“Tough,” I said.
When I finished the windows, I walked through the graveyard. It’s a strange thing, walking through a graveyard in the daytime. It’s not spooky, like it is at night. And it gives you this strange feeling: sort of a calm feeling in one way, and a very sad feeling in another way. When you’re in a graveyard, all the other stupid things like the convict and the things Sally Lynn and Sue Ann said, all those things seem ridiculous to worry about. And you wonder why you worry about them and why you let them get you so mad.
The graveyard is a pretty place, with flowers here and there, with all that grass, with those stones and the poems and sayings written on them, all about loving memory and loving parents and loving sisters and loving brothers and time and heaven and sleep.
And I was so calm after walking around the graveyard that I lay down in the grass and fell asleep.
I dreamed a strange dream. It was about Carl Ray and some man with a sheet over his head, and Carl Ray was walking up to him in slow motion, and then he was lifting the sheet, and then the sheet was off and Carl Ray was hugging the man. And someone was calling me, “Mary LOUUU, Mary Louuuu, where are youuuu?” and then I woke up.
Aunt Radene was standing on the porch calling me.
So I went up to the house, and she said, “It’s dinnertime. Come on in.”
Boy, what a huge dinner. Fried chicken (again), mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, tomatoes, green beans, coleslaw, potato salad, and beets. Everybody was talking about how it was Carl Ray’s last night home (they didn’t mention me) and oh, they wished he would stay longer, and couldn’t he at least stay until Saturday, and I started to feel sick because I thought he might give in and say yes.
But then. It was time for dessert. Sally Lynn and John Roy went into the living room and came out with this huge chocolate cake and on it, in huge white letters, was “MARY LOU: WE’LL MISS YOU.”
And then everybody started talking to me all at once, and Sally Lynn said she was sorry about Booger Hill and John Roy said he was sorry about the convict and Sue Ann said she was sorry if I overheard them today (how did she know?) and that they didn’t mean it, and on and on. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby, so I chewed on my lip a lot.
That was a nice thing for them to do, don’t you think?
But still, I’m not sorry to leave and WE GO HOME TOMORROW!!!!!!!
HOORAY!!!!
I AM HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We made it! The ship didn’t crash in the storm. Captain Carl Ray got us through. I am in my OWN room writing at my own NEW DESK. But, but, but. There’s more to tell first.
Where oh where to begin? Calm down, Mary Lou.
The trip. You can imagine, I guess, that I wasn’t real sorry to leave Aunt Radene’s, even if she did cry when she hugged me good-bye and even if Sally Lynn did give me a present (a book wrapped up in paper: it’s all about sex) and even if Aunt Radene did hold on to Carl Ray as if she wasn’t ever going to see him again.
One really surprising thing is that Carl Ray and I talked (yes, talked) on the way back, and I found out the most amazing things about Carl Ray.
First, I asked him if he had ever been homesick at our house, and he said yes. So I asked him why he hadn’t said anything about being homesick, and he said, “Wouldn’t have done any good, would it?” I had to think about that. When I asked him if he would still be homesick now, he said he didn’t rightly know. “But why are you coming back, then?” He said he had some “unfinished business,” and he wouldn’t explain, but I figure he means Beth Ann.
It took about a hundred miles of the trip to get that much out of Carl Ray. Then I asked him if Uncle Carl Joe was always mad at him.
“Mad?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘mad’?”
“Well, he didn’t exactly seem thrilled to see you home.”
Carl Ray gave me one of his long, mournful looks. “He just doesn’t show it,” he said. “We had a fight.”
“A fight?” This was interesting.
“Before. When I was still living there. That’s why I left in such a hurry. That’s why I came to Easton.”
“What? You didn’t come to find work? Aunt Radene said you were coming to look for work.”
“I did look for work, didn’t I?” he said.
“But what was the fight about?” Carl Ray gets away from the important issues very quickly.
“Well…” He looked as if he was trying to decide whether or not he should continue. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to…”
Oh boy, here we go again, I thought. Maggie and Beth Ann are always making me promise not to tell. And Aunt Radene asked me to keep the secret about Carl Ray. Now someone else making me promise not to tell. I can’t keep all these promises straight.
“I promise. Now just tell me.”
“You really can’t repeat—”
“I promised, didn’t I? God, Carl Ray.”
“Naw,” he said. “I can’t. Mom would kill me.”
“Carl Ray! That’s so mean. First you make me promise. Then I promise. Now you’re not going to tell me. God.” (I was saying “God” again.)
But he wouldn’t tell me. So I was mad for a while. Then I decided to read the Odyssey, but all of a sudden I remembered the dream in the graveyard and all of a sudden I realized that Carl Ray was Telemachus!!! I said, “I’ve been having the strangest dreams, and you’re in almost every one.”
“Me?” He looked pleased.
Then I told him each dream. I told him about the headless body dream and the ship in the storm dream and then the graveyard dream where he rips the sheet off of the man and starts hugging him. “I think I’ve been reading the Odyssey too much.”
But Carl Ray had the strangest look on his face. His mouth was half open and his hands were wrapping tighter and tighter around the steering wheel.
“What’s the matter, Carl Ray?”
“That’s amazing,” he said.
“What is?”
He just sat there. I thought I was going to have to slap him or something. Then he said, “Okay. I’m gonna tell you. But you have to promise.”
“I already promised. I am not promising again. If you don’t believe me—”
“Okay. Okay. Here it is, then.”
Why can’t people just say things straight out? It drives me one hundred percent cra-zeeeee when they mumble around like this.
Ooops. Mom wants me to stop writing and talk with her.
I’m too tired to finish this. Tomorrow. I have a lot to tell.
Oh, mercy. Why is everything getting so complicated? How am I ever going to catch up? How am I going to explain it?
And where, oh where, is Alexxxxx?????
Oh, God. I mean Alpha and Omega. Control yourself, Mary Lou. Back to the car trip home yesterday with Carl Ray.
Right.
Here is what Carl Ray told me when he finally decided that he could trust me. He said, “Have you ever thought your parents weren’t your parents?”
“Sure,” I said. “I always think I’m probably adopted. Only my parents don’t want to tell me. See, they want to pretend—”
“Well, I never thought that.”
“That I was adopted?”
“No. That I was adopted.”
“Carl Ray, are you? Are you adopted? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? If that—”
“No.”
“No what? Carl Ray, just spit it out. Just spit it right out!!!” I was getting that exploding feeling again.