Here in the Real World Read online

  Ware looked down at Jolene. She was dabbing her trowel over each plant down the row, like a fairy godmother bestowing blessings with her wand. And then he realized: She wasn’t blessing her plants, she was counting them. As if they could have grown legs and escaped during the night.

  When she picked up the hose and began to water them, it dawned on him: If he wanted to try out that do-over tub—and he did, although he’d have to keep it secret from her, of course—he had the upper hand now, thanks to that hose. She’d have to tell him whatever she knew about the holy water deal.

  He hurried down the tower stairs, jumped off the back of the foundation. Chin up, chest out, he advanced boldly into her territory.

  Thirteen

  “This good soil you need,” Ware said, employing Jolene’s strength as a diversionary tactic before sneaking into the holy water issue. “Where are you going to get it?”

  Jolene nodded approvingly at the question. She twisted the hose nozzle off and waved toward three waist-high heaps he hadn’t noticed before.

  The piles were layered with food in various stages of rot. Banana peels, orange and watermelon rinds, some greenish stuff that must have once been vegetables. “Garbage?”

  “It was,” she agreed. “It’s turning into compost.”

  Ware hitched his eyebrows into a look that he hoped conveyed sufficient wonder. “Compost. Great. Now, what did the preacher do to make the water holy?”

  She tipped her head to the fence behind the piles. “I go to the Greek Market next door and get the fruits and vegetables too old to sell. I shovel some dirt over them and the worms do the rest. Now, the Chinese were the first to compost, back in 2000 BC, and . . .”

  Ware started to zone out, but when the sun pulled out of the queen palm fronds and hit her mirror glasses, it jolted him.

  At his grandmother’s place, Ware had gotten up at dawn to have the pool to himself. That early, the water would flash blindingly, like those glasses. No matter how hard he’d tried to peer down into it, he’d only seen his own face reflected back. Sometimes, yourself was exactly what you didn’t want to see.

  “Oh,” he said, a little unnerved for a moment. “So . . . the preacher. Was it a spell?”

  “Look. I only snuck in once. I heard some words that sounded important.” Jolene pushed her hat up and studied his head for a thoughtful moment. “You look like you’re rusting.”

  Ware rubbed his hair. He knew it was unusual—his mom’s tight waves, his dad’s dark copper color. But the summer sun bleached it bronze, and three weeks of chlorine at Sunset Palms hadn’t helped. “I know,” he said. “But what about—”

  Jolene flapped her trowel at him dismissively. “No offense. My freckles look greenish in the sun. Now, there are three piles because they’re in different stages—”

  They both turned at the shriek of a whistle.

  The Rec kids were outside. They began to cheer.

  “Rec-re-ation

  On va-cation

  We’re fun-nation

  Go, Rec, GO!”

  Several times a day the campers were gathered in a circle to link arms for something called Rec Spirit. Ware hadn’t liked the shouting, and he’d never understood the cheer.

  At home after his first day, he’d asked his mother what recreation meant.

  “Play. You know, things you do for fun. Not work.”

  None of those definitions applied to the day he’d just had. “How about funnation? What does that mean?”

  “It’s not a word,” she’d said. “You must have heard it wrong.”

  He’d listened carefully the next day, and when he heard the word again, he’d unhooked an elbow and raised his hand. “Is it Fun Nation? Or fun-ation?” The counselor had just stared at him. “It’s funnation,” she’d said unhelpfully. “So it rhymes.”

  From then, he’d shouted the cheer along with everyone else, but it always left him feeling vaguely embarrassed.

  “Hey, wake up.” Jolene waggled her fingers toward the Rec. “You have to go. Bye.”

  “Not yet.” Ware heard the words as if it had come from someone else. “First, I have something important to do.”

  Fourteen

  Ware shoved the big wooden door over the side until it thudded to the ground. If he was going to have a castle, its drawbridge was going to welcome him.

  Then, trip after trip, he hauled junk out of the baptistery and into the dumpsters at the back of the property. At the bottom, he discovered a problem: a massive brass bell. The wrecking ball must have knocked it out of the tower.

  He needed some rope to haul out that bell. Somewhere in this mess there must be some rope.

  He began the search in what used to be the kitchen. A long butcher-block table stood stolidly bearing its load of rubble, but most everything else had been crushed. He yanked open the few cupboards that were still accessible. Plastic and paper supplies; burned pans and cracked dishes; a bottle of grape juice, furred with mold. Jolene was right: all the good stuff had been scooped.

  Next to the kitchen had been a dining hall. It had probably held a flock of tables and chairs, but now only the collapsed roof furnished the space. At the far end, though, stood three closets, barely touched.

  Ware clambered over the wreckage and cleared enough space to open the doors. The first was a janitor’s closet—cleaning supplies, mops, buckets, and brooms.

  The shelves of the next closet were empty except for some red-and-white-checkered vinyl tablecloths and a wooden box full of candle stubs with a lighter on top. More junk, no rope.

  The last closet was full of art supplies—cases of glue, cartons of markers and crayons, jars of glitter and finger paint, a pile of Noah’s ark coloring books.

  He flipped through the top one and a memory surfaced.

  The first summer, after a trip to the zoo, the Rec kids had been marched into the Art Hut to draw an animal they’d seen.

  “What’s this?” the counselor had asked, holding up Ware’s drawing—dramatic blazes of black and orange spiraling into a joyful scribble of green.

  “The tiger.” Ware had been so proud, he’d raised his voice so all the kids could hear—this would make up for the inside/outside thing. “It’s escaping. Remember, its face was sad?”

  “Well, that’s okay,” the counselor had said, “not everyone can be an artist.” She’d moved away, pinning up the drawings the other kids had done by tracing lions and elephants and bears. Ware had crumpled his drawing and stuffed it in the trash.

  He shook off the memory. He was about to leave when he spied a fresh pack of Play-Doh at the back.

  He split the cellophane and peeled up the lids. The weird chemical vanilla smell made his fingers ache to plunge into the smooth mounds, but he thought about Sad Girl and snapped the lids back on. Clay was only perfect once.

  The room at the corner must have been an office. Wooden bookshelves collapsed against the broken walls, their shelves bare except for a bag of black plastic letters and numbers and a cardboard box.

  The box was damp and smelled defeated, like mold. He opened the lid and lifted out a framed photograph: a brown-toned picture of the church, its roof only a skeleton of beams, surrounded by men raising hammers and saws. The year 1951 was written in faded ink on the back.

  He flipped through other pictures. Weddings and funerals; young men in soldiers’ uniforms; beaming women holding pies in gloved hands; children in bathrobes adoring baby dolls in mangers.

  The pictures reminded Ware of the tapestries that royal ladies wove for their castles. Those tapestries kept out the winter drafts, but their true purpose was much more important. People passing by learned the stories of the castle from the panels hanging outside—births and deaths, battles and unions, acts of heroism or mystic encounters.

  These pictures weren’t so different from those tapestries, he realized. They weren’t different at all.

  He held up another. In it, a stained-glass window was being installed in the west wall.

&n
bsp; He carried the photo to the spot and tossed away junk until he found the remains: a thousand shards of colored glass glittering through the debris. He picked some out and cradled them in his palm—ruby, sapphire, emerald, and amber. They shone like doomed jewels.

  He propped up the photograph to tell its story—Once, a window glowed here—and made his way back.

  He re-covered the box and pushed it deeper under the shelf so rain wouldn’t ruin it. A folder that had been underneath fell to the floor.

  Ware picked it up. The question on its cover—ARE YOU LEADING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE?—electrified him as if a switch had been thrown.

  What was a purpose-driven life? What purpose could drive his? These seemed like exactly the kinds of things a person trying to get himself reborn should ask.

  He flipped open the cover in tremendous excitement.

  The folder was empty.

  Ware slumped against the bookcase.

  Are you leading a purpose-driven life?

  What a question.

  Fifteen

  Ware found his parents splayed across the living room couch as if they’d been blown there by cannon, too exhausted to even look shocked about it. The pregame was on with no sound—his dad believed announcers ruined baseball—and a pizza box sat on the coffee table.

  His mother shook her head as if to clear it. “Hey, there. You have a good day?”

  Guilt over ditching Rec coated Ware like grime. He’d meant to go. He’d actually made it to the door and reached for the bar handle. But inside, they were shouting again. His soul had retreated and his arm had fallen back to his side. Whatever funnation was, he wasn’t. He’d placed the Play-Doh on the step and bolted back to the lot.

  Jolene had vanished, so Ware climbed the tower and ate his lunch surveying his kingdom.

  His kingdom, he’d seen from there, was a mess.

  So he’d come down, gotten a push broom, and started clearing the floor around the baptistery. When a blister on his palm made that too painful, he located a window screen and some glue and set them on the kitchen work table. He gathered all the broken pieces of stained glass big enough to salvage and began sticking them to the screen—an explosion of smashed gems, come to life again.

  He’d had a great day.

  Now he considered the possible answers to his mother’s question. His parents had been working double shifts for nearly a month. They might be too tired to care if he admitted he hadn’t gone to Rec. “I had a really good day,” he began cautiously.

  Before he could go on, his mother sighed with dramatic relief. “Oh, thank goodness. We’re so glad you’re making it work.”

  Ware winced. “Dad . . .”

  “We both appreciate it, son.” He pointed at the TV screen, where players were running around the bases. “Think of it like that. A sacrifice fly. Not great for the player, but best for the team. There’s no ‘I’ in team, you know.”

  “Or think of it as your job this summer,” his mother chimed in. “To help us buy this house.”

  “My job is going to Rec?”

  “No, your job is making sure we don’t worry about you. And don’t forget, we owe you something nice at the end. Do you know what you want?”

  Ware shook his head. He just wanted summer to be over.

  “Now, what is it you did today that was so much fun?”

  “So . . .” He turned to the television. “Just, you know, normal stuff.” He pushed the word normal a little extra, then risked a glance to see how it had gone over.

  His mother smiled and pushed the pizza box toward him along with a stack of napkins.

  Ware sat on the rug and took a slice, although he’d just lost his appetite.

  Just then, his mother’s phone rang. “Your grandmother’s hospital,” she announced. She left to take the call in the bedroom, closed-door style.

  When she came back, she was trailing a suitcase. “Eight tomorrow morning for the surgery. I’ll go down tonight, after work. I’ll stay until she can be moved.”

  Ware put down his slice. “Is she scared?”

  “What? No.” His mother looked puzzled. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Tell her I’ll come see her. Can I?”

  “It’s ‘may,’ not ‘can.’ And yes. She’ll be at a rehab place nearby.” She shouldered her pocketbook. “I almost forgot. Uncle Cy is coming. He’ll stay with us a few days.”

  “Oh, good.” Ware’s uncle wasn’t like other grown-ups. When Uncle Cy asked you a question, he actually listened to the answer. But he worked for a news organization, filming documentaries all over the world, and the few times he came to the States, it was usually to Los Angeles or New York.

  His mom studied him, hand on a hip. “I don’t know what it is, but you remind me of him at your age.” She grabbed her suitcase, kissed the top of his head, and pointed to the kitchen. “I left you a schedule.”

  Ware sighed. Of course she did.

  Sixteen

  The schedule was three pages long.

  Ware sighed again. Beside him, his father sighed, too. His father’s sigh was admiring and Ware’s was despairing, but both were heartfelt.

  “She needed to tell me when to put on sunscreen?”

  His father leaned in for a closer look. “Every four hours,” he confirmed. “And look. She’s labeled the tubes. One for each week.”

  None of it surprised Ware. His mother was a walking daily planner. She had an infallible internal clock and a memory that archived every appointment time for eternity.

  Once, while shopping, she’d passed a big digital display that read 2:55. “Oh,” she said wistfully, “two fifty-five! First Monday of every month, I’d leave the office at two fifty-five. Pick you up from school at seven past three, have you at your orthodontist at three twenty-five. We’d sit in the car for exactly four minutes while you complained about having braces and then we’d walk in right on time. Remember?”

  His braces had come off six months ago. He remembered the fruity cleaning-supplies smell of the office, the way the orthodontist’s hairs had sprouted out of his nose, and how sharply the braces bit each time they were tightened. But no, he did not remember the time.

  “Think of it this way,” his father interrupted Ware’s thoughts. “It’s fourth down, fourth quarter, a minute to go and we’re behind. The quarterback, your mother, calls for a Red Right Thirty Pull Trap. The touchdown depends on every player being exactly where he’s supposed to be, doing exactly what he’s supposed to do exactly when he’s supposed to do it. You get it?”

  Ware nodded vigorously, as if he totally got it. He stared hard at the schedule, pretending to ponder the advice deeply.

  Moments like this, he always felt lonely, as if sports were a planet his father lived on, a planet he could never travel to.

  Worse, Ware knew his dad felt lonely at these times, too. Sometimes he would look at his son with a baffled expression, the kind of expression someone getting ready to dig into a big steak might wear when he realized there were only a couple of cotton balls next to the plate instead of a knife and a fork. What am I supposed to do with this? the expression asked.

  Ware didn’t want to see that expression right now, so he nodded some more.

  Beside him, Ware’s dad stretched out his arm. He eyed his watch, then took it off.

  “What are you doing?” Ware asked, shocked. Unlike his mother, his father didn’t have an infallible internal clock, and he worried about forgetting some important appointment, such as watching a ball game. To prevent this tragedy, he wore a wristwatch able to maintain several alarms at once.

  His father clasped the watch around Ware’s wrist.

  “But you need this, Dad.”

  “Not as much as you do,” he said with another deep sigh. Then he headed back to the couch.

  Ware put the schedule back on the fridge next to the Rec brochure. The only appointment he didn’t want to miss was with the three forty-five bus home. He set the watch for three thirty, then cho
se a birdcall for the alarm.

  Birds symbolized freedom. Which he would never have.

  Seventeen

  Ware smiled at the sight of his hose curled beside Jolene like a faithful dog. Today, he’d haul out the bell with the rope he’d found in his shed, then fill the baptistery and get himself born again. A penny in Coke.

  He dropped from the branch and ran over to Jolene.

  “Nuh-uh. Boundaries.”

  “We don’t need boundaries,” Ware said. He had thought about this all night. People defending castles needed to work together. That’s why they held games and festivals—to practice their cooperation, enhance their loyalty. “The lot is ours, together. We’re on the same team.”

  Jolene sat back on her heels, a wary look on her face.

  “Think of it like football,” he tried. “A pull trap. Red. For the touchdown.”

  Jolene just stared.

  “Never mind.” He sighed. He pointed to the hose. “It’s my turn.”

  “Your turn?”

  “With the hose. Remember?”

  Jolene dropped her trowel and trekked over to the Grotto Bar–side fence. Her left flip-flop flashed the dull silver of duct tape with every step. She bent to the hose coupling. It looked as if she was disconnecting her hose from his.

  She was disconnecting hers from his.

  She walked back and pointed to his hose. “Okay. You can take it now.”

  “What do you mean? It’s not going to work now. It’s got no water!”

  Jolene looked back to the separated ends. “Correct. No water now.”