Mason saw himself in the whole novel as Mark, the responsible one, the sardonic one. In the last third of the book, the day at the reservoir, Jimmy had changed one thing. He’d changed what happened so that now when the angel boy, who was Matt, named Zeke in the book, full of beer and sorrow, as drunk really as Mason had ever seen anyone, takes the boat out into the reservoir, somebody goes with him. The somebody was Jimmy, whose name in the book is Cameron, and the two of them fight in the book, and Zeke does not return. Zeke, like Matt, never returns. Mason knew how to read such a scene in such a book; he knew what fiction is and what nonfiction is, and he also knew it was just a book, a story. And still when he finally picked it up again two days later and cut himself on a little triangle of glass caught in the cover, he was filled with the great urge to throw it again. That day had been the best and worst day of his life, and he’d been full of the sense of the day as a pinnacle. His whole life had been coming together for seventeen years, and he knew it was a false feeling, but he gloried in it that day at the reservoir, and knowing what had happened was important to him, essential to him. It rankled him to have Jimmy make it fiction, but he loved that the book glowed with the feeling of the day. It rankled him more to be such a callow reader.
Now Mason wasn’t dizzy, but it was unearthly to walk on the dark driveway, to be in the past this way, deeply in the old days. He turned in a circle, taking in the Brands’ house, the whole night world, his old world, blades of light flared at the edge of things. He drifted toward the street watching the little garage, and the quiet shelter seemed to float in the familiar dark.
• • •
Wendy Ingram rode her blue bicycle one-handed up the uneven center of Berry Street and halfway up the driveway of the Brands’ house the next afternoon. The sunlight caught in the great loads of heavy yellow leaves gathered and waiting in the old trees, and she stood and looked up; the whole street felt like a glowing cavern. She carried three books and walked back along the driveway to the garage, where she knocked lightly on the side door and then peeked in. “Hello?”
“Come in,” Jimmy Brand said. He was sitting on the bed in a white dress shirt and a pair of corduroys typing on his laptop. There was a pillow under it.
“You’re writing,” Wendy said, coming in a step. “I’ll come back later. Do you remember when I was over with Larry? I’m Wendy. I got your book.” She held it up, along with the two others in her hand. “I got another. I read them. I’ll come back when you’re not working.”
“Don’t come later.” Jimmy smiled and tipped his head back. “Come in the door right now. How’s the weather?”
“I love the fall,” she said. “The leaves are just turning and it’s still pretty warm out, but it’s all so . . .”
“Sad,” he said.
“Some,” she said. “I guess. But it’s a beautiful day. You want me to open the door? It’s not cold.”
“Let’s do that, Wendy,” he said. She opened the door, and a plank of white light fell onto the floor, and light took all the upper corners of the odd room, reflecting off the plastic sheeting stapled there. “Well,” Jimmy said. “Hello. That’s better. It is a day. With the leaves, you can be sad or get ready with your rake. In the old days we made some leaf piles like haystacks.”
“We still do it, but everybody has a blower.”
“Of course they do.”
She sat down, the books in her lap. Now she was uneasy and unsure of what to say, why she had come. “How are you?” she asked. “Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine. I’ve got everybody hopping, and my mother is taking remarkable care. How’s your Larry?”
“Larry’s great. He’s always been great. But he’s not my Larry.”