The Most Dangerous Thing

ended up being washed away as the stream gained in power. It rained very hard that night, and the streets did flood, as predicted, but they were empty by morning and everyone made their way home.

A week later, we went back to his house, perhaps the last thing we ever did as a group. It was empty, but then-it had been empty before.

“Do you think he had a funeral?” Go-Go asked.

“Who cares?” Mickey said. “He was a bad person. Not you, Go-Go. Chicken George.”

It was the right thing to say. Yet why did it sound as if Mickey was saying the exact opposite? In telling Go-Go that he was not a bad person, wasn’t she suggesting that some might think he was, that everything was his fault?

“What if he’s still alive,” Go-Go said. “What if he never really died?”

“It’s not like a horror film,” Sean assured his brother. “He died. He most definitely died. Dr. Robison said so.”

Chicken George died. From his head injury, according to Gwen’s father, but it was hard not to wonder about the water rushing around him, growing in power, carrying him and his guitar-where, exactly? Where did the stream end up? In the harbor, at a treatment plant? We knew the stream so well, understood its moods and shifts, its dangers, but we didn’t know its ultimate destination. We knew only the part we saw.

Chicken George died. Our group, already splintering, died with him. Sean quickly became unsatisfactory to Gwen, and he didn’t seem particularly brokenhearted when she invited another boy to the Homecoming dance in October, her way of telling Sean that things were over. Tim worked even harder for those elusive A’s, determined to get a scholarship. Mickey’s mother broke up with Rick and moved across the county line-not even two miles, to the Strawberry Hill apartment, but far enough away that we never saw Mickey, now in a new school, hanging out with new friends. Go-Go got caught shoplifting at the Windsor Hills pharmacy. Go-Go got caught setting a small fire. Go-Go put a stray cat in an old insulated milk box, but maybe that was just a rumor. At any rate, with each incident, people sighed and said: “Oh, that Go-Go.” We never spoke of Chicken George again, and perhaps some of us even managed never to think about him, although that’s harder to imagine.

Tally Robison died-cancer at age forty-nine. Tim Senior died, a heart attack while sitting in his recliner, watching the 1996 play-off between the Orioles and the Yankees. Mickey’s mother met another man, someone older, and followed him to Florida. It was sad, but natural, the way things happen. It was life.

Then Gwen’s father fell down the steps. Tripping, he said, on a chicken. And Go-Go drove his car into the concrete barrier at the foot of the highway. The highway that, had it been completed, would have cut straight through the park and the land where Chicken George once lived. Could the highway have saved Go-Go? Could anything save Go-Go? Could we have saved Go-Go?

Thirty-two years later, we are still trying to figure that out.

Them

Chapter Fifteen

Autumn 1979

Tally Robison has made a private game of cooking dinner out of whatever is at hand. She doesn’t plan the week’s meals in advance. That would be cheating. She flies down the aisles of the Giant every Saturday morning, picking up things on a whim, never using a list. The rest of the week, she stays at her easel as late as possible, channeling a character in a fairy tale, an enchanted princess who shifts shape every evening. Sunset is coming! The dark forces are gathering. Once the light is gone, she will be transformed into an everyday wife and mother, making dinner and small talk.

This strict separation between her daytime and evening lives is entirely her choice. Neither Clem nor Gwen challenges the hours she devotes to painting, much less suggests she is neglectful of them in any way. Tally is the one who has decided that her artistic self must be banished with the dying of the light. Clem and Gwen wouldn’t mind if Tally threw buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the table, or fell back on Chinese takeout. They wouldn’t notice if she remained in her painting clothes or allowed a few romantic spatters to linger on her hands. But she minds. She notices. There has to be a clean break between her two lives, no overlap. That way, she is wild to get back to her work in the morning.

Even so, it’s hard to let go of her daytime life, now that the days are short. The inevitable consequence is that she tests time, working feverishly to the last possible moment, showers as quickly as possible, then descends to the kitchen to face the challenge of assembling that night’s meal.

Today, it is barely five-thirty when she enters the kitchen and sets to work on a quiche recipe out of the Moosewood Cookbook . Tally’s vegetarian aspirations are another secret, a new regime launched with no fanfare just after Labor Day and the big storm, when the lights went out for several hours and she decided she didn’t trust any of the meat in the house. September is a better time for new beginnings than January 1, when she is usually so depressed she can barely haul herself out of bed. No fanfare, no resolutions, no grand pronouncements, yet September’s changes stick. Now, two months later, neither Clem nor Gwen has picked up on the fact that Tally prepares red meat only once or twice a month and that the evening meal is altogether meatless every other night. Do they notice anything she does? But who would register the lack of steak and pot roast when there is quiche with homemade crust, pizza from scratch, red beans and rice, Moroccan stew with couscous? Besides, food isn’t important to them. Clem is one of those odd people who eats mainly for fuel, although he has a yen for greasy fast foods. Gwen, untrusting of her newfound slenderness, evaluates every mouthful based only on what it might do to her figure.

Where is Gwen? Tally stands still, listens to the house, catches the buzz of a radio or television coming from Gwen’s room. She is supposed to check in with Tally upon arrival home, but that is Clem’s rule, and Tally doesn’t bother to enforce it now that Gwen is alone behind her closed door. Tally doesn’t want to be disturbed while in her studio, and Gwen understands that. She’s a considerate girl. She is Tally’s favorite child, a sentiment she would freely profess if it didn’t horrify others. She believes all mothers have favorites. Hers did, and it wasn’t Tally. Miller is a stolid, dutiful lump, Clem without a sense of humor. And Fee, lacking any talent for introspection, is an utter bore. How did Tally have such dull children?

Two months ago, Where is Gwen? was a much more freighted question because Gwen would have been with Sean, and the two of them were clearly working their way toward serious mischief. Clem professed to be unconcerned, called it puppy love, said Gwen was too young to get into trouble. Tally considered that an interesting bit of denial for a man whose own bride had been a mere eighteen to his thirty-two on their wedding day. But Clem’s naivete turned out to be justified. The romance with Sean was fleeting. Now Gwen is seeing other boys, determined not to be tied down. She’s all about quantity now, flitting from one to another. Tally approves, for the most part. Her only worry is that Gwen will meet a boy who ignores her and mistake his lack of interest for love.

Tally zips through the crust, thanks to the Cuisinart she received last Mother’s Day, at her request, grates the cheese, slices the mushrooms, marveling-no false modesty for her, thank you-at her dexterity and speed. A tidy person, she cleans up as she goes, which is all to Gwen’s benefit, as it’s Gwen’s job to clear the table and load the dishwasher at dinner’s end, not that Gwen notices, much less thanks her. I am a good mother. I am a good wife. I take good care of my family. It is the very same theme embodied by a new perfume commercial, the one that uses the old blues song, although the woman in the ad also makes money for her household. Tally might not bring home the bacon, but she is creating beautiful, beautiful things in her makeshift studio. And the new project-