From his father’s bedroom he hears the stentorian tones of a television newscast. The minute Reuben gets home now, he begins to cable-surf, running the clicker up and down the dial looking for the latest war news. Though they know Frankie is somewhere in the Gulf, the position of his vessel is classified. They have not heard from him since the war began. The talking heads on the tube claim casualties in six months of land war might run fifty, sixty thousand. The fuckup in Vietnam claimed, officially, about that number over more than ten years. American dead. The never-mentioned enemy loss was more than twenty times that number and no one wants to speculate on what the ratio of dead Iraqis to Allies will be. He shivers, wondering if Frankie will ever make it home and if he himself will be over there this time next year.
And who will look out for Deanie if he is?
Game day. Last game day on the bench. The Mutant blinks at the ceiling, rolls over to look down into her duffel, where her protective mask nestles on top of her books. She touches her scar, amazed again at the seemingly instant seaming of her tissue. The doctor drew the edges together and the cells sealed themselves, zipped together like that, in the first twenty-four hours. Going on ten days and the rest of it is obviously on the mend, so the delicate-minded don’t jerk their eyes away at first sight.
In the bathroom, she checks in at the mirror. It’s beginning to look the way it will for good. Her face aches sometimes but she doesn’t need the painkillers anymore. She takes them to kill the nightmares. She’ll be out of them soon.
She takes her disc of b.c. pills from the pocket she has sewed into the inside of her bathrobe. Looking at the loop of tiny pellets, like a chain of flavorless candy, she wonders why she’s bothering.
34
“ ‘This ain’t no disco! This ain’t no foolin’ around!’” is the Mutant’s cry from the middle of the pack in the corridor.
It is a group-grope heaven as the boys emerge from the Chamberlain locker rooms into wall-to-wall bodies. The girls squeal and jump up and down and throw themselves on guys and not just guys on the team but anyone quick enough to jam himself into the corridor after the double-eagle win against Chamberlain. The Greenspark boys are beginning to feel they are as unbeatable as the weekend sports pages will speculate. And the next time the girls take the floor, the Mutant will be back.
To Sam’s eyes, she’s back already. She’s cast off her depression, that cloak of invisibility. Her eyes are feverish, her skin translucent and glowing, the fading bruises opalescent smears of color, the scar a pearly chain underlining the upsweep of her cheekbone, nose to ear. Her headscarf is low on her forehead, and she is beautiful—the narrow cameo oval of her face, the dark arch of eyebrows, the rich bitter chocolate of her eyes, her full mouth. He moves through the crowd toward her, elated, stunned and afraid.
After the bus ride home, she crows again in the truck. She flops back and props her feet on the dashboard.
The radio bellows and he clicks down the volume.
“Next game,” she says. “I can’t wait.”
“Be great.”
The look she concentrates on him makes him feel like dry pine straw under a lens, an intensification of light into a sudden dangerous warmth. “You were great tonight.”
He breaks eye contact hastily, addressing himself to getting out of the parking lot. No matter how many times he’s had girls look at him like that, it’s still heady stuff that leaves him covering confusion about how he’s supposed to deal with it.
She chatters on, comparing the two games, contrasting plays and players, dissecting and re-playing exhaustively, just the way they all did in the locker rooms, on the buses, and the way they will tomorrow at the lunch tables. He listens. He is good at listening, in compensation for being so bad at speaking. Unable to sit still, she twists on her knees like a little kid to talk and gesticulate. Then she picks up the basketball from the floor of the cab and hugs it.
She bounces into the house ahead of him and accepts high fives from Pearl and his father without apparent unease.
It isn’t until Pearl takes the baby upstairs to bathe her that Reuben tells them the woman from DHS called at the garage earlier. “She says the medical report and the Greenspark cops’ information that Deanie’s mother failed to seek medical care for her or even determine how badly she was hurt gives the state grounds to take custody until an investigation is completed. DHS might have a foster home for Deanie in Lisbon Falls by the end of next week.”
The color drains from Deanie’s face.
Sam reaches for her hand under the table. “How will she get to school?”
Reuben sighs. “She’ll be transferred to the high school there.”
“No!”
Deanie’s cry expresses Sam’s own stunned disbelief but before he can say anything, she jerks her hand from his and rushes from the room. He starts to rise but the bathroom door slams and he sinks back into his chair.
“You see how she was when we came in?” Sam asks, keeping his voice low so it won’t carry to Deanie in the
