Crystal Grader - Tag Cavello (reading women .TXT) 📗

to be found, which did not surprise Crystal considering how many winters these walls had already survived. A light lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and Coke followed, then another tutoring session, this time with a twist: Jarett wanted Crystal to come up with an idea for a novel, complete with theme and outline.

She stared at him from the couch, gobsmacked. Was he serious? she asked. Why not? he replied. If she intended to be a novelist one day there was no time like the present to get started. And even if she never actually wrote the novel for this particular assignment, he added, it would still provide useful insights for them both on the importance of structure and foundation.

“All right,” she agreed, though the task seemed akin to fighting a dragon after only a few fencing lessons.

Part of her acceptance had to do with the way Jarett was walking back and forth in front of the fireplace. His words were as passionate as she had ever heard them, laced with gesticulations that were almost frantic in nature. At one point he spun around with his finger in the air, eyes alight with whatever fresh idea he was about to pitch, and knocked a picture off the mantle with the other hand. The frame shattered as it struck the hearthstones, but with barely a glance at what he had done Jarett went right on talking.

“Once you have your idea,” he said, “I want a theme that you care about attached to it. If you can’t come up with a theme then don’t bother with the idea at all.”

“So it’s idea first and then theme?” Crystal asked, charmed as always to discover something new in this man.

“Not always,” Jarett allowed. “But you need to care about both, Crystal. A lot. Because most writers take at least a year to work on a novel. I normally take two. That’s a hell of a long time, so you’re going to need a shitload of coal to shovel.”

“Got it,” she said.

“Once you have your idea and your theme down, I want you to write in one or two short, simple sentences what the book is supposed to be about. Don’t give me any bullshit, long-winded crap that makes me need to sit down and smoke a pipe while I try to understand it.”

“Um…”

“Short and simple. What is your fucking book about?”

“Jarett, I don’t know if I’m ready to write a novel.”

“You will be once you have your theme and outline. I want a list of your main characters, too, with descriptions for each. Tell me about their personalities, their traits.” He stopped pacing again. “Are you writing this down?”

Crystal snatched guiltily at her notebook. “Oh fuck. Sorry, sorry. Is there a deadline?”

“Bet your ass there is. I want everything in two weeks.”

“The theme and outline you mean, not the whole novel. I hope.”

“Of course not the whole novel,” he laughed. “I don’t expect you to be William fucking Goldman. I do expect you to be disciplined. If you want to write books you goddamned well need to be.”

“I’m disciplined, boss,” she said, thinking of her near fatal breath-holding performance in the bathtub last night.

Jarett went to the closet as she spoke and got out a broom.

“You’re getting there,” he said. “But we haven’t been aggressive enough with these lessons. That’s my fault. I’ve been treating you with kid gloves.”

“I—“

“Starting today we’re going to take bigger strides. You turn thirteen on Valentine’s Day, right?”

“Yes,” Crystal said, blushing happily.

“Hell, that’s only four days away. But you know what?” He brushed the broken glass into a dust pan. “You’re going to have a huge head start on being a novelist. Huge.”

Crystal kept smiling, though her buoyancy sprouted from a different source than his own. Ideas and outlines interested her far less than this newly awakened man who had gotten out of bed with her a few hours ago.

She followed him into the kitchen, where his chatter turned to more pedestrian topics. The house was still a concern. It had pipes that tended to freeze in weather like this, and a furnace that was getting too old for Ohio Februaries. And had he told her about the roof on the tool shed? It leaked, but only when it rained. He’d yet to fix it. He kept putting it off and off. Stupid. Also there were some rotten boards on the back porch that needed replacing—

Crystal touched his chin, cutting the litany off in its tracks.

“It’s okay, Jarett,” she said. “Whatever’s broken around here, we’ll fix it.”

“There’s nothing serious. I mean seriously wrong. The house, you know, just needs a little love—“

She kissed him. The effort proved a stretch considering their height difference, but her posture was graceful, and his shoulders made for strong anchors.

When it was over her cell phone rang from the other room. Leaving him to percolate with the coffee, Crystal went to answer it. Already she knew who it was. Only one person in the entire world could be so cluelessly inconvenient.

“Mom,” she said.

Silence for a moment on the other end. Then: “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

“I was hoping you’d call once the networks came back up,” she lied. “How is everything over there?”

“We’re good, we’re good. Cold but good. Hannah won’t come out from under the quilts.”

“Smart girl.”

“What about you? Is the house still standing?”

“Of course. Jarett put me up in a spare bedroom. Everything’s cool.”

“Great! I mean…you know, great. But I guess you still can’t make it home today. The drifts are like ten feet high on the roads.”

“Oh darn.”

“Will Jarett be okay keeping you just one more night? Can I talk to him?”

“Sure can. He’s right here.”

He was, in fact, standing in the kitchen doorway. Crystal waved him over, and after he took the phone, she jumped up on the coffee table to plant myriad kisses on his neck whilst her mother’s voice, now tinny with distance, hovered between them.

“It’s not a problem, Ms. Genesio, I assure you. February in Ohio is about as predictable as…well, it’s just really unpredictable.”

More talking from the other end of the line, though Crystal was far from caring what it said. Her eyes were closed as she began to chew on Jarett’s skin like a vampire.

“Yes,” Jarett laughed, “yes I do get paid to dream up fascinating similes, thank you.”

“And how is Crystal’s writing these days?” she quite by accident heard Lucretia ask.

“Oh, her style is very unique.” Crystal wrapped one leg around his waist. “The way she communicates her ideas is inimitable. Yes ma’am. Oh, you know that already? Well that makes sense.”

“Zabbazabbazrr-rrr-rr,” Lucretia said, as Crystal’s hand found its way beneath the button of her teacher’s pants.

“How’s that?” Jarett asked. “Is she making trouble for me? Oh no, no, no, no. No, no.” He coughed. “No.” Then, stunned: “Am I asking her to do what?”

“Zabbazabbazrr-rrr-rr.”

“Oh! Oh, right. I’m not asking her to mold another Macbeth at all, Ms. Genesio.”

Laughing, Crystal buried her face into Jarett’s shoulder. But she wasn’t quick enough.

“Yes, that’s her, Ms. Genesio. She’s laughing at Chubby. That’s my dog. Yeah. He’s begging for a treat.”

“Has she had any cigarettes while she’s been with you?”

Sweaty with distrust, this question came through clear as a bell. Crystal felt almost obligated to do what she did next. While Jarett fumbled for a proper reply, she dropped from his shoulders, went to the coat rack, and lit up from a pack he kept in his wool-lined parka.

“She told me she was banned and as far as I know she’s sticking to it,” Jarett said, looking straight into her eyes. “Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. It’s all right. You and Hannah take care. Thank you. Goodbye.”

He put the phone back on the table and they stared at each other for what seemed to Crystal like a hundred years. She continued to let out puff after dainty puff from the cigarette, doing what she hoped was a fair impersonation of Audrey Hepburn.

“We’re in trouble,” Jarett said, echoing his concern from the night before.

But this time Crystal had no contradictions to give. She pursed her lips into the shape of a kiss to blow more smoke across the room, and said:

“It’ll be worth it, baby. I promise you that.”

***

She slept in his arms again that night, hunkered deep under the quilts. Coming out again before spring did not seem plausible. The temperature outside was twenty below zero. Icicles hung from every tree branch and power line Crystal could see before coming to bed. It was all right, though. Better than that. It gave her an excuse to be here, where not only had she taken Jarett as her own, officially and eternally, but where she could also find solace from the horror of last autumn.

That solace had become more tempered than ever not long after Lucretia’s phone call. Seeing Crystal smoke had perhaps reminded Jarett of the dead janitor, for on that afternoon he breached the subject in direct fashion for the first time.

His audacity did not sit well with her at the outset. She’d glared at him from the stove, a hamburger sizzling in the frying pan, and asked him to repeat himself.

“The janitor,” Jarett obliged. “Does he haunt you? And by that I mean—“

“Do I think about him a lot. I know what you mean.” She flipped the burger over. Hot grease spattered her arms. “Ouch! Dammit!”

“Is that a yes?” Jarett said, handing her a dishrag, which she snatched at like a cornered animal.

“That’s a shut up and let me finish making dinner.”

“Crystal.”

“Why are you asking me this? We’re having a wonderful couple of days here. Please don’t spoil it.”

“Because hiding isn’t healing, remember?” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “And if you need to talk about it, then talk. To me. As much as you want.”

During their meal Crystal told him about how things were at school: the lunch hours spent alone, the growing distance between her and Lucy. As promised, Jarett honored them with his full attention, nodding at times but never interrupting. And to her surprise, Crystal found that she did indeed feel better, not because a ghost in her mind had been exorcised (she wasn’t so naïve as to think this would ever be possible), but because by acknowledging it, she had deprived it of its concealment. Under the bright light of her regard, it wasn’t so frightening as she’d made it out to be, especially with a protecting champion by her side.

That night in the bathtub she even found the courage to confess her guilt out loud.

“I killed him,” she said. “Right?”

The champion had no time to answer, so fast was the alibi that rose to her lips.

“God, that wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out. I swear it. I just wanted to humiliate him the way he humiliated me.”

“Of course you didn’t mean to kill him,” Jarett said, as if she were being ridiculous.

Except that lying in his arms this way, watching the steamy air through golden candlelight, Crystal felt anything but ridiculous.

“Did you see the pictures?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure everyone did. You and Lucy spoiled a lot of Thanksgiving feasts with that stunt.”

“Am I a good photographer or what?”

“Maybe a little too good. You’re dangerous when you get your mind made up.”

Crystal nodded. It was the simple truth.

“He shouldn’t have messed with me,” she said.

“And what about me?”

“You didn’t mess with me. I wanted you, so I took you.”

“Easy pickings,” he mused, in a tone that was almost remorseful.

“No you weren’t. It took me over a year, Jarett.”

“Ooh, so I was a project. Interesting.”

“You were a project all right. You were practically a dissertation.”

“Oh come on,” he laughed. “What about that birthday kiss last year?”

“That birthday kiss,” she told him, “got me through all of 2005.”

“I don’t kiss that well.”

“Like hell you don’t.”

Her testimony comprised a sturdy foundation. Even if last night had never occurred, her memory of the event in question could not have been more clear.

It was your first kiss, Crystal, she tried to tell herself,