Read Online The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Christopher Rice
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patients can hear everything that’s said in the room with them. So that comment you made to him in the Plimsoll Club. It’s not like it’ll be the last thing he hears. Not until he decides to die.”
“Is that what you really believe?” she asked. “You think he’s in some kind of limbo?”
“Well, if he’s not in hell, I hope he’s got a real good view.”
The kid’s jaw was quivering again, and the wet sheen in his eyes was back, and that’s when Marissa realized why he’d looked vaguely familiar. His jaw was quivering the first time she ever laid eyes on him, on the WDSU nightly news, when he was one of scores of other well-dressed Uptown teenagers and their parents standing along the banks of Bayou Rabineaux and setting glowing Japanese lanterns adrift in theblack waters that had swallowed the Delongpre family with one final, unforgiving gulp.
The Delongpres. Funny how the name itself had been scrubbed from her memory by the horrors she had witnessed at the Plimsoll Club.
“What’s your name?”
But he was halfway down the block, and he was moving so fast down the grim little concrete canyon, the white soles of tennis shoes seemed to be winking at her.
10
----
I want you back in school tomorrow,” Peyton Broyard told her son when she found him slouching in front of his laptop. She’d only been home from the grocery store a minute or two when she abandoned her bags in the kitchen and came straight to Ben’s room, and that meant the message she had to deliver was important with a capital I, P, T and another T , as she liked to say.
Ben’s mother had stopped searching his face for evidence of teenage secrets a while ago, mostly because she wasn’t any good at it. Too many alarmist news stories about teenagers and drugs had given her the false sense that her only child was a lot more predictable then he actually was. Three times last year she’d accused him of recreational cough medicine abuse when in each case he was just sluggish at breakfast because he’d been up most of the night downloading pirated gay porn.
Now, as she stood planted in his doorway like a miniature Beefeaterwith a festive scarf, Ben was reminded once again of how his mother would always look twice as masculine as him, even when she was decked out in J.Jill. They were almost the same height, but the gymnastics training she’d gone through as a young girl had left her brawny and bullish. Her Suze Orman haircut and sharp jawline didn’t do much to soften her appearance either.
It had been a few hours since Ben’s run-in with Marissa Hopewell and he’d spent the time since perusing Nikki’s Myspace page, now plastered with heartfelt tributes from students who just couldn’t go on with their lives in the wake of her disappearance even though they’d hardly said more than a few words to her in their lifetimes. But it wasn’t the desire of his classmates to cast themselves as major stars in The Great Delongpre Disappearance that had left him dazed. And it wasn’t his spat with Marissa Hopewell either. It was the dawning realization that he and Anthem probably wouldn’t be doing any more flyering anytime soon, not after what had happened the day before.
“Mom, I have two classes tomorrow and I’m passing both of them.”
“That’s great. And I want you back in some kind of routine, so you’re going to go to both. Even if you plan on getting a C in both.”
“I’ve never made a C in my life.”
The doorbell startled them. Theirs was a small shotgun cottage on a block of mansions, so it was just a few paces to the front door, down a short hallway wallpapered with the annual Jazz Fest posters his mother collected and had framed every spring.
In her youth, Peyton Broyard might have blanched at the sight of a strange black woman standing on her front porch, but Ben thought even that was growth considering his grandmother had once said to him of black people, They’re like dogs, Ben. You can’t show them
“Is that what you really believe?” she asked. “You think he’s in some kind of limbo?”
“Well, if he’s not in hell, I hope he’s got a real good view.”
The kid’s jaw was quivering again, and the wet sheen in his eyes was back, and that’s when Marissa realized why he’d looked vaguely familiar. His jaw was quivering the first time she ever laid eyes on him, on the WDSU nightly news, when he was one of scores of other well-dressed Uptown teenagers and their parents standing along the banks of Bayou Rabineaux and setting glowing Japanese lanterns adrift in theblack waters that had swallowed the Delongpre family with one final, unforgiving gulp.
The Delongpres. Funny how the name itself had been scrubbed from her memory by the horrors she had witnessed at the Plimsoll Club.
“What’s your name?”
But he was halfway down the block, and he was moving so fast down the grim little concrete canyon, the white soles of tennis shoes seemed to be winking at her.
10
----
I want you back in school tomorrow,” Peyton Broyard told her son when she found him slouching in front of his laptop. She’d only been home from the grocery store a minute or two when she abandoned her bags in the kitchen and came straight to Ben’s room, and that meant the message she had to deliver was important with a capital I, P, T and another T , as she liked to say.
Ben’s mother had stopped searching his face for evidence of teenage secrets a while ago, mostly because she wasn’t any good at it. Too many alarmist news stories about teenagers and drugs had given her the false sense that her only child was a lot more predictable then he actually was. Three times last year she’d accused him of recreational cough medicine abuse when in each case he was just sluggish at breakfast because he’d been up most of the night downloading pirated gay porn.
Now, as she stood planted in his doorway like a miniature Beefeaterwith a festive scarf, Ben was reminded once again of how his mother would always look twice as masculine as him, even when she was decked out in J.Jill. They were almost the same height, but the gymnastics training she’d gone through as a young girl had left her brawny and bullish. Her Suze Orman haircut and sharp jawline didn’t do much to soften her appearance either.
It had been a few hours since Ben’s run-in with Marissa Hopewell and he’d spent the time since perusing Nikki’s Myspace page, now plastered with heartfelt tributes from students who just couldn’t go on with their lives in the wake of her disappearance even though they’d hardly said more than a few words to her in their lifetimes. But it wasn’t the desire of his classmates to cast themselves as major stars in The Great Delongpre Disappearance that had left him dazed. And it wasn’t his spat with Marissa Hopewell either. It was the dawning realization that he and Anthem probably wouldn’t be doing any more flyering anytime soon, not after what had happened the day before.
“Mom, I have two classes tomorrow and I’m passing both of them.”
“That’s great. And I want you back in some kind of routine, so you’re going to go to both. Even if you plan on getting a C in both.”
“I’ve never made a C in my life.”
The doorbell startled them. Theirs was a small shotgun cottage on a block of mansions, so it was just a few paces to the front door, down a short hallway wallpapered with the annual Jazz Fest posters his mother collected and had framed every spring.
In her youth, Peyton Broyard might have blanched at the sight of a strange black woman standing on her front porch, but Ben thought even that was growth considering his grandmother had once said to him of black people, They’re like dogs, Ben. You can’t show them
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