Mean Season Read online

  MEAN SEASON

  MEAN SEASON

  Heather Cochran

  To Zoë

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Heartfelt thanks to all four of my parents for their varied support through this process. To some early and awesome readers, Brangien Davis, Aly Meranze, Dan Daley, Erica Payne, Gabrielle Dudnyk and Gwen Riley. Huge thanks also to Katherine Fausset of Watkins-Loomis and to my editor, Farrin Jacobs. And to David Allen, whose opinion matters.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Day One

  Joshua Reed was delivered to our house on Prospect Street in a police car. Lars and Judy followed in their rental, then Momma and I in her station wagon. Momma was humming, like she found it all so amusing. My oldest brother, Tommy, had got into trouble with the law a few times back when he was in high school, and each call from the police station had sparked words between Momma (who wanted to see him punished) and Dad (who thought a good scare was punishment enough). But when it came to Joshua, Momma didn’t seem to care whether he learned anything from his punishment. She said that Joshua not being her son made it seem like a movie, something she might keep her distance from and maybe even enjoy a little.

  The policemen who drove Joshua Reed to our house stayed for a couple minutes to make sure that his ankle sensor was working, and also to review the boundaries of our property. In the backyard, Joshua would be allowed to wander to the edge of the lawn, where the trees started, and on the unfenced side of the house, he could go as far as the stand of creepy dead oaks. In front, he could wander to the mailbox at the edge of our driveway.

  Once the police drove off (after one of them had asked Joshua for an autograph, for his daughter he made sure to say), the five of us who were left stood a moment in our living room, me and Momma and Judy and Lars and Joshua Reed, newly incarcerated movie star. It was the first time that Judy and Lars and Joshua had actually been inside our house. I caught them looking around, and my cheeks burned. I was suddenly aware of the peeling ceiling paint and the frayed edge of the living room rug and how the fabric on the big couch was worn through, so that Momma had long ago thrown one of her quilts over top of it, like a slipcover that didn’t fit neat around the curves or corners. We’d cleaned—well, I’d cleaned—the house all that previous week. And it looked clean, but it was still nothing like the houses you see in TV shows. And I knew it was nothing like where Joshua Reed usually called home. A year back, there’d been an article about his house in a home decor magazine, so I’d seen pictures. The magazine had called his place an “artist’s cottage,” though it was maybe twice as big as the largest house along all of Prospect Street, maybe in all of Pinecob.

  No one looked too comfortable, just standing there. I wasn’t sure what to do besides offer to show Joshua his room, and I noticed him glare at Judy and Lars before he followed me up the stairs.

  “I’ll call you soon, J.P.,” Judy said.

  He didn’t answer her.

  I had put my best sheets on his bed and cleared out some space in the dresser and closet. Vince’s stuff was still all through the room, on the walls and the shelves. After he disappeared, Momma mostly stopped going in there, so it had stayed the same for the past decade. It was only maybe a season before that she’d started to leave Vince’s door open during the day, and I noticed that sometimes, when I got home from work, the shades in his room would be up, letting in a little light.

  Vince had always been Momma’s favorite. Maybe I shouldn’t say that—it’s the sort of thing kids aren’t supposed to pick up on, which pretty much ensures that they will. I picked up on it, even when I was little. So when Vince took off, well, I’m sure I won’t get the words right to describe how hard it was on Momma. I can barely describe how hard it was on me. Vince had been my favorite, too.

  If you knew Vince, you’d understand. He was the sort of person you’d notice as soon as he entered a room, and the sort of person your eyes would search for, as soon as you entered. He was the guy you always saved a seat for, because sitting beside Vince was like sitting in the sun on a cold day. He could make even church fly by, pointing out who was about to fall asleep, imagining who was daydreaming what, and when it came time to sing, belting out hymns in perfect pitch.

  He made up silly games to pass the time, like the one where he’d give you two choices.

  “Avocado or banana?” he’d ask, and if you chose differently from him, he’d make you say why. “Orange or green?” he’d ask. “Brother or sister?” he’d always end with. That was the only one we were allowed to disagree on.

  Vince was a hair shorter and quite a bit skinnier than both of my other brothers, Beau Ray and Tommy. Still, he’d made varsity football his freshman year of high school, on account of being so fast. No one could catch him, and if someone did manage to get a handful of jersey, they had a hell of a time trying to keep him pinned. That’s what I’d tell myself, whenever I got to thinking about him, that he was one of those people you couldn’t hold down. Maybe he wasn’t made for a town the size of Pinecob. Of course, me being his younger sister surely had something to do with that opinion.

  Even with the shades open, it was still Vince’s room. It was still full of his trophies and his football uniform and cleats; and those things, I’d left there. I didn’t know how much shelf space Joshua would need. I didn’t know if he was going to have boxes of clothing sent from California, or whether he planned to spend the whole of his time with us in sweat-pants. I showed him the closet, and the bathroom he would be using.

  “I’m going to lie down now,” Joshua said, without looking at me.

  As soon as I came back downstairs, Momma left to pick up Beau Ray from the adult care center.

  I asked Lars and Judy whether they’d be staying for dinner—I figured they would, to make sure that Joshua was settling in okay—but Lars shook his head.

  “Love to, Leanne, but we’ve got a flight back to Los Angeles tonight.”

  I nodded. I had seen so much of them in the past weeks, it felt strange to remember that they lived all the way across the country.

  “Leanne,” Judy said. “I want to tell you something. Lars and I both do.”

  Her tone made me nervous. “Something bad?” I asked.

  “Nothing bad,” Lars said, shaking his head.

  “You must know how much we appreciate all you’ve done for J.P.,” Judy began. “I’m not talking about the fan club. If it weren’t for you, he’d almost certainly be in jail right now.”

  I nodded. “I guess,” I said.

  “But I want to say, well, I hope you’re not thinking,” Judy went on, “that the next ninety days are going to be some sort of slumber party.”

  “Judy,” I said. I was embarrassed she would think such a thing. “I’m twenty-five. I’m not nine.”

  “Oh, I know, dear, I know. It’s just that you’ve only really known J.P. for a week. Maybe it seems like you know him better, because of your work with the fan club. But you don’t. Not really. He’s a stranger. And Lars and I, well, we’d prefer that you keep that in mind.”

  “That he’s a stranger?”

  “You know, don’t be too accommodating,” Judy said. “Keep your distan
ce.”

  “But he’s stuck here,” I said. “For the summer. You’re saying I shouldn’t be nice to him?”

  “I’m saying you don’t have to be. He hasn’t earned it,” Judy said. “He got himself into this mess,” she said. “You call me for any reason at all. Okay? You have all my numbers.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be back in the next month or so, as things with the production start to heat up.” She looked at me. “Trust me, someday this will make sense,” she said.

  Chapter 2

  The Joshua Reed Fan Club

  I was fifteen when I first fell in love with Joshua Reed. Okay, so maybe love is a strong word, but it was all I knew at that age. Joshua had just joined the staff of General Hospital—not a real hospital, but the one on the soap General Hospital. He played Colin Ashcroft, a cardiology resident. He ran on-screen in order to save Miranda’s life with mouth-to-mouth, and I sat there, stock-still, staring at him. I called Sandy Wilson, my best friend since third grade, to ask if she’d seen what I’d just seen, but she wasn’t home yet from her job at her family’s service station. I watched him, wishing that I was Miranda or at least that I’d be given the chance to swoon in his general vicinity. Not that such swooning was likely—I lived outside of Charles Town and General Hospital was filmed in Los Angeles, about as far as you can get from West Virginia and still be in the States.

  I knew that Joshua Reed wasn’t really a doctor. I knew he was an actor. For one, I’m sharper than that, and for two, he was way dreamier and younger than any doctor I’d ever seen in the town clinic where we went for shots and checkups. Even the night of Beau Ray’s accident, when we went to a real hospital, and even in the weeks that followed, I don’t remember seeing anyone who looked like Joshua Reed. Most of the doctors I knew were older and tired-out-looking, or young and scared-looking. I figured the young ones were scared that their patients were going to die on them. There were always a few drunks and some really gray-looking people in the waiting room at the clinic, so maybe those skittish doctors had reason to be scared. I felt so bad for them that I used to pinch my cheeks before a checkup, to look particularly healthy. When I was twelve, I pinched myself a little too hard and scared one of them into thinking I had scarlet fever. That put an end to such nonsense.

  Colin Ashcroft was never scared, but there weren’t any drunks at General Hospital, or old guys up from center state where all the mines are, the ones who were constantly coughing and spitting. And even if there had been, technically speaking, his character wouldn’t have seen them, because he specialized in cardiology. Colin Ashcroft, as written, was a prodigy, in line to become the head of the cardiology unit, and I hoped he would someday, because it meant that Joshua Reed would keep showing up on my television screen.

  Joshua Reed had also been on The Young and the Restless for a short time, playing Copper Malabar, a drifter who seduced a number of the leading ladies before leaving town. That was his breakout role, but I never watched The Young and the Restless (although back when I was fifteen, I fit the description well enough). Later, of course, I’d learn all his roles, from Copper to Colin to Nate to Stormy, and so on. But that’s because it became my job to know them.

  The fan thing was new to me. I’d never been a devoted fan of anyone before, except maybe my brother Beau Ray’s friend Max Campbell, whom I had one doozy of a crush on, pretty much from the word go, which is to say, when I was eight and he was twelve. Sandy always liked Eleanor Roosevelt. And my sister, Susan, had a thing for Bo Duke, the blond one on Dukes of Hazzard, but I was always keener for dark-haired guys. Maybe that’s why I got hooked by Joshua, that day he ran on-screen to save Miranda. Even in green scrubs, he looked like I imagined a prince would—with short dark hair, deep green eyes and the end of a long day, shadow of a beard. He didn’t wear glasses. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink. He didn’t swear. And he was a doctor. He saved lives. I mean, it’s all fine and well to bag groceries at the Winn-Dixie (like Max, my longstanding crush), or build houses (like my oldest brother Tommy, who could lift me by his forearms alone), or even sell life insurance (like Dad did, before he died). That’s what normal people do, and it’s fine, but Joshua Reed seemed like so much more.

  So there I was, fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen, grinding through high school in Pinecob, West Virginia, starry-eyed over the actor Joshua Reed. I wasn’t obsessed. I did all the normal things a high-school girl does. I did my homework. I did my makeup. I went on dates. I got to first, then second base with Butch MacAfee, then broke up with him. I got to third with Howard Malkin, then broke up with him.

  I didn’t break up with Howard because I was holding out for the likes of Joshua Reed. I’ve always been pretty realistic. You learn to be when you’re the youngest of five, and every day after school, you have to make sure your older brother hasn’t died during the day from a seizure or a clot or something. But I remember that it was around then, around the breakup with Howard, a low time even though I’d called it quits, that Momma found her autographed picture of Pat Boone.

  She was being surprisingly nice to me about Howard, saying things like “that Loreen can’t hold a candle to you.” I didn’t expect the sympathy. For a few years after my dad died, Momma held back a lot of her mothering, as if she’d forgotten that I was still mostly a child, one that might need a parental sort of guidance now and again. I don’t mean to say that I suffered from it. Not more than anyone else. Besides, I had Sandy, and I was always welcome at the Wilsons’ house for dinner.

  And every so often, Momma would muster her energy, and there’d be all sorts of activity as she hurried to catch up on the months she hadn’t been paying attention. One such time coincided with my breakup with Howard Malkin. Momma was down in the basement, knee-deep in boxes of her and Dad’s old papers, when she looked up and told me that Howard Malkin was a pissant who would never amount to much. A minute later, she found the Pat Boone picture, and rattled off the story behind it: how she’d had a crush on Mr. Boone back when he was first starting out, how she had written to him and been sent a signed photograph in return.

  Early on, I had found a picture of Joshua—a really good one in Soap Opera Digest where he was in a tank top—and I stuck it inside my locker door at school. I always kept an eye out for him in Soap Opera Digest and Daytime Drama Weekly and even People magazine, but in those first years, he didn’t get much coverage. He was certainly handsome enough, but that was back when the whole country was obsessed with the Jasper and Helen storyline and whether or not Jasper would come back before Helen married Bart. All that buzz drowned out Joshua for a time. When my mother held up her picture of Mr. Boone, I realized that if all it took was asking nice in a letter, then, sure, I’d like a signed photograph, too. The cutout in my locker was getting a little ratty by then.

  So I wrote to General Hospital. I sent my letter to Joshua Reed’s publicist, not to Joshua himself. Momma told me it would get forwarded to the publicist anyhow, so I’d get faster results that way. Besides, I didn’t want Joshua Reed to think that I was the sort of girl who wrote to stars and expected a response. Publicists, they’re supposed to write back. That’s their job. At least, that’s what I thought it was. I wrote about how I was a big fan, ever since the day Colin Ashcroft first saved Miranda. I wrote about how I’d watched the show consistently, how I had Joshua’s picture in my locker and how I would like to know more about him—where he was from, what he liked, what he was like.

  That’s what started it all. It was the second semester of my senior year in high school when I sent the letter. A couple weeks later, a woman called me at home. She said that she did publicity for all of General Hospital, which was a huge job and growing (especially with the Jasper and Helen affair). She said that one of her duties was to organize the official fan clubs for every General Hospital cast member who had one. Of course Joshua Reed had a fan club, but it had been slow to get off the ground—not because he wasn’t popular, but because the woman who then ran it had gotten p
regnant and wasn’t getting the newsletter out like she was supposed to. Judy—that was the publicist’s name—said that my letter hit her desk right when she was trying to decide what to do. She asked whether I had any interest in heading up the club, at least as a trial—then before I could answer, she asked how old I was. I said seventeen, almost eighteen at that point, and I could hear her start to backpedal. I could tell she thought I was too young, so real quick I explained how I was a mature seventeen, maybe not in the bra and hips way, but in the way I took care of Beau Ray a lot and did most of the grocery shopping and made sure Momma got presents out for Susan’s kids’ birthdays.

  “It doesn’t pay anything,” Judy said. “You’ve got to really want to do it. I’m looking for someone who really wants to do it. I don’t have time to train and retrain and retrain,” she said.

  I swore up and down that I wanted to do it, even before I knew for sure that I did. I was old enough to recognize that such an opportunity didn’t often show up in Pinecob.

  She told me what I would have to do. I would have to keep the membership list current, forward membership dues and send out a welcome kit. I would have to organize and send out the newsletter four times a year. I would be expected to answer some of the basic fan mail and forward on to her anything that I couldn’t figure out or anything at all threatening. And, Judy said, she would expect me to keep her informed if I heard any rumors about Joshua, good or bad. Did I want to try it, she asked me.

  Would I get to meet him, I asked her. Judy said maybe, someday, and surely that could be arranged if I ever found myself in Los Angeles. Judy said that she didn’t know how often J.P. (she called him J.P.) got to West Virginia. But if such a trip ever got planned, she would let me know. Judy seemed really nice—really busy, like one of those New York people you see in the movies talking on two phones at once, but really nice. I was seventeen, almost eighteen, and Joshua Reed was twenty-four. I said yes. I mean, what girl wouldn’t have?