The Mourning Hours. Paula DeBoard Treick

Johnny said, still not letting it go.

      Dad cleared his throat again, trying to diffuse the awkwardness. “How about a breather?” he asked, motioning toward the kitchen. The men followed his cue and trudged off obediently, even Grandpa, who seemed to greatly resent having to move. I stayed in the doorway, nervous for Stacy.

      “Really, I didn’t mean to break up anything,” Stacy said. She reached for Johnny’s hand, threading her fingers through his. Johnny was as unyielding as a plastic dummy. “Okay. Look, you’re right. I should have called first.”

      “Yeah,” Johnny grunted, relenting. He locked his fingers with hers, bringing her hand to his chest. “We were about done anyway.”

      I knew that wasn’t true. It was barely eight o’clock, and sometimes they wrestled past ten, until Mom started hinting about an early shift in the morning, and Dad drifted off to check the barn one last time. This was the power Stacy had over him, then; she could interrupt his wrestling night—that most sacred of Johnny’s rituals—and be forgiven.

      “Are you sure?” Stacy gave him a playful smile. “You might need more practice. Looks like you were getting whipped right there.”

      “Oh, yeah?” Johnny grabbed her by the waist. “That’s it, Lemke, you’re going down.” He scooped her up in his arms like she weighed nothing at all. I held my breath, trying to figure out if he was joking or angry. It was hard to tell from the way he handled her—swinging her around a little too fast, depositing her a little too roughly on the carpet. Stacy shrieked but didn’t struggle as he pinned her down, his knees on either side of her legs, his hands on her shoulders.

      “Say that again?” Johnny asked.

      Teasing, I thought, relieved. He’s only teasing.

      “I said it looks like you need a little more practice,” Stacy said, smirking.

      “You’re going to help me with that?” Johnny leaned over her, pressing his weight against her.

      “You bet.”

      Johnny brought his face down to hers and kissed her so hard that it made me dizzy. Stacy grabbed him around the neck and somehow they were rolling, her over him and him over her, not coming to a stop until they bumped up against the sofa. Stacy was on top, grinning.

      “Looks like I win,” she said.

      Johnny laughed. “This is only round one, Lemke,” he said, and rolled her onto her back.

      I slipped into the kitchen, joining the men for a piece of pie.

      By the time Johnny and Stacy came in, red-cheeked, all the men had left, except Grandpa, who was picking at a few last crumbs on his plate.

      “Everyone’s gone?” Johnny asked, looking around.

      No one answered. Mom was at the sink with her back to him, running water, and Emilie stood next to her, scowling, a dish towel in hand.

      “I should probably go, too,” Stacy said. “Good night, everyone!”

      “Good night,” Mom murmured.

      “Good night, Stacy!” I called, and she gave me a little wink.

      “Umm...Stacy’s going to need a ride home,” Johnny announced, jiggling his keys. “I’ll be back in a half hour.” I watched the two of them head down the sidewalk together, with both of her arms wrapped around his waist. Johnny opened the passenger door of his truck and escorted her inside with a flourish.

      “It doesn’t take half an hour to get to the other side of Watankee and back,” Emilie observed drily.

      Mom gave Dad a look—the look.

      “I don’t think we were ever like that,” he said, giving her a playful nudge with his foot. His sock, I noticed, was worn thin at the heel.

      In the moment before the interior light in the truck was extinguished, I saw that Stacy had scooted across the bench seat, so she was riding with the left side of her body pressed up against Johnny.

      “No,” Mom said, refusing to take the bait. “I don’t think we ever were.”

      I never learned where Stacy had seen Johnny for the first time. Maybe it was between classes and he was shelving books in his locker, or maybe he was standing in line at the cafeteria, but I liked to believe that she first saw him when he was wrestling, crouched in the stance perfected on all those long summer nights, a number on his back, battling his way through the bracket and coming out, just about always, on top.

      seven

      After that evening, Johnny’s wrestling nights became rarer and then tapered off for good. There was something a little awkward about being around Johnny and Stacy, something that made everyone else feel like a third wheel. They couldn’t stop touching each other, and they practically sat on top of each other on the couch, even though, as Mom liked to point out, there was plenty of room to spread out. On warm-weather weekends, Johnny’s friends used to congregate in our driveway, their Fords and Chevys idling, finalizing plans for cliff jumping in Manitou Park or riding their bikes down Clay Pit Road to the old quarry. But once Johnny and Stacy were officially dating, the guys Johnny had known his whole life—guys he’d played with since elementary school—basically disappeared.

      Stacy’s sixteenth birthday coincided with Labor Day weekend, our last truly free moments of life before school began. Stacy delivered the party invitation herself, her hair swinging in a thick French braid.

      “It’ll be small, just family and a few friends,” she said at dinner. She’d become a regular fixture in our lives in a short span of time. “My parents just want to meet everybody, you know, officially.” She grinned at Johnny, and he smiled back at her.

      “Well, that sounds very nice,” Mom said with a tight half smile she generally reserved for the women she didn’t like at church, or the times when Grandpa invited himself over and didn’t seem inclined to leave. “Doesn’t that sound nice?” she continued, looking around the table. “Please tell your parents we wouldn’t miss it.”

      Later, Emilie made a valiant effort to plead for freedom. “When you said we wouldn’t miss it, you meant you and Dad, right?”

      Mom stiffened her jaw. “We’re all going,” she said, throwing her gaze onto me.

      I tried to shrug casually, but it was no secret to anyone that Stacy Lemke had become my idol. When I was alone I tried to imitate the way she walked, with just a little slouch to her shoulders. I loved how she parted her straight hair right down the middle and had tried it with my own, wetting my hairbrush under the faucet. Emilie had studied the end result critically. “What happened to your hair? You look like a drowned rat,” she’d pronounced.

      As it turned out, the Lemkes lived less than two miles from us, on the south side of Watankee, not far from the juncture at Passaqua Road. I noticed right away that their white house looked neater than ours, as if it were standing up a little straighter in its frame. Half a dozen kids were bouncing on a huge trampoline on the lawn—the sort of thing Dad would never approve of because it killed the grass. Behind their house, tucked between a row of evergreens and a three-car garage, the yard was set up for Stacy’s party. Crepe-paper streamers twisted from surface to surface, and bouquets of helium-filled balloons floated from the backs of folding chairs.

      “I thought this was just a small thing,” Mom said as we pulled into the driveway, which was lined with parked cars. Johnny’s truck was already there, behind a shiny burgundy Buick.

      Stacy, wearing a white dress with eyelet trim and red sandals, rushed over to greet us, followed by her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Lemke, tall and tanned, might have been siblings. If they were cookies, they would have come out from practically the same cutter. I couldn’t stop staring at Mrs. Lemke; she looked pretty enough to be on television. Her hair was sprayed upward and rode on her head like a reddish-blond helmet. She wore a pink shift dress with platform sandals, and her fingers glittered