Pacific Avenue by Anne L. Watson Read Free Book Online

house,” he
said.
    “Magnolia Woods isn’t too convenient. It’s better for
us to meet near campus.” I pulled out the next stake without help.
    “Are you sure he feels welcome?” Dad sounded anxious.
    “Sure,” I said. “That’s not the problem. He just
doesn’t have transportation.” Or is that an excuse? Guess who’s not coming
to dinner.
    “Why don’t you pick him up one evening and bring him
over?” Dad asked. “He seems like a nice young man. We’d like to get to know him
better.”
    I noticed some crabgrass had sneaked in where the
tomato vines had been particularly lush. I pulled at one of the clumps, but it
came off in my hand the way crabgrass always does, leaving its roots behind to
spread.
    “One evening or a particular evening?” I asked. As soon
as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I hadn’t asked.
    “Next Saturday,” Dad said. “Ask him over for dinner
next Saturday.”
    So, Richard came to dinner. Over roast lamb and Potatoes
Anna, he and Dad debated the war. Dad was a pacifist. Richard agreed the war
was wrong, but he thought most of the soldiers were only trying to stay alive.
    “I didn’t meet any monsters in the army,” he said. “Everyone
I knew did what they had to and that’s all.”
    “What about Lieutenant Calley?” asked my father. The
scandal had been going on for years—the My Lai massacre and then William
Calley’s court martial.
    “It wasn’t all like that. The war is no good. We
shouldn’t be there. But not one man in a thousand is like Calley.”
    “‘An isolated incident’?”
    “Not isolated enough. But most of us weren’t anything
like that. And things like My Lai will go on happening as long as there’s war.
It’s no good to blame each and every soldier.”
    At first I was happy at how well Richard and Dad were
getting along. After a while, that wore thin. Neither of them seemed to know
how to bring the bull session to an end and talk about something else. Mom
would ordinarily have diverted a runaway conversation at a dinner party, but
this time she didn’t. She sat stiff and wordless, with a vacant look in her
eyes. Except for her fixed hostess smile, she might as well have been at the
dentist’s.
    They’re not even talking to me. Mom’s never liked
me, and Sharon’s moved out, and I haven’t even been able to talk to Dad for a
while, not the way we used to. And Richard—when I asked him about the army, I
could see he didn’t want to talk about it, but here he is yakking with Dad like
they were at a VFW meeting. Damn it, I was afraid they wouldn’t accept him, but
it’s me they don’t accept.
    The next day at school, I ran into Richard in the
library. First words out of my mouth, I tried to pick a fight with him.
    “You seem to have more in common with my dad than I
do.”
    Richard laughed. “Well, at least we don’t have the opposite
problem—your parents refusing to let me in the door.”
    “What about the other way around? Maybe the two of you
won’t let me in the door.”
    He shrugged.
    “Don’t take it personally, Kathy. Your dad is way to
the left, for Baton Rouge. He probably can’t say stuff like that to his
friends. He likes to talk politics, and I happen to be someone he can talk to.”
    “Well, I happen to be someone he has nothing to say to
anymore.”
    “Join the club. I don’t talk to my father at all.”
    That made me feel less alone. “Why? Because of the
army?”
    “It’s a long story. The army was the last straw.”
    “I have time for a long story.”
    A librarian frowned at us and put a finger to her lips.
Richard gestured toward the door. “Let’s go somewhere else, and I’ll tell you.”
    We went out onto the long main quadrangle. The prettiest
buildings on campus were here—tan, tile-roofed, connected with arched breezeways.
Small oak trees spotted the inner court with patches of shade.
    We sat on an out-of-the-way bench. Richard stared at an
azalea bush like he’d never seen such a