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Dear Mr. Wayne,

My mother’s got a man coming to see her. She’s all excited, running around, getting ready, making me clean up the whole house. She thinks this man might be the one, you know, the big enchilada, her soul’s mate, her life’s light, and stuff.

She’s always thinking that.

She’s had men before, since my stepfather died. But this guy’s going to stay with us in our house, for a while. Not too long, she tells me. Just until he’s back on his feet. This one’s moving back east from Oregon and needs a place to sleep while he looks for work.

I think, that’s what hotels are for, but she’s so happy, humming all the time, singing Celine Dion songs, that I don’t say anything that I’m thinking in my head.

She’s made up the guest bedroom. I don’t think he’ll stay there. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. Not me.

He’s a tall man, Mr. Wayne, like you. She knew him a long time ago, back when she was married to my father. On the phone his voice sounds Western, or Texan, like he has traces of sand and grit stuck in it that float out with his words when he talks. He sounds like he’s been in the desert a long, damn while and hasn’t had any water to drink and has a mighty thirst.

He doesn’t sound like he’s from Maine, but she says he was born and raised here.

I didn’t know that people could move and have their accents change, that all their baby years and teenage years of talking could just get erased.

My mother blows air out her nose when I say this to her, and she taps her fingernails on the kitchen counter, crosses her legs and gets out a cigarette.

“People adapt, Liliana,” she says, and the whole sentence is just one long exasperated sigh.

It’s kind of cool in a way, the adapting thing. I mean, depending on how bad high school goes, I might want to erase all of it and pretend I’m someone else when I go to college—if I get into college.

My mom thinks this man will be like you: a hero kind of man with a clean face and soul. She thinks that about every man she sees. But they never are. There’s only one you.

***

Dear Mr. Wayne,

So I don’t have to think about this man coming, I mosey over to the old Alamo Theater and catch a movie. Good ole American escapism at its best. Right?

Nicole, my best friend, is meeting me. I amble in and pretend like it doesn’t bother me at all that I’m alone and everyone is looking at me wondering why. Do I have the worst BO ever? Have I offed a teacher somewhere and just been sprung from juvie? Has my boyfriend dumped me? No. No. And no. I’m just waiting on a friend and wishing I was secure enough that I didn’t have to worry about things like this.

I find a seat near the front and settle in. It’s got duct tape on the chair arm to hold it together, and the red upholstery is ripped up some good. We don’t have a lot of theaters in Merrimack, Maine. There’s just Hoyts, where they play two new movies, almost always the latest slasher flick for the teenage boys and some new romantic comedy for the bored moms. Then there’s the Alamo. That’s where they play what my stepdad used to call the “oldies but goodies.” We used to come here a lot before he died.

Pulling out my notebook, I put my feet against the chair backs in front of me because I’m too short to sling my legs over in a cool way. Once I’m settled in for a spell, I start writing.

I pause every now and then to take good deep breaths of old movie theater air.

There’s nothing better than the way a movie theater smells before one of your shows. The air is cold and aching. There are traces of popcorn and beer that’s been there before. It smells like wanting, like waiting.

I smile real slow because soon you’ll be filling up that screen, a giant man with a mission, a gun on his hip and a swagger in his smile.

Nicole comes in and yells my name. I wave. She yells it again. I wave bigger and she starts down the slanted aisle, looking tipsy in her heels. She’s wearing a miniskirt, which is stupid, because her type of guys (jock guys) never come into the Alamo. It’s all arty-nerd types and me. So, there’s no one here for her to get all flirty with.

“You’re so short. I didn’t see you.” She flops into the seat. “What’cha writing?”

“Nothing.”

I slam my notebook shut and sit up straight.

She pulls her skirt over her lap with a quick snap and says all accusing, “You’re writing to John Wayne again.”

I shrug. Sometimes there’s no point in denying things, you just have to cowboy up.

She sighs a fake, overblown, exasperated, mother-type sigh. “No one even knows who John Wayne is, you know. Like you could be writing fan letters to someone really cool, really hot, but no … John Wayne. Cowboy, gun-toting man.”

She tries to impersonate you and falls way short, sounding more like a cartoon character than a Western star: “How-dy pard-ner. How-dy ma-am.”

I put my notebook in my backpack and close my eyes. Nicole doesn’t take the hint and keeps yammering on. I swear she is the reincarnation of some dead French queen’s poodle, all yippy. I still love her, though. We soldiered through eighth-grade camping trips together up at Baxter State Park. She let me cry when Stuart Silsby totally humiliated me at a CCD dance in seventh grade. She let me hang out at her house twelve nights in a row after my stepfather died. You can forgive someone for being a poodle when they guard your back like that.

“I mean,” Nicole says and starts yanking out popcorn pieces and stuffing them in her mouth, “he’s not even around anymore. You know that, don’t you? You know that he’s not even alive.”

“Yeah,” I say and shake my head when she offers me some popcorn. “I know that.”

“He’s dead.”

I sit up straight as I can and try to get her to stop talk-ing by staring her down. “I know.”

“You are writing to a dead movie star.” She accentuates every syllable. A piece of popcorn flies out of her mouth and into the empty aisle of seats in front of us. We start laughing.

“I mean, really, Lily. We’re about to be freshmen. Do you want everybody to think you’re a freak?”

I don’t say anything and examine the watermarks on the ceiling. Sometimes I think friends are a necessary evil, say like McDonald’s burgers. You need to have them, you want to have them, but sometimes they make your stom-ach ache.

Before I can think of a good line, from the back of the movie theater a boy’s voice yells, “Liliana!”

Nicole’s mouth opens, because, let’s face it: it’s not all that often boys yell for me.

Fearing a shower of soda or a popcorn pummelling, I turn around real slow. It’s Paolo Mattias, this popular boy in our grade that I’ve never talked to much. He’s the kind of boy I’d expect to see at Hoyts Cinemas with his arm around a girl’s shoulders and his tongue down her throat, not alone at the Alamo.

He does not throw popcorn. He does not spit soda. He smiles. I freeze, gun finger twitching, even though I don’t have a gun.

“Wave to him!” Nicole commands in a loud whisper-voice.

I give a halfhearted wave.

“Tell him to come down!” Nicole insists, poking me in the ribs.

I look at the five or so other people scattered around the seats, mostly old people like Mrs. Samuel, who is a big John Wayne fan too and works in the fish section of Hannaford’s. I feel bad for yelling, but I do. “You want to come down?”

He bangs up out of his chair, a rifle bullet blasting off, and strides down the aisle.

He’s got popcorn too. He folds his long body into the seat next to me and smiles at me. Then he smiles at Nicole. He smells like that fake butter-oil they put on popcorn and Old Spice deodorant, which is a weird combination.

“Cool,” he says and nods.

I nod back. Nicole starts to giggle again. She hikes her miniskirt up an inch to reveal more thigh. I mouth the word “Ho.”

She wiggles her eyebrows and I turn away to take a side look at Paolo Mattias.

He’s got a piece of popcorn on his shirt. I flick it off in a super-bold move, and then blow it by blushing.

“I saw you riding your bike,” he says. “You ride it a lot?”

Nicole leans forward. “She rides it all the time. When-ever she’s upset, she rides her bike. The only place she doesn’t ride it to is school.”

I punch her in the arm. She giggles. Paolo just smiles and goes, “That’s cool. You must have strong legs.”

Nicole giggles more. I sneak a peek at my legs.

The ancient projector makes this hiss noise and starts. That cool old-time music begins, and there’s your name in big gold letters filling up the screen.

“You like John Wayne?” Paolo asks, slumping and slinging his own damn legs over the chair backs because he’s tall enough. He’s got his arm on the rest and we’re almost touching.

“Yeah,” I say. “You?”

“He’s great,” he says. “So cowboy hero, you know?”

“I know!” I start to say, “He’s so fantastic, so solid and so—”

Nicole groans, leans over me and pulls the trigger. “Lily writes him letters.”

Paolo stares at her. I imagine everyone has heard that gunshot.

My skin burns. Everything in me plummets; all my internal organs are on the floor of the Alamo. There’s my heart flopping next to my liver, which is sliding past a piece of Hubba Bubba bubble gum. Paolo Mattias lifts his eye-brows at Nicole and then says to me, “He’s dead.”

“Yeah, I know … ” I don’t know what to say. My hand flutters up and makes circles where words should be. Paolo Mattias shakes his head and laughs. He touches my shoul-der with his hand and all my organs hop back up into place.

“You are some strange girl,” he says and I can’t tell if it’s an insult or a compliment. The lights go down, thanks to the gods of the Alamo projection room.

I breathe in, because no matter what’s just happened, the waiting is over.

North to Alaska begins for real. The guitar music plays, and there you are bigger than life on the screen. John Wayne. For almost two hours I don’t think about my mother’s man, or Nicole’s stupid miniskirt, or Paolo Mattias knowing about the letters. For almost two hours all I see is you, Mr. John Wayne, the DUKE, righting wrongs and riding into the sunset. For almost two hours, Paolo Mattias and Nicole fade into the background like extras no one can remember because they aren’t the stars. No, that’s not true. Paolo Mattias stays right there; a smell and an idea that’s trying to make itself known.

Paolo laughs so hard he almost snarfs soda out his nose during the bar fight, when the bartender’s hat flips up every time he’s hit.

“You have a real snooty look, missy,” you tell the whore in the dance hall. “And I don’t like dames that have snooty looks.”

Paolo laughs, looks at me and points. He whispers, “You have a real snooty look, missy.”

I blush. I feel like that bad guy in the bar fight, the one who’s slumped to the floor with an upside-down cuckoo clock on his head. I don’t have a clue about what’s going on, but I’ve got a goofy smile on my face and I think I like it.

***

Dear Mr. Wayne,

My mother’s new man sent his stuff ahead of him.

The UPS man lugged six big boxes to our front door, the one we never use because you have to walk right past the septic-tank hole, and we don’t have enough money to get the septic tank pumped right now and it needs it, you know, it smells bad.

On the phone he told my mother, “You go ahead and open them. Make sure they didn’t break anything.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“It wouldn’t feel right?”

“I give you my permission, baby,” he said. “I can’t wait to see your beautiful shining face again.”

Blah. Blah. Blah.

I hung up the phone so I didn’t have to hear anymore. That man sure is going to be some disappointed when he gets here. She should have sent him a picture of what she looks like now, because it’s been fourteen years and a baby since she’s seen him last and she looks none the better for it.

I mean, when I was a little-little kid I thought she was beautiful the way little kids do, but, well … she really isn’t; not in the traditional sense of the word. No offense to her. The beauty is on the inside, right?

She told him that she’d open the packages but she hasn’t. The boxes just sit there, all piled up on each other, in the middle of the kitchen floor. They look like a moun-tain. They say to me: He’s coming. He’s coming.

Sometimes when my mother isn’t here I kick at them with my foot and say, I know. I know.

Days go by, Mr. Wayne, and she still hasn’t opened them. She just sweeps around them, puts the mail on the flat top of one of them and sorts the bills.

“I’ll do it when I have time,” she says.

She says that about paying the bills and opening the boxes. But she never gets around to either. With the bills, she always waits until it’s too late.

***

Dear Mr. Wayne,

I hope you are well. I’m trying to rustle up something positive about my day, but it’s some hard. I wonder, did you have a good first day of high school? Were they mean to you? You still had the name Marion then, right? That’s a burden right there, Mr. Wayne, so lord knows why I’m complaining.

My father drove over from his house in Hancock today to bring me to my first day of high school. He said it was too special to go on the bus with all the other “ordi-nary” freshmen. He picked me up in his little beige car. I hate his little beige car. Everybody drives trucks in Maine, except the tourists who drive Jags and Beamers and the moms who drive Subarus. No dads drive little beige cars. My dad, as you know, has to be different.

He put his hand on my arm when he drove, like when I was a little kid and he was always afraid the seat belt wasn’t good enough to keep me from flying through the windshield. I hate that too. I feel so trapped in there, just like the way high school is going to be. You can’t go out without asking or you’ll be one of the bad kids break-ing the rules.

You don’t seem like the kind of man who always plays by the rules, Mr. Wayne.

You seem like the kind of man who knows that sometimes the rules just stink.

My father is not like that.

When I’m in his car, my father doesn’t even let me cross my legs because he’s afraid my shoe might scrape up against the dashboard and make it dirty. Dirt shows up on beige-everything.

When he dropped me off, he squeezed my knee and said, “I’m so proud of my little girl. You’re all grown up.”

I didn’t look at him because his blue eyes were in dan-ger of going liquid, but I fiddled with the front zipper on my backpack and said, “Uh-huh.”

Then he started to cry. Really, a man crying! Can you believe it? And the worst thing is that he does it all the time. You wouldn’t have done that. You would’ve been proud of your daughter, right? Told her to mosey on in there. So that’s what I did. I kissed him and got out of the car real fast before anyone cool saw. Fathers aren’t supposed to do that crying thing. Mothers are. Sometimes.

But I guess he thought he needed to fill in, like my mother was too busy with her new man coming to do the right things like take me to high school on the first day, and cry because I’m getting old and more than halfway to leaving.

Now, listen to this, when I hopped out of my dad’s car, Paolo Mattias saw me and I tried to look the other way so he wouldn’t notice me, but he said, “Is that your dad?”

“Uh-huh,” I said and did my stupid bottom-lip wiggle thing that makes me look like a complete idiot. Nicole once said it looks like my lip is an inchworm trying to wiggle off my face.

Paolo Mattias is a pretty cool boy. After that whole movie thing where Nicole the jerk-off blew the whistle on me about the letters, the fact that he was talking to me was so astounding I forgot to be scared. It’s amazing I managed to even say “uh-huh.” So, I can forgive myself the lip wiggle.

In the distance, I thought I heard a low whistle, like a bank robber gang member sending a signal to his boss in the distance. We’ve got her cornered, come on in.

“Yeah, that’s my dad,” I said to try to be a little articulate.

Paolo Mattias stared at my lips, nodded, and said, “It’s cool that he dropped you off. I always have to take the bus. You know, even on the first day and everything.”

“Oh,” I said, real stupid. No movie line. You’re supposed to say movie lines to boys like Paolo Mattias and men like you, Mr. Wayne.

I’m so bad at movie lines. They flap inside my mouth like a dying fish, moving around but never escaping out to sea.

Paolo looked at me, up and down, and I tried not to meet his eyes because if I did

I’m sure my lip would have wiggled again. He was all spiffed up for the first day of school and his jeans had creases in the middle of his legs like maybe his mother ironed them for him or something. He didn’t have the clothes of a cowboy, not with those creases, but he was standing like one, feet a little too far apart, ready to pull out the gun nestled on his hip. His sneakers had grass stains on them, though. I stared at them.

It was so quiet, despite everyone else getting off their busses and being dropped off. It was so quiet just between the two of us, that I swear if Maine had a tumbleweed I would have heard it blowing. We don’t have those lonely tumbleweeds though. Paolo pulled his gun first.

“Is he really gay?” he blurted.

I gulped and Paolo’s sneakers took a step back.

“Who?” My lip wiggled.

“Your father.”

Someone slapped Paolo’s shoulder. He gave them a wave and then turned back to me.

“My father,” I said, my voice squeaking like I was a boy going through puberty, “is a truck driver.”

I stared him down. He blushed. So did I.

“It’s not a big deal. It’s just what people are saying.”

My hands went to my hips. “What people?”

“It’s not a big deal, Lily. Nobody cares.” His hand went up and rushed through his hair. He shifted his weight. His sneakers moved.

“If nobody cares, why are you asking me about it?”
His breath rushed out. He tried to smile, and quoted you at me: “You have a real snooty look, missy.”

But I didn’t bite. I couldn’t bite. Instead, I just walked away from him into the dingy school cafeteria that smelled like old pickles and cheeseburgers. I found a seat with a bunch of kids I knew from eighth grade and waited for the day to begin, so we could start classes and I could hide my head behind the desk.

I started chanting things under my breath, just one little sentence really.

Truck drivers can’t be gay. Truck drivers can’t be gay.

They’re like cowboys. Cowboys can’t be gay either, right?

I was still chanting when the morning bell rang. I turned around to head to English class and I witnessed Mary Bilodeau trip over the extended foot of Travis Poppins,

Nicole’s brother’s best friend and all-around evil hombre.

That stopped my chanting.

Mary Bilodeau’s brown paper lunch bag flopped on the floor and her tuna sandwich, apple, pickle and Cheez-Its fell out on the cracked linoleum. People started step-ping on the Cheez-Its, crushing them and making a really big mess. Mary Bilodeau just stood still, looking down at her lunch. She started scrunching up her face like she was going to cry, and her hands shook. I couldn’t watch. So I pushed my way through the crowd and yelled, “Hold it!” just like you did in Stagecoach. Well, that’s what I wanted to do anyway.

You don’t know her, but Mary Bilodeau is a big geek. She’s smart enough and everything, but she’s doughy like half-risen bread. You think you could stick your finger in her and watch the dent form where you’d poked. Once you take your finger away, the dough moves in just a bit more and holds. She’s the girl no one wants to sit with; she smells a little like chicken soup that has too much garlic in it. She stammers. She cries if she gets called on even though she knows the answer. The only person she’s really friends with is Katie Henderson.

But I made my way over to her anyways, through the throngs of walking mall-clothes, and knelt down and started picking things up. If this were me, I’d run away and hide, or else maybe if I were feeling a little more brave, more like you, I’d have pointed my finger at Travis Poppins and said, You and me. A word.

Poor Mary. It’s bad enough having a brown bag for lunch on the first day of high school when everybody knows if you’re a girl you’re supposed to just get a bagel or French fries in the a la carte line, but to be tripped and then to drop everything.

I avoided feet and plucked her sandwich up off the floor. It was wrapped in plastic, so it was still edible, and her apple could be washed off. I grabbed the apple as someone’s Nike tapped it and it started to roll.

“Here,” I said and handed her the sandwich and apple. She took them, but her eyes didn’t look at mine; instead, they watched the orange Cheez-Its being scrunched by all the feet heading to first-period classes. They were all broken to pieces, and it didn’t look right like that, so shattered. I know they get that way between your teeth when you chew, but that’s in your mouth, not on the tile floor where sneakers that may have stepped in dog poop or vomit or something are now stepping. Their orangeness just stood out and seemed to scream out how messed up everything was. How nothing was right and pure, just processed, packaged, dyed and filled with chemicals. Now I sound like one of those macrobiotic freaks. Which I’m not. I eat salami. But only if I can brush my teeth afterwards, just in case someone randomly decides to kiss me. You can’t kiss anyone with salami breath.

“Thanks,” Mary mumbled. She clutched her sandwich, her ripped bag and her apple to her chest and turned her dewy eyes on me and I didn’t like how they looked, like she worshipped me or something.

“Not a big deal,” I said as she shuffled off, hurrying so she wouldn’t be late.

“You’re such a hero,” Travis Poppins snided out at me.

“And you,” I said, still crouched on the ground, “are such an ass it’s hard to believe you can talk through your mouth instead of your butt.”

“Oh, brilliant one …” He fake-laughed and hopped off like he’d won.
I mumbled the next words. “He is so bosh.”

“Bosh?” There was Paolo, cowboy-strong legs a little apart.

“It’s cowboy slang,” I muttered. “It means nonsense.”

He reached out his hand to help me up. I took it. His fingers touching mine made me feel more solid somehow. I smiled and took my hand away. “Thanks.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. A lot of us are idiots.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about what he’d said about my dad. “No…I mean…”

I smacked my forehead with my hand. He grabbed it by the wrist. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I meant that I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, right.” He shook his head, smiled, and ambled away.