Mean Season

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Mean Season
Heather Cochran

What would you do if a movie star was living under your roof?Prepping for his new movie in the tiny town of Pinecob, West Virginia, up-and-coming actor Joshua Reed lands himself another drunk-driving conviction, this time involving a stolen limo, a dark country road and a cow. Rather than let him rot in jail for the summer, twenty-five-year-old Leanne Gitlin, his fan club president, agrees to vouch for him so he can serve out his sentence under house arrest. In her home.But playing the gracious guest isn't in Joshua Reed's repertoire. And while everyone in town is thinking up excuses to drop by the Gitlin house, Leanne quickly finds herself counting the days until her famous visitor leaves.Leanne, the youngest of five, watched her family fall apart and dutifully stayed put to help her mother pick up the pieces. Stuck in Pinecob, she was itching for something new, but Joshua Reed's media circus isn't quite what she had in mind.In a debut novel as endearing as it is wise, Heather Cochran has whipped up one season the town of Pinecob won't soon forget.

Mean Season

Mean Season

Heather Cochran

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

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 distance.”

“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 pregnant 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?

I learned right away that you have to be organized. Judy sent me all the information I needed to get started, which included the membership list and copies of his biography and a whole stack of autographed 8x10 photographs. There were only two hundred and seventy-three paying members back then, with a lot in Texas (where Joshua was originally from) and Iowa and Washington state. From West Virginia there were just two—me and Sandy.

Dues were ten dollars a year, and for that, members got (and I had to assemble) a package that included Joshua’s biography and list of credits, an autographed picture, the quarterly newsletter and a membership card—Judy gave me a whole box of blank ones, and it was my job to type in the member’s name. All of that was mailed out in an envelope that had a picture of Joshua (dressed in scrubs, as Colin Ashcroft) printed across the front.

At first, all my supplies fit into a milk crate that Tommy had years back stolen from behind the Winn-Dixie, but once Joshua started getting movie work, I moved into a filing cabinet. I filled it with the clippings that Judy would send to me and the clippings that I came across, and all the normal fan mail. And I kept old photographs whenever a stack of new ones would arrive, in case I needed them some day.

Being president of the fan club made me stand out a bit in Pinecob. It’s not like I was an actress or anything, but people knew that I had connections to General Hospital, and that I could get them 8x10 glossies of just about any soap star, even those on other shows. Once you’re president of a fan club, you learn how those things work. But the fact was—and I knew it—I was still Leanne Gitlin, living at home with Momma and Beau Ray, working at the county clerk’s office over in Charles Town, going out on the weekends with Sandy or whatever guys would occasionally ask, and buying groceries at the Winn-Dixie each Sunday.

Momma was inconsistent when it came to my hobby. On the one hand, she was glad to see me focused on something that wouldn’t get me pregnant. Momma had some professional hopes for me, and I think she realized that my fan club responsibilities provided organizational practice, the sort that you might someday be able to coax into an actual occupation. Much as Momma loved Susan’s kids, Susan had been just sixteen when Kevin came along, eighteen with Kathy, and twenty-one with Kenny. Taking care of three kids when your husband is on the road all day takes skill, but not the sort you can easily turn into a job that pays well.

My oldest brother Tommy had his trade but never seemed to save a dime, and he’d taken to sometimes living out of his truck while he worked different construction jobs up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Vince—well, no one knew where he was, and it was one of those things that even my friends had learned not to mention when Momma was anywhere near. And no one ever talked about Beau Ray getting a job even though he’d had one before his fall. For a while, I’d tried to get Beau Ray to help me with my fan club duties—but even putting things into an envelope was hard for him to focus on, and he’d grow frustrated within five minutes.

But I knew that Momma also worried that the fan club would mess me up somehow, since it was different from what everyone else was doing, and different to her meant abnormal. Somehow she was fine with letting me take care of Beau Ray, and she didn’t mind expecting me to do most of the housecleaning from the time I was fourteen on—but the fan club thing threw her. She worried (I overheard her say so) that I would start to think I was someone I wasn’t, or want to be something I couldn’t be, or decide to move to Los Angeles to be a star and end up in porno movies. Of all us kids, I’m the one who never offered her any reason to worry, and maybe that felt strange, so she made up the hows and whys. I probably stayed in the county clerk job for as long as I did because she harped on me a lot less after I took it. I guess it seemed to her along the road to somewhere called normal.

But I wasn’t going to end up in pornos. Being president of Joshua Reed’s fan club gave me something to look forward to, was all. I liked that it was different. Still, life on Prospect Street got easier once I learned to manage most of my fan club chores from the basement in a couple hours on Saturday afternoons. That’s when Beau Ray went to his “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” class at the Y and Mom went to her ages-old quilting bee, so I had a little quiet time. To tell the truth, by two years in, the fan club had become almost as routine as everything else.

Of course, it’s old news by now that Joshua Reed’s career really took off after he played Nate, the hero in Villains Can’t Be Choosers. It’s easy to see why. The costume people dressed him all in white and he grew his hair out, and he looked like Jesus come to life. Only sexy.

The fan club membership had been growing since I took the job, but it really jumped—it tripled in size—after that movie came out, and again when Villains hit video. Judy had to send a whole new batch of membership cards and glossies. By then, she wasn’t working for all the General Hospital staff—she only had a few clients, Joshua being one of them. By then, Joshua had made it into People a few times. I cut out the pictures and photocopied them for the newsletter.

I know people wondered about it—what my real deal with Joshua was. Mostly, I let them guess, although it was obvious to me that I wasn’t flying off to Los Angeles for weekends, and no limos were ever parked along Prospect Street. Fact is, I knew a lot about Joshua, and I could answer almost all of the questions that club members would send in. (For example, Judy called him J.P. because his real name was Joshua Polichuk. He started going by Joshua Reed when he moved to L.A.) But I never talked to him on the phone or anything. Once, when I was talking to Judy, she said that Joshua said to say hi, but I didn’t hear him say it, so I don’t know whether he was even in the room with her. He did write—a couple of times. Not really letters, but he would scrawl a note at the end of something Judy was sending off. He had messy, uneven handwriting, but his signature was polished. Probably from signing all those photographs. The first time, he wrote: Leanne, Judy tells me you’re my biggest fan. You’re the best! xoxo, Joshua Reed.

The second time, he wrote: Leanne, you’re the best for keeping all this together!

The third time, it was: Leanne, Be sure to tell all your friends about Villains, and also about Celebrity Jeopardy! That was right before Villains Can’t Be Choosers came out, and Judy was keeping him busy with all sorts of special events and appearances, mostly in California, but also in New York.

Sure, it would have been nice if he’d written more or even called on the phone once or twice. That way I might have known him in a personal way, different from the facts and stories that were out there for everyone. But it’s impossible to know where a thread starts when you’re looking back on things. Maybe if I had known Joshua better, I would have quit the fan club long before I did, and Judy probably figured that. Still, it was fun seeing my name in his handwriting, and he spelled it right, too. A lot of people spell it Leeanne, or Leann, or some other way. But Joshua always spelled it right.

I didn’t stick with the fan club because I thought that we were meant for each other, Joshua and me. I’m not going to say that a seventeen-year-old girl doesn’t imagine things, and I’ll admit that I imagined plenty in my early days with the club. But that was before Beau Ray suffered the first of his bad seizures and before Momma went through the months she’d come to call her “unraveleds.” I referred to those months as her mean seasons, since it seemed like she was pissed at everything and everyone in the world. Of course, folks in such a state never realize how ornery and off-putting they’re being, so when you find yourself in the midst of someone’s mean season, the best you can hope for is to stay out of their line of fire. Back in Momma’s worst times, I’d call Tommy or Susan for help, but neither ever offered to head home for even a week to make dinner and check which bills were least overdue. (That was around the same time that the idea of me going off to a full-time college stopped being talked about like it was a good thing, something that might really happen.)

But whenever I thought maybe I ought to give up the club and focus on getting my own life in order, I’d feel a heaviness, almost like family, like I’d be letting Judy down. Judy, who always said “thank you” to me. Judy, who asked “would you please.” Judy, who sent cards on my birthday and told me when she would be unavailable (like during her honeymoon) and called whenever she was going to send a new set of photos or an updated credits sheet or a rewritten biography—so I’d know it was coming. Part of me wanted to be like her. Even more of me wanted to be her, out there in California, seeing Joshua close up and making dinner for myself, just myself.