“Yeah.”
Her mother helped her put it on and said, “Take the bag with you. You’ll need to change them again. Where are you staying tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can stay on the couch or in my bed. Kenny won’t mind a sleeping bag on the floor.”
Lynette got up and followed her out to the living room and sat in the same wooden chair by the door. Their mother sat next to Kenny on the couch and put the electric blanket over them both. “The good news is that Mona has a neighbor who is a hairstylist. She said she can get me a makeover pretty cheap and Jesus knows I could use one. Plus she said she’ll shop for me online. I’ve never been good at buying online, but she says you can get stuff and try it on and if you don’t like it you can send it back for free. I didn’t know that. And she has another friend who will do my nails for ten bucks a pop.”
“I didn’t know you talked to Mona so much. I haven’t heard her name in a long time. When did you guys start being friends again?”
“We never really quit talking, we’ve just been talking more lately.”
“Lately meaning how long?”
Their mother shrugged, took her cigarettes from the coffee table, and lit one.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Maybe,” said their mother.
“Did you ever want to buy the house?” Lynette said almost out of breath. “I mean, were you ever really serious about us buying it?”
Their mother blew out a trail of smoke and sighed. “I don’t know. . . . Maybe. Maybe I was at one point. But it was all too much for me and I don’t want to get into that again. I’m exhausted and I don’t have it in me to see you get upset again.”
“Why can’t I be upset? Because I’m just beginning to realize you were never serious about buying the house. You watched me work so hard I could barely see straight and even so you didn’t say anything. Not a word that you didn’t want the house.”
“If I would have, you would have just yelled at me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Well, the money you made is still yours, isn’t it? And if you honestly do have almost a hundred thousand, then that’s something. That’s a lot more than I have and I’ll tell you this, I sure didn’t have that when I was your age. I just had two babies and a deadbeat husband. But you, you get all that money for yourself and I’m not even asking for any of it. And I could ask for some, I could, I could ask for a lot, but I won’t because I want you to have a chance. You deserve a chance, but then I deserve a chance, too. . . . I have to tell you something else. Something I was gonna tell you tomorrow when I wasn’t so tired, but I guess I’ll tell you now and get it over with. And I want you to listen to me before you say anything. Listen to me all the way through before you interrupt and get upset. Can you do that?”
Lynette nodded.
“You promise?”
“I promise, I won’t interrupt.”
Their mother knocked the ash from her cigarette onto a plate sitting on the coffee table. “For all the bad things I’ve said about Mona, she’s also smart and she can really work the system. She studies it, and today she and I came up with a plan. The way she figures it, I can become a personal care assistant. I can get hired as Kenny’s full-time caregiver. I’ll have to get interviewed first and they’ll have to check out Mona’s place, but what it means is that I can get $14.65 an hour, twenty hours a week, from the state of Oregon to look after Kenny. That’s about a thousand bucks a month. We always knew about it, but it wouldn’t fly with you and me because we always worked too much. Now with my lower hours, Mona thinks we could swing it. But, see, I won’t be doing it. Mona will, at least most of it. That way she can keep her disability check. And, on top of that, I’ll get Kenny’s monthly disability check and his food stamps. The arrangement is that she gets the personal care assistant money, I don’t pay rent, only half of the utilities, and I give her Kenny’s food stamps. She’ll give those to her fucked-up daughter and she’ll look after Kenny while I’m at work. This way I can finally save some money. It’s kind of confusing and I’m not sure I totally understand, but I think it can work and it’ll be a good opportunity for me. Plus she said she’d give me half of her food stamps if I do the shopping. She’s one of those people who hates leaving the house. She hasn’t eaten in a restaurant in over a year, hasn’t gone to the mall or anything. What are they called?”
“Agoraphobics.”
“Well, she’s that. The only problem is that her house only has two bedrooms, so Kenny and I have to share a room. But I sleep on the couch most nights anyway, so basically he’ll get his own room. After about eight Mona goes into her room and she’s got her own bathroom in there and doesn’t come out until eleven or twelve the next morning.”
“But you’re forgetting something,” said Lynette. “I’m taking Kenny. That was the deal.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind.”
“You can’t just change your mind.”
“I can because he’s my son, not yours.”
“I won’t let you.”
Their mother let out a short laugh. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll fight for custody.”
“And tell them what? That you’ve got anger issues, that you’ve tried to kill yourself, that you’ve been hospitalized for it, and that most likely, from what I gather, you’ve been making money in a way I don’t even want to think about.”
“You’d tell them all that?”
Their mother shrugged.
Tears welled in Lynette’s eyes and she didn’t say anything. She wanted to argue, she wanted to stand up to their mother, but it all just flooded over her like wet concrete. The guilt and shame of what she’d done and what had been done to her. It took the wind from her, and so she just sat there.
Their mother took a drag from her cigarette and moved closer to Kenny. “And you don’t even have a place to live. How can you get custody with no home?”
“That’s not fair. You’re being really cruel now.”
“I’m sorry. You say I haven’t given a shit about Kenny in years. Maybe that’s true, but what have you done? All you do is work. You said so yourself.”
“But I’m not gonna be like that anymore,” said Lynette. “I don’t have to be. I just did that for us, for the house.”
“You did it so you could have a house. I’ll be long-gone dead before any mortgage would have ever been paid off.”
“I wanted the house for all of us and I did everything for us, not for me. And you know that’s true.”
“Maybe. Maybe you did,” their mother said. “And maybe I’ve fucked up everything in our lives, maybe the whole problem from the get-go is me. Is that what you want to hear? Does it make you feel better to hear that? Well, it’s probably true anyway, and that’s a hard thing for me to realize. I mean, I picked your dad even when I knew he was gonna ruin me. I was telling Mona that I knew by our third date that he was no good, that he was a low-down fucker. Did you know he borrowed fifty bucks from me on our third date? Fifty bucks and he never paid me back. Can you imagine? Third date and already he’s stealing from me. But, Jesus, he was so handsome and charming and good in bed and all that shit you think is interesting when you’re young. But even so, what the hell was I thinking? My dad couldn’t believe it. He kept saying, ‘Doreen, what are you doing with him? Are you sure he’s the right one? Are you certain? Don’t you think a girl should shop around before she gets too involved with one boy?’ My dad knew your dad was a no-good idiot. Did I ever tell you about the time we all went to Old Town Pizza?”
“I’m not sure,” said Lynette.
“I told Mona this not too long ago. It was my mom and dad and your father. We’d been together maybe six months by then. Your father showed up drunk and kept drinking. He ordered a pitcher of beer and then he spilled it on the pizza. In my whole life I’ve never seen that before. Somebody spilling a full pitcher of beer on a pizza. And do you know what he did when he spilled
it? He started screaming at the kid trying to clean up the mess. He blamed the spilling of the pitcher on a kid who was busing another table when it happened. Your father demanded a free pizza and another pitcher of beer. My god, it was awful, so embarrassing. Dad took me aside a week later. He was worried. He said a guy who’d do that would probably be the kind of guy who could make your life pretty tough. He said it was a small thing by itself, but it meant something bigger. I yelled at Dad for saying bad things about him, but of course he was right.”
“I miss Grandpa every day,” Lynette said and went to the coffee table, took a cigarette from their mother’s pack, lit it, and sat back down in the chair.
“Me, too,” their mother said. “He was a good man. They always say the only way you can find a good man is to be raised by a good man. That sure hasn’t worked for me. I didn’t land close to the tree that way. I’m starting to think that some people are just born to sink. Born to fail. And I’m beginning to realize that I’m one of those people, and you have no idea what that’s like. How truly awful it is to know that about yourself. But that doesn’t mean I want things as hard as they’ve been. And it doesn’t mean I want it to stay that way. It doesn’t mean I like it either. But I’ve got to live, too, don’t I?”
21
Lynette waited under the carport until the cab came. The driver took her down the interstate to Lombard and then to Pier Park in St. Johns and dropped her off. The duplex was a ranch-style single level and had recently been painted. The left side had its porch light on, and Lynette walked up the concrete walkway and knocked on the door. Two dogs barked from inside, the door opened, and the old woman, Shirley, stood in front of Lynette holding a bottle of Coors Light.
Inside, a small lamp sat on a table in the corner of the living room and gave off the only light besides the TV. Shirley was dressed in green sweats that read UNIVERSITY OF OREGON. On her feet were green-and-yellow slippers. A Burgerville bag sat on a coffee table. Her dogs, Bernese mountain dogs, continued to bark until Shirley called for them to stop.
“You want a drink?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Lynette and took off her coat and set it on a hook by the door.
“I have your bottle of Jägermeister in the freezer. You still drinking that?”
“Yeah.”
“Then just help yourself.”
Lynette went to the kitchen and poured a drink, and Shirley went back to the couch. Her two dogs jumped up on each side of her and Lynette sat in a recliner next to them. Behind Shirley, on the back wall, was an enlarged color photo of her father’s logging truck. It was from the 1960s, and the photo showed the entire length of a dented and faded blue Kenworth pulling a trailer of logs. On the door it read V & P LOGGING, VERNONIA, OR.
Shirley turned off the TV and put her arm around one of her dogs. “So what’s going on? First crying all day and now calling out of the blue wanting to buy my dad’s car.”
“Are you still okay with selling it to me?”
“Yeah, of course.” She nodded. “But like I said, it smells like cigars. I took it to one of those places, but even they couldn’t get the smell out. It only has thirty thousand miles on it, but still no one wants it. I’ve had it on Craigslist for a month. It’s a 2003 Buick LeSabre. A real old man’s car. You want to look at it now?”
“Not yet.”
Shirley took a drink of beer. “Then are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Lynette petted the dog closest to her. “My mom backed out of buying the house.”
“She backed out?” said Shirley. “Really backed out or is she just being nervous?”
Lynette shook her head, looked down, and whispered, “We’re not going to get the house and tonight I learned that she was never serious about buying it. Not really. But the thing is, she never told me she wasn’t serious. I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me, but she didn’t. For over three years I worked two jobs and I had the other thing also.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“I worked so hard, Shirley, I could barely breathe,” Lynette whispered.
“I know you did,” she said gently.
Lynette looked at her. “She doesn’t want to live with me, Shirley. That’s why she doesn’t want the house. That’s the reason. She doesn’t want to be near me anymore.”
Shirley took another sip of her beer and set it down on the coffee table. “In the end maybe that’s a good thing.”
“How can that be a good thing?”
“Because living with her isn’t good for you.”
“Maybe,” said Lynette. “Maybe. . . . You know, she wanted me to take Kenny, and I wanted to, but now she’s keeping him. She’s even taking him away from me. She says she’ll tell everyone I’m unfit if I try to get custody.” She wiped the tears from her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry in front of you.”
“It’s okay. When I saw your face yesterday, I knew something was up. I’d have thought you were pregnant or your boyfriend left you or someone in your family died. But I’ve never seen you with a boyfriend and you wouldn’t be lucky enough to have someone in your family die.” Shirley smiled. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Lynette said and leaned over and rested her elbows on her legs. “My head feels like it’s imploding, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” said Shirley.
Lynette again wiped her eyes.
“Well, at least now you can be done with that one thing, right? No more Gloria?”
“No, no more of that,” said Lynette. “I just didn’t know how else to make that kind of money. And it was easy at first because Gloria set it all up. But it got harder the longer I did it. No, I won’t do that again.”
“I’m not judging you,” said Shirley. “I just don’t think it’s a smart thing for someone like you. For Gloria, I don’t think it matters because she’s always been a taker. But underneath it all you’re a good person and you’re too sensitive and you worry too much about what people think to do that for a living and have it not ruin you. It’ll ruin Gloria, but that’s because Gloria’s lazy. That’s different. Do you promise me you’ll never do it again?”
“I promise.”
“Good. That makes me feel good.”
“I think I’m gonna have to leave town.”
“Leave town? Where?”
“I don’t know. But if I stay here, I’ll probably just have to get a room somewhere. An apartment, even a studio, is around thirteen hundred bucks a month, and I’ll work all day just to scrape by living in it. I’ll never be able to buy a house. I know I always told you that I dreamed about owning a bakery, like Tulip when it was open. I wasn’t joking about that. Before our landlord gave us his notice that was my plan. I was saving money for that. Not a lot of money, but I had some. I was an idiot to think I could ever do that. Because there’s no way I’ll ever get the amount of money together to open one here. Never. I mean my landlord says he thinks they’ll get three hundred thousand for the house I grew up in. And I mean . . . you’ve been there.”
“The house two doors down from here went for four hundred and thirty. It’s crazy. I don’t know what to tell you about that. I just got lucky. I was just here when it wasn’t expensive, and when my husband got sick, he sold our house and bought the duplex for me so I’d have income. But me, I never saved anything. I always spent it as quick as I got it. But my husband was smarter, he set me up alright.” Shirley paused for a moment and then said, “If you do leave, where will you go?”
Lynette shrugged.
“You know, I read in the paper a while ago that the places to move to are in the Midwest. That it’s cheap in the old cities like St. Louis or Kansas City or Detroit or Cleveland. Everyone left them for a while, but now people are going back. Maybe you could start a bakery out there. In some city like that. How much money you got?”
“Almost a hundred thousand.”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? Just work on fixing your cred
it, talk to somebody on how to do it, and save that money and then buy something.”
“Is it stupid to still want to buy something?” Lynette said and took a drink.
“I don’t know. I’m not that smart about things like that. But we were all brought up to think it’s the only way not to be broke. The American dream, you know? Maybe that’s all changing, but for you, I think you should buy something because it’ll give you something to work for. Something of your own. And you need something of your own. But maybe you should just stay here for a while and think it over. You could live with me for a few months.”
“Thank you,” said Lynette, and again tears fell down her face. “But I can’t stay here. This is just down the street from where I lived with Jack. I don’t even like walking through St. Johns anymore. I don’t even like going over the bridge and it’s my favorite bridge in the world. I’m realizing that the whole city is starting to haunt me. And all the new places, all the big new buildings, just remind me that I’m nothing, that I’m nobody.”
Shirley took another drink of her beer and finished it. She got up, went to the fridge, opened another, and came back with the bottle of Jägermeister, then set it on the table in front of Lynette. “Maybe you should use the money to go to college. Everybody goes to college now.”
Lynette laughed and looked at a picture on a shelf near the TV. It was of Shirley and her husband on a beach. They both wore swimsuits and were smiling with their arms around each other. In the picture she was even younger than Lynette. “It took me a year to get my GED. That was hard enough. I’ve taken three classes at PCC and for all of them I studied harder than I ever studied for anything and still I only barely passed. No. . . . I just don’t think I’m smart enough.”
“Then maybe a bakery is the right move. You do make the best cakes I’ve ever had, and cookies and those little pie things.”
“Crostatas?”
“Yeah, I’d almost kill somebody for one of those right now.”
The Night Always Comes Page 16
