Alex glanced at the now-empty can in her hand. "I'm with you, kiddo. We'll both hit the gym. So what happened next? Did Cool Breeze bring you all home?"
"Not exactly. On the third pitch, Breeze hit the ball and it flew straight up the middle, past his wheezing brother John—the pitcher—and deep into the outfield. I took off, head down, sweat blurring my vision. E.J., unfortunately, was still on second base, jumping up and down."
"Why didn't she run?"
"No clue. But you have to picture this: E.J. is top-heavy, and she's jumping up and down and her gigantic breasts are just swinging wildly."
"Oh my goodness."
"She's not paying attention, so I yelled, Run! but E.J. just kept cheering me on. No way could I stop in time so I plowed right into her, knocked her over, and landed on her boobs."
Alex laughed so hard that tears filled her eyes. "Were you hurt? Was E.J.?"
"No, but I was out, according to the ump—who of course was another cousin."
"Oh. You did say earlier you didn't win, but I was still hopeful."
"Ever the optimist in spite of evidence to the contrary."
"Hmmm." Was that true? Vanessa had just said something similar to her.
"I was lying on top of E.J. and I heard Breeze laughing. In fact, everyone was laughing. That got me laughing too."
"What a good day you had."
"That's the thing: E.J. and I were so hysterical we could barely get up. All of my muscles ached, my legs were scraped and filthy, but you know what?"
"What?"
"I felt fabulous." Then Pigeon got quiet.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Alex broke the silence.
"You'd think so, but the strangest thing happened."
Alex heard the shift in Pigeon's voice, the cautious, glass-half-empty tone.
"I kept laughing until I cried, and then I cried some more, and I couldn't stop. There I was lying on the ground with everyone laughing around me, and I'm sobbing."
Poor baby. What's wrong with us? Is the whole family crazy? "Why do you think that happened?"
"Beats me. All those beer-hazy nights with no-name men, and shitty jobs . . ."
Alex heard Pigeon's quavering intake of breath. Alex hugged her knees to her chest and waited for her sister to continue. While her own situation wasn't the same, the hollowness she heard in Pigeon's voice sounded familiar. In fact, all three Lawrence girls had a hard time being happy. Even when they were, they questioned it, never trusting it would last, or that it was even real. Did Kara feel the same?
Pigeon said, "I used to think I was destined for the streets. Now, I have that Alex-hope. Maybe I can get it right, have what Breeze has, and not be Pigeon-the-loser."
"Oh, sweetie." Alex clicked off the muted Jimmy Fallon, who had followed the news. "You are way better than the worst name Mom ever called you."
"Am I?
"Yes. We both are."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A couple from Bangladesh owned the small East Indian restaurant next to Tuesday's apartment in Morningside Heights. In fact, the owners had explained, Bengalis owned most Indian restaurants in New York. It was a perception issue, they said. People wouldn't come to a Bengali restaurant, but an Indian establishment felt familiar. The three friends—Tuesday, Flyer, and Kara—often met there on Sundays to catch up.
Today, the aroma of curry and meat filled the air. It was after the church crowd and before dinner so the place was almost empty. Jammed in with ten or twelve other tables, theirs was covered with a white tablecloth and stood close to the kitchen. One of the owners took their order.
Tuesday sipped her water. "What happened to your face?"
"I fell."
"On your face?"
Kara didn't want to talk about Zach or the FBI. "I'm fine." She had other things on her mind. She couldn't stop thinking about Barry White, wondering what his short life had been like. As troubled as theirs? Plus, the nightmares and daytime flashbacks were wearing her down.
Their food soon arrived. Each dish in a separate bowl for easy sharing. For the next few minutes, the trio focused on filling their plates and sampling different dishes.
"What's with all the urgency?" Tuesday tucked into her spinach, lamb, and potato casserole. "Why aren't we meeting for dinner like we usually do?"
Kara needed a point of entry so she decided to take an oblique approach. "I was thinking about the first year we all moved to the group home—how scared we were."
Tuesday asked, "Why were you thinking about that?"
Flyer reached for a slice of warm naan. "Good thing we had each other. Some of the older kids were crazy mean."
"What brought this up?" Tuesday put her fork down. "You've been acting all weird lately, jumpy."
Kara wasn't sure where to go next. She was waking up exhausted every morning with little strength to deal with Zach or the FBI. Did Tuesday have nightmares as well? She never hinted at it, but then again neither had Kara. How did Tuesday deal with them? Did they start recently like Kara's, or did Tuesday always have them? Kara also wondered about Flyer. He seemed unwell, and his life was haphazard. Her therapist, Marci, told Kara that sexual abuse in families sometimes happened to children of both sexes: it was about power—not sex, control, and violence, like rape. They weren't exactly a family, but still. Maybe if they all admitted it to each other, they could get better together.
"I remember being frightened all the time," she repeated.
Flyer's head bobbed up and down. "We must have had a fight a day on the school bus, not to mention in the dining room."
Tuesday jumped in: "They picked on us because we were the newbies."
"We were a great team," Flyer chuckled. "Tuesday worked the shins with her lunch pail and I had the intimidating shove down to a science."
Tuesday's scowl deepened. "We still got beat up."
"True," said Flyer.
"But why are we talking about ancient history? Who wants to remember those crappy days?" Tuesday peered at Kara. "You look like hell, and not just the new bruise. What's really going on?"
Kara took the plunge into taboo waters: "I was wondering if you remember why they took us from Big Jim and Nora."
"Because he was a sadistic moron." Flyer tapped a rhythm with his fingers on the edge of the table, his spiky dreads dancing to the beat. "And Nora let him. She never made him stop."
"He beat her too," Tuesday protested.
"Still, she could've reported him. Did something." His voice became hushed. "They were both evil."
"Yes, but how did they find out that he was—" Kara pulled back the word she was about to say, "beating us?"
Tuesday pushed out her breath in exaggerated annoyance. "It was the social worker's job. Didn't Liz check up on us?" She took a slice of flat bread and dipped it into one of the sauces. Chewing with her hand over her mouth, she said, "This can't be why you insisted on meeting up early today."
"I've been having dreams about when we were kids."
"Nightmares, more like," Flyer said.
"Yes. Flashbacks, you know, like war vets."
Dwarfed by the taller Flyer and Kara even when sitting, her dark skin as shiny as patent leather, Tuesday dropped her eyes. Flyer shifted in his seat.
"Big Jim did more than hit and yell at us, and I just thought it might be time to talk about it." Kara held her breath, her eyes shifting from one to the other. Her friends sat in silence, but Kara decided to wait them out. She stirred her food; still nothing. "He sexually molested us." Her mouth felt dry and she could feel tears filling her eyes. "Night after night for years." A voice in her head screamed, Never tell anyone, ever!
Tuesday was sitting opposite her, Flyer was diagonal to her right. Kara couldn't read Tuesday's reaction, and Flyer wouldn't meet her eyes.
The pain in her head throbbed. "I think it's harmful, you know, keeping it all in, keeping his secrets."
"Damn you, Kara." Tuesday spat out each word, her saliva and bits of food flying out with each one. "We agre
ed."
"We didn't."
Flyer bounced up from his seat. "He said he'd kill us if we ever told." He took a swallow of his Coke, sat back down. "Then he drowned the kittens."
Flyer had brought home the cat, who they named Splash—because her coat had splashes of colors, as if someone had spilled paint on different days. They were all excited when they realized Splash was pregnant, and even more so when the kittens were born.
"Why did he drown them?" Kara couldn't remember anything except seeing them floating in the bathtub.
"Because he was a sadistic bastard," Flyer said.
Tuesday stood up. "I can't believe you're talking about this now. It was a zillion years ago, who cares?" She ran both her hands through her short Afro. "He's fucking dead. Why are you doing this?"
"I've been seeing a therapist," Kara said.
"How's that working? You're going crazy and now you want us to feel the same way."
Tears rolled down Flyer's gaunt cheeks. "I told him to stop. I tried to help you girls, but then he killed the kittens and said he'd kill all of us and I couldn't do anything. I tried, I did, but he was too big."
Kara grabbed Flyer's hand. "It wasn't your fault. You were just a kid."
"I was supposed to protect you girls."
Tuesday paced around in tight circles. "Flyer, you were the baby." She pointed a finger at Kara. "It was your job to take care of us."
"We were all children." Kara's voice trembled; she could hear Marci Nye's tender voice in her head. "They were the adults."
"You didn't save us." Tuesday's dark skin was purple with fury. "You were the biggest. You were all we had, and you didn't save us."
"I'm sorry." Tears streamed down Kara's face.
Kara put her arm around Flyer. "Did he hurt you too?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
"He used you girls like whores."
"Did he do the same to you?"
Flyer's tortured eyes pierced her even more than Tuesday's accusation.
Tuesday flopped back in her seat, wiped her face with a napkin.
They sat in silence, except for Flyer's sobs. Finally he lifted his head. With his two index fingers, he beat out an angry rhythm on the edge of the table before he wiped his nose and eyes with the backs of his hands. "Nah, not like that. What do you think? No way, just you girls." He swiped at his tears again as they continued to flow. "I used to wish I had a sword or something, maybe a gun, something to make him stop hurting you. I would've killed him for sure, if I could've." He drummed his beat again. "No, no, he never touched me like no girl."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The diner, packed with an after-church crowd, had a long line of waiting patrons. Fortunately, Alex and her mother had gotten there just before the rush.
Dressed in a mixed—but not matched—jogging suit, hair smoothed back from her face with a headband, Judy addressed Sharon, their wizened waitress: "I asked for buttermilk pancakes," she said in her best mistress-to-lowly-servant voice. "These cardboard disks are made of something powdered and fake."
Sharon appeared bored.
"Go ahead, taste them." Judy lifted a forkful toward Sharon's mouth; the woman pulled back like a two-year-old refusing a spoonful of peas. "They're as dry as dust."
"Mom, just order something else." Alex caught the eye of a woman in the opposite booth. She gave Alex an empathetic nod.
"Something else? If they can't make decent pancakes, why would I believe they are capable of making an omelet or French toast?"
Alex grabbed her things. "Come on, I'll buy you brunch somewhere else." She spoke to Sharon: "I'm sorry, can we just get our check?"
"I'm starving, so this place better not be far."
"Argh." Alex wrapped her scarf around her neck and picked up her mother's coat from the seat next to her. The desire for a cigarette welled up—five weeks smoke free and counting. She was not going to make it.
Sharon returned. "You have to pay the full bill," she said, her hands on her hips. "Just 'cause you're picky don't mean you get away without paying."
"Get the manager," Judy ordered.
Alex lifted a hand to stop Sharon from walking away. "We'll pay," she said, digging into her bag and pulling out her wallet. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her mother, mouth agape, staring over Alex's shoulder. What now? Alex shifted her gaze in time to see a large black carpenter ant scurrying across the backrest of the booth.
"Oh dear," said Sharon, "we just sprayed." With gnarled fingers, she gripped her order pad and swatted the bug, knocking it off the back of the plastic-covered booth and onto Judy Lawrence's lap.
Her mother's screech startled the other diners. She struggled to get up and out of the narrow space between the seat and the booth table, glasses and cutlery rattling. "This sort of thing doesn't happen in Bedford!"
Alex couldn't help it—her shoulders rocked from suppressed laughter. Typical Judy-theater: on the one hand humiliating, and damn funny on the other.
"Do you see what kind of place this is?"
Alex helped her mother into her coat, fighting to hold in the laughter now shaking her entire body.
"Styrofoam pancakes and ants to boot." Judy eyed Sharon. "Not to mention incompetent help."
"Come on," was all Alex could say between clenched teeth as she continued to hold the guffaws at bay.
The moment they stepped outside, Alex exploded with laughter. Her mother stared at her, her heart-shaped face still scrunched.
"You should have seen your expression, Mom. It reminded me of the carpenter ant invasion we had at home, remember?"
Judy's face relaxed. "They marched across the kitchen floor and in and out of the cabinets, feasting on spilled honey."
"You chased them with the broom and screamed at them as if they would listen to you."
"Remember how Pigeon kept trying to eat them?" The two women walked to Alex's Jeep in the crowded parking lot. "Your father called the exterminator and checked us into the Rye Hilton until they were gone." Judy chuckled. "We had an antless picnic in our room and watched I Love Lucy reruns."
"Vanessa and I love telling that story to Pigeon." Why was it so memorable? Alex unlocked the car and the two women climbed in. She started the engine, backed up, and pulled out of the parking lot, the memory still with her. Their father wasn't even upset, and although Judy was in full-force agitation, the day had ended with all of them together, sharing a meal in their hotel room.
They drove in silence for several minutes. The recollection of the ant invasion fused into the conversation she'd had with Pigeon the night before. Had the Lawrence family ever had as much fun as the softball game Pigeon had described?
"We did have good times, Mom, didn't we, back then? We were happy some of the time, weren't we?"
Her mother didn't respond.
"Did we ever play games as a family?"
"Stop talking nonsense."
"Weren't there other times when we just laughed?"
"What does that have to do with anything? How does that change things?"
"I'm just wondering."
"You learned to speak fluent French, you rode thoroughbreds, you took piano lessons and ballet."
"Mom, I'm not ungrateful."
"Not that Monica ever cared. How is she, anyway? I suppose you've heard from her."
"She's fine. Happy, in fact."
"Happy? While her father is on the precipice?"
"Of course she's worried about Daddy, and about you."
Her mother snorted.
Alex wanted to get back to her original query. "So, what was the best time we ever had as family?"
Judy uncrossed her arms, smoothed out her gloves across her lap. "Life is not supposed to be fun; it just is."
"The Cole family seems to have lots of fun."
"I did my best, Alex."
"Were you happy?"
"Do you think I don't know you and your sisters wished you had a different mother?"
"Not true."
"You
thought it was my fault—your father's philandering, his utter neglect."
She was right. Alex did blame her mother for Worth's absences; she had seemed to drive him away.
"I gave you girls every advantage, all the opportunities I never had. Not that you used them wisely." She put on her gloves, carefully smoothing the leather over each finger.
"What happened to you and Daddy?"
Judy closed her eyes and pressed her head against the backrest. "In the beginning, it was fine."
Alex pulled over and half-parked in a metered spot. She needed to hear this story, to sift out the real meanings hidden in her mother's words. Judy, for all of her bluster about straight talk, never shed light on anything.
"Your father was charming, handsome, Yale-educated, from Central Park West. I was Judy Colonie, daughter of a housewife and a high-school dropout, twenty-two years old with a Hunter College education and a Bronx accent—a cliché."
Afraid of what she might learn, but also scared her mother would stop, Alex stared straight ahead, willing her to continue.
"Not that Hunter was a bad place, but it was already changing. Still lots of Jewish girls, you know how they are, always pushing to get ahead of everyone else."
Alex groaned. Her mother's list of prejudices and hateful stereotypes was long.
"I'm not saying anything wrong."
"You are."
Judy pursed her lips.
"Finish your story."
"Where was I? Oh yes. By then the college had started letting just about anyone in. Not like the old days when you had to have the grades. Blacks, Hispanics, and foreigners crowded the classrooms." Judy's body shuddered.
Alex bit her tongue.
"But what could I do? It was what we could afford and Hunter's reputation was still solid."
"Okay, you're at Hunter, then what?"
"My parents couldn't afford the kind of education we gave you girls." She gave Alex a pointed look. "I'm not saying I didn't have things going for me—we lived in a nice place and Mother made sure I learned all of the right things, just as I made sure each of you did. She took the Bronx out of me and helped me be the kind of girl Worth Lawrence would covet for a wife."
Getting It Right Page 12
