I light up. She’s leaning on me, and I pull her in for another kiss. But she pushes away, smiling a devious smile.
“And an official first kiss,” she adds.
On the drive home, I take the scenic route. The radio is turned up all the way. I’m all grinning and happy. For the first time in a long while, I don’t feel the shackles of the past weighing me down.
I feel free.
Sixteen
I’m still not living in my apartment. With Mom’s chances of coming back to the house growing with each passing day, I don’t think I will go back. Not for a while, at least. I want to spend as much time with her as I can.
Her cancer has made me realize how precious each second is.
Chester greets me at the door. As usual. He has gained some weight since I’ve moved back here, which only makes him that much cuter. Dad sneaks him people food all the time. He thinks I don’t see it, but I do. A lick of his spoon after he’s eaten some ice cream, a piece of cheese or chicken whenever he’s making a sandwich, a capful of Dr. Pepper—Chester, for some odd reason, loves Dr. Pepper; he hears the fizz of a freshly opened bottle and he comes running, the way he used to when I opened a can of his Fancy Feast.
Speaking of my father, he’s upstairs. I hear him struggling. Grunting.
“Dad?”
“Up here!”
“You all right?”
“Y-yeah. I’ll be down in just a minute!” he says.
But I’m curious. I take the stairs, skip two steps at a time, using the rail for support. Dad’s partly in the master bedroom, smashed between the door and a mattress that’s half-wedged in the hallway and the threshold. He’s throwing his shoulder into it, trying to get it to budge. It’s the old bed him and Mom used to share. When she went to hospice, he moved it because he couldn’t deal with the empty space next to him. The bed was too big without her. He put it in the basement with all her other medical equipment.
He meets my eyes. His face is sweaty and red, his grayish hair disheveled. “Don’t look at me like that, Mel,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Look at you like what?”
“The way your mom looks at me when I’m in trouble.”
I know exactly what he’s talking about, too. My mother makes this face where both eyebrows come down to form a V and her upper lip kind of snarls. That face has greeted me hundreds of times when I missed curfew or failed a test in high school. I don’t realize I’m doing it, but it makes sense that I am.
“You’re not in trouble. I just think you might be getting a little ahead of—”
“I’m not. I’m remaining hopeful. That’s all. It’s what we have now, Mel.”
I sigh. He’s right. Today’s been too good of a day to get crabby. So I motion him to back up into the room.
“I’ll help.”
He smiles. “You’re the best daughter ever.”
“Yeah, a twenty-four-year-old college dropout who’s squatting at her parents’ house. I’m in the running for Daughter of the Year, for sure.”
Grunting, “Hey, Steve Jobs dropped out of college and made Microsoft in his parents’ garage.”
“Apple.”
“You have one? I am kind of hungry.”
“No, he founded Apple, Dad, the company.”
“Oh, yeah…he did.”
We slide the mattress in after much struggle. I help him get the bed set up. He’s never been good with putting on sheets; that was usually my mother’s job.
In the span of maybe an hour or two, the room looks the way it used to before my mother got sick.
Clean. Pretty. Floral drapes. Floral bedspread. Mom’s nightstand completely organized, while Dad’s is in a constant state of disrepair.
“It’ll be like she never left,” Dad says, standing at the foot of the bed, his hands on his hips. Proud. He looks at me, puts his arm around my shoulder. “And you’re a hell of a daughter, Mel, and an even better human being. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”
Seventeen
When my father calls me at work and tells me Mom is coming home, that she’s officially been discharged from hospice care, I think it’s a joke.
I step out of the office and into the hall. A couple of businessmen smelling of cigarettes pass me coming from the elevator. They’re heading to one of the other offices next to the heating and cooling place I work in. One of them gives me the old up-down, thinking he’s slick. I stare back at him, give him a dirty look. He does a quick watch check. Keeps walking. They’re talking about their sexual conquests from the weekend. I only catch snippets, but I can tell the stories are total bullshit—unless, of course, they paid for it.
“I’m not joking,” Dad’s saying in my ear. “They’re letting her out, Mel!”
Tears swell in my eyes.
“Can you get out of work? Come down here?” he asks.
“I can take a lunch. When should I leave?”
“ASAP. I’m going over to hospice to pick her up now. Can you believe they say she’s gained fifteen pounds? She’s eating like a horse. Walking to the bathroom without any help. Jesus, Mel, things are really looking up.”
No. I can’t believe it. It’s a miracle. My mom was a living corpse just two months ago.
“Okay, let me go tell Fred, and then I’m on my way. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I drive over to the house in record time. I want to be there when she walks in. Give her the biggest hug and kiss I’ve ever given her.
Inside, Chester senses my excitement. He jumps from the stair banister into my arms and purrs lovingly.
I hear Dad pull in, and I’m there waiting by the door. On tiptoe, looking out the window, I see him help Mom down from the Toyota. She’s in normal clothes, a pair of faded jeans and a hair-band shirt straight from the eighties. I reckon it really is from the eighties, that she hasn’t worn it since she was younger than me. She pushes Dad’s hand away, says, “I can do it, John!” and makes her way up the walk. She only struggles on the two low porch steps. Dad’s there to help guide her, and she looks grateful for him.
I open the door. We lock eyes through the glass. Mine, I’ll admit, are wet with tears. I never thought I’d see my mother at home again. I thought she would die in hospice, a worn skeleton in frilly gowns meant for women in their eighties and nineties.
But here she is, my mother, my best friend.
“Mel,” she says, and her voice is watery. “Mel, Mel, Mel!”
It’s a teary-eyed affair. We sob, all three of us; we hug, we kiss, we thank deities high in the sky.
My mom is home, I may be in love, and no other women have shown up mutilated by the Mannequin Man in over a month.
Things, I think, are looking up.
Eighteen
For the next few days, things are pretty much perfect. It’s like we are back to normal, like my mother was never sick, like I never witnessed the Mannequin Man in the act of his gruesome ritual.
We sit down for meals together, we watch television together. Chester snuggles in Mom’s lap, purring like a chainsaw, and I don’t see Dad crack open a beer or leave for the Lounge, not even once. Aside from Mom’s pills and doctor’s appointment, things really are how they used to be.
I tell my mother all about Lola on the way back from the doctor’s. The prognosis was positive. Doctor Cooliato deemed Mom’s rapidly improving condition a miracle, and I can’t say I don’t agree with her.
“When will I get to meet this mystery girl?” Mom asks. She’s in the front, Dad’s driving, and I’m in the back. This makes me think of Saturday morning soccer games near the tail end of summer, when I was about eight or nine. We’d always stop for ice cream on the way home. I don’t think we’ll do that, but I remember leaning forward, stretching my seatbelt as far as I could—much to Dad’s displeasure—and yakking about the other team or the nice kick I had or even the goal I scored once. Things are a bit different this time around, but I’m still tripping hard on the n
ostalgia.
“I don’t know when you’ll meet her. We’re not exactly serious,” I say.
“Yet,” Dad chimes in. He smiles at me in the rearview. His hair’s a little grayer, face a little gaunter and more wrinkled than when I was a kid, but he used to do the same thing on those summer Sunday evenings.
“Yet. He’s right, Mel,” my mother says. “You should bring her over for dinner.”
“So you can approve of her?” I reply, eyes rolling. “I’m not in high school anymore.”
“No, but you’ll always be our little baby,” she says. “And you said you’re going on a date with her tomorrow, right? What better way to get a relationship off to a good start than to have her meet your parents?”
“You’re pushing it, Mom.”
“Aw, Savanna, let her be. We’ll meet this mystery woman soon enough.”
My mother frowns at him. “Easy for you to say, buck-o. You got it simple. You don’t have to worry about a bunch of tools only thinking with their tools as they go after your daughter. I know women. I know how they can be.” She makes a cat-yowling sound that eerily mimics Chester when he’s hungry, almost to a T.
I sigh and lean back with a thump. An exasperated teen in a twenty-four-year-old woman’s body. Lord, help me.
“Whatever the case,” my father says, “bring a condom!”
I’m taking a drink of water when he says it, and I nearly spit it out all over the middle console. “Dad!” I say, choking and coughing. “Gross!”
He gets a good laugh out of that. “What? Isn’t that the fatherly advice I’m supposed to give?”
“More like this, John: Remember to trim your nails, honey,” my mother says.
“Trim her nails?” Dad asks, confused. “Why—ohhhhhhhh…I get it.” He shudders.
“You’re both disgusting!” I shout.
Nineteen
In the many text messages I’ve sent to Lola, none of them consisted of what our official first date would be.
I went online for some ideas. The number one activity that popped up—I feel like I’m a contestant on Family Feud—was going out for coffee, which we’ve already done. The rest of the suggestions sound like, excuse my French, cookie-cutter bullshit. Bowling, wine tasting, crafts. A trip to the movies is considered bad. Too awkward, sitting in silence with someone you barely know. But I call bull on that, too. If you can sit next to someone in silence during the course of a two-hour film and not feel awkward, then that someone is the one for you.
So I scan the movies playing up at the Cinemark. Nothing seems remotely interesting. A bunch of kids’ flicks and a low-budget horror movie probably not low-budget in the entertaining way.
I scratch that off the list.
As I’m scratching away, my phone lights up. It’s a text from Lola. It says: Karaoke? Lol that sounds like fun…
She’s right. It does. A couple of drinks, a couple of poor renditions of famous songs.
I’m nodding as I write back.
Sounds great.
The little dot-dot-dots show on the screen. She’s typing.
Drinks at my place first?
My heart thumps hard, a single knock-knock. Her place? I hoped the date would end up back there, but before? That’s a bit unconventional.
I don’t text back immediately and the dot-dot-dots are on the screen again.
Pregaming, that’s all. Bars are pricey. And I won’t let any drunk douchebags buy you drinks.
I grin at that. In fact, if I was looking at myself in the mirror, I’m sure I would be absolutely glowing.
I send back a smiley emoji, the one with the big teeth, and a cool I’m down.
She sends me her address: 1507 East Avenue, right off the large roundabout surrounded by fast food places, coffee shops, and gas stations. I know the street. I’ve been that way many times when heading out to the Walmart in Brimfield.
Or heading toward Green.
Green…
It makes me think of the most recent girl murdered. Alicia Rodriguez, her face found a little over a month ago.
The crime scene photos flash through my mind. The precision of the cuts, the stretched eyeholes, the slack lips dripping blood.
The mannequin wearing my favorite outfit.
My stomach lurches, and the pizza I ate for lunch does a barrel roll, threatens to come up. I close my eyes and do what the therapist told me to do when things get like this.
Deep breaths.
I think of my definition of happiness. This consists of my smiling mom, my father cracking jokes, Chester purring.
And now—Lola.
Just like that, for the moment, the brutal images dissolve.
I’m okay.
See you soon, Lola’s next text reads. Following it is a kissing-face emoji.
Twenty
I go through about seventy different outfits, no joke. I’m changing into a yellow and blue polka-dotted jumper when I hear a knock on the door.
“Hon?” It’s my mom.
“Come in.”
She does, her eyes ballooning at the state of my old childhood room. There are clothes strewn everywhere. Drawers pulled out almost all the way, hanging. Mirror powdery from my makeup. I’m aware of the smell, too: the cloud of hairspray that seems to linger just above me, the burning iron of my straightener, the burning iron of my curler.
My mother starts laughing. “You’re like a high schooler all over again,” she says. “Look at you. It’s like a repeat of prom night your senior year.” She scoots a mound of jeans from the end of the bed and onto the carpet and sits down.
“I’m nervous,” I admit. “I really like this girl.”
“I know you do, honey. But there’s no need to be nervous.” She pats the bed next to her.
I have to clear the pile of blouses and button-ups to make room.
She touches my made-up face gently. Her fingers are not as cold as they once were; they pulse with life. “You don’t need all of this, Mel. Just be yourself. Don’t worry. If she’s the right one…” She shrugs.
“So what, jeans and a t-shirt?” I ask.
“If that’s what you’re comfortable in, then yes.” She stands up. Her gracefulness surprises me. She’s almost as agile as she was before the cancer ever took hold of her body. “Remember, Mel, just be yourself, and the rest will fall into place, I promise.”
Twenty-One
Lola’s apartment is beautiful. The furniture in the living room—a couch and two chairs—are a soft white. There’s a fifty-inch flat screen TV mounted on the wall opposite the couch. An oriental rug, white and robin’s egg blue beneath a coffee table of gleaming marble.
She’s waiting at the door to greet me, two glasses of wine in her hand. She gives me one.
“Thank you,” I say. She’s wearing a loose pair of jeans rolled up to her calves and a Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatshirt. On her feet are black velvet heels. Her hair is done up in a loose, messy bun that only accentuates the shape and symmetry of her face. “You look beautiful.”
“So do you,” she replies.
That’s debatable. I settled on a pair of tight jeans and a baby tee I got off the clearance rack at Target. Orange Crush is screen-printed across my chest. I call it my “Casual Date” look.
We drink our wine sitting on her white couch. Her feet are curled under her. She’s looking into my eyes. The wine rushes to my head. Before I know it, I’ve drained the glass and have gotten a refill. Lola’s only sipped hers. She is the driver tonight. The responsible one, she says.
“So you’ve never been to the Lounge?” I ask.
Lola shakes her head. “I don’t get to the Falls much, except when I go to hospice. I usually don’t feel like doing much of anything after I leave that place, either.”
“How is she?”
Lola’s grandmother. I’ve drawn her in my sketchbook without ever having seen her.
“Not much better. I’ll be surprised if she makes it to the summer,” she says. “My dad’s going t
o be heartbroken when my grandma finally goes. I think he’ll be sort of relieved, though, too.” She raises her hand. On her right index finger is a ring. Thin white gold band, a small ruby atop it. “My grandma, she gave this to me when I graduated college. It was her own grandmother’s. So it’s ancient.” Her eyes moisten.
“Don’t give up hope yet,” I say. “My mom’s funeral was already planned, and she’s home now. The cancer’s almost completely gone.”
Lola’s lips curl into a smile, but her eyes are distant and glassy, no doubt thinking about her grandma’s funeral. She raises her wineglass. “To Mrs. Padgett.”
“To Mom,” I say, returning the smile.
Our glasses clink and we drink.
Lola adds, “Whom I hope to be meeting very soon.”
I laugh. “She thinks likewise. Get this, she wanted to invite you over tonight for dinner. What a first-date disaster that would’ve been.”
“Aww!” Lola’s bottom lip, shining with her usual lip gloss, juts out. “That would’ve been so cute!” She playfully swats my shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve loved it.”
Confusion. “Really? It wouldn’t have been awkward?”
“Mel, we’re not teenagers anymore. We’re adults—women. Adults just like your parents. I would’ve loved to meet them, especially your mom. I’ve heard so much about her.”
I roll my eyes. “Maybe next time. But she’ll be glad to hear how you feel.”
“The Lounge is right by your house, isn’t it? We should stop there before we go singing. Maybe they can tag along! Oh, my God, we can make it a double date.”
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