by Sandra Kring
“Remember I was telling you about them coming to town, Barry?” she says to the fat guy across from her, who is already mentally devouring the menu.
The fat guy, up close, has a ball face that is pocked with acne scars. He looks up and nods. Mrs. Olinger peers down at the menu. “I meet Barry here for lunch every Friday,” she says. “We’re having pizza. Deep dish, sausage, and extra cheese.” She leans over and half whispers, “Barry’s sweet on that new waitress with the funny hair. He likes her personality,” she says. “I don’t know about that hair, though.”
“Geez, Ma!” Barry hisses. “Do you have to tell everybody my business?” He squirms in his seat, and the table edge cuts into his gut.
Mrs. Olinger asks what I’m doing in town, and I tell her that I’m waiting for my mother because we’re going to have lunch too. I can tell by the tone of Mrs. Olinger’s “Oh” that her opinion of Mom isn’t favorable. And although I don’t yet know how, I know I’ll be using that to my advantage.
“Well, you’re certainly welcome to sit with us while you wait,” she says.
“Thank you. That would be nice.” I slip into the booth alongside her, since she’s scooted over to make room, and since Barry couldn’t scoot over if he tried. Even from across the table, he smells like sweat and oil—the kind you fry chicken in, not the kind you pour into your car.
“How is your grandpa?” Mrs. Olinger asks me, her head tipping sideways toward me, like the bud of a wilting flower.
“He’s not doing so well. He had to have a feeding tube put into his stomach because he can’t swallow anymore, and he’ll aspirate if he swallows wrong. He’s getting a hoist today, because we can’t get him in and out of bed anymore, and he’s going to get bedsores if all he does is lie there.”
“Oh, that’s such a shame,” she says, and Barry looks up. His small eyes are fringed with long, white, piggy lashes.
“Your grandpa was … is … a good guy. He sure did go to bat for me. When those assholes at the mill were giving me shit, he walked in and clocked two of those wise guys. Flattened ’em.”
I can’t know for sure yet, but I think Barry may be one of those compulsive liars.
Mrs. Olinger shifts in her seat and is about to say something, but then Miss Dreadlocks interrupts. “Well, what will it be to drink? Your usual, Barry?” she asks, flipping a sheet over on her notepad.
“Y-yeah,” Barry stammers, and Mrs. Olinger sighs.
“Barry, what did Dr. Imm tell you about soda? Remember? He said if you’re going to drink it, you’re best having root beer, because it has less acid and is easier on your teeth.” She looks at Miss Dreadlocks. “He’ll have a root beer,” she says. “Three please.”
Miss Dreadlocks looks at me. “Hey, I remember you. You came in here with Mitzy and the woman who got all uptight because I had an itch.” This seems to please Mrs. Olinger, who no doubt wants validation for her negative feelings toward Mom.
“This is Lucy,” Mrs. Olinger tells her. “Sam McGowan’s granddaughter. You haven’t been in town long enough that you would have met him when he was well, but he was a wonderful man. Just wonderful.”
“Nice,” the waitress says. “You ready to order?”
“Yes. We’ll have a deep dish. Large. Sausage and the fixings … well, except for the onions. They make Barry gassy. Oh, and extra cheese.”
I try not to look at Barry, because I know he’s humiliated enough at the moment, but it proves impossible since he’s sitting right across from me and his face is turning the most interesting shade of maroon.
After Miss Dreads leaves, I swoop in. “Mom wasn’t very nice to Lizzie when we came in here before, but she was under a lot of stress. You know, returning after all these years … after what happened.”
“Ma, do you have to say stuff like that?” Barry interrupts. “You make me sound like some kind of farting freak of nature.”
Mrs. Olinger acts as though Barry hasn’t even spoken. Her face softens. “Oh, of course. I didn’t think of that, but, yes, your mother would be under a lot of stress right now. Why, I was just talking to Barry about the trouble your family had some years back, and—” It’s as though she suddenly remembers she’s talking to a kid, and a McGowan besides, and she stops.
I arch my back and sit up straight, hoping to make the most of my strawberry-size boobs and average height so I look mature enough to have a conversation about adult issues. “Mrs. Olinger, just so you know, I have an IQ of 144. And while that doesn’t make me profoundly gifted, it does mean that I’m far enough above average to comprehend things better than most children my age.”
Mrs. Olinger grins at Barry. “See? Didn’t I tell you this girl was smart? Did you hear the big words she uses?”
“Well, I didn’t say it to brag, Mrs. Olinger, because frankly, although I’m okay with my IQ, I don’t think having good cognitive skills necessarily makes someone wise, or smart, for that matter. I was just telling you so you’d know that you don’t need to talk to me like I’m a child. My mother and grandmother don’t. In fact, they’ve told me the whole family story. Even that Nordine Bickett was Grandpa Sam’s mistress.”
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Olinger says. She picks at the hem of hair at the nape of her neck. “Why, that is being open, isn’t it? But then, Barry and I are very open with each other too, so I suppose …”
Barry’s watching Lizzie and blushing, even though she’s at the far end of the restaurant. “Yeah, and sometimes I’m sorry I ever tell you anything.”
“I’ve heard folks say that your mother blamed Sam for what happened. I hope that’s not true, dear. I mean—”
“Blamed him?” Barry huffs, turning his attention back to our table. “Why in the hell would she blame him for what happened? If that had been my daughter, I would have done the same thing. No, I would have done worse! I would have—”
But Barry doesn’t get a chance to finish, because Lizzie is coming to our table with our drinks, and the second he sees her heading our way, his skin tone deepens and what little neck he has disappears all the way into the collar of his plaid shirt.
Lizzie sets down our root beers, made pale with ice cubes packed to the rim, and starts yammering to Mrs. Olinger, telling her that our pizza’s in the oven and asking her if she can get DSL out on her road yet, because she’s thinking of putting herself on an online dating site. “I mean, really, I wish I could find a good guy here in town, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Oh, I think you’ll get your wish soon.” Mrs. Olinger grins like she’s Lizzie’s secret Santa, which, I suppose, is less humiliating for Barry than if she broke out into an impromptu infomercial for him.
“I doubt it. This town doesn’t grow my kind of guys.” Lizzie shakes her head, and her dreadlocks crawl like tarantula legs. “I need a free spirit, like me. My friend hooked up with a guy through one of those sites, and I could have scratched her eyes out when I saw his picture. Long hair down to here,” she says, chopping at her elbow. “A muscle shirt, cool tats from his neck all the way down to his wrists. Mmmm, he was hot!”
“Tats?” Mrs. Olinger asks, and Barry mumbles, “Tattoos, Ma. Geez, get modern.”
“Oh, I don’t …” Mrs. Olinger begins, but Lizzie stops her.
“Tats are cool. I have them. Want to see my tramp stamp?” She doesn’t wait for a response before spinning around, tugging the back of her shirt up, and showing us a strip of waves with three dolphins leaping just above her low-rise jeans.
“Order’s up!”
“Oh, there’s your pizza. B-r-b,” she says, using the computer lingo for be right back.
“Tramp stamp?” Mrs. Olinger says, as if the very sound of the words is digging in her throat like a fish bone. “Oh, she is definitely not the girl for you, Barry. Don’t give her the time of day.” She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “I guess I can count my lucky stars that she’s not interested in him.”
Barry straightens up. “She’s just playing hard to get. I know she
digs me. She as much as said so the last time I was in here.” His ridiculous comment makes me think that maybe some people just can’t tell the difference between a wink and somebody shutting their eyes to avoid looking at them.
I try to hide my frustration by concentrating on relaxing my facial muscles as I scramble to find some way to get the conversation back to my family.
I ask Barry for the time, and he glances down at his watch and tells me that it’s 12:16. I sigh. “I wonder where Mom is,” I say with just the right amount of dramatic flair.
“Barry can give you a lift home if she doesn’t show up,” she says. “I have to be back to work by one, or I would. He’s a real good driver.”
“I rode my bike here,” I say. “But thank you anyway.”
I take a sip of my root beer. “Maybe Mom’s just having trouble tearing herself away from her dad’s bedside. It’s hard for her to see him like this. Like today. He was trying to tell me something about my dad, but he just couldn’t get the words out. Mom burst into tears, she was so upset to see him struggling with something so important. I suppose he wanted to tell me what happened himself. He probably knows that ten different people are going to tell me ten different stories.”
“Oh, how sad,” Mrs. Olinger says, her face dripping with grief. And Barry says, “That’s people for you. Such gossips.”
“True,” Mrs. Olinger says. “I know I sure heard my share of stories about that day. Why, the first story I heard was that your dad—”
“Here you go!” Lizzie says, as she swoops in and lowers the pizza to the center of the table, the grease at the edges of the pan still sizzling. She starts dishing a slice onto a plate, but Mrs. Olinger takes it from her. “I can do that,” she says, wincing, as though she fears that Lizzie’s thumbs might deposit an STD by touching the edge of crust, even though Barry is using his fingers and he inseminates cows for a living. Mrs. Olinger dishes up a slice for me and says, “Enjoy, honey.”
The bell on the front door sounds, and Lizzie looks across the room. “Afternoon, Miss Tuttle. I’ll be right with you,” she calls. She gives Mrs. Olinger a grin and a wink, mumbles something about Miss Tuttle being her “fave,” and off she goes.
“Speaking of that sort …” Mrs. Olinger says.
I’m sitting facing the back of the restaurant, so I have to turn and peer around the wooden bench to see her. There she is, the infamous Miss Maude Tuttle! She has big, shocking red hair in curls the size of juice cans hanging to her slumped shoulders, and her face is draped in sagging skin. She’s wearing a black knit sweater flecked with silver glitter and ropes of silver necklaces and bracelets. Silver earrings hang long enough to show under the hem of her hair. She looks like an old movie star.
“Honey? Lucy?” Mrs. Olinger is tapping my shoulder. “Turn around, okay? Maude doesn’t like to be stared at, and, well, she’s just not the sort of woman that a young girl like yourself should pay attention to. She has a past.”
“I’ll bet she would have had a tramp stamp too, if they had put tats on the back, back in her day.” Barry picks a string of cheese off his pizza, lifts it into the air, and lowers it onto his tongue.
“Boys!” Mrs. Olinger says, shaking her head.
“This seat okay, Miss Tuttle?” Lizzie asks, as she motions to a table toward the back of the room.
“I don’t give a damn where I sit, as long as it’s not a booth. I like to keep my eyes on my enemies.”
Lizzie laughs, even though there’s nothing in Maude Tuttle’s voice to indicate that she’s trying to be funny.
The second Maude Tuttle is seated, Lizzie starts reciting the specials to her. Maude cuts her off while she’s giving the soup of the day and says, “Listen, sweetheart. I understand that you’re relatively new, but after two weeks you should have figured it out. Since you haven’t, I’ll tell you. I come here every day for lunch, and every day I order a cup of coffee—black and strong—and a piece of pie. That’s it. No sandwich. No soup. Just a piece of goddamn pie and coffee. Today I want lemon meringue. Now, cut the sales pitch and get me my order.”
Lizzie is standing with her back to us, but it’s obvious that she opened her mouth to say something, because Maude Tuttle snaps in a voice as big as her hair, “Just get my order, sweetheart. I don’t small-talk.”
As soon as Lizzie moves and the space between Maude’s table and our booth is open, and Maude sees Mrs. Olinger, Barry, and me staring at her, she lifts her middle finger and jabs it in the air.
Mrs. Olinger gasps and dips her head. “Oh, my, that she’d do something like that in front of children. That woman is crazy. Ignore her and eat, Lucy. Barry, you too.”
“She’s not crazy,” Barry says. “She’s just good and damn sick of folks in this town judging her. Good for her, I say. People here can be such assholes.” Barry looks over at Maude Tuttle to give her a quick yep-we’re-in-this-together thumbs-up, and she gives him the finger again.
I don’t stare at Maude Tuttle, but I do glance at her from the corner of my eye now and then while she sips her coffee and Mrs. Olinger talks about the pizza, which she thinks is undercooked because the cheese in the middle is still stringy. Suddenly, I’m sorry I’m stuck at the table with the Olingers, because there’s something about Maude Tuttle that tells me that if I play my cards right, I could learn everything I want to know from her.
“Uh-oh. The time,” Connie Olinger says after she downs two slices of pizza. “I’d better get going. Barry, you take any leftovers home, okay? You can snack on them until dinner.”
I pop the last bite of my pizza into my mouth and stand so Mrs. Olinger can get out. “Thank you for treating me to lunch,” I say, and Mrs. Olinger smiles and says it was her and Barry’s pleasure—that they’d treat Sam McGowan’s granddaughter to lunch anytime. Maude Tuttle looks over at us, her eyes pausing to examine me. Mrs. Olinger notices and leans down to whisper, “You ignore that wretched woman, you hear me? In fact, maybe you should just go on home now, dear. It doesn’t look like your mother’s going to show up.” I nod, but of course that’s the last thing I intend to do.
I look at Barry, then down at the third of the pizza that’s left, and I know he’ll sit right here until every stray olive is plucked from the tray. I don’t expect Barry to pay one iota of attention to me after his mother is gone, and he almost doesn’t. Not until he sees me heading toward Maude Tuttle’s table. I glance back when I hear the wooden seat groan, and, sure enough, Barry is leaning out of the booth to watch me.
I’m inches away from taking the seat facing Maude when the cowbell attached to the door clinks and jingles and I hear my name.
It’s Mom and Mitzy. Mom has dark smudges under her eyes from lack of sleep, and she’s pale. Mitzy doesn’t look much better. “What on earth are you doing here?” Mom calls.
“Waiting for you,” I say, loudly enough for Barry to hear me. I hurry to Mom and glance back toward Barry. I can see his squinty eyes peeking above the top of the booth, but when he sees me watching him, he dips his head down until all I can see is his orange orangutan hair.
Mom’s confused, of course, and more than a little pissed, so I drop my voice. “I was out riding my bike and I had to pee, so I came here.” I try hard to keep every ounce of snippiness out of my voice, but I’m not sure I’m doing such a good job, because Mom is giving me that look again. The one that says if I’m not careful, I may be ninety before I ride my bike again. I can’t help it, though. I’m still furious at her for ruining things with Peter—again!
“Who said you could ride your bike to town?”
“Milo rides to town all the time. Do you yell at him for it?”
“Does Ma know this?”
“I don’t know. But Milo does it, so why can’t I?”
“I never said you kids could—”
“You hungry?” Mitzy cuts in.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell them I was freeloading off the Olingers, so I just say, “No. Not yet. I’ll head home and have lunch th
ere. Oma’s making a chef salad.”
Mom looks distressed. “We’ll discuss this when I get home. All four of us. You have your helmet with you?” She digs in her purse as she talks, then she pulls out her cell phone. “If you have any problems, you call Oma or Mitzy’s cell. Their numbers are in my contact list. You ride carefully, Lucy. Watch for cars, and if anyone stops, don’t—”
“Geez, Mom, it’s not like we’re in Chicago anymore. I got here safely, didn’t I?”
“I’ll be home as soon as Mitzy and I finish lunch.”
Mitzy gives me a kiss on the cheek, and I scoot to the door.
“Use your hand signals,” Mom calls after me, and Mitzy tells her I’ll be fine; I take note of the fact that Mitzy only fusses over Milo’s safety, not mine. I don’t take it personally, though. Milo is a boy, like Dylan.
I pedal my bike hard so I can get home in plenty of time before Mom does, for two reasons. One, so I can get some of the anger worked out of me and not get grounded again, and two, so I can lift some things off Mom’s computer. I wasn’t going to read any more, but I know that the more frazzled Mom is—and she is about as frazzled as I’ve ever seen her—the more likely it is that she’s made some new entries in her digital journal.
chapter
TWENTY-TWO
WHEN I get home, Oma is on the floor, her back arched over her exercise ball, rolling back and forth and grunting, her face as red as the giant poppy on her workout shirt. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here!” she says. “Give me a hand, will you? I never tried this position before and, oh, my, I can’t get myself up, and Milo’s in the shower. I was just going to spill over the sides, but a gal from my Pilates class tried that and cracked her tailbone.”
I have to skirt around a big metal contraption so I can reach her. “That’s your grandpa’s hoist,” Oma says. “It was just delivered. We’ll have an easier time getting him in and out of bed now.” I stand with both feet on either side of the ball to keep it steady, then brace my arms tight as Oma holds my hands and pulls herself up to sitting.
