by Drew Perry
“Do you mind?”
“Let me get the keys.” I left him there in the hallway, went to get my things. I stood in the back bedroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Ice cream. I didn’t quite know him well enough to understand if he was coming unraveled or not. All I knew was that he was in my hallway, holding a sparkly pink duffel bag and banging his head against the door. Nothing in Sandy’s bird books for that, probably. I found my wallet, found my shoes, and only then remembered that I didn’t own my own car anymore, and that Alice had taken the one we had. “Mid,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“You drove here?”
“In the banana.”
“You buy that thing yet?”
“Still test-driving it.”
“You’re going to have to test-drive us to the store.”
“Right. That’ll be fine.”
I walked out there. “Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“What’s in the bag?”
He looked up at me. I don’t know what I thought he was about to show me. Stacks of twenties. Silver-plated pistols. Pure uncut Venezuelan hash. He unzipped the bag. Clothes. T-shirts and socks. I felt relieved, but also a little disappointed, which was how I knew Mid might not be the only one tuned in to the wrong station. Be good, I could hear Alice saying. Be good, be good.
“You ready?” Mid said, standing up, and off we went.
Delton was in the parking lot at the grocery. We passed her coming in. “Jesus Christ in a rayon tracksuit,” Mid said. “Another country heard from.” He cut a long loop around a row of parked cars, brought the Camaro back to where she was standing with a few other kids, all of them smoking cigarettes. She’d seen us the first time by. There wasn’t any mistaking that car. When she flicked her cigarette away, it was more show than any attempt to cover up what she’d been doing. Mid shut the headlights off so we wouldn’t blind them. The kids stared at us. They were bored. Not caught. Not afraid. Just bored.
“See?” Mid said. “This is what I’m talking about. She doesn’t give a shit about anything.”
“Sure she does.”
“She doesn’t give a shit about me. We’ve asked her not to smoke.”
“Kids smoke,” I said. “At least she’s not driving.”
“We asked her not to smoke until she was eighteen. That’s the kind of fuckwad compromise you end up making.”
“The other night, Alice said she’d have her on the pill.” It was out of my mouth before I even tried to think it through.
“She is on the pill.”
“She is?”
“Sure, man. You think we’re idiots?”
He left the motor running, got out of the car, and walked over to Delton. He didn’t yell. He put his hands in his pockets, stood there and fathered. He’d gone to jail. He’d been kicked out of his own house. He was in search of ice cream. He asked her a couple of questions, and she shook her head no to each one. She had a new haircut, one side longer than the other. She had on that same long-sleeved band T-shirt again, only this time with a pink ballet skirt. She was cute—not Homecoming Queen cute, but you could tell she wasn’t going for that. Mainly what she looked like was a kid playing dress-up, trying to play at being grown up. And who could blame her? That was give or take what any of us were doing. Mid asked another question, and she nodded yes this time, leaned into the car they were standing around, came out with her purse. They walked back toward me and Mid opened the driver’s-side door, folded the seat forward. She got in. She reeked of smoke. “Walter,” she said, in a fake deep voice. “How goes?”
“Delton. It goes.”
“Father has suggested I tag along with you two for a while, instead of hanging out with my miscreant friends.”
“Fabulous,” I said.
“Isn’t it?”
Mid drove us over a few rows, found a space by the door. He parked and we sat there, the grocery glowing out into the lot. I hadn’t seen Delton since she spent the night in the condo. From the back seat, I heard the scrape and flash of a lighter. “Come on, Liv,” Mid said. “At least don’t smoke in the goddamn car.”
Delton took a long drag, then knocked on the glass with one knuckle. “These windows back here don’t open or something,” she said.
Mid reached his hand back. She gave him the cigarette like it was a wad of gum. He rolled his window down, dropped it out, and almost immediately a pickup flashing green lights pulled up behind us, blocked us in. Security. Mid looked in the rearview. “Give me a fucking break,” he said. Delton giggled. I wondered if maybe she’d been smoking more than cigarettes. A kid got out of the pickup, walked to Mid’s window. He said, “Excuse me, sir?”
Mid said, “Yes?”
“I was just wanting to ask if this was your cigarette.”
Mid leaned out the window and looked at the ground. “It is not,” he said.
“I believe I just saw you drop it out of your window.”
“Yes,” Mid said, and that seemed to confuse things. The kid stood. We sat. It was a standoff. Then he noticed Delton.
“Olivia?” he said.
“Hi, Ellis.”
He looked back at Mid and me, frowning. “Is everything alright?”
“This is my dad,” she said. “And my Uncle Walter.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly relaxing. We weren’t homicidal kidnappers. Probably. He reached his hand in. “I’m Ellis,” he said. “Olivia and I had PreCal together last spring.” Mid shook his hand.
“Mrs. Newell,” Delton said.
“Remember how she wore that same sweater every day for two weeks?” Ellis said.
“Yes,” said Delton, but not really to him. It was pretty clear what the score was: Delton was several rungs up the social ladder from Ellis. They were math class friends. Associates. Out of math class—at the grocery store, say, with her jailbird dad—she wanted less to do with him.
Ellis said, “You know what? How about I just pick this up this one time, and we go on about our business?” He was magnanimous. Dauntless. He already had the cigarette in his hand.
“Great,” Delton said.
“Thank you,” said Mid.
“We’re supposed to enforce the regulations,” the kid said, by way of apology. “You know, rule of law, that kind of thing. Society on the brink of collapse.”
“Wow,” Mid said.
“It’s serious business,” he said.
Mid said, “It won’t happen again.”
“Olivia,” Ellis said. “Maybe I can text you.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Awesome,” he said. He was wearing a white short-sleeve polo. He had acne. He had a blue baseball cap with the logo of the security company on it—a lock and a dog. Finally he gave us what was probably supposed to be a wave, walked over to a trash can by the building, dropped the cigarette in, got back in his truck, and left.
Mid tilted the rearview so he could see Delton. “He seemed nice,” he said.
“Dad.”
“He’s got a job. Tucks his shirt in. Talks like a senator.”
“Dad. Seriously.”
We went inside the grocery. It was catastrophically well lit. The store was running some kind of promotion having to do with a new deli counter, which looked exactly like any other deli counter I’d ever seen, but they were excited about it, had arches of red and orange balloons up everywhere in all the bright light, stations where free deli samples could be had. It seemed late at night to be having a deli party. Delton broke away, started making the circuit of samples. I hung back with Mid. We watched her eat sliced turkey, sliced ham. “What’d you say to her back there?” I asked him. “In the parking lot?”
“I told her we were getting ice cream.”
“She knows about you and Carolyn?”
“Everybody was right there when she went apeshit.”
“But why’d she want to come with us?”
“I told her we were going to a party at my buddy’s p
lace on the beach. I said she could come.”
“We’re going to a party?”
“It’s one of the kids at Me Kayak, Sea Kayak. It’s his parents’ place. They’re in Europe for the summer. That’s where I’m staying. Only he’s having a thing tonight, a few people, low-key.”
“You’re taking her to a house party on the beach.”
“We are. I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
“How about let her smoke in the parking lot with her friends?”
“You know,” he said, “that didn’t really cross my mind.”
We went to look for ice cream. Mid chose chocolate. I got a thing of rum raisin. When we got back to the deli, there was a pirate, in full garb, doing a magic trick for Delton. He was floating a small table a couple feet in the air, lighting a candle on it, saying something into a headset about a lovely dinner for two. “Now I’m going to turn this over to you,” he was saying to Delton. “You’re going to fly the table, little miss.” The tablecloth had some kind of wire rigged into it so that he could do what he was doing, which was to hang onto the corners magic-carpet-style and act like he was the only thing keeping all of it from zipping over to frozen foods. The table danced in the air. It was a medium-good trick, a step or two up from what you could get at a toy store in the mall. Delton was shaking her head, was saying she didn’t want to fly the table.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“Come on, baby,” the pirate said into the microphone.
“I don’t think I love the tone of his voice,” Mid said.
“Let’s everybody gather round and watch the pretty girl do some magic, all courtesy of SliceRite Premium Select meats and cheeses,” said the pirate. “Watch the little lady amaze us.” The pirate had a peg leg, obviously fake, obviously plastic. I had no idea what a pirate might have to do with meat and cheese. Or magic tricks. Then the pirate was somehow touching Delton on her right hip, right about where her T-shirt didn’t quite meet her skirt, and she shoved him, hard, back through a prize wheel that was set up behind him, orange and black and red pie wedges of various discounts and two-for-one offers from the deli. The pirate went down, and the prize wheel and the magic table and a stand speaker hooked up to the microphone went down with him. It made a hell of a noise. He was back up in a hurry, one bare leg sticking out from his costume. “Fuck you, you little bitch,” he said into the mike, and that went out over the speakers. He took a step in Delton’s direction. Mid started toward both of them at a jog—we’d both just been standing there—but Delton was fine on her own. She stepped crisply to the side and pushed a wire rack of bread at the pirate, baguettes and ciabattas, and he slipped and went down again, this time cracking his head pretty hard on the floor. He stayed down.
Delton turned, saw Mid coming for her. She looked like she might take him out, too. That or start crying. But she didn’t do either. She stood still. The pirate groaned. There were store people moving our way, deli employees, and customers standing around like they’d witnessed a crime, which maybe they had. Mid got Delton by the arm, walked her back past me, said, “We don’t need to hang around for this.” We took our ice cream through one of those do-it-yourself checkouts, and Mid gave the woman supervising the computers ten dollars, made some kind of gesture that I took to mean we weren’t waiting for change. The pirate said cunt into the microphone. People stared. Mid jogged Delton into the parking lot. He already had the car started by the time I got in. Ellis pulled up to the front of the store in his security pickup, green lights flashing.
“Go,” Delton said. “Please go.”
Mid clipped a cart on his way out of the lot. He said, “That’ll leave a mark.”
“You’d be surprised,” Delton said from the back seat, not in a faked voice, but not in her real voice, either. She sounded about how you’d sound if the deli pirate had just tried to feel you up. I hurt for her. I didn’t know how or whether to say so. Mid turned right, out from under a NO TURN ON RED sign, aimed us back toward the beach. He drove the speed limit, kept trying to check on Delton in the rearview without her catching him. None of us talked. The car rumbled below us. The radio played. We listened to the DJ tell us what had just been on, what was coming up next.
“We don’t have any way to eat this,” I said. Mid had parked us at a public access for the beach. The gate was closed and padlocked. All we could see was dune grass. No ocean.
“Here,” Delton said. She unbent two spoons she was wearing as bracelets, handed them up.
“Are these clean?” Mid asked.
“They’re spoons,” she said. She pulled a third one off her wrist, wiped it on her shirt. “Pass me some,” she said. I gave her my carton. We ate like that a while, sharing the ice cream around. Moths the size of wrens crashed into each other in the lights hanging off the corners of the picnic shelter. A couple came out of the dunes, climbed the gate, giggling. “Great,” Delton said. “Young love.” They got into a car and drove away.
Mid turned around in his seat. He tried to start talking a couple of times before he finally got going. He said, “Sweetie—”
Delton said, “Here we go.”
“What?”
“No speeches, OK? That guy was a creeper. That’s all. I shouldn’t have walked up to him in the first place. I knew it. I just felt bad for him, and then he was doing the thing with the table, and then, I don’t know, it was too late.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He probably has a concussion.”
“If he does, he deserves it.”
“I guess,” she said.
Mid chewed his lip. “I’m really sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For that guy. For the kid from your class in the parking lot. For what’s going on with your mom and me.”
“Would you guys like me to get out a minute?” I said. “I could go for a walk.”
“Can I have the chocolate?” she said. It was like I wasn’t there. “Dad. Seriously. I’m all set. You’re the one in the shitstorm.”
“I think you owe the twins a dollar,” he said.
“They’re not here, right? I can say what I want. Fucking prudes.”
“They’re twelve.”
“They’re the fucking Gestapo.”
“Olivia.”
“Sorry.”
“Your mom and I will be fine,” he told her. “Once she forgives me.”
She took a bite of ice cream. “Except she doesn’t seem all that into doing that.”
“What makes you say that?”
She smiled at him. It wasn’t a mean smile, but it wasn’t kind, either. “You saw her.”
“That’s how she gets. She’s just mad.”
“Wait until she finds out you took me to a party.”
“How will she find out?”
“She finds everything out. That’s how she is.”
“Where are you supposed to be right now, anyway?”
“Out.”
“Home by eleven?”
“Home by eleven.”
I tried to imagine what might be running through Delton’s head right then—what might have made her want to be in the car with us instead of out on the beach with some boy, or in a parking lot with her friends. “So, Dad,” Delton said. “Are we going to this thing, or what?”
Mid cranked the car, turned us around, put us back out on the road. I started counting Hurricane Evacuation signs again.
After a couple of miles, Delton said, “Will there be any pirates there?”
“God,” Mid said. “There damn well better not be.”
Even though I didn’t want any part of being fifteen again, I envied her all the same. Something about that age—young enough to still be a kid, and know it; old enough to feel pretty certain that your problems weren’t really kid problems anymore, but to find ways to enjoy wallowing in the pain of that, too. Your dad deals pot out of the back of his restaurant. Your mom kicks him out. Your phone lights and jumps five or six times on
the way to a party with your dad and your drifter uncle, the screen filling with the Morse code of everyone you know, and when it goes off yet again, you hunch down farther into the back seat of a monstrous car that could soon be yours, try to make yourself still more hidden. The things she probably typed back: U will not blv this. LOL. SOS. Or just as likely, somehow: I remain, as always, yr hmbl svt.
She was two months away from sixteen—two months from the open road and the endless dream of a better tomorrow, her few belongings tied into a bandanna and slung over her shoulder, Huck Finn driving a yellow muscle car, smoking a pack of Winstons, wearing a tutu. And as for me? I was twenty-some weeks away from my daughter’s arrival on the planet. I could feel the pressing weight of how little time that was. What I wanted to do was hand a spiral notebook and a pencil into the back seat and ask Delton to jot down, longhand, everything she knew: Should we make the BOJ take piano lessons? Gymnastics? When does a kid go to sleepover camp for the first time? When was the first time you remember being actually happy to play by yourself in your room? Or in the yard? If we had one kid, did we have to have two? Was that some kind of rule? Just write it all down, please, I wanted to tell her. All of it. Write down everything I’m going to need to know.
Mid turned at a driveway, pulled up to a little gray clapboard house. It was tiny, fifty or sixty years old. The houses on either side were not—they were behemoths, the products of bulldozings of places like the gray house. The house on the left had its own pool, covered in a clear geodesic dome. The one on the right had marble railings on the upstairs balconies. The gray house had rusting gutters, a cracked storm door. It gave the impression it was leaning. There was an inflatable kiddie pool in the lawn. “Damn,” Delton said, once we were out of the car.
For the first time, I saw her fingernails were painted lime green. “Nice fingernails,” I said.
She looked down at her hands. She had rings on both thumbs. “It’s supposed to be how far you’ll go,” she said.
“How far?” I said.
“Yeah. All the girls do it. Like, stuff you’ll do. Sex stuff.”
