by Vicki Grant
I looked up. I smiled like the perfect son I am. I still wasn’t used to this Chuck guy. He just didn’t look the way I expected him to look. The only time I’d ever seen him in the paper or on TV, he had his hands over his face. The reporters always talked about how timid he was. “Timid,” “publicity shy,” “humble.” Those were the kind of words they used. It’s stupid, I guess, but somehow I figured he was going to be smaller. I mean, timid is a little-person word. You know, more mouse than moose.
Chuck wasn’t a little person. He was as tall as Biff but, as my geography teacher would say, “had a much larger land mass.” To tell you the truth, he kind of looked like Santa’s younger brother, the one with the criminal record. He had the whole bowl-full-of-jelly thing happening, and the beard too, but you could tell by Chuck’s face that life hadn’t been as cushy for him as it was up at the North Pole. He had no front teeth, a big doughy nose and bags under his eyes that—no kidding—looked exactly like those raw chicken breasts I’d spent the afternoon stuffing.
He sure talked a lot for a timid guy too. Someone asked him about his background, and next thing you know, he’d given us every detail about his childhood in backwoods Nova Scotia except for how often he changed his bearskin underwear. It was pretty boring but it didn’t matter. I kept on smiling. He was a hero. Andy had won the biggest case of her career. I was going to get my board. What’s not to smile about?
Atula didn’t seem to hold it against Chuck that he got ninety-two percent of the love seat they were supposedly sharing. She asked him what his plans were now that the trial was over. Somehow that reminded me of my plan to hit Boarders’ World first thing Saturday morning, and I drifted off before I could hear his answer. Just to seal the deal, I looked over at Andy in my most deserving-child kind of way.
I almost laughed. Andy had so many little blobs of potato in her hair, she looked like she was starring in her own Christmas TV special. The blizzard obviously didn’t bother her at all though. She had an expression on her face that most people save for a marriage proposal or a winning door on The Price Is Right. Her eyes were all glittery, and she was so excited her head was vibrating like it was getting ready to blast off from her neck. She slapped the table and went, “Of course, Chuck! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? We’ll make the police pay for what they put you through!”
Chuck did this aw-shucks thing and went, “Well, I don’t know how brilliant it ith, Andy. I might be wrong, eh? I’m juth a thimple guy with no education or nothin’, but I bet we could win a malithuth prothecution thuit.”
He licked his middle finger and pushed his glasses back up his nose. He gave this big gummy smile. It was amazing. I could see all the way to that little punching-bag thing at the back of his throat. If I’d had a flashlight, I could have told you what he had for breakfast.
Atula started twiddling that scarf she always wears, and I knew there was something she didn’t like about whatever the heck it was he just said.
“Chuck, might I offer an opinion? Suing the police for malicious prosecution is, of course, an interesting idea, but it would be a most difficult case to make. One would have to prove that the police had no basis whatsoever for charging you with manslaughter—that, in effect, they were just charging you to be unkind.”
She stuck her lips out and shrugged. “I cannot see how you would manage to do that. It has already been ascertained in a court of law that there were adequate warnings on the cleaning solution, that you yourself threw it on the flames and that this alone was the cause of death of the unfortunate Dr. Sanderson. In my opinion, that’s proof that the police had more than enough reason to charge you. Luckily, your very talented lawyer was able to convince the jury that in the heat of the moment you made a mistake—one that any reasonable person could have made—and you were found not guilty. I would be tempted to count my lucky stars and leave it at that, dear boy.”
Andy laughed at that. “Yeah—but you know what? I’d be tempted to go for it!” It was pretty clear from the crazy-dog froth at the corner of her mouth that she wasn’t going to be put off by a little thing like whether she could win or not. “I mean, hey, what have we got to lose?”
Atula scooped some Chuckie chunks out of her water glass with a spoon. “Well, for one thing, Andy, a considerable amount of time. Something like this could be dragged through the courts for years. Who will pay for that?”
Andy waggled her head around like “big deal.” “I’ll do it on contingency,” she said.
Atula took a long breath in through her nose and made her lips sort of smile. She didn’t like that idea either. Andy pretended not to notice. Something was up. It was making me nervous.
“O-kay,” I went. “Two questions. ‘Contingency.’ A: What does it mean? And B: Is it even legal?”
Andy laughed. “Oh, Cyril! Of course it is. It just means that Chuck doesn’t pay me anything while I’m working on the case. Instead, I’ll get part of the money the court awards him when we win.”
“If you win,” Atula said. “You will receive nothing, of course, if you lose. Moreover, while you’re working on the case, you will have no time to spend on your paying clients.”
Andy opened her mouth to counterattack but was cut short by Biff walking in with a big pumpkin cheesecake.
“Sorry this took so long, folks,” he said. “Had a little trouble getting it out of the pan.”
Atula went all over-the-top about how delicious it looked. She wasn’t lying, but my guess is she was only going on about the cake because she didn’t want to get into an argument with Andy right then.
Fine by me. After all, the whole point of the dinner was to keep Andy in her best board-buying mood.
Luckily, a big hit of sugar usually takes her mind off more important things. Andy took a bite and moaned about how fabulous the cake was. Chuck made some lame pun about us finally getting our “just desserts.” He had to repeat it a few times before we understood what he was talking about. I did some mm-mm-good thing too and smiled at Biff. I was expecting a big grin back, but he didn’t even notice. He was looking at Chuck.
It was only for half a second—not even that, a quarter of a second!—but I saw something happen.
I saw something go between Chuck and Biff. A look or maybe just a feeling, I don’t know. It happened so fast I couldn’t describe it. It was just there and then it wasn’t, like a guppy in a fish bowl or a shadow when you’re home alone. If they’d been smiling, I would have thought it was a private joke, but they weren’t smiling.
Somehow I got the sense that whatever had just gone between them wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t something anyone was supposed to see either.
I looked at Biff. I pulled back my chin and kind of screwed up my face like “What was that all about?” but I was too late. By that time, Biff had gone all Biffy on me again. He winked at me. He mussed up my hair. He went, “Hey, Sport, give yourself some credit! You were the one who crushed all those graham crackers, not me. It’s the crust that makes the cheese-cake. Aren’t I right, folks? Not a bad effort for a rookie, eh?”
He nudged Atula with his elbow. He cut another piece of cake for Andy. He acted like nothing had even happened, and I probably would have thought so too, except for one thing.
For the whole rest of the meal, Biff didn’t look at Chuck once.
Not once.
I mean, I sort of couldn’t blame him. Chuck was pretty bad with the potatoes, but he was like some sick new Super Villain with that cheesecake. (“From out of his gaping jaws, the fearful Regurgitron spews orange radioactive sludge on his cowering victim. ‘Take that, you thavage!’ he roars.”)
It was pretty disgusting, but somehow I couldn’t believe that that’s what was bothering Biff. He didn’t seem like the type to get grossed out by a little thing like pumpkin boogers. The guy had a steel stomach. I mean, he cleaned that compost bin without even gagging. (I don’t know how he did it. Honestly. The bin was like a cross between a port-a-potty and a scene from Saw.)
Unless I was really wrong about Biff, there was something else going on here.
I was flicking back and forth between Biff and Chuck, mulling this all over, when Andy asked me if I still had that video camera from school. She wanted some footage of our little celebration. Chuck and Atula both put up a big fuss about getting their pictures taken, but Andy badgered them into it. I guess it’s hard to say no to someone when you’re eating dinner at their place.
I was looking through the viewfinder when I figured it out.
Chuck was still blabbing away. Andy was sitting there, smiling and wiping and gazing at him like he was the most fascinating man on the planet. She batted her eyelashes at him. It was probably just to shake off some of the graham cracker crumbs he was spraying all over her, but it looked kind of flirty anyway. That’s when it hit me. I thought of what Kendall said at the bowl that day.
Of course! It was so obvious.
Chuck was “monopolizing” Andy. That’s what was happening.
Biff was jealous of Chuck!
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I mean, adults are so weird.
Chuck had no front teeth, questionable hygiene and a beard that in any other situation could have been mistaken for roadkill. The guy might have been a hero, but he was no hottie, that’s for sure. Seemed to me, Andy was way too shallow to fall for someone like that. It didn’t matter how many lives he’d tried to save.
I could hardly wait to bug Biff about this one. He would so squirm. It would be hilarious.
He was just putting his coat on to drive Chuck and Atula home. I went, “Ah, Biff. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about when you get back.” I tried to look all serious, but my mouth kept struggling free.
He went, “Can it wait, Sport? I want to talk to your mom about something later too.” He lifted his eyebrows and smiled.
I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited about torturing Biff that I’d almost forgotten about the long board. (Priorities, Cyril! Priorities!)
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “No biggie. We can talk about it tomorrow. I’ll just get these dishes cleaned up. Then I’ll wipe down the counter, floss my teeth and go straight to bed.”
I’d be embarrassed to be that sucky around my friends, but my friends weren’t there, and I didn’t care. I was this close to heaven. I pictured myself heading down to the bowl on my new board and the girls all sort of turning around to get a better look. One of them—probably Mary Mulderry-MacIsaac—would say something like, “Hey, Cyril! Niiiiice board. Where did you get it?” and that would be my, like, you know, entrée. We’d talk. I’d make a couple of jokes. She’d laugh and kind of flip back that black hair of hers. It would be excellent. My life could finally get started.
I had the table almost cleared before the door had even shut behind Biff.
I practically bounced out of bed the next day. Andy was already up, standing at the sink, waiting for the kettle to boil.
I didn’t want to press my luck and ask her about the board, especially before she’d had her first hit of coffee. I figured it was safer to get the good news from Biff.
I poured some Cap’n Crunch into my glass of milk and took a swig of breakfast. I went, “So, ah, when’s Biff coming by today?”
Andy didn’t even turn and look at me. She just let out a hiss of smoke and went, “Biff who?”
chapter 9
Compensation
1) Payment for work performed or 2) the amount
received, usually from an insurance company,
to “make one whole” after an injury or loss.
“I gotta get Biff and Andy back together again.” Kendall got off his board and looked at me. He scratched his neck. All he’d ever heard me do was complain about the guy, and now here I was all desperate for Biff to come back. Kendall must have thought I was crazy, but scratching his neck in a thoughtful sort of way was about as close as he’d ever come to mentioning that kind of thing.
He just went, “Oh, yeah? They broke up? What happened?”
I thought of Andy standing there at the sink, and the way the red blotches started spreading around her eyes as if someone had just dumped a package of cherry Kool-Aid into a jug of milk. I thought of the way her chin quivered and how mean her mouth looked and the big pile of cigarettes she’d already smoked down to little crumpled butts by eight in the morning.
I thought about Kendall saying how he liked Eddie because at least Eddie made his mother happy. I realized what a jerk I used to be to Biff and what a moron I was for resenting him even though Andy had never had another boyfriend the whole time I was growing up. Not because there weren’t guys who were interested—even I could see there were—but just because she didn’t want me to go through the whole Dad-of-the-Month Club thing. She didn’t want me to get attached to someone if she wasn’t sure it would last. For fifteen years she did nothing but be my mother, and then some guy comes along—some perfectly nice guy—and I can’t even say, “Good for you, have fun.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”
But I did know. Or at least I thought I did. Andy wouldn’t tell me what was up that morning, but I was pretty sure it had to do with that stupid long board.
I had this feeling, this I-ate-something-rotten feeling, that it was all my fault.
I knew Andy hated it when someone butted into our family business. I knew how mad she could get, how unreasonable she could be, how she could just go totally berserk at the least little thing and never, ever get over it. Didn’t matter. I still made Biff swear he’d ask her about buying me that board.
My exact words: “And don’t come back empty-handed. I mean it, Biff!”
I was only joking—sort of. I was only joking too when I said I wouldn’t help with the meal unless he promised to get it for me. But everybody knows a lot of jokes aren’t meant to be funny. Biff knew I was telling him I wanted that board, and I wanted it now.
Who cared about a stupid board? Who cared that Andy owed it to me? Who cared that she broke her promise? I mean, it’s not like that was the first time she ever broke a promise.
Big deal.
When you think about it, I got paid plenty for that stupid factum. I had to stay inside one night—one night!—and do a couple hours’ work so that Andy, for the first time in fifteen years, could actually go out with a guy. And look what I got for it: Andy was happy. She stopped bugging me about stuff. She hardly ever swore. She quit smoking. She laughed all the time. She cut way back on the black eyeliner. The apartment was clean. There was food on the table.
Like, what more did I want?
For the first time in my life, we were almost normal. I wanted that way more than I wanted a new board.
Kendall went, “It’s probably nothing. Mom and Eddie broke up once too. They’ll get over it. I bet they’re back together again already.”
Easy for him to say. He didn’t know Andy the way I do. He didn’t hear her that morning. I mean, I thought she was joking at first with that whole “Biff who?” thing.
I went, “Ahhhhhh...Biff Fougere? You know, your boyfriend? The love of your life?” She spun around like I just said rich people deserve to rule the world or something. She was panting and her bottom teeth were all stuck out at me. It was like Andy’s evil twin was back again or something. She went, “Don’t ever mention. That name. To me. Again.”
I knew right away this wasn’t some joke. She was serious. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, “He’s gone. He’s out of here
. Good riddance! Believe me, we’re better off without that beeping guy.” She tried to smile, but she couldn’t pull it off. It was like a corpse smiling or something. It was scary. It looked like it hurt.
I went, “C’mon! Like, what are you talking about? Better off without Biff? No, we aren’t! We need Biff! Who’s going to cook? Who’s going to...”
I stopped. I wanted to come up with something really, really convincing that would make Andy go, “Oh, yeah, sorry. What was I thinking? I’ll ask Biff to come back right now.”
But all I could think of was that time I forgot to bring my homework to school, and Juliana Karlsen came into class and said, “There’s someone in the foyer for you, Cyril. I think it’s your dad.” I didn’t tell her any different. I just said, “Yeah, thanks” and walked down the hall like I was sporting a brand-new pair of Nikes.
I wasn’t stupid enough to say something like that to Andy. Not the way she was looking at me then. It was like she was a hyena on the Discovery Channel and I was some nice rotting wildebeest carcass. She attacked. She didn’t actually tear my limbs from my body, but it probably wouldn’t have felt any worse if she had.
She went, “You think he’s such a great guy, do you? Do you? Well, just goes to show what you know! You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything, Cyril! You think he’s Dudley Do-Right. All big and strong and looking out for the little guy and everything. Well, I got news for you, Buster. You’re way off. That’s just an act. The truth is he—”
She stopped dead. She stood there staring at me, breathing hard, chewing on her lip, watching something play out in her brain. I was bracing for the next big blast, but it didn’t come. She just yanked her head up like she was trying to get some really irritating fly off her face and turned away from me again. Her voice was quieter, but she sounded just as mad. “Forget about him,” she said. “Just forget you even met the beeping beep. We’ll be fine. Better than fine! We’ll be great.” She dragged so hard on her cigarette it squeaked in pain.
