by Patti Abbott
Hip jutting out, she scanned every surface. Couldn’t understand how I could get to age eighteen and never have a single date.
“Don’t know any guys,” I said, heading out. The ones from high school drifted away, like the people in those old Polaroid pictures from the seventies. Only the Mennonites or Amish guys stuck around, and they kept to their own kind. I wasn’t fixin’ to hang around long myself.
“You’re a strange one, Mr. Grinch,” Mom shouted after me.
Me and manager at Staples, Andy, goofed off a little when it wasn’t busy, which was most of the time lately. There was a little rush when everyone drove home from work, people picking up some toner or a notebook, but by 7:30, it was usually dead. People around here don’t think much about office supplies after dark. We already had an empty Applebee’s, a Circuit City, and a Home Depot, too. The only places coming in now were dollar stores.
Daddy came in the door on Saturday near closing. “What time you done?” His eyes flitted around like he was looking for something he couldn’t find.
“’Nother hour. If you need a ride home….”
Daddy cut me off. “Okay if I borrow your vehicle for half an hour?”
I thought only cops used the word vehicle, but maybe prisoners and cops traded words like a cold. Andy was looking at me. Nobody ever came into the store to talk to me before, and Daddy was still wearing the same clothes from two days ago. His hair looked really greasy now. I wondered if he was drinking.
“I’ll have it back by 9:30,” he added, still scanning the aisles.
I was worried, but he wasn’t slurring his words or swaying—the way people did on TV. “Fuck, girl. You ever gonna answer me?”
I hurried to the back room to fetch the keys, and he left without saying another word. I didn’t like handing them over, but he was my father and a grown man. He needed someone to believe in him and it’d have to be me.
Andy asked if I wanted a lift home at closing time.
“I don’t like leaving you here alone,” he said, looking around the empty strip mall. But heck, this was Indiana country and the only worry usually was a runaway mule from one of those Amish farms.
“I’m goin’ over to the 7-ELEVEN to wait for my ride,” I told him, heading across the highway.
t 10:20, I gave up, tossed my Big Gulp cup in the trashcan, and walked home. It was a two-mile walk and I ran half the way, praying I’d beat Mom. She’d figure my car was inside the garage like it always was when she came in. I called the motel and asked for Daddy’s room. No answer. So I stayed up wondering when and if Daddy would return my car till Mom came in at two,
My car was sitting in the driveway the next morning.
“Been out already?” Mom asked, sneaking up. She looked out at the car as she filled the kettle.
“Ran down to the post office first thing. Justin emailed and asked me to send him….a Colts’ teeshirt.”
“Since when does that boy like football?”
“Maybe he picked it up over there.”
Justin was in Afghanistan. Sometimes I sent over a package, usually baked goods from the Amish ladies. Sometimes a paperback from the Book Swap.
“You’ve seemed kinda wired,” Mom said, turning the burner on.
“Just worryin’ about my job. Didn’t take in squat yesterday.”
“You should be takin’ some classes,” Mom said, starting that up again. “There’s no future for you at Staples. Hell, there’s no future for Staples at Staples.” She poured water over the Taster’s Choice granules and sat down. “Why do you have to make the same mistakes as me?”
For a minute, I thought she meant Daddy, but it was my occupational choices she was talking about. She poured a second cup of water over her oatmeal and stuck in a spoon.
Daddy was waiting outside Staples when I came out the next night. I expected he’d be apologizing about keeping my car, but he started right in with somethin’ new. “Can you give me a ride home or is Star waiting?”
His foot tapped a little tune on the concrete. I nodded and he slid into the passenger side. “Listen, Louellen, I need you to help me out some more. Tomorrow night.” He was looking at his feet. “Fellow outside of town owes me money—from way back. It’s be some start-up money. Want you drive me out there after work.”
“You can borrow my car. Just have it back…”
“Rather you drive, Louellen,” he interrupted me, looking out the window.
When I didn’t say anything, he added, “Let my license lapse—while I was away.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should tell Star you’re gonna be a little late. Don’t want to get things all stirred up.”
“How late?”
“Not real,” he said, finally looking me in the eyes. “Fellow lives ten miles or so out of town. I’ll just run inside, pick up the dough, and we’ll be off.”
I decided to tell Mom that Andy had invited me out for a burger.
“Andy’s a drip,” Gordon shouted. “Remember Andy from Little League. He stunk. He was twelve years to my nine but he couldn’t hit the ball.” He was lying on the sofa watching the cartoon network with the sound turned up loud.
“Like that’s an important thing ten years on,” I said, walking closer so he could hear me.
I noticed a tattoo on his arm. A red hawk.
“Could you turn that down,” Mom shouted. “You just got yourself used to that volume, Gordon. I know your ears are fine.”
Daddy was waiting outside when I pulled up the next night, even more jittery than the day before. I could see a bulge in his pocket. He‘d probably been nipping at that flask while he waited. Stoking up his courage to get the money from this guy. We traveled north on the Interstate for about 10 miles.
“Get off at the next exit,” he said hoarsely, peering through the dark. It was really hard to see anything. “Right here,” he hollered suddenly, long before I needed to pull into the exit lane.
He was making me jumpy too. “Okay, now look for a lane off to the left. A horse trail practically. Next to a mailbox if I ‘member rightly. A battered metal thing on a pole.”
“Remember that from ten years ago?” I asked.
“There it is.”
I swerved so suddenly any car behind could’ve hit us. But we were in the only car on this road. Maybe the only car on it all day from the dusty look of things. We headed down what was more trail than road, tree branches scrapping the windshield, small stones crunching under the tires. Pure country. Would our town be like this soon too? Would the brush and stone come to take us?
“Cal’s got a motorcycle,” Daddy said. “Used to whip right through these shitty weeds. In a chair now though. Half-blind, too.”
I wondered who’d want to live in such a lonely place and who brought him what he needed. We drove another quarter-mile before a house appeared, a few hundred yards in front of us.
“Whoa,” Daddy said, “Stop here, but keep the car running. Not too noisy, is it? Your engine, I mean. An Escape, huh?” He sat wringing his hands. One lone light on the side of the house, a forty-watt bulb’s worth of shine from the look of it. Things were dead quiet until a dog, sleeping under the porch woke up, came out, and began to bark. It wasn’t the kind of bark you worried about, but it sure told anyone inside that house that something was up.
“Daddy, maybe you should’ve called him first. It don’t look like he’s expecting you.”
“’Specting me? Better not be ‘specting me, Louellen. Now look, when you see me come back outta that house, you pull right on up to the door—fast as you can. This guy ain’t gonna like what I say to him and you never can tell. He might try to hold out on me. Do something anyway.”
I was getting a real bad feeling. “Better tell me now, Daddy. What’re you gonna do in there?”
“You don’t wanna know my business, Louellen. Jus’ do like I say and drive up to the door as fast as you can when you see me. Stomp right on that gas. Don’t turn the car off neither. No matter how long I take. You gott
a enough gas? ”
“Why don’t I pull up there right now?
“Cause he’ll hear you, girl. Ain’t that deaf. Now be ready for me.”
I looked at the barking dog and wondered if Daddy didn’t hear it. If Daddy didn’t know that anyone inside that place would be ready for him. Deaf or not.
The flask in his pocket turned out to be a gun, and he pulled it out as soon as he was outside the car. I shut my eyes and when I opened them he was gone. I stuck my Ipod in my ear and listened to a track or two from Sick Puppies. Then an old tune from Evanescence, and another two or three from Lil Wayne. None of ‘em took my mind off what was going on in the cabin though. No music on earth coulda done that. I couldn’t hear anything with the music in my ears. Didn’t want to hear gunshots, or shouting, or breaking glass. Any of the things I was imaginin’ in my head.
Suddenly, Daddy came tumblin’ out the door, holding his shoulder, and screaming. I yanked the plugs in time to hear him yell, “Girl! Where are you? Jesus Christ, Lou!”
I was about to stomp on the pedal when another car leaped out of the dark. Probably eased in when I was listening to those tunes. Maybe during, “All the Same,” which kind of haunts me. Didn’t take me more than two seconds to realize it must’ve been my mother. In the dark, our cars were twins. Daddy climbed right in Mom’s car, thinking it was me.
I sat frozen, listening as the car quietly disappeared through the patchy fog and twisted trees. Turning on my headlights to go, they picked up something on the gravel. A gun. Daddy must’ve dropped it scrambling into Mom’s car. I got out, grabbed it and drove home as slow as I dared. Worrying about meeting up with a cop—me with a gun in the car. Worrying too about what Mom would say.
An hour or more passed before both Mom and Gordon came in. Neither said a word ‘though they must have followed me from Staples, to the motel, to that cabin in the woods. They must’ve known what I was up to, found out Daddy was back in town and dogging me.
“Had dinner yet, Louellen?” Mom said, slapping some placemats on the table.
It was going on midnight. “Nothin’ much,” I said.
She motioned me to my seat and Gordon came in and sat down too. Mom pulled a bucket of chicken and the fixings out of her carryall. “Picked stuff up earlier today. Thought we might be hungry ‘bout now. Good thing, too cause nothing’s open.”
Nobody said a word ‘til the chicken was nothing more than gristle and bones. Soon one, then the other of ‘em, drifted off to bed. Oh, I tell you those two were good at keeping secrets. But I had a secret hidden under my bed. I wondered if I remembered the way back to that cabin, to that half-blind cripple and his money, to my way out of this town. I wondered too if some of Mom’s sleeping pills that I had already put in the mashed potatoes might make that darn dog out there shut up. He was a noisy bastard.
GEORGIE
“He’s out there already,” my mother says flatly, shaking her head. “Out there and it’s not even eight.”
She’s standing over the sink with her hands in the foamy water, washing her lingerie. Silky, satiny pastels glide through her fingers, bobbing up unexpectedly when they break loose from her grip.
I try not to watch, being at an age when my mother’s undergarments make me queasy. My head’s about six inches over my cereal bowl because I don’t want to get Count Chocula splatters on my last clean shirt. Instead of answering, I shovel another spoonful of cereal into my mouth.
“Did you hear me, Rufe?”
My mother raises both her voice and hands as she reaches for the dishtowel. She’s still in her nightgown—a pale green one with a plunging neckline, and I can see her soaked tits, a word I recently learned. I gurgle something, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Nice,” she says, eyeing me slit-eyed through the haze of smoke from the cigarette on the windowsill. The trail of smoke scorches the air and I suck it in. It stings the back of my throat but in a thrilling way. I wonder if I’m going to be a smoker too. Going to be like her.
“Aren’t you gonna be late?”
She’s not worried though, knowing I’m never late. Neither was my Dad from what she tells me. There’s almost always a flicker of disapproval on her face for the ways I’m like him—even if the trait seems to be a good one, like being on time or neat. She watches me now, taking huge drags of her Salem as I place my cereal bowl on the counter, find my books, grab my jacket from the heap of clothes on the other chair and leave. We aren’t the kind of family that kisses goodbye and she barely notices when I finally go, absorbed in the pleasure of her cigarette. Her other hand rotates the large, brass table lighter she carries from room to room in her pocket.
I make my way back to the dirt path behind the garage—the spot where Georgie’s waiting—stopping to put the lid on the garbage can, then picking a beer bottle off of the lawn—if you can call it a lawn; it’s more dirt, rocks and discarded household objects than grass. By the time I reach Georgie, Mom’s hanging her stockings, nightgowns and underwear on a line that’s strung on the porch. I look back without meaning to. The dirty dishes will still be there after school, her beauty products will sit on the bathroom shelf, her overflowing ashtrays will be on every table top, but those nightgowns will be ready to wear, hanging in her closet on padded hangers if I’m lucky. I always dread the possibility of coming home to the extravaganza of billowing color on the porch, but it’s her uniform after all. And as isolated as our house is, men seem to find their way there.
Georgie doesn’t say a word as we walk the half-mile to school. I don’t mind his silence, but it’s one of the things that drives my mother crazy. He can go for hours, even days, without talking. And then suddenly, some switch in his head clicks on and he talks nonstop. This is not one of those days but we walk along companionably. I tell him about the footsteps I heard on the stairs the night before and he nods every now and then to show me he’s keeping up.
It was only recently that I discovered my mother’s method of supplementing the money she makes selling beauty products over the phone. You have to reach a certain age before noticing certain things and in the year between eleven and twelve, I wised up. Suddenly her short, tight clothes, the care she takes in decorating her bedroom, the noises at night, the expensive bottles of liquor she keeps on the glass cart in the living room, the hushed phone calls, all made sense. Plus I read a book called East of Eden and found out that mothers can be such things—prostitutes, that is.
My mother usually works in the daytime hours when I’m at school, but some men—factory workers, men who work the fishing boats, shop owners, high school teachers—can’t get away before night. It’s not like we ever discuss it. I’m just guessing. When I was six or even ten, I fell asleep by eight or nine and never heard those footsteps on the stairs. But lately I hear them once or twice a week. And it’s usually the same scraping, metallic sound. Maybe the guy’s a dancer and has cleats on his shoes.
Georgie and I arrive at school at 8:30 and he makes his way to the special class where he’s been every day since first grade. He’s nearly fourteen now. On one of the days when he was talking like a magpie, he told me he’d been watching the same crack make its way down the wall since he was six. The walls are twelve feet high at least and that wall, in particular, has a hidey-hole closet behind it. That hidden space leads to a tunnel and was once part of the Underground Railroad where escaped slaves hid on their way to Canada. Now it’s sealed up and only the crack reminds us of what once happened right here in our own school. That section of the school was a church back then. It still has a sort of peaky roof that makes you think a cross should be at the top.
There’s only about a yard between the crack in Georgie’s classroom and the floor and one kid’s taking bets on whether it reaches the bottom before Georgie goes off to middle school. Betting on such a thing sounds mean, but Georgie has a fiver on it himself.
“Rufus, would you start putting the desks in a circle.”
Ms. Proctor likes the desks arra
nged that way—friendly, she calls it. But every night, starting back around Christmas, the custodian, Mr. Hamilton, moves the desks back into regular rows. He says it’s a Maine state law but nobody believes him and we think it has something to do with Mr. Hamilton having a thing for Ms. Proctor. A thing that went wrong, that is. The first time Ms. Proctor came into the classroom and saw them forced into rows, she gasped. I think it’s the only time I ever heard anyone do that in real life. It seemed to pull some of the oxygen out of the room.
I start moving the desks and the next two kids who come in pitch in and pretty soon, we’re sitting in a circle, craning our necks to see what Ms. Proctor’s putting on the blackboard behind half of us. That’s the trouble with circles.
Ms. Proctor’s wearing a white blouse today and the first button is halfway down, so a big V of pinkish skin shows. Her full green skirt billows in the breeze coming in through the row of windows and I see her thighs twice. Her legs are bare and the breeze is making goose bumps on her calves. She can feel someone staring at her and turns around, but by then I have my head burrowed into our math book.
I go up to the blackboard on the third round of math problems. I finally work out the problem and luckily Susan Bower is still standing because the last one to come up with the right answer has to solve another problem. I wonder if that’s a state law too. After that we look at a map of China.
“Rice,” someone yells out when Ms. Proctor asks what the Chinese eat. “Rice with chopsticks,” another kid says. We all laugh, wondering why the Chinese never discovered the fork. Some girl in the back row picks up two pencils then and pretends they’re chopsticks. Pretty soon, we’re all doing it and a kid or two sticks the pencils in their noses.
“Respect other cultures.” Ms. Proctor has to shout and a bunch of pencils clatter to the floor. “Anyone can use a fork. Think how lovely the Chinese look at the dinner table.”
This image is squashed minutes later by her explanation of how the communists in China and Russia might soon be joining forces to A-bomb the U.S. to smithereens. She lets the map snap up when she’s done and we all jump.
