“Do you think she’s all right?”
“Oh, sure she’s just a little worn out, that’s all,” Lexus said, pulling the sheet up and looking down. “Puddin’, are you all right?” Lexus made a show of waiting for an answer. “Come again?” Lexus said. “Oh, okay.” Lexus smiled at Cheryl. “She says she’s all right.”
“I’m not talking about your vagina. I’m talking about Pen,” Cheryl said.
“Oh, yeah. I think it’s really cool that Frank and Adele took her for the weekend.”
“At least we know they won’t go on an acid trip and leave her in San Francisco like Martha Sue did that time when she was five. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that.”
“They said they’d only go as far as Snoqualmie.”
“I know,” Cheryl said, fluffing up her pillow and sticking it behind her so she could sit up. It was twelve thirty on a Saturday night and it probably wasn’t the best time to have a life-altering conversation, but she didn’t want it hanging over her the rest of the weekend.
“Just checking. There will still be snow up there. I showed her how to use the camera. She was stoked,” Lexus said, still lounging on her back with her hands behind her head.
“We have to talk about Pen,” Cheryl said.
“I thought we were.”
“I mean about making this permanent.”
“It is permanent, isn’t it? I filled out all the paperwork,” Lexus said. She shot up, going from supine to flagpole in less than a second. “I didn’t fuck something up, did I?”
“No, you didn’t. We have foster care approval, but if someone comes along and wants to adopt her or there’s an opening in the state home, they could take her.”
“What?” Lexus flapped her arms in distress as if to notify the universe that she needed aid.
“We would have to adopt her to ensure we are her parents until she comes of age.”
“So we’re, like, temporary?”
“Yes,” Cheryl said.
“But how can they do that with kids? I mean, don’t they have a voice in all this?”
“Apparently not. I suppose they could register a complaint or express a preference,” Cheryl said.
“This is really fucked-up. I want to adopt her.” Lexus was on her knees and jumping up and down, making the whole bed shake.
“Are you sure?” Cheryl said, putting her hand out to the nightstand to steady herself.
Lexus looked at her. “You know, I thought I was complete, that I had lots of love in my life. I had you. I had the careers I wanted. I had a nice place to live, no money trouble, but not until Pen came did I realize there was something more that I needed. I could help another person grow up in a loving, safe, supportive environment so that they would be a good person who could make the world a better place.”
“Wow, that was beautiful. Remember that line when we talk to the social worker.”
“Social worker?” Lexus stopped jumping.
“According to Agnes, we have to jump through a few hoops of fires before we can adopt. Fostering is not as big a deal as adoption.”
“Okay, so what do we have to do exactly?”
Cheryl looked at her.
“What?”
“It might not be such a good idea to have pink hair,” Cheryl said. She said this with great trepidation. Lexus got uptight when she felt forced to conform. She viewed it as a sellout of her essential self. If people didn’t like how she dressed or her hair, she either won them over or ignored them. Cheryl wasn’t sure how this was going to go. Her visions of social workers had lots of bad juju around them. She eyed Lexus.
“Not a problem. Give me the parameters and I’ll be there. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”
Cheryl supposed she could be hungry despite the late hour. “Sure.”
“I’ll make us an omelet.” Lexus hopped out of bed, threw on a robe and was down the hall before Cheryl’s feet hit the floor.
When Cheryl got to the kitchen, Lexus had the eggs out and was whipping them with a frenzy. Cheryl, still a little stupefied by all the post-coital activity, grabbed a chef knife and began chopping the green onions and mushrooms that Lexus had laid out on the counter.
“So how do you want to do this?” Lexus said.
“Do what? I thought we were having a cheese, green onions and mushroom omelet. I’m doing the chopping and you’re scrambling the eggs.”
“Not that. The adoption thing.”
“I think they interview us and come to the house and check our criminal records, which we don’t have, and see if we’re fit to be parents and of course there’s a ton of forms.”
“I’ll take care of the forms. I know how you feel about paperwork.”
“The bane of my existence.” She slid the green onions toward Lexus, who threw them in the pan with the mushrooms. They hissed and steamed.
“What I meant was our approach to it. Do we try to anticipate everything they want? I call this the ‘Second Guess’ method. Or do we go with the ‘Vicarious Failure’ method?”
“I don’t understand either one of them,” Cheryl said, watching as Lexus added the egg mixture to the pan.
“In the ‘Second Guess’ method we find out all the necessary requirements and then try to figure out how they are going to trip us up. We do all we can to get it right.”
“That sounds good. Agnes can tell us everything we need to do. We’re smart, hard-working, honest people. How can we go wrong?” Cheryl said. She put out the silverware on the kitchen bar.
“We’re gay.”
Cheryl bit her lip. That was or rather could be a stumbling block. “What’s the other method entail?”
“The ‘Vicarious Failure’ method involves more research but in the end often pays higher dividends.”
Lexus’s life-coach jargon confused Cheryl, who considered herself a tell-it-like-it-is kind of person. This tended to be a detriment when it came to her bedside manner. What did dividends have to do with not getting an adoption approval? Instead of playing along and getting stuck in the murky world of self-improvement, Cheryl fessed up. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean is we find out all the things that went wrong with other people’s adoptions, especially the gay ones, and make sure we avoid or correct any of those.”
“How do we do that?”
“Research.”
“And we do that how?” Cheryl asked.
Lexus flipped the omelet on her plate. “The Internet, silly. Now, eat up, then we’ll look up cases on gay adoption.”
“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” Cheryl said.
“No time like the present. Like I tell my clients, you can sleep when you’re dead.”
“I tell my patients that sleep deprivation has certain health hazards,” Cheryl said. She took a bite of omelet.
“Aw, I’ll let you sleep in and make it worth your while.”
Cheryl felt a stir in her nether regions. It appeared her Puddin’ was nodding her assent. “Does that mean we can have sex again after we do research?”
Lexus wiggled her ass in a way that could only mean “Come hither.”
For as sane and sensible as Cheryl felt herself to be, sex with Lexus or the promise of it always turned her a bit feral. Sex was an amazing thing. She ate her omelet while they surfed the ’net side by side. She loved when they had a common purpose, and she was glad that she’d overcome her trepidation about being a parent.
Pen had helped her see it one afternoon when Cheryl was feeling unsettled. She had asked her two questions.
“Will you ever leave me alone in a strange city for a weekend?”
“Well, no, of course not,” Cheryl had responded.
“Will you keep me in clean underpants and socks?”
“Yes.”
“I hereby deem you a fit parent,” Pen had said. Then she’d taken a kitchen skewer and touched both her shoulders.
Lexus was deep into the research. “Look at this,” she pointed at the computer screen. It was
a video of the social worker going into the house of a hoarder who was trying to adopt her own grandchild. Instead of passing the test, Social Services had taken the child, deeming the house uninhabitable.
“I think we’re one up on that one. We can at least locate our furniture,” Cheryl said.
“They should make a reality TV show on how to fail an adoption. This one here says that the foster parents used the children as hired help. I can see asking them to do some chores but not running the whole farm.”
“Just think, Pen could have ended up in one of those places.”
“We can’t discount all the wonderful people who foster kids,” Lexus said. “These are just the horror stories. Come on, we’ll do some serious research through the proper channels in the morning. I don’t want to give you nightmares.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Cheryl said, looking at child labor in a Third World country. There were good people in the world trying to give these children a decent home and a better life too.
Lexus took her hand. “Stop looking at the negativity.”
“I want to give Pen a safe and loving home.”
“We will. I promise to make the social worker think I’m Donna Reed.” Lexus did a twirl.
“Please don’t dress like her.”
Lexus had that gleam in her eye. “We’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Painting the Moon
The bathroom was next on Sparky’s remodel list. With Uncle Milton’s help Sparky unloaded the toilet and sink from the back of the truck into Apartment Number 4. They were resting from their labors, when, through the open door to the apartment, Sparky heard the click of high heels in the hallway. A woman popped her head in the door. Sparky didn’t recognize her at first.
Lexus had had her hair cut in a pixie. And she was wearing a tailored black with white pinstripe skirt and matching jacket and red shoes with heels—not overly high heels but definitely heels—with pantyhose. And she had a dog. It was an English bulldog with a black circle around his right eye. He—and it was definitely a he, for all his equipment was prominent—had a red collar and matching leash. He complemented Lexus’s outfit. Sparky wondered if this was intentional.
Milton and Sparky stared. “Well, what do you think?” Lexus said, unclipping the dog’s leash. Sparky’s first thought was “Please don’t let him pee on my freshly refinished floor.” This was a selfish thought, she realized, and possessive of a place that wasn’t hers. She hoped whoever moved in here wouldn’t immediately trash the place, then she thought of Mr. Agassiz—he’d kill them if they did.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Milton said, wiping his hand on a sanitary wipe that he pulled from a packet he kept in his rear pocket. Nowadays, of course, wiping your hands on a well-used hankie was frowned upon, so Milton had given all his helpers packs of wet wipes and instructed them to use them before shaking hands with a customer. Sparky admired his social acumen—McAlester Electric had the most well-mannered group of workers she’d ever seen. Uncle Milton did not allow coarse, rude, obscenity-using workers on his watch and T-shirts with long tails were standard issue to make sure no one ever flashed a butt crack. Show just one and you were done.
“I’m Lexus Lewis. I live down the hall in Apartment Number 2. I saw the door open and thought I’d pop in and show you my new look.”
“You look real nice and very classy. Is that what you were aiming at?” Milton said as he shook her hand. “I’m Milton, Sparky’s uncle.”
“And my boss,” Sparky added.
“In the gentlest sense of the word. I only fired her once,” Milton said, winking at Sparky.
“What did she do?” Lexus said.
“Shall I tell her?” Milton said, looking at Sparky.
“Please,” Lexus pleaded.
“I don’t know,” Sparky said, smiling coyly. “She’ll probably never trust me again.”
“Who says I trust you now?” Lexus teased.
“I’m your maintenance person. You have to trust me. Who else is going to fix your garbage disposal?” Sparky said.
“What happened to the garbage disposal?” Milton asked. He was like all people who fixed things for a living—things in need of repair engrossed him. Upon hearing about them, he would either ponder how to fix them or he would learn what had been done so it could be filed away for future reference.
“I put a bag of marbles down the disposal and it kind of mucked it up,” Lexus said. She glanced over at the dog who was sitting patiently in front of Sparky as she sat on a low work stool.
“Did you drop them in there by accident? I knew a woman who ground up the TV remote because her husband never stopped watching ESPN long enough to say more than, ‘I want a sandwich and bring me a beer.’ The batteries got jammed up in the blades, but it did demolish the plastic part. Her husband could never get the replacement remote to sync properly. It worked out okay in the end. Getting up to change the channel caused him to lose weight, and his new and improved physique caused his wife to lust after him. Their conjugals took a decided upswing and his TV watching plummeted,” Uncle Milton said.
“The relationship that was saved by a garbage disposal. That’s a great story. Can I use it in my life coach seminar?” Lexus said. She sat down on the box containing the toilet and took off her heels. She rubbed her foot.
“Sure. I love to be of service to my fellow human beings,” Milton said. “So tell me your disposal story.” He took a seat on the sink box.
“I put marbles in there for sound effects. I wanted the garbled noise so I could record it and use it in my presentations. The noise demonstrated how an unfocused brain sounded.”
Sparky tried to imagine how that noise would sound amplified, then gave up. She studied the dog. “What does he want? He keeps staring at me.”
“That’s Marlowe. Just say ‘Freud’ and he’ll stop.”
“Why?” Sparky asked.
“Just say it.”
“Freud.”
Marlowe lay on his back and crossed his paws on his chest. He made three short barks and then a heavy sigh.
“What is he doing?” Sparky asked.
Milton laughed. “I bet I can guess.”
“Go ahead,” Lexus said, acting like this was better than charades.
“He’s pretending to be on a couch in a psychiatrist’s office.”
“Bingo!” Lexus said.
Milton did a little jump. He really is a fag, Sparky thought. All he needed was the arm flap. She wished he’d come out of the closet.
“Why does he do that?” Sparky asked. She patted Marlowe’s tummy. He sighed again.
“His previous owner was a shrink. He died and Marlowe ended up in the shelter. I took him as my parting gift when I gave up my job at the shelter in order to be more of a stay-at-home mother for Pen. I’m doing my life coaching via Skype now. Business has really taken off. I’ve got this new method and it seems to be working. I call it the Get Off Your Ass Approach.”
“So you’re going to keep him?” Sparky said.
“Yes, I want the social worker to know that we’re a gender friendly household. I’m hoping Marlowe will offset some of the excess estrogen we have in the house,” Lexus said.
“Social worker?” Sparky asked.
“We want to adopt Pen. This is one of the hoops of fire we have to go through.”
“Is that why you got rid of the pink hair?” Sparky asked.
“Unfortunately it had to go, for the time being at least. I don’t want the powers that be to deny our petition because I have pink hair.” She patted Marlowe’s head. He’d gotten up and was nuzzling her.
“I think it’s wonderful that you’re going to adopt her,” Sparky said. She had been hoping that Pen would be staying. She was rather attached to her.
“It was actually Cheryl’s idea, which makes it so much better. Cheryl wanted to have a baby but couldn’t conceive. Then we were going to adopt a baby, but that had its own set of hoops, ones th
at didn’t favor gay parents. Pen came along, and although it’s not what Cheryl had envisioned it’s proven even better,” Lexus explained to Uncle Milton.
“That’s wonderful,” Milton said, putting his hand over his heart. He was so Harvey Fierstein, Sparky thought.
“It is wonderful, but it hasn’t been a snap. Cheryl had ‘envisioning’ anxiety about getting an older child after envisioning a baby for so long.”
Sparky wasn’t surprised. Cheryl was the kind of woman who saw her life proceeding according to a certain plan and tried her best to keep it on track. This was the worst kind of way to get what you wanted, Sparky thought. It seemed to her that the universe had its own set of plans. It was all a matter of acceptance, of realizing that what you thought you wanted and what you got had somehow worked out a deal. And if you were smart you understood that your life ended up being better as a result. She wished she could pass this nugget of knowledge on to Wesson.
Sparky scratched Marlowe’s neck. He was making his way around the room looking for scratches and pats—in a more-the-merrier fashion.
“Maybe you should try this ‘envisioning’ thing when it comes to Wesson, Sparky,” Milton said. “You need to do something about her.”
“What I would like to do, Uncle Milton, is envision you finally falling in love,” Sparky said. If they were doing some truth telling here, Milton should fess up.
“Cheryl was concerned that Pen would have trouble because her parents were lesbians,” Lexus said.
Marlowe’s head kept going from one person to the other, seeming to follow the conversation. Sparky wondered if he sensed that they were having three different conversations.
“Wesson looks pretty miserable. I think she needs closure,” Milton said.
Sparky grimaced. “You need to go out on a date.”
“I think that once Cheryl got past the gay thing she came to terms with her decision.”
“Have you thought about talking with Wesson?” Milton said. “Maybe after some counseling she won’t be so uptight and angry?”
“I don’t understand why you don’t just say you’re gay and go out with your friend Bernie from your whist club thing,” Sparky said.
Love Over Moon Street Page 22
