Rhymes with Cupid

by Anna Humphrey

  “Sorry!” I squeaked, making a pained face. First I’d accused him of stalking me in a parking lot, and now I’d nearly given him whiplash for the second time in half an hour. I was clearly off to a wicked awesome start getting to know my new neighbor.

  “No. My fault,” he apologized. “I got so busy talking, I forgot you’re nervous on the roads. I should have used a calmer voice. I just meant, ‘You can stop now. We’re here.’”

  “We’re where?”

  “Here. The place where we’re going.”

  I looked around, my heart continuing to beat loudly against my ribs. We were in old Middleford, on Carlton, six blocks from where my mom and I used to live. It was a street full of big, old trees and expensive, historic, three-story houses.

  “See that car?” Patrick asked. It was a red convertible parked at the side of the road. “Pretty nice, right?” I nodded, still trying to catch my breath. “That’s an Audi A4. It’d run you somewhere around forty thousand dollars. Why anyone would drive a convertible in the winter, I have no idea, but some people are idiots.”

  I gave him a weird look. I definitely didn’t have $40,000. And I didn’t need to learn about buying a luxury car. I just needed to learn about driving a regular one. “And see that one?” He pointed to the one in front. “It’s a BMW 7-Series. You’re looking at eighty thousand, minimum.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “You think so?” he asked. “I always thought they were kind of squashed looking. And my friend’s dad back in Canada has one. He says they guzzle gas. Personally, when this one dies, and I graduate and get a decent job, I’m buying a hybrid.” We sat in silence for a few seconds.

  “Okay, now what?” I asked.

  “Now you parallel park between those two cars.” I must have given him a look like he had banana trees growing out his ears, because he started laughing.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Shouldn’t we be practicing this in, like, a deserted parking lot somewhere? Plus, you just told me that those two cars combined cost at least a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. You do realize my mom and I don’t have that kind of cash, right? How do you expect me to pay when I total them?”

  “You’re not going to total them.”

  I let my head fall forward against the steering wheel and shut my eyes. “Okay, Patrick, you’ve obviously never driven with me before. If you had, you’d know that there’s no point sitting here discussing this. I can’t do it.”

  “I’ve been driving with you for the past half hour,” he answered. “That’s how I know that you can.” I obviously didn’t look convinced. “There won’t be a scratch on those cars when you’re finished. I promise. I’m going to be right here beside you, helping.” I sighed. “Parallel parking is like riding a bike—” he started.

  I cut him off. “The last time I rode a bike I broke my ankle and came this close to killing some lady’s cat.”

  “Okay.” He paused. “It’s like learning to swim—”

  “I sink.”

  “Okay. What can you do?”

  I sighed again. “I read. I bake cookies and cakes. I study. I pretty much excel at all things safe and boring that involve sitting at home and not parallel parking between a hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of cars.”

  “Baking!” he said. “Parallel parking is exactly like baking.” I was not going to be parallel parking in that spot. No way, no how. But I had to hear this. “You’ve got your ingredients, right?” I could tell his mind was racing. “The car and the spot. And you’ve got your recipe. Here. Pull up beside the BMW. Not too close. About two feet away. Line the bumpers up, then put on your turn signal.”

  “Patrick. That’s a really bad idea. I don’t think you understand. . . .”

  “Here,” he said, ignoring me. “Give it a tiny bit of gas.”

  “No way.”

  “Just try.” Against my better judgment, I gave in and Patrick guided the wheel as I pressed gently on the gas pedal. We pulled alongside the BMW. “Okay. So you take one car.” He pointed at the steering wheel. “Check!” I was trying not to hyperventilate. “You take two feet of space.” He rolled down his window and leaned out, letting in a gush of cold air. “Check!” He motioned for me to take the wheel again. “You put it in reverse.” He adjusted the gear shift for me. “Then use juuuust a little gas, and you stir it all the way to the right. Stir,” he said, and I wrenched the wheel around, feeling like I was about to barf. The car inched back. “Stir stir stir stir. Good. Okay. Brake.” I stepped on the pedal. Hard. We both lurched forward. Again. “Okay. Good. We’ll work on smooth braking later.”

  I pulled my hat off and shoved it between the seats. I could feel my forehead sweating, and I was sure I had a brutal case of hat head, but I didn’t care. I was so mad at Patrick for making me do this. I didn’t have anything to prove to him, and I didn’t care how bad I looked.

  “Okay, now just a little bit of gas again and stir it to the left. Keep looking over your shoulder to watch where you’re going.” I wrenched the wheel around, swearing under my breath. “Okay, brake.” I did, more gently this time. “There. Now just pull forward and center the car, like you’re sliding a cookie sheet into the oven. You want at least two feet of space at the front and back, and about half a foot from the curb.” I pulled forward, hit the brake again, put the car in park, and shut off the ignition.

  “See?” he said, grinning. “I knew you could do it. And that was, like, extreme parallel parking. Now that you’ve parked between two cars that cost more than your entire university education will, you’ll never be scared again.” He held up his hand for a high five.

  I did not high-five him back. Instead, I unbuckled my seat belt and got out, slamming the door behind me. Patrick got out, too.

  “Check it out.” He walked around the car. “You’re exactly half a foot from the curb. Exactly. Honestly, I kind of want to take a picture of this parallel park and frame it, because that’s how perfect it is. It’s like the Mona Lisa of parallel parks, or something.”

  I was fuming too much to listen. It was a miracle I’d made it into the space without damaging $120,000 worth of luxury cars. He was an idiot if he thought there was any other explanation. And I was an idiot for letting him talk me into doing something so risky. If I’d hit those cars, we never would have been able to pay for the damages—even with Patrick’s insurance coverage. My mom and I would have probably had to sell our new, cheaper house. We’d be on the streets, sleeping next to Jack the homeless guy and kicking ice chips at strangers who wouldn’t give us their bus money. I walked past him, opened the passenger-side door, got in, and slammed it shut.

  “Hey!” Patrick knocked on the window but I refused to look at him. My hands were shaking in my lap. I wiped some sweat off my forehead and blinked back tears. He knocked again. This time I rolled the window down a crack. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You’re driving,” I said, then looked straight ahead again. He came around to the driver’s side and got in. Neither of us said a single word the whole way home.

  “You working tomorrow?” Patrick asked finally as he effortlessly backed the car into the driveway of his grandfather’s house.

  “Noon to four,” I answered, unbuckling my seat belt.

  “I’m off at three thirty,” he said. “I’ll wait for you. You can practice driving home. We’re going the same way, anyway. Makes sense, right?” It did. But just because it made sense, didn’t mean I wanted to do it. “What’ve we got left? Thirteen days before your road test? There’s no way you’re failing this time. You’re an awesome driver, Elyse. You just need to work on your confidence.”

  I knew he was trying to help, that he was trying to be nice. So why was it that I couldn’t seem to keep the sarcastic tone out of my voice? “Right,” I said, closing the car door and walking away. “Because I’m the Leonardo da Vinci of left-hand turns.” I didn’t look back, but I’d swear I heard him laughing at me softly as I trudged up
the path to my front door.

  I kicked off my boots and glanced at the clock on the DVD player. It was 7:10, plus our car was in the driveway, so I knew my mom was home. “Hello?” I called. Nobody answered. There weren’t any cooking smells coming from the kitchen. “You won’t believe what the neighbor made me do.” I started telling the story, figuring my mom was just in the bathroom and would hear me through the door. “I seriously think we should cancel these driving lessons before something goes horribly wrong.” Still no answer. “Hello?” I stuck my head up the stairwell. And that was when I heard it: a faint banging noise. It got louder as I walked toward the kitchen, but there was nobody there. I opened the door to the basement.

  “Elyse?!” The banging resumed. “Elyse?!” My mother’s voice was muffled, but I didn’t miss the hint of panic in it. “Elyse, come help me.” I flew down the stairs, taking them two at a time. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but when they did I gasped. The huge, heavy wooden wardrobe my mom had been sanding to keep our extra winter coats in was lying facedown on the cement floor—its doors open. A single hand—my mother’s—was reaching out from underneath a small gap between the floor and the wardrobe, waving frantically for my attention. I knelt down on the ground. “Oh my God. Are you okay? Are you crushed? Do you need an ambulance? Mom, can you breathe? I’m calling 911.” I raced toward the stairs, my knees trembling.

  “Elyse, I’m fine.” Was my mother laughing or crying? I couldn’t tell for sure without seeing her face. She gestured with her single visible hand, telling the story just like she would have if she weren’t underneath a 200-pound wardrobe. “I had a few minutes when I got home, so I thought I’d sand the insides of the doors before making dinner. I stood up on the shelf to reach the top and the whole thing tipped on me. I’ve been trying to bang my way through the back panel, but it’s no use. Can you lift up the wardrobe, sweetie? Just a little? Get the cement block that’s in the corner under the bag of peat moss. Prop it underneath and I should be able to crawl out.”

  I got the cinder block she was talking about and somehow managed to heave the wardrobe up several inches. I pushed the big cement brick under with my foot, fighting back tears the whole time. A second later, my mother shimmied out from underneath, stood up, and brushed the floor dirt and sawdust out of her hair. She crouched down to examine the wardrobe. One of the doors had cracked a bit in the fall and, even with the two of us lifting, there was no way we’d ever be able to get it standing upright again. The thing weighed a ton.

  “Well, maybe we could just store our extra winter coats in plastic bins under the stairs instead,” she said, and that was when my mother noticed the tears streaming down my face. She understood immediately. “Oh, Elyse. Oh, sweetie. I’m all right.” She stood up and held out her arms to show me. “Not a scratch. I’m fine.”

  “But what if you hadn’t been? Mom, that thing could have crushed you.”

  “But it didn’t.” She put her arms around me, then pulled away to wipe the tears off my cheeks with her fingers.

  “And you were all alone down there. What if I hadn’t come right home for some reason?”

  “But you did.”

  “I was supposed to help you sand this last night,” I sniffed, looking at the wardrobe, “when I was done studying. I forgot. If I hadn’t forgotten, you wouldn’t have been doing it all by yourself.”

  “That’s all right, Elyse. It’s my responsibility to get these things done. I’m the adult in this family.” I hated it when she said things like that. Maybe it was true when I was a kid, but now I was seventeen. She shouldn’t have to take care of everything all on her own anymore. It was bad enough that my father had walked out on her with barely a backward glance; she should have at least been able to count on me. “From now on I’ll be more careful when I’m fixing things around the house. I promise,” she said.

  “And ask me for help,” I said, giving her my best “I am so serious right now” look, which she totally ignored.

  “Come on,” she said instead. “Come upstairs. We’ll order a pizza. You’ll feel better after you’ve had something to eat. Then you can help me with my homework assignment.”

  My mom’s “homework assignment” turned out to be hand-lettering forty-five place cards using gold ink and a calligraphy pen. After an afternoon of extreme parallel parking followed by the near-crushing-death-of-my-mother-by-a-wardrobe, my hand wasn’t exactly steady, to say the least. I went through five different cards before I finally did one that was good enough to keep.

  “They’ve got the Bradford ballroom booked out for lunch, and they’re closing the entire spa for the afternoon,” my mom explained. “The whole thing is being catered by Chez Pierre, and they’re giving away all kinds of raffle prizes.” She stacked another neatly lettered card onto her pile. “I still miss Chudleigh’s Auto Insurance, but I have to say, they never had staff appreciation days like this.”

  I took a bite of my Hawaiian slice and washed it down with some iced tea while I watched my mother work. The bags under her eyes were huge and dark, but besides that, she looked good. She’d been waking up at six A.M. the past two days so she’d have time to blow-dry her hair and do her makeup. Apparently one of the requirements of working reception at a spa was to look put-together. She even had pink polish on her nails—something I’d never seen her wear before. She noticed me noticing it. “Oh, Claire—one of the aestheticians—did this for me at break. It doesn’t look too glitzy, does it?”

  I smiled, putting down my pizza crust. “It’s nice,” I said. I wiped my hands on my napkin and picked up another place card to letter. “Seriously?” I looked down at the list of names my mom had given me. “This is somebody’s real name?” My mother finished clearing the plates, then peered over my shoulder.

  “Oh. Valter. He’s the spa’s Swedish masseuse.”

  “And his last name’s Bigaskis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pronounced ‘big-ass-kiss’?” I asked, enunciating the word in my best imitation of a Swedish accent. “Like, ‘Val-ter Big-ass-kiss’?”

  “Elyse,” my mother scolded in the same tone she used to use when I’d pick my nose or make farting sounds with my male cousins as a kid. “That’s not funny.”

  “Yes it is,” I said. “Kind of, at least. You’ve got to admit.” But my mother didn’t look like she was about to admit anything. “Val-ter Big-ass-kiss,” I said again, giggling a little to myself as I lettered the place card. My mom hadn’t cracked a smile, so I tried to stop laughing.

  “Oh.” She sat down and picked up another place card, changing the subject. “Dina called for you earlier. I guess she didn’t realize you had a driving lesson. She was wondering if she could confirm you for the chocolate-vanilla cheesecake. Sounds like a fun party.”

  I groaned. It had been a long day. The last thing I wanted to think about was Valentine’s Day, or Dina’s ridiculous party, but now that Dina had told my mother all about it, I knew there was no way out—I’d be going.

  “I told her no problem. I’ll help you bake it if you want. We still have your stuffed panda bear collection, too. I packed them in one of those filing boxes for the move. It’s somewhere in the basement. I said we’d see if we could dig them up. They’d make great decorations.”

  “Mom!” I cried. It was bad enough that I was being forced to party on Valentine’s Day when all I wanted to do was mope. I didn’t want to drag along a bunch of stupid childhood stuffed animals.

  “You’ll have fun, Elyse. It’s good that you’re going out.” I sighed. “And it’s two weeks from today, too. You know what that means, don’t you?” I gave her a blank look. “You’ll have passed your road test by then. You can drive to Dina’s yourself.”

  I dropped Valter Bigaskis’s finished name card into my pile and reached for another. Drew Hulse. Nothing funny about that one. In fact, it was one of the most depressing names I’d ever heard, which was fitting, because I was suddenly feeling gloomy—not to menti
on very, very tired.

  Chapter 5

  On Saturday morning my bootlace came untied just as I was running down the steps. I stopped to tie it and, as a result, just missed the stupid number four bus again. Since my mom had already left for the grocery store, I had no choice but to wait. I ended up being fifteen minutes late for work. When I got there, Dina was wrestling with a bunch of unruly helium balloons while trying to sell a frazzled-looking mother on the customer loyalty Cupid promotion.

  “Thanks,” the mother was saying distractedly, keeping an eye on her two sons, who were playing tag dangerously close to the crystal dolphin figurines. “But it’s my son’s sixth birthday party today. We’ll get enough noisy, battery powered toys as it is.”

  The day before, when someone had shared a similar concern, I’d overheard Dina trying to convince them that—if you took the batteries out—Cupid could also make a lovely centerpiece for a Valentine’s Day dinner table, but for some reason, she didn’t even bother. “Dammit,” she said instead, under her breath, as a robot-shaped foil balloon made a break for freedom and floated toward the ceiling.

  “I’ll get the stepladder,” I offered, dumping my bag behind the counter and heading for the back room. As soon as the mother had left with her bratty kids and her bunch of balloons, I turned to Dina. “You don’t seem so good. Everything okay?”

  She sank down miserably on the stool behind the counter. “Elyse, if you called somebody, and they said they’d call you right back, when would you expect to hear from them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe in a couple of minutes.” I could tell from the look on her face that I hadn’t given the answer she’d been hoping for. “Or, it depends. If they’re really busy with something, it might be longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  “An hour, maybe? Two hours.”

  “Not sixteen?”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what we were talking about, although I had a pretty good guess. “No. Probably not sixteen.” I hesitated. “Unless something really important came up. Or there was an emergency.”