by Maggie Bloom
I draw the knife out and pass it to Tom, who looks surprised. “You want me to do it?” he asks.
I have a bad history with sharp objects. “Yup,” I say. I point out the section I’d like him to carve, which features a haphazard mound of rainbow sprinkles. He divides it into three roughly equal parts and then flops the pieces onto the plates I’ve got on standby. Without me having to ask, he delivers a slice to Denise in the living room.
Instead of sitting opposite me when he returns, Tom takes the chair at my side, our thighs rubbing and knees knocking as we chew. “I like your house,” he tells me earnestly, his cake clinging frosting-side down to his plate. “It’s…uh…homey.”
This comment could be taken as a compliment or an insult, but there’s not a smidge of ill will in Tom’s delivery. “I know,” I say, accepting his words at face value. I glance around and realize that Gramp’s house is homey, in the best sort of way.
We finish our cake, me inhaling every last grain of frosting (including a triple lick of the fork, just to be on the safe side) and Tom leaving a two-inch gob of the sticky stuff adhered to his plate, a situation I am too self-conscious to correct. (It appears I do have some limits when it comes to food, after all.)
“I think Denise fell asleep,” I whisper, straining to hear the soft humming of her snore in the not-so-distant distance. I bring a finger to my lips and make a shhh sound, then take Tom’s hand. “Let’s go to my room.”
Tom’s eyes light up. Instead of answering, he nods, tightens his fingers around mine. Warily we slink down the hall, my suspicions verified with a sideways glance into the living room, where I spot Denise’s petite frame tucked against the arm of the couch.
I shut my bedroom door with due caution and invite Tom into my bed (good thing I remembered to make it this morning). I’ve only got one pillow, so we have to share.
“Your bed is really soft,” Tom tells me as we lie side-by-side, staring at the water-stained ceiling, our arms tense between us.
“It’s old.”
“Mine’s like a gang plank,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “My dad’s big on ‘firmness’ and ‘back support.’ ”
“Oh.”
Tom goes quiet for a while, and I close my eyes, feeling that I am somehow like a blind person, my other senses heightened. The faint scents of perspiration and soap fill my nostrils. I hear Tom’s lungs seesawing with breath, his tongue coating his parched lips with moisture. My arm-hairs stiffen against his, setting off an electrical charge that echoes between my legs and starts my thighs twitching.
Softly Tom says, “I’m glad you didn’t turn out to be…um, you know.”
I flash on the pregnancy test stick. “Me too.”
“Why did you let them do that?” he asks, sounding pained. Before I can answer, he adds, “You’re not letting them do it anymore, right?”
“I was stupid,” I say.
“Was?”
“That’s right.”
I open my eyes and roll toward him, my front flush with his side, my arm draped across his bony chest, his heart jumping against the inside of my elbow. I press my lips to his neck with the delicacy of a firefly alighting on a mountain lion, and he lets me. Again and again. Until, like Denise, he surrenders to the lure of sleep. And I’ve missed my chance to tell him I love him.
chapter 14
THE COPS never solved the case of the Royale, and I doubt they ever will, which makes me glad in a selfish sort of way. Because before that wrecker carted Gramp’s pride and joy off to the salvage yard, I dedicated an entire Tuesday afternoon to trying to decipher even one word of the mindless graffiti layered over the Royale’s fenders and hood.
And I think I found something.
In random spurts of hot-pink lettering (seriously, what kind of vandals tote around such flamboyant spray paint?) were what appeared to be the letters: G-O-D-O-U-L-C-K-A-F-T-T-Y, which I carefully transcribed onto the back of an old envelope for further analysis.
After three hours of staring myself cross-eyed and plucking out the bulk of my eyebrow hairs from sheer frustration, I came to the following possible translations of this message:
FLOCK GAUDY TOT
DUCK LOFTY GOAT
LUCK FATTY GOOD
FLOUT TACKY DOG
I must say that “duck lofty goat” is my favorite (a great name for a racehorse, right?), although I can’t imagine such humorous phrasing coming from the street urchins who obliterated the Royale. Plus, the “fatty” option seems a lot more likely, given my suspicions about Evan Richter, Justin White, Malcolm Gates and Corey Benson retaliating against me for shutting down the screw factory.
Either way, the Royale is toast. And we’ve got a giant slice of cardboard for a window. And I hate assholes, whether they’ve screwed me or not.
* * *
I’m behind the counter at The Pit, my back to the door, when Marie and Duncan (and a cool blast of air) breeze in. I shiver, turn to see Harvey shaking hands with my father and Roy bouncing softly on my mother’s hip.
“Nice to meet you,” says Harvey’s voice as it floats my way.
Duncan mumbles something I strain to hear, his death-grip of a handshake holding Harvey hostage. Suddenly I’m struck with an uncomfortable feeling, the feeling I might have if my husband stumbled across my lover, or vice versa.
The strange thing is, Harvey’s my regular thing, and Marie and Duncan are the seedy indulgence. “What’s going on?” I ask, stalking up to Marie with a stiff spine and an attitude.
My mother smiles, brushes a wisp of hair from Roy’s forehead. “Hello, Roberta,” she says without really looking at me.
I shoot a dagger-stare at Duncan. “What’re you doing here?” I ask Marie, my thumb in my belt loop, my elbow cocked, my hand clutching a stack of numbered race cards I’m in the process of assigning to Yo-Yo cyclists.
Marie spits out a little tsk sound. “Honest to goodness, Roberta, do you have to be so…?”
“Bobbi,” I remind her. “You keep calling me Roberta. I don’t like that name.”
“Point taken,” Marie says with a shallow nod, her fingertips dancing over Roy’s belly as if she’s about to start a tickle fight.
I meet my brother’s gaze, and he gives me a perky giggle of recognition that sends a spike of sadness through my soul. “Dad,” I say, with a raised voice that interrupts Harvey and Duncan.
Both men turn in my direction, Harvey rocking on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back, Duncan’s ears pricked like a curious dog’s. “Yes?” says my father.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
Harvey shoots me a cautionary glance. “I was just telling your father that the heats were divided by age based on date of entry, not date of competition.”
Who cares? I want to say. Instead, I whisper, “Oh.”
“We can’t change them now,” Harvey continues in a regretful tone that strikes me as false, “simply because entrants have had birthdays between registration and race day. Even if we could, there’s no time.”
Leave it to Duncan to devise a list of inane demands. “You want to race the old folks?” I ask incredulously.
“Forty-five is hardly old,” Duncan insists with a huff. “Do you think it’s fair to pit me against thirty-year-olds?”
My eyes go wide. “It’s for charity!” I remind him with a dash too much force. “What does it matter?”
“The asthma fund will have their money,” Duncan says.
“Lung,” says Harvey. “The American Lung Association.”
“Regardless,” Duncan says, “I don’t undertake a challenge to lose.”
Except parenting, I stop myself from uttering. Your record in that arena is pretty spotty. “We don’t have time,” I say, echoing Harvey. In reality, I could probably switch riders around with a few strokes at the keyboard, but I’m not about to let that intelligence loose. “Anything else?” I ask, my gaze jumping from Duncan to Marie.
Duncan pulls his lips into a horizontal line, turn
s on his heel for the door.
“We’ll expect you tomorrow,” my mother tells me flatly. The bell dings as Duncan stomps out. “Try to be on time.”
* * *
Denise’s doctor was wrong about her chances of conceiving, it seems (unless Orv just has supercharged sperm), because as Denise and Orv ecstatically reported after dinner last night, I will soon have a new baby second-cousin.
“What about over there?” I ask Orv as he pilots Duncan’s minivan (shockingly my father let Orv and Denise borrow the thing for the day) through the rutted dirt parking lot of the Second Chance Flea Market, a shabby little venture by the highway that specializes in Chinese knockoffs of designer shoes and handbags, not to mention its fair share of dusty merchandise from the attics and crawlspaces of hard-up residents nearby. I point at a Mercedes (a Mercedes? really?), whose driver is executing a three-point turn, freeing up a spot. “They’re leaving.”
Orv takes my advice and sneaks the van in behind the Mercedes, nabbing the spot before an elderly man in a Cadillac has the chance to round the corner and challenge him. “Hang on,” he says to Denise, who’s already unbuckled her safety belt. He shuts the van down, hops out and rushes to her door.
I yank the slider open and meet them by the van’s front bumper.
Denise is pregnant, I remind myself. It’s not showing yet, but she is. And if the weekly injections her doctor has prescribed are successful, she’ll be able to carry the baby to term. Still, it’s a high risk pregnancy and anything could—and may—go wrong (at least according to Orv and Denise, who, when they told me this, might as well have added, “Don’t get your hopes up until you see the whites of the baby’s eyes”).
I’m pretty optimistic anyhow, though, because Orv and Denise deserve to be happy more than anyone I know. And, once in a while, the universe seems to take this into consideration.
We trudge along in a ragged little line, Orv in the lead, me bringing up the rear, Denise floating between us like an air bubble suspended in a jug of molasses.
“Last time we were here…” Denise says, sprouting up on her tiptoes for a better view, “…there was a shop that sold discounted baby goods.”
Calling any of these displays, the most polished of which amounts to little more than five or six weathered picnic tables strung together and covered with a tarp, a “shop” is overly generous. “Mind if I wander?” I say. I’ve got twelve dollars and a surprisingly specific shopping list.
Orv wraps an arm around Denise’s shoulder and tells me, “Meet us at the hot dog cart in half an hour.”
I shrug. “Is there a clock around here somewhere?” Maybe I should also seek out a watch.
Denise unlatches the pearl-faced bangle bracelet (which just-so-happens to also tell time) from her wrist and passes it to me. “Don’t lose it,” she says with a stern face (for her anyway).
I remember the spark in Denise’s eyes when Orv sprang this bauble on her two Christmases ago. I snap it onto my wrist and say, “Sure thing.”
Three tables past where I part ways with Orv and Denise, the flea market branches off into a maze of rough, cluttered alleys that are loosely (make that very loosely) arranged by the type of product for sale. After a couple of false starts, I locate the quasi-electronics section, which offers a wide selection of used video games (going all the way back to Atari), car stereos (with their guts hanging out), battered VHS tapes, and, just to spice things up, a random toaster or push mower jammed in here and there.
I crunch through a pile of twigs (did I mention that this flea market is practically in the woods?) and stop by a table that prominently features a basketful of old MP3 players. “Do these work?” I say with a flick of my bangled wrist.
A wizened old lady in a webbed lawn chair puffs a ring of smoke in my direction. “Two bucks each,” she tells me.
“But do they work?”
Another smoke ring drifts my way. “Don’t see why not.”
I pick a shiny red player out of the basket and press the power button, but nothing happens, so I toss it back in and fish out another, this one white and boring-looking. When I juice it up, a stream of block letters scrolls across the screen. “This’ll do,” I say, more to myself than the old lady, whose gaze is focused somewhere in the trees. I slap a couple of ones down and move on.
After scouring every table in the vicinity (and burning through twenty-five minutes of my thirty-minute time limit), I’m about to give up on the next item on my hit list, until…
Balanced precariously atop an owl-shaped cookie jar, on a table I must’ve passed four times already, I notice just the kind of portable mini speakers I’m looking for. My pulse quickens as I move in on them, a reaction that seems a bit like overkill, since I’m not about to steal the things.
From the bed of a grungy pickup, a ten-year-old boy surveys me with coal-black eyes. I stare back, pop my shoulders and cock my head as if to say, What are you looking at? He takes a long swig of his bottled root beer, keeps his gaze unnervingly pinned to the side of my head. “How much are these?” I grumble, the speakers cupped in my palm, their clip-on chain dangling over my thumbnail.
He cracks a smile, his gnarly teeth the same color as the root beer bottle. “Ten.”
“Ten dollars?”
“Yep.”
That’s all the money I have. “How about five?”
He wags his head. “Uh-uh.”
I scan the area for the brat’s parents, who will hopefully be more reasonable than their offspring. I mean, the kid didn’t drive himself here, did he? “I don’t have ten,” I lie. “Will you take six?”
No parents in sight.
“Nine,” he offers, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“Seven.”
Again he says, “Uh-uh.”
Give me a break. “I can’t do nine,” I say, frustration rising in my voice. “Seven’s all I’ve got.”
He clangs the bottle against the tailgate. “Eight bucks. Final offer.”
Does this kid have x-ray vision? I swear he can see into my pocket. “Whatever,” I agree, defeated. I count the money out in front of him, making sure he sees that I’ve still got two bucks left, which means, technically, I’ve won.
I clip the speakers to my belt loop and shuffle toward the hot dog stand, my eyes peeled for the final item on my list. But I doubt I’m in the right section of the flea market for jewelry. And I’ve got a total of two-hundred cents to my name.
I check Denise’s watch and find that I’m already a minute overdue for our rendezvous. Now that the deadline’s blown, I might as well take a look-see down the most sparkly aisle here (which, as it turns out, is only two rows away from the electronics section), the sheer volume of silver burning my corneas as it reflects—and seemingly magnifies—the sun’s rays.
At the halfway point of the jewelry aisle, I hit the cheesy, costume-y stuff, my only hope of snatching up what I need and staying within my paltry budget. Of course, I could ask Orv or Denise for a loan, but I won’t.
Bins are my friends, I’ve decided. Whatever these vendors don’t give a crap about gets tossed into some mangled cardboard box or holey Easter basket and liquidated on the cheap. In a soft-sided Marlboro cooler (most likely a “gift” for sucking down an insane number of death sticks), I locate a bunch of colorful but knotted Mardi Gras beads, which should work nicely for my purposes. I give them a little tug (not to separate them, but to test their strength) and am satisfied.
As I reach for my money, the lady behind the table says, “You like those, sugar?” She’s middle-aged but made up to resemble a pageant queen with her bouffant hairdo and rosy cheeks, false eye lashes and glistening cleavage.
“Yeah,” I say, the two dollars clutched in my grip.
She pulls her lapdog, the breed of which I wouldn’t even try to guess (definitely not a Yorkie, but maybe something like it), to her chest for a cuddle. “They’re all yours.”
“How much?”
She shakes her head and smiles. “Free. You
can have ‘em.”
What the hell? I’m not a charity case. “I’ve got two dollars,” I say, opening my palm to prove it.
“I got those for nothin’,” she tells me with a dismissive wave, “at the church bazaar. Don’t seem right to charge you for ‘em.”
I see her point, but still. “What else is two dollars?” I ask, an invisible clock ticking off the seconds in my brain. Hopefully Orv and Denise don’t end up too pissed at me.
“Depends,” she says. She scratches the dog vigorously between its ears. “What’re you lookin’ for?”
“Something for my cousin,” I say with a shrug. “Or her baby.”
“Oh, jiminy Christmas!” she squeaks. “It must be fate!” She extends an index finger. “Wait right there.”
I don’t want to, but I do. And I’m not sorry. “Cool,” I say as she presses an old baby rattle into my hand. It’s bright and noisy, and I can already see my little cousin gnawing on it as if it’s a turkey leg (or at least that’s what Roy does). “Thanks.”
I shove the rattle into my back pocket and toss the bills in the cooler. Then I vamoose. She calls something after me (probably an offer of change on the two bucks), but I just keep rolling.
chapter 15
CONSIDERING DENISE’S fascination with bridal magazines, I’d figured that, even though money’s tight around here, she’d have finagled a wedding that would make Martha Stewart proud. Instead, she and Orv are tying the knot in Gramp’s backyard with Denise’s Aunt Paulina (a notary public) as the master of ceremonies and me as maid of honor. Marie and Duncan (and even baby Roy) are invited.
“Do I look all right?” I ask Denise as we model in front of her bedroom mirror, me in a poufy, knee-length yellow dress with lace trim and a beaded bodice, her in a cream-colored silk gown with an embroidered neckline and a tulle underskirt, which camouflages the beginning of a baby bump.
