Heart sinks to stomach as reality hits me over the head. The cold’s dulled the rest of my senses so, like a blind person whose hearing becomes more acute, I’ve amplified my relationship radar. It’s blinking fast and bright as this ship sails beyond the horizon of teen crush dreams.
Let’s examine the evidence, shall we? Doug sees me a scant hour or so at the mall, as arranged by mutual friend Kerrie. He utters not a word about whether he can definitely come to the Junior/Senior Ball. Doug calls, lets others pull him away, and doesn’t protest when I suggest a later call. Said later call is mere moments from the time he is about to leave, and it takes place amid the hustle and bustle of said leave-taking, not in an intimate corner of his room where he’s hunched over the phone clinging to every breath and syllable wafting from said girlfriend’s mouth. Girlfriend? In the Doug Dictionary of Life, is my picture still next to that word?
I heave a big sigh.
“You upset about something?” he says. Slight defensiveness creeps into his voice. Another sign. He doesn’t know it, but he’s itching for a fight. A fight will make it okay to split with me.
“No,” I lie. “Just tired. And I don’t feel too well. So have a good trip, kiddo. I’ll give you a call next week or something.”
“Sure. Sounds good. It was great seeing you.”
Yeah. Right.
I eat too much at dinner because I keep hoping I’ll taste the next bite. Besides, Tony’s off with his latest girlfriend, which means there’s actually enough food for the rest of us. My overindulging gives me a ginormous stomach ache to go with my stuffy nose and sore throat.
So all I want to do is curl up in bed and feel sorry for myself. But Connie has decided to get over her earlier bad feelings and declare this “Be Nice to Bianca” night. She calls me into her wicker and brass bedroom and gives me a notebook and pen, instructing me to “take these things down” while she rambles off a list of potential leads and theories in our pursuit of Paluchek. Funny how being nice to me means treating me like a secretary.
Now, normally, I would be using this little exercise to my advantage. I’d be offering my own theories and suggesting next steps — in other words, showing her what an asset I’d be in her office. But I feel like the Olympic basketball team is bouncing balls off my stomach lining, and my head has begun a dull yet curiously excruciating pounding behind my eyes — and oh, yeah, I can hardly breathe. Besides, nothing Connie is saying is new. Mostly, it’s a rehash of Paluchek’s records — the ones she has, that is — and the rest is just wild speculation. I’m waiting for her to wonder if Paluchek was anywhere near the grassy knoll in 1963. It’s that bad.
At a pause in her dictation, I blow my nose. As if remembering I’m really alive, Connie looks at me and tilts her head to the side in concern. “You okay?”
I mumble a yes and nod.
“What do you think so far?” she asks, pointing to the notebook on which I’ve scribbled her thoughts, most of which have to do with tracking down this or that piece of Paluchek’s background. She’s frowning, as if I’d be a real idiot to disagree with her generously offered wisdom.
“I think …” And here, once again, my cold acts as a filter, sifting the important from the unimportant, pushing an Honesty Button that forces me to speak Truth to Glower.
“I think we should focus more on trying to figure out what really happened to Dad.”
“We are doing that!” She grabs the notebook from me and starts reciting the various tasks she’s enumerated.
I stand, feeling too lousy to worry about whether disagreeing with her will torpedo my summer employment chances.
“All of those things,” I say, pointing to the notebook, “are about Paluchek: finding out about his ex-wife and her friends in California; talking to people he knows on the force; even getting his credit rating, for crying out loud.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So if you want to find out if he was involved in any way with what happened to Dad, we should start by looking at what happened to Dad.” I blow my nose. “Isn’t that the way to solve a crime — by looking at the crime? Not by constructing the case against one suspect in particular.”
“Paluchek isn’t just any suspect.”
“Do you even know where he was the night of the murder?”
“Far as I can tell, nowhere.”
I straighten. “What does that mean?”
“It means that nobody knew where he was. Bad news travels like wildfire through the force. But he didn’t find out about the incident until the next day, when the main office got hold of him. He was probably the last officer to hear.”
“He wasn’t home that night?” I swallow hard.
“Not that anyone knows of.”
“What about his wife?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me? I’m trying to contact her. It’s one of the questions I want to ask her — where was our pal Steve that night?”
Connie’s face reddens and she grits her teeth. At first, I think she’s angry, maybe at me, but then I realize what’s happening. She’s probably remembering “that night” herself. She was about ten at the time. It must be engraved on her heart with a metal-burning stylus.
After an uncomfortable silence, she lets out a long breath.
“You look awful. Go to bed.”
But as I head off to my room, all I can think about is how awful she looked just thinking about the night Dad died.
CHAPTER TEN
THAT NIGHT, I dream of ravioli-shaped ghosts flitting through the windows and tickling my nose. Or maybe they’re mashed potato-shaped ghosts. They look like food, okay? The food I couldn’t taste the night before. And the nose-tickling was real enough to wake me up in a sneezing fit at half past midnight.
When I went to bed, I was sure I’d be home sick on Monday. That was the silver lining in this dripping cloud of a cold. But after a double-dose of Nyquil, I wake up feeling tired but clear-headed. When I talk, I still sound like I breathed helium, but my throat’s only marginally scratchy and my head no longer aches.
And I get an e-mail from Doug. Maybe that’s the cure. There it is, all bright and snappy, in my inbox that morning. He says he was glad we had a chance to see each other and maybe I can visit Virginia sometime soon.
Where’s the map?
I grunt at Tony, who’s driving me to school. I could drive myself. I’ve recently secured my license. But it does me little good if I hardly have access to the car.
We’re a three-car family. There’s the family car — Mom’s Buick Century. And there’s “Tony’s car” — a sleek green Honda Civic. Tony’s car is technically a family car, but he pays the insurance and the maintenance, so he thinks of it as his.
This leaves Connie’s car. Connie might not be raking in the dough, but she does make enough to afford a used Saab. Through consultations unbeknownst to me, Connie, Tony, and Mom work out how I get to and from school. Sometimes, Tony drives me. Sometimes, it’s Connie. Sometimes, I take the bus. Sometimes, Mom is the chauffeur.
It makes me mad sometimes. I have a license. Shouldn’t that earn me a little bit of trust behind the wheel?
Anyway, Connie’s nowhere to be seen this morning. Tony manages to telegram-speak her whereabouts — “Work early. Said get dinner started tonight.” Tony drives me to school only because Mom makes him. He pumps up the volume on a CD of Big & Rich and drops me off at school with a silent nod. Translation: Thank God I don’t have to do this every day.
St. John’s is a private school, but it’s not one of those fancy-schmancy prep schools that provide grist for the angst-ridden Hollywood writer. No Dead Poet’s Society or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie here. This is working-class territory. A Catholic high school where rich, poor, and middle class conspire against the oppressive conformity of … something. We’ll get to that oppressive conformity problem at some point, right after we solve the “making enough money to support ourselves and our parents in their old age” problem.
In the lock
er hall, I twirl through my combination faster than you can say “my boyfriend’s back,” when in sashays Kerrie happier than an ant at a pastry chef’s picnic. Before I have a chance to share my news, she divulges her own.
“I have an interview at Harvard,” she says so joyfully that a laugh escapes her lips as she flips through her combination. “Well, not at Harvard. With a Harvard alum. It’s part of the application process. We got the call last night. Somebody my Dad knows. He went to law school with the woman’s sister.”
Aw jeez! Do we really have to go here? Not only does her good news make mine seem like a MINI Cooper alongside a Hummer, but we’ve got the whole fairness and envy vibe to contend with. Here’s the picture: I’m worried about not humiliating myself in the college game of chance. Meanwhile, Kerrie gets a score high enough to have Harvard consider her worthy. And Harvard has an alum interviewer who happens to know Kerrie’s dad. It’s not fair.
It would only be fair if it were happening to me.
“Wow, that’s great!” I say. Can I sound more fake? I don’t even bother to tell her my Doug news, which now seems pathetically, well, pathetic. What precisely is it anyway? Oh, yeah. Doug emailed me this morning and would like me to visit. Why is that news? Shouldn’t that be run-of-the-mill girlfriend/boyfriend stuff? The fact that, in my case, it’s not says something Kerrie, with her stratospheric SAT scores, would understand in an instant.
She spends the next few minutes putting books and lunch in her locker, taking books out of her locker, rearranging it, and taping a fresh batch of old movie photos and art imprints on the inside of it. She brought special two-sided tape for this. Kerrie is a planner.
While she does her Martha Stewart magic, she gabs. Not about Harvard, thank goodness, but about bras — Ipex or Apex or Cineplex bras. Something like that. She’s wearing one. She even unbuttons the top of her blouse so I can see just what a marvel this engineered piece of spandex and lace is.
“I mean, it’s really comfortable. And my clothes fit better. They don’t pucker, if you know what I mean. You really have to try one, Bianc.”
I nod. I smile. But in my head, I roll my eyes. You see, in addition to having money and smarts, Kerrie also has a great figure. She’s not one of those creepy anorexic-looking babes that show up all over the big and little screens. She’s more the Marilyn Monroe type, all curves and bootyliciousness. I, on the other hand, am just kind of … straight. I’m not skinny, but I’m not fat. I have a waist, but it’s not part of an “hourglass” figure. And the parts of my body a Multiplex Bra would embrace are just average. Somewhere between an A and B cup depending on the time of the month.
Kerrie tries to be helpful, but she has this habit of making me feel self-conscious about my looks. I am now very aware of how my uniform puckers and bunches in all the wrong places.
When we head off to class, I’m grumpy and achey (the Nyquil buzz has completely worn off) and ready to kick pigeons. But I don’t want to think too much about the Kerrie situation, which, I tell myself, shouldn’t be a situation at all. She’s my best friend. Don’t want to sully that. And I don’t want to think too much about the Doug situation either. Confrontation looms, but I don’t want any part of it.
So, instead, I think about the Connie and me and Steve and Mom and Dad situation. As I try to work it out, I spend ten minutes of creative writing class halfheartedly dabbling at a story about aliens attacking a school remarkably like our own, liberating the students and forcing the teachers into rehabilitation programs. I like writing a lot. Maybe I should major in Famous Novelists when I go to college. They do have that major, don’t they?
When I look up from my musings, I see Brenda Wilmenski sitting directly in front of me.
Brenda’s mother is on the police force. She works in Records. I know this because Brenda used info from her mother’s job as background for a short story she wrote and we critiqued in class. What did I say about that story? I wrack my brain trying to remember. Please oh please oh please, I hope it was something good. “Nice imagery,” I recall. Nothing more than that? At least it was a compliment. I don’t remember much about the story, quite frankly, except it involved a woman in a police records office and had something to do with snakes on a plane.
No, wait. That was a movie.
I clear my throat. Well, at least I try to clear my throat. With my cold, it sounds like a car misfiring. Brenda catches the cue, though, and angles her head toward mine, her jagged punk-like haircut framing a face as pale as Fluff. I give her the age-old eye cue that promises a note in short order and scribble a few lines on paper.
“Your Mom still working downtown? I got a question for you.”
She reads, turns, and raises both eyebrows and lip corners. Yes? she seems to say.
“I’d like to find out more about my father.”
Simple enough to scratch those words on paper. But the act itself doesn’t begin to capture my slog-through-mud moral debate. You see, by writing those words, I’m exploiting my father’s death.
Yeah. Sure. I do want to know more about him. That’s the truth and nothing but. Putting it in a note, as a request, to a gal I barely know is deliberately tugging at her heartstrings and I know it. I’m using the tragedy of Dad’s death and the consequent sympathy to induce a girl to whom I’ve hardly even said a word to do something for me.
I’m sure Brenda knows about Dad. The police force is like a family.
After reading the note, she nods seriously, and then writes one back. A really long one. A note filled with news of her mother’s recent promotion, of how she doesn’t like her boss, of how Brenda is taking a look at the University of Richmond and Dartmouth but doesn’t want to go into criminal justice and …
And I feel like crap, because playing the sympathy card has yielded me a jackpot of friendship I hadn’t been seeking.
Oh, and I also feel like crap because my nose is plugged up tighter than a corked wine bottle. The cold is definitely messing with my moral compass.
During the rest of the class period, I daydream, and after class, I gab a bit with Brenda about what I want. Because I’ve already sold my soul to the devil, I ask for the whole enchilada.
“I’d love to see a copy of the report. On my Dad’s case,” I say. “And …” Deep breath. “And I want to know where Officer Steve Paluchek was the night of the … incident.”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t know if Mom can get that,” she tells me.
As penance for exploiting a personal tragedy, I stop by the guidance counselor’s office before catching my bus home. Sister Angela Dorwin is the head of the office, but I sometimes wonder if the school administration stuck her in this position because she’s too old to teach. She used to teach science when it consisted of memorizing the Table of Elements and speculating on whether man would ever land on the moon.
If she’s lost her touch in the lab, she’s made up for it with organizational skills. Her office consists of neat filing cabinets; oversized calendar pages tacked to the walls with college deadlines neatly written in different color inks; a tidy desk with red trays marked “urgent,” yellow trays marked “pending,” and blue trays marked “follow up”; and standing file folders (also color-coded) for recommendation sheets, essay-writing guides, paper applications, and SAT prep class information. Word is that once your paperwork is in Dorwin’s system, you’ll go to college or else. She’s never missed a deadline for mailing transcripts, teacher recommendations, or other materials for college applicants. You walk through her door, you’re in her clutches.
“Welcome, Bianca,” she says, her eyes twinkling behind rimless glasses. She wears a black and white habit, with a short black veil revealing a pinch of gray hair at the crown, and heavy black shoes that look misshapen from overuse. “Do you need some college catalogs?”
It’s freaky how she knows what you want before you even ask for it. She must spend her spare time memorizing our personal files. The CIA should hire her — or Connie should, for that matter, not that
I need the competition.
“I don’t have my SAT scores back yet but—”
She turns her back to me and flips up a long file drawer lid, revealing row after row of magazine boxes crammed with catalogs. With lightning speed, she silently plucks one catalogue from one box, two from another, and so on, moving seamlessly from that drawer to another and yet another until she’s created a tidy pile on a narrow folding table below the window.
“Here you go,” she says, gesturing to the chair. “Let me get you some papers.”
“Some papers” turns out to be a stack of forms she’s made up with blanks for the name of the college, the SAT range required, the web site address, “notable features,” and little boxes with questions: essay required? teacher recommendations? due date?
“Most students find jotting down some notes helps them remember the college better. And I’m sure you know you can usually take virtual tours online.” She sounds proud of herself when she tells me this. Her own computer has a St. John’s screensaver on it, but I notice she has a lined notepad and pen in front of that. She still takes notes longhand, not on her computer.
I drop my backpack on the floor, scoot into a chair, and spend the next half hour browsing through the catalogues, brochures, and booklets Sister Angela has picked out for me — all colleges that fit in the Little College That Tried category. I glance over my shoulder. Sister Angela is smiling to herself as she goes through files jotting down notes.
So this is what it’s come to? The very people who tell us we can achieve anything we want are pigeon-holing me into the training-bra equivalent of postsecondary education? If I thought I’d goose up my college-hunt spirits with this pit stop in Sister Angela’s office, I am mistaken. I’m crushed. I’m angry. This is the best she thinks I can do?
So I scratch out a few notes, look at my watch, and say I’m going to be late for my bus and wish I had more time. I thank Sister Angela and leave that ego-vacuum office faster than you can say, “Don’t shoot the puppy.”
Recovering Dad Page 5
