“I don’t smoke in the house,” her father said.
“That’s not what I meant. You shouldn’t be smoking.”
“One or two a day isn’t going to hurt me. Moderation.”
Her mother put her hands behind her head. Her eyes switched to Toni. “Have you done your homework, sweetheart?”
A perfectly normal question. A perfectly normal moment. Her father had turned toward Toni, too. They were both looking at her, as they often did, with their special we-love-you-and-adore-you smiles. And suddenly, with a kind of mental grinding of gears, Toni’s vision shifted, and she saw, not her familiar parents but two enormous puppets. Puffed-up faces, large, boxy bodies, mouths slashed red, hands like mitts, voices creaking out from behind the masks of their faces. “HAVE YOU DONE YOUR HOMEWORK, SWEETHEART?” the giant puppet mother said. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING, BABYFACE?” the giant puppet father said.
Panicked, Toni ran. She ran to her room, fell on the bed and pulled the pillow over her head. Was she going crazy? She felt dizzy with emotions; they came at her in great sweeps of feeling like fat, hard clouds blowing through her. She cried. She cried harder, hiding her head under the pillow. Don’t hear me—don’t come up the stairs … don’t come in here … leave me alone. She sat up. Her eyes ached, her head felt hollow and bony. She remembered, as if from a long time ago, that she used to enjoy crying, that there had been something satisfying, pleasurable, in letting go, crying ceaselessly, fast and soft. Afterward she would feel limp, peaceful, a calm lake after a storm. But these tears were different; these were hard tears, tears like stones.
Walking into the house after school, Toni put down her books. “Paws?” she called, but it was her father who appeared, coming through the door from the kitchen.
He brushed his hand back and forth in the air. “Good day in school, Babyface?” His eyes were red-rimmed.
“Mom is going to smell the smoke,” Toni said.
“I’ll open a window.” He gave her a complicitous smile. “Her sniffer isn’t as sharp as yours.”
“That’s what you think,” Toni said.
“We’ll see, we’ll see.” He was playful, like a boy throwing a ball, ignoring that no one wanted to catch it. “Want to take a bet on that?” He laid his hand on her head, frowzed up her hair.
A heavy heat filled Toni’s chest. She wanted to shove her father’s hot, heavy hand off her head. Grow up! Stop smoking. I don’t want to play your little games. And don’t call me Babyface. I’m not your Babyface. I refuse.
Did he “hear” her? Did the words, like little poison darts, fly from her mind to his? Bending a little, looking at her, his face went soft and red, wondering. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” he said. “Are you hungry? I’m making a bread pudding—eggs, milk, a little cream, cinammon—it’s going to be good.”
Eggs, milk, cream. More things he wasn’t supposed to have. She remembered Julie once saying, “Your father is like Humpty Dumpty, he’s round and soft and loves to feed people.” Toni had laughed. “What’s Humpty Dumpty got to do with feeding people?” And Julie had said, “I don’t know, he was an egg, wasn’t he? Food, himself.”
Now the image stayed in Toni’s mind. Her father as Humpty Dumpty, the round white egg teetering on the wall. If he fell, he would have a great, great fall.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
“A friend of mine says one of his uncles had the same thing you do, Mom.” Toni put down a tray with food on the table next to her mother’s bed. “And a chiropractor helped him a lot.”
“I don’t believe in them,” her mother said.
She had thrown out her back. “Ridiculous,” she kept saying. “Ridiculous the way it happened. I wasn’t doing anything!” She had, in fact, opened a bureau drawer to take out a scarf when, in a moment, she found herself on the floor, in pain and unable to move. She had lain there, helpless as a bug on its back, for over an hour, until Toni found her. The doctor had put Violet in traction for five days. After that she was to stay in bed for at least a week.
“L.R.’s uncle didn’t stay in bed more than a couple of days.”
“Where’s your father?” her mother said.
“Maybe you just want to try the chiropractor?” Toni said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not? You keep complaining about missing work.”
“I just don’t want to, Toni. Is your father coming in to eat?”
Toni went to the window. Why was her mother so stubborn? Would it hurt to try something different? “Dad,” she called. She rapped on the glass. He was in the backyard, raking. “Do you want to eat with Mom?”
Toni and her father had moved the TV from the family room into the bedroom for her mother, and they watched while they ate. Toni only half looked or listened. It was the evening news, something about a country called Mozambique in Africa. Starving children. She turned away. It was too sad. Why should people be hungry? Then, right afterward, came happy singing ads for shampoo and cars. Then the news again. Child abuse this time. A man being led away, his head bowed.
“People like that shouldn’t have kids,” her father said.
And Toni said, “Why did you hit Mom?”
She hadn’t known she was going to say it.
Her father stared at her. There were little broken red veins on his nose. One of them flared like a red flower. His eyes switched to the TV. Then he glanced at her. And again his eyes went to the TV.
“What did you say?” It was her mother who spoke first. “Hit? What are you talking about? Where did you get such an idea? Who told you that?” her mother said.
Toni looked at her father. “How could you do that? How could you? I thought I knew you. Who are you?” The words came out of her, breathless, sucked out of her.
“Who told you?” her mother asked again. “Who told you all this stuff? Martine? She shouldn’t have done that!”
Toni crumpled her napkin. Why didn’t her father speak? How could he just sit there like a frog on a log? A fat frog on a log! “I always thought you were so perfect.” Her voice shook.
“It has nothing to do with you,” her mother said. “It was before you were born. Nothing to do with you,” she repeated. And finally her father moved; he thrust aside the little tray table and stood up. “Hal,” her mother said. “Don’t get yourself upset.” He gave her a single blank and furious look and walked out.
“You upset him.” Her mother hit the control on the TV. The picture went off with a little thump of light. “Toni, you know he’s not well, how could you do that to him?”
Toni looked down at the food on her plate, repulsive lumps of brown meat. “How could you just go back to living with him, as if nothing happened?”
“How could I? I’ll tell you how.” Her mother’s little pale face flamed up. “I could because of you. You were more important, that’s how.”
“You were going to split. Martine told me. He was gone already.”
“So what?” her mother said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. What is the point? Why drag this up now?”
“You kept me ignorant. I had a whole different idea of our family, of him.” Toni’s throat swelled. She felt awful. She didn’t know why she had started this. “You never told me anything.”
“Of course I didn’t tell you! Why would I? It wasn’t a happy time. What matters is that you were born, and I loved you, we both loved you. We made up our differences, we put aside our differences for you.”
“I always thought you were so happy. I thought you loved each other.”
“Who are you to say we don’t?”
Toni stared at her mother. “What did you get out of it?”
“A life,” her mother said. “My life. Let me tell you something, Toni, you don’t know that much about love. It’s not from a storybook. There are different kinds of love. Your father and I have been through a lot together.” She was speaking fast. “Thirty years together. Don’t you think that counts for something? Thirty years we�
�ve stuck it out. What we did, we did for you. We have you. We’ve always had that.”
“Stuck it out?” Toni repeated, horrified.
Her mother sliced her hand through the air. “Don’t get into words with me. Maybe I didn’t say it right. We stuck—stayed together. Is that a crime? What was the alternative? Would you have wanted to grow up without your father? Or not be here at all?”
Toni didn’t answer. She held her throat. She was the glue that had kept them together? It made her feel sick. Her parents’ lives were awful. Everything she had thought true was untrue. Everything she had thought real was unreal.
Pretense and sacrifice—that was her parents’ lives. Pretending to be happy, happy together, a happy family. And they had done it for her! She squeezed her hands together. Why? Why would anybody choose unhappiness? Choose to make somebody else responsible for their unhappiness? Was this the way she would live when she grew up?
She took the tray with the dishes downstairs. Her father was lying on the couch in the living room. “Toni!” She stood in the doorway, looking at him. The back of his hand was over his eyes. “Why are you doing this to me, Toni?” he said. “You think I’m the only man in the world who ever lost it and hit someone?”
“It wasn’t someone. It was Mom. It was my mother.”
“And I’m your father,” he said, his hand still over his eyes. “I put you here on this earth, and I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen. I’m telling you that it was something awful in my life. You weren’t involved. It’s not your business. So do you think you can forget this? It happened once. Only once. Once,” he repeated. “And there’s such a thing as being human. Making mistakes.”
Words. Words, words. She lost the meaning of them. She heard them as sounds in her head. Words. Just words.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “You think I don’t know that? You think I wasn’t sorry?”
As if from a distance, she gazed at him as he lay on the couch, his hand limp over his eyes, telling her to forget the awful thing he had done. She seemed to see him as if for the first time. Forget? Why? She felt tough, unyielding. She would never forget what he’d done. He wasn’t the person she’d believed he was. No, he wasn’t! A hot breath swept through her. She felt betrayed. Forget? No. Never. Even though it had happened before she was born, she would never forget.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Kelly Lutz sat down next to Toni in the cafeteria and opened a carton of milk. Last week her hair had been short, straight, and pink. Today her head was shaved with only a tuft of bright red curls left on top. “So, do you like it?” she asked.
“Don’t you get tired of changing it?” Toni said.
“Noooo! Tell the truth now.”
“It’s cute. It shows off your eyes.”
“Leon Victor did it. I’ll have to tell him you like it. He always cuts his sister’s hair. He came over the other day. I got the scissors and said, ‘Leon. Cut.’”
“How did you know he could do a good job?”
“I didn’t.” Kelly laughed raucously. “But I’m a person with faith. You should have heard my mother scream when she saw it. I said, ‘Ma, this isn’t even a new style anymore. Lisa Bonet had her hair cut like this a trillion years ago.’ You know what my mother said? ‘Who’s Lisa Bonet?’ Uh-oh!” she elbowed Toni. “Your throb just walked in.”
Toni followed Kelly’s eyes. L.R. was standing in the doorway of the cafeteria. “He’s just a friend.”
“Uhhh-huh,” Kelly drawled disbelievingly. “So how come I keep seeing you two together?”
“I told you, we’re just friends.”
“Riiiight. And now ask me if I think a boy and a girl can be just friends. Sure they can, in pig heaven.”
L.R. was approaching. Toni noted that he’d just had his hair cut, too. So did Kelly. “L.R., where’d you get your hair cut?” she said.
“Design Line.”
“How much did you pay? You should go to my guy. He’s free.” Kelly gave her loud laugh.
L.R. looked at Toni. “Want to go outside until the bell?”
“Who, me?” Kelly winked at him.
Toni stood, crumpling her paper bag.
“Bye-bye, kiddies. Have fun.” This time Kelly winked at Toni.
A noise woke Toni in the middle of the night. She sat up and listened. At the foot of the bed, Paws made dream sounds. But that wasn’t what had awakened Toni. She heard it again, a rattling at the window. She got out of bed. The moon was up, and she could see someone under the plum tree, a dark shape, a lifted arm.
She ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door. Julie emerged from under the tree. “It’s about time you woke up,” she said. “I was getting tired of throwing gravel.”
“Did you just get here?” The grass was cool under Toni’s bare feet.
“About twenty minutes ago.”
They stood there, looking at each other, and neither one moved. It was so strange, awkward. “So here I am,” Julie said.
“Here you are,” Toni said. She was aware of Julie’s flat, ironic voice, aware of herself standing motionless. She had thought of this moment so often, had imagined screaming, shouting with joy. Calling Julie’s name. Had imagined them both jumping around, excited, tearful.
“Julie,” she said. “Wow, I can’t quite believe it.”
“Me, either.”
Toni smiled. “So am I awake?”
“You’re not dreaming,” Julie said.
“Wow,” Toni said again; and then, at the same moment, they moved toward each other, hugged, and did a little dance in place on the wet grass.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
In Julie’s room, they lay around on the beds, chewing pistachios and tossing the shells into the wastebasket. “I keep expecting Heather to walk in and order me off her bed,” Toni said with a little laugh.
Julie thumped her feet restlessly. “Believe it or not, I miss that brat. This house seems so empty.” Heather had decided to stay on in San Francisco with her aunt Wendy.
“Was your mother upset about leaving her there?”
“Jerrine? Lord knows what goes on with Jerrine. I can’t pull that woman apart.”
Had Julie always talked that way, used those expressions? Lord knows … can’t pull that woman apart … Had she always been so restless? She couldn’t seem to stay still for a moment.
She got up and started brushing her hair. “Want to fetch a guess why Jerrine decided to come back?”
“Fetch a what?”
“Oh, that’s my aunt. Wendy says these weird things. When my mother heard that my father had left Alaska and was on his way east, she suddenly couldn’t bear the way we were living one more moment. She was Mrs. Whirlwind, she was ordering everyone around. Do this, do that, we’re gonna go! Now my father is in Buffalo, and Jerrine thinks it’s just a quick stop on his way home.”
Julie sat down and studied her face in the mirror. “Do I look worn-out? Haggard? Old? I’m serious. Look at these dark circles under my eyes.” Toni went to Julie and hugged her. Julie leaned against her. “Look at that puffy stuff, aren’t those bags under my eyes? My mother says everything shows on your face in time.”
“Your eyes look fine, maybe a little tired.”
Julie opened a jar and began brushing color rapidly on her cheeks. “Toni, am I going to be incredibly far behind in school?”
“Why? They must do the same stuff in San Francisco as we do here.”
“Who knows?” Julie swiveled around. “Toni, I was dumb, I didn’t do anything there. I didn’t want to do anything. I was failing.”
“You, failing?”
Tears came up in Julie’s eyes. “It was stupid of me, but it was the way I felt. Now I’ll be behind everyone.”
“You’ll catch up. I’ll help you, I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
“You’re always sure things will be okay,” Julie said. She pushed her chair back. “Did I
tell you my mother bought a car out there and then had to sell it for practically nothing? We even borrowed money from Wendy to come home. She doesn’t have anything, either!”
“You know, we’ve been talking about your stuff for three days,” Toni remarked.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I have stuff, too.”
“Fine. We’ll talk about your stuff. Just don’t tell me about your father’s heart attack. I don’t need to be more depressed.”
With that, Toni put off again telling Julie about Martine and her parents. But there was one subject she had to bring up, and the sooner the better. “Will hearing about L.R. depress you?”
“L.R.? I don’t see why it should. Is he still wearing black T-shirts and dark glasses?”
Toni nodded. “Exactly. I have some information you might like knowing. Why he wears the dark glasses and what his initials stand for.”
“Okay.”
“Dark glasses because his eyes are light-sensitive.”
“Medical reason? How disillusioning.”
“And L.R. stands for … want to guess?”
“Larry Richard.”
“Try again.”
“Lewis Robert … Lefty Ricky … Laurence Rider … Tell. I don’t know.”
“Little Rose.”
“Little Rose?”
“It’s the family name for the first son. He’s the fourth generation in his family to have that name. His father is Big Rose, and L.R. is Little Rose. Get it? Little Rose. L.R.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I asked him.”
Julie gazed intently at her. “You asked him? You asked Little Rose?”
“Julie, don’t ever call him that to his face,” Toni warned. “He doesn’t go around telling people his real name.”
“Why not? I think it’s kind of adorable. Little Rose. I love it! Little Rose, Little Rose, Little Rose.” She sprang up and stood over Toni. “Why did Little Rose tell you his name?”
“I told you … I asked him. “Toni told herself she didn’t have to feel guilty for becoming L.R.’s friend.
“You asked him? You? My shy, embarrassed friend?”
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