“Mom, if we need the money—”
“Don’t be a goon. This is important.”
The waitress comes over and fills Mom’s and my coffee cups. I open my mouth. Just ask her about the Greenhouse, I think. Now. Do it, do it. I’ve put this off for almost a week. I’m going to tell her I know where she was last night, and I’m going to ask her what the deal is, keeping this stupid secret from me. What comes out of my mouth is, “How was rehearsal last night?”
“Oh, Louis is having his last-minute panic attacks, of course.” Mom shakes her head and grins like she’s thinking back on something funny that happened.
Every day, the not-tell that has sprung up between us gathers a strange shape, growing thicker and more resistant to the truth.
The weekend blows by and Mom still won’t tell me about her job, and since she’s always out when I’m home and vice versa, I never find the right opportunity to talk with her. Everyone at Bradshaw knows she’s working at the Greenhouse, though, mostly because Esther Zeller, a junior I don’t know very well, buses tables there on weekends.
“Your Mom and I made a killing at the restaurant, Danny,” Esther shouts and gives me a wink Monday afternoon, as I’m leaving the locker room. “You should’ve seen us move.” A cluster of girls stand nearby, but no one speaks or looks at me, yet I sense a shifting, a quieting down of the noise level. They think I’m ashamed, I realize. Bunch of snobs. Then I think, Am I ashamed? And I know that I am, but part of the problem is that it’s all mixed up with feeling angry and defensive and protective of Mom. Another part of the problem is that the person I want to talk with most about my feelings has decided not to talk to me about hers.
“It’s not for a play, is it?” Portia asks later that same day
“No, it’s because Kahani’s is closing down.”
“We knew it.” She snaps her fingers in my face.
“That’s what my dad had guessed, anyway. Look, you don’t have to feel insecure about it with me, you know. Everyone totally loves your mom, Danny. We think she’s so great, and everyone feels really bad that she’s got to work that bummer job.”
Really bad. Bummer job. Insecure. I hate feeling like Mom’s and my finances are up for discussion. What goes on with people moneywise should be private, not discussed over mashed potatoes in the Paulsons’ dining room or in the locker room at school. The whole situation feels like it’s spinning way out of control. I write a note and stick it in the fridge.
Mom,
Please tell me what’s going on with the Greenhouse. I don’t know why you’re feeling so private about it and I’d really like to talk to you.
Love, Danny
Just as I’m going to bed, though, I rip the note into confetti.
Late that night, I call the Greenhouse again, and listen to Mom shout, “Hello hello, who the hell is this?” I stare at the receiver and hang up.
On Tuesday, I make a very dumb fashion decision which, when I mull it over later, ends up adding a big fat worm to my unopened worm can. In a way it’s my own stupid fault, but the boots had been hanging out in my closet for so long that their ugliness shock value was gone for me. So when I put them on Tuesday morning, while they didn’t look stylish, they at least seemed like they were mine. Big mistake.
The curse of the ugly boots happened a couple years ago, when Mom and I went to a church rummage sale. Since we don’t belong to any church, Mom was nervous, and she kept looking around like she thought the church sheriff was going to rush over any minute and kick us out.
“Mom, you don’t have to be a member of a church to rummage here,” I whispered.
“I’m not so sure about that, Danny,” she said darkly. “But if they ask, say you belong to Saint Thomas.” We couldn’t find anything we liked, but Mom felt like she had to get something, so she impulsively bought a pair of cordovan, knee-high, cork-heeled, jangly zip-up boots. Aside from being out of style, they were way too big for her, so she chucked them into my closet, where they remained, slouched against the back wall like two old drunks in the park. But whenever I’ve tried to throw the boots away, Mom makes me keep them. I swear she thinks it would be a sacrilege to throw away church-fair boots. She can be very superstitious like that.
Tuesdays are Bradshaw’s weekly “casual day,” which means, as long as you don’t wear pants, you don’t have to wear your uniform. I’m not a fan of shopping, and most Tuesdays I’ll usually wear my uniform skirt with a sweatshirt on top. But this week, probably because Spring Fling is coming up, I’m thinking of different outfit possibilities for Saturday. So I dust off the boots and zip them up, pairing them with my short tan dress that doesn’t match any of my other shoes.
“You need panty hose,” Mom says, handing me a packet. “Otherwise, you look adorable.” That should have been warning enough. But no bells go off in my head.
As soon as I walk into homeroom, Portia claps her hands over her cheeks and starts laughing. She runs over to me. “Eww, Danny Those boots are just so, so icky, so Welcome Back, Kotter.” She sticks out her tongue at me. “Although I have to say—I admire your nerve.”
“They’re ironic,” I say “I wore them sort of as a joke.” But then I double-check my locker just in case my basketball sneakers followed me to school. They didn’t.
All morning, I feel girls’ eyes staring down at my boots. To make matters worse, the panty hose almost immediately snag a run (I have no business wearing Mom’s size petite anyway). After lunch, I have a double free period, so I use it to go hide in the library until the end of the day. No one bothers me, and I’m almost home free until Hannah Wilder and Lacy Finn show up.
I can sense Hannah and Lacy’s presence in the library before I actually see them. Hannah and Lacy know how to make other girls aware of them—not nervous, exactly—just very conscious that they’re in the room. Maybe it’s their clinky bracelets, or their barely stifled giggles, or the perfumy smell of their hair and book bags, but as soon as they walk through the library’s double doors, I’m very aware of them.
“No, you shut up, you loser,” Hannah hisses to Lacy
“You’re the loser,” Lacy whispers back. Hannah and Lacy always crack themselves up, calling each other names like loser, since they and everyone else in the class know how cool they are. It makes me feel uncomfortable, because it gets me wondering who they think the real losers are.
I don’t look up from the table until their minty breath practically curls into my face.
“Hey, Danny, doll face. Want one?” Lacy holds out a roll of breath mints.
“Thanks. What are you guys up to?”
“We were shortcutting to go hang out in the upstairs lounge, then we saw you and thought we’d say hi.”
“Hi.”
“You’re going to the Fling with my cousin.” Hannah slides up on the table and crosses her legs Indian style, yanking her miniskirt down between them to cover her underwear. “I talked to him last night.”
“So, what’re you wearing?” Lacy asks abruptly.
“I haven’t thought about it. What’re you guys wearing?” I counter.
“Je ne sais pas,” Hannah says in a dumb-sounding southern drawl, rolling through all her vowels. “That’s me being Dr. Sonenshine,” she says, laughing. It’s just the kind of Hannah joke I don’t like, but I smile. Hannah has a way of making you join in on unfunny jokes.
“I don’t know what I’m wearing,” Lacy says, and then she looks at me in a friendly, thoughtful way. She rubs a finger over her chin. “But I bet you and I are about the same size. Hey, you know what, Danny?” She leans against the table and tilts her head as she studies me. “If you want, you can come over sometime tomorrow and look through my stuff. Most of my semiformal dresses I’ve only worn once; you know how my mom’s such a shopaholic. Maybe you could borrow?”
“My mom’s taking me shopping,” I tell her. My voice feels glue thick. A setup. They’ve been talking about me, maybe even to Ty. About how I might not have the right dress for t
he Spring Fling.
“Too bad Portia’s so teeny-tiny,” Hannah says with a little giggle. “She has great clothes.”
“Portia doesn’t need to lend me an outfit. My mom and I are going shopping. For something new,” I explain.
“If she has time, though. Doesn’t she work a lot now, like, I know she has that new waitressing job?” Lacy doesn’t wait for me to answer; she just plows ahead and I recognize a script when I hear it. “Hey, I might have an idea. My mom has credit over at Pagniti Marcello, since she returned all her birthday gifts. I know!” Lacy squeals and seizes my wrist. “We’ll all go pick out something together: you, me, Mom, and Wilder.” She smiles at Hannah. “And we’ll get lunch at the club after. It’ll be fun!”
My mind is reeling, planning my next move. If I get up from this table and walk out the door, I think, that gives them more than ten seconds of looking at my stupid zip boots and runny stockings. But if I keep sitting here, my face will just get redder, and worse, I might cry.
“You guys are really nice,” I say carefully. “But my mom would be kind of disappointed if she thought I’d rather wear someone’s hand-me-down than something new she wants to buy me.”
“Oh my god, Danny, we are totally not saying that it’s charity.” Hannah’s pretend worried face is enough to make me want to slap her.
“I’m going shopping with my mom, okay?”
“Did she help you pick out those boots?” Hannah says it light enough so that maybe, if you paid a fancy lawyer enough money he could argue that it was meant only as kidding, but that’s when I feel the tears behind my eyes.
“Oh, uh, no,” I say with a laugh. “I actually got these at a thrift shop up in New York, in Manhattan.” I stand up and look down at them, like I just at that moment noticed how awful they were. “Anyhow, I’m late for my math tutorial. I’ll see you guys later.”
I walk out of the library, my huge boot zippers jangling with every step, but I’m careful not to slam the door so they don’t know how much they’ve upset me.
Once I’m safely in the faculty bathroom (which you can lock), splashing water on my face and rubbing my hands over my chest splotches to calm them down, I let the tears come. The crying feels good, as if all of my doubts and problems, like these stupid boots, and Mom’s job, and whether I’m going to find the right dress to wear to Fling, and wondering if Ty’s going to call me tonight, and my crummy math grades, are all just rolling out of me, collecting into a big river of sludge.
I try for a smile, to reassure myself. The person in the mirror smiles back at me, but not with the carefree Rick Finzimer smile or the dead-on, ready-to-fight eyes of my mom. The girl in the mirror doesn’t seem to be much of anyone, except a gigantic mess with a blotchy chest and puffy eyes and a pair of hideous boots on her feet.
CHAPTER 6
SHE HAD TO DESTROY something, anything. She thought of scissors, but a search through the house turned up only a tarnished silver butter knife. Nothing would stop her; she gripped handfuls of her shiny, waist-length hair and sawed at it until raggedy shanks of cerise lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, and jagged wisps fluffed out just above her ear. Her cats, Raison and Sprite, watched in fear, but her madness didn’t end there. She ran to her mother’s room and in a few minutes had shredded all her clothes to tatters, including her ugly cordovan zip skirt.
“Finally, I’m free,” she whispered, clutching the knife in the air. Yet she could not quench this unbidden longing to slice, slash, and destroy. Suddenly the doorknob turned. Her father had come home! The knife sweat in her hand.
The Lilac contest rules had been to write “a dynamic first page to anything: novel, short story, fantasy, or science fiction text—you be the judge. Let your creative juices flow!” I didn’t like the sound of the phrase “creative juices”; it made me think of my brain like a grapefruit, painstakingly squeezing out a sour trickle of pulp and seeds. But first place was a thousand dollars, then a five-hundred-dollar second place, and three more prizes of a hundred dollars apiece. And best of all—no entry fee.
“Hey, Danny, you want to come with me to rehearsal?” Mom calls.
“Why would I do that?” I shout, proofreading through my paragraph. I’m wondering about that word cerise. I don’t think I know exactly what that word means.
“To run lines in the car? We could pick up Chinese, and you could see the dress rehearsal.”
There’s only an open can of tuna, an empty pizza box, and some of Gary’s leftover Caesar salad in the fridge. It figures I’d have to be roped into watching Mom’s stupid rehearsal just to get some dinner.
“Okay, hang on a minute while I get my jacket.”
I close up my laptop and unfurl my cramped bones from the wobbling tortoiseshell, stepping out of it carefully.
Mom’s on the phone, placing our order with Hunan Garden and snapping a raincoat over her Rosalind costume, which trails behind her in yards of worn brown velvet. A faded coronet of flowers is perched on top of her head.
“You look crazy,” I tell her, frowning.
“Shakespeare would have appreciated raincoats. Stratford-upon-Avon probably got its share of downpours, don’t you think?” She looks up at me and smiles.
“No comment,” I say.
Neither of us takes umbrellas, and Mom’s laughing as we dash out to the car. Her good mood makes my bad one worse. Old Yeller hacks and heaves a while before he hits his warming-up stage.
“Old Yeller’s going in for inspection next week.” Mom pats the dashboard. “Come on, baby. There’s a boy. There’s a boy. Ten minutes, buddy, you can do it.”
“It’s too dark to read this script.” I squint at the chains of words.
“Never mind, lord help me if I’m not off-book by now … Danny, does this car smell funny to you? Like gas?”
I sniff. “I can’t tell.” We drive in silence a while, sniffing and frowning at each other. I jump out at Hunan Garden while Mom drives the car around the block because she doesn’t know how to parallel park. Usually I don’t care about Mom’s bad driving but tonight, standing in the rain with soggy Chinese food bags and watching Old Yeller stalled at the red light across the street, I feel a burst of annoyance at her.
“Is the defroster on?” I ask when I get in.
The windshield wipers are chasing each other back and forth and don’t do much to rub away the fog that films the glass.
“Broken.” Mom sighs. “Okay, I smell something for real.”
“All I smell is your gross cabbage cashew whatever-it-is that you ordered. You should really get this stupid car into the shop tomorrow.”
“Why are being you such a sulky teenager lately?” Mom hunches over the steering wheel and squints out at the black road. “By the way—huge turnout for Tom Sawyer auditions. I think the girls really see this as a chance for fun for a change. People can let theater get so pretentious and affected, such a draw for world-class jackasses like Lemmon. Now this show—oh my gosh, Danny, did you feel that?”
“I didn’t feel any—”
Old Yeller suddenly gives a shudder and a sad-sounding brrrummmph. I grip the sides of my seat as we reel forward.
“This is the end!” Mom shouts with the kind of expression that would make Louis proud. With a final hacking cough and a violent tremble, Old Yeller’s tired old engine dies, right in the middle of Route 29.
“Please don’t do this, you creep,” Mom whispers, and for a second I think she’s talking to me. She turns the key and presses her boot to the gas, then stomps on the gas, and the turning and stomping find a desperate rhythm. The angry bleat of car horns begins to sound all around us.
“I’ll get out,” I offer, opening the car door, “and I’ll push.” I saw that once in the movies, only it was a big brawny guy who did the pushing. But Mom looks at me with eyes full of thanks and hope, and I relent slightly in my bad mood toward her.
Being out in the middle of a highway on a rainy March night is something I’ve never experienced until toni
ght. Cars spin past me in a hiss of tires on water. Drizzly yellow highway lights send up oily reflections from the water-slicked road. I just hope the color of Old Canned Peas is bright enough to keep a car from hitting me.
I crouch and shove my body against the back of Old Yeller, pushing with each muscle that lets itself be pushed. Mom signals for me to hold on and then she gets out, too. She pushes the car from the driver side, reaching one of her hands inside to turn the steering wheel left. Slowly, painstakingly, we roll Old Yeller onto the shoulder of the road, to safety.
“We did it.” Mom huffs and smiles at me through the dark downpour.
“Yeah, but now what?”
“I need to find a pay phone.” Mom stands on tiptoe and peers ineffectively through the dark. “But it’s a hike to that Aamco station. Almost a mile.”
The car seems to have cruised straight out of nowhere; all at once a rain-glittering white Saab has pulled up right at our side.
“You need help?” A sheet of wet window glass rolls down and then I’m peering into the perfectly made-up face of Mrs. Finn. Mr. Finn is driving and, thankfully, there’s no one in the back.
“Elizabeth, it’s good to see you. Our car broke down.” The words in Mom’s mouth shake out a little too brightly She sounds like she’s acting at being someone else. I shoot her a warning look; Masterpiece Theater isn’t the best idea right now.
“Get in, both of you. Hurry.” There’s a cha-kunk sound of the automatic locks releasing and then Mom opens the passenger-side door. We slide inside the velvety leather of the Saab’s tan interior and roll away from Old Yeller’s broken body.
“Lucky thing we came along,” Mrs. Finn says, waiting for us to thank her and agree.
“Thank you so much; it sure is lucky,” Mom answers.
“Yeah, this is great,” I add, although there are about a million names I would have put ahead of the Finns on my list of people I’d most like to be rescued by.
“I’ll call the tow service.” Mr. Finn nods, more to his wife than Mom, although his eyes dart at us from the rearview mirror. He picks up the car phone from the twinkling lights of his high-tech dashboard and starts punching up numbers.
Split Just Right Page 6
