by Lynne Hugo
After they left the trailer, without telling Detta what he was doing, he called Cora from the pay phone outside the Rite Aid pharmacy a half-mile away. He didn’t slam the door this time. Detta sneaked a peek at him but couldn’t tell anything from his face.
“It’s Alex,” he said without a greeting. Behind him, Detta was stony-faced, still in the truck. In spite of the heat, she’d kept her window rolled up, so her profile was hazy, a sun glare igniting the back of her head to his eyes.
“Oh, yes. Hello, Alex.” He could hear the wariness in Cora’s voice. She always sounded like that to him, like he’d once pulled a gun on her or something.
“Been a fire at my place. I need to bring Detta back to you.” He turned his back to the truck, not that Detta seemed to be looking at him. He stuck a finger in his free ear to block out the traffic noise beyond the parking lot.
“Oh, my god. Is she all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, of course, bring her. Right away. I mean, now is fine. I’m here. What happened?”
He was going to do it, tell Cora what her precious granddaughter had done. At the moment, he couldn’t have said why he didn’t. Certainly not because he wasn’t sure.
“Just an accident. Look, I’m in a pay phone…on the way.”
“Oh, yes. Of course, all right.” Polite as always, that was Cora. And she hadn’t even asked if he was all right, not that he’d really expect her to. So why did it grate on him so?
Alex grunted a syllable that could have been “Bye.” He hung the receiver in its cradle, but didn’t turn around right away. He studied, without concentrating, the parts of the pay phone worn to a dull ready-to-be-retired patina by thousands of hands and coins and extremes of weather, while he considered whether to call N. Reardon Greevy, his snotty pinstriped lawyer. He pulled the attorney’s card from where it was tucked behind his driver’s license in his wallet and felt in his pocket for change. Four pennies, a dime and a nickel. He was damned if he was going to ask Detta for money. He turned and walked back to his truck where the girl sat exactly as she’d been when he got out, that rigid.
Neither of them spoke a word the whole way to Cora’s. Within five minutes, of course, Detta figured out where he was taking her. Was he imagining a smug aura around her silence? Was that exhalation a little sigh of triumph?
thirty-eight
I WAS SURE HE WAS going to tell Grandma I did it, even though he doesn’t have one bit of proof, but he didn’t. Well, actually, he couldn’t when we got there, strictly speaking, because she wasn’t there, but he didn’t call her up later to tell, either. Probably he forgot due to brain damage.
Grandma had left a note on the door saying Rebecca fell in the bathtub and she had to rush over there to help Jill. Well, that’s right, I guess she should do that, since Jill is such a namby pamby spoiled little ditzbrain. Grandma certainly couldn’t tell her no, I have to stay home for Lexie’s sake on account of she was almost killed in a fire (for all she knows I was almost killed) and her psycho-drunk father is bringing her here within the next hour. No, of course not.
So I’m stuck with Alexander the Goddamn Great standing on the back porch, too damn close to my mother’s bird feeder, looking right at me and saying—What’s the deal with Rebecca?
—None of your beeswax, I whispered. Not too original, but it was all I could come up with.
—I hear she’s got cancer. That right?
—Where’d you get that idea? We didn’t want him to know so he couldn’t use it against us in court.—You spying on us?
He sort of snorted, like he was saying I wouldn’t waste my time.—Never mind that, is what he said.—How bad is it?
—She’s fine! I shrieked. The effect was sort of ruined because my voice cracked big time. I went back to a whisper, which is what the paramedic told me to stick to. Well, he really said try not to use it at all and drink a lot of fluids.—She’s completely fine. Didn’t you ever slip in a bathtub? Does that mean you’ve got cancer and are going to die?
—She’s dying?
—No! didn’t you hear me? I said she does not have cancer and she’s not going to die. Are you deaf? That many words made my throat hurt again, so I just shut up and gave him death rays again.
By then it was late afternoon and I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. My stomach let out this enormous growl. Alex cracked up. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh before. First it made me mad because I was already mad over how he was going on with lies about Rebecca. Well, it was true but he didn’t know it so that made it lies. Then I didn’t appreciate him laughing at me. But his laugh was so weird, sort of like a goose honking, and he sounded so stupid that I laughed. For a minute we were both laughing, but then my face got all wet and I guess I was crying because Grandma wasn’t there and I was hungry and because the fire got so big so fast.
At first it didn’t seem like the fire was even going to catch. I must have dropped the match where there wasn’t any grease. I stood up and tucked in the cover of the matchbook so I could light another one. I was madder than any fire, that’s what I thought. But before I could do it, Whoosh! Flash! and the whole pile blew up into flames. He was finally going to lose something, not that the clothes he wears are actually worth anything.
I got to be happy for all of two seconds. Then, black smoke was coming down from the ceiling. My eyes stung and watered, and it was just like if you open the oven door and put your face in to see if cookies are done, that hot, only all over, and when I tried to get a breath, the coughing started. I knew I had to get the fire out before it spread. I filled up a glass with water—even left it running so I could just keep filling it and throwing water until it was out. But it was just like I had thrown a glassful of flames; the fire splattered, just splattered like I had no idea a fire could, and then it was on a wall and over on the doorway into the living room and the smell—plastic melting? I don’t know what it was except the worst smell that won’t let you stop coughing enough even to get a breath in to cough back out—and the fire that was like something alive: those two things were everything and everywhere.
I tried again with another glassful, but the same thing happened. It made no sense, but I was afraid to keep trying, and the truth is, I couldn’t anyway. For a minute I couldn’t even figure out where the door was. My eyes wouldn’t stay open because the smoke was so thick and stinging. I got turned around and was headed the wrong way, and when I felt around for the door and it wasn’t there, I thought This is it, I’m going to die, I’ll see my mother if she really is anywhere. I started to panic, but then I saw the living-room window and I realized I was backward. My face and hair and clothes were sopped with sweat; I felt it running down my back and legs. I remembered that thing about get down on the floor because the smoke goes up, and I found the door. I don’t know why I thought of bunching up my T-shirt between my hand and the doorknob, but even through the cloth, it burned. Maybe my mother gave me the idea.
I got outside and I tried to scream, but a croak came out. I pounded on the Rockwell’s trailer door, but no one came. Then I just ran to Ramon’s, even though it was farther, because I don’t know any of the other people.
At first, I thought Rosa wouldn’t even come, wouldn’t open the door because of Alexander the Goddamn Great telling her not to. I saw a movement behind the curtain, and Ramon’s car was still there, so I knew they were there and I pounded and pounded. I think I was crying. Finally, Rosa opened it. I could see on her face she was going to say, no, we have to do what your father says, but then her eyes got big and I looked over my shoulder. Two windows were shooting fire. “Did you call firemen?” I heard her say. As soon as I started shaking my head, she ran back in shouting, “Ramon! Detta…fuego!” I was standing there on the bottom step outside the screen door with no idea what to do.
Then Ramon came to the door, and his eyes got like Rosa’s when he looked over my head, past me. He almost knocked me over, running out. He got the hose Rosa uses for her flowers
, but it was nowhere near long enough even when he stretched it all the way out. He unscrewed it from the house and dragged it like the world’s longest tail over to the Rockwell’s trailer, next to Alex’s. He used their spigot and turned the water on. I was grabbing at him, trying to stop him, trying to tell him what happened when I threw the water on, but my voice wouldn’t work. By then, Rosa was there, still in her bathrobe, and she grabbed me away from Ramon while she was shouting Spanish to him. She pulled me back, way back from the fire and shouted, “Movate!” to Ramon again while she waved her arm. He backed up, farther from the fire, and used his thumb over part of the hose to make it spray into one window. I was trying to tell Rosa what happened, about the glass of water I mean, but I was shaking and she just put one arm around me and used the other hand to pull my head down onto her chest, just like mom used to. Just like my Mom, and then I cried harder and I couldn’t stand up, so she squatted down next to me and held me that way.
The water didn’t make things any worse this time, anyway. There was no way that fire could get worse by then. Some other people came, and a man tried to help Ramon until we heard the sirens and Ramon dropped the hose and ran out toward the road to show them the way.
ALEX PUT OUT HIS hand like he was going to touch me, but I took a step backward and used the bottom of my T-shirt, which was already filthy, to wipe my face. The shirt was still damp. There wasn’t a mirror in the bathroom at the police station so I never saw how dirty my face was, and of course Alex never said anything.
—You got a key? he said then, real gruff.—Can you get in and get you something to eat?
—Of course I’ve got a key, I whispered.—I live here. He is so dense.
—Well, use it, he said. So I got it out of my backpack and went in. I didn’t invite him, but he followed me through the door and looked around. The kitchen was a mess, not like Grandma at all except for a while after Mom died. But there were a bunch of dirty dishes around the sink, not even soaking in it like she sometimes did them. The floor was sticky, and the garbage hadn’t been emptied.
Alex looked in the refrigerator, bold as you please, like he had a right to which he didn’t. There was a gallon jug of milk with a slosh or two in the bottom, some margarine, dill pickles, two eggs and a lot of salad dressings in the shelves on the door. Wilty lettuce was browning on the bottom shelf, and two puny apples. She always keeps them even when they’re mushy. As usual, Grandma had a box of Esther Price soft-center chocolates in there, too. Don’t try to get between Grandma and her chocolates, Mom used to say. When I was little, she’d give me a pack of M&M’s when she took me over, so I wouldn’t bug Grandma for her candy. I haven’t thought of those M&M’s in a long time, and suddenly they were in my mind and I wanted to cry again.
Not that I would in a million years around him. He sort of blew out a sigh and shut the refrigerator door.—I’ll be back in a while, he said.—You get cleaned up and then do these here dishes.
—Don’t tell me what to do. I kept breaking my own rule about not talking to him but it just popped out.—And don’t come back.
—Do it, he said, just like I hadn’t said a word, and just walked out the kitchen, and across the porch. I watched out the kitchen window while he took his skinny butt across the yard and got into his truck.
Then I had what Grandma calls a dilemma. I knew it would make Grandma happy if I did the dishes, but Alex had told me to, which meant that doing those damn dishes was the very last, the very, very last thing I could even consider doing or he’d get the idea that he could boss me around. I still had to set him straight about Ramon and Rosa. I went up to the bathroom to pee and wash my face and think. That part had been my own idea before he said anything. The mirror pretty much freaked me out, I was such a mess, and I knew Grandma would get upset if she came home and saw me, so I washed my face—which did have soot stuff in places I’d missed—changed my shirt, combed my hair and brushed my teeth. I did that, brush my teeth, just because it would feel good and for some reason I thought the toothpaste would make me less hungry. I put the T-shirt I’d had on into a bag and stuck it under some soap wrappers and used tissues in the wastebasket because once I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth, I realized it reeked and I didn’t want Grandma to see it, either. But then I realized I reeked, and I got rid of the rest of my clothes and took a shower. I left my hair wet—it felt good like that anyway, and my stomach was complaining again.
I headed downstairs, back to the kitchen to call Tim, which meant I had to pass all the pictures of Grandma’s dead relatives on the wall along the stairs. Most of the time they don’t bother me, but today they did. Grandma’s mother and father and a slew of aunts and uncles and people I never even knew were all smiley once, like it would never end. I thought maybe Tim could come get me and we could get something to eat in town, and when I wasn’t so hungry I’d figure out what to do next. There was no answer at his house, which in some ways was for the best because I’m probably not even his girlfriend anymore, not the way I used to be. Big deal, it’s long distance to Alex’s. His mother would let him call, at least sometimes. I wish I hadn’t let him feel me up. Or maybe it’s the opposite and I should have let him feel whatever he wanted of me. Maybe I should have let him get to third base or even home and he would have stayed my boyfriend.
But then I thought: Who wants a boyfriend? Look how my mother’s boyfriend turned out, we all know that story.
I stood there in the kitchen and looked around. The rest of the house hadn’t looked that good, either. Grandma’s bed wasn’t made, which is a mortal sin to her, and stuff wasn’t picked up. It was like she’d left in a hurry long time ago and dust had settled on top of whatever was wherever. I made her bed real quick. Then I thought, wait, I can do the dishes because I was the first in the door, I saw them and I thought of how bad they needed to be cleaned up, so it was my idea, not his.
I didn’t want to examine that too close, so I just marked that thought done and ran water in the sink. After the dishes were finished, there’d be a clean saucepan and I could open a can of soup.
Which I did. Split pea with ham, the chunky kind, and I ate it right out of the pot, which Grandma says is disgusting, but I don’t care. Then I washed the pot again.
I heard a car out in the driveway.—Grandma! I said out loud, but then out the living-room window I saw no, it was Alex. He pulled up in front of the path to the kitchen door, turned the damn truck off like he meant to stay, got out and went around to the back. He pulled two brown bags out of the truck bed and carried one in each arm up to the back door like they were twin babies or something. He’s carrying grocery bags and I’m thinking about twin babies. I really, really hope his weirdness isn’t coming off on me.
He opened the door and walked right into the kitchen, set the bags on the kitchen table and went back out. I thought he was leaving, but then there he was right back again with two more bags.—Help me unload this stuff, he said. I just stared at him. What was Alexander the Goddamn Great doing bringing groceries into my grandmother’s house?
He looked at me.—I said, help me with this stuff. I don’t know where things go. He looked around.—Good, you got the dishes cleared up. You look better, too. He was completely ignoring that I didn’t answer him.—I’ll put stuff into the refrigerator and freezer. You put the rest away. He was back on that like a broken record.
I walked out of the room, down the hall and into the living room where I sat in Grandpa’s old chair and tried to think. He shouldn’t be in our house, I thought. I could hear the brown bags giving up the food and the refrigerator door opened and closed about six times. So did the freezer door, which closes with a shorter higher wump. I know that because I can always tell whether Grandma is after Esther Price chocolates or ice cream when she can’t sleep and goes downstairs real late.
A minute later, he was standing in the hall outside the living room as if there was an invisible fence keeping him out of the room. Which I was glad of.—I’m leaving now, he sa
id.—I gotta look for another place. You stay here.
—Another trailer? One of my ears was clogged up and it made my voice sound like I was choking again.
—I guess. If I can find a furnished one. He sort of shrugged, like it was already impossible. He looked raggedy, sort of like a bum, because he hadn’t shaved and his cheeks and chin had black shadows like mine did before I washed. The front of his hair had separated from the main part, too, and slopped over onto his forehead.
—I’m not going in a trailer. It’s a firetrap. I’ll tell the judge there wasn’t a smoke detector.
—Look…I was…glad you were okay even though you….
I didn’t want him to say what he thought I did, so I just interrupted.—Sure you were.
I was ignoring the fact that I started it on the grounds that I didn’t mean for the whole thing to burn, but that’s just what happened so it wasn’t my fault. It’s not like some of my stuff didn’t burn up, too. Fortunately, I keep my good stuff at Grandma’s. All I ever took there was the least I could get by on until I came back here. I turned my back on him and stared out the window hoping Grandma would drive up. A moment later, he clunked down the hall, the kitchen door opened and shut and then his tires crunched the driveway gravel. He was leaving. Again. It’s his specialty, leaving.
I went upstairs to Mom’s old room then. I could watch for Grandma from there. I got the picture out of the drawer and propped it on the dresser. Then I set out the candles and I was going to light them, but suddenly I was afraid I might drop the match and start another fire. I got sort of shaky thinking about it, and I wrapped Mom’s turquoise sweater around my shoulders even though the room was hot from it being closed up all the time, especially now, with the weather turned summery. Hot like after a fire, but I was cold. I didn’t even talk to Mom. I’d thought she’d like it, the fire, because of getting even with him, but then when I could tell her about it—I didn’t. I felt a little ashamed, which was dumb because I’m sure she hated him. I heard her voice then, strong in my head, but the words didn’t make any sense. A bird in the hand…? Is worth two in the bush, she used to say, but what did she mean? And there was no more, nothing else. She could at least have explained it. I stayed still, but once she’s gone she never comes back.
