Spilled Coffee

by J. B. Chicoine

  She sighed. “He told me all about that, too. How Amy got drunk and threw herself at him—I mean, really, Ben. I saw her passed out at the party myself. Remember? You were sitting right there next to her.”

  My mouth dropped open and before I could do more than let out a huff, she continued, “Seriously, Ben, Ricky has every right to be mad at you for making him fall in the water, but he’s not mad at all. He likes you in spite of it. He thinks it’s sweet that you’re so protective of his baby sister. And I have to tell you, I was a little embarrassed by your behavior tonight. Ricky was no less than a gentleman this evening—and I mean all evening—he couldn’t have been more respectful and kind to me. And you acted like—well, like a miserable brat. You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not saying that to be mean, but you embarrassed me tonight.”

  With that, she climbed into the front passenger seat and shut the door.

  Oh my gosh! When had my sister turned into Mom? I was so mad and my heart was beating so fast that I wanted to scream, but the knot in my throat wouldn’t let me. How could Penny have been so taken in by Ricky? I paced behind the tailgate, trying to calm down.

  In the distance, but not so far that I couldn’t see the whites of his eyes, Ricky walked to his car, peeling off his shirt. Bare chested, his muscles flexed as his gaze kept fixed on mine. Standing at the rear bumper of his dad’s Mercedes, he stripped to his underwear, wadded his clothes into a ball, and tossed them into the trunk. He slammed it shut, flipped me the bird, and climbed into the front seat.

  I glanced at Penny in our wagon. Her head tipped back as if she was dreaming, completely unaware as the Mercedes drove off, right as Mom came around the corner from Garver’s. She tucked a small envelope in her purse and blotted her eyes.

  “Good news,” she said as she approached, carrying a tall paper sack. Her lips trembled as they formed a thin smile. “Your father is coming up early. On Thursday afternoon. Isn’t that nice, Ben?”

  “Yeah. That’s great.” Just great.

  Chapter 28

  Spam has a very distinct aroma. As I squeeze yellow mustard from the condiment packet and smear it over a slab, it evokes some memory that catches and then slips away, like a fish that nibbles but doesn’t snag—like a gag reflex that subsides. It’s something from a long time ago—maybe from the last time I smelled or ate it. I didn’t eat any Spam all through college, and my aunt never served it. She had a freezer full of homegrown beef, pork, and chicken—no need for store-bought meat. Likely, I ate my last Spam meal during those few days after the carnival—when it rained nonstop for three days straight.

  My upset stomach hasn’t improved, yet I go ahead and flop a slice of Wonder bread over the compressed-meat-substance. I sniff it again and then hold my breath before taking a bite. I chew, stretching back in my chair at the kitchen table. It’s not bad. But as I swallow, my stomach doesn’t agree.

  As I massage my belly, a gust blows the door wide open. I rise to shut it and the sky opens up, spraying water sideways onto the front stoop. Off in the distance, thunder rumbles. Heavy drops pelt the screen over the sink as I shut the window and the door, and return to my seat. A vague memory surfaces again; this time it snags.

  I bite off, chew, and swallow a second mouthful and wait for the memory to congeal. Nothing. I take another bite, chew a few times, and it reminds me of Monopoly, of all things. Now it’s coming back. Spam, Monopoly, and Frankie.

  After the carnival, not only did it rain for three days, but Mom didn’t come out of her room. I didn’t see a whole lot of Penny, either. That meant I got stuck minding Frankie during those few days while it poured and poured and poured.

  It seemed that every summer there was at least one week when rain kept us stuck inside, listening to it patter, hoping it might let up. It always turned into a two-or-three-day-long Monopoly game, and Spam for lunch and supper. At least this time the rain didn’t coincide with one of Dad’s weeks at camp. It was bad enough that it sent Mom to her room, but Dad would have turned as foul as the weather, pacing from upstairs to the basement and back up again.

  During those days after the carnival, Mom’s mood lasted a lot longer than usual. At first, I thought she might be sick, but she didn’t cough or sneeze or sound congested as if she had a cold. And she didn’t rush to the bathroom to puke or ask for the antacid like she would have if it were a stomach flu. I thought maybe it was a hangover, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t been to the kitchen for lemonade or a Coke.

  When I hadn’t seen her for an entire day, I tapped her door. She didn’t respond, so I cracked it open. Mom hollered and told me to get out. I sure didn’t need to be told twice. It wasn’t as if that had never happened before—the really bad mood and the yelling, that is. It just hadn’t occurred yet at camp this summer. Dad had said it was her nerves, and after she had gone to the doctor that one time, she hadn’t had a “nerve attack” for a couple of years. I had almost forgotten about them.

  After she had shrieked at me, I wasn’t going to push it and ask for permission to light a fire in the fireplace. She had appointed me the de facto decision maker and I would start a fire if I wanted. Within a few hours, a warm glow heated the concrete and dried the mustiness to a comfortable level. Outside, a stream of water dripped from the overhang above the back door.

  Frankie wiped his nose as we leaned over the Monopoly board. I rolled the dice and moved my boot five squares, landing on his property. Pennsylvania Avenue, with a hotel. $1400. I doled out the rent as he bounced up and down, giggling like a girl. Maybe it was because I had the feeling he had been cheating all along, or I would have rather been out rowing around the lake looking for Amelia, or riding my bike if it wasn’t all busted up, or the fact that Penny had been ignoring me, but Frankie’s nose picking and giggling grated on my nerves more than usual. And if it wasn’t that, it was his whining. Then, when I turned my back on him to add another log to the fire, I returned to a much thinner stack of blue fifties. To make it worse, he had just landed on Chance, right before Park Place, drawing the card Take a ride on the Reading—If you pass Go collect $200—though I could have sworn that card had been drawn an hour ago. I’d had enough Monopoly!

  “You little cheat!” I said, my frustration rising from a place so deep it came up and overtook me faster than I could get it under control.

  “I am not. You’re just a sore loser.”

  “Is that right? I’ll show you a sore loser.” I flipped the board and all its contents onto Frankie’s lap. With that, he broke out in a squeal, rising in pitch as he ran for the stairs, drawing out “Mom” into ten syllables.

  Great. Halfway up the stairs, I caught up with him and grabbed his arm, which sent him to his knees and amplified his cry.

  “I’m sorry, Frankie, I didn’t mean it. Just calm down.”

  “Stop pinching me!” he squealed louder.

  “I wasn’t pinching you.” I threw my hands up as he tore his way into the kitchen. I blew out a long breath as his footsteps clopped overhead, all the way to Mom’s room. Through his sobs, he spewed accusations of cruelty and violence as I waited for the inevitable.

  Mom screeched, “Ben!”

  I lugged myself upstairs as Frankie emerged from Mom’s room, snuffling loudly. He rubbed his eyes and smirked, a little too much like Ricky.

  “Ben!” Mom hollered again. I stood in her dark doorway. The shades in her room were drawn and it smelled like unchanged sheets and BO mixed with hairspray and maybe liquor. I didn’t get a real good look, but her hair stuck out in all directions as if it hadn’t seen a comb or brush in days. Her eyes sank into dark circles. She looked like a madwoman on Creature Features. I wasn’t sure how long she ranted, but after the first round of “selfish, inconsiderate, irresponsible, girl-crazy, cruel, unfeeling, no-good, six-years-older-for-god’s-sake” and back to “selfish,” I tuned her out. “Now, you go apologize to him, right now! And shut the door on your way out!”

  I backed away, closing her door as quietly as I cou
ld. When I turned, Penny stood in her doorway, her expression blank.

  “What on earth?” she said, as bewildered and perplexed as I must have looked.

  I choked back the emotion churning, or maybe it was my Spam sandwich threatening to come back up. “She’s in one of her moods.”

  “Oh God, no. Not now.”

  “She’ll snap out of it.”

  “I wish Dad was here.”

  For the first time, I did too.

  Penny followed me to the sink. As I filled a cup of water and then drank, she peeked in Mom’s paper sack from Garver’s, still sitting on the counter.

  “It’s full,” she said and moved to the cupboard beside the refrigerator where Mom kept her stash. A nearly empty bottle sat on the top shelf. “She hasn’t been drinking—unless she has a bottle in her room. Did she smell like liquor?”

  “How should I know? She just smelled bad.”

  “Okay, well, we need to keep her calm. You need to go back downstairs and make nice with Frankie. Do you think you can keep from getting him wound up?”

  “I wouldn’t have gotten him wound up if I hadn’t gotten stuck with him all by myself for the past three days.”

  She looked away. “Sorry—I guess I’ve just been in a mood of my own. I got my, you know—my time of the month.”

  “Maybe that’s what Mom’s got.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that why it seems like you hate my guts these days?”

  “I don’t hate your guts. I just … I don’t know. Everything gets so confusing. I can’t even explain it.”

  “You’re not going to wig out like Mom, are you?”

  “No. You just don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman.”

  “Does this have something to do with hormones and—guys?”

  “Don’t start in on Ricky again. He’s really nice and you shouldn’t be so intolerant of people you don’t know.”

  I didn’t want her to turn on me again, but I had to at least say, “Just be careful around him.”

  “Don’t worry about your big sister, Benjie.” She patted my shoulder. “Come on, I’ll play cards with you and Frankie for a few hours, okay?”

  In the basement, Frankie’s face showed none of the telltale red or puffiness of someone who had actually been crying. As Penny dealt a round of Authors card game, he poked at the fire with a long stick and then blew on its glowing tip. I grabbed it from him, pushing him away. “What are you trying to do—burn down the house?”

  “Why would I want to do that? This place isn’t worth anything if it’s burnt down.”

  I wondered if he had ever heard of fire insurance. I didn’t know if my parents insured the place, but if they did, Frankie was the last person I would tell. He would probably turn out to be a pyromaniac in addition to a klepto.

  Chapter 29

  The falling rain lulls me into a stupor. I belch up Spam. I knew I would regret eating. And I would have preferred not to remember that episode, either. I glance at the clock—9:59. It feels like 11:00 or later, and I wish it were. My day is catching up with me, and my eyes don’t want to stay open. I rise from the table and stretch.

  The wind has died and rain patters the roof in a gentle, steady rhythm. I crack the front door, letting in a fresh breeze. Clean air fills my lungs. Thunder rumbles in the distance. In all likelihood, the storm will roll around again.

  That’s what Mom was like; a storm that always rolled back around. It was only a matter of time. Penny and I had both seen her in bad moods, but we had always assumed she would snap out of them eventually, and she had, as far as we could tell. But who really knew what was going on in her mind? I don’t think either of us comprehended the extent of her mental illness. In fact, I don’t think we even comprehended the concept of mental illness.

  Dora was mentally handicapped—we understood that meant she had mental limitations, something she was born with like a clubfoot, except it was her brain that didn’t work quite right. But she was harmless and sweet and predictable. Before that summer, I’m not sure I had ever heard the term ‘mentally ill’ in a clinical sense. But I had heard of psychos, lunatics and schizos—those were the crazies in the loony bin. I had no idea how people ended up in the psyche ward or institution, but they were scary places with padded cells and straitjackets, hiding behind names like Meadow Brook Acres or Oak Hill Haven.

  By Tuesday night, the weather broke. First thing on Wednesday morning, I went for a swim, which meant that if Mom didn’t get out of bed again, Penny would get stuck with Frankie for the morning. Or maybe he would go and play at Skip’s.

  Humidity coated everything. The planks on our dock swelled with rainwater, black and slippery underfoot as I walked to the end. Even as I took in a lungful of air before diving, it felt like nine-parts water to one-part oxygen. I hardly noticed the difference in atmosphere when I hit water. Swimming circles deep into the cove, water washed over every fine hair on my body. Damselflies and pond skaters skimmed the water’s surface. All the tension of the past few weeks dissolved into the lake.

  Sometimes, it felt so good to be alive—to be a kid on summer vacation with nothing like homework or teachers or school bullies looming over me. Even if my life wasn’t perfect, being a kid was great. And even better, I was a kid with a girl who not only liked me, but who liked to kiss.

  While thinking of Amelia, I made another pass near Whispering Narrows and spotted her coming out onto the lawn, still in pajamas—the same ones she had been embarrassed for me to see her in a few weeks ago. She waved and I swam to meet her at the end of the dock. She sat, arms folded across her chest. I propelled my way over to the hidden side of the dock and braced my arms on the planks, like last time.

  She hugged her knees. “How’s it going?”

  I rolled my eyes. Part of me wanted to tell her all about what a crummy few days I’d had, but I didn’t want to dive into a conversation about how weird my mother was, or that I still couldn’t make Penny believe me about Ricky. I wanted to hear about Amelia.

  “I guess it’s going pretty good,” I said, “now that it’s not raining. How’s it going with you?”

  She shrugged. “I’m okay, now that Ricky is gone. He left on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, he’s coming back this afternoon.” Maybe that explained why Penny didn’t bother leaving the house this morning. Amelia continued, “And Sunshine and Lenny are making plans to go to that Woodstock Love-In this weekend. Sunshine’s got her, you know—period, so she doesn’t want to be there the whole time, so Grandpa’s flying her over on Sunday. Lenny’s driving the rest of them over tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn, to get good seats or something.”

  “So much for my bodyguard,” I chuckled.

  “So, did you talk to Penny?”

  “Yeah. Ricky’s pretty sly—he’s making like everything was all our fault, and Penny believed it. She thinks I’m being overprotective.”

  Just then, Doc’s voice rumbled down the lawn, reverberated across the water, and rolled back. “Amelia! Breakfast!”

  Amelia stood. “I gotta go.”

  “Hey, do you want to go for another boat ride tonight? Ten?”

  She smiled. “Yeah.”

  I pushed away from the dock as Amelia wiggled her way up the lawn.

  I swam a little longer, putting off my hunger, but if I wanted any of the remaining Frosted Flakes, I had to beat Penny to the table, which I did.

  When I was halfway through my bowl of cereal, down to the sweet milk and a few soggy flakes, Penny came out of her room and joined me at the table. She shook the box and frowned at me. “Hog.”

  “There’s Rice Krispies.”

  She rolled her eyes, disappeared behind me, and returned with the new cereal box, prying the top open.

  “Mom still asleep?” I asked.

  “I think so, I mean, I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “What about Frankie?”

  At that moment, he came out of our room, yawning. “Hey, Ben, Mom says you have t
o help me strap my sleeping bag on my bike and ride with me down to Skippy’s today. ”

  I muttered, “I can’t. My bike’s busted.”

  “Mom said,” he whined.

  “Fine. I’ll walk you down.” I glanced at my sister stuffing spoonful after spoonful in her mouth. “What are you doing today?”

  “I might ride my bike later. Too bad you can’t come with—you know on account of it being all busted.”

  I didn’t want to get into the reason why it was all busted; that would just bring up the subject we couldn’t talk about without me seeming like an overprotective, jerky little brother. I continued eating in silence, thinking about what a great evening I had planned with Amelia. Nobody’s bad mood was going to interfere with that.

  By midmorning, Penny had already left on her bike, and I escaped to the end of the dock for some alone time with my Mad magazine. Even though I had to fend off a new hatch of pterodactyl-size mosquitoes, I didn’t mind. Any encounter with the lake’s ‘wildlife’ was a welcome change after three days of Frankie duty. Besides, from where I sat, I could also keep an eye out for Amelia between the stimulating and mind-broadening encounters of Spy vs. Spy.

  In the middle of black powder and kabooms, Frankie called out, “Ben, I’m ready.”

  I stood and stuffed the magazine in my pocket. Frankie struggled with his sleeping bag and a paper sack full of clothes. He was such a pathetic, wheezing little spaz. How could I have wanted to choke the life out of him only twenty-four hours ago? Poor kid. As brazen as he could be about thieving, he was a bundle of fears—that and boogers.

  I grabbed the bag so he wouldn’t drop it. “Looks like you packed for a week.”

  “Only two nights.”

  I looked at him behind me as we walked up the outside stairway to the dooryard. “You gonna be okay, away for two whole nights?”

  “Yeah. I’m not a baby, you know. I haven’t peed the bed in a long time.”