The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

by Deb Caletti

  I bring the plastic menus to the table. And here’s what I do. I slap one down so hard onto the marble surface that all three men jump. I point my finger at them, make it a weapon in the air.

  “I want you to listen to me, and listen to me good,” I say, channeling some sheriff in a western my mother must have watched while I was in the womb. “If you ever—and I mean ever—give Nick any more crap about his wife again, God help me I will take you both down.” I realize I have raised my voice, not in a yell, but loud enough to still all silverware and cups and dishes and even Luigi. The kitchen is quiet. Jack’s ears are perked up into two alert triangles.

  “Indigo…,” Nick says.

  Bill smirks. “Are you smirking?” I say. “You think I can’t do it? Well, sweetie, you may want to wipe that look right off your face, because I have a black belt. Got it? These hands are lethal, understand? And if you still don’t believe me, I’ll be happy to write down the name of the man I put in the hospital when he laid a hand on me in an ungentlemanly fashion.”

  Bill gets serious. But the corners of Marty’s mouth are still turned up, ever so slightly. “Give me a napkin,” I say. “Hand over that napkin right now.” I click my pen into working position, think quickly. Peter Frampton, I write. Okay, so thinking quickly is not always my strong suit.

  “Wasn’t he a singer?” Marty says. “Kinky-haired guy?”

  “Not that Peter Frampton, you asshole,” I say. I ball up the napkin in anger. “You better remember this. It’s the last warning you’re gonna get.”

  I turn my back. I hold my breath.

  “This place sucks,” Bill says.

  “Let’s go to Starbucks,” Marty says.

  They ease out of the seat. The bells of the door jangle hard behind them. When the two men pass by the window, Leroy starts to applaud. Then Trina joins in, and then Joe, and even the bookstore guy. It’s just a smattering of applause, not the full-fledged all-out type you’d get if this were a movie, but still. The old couple, who I’m guessing are visiting from out of town, look up like gaping fish, eyes big and scared behind their glasses.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that to those guys,” Leroy says.

  “Me too,” Joe says.

  “Do you really have a black belt?” Funny asks.

  “Sure,” I say. “I also have a brown one, and a fake snakeskin one that I don’t wear because it looks like an endangered species.”

  “Why didn’t we ever DO that?” Leroy says. “We just sat there and let it happen, and no one said a word to those assholes.”

  “Why didn’t I ever do that, is more like it,” Nick says.

  “Those guys were shaking. Did you see that?” Trina holds up a hand, makes it tremble.

  “Indigo?” Jane says. “I need to talk with you. When your shift is over.” Her voice is stretched tight, like the snappy skin of a polish sausage.

  “Dum da dum dum.” Trina hums uh-oh music.

  “She’s not in trouble for that. Tell me she’s not in trouble for that,” Leroy says. Jane ignores him. She gives the old couple their check and smiles nicely at them.

  “If I were younger, I would have pow, popped those guys in the kisser,” Joe says.

  I know Jane isn’t exactly pleased with me, but I figure it’ll wear off by the time the morning’s over. She’d been pissed at me before—for taking too long at tables (it’s not my fault if people want to tell me their life stories), for flipping off nasty customers behind their back. But I just act remorseful and everything is fine. Even with her weird new attitude toward me, I figure that’s how it’ll go. So I work my shift and the Irregulars start heading out, and I hang up my apron and say good-bye to Luigi, and expect Jane to give me a few serious words using her eyebrows of concern, the end.

  “Indigo,” she says. We are by the coatrack in the back room. It is past coat-wearing season, but the rack is filled. There’s a blue puffy parka, and a navy nylon jacket and a zip-up gray sweatshirt. Who knows who the coats belong to—they’ve been here for as long as I’ve worked here, gaining new members periodically (a red jacket with ski tags on the zipper, an orange slicker like crossing guards wear). It’s like the shelter for homeless coats. Coats with no places to go and be a coat.

  I sigh.

  “Look, I’m not kidding around here,” she says.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I say.

  “Not yet,” she says, and her tone surprises me. The “yet” is a word with edges, the sharp angles of hostility.

  “Jeez, Jane,” I say. Here’s where I am supposed to apologize. She’s supposed to accept. I make a joke and all is well again. But her tone jabs in a way she’s never jabbed before. And I’m not so sure I like being jabbed. “Ever since I got the money, you’ve been like this,” I say.

  “And you’ve been like this,” she says. “You leave me in the lurch when you go off to Hawaii. Your cell phone’s making me freaking nuts and I told you I wanted it off. You tell off my customers—”

  “I had to go, you knew that. And your customers are hurting your other customer,” I say.

  “I can’t exactly afford to lose people here, Indigo.” She folds her arms. Her face is actually flushed red. “They’re probably not going to come back.”

  “You shouldn’t even let guys like that in,” I say. I start to cross my own arms, then let them hang at my sides. It feels like a face-off, and this is Jane and I love her, but the edge is in my own voice now. “They treat Nick that way—”

  “It’s up to Nick to take care of himself. I’ve got my own things to take care of here. I’ve got people who count on me. What you did might have been amusing to everyone else—”

  “Amusing isn’t the point, Jane,” I breathe. “Caring about people more than a twenty-dollar check is the point.”

  “That’s all fine when you have the luxury of being able to have principles.”

  I do fold my arms then. We are arguing. We’re actually arguing. And then comes what I know is coming. What I knew all along was coming.

  “You may have the money to say and do whatever you want, Indigo, but I don’t,” she says. “I’ve got responsibilities. I have bills to pay. No one gave me two and a half million dollars.” Her forehead is shiny with sweat. She wipes it with her palm.

  “I didn’t ask him to give me that money. It just happened,” I say.

  Jane takes a deep breath, blows out slowly. She looks at me, and for a minute I see just Jane, the old Jane. “I know you didn’t,” she says. “I apologize for being bitchy. I’m under a lot of stress here lately. And the whole money thing—I’m sorry. I confess to feeling very human about it. Ungenerous. Jealous in a way I’m not proud of. And then there’s your own behavior recently…”

  “Okay,” I say.

  But I don’t say I’m sorry. She’s being unfair. It’s not my fault I’m suddenly rich. The apology is noticeably absent. I stare at the coats. Jane stares at the coats. I hear the siss of Luigi cooking something in oil. Jane looks at me briefly, then shakes her head and walks back out to the dining area. “I want the phone off,” she says over one shoulder. I watch her silver earrings flash their disappointment, then the round curve of her shoulders heading away.

  I don’t think of those shoulders hunched over the spreadsheet on a computer screen, or at the counter of her bank, or even up late at night in bed, the light on when lights should be off, joining all of the other lights lit in midnight worry. Instead, I think about Leroy’s question, of why no one stopped the True Value guys, even Nick himself. It was hopelessness, I decide, and the word, just that word, makes me feel ticked off and even slightly disgusted. Hope is not something that fate bestows, like Willy Wonka and the golden ticket, I think then. Hope is a decision. And sure, maybe money allows you to make that decision more easily, but still.

  I let the bells slam against the glass, and if Jane doesn’t like that, either, it’s just too bad.

  Severin bounds out of the house when Trevor and I drive up. The front door bangs ag
ainst the wall with a bash—it lost its springy little doorstop long ago. Mrs. Denholm is watering her plants—i.e., spying on us. The stream of water that’s supposed to be hitting a rosebush is actually hitting a cement garden frog, and she is squinting in the effort to get a good look at us. She keeps studying other things intently—the mailboxes, her own porch—in an effort, I guess, not to stare. She’s no doubt convinced that Trevor and Severin are part of some robbery or heist or credit card scam due to the amount of boxes that have been entering our house in the last week, and she’s probably working hard at remembering everything to tell the police. Mrs. Denholm used to make those offers that were really demands—Would you like to borrow my clippers so that you can trim that hedge? If your lawn mower’s not working, you can certainly use mine…—but she has changed tactics lately and has taken to making statements that are really quests for information. There’s certainly been a lot of commotion at your house lately. Or, A delivery truck was here, but you weren’t home.

  This is what she says now. “A delivery truck was here, but you weren’t home,” she shouts, cupping one hand around her mouth, megaphone-style. That cement frog is getting the watering of his life.

  “Thanks,” I shout back, and give a little wave. I love the fact that this gives her no additional detail. I love the fact that this will make her stew in her own juices of curiosity, and that it will send her into a frenzy of peeking through her venetian blinds.

  “We missed FedEx, but I was here for UPS,” Severin says. He’s getting tan already, and I’m surprised right then how much he looks like Dad. “Trev, I need your help. What’d you guys do, buy the biggest TV in the store?”

  “Flat screen,” Trevor says. “It can hang right on the wall.”

  “If we had a wall that size. Come on, I can’t even get it out of the box by myself. The UPS man had to use a cart.”

  “UPS men don’t lift refrigerators,” Trevor says. This reminds me to admire his muscles, which reminds me to pinch his cute little ass. I love that little ass. It isn’t Hunter Eden cute, not cute enough for screaming masses, but it’s cute enough for one Indigo Skye.

  Mom isn’t home from work yet, which is probably a good thing. Severin was right about the TV—he and Trevor are hauling it around and trying it in different places, and it looks a little like a drive-in movie screen suddenly in our living room.

  “We’ll get used to it,” Trevor says, and in spite of his refrigerator comment, his arm muscles are bulgy with effort, and a thin stream of sweat is cruising down his temple.

  “I can’t wait to see it on,” Severin says. “Where were you today at school, In?” he says. “Mr. Fetterling asked where you were. He said he heard some rumor that you came into a fortune and were going to drop out three weeks before graduation. I told him you had strep throat.”

  “I got in a fight with Jane and didn’t feel like going,” I say.

  “She came with me on my rounds. You should have seen her lift this microwave oven by herself,” Trevor says. He shakes his head and his hair swivels with crazy blond pride.

  “Small but mighty,” I say, and flex my arm for him.

  “Strong and beautiful,” Trevor says. “And rich.”

  I wish he wouldn’t say that and I’m about to tell him so, when Severin says, “Well, you better get Mom to call. Okay, I think this wall is as good as we’re going to get.”

  It’s the wall where Mom’s rocker is, and Trevor lifts the rocker in one hand and plops it onto the middle of the carpet. The TV sticks out into the hall a little, but it’s either that or hanging it in the hall itself.

  “Screwdriver,” Severin says.

  I search around on the floor. “Check.” I hand it over.

  “Metal hanger,” Severin says.

  “Check.” That too.

  Severin fusses with bolts and hangers while Trevor hunts in the fridge for something cool to boost his strength before we have to lift the thing up again.

  “Hey, didn’t you guys buy a drill?” Severin says.

  “Yeah, it makes holes to the tune of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’” Trevor shouts from the kitchen, and chuckles. The soap dispenser had been keeping everyone up at night. Mom hid it under some towels in the bathroom cabinet, and it is still there now.

  “Just a sec, I’ll get it,” I say.

  Severin zzzzz’s with the drill and Trevor leans in the doorway and swigs a Fresca.

  “Speaking of rich, In? I’ve got to ask you something,” Severin says. “I wouldn’t bring it up, but it’s sort of an emergency and I figured you wouldn’t mind…. Does that look straight?” He stands back, appraises the hooks now firmly in the wall.

  “I’m not buying you steroids. The protein shakes are bad enough.”

  “Ha. And, no jokes, okay? Just because you’re not going? It’s important to me. The prom. I don’t want Kayleigh to think I’m some poor kid…”

  “You are some poor kid,” Trevor reminds. “At least, no one puts your head on God’s body.”

  “You know, a few hundred dollars? I have the tux money, but I know she’d expect a limo. And a nice dinner. A really nice dinner. A dozen roses, maybe.”

  “A corsage, not roses,” I say. “She can’t wear a dozen roses pinned to her dress.”

  “Well, she could, it’d just make dancing painful.” Trevor tilts the Fresca can and takes another swig.

  “I just thought, both, you know? A special night? Why not?”

  Why not? Because I don’t like Kayleigh Moore? Because I think she’s like some child who would only look down her nose at the other children grappling on the floor for the candy that fell from the piñata? Because I worry she’s going with Severin to do a good deed for the kid who works in the warehouse? Because in her case, Moore is less?

  “I don’t get why a prom is like a mini-wedding these days and a wedding is like royal nuptials. No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.”

  “You sound like Mom,” Severin says.

  “He’s right,” Trevor says. “You never say ‘nuptials.’ No one says ‘nuptials.’”

  “Fine,” I say. “Anything you want, Severin.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to…,” Severin says. “Okay, we’re ready to lift.”

  Trevor sets down his Fresca. Lifts one corner of the TV as Severin lifts the other.

  “No,” I say. “Knock yourself out.”

  “Okay, I think it’s hanging. Yeah, it’s on the hooks,” Severin says. “In? Hey, thanks. I don’t want to look stupid with her, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Trevor screws in the cable, and I push the power button. The image is huge. Two kids at a table, eating breakfast. Their father enters, snitches a handful of cereal from the box. His figure fills the screen.

  “Holy shit,” Mom screams. She is in the doorway, suddenly. Her hand is to her chest. Bex stands beside her.

  “We thought a man was in the house,” Bex says.

  “That’s a television?” my mother says.

  “It’s hanging over into the hall,” Bex says.

  “What’s wrong with your voice?” I ask her. She’s talking funny, like she can’t manage her own tongue.

  “I went to the dentist,” she says. “I can’t feel my lips.”

  The image on the television changes. Now some woman is walking in a field of flowers, blowing her nose and looking miserable.

  “Huge nose,” Bex says.

  “Guys, this is ridiculous,” Mom says. She tosses her purse onto the seat of the poor rocker, which is adrift in the middle of the room. “No one even watches TV around here.”

  “Because our TV is about four inches across and you have to bang on it to get the color to come back,” Severin says. He leans back on his heels, crosses his arms, and stares at the woman blowing her nose as if he’s never seen anything quite so fascinating. Trevor aims the remote at the television and shoots, and the image changes to some bald man heavy with middle age, yabbing on about city government
.

  “Talking head. Get rid of him,” Bex says. Thalking head. Ge rih a him.

  She moves Mom’s purse and sits in the rocker, scoots it in the direction of the TV.

  “This doesn’t fit the room. This doesn’t fit us,” Mom says.

  Trevor clicks and the government guy disappears.

  “Spanish channel,” Bex says. Click. “Religion. Whoa, big hair religion.”

  “Let’s call the number,” Trevor says, but he’s already moved on.

  “Home shopping!” Bex yells. “Look! In? You want that necklace?” My mind flashes on Dan Shugman and Richard Howards and their ex-jewelry.

  “Nah,” I say. “Ugly.”

  “Guys. No one is listening!” Mom is raising her voice.

  “Warning! It’s the hormone hour. Do you need a pot holder to throw?” I say.

  “Cooking channel. What IS that? Eyuw, gross,” Bex says.

  “Fancy shit,” Trevor says.

  “Hmm, I don’t know,” I say. “It looks kind of good.”

  “History…Sharks…Cartoons! Keep it there,” Bex says.

  Trevor has the power, though, and he’s loving it. Click, click, go the enormous images, and Severin hasn’t moved. It’s understandable—I haven’t either. It’s all so large that it’s hypnotizing. You could fall in there and never get out.

  “People!” Mom shouts. She snaps her fingers, like trying to break a spell.

  Erectile dysfunction ad (thanks for sharing), shower cleaner. Guys in a bar drinking beer. And then Trevor stops. There’s a guy walking on a beach. A chick in a bikini walks up to him and sniffs the air around him. “You smell sooo good,” she hums.