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by Ron Koertge

  “I can cook, baby,” Javier’s girlfriend says, “you don’t have to. And, anyway, cooking is easy. Anybody can fry an egg.”

  Boom! Another smash cut.

  “Not everybody can fry an egg,” Mrs. PQ says. “You don’t want heat more than two hundred fifty degrees. You don’t want PAM; you want margarine with lecithin.” She takes a brown egg, taps the shell, carries it toward a yellow sauté pan. “Keep it a couple of inches above the skillet or grill or whatever, then let the egg just slip right out of its little shell. Oh, yeah. Cooking is sexy, okay? Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

  Marcie grins at me, and I can’t help but grin back. The close-up of the egg was perfect.

  Alanna makes sure her sister gets on the bus that takes her to school, then goes back inside to study. She frowns and chews her pencil. She’s got a mom, but we never see her.

  Javier’s mom turns up two or three times, and she says the same thing, just in different ways. “When Javie gets a scholarship for soccer, we’re getting out of this neighborhood.” Then she turns on the TV.

  “It’s all on the kid,” Marcie says. “Mom just watches telenovelas. And the director only nails her that one time. Any more is overkill.”

  We eat and watch. Alanna’s sister gets sick, and she almost doesn’t get to go to Dallas. Javier twists an ankle and can’t play soccer, but he can get around at the cook-off.

  And then they win! The whole class competes, but the focus is on Javier and Alanna. Mrs. PQ hugs them both. A judge talks to Alanna, then Javier, about scholarships. Alanna calls her sister, but Javier doesn’t call anybody.

  “What about your mom?” asks Mrs. PQ.

  “She’s probably asleep in front of the TV,” Javier replies.

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  “What about her?”

  And that shot, the expression on his face as he answers his teacher, is the last frame in the film.

  I sit back. “Wow.”

  Marcie points to the now-dark screen. “That’s your future, Ben. You’ve got all the tools. You’re smart, you’re funny, and you’ve got a great eye. You know how photographers are always telling models how the camera loves them? Well, the camera loves you, kiddo.”

  I point at the clock. “It’s almost ten thirty.”

  “Honey, Colleen’s not the only girlfriend you’ll ever have. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “What’d Mrs. PQ tell her students ten times a day?”

  I recite, “‘If I just stay focused on my goal, it’ll all pay off in the end.’”

  “That’s right.” Marcie stands up. “So let’s go. What are you waiting for?”

  St. Luke’s is where I used to come to do physical therapy or let somebody run another ten thousand tests. Grandma brought me even before my mother took off. It’s pretty much the same, but I’m different. Thank God. And thank Grandma and Marcie and the kids from school who were in my documentary and the company that made my camera. And Colleen.

  She’s in the new wing — a giant, spick-and-span igloo. Not that shape, but that white and cold. What a place — people in wheelchairs, people staggering and holding on to their IVs, people in bed with their faces turned to the wall.

  When we get to her room, Marcie tells me to go on in. She’ll check at the nurses’ station and see what’s what.

  Colleen is at least sitting up and holding a People magazine. Her forehead is bandaged. Her tattooed arms stick out of a light-blue hospital gown.

  She pretends to read until I kiss her on the cheek. She keeps her hands in her lap.

  “Now you’ve got a girlfriend with antlers,” she says.

  I touch one of the bandages lightly. “A couple of bumps. They’ll go away.”

  “Are you mad?”

  I shake my head. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “Am I stupid?”

  “Sometimes. Were you loaded?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you come over? We could have just watched TV or something.”

  She points to a glass of water with a bendy straw, and I hand it to her. “I didn’t come over because I wanted to get high. Same reason I didn’t call my sponsor. And I didn’t want to get ripped. I just wanted a little buzz. I don’t know what that dude gave me. Creeper bud or something.”

  I just look at the highly polished floor.

  “I didn’t sleep with him, Ben. We sat in the car and smoked. When he put the moves on me, I split.”

  Her left foot, callused and a little dirty, is sticking out, so I pull the sheet over it.

  She reaches for my hand, the sick one. “I’m driving home and thinking about your mom and then you and what a fucking sweetheart you are, and the next thing I know, I rear-end these people in a station wagon and knock myself out. They’re totally okay, and my car is just, like, more dented, if that’s possible, but they’re worried about me and call an ambulance.” She tugs at me. “I will never ever do anything like that again. Ever. I swear to God.”

  Just then Marcie sails in and says, “Good to go. Sign a few papers, and then they’ll take you downstairs in a wheelchair. I’ll get the car and meet you at the front door.”

  Colleen throws back the covers. “Give me a minute, Ben. I have to get dressed. Turn your back, okay?”

  Across the room the closet door is open, and there are Colleen’s clothes. Some I’ve never seen before. Flimsier. Trashier. Anti-camouflage. She wanted to be seen.

  She puts both arms around me from behind, like a kidnapper. “Ben, do you love me more than anybody else in the world?”

  I tell her, “You just wear me out. Do you know that?”

  She holds on tighter. She says, “Don’t get tired of me, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if you got tired of me.”

  A few days later, she’s got a job at the food co-op on Arroyo. I leave her messages and ask if she wants to watch a DVD or go to the Rialto, but she e-mails back and says she doesn’t have time because she’s studying.

  But what about your mom? I think about her

  a lot.

  Love,

  C

  Love. That’s new.

  I can’t call Delia. I don’t even know if she’s got a phone. I try 411, but there’s no listing. So one day after school, I don’t take the bus west, toward my house, but east, toward Azusa. Colleen’s working, but even if she wasn’t, I’d make this trip on my own.

  People get off and on — people from countries the U.S. has probably invaded: a clown on his way to a kids’ party, but he’s wearing a headset and he snarls into it, speaking a language I’ve never heard before; a kid younger than me with an old-fashioned shoe-shine box, the kind with a handle and a little stand for one shoe; two brothers with plastic tyrannosauruses. They make them fight for miles, snarling and whimpering, first one winning and then the other. Three ninth-graders in do-rags swagger up and down the aisles, and we’re all glad when they get off.

  I have to change buses twice. I ride by places I’ve never been, places Grandma would never go. Every mile or so, some kids play pickup ball on bleached-out playgrounds. No matter what suburb I’m in, they look like the same kids — skinny and noisy, and at least one of them wearing a Kobe Bryant tank top. And then, just before I have to change buses again, there’s a huge vacant lot with bees. Boxes of them. Colonies, I guess. Or hives. And a guy in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and gloves and a gauzy-looking mask lifting off the lids and peering in.

  Just a few blocks away from Target, my phone rings, and I answer it without checking to see who it is. I want it to be Colleen. But it’s not.

  “Ben? It’s A.J. What’s up?”

  “I’m, uh . . . I’m on a bus to Azusa.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause that’s where my mom is.”

  “No way!”

  “Yeah. She just . . . turned up. Recently.”

  “You’re seeing her for the first time?”

  “Second, a
ctually.”

  “Wow. What’s that like?”

  “Confusing.”

  “So, have you got your camera? You should totally have your camera.”

  “I guess I forgot. And, anyway, my mom’s kind of —”

  “But, Ben. This is a real opportunity. It’s a movie nobody but you can make.”

  “She’s pretty fragile, A.J.”

  “Physically?”

  “Yeah, but not just that. She’s —”

  “So in the right light, close-ups could be incredible.”

  “Hold on a minute. That day we met at Buster’s for the first time, you said you hated those documentaries where somebody’s bleeding and the guy with the camera just keeps shooting.”

  “Your mom’s not bleeding, okay? It’s totally different. Look, Ben. I’ve been thinking a lot lately. My parents are so successful. So is your grandma. And I want us to be successful, too. I’m not telling you to shove a camera in your mother’s face. I’m just saying you could film the reunion. Did you ask her if she’d mind?”

  “No, but —”

  “At least ask her.”

  “It’d just freak her out and scare her. I don’t want to be successful if I have to do stuff like that.”

  A few seconds go by before she says, “Conrad was right. You aren’t a real filmmaker.”

  “Oh, well, if Conrad says so, it must be true.”

  “He said you were lucky to make High School Confidential because basically all you are is some trivia geek.”

  “Oh, screw Conrad.”

  “Some trivia geek with a slutty girlfriend.”

  “You don’t know Colleen. Okay, she likes to dress up and shock people. Big deal.”

  “And sell drugs.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “And get kicked out of school for beating you up.”

  “You don’t know the whole story. She trusted me and I let her down.”

  “I’m talking to you as a friend, Ben.”

  “Oh, great. I need a few more friends like you who’ll call my girlfriend names and tell me to use my mother to make some stupid documentary nine people will see.”

  “I guess you’re not the person I thought you were.”

  “Good. I don’t want to be that person.”

  Then I hang up. I guess I was yelling a little at the end, because the people around me are staring. Well, I had a right to yell. What a stupid idea. I’ll bet A.J. wouldn’t interrogate her precious mother.

  I go in Target through the front door this time, scan the women’s section, and there she is. That same one-size-fits-nobody vest. I watch her fold and smooth. Pick up clothes people have looked at and then dropped on the floor. Find room on the rack for one more neon-colored blouse.

  I make a wide half circle so Delia can see me coming. It’s the opposite of hunting, where you sneak up on your prey. Pointing a camera at my mother would terrify her. It’d be like yelling at Bambi.

  “Mom, it’s Ben. Remember?”

  She stops what she’s doing and looks down into the big wheeled bin beside her. “Yes.”

  “Do you get a break anytime soon? I thought we’d, you know, talk or something.”

  “I should finish zoning this area.” Her eyes light everywhere but on me.

  “Please. I came on the bus. It took forever.”

  “Well, then. Wait for me in the snack bar. I’ll sneak away.”

  I remember she drank 7-Up, so I buy two of those and find a semiclean table. I have weird thoughts — everybody in here, every grown-up, anyway, fell in love. At least for a little while. My parents did, and look what happened.

  I think about something one of my teachers said: when somebody is really emotional, like mad or just totally excited about something, he or she speaks at the rate of 160 words a minute. My grandma does yoga and meditates and is proud of never getting — and this is her word — overwrought. I’ll bet she never topped 95 words per minute in her life.

  When I see my mother, I stand up. “Grandma’s probably coming next time,” I say.

  “She drives?”

  “Oh, yeah. A Cadillac.”

  “So that’ll be easier for you.” Delia picks up her gaudy cup and takes a sip. “Refreshing,” she says. “Do you remember ‘You Like It, It Likes You’? It was their slogan. That’s why I prefer 7-Up to other soft drinks.”

  “It’s good.”

  “I used to take the bus when I lived in Seattle.”

  “What’d you do there?” I ask.

  “I worked for a little church. I answered phones and folded programs. I liked having something to do on Sundays. Sundays are hard for me.”

  “I don’t much like Sundays. There’s always school the next day.”

  “Are you a good student?”

  I nod. “Pretty good.”

  “Do you play sports?”

  I show her my arm. Even in long sleeves it looks wrong. “Not much.”

  “I like watching bowling on television. Do you watch bowling?”

  “I like movies better, remember?”

  She frowns and her eyes narrow. I can see her do the math. “How old are you now?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “That much time has gone by.”

  I move my cup so that it touches hers. “You’re not old, Mom.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  I can tell she’s about to get up, so I blurt, “Look, do you need anything? You know — clothes or a better TV or something for your apartment?”

  “Oh, no. I love my little cottage. I decorated it myself. I bought everything right here where I work. I get a big discount, and I know when all the sales are, and we’re not supposed to do this, but we put things aside for each other. I got four big blue cups last week for a dollar!”

  She looks around then like somebody might have heard. Then she sinks into the plastic chair, sliding down like a kid who doesn’t want the teacher to call on her. “That man in the red vest,” she whispers, “is my supervisor.”

  “They have to give you breaks, don’t they?”

  She stands up. “I should go.”

  “Wait.” I slide just a little closer. “Do you want to come for dinner sometime?”

  She thinks it over. “On a Sunday, maybe. Sundays are hard for me.”

  “Great.”

  She frowns again. “Who’ll be there?”

  “You and me and Grandma and maybe a neighbor from across the street and Colleen. Remember Colleen?”

  She lights up for the first time. Just a little, but what a difference! “Oh, Colleen. The girl you brought out here. I liked her.”

  “So,” I say, “pick a Sunday.”

  “Yes. Well, let’s see. Why don’t we wait and see.”

  “Do you have a phone?”

  “Oh, yes. If someone calls in sick, I have to be available. I can work a double shift if I have to.”

  I hand her a clean napkin. “So, can I have the number?”

  She writes, folds it in half, then quarters, and slides it across the table at me. Then she leaves. Not a handshake, for sure not a pat on the shoulder, much less a hug.

  I am just so tired. I could call Grandma to come get me, but I think about what Colleen’s mother always said —“You got yourself into this, so get yourself out.”

  I’ll just wait for the bus, and, like half the people on it, I’ll lean against the window and close my eyes.

  COLLEEN INCHES BACK INTO MY LIFE. Not that she was totally out of it, as far as I was concerned.

  I come home from school, and Colleen’s there talking to Grandma. She says she’s not too tired to watch a movie later. When she comes back that night after dinner, she asks if Grandma wants to watch it with us, and when I say that I don’t know, she goes and asks! Then we have to wait while Grandma makes edamame because soybeans are better for us than popcorn.

  Afterward I walk Colleen across the street, say hi to Marcie, who’s up reading; then Colleen and I make out a little by the front door. It’s nice.
Sure, I get excited. I’m sixteen. But I don’t get feverish.

  We stand face-to-face, almost nose-to-nose, and she whispers, “I was checking this couple out the other day. At the store, right? At my register. And he’s just staring at this little picture, so his wife is doing all the work. She’s helping me bag, and before that she’s got the credit card, and she unloaded the cart, and I’m thinking, What a dick. Look at your stupid little picture somewhere else. And then he shows her, and she smiles this huge smile and shows me, and it’s an ultrasound. She’s pregnant. They’re both so happy. He was, like, mesmerized. And there I am, judging him.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s all these people I’m calling. All the amends I’m making. I felt like I should apologize to that couple.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “I guess. Did you just brush your teeth? You taste like fucking candy.”

  “Actually, I did. When I went to the bathroom after dinner. I thought if you wanted to kiss me, I’d be ready.”

  All of a sudden she holds me so tight. Seizes me. Grips me. “I fucking do not deserve you.”

  I smooth her short hair. “Yeah, you do. You deserve better than me.”

  “Really? Like who?”

  “I didn’t mean anybody in particular.”

  “Like Brad Pitt? I would do Brad Pitt in a heartbeat.”

  “There goes that Hallmark moment.”

  She laughs and asks, “So, what about the elusive Delia?”

  I shrug. “I call and she doesn’t pick up. Is she not there, or is she screening her calls? I was all gee-I-found-my-mom-again for a few days. Now I’m kind of mad. I think if you don’t want to see me, say so. I’ll be fine. I’ve seen you, and you’re nothing to write home about.”

  Colleen shakes her head. “Don’t be that way. We have to go out there again. I’ve got Tuesday off. Can you go Tuesday after English?”

  I like school. Before Colleen, school and movies were all I did. Now I still like it. Maybe even more. People talk to me, they ask me what’s playing at the mall and if anything is worth seeing. They’re stuck on a math problem or an être verb involving movement. I don’t always know, so we figure it out together. They ask about Colleen and actually seem sincere.