“Crocodiles,” she said. “It’d probably be crocodiles because it’s hot there.”
“Same thing.” Leo popped a cap off a beer bottle with his back teeth, and Lorraine winced. Metal on teeth was worse than dentist cotton. “Point is, either one can snap you in half.”
“They’re almost dinosaurs,” Gia said. “Remember when Dad held you over the alligator tank in Florida? Why’d he do that?”
“Because I asked him.” Leo took a sip, smirking, and gathered the twigs into a neat pile. “I heard they jump. I wish we still had the other ones.” He pointed to the empty tanks. “We could’ve trained them to swim behind the boat and snap at morons we don’t like.”
He held up his hands and snapped at the air. Gia’s patience for the basement was running out.
“But you want to really know why? Because how else can I be a Hells Angel? You think they’d want some kid from suburbia? No one here would take a bullet for anyone else, not if dinner was done or Sullivan was on. No way. It does not happen here.”
Gia rolled her eyes. Who actually believed a Hells Angel was a good goal?
“What does your dad think about you being a Hells Angel?” Lorraine smirked. They all knew what the answer was. Leo took a long drag off the bottle and slammed it down.
“Same as he thinks about anything that isn’t food on the table.”
Leo looked at Gia, waiting for her to nod along and chime in, but she couldn’t because it wasn’t right, not when her father was doing the right thing. Annoyance flickered on Leo’s face, and then he licked the joint shut, closing Gia out with it.
“Lorraine, you are sunshine down here,” Ray said. She was perched on the couch arm, taller than the rest of them, her hair still damp from the canal. “Like the grand marshal of San Gennaro, ready for a parade car.” Ray waved to an imaginary crowd.
Lorraine rolled her eyes, tossed a pillow at him, scattering the twigs on the table. Tommy dropped the stray twigs into a candle burning on the shelf. Green bits sank into melting wax. Tommy liked everything neat.
“My friend’s been asking about you.”
“Not interested,” Lorraine shot back, hardening into a glimmer of the person she’d been by the canal before. “Tell him I don’t go out with trash.”
“You don’t even know who it is.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
The boys smirked. Gia smoothed her shorts, wishing they’d change the subject. Dating made her feel less like a real girl, at least here. It was different in Lorraine’s room with magazines spread over the comforter as she tried on the clothes Lorraine picked out for her. There, she was less of a wild-haired troll doll.
“You’re not seeing anyone, from what I understand,” Ray said slowly.
“What’s it to you?” Lorraine crossed her arms.
“Just curious.”
“When’s the last time you were ever ‘just curious,’ Ray?” But Ray only shrugged, eyeing Lorraine the way Gia’s father looked at wood before cutting. Measure twice; cut once.
“I’m gonna make it with Flora this year,” Leo said, lighting the joint he’d just finished rolling.
“That’s disgusting,” Gia spit. “Don’t say that out loud.”
“You know what’s worse?” Leo pushed on. “The way dumb Joseph looks at you. You see him? Staring over the fence?”
“Shut up, Leo.” Gia’s heart pounded. Why did he have to embarrass her like this when it wasn’t even true? She swatted at Leo, but it only amused him, so Gia hit harder until Ray cleared his throat.
“Well . . .” Ray took a small white rock out of his shirt pocket and put it on the table, grinning. It looked like something swept out from under the couch.
Leo turned it over in his hands, sniffed it. It was the size of his fingernail. “Where’d you get it?”
“I’m starting a little business,” Ray said.
“Ray.” There was a warning in Lorraine’s voice. “What kind of business?”
Ray ignored her.
Gia glanced at Tommy, because they were a year apart and he was usually as dumb as she was with these things, but Tommy was expressionless. If they waited long enough, they wouldn’t have to ask. Tommy sat back. The rock could’ve been a quarter or a deck of cards, only it’d be swept away if any parents came down for a can of tomatoes or something. That much she knew.
“I thought we’d give it a try on this lovely evening.”
“Well, have fun with that.” Lorraine stood. “I’ve got to feed my mother.”
Gia followed because she’d already let Lorraine down once today, but what was it?
“Just wait,” Ray protested. He had the look he got when he was dealing cards, doling them out in a circle as everyone scooped and flipped, knowing he’d somehow cut the deck in his favor.
“She’s not gonna feed herself.” Lorraine was already at the steps, her hand on the banister. Something had spooked her.
“It might help her too,” Ray mumbled, and Lorraine glared. “I’m serious. Timothy Leary says LSD opens up people’s minds. You’re gonna argue with a Harvard professor? Just watch for a second. Gia, just wait.”
Ray rarely addressed her directly. A record ended, and the basement buzzed with silence.
“What does it do?” Gia asked. Ray’s eyebrow rose.
“Eu-phor-ia.” Leo exhaled a cloud of smoke, stretching the word into an exotic place with leis of tropical flowers around your neck at the airport. “And more energy than a million cups of coffee.”
He couldn’t even sit long enough as it was. The scrapes and bruises forming on his arms and hands were proof. She wanted to make a snide comment about the fence but couldn’t think of one fast enough.
“I’ll show you,” Ray teased, “so you’ll know when you’re at a party.”
The only parties Gia knew had streamers and stick ponies, not the parentless kind with pillows, black light bulbs that made clothes glow, spinning bottles, and holding hands like Lorraine told her about. She inched closer, because she would be in eighth grade soon. Things were changing. Lorraine paused on the steps, staring toward the upstairs door.
Ray crushed the rock with the bottom of a beer bottle into powder, like in the fingerprint kits her father used to bring home from the station. He’d let her dust everything until oily prints appeared like magic on doorknobs, handles, forgotten glasses of water.
“The good stuff comes like this. Powder is junk.”
Tommy and Leo leaned their elbows against their thighs. Was it working already, drawing everyone closer, or was it like the powders in her book that coated budding orange blossoms on trees or lay sprinkled in sidewalk cracks to stop weeds, only to cause sparrows to fall from trees? Or worse, like the invisible chemicals that got dogs or babies sick after they played on the floor or with their toys? But she wasn’t scared. She was curious. This was more interesting than watching her parents thumb through the TV Guide, arguing over what to watch while a bowl of popcorn steamed between them.
“Then you taste it.” Ray dipped his pinkie and rubbed it over his gums. “That’s good. My gums are numb. The numb-er the better,” he fake slurred, more animated now. He’d been waiting all day for this, and his excitement was contagious.
Leo reached forward, but Ray stopped him.
“Ladies first,” Ray said to Gia. “Just a taste.”
Gia let go of the banister, drifting toward Ray like a jellyfish in a current, avoiding Lorraine’s eye. Just a taste. Leo raised one surprised eyebrow. Doing something before Leo made her bolder. She dipped her pinkie, the powder illuminating a maze of lines, as her head did circles around itself: oranges growing slowly in a grove, sprinkled with snow in Florida, so far from here. It was not the same thing.
Ray mimed a little circle. Gia imitated him. A bitter taste spread through her mouth, worse than grapefruit, then went cold.
Her face puckered. The spell was broken. There was nowhere to spit, so she swigged from the beer bottle on the table, too disgusted to care that Ray
’s girl-kissing lips had been on this bottle, but the taste lingered. She felt tricked, worse than the time they’d told her pickle juice was soda and wouldn’t let her have any because she wasn’t five yet, but she’d begged and they’d let her, then laughed into each other like hyenas. Why did she bother coming here? She stomped to the steps.
“Hey, hey, hey. Wait. I know. It’s gross. You’re right. Just let me show you the next part so you’ll know.” Ray tore off a chunk of a magazine cover and scooped the powder into a line on his fist, then sucked it up his nose until it was gone, flashing his hand at the end like a magician. Why would anyone do that after what she’d just tasted? But Leo’s fist was out, which wasn’t surprising, considering he was stupid enough to think Vietnam and Hells Angels were good ideas. Ray smiled at her. She’d passed some kind of test. OK, she imagined him saying. You can join the over-ten club now. Part of her still wanted to be let in.
Ray had wanted to be a doctor once. He’d cut an old white T-shirt in half, wear it over his clothes, listen to their heartbeats with two cups on a string, the echo of a beat traveling from cup to cup. “What seems to be the problem here?” he’d ask while their feet dangled from the makeshift exam table on the counter, covered in newspaper so it crinkled like the real kind, prescribing M&M’S in Dixie Cups or candy cigarettes to calm their nerves while Nurse Lorraine took notes on a legal pad. Leo’s illnesses were always the best—tucking the lower half of his arm into his shirt so only his elbow popped out. “It was here this morning.”
Uncle Frank had come home one night to this scene in the kitchen, stinking of stale beer. “Like any of you got the brains to be doctors,” he’d laughed. “You’ll be lucky selling encyclopedias.” They’d stopped playing doctor after that. Ray never talked about what he wanted to be now. Maybe it was this.
“Hey,” Ray called after them. “I’ll pick you up later. We’ll go for a ride.”
A ride meant cruising Cross Bay, windows down, hollering at people they knew. She’d much rather be in the boat, dropping the outboard into the water with a splash, gliding feather smooth on black water until the bay opened up, gray and choppy, salt on her lips. Disappearing into the marsh to watch planes take off, looking for mussels, wind tangling her hair. President Kennedy had promised a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and Gia hoped her parents would let her take the boat out alone before then. That would be better than any walk on the moon. That would be eu-phor-ia.
“Shouldn’t we leave room for real girls?” Tommy pleaded.
“What would they want with you?” Ray shot back.
Gia slammed the basement door. A Florida magnet fell off the refrigerator, broke in two neat pieces.
“Shit.” Gia stuffed them into her pocket to glue and put back later, but Aunt Ida was already in the doorway, ghost white in her floral housedress and cold cream, ice clinking in her gimlet. She’d hated Gia since the time Gia had plucked all the translucent seedpods off her money tree and skipped around in a flannel nightgown, handing out “money” to every open hand, while Aunt Ida had made a big show of stuffing the stark branches into the trash and hauling it out to the curb. Her mother would hear about this for sure.
“Wind took it.” Lorraine shrugged. Aunt Ida nodded even though the windows were closed, the whole house buttoned to shut out dirt, bugs, and problems that couldn’t be scrubbed with bleach.
In the living room, Uncle Frank yelled out for another beer. As Aunt Ida shuffled to the fridge, wrapping a towel around her hand to open the door without a smudge, Gia wondered why anyone would ever want to grow up and be a woman.
Chapter Three
A flea bit a dog and died from its blood; insects died from vapors off poisoned plants. Bees carried contaminated nectar to a hive and turned it into poisonous honey: spreading, spreading, spreading. The book didn’t always say where these things happened, but it was here. Gia was sure of it—in her sparrows and stray cats and the rabbit hutch or the canals that led to the bay and beyond to the ocean.
Outside of Ray’s basement, the white rock felt connected to these things too. The day the sparrows had fallen, other birds had cut across the sky, gripped tree branches with tiny claws, oblivious to the ones on the ground, and for a moment, Gia had felt as if she were on the ground with her arms tossed out to either side, her hair in the grass, blank eyes staring at a regular blue sky. Something was happening to her while the other birds tugged worms from the earth. It was so upsetting she’d grabbed at herself to make sure she was whole before riding away on her bike, but the feeling persisted.
A horn honked outside. Ray. She wanted to get to the bottom of it. It was more important than riding around on Cross Bay, but that was hard to explain. The faded macramé owl on her wall gave her a silent hoot. Fine. She pulled on her shoes and swiped sticky lip gloss over her lips. More chemicals.
The stairs creaked under her weight, heavy with humidity.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked from the couch as a laugh track erupted on Ed Sullivan.
“Out.”
“Where’s out?” The volume lowered. This would not be easy.
“I don’t know. Just a ride.” The horn honked again. She almost hoped they’d leave her behind. The TV clicked off.
“I’ll walk you out.” Her father met her in the hallway. Gia wiped the lip shine off. Wearing it in front of him was embarrassing.
“Why don’t you just tie a bib around my neck and stick a Binky in my mouth?”
Her father searched her face. Gia glared back. Leo never got walked out. This was worse than him dropping her at school in the patrol car, whooping the siren to see which circles of kids scattered. None of them better be your friends. How was she supposed to grow up like this?
“You’re my daughter,” he said. “Shouldn’t I know where you go?”
“But Lorraine is going too.”
“Even more of a reason.”
The man at the canal flashed back into her mind. The wet dress was still in a heap upstairs. She wouldn’t have minded her father’s arm around her shoulder then, but now it was heavy, labored her walking, and felt more like ownership than protection.
The radio shook the car, scattering the parakeets. Lorraine’s front door opened. She was still in her honeycomb dress, glowing on the dark porch like a firefly. Ray lowered the music, one arm dangling from the window. There was no shuffling, no quick hiding. Ray had anticipated this, which made Gia feel less grounded, like riding a bike on ice.
“Hello again.” Ray smiled. His sleeves were rolled up, showing mismatched skin tones. Whatever that rock had done was hiding.
“Evening,” her father said. Why did Ray always get such gentlemanly respect even though he was a kid too?
“What’s the plan for this evening?” It sounded friendly, but something floated underneath. Her father leaned into the window like at a traffic stop for a “broken taillight.” Gia inched away now that his arm wasn’t around her. Lorraine picked her way over the uneven stones dotting her walkway, one arm holding her elbow, turning back to look at her house, chin quivering.
“Dad?” Gia whispered. He didn’t look up.
“Just a ride, Uncle Eddie. Maybe grab a burger, a milkshake.” He stretched the last word into two, snapping on the k like a broken rubber band. Leo and Tommy stifled giggles, but her father wasn’t laughing. They wiped their faces clean and shut up real quick.
“We got plenty of food inside, you know.” His eyes met Leo’s. “Your mother saved you a plate.”
Leo stared into his lap, his thumbs running circles over each other.
“That’s real nice,” Leo mumbled. Tommy’s shoulders shook from the effort not to laugh.
“Well, you know, that’s my point.” The trap snapped closed. “It’s not funny. In fact, it’s disrespectful. You’re punished for the fence but think you can ride around all night?”
The parakeets flapped wildly, neon green in the streetlight, bouncing the wire. So much for caring where his daughter w
as going.
“So I says to myself, What could be so important for him to forget?” He threw up his hands, mock considering. Said, Gia silently corrected, embarrassed. They’d been over this. Present tense. Past tense. Future tense. Grammar. He hadn’t just stepped off the boat. No need to sound like it.
A silent tear rolled down Lorraine’s cheek, catching the streetlight. She brushed it away. Everything was wrong tonight.
“And I couldn’t think of one good reason, so let’s go. Out of the car. Night’s over.”
“We didn’t mean any disrespect.” Ray held up his empty hands, trying to catch whatever was left of the night, but her father was angry-calm. It was over.
“My son should know better. It’s disappointing.”
Leo slid over Tommy, trying harder than usual not to fidget, but his face twitched. He rounded the car, the headlights washing him into a blur.
“Get inside.” Eddie pushed Leo toward the walkway, but Leo was only wearing one shoe. “And what is this?” Eddie threw up his hands.
Agnes was in the doorway, a silhouette of a bathrobe. The rabbits stirred in their cage. Straw fell through the chicken wire as Ray coasted to the stop sign, but Lorraine was still standing in the street, holding her elbow.
“Show’s over,” her father said, softening when he saw Lorraine. Where was that same nice for Gia? “What’d she do?” he asked Lorraine, noticing her tears.
The house was dark minus the flickering TV in the window. Lorraine’s chin quivered harder. It was puffy and red. Lorraine licked the tears away, holding her elbow tighter.
“Stay here,” Eddie whispered, and he headed into her house. Gia stood beside Lorraine, sorry she’d lingered in Ray’s basement now. It had probably upset Aunt Diane. Or the canal had. The TV snapped off. Something thumped. Eddie hauled a black trash bag to the curb. Glass broke. Diane screamed inside, but it didn’t sound like words. Lorraine stiffened. Agnes put her arm around her even though they were almost the same size.
A Frenzy of Sparks: A Novel Page 3
