“Okay, then. If you don’t want to.”
Realistically, I was too socially ill-equipped to do anything but fantasize about Masie. And yet she’d asked me to hang out after school, and being realistic wasn’t one of my strong suits. If it happened once, it could happen again, even if she’d already walked away with barely a goodbye. But I had a secret weapon. I had the locker right next to hers. For an entire school year. And now I had the truck. Who knew where that might lead?
Papa tells a story of how he and Maman met in New Orleans where Maman was visiting relatives. One night, he and his friends were cutting loose on Bourbon Street when he met up with Maman and her cousin, Neela. They hit it off right away and talked late into the night. Anyway, that’s the PG version, which is thankfully what he sticks to. I’m sure there was some kissing and other stuff that happened, knowing Papa.
“She was this beautiful California surfer girl and by the end of the night I knew I’d follow her anywhere . . . even to California,” he said. “Knew that after five minutes.”
“But Maman doesn’t surf. She doesn’t even like to go to the beach.”
“Don’t matter. I knew who she was in her heart,” he’d say, which never made any sense to me.
But he did follow her to California and they did get married and have four kids.
“We don’t have much luck in the LeFrancois family. But we’re lucky in love,” was the way that story always ended.
I sure as hell wasn’t.
Five
“Hey dude, it’s cool you’re picking me up but next time pull up closer to the front of school, so the kids can see me driving off with you.”
I looked over at Khalil, wondering at first if he was kidding, and then realizing he wasn’t.
“In this old piece of shit truck? Are you serious? My mom’s car is much nicer.”
“Nah, man, it’s all good. And you give me more cred . . . no offense to L-Mom.”
“L-Mom?”
“You know . . . your mom,” he mumbled. “Mrs. LeFrancois.” He shifted uncomfortably and pulled on the seat belt as if it was choking him.
“L-Mom. That’s so weird.”
“Hey, well, she practically raised me.”
I thought about how sad it would be to be raised by your maid. And I counted my lucky stars I had an actual mom to raise me, when she wasn’t busy with Khalil. At least one of my parents was mostly there at all times. Khalil’s parents were both world-famous doctors and they were never home—traveling to conferences all over the world when they weren’t seeing private patients. I stuck my arm out to signal a left turn since the truck had no functioning turn signals.
Sometimes I actually felt sorry for this kid. He was fifteen going on five. He just needed some good old-fashioned attention in my opinion. But it wasn’t my job to give it to him.
“Anyway, I’m not going to be picking you up tomorrow most likely. My mom’s car will be serviced by then so it’s back to L-Mom, I’m afraid.”
“Daaaaamn!” Khalil unsnapped his seat belt and leaned out the window, in the ridiculous stomach-churning, head-turning move some guys do when they see a girl walking down the street minding her own business. “Lookin’ good, pretty mama!”
“Put your seat belt back on,” I hissed, “or I’ll stop the truck right now and get out to buckle you in myself. Then those girls can see what a man you really are.”
With our lack of insurance, I didn’t need another vehicle mishap.
“Chill . . . chill, brah. Just checking out the fine ladies.”
“And why are you talking like that?” I said. “That’s not even you.”
He groped around for the two ends of the seat belt and snapped it shut. I knew he knew I wasn’t messing around. I would’ve stopped the car if I’d had to.
“Just having fun,” he said. “You know . . . fun. Have you heard of it?”
“Okay, well, just keep in mind that what’s fun for you I can one hundred percent guarantee wasn’t fun for those girls.” I started feeling sorry for him again. In spite of his size, which was bigger than me, he was still just a kid and probably trying to get attention, even if he was going about it all wrong. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” I said, this time more softly. “And you really should cool it with the girls. That kind of stuff doesn’t work on them.”
Listen to me. I had no idea what worked with girls, except now I had an inkling that access to wheels at least might help with Masie. Maybe the Khalil method really did work, but I seriously doubted it. I was all of eighteen months older than Khalil—I was a junior and he was just a freshman—so I felt a certain big brother responsibility, and I’d seen the look on the girls’ faces. It didn’t look welcoming; it looked more hostile. Why would anyone choose to be talked to that way? Common sense told me they wouldn’t, so I wanted to save Khalil from himself.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and wondered if I was being too hard on him. He was a panda bear. Too big to be cuddled but still stirring those feelings in you—as if you wanted to take him on your knee and tell him a bedtime story or something. Just a big old adorable bear. Well, maybe not adorable but . . . endearing somehow.
“How are you liking high school?” I asked. I was already feeling a little guilty about the way I’d jumped on him. I mean, how could you stay mad at a panda bear?
He hesitated just for a second and then I knew he was over it. Khalil was not the grudge-carrying type.
“It sucked the first few weeks when the seniors waited outside the cafeteria and milked us after lunch.”
I’d heard about this initiation even though it didn’t happen in my school. Our seniors had different methods of torture that didn’t involve throwing open milk cartons at unsuspecting freshmen. Thankfully, I survived everything they’d come up with two years earlier when I was a freshman.
“Well, at least you’re over the worst of it,” I said. “Now you can get on with your life and next year there’ll be a whole new crop of kids to take the heat off of you.”
“I wish,” Khalil said. I noticed the closer we got to his house, the more his language reverted to normal Khalil, which was actually pretty refined with a vocabulary superior to mine. “There’s a group of junior girls who torment everyone, but especially the freshmen.”
We were on Khalil’s street by then, so I slowed way down because there were usually cops patrolling his neighborhood to make sure nobody did anything to make it less of a paradise for the residents. In fact, Maman told me they had their own private security cops—a few patrol cars that never left the area. Which was good for Maman and Khalil but made me a little nervous in case I got pulled over for a busted taillight or something and I had to show proof of insurance.
“Just try to stay low key—under the radar. Don’t call attention to yourself in any way,” I said, wondering if I was talking about Khalil at school or me driving through that fancy neighborhood.
“Easier said than done,” Khalil said. “Those girls only exist to instill feelings of total worthlessness in others. One girl, especially. She has it out for me like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Dang, Khalil, you’re hella smart. Just ignore them and when you’re older, you’ll find a nice girl who’ll appreciate your . . . ,” I flailed around for something a girl would appreciate in Khalil. “ . . . Your mind. Or maybe your wallet.” I couldn’t resist but he knew I was kidding around and we were almost friends, so he just reached across the seat and cuffed me with one of those giant paws.
Anyway, who was I to talk? No mind, not like Khalil’s. No wallet. No luck.
Six
I left Khalil at his house happily rooted in his after-school ritual of delicious snacks (prepared by Maman) consumed in front of the TV. In spite of his pleas for me to join him, I knew I had to get to the Diaz Ranch. On my way out, Maman slipped me a few chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven and gave me a parting hug.
“Bonne chance,” she
whispered, even though the TV was on too loud for Khalil to hear us and he probably didn’t understand French. After all those years of being married to Papa, Maman had picked up a few of his expressions, and we both knew I’d be needing a dose of good luck. “Don’t let them hem you in on anything. Don’t sign anything. Don’t admit any guilt on our part. Just try to appeal to their humanity and ask if they’re willing to work something out that would be mutually beneficial to both parties.” Maman should’ve been a lawyer.
I didn’t have any trouble finding the place; everyone knew the Diaz Ranch, which was a huge spread where they mainly grew avocados. It was about a ten-minute drive from Khalil’s house.
Once I got there I surveyed the scene of the crime. That must be the overhanging branch where Maman stopped to pick the avocado. There was the driveway—really just a long gravel road that went straight back for who knows how long. I could see in my mind exactly how it must have played out. I even thought I could see the bare earth where the Range Rover must have skidded to avoid colliding with Maman’s car. But who would be at fault in that case? Couldn’t the driver of the Range Rover be just as responsible, if not more, than Maman? I wished that she’d stood up for herself when it all went down. And I hoped the girl wasn’t home—the one who yelled at Maman and took her picture.
I turned into the driveway, which was a one-car-only affair, wondering what would happen if two cars were taking this same driveway at the same time, going in opposite directions.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long to get the answer to that question. After driving a few hundred yards down the narrow tree-lined lane, along comes the white Range Rover I assumed must be the one my mom hit. And, sure enough, there was the dent in the bumper. And, sure enough, there was a girl about my age behind the wheel.
We both stopped and stared at each other for a fraction of a second before she got out of her car and, looking all mad, took a few steps toward me.
“One way,” she said, way too loud. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her mouth closed in a tight, firm line. She pointed in the direction she was going just in case there was any doubt in my mind about which way the one way was. She had a thick dark-brown braid that hung over one shoulder, which was about all I could take in without staring. Oh yeah, and she was also wearing a bright yellow dress. Without that cold, flat voice and the way her mouth twisted into a spiteful sneer, she might’ve actually become the object of my fantasy like most girls did. But the voice took over and kind of drowned out any other impression that could’ve stuck.
“Back up,” she said, as if I was going to challenge her to a game of chicken. It wasn’t that her voice was so awful . . . but the feeling behind it was.
I put the truck in reverse and backed up the entire way, with her right on my tail, leaving me absolutely no breathing room at all. Well, not exactly my tail but my hood, which had become my tail. If I’d had to slow down for a pothole or something, she would’ve rammed right into me. Once I was out on the street about ready to back into oncoming traffic—for all she cared—I pulled into the spot where my mom had probably been when the collision occurred.
At that point, the girl gunned her engine and drove off down the street without even a backward glance, leaving me alone to figure out how to get to the house if that driveway was one-way only. And if it was, why wasn’t there a sign? I finally decided to leave the truck on the side of the road and go by foot. Which turned out to be a pretty long walk—maybe a quarter mile since it took me almost ten minutes before I saw the main house which was . . . awesome. At least I knew she was gone and whoever was home had to be better than her. Or so I hoped.
Seven
Did I mention the ranch house was awesome? Sprawling Spanish-style white stucco walls with a red tile roof. Instead of avocado trees, the last twenty yards leading up to the house were lined by palm trees—the short stubby kind, not much taller than me, but with huge green fronds that spilled from the tops like giant toadstools. There was a circular driveway covered by smooth white stones that sparkled in the sun like diamonds. Blood red geraniums lined the hedges on either side of the massive oak door. And off to one side of the sprawling house were row after row of grapevines, with bright orange poppies filling in the gaps. All this under a sky as blue as my mom’s eyes, and maybe even bluer. I couldn’t comprehend what it would be like to live in such a place. Khalil’s grand mansion seemed like a dump in comparison.
The day was warm and I knew I wasn’t looking my best, sweating a bit after the walk, but mainly after the encounter with the girl. I took a deep breath and strode to the door wearing my toughest emotional suit of armor. Lifting the massive door knocker took some effort. It was in the shape of an upside-down horseshoe, maybe made for a horse the size of a tractor. The door knocker made a thunderous sound, suitable for rousing a giant like the one in Jack and the Beanstalk. I started off with two hefty knocks but after about thirty seconds I threw in a few more for good measure. I wanted the person inside to realize the person outside was not to be messed with.
After a few minutes, and a few more knocks, it was obvious no one was coming. That’s when I noticed the tiny white button to the side of the door—the doorbell. I pushed it and heard nothing. Five seconds later the door swung open.
On the other side of the door stood an older woman, grandmother-aged. She had her hair pulled back in a bun and was wearing an apron. I couldn’t tell if she smiled at me or maybe just winced, but she said, “Deliveries in the back.”
What? Do I really look that bad?
I thought about the new clothes I wasn’t going to be wearing any time soon because of Maman’s accident. I thought about the girl in the Range Rover and how she also must have thought I was a delivery boy when she nearly ran into me in the driveway. I picked up whatever dignity I still had left and straightened my spine.
“I don’t have a delivery,” I explained. “I’m here to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Diaz.”
“I’m Mrs. Diaz,” she said and smiled (or winced) again. She was wearing a plain sort of dress under her apron—the type my mom would call a housedress, something she’d wear to work to look presentable but that would also allow her to cook and clean without having to worry about stains. I have to admit, at first I’d taken the old lady for the maid.
“In that case, I’d like to talk to you about the accident my mother had yesterday with your . . . ” I hesitated for a brief moment. Here was my chance to get on her good side. “With your daughter.”
“My daughter?” Her voice crackled. “I don’t have a daughter. You must mean my granddaughter.” She smile-winced.
“Oh, your granddaughter. I beg your pardon, I mistook you for . . . ” I trailed off and let her guess what I mistook her for.
“What’s she done now?” The old lady looked impatient. “How much do you want?”
How much did I want? Had I just gone from zero to hero? How much could I ask for and get out of there with quickly? But as Papa is so fond of saying, the LeFrancois family isn’t lucky—except in love, and love wasn’t an issue in this negotiation.
“Who is it, Mother?” A slightly stocky but striking man appeared by her side. He had a sort of rugged look with all straight lines that reminded me of an eagle. We’d gone from grandmother generation to parent generation. The man took one look at me, sizing me up in a flash. “Deliveries in the back,” he said.
“He’s not here for a delivery,” Mrs. Diaz said impatiently, as if speaking to a child. “He’s here for something Bettina’s done.”
My hopes were still high at that point. “I’m here regarding the . . . accident yesterday.” I hoped that by deepening my voice, I would appear to be older and maybe even a little threatening.
“Oh. You the guy who ran into Bettina’s car? I thought she said it was a lady.”
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be getting the settlement I hoped for.
“I . . . uh, I think it’s not clear who was at fault exactly. I’m here on
behalf of my mom who couldn’t make it because she couldn’t take time off from work. I was hoping we could reach some sort of agreement.”
The old woman moved slightly behind her son before reappearing at his side. She was like a tiny bird—a finch—flitting around and carefully observing me with piercing round black eyes. She nodded her silver head as if to encourage me and root against her absentee granddaughter at the same time. Her son, on the other hand, stared blankly and I couldn’t read his expression. “Go on,” he said.
“So . . . ” I realized I hadn’t really thought any of this through beyond Maman’s parting instructions that I was scrambling to recall. Something about not admitting guilt. Something about appealing to his humanity.
“Look . . . ” I guess he got tired of waiting. “The truth is your mother was at fault. Bettina took pictures and your mother was evidently on our property. I’m not sure why she was pulled over but I’m venturing a guess she was after some of our avocados. A lot of people think that’s a public pathway, but it’s not. That’s our property even on the other side of the fence. If you want, I can get nasty about it, but I don’t think you want that and I don’t either, so I tell you what I’m going to do. I keep a fairly high deductible on collision for our cars . . . a thousand dollars. You pay the deductible and we’ll call it even. I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to report it to your insurance company or not.”
This was a man who was obviously used to giving orders. He gave me a chance to step up, but I hadn’t been fast enough. And I knew enough to know that with a guy like him, once you’ve had your chance you don’t get another one. I’d blown it. A thousand dollars? Might as well be a million. So, we were back to the plan Maman had yesterday. Work it off somehow. But how? And would he go for that? Would he even believe we didn’t have more than five hundred in the bank and that was everything we had in the world?
Once again, I struggled to assemble any shreds of dignity still clinging to me.
Beau and Bett Page 2
