My Life Next Door

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  “Uh, Thorpe plays for the other team,” I tell her.

  “Well, I hardly think his sports allegiances matter,” she says. “He’s always had lovely manners.”

  “He’s been out of the closet since middle school, Mom.”

  She blinks rapidly, absorbing this. “Oh. Oh. Well, then.”

  Her cell phone rings, loud in the quiet air. “Hi, honey.” Mom tucks the phone to her shoulder, fluffing her hair even though Clay’s not present.

  “When? Okay, I’ll turn it on right now. Call you back after!”

  She reaches for the clicker, neatly contained in a wicker basket on her bedside table. “Channel Seven covered my speech at the Tapping Reeve House. Tell me what you think, Samantha.”

  I wonder if the children of movie stars get this weird sense of disconnect I have now. The person on-screen looks like the woman who makes lemonade in our kitchen, but the words coming out of her mouth are alien. She’s never had a problem with immigrants before. Or gay marriage. She’s always been conservative in a moderate way. I listen to her, I look at her excited face next to me, and I don’t know what to say. Is this Clay? Whatever it is, it makes me squirm.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Mom isn’t out campaigning, busier than ever, Clay’s at our house. This takes getting used to. As I saw from the start, Clay’s different. He spreads himself out, taking off his tie and tossing his jacket down on the sofa, kicking his shoes any which way, thinking nothing of opening the refrigerator, taking out leftovers and eating them straight from the Tupperware. Things Mom would never allow Tracy or me to do. But Clay gets a free pass. I walk into the kitchen some mornings to find him cooking breakfast for Mom, mysterious breakfasts full of things she’s never eaten, like grits and home fries. While Mom studies the schedule of the day, Clay fills up her coffee cup, her plate, planting a kiss on her head as he does so.

  The morning after we choose clothes, he’s in the kitchen in an apron (!) when I come downstairs. “Your mama’s just gone out to get the papers, Samantha. Would you like some biscuits with sausage gravy?”

  Yuck, no. He is wielding the frying pan with the same easy confidence he seems to bring to everything. It’s odd to have a man feeling comfortable in our house.

  Then I realize, this is the first time I’ve seen him alone since I ran into him on Main Street. It’s my chance to ask him what’s up with that woman, but I have no idea how to begin.

  “Here. Try this,” he says, setting a plate in front of me. It looks like someone’s thrown up on a biscuit, but it actually smells really good.

  “C’mon,” he says. “Don’t be one of those girls who’s afraid to put a little meat on her bones.”

  His hair is flopping boyishly on his forehead and his eyes smile. I want to like him. He makes Mom so happy. And he did stand up for me about curfew. I shift uncomfortably.

  “Thanks, by the way. For helping me out the other night,” I finally say, poking at the lumpy gravy with my fork.

  Clay chuckles. “I was young once too, honey.”

  You still are, I think, wondering suddenly if he’s closer to my own age than Mom’s.

  “C’mon, Samantha. You’re no coward. Take a bite.”

  All right, I think. I won’t be a coward. I look him in the eyes.

  “So who was that woman I saw you with?”

  I expect him to tell me it’s none of my business. Or say he has no clue what I’m talking about. But he doesn’t miss a beat.

  “Downtown? Have you been fussin’ about that?”

  I shrug. “I’ve been wondering. If I should say something to my mom.”

  He plants his hands on the counter, looking me in the eye. “Because you saw me having lunch with an old friend?”

  The air has shifted a little. He’s smiling, but I’m not sure he means it now. “You did seem pretty friendly,” I say.

  Clay studies me, still leaning casually against the counter. I meet his eyes. After a moment, he suddenly seems to relax. “She’s just a pal, Samantha. She was a girlfriend, a while back, but that’s history. I’m with your mama now.”

  I make little indentations in the gravy with my fork. “So Mom knows about her?”

  “We haven’t sat down and talked about our pasts much. Too much goin’ on right here and now. But your mama has no call to be concerned about Marcie. Any more than I would fret about your daddy. Want some OJ?” He pours me a glass before I can answer. “We’re grown-ups, sugar. We all have pasts. I bet even you do. But those don’t much matter compared to the present, right?”

  Well…right, I guess. I mean, I can barely remember what I saw in Michael or Charley.

  “We all have presents too,” he adds, “that we don’t tell even the people we love every little thing about.”

  I look at him sharply. But no, that’s crazy. He’s here even less often than Mom. He couldn’t possibly know about Jase. But wait, does that mean…

  “Like I said, Marcie’s the past. She’s not my present, Samantha. And you know me well enough to know I’m a heckuva lot more concerned with the future than the past.”

  I’m polishing off the surprisingly good biscuit when Mom comes in, flushed from the heat, with a large stack of newspapers. Clay scoops them out of her hands, gives her a big kiss, pulls out a stool for her.

  “I’ve been working on making a Southerner out of your daughter, Gracie. Hope you’ve got no objection to that.”

  “Of course not, sweetie.” She slides onto the stool next to me. “That looks delicious. I’m famished!”

  Clay gives her two biscuits and ladles on the gravy, and Mom tucks into it like a lumberjack. So much for her usual breakfast of cantaloupe and rye toast.

  And so it goes. He’s in our lives, in our house, everywhere now.

  That feels like the last I see of Mom for a while. She dashes out the door every morning with her change of clothes for the evening hanging off the backseat hook in her car. The longest conversations I have with her are by text, as she lets me know she’s at a cookout, clam broil, ribbon cutting, fund-raising harbor cruise, union meeting…whatever. She even falls behind on vacuuming, leaving Post-it notes directing me to pick up the slack. When she is home for dinner, Clay’s there too, and halfway into the meal he shoves aside his plate, pulling out a pad to scribble notes on, absently reaching for his fork from time to time, fishing a piece of meat or a bite of tomato off whatever plate he lands on—his own, mine, Mom’s.

  You hear that phrase “he lives and breathes” about people’s enthusiasms, but I’ve never seen it in action quite like this. Clay Tucker lives and breathes politics. He makes Mom, with her relentless schedule, seem like a casual dabbler. He’s turning her into someone new, someone like him. Maybe that’s a good thing…But the fact is, I miss my mom.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Ms. Reed! Ms. Reed? Could you please come here?” Mr. Lennox’s voice slices through the air, practically vibrating with rage. “This instant!”

  I blow my whistle, put the Lifeguard Off Duty sign on my chair after making sure there are no small kids without parents in the water, and head for the Lagoon pool. Mr. Lennox is standing there with Tim. Once again Mr. Lennox looks a few breaths from an apoplexy. Tim, amused and a little wasted, is squinting in the midday sun.

  “This”—Mr. Lennox points to me—“is a lifeguard.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” Tim says. “I get it now.”

  “No, you do not get it, young man. Do you call yourself a lifeguard? Is that what you call yourself?”

  Tim’s expression is familiar, struggling to decide whether to be a smart ass. Finally he says, “My friends are allowed to call me Tim.”

  “That is not what I mean!” Mr. Lennox whirls on me. “Do you know how many demerits this young man has accrued?”

  He’s only worked at the B&T for a week, so I make a conservative guess. “Um…five?”

  “Eight! Eight!” I’m almost expecting Mr. Lennox to burst into a ball of flame. “Eight demerits. You’ve w
orked here two summers. How many demerits do you have?”

  Tim folds his arms and looks at me. “Fraternizing” on the job is worth four demerits, but he’s never said a word—to me or, apparently, Nan—about seeing me and Jase.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. None.

  “None!” Mr. Lennox says. “In his brief stint on the job, this young man has”—he holds up one hand, bending down finger by finger—“taken food from the snack bar—twice—without paying. Not worn his hat—three times. Allowed someone else to sit in the lifeguard chair—”

  “It was just this little kid,” Tim interjects. “He wanted to see the view. He was, like, four.”

  “That chair is not a toy. You have also left your post without posting the off duty or on break sign—twice.”

  “I was right there by the pool,” Tim objects. “I was just talking to some girls. I would have stopped if someone was drowning. They weren’t that hot,” he adds this last to me, as though he owes me an explanation for this unaccountable sense of responsibility.

  “You didn’t even notice me when I stood behind you clearing my throat! I cleared it three times.”

  “Is not noticing the throat-clearing a separate offense from not putting up that sign? Or is it three different demerits because of the three times, because—”

  Mr. Lennox’s face seems to contract and freeze. He straightens up as tall as a very short man can. “You”—finger jabbed at Tim’s chest—“do not have the Bath and Tennis spirit.” He punctuates each word with another jab.

  Tim’s lip twitches, another bad move.

  “Now,” Mr. Lennox thunders, “you do not have a job.”

  I hear a sigh from behind me and turn to find Nan.

  “A week,” she whispers. “A new record, Timmy.”

  Mr. Lennox turns on his heel, calling, “Please return all items of your wardrobe that are club property to the office.”

  “Aw, shit,” Tim says, reaching into the pocket of the hoodie draped over the lifeguard chair and pulling out a pack of Marlboros. “I was so hoping I’d get to keep the cute hat.”

  “That’s it?” Nan’s voice rises unexpectedly in both pitch and volume. “That’s all you have to say? This is the fourth job you’ve lost since you got kicked out of school! Your third school in three years! Your fourth job in three months! How is it even possible to get fired that often?”

  “Well, that movie theater gig was boring as all fuck, for one thing,” Tim offers, lighting up.

  “Who cares! All you had to do was take tickets!” Nan shouts. Tim’s kept his voice low, but Mr. Lennox was loud and Nan, who hates a scene, doesn’t seem to care that she’s making one now. A group of small kids are staring, round-eyed. Mrs. Henderson has her cell phone out once again. “And you screwed that up by letting everyone you know in for free!”

  “They charge crazy-ass prices for popcorn and candy—the management was hardly losing money.”

  Nan puts her hands in her hair, sweat-damp with either heat or frustration. “Then the senior center. Giving joints out to senior citizens, Timmy? What was that?” Mrs. Henderson has now moved in closer, under the pretext of heading toward the snack bar.

  “Hey, Nano, if my ass were in a wheelchair in a place like that, I’d only hope you’d show up with some weed. Those poor bastards needed their reality blurred. It was like a public service. They had them square dancing. They had fake American Idol contests. They had frickin’ funny hat day. It was like Torture the Elderly Fest. They—”

  “You’re such a goddamn loser,” Nan, who never swears, says. “It’s not possible we’re really related.”

  Then a surprising thing happens. Hurt slices across Tim’s face. He shuts his eyes, pops them open again to glare at her.

  “Sorry, sis. Same gene pool. I could resent you for swimming to the deep end with all the perfect genes, but since they make you so fucking miserable, I don’t. You can have ’em.”

  “Okay stop it, you two,” I say, the way I used to when they clashed as kids, rolling around on the grass, pinching, scratching, punching, no holds barred. It always scared me, afraid they’d really get hurt. Somehow the potential seems so much bigger now that words are the weapons of choice.

  “Samantha,” Nan says. “Let’s get back to work. We need to do those jobs we still have.”

  “Right,” Tim calls after her retreating back. “’Cause then you get to keep the great outfits! Priorities, right, Nano?” He picks up his hat, puts it on the lifeguard chair, and stubs out his cigarette in it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I’ve got a surprise.” Jase opens the door of the van for me a couple days later. I haven’t seen Tim or Nan since the incident at the B&T, and I’m secretly glad for a break from the drama.

  I slide into the van, my sneakers crunching into a crumpled pile of magazines, an empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, various Poland Spring and Gatorade bottles, and lots of unidentifiable snack wrappers. Alice and her Bug are evidently still at work.

  “A surprise, for me?” I ask, intrigued.

  “Well, it’s for me, but you too, kind of. I mean, it’s something I want you to see.”

  This sounds a little unnerving. “Is it a body part?” I ask.

  Jase rolls his eyes. “No. Jeez. I hope I’d be smoother than that.”

  I laugh. “Okay. Just checking. Show me.”

  We drive to Maplewood, two towns over, more run-down than Stony Bay. Jase pulls the van into a parking lot with a huge red, white, and blue sign that says “French Bob’s Used Cars.”

  “French Bob?”

  “Bob unfortunately thinks that adding ‘French’ makes him sound classier.”

  “Got it. So, you’d be French Jase?”

  “Oui, oui. Come on. I want you to tell me what you think of her.”

  Her?

  He takes my hand after we climb out of the car, pulling me into the back lot. There are lots and lots of extremely aged vehicles in various states of disrepair, with big white painted lettering on their windshields. I peer at them, noticing that they all say things like “A STEAL AT $3,999!” or “THEY DON’T MAKE ’EM LIKE THIS ANYMORE” or “PURRS LIKE A TIGER CUB.”

  We come to a stop in front of a grayish white car with a huge hood and tiny cockpit. The windshield says “THIS SWEET BABY COULD BE YOURS FOR MERE PENNIES.”

  “Mere pennies meaning, of course, fifteen hundred bucks,” Jase says. “But isn’t she beautiful?”

  I’m no car connoisseur, but his eyes are shining, so I say enthusiastically, “Gorgeous.”

  He laughs at me. “I know, not now. But she’s a ’73 Mustang. Picture her with paint instead of primer. Picture her with new seat covers and a leather steering wheel and—”

  “Fuzzy dice?” I ask dubiously. “Candy apple–red paint? Leopard-print seat covers?”

  Jase shakes his head. “Just who do you think I am today, Samantha? No way. British racing green, of course. And no dice. And, before you ask, no dancing hula girl figurines either.”

  “In that case, I love it.”

  He grins. “Good. Because I know I can get her working again, and she’s a convertible and I just wanted to make sure you…liked her because…I just wanted to be sure you did.” He pats the hood, ducking his head slightly. “I’ve been saving for this now for four years. I should put it toward college, I know,” he says, as though expecting me to give him a lecture on fiscal responsibility. “But Alice, like, always has the Bug these days. Apparently Brad is a lousy driver. And you and I can’t have all our dates on your roof. Besides, this is such a deal.”

  My attention has been caught by one thing. “You’ve been saving for a car since you were thirteen?”

  “What? You think that’s weird?”

  His smile’s so infectious that I’m returning it before I even begin to answer. “I don’t know. I just thought thirteen-year-olds went for the Xbox first.”

  “Joel taught me to drive when I was thirteen—in the beach parking lot in the fall. I ju
st got hooked. That’s why I started learning how to fix things on cars…since I couldn’t legally drive ’em yet. You still think I’m nuts, huh? I can tell.”

  “In a good way,” I assure him.

  “I can live with that. Now come on, ma chérie, and let’s pay French Bob.”

  Bob agrees to have the Mustang towed to the Garretts’ house by Friday. As we climb back into the van, I ask, “Where are you going to work on her?” Already, I too am referring to this car as if it has a gender.

  “I’ll just do it in the driveway. Joel takes the cycle to work these days, so that space will be clear. Besides, there’s no room in the garage until my mom has that yard sale she’s been talking about for five years.”

  I can already see my mother, hands on hips, glaring through the window at the disabled car and huffing out an impatient breath. “A rusty old wreck now! What next? Plastic flamingos?” I squeeze Jase’s knee, and he instantly covers my fingers with his own, giving me his slow, intoxicating smile. I feel a pang, as though I’m handing over a part of myself I’ve never offered before. And I suddenly remember Tracy worrying about getting in too deep with Flip. It’s only been a few weeks and somehow I seem to have gotten far from shore.

  Jase’s schedule is as busy as Mom’s. The hardware store, training, some odd jobs fixing things at the bike shop, delivering lumber…One afternoon after lifeguarding, I’m hesitating on our porch, wondering about calling him, when I hear a whistle and he’s walking up our driveway.

  He gives my jacket with its epaulets and stupid crested suit the once-over. I’d been so eager to get out of the B&T that I hadn’t bothered to change. “Admiral Samantha, once again.”

  “I know,” I say. “Lucky you, getting to wear anything you want.” I wave my hand at his faded shorts and his untucked forest green oxford shirt.

  “But you still look better than me. When does your mom get home today?”

  “Late. She’s at some fund raiser at the Bay Harbor Grille.” I roll my eyes.