As Cool As I Am, page 13
“That was one time. One disgusting kiss.”
“I still haven’t heard enough about that,” Mom interrupted.
Dad kept working his fingers. “Lucy’s carrying home drunks. She’s got a boyfriend.”
“I do not have a boyfriend!” I shouted.
Dad paused with another finger poised to go down. “Anything else I should know about along those lines?” he asked Mom.
“Oh, grow up, Luce,” Mom said. She waved her hands in the air. “Boy germs! Ahh, cooties! You’re not six anymore.”
“I wish I was,” I said, and Mom looked like she knew what I meant, like she wanted to go back there with me herself.
“Kenny’s mom didn’t say yes, did she?” I asked one more time.
Dad nodded. “She and Kenny will be over in time for the second football game.”
Mom laughed. “She said that?”
“Not exactly. But I could tell. She’s definitely a fan.” Football was the one thing Dad watched on TV. It was about the only time he ever sat still. Mom and I couldn’t stand it.
Mom shook her head. “We don’t know her from Adam, Chuck.”
“Luce and Lenny are tight, though. We should get to know his mom. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun?” I blurted.
Dad glanced at me but kept on at Mom. “And it won’t be any more work. That turkey’s-”
"‘Big enough to stuff a pope.’ I know,” Mom said.
“Just buy wine,” I said. “Plenty of it.”
They turned to me.
“For Kenny?” Dad asked.
“Or you?” Mom said.
“Ha, ha.” I stood, my stomach clenching and unclenching, hoping they’d let me through to the bathroom.
But Dad said, “No time for a shower, Luce. We’re off to the mountains.”
“Can I at least pee?”
Dad checked his watch. “Well,” he said, drawing it out like it was this big decision.
So that’s what we did. The three of us. Off to get our Christmas tree. A postcard family. Dad making up his own words to Christmas carols all day long. The traditional snowball fight, Mom ducking and yelling. Me blasting off Dad’s hat. Eventually, Dad cranked up his monster chain saw and ripped through a tree trunk no thicker than my wrist. Zip! Made me flinch. Made me sick to my stomach. He was done that fast, but I was the one who staggered, on my way down.
As they dragged out the tree, me trudging along after them, falling behind, Dad started playing grab-ass with Mom. I could barely hear him sing, “Lainee with your rear so tight, won’t you be my lay tonight.”
Slapping at his hand, Mom laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t see Kenny again till Monday morning. Before we took one step away from our front gate, he asked, “What happened? I can’t even remember getting home.”
We headed toward school, leaving Mom and Dad to whatever. I looked to see if Kenny could be kidding. “I carried you.”
“I took a shower. I could smell it in the morning. The shampoo.”
“Your mom. You puked all over yourself. She cleaned you up.”
Kenny’s eyes closed. Maybe he was seeing her giving his dad the same kind of shower. “You were there? You guys talked to each other?”
The chinook had torched off all the snow over the weekend, leaving everything gray and brown. “A little. You know. ‘Hold his arm there.’ ‘Get his socks.’ “
Kenny groaned. “How was Mom?”
“It was the middle of the night. You were hammered. How do you think she was?”
“Was she mad at you?”
“Me? I don’t know. I guess.”
“She was,” he answered. “That’s how it always went with Dad. Get mad at whoever he was with. Me if nobody else was around.”
“She said we’d have a talk sometime.”
“Don’t do it. It’ll all be crazy lies.”
“She saw me. The other time. When I left that morning. She remembered me.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, you definitely want to avoid that chat.”
“You’re coming over for Thanksgiving. How am I supposed to avoid that?”
“We’re what?”
“She didn’t tell you? She called the next morning. Dad invited her over.”
Kenny whispered, “Fuck,” which was something he never said. We walked another block before he said, “So, how was the party?”
I kind of laughed. “You really don’t remember any of it?”
“Just how I drank Justin and Tim under the table.”
“That was about it. After that the party pretty much fell apart.”
After another block, Kenny asked, “What happened to my face?”
One cheek was scraped, his nose sort of swollen. “That bitch Jaimie pushed you off the front steps.”
“I thought Justin might have popped me one.”
“Justin? What for?”
Kenny puffed out a laugh. Or a sigh. “Just for being me. The pesky kernel. For being in the way with you.”
“Once you set to outdrinking them, you weren’t in the way long.”
He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
“I mean, there wasn’t much left to punch. Would’ve been like boxing with a jellyfish.”
Kenny grinned helplessly.
I stopped. “Kenny, what were you thinking, anyway? What were you trying to prove?”
He shrugged, looking up at the brick face of Great Falls High. “I thought I could distract them from you.”
“By getting shitfaced?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I laughed, giving him a quick hug. I called him my knight in shining armor.
Which, when we got into school, Justin and Tim falling in beside us like they’d been doing it every day of the year, was not what they called him. They hooted, clapping Kenny on the back, calling him Animal and Beermeister, Justin so close to me he was like wallpaper. They never left us alone. Thank God it was a short week in school.
But Thanksgiving Day made school, even with Justin and Tim as our shadows, seem not so bad.
Working together all day in the kitchen, Mom and Dad couldn’t keep from touching, from bumping “accidentally” as they moved around, cutting up vegetables for stuffing, looking for breadcrumbs. Dad peeled a bag of spuds, dropping them into a pot of water, reminiscing about KP duty in the army. He always said the same thing when he was home for a holiday’s cooking. He’d never been in the army in his life.
Dad missed as many holidays as he made, as if he had to share the wealth, one with us, one with work, so when he was around, it was always a huge production. It was the one time Mom didn’t mind cooking. Pretended that she could. Though inviting somebody else in was different. Somebody they had to share each other with. Besides me, I mean. I had to be there. They’d gotten used to that. I think. They’d been married five months when I was born. First math problem I ever did.
I tried to help cook, but Mom said the kitchen was too tight for all three of us anymore. She sent me out to vacuum. To dust. “Don’t forget the bathroom. Put out fresh towels.”
Maybe they hadn’t gotten used to me. Maybe I was just getting too big to ignore.
I did what had to be done, then dropped down hard on the couch. To keep from gnawing off the stubs of my nails, I fiddled with the remote, turning on the football game, watching it as much as Kenny and I used to watch TV, what seemed like years ago. I kept wondering how I could escape.
Mom and Dad came into the living room together, still looking like the high-schoolers they’d been about the time I came along. Dad had bread crumbs clinging to his waist, caught in the rough wool of his shirt.
“We’re going to clean up, Luce,” Mom said.
“Company’s coming,” Dad said. “Get to meet your new man.”
“You’ve met him plenty of times, Dad,” I said. “And he is not my new man. He is not my old man. He’s not even a man. He’s a kid. So am I. I don’t have a man. Why on earth would I want one?”
“Did I tell you she was smart?” Mom asked.
“My side of the family.” He bumped his hip against Mom’s. I clapped a hand over my eyes, dragged it down the length of my face.
“Why don’t you get dressed, anyway,” Mom said. “Even if, hope of hopes, you never do need a man.”
“What do you mean get dressed? What are you making this?”
Mom smiled and shook her head. Dad studied the TV for the score. “This is what people do, Luce. When they invite somebody over. They cook. They clean. They get dressed up. They make it an occasion.”
“People? Like who?”
“Real people. The rest of the world.”
“How would we know one thing about what real people do?”
Mom said, “Turn off the TV, Luce. Come on up. Wear something nice. We’re going to hit the shower.”
So I tromped up after them. They knew I was there. When they turned on the shower. When they started going at it in there. You could hear by the rhythm of the water pounding down. The pulse of it. It was like they were teaching me what dates were about, what it meant to be an adult. They had to know I could hear. Even if they hadn’t slipped, if I hadn’t heard the popping jingle of the shower-curtain rings as they tore the curtain down, the staggering thumps of their bodies.
I jumped off the edge of my bed, bolting for their room. That kind of crash didn’t make you think; it made you rush for the remains. I was all the way into their room when I heard what I always heard from them. Laughing. Hysterical laughing. Both of them. Mom asking, in gasps, “What on earth?”
Dad bellowed, “No chains can hold us!”
I stood there, and as the laughing died out, I heard something new. A slick, plasticky rustle, gaining on itself, that heartbeat throbbing of theirs. The other thing I always heard from them. I could imagine them on the floor, the wet plastic of the shower curtain wrapped around them. The pinkish-white glow wherever it stuck to their bodies. Still going at it.
There was something wrong with them.
Turning away—thank God I hadn’t barged in on that—I caught myself in the long mirror on the open closet door. I’d only taken my shirt off. I mean, what the hell was I going to wear to my own execution? I looked at myself in my jeans and bra. Then I slammed the door, but it whooshed shut: nothing that, in their state, they stood a chance of hearing.
After sitting in front of my closet forever, I just changed my jeans. Put on a sweater. The baggiest I had. Trying to make myself, for Kenny’s mom, a harmless, shapeless blob. I saw my bike helmet in the bottom of my closet, tangled up with my shoes and dust bunnies, and thought about wearing it. The only protection I had. That and the Planned Parenthood condoms in the back of my underwear drawer. Wasn’t much between me and my life.
Standing in the hallway bathroom, looking at my hair, I thought about asking Dad for the old shave. Get out the motorboat and turn me back into a boy. That ought to take the fight out of Mrs. Crauder.
But I just slicked it down, let it dry however. I did not want to look how people thought I looked. Not the way Justin saw me. Or Jaimie. Kenny. Not for her.
When Mom and Dad came down, Dad had a sport coat on. It had leather patches on the elbows and another on the shoulder, like he might decide to jump up during dinner and do some shooting. I’d never seen him in anything like it in my life.
Mom looked like she’d spent every second upstairs trying to look exactly how I was trying not to look. Her blouse had a nice cleavage “V” in it, the pleats of her black pants were pressed tight over her almost flat belly. I could smell the spray holding her every hair.
Of course I knew that wasn’t how she’d spent every second.
My mouth hung open, seeing the two of them standing like that in our usual old house. When I could, I asked, “How’s the shower?”
Dad grinned, but Mom looked right through me. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
“What? What do you want?”
“Well, I thought that this once-”
“What, Mom, what do you want me to look like?”
“Something a little more-”
“More like you? How about your thong bikini? Would that fit your plans? What are you, Mrs. Theodora? Trying to seal the bargain here tonight?”
If Mom’s eyes had been lasers, I’d have been a smoldering ribbon on the couch.
Dad said, “What is it with the two of you?” but as Mom and I kept up our stare-down, he got this kind of far-off smile. “I forgot about that bikini.”
Mom swatted him on the chest with the back of her hand. “Down, boy,” she said.
“Who’s Mrs. Theodora?” he asked.
“It’s hormones, Chuck. Remember those days? She’s not responsible for what she says.” Mom gave him a push toward the kitchen. “Let’s go check the turkey.”
God, that pissed me off, getting swept under the rug that way. “Who the hell’s got the hormone problem in this family?” I shouted. Mom whirled around, a warning finger already leveled my way. The doorbell rang.
Dad glanced at Mom. At me. “No, don’t get up,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dad ushered Mrs. Crauder into our hallway. He took her coat and passed it to Mom. Mrs. Crauder had on black jeans and a sweater kind of like mine. There was nothing she had that she wanted shown off. Kenny was dressed the same as any day. Jeans. Sweatshirt. He walked like his chin was glued to his chest.
“Come in, come in,” Dad kept saying. “It’s freezing out there.”
The chinook wasn’t finished with us yet. It was maybe fifty-five outside. Sixty. Kenny hadn’t bothered with a coat.
His mom said hello, thanks for the invitation, her eyes flicking around, taking in the details. There wasn’t much to see. We were not Jaimie Tilton. No knickknack cabinets, no oil paintings under their own lights. But maybe the lack of clutter caught her eye, the lack of dirt. When she saw me on the couch, her eyes locked on to mine for an instant, then went on roving.
Mom asked, “Could I get you anything? A glass of wine? Beer? Soda?”
Mrs. Crauder’s eyes flicked back to me. “No, thank you. Nothing for me, please.”
I clicked the remote. Instant crowd noise. “The game’s on. Dad says you’re a fan.”
Kenny’s mom seemed surprised. “I used to watch some. With Kenny’s dad. He bet on it.” Her expression said that was more than she’d meant to say, and we all caught it.
“Hope he had better luck than I ever did,” Dad said.
“That man wouldn’t know luck if it walked up and bit him.”
Dad grinned. He would have been proud to have said that himself. “It’s walked up and bit me plenty,” he said. “I got Luck’s teeth marks all over my-”
“Chuck.”
I’d never once known Dad to gamble. To ever make a single mention of it. Dad the chameleon. I’d hardly ever gotten to watch him change colors right before my eyes. Not for anybody but us.
Mom brought out a plate of water chestnuts wrapped in blackened bacon, which explained the burned-fat smell. We all sat around the living room and the plate. Mom asked me to turn off the TV. I muted it. Mom gave me a look, but Dad kept sneaking peeks. Kenny studied the floor. Now and then I caught his mom’s darting glances run aground on Mom’s cleavage, her legs.
Mom said, “It’s nice to finally meet you. Kenny and Lucy have been friends forever.”
“We’ve met,” Kenny’s mom said. “When Kenny and I first moved here. I would never let him play with someone I didn’t even know.”
Mom blinked. “Of course not. I mean it’s nice to get a chance to know each other better.”
Dad picked up one of Mom’s appetizers. The bacon was so hard you could hear the crunch of it in his mouth. “You grew up here, didn’t you?” he asked.
Mrs. Crauder said, “How did you know that?”
“Not many people move here for the wind.”
“We lived down near the park. The duck pond.”
Dad smiled. “That must have been nice.”
Mrs. Crauder opened her mouth but then didn’t say anything. She did not look like “nice” was a word she’d ever thought of.
“So,” Dad went on, “you’re a Great Falls High survivor yourself. Funny we never ran into each other. Did you know the Tillmans? They lived down that way.”
Before Dad could do anything else to point out exactly how much older Mrs. Crauder was Mom said, “I grew up right in this house. It’s like I’ve never gone anywhere.”
“I landed in St. Thomas’s,” Dad volunteered out of the blue.
“The orphanage?” Kenny’s mom asked.
I spun away from the TV. This was not one I’d heard before.
Dad nodded. “A big vacant lot now. I came back from one of my first jobs and found the whole place razed. Every last brick. After me, I think, the sisters decided their good work was done.”
I knew the lot. Four solid city blocks, the streets dead-ending at its curbs. A falling stone wall. Chunks of concrete. An old baseball diamond. All clogged with weeds. “You were born there?” I said.
Dad nodded. “Still lived there when your mom and I met.”
“You’re kidding.”
Mom nodded. “He calls it his time in the army.”
Peeling potatoes. I pictured him as a kid, hunkered over a huge pot, glistening white spuds piled high around him. “How come you never told me?”
“What’s the difference? No matter the size of the litter, I’m still the pick.”
“What about your parents?”
Dad raised his hands and shoulders in this way overdone shrug.
I sat looking from Mom to Dad, waiting for the punch line.
“Once I got free of John,” Mrs. Crauder said into the silence, nodding at Kenny, “his father, this seemed like the place to come back to.”
“Did you even know your parents?” I asked Dad.
A commercial came on, and leaning forward, Dad socked Kenny on top of the knee. “So, Kenny, you play any football yourself?”
“No sir, Mr. Diamond. My size, it wouldn’t be fair to the other boys.”
Dad grinned. “We don’t want anyone getting hurt out there.”
