Perris, California, page 5
“Boy, you sure knocked her dick in the dirt pretty good,” Mel said.
The expression caught Tessa off guard, and she had to cover her mouth to keep half-chewed pancakes from shooting out. She began to laugh so hard that she couldn’t swallow for fear of choking. She had to take deep breaths in and out of her nose with her cheeks puffed full of pancakes. Tears were streaming from the corners of her eyes.
“Careful, Tessa,” Mel said. “Come on, now, girl. Spit that pancake out before you choke to death.” Tessa shook her head. She took a big breath in through her nose and concentrated on swallowing. The moment she forced it down her throat, she went back to laughing.
“I mean it. You put the fear of God in that poor little featherhead. Jesus, look at you,” Mel said. “You’re the only woman I know that would rather choke to death than sacrifice a bite of pancakes.”
Tessa dabbed at the corners of her eyes and took in another breath. “You did always have a way with words,” Tessa said. “I’ll give you that.”
The talk was lighter after that. They worked their way through the superficial wheres and whats of their lives over the past eight years. It turned out that Mel had been finished with school for a while. She’d been working in a pharmaceutical lab up north the past four years. Mel’s mama was worse off than she’d first let on. Her memory was going pretty fast. She had nearly burned the house down a few months back. The fire department had to come. Doreen ended up in the hospital with smoky lungs and third-degree burns on her forearms and hands. That’s what had brought Mel back.
Mel paid at the register after they’d finished their pancakes and had two cups of coffee each. Tessa drove her back to work. Mel came around to Tessa’s side of the truck out front of Thrifty’s. Tessa rolled her window down. “Well,” Mel said. She put a hand on the cab of the truck. “That turned out to be a nice surprise.”
“Yeah,” Tessa said.
“I better get to work,” Mel said.
“I hope your mama gets better. I’d ask you to tell her I said hi, but I don’t figure she’d like to hear from me,” Tessa said.
“Well, you know how Doreen is, but I appreciate the thought,” Mel said. Tessa nodded. “See you later, then,” Mel said. Tessa smiled and gave a little wave. Mel stuck her hands in her pockets, then turned and headed for the double doors.
“See you later,” Tessa said.
Mel was about four paces away when Tessa felt something thrashing around in her throat. She called after Mel. “I lied to get the truck from Angie,” she said. It wasn’t what had wanted to come out, but it was enough to give her some relief. Mel turned sharply and paced back over.
“I don’t want to get mixed up in any trouble,” Mel said in a lowered voice.
“I know that.” Tessa looked out the windshield in front of her.
“Okay, well then, know it. That’s it. You get me, Tess?”
Tessa nodded. She bit her tongue and focused on the sharp pain to keep tears from coming. She put a hand on the steering wheel and reached for the ignition with the other.
“It was good running into you again,” Tessa said.
“It was,” Mel said.
Mel
Mel walked into Doreen’s house and threw her keys and red vest on the entryway table. The smell of pozole was a welcoming comfort after the long, boring day filled with hand sanitizer and pill counting under buzzing fluorescent lights. “Mom,” Mel called.
The doctors had recommended that Doreen only use the kitchen under supervision after she had left a pot full of cardboard scraps cooking on the stove, but Doreen didn’t like people telling her what to do and she had seemed almost normal since Mel brought her home from the hospital other than a few moments of forgetfulness.
“In here,” her mother called from the living room. Doreen was sitting in her recliner across from Ethan Anders, who was now the grade-school PE teacher for the private Catholic school he and Mel had attended as kids. He was sitting straight-backed on the couch. “I ran into Ethan at the grocery store, and I told him you were back in town. I told him to come over for dinner so the two of you could catch up.” Ethan was the latest of Doreen’s attempts to set Mel up and marry her off to a good Catholic man. Doreen had been inviting men from St. James Parish over for dinner at least twice a week since she’d come back. Many of them were repeat visits, as there weren’t a lot of eligible men to choose from, but this was Ethan’s first time over for dinner. He stood up and gave a bashful wave that made Mel feel sorry for him.
“Hiya, Mel,” he said.
“Hey there, Ethan.” Mel reached out to shake his hand. “How you been?”
Mel no longer got worked up over her mother’s attempts to fix her up the way she had when she was younger. These days, the suitors never stayed late, and the quest to find Mel a man gave Doreen something to keep her busy. Nearly three weeks had gone by without any sign of her dementia. That was the biggest chunk of incident-free time since Mel had moved back. If the task of finding her a husband kept Doreen awake and engaged with reality, Mel was fine with it. The conversation wasn’t always riveting, but the dinners Doreen made these nights were extra good, and they always came with dessert.
Mel saw a pie cooling in the window from where she stood and felt A-OK about good old Ethan being there. She even offered him one of her beers. This, Mel could tell, was not appreciated by her mother, who thought Mel shouldn’t drink beer out of the can like she did. That was how men behaved. Mel clinked aluminum with Ethan and eased into the ottoman across from him.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the couch with Ethan?” Doreen said.
“I’m good here,” Mel said. She and Ethan sipped their beers in the awkward silences that fell between Doreen’s attempts to force conversation.
“Well, would you like to freshen up a bit before we eat? Dinner is almost ready,” Doreen finally said after the longest of these pauses.
“Sure,” Mel said. She tossed her empty can into the recycling bin and headed down the hallway past her brother Robby’s old room to her current and childhood bedroom. Mel flopped down on her twin-size mattress and stared up at the ceiling. She could hear her mother chatting Ethan up with the pleasant, perky voice she would use with these visitors. She worked hard at this, Mel could tell. As if she believed her pleasantness would somehow obscure Mel’s less-than-enthusiastic presence. Doreen was casually bragging about Mel’s job at the pharmacy that just happened to “pay pretty darn good.” Of course, everyone already knew about her education and job. It was a big part of why Doreen was able to line these dinners up so easily. A decent-paying full-time job with benefits wasn’t easy to come by. It meant you could afford to live a little easier, knowing you wouldn’t have to scramble at the end of each month.
Mel’s income and the fact that she was “pretty” kept these awkward dinner dates regular. The designation had been assigned to her as far as her memory went back. Her mother used to make her compete in junior beauty pageants all over because of it. Mel even placed in a couple. Once, she and Doreen left with a twenty-pound frozen turkey for taking third place in the Temecula Valley Regional. Placing was an impressive feat considering she was often the only brown girl competing, which put her at an automatic disadvantage, just like it would anywhere else.
Of course, Mel was half white and didn’t have an accent. Sadly, both of these facts had bettered her chances in those competitions. Mel had never met her father. She once found a picture of him in Doreen’s sock drawer. He was hugging Doreen, and they were standing out in front of some hotel with palm trees. He was tall and thin, with some muscle, and had stringy, shoulder-length brown hair and a mustache. The picture had been taken from pretty far away, and her father was wearing big, ’70s-style sunglasses, so Mel didn’t really have the best idea of what he looked like. She could see that she had his smile, though, and he had the same build and height that her brother once had. She knew his name was Peter because she grew up hearing Doreen and her tías sitting at the kitchen table late at night whispering over shots of tequila about him and other hijos de putas that had double-crossed them. “If only Tío Lalo was still around,” Tía Josie would always say, “he would put these m-f’ers in their place.” Peter had split right after Mel was born. Robby was just five then.
Mel figured she had time for a quick shower. After she got out and toweled off, she humored her mother and put on a blouse and a pair of blue jeans that she knew Doreen liked seeing her wear. She combed her long, thick hair and hooked the pieces that hung loose around her face behind her ears. She reached into her drawer. The floral-patterned paper that lined it shifted, and she caught a glimpse of something beneath it. Mel pulled the paper back and lifted a picture out.
Tessa and Mel were sitting up on one of the big boulders way out in the middle of nowheres, smiling big and happy as ever. They used to go scrambling up those boulders a lot. Mel had seen the biggest rattlesnake of her life and had once found a duffel bag full of bloodied clothes out there. It wasn’t safe for just the two of them to go out that far, but she and Tessa had done a lot of dumb shit back then.
Mel thumbed the edge of the photo. How strange it was to be back in Doreen’s house and to have run into Tessa like she had. She studied their faces. What a couple of dweebs they were. She was glad to be holding that picture. She hadn’t thought she’d ever see anything from back then again. Doreen had turned her room over and trashed everything related to Tessa after she sent Mel away. Mel shook her head. Then she slipped the picture back under the floral paper and closed the drawer.
* * *
—
Ethan is such a nice man. I like him. Isn’t he so nice, Mel?” Doreen whispered. Mel had followed her mother into the kitchen to help her bring dinner to the table.
“Sure,” Mel said. “He seems nice.”
Mel already knew he was nice. She already knew everything about everyone Doreen had over. The parish was a small community. She knew Ethan from way back. He was a shy, skinny white boy then too. He used to slouch down in his chair and hide behind his desk so that he could chew crayons. He always had a colorful smile back then and would get in trouble for it all the time. She never understood why he kept at it like he did. He eventually stopped the strange habit sometime during middle school.
She had very little memory of Ethan being at their high school before she was forced to leave it. She thought she remembered him being on the basketball team, but she had smoked a lot of pot and taken a lot of pills her freshman year and couldn’t be sure of that fact. Robby had been one of 240 killed in a barracks bombing in Beirut the summer before her freshman year started, and Mel would just as soon not have been clearheaded enough back then to miss him.
Mel had stopped with the pills and eased off the weed some by the time sophomore year rolled around. She was trying to stay out of trouble and do better for Doreen, but ditching the pills and cutting back on the weed wasn’t enough. Mel’s second year at St. James High School had hardly started before Doreen yanked her out.
The rumors about Mel and Alexus began to spread not long after they started seeing each other. Mel kept her mouth shut when Doreen confronted her about it, but Alexus squealed like a pig. She told her parents it was all Mel’s idea, that Mel had put her up to it and made her do the things they did together. The next day, Doreen was signing transfer papers. To help save face and restore her daughter’s reputation, Doreen took Mel to Mass five days a week instead of the standard three they’d been going and told anyone who’d listen that Mel was leaving St. James so she could go to Perris High and be part of an honors science program there.
Looking back now, Mel was grateful for the transfer. She had actually ended up joining the honors science program, and that had given her some direction. With the way things had been going before the transfer, Mel probably would have enlisted straight out of high school, just like Robby had. Besides, things would have been hard for her if she’d stayed at good old SJHS. Alexus was her first real girlfriend, and Mel had taken the betrayal pretty hard. She heard Alexus got right back on the straight and narrow after being found out. She started dating a senior on the basketball team and got knocked up two months later to prove her commitment to hetero life.
As far as Mel could tell, not much progress had been made in the direction of the parish accepting lesbos like herself. Everyone with her particular lean seemed to either move away as soon as they could, like she had, or dive back into the closet, have a public come-to-Jesus moment, and let the Holy Spirit heal their wicked ways. Her favorite tía had tried the latter. The prayers and holy waters didn’t stick, though. Tía Dede ended up dying of pills and shame when Mel was just a kid. Mel guessed that was a big part of why Doreen had been so fierce in her attempts to keep Mel from being who she was.
Doreen had been skeptical and uneasy when Mel first started hanging out with Tessa back then, but Mel’s grades and mood improved after they became friends. That was enough for Doreen to decide to believe that Tessa was a good, straight-girl influence on her daughter, and she began to encourage the friendship. Doreen was always having Mel bring Tessa over for dinner.
“That girl eats like a pig,” she would say with big, unbelieving eyes and a shaking head after Tessa left. She was part shocked and part flattered, as she thought Tessa eating so much was a testament to her cooking. “Doesn’t her family feed her?!”
In reality, it didn’t matter much whether the food was good or not. Tessa ate that way because she never knew when her next meal was coming. It made Mel sick to think of how often Tessa had gone hungry. Mel had always shared what she had with Tessa back then, but she still regretted not having done more to help her.
Ethan had been kind enough to make up an excuse about needing to get back to give his dog medicine shortly after they finished dinner. Doreen was disappointed when he said he had to leave, but she still seemed hopeful of the possible match. She handed him a slice of pie to take home, patted his arm, and gave a friendly smile when she told him to come back soon.
“He seems nice,” Doreen said again when she dropped a soaped-up plate into the side of the sink with clean water. Mel scooped it out and began drying.
“Yeah,” Mel said.
“He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Doreen said.
“Yep,” Mel said. She placed the plate atop the stack in the cabinet and started drying the next.
“And he’s handsome,” Doreen said. When Mel didn’t chime in, she continued: “Nice smile and a strong build.” Mel’s silence made her angry. “You know, Mel, you could try a little. I worked hard to make a nice dinner for us to have with Ethan. You could have at least pretended to enjoy it.”
Mel’s hands tightened around the plate she was holding. The word pretend stuck her and throbbed like a thorn in her foot, so she felt she could hardly stand there. All she had ever done was pretend for Doreen. It had mixed her up so badly that even when she’d left home and moved to the Bay—a place she’d once heard called the gay capital, for Chrissake—she’d ended up pushing away all the women she tried to date there. All the years of pretending and shame had turned her into some weird, warped creature that couldn’t accept the one thing it had always wanted.
“You know what?” Mel said, loud and sharp. She threw the plate into the water, and it pinged against the inside of the sink. Doreen’s head snapped up from her soapy hands, and her jaw fell slightly open and to the side, like it was broken. She’d had the same wounded, helpless look on her face when Mel came home to find her in a hospital room in a state of bewilderment after she set her kitchen on fire. It had shaken Mel and messed her up inside to see Doreen that way when all she’d ever known of her was the strong, stern woman who’d raised her by the belt.
She considered her next words. Considered how Doreen had been doing so well. Considered that Doreen was just trying to do what she thought was best for her. That this was what she had always tried to do. Mel knew it couldn’t have been easy on Doreen, raising her and Robby on her own like she had. She considered the possibility that Doreen would forget about the whole evening by tomorrow. That her mother was slowly slipping away. Mel swallowed the confusion and grief swelling in her throat.
She softened her voice. “You know, I could go for some of that prizewinning pie of yours,” she said. Doreen didn’t answer. She kept at the dishes. “I can nearly taste it now, that buttery crust that dissolves on the tongue.” She looked to see if Doreen was coming around. She wasn’t. “The way the blueberry filling, when just warm enough, reminds you of the best jam you ever had in your life and the sweetest story anyone ever told you at the same time.” Doreen dropped another dish into the lukewarm water with a blank face. Mel cleared her throat and continued. “I’ll tell you what, my stomach is getting warm and fuzzy just thinking about that pie of yours.”
“Well, get a plate and have a slice already, dummy,” Doreen said. “And don’t ever throw my china around like that. You better pray you didn’t put a chip in it.”
Mel wiped her hands on her jeans and moved the pie to the table. She took a knife from the block and a spatula from the drawer. “I’m sure looking forward to this pie of yours. Boy, is it ever good, though.” Doreen was pursing her lips to fight the smile that was coming. “Best thing I ever tasted on this earth,” Mel said.
“Would you quit it?” Doreen said. “Give me that knife, and stop talking that way. To think of the money I spent to send you and Robby to private school. Two jobs, working ’round the clock, and the both of you ended up sounding like a couple of fools. With all the good kids you two could have made friends with in the parish, you decided to go out and roll around in the dirt with a bunch of hoodlums and bumpkins. I swear, you did it just to spite me.” She took the pie from Mel. “We’ll have to warm it in the oven,” she said. “There’s no use in going through all that work to eat cold pie. Besides, you always butcher it when I give it to you to cut and serve. You’d think a wild animal got to it.”
