The Miss America Family

by Julianna Baggott

  “Why isn’t she at home? She should be at home, shouldn’t she?” Sweat trickled down the insides of my arms.

  “She isn’t going back home. Dilworth does not know this. He thinks she iss beink too embarrassed to see him, but that she’ll be back soon.”

  “And my grandmother?”

  “In hospital still. But improvink!”

  By now we were driving down our tree-lined street. I felt like I had been away for years. I stared into each house, wondering who knew what and what rumors were being whispered among the neighbors, over fences and telephone wires, at pool-side cocktail parties at the club. Mrs. Worthington was out front, weed-whacking behind her bushes. The yard was filled with kids, playing some sort of tag, as many kids as there usually were cats. There were five cats perched in the bay window, their heads zigzagging back and forth as if they were watching mice from behind the glass, not children. Mitzie was with the kids in the yard. She was wearing shorts and her knees were dirty; her hair was pulled into short ponytails over each of her ears. She looked like a regular kid, not like the Mitzie I knew at all who’d always been so together in her matching outfits and hair-sprayed hairdos. “Mitzie is still living at the Worthingtons, I take it.”

  “Too bad she couldn’t have her own babies. Mrs. Worthington iss such a goot mother,” Helga said.

  And my mother was not, that’s what Helga meant. I was covered in a thick film of sweat. I felt dizzy, and as she pulled into the driveway, I already had a grip on the door handle, popping it open as soon as she came to a stop.

  “My mother can do all of that stuff,” I said. “Mrs. Worthington didn’t invent motherhood, you know.”

  Helga didn’t seem to listen. She said, “Go inside. There’s thinks for you to do,” she said. “Your mother wants you to call her. She needs to ask a favor.”

  I swung my backpack over my shoulder, grabbed my shoe box, and ran up to the front door. I was nervous about calling my mother. I wanted her to be fine, because I was planning on seeing Janie Pinkering. I was thinking that Janie was probably waiting for me to stop by, that’s how much I’d convinced myself. That’s what I was actually trying to believe.

  Dilworth was in his La-Z-Boy. He had the contraption tilted all the way back so he was lying flat. He was wearing a T-shirt with one of the arms cut off and a big bandage wrapped around the meat of his shoulder. I could make out that the bandages on his shoulder were connected to a network of bandages that strapped around his chest for extra support. The TV was on, a car race, the roar, roar, roar of each engine as they made their laps, and a newscaster’s dull monotone, but Dilworth wasn’t looking at the TV. He was staring out the side window that overlooked nothing but the driveway and some shrubbery, a short glass of scotch resting on his stomach, held with the hand of his good arm.

  “Hey,” I said, quietly.

  He turned his head. “Ezra!” he said. “Come on in. How are you doing, there? Good to see you. Beautiful day. Sit down and stay awhile. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  I sat down on the edge of the sofa, facing him, still holding on to my backpack, my shoe box. “Not much,” I said.

  “Well,” Dilworth said. “Too bad. That’s a shame. A pity.” He wasn’t making sense. He was like a thesaurus of clichés, Dilworth set on autopilot.

  “How are you doing? Your shoulder?”

  “Just fine. Can’t complain. No golf, the doctor said. No dentistry. Good news: full disability. I’m okay. Taking it day by day.”

  “You mean no golf or dentistry ever?”

  “Oh, well, hard to tell. Can’t say for sure. It’s uncertain. There’s nerve damage. I can’t really clench my fist. I have to drink with my left hand. It was my right, you know, where I took it. So, tough luck. Could be worse, right? Can’t cry over spilled milk.”

  “No,” I said. “I guess not.” There was a pause and Dilworth looked back out the window. I stood up. “Well.”

  “Okay, then. I can see you’ve got things to do. Excuse me for not walking you to the door. See you later. Thanks for stopping by.”

  “I’m going to be staying here, I guess, you know, well, out at the pool bungalow, until school starts,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure about this. I didn’t want to live with my grandmother and my mother in the small stinky apartment, but I wanted to be as far from Dilworth as possible too. Staying put in the bungalow seemed the best bet.

  He looked at me then, glassy-eyed, tired. He scratched his head, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Certainly.” But I wasn’t so sure he knew what was going on at all.

  I went to the kitchen to call my mother, pulling the phone cord as far as it could go like the last time I’d used it, to call Janie in my Hispanic accent.

  My mother answered on the third ring. She didn’t believe in snatching the phone up too quickly. She’d always said it made you seem anxious and made the caller nervous. I took this as a good sign, and I was right. My mother’s voice was calm. “Hello, Mrs. Kitchy’s residence.”

  “It’s Ezra.”

  “Oh, Ezra. I’m so happy to hear your voice. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Just fine, really. There’s been such a big fuss, and I’m just sitting here, absolutely fine.”

  “Well, everything’s a little crazy on this end. I mean, things have gotten a little off. Mitzie is living with the Worthingtons. Is that okay by you? I mean, the Worthingtons! They only let her watch PBS, wholesome TV with no commercials. And Dilworth is just staring out the window. He can’t play golf or fix teeth. And how come you never told me that Dad’s gay? You know that, right?”

  There was a long pause. My mother sighed. “It sounds fairly normal to me, Ezra. People think that life is supposed to play out just so, but it doesn’t. And anyone who doesn’t believe that your life, Ezra, is a normal life, as normal as anyone can expect, well then, they simply aren’t following along. They simply aren’t paying much attention. Because what’s normal is that life is completely, unforgivingly odd. We are a normal family, Ezra. You should know that by now.”

  I didn’t believe her. “I disagree,” I said. “I couldn’t disagree more! What kind of wife shoots her husband?”

  “Oh, please, Ezra, this sort of thing happens all the time. Lots of husbands and wives want to shoot each other.”

  “But they don’t do it.”

  “That’s because they’re not being honest. In any case, it was a mistake. I’ve admitted that. Don’t get so excited. This sort of thing happens to everybody, Ezra.”

  I let out a gusted sigh.

  My mother dismissed the discussion. “I want you to borrow Dilworth’s car and pick up your grandmother. She’s ready to be released from the hospital. You can bring her here to her apartment.”

  “You’re not coming? I can’t drive without a licensed driver.”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m trying to clean up bird cages. Helga gave up on the birds. She paid a little kid to come in and sprinkle bird seed in the cages and that was all. It’s filthy. You can go alone.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t feel like being at her beck and call. “I’ve got pressing business.” I was being my dad, giving her the lamb.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My ship’s about to come in.”

  “Four-thirty, Ezra Stocker. You will pick her up at four-thirty. And stop talking like that. It’s unbecoming.” She hung up.

  I cut through the Pinkerings’ neighbors’ yard to the Pinkerings’ wooden fence, which was just high enough that I couldn’t see over it, and the horizontal support boards were on the inside, so there was no way for me to climb up. I walked the length of it and finally found a knothole. It was a low knothole, and I practically had to lie down to see through it.

  Janie was there with Elsie Finner. They were sitting by the pool, not in swimsuits but in raggedy shorts and T-shirts like
the one that Kermit’s girlfriend had worn to the tennis match where she played drunk and laughed at everything. There were three cars in the driveway—Janie’s blue convertible, Elsie’s Saab, and a tan Mercedes. So, I figured that at least one of her parents was at home. I couldn’t risk going to the door.

  I’d unpacked quickly, throwing dirty clothes into the hamper to be picked up by Helga on wash day. I shoved the shoe box under my bed, showered, and changed into fresh clothes. I was wearing khaki shorts and an army green shirt, sneakers. My hair was still wet, and I wished now that I looked more ratty. Evidently, it was the new style. I’d brought my swim trunks and that alone proves how optimistic I was, how willing I was to do whatever it took, and how hopeful, too, just living on hope.

  I called out, “Janie,” just above a whisper at first. But she went on yakking with Elsie, giggling, sipping fruity drinks. Finally, I yelled it, “JANIE!” And she looked up. I could see her glancing the length of the fence, her ponytail whipping, landing curled around her long neck. “IT’S ME! EZRA! OVER HERE!”

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “HERE!” I threw my swim trunks up in the air a couple of times so she could see where I was exactly, and then got down again to the knothole to watch her walk across the yard, to see if she was running, maybe, to come to see me. But it was really a stroll, her tan face still a little mystified by my voice and the appearing and disappearing swim trunks. She walked up to the spot, so close that I lost her face and then her soft breasts under a yellow tank top, and then from the bottom, her unlaced Nikes, pointy ankles, and, finally all I could see were her shins and her sweet knees, like soft fruit.

  She knocked on the fence. “Ezra?”

  I stood up and knocked back. “Yeah, it’s me. I’d have come by earlier, you know, for that swim, but I’ve been out of town.” She didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t see her face to read her expression. “I’ve been off with my father.” I thought, Be personal, be personal, Janie loves personal, but I couldn’t tell her that my mother shot my stepdad or that my dad was gay. I thought, Send in the lamb. I thought, No, it’s unbecoming. I said, “I was out seeking opportunities with my father.” She didn’t say anything. I panicked, “He’s gay.”

  “What kind of opportunities, then?” Janie asked, sarcastically. “Opportunities to be gay?”

  “No, of course not. Business opportunities, really. He’s a businessman.”

  “I thought he was a politician. You told my mom he was a politician.”

  “Well, that too,” I said.

  “Sounds like a blast, Ezra, but, you know, now’s not the perfect time. Elsie’s over and this thing with Manuel has started up again and fizzled and started up again, and she needs some counsel. You know what I mean. Girl talk.” Her voice was a little hoarse, maybe from spending the summer arguing tennis calls, or maybe, I thought, she’d been to loud parties while I was gone, college parties where you have to yell over the music, parties with Kermit in his college scene.

  I put my head up against the fence, so close I could smell the chemically weather-treated wood, so close my lips almost brushed it. I wondered what Janie smelled like, if she was wearing one of the fruity soaps and lotions from her mother’s bathroom basket. “I could help out. Remember you thought my mom was a genius about women’s things, and, well, I’ve memorized a lot of the things she’s told me.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I see.” And then things were clear to me again. Nothing had changed. I hadn’t misunderstood our phone conversation, the tone of her voice. Her mother hadn’t been standing nearby, mouthing “Is that Ezra Stocker? Hang up. Hang up this instant.” It was over. She didn’t love me, had never loved me. I thought that it was possible now even more than before that she thought I was gay, like my father, and out looking for “gay opportunities,” whatever they might be.

  I bent back down to look through the knothole, but didn’t have the stomach to watch her walk away. So I just sat there for a while, my back to the fence. Finally, I decided that Janie Pinkering was no good, that women, in general, weren’t worth the trouble they caused. It was almost four o’clock, and I knew that I’d show up at my grandmother’s apartment in Dilworth’s car just as my mother had asked. I just knew I would, and it made me mad as hell that I couldn’t do anything about it. Just then I remembered my grandmother’s dead bird in the Nescafé jar. I imagined it now shrunken, puckered, its eyes even pop-pier, a few feathers having fallen off and now drifting around in the jar. I was pissed. I knew I had to go get it.

  I walked to the front yard. There was an old woman hunched down almost hidden under a bush. My replacement. It was then that I noticed that the yard was impeccable, perfectly tidy again, trimmed, the green rows from a wide riding mower striping the lawn, a light green, a darker green, smooth as velvet. I walked down the side yard so the old woman wouldn’t see me, and then up the sidewalk. I ignored her, and kicked my shoe around in the patch of pachysandra near the tree where I’d left the jar.

  The old woman looked up, squinting under her visor. She was pinch-faced, wearing gardening gloves and slacks. “You looking for something?” she said.

  I stared at her and she stared at me. I knew that she’d already found the jar and the dead bird. I could tell by her pruny, pursed face. “No,” I said. “Just admiring your healthy leaves.”

  Just then Dr. and Mrs. Pinkering walked across their porch to the car parked in the driveway. They glanced at me and at each other. Mrs. Pinkering’s high heels picked across the gravel driveway like stupid big-beaked birds. I stood my ground, just watched them.

  Dr. Pinkering pulled out of the driveway slowly and stopped next to where I was standing, one foot on the sidewalk, one in his pachysandra. “Go home, Ezra,” he said. “It’s over.”

  Mrs. Pinkering leaned forward. “Yes, Ezra, it’s quite finished. Just go home.”

  I stood there, not moving.

  “I’ll call the cops,” Dr. Pinkering said. “You hear me?”

  I felt sick, flushed, like I might start to cry. I took my foot out of the pachysandra, and he let up on the brakes and rolled out into the street.

  I turned to the old lady. “What did you do with it?” I asked. She stood up, a chubby woman. “What did you do with it, huh?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to go inside to get something.” She picked up her spade and hurried nervously across the lawn up to the front door.

  I walked home, to the pool bungalow first, pulled the old man’s shoe box out from under the bed. I opened the lid and could smell the old leather, a little dry, cracked. I changed out of my shorts to a pair of long pants and then slipped on the shoes, bent over and worked the buckles. I rose up and down on my toes, still thinking that women were just a lot of trouble, that I shouldn’t have gone over to Janie Pinkering’s house, that Mr. Pichard was right: I should have wondered my whole life, and then I wouldn’t have failed and I’d have had this nice little dream tucked away forever, a pillow where I could always rest my head. The shoes were a little tight, my webbed toes shoved together in the tip, but I wore them anyway.

  I walked across the yard to the back door of the house, opening and then slamming it behind me. I heard Dilworth shift in his La-Z-Boy. “That you?” he called out. “Pixie?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s me. I need to borrow your car.” I walked into the den.

  The chair was upright. Dilworth was sitting up, both feet on the floor. “Oh, I thought it was your mother.” He sank back a little into the recliner. He was wearing shorts and the leather squeaked against the backs of his thighs. His shirt had a golden stain still wet from his having just jostled the drink in his hands. “You need the car, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okeydokey,” he said. “Fine and dandy, but I might need it back soon. I might need to pick up your mother. She’ll be calling for me to pick her up. That’s how we left it. Okay? All right? So not too long.”


  “She’s not coming back,” I said. “Can’t you see that? I mean, she shot you, and she’s not coming back. Anybody could tell that much.”

  Dilworth looked at the TV, a ball game now, a close-up on the pitcher’s face, a clockwork of twitches. Dilworth looked back at me over his bad shoulder. “Now, that’s just not true, Ezra,” he said, his stiff arm bent at the elbow, pressed to his chest in a permanent pledge of allegiance. “It isn’t factual. You don’t know all the facts here.”

  He was stupid and pathetic. I felt sorry for him, but feeling sorry for him made me feel powerful all of a sudden. “I know she isn’t coming back,” I said. “Talk to anyone. It’s obvious. You’re the only one who can’t see it. She never loved you.” I almost knew at the time that I was yelling at myself too, because I knew that Janie didn’t love me after all, but I only almost knew it, not really.

  He didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. There was just the announcer’s muffled voice-over, the knock of a pop-up. He suddenly looked like a little boy, a potbellied kid.

  “Aren’t you going to come at me? Aren’t you coming at me with all that British schoolboy crap?” But he didn’t move. “Come on and tell me you think I’m a faggot. Like my dad. She loved him, you know.” I couldn’t back down. I thought of all the people I should be saving, my mother most of all. Dilworth was the problem.

  “You think you know me?” he said. “You think you know everything about me?” He let his scotch glass drop to the floor where it rolled in a circle before it stopped, a semicircular stain from its mouth. His eyes filled up, gleamed. “You don’t know a thing.” He stood up, started to stagger away from me, but I followed him. “She needs me,” he said. “She’d fall apart without me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  He turned around, big then, suddenly right in front of me. A huge-chested man, so close I could see a vein ticking on his temple, another purple vein running up the middle of his forehead. He slapped me with the back of his left hand, which he kept lifted for a moment, like he might come at me again, his beefy hand stiff and shaking.