Riding Standing Up

by Sparrow Spaulding

  The next day I was hung over yet still rode my bike to Dana’s house. Mom pulled up shortly after in the car, honking for me to come out. When I did she was shaking a cup full of bottle caps. “You’re grounded. Get in the car!”

  I remained calm.

  “First off, I didn’t do any stealing, and second that was two years ago and I already served my time for that.” How could he be so unreasonable? I knew he just wanted to break me.

  “I don’t care! You’re gonna go in and apologize to Wally himself!”

  Wally was a hefty older man. He looked Greek with his dark wavy hair and olive complexion. He wore a dirty, white apron over his giant belly and always had a lit cigar in his mouth. Wally had a little butcher shop in the back of the store and his apron always had some kind of blood and guts smeared on it. Who knows? Maybe he was chopping up kids who had stolen from him. I wasn’t about to find out.

  As Larry approached the four-way stop where Wally’s was I saw my opportunity and took it. As the car slowed down I opened the left side passenger door and dove out. He wasn’t going fast, maybe ten miles an hour, but it still scraped me up some. I was careful to make sure I had my stolen-yet-recently-purchased outfit in hand. I know I rolled once, I may have rolled twice, but at least it was in the direction of home.

  As soon as I could stand I gathered myself and booked it toward the house. Mom saw what I did first so she screamed her typical Mom scream, like someone was being murdered by clowns. Larry slammed on the brakes and Mom hit her head on the windshield, ranting about whiplash. Doodie was crying in the back, Larry was screaming and of course Punky was silent, as usual, taking it all in. I wanted nothing to do with this freak show family.

  Once again, I won. I beat them home, probably because Mom made Larry go to Wally’s for more cigarettes. I holed up in my room with my heavy dresser barricading the door and I put my stereo on, smoked cigarettes and celebrated my success. No one bothered to pound on my door this time, which was refreshing. And, I kept my promise to Dreamboat and never stole anything ever again.

  Chapter 18

  The rest of junior year was uneventful. I was asked to prom by a quiet guy named Roland Tweed. He was average height, slightly lanky and had wavy, coarse dark hair—a total Jew fro. I actually don’t know if he was Jewish or not and it wouldn’t have mattered, except for some reason East Coast people tend to be obsessed about nationality. If your last name wasn’t Hispanic or Italian everyone wondered if you were a Jew. It reminded me of how some people are really into cars. Going down the road with Dad and Mikey was always a lesson in cars for me. I can still identify cars better than any female I know, not that I want to or really care, it’s just an ingrained habit now and maybe it’s my way of remaining close to them.

  I didn’t know Roland well but Dana convinced me to go with him so we could double-date with her and her boyfriend Dave. Larry was working and Mom loved spending his money when he wasn’t around to bitch so she piled the kids in the car and took me to the nice mall. I got a gorgeous dark blue taffeta dress that looked black when you moved the fabric a certain way. It was strapless and above the knee and it fit just like a glove. I couldn’t wait to wear it.

  The prom was on a Friday night. Dana dropped me off at home after school so I could get ready, then she was coming back to pick me up. I worried about riding up front since her super-old Cutlass had a giant hole in the front passenger floorboard and I didn’t want anything to happen to my dress or shoes. Normally we put a bunch of cardboard down and I would hold it in place with my feet but once it fell out and I could see the road right below me as she was driving. This time I would sit in the back.

  When I got home that day no one else was there. Larry was off ruining the environment with his pesticides and Mom and the kids were shopping. I saw the answering machine light blinking so I pushed the button.

  “Hello, this is Howard Sterling, the Dean here at Barrington Academy. Sparrow, I know you’re planning a party after prom and I just want to let you know I’m onto you and I am sending the police over to break it up.” Although I had a well-established reputation as a party girl at school I definitely didn’t have the means to throw a party anywhere. I had heard of a few and was planning to attend at least one, but I had to rethink my plan. Thank God I heard this message first, I thought as I erased it before getting ready for the evening.

  “You’re not gonna believe this!” I said to Dana as I hopped into the backseat. “Sterling thinks I’m throwing a party. He left a voicemail saying he’s going to bust me!”

  “Shit, does that mean we shouldn’t go tonight?” Dana was deflated as she was hardly ever let out of the house and I knew she and Dave wanted to get it on after prom. Her mom had snooped in her purse and found her birth control pills and then put her on lockdown.

  “Let’s see what happens tonight,” I said, confident I could come up with a plan.

  We went to the dorm to pick up the guys because they were both out-of-state students. They were called “dormies” at my school and Dana and I were “townies.” Dave was from Boston and Roland was from Rhode Island. They were preppies and not my usual type to hang out with, let alone date, but I was doing this mainly for Dana, and to go to the prom. I also had a thing for the name Roland since Andy Gibb, my first crush, had been replaced with Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears. I had fallen in love with him the summer before my thirteenth year when I heard him on the radio and he was my new future baby daddy, though I wanted nothing to do with having babies.

  Dave had made a reservation at this really fancy restaurant, the kind where the waiter opens your napkin and puts it on your lap. I was immediately intimidated because I realized I didn’t bring enough money. I was hoping to ask Mom for a few bucks but she still wasn’t home when I left and the voicemail from Sterling threw me off my game so I forgot to grab the money I had stashed in my room. I was screwed. Shit. I wondered if my date was planning to pay, but a few minutes after sitting down Dana told me that Roland told Dave he didn’t bring enough money either. “Okay, I’ll just order a salad,” I whispered back to Dana, not yet aware that even a salad was twenty-four dollars and I only had six bucks.

  I was so worried about not having money to pay for my fancy salad (that tasted like potting soil) that I could hardly enjoy it. Stupid, fucking rich kids, I couldn’t help thinking more than once. Dave was a nice guy but he came from money which is why he didn’t bat an eye picking that restaurant in the first place. I certainly couldn’t call myself poor anymore after Mom married Larry, but with my own money struggles I still always felt like I lacked. I found myself praying to Jesus over food once again, although this time it was a silent prayer in my head and the words were a little different:

  Dear Jesus, please allow me to somehow pay for this wretched salad that I would not want my worst enemy to eat. This curly lettuce shit is awful and I’m not sure what these mushy yellow things are but they taste like they came out of an earthworm’s asshole. You’ve always come through for me when I’ve prayed about food, Lord, so I know you will help me with this. Please God, please God, please God....

  “Hey,” Dana leaned over and whispered, interrupting my silent prayer. “Dave’s going to pay for your salad. He says don’t worry about it.” The biggest wave of relief washed over me. Jesus came through for me once again. It wasn’t Devil Dogs or Sno Balls but I was relieved that I didn’t have to wash dishes or get arrested and go to juvie in my nice dress for stealing a disgusting salad. If I was going to be arrested it was going to be for something worth it, like that party.

  Prom itself was fairly fun. The location had a great dance floor and I loved to dance so that was exciting. I decided to ignore Roland since he had disgraced me at dinner. How could a boy think he was taking me out when he was unable to buy me dinner? It wasn’t long before I caught sight of Sterling on the dance floor with his poor wife. I had no idea how she lived with that guy. He was as nerdy as they come with his horn-rimmed glasses, middle-aged dad bod and total lack
of a personality. Other than those things he wasn’t so bad for the most part, just another adult figure who didn’t care about me.

  I wondered if he would come up to me and say something but he didn’t. I wondered if he wondered if anyone got his voicemail. I pretended to know nothing about it, and he didn’t ask, though I caught him staring at me more than once. I considered for a moment that he could be another pervy adult with naughty thoughts about me, but he was probably the most vanilla man I knew. Watching those two dance I was convinced that they had sex with the lights off.

  When it was time to head to the party Dana panicked.

  “I can’t go. If I get busted I’ll be grounded forever.”

  Dana was a true goody-goody. She wanted to have fun and be careless but she was always so afraid of her parents. She had a step-dad much like mine. His name was Arnold and he was always yelling about something, typically with a beer in his hand. Dana’s mom was always squawking and scowling about something too. Dana never would have dared to tell her parents off like I did and I could never figure out why. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she didn’t have a door to her room. Their house was always under some kind of construction and she had cardboard walls and a tattered curtain where the door should be, so she couldn’t scooch her dresser up against the door and hide like I did. I wished she would stand up for herself here and there but she didn’t have it in her.

  “We can just go home,” I said, feeling deflated. It was prom and I was yet to have anything to drink or kiss any boys.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind? I can drop you off at the party and you can find a ride home.” Home was more than an hour away from any of the parties so I chose to skip out, since I’d most likely have to offer an intense make-out session to get a ride that far.

  “No, I’ll go home too.” We dropped the boys off at one of the parties and went home. I was rather glad in the end, though incensed when I found out the next day that Sterling was full of shit and never busted any party. He bluffed and we fell for it.

  When school ended Mom didn’t make me go to Dad’s for the entire summer. He was living in Iowa in the tiniest of towns in the middle of nowhere. His house was nice and had a pool but I didn’t have any friends out there so all I ended up doing was lying by the pool every day, smoking, reading books and making myself drinks from Dad’s liquor cabinet. Samantha and I would go shopping on occasion but she was busy doing her thing and I felt isolated. I still didn’t have a driver’s license so I couldn’t drive myself into town.

  The whole license thing was a story in itself. Why was it so hard to get a driver’s license in the state of Maine? First, you had to mail in an application to get a test date, which took eight or more weeks. Then, the test date was scheduled at least another eight weeks out. I was nervous to take the test the first time and convinced Jess to let me use her Mom’s car so I didn’t have to parallel park the Rust Puppy or Mom’s giant station wagon.

  Who knew it would be snowing the first time I took the test? The roads were slick but it was Maine and the roads always sucked. I did fine at first even though my heart was racing the entire time. The driving instructor was a crotchety old man named Stan Crandall who had a perma-frown and smelled like charcoal. He made me over-the-top nervous but I tried not to let on.

  “Pull in over here,” he said as he pointed to a spot on a hill between two cars. Oh no, I have to parallel park, I thought as the sweat formed between my legs. I hated sweating there because it smelled like tomato soup and made me feel like a stinkbug that gives off a terrible odor to protect itself when it’s scared.

  “Ok,” I mumbled. I forgot nearly everything Mom had taught me. Being from New York Mom was an excellent parallel parker and the only thing I remembered was how she taught me to line up my side mirror with the car I was parking behind. Oh yeah, I have to crank the wheel. I remembered that a little too late since I was already backing up. Mrs. O’Toole’s Audi was large and the turning radius wasn’t great; I’m not sure what else happened but long story short I tapped the car behind me.

  “You just hit a parked car!” Stan yelled. I was hoping I had hit the curb but no such luck. “You fail!” His face turned purplish like Larry’s. “Drive back to the station.” I was in full-on panic mode by this point but I had to do what I was told so I drove back at a whole six miles per hour just to make sure I didn’t hit any more cars, or pedestrians for that matter.

  “Did you pass?” Jess asked as I got out of the car.

  “Not this time.” I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I filled her in on the details in the car. “I don’t mind driving you around.” She liked having a sidekick. “You’ll pass next time,” she said as we celebrated my failure with a few tokes from a joint she had in the ashtray.

  * * *

  Summer was winding down and school was just around the corner. One Sunday Jess and I drove around in her dad’s pickup truck to see if we could find something to do. We made ourselves screwdrivers for the road in some thermoses we found in her kitchen. For a second I felt a twinge of guilt, remembering back to the days of going to church or watching Jim and Tammy Faye but the guilt turned to indignation when I remembered all the money Mom gave to those crooks. I made a silent toast in my head that went something like Screw you crazy liars, God is right here in this stainless steel thermos. I sure wished someone had told me sooner.

  We had gone all the way to New Hampshire to get breakfast and on our way back we crossed over the Denmark Bridge. We had crossed this bridge countless times, but that day there were two guys standing on the edge, shirtless, getting ready to jump into the water. As we were passing I locked eyes with the taller guy. He motioned for us to turn the car around. Somehow, he commanded it.

  “Hey, turn around. That guy just motioned for us to come back.” Jess didn’t waste a moment turning the truck around and parking right on the bridge. It so happened that the taller guy approached her window and the other guy came over to mine.

  “What are you ladies up to today?” the taller, intense guy asked, staring right into my soul.

  “Just driving around.” My heart skipped a beat. “What about you boys?”

  “We’re here from Boston, camping for the weekend,” Intense guy answered. I’m sure Jess and Other guy must have felt left out, but I couldn’t help it. Intense guy was mesmerizing. And I could definitely tell he was from Boston with that accent. A Southie, most likely.

  “Do you girls wanna come hang out with us and drink some beers?” Intense guy asked. Jess and I looked at each other.

  “Sure thing. We’ll meet you under the bridge,” she replied. As we pulled away we both started giggling, happy that our uneventful Sunday had taken an interesting turn.

  When I got out of the truck Intense guy came over to my door.

  “My name’s Ed,” he said as he stuck his hand out.

  “Hi, I’m Sparrow.” I shyly shook his hand. His gaze was so intense that I averted my eyes so he couldn’t see into me completely. I caught a glimpse of his perfect body, and it didn’t help that he still had tiny drops of water running down his chest. His very toned chest and abs. The man definitely worked out. His hair was wet so I couldn’t tell what color it was, but his eyes were the most perfect combination of Ceylon-blue sapphire and sea foam green. He reminded me of that store manager who let me off for stealing, however this was different. Ed wasn’t looking at me the way Dreamboat looked at a wayward teenager. He was looking at me like I was a woman. A beautiful woman he wanted. I could tell he was older than me but I didn’t get that pervy vibe I had experienced in the past. This was legit. My body shivered.

  “I’m Miles,” Other guy said. He handed me a beer and belched loudly in my general direction. I could tell Ed was the brains of the duo. Miles was darker-skinned and his belly hung over his swim trunks. He looked Italian, or maybe Armenian but I didn’t bother to ask. He oozed a Neanderthal vibe. Perfect for Jess.

  “Thanks,” I said as I grabbed the beer and
opened it. Yes, I’m definitely going to need a few of these to hold my own with Intense guy, I thought as I took a long sip.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Ed said grabbing my hand and leading me down the beach. I glanced back at Jess to make sure she was okay with me leaving and she seemed fine, already through her first beer and well into the second. If anyone had to look out it was Miles, since she would be climbing him in a matter of minutes.

  “So, Sparrow, how old are you?” Ed and I were walking barefoot in the sand, drinking our Busch lights. “I’m eighteen.” Shit. I just lied. “How about you?” I said before he could ask any more questions.

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  “Oh.” His age didn’t bother me a bit. The summer before I had briefly dated a twenty-five-year-old history teacher I’d met at a music festival. I somehow rationalized that it was okay because he wasn’t my teacher. He was working at a campground for the summer that happened to be less than a mile from my house. Mason was attractive, well-read, played the guitar and liked to get high. He had a three-foot bong named Charlotte that he’d made out of PVC pipe. He made me read Still Life with Woodpecker and taught me how to sing the words to “Creeque Alley” as he played the guitar. He also taught me to enjoy going to third base, although he never made me come. When Mom found out she shipped me off to Dad’s the next day. There went my summer romance.

  “So, what are you in to?” Ed asked as if he really wanted to know. I told him the truth, that I was getting ready to be a senior in high school. I told him I wanted to study psychology, that I played the piano and I loved French culture and language. He seemed intrigued. He told me about his life growing up in Boston, how his dad died when he was twelve, and how he quit school in the eighth grade to help his mom take care of the family. In a roundabout way he admitted to being a street rat, stealing cars and getting into lots of trouble. I asked about the scar over his left eye and he told me he it was from a beer bottle and how he had gotten it in a random bar fight. With every story he told me I was more and more attracted to him. Did I really just meet someone tougher than me? The more he told me the safer I felt with him. I could tell he was a real protector and looked out for others just like I did. Perhaps there was someone out there who would actually look out for me? I dismissed that thought as something only a weak person would consider. But I couldn’t deny I felt calm in his presence and like I could let my guard down and be… well, a girl, on the inside too.