Mikey laughed.
Alice said, “All right, let’s check on old Finny and hit the road.”
“Finny?”
“Finn’s my husky,” Alice explained.
“That’s right.” Mikey remembered from the emails. “He’s in your car?”
Alice nodded. “He’s from the arctic, loves the cold. Does just fine in this. Got him a pile of wool blankets in the back, anyhow. He’s a hundred years old, and I won’t go anywhere without him. And, yes, I cleared it with Jimmy that I’m bringing my old-ass dog to his place. What, ya think I was raised in a friggin’ barn? Look at me like that . . .”
Mikey said, “I wasn’t looking at you any kind of way, Alice.”
“Am I annoying you already?” she said.
“Yes.”
Alice threw her head back and laughed in big ha’s that released thick puffing clouds into the air before her face, which she waved away with her hand as they evaporated. “This is making me want a cigarette,” she said, releasing a tight, slow stream through her lips.
Chris gave her a stern look and whined, “Baaaabe.”
Mikey’s earholes practically seized up. That voice! Alice and Chris had been dating for a good little while, so Alice must have made her peace with it, Mikey concluded, although he couldn’t quite imagine how, and it would be unlike Alice to make peace with any sort of thing at all.
Alice turned to Mikey. “Chris says smoking takes seven years off the average life span.” Alice made a distasteful face and spat something, or nothing, into the snow at her feet. “I say so does worrying about things like the average life span.”
“I’ll see you guys over there,” Mikey said. “Don’t get lost. Jimmy said the driveway’s steep and hard to find—start watching for it soon after you cross the train tracks.”
Alice said, “Yo-ho-ho.”
Before Mikey got into his car, he glanced back up toward the church, where Corinne stood at the entrance. She was directing a young man who carried flower arrangements in brown paper grocery bags to her old teal Chevy Chevette. Above Corinne’s car, a grackle perched on a telephone pole was chewing out the sky, really laying into it. Raw-raw-raw! Wah-wah! Car-car! War-war-war!
Chapter 10
Mikey’s father left for work at seven o’clock every morning, roughly twenty minutes before the bus came by for Mikey. He always woke Mikey before leaving and left a bowl and a box of cereal on the table. Mikey was expected to rinse his dishes and lock the door behind him. If he ever missed the bus, and if he ever missed the bus, he was instructed to let himself back inside and call his father at work; his father would leave work to return and deliver Mikey to school. When this happened, Mikey knew it was better to sit silently on the drive over rather than offer any sort of apology or excuse.
It was on one of these mornings when Mikey was eleven years old that diarrhea had delayed him and he didn’t make it out on time. He watched as the bus rounded the corner at the far end of Ingram, the morning sun fierce in his eyes, his bottom still burning and pursed unpleasantly from his session on the toilet.
He turned to go back inside to make the dreaded phone call to his father’s workplace when a woman’s voice from the sidewalk called, “Hey, you! Barney Rubble!”
Mikey turned. It was the slim, silver-haired woman, Sally’s mother. Although he and Sally had been best friends for years, he had spoken with Sally’s mother only a handful of times. Of all The Gunners, Sally’s was the only home where they never, ever played. Nevertheless, it surprised him that she didn’t know his name.
“Barney Rubble!” she called out again, approaching with her hand in the air, a sloppy but unthreatening wave. She wore a sheer, pale blue garment beneath an unzipped Buffalo Bills hoodie, and purple flip-flops. Her silver hair was in some extravagant sort of updo.
Mikey waved back, and she approached the porch.
“It’s Mikey,” he said, “not Barney.”
“I know that,” she said. “Gimme a little credit! You never seen The Flintstones?”
Mikey shook his head.
“Well, that makes me sad,” she said, although it didn’t seem to make her sad at all. “Barney Rubble’s a blondie like you,” she explained, rumpling his hair with her spidery fingers. “And he wears a shirt that same shade.”
Mikey’s plain brown T-shirt was part of a ten-piece rainbow pack from Kmart.
“Ya miss the bus?” The woman shared Sally’s delicate, pretty features, but her skin had an unhealthy sheen, and her teeth were a grayish hue. Within clotted mascara frames, both the iris and white of her eyes seemed too close to yellow. There were tiny threads of blood in the inner corners of her eyes.
Mikey nodded.
“I’m Corinne, Sally’s mom,” she said. “I know you know me.”
“I do.” Mikey nodded again. “I met you before,” he said.
“I know,” Corinne said. “You want a ride to school? I’ve gotta head that direction to hit the tanning bed anyway.”
Mikey considered this. He had been instructed many times to never, ever get into a car with a stranger, but given his long friendship with Sally, surely this woman could not be considered a threat. Corinne reached out to tug on his shoulder, and she said, “Come on. You can wait inside while I put on pants. Then we’ll head on over. We’ll probably beat the bus, anyhow. They’ve gotta make all those stops.”
Mikey took a seat at the kitchen table in the Forrest household and gazed around the room while Corinne disappeared into another part of the house. Dishes were stacked high within the sink and on the counter, food drippings and splatters on every surface. Ant traps and roach traps sat out in plain view. Balled-up underwear. The house smelled of garbage and perfume. The TV blared the gleeful meows of a cat food commercial in the next room. There was a plastic bear full of honey on the table, a tiny golden bulb gleaming at its yellow tip.
Corinne returned from her bedroom in jeans and a white tank top, with the same purple flip-flops and hairdo. She held a photograph in her hand and gazed at it fondly for a moment before handing it over to Mikey, and she said, “Lookie.”
As Mikey took the photograph, he heard movement and a man’s phlegmy cough from elsewhere in the house.
Corinne said, “That’s Billy. He’s trouble.” She laughed indelicately, her chin high in the air, then said, “He’s harmless.”
Corinne pointed back down to the photograph in Mikey’s hands.
The photograph featured a young, silver-haired girl draped over a tire swing and straddling it. She gazed at the camera with pouting, model-like intensity. The girl looked so much like Sally that at first Mikey thought it must be her but then realized from the fading and softened corners of the photograph that it was an old photograph and therefore was not of Sally but of her mother.
“Is it you?” he said.
Corinne nodded. “Don’t we look alike? Me and Sally?”
Mikey nodded. “A lot.”
Corinne said, “We could easy be twins, don’t you think? We look so much alike.”
Mikey nodded again.
“People tell us that all the time,” Corinne said.
A head poked briefly around the corner into the kitchen. Billy’s big pale face was potato-like, slothful and indistinct, completely devoid of curiosity. He said, “Your AC’s broke.”
Corinne said, “So fix it.”
Billy shuffled away, and Mikey heard steps in the bathroom, then a thick torrent of pee.
Corinne turned back to Mikey, took the photograph from him, and stared at it under the light with an expression that briefly became complicated. Then she looked back at Mikey and said, “Do you want to see more?”
Mikey glanced at the clock on the wall. They really needed to leave soon or he was going to be late. Then the school would call his father, and then he could really be in much more trouble than if he had just
called his father right away. Corinne followed his eyes to the clock and said, “I guess I need to get you to school, don’t I? Well, this has been just fine.”
Corinne walked Mikey back out to the street, where her Cutlass Supreme was parked. She turned on the radio and headed up Ingram toward Ridge.
Mikey wondered what Billy was up to back at the house, if he might do some of those dishes or help take the garbage out. He wondered if Billy was responsible for the mess.
Corinne sang along with the Beach Boys, utilizing vibrato on sustained notes and harmonizing with the chorus. She glanced over at Mikey. “Sally has a great voice, too,” she said, “although I don’t imagine she ever sings for you.”
Mikey said, “Sometimes really soft.”
Corinne was quiet for a bit. Then she said, “She’s your favorite, isn’t she?”
Mikey glanced at Corinne. “She’s what?”
“Your favorite. She’s the prettiest. You love her. You like her the best.”
“Oh . . .” Yes, Mikey supposed maybe he did love Sally, although not for the reason Corinne had suggested. Not for the way that Sally looked, nor for the fact that she and her mother were “practically like twins.” If he loved Sally, it was because Sally had been his first friend.
Corinne lowered her window, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the center console, and lit up, briefly removing both hands from the steering wheel in order to do so.
When they reached the school, Mikey could see across the lot that his bus was just pulling in as well. He had made it on time! His father would not receive a phone call; he would not have to endure that silent ride, his father’s seething silence. He thanked Corinne for the ride. She was right; this had been just fine.
Corinne cheerily lit another cigarette and waved to him through the window once he had gotten out of the car, and she said, “Make sure you tell your dad what a good driver I am! Toodle-oo!”
Later that day, Mikey mentioned all of this to Sally, how her mother had offered him a ride, how he’d been in their home, how her mother had shown him a photograph from her own childhood.
Sally looked as if this information might make her cry, so Mikey quickly said, “Your mom is very nice.”
Sally blinked and stared at Mikey for a moment. Then she said, “I guess she is nice. Okay.”
Mikey sensed that Sally did not wish to discuss any of this further, so he decided not to ask her about Billy, who he was, and why Sally’s mother had said that he was trouble and that he was harmless.
That weekend, Mikey was outside helping his father wash the car when Corinne walked up the street carrying a bag from the 7-Eleven. She waved to Mikey and his father as she passed their home. It occurred to Mikey that their house was not on the way back from the 7-Eleven; Corinne had passed her own home up the block in order to reach theirs.
She called out, “Hey, John, your kid tell you what a good driver I am?” She delivered this question almost like a taunt, each word barbed.
Mikey felt his face immediately go hot with blood. He had not told his father about getting a ride with Corinne.
She stood grinning with the plastic bag hooked through her elbow and swinging against her waist. She wore what looked like a very large men’s work shirt over pink pajama pants and sneakers.
Mikey’s father didn’t say anything, but he gazed briefly at Mikey, whose deep flush confirmed the story, then back toward Corinne, dipping his chin ever so slightly in lieu of a spoken thank you.
When Corinne had passed, Mikey’s father spoke to Mikey in a voice that was low and dangerous, like an idling motor: “Tell me what happened.”
Mikey told him everything, and at the end of his account, he added that Corinne had not once exceeded the speed limit on the drive over.
His father wrung out the sponge in his hands. Soapy water plummeted to the paved driveway and landed with a singular and definitive splat.
His father said with lips curled and mean, “I don’t want you going into that house again.”
Mikey was hurt by the tone of his father’s voice. He wanted to point out that Sally never invited him into her house, so he would have no reason to return anyway. He wanted to point out that it had all worked out just fine; he’d gotten to school on time without his father having to leave his workplace to drive him. And wasn’t that a good thing? Couldn’t they focus on that? He wanted to point out that Alice’s big brother had driven Mikey to school several times, and his car smelled like what Alice said was a weed smell, like actual drugs, and he went fifty in a thirty-five.
Mikey blinked rapidly to prevent tears from spilling over onto his cheeks. He hated himself for being so easily hurt by things he didn’t understand. What a wimp. As Mikey reached for the chamois to start drying the windows of his father’s car, he felt resentment ripple up through him as black and dirty as tar. Sally’s mom is nicer than you, he thought scornfully toward his father. I like her better. Mikey thought these words over and over, not just about his father but at him, lobbing the words through the space between them like darts and hoping that, even though he didn’t dare speak these sentiments aloud, they would reach his father and hurt him bad.
Chapter 11
It was rare that Mikey was truly angry at one of his friends but not rare at all for some conflict to be smoldering between two of the others, with the most frequent clashes occurring between Sam and Alice. Sometimes it escalated to raised voices and name-calling, a slap or shove with no real intent of injury, angry tears scooped up by a shirtsleeve. Sometimes it culminated with a dare. Alice was the only one to ever spend the night alone at The Gunner House, and it was because Sam provoked her.
They were all at the house together one evening, playing Hearts and passing a bottle of Popov around and around and around the circle. Alice was fourteen years old. It was summertime—they had no school in the morning, so their parents were happy to have them out of the house and seldom took notice of their activities unless they were out past nine or ten.
On this day, Babcia had offered the children half of a cheesecake, two poppy seed rolls, and a tray of spiced candies in tiny paper cups, which they had nearly finished. Their sugary fingers adhered to the playing cards. The windows were open, and there was a slight breeze that was not cool. A soupy dusk settled in, bathing the room in a soft, submarine light. Alice was quite drunk.
The subject of ghosts came up—Lynn had just watched The Shining for the first time. They continued to play cards as they discussed this movie and others featuring paranormal experiences.
Alice announced that she didn’t believe in ghosts and that horror movies bored her.
It was Sam’s turn to play a card. His blond hair was darkened by sweat around his temples. He tossed a jack into the middle of the floor and said, “You know there’s a ghost in this house, right?”
Alice reached for the plastic bottle of Popov and squeezed a small pinch into her mouth.
“I’ve seen it,” Sam said. “A few times. So has Jimmy.”
“Pfft!” Alice spat vodka from her lips and laughed. Several others laughed, too, and Jimmy did not confirm or deny that he had seen the ghost.
Sally said, “What does it look like?”
“Hard to say,” Sam said. “It’s always in the shadows.”
The others paused the game to stare at Sam in a way that annoyed Alice. She disliked it when anyone else took control of the room.
“Funny, funny, funny,” Alice said. She played her ace and collected the pile of cards.
Sally started a fresh hand with a six of spades. She picked up the final candy and said, “Where’d you see it?”
“Upstairs,” Sam said. “I’ve seen it through the window before. That’s where Jimmy saw it, too.”
Sam was really pissing Alice off now. “You’re an ass-butt,” she said. She gripped the corner of her thumbnail between her teeth, ripped it off in a
clean half-moon, tasted salt and something intensely bitter.
Mikey turned to Sam. “How many times have you seen it?”
“Oh, come on,” Alice said. “He’s just messing with you. Sam, quit messing with him.”
Mikey said, “I’m just curious.” He chewed his bottom lip for a moment then said softly, as though issuing an apology, “I think maybe I’ve seen it, too.”
Alice tossed her head back, rolling her eyes. Since she felt the most protective of Mikey, it offended her the most when he defied her.
Sally received the bottle of Popov and sent it around to her left.
Jimmy grabbed the bottle by its neck and said, “It’s true, you guys, the ghost is real. But I get the feeling it’s scared of us.” He took a sip of vodka.
Sally said, “What if ghosts think they’re the real ones, and we’re the dead ones? And that’s why they’re so scared of us?”
Lynn said, “I wonder if the ghost is the one that used my hairbrush. I left it here one night, and the next day it was sitting at the wrong end of the room.”
Alice made a talking puppet with her hand. “Blah, blah, blah!” she said, her voice angrier and more percussive than she intended. “I suppose you’ve all seen the ghost, haven’t you? Shared a beer with it, have you? Watched it take a shit?”
Sally giggled, and this pleased Alice.
Sam turned to Mikey and said, “Three times. That’s how many times I’ve seen it. And I can always tell when it’s here.”
“Is it here now?” Lynn asked.
Sam closed his eyes and held up a hand, demanding silence.
Moments later, he opened his eyes and confirmed, “Yes. It is here.”
Jimmy nodded in agreement.
Lynn made a small noise and captured her bottom lip under her teeth.
Alice had lost complete control of this situation and was now very angry. She said, “Shut up, all of you, would you please?”
It was unlike Jimmy to conspire against Alice with Sam this way, even though Jimmy and Sam were best friends. It occurred to Alice that while Sam was clearly just trying to provoke her, Jimmy might actually believe the ghost was real.
The Gunners Page 6