“Jane, you need to come see me in my office.”
“Oh no,” Krishna said, hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’ll be waiting in the car.”
19
“You want to tell me what your friend was doing here?” Francine asked, the moment I sat down.
“I didn’t tell her to come,” I said.
Francine eyed me like I was lying. She scrutinized me until I was nervous enough to say something, but all I did was sputter my outrage till I found my voice, and said, “You can stare at me all you like, but I didn’t ask her to come here.”
“I don’t like your attitude.”
“What attitude?”
“Your tone is defensive.”
“Because I’m being accused of something I didn’t do.”
“Who is accusing you?”
“You are.”
“I didn’t say anything. I asked you a question.”
“Yeah, and then you stared me down.”
“Jane, your tone is insubordinate.”
“Insubordinate? Fine. I’ll have to chat with you later. I have a party to go to,” I said, and stood up to leave the office.
“You will need to return that uniform.”
“Are you firing me?” I turned around and stood in the office door.
“Yes.”
“Good. I was sick of this stupid job anyway,” I said, and left the building. I was so mad I didn’t even grab my coat. I went out into the freezing cold still wearing my pink, polyester uniform and climbed into the car. Gay and Krishna were blowing out air that was so cold it looked like cigarette smoke, even with the car running.
“God I’m cold,” I said, slamming the door and crawling in the back.
“Are you going to leave your car here?” Krishna asked.
“No,” I said. “My dad dropped me off here. My mom needed her car tonight. Quick, give me a toke off of that pipe. I quit my job. Where’s the party?”
“It’s some jocks. Jeff Johnson and those guys. Football players.”
I woke up. I wouldn’t have woken up. I would have frozen to death, but someone was kissing me.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
I opened my eyes. It took me a minute to register that it was Paul. I was too cold and numb and sick to feel anything other than confusion. He was holding me around the shoulders.
“Let’s get you into the car. You’re going to freeze to death.”
“How did I end up here? Where is everybody?”
“Most people went home.”
“How long have I been out here?”
“Long enough that you’re lucky you didn’t freeze to death. It took me a while to find you.”
“You were looking for me?”
“I saw how drunk you were. I saw you attack that boy. Then you left the rooming house and I didn’t know what happened to you,” he said. “Put your arms around my neck.”
I tried, but felt too sick and cold. Paul scooped me up and carried me to his car. He still had that great big boat car.
“I didn’t know you were here,” I mumbled. “How do you know Johnny?”
“I don’t. I ended up here because I was with some people.” He opened the door and laid me in his car.
“Wait, I attacked a boy? What do you mean, like sexually?”
“No,” he said. “You were beating the crap out of him.”
Vaguely, I started remembering flashes of the night.
“Over what?”
“I don’t know.”
I had lost Krishna. I had kept opening doors and calling her name. There had been couples fully engaged in their copular activities, some of whom had tried to say, “I think she’s with Ames.”
I should have been happy about Paul, but wasn’t. And he didn’t seem that happy either. He just seemed concerned.
“Ziggy comes home in a few days,” I said.
Paul didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to go see him?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’m sick of all the drugs.”
“Sick of all the drugs? Then what were you doing here?”
“I told you, I just ended up here.” He drove in silence.
I lay back down on the seat, too sick and drunk to sit up and talk anymore. He brought me home, and came with me into the back room.
We smoked a bowl together. I said, “I thought you were sick of the drugs.”
“I am,” he said, and gazed at my picture window into the dark.
We sat in silence, then I passed out on my green chair.
He must have moved me to my cot. I woke up the next morning wondering if it had been a dream.
Then I remembered I didn’t have my car.
I poured some coffee. I brought it back with me to my room and sat down at my table, put on some music, and contemplated the snow.
20
“How was work last night?” Mom asked. I was passing through the kitchen.
“Fine,” I said, and grabbed the car keys.
“I need the car today,” she said.
“Nope, sorry, I gotta go.”
I pulled out of the driveway before she could stop me and drove to Krishna’s.
It was freezing outside. I stood knocking on Krishna’s door, shivering, wishing someone would hurry up and answer.
There was no car in the driveway. Maybe nobody was home. I went into the backyard, knee-deep in snow, and started throwing snowballs at Krishna’s window.
She came to the window and opened it as a snowball headed toward her. She got it right in the face.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Damn it!” she yelled. “What are you doing? You’re crazy.”
“Let me in.”
She shut the window. I went and stood by the door. I was tempted to return to the backyard about the time I saw her walking through the kitchen.
She opened the door.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“You’re still alive.”
“What happened to me last night?” I sat down at the kitchen table. “Can you make me some coffee?”
“You were crazy. You were insane,” Krishna said, preparing the coffee. They used a drip machine. “It was like someone unleashed a tiger into the room. You were completely out of your mind.”
“What did I do?”
“You got angry at this guy who was saying a bunch of sexist shit. I don’t think anybody knew him. He was from Fond du Lac, I think. Paul was there. Did you see him?”
“He was the one who got me out of the snowbank where I passed out.”
“Paul did? I think I remember him looking for you. We tried to look for you. We were going to call the police but were afraid we might get you into trouble.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” I said. “I don’t remember no matter how hard I try.”
I stopped trying.
When my mom asked me about going to work later that afternoon, I told her I about the job. She said she wasn’t surprised. She said she had given up on me a long time ago.
I sat in the living room, watching TV. I heard what she said, but it didn’t register.
Gay came over at some point. She told me something, but I couldn’t hear her.
“What?” I said.
“Look at this.” Gay set something down on the coffee table in front of me.
I looked at it. “What the hell is that?”
“Um,” Gay said, hesitating. “It may be too late to say this, but I don’t think you should drink.”
I stared at the brick on my coffee table.
“Are you saying I hurt someone with that?”
“Nobody has seen that kid you were pummeling last night. I don’t think you hurt anyone with this because I took it out of your hand. I had to practically wrestle you to the ground to get it.”
I picked it up and turned it around, looking at it from all angles.<
br />
“I don’t remember anything from last night. I don’t remember going to the party. The last thing I remember was losing my job. Then waking up in a snowbank with Paul. He took me home.”
“Maybe don’t drink as much,” Gay said.
I had a vague memory of her telling me to drink. It seemed like such a long time ago.
“Maybe some people shouldn’t drink,” she continued.
“Whatever. I don’t give a fuck anyway; it doesn’t matter what I do,” I said.
Gay stood up and backed up from the coffee table. She backed up to the gold curtain that hung down to the floor.
Then she gestured with her arms, and said, “What are you talking about? You have all this.”
I looked around and tried to imagine what she was talking about.
“My living room?” I asked, baffled.
When she didn’t answer, I thought about it. I remembered the first time I’d met her. Well, not the first time, but one of the first times. She had gone rampaging through my house, hanging wine-soaked tampons from my chandeliers.
Nothing she was telling me about how lucky I was registering with me at all.
“Anyway, whatever,” she said, when my incomprehension became clear. “Can I organize your records for you? Will you pay me?”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, and sat admiring the snow. I pulled out a baggie and smoked some of it with her while I watched her work.
I didn’t see her again till later than night. By that time, I had forgotten what she’d said to me in the afternoon.
Between then and the time that I saw her again that night, I had smoked most of my pot. I decided to drink the rest of a pint of whiskey that I had hidden away for times of need. I put some Dylan albums on and sipped and chain-smoked.
21
By the time Krishna called, I was completely drunk. I stumbled into the kitchen when my dad told me she was on the phone.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he said.
I turned to answer him but, since I was seeing two of him, couldn’t decide which one to speak to. I picked up the phone, and said, “Hello?”
“Are you ready? Come get me. Ziggy’s home,” Krishna said.
“Okay, I’ll be right over,” I said.
I turned around.
My dad was still waiting for an answer. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“You haven’t talked to Mom yet?” I said.
“No, why?”
“Never mind. I need the car,” I said.
“Your mom has it. You can’t use mine.”
Even though I knew he wouldn’t budge on this, I was about to try to convince him to let me use it, but then saw Mom pull up in the driveway. I had a feeling I was going to have trouble taking the keys away from her. I heard the car door slam.
It had warmed up a little, and some of the ice on the driveway had melted. It didn’t take her long to reach the back door.
She shut the door and began taking the scarf off her head, and taking off the woolen, blue-and-white speckled winter coat.
“I need the car,” I said.
“You’re not using my car,” she said. “No.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Why not?”
My dad stood behind me with his hands in his pockets. He stood about two inches shorter than me. My mom was a whole head taller.
“What happened to your job, Jane? Do you need the car to get to work? I can take you,” said my dad.
My mom shook some of the snow off the coat in the kitchen before taking it to the hall closet.
I followed her.
“She quit her job,” Mom said, “so you don’t have to worry about taking her to work anymore. I wouldn’t let her use your car either. You can smell the alcohol on her breath.”
If the rage I felt had a color, it would have been orange, like the fire in hell.
The phone rang. I was prepared to knock them down in order to reach it first. I didn’t want them telling Krishna that I couldn’t use the car. That seemed humiliating to me somehow. How dare they tell me I can’t use the car? It felt like my car.
“Hello?”
“Jane?” It was Gay.
“Yeah?”
“When are you picking us up? I’m at Krishna’s. When are you getting here?”
“I’ll be there soon,” I said.
“No she won’t!”
“Was that your mom?” Gay asked.
“Don’t worry about her. She doesn’t tell me what to do,” I said, and hung up. “Don’t you shout again when I’m on the phone with my friends.”
“Some friends,” Mom scoffed. She had put away her coat, and was heading up the stairs.
“I am taking the car,” I said, and climbed the red-carpeted stairs after her.
She had her purse tucked tightly under her arm. All I needed to do was grab it from her. I tried, but she pulled it quickly in front of her. I knew I could overpower her. It wouldn’t be hard. But I wanted to do this the nice way.
“I tell you what, Mom,” I said, and headed back down the stairs for the living room. “You give me the keys and I won’t light the house on fire again.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. But she stopped. She was taking me seriously at least.
“You go ahead and try to sleep, but bear that in mind,” I said, and smirked.
She started toward me. I went into the living room by the coffee table where I had been talking to Gay in the afternoon. It seemed like a long time ago, but it was only a couple of hours. I had paid her the $20 I always paid her when she sorted my records. My purse was still sitting there with my wallet out, next to the brick she’d left there. I picked up the brick.
My mom stood at the door of the living room with her purse clutched under her arms.
“Do I need to call the police?” she asked me.
I saw my dad come up behind her. He stood behind her in the hallway.
“I don’t know, are you going to give me the car keys? If you give them to me, there is no need to call the police.”
My dad started to move in front of her. I saw those tiger-striped pajamas. At that moment, the impulse to throw something took over. I was drunk, but not so drunk that I had no awareness of what I was doing. The floor swayed some, but not enough to explain the lack of aim. I meant to throw the brick through the front window, but as the brick was leaving my hand, my dad lunged toward me, his arm extended.
I could still feel the brick scraping the tips of my fingers as it left my hand. It struck my dad’s forehead, just above his eye, cutting him.
The blood. There must have been some kind of mistake.
I couldn’t believe how quickly it had happened.
Mom dropped her purse. I grabbed it.
“Where’s her keys? Where’s her keys? Oh my God.” It was freezing. I found them at the bottom after swirling the contents around and around, dropping some of them onto the snowy pavement. I stuck the key in the lock and rushed into the car. It didn’t help.
Somehow, I’d thought if I shut the door, I could change something. But nothing changed.
22
I drove toward Krishna’s, as if picking up Krishna and Gay and going over to see Ziggy could change something. The road looked weird, like it wasn’t real. The darkness of the night, the Christmas lights, and the lake ahead of me, and the moon. The moon.
I pulled into Krishna’s driveway.
There were Christmas lights up and down the fancy houses by the lake. I could see a Christmas tree inside some of the houses, but not Krishna’s. In the driveway, I honked.
Sickness churned in my stomach. There was no way I was leaving that car and going inside that house; I was going to sit there and blast the horn. If they didn’t come out, I didn’t care. Let them rot.
They finally came out, both of them smiling. How could they be smiling? How could they be so revoltingly blind?
But then, why they wouldn’t be smiling?
What was wrong
with me?
They opened the door.
“Now that’s a ghastly moon,” Krishna announced, as she came in, “not ghostly.”
Ghastly moon, ghastly night. Maybe Krishna wasn’t as blind as she seemed. But then how could she smile?
Gay sat in the front seat, and slammed the door, shivering in the cold. She reached over and turned up the heat.
“How’d you finally get the keys away from your mom?” Gay asked, her tone light and oblivious. “Is she on the rampage or what?”
“You know what they say,” Krishna said from the back. “Whatever Janey Lou wants, Janey Lou gets.”
“Don’t call me that.” I turned and glared at Krishna, half-snarling. “Don’t you ever call me that again. Call me Jane.”
Krishna’s eyes went from flippant and amused to shocked. “Okay,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Nothing, nothing, nothing but the ghastly moon. Nothing but everything.
“Guess she doesn’t like that name,” Krishna mumbled.
I pretended not to hear her.
“What did you do to get the keys, kill one of them?” Gay asked mockingly.
“Why did you say that?” I asked sharply. How could she know?
“No reason. Let’s drive. Mellow the fuck out,” Gay said.
“Okay,” I said. Nothing, nothing. She knew nothing. “I’ll mellow the fuck out.” I focused on the road.
Gay and Krishna started a conversation about something that had happened at Krishna’s. Krishna giggled. Giggled! Gay said, “That was unreal. Jane, you should’ve been at Krishna’s. Ames came over and demanded his arm back.”
“His arm?” I spoke on autopilot, only half-processing the words.
“That candle arm,” Gay said. “The arm that held the candle. The one that sits on her coffee table that she made from a mold of Ames’s arm.”
“I wish I had been over there,” I said.
Then nothing would be wrong. Nothing, nothing.
“She broke up with him,” Gay said. “Wait, she didn’t exactly break up with him. She asked him why he was still coming over all the time.” She busted out laughing.
“That’s not what I said,” Krishna protested.
Thin Ice (The Oshkosh Trilogy) Page 9