“There’s nothing to eat here.”
“In the coffee can on top of the fridge, there’s some money. Use that to buy a frozen burrito or something at the Texaco station.”
I pulled it down and popped the plastic top off. “There’s only a handful of change in here.”
“Lynn, please.” She made her bad teenager, heel expression. Then she shut the door and was off.
Phony
I let it ring three times before I picked it up.
“Hey,” a man said. It was a voice I didn’t recognize, so I waited for him to say something else before I answered him. “Hello.” The pitch of his voice went up a little on the o. “Somebody there?” The man spoke in a gruff, southern accent, definitely a Wiregrass accent, so I thought he might be someone my mom knew.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hayes there?”
“What?” I said.
“Hayes. I’m looking for Hayes. He there?”
“No, sir.”
“You know when he’ll be back?” The man coughed. It was a cough that sounded about twenty thousand cigarettes deep. “Ma’am?” he added after a cautious pause.
“He doesn’t live here, sir.”
“That don’t matter. He’s over there a lot, ain’t he?”
“Sometimes.” I let out a breath, wondering if I’d made a mistake admitting this. “I don’t understand what you want.” I forced myself to leave off the sir at the end.
“How about,” he said, “you just give me the address where you are.”
“If you’re looking for him, why don’t you go to his house? That’s usually what people do when they’re trying to find somebody. Not call a stranger’s house asking after street addresses they have no business with.”
This made him laugh until he coughed again, and then he coughed until he brought up something he felt the need to hawk and spit. The thick, wet sound of it came out of his mouth and through the phone lines. Then he hung up.
Doing It
“I think I’m ready to have sex,” Dani told me.
“With who?”
“I don’t mean I have someone picked out. I just feel like I’m ready now. I’m old enough. I might even need it.” She went over to her bed and lay on her back. Her hair spilled onto the quilt like a black puddle of oil and she stretched out her arms and sighed.
“How do you know?”
She closed her eyes and kicked her legs up in the air, pumping them like she was riding an invisible bike. The springs in the mattress made a soft ping sound each time she kicked out a foot. “I can feel it.”
“In your head?” I got up and sat beside her on the bed. Her pedaling made me bounce.
“No, of course not. I feel it right there.” She stopped her imaginary bike race and pointed to a spot right above her belly button.
“Your stomach?” I said, carefully.
“Somewhere inside there. Maybe it’s my womb. It’s a kind of tickly-itchy feeling. I can’t quite explain it.”
“Your womb itches?” Something about this cracked me up and I giggled.
“Don’t act like such a baby. I’m serious. I think it might be, I don’t know, unnatural maybe.”
“Well, my womb doesn’t itch.”
Upstairs, her mom stomped across the living room. A faucet turned on and off.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to want it this much,” Dani whispered to me without moving her lips and then glanced up at the ceiling as though her mom might be squatting on the floor, listening with a drinking glass pressed to the linoleum.
“But you haven’t even done it before. How do you know that’s what it is you want so bad?” I put a hand on my belly and tried to feel around inside my womb with my mind. “Maybe you’re just constipated again, like when you had to get the enema treatment.”
Dani sat up to pick a piece of pink sock fluff out from between her toes. “Ever since I kissed Wayne Keegan last month, I’ve been feeling like this.”
“You told me his mouth tasted like cheddar cheese.”
“That’s the mystery of it.” She put a fist under her chin. Her look said: I am now assuming a thoughtful expression. “It wasn’t Wayne, exactly. Just the act of kissing. I think it started a chemical reaction. You know, inside. Now it will never stop and I’ll have to keep doing it and doing it.”
“Well, don’t do it with Wayne Keegan. He’ll tell everyone.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do it with anybody. I just said I wanted to. Sometimes, Lynn, you’re so literal. I can’t believe I even try with you.”
“I’d want to do it too, but only if the right guy came around.”
“You’re just saying that. You’ll probably stay a virgin till you’re thirty.” Dani closed her eyes and shook her head. Her mom did the exact same thing to Dani when she was frustrated with her. I had the urge to tell her this, but then the half-fight we were having would turn into a whole fight and I wasn’t up to fighting with Dani that day.
“I do, too,” I said, not sure at all if I did. “Really. Just not with someone from our school.”
“Of course not,” Dani said, sitting up and becoming even more serious. “I told you before, your type shouldn’t even be in high school. Your type is at least a college sophomore.” She studied my face like an Us Weekly photo spread. “Have you even looked at that sheet I made you?”
“That’s what I’m talking about. If I did it, I’d want a college sophomore. Maybe some guy from Georgia Southern.”
“Hah!” Dani said, flicking me on the knee hard enough to sting. “I knew you hadn’t read it. I was testing you. I said your type was a college freshman. You’re not mature enough for a sophomore.”
“And you are?”
“Sometimes,” Dani said, closing her eyes again and shaking her head, “I don’t think you get me at all.”
“You know, Dani,” I said, and then it slipped right out, “your mom does that exact same thing where she closes her eyes and shakes her head like that.” I did a little imitation. “Exactly the same as what you’re doing now. She did it to you at dinner tonight when you told her—”
Dani made a loud, shrill sound.
Three-Day Rule
I broke the three-day rule out of boredom and general all around twitchiness about this Hayes weirdness, and then more boredom heaped on top. The house felt stuffy and smaller than normal. The window air conditioner in the living room wasn’t working right again. It made coughing sounds and the air coming out was barely cool. I watched TV. I read my mom’s back issues of Cosmopolitan from the stack in the bathroom. I walked in circles and talked to myself. I was about driven crazy with nervous energy and nowhere to put it. If you looked at it this way, and I did, I had no choice but to break the three-day rule.
“Specialist Loy,” he said when he answered the phone. His voice sounded softer than I expected. And kind. I’m not sure if I can explain what a kind voice sounds like. Sort of even and deep. In the background a man yelled, “You sunk my fucking battleship!” Two or three other guys in the room laughed at that. I didn’t say anything right away. I just sort of let his voice sink in. “Loy here,” he said after a moment. The second time he spoke he sounded impatient, not irritated, more like he was pressed for time.
“Hey,” I said, “Specialist Loy.”
“Hey.” His voice changed again. It became even softer and there was a hint of something new in it. Playfulness, maybe. “Who’s this?”
“This is, uh—”
“Lynn?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“It is.” I flopped down on the couch and put my bare feet up against the wall. The kitchen phone’s cord stretched tight as a laundry line.
“I didn’t expect you to actually call.”
“Why not?” I pinged the cord with my big toe and tried to imagine his face. A medium-sized forehead and dark, well-defined eyebrows. A nice, straight nose and good-sized lips. A dimple in his chin. No, no, scratch that, I thought
. No chin dimples. It ruined the picture.
“I don’t know,” he said. There was a muffled crash on his end. I heard him tell someone to take it outside.
“Do you have a roommate?”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t him. Just some guys from down the hall throwing a football around.”
I didn’t know what to say. My belly felt like it was full of buzzing radio static. I sat up straight and put my feet on the floor. I watched the moisture prints on the wall shrink and vanish.
“Lynn?” His voice got just the teeniest bit higher. “You still there?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”
“You know, you sound a lot like I imagined you would. What are you doing?”
“I’m bored. I’m stuck in the house today.”
“I wish I could drive up there and do something fun with you, but I’ve got to do some bullshit scut work. Excuse my language. I got in trouble this morning.”
“In trouble for what?”
“Oh, it was stupid.” He let out a long breath. “I failed room inspection three times this week, so now I’ve got to go rake pea gravel up on the roof of the armory.”
“Was your room really messy?” I pictured dirty socks on the floor and wrinkled uniforms tossed over the back of a chair.
“No, my sergeant just has it out for me. He has ever since I got transferred to his unit. I never even got discharged. As soon as I came home, they just reassigned me. I got stop-lossed, you know?”
Logan explained why this stop-loss business was bullshit. For a year they’d been telling him he’d get out on such-and-such a day. Less than a month before he was set to leave, they showed him the fine print on his contract, which basically said the Army had him as long as they needed him. All his plans were ruined in the time it takes to drink a Coke. He’d already signed up for a graphic design course at the DeVry Institute. His dream was to illustrate graphic novels. To top it off, nothing Logan did was good enough for his new sergeant. This last time he got in trouble it was because his bed wasn’t made right. The sergeant couldn’t bounce a quarter off it. If he messed up one more time, the man threatened to “section his ass.” I couldn’t help but imagine an ass being pried apart like a grapefruit.
“A quarter?” I asked, thinking of my bed.
“He has it in for me. I’d leave today if I could.”
“Why don’t you then?”
He groaned. “I wish it were that simple. I’d be in a world of shit if I just up and left. Take a lesson from me. Always read the small print before you sign your name to something.”
“You couldn’t just run away? Go to Canada or something? No one could say you were a coward. I mean, you already went once, right?”
“I guess.” He paused for a second, like he might actually be thinking about it. I only said it for something to say. I didn’t expect him to take me serious. “But here’s the thing, if they caught me, I’d probably go to jail. At best, they’d give me a dishonorable discharge and with that on my record it’d be impossible to get a decent job. Worst of all, they’d cancel my G.I. bill and then it’s bye-bye tuition money and bye-bye DeVry Institute.” He sniffed twice and clucked his tongue. “But yeah, if I wanted, I probably could skip. It wouldn’t be all that hard. If this fucking sergeant doesn’t get off of my ass, I just might.”
“What’d happen? Do they send a pack of hounds after you?” I bayed like a bluetick and Logan Loy laughed.
“I don’t think they’d come looking for me, unless I pulled some stunt before I left or maybe stole equipment. A gun, say. But if I was driving too fast or something and the cops pulled me over, they’d haul my ass in. No doubt. After forty-eight hours I think they put out some kind of a bulletin.” He lowered his voice like a TV announcer. “Keep on the lookout for Logan Loy, five foot eleven inches and a hundred and fifty pounds. Blond hair and a tattoo of the word Mom in a heart on his left arm.”
What he said wasn’t all that funny, but it stirred up a couple happy bumblebees in my belly and set them to buzzing about down there. I laughed because he wanted me to, and knowing he wanted me to made me happy. A good sign, I thought. He ain’t afraid to sound foolish.
“What about you?” Logan asked. “You skipping out on school today?”
“School doesn’t start till next week.”
“One more week of summer, huh?” Logan laughed some more. “That was always my busiest week. I tried to cram in all the stuff I’d planned on doing during the summer but hadn’t gotten around to yet. Maybe I can come up and see you before you have to go back? What do you think? Would that be cool?”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes and tried not to shout my answer. “Very cool.” My heart swelled—
“I was thinking like a picnic or something. You into that? It’s not too lame for you?”
“Not lame at all.”
—and swelled—
“How does Friday sound?”
—and then it popped from sheer happiness.
Serial Killer
I had saved a really long cigarette butt for after my shower and I was about to light it up, actually had it in my mouth and was picking up the lighter, when Hayes smashed his face up against the screen door and yelled, “Lynnie, sweetie, honey!” With his nose smushed up against the screen like that, he looked like a serial killer. I didn’t say anything at first and I don’t think he could see me since the blinds were down and it was dark in there. “Whatcha doing, Little Flipper?” He made a couple of dolphin squeaks per usual. “Why don’t you let old Hayes in?”
I stayed right where I was on the floor by the coffee table. “My mom said you weren’t allowed in the house because you’re having a spell.”
“Having a what?”
“A spell. That’s what she said. Spell. S-P-E-L-L.”
“The only spell I’m having is one of unemployment. And I believe that’ll be coming to an end here shortly.”
“You get a job or something?”
“I have some prospects.”
After the accident that wound him up in the emergency room where he met my mom, she helped him get a job “managing” the pharmacy of a Drug Rite over in Statesboro. He was not actually a pharmacist, but something called a pharmacy technician, which, to my mind, seemed like the pharmacist’s equivalent to a nurse’s assistant. Maybe not even. More like a hospital candy striper. All a pharmacist does is count pills. What does the assistant do, hold the bottle for him? Anyhow, he was fired for reasons that were never fully explained to me (hmm, let me take a wild guess).
“I heard they were hiring over at the Crispy Chik,” I said. “You know you look like a rapist with your face pressed flat like that?”
“In your dreams, Flipper,” Hayes said.
“Nightmares,” I said.
“Hey,” Hayes said, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth from heel to toe. “Just let me in there for a sec to use the bathroom and then I’ll take off.”
“Nope. The order is, and I quote, ‘Hayes is not allowed in the house when I’m not here.’ The bathroom’s in the house. So, no bathroom. Anyway, you drank the last of the cough syrup. If you really got to go, just tinkle out there behind the camellia bush.”
His face drooped when I mentioned the syrup and he said, “Come on, now.”
“I’m walking to the phone now. I’m picking up the phone. I’m dialing the nurse’s station at the hospital.”
“You go ahead and be that way, but don’t expect no favors from me anytime soon.”
When the thumps came an hour later, I thought it was Hayes back to pester me some more. I’d shut the door and locked it. There were just the two thumps, like somebody hitting the door really hard with the heel of his palm, and then nothing.
I crept to the window and peeked out. There wasn’t anybody I could see on the stoop, unless he’d pressed himself right up against the door.
I went ahead and opened it. Not a soul on the front walk or anywhere in sight. Then I saw a little bit
of shiny wet on the doormat and crouched down to look closer. I touched it and rubbed it between my thumb and index finger. Red, I thought. Even then I didn’t get it. But when I turned to go inside, I saw what was there. Stuck to the door with green punch pins were two fuzzy, gray ears. I knew them for what they were right away. Terrier ears.
I thought about the man on the phone with the cigarette-burned voice. Two bluebottle flies buzzed in a circle and landed on the red, wet edge of the ears. First one, then the other. I thought to take the sad, little things down before those flies laid their maggot eggs inside, but I didn’t want to touch them.
That man, I remembered suddenly, knew Mom was a nurse at the hospital and that we lived near it. I had a sudden picture of my mom’s ears nailed to the door.
Angry Red Mouth Print
The only other person in the hospital waiting room was a great fat woman with an infected spot on her leg. The spot was greenish yellow and as big as a walnut. I tried not to look at her, but it was hard, as she kept squeezing at the lump and wiping off the drippings with crumpled-up Dairy Queen napkins. She seemed to have a never-ending supply of them in her purse.
When my mom finally came out, I saw right away she was aggravated. I found out later a boy with a jammed finger had bitten her on the arm and left an angry red mouth print.
“What do you want?” my mom said. She bit off the end of each word with a hard chomp of her teeth. “I only have a couple of minutes.”
I told her about the man calling for Hayes, which I hadn’t mentioned before because it hadn’t really seemed like all that big a deal at the time. More Hayes’s problem than ours. The husky woman on the other side of the room stopped milking her infected lump for a moment, so she could listen in. She nodded at me and clucked her tongue like I was talking to her.
“I hope to God you didn’t tell him nothing.”
“I told him he had the wrong number.”
“When was this?” Mom asked. She squeezed her lower lip with her fingers.
“Oh, a day or so ago, but that ain’t why I came over and bothered you.”
Caring Is Creepy Page 5