Waiting for Normal
Page 14
“No, don’t!” I squeaked.
“Okay, okay,” he whispered.
There was a long silence between us. Well, not true silence—the city kept happening around us. People passed us. The traffic moved up Union Street. I pulled terrible, skipping breaths into my chest and I wondered if anyone noticed us standing there. Did they wonder why a man and a girl would seem to be having a disagreement right on the street? Dwight covered his mouth with his hand, drew his fingers along his chin and kept sighing through his nose.
“Don’t you have to get back?” I finally said. “Don’t forget, it’s Valentine’s Day.”
He nodded slowly. “I guess so. But, Addie, we’re not done with this.”
“Well, I think we are. We have to be,” I mumbled. I turned and headed down Union. Dwight followed behind me. When we got to the truck he gave me a ride to the trailer. He didn’t come inside—thank goodness—just went around back to check on the electrical hookup. I followed him as much to keep him out of the trailer as anything. He said it was good to keep the snow cleared around the connection. I said I’d tell Mommers. Then I said good-bye to him. No hug. That was awful. But it was the right thing to do now.
Inside the trailer, I slipped Dwight’s bank card into one pocket of my electric blue duffel bag. I rolled the duffel up small as I could and stuffed it into the back of my closet.
“Perfect, huh, Piccolo? Two things I won’t be using so they might as well be in the same place.” I thought about how Dwight had given me the lunch tickets, how he’d come all the way down to Schenectady to make sure I was all right. I thought about how mean I’d been. I looked at Pic again and said, “But I had to be mean.”
I flopped on my back in my bunk. I put my feet up in the air and stretched my toes up till they reached the ceiling. In my mind I kept seeing the inn, my little sisters on the snowy hill, Hannah throwing her braid back as she stood in the doorway and Dwight strapping on his tool belt for work in the morning. I saw a table spread for dinner— “Their table. Not mine,” I said. I pushed back tears. “Okay, now, I am not going to become some weenie-headed crybaby over this.” I gently drummed on Pic’s cage with my finger. “Ya get it, Pic?” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “Besides, we’ll be fine. We have a home and Mommers always makes it back before the food runs out.”
I went into the kitchen and did another cupboard check even though I already knew exactly what was there. I called it out loud for Piccolo. “One box of mac and cheese, one brownie mix, one bag of goldfish crackers. One empty Cheerios box.” (I’d kept it in there just for show.) I moved on to the cans. “Two tomato soups, one chicken noodle.” I opened the refrigerator. “One stick of butter, one can diet soda, one jar pickles. And now for the Hamster Pantry.” I turned and went to my closet. “Half a bag of seed and an almost full box of alfalfa blend. Well, Pic, given the size of me and the size of you, if food is wealth, you’re the queen today,” I said. “But if Grandio comes back, we’re both in trouble.” I remembered how he had poked at the boxes of food with his finger.
“That empty Cheerios box is a problem.” I said, hopping off the bunk. I took the box down, and after rummaging around the trailer, finally stuffed it with a rolled-up magazine. The magazine filled the box and made it look full of cereal again. That gave me another idea. I checked the paper trash. I found two flattened mac and cheese boxes and put them back together with a glue stick from Mommers’ office supplies. Then I filled the boxes full of plastic pushpins that she had never even opened. I shook the boxes.
“Hey, hey, hey, Piccolo! How do you like that? Sounds like real macaronis to me!” I shook again and danced a little cha-cha. I suddenly felt better than I had all day. I pulled the rumpled valentines from my sisters out of my jacket pocket. I smoothed them out and just stared at them for a minute. They were sweet, good decorations so I taped them to the paper shade I’d given to Mommers for Christmas. Then I cut a chain of hearts from an old newspaper and hung those up, too.
I heated a can of tomato soup for my Valentine’s supper and floated a little pat of butter on the top of it for good looks and richer taste. (Elliot taught me that.) I poured a little bit of Piccolo’s seed right onto my bedcover. I let her come out and sit next to me. I sipped my soup and Piccolo filled her cheeks until her face looked like a puffy valentine heart.
chapter 39
the goosh in my gut
All my worrying about the February vacation snag was for nothing. Mommers happened to be home the night Dwight called and she flat out refused to let him have me. Of course, she did that just to rip Dwight but I was relieved that there wasn’t a fight over it. I wondered if that meant that Dwight wouldn’t ask again. I ignored the goosh in my gut. Mommers and I put away the groceries together. I counted meals as we worked.
One jar of applesauce goes with two cans of baked beans and makes four meals. One loaf of bread is eighteen slices including the heels—
“Hey! You must be mooching off your friends at the chubby-mart.” Mommers elbowed me and giggled. “There’s still a lot of macaronis in here.” She shook the box.
“Not really,” I said. “They’re fakes. I just did it to make the cupboards look full. In case Grandio comes by again.”
“Jack? Jack was here? Inside? He’s got no business coming through my place!” Mommers insisted. “You can tell him no. You know that?”
“Mommers, it was Grandio, not some ax murderer.”
“What did he want with us anyway?” Mommers asked.
“Well, Dwight sent him because he was worried about us.”
“Yeah, right. Dwight’s so worried he put us in this dump in the first place. If he’s got a guilty conscience, it’s because he deserves one!” Mommers simmered on and on. Finally, she sat down with a diet soda and lit a cigarette.
“Isn’t that bad for your baby?” I asked.
“What? The baby you don’t think I should be having?”
I shrugged. She took a puff.
“I’m gonna quit. I’m just …nervous right now.”
“Are you staying?” I asked.
“I’m here tonight,” she said. “Can you make something for dinner? My feet are killing me.” She thunked one foot then the other up onto a chair and sighed cigarette smoke out her nose. “I forgot how much being pregnant takes it outta me.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get dinner.”
chapter 40
fiesta night
Soula had been having energy problems. Her skin seemed kind of yellowy to me. She kept trying to powder up her face, but the yellow always showed through. I wondered if she’d ever had that last chemo treatment.
We had started to eat together most nights. When Soula let me cook for her, I felt good—like I was repaying some of her kindness. It turned out that she liked toast dinners. She said they reminded her of the food she had eaten as a kid.
“Makes me remember being young again,” she told me one night as she took a bite of my special tomato soup on toast. “And there’s not much on this planet that does that for this old girl anymore. You’re my hero, Cookie.”
Sometimes Elliot stayed around for dinner and he and Soula got into salad wars. Elliot made the salad and Soula refused to eat it.
“The darker the greens the higher the vitamin C,” he said. He slid the bowl under her nose and she swatted at him.
“Get that away from me, you fool!” she said. She turned her head away. “My ancestors didn’t fight their way to the top of the food chain to look down and see me eating leaves!”
“Oh come on, Crab Cake. Afraid you might get healthy?” He shook the salad tongs at her.
“Look at me, Elliot!” Soula snapped. “Do I look like I’m about to get healthy?”
“Maybe you should try!” he shouted back.
I kept eating through their fight and wondering if everything would be okay. Poor Elliot. His face was red for half an hour. He didn’t eat much—just pushed the food around on his plate. I made sure I ate lots of salad.
“Are you still gonna have that party for me after the last chemo?” She tapped a slipper covered foot out in front of her and stuck out her bottom lip.
“Of course,” Elliot told her.
“With a chocolate cake as big as a boulder?” she pleaded.
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” he said. Then he grinned at me and rolled his eyes.
A folded corn tortilla sizzled in the pan on the back of the stove and an oily haze hung in the trailer. I smelled meat and beans with chili powder.
“Hope you’re hungry!” Mommers whooped as I walked in the door.
“I already ate tonight,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Well”—she grinned and brought her hands together in a loud clap—“you’re gonna eat again! It’s Fiesta Night!” She made big, sweeping loops in the air with one finger. She turned the tortilla with a fork, picked up a knife and split a green pepper in two. A mound of chopped onions and another of grated cheese were piled in bowls near her elbow. “Stir that pot of slop, will you?”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked. I pushed a spoon into the meat and beans and stirred.
“Who needs an occasion? It’s a fiesta!” she repeated. I banged the spoon on the side of the pot to clean it. “You can’t have too many leftovers,” Mommers went on.
Well, she was right about that, I thought, as I twirled the spoon in my fingers. The refrigerator would be full of this stuff until—well, until she came back again. All or nothing. That was Mommers.
“Get me that head of iceberg from the fridge, huh?” she said. I did. When I handed it over, she put the blade of her knife up through the still wrapped head of lettuce and stared at it for a second. She peeled back the plastic. “Oh! Oh! My long lost love!” she spoke to the pale green head. She puckered her lips and made loud kissing noises. “How could you stay away so long? I have waited”—kiss—“and waited for your return!” Kiss! Kiss! She went on and on. I don’t know why I didn’t laugh. It was funny enough. Instead, I picked up a sponge.
“Addie, you poop.” Mommers dropped her lettuce puppet on the table. “What’s the matter with you?”
I shook my head.
“What?”
“You,” I said. I stood at the sink turning the faucet off and on over the sponge for no reason. “I know what you’re doing,” I said. “You’re trailer stuffing.”
“Trailer stuffing?”
“You’re filling the place up with food.” I swiped at the counter with the sponge. “You’re gonna leave again.”
Mommers froze for a second. “Well, I can’t be here all the time! I have a job, ya know? Are you really mad at me? I can’t believe this!”
“You’re gone all the time,” I said. I mashed the meat tray into the garbage and pushed it down hard twice. “We’re gonna get caught again,” I mumbled.
“Caught? No, no we are not .” Mommers took a deep breath. “This isn’t the same as …as before. Besides, you’re twelve now! And look at you! Now listen, I’m here doing all this cooking and you are spoiling Fiesta Night, Addison. Come on. Get happy!” She went on chopping and frying. Then, without looking at me, she said, “And when I’m not here, you just …just …take real good care of yourself. Give me a little more time. Everything will work out fine.”
I waited a couple of seconds. “Did you tell Pete?”
“I’ll tell him about the baby when he needs to know,” she said flatly.
“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I meant did you tell him about me?”
She didn’t answer.
I managed to eat one taco. Mommers ate three. While she settled in front of the TV with a diet soda, I cleaned up the kitchen. It seemed to take forever. The oil had splattered and she had set the meat and bean spoon down on the counter in about a dozen different places. There were puddles of slop everywhere. The more I cleaned, the madder I got. Mommers sat glued to Jeanette. I began to think it was better when I had the trailer to myself. At least then I only had to clean up my own mess. I scraped the meat and beans into a plastic bowl and stored it in the fridge. I scrubbed the pan in the sink and dried my hands.
“Finally,” I said. Then I turned and saw the tortilla pan at the back of the stove and the onion bowl that I had missed on the table. I let a little growl out between my teeth.
“Hey, I’ll get the rest,” Mommers called to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Really? That’d be nice. I’m going to do my homework.”
In the morning, I found Mommers asleep in front of the TV. She had not moved since the night before. She had not done the last of the dishes. I went to her and shook her by the shoulder. “Don’t you have to be at work soon?” I asked. She grumbled and rolled away from me. “Mommers,” I said again. “You were gonna finish the kitchen. Remember?”
I took my shower and left for school.
chapter 41
making changes
“Hi, Elliot,” I said as I entered the minimart. My backpack caught on the closing door and “ pulled me backward.
Elliot laughed and raised a hand. “Hi, Addie.”
I looked at the empty lawn chair. Soula was usually right there when I came in from school. “Where is she?” I asked.
“Napping. It’s not a great day,” Elliot said, curling his lip.
“Oh. Poor Soula,” I said.
“Yeah, only don’t let her catch you saying that,” he warned me. He put his finger to his lips. “No pity parties.”
“Right. Hey, Elliot?” I kept my voice low. “Isn’t it time for the last chemo?”
“Past time.” He nodded. “Way past. But they’re holding off. She needs a break.”
“Oh, that’s good!” I said. I grabbed the broom and started sweeping my way past the dairy case. “Soula probably wants a break. She told me the chemo is the cure but the cure is a killer.”
“Guess that’s true,” said Elliot.
I hung around awhile. I unpacked a box of chips and filled the coffee cup dispenser. Elliot took inventory in the candy aisle, marking off an order form he had on a clipboard.
“What’s this week’s winner?” I asked.
“Hershey’s plain,” he replied. Same as usual. “Not much changes around here.” He made a big sigh and ran his hand over his short hair. “Then again, maybe that’s a good thing.” I have to admit, I thought he was being a bit dramatic.
“Aw, come on, Elliot. It’s just chocolate,” I said. “Hey, let’s change something. Let’s change the radio station!”
He gave me a silly grin. I got up on a stool and turned the tuning dial until I got a country and western station. We pushed back a cardboard display for disposable cameras and made a dance floor. Elliot was so good at leading that he made me, the clod, look like a pro. When I sat out, exhausted and sweaty, he danced the broom instead and just as easily too. From my milk crate stage, I sang with a twang into my ice scraper microphone. “One minute yo’re beatin’ all the odds, and the next, they’re beatin’ you!”
Soula never showed that afternoon. I left her a note to say hello and told her I’d be by tomorrow in case she had missed me. I shouldered my backpack and headed out.
“Hey, kiddo,” Elliot said. He laughed when I pretended to be squooshed in the closing door. “Thanks for hanging around.”
“Sure!” I said. I squeezed out the door and made a big circular wave with my arm from the other side.
I hopped the river of water that came streaming across the road from Soula’s melting avalanche. I sniffed the air. Five o’clock on the corner had a sort of gassy smell about it, what with everyone coming and going. Elliot would be anchored to the register soon with everyone fueling up. The air was warmer than it had been in months. March was here. Spring was coming. I wondered how long before the tar would bubble up in place of all the slush and melting snow. I remembered pop
ping the bubbles with Katie and Brynna back in September. I caught a sorry breath in my chest, along with a cloud of exhaust from an eighteen wheeler.
I coughed my way into the trailer and closed the door quickly.
“Whoa! You don’t need any of that stink filling up your little lungs, Pic,” I said. I checked the stove just like I had for four nights running. Mommers had still not been back, or if she had been, she still hadn’t done her share of the Fiesta Night cleanup. The taco pan was still on the back of the stove and I left it there. I scrubbed the saucepan I’d made my chicken noodle soup in (I was sick of beans after four nights in a row) and the knife I spread peanut butter onto my toast with. I rinsed the suds from my bowl, glanced at the pan full of oil and thought about cleaning it.
“Nope,” I said. “Not gonna.” I wiped up all around it. Then I turned on the radio, found the station Elliot and I had had so much fun with and kicked back. “From now on, Pic, I clean up after me and you. I’m changing my life!” I threw my head back and howled with the music.
chapter 42
my fault
I woke up way before the alarm the next morning. I was sure I had heard Mommers come in, but when I checked her room it was empty. I looked at the clock. It was just a little after five. I had hours before I needed to leave for school. I dug into the cupboard and pulled out a packet of cocoa mix—the last packet.
“Well, Piccolo, I got me one last cocoa and plenty of time to drink it,” I said, still enjoying a Western twang. I flicked on the burner to start my kettle and went in for a quick shower.
When I came padding out in my bare feet and bathrobe a few minutes later I heard a strange sound—a mix of crackle and wind. Not right. The air smelled like burned tacos. I whipped around to see a black haze rising from the fry pan on the stove. There was a loud pop and it burst into flames. I reached for the handle. Too hot! I dropped the pan. The flames spilled and leaped. I grabbed the fire extinguisher. What had Dwight said? I pulled the pin and aimed. A watery spray hit the fire.