by Gail Giles
“Mom, what can Chrissy and I help you do?”
“At this stage, not a lot. You can get Chrissy ready for bed, you can do your homework without a fuss. I’m going to be busy sorting things and looking for a house and getting this one ready for sale, all while looking for a job. You’ll have to take up the slack around here.” Mom sighed. “I’ll make out a chore sheet for each of you tomorrow.”
The Commander was back.
THE OARS AREN’T FOR ROWING
When I stepped out of Em’s car the next day, six burly men were transferring our grand piano into a truck. The piano was wrapped and packaged and the legs were removed and I guess already in the truck, so that it looked like a puffy kidney that weighed a gazillion pounds.
“Oh,” Em’s mom exhaled. Pity. Clear and undisguised. We were garage-sale poor.
“You win!” Em shouted. “No more piano lessons. Awesome.”
“I haven’t had piano lessons in years, Em,” I reminded her — like I was justifying this whole embarrassment. I cringed.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Ames, sweetie,” Em’s mom said. Sweetie. I cringed again. I was climbing the pity ladder fast.
I walked through the kitchen and looked into the formal living room. Mom was lingering in the great big hole of space, absently toeing the imprints in the carpet left from the piano legs. She looked like somebody had skinned her cat.
“I hate this,” I said.
Mom puffed her cheeks full of air, then let it out of her mouth like a balloon deflating. “I never saw anyone with a piano living in a tent,” she murmured, almost as if to herself. She put her fingertips against her lips.
I stepped close and put my arms around Mom to hug her. She jerked back, surprised at my touch. “I can’t deal with anything else right now, Ames. Anyone else. Please, go away. Go watch TV or something.” Mom returned to rubbing out the carpet indentations.
I knew she was hurting. But the first time I tried to help row, Mom swatted me with her oar.
I headed to Chrissy’s room. “C’mon, small-type person,” I said when I found her in the closet rearranging her bears. “I’m inviting you and one bear of your choice to watch TV or a movie, also of your choice. I draw the line, however, at any purple character or talking unicorns. And I’m not too fond of mermaids.”
“You’ll watch a whole movie with me?”
“Abso-certain-lutely.”
“That’s not a real word,” Chrissy said.
“Is now,” I said. “What do you think about tacos for supper? I’m going to cook tonight,” I said.
“You can cook?” Chrissy asked.
“We’ll have to see,” I said.
There were talking bears in the movie. Haven’t a clue what they talked about but Chrissy recited the dialogue with them and Mr. Brown clapped a lot. When the movie finished and we opened the door we heard the sounds of an argument drifting up the stairs. I was halfway down when I could make out the words.
“I don’t believe you!” It was Mom shouting. “You lazy piece of crap. How could you?”
“For one single minute, can you not nag and scream in my ear? Just sell everything I worked to give you and shut the hell up,” Dad roared back.
“Back to your room,” I told Chrissy. “You need to guard your bears while I try to calm things down.”
Chrissy put her hands over her ears and ran back up the stairway and then to her room. She slammed the door behind her.
When I got down to the first floor, I saw Mom towering over Dad as he sat at his desk, shouting at her and pouring a drink. A computer card game was on the computer screen. I listened and put what bits I understood together.
Mom had walked in on Dad while he was playing computer poker and she’d lost it. Why wasn’t he looking for a job, doing his share? This was all his doing; it was his responsibility to make it right. Rinse and repeat.
Dad: How many hours a day can I search for jobs online? If you can spend an hour sobbing over a piano and toeing carpet marks, why can’t I have fifteen minutes to play a game to de-stress? My money bought the piano that you just sold; that’s my contribution for the day — where’s yours?
Each just wanted to win. The oars weren’t meant to move the boat forward. They were weapons.
They hadn’t kept their word for one day. Not a single day.
I had to get out of here before I physically hurt someone.
I grabbed the phone in the kitchen and dialed Em. “Can we get to the mall?”
“Sure. Have you met my new guy? He’s a cowboy. He’s eighteen so he can take us. Be outside in ten.”
I was outside in ten and in the long-legged, slow-talking boy’s backseat in ten and a half.
“Ames, this is Win.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Win said.
“Win? Short for something?” I asked.
“Lord, yes. Something long and tongue-tangled and got some Roman numerals, too. We’ll just keep it at Win, if you don’t mind.”
“Secrets, lies, and theft, that’s my life now,” I said.
“Well, little missy,” Win said to Em. “I thought you were the sassy one of this bad-girl team.”
“I need to learn. I’m poor now and I think shoplifting might become a necessary skill.”
“Wait a minute. Do you want to start shoplifting to piss off the parents and get a little payback — show them you can lie and steal, too? Or are you shoplifting to get stuff you can’t afford now?” Em asked.
“Could be both,” I said.
“So not true. But it’s good enough. What are you after? New cell phone?”
“I don’t think so,” Win countered. “You can lift the phone, but you have to pay for the plan. That gets complicated. Now, I might know some people…”
“Nah, I just want an iPod for now.”
“Easy peasy.”
* * *
When I slid the iPod into my purse and turned toward the door, I felt that dark thrill, that silver cool feeling of deceit and being something I had never been.
But Apple was on the ball and we were busted before we were halfway out the door. Our tears and it was just a joke —sort of a dare — like a scavenger hunt — we’re so sorry’s fell on totally deaf ears. It didn’t help that I had wire cutters in my pocket.
Mall security turned us over to the police, who hauled our butts downtown. We were printed, photographed with a digitally entered numbered sign just like in the movies. We were searched, humiliated, and slapped in a cell. Because we were juvies they put us in a cell together and not with adults. The cowboy got adult treatment, but he looked like he was used to the drill.
“What about our call?” Em demanded.
“You watch too much TV,” the officer said. “You’re juveniles. You don’t get a call. I call your parents. Go sit down.”
“So what do you think of jail?” Em whispered, nodding across to the big holding tank at the jeering, trash-talking pros in ho outfits and vomiting women who had been without drugs a little too long.
I flashed back to how the word jail had sent ice down my spine when Em first said it in relation to my dad.
“I’d rather be here than home,” I said.
“Wow, things are really circling the drain for you, aren’t they?”
I sat on the stainless steel “bed.” Sighed.
In an hour, Em’s stepdad, in his perfect suit and his tightly knotted silk tie, appeared. “Let’s go.”
“Earl, when you leave Mom, please take me with you,” Em said.
I still sat on the bed. “You too, Ames,” Earl said. “All arranged. You’re released to my custody.”
“That was fast,” Em remarked.
“I only play golf because the judges do,” he shot back.
“Are my parents out there?” I asked.
Earl scowled. “You’ll be staying with us tonight, Ames. We’ll discuss that at the house. Let’s get you out of here.”
We signed for our things. Earl did some business and we were in
the backseat of his car.
“Em, will you understand when I tell you that you’re an idiot?” her stepdad asked.
“I’d understand and agree, Earl,” Em replied.
“Sir, this was all my fault,” I broke in. “I asked Em to do this with me.”
“That’s probably true, Ames, except that I suspect you asked Em to show you how. Am I correct?”
“I needed a new iPod. My mom took mine.”
“Never lie to your lawyer. That can’t be the only reason. Em has a handful of those things she could lend or give you.” A short silence. “Ames, I know why Em shoplifts — it’s her head rush. She’s also savvy enough to know that everything on her record before she’s eighteen is sealed. She knows what real trouble is and how to stay out of it. She flirts with trouble but she doesn’t kiss it.” Em laughed, but my head spun. “I think it’s different with you.”
I thought for a minute.
“I guess… I just wanted to see how it felt to steal.” Never lie to your lawyer, I reminded myself. “To do — something… bad, I guess.”
“How’d that work out for you?” Em’s stepdad asked.
I didn’t reply. Earl wouldn’t approve of the honest answer.
It felt dangerous. I found something dark in me that sang. I wanted to listen. Maybe I wanted to sing, too.
When we got back to Em’s, Earl told her to go up to her room and get ready for bed. “I need some time with Ames.”
Em’s face turned totally serious and suddenly she was all good-girl behavior. She slid out of the seat, through the door from garage to house without a word.
Earl put his arm on the back of the seat and turned so he could face me. “I’ll represent you in this shoplifting case. Since you didn’t make it out of the store, nothing was stolen, so it boils down to attempted shoplifting. It will be taken care of in tandem with Em. It’s easily handled.” He stopped. I think he was waiting for me to say something. His silence sounded lawyerly.
“This isn’t like you, Ames.” He nailed me with a steady look. “I never picked your father to embezzle from his clients. Now you steal just to see what it feels like?
“Ames, I am sympathetic, but you are in trouble on so many levels. More than legal. When I called your house to get your father or mother to come with me to get you out of jail…” Again with the drilling look. “Your father was too drunk to drive and your mother said that she couldn’t deal with you. I told her that I would take care of everything.”
Finally, someone told the truth. My mother and father didn’t give a shit. They were too absorbed in their own miserable worlds.
Tears pushed their way to my eyes. I blinked and fought them back.
“Ames, I’m not sure they would have left you in jail, but… I’ll be here for you if I can. Circumstances being what they are, however, you need to stay out of trouble.” He stopped. “I wish I could do more to help you, but… the law won’t allow me to do much.” He appeared frustrated. I had never seen Earl frustrated. He drummed his fingers on the seat back. “You need to stop acting out. You don’t have the liberty to rebel like a normal teen right now. I was here to catch you this time, but next time you fall, I might not be around.”
Translation: Get used to being unprotected.
* * *
When I got to Em’s room, she had pajamas on the bed for me. I showered first, washing jail off my skin and out of my hair with hot water and tea tree oil shampoo. I came out of the bath feeling less of a felon but more of an orphan. Chinese takeout was sitting in white boxes in Em’s sitting room.
“Let’s take this stuff to the media room and watch a movie,” Em suggested.
“Works for me,” I said. We ferried the stuff down the hall and settled in.
“I get kicked out and you get takeout. What’s with that?”
“You’re carrying my weight here. Earl and Mom feel so sorry for you that they kind of forgot I got arrested. By the time they remember, they won’t be nearly as mad as they would have been.” She flipped through the DVDs. “Something stupid-type funny?”
“Sounds right.”
Em slid in a DVD and hit the remote. “Let’s see what Mom ordered.” She sorted through the boxes. “Sweet and sour shrimp. Yum.” She handed me a plate and chopsticks.
“My life has turned to crap,” I said. It was matter of fact. No whine, no anger. Just that hard-to-find element: truth.
“It’s looking that way. Seriously, I’m not going to blow smoke up your butt on this one. Your dad should be in prison, your mother is selling all your stuff, and they were going to leave you in jail. This is not good.”
I couldn’t argue.
“All for ditching school once and getting busted for trying to jack an iPod?” She shook her head and talked around a mouthful of rice. “That’s way harsh.”
“My dad almost slapped me across the face last week,” I said. I stared at the movie and shoveled food into my mouth.
Em’s chopsticks froze mid-bite. “Your dad hit you?”
“No, but he had his hand raised. And the reason he didn’t come tonight is that he was too drunk. He’s been drinking a lot.”
“You can’t stay there anymore. Let’s talk to Earl. Maybe that’s abuse or neglect or something.”
“One non-slap won’t get me out of the house.”
“What will you do if he does hit you?”
“I don’t know. I do know that if either one of them ever hits Chrissy, neither of them will walk away.”
There was a car I didn’t recognize parked in the drive when Em’s mom pulled in and a FOR SALE sign was in the yard. I guess Mom had been too busy getting her nest egg together to bother about me.
Mom gave me a quick glance and nothing else when I came in. She and a small man with a quick, birdlike manner pointed at an open ledger in his left hand. I headed up the stairs and ducked into Chrissy’s room.
“Ames!” Chrissy attached herself to my legs. “Where’ve you been? Mom won’t tell me. Everybody’s been screaming and a man is here to take our furniture. I don’t understand.” Chrissy clutched me harder, her eyes watery and confused. “Will he take my bears?”
I picked her up and sat her in my lap on the bed. “I’m sure the man doesn’t want your bears, but if he does, I’ll fight him. He’ll get two black eyes and a crunched-up nose if he touches one of your bears.”
“He’d look funny,” Chrissy said.
“He’d yell, ‘Owie, owie, owie,’ ” I said.
Chrissy giggled. “That’s what I used to say when I got hurt.”
“That’s right.” I hugged her. “When he leaves, I’ll talk to Mom and see what’s up. Where’s Dad?”
“He won’t come out of his study. That’s what all the screaming is. He told Mom he’s on a roll.”
Dad didn’t come out of his study for two days. Our antique furniture was gone along with the silver, china, and crystal, and the two big chandeliers. I’d give odds that Mom’s good jewelry was missing, too.
The realtor called that morning and Mom returned to the breakfast table. “You took out a second mortgage on the house? You forged my name?”
Dad’s face was blank and gray.
“Not even the money I’ve got in the bank for all the things I’ve sold will cover that. We can’t get our equity out of this house.”
Dad put his elbows on the table. Face in his hands. “You don’t have any money in the bank.”
Mom couldn’t wrap her mind around what she just heard. “What did you say?” She looked here and there as if trying to place where she had mislaid something.
Dad moved his hands from his face but didn’t look up. “I’ve been gambling online. I was up, really up, but the cards turned on me. When you put all that money in the account, I kept playing, trying to win back what I lost, but…”
“All that money is gone?” Mom’s voice trembled, fading to a whisper. “You gambled it away?” Her eyes were wide in a thousand-yard stare. Like someone had smacked her across t
he forehead with a board and none of the synapses were firing.
“The money I took from the business was more than I told you,” Dad stated, almost robotic. “My retirement wasn’t enough. I had to get the second mortgage to cover it.”
Dad hadn’t just thrown Robin out on the street. He’d done it to us. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that if he could do that to Robin, that he would do it to his wife and children? Why had I trusted anything he said at all? My stomach rolled over.
Mom grabbed the back of a chair, unsteady. She still had the stare and couldn’t speak above a whisper. In short bursts. Disjointed in cadence. “We’ll lose the house. We won’t have a house. We won’t have enough money to rent an apartment. We have one car and our clothes —” She stopped.
I thought Mom would faint. She sank into the chair. “What. Have. You. Done?”
IT’S OVER, BOULDER
Mom barged into my room without knocking and marched straight to my closets. “We’re having a garage sale,” she announced. I was still fighting nausea. I had heard Mom screaming — full-on banshee wailing — at Dad for a good while, then I couldn’t hear anything. The study door slammed shut and mine flung open soon after. Mom was in fight mode.
First she pulled out all my school uniforms, then she found my heavy sweaters and stacked them on the bed. “Take anything you haven’t worn in the last year, fold it, and add it to this stuff. We need money for a U-Haul trailer and the gas to get us to Texas.” Was she in fight mode or flight mode?
“Texas?” I demanded, following her into the hall as she went into Chrissy’s room.
“We won’t have much room, so not much goes. I suggest you select wisely.”
“This subdivision doesn’t allow garage sales,” I said.
“We won’t be living here by the time they have a meeting of the committee. Let them sue me,” Mom said. “Cheer up. You don’t have to go back to school until we get settled.”
“Why Texas?”