Girl Unmoored

by Hummer, Jennifer Gooch

  “Nemo sine vitio est,” he corrected me. “And Margie wasn’t the one to knock the wind out of Grandma Bramhall.”

  I looked out my window.

  “Why did you hit Mr. Perry?” We hadn’t talked about it once since it happened.

  My dad didn’t answer for a moment. “He cheated,” he said finally.

  “How?” I crossed my arms.

  “Illegal tackle.”

  I looked over at him. “Why?”

  My dad shook his head. “That’s just what some people do.”

  I looked back out at the road. A green car switched into our lane too fast, and my dad honked. “Idiot,” he said. And I agreed.

  Later, I didn’t get into as much trouble as you might think. But only because a) Grandma Bramhall’s head was all the way back up to speed again and b) I went into the kitchen after we got back from Scent Appeal and looked M straight in the eye and said, “Sorry,” while my dad stood in the doorway watching.

  Behind M’s eyes, you could see that she didn’t mean it when she smiled, or when she said, “It’s okay, Aprons. Come to gives me a hug,” opening her arms like a pterodactyl. I had to hug her if I knew what was good for me, so I held my breath and waited for it to be over. You could feel that round bump of little whatever in there.

  “My new daughter,” she said trapping me and rubbing my back so my dad could get a good look. Then she stood back and took my shoulders in her hands and laser-beamed me with her brown eyes. “Now we are one big happies of family.”

  My dad stepped up. “All right, Apron. Up to bed,” he said, taking M’s arm off of me and wrapping it around his own waist. It was like watching a commercial for life insurance, the two of them standing together, smiling, and only I could see the black tornado spinning toward my dad.

  “I have to feed The Boss first,” I said. Except then I noticed his cage wasn’t where I left it. My throat jammed. I glared at M. “What did you do to him?”

  She faked a stunned look and my dad’s forehead pinched together. “Don’t talk to Margie like that, young lady. The Boss is in the pantry, on the counter.”

  And that’s when I realized she could have poisoned him. Just a little mouse poison and he’d be dead in an hour. A lock wasn’t going to save him anyway.

  I narrowed my eyes at M’s lying face. There was no way I was going to make it through a whole summer with her. One of us had to go.

  15

  A.M.

  Before midday

  A moaning sound was coming from somewhere inside the house. I rolled over and looked at my clock. It wasn’t even seven yet and it was Saturday, when my dad went to get the paper at Town Landing. I shut my eyes but then I heard that moan again.

  I sat up.

  There it was again.

  Except this time it was in a small animal kind of way, like a cat had gotten its paws stuck somewhere.

  The Boss’s cage.

  M.

  I jumped out of bed and practically fell down those stairs. Then I ran through the kitchen and into the pantry, and sighed. The Boss was twitching away in his cage. But behind me the moan happened again. This time, I followed it through the living room and onto the back porch. And when it happened again, I didn’t wonder who it was anymore. It was no cat. It was M.

  She was lying on the couch facing away from the door, curled up on her side, making that moaning sound and crying hard in between. My blood turned into a slushy and my feet felt like they were stuck on flypaper.

  I had never heard anyone make that sound before, not even the bear at the Portland Zoo. She moaned again. I thought about calling 911, except my dad might end up getting mad at me, and after last night I didn’t want to risk it. I squinted to make sure she was still breathing, which she was. She was wearing a white T-shirt and tan shorts and her hair was sprayed out around the couch cushion.

  I was about to say her name, until another groan came out of her. And then she did something that made me stop breathing. She slapped her bump. Not in a nice, tapping way like you did on a fish tank. She slapped her belly hard with the palm of her hand. “Uh! Uh! Uh!” she groaned each time, and then did that moan, and then just cried.

  Before I could move, she rolled onto her back and turned her head toward me, slinging her arm over her eyes. I unglued my feet and made a run for the door as quietly as I could. Behind me, I heard her moan again.

  Upstairs, I ran into the bathroom and shut the door. That little bump of whatever was just sitting there, growing a leg or an ear like it was supposed to, and then all of a sudden getting slapped for it. Something deep in me burned when I thought about this. Even though it was M’s little whatever, it still didn’t deserve to get hit.

  I looked in the mirror at my blotchy freckles and red eyes and fat lip. Apron, I told that person, you have to stop her.

  I opened the door but waited when I heard footsteps. My dad.

  I ran downstairs as fast as I could to tell him what I just saw, but when I stepped into the kitchen and opened my mouth and said, “Dad!” M looked over at me. She was holding a tea bag in mid-air, dripping it into my mom’s Tap Your Life Away! mug.

  “Your father’s not back yet,” she said. Her face was puffy but her hair was tucked back, neat now.

  I looked down at that bump.

  “Getting bigger, no?” she said trying to sound like a real mom.

  A tidal wave of sadness hit me.

  She turned away, stirring her tea, and I knew that if my dad walked in right now and I told him how I saw M banging on her bump like she was making homemade pizza dough, he would never believe me.

  “I pray to Gods it doesn’t have red hair,” M mumbled, still stirring her tea. She didn’t look at me when she said it, which is how I knew she meant it.

  I turned and walked out the door.

  Then I walked upstairs and climbed back into bed, remembering in a dream how loud the rock was when it shot through Mike’s window.

  16

  Accipe hoc!

  Take this!

  When I woke up again it was nine o’clock and everything was quiet. No moaning anywhere. And downstairs, the kitchen was empty. No M and no Hello Maine! I got my cereal, dropped a few pieces of it on the floor, and sat at my lobster.

  I had come up with a plan. My dad might not be able to see the M that I could, but there was no way he could miss what a slob she was. My dad was a neat freak and it wouldn’t take long for him to realize he’d just married a mess. And messes can be divorced.

  “Morning, Apron,” he said walking in. He was dressed in his usual jeans, yellow button-down shirt, and red hair, but something was new about him, and when he sat down at his lobster, I could see what it was: a gold ring on his left finger.

  “Where did you get that?” I pointed to it.

  My dad looked down and scrunched up his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “Margie’s idea. I told her I didn’t know how long it was going to last, though. It’s already driving me crazy.” He spun it around with his thumb.

  A piece of cereal swelled up like a log in my throat. I had to look away. My dad never wore one for my mother. I waited for him to mention it—that he was sorry he had to marry M. That he’d just promised me he was going to stay married to my mom forever.

  Except he hadn’t. I swallowed. He hadn’t said that at all.

  “So is it me or Perry today?”

  I turned back to him quickly. “Did she call?”

  “Not yet,” he said flicking open his newspaper and disappearing behind it.

  Hope drained out my feet. Rennie wasn’t going to call, but my dad didn’t know that. And this is what he always asked every Saturday morning: who was dropping off whom, at whose house, for a sleepover?

  “We’re not friends anymore, Dad,” I said, stirring pink milk.

  My dad lowered the paper and looked at me. “What? Why?” I wondered if this was the way he talked to his students. Why, he might ask, do you think Maine matters? He was a Latin professor, but they made him teach a
class about Maine too, which is why he wrote the book.

  “Forget it,” I said standing up.

  “Sit down,” my dad said. He had said that a million times before, but this one surprised me. I sat right away.

  “What happened with Rennie?”

  “She’s best friends with Jenny Pratt now and they hate me.”

  My dad folded the paper, clasped his fingers together, and looked at me. “Well, that’s just not right, is it? What did you ever do to her?”

  I shrugged. “You don’t have to do anything for some people to hate you, Dad,” I said. “Look at Chad and Mike. People throw things through their window just because they’re gay.”

  My dad considered me. “Homosexual, Apron. That’s the proper word. Gay is slang. Along with a host of other words, some of which were written on their window.”

  I nodded. I started to tell him that I had been there when the rock smashed it, but caught myself. “Dad,” I said quietly. “Why do people hate them anyway? They’re not hurting anyone.”

  My dad sat back and crossed his arms. “Men vereor they quis they operor non agnosco. The age-old reason, Apron. Men fear what they do not understand.”

  “Do you hate them?” I’d heard him joking with Mr. Haffenreffer before, about how they’d had to share a bed in a motel once so they lifted up the dresser and put it down between them.

  “No. I don’t hate them.”

  “Mrs. Perry does. She hates them. And Eeebs, he does too. But I don’t think Mr. Perry does.”

  My dad’s face tightened up. “Listen, kiddo, I’m sorry about Rennie. I don’t think I can fix that one for you. Maybe it’s time we all move on.”

  It was the same thing Rennie had said. Time to be friends with someone else.

  “But what if you don’t want to?” I asked.

  “Sometimes it’s not up to you, is it?”

  He squeezed my hand and disappeared behind the news again.

  I went to the sink and washed my bowl. Then I got out the saltines and crushed a few onto the counter. They were M’s favorite crackers.

  I left through the back door.

  Outside, it wasn’t raining exactly, just sort of spritzing on my face every second. I walked around the house and into the garage for my pogo stick. Then I bounced up to Mrs. Weller’s driveway to see if Mike’s truck was there. It wasn’t. Her orange love bug was though.

  I knocked on her door and prayed she didn’t have blood on her anywhere.

  All clear, but her George Washington face was as cranky as ever.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Weller.”

  “Are you selling today?” she looked behind me for the wagon.

  “No. I just came over to see if Mike was coming by anytime soon.”

  She sneered at me. “Mike’s in the hospital.”

  I shook my head because I thought she said Mike was in the hospital. “He works near the hospital,” I told Mrs. Weller carefully.

  “I didn’t say that,” she snapped. “I said he’s in the hospital. You need one of these.” She pointed to her hearing aid.

  “What happened? Is he okay?”

  Mrs. Weller smacked her lips together. “You kids,” she said. “You all watch too much damn television and now you can’t HEAR right,” she yelled. “What I said was, Mike’s not sick. His little queer friend, Chad, is.”

  17

  Fors fortis

  Fat chance

  I kept the TV on low in case Mike’s truck drove into Mrs. Weller’s driveway. Mrs. Weller knew nothing else about Chad, not even which hospital he was in. “I’m not sure they let queers into Maine Med,” she said before shutting the door so close to my face my eyelashes blew back. “He might be at Mercy.”

  Finally, I let my fingers do the walking and called Scent Appeal. After three rings, Chad’s voice said, “Hello. You’ve reached Scent Appeal. Floral arrangements for every occasion.”

  I left a message, then heard a car bumping down the road.

  Just like I thought, my dad bought M an answering machine and a million things for that little whatever. I helped them get everything out of the car and up the stairs. At dinner, they yakked on and on about cribs and strollers while I pushed my Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes around and thought up more jokes to tell Chad. What bird sings the saddest song?

  “Apron. The Boss has to go.”

  “What?” I dropped my fork. “No way.”

  “Margie feels, no, we feel that if some of the feces gets near Margie, she could get sick, Apron. Really sick.”

  I glared at M. She stood and picked up my dad’s plate.

  “But she doesn’t even have to go near him. She doesn’t even have to see him. He can live in my room from now on. Dad,” I told him quietly, “Mom gave him to me.”

  He looked at me with drooping eyes and whispered, “She’s afraid of him, Apron.”

  “Then she can leave,” I whispered back, with a growl in it.

  My dad almost got mad, but then he leaned forward and put his hand on top of mine. “We’ve already decided.”

  A bluebird. A bluebird sings the saddest song.

  I pulled my hand away. “Where’s he supposed to go?”

  My dad sat back. “I don’t know, Apron. Anywhere but here.”

  Which was exactly where I was going.

  I stood and headed for the door, but stopped when I heard a pan crash. “Oopsies,” M said, squatting down to pick it up.

  My dad stood to help, but I walked out.

  Later, when my dad was in his office and M was upstairs glued to more reruns of The Love Boat, I went back into the kitchen. Soaking pans and crumbly counter tops were everywhere. Still, I took some paper towels, wet them into little blobs and dropped them all around the stove. Then I picked up the phone.

  It took years for Grandma Bramhall to answer.

  “Hi, dearie,” she said, but carefully.

  “Are you okay, Grandma Bramhall? I’m so sorry.”

  I could hear a lawn mower in the background, which meant she was sitting in her screened-in back porch, surrounded by the plastic green frogs she had lined up in certain directions for good luck. “Yes, dearie, I’m fine.”

  But you could tell she was waiting for me to tell her why I hit her.

  “My hand just flung out like that. I was trying to take my bracelet off and it just snapped.”

  “Really, dearie, I’m fine. The hospital was very relaxing and I needed a little tune-up anyway. And those paramedics were just divine.” I heard the lawnmower move farther away so she must have walked into the kitchen.

  “They got married anyway.”

  “They did?”

  “Yup.” I told her how M wouldn’t take off her dress until they did.

  “That little tart,” she said, throwing something that sounded like ice into a glass. “I should have known when she wouldn’t take that damn dress off in the emergency room, not even a heart attack would slow her down.”

  “You had a heart attack?”

  “Well, no.”

  She asked me what I was doing tomorrow: did I want to go to church with her and then out on Mr. John’s lobster boat for a picnic?

  “Grandma Bramhall?” I asked, twirling myself all the way up into the phone cord.

  “Was that yes or no, Apron?” You could hear the lawnmower behind her again. Our phones were all stuck to walls, but she could go anywhere with hers, even to her pool if she wanted to. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  I untwirled an inch. “Do you think I can come live with you?”

  For a second, the only noise was the lawnmower.

  Then I heard Grandma Bramhall’s shoes clicking up the stairs.

  “Oh, dearie, wouldn’t that just be the monkey’s uncle?” I heard a squeak and water running. “Now listen, did I tell you about the cruise that Mr. John is taking me on?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Apron? I’m starting a nice hot bath. You sure you won’t come tomorrow?”


  I spun myself out of the phone cord.

  “I’ll pick you up at nine forty-five?”

  I said no, thank you, I had a lot of homework.

  “All right. But we still have a Handy’s brunch date, with or without the bride and groom. Preferably without. Next Saturday, then?”

  I didn’t say yes or no, just something in between.

  But Grandma Bramhall wasn’t even listening. “I’ll tell you all about the cruise,” she said.

  After we hung up, I stared at the phone and swallowed the piece of my heart that was lodged in my throat now. She was my last chance.

  18

  Et tu, Brute?

  You too, Brutus?

  Nobody talked about The Boss, who was still in the pantry, and all my dad and M did the next day was walk around the guest room deciding where the little whatever’s crib should go and what color they should paint its room. While they were up there, I took a used tea bag out of the garbage, put it in an empty mug and left it on the living room table. M was the only one who drank tea around here.

  Upstairs, I stayed on my bed, studying different stages of a cell’s life and wishing I were one of them. Cells could never be lonely, all they had to do was divide themselves up. We had lab on Monday and Johnny Berman and I were already assigned to be partners. I had decided I was going to wear my pink short-sleeved button-down with Rennie’s lace undershirt that she left at my house once. A few times last week, I’d caught Johnny staring at me when Ms. Frane wasn’t looking, the drill in my belly button happened every time.

  Later, I rode my bike to the Foreside Market.

  My forehead was dripping sweat by the time I got there. It smelled awful at the deli, like Mr. Clean mixed in with things that used to have eyes. But even if you didn’t live in Falmouth Foreside, you would probably come all the way here to get your Italian sandwiches, which are the best in Maine. A few people were waiting for their order so I squished by them, and heard my name. When I turned around, Mrs. Perry was watching me.