Penelope Lemon

by Inman Majors

  Whichever the case, Penelope breathed a sigh of relief when he said:

  “So, do you want to wrestle a little bit before supper?”

  “I don’t think so, Theo. I’ve had a long day.”

  “Oh, come on. That was fun.”

  “Theo, my car just died. I am not in the mood to wrestle right now.”

  “Maw-Maw says it’s probably going to be really expensive to fix the car.”

  “Probably.”

  “Does that mean we can’t get our own place soon?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it.”

  Penelope tied the garbage bag tightly, then placed it at the top of the steps leading to the basement. She went over and squeezed Theo in a hug, steering him backwards toward the couch in the den, away from the contraband. She sat down and motioned for Theo to join her.

  “Did those kids bother you again today?”

  “Lately it’s not all of them. It’s just the one kid, Alex.”

  “What did he do today?”

  “You know. Same stuff.”

  “Did he flick your nose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wet Willie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you do anything back?”

  “No.”

  Penelope found that her blood was boiling. Mostly at that Alex kid, but also a little at Theo for not taking up for himself.

  “Why not? You know at least three good wrestling moves that you could throw at him right now. He’d never know what hit him.”

  Theo shook his head.

  “And if you popped him one, or put him in a headlock or something, his friends wouldn’t jump in and gang up, would they?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Penelope nodded but said nothing further. Normally she would have given him a pep talk, but at the moment she didn’t have the energy. Theo must have sensed her disappointment, for he didn’t mention anything more about wrestling.

  “Are you going to my game on Saturday?” he asked.

  Penelope turned on the TV and scooted closer to her son. She put her arm around his shoulder and flipped channels without paying attention. She felt very tired.

  “I definitely am,” she said. “With my new job I don’t have to work weekends.”

  “I’m going to swing at the ball again.”

  “That’s great, honey.”

  “I’m going to swing every time from now on.”

  “Well, you don’t have to swing if it’s over your head or in the dirt or something.”

  Theo frowned, deep in thought, looking so much like his father that Penelope smiled despite herself.

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. Swing every time. Baseball is more fun if you’re just letting it rip. Everything’s more fun if you let it rip. Remember that.”

  Theo nodded, then snuggled his head into her armpit like he used to when he was little. Penelope continued to flip channels, looking for something they’d both like to watch.

  27

  Penelope sat in the yellow pickup named Daisy. On her blistered, cut, and swollen feet were the wedges she’d found the night before, a marked improvement. Theo was running behind, as he often was, though he seemed in a good mood over cereal, singing the Pokémon theme with unusual gusto. The song was bad but catchy, and it was stuck in Penelope’s head. She couldn’t not sing it and this always drove her crazy: I want to be the very best.

  On the passenger seat floorboard was the plastic trash bag containing James’s anti-erotic lingerie. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, only that the town wasn’t big enough for the both of them. She felt weird throwing a perfectly good clothing item away, but also feared that if she dropped the robe at Goodwill, some other local man interesting in covering himself only so much might discover it. She thought of the man’s poor wife and the effect the shorty would have on their relationship. She didn’t want that on her conscience.

  She also wondered how good a look Theo had gotten the night before and whether he might accidentally rat her out. Truthfully, until its discovery yesterday, she wouldn’t have been able to say, under oath, if she’d hidden it, thrown it away, or buried it in the backyard. That whole incident was a blur, spurred one morning when James was singing “Sweet Melissa” by the Allman Brothers in front of the mirror while blow-drying his hair, his pasty legs swaying gently under the yellow silk. Coming out of the bathroom, microphone hair dryer in hand, legs pale as a Highlands sheep, James proposed that they had time to mess around before he went to work.

  Penelope could oblige, but she’d crossed her Rubicon. She could be frisky in the morning, or he could wear the kimono, but never again would both occur simultaneously.

  She sighed now and gave the steering wheel a little pat. Daisy understood what it was like. Then she honked the horn again for Theo, irritated that he was probably playing some game instead of finding his shoes like she asked.

  She’d slept poorly the night before, thinking of bullies and teacher meetings and six months of Dimwit pleasuring himself in a Yosemite Sam cap ten feet away. She was also thinking of naked photos of herself that looked to be on the Internet forever and evangelical dudes who sent photos of their privates and how she never had responded to Fitzwilliam Darcy about that lunch date. Despite her best efforts, she also thought about her ex-husband and how he’d moved on so seamlessly since the divorce and was carrying on with a teacher who had a cute-as-hell puppy with a white ear. But most of all, she thought of the death of her car and how it meant the death of her independence. It might be a year before she could get her own place now. How much the repair would cost, if it even could be repaired, was anyone’s guess:

  Ma’am, your supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was shot all to hell. It’s going to cost nine thousand dollars to fix. And that’s before we lube the galinky valves. So you’re looking at a quarter million dollars. Now that’s not including labor.

  She honked again and Theo came racing out in his funny kneeless gait, smiling and looking perkier than usual in the morning. Bully or no bully, it was the next-to-last day of school.

  “Hey,” said Theo, opening the passenger door, “what’s in the bag?”

  “A whole lot of none-ya.”

  “What?”

  “A heaping helping of none-ya-business. Now let’s roll. Do you want me to just drop you off at school today? You’d skip those guys on the bus.”

  “No, that’s okay. But can I ride in the back to the bus stop?”

  “No, just ride up front.”

  “Come on. You usually say I’m too much of a suburban kid and the kids in Hillsboro always used to do it. You did.”

  “It’s against the law, Theo.”

  “That’s what I always say. Then you say, Who cares, it’s fun. No one in the history of Hillsboro has ever been arrested for riding in the back of a truck.”

  This point about arrestability was basically true, the HHR being the lone exception. Of course he was naked at the time, save for fishing waders, and sitting on a bale of hay while Weasel ordered a Whopper at the Burger King drive-through. Some dare or another, the details of which escaped Penelope now.

  “Okay, Theo,” she said. “Hop in the back like the Pokémon farmboy you are.”

  “Yee-hi,” he said, throwing his backpack in the bed, then clambering over the tailgate.

  Daisy was properly warmed up now and Penelope put her into drive as smoothly as George had taught her. She backed out of the driveway, wondering who this kid was. She could hear him singing the Pokémon theme against the rush of the wind. Otherwise, she felt like she was carting around an unknown kneeless boy. End-of-school goofiness, she reckoned.

  She dropped him off with the gaggle of kids already waiting. Theo’s arrival didn’t go without notice and the thought struck Penelope that what had been commonplace back in her day was pretty rare now.

  Theo put a hand on the side rail and leaped over, stuntman-style. He nearly wiped out on landing but gathered him
self quickly, his knees, if he had them, only buckling for a moment. He grabbed his backpack, then came around to the driver’s side window. Penelope could see all the kids looking at him. He’d made quite an appearance. She couldn’t tell if this was Weird Turd/Fart Boy territory, the showy arrival, or if his peers were just a tiny bit impressed. He’d looked pretty cool hopping out. Or at least daring.

  “All right, Mom,” he said. “Tower of Power, too sweet to be sour. Ohhh Yeahhhh!”

  And with that, he bade his mother good-bye.

  28

  It’d been a routine day at the office, if every office included a daily visit by Dimwit. Now Penelope was cutting out for her meeting with Ms. Dunleavy.

  “So you’ll definitely be back tomorrow, right?” Missy said, pacing in front of Penelope’s desk and chawing at a hangnail that had bedeviled her all day.

  “Yes, I’ll be back.”

  “Because Doris said she’d come back, and I never heard from her again. Not even to pick up her last check.”

  “I assure you I won’t be leaving any paychecks behind,” Penelope said, scooping the last of the Starbursts into her purse. Nervous about the teacher conference, she’d pounded the pack all day. She’d have to be judicious tomorrow, or Friday would be snack-free.

  “Doris said that too. But Dimwit wore her down. She said it was the silence that was the worst. The not-knowing. I think she had a very strong imagination and the picture in her head just got more vivid each day. She ended up thinking he was in there with axle grease and a mute chicken. I think that was because of this one day when he came out with a random feather on his coveralls. You swear he’s not going to run you off?”

  “Listen,” said Penelope. “Dimwit could use my bathroom at home, with the door open and all lotion included, if it meant me paying off my car and getting an apartment sometime in the next decade. I’m not letting some little peckerwood run me off.”

  “Can you just promise me six months?”

  “Yes. You have my word that I will stay six months. After that I’ll probably be a hedge fund manager or brain surgeon or something, but I can give you half a year.”

  Missy looked relieved. “Okay, so let’s go over it again. What are you going to do if you see evidence of that dog in the BJ Queen’s room?

  “I need to go,” Penelope said. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “Your husband and your son’s teacher are doing it. In the parking lot. And then they go on picnics with a cute little puppy. You’re about to shower with your uncle for a month. And share his Neti Pot. Have you bought those galoshes yet? You know, I think they call them Wellies in England. Ask Fitzbodkin about that.”

  Penelope gave her a look.

  “I just want to make sure you’re properly focused for the showdown,” Missy said. “Find the white-eared puppy, and game/set/match. And then you just raise all kinds of hell. Maybe get the principal in there and everything. I mean just absolutely go to town.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Penelope said.

  Penelope approached the school while checking her phone every ten seconds for an update from the mechanic, but none came. Maybe it was worse than she feared. She’d passed at least five of those payday loan places on the way and wondered if that was an option. Sure, they charged about 50 percent interest, but it was cash on the barrel, virtually no questions asked. From what she’d heard, as long as you could sign your name with an X and weren’t literally dashing into the store with cops firing guns behind you, you could get a loan.

  She pulled into Stonewall Jackson Elementary in a financial panic. Two words kept appearing over and over in her brain: car, money, money, car.

  There was also the phrase BJ Queen bouncing around in her gourd, courtesy of the one thousand times Missy had used it that day, so she was in an unusual state of mind. She parked and got out with her heart racing. Several adults—teachers or parents, she couldn’t tell—were looking at her strangely. Had they never seen a woman in a skirt and blouse get out of a yellow 1970 Chevy truck before?

  She was a little worked up. She slammed her door, opened the passenger side, and grabbed the trash bag. She couldn’t have said why. Her subconscious probably had its reasons, but she was too distracted to consider them.

  Parcel in hand, she marched into the school, checked in with the secretary, and was pointed to the BJ Queen’s room. Thoughts of bullies and ex-husbands and cars and money jangled around in her brain as she walked down the sterile halls. She knocked once on the open door of 11B and was told by the woman tallying a gradebook at the desk to come in.

  Ms. Dunleavy gave Penelope an apprehensive smile as she approached, and then got up to pull two of the hard plastic chairs together so they could sit face to face. The chairs were sized for the average third-grader, and when Penelope took hers, she banged her knee smartly.

  “Sorry,” Ms. Dunleavy said. “I’ve said for years that we should keep a few grown-up chairs in here for conferences.”

  Penelope smiled. It wasn’t her nature to be impolite. Then she checked the smile. She was still agitated on a number of fronts and wouldn’t be swayed by niceties.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “So you got my email about the bus situation with Theo?”

  “Yes. And I wish I’d known about it sooner. Maybe I could have done something. Theo is such a sweet, sweet boy.”

  This bragging on her son threw Penelope off guard for a moment, but she recovered soon enough.

  “Well, my ex-husband James doesn’t think it’s a big deal. My ex-husband thinks it’s just typical boy stuff, but I know it’s affected Theo. They’re not just calling him names, which is bad enough, but actually putting their hands on him. James thinks it will just pass. Or that Theo could just put on a Dumbledore robe and cast a spell and that would be the end of it. But I’m not so sure. Things aren’t usually quite that silky smooth. Anyway, he and I seem to have very different ideas about what is and isn’t appropriate in a school setting. Or even outside a school setting.”

  After this peroration, Penelope sat back, not wincing in the least when her knee banged the tiny chair a second painful time. The bag with the shorty robe was twitching to be opened, she could feel it. She knew now exactly why’d she’d brought it.

  As Ms. Dunleavy rose from her own tiny chair and went back to her desk, Penelope thought of other ways she might work in the word robe or appropriate or ex-husband. The teacher had definitely blanched during her spiel and seemed now to be stalling. All she needed was solid puppy evidence, and then the mystery bag would be opened, the male delicate revealed.

  “I’m sorry,” the teacher said. “I’m looking for something. Just give me a minute.”

  Ms. Dunleavy was definitely rattled, temporizing, and trying to regain her composure. How many times had a teacher—Mrs. Sketchin especially—discomfited Penelope in just such a setting? It felt nice for the shoe to be on the other foot after all these years.

  As she waited, she took in Ms. Dunleavy, studying her unabashedly, hoping the teacher could feel her staring. She was younger than Penelope by a few years, but was no spring chicken herself. She was around Penelope’s height and build, and her hair was similarly wavy but not dark. Penelope wondered if perhaps James had a type. Ms. Dunleavy had the same soccer player look that she did. She even moved the same when nervous, her hands flitting busily, trying to feign obliviousness to the person intently watching. Penelope found the similarities off-putting and decided she’d had enough of looking at her bespectacled academic doppelganger.

  Around the room, she saw the typical third-grade stuff: maps, motivational posters, a bulletin board. Nothing of note and nothing personal. She looked back to Ms. Dunleavy’s desk. Again, typical teacher bric-a-brac: stapler, porcelain paperweight, penholder. This was the most boring room ever.

  Hold on. That porcelain paperweight. Penelope squinted. Yes, it was a dog. A small, black cute one. Ms. Dunleavy had a small cute porcelain dog on her desk.

  Her eyes cut back to
the bulletin board. Aha! Yes, indeed, yes, indeed. There among the crude maps of Virginia drawn by her students, and the week’s lunch menu, and a reminder that Manners Matter, was a very small photo of what looked like a very small animal. Penelope got out of her chair and ventured over for a closer look.

  It was a black puppy like the one running on James’s Facebook. And it had one all-white ear like the puppy on Theo’s Instagram.

  Here, staring her in the face from the Blowjob Queen’s bulletin board, was the proof, once and for all, of what she’d intuited from the instant she saw Van Halen on her ex-husband’s Facebook page: James and Ms. Dunleavy were a couple.

  “I like your puppy,” Penelope said, thinking how much Theo would enjoy playing with it all summer long. “That white ear is so unusual. So distinct. Once you see it, you’re never going to forget it.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Ms. Dunleavy said, again sounding nervous, not meeting Penelope’s eye. “I loved her the first time I saw her.”

  The bag in Penelope’s hand was beginning to feel sweaty. She could say something like: “And do you love this the first time you see it? Because it’s yours now!” before flinging the robe onto the desk next to the porcelain puppy.

  Penelope had her hand inside the trash bag, gripping the satin silky, in front of the bulletin board with the evidence that proved beyond all doubt that Theo’s teacher was carrying on with Theo’s father. Her heart was pounding as hard as it ever had in her life.

  Then Ms. Dunleavy said: “Okay, I found it. Sorry it took so long. It’s a report Theo wrote yesterday. I asked the class to write about their proudest moment of the year. All the other kids took their essays home with them after school, but I asked Theo if I could make a copy of his and send it in to the newspaper. After I asked your permission, of course.”

  The piece was entitled “My Big Hit” and detailed, with considerable pathos, Theo’s foray into baseball. Penelope felt confused and distracted and suddenly very tired. It had been a long day, a long week, a long year. And now this woman was reading an essay, aloud, with feeling and an effective quaver in her voice, that her son had written. It concluded as follows: