• • •
Lily and Abby press their noses against the glass and jump up and down, yelling, “Angel!” Lily’s four and Abby’s nearly three and they each have high pigtails shooting out the sides of their heads like little fire hydrants.
“Hello, monkeys,” I say to them.
My dad ushers me into the kitchen. “Sit and eat something, honey.”
“We’re doing cleanup,” Ginger says. “Leftovers.” She’s pear-shaped with frizzy hair she pulls back in a scrunchie, but she has a pretty smile when she smiles, which isn’t often.
“No worries, I’m not hungry,” I lie. “I’ve been foraging in the fridge.”
Ginger opens lids and sniffs things.
“I’m having spaghetti,” Abby tells me.
“And I’m having a pork chop.” Lily leaps across the linoleum.
“Here’s some eggplant rotini,” Ginger says doubtfully. The gravy is hardened around the edges and laced with water droplets.
“Really, I ate,” I say.
“Foraging isn’t a meal,” Dad says. “I’ll make you some spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, and red pepper.” One of my favorites.
“Darn, we only have enough spaghetti for Abby.” Ginger presses her hand to my arm. “Sorry. Saturday is cleanup day and Sunday is food shopping.”
That’s my cue; I should go. I really should. “I’ll take a cookie or a Coke. Or nothing. Really. I’m easy.”
“We don’t keep soda in the house anymore. Empty calories, you know.” Ginger comes up with a half-eaten box of animal crackers and a half glass of pomegranate juice to which she adds a splash of tap water. She hands it to me with a quick smile. Then as she heats up the assorted meals in the microwave she does squats. “I’m multitasking,” she tells me.
I’m saved by Lily, who doesn’t want to eat sitting down. She wanders around the living room, nibbling on the greasy pork and giving karate chops to the couch and recliner. When Ginger gets a phone call, Lily and I wander off to her bedroom and sit at a little plastic table.
“I missed you, Angel,” Lily says tipping her face up at me. “Would you like a lobster or fried egg?”
“A lobster would be yummy.” She chucks the pork chop into the toy box, wiggles into a tutu, and serves me a plastic lobster on a plate. “Enjoy,” she says. Then she trots over with the tea service. “How many lumps?” She grabs a handful of plastic sugar cubes.
“Three,” I say. She daintily drops them in my cup one at time, looking pleased.
Ginger pokes her head into the room and watches us. “Where is the pork chop, young lady?”
Lily’s eyes grow wide. “Angel ate it.”
Ginger gives me the death glare. I’m not kidding, the death glare.
“Hey, I’m enjoying a lobster.” I wave it in the air. “You might want to check the toy box.”
She screws up her face and her head must momentarily shrivel too, because her scrunchie suddenly wilts to the side. She marches over to the box and flings the toys around and finally holds up the gnawed-on chop. “What is this?” she screams at Lily. “Is this what you do with your dinner?”
Dad rescues me and steers me out the room. “What a nuthouse, huh? Come have my ravioli. I insist,” he whispers.
“I’m good,” I say, beelining for the door and grabbing my jacket and bag. “Maybe we can hang out soon?”
“Sure thing.” He wraps me in a hug and kisses my forehead. “Where are you off to tonight?”
“A party?”
“I remember parties,” he says. “Then you get old and go to bed at nine-thirty.”
“Dad, you seriously need to have fun.”
“You need to have fun. You’re young.”
“Angel, I just love spaghetti,” Abby calls from her booster chair.
“Me too, Ab,” I say, craning my neck to see her. She smiles sweetly, her mouth ringed with red gravy, and gives me a little wave.
chapter 10
They are cozy, Joey and Carmella. Here we are on the couch at the party’s end with most everyone clearing out or already gone. I’m slumped at one end, Carmella is asleep and curled on Joey’s lap in the middle, and pregnant Sherry is asleep at the other end, her head tilted back against the cushions.
Joey shifts Carmella’s weight. “My shoulder fell asleep,” he says. I grab her bag and jacket and hold them on my lap. She looks so trusting sprawled out against him, her dark hair falling across her cheek and her mouth sort of open. Her shirt is scrunched down a bit in the front and her bra strap shows. It’s satiny blue. I fix her top, and she stirs a little but goes right on sleeping in Joey’s arms.
“Taking off soon?” he asks.
I nod, but I’m not ready to wrap it up. “How’s the fancy cheese these days?”
“I’m addicted,” he says, shaking his head. “And getting a gut.”
“Get out. And since when are you vain?”
“A gut, Angel. A gut!”
Inggy and Cork walk through the living room, Inggy hanging on Cork’s shoulder. Cork barely looks at me, but Ing turns and yawns, waving goodbye. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yup,” I say.
Joey gives Carmella a little jostle but she doesn’t wake.
“Too gentle,” I tell him. “Give her a poke.”
“She’ll get up,” he says, giving her another jiggle.
“Oh, you like her,” I tease.
“And who do you like these days?”
“Well, Sardi, I’ll tell you how it is. I’m in between adventures. There’s a definite lull.”
“Someday,” he whispers. “You’ll fall for somebody.”
“Maybe I fell for you,” I say, growing warm all over.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t feel it.”
“You know how I would know if I was loved?” Sherry says from the other end of the couch. She sits up, rubs her eyes, and settles her hands on her big stomach. “If a guy carried me over a puddle. I saw that once in a movie. This girl is a skinny little thing all decked out in fierce heels, and there’s this huge puddle. Her guy picks her up like she’s a delicate flower and carries her over and places her down as fine as can be on the curb. To me that speaks of love.” She takes a sip of Diet Coke, heaves herself off the couch, and waddles away.
Carmella stirs and yawns, gives her hair a tousle, jingling all her silver bracelets.
“You should have woke me,” she says.
“It’s okay,” Joeys says. I hand her her bag and jacket and off they go, hand in hand.
Kipper Coleman plops down on the couch right next to me and pats my leg. “How about me and you go get a hamburger.” He has good breath, like he was just eating an apple.
“What’s open?”
He looks at his watch. “Shoot. Probably nothing. Not even the greasy spoon.”
“I could eat a hamburger,” I say.
“Oh, I wish I could make you a hamburger.” He looks at me longingly. “Let me check out the fridge and I’ll report back.” He leaps up and sprints into the kitchen and returns a minute later with an individually wrapped slice of yellow cheese and a dill pickle on a plate. “It was the best I could do.” I open the cheese and take a bite and hold it out to him but he shakes his head and says, “For you.” So I eat.
“Look,” Kipper says, scanning the room. “We’re the pity party people, the hangers-on who don’t know when to go home.”
“So what?” I say. I don’t want to go home yet. “Let’s fox-trot.”
In gym, they’re teaching us ballroom dancing. Who knows why, but honestly, it’s kind of fun and interesting too. We get the fancy-schmancy handhold going, meaning your arms that aren’t around each other are held rigid out to the side. Very last-century.
“Slow, slow, quick, quick,” I say. “You’re a good dancer, you know that?”
“You smell like a pickle.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t mind.” He leads us around the recliner and along the coffee table. “Rock back, forward, s
ide, together. Hey, Angel, you think I’ll ever get laid?”
“Go get yourself a girlfriend.”
“It’s complicated,” he whispers. “The ones I like don’t like me and the ones I don’t like don’t like me either.”
“Come on. Alyssa?”
“She wants to be friends.”
“Marcie?”
“She wears Birkenstocks.”
I arch an eyebrow, which I note goes very well with this arm hold.
“Don’t give me that. You don’t wear Birkenstocks.” He has a point. “Am I really a good dancer?”
“Absolutely,” I say. I can easily follow what he leads, and we get a real rhythm going.
“How old were you when you did it?” he asks.
“Fourteen.”
“Crap. I’m so late to the game.” He falls on the couch.
I want to keep dancing, but it looks like he’s not moving, so I sit next to him.
He latches onto my arm. “What are the chances of you doing it with me?”
“Why me?” I shake him off.
“ ’Cause you’re so nice, Angel. And if I touch your boob I might die on the spot. And if I can’t get it up or last for like two seconds, I’m thinking you won’t blab it all over.” He chews on a nail. “What else could go wrong, by the way?”
“Those are the main ones, but there’s also, like, bad form.”
“Well, I don’t have any form. Not yet anyway.” He leans toward me. “I know you can’t tell by looking at me, but I’m actually sexy.”
“Do tell,” I say, plucking a cashew from the nut bowl.
“Naked,” he whispers. “I’m not so skinny, if you can believe it.”
I smile into the nut bowl and brush salt from my palms and stand up. “All right.”
His eyes tremble.
“I’ll make out with you,” I tell him.
“I’ll take it.”
“Don’t be so grateful. It’s not attractive.”
“Gotcha.” He leaps up and does a little hop.
“No hopping.” We walk out the front door into a foggy mist.
“Can I hold your hand?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You’re so pretty, Angel.”
The cool, wet night swirls around us as I turn to him. “What do you like about me?”
He rakes his eyes over my face and takes about thirty seconds to answer. “It’s not any one thing in particular. It’s more the overall effect of your eyes, nose, mouth, and hair.” I’ll need to teach him something about romance. His hand is damp and warm in mine. “Let me know when we can start making out,” he says.
“You’re a nice guy, Kipper, but you totally need to relax.”
“Don’t I know it.”
chapter 11
Kipper hugs his books to his chest and stands by my locker. “I adore you.”
“No, you don’t.” I yank out my history book. He stands there staring at me, his face flushed like he has a tropical fever. “Listen,” I say low. “You just need to get laid fifty more times. You need some perspective.”
The bell rings, and I’m saved.
I didn’t mean to. I only meant to make out on my couch. But it wasn’t exactly comfy, the itchy fabric, the bad angles, and him so tall his legs hung over the edge. So I brought him upstairs and told him, “We’re not doing it. It’s just that I have a crick in my neck.”
We made ourselves comfy and old neurotic Kipper started to relax. It turns out he never felt a boob before, at least not a naked one, so he was full of glee and spent a long time looking and touching and burying his face between my boobage, which was a nice change of pace since most guys are quick to head south. And I have to agree Kipper is sort of sexy in a super-skinny way, sort of being the key words. Sexy, I guess I mean, because he was sweetly game, his face happily flushed, laughing off his mis-pokes and asking how my clit worked. When the sun started to rise and he wouldn’t stop kissing my face, I finally had to throw him out.
In an Inggy-inspired moment, I take the SAT. She took it last spring and did well and she’s going to see if she can beat her score, which is kind of annoying no matter how you slice it. She calls early that morning to make sure I’m awake, then picks me up in her mom’s Infiniti. She’s not wearing any makeup, which make her pale lashes and brows disappear, but still, she looks good, her hair swinging in an energetic ponytail.
Cork’s sprawled out in the backseat, eyes closed, with a bowl of cereal on his chest. We head over to school and I’m thinking what’s the point, the community college is going to take me no matter what. They have no standards. Not to mention I only went to two of the study sessions. I give her a look as we pull into the school parking lot. It’s seven-forty-five a.m. on a Saturday. “Just take it,” she says.
“I am,” I snap.
• • •
I’m in with the first quarter of the alphabet and am sent upstairs to a large classroom along with Cork, who’s still eating out of his cereal bowl. Kipper gives me a sly little wave across the room. Soon enough, the proctor, one of our grubby subs, hands out the booklets and score sheets and we begin. Oh, help me.
I didn’t tell anybody, but I did bad on the PSAT. Like moron bad. What I told Inggy was that I didn’t do so hot and left it at that. The thing about that stupid PSAT is that it was demoralizing. After a lot of guesses I just lost heart and could barely pay attention. I hated it, and when I hate something I just can’t do it.
“Maybe standardized tests don’t work for you,” the old guidance counselor had said to me, glancing at my scores and my transcript littered with Cs. She took off her glasses and looked at me with ancient eyes, eyes like a turtle’s. “What do you want to do with yourself, Angel?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
“I don’t love school, you know. I really can’t imagine four more years.”
“Maybe that’s right, and maybe you’ll return years later. Some do.”
“You know, I don’t think a job is everything. I think my life is everything, and the job is one thing. It might be sort of interesting to be a receptionist. I’m friendly. I like people, and I like the phone. I’d like to sit at a desk and buzz people in and be the first person you see. I’m not saying I’d love it or anything, but I’d be good at it.”
She focused those ancient reptilian eyes on me. “I wonder if you’d like it, but there’s only one way to know. It’s a start, right?”
“Right.”
“Off you go,” she said, patting my hand.
I sat there. “I guess no matter what plan you have life will spring surprises. I read that in a book once, about life springing its surprises. I like that. My life definitely springs things on me.”
“That’s true, my dear, but it doesn’t mean you should wait around for what’ll happen. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spring yourself.”
“Right,” I said, annoyed with her little maneuver, at how her words sounded better than mine.
“You’ll do fine, Angel.”
I nodded. “How do you think I should spring myself?”
“Hmm,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Start thinking about what you want. Down the road. What matters to you.”
“It’s not like there’s anything wrong with being a receptionist.”
“Of course not. Now, off you go, because I must skedaddle to a very boring meeting.” She sighed and patted my arm. “You’re a lovely girl.”
I’ve never told anyone else my receptionist plan. Not even my mom, ’cause she would say that it pays crap. Everything pays crap in her book. And it probably would on the island, but maybe I’ll move to the city. I could. Though I don’t know.
11. There is no doubt that Larry is a genuine ______: he excels at telling stories that fascinate his listeners.
a. Braggart. Not that, obviously.
b. Dilettante. I don’t remember what this means. But not this either.
c. Pilferer. What the heck? Oh, pilfer. Like to lift som
ething. Okay, not that.
d. Prevaricator. What the hell. Sort of like velociraptor, but obviously not a dinosaur. No idea.
e. Raconteur. Well, this I think is a word like entrepreneur but not. And that’s like some big shot with lots of cash and a scheme, like Vic’s uncle. Okay, so that’s not Larry. So it has to be the dinosaur word, but really … who gives a shit? Can’t we just say Larry’s a talker, for God’s sake? Whatever happened to plain English, and why isn’t it good enough? I mean, who would say, He sat at the table and tore into his steak like a prevaricator? I mean, you could just say he tore into his steak. You could say he’s a pig. The thing that gets me is a word should sound like what it is. Like grimy, for example, has a dirt feel. But a prevaricator? I mean, come on. How often am I going to work that into a sentence, even if I’m an egghead?
I stare at words, feeling myself grow damp. No, Larry is not a prevaricator. I’m certain. It must be this raconteur. I fill in the circle and with a pen I dig out of my bag I write both words on my hand because I’m pretty annoyed.
Then it happens. I lose heart. I fold up my answer sheet, stick it in my bag, and sit there for a while, head down, telling myself this is one small moment in my otherwise interesting life.
I get up eventually and walk out, quietly closing the door behind me, and look in through the little window at the back of the sub’s head where her hairdo is crushed from sleeping on it. She’s bent over a novel and everyone is hunched over their booklets. I have Cork in my line of vision, and finally he looks up and sees me. In a few seconds he lifts himself out of his seat, and I wait for him by the water fountain.
“I’m bailing,” I say.
He takes my fingers and we run down two flights to the gym, so fast we’re practically flying, and push through the doors. It’s dark and the air is sweaty and close, and we run through the big gym into the little gym where all the mats are stacked. Cork throws me down and kisses me hard and I grab his hair and we roll around, exhilarated. I flip off my shoes, and he pushes off my jeans and underwear and my ass is on the rubber mat and we do it really hard and much too fast. I feel slammed. The best part was tearing down the stairs, flying through the gym.
Jersey Angel Page 7