Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  Also by Leah Thomas

  Because You’ll Never Meet Me

  Nowhere Near You

  When Light Left Us

  For Grandma, who asked if I was ever going to write any “normal” stories.

  (Maybe not, but I love you, and thanks for reading them anyway.)

  CONTENTS

  Act One: Happy Birthday, Rose Poplawski

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Act Two: Greetings, Gus Peake!

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Act Three: Farewell, Friend

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Act Four: Hello, Stranger

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Act Five: Enter PHIL WHEELER

  Phil

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Phil

  Act Six: Happy Homecoming, Jefferson High

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Phil

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Phil

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Phil

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Phil

  Epilogue: Love, Kalyn Spence

  Kalyn

  Gus

  Kalyn

  Acknowledgments

  “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

  —Unknown (NOT Shakespeare)

  “Accepting yourself as you are is an act of civil disobedience.”

  —Francesca Martinez

  ACT ONE

  Happy Birthday, Rose Poplawski

  KALYN

  BOY OH BOY, is there nothing to see in Samsboro, Kentucky.

  Nothing but corn and grass and grubby little houses and sunbaked faces, which combined is still basically the definition of nothing. It’s almost the same kind of nothing we had in Alleghany, except here it’s corn instead of cattle. There’s a cereal mill in town, so the air smells a little better, but we’re still stuck with dirt roads. Once we finally get ourselves to the van, it’ll be a straight-and-narrow shot down M-12 to Jefferson High. It shouldn’t take long.

  But like Mom always says, “The straight and narrow’s for bad drivers.” It’s never easy getting anywhere when you’re a Spence.

  Even the road to my conception was totally crooked and wide, and maybe that’s why my parents were so eager to pop me into the world. They were troubled teenagers themselves, and the last thing they needed was a squalling poop-machine, but heck. Tell my parents “Stop!” and they slam down on the gas. Mom and Dad have basically driven circles all over the straight and narrow, spun out and done screeching doughnuts, too. I’m definitely their kid.

  Maybe that’s why I’m still standing in front of the bathroom mirror on my birthday, smearing basically inches of eyeliner under my eyes when we should’ve hit the road ten minutes ago.

  Somehow the truancy officer found out about me. Mom blames the nosy neighboring of Ms. Pilson, the old lady who lives in the peeling house at the road-end. I blame plain old rotten luck. In any case, Officer Newton and his damp armpits appeared on Grandma’s front step last Wednesday.

  I thought Mom would fight him, tooth and bedazzled nail. I eavesdropped through Grandma’s walls, waiting for her to claw him good.

  Mom’s made for the wide and crooked. She doesn’t trust anyone in a uniform. She doesn’t believe in turn signals. She’s put so much peroxide on her hair across her lifetime that the smell’s as good as coffee to her. I’m her pistol and she’s a much bigger gun, maybe a Winchester Magnum, from a family of firearms. We’ve got gunpowder where most people have cartilage.

  I thought Mom would stare Officer Newton down or pull the “it’s a free country!” card, at least. Instead, Mom offered the man sweet tea before he left.

  “Mom, no,” I told her when she closed the screen behind him. The untouched glass of tea dribbled sweat onto the card table, and Grandma’s mouth dribbled oatmeal down her bib. “It’s bullshit!”

  Mom lit her cigarette. “He says it’s best for you. He ain’t wrong.”

  I snorted. “Since when do people in this town want what’s best for Spences?”

  “Hopefully since now.”

  But it is bullshit. Even if Mom doesn’t have a high school diploma, she teaches me more than all the teachers I ever had back in Arkansas combined. She taught me to drive, and to cook, and to use dumbasses against themselves, like the misogynistic creeps we could get to buy us dinner, and she taught me to read widely and often and teach myself words like “misogynistic.” Getting certified in the Louise Spence education program means I’m plenty ready for Jefferson freakin’ High today.

  I slap a layer of glitter on the black eyeliner. It’s my damn birthday.

  “You gonna be ready before the cows come home?” Mom leans against the door frame, tapping ash from her cigarette into the pink porcelain sink.

  Everything in Grandma’s bathroom has a doily on it. The toothbrush holder is hemmed in lace, stained white with toothpaste buildup.

  “. . . you listenin’ to me, Kalyn-Rose?”

  “Well, you’re shouting right in my ear.”

  Mom takes a drag bigger than she is. “Don’t let the assholes knock you down today.”

  Smoking’s the last thing a five-foot-tall, thirty-six-year-old asthmatic should be doing, but I can’t say jack about it, what with a pack of Pall Malls in my sock drawer that she doesn’t know about. And if anyone told her to quit, you know what Mom would do? She’d light up two fresh ones and plug ’em into her nostrils to make her damn point.

  “So what are you this year—eight? Twelve?”

  “It’s 2007, Mom.”

  Mom lets the cigarette fall into the clogged sink basin. “Fine. Ask me.”

  Other people break piñatas, but in the Spence household we’ve got an annual interrogation tradition.

  “How’d you get pregnant?”

  Like always, Mom replies, “Don’t question miracles, sweet-cakes.”

  I roll my eyes. It’s not like I want the grossest details. I’ve got all kinds of theories about how the spunk that became moi made its way through the barbed wire, bars, and steel walls of Wilder Penitentiary, the largest high-security prison in the Bible Belt. Mom’s never confirmed any of them.

  Turkey basters, and forged medical reports, and maybe the sneaking of goods through a cake? Whatever it was, Mom started ballooning up like any other mom. Like Dad was any other dad, and not a convicted murderer sentenced to life.

  I bite my tongue to keep from cussing. I’m trying to put my contacts in. Maybe that should have happened before the eyeliner.

  For years I had this pair of old-man glasses that I downright refused to wear. My teachers in Alleghany kept throwin’ fits, saying I couldn’t see the board. I threw them right back because there was jack-all I wanted to see on that board anyhow.

  Mom struck me a deal: if I helped her change some bedpans, I could use a cut of her earnings to save up for contacts.

  Before we moved to Shitsboro to take care of Gran
dma, Mom took care of other old people. Checking their catheters, and making sure they took their meds, and giving them pep talks about how their lives were worth living regardless of whether their idiot kids bothered visiting.

  It took me 137 bedpans to afford my fake eyes. Damn right I’ll suffer for them.

  I finally wedge the lens in and blink the pain away. After some nose blowing, I get a good gander at the mess I’ve made. Eyeliner has slipped down my cheeks in sparkling black trickles, but screw it.

  I show the mirror my fangs. I might need them today.

  Grandma’s prefab’s been egged five times since we moved in. Dad’s been in prison for two decades, but people don’t forget. Killing a local golden boy has that effect.

  I toss my braid over my shoulder. It’s crazy long these days, this pumpkin whip that hangs past the small of my back. I step back to admire the mess of me. “I like it.”

  “You’re your father’s daughter,” Mom announces, letting loose another coughle.

  “I’m gonna get off work early and pick up a cake mix so we can celebrate.” Mom works at the Sunny Spot, a little gas station by the freeway. “Funfetti again?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods? Forever Funfetti.”

  We overhear Grandma hacking in the kitchen. If the walls were any thinner they’d be wax paper. Mom ducks away, saying, “Come help me get her settled.”

  I follow Mom to the kitchen. Grandma smiles at me as I wheel her into the living room where she can watch her soaps. I stare at her scalp through her silver feather petals of hair and wonder why it’s so much paler than the rest of her when really it’s the closest piece of her to the sun.

  “You’ve got a head like a baby’s, Grandma.”

  Grandma clears her throat best she can. “Uh . . . ​babies, no wavy time wig for.”

  I only met Grandma three times before her stroke: at Mom and Dad’s wedding, and at two Christmas parties at the Alleghany Mobile Park. Both Christmases, Grandma got so drunk on peppermint schnapps that she couldn’t speak English anymore, just rambled in Polish. I almost understood her then, like I almost understand her now.

  Grandma always knows what she’s trying to say, even if her mouth fumbles. Grandma not making a lot of sense makes sense to me, because I never make sense, either. Peas attached at the hip. That’s exactly us.

  Mom hates leaving Grandma home alone. She has a hard time swallowing, and sometimes we have to clear her throat for her, fingers like fishhooks scraping phlegm away. But Grandma’s prefab sits in the center of the family salvage yard, resting on the same cinderblocks she uses as a doorstep. It’s a painful process, lowering her down.

  Grandma’s hand lands on mine. Her eyes are rheumy and bloodshot, but her stare is clear as water. “Be good today.”

  Mom rolls her eyes. “If wishes were horses.”

  Sure, back in Alleghany I started shit with kids on the way to school, mostly because they thought it was hysterical that the bus was bigger than our house. There’re only so many times a girl can call you “trailer trash” before you trash that girl’s face.

  Mostly, though, Mom’s worried people here’ll recognize me.

  And that’s why she pulls me aside toward the kitchen sink and says something awful. “Listen, Kalyn. Me and Officer Newton agreed it’d be a good idea to register you under a different last name.”

  It’s shock more than anything that makes a sailor of me: “You fucking what?”

  “You’ll be Kalyn Poplawski this year.”

  “Poplaw—I can’t even pronounce it!”

  Grandma tsks one or both of us.

  “Watch it. Poplawski’s your grandma’s maiden name!” She says the next part like she’s banking on it: “She’s been married since 1949, so prob’ly no one remembers.”

  “I want to forget, and you just told me!”

  “Kalyn-Rose Tulip Spence.”

  But Mom’s request seems like a whole new blasphemy. She might as well be another mean girl on the bus. Might as well be calling us NASCAR-loving, cousin-marrying, Podunk garbage. I’m used to other people name-calling, but this?

  “I can’t believe you.”

  Mom squeezes her eyes shut. “This ain’t a choice, Kalyn. You get it, right?”

  Oh, I get it. This is the town that made Dad a murderer.

  I glance out the kitchen window at the field of rusting cars under the cotton-candy-pink morning sky. Samsboro’s treated my family like garbage for decades, dumping literal trash in our yard because they figure trash is the same as salvage (it’s not, damn it, when your family makes a living selling auto parts).

  “Kalyn, we’ve gotta try and make this work.”

  “For how long?”

  “However long it takes.”

  I don’t ask what “it” means. I can hear Grandma’s wheezes over the blare of the TV. Grandma’s not the only one in this room counting the breaths until she’ll have none.

  “You told me to be proud. You always said if people talk shit, take none of it.”

  “Guess I was talking shit, too. Sometimes you have to take it.”

  If anyone knows this, it’s Mom. She’s received a death threat a week ever since she married Dad. That’s partly my fault; I just had to be the flower girl at the wedding.

  Seeing me in a little white lace dress drove the media up the walls. Mom and Dad let me wear it anyway, because my pistol went off: I screamed for days straight (between meals) when Mom told me I couldn’t come.

  So she bought me an Easter dress from the clearance rack at Kohl’s. Her dress was thrifted, faded red and slim fitting. She had to put a sweater on over it in the prison parking lot. They have very particular regulations in prisons about clothes. They wouldn’t let Dad wear long sleeves, even though his arms are coated in burn scars.

  The visitation room reminded me of my elementary school cafeteria. The fluorescents made my tummy rumble. I fidgeted through the half-hour service, eyeballing the vending machines until Grandma caved. She looked downright funny with her balding mullet, denim skirt, and blue eye shadow, but she knew Reese’s Pieces were the way to a kid’s heart.

  In the photo that made national news, Mom and Dad stare lovingly into each other’s eyes and I stand between them and beam at the camera, melted chocolate all over my face. The hateful moms of America had a lot to say about whether Mom should be a mother after that. I wonder if the hateful moms of America still want to adopt me now that I’m a juvenile delinquent and not a “baby angel cursed with evil parents.”

  “You’re a coward,” I tell Mom, and I close myself in the bathroom again.

  No way in hell am I nervous about going to Jefferson High. I know I’m poor and angry. Changing my name won’t change what I am. Even without my new tiger stripes, my old snaggle-tooth, the egg in my pocket, and my gunpowder marrow, people in Samsboro were never, ever gonna be pleased to have me here.

  GUS

  “I’D GIVE MY left arm not to go in today.”

  Dad’s blue eyes twinkle through time and glass. He offers no consolation.

  I lower my voice to a manly timbre: “But that’s your good arm, Gus.”

  The imitation makes me cough. I slur the words, too. Dad wouldn’t have. As far as I know, Dad didn’t have a speech disorder.

  Dad twinkles on, unbothered. Eternal smile, eternal indifference.

  I have looked at my father’s face every day since the day I was born, but I’ve never met him. Apart from the picture on my bookshelf, there’s one on Mom’s nightstand and a collage above the fireplace in the living room. A few summer camp photos are tacked to our refrigerator. The guest room contains dozens of pairs of his eternal eyes, trapped in the darkness of the shoe-boxes that hold his personal effects.

  There’s a photo of Dad holding an enormous trout situated halfway up the staircase. This one is a real nuisance, because almost every time I trip on the steps, the frame rattles against the wall, slips off its nail, and clunks against the carpet. Every other day I am fumbling
over that picture, trying to hang it back up before Mom can catch me.

  One of these days the glass will crack, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  I can’t complain about the stupid placement of the weird trout picture. If I do, Mom will want to talk about why it upsets me.

  There are two ways that conversation can go:

  1.Mom will assume I hate the picture because it’s a picture of my dead dad, not because it’s hanging in a stupid place. She’ll explain to me, again, that even if Dad is gone, she wants him to be a comforting presence in our lives. She’ll sit me down on the recliner and she’ll sit on the settee and she’ll ask me, again, eternally, how I feel about living with the ghost of my father.

  2.Mom will realize the truth: the picture keeps falling because I keep tripping. The dead leg strikes again! So Mom’ll sit me down on the recliner and she’ll sit on the settee and ask me, again, why I don’t consider moving into the downstairs bedroom.

  “It’s the guest room.” If I stare at the bottom of my bifocals, I won’t see her at all.

  “We hardly ever have guests, and it’d be easier for you—”

  When I lift my hands in exasperation, the right one won’t go all the way up; it never does. That will definitely catch her eye. “Mom. Let me keep my room.”

  Or maybe the words won’t come out right. Maybe I’ll say something like, “Mom. Let me hold, I mean, um, keep my . . . ​ the . . . place?”

  Because a conversation this uncomfortable might trigger my aphasia, and all the nouns in the world could abandon me. That’ll convince Mom that I must move downstairs.

  Mom hates seeing other people uncomfortable. She’d wet herself to let a stranger cut her in a restroom line. Unluckily for Mom, discomfort is my default setting. I wonder if I feel like an itch she can’t scratch. She’ll never say so, and I’ll never ask.

  Today I make my way down the stairs and Dad doesn’t fall. I wish some of his enthusiasm would infect me. I feel more like the trout in his arms, sucking empty air.

  Mom stands when I enter the kitchen. I wish she wouldn’t. “Perfect timing!”

  I look at the stacks of fried batter cooling on the table and know it’s not perfect timing at all. The chocolate syrup’s sunken through two layers of cakes. Mom’s ready for work but won’t even eat until she knows I’m going to make it downstairs.