by Diane Munier
She ignores me because my voice has no impact on the woman, not ever. So the singing starts, and his arms are folded because there’s not room for him to relax, but the fingers nearest are tap-dancing on my arm. I am trying to ignore him the way Mom does me, but I’m only thinking of everything of his touching everything of mine, and then the added effort of the fingers, playing my arm like the guitar.
He’s playing along with the singing, that’s all. He’s enjoying it. I’m barely aware there is music, because there’s no sensory perception left in me for things like music and light or stained glass or anything beyond the fact that he’s touching me.
The preacher is finally up there. He says, “It’s not good for man to be alone.”
Spencer takes one of the mission envelopes from the slot in the pew. I notice how his thighs are so much longer than mine. He takes the little pencil and writes on the envelope, “Amen!”
Mom is smiling, I see that. Then Spencer and I play Hangman. He wins.
Then he folds our paper and puts it in his shirt pocket and tells me to pay attention. I scowl a little. I listen to the preacher expound, but I’m wondering why God seems to have forgotten me. We’ve come here pretty regularly. Pastor Stanley rushed right in to our difficulties and saved Mom. And he’s tried his best with me too. I even got baptized years back to cover all my bases.
But God, I don’t mess with him much. I figure He’s going to do what He’s going to do. It doesn’t mean I can rest on my ass (which is a bible word). But according to Cyro I can. I should just give up? Just let us all be sitting ducks?
“What?” I say to Spencer. He takes my hand. It’s hold hands and pray time. I’m so glad I’m on the aisle because I do not hold hands. But I am holding Spencer’s. Or he’s holding mine. I am looking at my hand in his hand. He holds Mom’s hand too. He rests our hands on his legs while he clings to us.
Pastor Stanley is doing the voice, the come to Jesus voice. It’s very pleading. Right now he’s talking about being burdened, being troubled. He’s talking to the weary, the heavy ladened. Spencer’s head is bowed, and he’s staring at his knees. He’s squeezing my hand so hard my fingertips are white. But I won’t say anything. It feels…like he needs it.
Finally it’s over. His grip eases and his head lifts, and he tells me he’s sorry, and Mom too. Mom pats his knee, but I take my hand and fold my arms and work my fingers a little so he can’t see. I guess I’d been staring at him. He looks at me, his eyes are glassy. He licks his lips. He nudges me with his shoulder and smiles a little. I can’t smile back because he’s hurt and I’m the worst comforter God ever created.
Spencer doesn’t get out of there without meeting Pastor Stanley. Now the guy will visit, but I don’t tell Spencer. Mom also tells Stanley that Spencer moved into Frieda’s house. Stanley has a ‘no shit’ look, but we leave him pretty much with his vestments and chin flapping in the wind.
We have to hurry to the restaurant to get our chicken dinner. The longer you wait, the more it fills.
“Fried chicken, mashed potatoes with white or brown gravy and green beans,” Mom is telling Spencer.
“That sounds fantastic,” he says, very willing to go. He yanks a little on my ponytail and he moves it over the seat and keeps holding on to it.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Thirteen
Chicken Part One
The restaurant is packed. I hate that, but the food is nearly worth it. Usually I make Mom put our name in while I wait in her car and she calls me on my cell when we get a table. Usually Horny meets us here. Horny doesn’t do church, but she is all about the fried chicken. For her it’s breakfast, great hangover food, she says. And then I have to hear it while they swap Saturday night stories, Saturday all night stories. Unless they were together, and sometimes it goes like that, then they talk in code, crackable code, but I try to imagine black holes in the center of galaxies spitting out a lot to swallow a little…or something.
But here’s how to get your money out of the dating site, hook up with a dude and get him to bring a friend for your friend. A two-fer. Mom and Christine love a man-bargain.
But today, I can’t hide out in the car, so I walk into the hub-bub with Mom and Spencer. “I’m getting this,” he tells Mom, meaning he’s wants to pay.
“Alright,” Mom says to my mortification, as she opens her mouth and puts thumb and forefinger at the corners of her lips to blot her lipstick.
“I’m getting mine,” I say.
“No you’re not,” Spencer says the way you’d speak to a petulant child. “We’ll have a throw-down right here in front of all these church folks, Sullivan,” he warns me.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say, and I might be flirting. Me. But I mean it.
He pulls my tail again, while Mom is at the little desk giving the lady our name. “End of discussion Miss Sarah. And you didn’t come over with your mom last night,” he says.
Well, I hadn’t.
“I saw you walking.”
Well, I had.
But he didn’t see me walking, he saw me standing, in front of my house like a creeper because of Jason running off to the army and deserting Cyro, and what Cyro said to me making me question my whole life. But I could never say all of that in a million years.
“So now you look at me with those big beautiful eyes so full of things you never say,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets and going up on his toes, back on his heels.
Oh God, I make that sound in my neck, and I quickly clear my throat. But I want a repeat…of his words, not my sound…God no not that.
Big beautiful eyes. “Big Bad Wolf,” I say. But I mean, it’s what Red Riding Hood said to the…wolf…’what beautiful eyes you have,’ but Spencer is not Red Riding Hood and I’m not the wolf so…crap!
He laughs some, and he flushes a little red, and I know I’m red because I’m an embarrassment to myself…feminism…and the whole human race.
“Fifteen minutes,” Mom says having put our name in the hat, “not bad. Hold my place guys, while I go tinkle.”
She did not say tinkle. “She said twinkle,” I say, smiling at Spencer, cause we’re not middle-schoolers, or pre-schoolers, or nursing home residents.
Spencer has his lips pressed tight, and he laughs again, like he’s trying not to. “Your mom is great,” he says.
And that’s so…nice. Why can’t I say nice, easy things like that? I rub my beautiful eye, so glad I didn’t wear the mascara I might possibly not need anyway…unless he was teasing. Was he teasing…about my eyes?
I can see three women standing behind Spencer, talking about him. He doesn’t know it, but he is causing quite a stir now that they don’t have Jesus to take their minds off of him. He is fresh…beautiful, to steal his word, beautiful meat in a man-meat desert cause anyone single and male around here has been torn to shreds already and left to jerkify in the hot sun in this barren practically single-man-free land.
And let’s face it, the eyes in this place have not seen the wonder that is Spencer Gundry, not anytime, not anyplace.
“Sarah?” Spencer touches my arm. He’s been saying my name.
They have our table ready. Spencer is worried Mom won’t be able to find us. I assure him she will find us.
So he gestures I should lead and I square my shoulders and plow into the dining room behind the hostess who holds our menus high and blazes a trail through the melee of diners.
Leeanne is here with Merle and Pearlie. I wave at them from across the room glad to see Leeanne has surfaced once more.
We are taken all the way to the back wall. I know there is an emergency door back here, and I prefer to sit on the wall, so this is perfect.
I get in the booth, and Spencer gets in next to me. I am looking at him.
“What?” he says scooting about as close to me as we’d been at church, so practically in my lap, shattering my personal space.
Does he know what he’s doing to me? I don’t even share a boot
h with Mom. She and Horny have to sit across from me so I can at least stay out of the crossfire of their conversation. Do I like Spencer so close? Well I don’t mind it so much, but it’s not easy either. And there are some eyes on us on top of it. I am twenty kinds of violated right now. I open the tall menu and close my eyes for a minute. God help me. I didn’t pray this earnestly in church, but I’m trapped here, and I’m vibrating up against this man.
Spencer has spoken to the waitress, telling her he’ll just have water. He pulls my menu aside, actually opens it wider, like a door I’ve been crouched behind. “Your drink, Sarah?”
“Um…water.”
“What about Mom?”
“She’ll um…Diet Coke.” She wouldn’t exactly love him calling her Mom. And she won’t be to the table until she’s worked the room, visited everyone she knows, bent over tables so her hiney sticks out at the rest of the room, while her boob crack hits everyone she’s talking to square in the face. I usually order and play with my phone until the food comes.
When Christine is here she works the part of the room Mom isn’t in cause you can’t be in two places at once, and Mom’s usually slept with someone here, and law of averages so has Christine, so they have to do some careful maneuvering, and by the time they get to their chicken dinners I’ve eaten all the applesauce and most of the green beans cause it’s family style and they’ve got enough gossip to swap clear through dessert.
I hope Spencer doesn’t tell me my eyes are beautiful again. Trapped in the corner like this…I don’t know what I’m capable of, but I have a picture in my mind of me taking off over the table, in my dress, shooting the beaver and just to get out of here because compliments make me so embarrassed I can barely breathe the few times I’ve gotten one, and compliments from Spencer could easily make me spastic.
The waitress is gone, and I’ve closed him off with my menu again and he says, ‘knock-knock,’ and pretends my menu is a door and he’s knocking upon it.
I shut the thing and lay it down, coming to terms. I can’t hide all afternoon. He is right here, and so, so, so, so….
“Where were we Sarah? Yes…you didn’t come over last night but your mom brought the soup you made and it was delicious.”
I have watched the words…his lips that make the words. I know it is English, but the process of vowels and consonants…I’ve not considered the sheer workmanship that goes into making words before now…words like ‘delicious.’ So much flexing flesh is involved.
“Where is your mind? Like right now? Tell me exactly what you’re thinking, what I’m seeing in those big brown eyes?”
He’s trying to kill me. I can feel my throat quivering.
The waitress brings our drinks. She looks at Spencer the whole time, nearly sets Mom’s Coke on my silverware and catches it when I gasp. She stumbles over her words when asking if she can, “Fake our order?”
“If you fake take it will we still get our food?” Spencer asks with a brilliant smile, and the girl can’t laugh, she is just stuck looking at him.
I clear my throat to help her out. Her poor performance has actually helped me come to my senses. “Chicken for three,” I say with authority.
“Oh,” she says, trying three times to slide her order pad into her apron pocket, then giving up and walking away with it still in her hand.
“Smoking a dubee on her break no doubt,” I say, suddenly back, mean as a snake and sharp as a tack.
Spencer laughs and bumps his shoulder into mine. “You never answered my question.”
My big brown eyes. “I just gave you a glimpse,” I say, meaning my dubee remark. That’s pretty much what’s in there, a wagon train of uselessness and twenty teams of braying mules.
“I’m starving,” he says, his eyes looking at my lips.
My hand goes there. I hope I don’t have a moustache that’s showing up in this light or something. Or worse an old milk moustache that’s hardened in place. When’s the last time I had milk?
“What are you doing?” he laughs, pulling my hand from the fuzz check. Now he’s holding my hand under the table, on his leg again, like in church, but nothing like that. And I have questions too, the great weight that gets him now and then, that rises in his big beautiful green eyes. Even I can see that, but nobody gets to lift the other’s scalp and poke in the gray matter. No thanks.
“You’re doing it again,” he says, this glee face.
“What?”
“Thinking and not sharing,” he says. “How do I get in there Miss Sarah?” The other hand, the long pointer finger taps me on the forehead and I rear back a little. Spastic.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Fourteen
Chicken Part Two
Mom returns to the table, glowing with the words she has possibly shared or heard about Spencer all over this land…room. She is checking out the close proximity of his shoulder to mine. I don’t always catch these things, but I do see this. Before she can comment, Horny is here pushing her way into our side of the booth while she insists Aaron, my boss, sit next to Mom.
Mom moves and things rattle and click, and she steps on my foot under the table but I take it quietly, keep all my cursing mental.
The waitress is on it, standing at our table, grinning at Aaron now cause I guess he’s attractive in the way men who look a little bit like women masquerading as men can be, and I don’t mean transvestites, I mean men who’ve had too many sisters and learned too much about hair products or moisturizers or something.
Aaron smiles at me cause I’ve been staring and Christine is saying to the waitress, yes, two more, and I like white meat. Then she grins at Aaron, lifts the doo-dad bauble dangling from her necklace, and presses her lips on it while she stares at Aaron some more. He giggles and his Adam’s apple bobs a few times and he gets very pink.
I am scrunched against the wall like my parts have surrendered to one of those space saving vacuum cleaner bags. Spencer Gundry smiles at me like this is a good thing, but this booth is not made for three, not if fork moving is involved.
The waitress brings two more settings and Christine digs right in to the bowls of food already on the table, the applesauce, the potatoes and gravy, the green beans and coleslaw. She even serves Aaron.
Aaron says this all looks great, and then the waitress brings two small platters of chicken, dark for Aaron and white meat, barf, for Christine.
I have to put food on my fork, hold my fork aloft and move my head to my fork to take a bite while my arm stays frozen. Well I don’t have to, but I want to. It’s my protest.
If I wasn’t so distracted by Spencer’s close proximity, his hip and thigh especially, smooshed against mine…well I’m the left bun on the twerking sandwich and who would have thought.
Mom and Christine are laughing and Aaron is looking at Christine, big smile while he chews. And he eats his fried chicken with a fork and knife. While I covet his elbow room, I feel it’s impossible to be his friend. And he is my boss for crying out loud. And I think it’s the same shirt he wore to game night. Surely he’s been home and returned? Surely…Shirley….
“Sarah Marie?” Spencer nudges me, offering the green beans. He’s going to serve me, like Christine with Aaron. I nod and he puts a spoonful on my plate. “More?” he says.
I shake my head and continue to eat like my elbows are glued to my ribs while Christine tells Aaron and Spencer and Mom her favorite desserts that they offer here. Her detail is inspiring. She goes on to tell how to make a really good cake from a boxed cake mix and what kinds of cakes her mother made her for her many, many birthday parties.
“Sarah, do you pick your garden this afternoon?” Spencer asks me, perhaps rescuing us from Horny’s walk down memory lane.
I am licking potatoes from my fork. “Maybe.” I do, but I don’t want to commit myself. I have to work but for some reason I don’t want to say that in case Aaron is listening. I don’t want to give him any insight into how I turn out copious amounts of work. I like him
to wonder how I do it. So I shrug and keep licking the tines on the public fork, and Spencer is watching too closely so I stop and poke a green bean.
“And the reason I ask,” Spencer says, low-voiced, “is because I noticed how loaded those little tomatoes are and I wondered if you wanted some help?”
I picture watching his long, long fingers working over…the vines.
“You don’t nap?” I say, stalling.
“Once. At a park. I was with a girl…it’s a long story. Best nap I ever had though.”
“Sounds like some of the dates I’ve been on,” Mom interjects and Christine snorts and has to drink her soda.
“Who naps at a park? Good way to get mugged,” Christine says.
Aaron launches into a story about getting mugged. Someone took his bus fare when he was in college. It was probably high school and the bus fare was his lunch money. I’m smiling.
“What’s that smile for?” Spencer asks like I’m adorable or something.
“What time?” I say.
“After lunch…after you take off that pretty dress,” he smiles and nudges me again and it kind of hurts as my other shoulder is already scrunched on the wall.
The unfortunate dress remark is heard. By the whole table. No one is talking now, but Christine leans forward enough to eye me around Spencer.
I am staring back at her, a green bean on my fork, and it poised to enter the hangar…my mouth.
Then I look at Mom, and she is glaring at Spencer. He smiles at her and goes on eating, so she eyes me, with her, ‘I knew it,’ face like I’m not practically a nun, but a secret whore who can’t wait for lunch to be over so I can strip for our neighbor Spencer Gundry.
And I’m not denying anything. Not even to my boss who doesn’t know what the hell is going on. No, he doesn’t think a thing of Spencer mentioning my dress, as in ‘take it off.’ Just another day in the outback. Now he’s telling us his favorite cakes and not even Christine seems to care.
“You got any kids Spencer?” Mom says. I lay the green bean down, and the fork it roofs.