I wave good-bye to Erika, but when I have one hand on the door, she waves me back in.
“One more thing.” She cocks her head and squints down at the cake, the rows of perfect sea-foam rosettes that create the pulled-down panties.
“Isn’t this absurd, Sandinista?” She waves her hands over the cake, the large vanilla breasts, and the frosted pink nipples as big as mini-muffins. “What passes for high humor at the frat parties these days. Hoo-hoo-hoo! So funny.”
I nod, sympathetic—Right?—as if I have ever been to a fraternity or bachelor party, as if I am some feminist sister in the know.
Erika is squinting her eyes, as if observing me from a great distance. “Want to see something, Sandinista?”
Uh-oh. Right away I can tell I do not want to see anything at all. I’m no fan of the awkward social encounter, but what can I do?
And so my own big smile is pure propriety, as is my starling chirp: “I sure would!”
Erika reaches to a shelf underneath the table and pulls out a can of Comet. She shakes the cleanser over a bowl of frosting next to the cake. Nothing. She frowns, and then pats the can with her palm. A cloud of dust puffs out, and then granules of pale green cleanser shower into the bowl. Erika coughs. And next there is the comforting whirr of the hand mixer, the seconds where talking would be futile. Uh-oh. When she turns off the mixer, she tilts the bowl so I can see: the frosting has turned a more saturated shade of pale sea-foam green.
“Wow,” I say.
She smiles. “Cool, right?”
I match her brightness: “Well … yeah! Very!”
“I use a shitload of Splenda in the frosting; it covers any taste. Artificial sweeteners are pure magic. Though they might give us cancer. Just use sugar in your coffee drinks if you like them sweet, okay?”
I nod. “That’s what I use. Just sugar.”
Her brow furrows while she works, whipping a spatula through the frosting. I’m thinking that the Comet might be a more immediate concern than the whole, um, cancer thing. Erica seems pretty crazy, but what’s a gal to do, what’s a gal to do. I know not. I can pay attention and that’s it, that’s all I can do.… I can study Erika and her poisoned icing until Catherine Bennett floats into the shop, shouting, What does this cake taste like to you, Alecia? What flavor is in the cake? Yoo-hoo, Alecia! Are you paying attention?
“I do this by hand, I don’t use the Mixmaster,” Erika says. She looks at the frosting, frowns, and squirts in some bright green food coloring. “Because if you use too much Comet it bleaches the frosting out when you whip it. It goes from nice green to sickly pale green.”
Psycho Martha Stewart sprinkles a bit more Comet into the frosting and I’m thinking, Wouldn’t that make it … kind of gritty, when she scoops shortening out of a tub and turns the hand mixer on again.
It’s all very migraine-licious, so I lift my hand to wave—see ya!—but Erika switches off the mixer and gives me a conspiratorial smile.
“When the jackass guys get sick, they never ever think it’s the cake. They don’t consider the cake! They assume it’s the booze.” She affects a baritone: “Dude, I got so wasted last night. I drank seventeen Jägermeister bombs, and then—dude!—I fucked the stripper, and then I threw up for five days. Ha!”
I chuckle along with Erika, but maybe she can tell what I’m thinking yet again because she says:
“Hey, don’t flush your chocolates down the john, Sandinista! I worked hard on those. They are the cleanest food you could hope to eat. I only add my secret ingredients to food that exploits women!”
I laugh barkingly hard, as if the exploitation of women is nothing short of distilled hilarity.
She raises one pierced eyebrow at me. “I’m serious, Sandinista. Cake can be a form of social justice. The brothers we share the block with?” She nods in the direction of the monastery. “They would tell me to turn the other cheek, but sometimes a lady needs to turn the tables instead.”
I am too flummoxed to think of any socially relevant comment, so I thank her for the chocolates and hightail it out of the shop, taking a final look at the display of chocolate breasts: gentlemen, beware.
* * *
And then it’s home again, home again, jiggety jog. It’s me walking in the front door and seeing the ghost of my mother in my peripheral vision. She wears a sort of pith helmet and khaki pantsuit, as if she has not only risen from the dead but is now a minor character in a manly man Hemingway novel. She says: Sandinista, sweet girl, please put your keys in the dish so that you don’t have to go on ye olde Great Key Hunt in the morning.
Oh, she is very pithy in her pith helmet.
But she has a point. I lose my keys on a daily basis, so I drop them into the dish on the coffee table, the crash of keys against glass a cartoon cymbal. I flop down on the couch and stare at the red living room walls, which my mother and I painted and texturized last summer. We had aimed for a field-of-poppies vibe, crisp and vibrant, fluted at the edges, but we ended up with muddy gazpacho. I think of my mom laughing at our failed efforts, of her in her rocker-chick black T-shirt and cutoffs, of how she told me, “This whole Home Depot culture we’re living in is bullshit. Pottery Barn can suck it too.”
I watch TV for hours, until there are only infomercials for Proactiv and the Ab Roller, until my eyes feel like dried-out moon marbles, but I do not fall asleep like a badass, splayed out on the couch with my gun clutched to my sternum. I lie down in my mother’s room, in her queen-sized bed. I should not sleep in her bed; I should not clutter her smell with mine. I want the lemongrass essence and Parliament cigarettes to forever linger on her crumpled sheets. I do not want to kill my mother off with my perfume and hair products and powder-scented deodorant, but we’re fading into each other just the same.
But I have something. I have a strange new freedom of heart, which is the gun on my mother’s rosewood nightstand. I try to fall into sleep but remain in a state of dreamy wakefulness; I float around Woodrow Wilson High School. I hover close to the water-stained ceiling of the gymnasium, where a pep rally is in full effect: the marching band plays, the glint of brass from tuba and French horn nearly blinds me; the cheerleaders cheer. English teacher Lisa Kaplansky has changed out of her hip linens and clogs into a cheerleading skirt. She has joined all the Megans and Caitlins in yelling Go, Sandinista! Take it to the hoop! The teachers and counselors sit in the bleachers with the students, shepherds to the flock. They pelt me with sugarless gum, with Gummi bears.
Catherine Bennett sits in the last row, but of course now she’s not so scary; she clutches the teacher’s edition of Math Without Fear! to her chest and smiles vaguely toward the heavens, toward me, her face a tableau of innocence and early Alzheimer’s. She cannot place the floating girl on the ceiling. Who is that? I really should pay closer attention. Her eyebrows rise when she notices my creamy pink gun. It has caught her attention.
Alecia Hardaway appears at the doors of the gymnasium, waving one hand frantically, visoring the other over her forehead as she frowns, puzzled by my gymnasium ascension. Sandinista? Hi, Sandinista! You’re a real cool person every day, Sandinista!
I hide my gun behind my back as I wave at Alecia Hardaway.
But Catherine Bennett sees my gun—oh, she knows all about my handgun. And so she merely lowers her eyes and clasps her hands, as if she were shy, or kind, or in prayer. But, Mrs. Bennett, switching to sweetheart mode will not impress me now. And it’s Mrs. Bennett’s getting away with it that gives me the courage to get out of bed and leave the house at four in the morning, though there’s nobody waiting for my safe return. But I will have my gun. For now I stick it in the glove box with the box of bullets and so hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the wicked witch’s house I go!
Oh, how I love the ccccahlunk sound it makes when I turn a corner sharply—the gun escaping the soft, folded maps and candy wrappers and napkins. And I drive, the music cranked, my driving on the slick streets fast enough that it feels like I might ascend and go flying over the guardrails of the inte
rstate to live forever in the iced velvet night. I must be going forty miles over the speed limit, taunting the black ice, but there are no cops around. This is a shame since flashing lights and a soft siren sign would be relief, medicine for this strung-out psycho feeling. And yet my sadness has a metallic edge. I have a gun.
I park across the street from Catherine Bennett’s house; I park so I can see the window where I hurled a stone amphibian—such is my courage! Oh, a valorous girl am I! Of course I want to return to the scene of the throwaway crime, to see the thrill of silver duct tape covering up the pane, the fast footprints in the snow. But the side yard of her house is too dark, no light through yonder window breaks for Catherine Bennett, for me. Not even a porch light left on. Her house would disappear in the darkness if not for the snow frosting it like a gingerbread house, a Hansel-and-Gretel getaway for Catherine Bennett. The car is cold. I double check that the doors are locked, thinking that if I were killed outside Catherine Bennett’s house when I myself am in possession of a gun, well … that would be just my luck indeed. I take my gun out of the glove box and put it on my lap, my little heavy metal baby.
I wonder how it would feel to crunch through the snow yet again, gun in my hand, to walk up to her door and ding-dong and Nice to see you. Might I borrow a cup of sugar?
My mind floats back to the day last fall when Mrs. Bennett, open algebra book in her hands, started a vicious, free-flowing conversation with Alecia. Mrs. Bennett was plagued by a froggy throat, and so there was a lozenge clacking against her teeth when she announced, apropos of nothing, that she was really looking forward to her Thermos of homemade beef stew. She turned to Alecia and said, as if pleasantly, “By the way, Alecia, what is the meal that a person eats in the middle of the day?”
Here Alecia Hardaway paused, and you could see her processing … Middle of the day … middle of the day … middle of the day … not quite able to put it together. When she finally answered, it was without her usual Jeopardy! player exuberance. Her tentativeness was even more dreadful than the shouted exultations of a slow girl, for it showed that there was something beyond Alecia’s grinning outbursts and her glittery Hello Kitty notebooks, that maybe there had always been more to Alecia Hardaway than we had thought.
And so Alecia Hardaway, who was definitely paying attention—her face screwed up and her eyes rolled back, ticking an unknown quantity off on her fingers—hours? heartbreaks?—finally said, “Breakfast?”
And of course the class sighed, and Mrs. Bennett’s mouth formed an oval of delight as her eyebrow shot up, the incarnation of her cartoonish evil. “Breakfast, Alecia? Is it really breakfast?”
But it was a trick question; the middle of the day is a variable, depending on the day: on a school day it’s high noon, but on the weekend you might sleep late, maybe till noon, which would make breakfast the middle of the day.
And, really, who’s the genius now, who doesn’t know that I sit outside her house waiting for her with my fake, filmy shroud of innocence? I raise my gun to the cold car window, metal to safety glass. I squeeze one eye shut and aim the barrel at Catherine Bennett’s front door. A boy sets out like something thrown from the furnace of a star.
Guess what? So does a girl.
But also I know—like the sickly sweet refrain from one of my mother’s old Abba albums—I know, I know, I know, I know, with God as my witness I know—that Catherine Bennett is beyond all accountability, a true believer in the world of What? Oh, no! There must have been a misunderstanding. I was just kidding around! Just fooling around! That’s my style. I see that gunning for those she perceives as weak or different is simply part of her DNA. And the school will probably do nothing; maybe they will give Catherine Bennett an expedient pep talk before they aggressively pretend that it never happened. Before they offer me a passive-aggressive apology—I’m sorry you feel that way—before they give me a corporate smile and many suggestions. There is a virtual high school in the district; I imagine they might like for me to continue my education online.
Yet how am I any different from all the grinning jackasses of the world? How valiant was I on those days when Catherine Bennett would torment and taunt Alecia Hardaway for sport? Didn’t I poison the cake with my own silence? Golly, why did my heart suddenly swell with this intense feeling for the slow girl? Do I really have to be the sort of person who only feels empathy and regret for a persecuted girl once I join her ranks? Do I really have to be so fucking typical? My poor mother, who always championed the underdog, would expect a little better from me.
I lower my gun to my lap. I review some basic facts, hoping for clarity. Right now Catherine Bennett is inside her house and I am outside her house, parked beneath the shaggy evergreen that borders her front lawn. We are both alone in the world—her husband is dead, and … I force myself to form the sentence in my head; I spell it out in the choppy font of cartoon ransom notes: my mother is dead. I turn my car on for the heater; I overheat and turn it off, sitting in the cold. I cross my arms over my chest. My rib still hurts, but I am paying attention.
I do not listen to the radio or to a CD. I sit in silence—trying to hear what, if anything, God tells me in the heart of this cold Midwestern night, in this reflective blackness that shades the snow in the distance with lilac and navy. I’m thinking, Out of the depths I cry unto you, O Lord, and also I could do it I could do it I could do it.
FRIDAY
PLAYING WITH THE CHEETAHS
I’m wearing starlet shoes and drinking coffee as I hobble from my parked car to the Pale Circus, a short icy journey that, to an indoors-loving girl like me, is as treacherous as a Himalayan trek on stilts. And so I nearly wipe out in my vintage stilettos when I hit a slick patch. I’m correcting myself, arms arched like I’m surfing, when I notice that the headless mannequin is wearing a long white parka with a full and fluffy hood. Our Lady of the Snows. When I pull open the door of the Pale Circus, I find Henry Charbonneau seated at the cash desk. Despite his general quality of bedazzlement—the sweet celery eyes, the ironic look of heartbreak on a face far, far too pretty for anyone to refuse, his startling hands, the knuckles wide as soup spoons—Henry Charbonneau certainly disappoints me. Wherefore art thou, Bradley?
“Good morning, pretty girl, good morning,” Henry Charbonneau calls out, as if he were a pet-store parrot with green and blue plumage. “We’ve got to get you some keys. Your own set, dearie-doo.”
“Okay,” I say. I will certainly kick off my stilettos later, but for now I hammer across the wooden floor in my lovely and perilous beaded shoes. With each wooden whackuh whackuh Henry Charbonneau winces, his central nervous system unglued by my shoes. Oh, he does so love the varnished hardwood of the Pale Circus.…
“Bradley called me this morning at home, and, apparently, he wasn’t ‘feeling well,’ ” Henry says, hooking his fingers around those two words and giving an exasperated smile, as if we were comrades in the know and Bradley existed merely as a drunken oaf we tolerated out of sheer goodwill.
But I offer up only a concerned and quizzical Florence Nightingale expression, as if Bradley has a new and surprising diagnosis and I am pondering potential sympathies: A balloon bouquet? Banana cream pie?
“I hope he feels better soon.”
“Oh, I’m fairly sure it’s nothing serious and that he’ll be ‘feeling better soon,’ ” Henry Charbonneau says, finger-quoting yet again. “Just as soon as he’s had a few hours to sleep off his hangover.”
And thinking, Wow, overkill, dude, what with all the bitchy finger quoting, I take off my coat and set my coffee cup on the counter.
Though it has a lid, Henry looks at my coffee cup with alarm, as if I’m about to dump it all over the party dresses slung next to the cash register, or maybe slam dance over and splash my coffee on the white fur parka in the display window, an homage to PETA, as the fur is really just acrylic fluff.
I take another sip of my coffee and he rubs his hands together, itching to give me instruction. Like all bosses, Henry C
harbonneau believes the wheels of industry should be in motion at all times, that workers should be working, people, working! I realize that he’s just a hipper and certainly more handsome version of bald Herb Winters, the manager at Baskin-Robbins, who gave many tutorials in the wrist-flip that provided maximum speed and efficiency when I was scooping up the Mint Chip and Pralines ’n Cream last summer.
Henry Charbonneau smiles at me, rests his palm on the party dresses before he taps them and says, “Will you iron these up, love?”
Ironing is not in my skill set. My mother was a leather-jacket-and-jeans kind of gal; in summer, a lover of Indian cotton gauze glinting with metallic thread. I take my vintage clothes to the dry cleaner’s. There is no iron in my home. And when I’m at the Pale Circus I prefer to use the steam cleaner with its fat-frog mouth sagging away from the hose that connects it to the steam.
But what can I do when he’s already plugging in the iron and pushing the candy and cash register aside, covering the cash desk with a stained tea towel. Oh, that’s what they’re for. I used the towel to mop up spilled tea yesterday. Henry Charbonneau notices the sepia-colored stains. Tut-tutting a bit, he digs around under the counter, finds a clean tea towel and drapes it over the cash desk.
I take another sip of coffee, and Henry Charbonneau says, “This time, before there are many customers, is really a great time to do all the housekeeping.”
“Right,” I say brightly, thinking Jackass, and I take a long draw of coffee before I flip my cup into the painted lavender trash can.
I lay a magenta dress with a jewel collar on the counter and start nosing the warm iron down the pleat of the skirt. I make a smooth canal; I am paying attention. I follow the line of the pleats and am rewarded by a dramatic smoothness, one crisp, bright line shooting to the hem.
I am lost in the reverie of this magic when Catherine Bennett’s gray face pops into my mind, entirely un-fucking-bidden: there she is, there she is, as if she doesn’t know I have a pink and cream gun in my glove box. This morning I left it on the coffee table, and then reconsidered. And so I’m thinking of the gun and bullets in my glove box when the iron grazes my pinkie. I pop my finger into my mouth, and Henry Charbonneau looks over, alarmed, as if this action is totally unhygienic/porn star–ish. Which, I suppose, it is.
The Sharp Time Page 10