by Joni Rodgers
Key change!
“Rollin’—yeah, honey! Rollin’—ooh, baby! Rollin’ on the river...”
Kiki fished a serving spoon out of the dishwater and sang into it.
“Left a good job in the ci-tay—”
“Mama!”
“Dang.” Kiki grabbed a towel from the fridge handle and wiped her hands on the way to Kit’s front hall. “What is it?” she called up the stairs.
“I can’t find my other shoe,” Oscar called back.
Kiki went up to Cooper’s room, where the floor was so littered with trucks and action figures and comic books, you couldn’t have seen a shoe in there if it belonged to Ronald McDonald.
“Will you do it, Mama?” Oscar asked.
“Stand back,” Kiki told him, taking the known sneaker in her hand and assuming her position beneath the lintel.
When she turned her back to the messy room, Wayne was standing at the top of the stairs in front of her.
“Well,” Kiki glared, “the people you meet when you forget to lock your door.”
“That never works, you know,” Wayne nodded toward the sneaker. “You’re teaching them to be superstitious.”
“Brother, go find your brother,” she chanted like a priestess and threw the shoe over her shoulder into the abyss of little-boy debris. Oscar and Cooper dove for it, and sure enough, with a little digging, they found its mate close by.
“I got it! I got it!” Oscar cried, and he showed it to Wayne. “See, Daddy? I got it. Don’t be mad. I got it.”
“Yeah, you got it all right, boy!” Wayne swooped him up, tickling him under his arms until he begged for mercy.
“Did you miss me?” he asked when Oscar lay breathless on the floor.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you boys get on outside now,” he said.
Cooper and Oscar bombed down the steps and out the front door. Kiki and Wayne stood silently in the hallway.
“Experts say that tickling can cause a child to stutter,” she finally sniffed and started downstairs, too, but Wayne side-saddled the banister and slid down to block her at the newel post.
“Kiki, honey,” he said, “I’ve been so lost without you.”
“Well, I guess that explains why it took you ten days to get here.”
She sidestepped and spun back toward the kitchen, already fighting tears.
“Kalene! C’mon, Peaches, don’t be like this.”
Wayne followed her into the kitchen and leaned on the edge of the counter. With his tousled hair and untucked shirt, he looked as young and reckless as he had the first time she saw him leaning over a porch rail at the Wunsche Brothers’ Cafe in Old Town Spring. “Full of sparks,” her mother had put it, and she was shaking her head for reasons Kiki was only now beginning to understand.
“Baby, please. Talk to me.”
“Talk to my lawyer, Wayne,” Kiki said, reminding her feet of the solid floor beneath them. “No. Talk to a moving company, then talk to my lawyer after you get your stuff together and get out of my house!”
Something flashed across his face, but when he spoke, his voice was placating and low.
“Baby, I’d give you the house, if that’s what you really wanted. But it wouldn’t be much of a home without the four of us living there all together, would it? I mean the five of us,” he added warmly, laying his hand against her stomach. “Honey, you need to come home now.”
“Forget it, Wayne.” Kiki got around him as best she could in the narrow kitchen. “I don’t like you anymore. And pretty soon, I won’t love you either.”
“You don’t mean that, Peaches. You know I was just being a drunk idiot, and I didn’t know what I was saying. You understand—”
“No, Wayne, I don’t understand! I don’t understand how you could go chasing around after another woman and getting drunk and hitting me. I don’t understand it, Wayne, and I don’t like it! I don’t want my kids to be brought up this way.”
“I have never once hit you in front of the kids!” Wayne hit the side of the refrigerator just to prove it. “I barely even touched you that night!”
Kiki pulled the sleeve of her T-shirt over her shoulder to expose the lingering mottle of purple, blue, and a sick, greenish yellow.
“Oh, God.” Wayne covered his face with his hands. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
He reached out to touch her, but she flinched away.
“Oh, c’mon, Kiki, honey, you know that wasn’t my fault. You were acting all hysterical, and I had to take hold of you so you wouldn’t go and hurt yourself, but—well, you must have got tangled up and fell.”
“You hurt me, Wayne. And it’s not the first time. And you know it.”
“Oh, what—now we’re talking about that old—”
“No, Wayne, we’re not talking about any of it. ‘Cause it’s never your fault, and you never did any of it on purpose. It’s not your fault how you won’t let me do anything or have any friends or how you probably gave me herpes or AIDS or something, chasing around with that—that—fish person who’s been Lord knows where!”
“Kiki, men have needs. And when those needs aren’t being met at home, well then...” He raised his eyebrows and glanced to the inevitable conclusion that waited just off stage. “I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying sooner or later, every man does it.”
“My daddy didn’t.”
“OK, every man who ain’t dead.”
“Mel doesn’t.”
“OK, every man who can.”
Wayne sat up on the countertop and lit a cigarette.
“Kit doesn’t allow smoking in here,” Kiki said.
She took the cigarette from his lips and dropped it into someone’s leftover apple juice in the sink. It hissed like a lizard, white paper bleeding yellow. Wayne caught her by the elbow and linked his feet around her waist.
“Kiki, please. I’m sorry, honey. I know I’m just making excuses. I think I just... you know—’cause I haven’t—I mean, here we are having another baby already and ... It’s a lot of pressure, Kalene. I don’t think you appreciate what I have to do to support this family and what that’s like for me.”
“Well, if I had a job like Kit—”
“Oh, yeah!” Wayne scoffed, gesturing to the small, cluttered kitchen. “Then we could be living in the lap of luxury just like this. Maybe ol’ Mel ain’t man enough to take care of his family, but—”
“Oh, Wayne! You sound just like your daddy when you say that stuff. ‘I never allowed your mama to lift a finger outside the house. She had all she could do caring for the yak yak yak.’”
“Okay, maybe I’m being selfish, but I work hard to give you the things you want, and I don’t think it’s so damn unreasonable for me to expect a few things in return. What am I asking for that’s so damn unreasonable? A decent supper? For the kids to be clean and respectful? For you to keep yourself up instead of looking like some old— You used to get dressed up special once in a while, Kalene. You used to like to please me. Baby, we just don’t seem to have any fun anymore.”
“Seems to me, you been having enough fun for the both of us.”
“Kiki, I made a mistake.” He pulled her close and bowed his head to her shoulder. “I made a terrible mistake, and I’m a terrible person, and I’m sorry. It won’t be going on anymore, Kiki. I promise. It won’t ever happen again. I swear, Kalene.”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t pull away.
“I got a surprise for you,” he teased like a mosquito in her ear. “And I think you’re gonna like it. It’s something you been wanting real, real bad.”
“I don’t want it. Whatever it is,” she said. “What is it?”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wayne took a ladle from the kitchen caddy and held it up in front of his mouth, “it’s time tooooo ... karaoke!”
“Wayneee!” she jumped up and down. “You did not!”
“I did, Peaches, and it’s all hooked up with four speakers and a recording deck so you can tape yourse
lf and everything.”
“This is not fair, Wayne. You’re not being fair.”
“Don’ tell ma hart,” he sang into the ladle, “ma achey-breaky hart—”
“Do you honestly think you can just—”
“Come on, Kiki. Can’t you see I’m making an effort here?”
“You think I’m so—that I’m such a—a—”
“No! Honey, of course not! And I know I can’t buy you back with some ol’—it’s just—it’s a gift to—to demonstrate to you how sorry I am. And how much I love you. Please, baby— God... I don’t know how else to... to...”
“What?”
He lifted her face between his hands.
“To tell you that what I have with you, Kalene, I will never have with anyone else. We got a history together, you and me. Just think about all we’ve been through together. Oscar and Chloe and now this baby and the home we’ve made together. How can I let you walk away from all that? You’re my wife. You belong to me.” His voice choked, and his eyes pooled with tears. “You’re my whole life, Kalene.”
He took her in his arms again, and Kiki felt herself swaying with the same familiar dance they always did.
“I love you, baby. I’m so sorry. I miss you so bad,” and his voice softened with each sentiment. “You know I can’t live without my Peaches.” He spanned his hands over the seat of her blue jeans. “I miss my sugar.”
She felt herself relax just slightly when he touched his lips to her neck.
“I’m so sorry, baby, I swear I’ll never let anything bad happen to you ever again. I swear to God. Just say you forgive me, and we’ll forget the whole thing ever happened, okay?”
“I forgive you, Wayne. But I can’t forget anymore.”
“What do you think you’re gonna do?”
“I’m gonna make a life for me and my children without you.”
“Yeah,” he smiled. “And where have we heard this before? You know it won’t work, Kiki. You’re gonna be broke. You know how you hate that. And you’re gonna be lonesome. You’re gonna need some of this,” he whispered with his tongue tickling her ear. “You need me,” he said, his white, hard teeth on her bottom lip, his flat, hard stomach against the soft swell of her early pregnancy. “You always come crawlin’ back sooner or later, so you might as well come on home and fire up your new karaoke machine and sing something pretty for me. C’mon, Peaches. Get the kids in the car and go home now.”
“Okay, I will. But where will you go?”
Wayne let go of her and dropped down from the counter.
“I, Miss Smart-ass, will go home with my family to the house I own in the car I paid for.”
“I paid for ‘em, Wayne. I paid plenty.”
“Plenty of what?” he scoffed. “You’ve never had nothin’, you’ve never done nothin’, you’ve never been nothin’.”
“I was a professional singer!” Kalene held up the serving spoon before God and Wayne Liam Daubert, Jr. “And I’m gonna be a professional singer again!”
“Oh, yeah!” He laughed, flat and humorless. “I’ll come see you at the Astrodome. Meanwhile, there’s no way you’re gonna be able to support those children without me.”
“You said you needed some freedom. Well, now you got it. You just better be prepared to pay the child support.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll sue your fancy you-know-what, and I’ll make you pay it!”
“Well,” Wayne crossed his arms and smiled, “you see what kind of lawyer you can afford, and I’ll see what kind of lawyer I can afford, and then you can kiss my fancy you-know-what on the courthouse steps, Sweet Cakes, ‘cause you’re not gettin’ diddly shit!”
“Good!” Kalene crossed her own arms. “‘Cause diddly shit is what I’ve been getting from you for ten years, and I don’t think much of it!”
Wayne took a step forward, and Kalene automatically covered her face, but Mel’s large shadow suddenly loomed between them.
“Hey, Wayne,” he said. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”
“Today,” Ricki Lake announced, “I’m a Selfish Bitch Who’s Totally Ungrateful for the Great Life I Don’t Even Deserve—and I Wish My Little Sister Would Get the Hell Out!”
The audience booed and hissed righteous condemnation.
“But it’s not like that!”
“Well then, what’s it like, Kit? Tell us.”
“It’s—it’s just ... Okay. The thing is—she’s been staying with us for almost two weeks now and ... and of course, she’s welcome to stay as long as she needs to, but...” Kit squirmed under the studio lights and turned to the clinical psychologist on her left. “See, this isn’t the first time this has happened. They fight, and she comes and stays with us for a while and—well, she just doesn’t—I mean, she’s never been on her own really. Not in her whole life! And he’s such a creep! I don’t know why she can’t just get rid of him, you know. Just get divorced.”
“So you could feel superior?”
“No! So she could be happy!”
“Or maybe you’re just a teensy bit jealous of the passion Wayne and Kiki share. I mean, isn’t a so-called ‘stormy relationship’ more exciting and rewarding than the dry, droning, day-to-day grind you have with Mel?”
“Mel and I have a very exciting relationship. We’re planning a trip to Disney World!”
“Kit has always had difficulty in her relationships with men,” said the psychologist. “Her father, who favored her, died when she was young. Her mother plainly preferred her younger sister, who is smaller, prettier, more talented, for all of which Kit would subconsciously like to see Kiki punished, which initiates a cycle of guilt, which generates resentment, more guilt, additional resentment...”
“No! That’s not... I don’t resent her! It’s just—Mel and I can’t afford—”
“I think she’s got a lot of nerve,” an audience member was telling Ricki, “talking about her sister when her own life is such a piece of crap.”
“How ‘bout it, Kit?” Ricki nodded wisely. “Maybe you’d better do a little housecleaning of your own before you go peeking under your sister’s bed.”
“Now, wait just a minute,” Kit protested. “My life is fine. Everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Then why are you so unhappy?” the clinical psychologist pried.
“Because ... because I’m... I don’t know.”
The audience seemed very far away now. In fact, she seemed to be all alone in the echoing auditorium.
“I think there’s something terribly wrong with me.”
She looked up just in time to see the falling glass, but before she could shield her face, she woke.
In a little honky-tonky village in Texas, there’s a guy...
The song in her head.
The rain on the pavement.
Kiki tried to fix her focus on these, rather than the surging of her stomach, but the grillish aroma of bacon-double-cheeseburger traveled over from the stainless steel counter to the booth right behind her. It stopped and sat directly adjacent to where she was sitting, sandwiched between the hard plastic seat and formica tabletop, facing the Whataburger assistant manager across his neon-colored clipboard.
“So, like—you have no other job experience?” he said for the tenth time.
He looked like he was all of about twelve years old, which made her feel all of about a hundred.
“No.”
“You never had—you know ... a job?”
She shook her head, raised her hand to cover her nose as unobtrusively as possible.
When he jams he’s a ball... he’s the daddy of ’em all...
“You never like... babysat for somebody or worked at like McDonald’s or something?”
“No,” Kiki swallowed. “Nothing like that. But I was—”
Paper crackled behind her. The limp, white odor of bubbled bacon wafted over her shoulder.
“I was a performing artist.”
“W
hat does that mean?”
“Well, I...” when he jams with the bass and guitar “I worked at Calloway’s.”
“Y’mean... Calloway’s? Down by the Galleria?”
“Yes. That Calloway’s.”
His eyes widened a little and dropped automatically to her breasts.
“And before that, I was a professional singer.”
“Wha’d’yamean?”
“I mean I sang. Professionally.”
“Oh.”
Picking at his chin uncertainly, he painstakingly printed “PROFSNL SNGER” in a box shaded FOR OFFICE USE ONLY.
... when the bass and—no, when he jams with the bass and guitar...
Salivary glands. Distending tongue. Lips pulling back over cigarette tanned incisors.
“So okay. So you umm... I guess ... Do you mind if I ask, umm, when are you... you know—having your baby?”
“Oh, not for a long time,” Kiki assured him. “Four months.”
A moment in a woman’s life, but a venerable career in the fast-food industry. The boy nodded and leafed through his papers. His jaw swiveled, rotating the Doublemint inside his mouth. The motion was beginning to make Kiki a bit dizzy.
... when he jams with the bass and guitar...
“So okay. So I guess ...”
He rolled and unrolled her application in his hand. Raindrops slipped and eddied down the window.
... they holler, beat me, daddy, eight to the bar...
Kiki took deep slow breaths, but then, in a wave, came the unmistakable fetor of plastic orange cheese congealing with stage-blood ketchup and squirt-yellow mustard over the greasy brown stench of fly-buzzing slaughterhouse cow carcass, and Kiki couldn’t even open her mouth to excuse herself as she dashed for the ladies’ room.
It took a while before she could come out because she had to take off her shirt and rinse the front under cold water, then hold it in the blowstream of the hand dryer until it looked like something worn by a woman of heartier constitution.
She eventually had to come out, though, and she stood at one end of the counter, waiting while the assistant manager dumped salt over a fresh batch of fries.
“Thanks for coming in,” he mumbled. “We’ll keep your ap on file.”