“You didn’t hear?” Suzanna said, when she saw me staring. “Jackie Friskey has an STD. I bet she got it from someone old and totally gross.”
“I wouldn’t touch her. Not with a ten-foot pole,” Glenn Lego said.
I got up and walked toward the No Bully Zone, stepping over backpacks and weaving through lunch tables to get there. Jackie had given me a flower once, a rose, and she had waved when I saw her that time at the river, hadn’t looked the other way. She was the nicest person in the middle school. She didn’t deserve to be gossiped about.
“I’ve never even been kissed,” Jackie sniffed as we talked. “I had a urinary tract infection, which my mom said anyone can get.”
We had learned about chlamydia, gonorrhea, and AIDS from our sixth-grade health teacher, shortly before we’d learned about scoliosis. We hadn’t covered urinary tract infections, but I knew what a UTI was from my work with Dr. Rotherwood; our camel had gotten one, and it had spread to her kidneys, turned very serious.
“What am I going to do?” Jackie asked me, and I guess she was asking the security guard too, but he looked pale in the face, pretending not to listen.
“Fuck everyone.” It was something Lizzie would say, but it seemed like the right thing. “Let’s get chocolate milks. Come on.”
“You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met,” Jackie said, her eyes big and sweet like a sheep’s.
38.
I worried about Lizzie’s routine changing, with nothing left to bake. Lizzie couldn’t go on baking cakes forever, we didn’t have room for them, not even with the rented walk-in freezer. She would have to stop.
I asked Vanessa about it, and she said that the rabbit cakes were a coping mechanism, which meant they were something to make Lizzie feel better.
“I thought it was about a world record,” I said.
“Well, that too,” Vanessa said. “But it’s more complicated than that.”
Vanessa said my investigation into Mom’s death was another coping mechanism. “You are both trying to keep your mother alive somehow.”
“I know she’s dead,” I told Vanessa. “I just want to know how it happened.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Well, how did your mother die?” I realized I’d never asked Vanessa that before.
“Heroin,” she said. “She killed herself, by accident. An overdose.”
“She killed herself by accident,” I repeated, letting the idea sink in.
At Thanksgiving, Lizzie made the turkey and Vanessa made the sides: yams with marshmallows and a green bean casserole. I made the sticky buns, which just meant I had to take the buns out of the can and put them on the baking sheet. Dad set the table and put the cornucopia figurine in the middle.
“I’m thankful for all of you,” Vanessa said when we went around the table, and I didn’t think she was lying. I’d said I was thankful for the zoo and for Boomer, but after Vanessa spoke I wished I’d said something nice about Lizzie, Vanessa, or Dad.
Vanessa was starting to feel like part of the family, so I was surprised when she announced at the end of dinner that she had to go down to New Orleans for a while. She said she’d be gone only two weeks, three at the most. She promised she’d be back by Christmas. She had a friend who had finally been released from St. Cloud’s and needed help moving into her new apartment. The girl’s family had offered Vanessa a thousand bucks to make sure there were no mirrors in the house, that the windows were tinted, that the bathroom faucets were not chrome, the surface of the coffee table not reflective. The girl had a narcissistic personality disorder. Vanessa said her friend had once caused a five-car pileup when she caught her own image while adjusting the rearview mirror and braked right there. It was only a little sliver of her forehead, but it was the most beautiful forehead the girl had ever seen.
The first night without Vanessa, Dad forced us to have a game night, said we could use some concentrated family time. Ernest kept pecking at the board, knocking our hotels over. Lizzie made me count her pastel money for her, since she was painting her fingernails.
“Did you ask Vanessa to leave?” Lizzie asked as Dad rolled the dice. She didn’t look up at him, admiring her slick red nails instead.
“What?” Dad said. “No, I didn’t. You know I like having her here.”
“But isn’t your internet girlfriend coming to visit next week?”
“She is. So?”
“Wouldn’t it be confusing for your girlfriend?” Lizzie said. “I assume you told her you have two daughters, not three.”
“Lizzie,” Dad said. “It’s a coincidence.”
I chose to believe Dad. Lizzie was probably just looking for something else to be angry about, now that she was getting over Soda.
The next morning, we got a package from Guinness World Records. The scrolled certificate read: Elizabeth G. Babbitt: Creator of the World’s Largest Collection of Rabbit-Shaped Cakes. They also sent a bunch of pencils with Certified Guinness World Record Holder stamped on the side. The world record adjudicator had to come sign the certificate, the note said, before it was official.
“We’ll have to frame this,” Dad said, unrolling the scroll. “This is really something.”
“I wish it said Lizzie,” Lizzie said. “No one calls me Elizabeth.”
The only thing I had framed on the wall in my room was the grieving chart. I was only three Xs away from the end, where Ms. Bernstein had written FIND CLOSURE in all caps.
After Nacho the bear had been put to sleep, Dr. Rotherwood decided that Yoyo, his mate, needed closure. The zookeepers brought Nacho’s body into Yoyo’s cage with a forklift, placed him on a flat rock by the swimming hole. They left his huge limp body there for five hours, let zoo visitors come by with flowers to pay their respects. But Yoyo wouldn’t come out of the sleeping cave. Dr. Rotherwood turned up the thermostat in there to make the cave uncomfortable, hoping to drive her to the water, but she stayed put, even after her nose had gone dry from dehydration.
Yoyo still wouldn’t go near that one rock, so the zoo was thinking of dividing her enclosure into two, in order to make room for a pair of red-crowned cranes.
I wasn’t sure I wanted closure, because Yoyo hadn’t been the same since. She wouldn’t wave her paw in the air anymore when you called out her name. She wouldn’t even lift her big black head in response.
PART IV
Months 18 to 20
39.
November, December
It was December, the eighteenth month on the grieving chart, and I came home from school on Friday to find that Lizzie was in the bathroom dyeing her hair. There was L’Oréal Superior Preference Intense Red Copper all over the sink and on the towels. Dad’s new girlfriend was coming for dinner that night.
“Mom would hate it that you’re dyeing your hair,” I said. Mom had claimed she’d never dye her hair, not even to color the gray. She hadn’t lived long enough to go gray, other than a strand here and there.
“Mom would hate a lot of things around here.”
“What are you making for dinner tonight?” I asked, changing the subject. “For Dad’s friend?”
“Nothing,” Lizzie said, squirting more goo from the nozzle into her scalp. “That’s Dad’s problem.”
I went downstairs and started on dinner, since Dad wouldn’t be home in time; he was driving to the Birmingham airport and back. I boiled water for mac and cheese. I made miniature cucumber sandwiches, because those were supposed to be sophisticated, but we didn’t have cucumbers in the house so I used a jar of dill pickles we had left in the fridge.
Ernest had been trapped in his cage all day, because Dad said he didn’t know how the bird would react to the girlfriend. Parrots are very jealous animals, possessive and temperamental. I gave Ernest a dried ear of corn to keep him busy.
I heard the truck pull up, and I watched from the kitchen window. Dad helped her out of the truck, and they held hands as they walked to the front door. She was wearing a tight pink dress, and she
didn’t look that much older than Lizzie. As soon as she walked into the house, Boomer stuck his nose right in her crotch, like he was trying to lift her off the ground with his head. “No no no,” she said, and swatted at him. Boomer slinked off, ashamed.
“This is Samantha,” he said, gesturing to Lizzie and me.
We both already knew that. Lizzie and I had looked at her dating profile when Dad was at work, so we knew she was twenty-nine, many years younger than Dad. She was interested in men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, she liked white wine and beach vacations, she had a nut allergy, and she wanted kids someday, with the right person.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, making eye contact with me. “Elvis, I presume.” I felt butterflies in my stomach. We’d learned in school about kissing the ring of the pope or the king as a sign of respect, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her turquoise ring to my lips. She looked surprised but she let me do it. Dad laughed. He was in a good mood.
“I like the new look,” Dad said to Lizzie. “You look like Lucille Ball.”
“Mom would hate it,” I said. “She would say you look like a cheap hooker.”
“Elvis!” Dad scolded, his eyes wide.
Lizzie laughed, not because I had called her a hooker but because I had upset Dad in front of his guest.
Samantha pulled a six-pack of beer out of a paper bag and placed the bottles on the kitchen table.
“Oh, thank you,” Lizzie said. “Dad must have told you how much I love beer.”
“Lizzie,” Dad warned.
“It’s fine,” Samantha said. “I’m sure this whole thing is weird for them.”
“I’m very glad to meet you,” I said. “I’m happy Dad has a girlfriend.”
Samantha blushed. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
“I’m eleven,” I said.
“She’s asexual, like a crab,” Lizzie said.
“Crabs aren’t asexual. You’re thinking of the blue crab. The female only mates once in her life, but that doesn’t make her asexual.”
“I hope you enjoy that one time.”
“Lizzie,” Dad said. “Pick on someone your own size.”
“Like Samantha?”
“No,” Dad said, “not Samantha.”
When Dad saw what I had made for dinner, he ordered pizza. Samantha was the kind that didn’t eat her crusts. At dinner, she let me quiz her like it was a game show. She owned an art gallery in Dallas, she didn’t have a dog, she had ridden a horse but only a few times. She had never been married, she loved canned tuna fish but she always tried to buy the dolphin-safe brand, she had a little brother named Steve who lived all the way in Alaska so she almost never saw him. She wanted to write a book someday about her favorite painter, someone I’d never heard of. “He’s not that famous,” she said. “But he will be when I’m done.”
“Lizzie dated an artist,” I said. “He dumped her.”
“Elvis,” Lizzie growled.
“You don’t want to date an artist, anyway, so it’s for the best. They are much too self-involved,” Samantha said. “Take it from me, I’ve dated several.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes, even though I thought it was good advice. Lizzie’s hands were stained red from the hair dye, like Lady Macbeth’s.
“What are your feelings on Shakespeare?” I asked.
Dad interrupted me, asked if anyone wanted apple pie for dessert. It was a store-bought one in a silver foil pan, but it wasn’t bad after Dad warmed it in the oven.
After dessert, Dad suggested we take Samantha to see the rabbit cakes, and Lizzie brightened up. She was glad for a new audience, even if the new audience was Samantha. We drove down to the meat locker all together in Dad’s truck, and stood back as Lizzie put the key in the padlock.
Before she opened the silver door, Lizzie explained that the collection was over a thousand, with number 1,003 cooling on the counter at home. Lizzie always wanted to go above and beyond. Most of the thousand rabbits were in the walk-in freezer at the butcher’s, although fifty of them remained in the chest freezer at home. Both freezers were at capacity, the rabbits lined up shoulder to shoulder like soldiers in the army.
Lizzie took out her two best rabbits to show Samantha: one black and white like Boomer, a border collie rabbit, and the other a light brown with a real cotton ball for a tail. Lizzie let Samantha hold the black-and-white cake, making her promise to keep her hands flat on the bottom for proper support.
“Wow,” Samantha said. “It’s heavy.” Lizzie beamed. “I like the markings on it, too,” she continued. “Looks realistic.”
I told Samantha about the time Lizzie shut me into the walk-in freezer, how dark it was. I didn’t tell her that the rabbit cakes came alive when I was in there; I didn’t want Samantha to think I was crazy.
“She shut you in the freezer?” Samantha asked, not smiling. “You could have frozen to death.” She placed the black-and-white rabbit back on the shelf. The rabbit’s nose twitched, and then the one next to it flicked its ear. Samantha didn’t seem to see anything; she walked right out of the freezer.
Maybe the rabbits were mad about Samantha, because they thought we were replacing Mom. “She’s just a girlfriend,” I whispered to the rabbits.
“Elvis, we’re leaving,” Lizzie said, poking her head back in. “Let’s go.”
That night, Samantha stayed in a hotel, I think because Dad didn’t want her to hear Lizzie’s night screams. Boomer and I were the only ones to hear Lizzie that night, because Dad snuck out to go join Samantha at the Motel 6. They’d made a big show of saying good-bye when we dropped Samantha off at the motel, but of course Lizzie and I both heard Dad leave twenty minutes after we got home, saw the truck headlights bright in the driveway.
40.
“Your dad tells me you work at the zoo?” Samantha asked at breakfast. Dad had brought a box of donuts home, pretending he’d woken up early to pick Samantha up at the motel.
She didn’t say I volunteered at the zoo, or ask if I did community service at the zoo. I loved the way she said work, such a simple word. She took me seriously, the same way Dr. Rotherwood did.
“I could give you a tour of the zoo, if you want,” I offered, blushing.
“Great idea,” Dad said. “We’ll all go.”
I used my ZooTeen ID badge to let us in the back entrance to the zoo, even though Dad would have paid for tickets.
“You can get in this way at any time?” Lizzie said.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling important. “They trust me.” Dr. Rotherwood had requested that my badge had access to the back entrance so I could come in early on weekends and file paperwork.
We went to the exotic animal clinic first; a litter of Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits had been born two weeks before, and their eyes were open now, their soft deer-brown fur had come in. Dr. Rotherwood said everyone in our party was allowed to handle them, as long as we were wearing gloves.
“A friend of Elvis,” Dr. Rotherwood said, “is a great friend of mine.”
“Endangered rabbits,” Samantha said. “I had no idea.” She offered her hands in a cup to accept one of the teacup-sized bunnies. Lizzie and Dad held one too, but I didn’t take one. I wanted them to know that this was no big deal for me, I handled endangered animals almost every day.
“It looks like the babies are tired now,” Dr. Rotherwood said. “Time for a nap.”
We walked from the animal hospital to Asia Quest and then to the African Safari. We went through the greenhouse at Bird Paradise and we looked at the tiny hummingbird’s nest, which had a new batch of blank eggs in it. We went underground to Rodent Tunnel. I didn’t tell them about what happened in Rodent Tunnel on Wednesdays, because I didn’t want to cry again, the way I had when I’d told Lizzie.
At the red pandas, Lizzie said, “They look like raccoons.”
“No, they don’t. They look like red pandas.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Lizzie said, but she was being the stupid one.
&nbs
p; We walked across the Japanese bridge over the waterfowl enclosure. Samantha didn’t complain about the smell. She used four quarters in the dispenser where you could buy food pellets, and she gave me a handful. Lizzie wouldn’t take any duck food, but she did lean over the bridge to watch the birds paddle with their beaks low to the water.
At the end of the day, Samantha wanted to take us to the gift shop, the only place in the zoo I never went. She bought me a snowy owl puppet, but Lizzie wouldn’t let her buy anything for her.
“Not even a T-shirt?” Samantha begged.
“Nope,” Lizzie said. “Not even.”
On Sunday night, after we’d all gone to the bowling alley, Dad announced that Samantha had had such a good time over the weekend that she was taking the week off from work at the art gallery, and she’d be staying with us, in our house. She moved from the Motel 6 into Dad’s room, dragging her black roller suitcase. Maybe Samantha would move in for good. We didn’t have an art gallery in Freedom, but we could probably use one.
“It’s just so disrespectful,” I heard Lizzie say on the phone, probably to Vanessa. I was sure Vanessa would like Samantha when she came back home.
I thought Samantha was a good choice for a stepmother, because she was so different from Mom. Dad would always love Mom best, he’d have to, but Samantha was warm and nice and responsible. She didn’t want me getting shut in the meat freezer, she didn’t want me freezing to death.
And after her first night in Dad’s room, Samantha said she wasn’t bothered by Lizzie’s sleepscreaming, insisted that she barely even heard her roaming through the hallway. She swore she’d slept just fine. “But I feel terrible that she’s having such bad nightmares.”
The way Samantha said it, it seemed like such a small thing: Lizzie was having nightmares. So what? Lots of people did. Maybe we’d always overreacted to this whole thing.
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