Dang! She’s going outside while he stays in. What are we going to do?
Connie pulls me back into the room, where I trip over the zebra rug and she mutters something lovingly sympathetic, like “You oaf,” before dragging me up and away toward the closets. We zip into these as we hear both pairs of footsteps heading this way and that. It’s hard to keep track of them in different parts of the house. Once in the dark closet, Connie shuts the doors and we hunker down, only to notice a sliver of light coming from under the door. Connie forgot to flip off the switch. The footsteps grow closer.
She darts out into the room again and, in one seamless maneuver, turns off the light while zooming back to our hideaway.
Just in time, too — both pairs of footsteps head our way, the voices growing louder by the nanosecond. Still, I’m having trouble hearing them over the booming timpani of my heartbeat.
We settle in and wait, trying to keep our breaths shallow and silent. If Connie could read my thoughts, she’d be shocked by the barrage of curses and spells. We never should have come here. What will we say if they discover us? Uh … we took a wrong turn? Off York Road into your closet?
I finger the scrap of paper in my pocket. Maybe it would be better if I’d never seen it.
A giggle. A silence.
“Please tell me I can redo this room,” Mom says. Good idea, Mom.
“Hey, I’ve already got the one piece of furniture I care about.” He chuckles.
Ack. Disgusting. Must clean my ears out.
“The pool table.” He laughs again.
Okay. Not so bad. Maybe they’ll look around, talk about furniture, and leave. Come on, Mom, tell him about that HGTV re-do you saw last month. You thought it was pretty neat. I’m sure Steve would love to hear about it.
They’ve been in the room a total of about twenty-four hours.
Okay, not twenty-four hours. But it sure feels that way to me. Connie’s dragged us into the far corner of the second closet, which is actually wrapped around the back of the master bath. It’s still close enough to hear quite clearly what’s going on in the other room, and I can tell from the way Connie’s eyes are glistening in the sliver of light from the again-illuminated bedroom that she’s thinking what I’m thinking: Holy crap, we might have to listen to a make-out session involving our mother.
Ick. Aargh. Bleeeeeeeeeech!
I simply shut down my mind during the long silences punctuated by little smoochy noises.
Ick. Aargh. Bleeeeeeeeeech!
Long silences grow. Smoochy noises become more frequent.
For the love of God, get us out of here!
I look at Connie, but she’s frozen in horror. We can’t just stay here waiting for this … ordeal … to be over. Our lives will never be the same if we have to continue to listen to this. We’ll be mindless drones incapable of thought or feeling. The universe will open and swallow us up, right? Please?
Enough! I can’t stand it. I grab Connie’s cell phone from her pocket. She does nothing to stop me, just looks at me, terror-stricken, when we both hear Mom coo, “Oh, Steve …”
No more, I tell you. We’re busting out of here! With the phone on silent, I punch in Paluchek’s cell number, which I know by heart because Mom forced me to memorize it in case I ever needed his help. I desperately reach behind me and grab a clump of tissue from a shoe box. In the bedroom beyond our batcave, I hear the rude chirp of Paluchek’s cell. For a heartstopping second, I wonder if he’ll break off his moves on Mom to answer it. After two rings, he picks it up, saying “Paluchek” in a husky, distracted voice. I crinkle the tissue paper in front of the phone, hoping it creates the illusion of static.
“Hello?”
Eureka — it does the trick! He repeats his hellos, gets up (I hear the bed creak), and walks around. “Bad reception,” he says to Mom.
“Who is it?”
“Don’t recognize the number.”
“Maybe you should try them back.” It sounds like Mom is following him.
“The land line’s not hooked up yet.”
“Try the kitchen. Could be better reception there.”
Way to go, Mom! They walk out of the room, complaining to each other about cell companies, phones, and people who don’t turn their ringers off in theaters.
As soon as their voices fade and their footsteps hit the stairs, Connie’s pulling me out of that closet faster than you can say, “Wipe my memory chip clean of this horrible moment, thank you very much.”
She pulls me toward the sliding door and I manage to avoid tripping over the rug this time as she wrenches my arm out of its socket in an attempt to set the world speed record for escapes onto private patios. In a flash, we’re outside, groping our way through the shadows, but I’m getting really annoyed with this arm-pulling routine, so I yank back, insisting, “Lemme go, you’re hurting me.” She does let go, but I’m still pulling back to counter her tug, so I end up losing my balance and knocking into a patio chair, which I manage to grab before it clatters to the ground. I smile at Connie as if to say, “So there, I didn’t give us away,” and take a step forward to follow her into the gloom.
And I would have been all right, too, if it weren’t for that twisted coil of hose I stepped into — right next to the edge of a shimmering swimming pool. Did I mention there was a pool? Of course there’s a pool. He has a dagblasted fountain out front, so obviously he’d have a pool out back.
Kerplunk. Bianca falls in said pool.
Is this my destiny — to stumble into pools the world over?
[Insert mental howl heard by dogs in Ohio.]
In reality, I say nothing, keeping my inner screams under— underwater. It’s a cool night, which means the pool is like ice. When I surface, sputtering, Connie’s crouched at the side of the pool offering, as usual, her loving help.
“What’d you do that for, you moron?!” She reaches under my elbow and pulls my sodden body over the edge. “C’mon, they’re sure to notice us now!”
And she’s right. On the far side of the house, an outdoor spotlight flips on, followed by another and another, as if some stagehand can’t find the stars of the show. We take off into the night as the lights nip at our heels, making it to a darkened corner, where we sprint toward a neighbor’s home a full football field away — at least it feels that way to my water-logged legs. Did you know that jeans, when wet, become fifty times as heavy?
Wet or not, they don’t adequately protect me from the brambles and thorns we manage to run into two houses over, where the landscaping crew has decided on a prickly bush theme for the perimeter of the estate. I’m experiencing déjà vu. This is the Gardenia-pool-and-brambles experience all over again. At least it’s in a pricier neighborhood. I’m moving up in my misadventures.
By the time we make it back to the car, I’m huffing and puffing like a geezer on the cardio treadmill. “You need to get more exercise,” Connie says once we’re in the car.
“Did we get away before they saw us?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure. Some dog is barking so they probably think that’s the troublemaker.”
I sneeze as I pull thorns from my arm, which is now bruised from Connie’s manhandling and scratched from our race through the bushes.
We take off toward home, where I hightail it inside, shower, and sit curled up on a chair with my hands around a mug of hot tea while nibbling on leftover roast beef. Dang! Missed a Sunday dinner!
Connie’s upstairs on the phone with Kurt. I know she’s asking him about the key and other things. I, meanwhile, have my own items to ponder.
I reach into the pocket of my terry cloth robe and pull out the piece of dried legal paper with what I assume are Paluchek’s scrawls on it. It’s been folded for so long, it’s got a razor sharp crease. I found it at the back of a file of tax receipts clipped to a list of deductions — misfiled and forgotten, like an unexploded World War II mine, ready to rip into an unsuspecting stranger. I open it carefully and read what I’d only skimmed previously.
Under the word “Balducci,” written at the top, is a list, sometimes just single words and sometimes phrases — the jottings of a man trying to sort out a problem. The words are:
“Bribe?”
“Need bank records.”
“Gang activity: cash flow”
“Winslow”
“Bromowich’s”
It’s not much, but the picture it paints is clear: Steve Paluchek thought my father was a dirty cop.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE ONE COMFORT I have during this long dark night of the soul is that Steve Paluchek might be a dirty cop, too. Maybe that’s why he suspected Dad. As that old saying goes, “Takes one to know one.”
One thing’s for sure: I’m not giving this paper to Connie until I find out more on my own. I love my Dad’s memory, but it’s just a memory to me. He was real to her. A real hero. I will not tarnish that image unless I’m absolutely, positively sure I’ve got the truth on my side.
The next day at school, my nose is stuffed up again and I’m sneezing like an asthmatic in a pollen factory. I must be allergic to chlorine, or at least unplanned nighttime plunges into it.
In the locker hall before classes, Kerrie is appropriately sympathetic, telling me I should think about seeing a doctor. Maybe I have bird flu or West Nile virus or some other infectious disease I would know about if my SAT results were as high as Kerrie’s. (I checked online last night and they’re still not posted.) At least I can trade on my cold to get out of Kerrie’s mall crawl.
“Tried to reach you yesterday,” she says, doing the twirly-whirl routine with her lock. “My dad decided to drive me up to Franklin and Marshall College just to walk around. Thought you might want to come along.”
Kerrie tries so hard, doesn’t she? She not only wants to let me into Beautiful Girl Land, but invite me into Good College Universe, too. The only problem with these efforts is that they make me feel diminished, not more self-confident. Seeing her scamper around a selective college’s campus in the amber glow of dusk with her successful and loving dad by her side would just have heightened the contrast with my own miserable existence.
“Thanks,” I manage to mumble. “Was busy. Out with Connie.”
“Hey, you two have been hanging out a lot lately. Guess that bodes well for the summer job, huh?” She grins and bops me in the shoulder, which ordinarily is a friendly gesture. But after last night’s excursion through the Valley of the Thorns, my arm’s a tad on the sensitive side, so I wince. “You’ll need some new work outfits,” Kerrie says. “Maybe we can find something when we go shopping.”
Translation: As God is my witness, I’m getting you into an Ipex Bra, Balducci.
Then, almost too casually, she says, “I’ve seen you getting to know Brenda. She’s nice. Very smart.” Is this good or bad? I can’t tell. Kerrie seems to be alerting me that she’s noticed my blossoming new friendship, and giving me her seal of approval at the same time. Probably makes her feel as if she’s in control, I guess. Whatever works for you, Ker. I don’t want to deal with the whole jealous girlfriend thing right now.
So I say, “Yeah, she’s got me beat in the brains department.” I hate to take anything from what Brenda and I have — we really are becoming friends!—but it’ll be easier, I figure, if Kerrie just thinks I need some extra help.
But then Kerrie surprises me. “Don’t sell yourself short, Bianc,” she says. “You’re just as smart as Brenda. Maybe smarter.”
I want to ask when she came to that conclusion, but then the first buzzer of the day reverberates through the halls, and we all scurry like maze mice to our first classes. Mine’s with Mr. Sampson, where I enjoy a little show that Brenda has coordinated. You see, Sampson is not a fan of the president. I’m not sure if this is really due to some deeply held political beliefs or his ability to speak truth to power, or just because cynicism about those in power makes him believe he’s engaged in a Struggle with The Man that will make him look tragically noble in our eyes.
Anyway, we’re supposed to discuss current events in the first fifteen minutes of the class, and Brenda has brought in some obscure story about the president’s dog. Sampson is off, running down that lane like a greyhound bound for glory. Brenda turns and winks at me, then passes me her latest short story, which I now have plenty of time to read because Sampson is unlikely to actually teach when the door has been opened for him to opine.
Brenda’s latest opus, “A Window on Time,” is a beautifully written story about how Officer Depp is called upon to help a little girl entice her kitten from a tree branch back into her bedroom through the window. There isn’t much meat to the story — it’s a simple tale, after all — but Brenda has a way with words that makes the whole thing sing.
“The kitten,” she writes, “creeps along the branch, her marble eyes fixed on the policeman. They communicate by the merest flick of an eyelash, movement of muscle, and soft whisper of breath …” Hmm … just the way Connie and I communicate. Must be in the genes.
Sigh. Officer Depp doesn’t do anything in this story except save the kitty. No news here — just one more piece of information about what a wonderful guy my dad was. Brenda’s mother probably found the reference in a file and told her about it. And Brenda knows I’m now collecting these stories as if putting together the ultimate scrapbook on my father.
Again, though, it makes me sad — sad that I myself never thought to put together this kind of scrapbook of memories before. Why’d I wait until now, when Connie and I are hot on unraveling a mystery that might reveal things better left out of the book? I’d much rather look at pages filled with happy pictures and glowing reports, with bright sunshine and no shadows. Let the dead rest in peace.
After class, I thank Brenda and praise her writing. And then it’s off to—insert music of doom here—AP Physics, the class that makes me feel like a shipwreck survivor tossing in the waves. I’m so lost in that class, I don’t know what questions to ask to get to the right questions to ask. But AP courses look good on transcripts when we apply for college, and I’m trying to rack ’em up. I should be taking this puppy my senior year, but my schedule had a hole in it and I thought I’d get rid of it early. I’d done okay in Bio and Chem, and am a decent student in Algebra and Trig, so I thought I could handle it. Boy, was I ever wrong!
So I spend the next hour re-reading Brenda’s story — it’s not as if I understand the class anyway — and mentally debate whether I should contact Doug again, asking him to “revise and expand” on his last e-mail. If the guy’s gonna say “no” to the Junior/Senior Ball, then he has to say “no” — none of this pussyfooting around. Yeah, that’ll teach him. Push him into breaking up with me. Am I smart or what?
Well, it turns out I’m “or what.” After class, Sister Delia Lamat (yes, indeed, we have nicknamed her Sister Dalai Lama) calls me to her desk/black-topped lab counter, pushes her glasses down her skinny nose, and smiles at me. Uh-oh. Sister Delia Lamat smiles only as a preface to bad news — took me a while to catch on to this. The first month in her class, I used to get all jazzed when I saw her beam at me. But then I figured out it was her way of softening the blow when handing out exam and lab papers with grades on the sad side of “C.”
“Bianca,” she begins in that soft, angelic voice of hers, “I’ve admired your desire to rise to the challenge of taking AP Physics, especially a year early.”
Translation: You made a mistake but I won’t hold it against you.
“But it’s clear you’ve been struggling, especially this last semester.”
Translation: You’re failing.
“And once you take the final AP exam, that grade will go into your records.”
Translation: You will fail the exam.
“So I want to propose something for you to think about: Perhaps you should consider dropping AP Physics and taking it next year, the year you normally would have taken it. I know it’s late in the year and I thought of mentioning this to you earlier, but I didn’t want to seem overly pess
imistic. Now that we’re near the end of the year, it’s clearer that we need to tackle this problem right away.”
Translation: Oh. My. God. She’s kicking me out of AP Physics.
My mind goes blank as the life raft I’ve been clinging to drifts away and I sink to the bottom of the academic ocean. A thought flashes through my brain: I’m probably the only kid at St. John’s ever asked to leave AP Physics. Well, I’ve always wanted to be one of a kind.
I numbly shake my head and say things like, “I’ll take that under consideration, Sister Delia,” and thank her for alerting me to this problem, then leave the classroom before my face heats up to combustible levels and I start to cry.
In the hallway, I run into Kerrie and manage to pour out my tale of woe before we both have to be in our next classes. She gives me a hug and an, “Aw, Bianca, that’s awful.” But before she disappears behind the door of her U.S. History class, she gives me a Sister Delia smile and says, “Look on the bright side — at least you won’t fail the exam.”
It takes a moment for this to sink in. I stand in the hall alone, hugging my books to my chest. Kerrie thinks I’m too stupid to pass the exam, too. So much for being “maybe smarter” than Brenda.
“Shouldn’t you be in class, Bianca?” asks Mrs. Witherspoon, the new art teacher. She’s come down the hall, carrying a pail of Plaster of Paris.
“Study hall,” I murmur, heading for the cafeteria.
My life is shifting orbits. Later this day, Brenda passes me another story in creative writing class. This one is about Officer Depp being kept out of the gang investigation and filing a complaint about not being let in on crucial information.
This offers me some consolation — for about thirty seconds. That’s how long it takes me to realize that if he was suspected of doing something underhanded, the powers-that-were would have deliberately kept him away from sensitive material on an ongoing case.
I write her a note: “Was Officer Depp involved in the gang?” But I scrunch it up and don’t pass it to her. Do I really need another piece of bad news today? I mean, I’m sure if Brenda’s got the inside goods on Officer Depp’s trip to the Dark Side, she’ll reveal them eventually in some tour de force piece of fiction. Why run to embrace bad news when you can patiently wait for it to clobber you over the head later?
Recovering Dad Page 11