by Joan Opyr
“Look at her. Do you think she’ll live to be twenty?”
“You’d be surprised,” my mother said. “I brought a kitten home from this place in 1946. She lived until the year your father and I got married. I’m about ready to go home. Any sign of Hunter?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s right over there, laughing like a hyena.”
“Great.” She looked at her watch. “He’s got till six o’clock. Then, I’m taking us home, and he can stay here with his mother.”
“I don’t want him,” Miss Agnes said. She lowered herself onto the padded wing chair Lucy had transported from the house to act as a birthday throne. “I told Myrtle when she married him that she’d have to keep him.”
Nana pulled up another lawn chair. “I believe your exact words were ‘You’ve made your bed and now you’ll have to lie in it.’ I should’ve taken that as a warning.”
As if on cue, Hunter wandered over.
“Uncle Robert was a sorry son of a bitch,” he said.
“Stop it, Hunter,” my grandmother said.
Miss Agnes stared off into the distance, her hands folded primly on her lap. I thought it was about time for someone to take her home. The mosquito coils had burned down to nothing, and the flies had long since taken over the buffet table.
“He was tighter than a bull’s ass in fly time,” Hunter went on. “A worthless cheating bastard in a shiny two-dollar suit.”
Nana put her head in her hands. I couldn’t tell if she was miserable or just tired. My mother closed her book and retreated to the car.
Hunter flung his head back and wailed, “Why did you do it, mother?”
Jezebel, who’d been asleep in my lap, opened one crossed eye.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Agnes said.
“I saw you through the kitchen window,” Hunter wailed. “Daddy was gone, and I was riding my tricycle on the side porch. I saw you letting Uncle Robert play with your titties.” He knelt beside her chair and ran his hands through his hair several times.
Miss Agnes shook her head. “You’re only saying this to hurt me, Hunter.”
“Uncle Robert, your baby sister’s husband,” he went on mournfully. “You ruined my life. My entire goddamned life. I hope Daddy never knew.”
I looked at my great-grandmother. The titties Uncle Robert had apparently been so fond of were tucked somewhere beneath the waistband of her flowered dress. Had she been good-looking once upon a time? She’d been a redhead, and like as not, the blue eyes weren’t always watery. She wanted Hunter to shut up and stop wrecking her birthday. So did I.
“You should have kept the kittens and drowned him in a bucket,” I said.
She didn’t disagree with me.
Chapter Twenty
Mr. Chisholm, the Vocational Ed teacher, also served as the lunchroom monitor. He didn’t like GT students. He’d written several letters to the Raleigh paper saying that the Magnet program was a waste of taxpayer money. He stopped Abby and me at the doorway to the cafeteria.
“Five per table,” he said, glowering at us. “No more.” The hand he held up to demonstrate this number had only three fingers and half a thumb.
“Those who can’t do, teach,” I whispered to Abby. She laughed so hard she swallowed her gum.
We waited in line for our helpings of Salisbury steak and industrial strength mashed potatoes. A tired woman in a white coat and hairnet slapped the potatoes onto a tray. “Gravy?”
Abby hesitated.
“Go on,” I urged. “You’re holding up the line.”
“Gravy?” the woman asked again.
“Let’s find Dave,” Abby suggested. “His dad owns the Hardee’s on New Bern Avenue. Maybe he’ll extend us some credit.”
I shook my head emphatically. “No way. She’ll have gravy,” I said to the woman with the hairnet, “and so will I.”
She pushed two trays over the steam shield. Abby sighed heavily. We both passed on the chocolate pudding. The skin on top was so thick it looked like the outer casing of a Nerf ball. Abby snapped the lid on a cup of Pepsi and shoved a straw through the hole.
“What’s the matter with you,” she said. “Do you want to eat this stuff?”
“No. I also don’t want to go to lunch with Dave.”
“You’re going to dinner with him. You’ve got his hopes up.”
We threaded our way through the crowded tables, finally settling in a secluded spot next to the fire exit, as far as out of Mr. Chisholm’s line of sight as possible.
“We’re not on the barter system. One dinner doesn’t equal a relationship.”
“What does equal a relationship?”
I frowned, thinking.
“Don’t pull a muscle,” she said. “I was just wondering.”
I spotted Kim, Alan, Joe, and Nick and waved to them.
“Five per table,” I said, holding up my right hand with the index and middle fingers folded down. Everyone laughed except Abby, who was busy using her fork to make a gravy moat for her castle of mashed potatoes.
Ten minutes later, Dave came waltzing in with a bag from Hardee’s. Abby shot me an evil glare. Fortunately, there was no room on either side of us, so he pulled up a chair between Nick and Joe.
“I hope you’re happy,” Abby whispered after a minute or two. She waved a piece of Salisbury steak at me, shaking congealed drops of gravy onto the table. “I could’ve had a hamburger.”
“Why don’t you go out with him, then?” I whispered. I took the fork from her hand and put it down on her tray. “Stop threatening me with that toxic waste.”
I looked out the window. The table next to the fire exit overlooked the students’ smoking lounge, which was where the kids in black Judas Priest T-shirts hung out. A girl in a motorcycle jacket caught my eye. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, she had all the hallmarks of the classic butch bar dyke, aggressive posture, shag haircut, and a bored expression. All she needed was a pool cue. We stared at one another for a moment. Then she leaned forward and thrust her head at me in a fuck-you gesture. I looked away.
“Abby,” I said. “Don’t look up, but that girl . . .”
I was interrupted by the ubiquitous Mr. Chisholm.
“You kids are blocking the fire exit,” he said. “There should be no more than five students sitting at this table. Five.”
Kim and Alan jumped apart as if they’d been shocked with a cattle prod. Nick and Joe stopped playing quarters with their soda cups. Abby and I tried to look innocent.
Mr. Chisholm glared at us. “I warned you. For kids who are supposed to be so smart, you’re pretty stupid. Five,” he said again, holding up his right hand.
“How many was that?” I asked Abby.
“Three and a half,” she replied.
We spent the next hour in the Principal’s office, trying to explain why we thought it was appropriate to mock the victims of Vocational Ed.
It was half past seven when Susan called, and I had to spend fifteen minutes arguing with my mother about whether or not I could go out on a Monday. I won, but only after promising to be back by eleven. It was eight before we actually pulled out of the driveway. We arrived at the drive-in forty-five minutes into Terms of Endearment.
I watched enough of the movie to know that Debra Winger died and Jack Nicholson drove Shirley Maclaine up a beach while steering the car with his feet. It was a cloudy night with no moon. Susan turned the volume on the speaker down. Pictures flashed on the screen. Two hours after my curfew, I went home to face the wrath of Barbara Koslowski. It was worth it.
Susan was squinting at me in the dim light. She’d given me a choice between an Indian restaurant and an Irish Pub on Franklin Street. I’d gone for the Pub. Though she’d only had half a glass of wine, her cheeks were flushed. Of necessity, I was drinking coffee. The only thing worse than being too young to drink, I decided, was having a girlfriend who was just old enough. I felt so obvious ordering a Coke or a glass of water. Coffee was the next best thing to beer or win
e. It was the sophisticated choice. For emphasis, I ordered it black, though I preferred it with cream.
“Do you believe that story about your great-grandmother?”
I nodded, taking a bite of dill pickle. “Yes. People had extra-marital affairs in 1923, just like they do now.”
Susan speared a piece of fried cod on the end of her fork and dipped it in tartar sauce. I’d finished everything but my pickle ten minutes before, but Susan was a more contemplative eater. I was contemplating my parsley when she finally pushed her plate away.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “I’ll show you the sights of Franklin Street.”
The sights were an ice cream parlor, a movie theater, and several shops of one kind or another. I loved it anyway. The trees on the UNC campus were old and mysterious; their roots shoved up huge mounds of dirt and grass. Susan and I found a secluded gnarl on an enormous oak and sat down with our backs against it. The sun had set, but there was still light in the sky. I reached through the evening shadows to take her hand, lacing my fingers with hers.
“My mother is having an affair,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know the signs. She’s furtive. She calls me up and wants to do mother-daughter things. She wants to drive over and take me out to lunch. She’ll disappear soon. My father will wait forty-eight hours, and then he’ll call the police. They’ll find her and bring her home.”
“I didn’t know . . .”
“I’ve never talked about it,” she said. “Not with anyone; not my mother, not Dad. Just you.”
“I’m sorry.” I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder.
“My mother has affairs,” she said. “Always with someone awful, some low-life she picked up in a bar. Young, old, it doesn’t matter. She goes off with them, and then my dad brings her back.”
I waited. Whatever I said, I didn’t want to sound shocked. The problem was that I was shocked.
“Why?” I asked at last. “Why does your father bring her back?”
“He loves her,” she said. “He says she’s mentally ill.”
“Your father’s a good man.”
“My father’s a fool. Sometimes, I think he’s the one who’s mentally ill. How long is he going to let her go on wrecking his life? She’s not going to wreck mine,” she said firmly. “I’m done. When she’s clean and sober, I’ll see her, but no more helping my dad pretend like everything is fine and normal when it’s not.”
“My grandfather had an affair once,” I said. “When I was a baby. He left my grandmother and married some woman who was younger than my mother. My mother said having a grandchild made him feel old.”
Susan lifted her head. “Like it was your fault?”
“Not like that. She was just trying to explain.”
“It sounds more like an excuse.”
We sat in silence. Then we went back to her apartment and climbed silently into bed. Sometime in the night, she turned to me, and without a word, she undressed us both. The next morning, the sun rose red in a nest of mare’s tales spun along the horizon of a pale blue sky.
April 30 bore down upon me with a dreadful inevitability. On the 29th, I told my mother and Nana about dinner at the French restaurant in Chapel Hill.
“Instead of the prom,” I explained.
“Are you going to eat snails?” Nana asked.
“Maybe.”
“Your grandfather ate them in France during World War II, didn’t you, Hunter?”
He nodded. “You won’t catch me eating them again. They’d gag a dog off a gut wagon.”
“You’re going to need a dress,” my mother said, frowning.
“What for?”
“Are you planning to wear jeans and a T-shirt to a French restaurant?”
“No, khakis.”
Nana gasped. “You are not wearing pants! Barbara, put that magazine down. We’re taking this child to Belk’s.”
“She’s got the funeral dress,” my mother said.
“That dress is four years old and she is two inches taller. It will not do.”
“I don’t need a dress. No one expects me to wear a dress.”
“Poppy,” my mother explained, “you’ve never been to this kind of restaurant. I know the place you’re talking about. You have to have reservations.”
Half an hour later, I found myself standing in Crabtree Valley Mall, forced once again to choose between the devil and a deep blue dress.
“I’m not wearing that.”
“Then how about this?” Nana held up a floral print dress with capped sleeves.
My mother laughed. “She can’t wear that. That looks like Aunt Lucy’s bedroom curtains.”
“It’ll have to be the blue, then.” Nana sighed. “I’ll loan you my diamond necklace and teardrop earrings, that’ll dress it up. What do you want to do about shoes?”
“I want to outlaw them.”
“Little Miss Smarty had a party, and nobody came but Little Miss Smarty. The shoes are on the first floor, aren’t they, Barbara?”
I ended up in a pair of dark blue pumps with a one-inch heel. I rejected the two-inch heels with the open toes, and Nana rejected the sandals with the ankle straps.
“I don’t know what Belk’s is coming to,” Nana said. “What kind of salesgirl brings out white before Memorial Day? And you in a size ten, you couldn’t wear white if it was the Fourth of July.”
I finished tying my torn and duct-taped tennis shoes. “Do we have time for a visit to the foot binder? I’m sure if I chopped off a few toes I could squeeze into a seven.”
My mother gave me a thorough appraising look. “A visit to the beauty parlor might not be amiss. Let’s see if one of the salons has a walk-in available.”
A girl with two-inch long red fingernails did the best she could with my three-inch long hair, giving me a spiky Sheena Easton kind of look. Nana and my mother loved it, so much so that they bought me a bottle of salon shampoo and a can of mousse. My reward for not killing myself or anyone else was dinner in the Belk’s cafeteria.
“Just this once,” my mother said, “you can break your curfew. Chapel Hill is a long drive, and a good French dinner can take hours to eat. Let yourself in with your key, and we won’t wait up for you.”
“You might not have a choice if Hunter is home.” A new and horrible thought occurred to me. “My god, he might meet Dave at the front door!”
Nana paused with a spoonful of banana pudding halfway to her mouth.
“That’s true,” my mother said thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll put a light under the curtain in the dining room window. If it’s switched on, don’t let Dave walk you to the door. Just say goodnight when he pulls into the driveway.”
My grandmother giggled. “She can’t do that. She has to give him a goodnight kiss.”
I pushed away the plate of half-eaten roast beef and covered it with my napkin.
“Mama, stop that,” my mother said firmly. “You tormented me in high school. You’re not going to do that to Poppy.”
“I’m only teasing.” Nana stabbed at a slice of banana. “She’s practically grown-up now. I wasn’t much older than she was when I got married.”
“Let that be a warning to you,” my mother said.
Chapter Twenty-One
We emerged from the Rathskellar to find that the day had taken on a mellow cast. A few large, white clouds had appeared, and the bright glare of noon had softened into the warm light of mid-afternoon.
“I’m sorry to rush,” Kim said. “I promised to take Tory to the mall to meet some of her friends. It was a babysitting bribe. I can trust Justin to her care for about three hours without fear of fratricide.”
I hugged her and promised to keep in touch, wishing that meant more than Christmas cards and email jokes. I missed Kim; or rather I missed the Kim I’d known, the one who was on her way to MIT, who had absentee parents and parties in her rec room. I wanted to know the mature Kim, the mother, t
he ex-wife, the woman who’d dropped out of MIT. Years later, after Tory was born and her divorce was final, she’d gone back to school and become an accountant. She had her own business now. By all reckoning she was very successful. I knew the bare details of her life, and yet I could catch only glimpses of the adult Kim through the prism of the teenaged girl who’d been my friend.
She climbed into a convertible Saab and drove off, waving to us in the rearview mirror. In high school, her dream car was a Datsun 280ZX, and she’d dated at least three guys who drove that make of car.
“Do you remember Kim’s car in high school?”
“The Great Pumpkin,” Abby said. “I remember pushing it.” A slight breeze ruffled Abby’s silk shirt, causing the sleeves and chest to billow out. She put her hands in her pockets and tucked her elbows to her sides. “Where to now?”
“Let’s walk across the brickyard and down through Free Expression Tunnel. We can visit the dorms and then stop at the bookstore and buy some of that overpriced alumni crap. Kim looks good, doesn’t she?”
“She does. It’s funny to see her without a man in tow.”
“Men,” I corrected. “There was always more than one. Kim liked to hedge her bets. Do you think she likes being an accountant?”
“Instead of an unemployed mathematical genius? I think so. She seems happy enough with her life. She was depressed as hell when she came back from Boston. I thought she should have been hospitalized.”
“If her parents could have abandoned their goddamn travel schedule for five minutes,” I said. “I don’t think they stuck around long enough to notice that she’d come home permanently.”
“She left MIT and saved them god knows how much in tuition. More money for Germany or Thailand or wherever the hell they wanted to gallivant off to next. She nearly died after that second abortion, a hemorrhage like you wouldn’t believe. If I’d gone home that night like she asked me to . . .”
“I know. Rosalyn insisted you stay.”
Abby shivered. I handed her my jacket.