In Zanesville

by Jo Ann Beard

  “She’s a cheerleader out there,” I add.

  “She is? Where?”

  I don’t know why I even brought this up. “Heyworth,” I tell her.

  “We killed them last year,” Deb says.

  “Is Patti mommy dead?” Gretchen asks tremulously.

  “Umm,” one of the girls from across the room says loudly. We all look over. “Her mother is not dead. She’s going through a hard time. In case you’re interested.”

  “We’re not,” Cindy says lightly, and then gets to her feet, trips over to the hi-fi, and turns up the background music.

  Across the room, the other girls stare at one another, flushed.

  Kathy Liddelmeyer turns to me. “The thing about Patti is, if you want to be a hood, drop cheerleading; if you want to cheer, drop being a hood.”

  “You know what we mean?” Cathy Olessen asks.

  I nod.

  “We mean we don’t like her at all,” Cindy tells me bluntly.

  I nod again, half to Cindy and half to the record, which is cool and tinkling, like listening to a martini. Soon people will shut up and go to sleep.

  “I like her,” Felicia says suddenly.

  Everyone turns.

  From my angle, she’s foreshortened on the beanbag in a way that makes her socks seem more prominent than her face—pale blue argyle, to go with her sweater. I know the look she has—when her nose turns red like that, she’s either getting ready to cry or smack somebody’s head off. Her hair looks good in this light, though, hardly frizzed.

  “Excuse me?” Deb Patterson asks.

  “I like her,” Felicia repeats.

  The record player lifts its arm and swings it back to the cradle, like somebody putting a hand on their hip. Cindy Falk, our head cheerleader, poses a question.

  “Why is your name Fellatio?” she asks.

  Uh-oh.

  “Why is your name Cindy Fuck?” Felicia replies.

  In the silence that follows, a scuffling is heard on the patio. Suddenly the door slides open and Patti appears in a swirl of curtain.

  “Get me away from Galen Pierce!” she cries. Her coat is unzipped, her shirt is untucked, and when she pulls off the hat she wasn’t wearing when she left, there are leaves in her hair. “We just almost got caught by the pigs.”

  Apparently, some guys from Waynesville climbed the hill and tried to take over the pavilion, throwing a few of our guys down the hill, until finally cops—or somebody—came through the woods with flashlights, causing everyone to scatter.

  Cindy and Deb stare at each other without expression.

  Kathy Liddelmeyer yawns hugely.

  Gretchen puts her head back on the sofa, and her eyes close like a doll’s.

  I glance sideways at Felicia, who is unrolling her sleeping bag, not looking at anyone. Behind her is the fish tank, but there’s no sign of the molly. It must have swum inside the shipwreck and gone to bed.

  “What happened while I was gone?” Patti asks the room.

  Nobody says anything.

  “This is what happened!” she crows, lifting her chin to show us her neck, ringed with hickeys.

  “Good-bye, dentist’s daughter!” the grandmother cries gaily, bending to wave at my mom.

  “What did she say?” my mother asks, pulling away.

  “I don’t know. You should see their house.”

  “But what did she just say about a dentist?” She gropes around in her bag, looking for the cigarettes that are on the seat next to her. I take one out and hold it for a second before handing it over.

  “The front hall has a huge chandelier that you can turn down the light on so that in the middle of the night it just glows, like a big glowing ball, up by the ceiling,” I say.

  “You were up there in the middle of the night?” Felicia says, leaning forward into the front seat, which she would normally never do with my mother right there, but she’s trying to get us speaking to each other again.

  “I heard her say ‘dentist’s daughter’ or something like that—didn’t she?” my mother asks.

  I turn around and look meaningfully at Felicia. “Remember how everyone went to sleep so early? I got hungry and I went up there to get malted milk balls.”

  “Oh, right,” she says. “We all fell asleep pretty early.”

  “Then you all woke up again,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says, sitting back. “Then there we were, awake.”

  “Tell me why that woman said that,” my mother says, lighting her cigarette and throwing the match out the window.

  “Mom, I’m telling you about the house, which you asked me to notice. The kitchen had a wagon-wheel chandelier—did you see that, Flea? It was like a wagon wheel suspended from the ceiling, with all these little candles that had lightbulbs in them shaped like flames.”

  “No, I never noticed,” Felicia says.

  “I don’t know if I’d care for that,” my mother answers, “but I’d take the other one. It’s a dimmer switch that lets you turn them up or down. We can’t have a crystal chandelier, but we could have a dimmer switch in the dining room if your father had any mechanical ability at all.”

  There’s a silence as we glide up to the stoplight, everyone thinking about all the things my dad can’t do.

  “I don’t know who she called the dentist’s daughter,” my mother says. “Do you?”

  “Yes, Mother, and it’s sad—why are you making me say this? She was telling me about how candy is bad for you when I was getting the malted milk balls, about cavities and all that, and at some point I go, ‘Oh, my dad is seeing a dentist,’ just to say something, and she heard it wrong and kept going, ‘Your father is a dentist! A dentist!’ and I was too embarrassed, so I just went back downstairs.”

  “Oh,” my mom says. “Well, she just heard you wrong; you could have explained what you were saying.”

  “She was drinking,” I say. Nothing more is said as we tick along, heading for Felicia’s street.

  After Felicia gets out, dragging both her sleeping bag and Stephanie’s, my mother lights another cigarette for the three blocks we have to go.

  “So she was up having one in the middle of the night?” she asks casually.

  “I don’t really know, Mother,” I say. Everything going by out the window is depressing: houses, people in church clothes getting out of their car, an abandoned yard sale with a sign saying FREE! propped against one of the tables. “I was trying to tell you what their house looked like but you didn’t even care.”

  “Can you see what they’ve got up there?” my mother asks, slowing.

  “We’re not stopping! Whatever it is has been rejected by the whole rest of the town!”

  “This is what I’m going to get all day now, because you went to a slumber party last night.”

  “Why can’t I do anything fun without being yelled at?” I feel like crying all of a sudden.

  “Was it fun?” she asks, pulling into the driveway. “Because I know you were worried about it.”

  “I wasn’t worried about it!” I say, slamming my door.

  I read and sleep the rest of the day, first in bed and then crammed behind the green chair with Tammy. I keep The Tempest with me because it’s homework, but I can’t take it, too ornate, so instead I sneak a new paperback book off Meg’s stack: The Red Badge of Courage, about the Civil War, which I feel a particular affinity for, ever since having to memorize and deliver the Gettysburg Address back in grade school. I still remember what I wore, a velveteen dress made by my mother and ankle boots with white kneesocks, and where I stood, in front of the tall, dusty curtain on the stage in the gymnasium, looking out over a sea of parents. I could say the entire thing right now—that’s how well I learned it, sitting doubled over every night on the living room ottoman, faint with gut-cramping dread, while my dad listened to me grunting out the lines.

  “You’re supposed to call Flea back, Mom says.”

  Raymond, peering over the top of the chair.

  “I
’m doing homework, tell her,” I say.

  He leaves and comes back. “Mom said then call and tell her that—she doesn’t want to answer the phone anymore.”

  “How many times did she call?”

  He leaves and comes back. “Three, and Mom said she said she’d have you call, so she wants you to call. Another girl called too, but she didn’t say who it was.”

  “What did she sound like?”

  He leaves and comes back. “She doesn’t know.”

  “Did she have a low voice, sort of, or was it high?” Probably Dunk, but possibly Cindy Falk, who had me write my phone number on the back of her hand this morning.

  He leaves and comes back. “She said to tell you not to send me back and forth anymore.”

  “Do you care?” I ask him.

  “Not really,” he admits. “She’s cooking a pie and has crust.”

  When she makes pies, she always puts an extra crust in the oven, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. It’s one of my favorite foods.

  “Would you bring me some?”

  He leaves and comes back, only it isn’t him, it’s her. “How would you like me to haul you out of there by your scalp?” she asks, peering over the back of the chair.

  “I’m doing homework!” I say, holding up The Tempest. “This is not easy, Mother—it’s Shakespeare.”

  “I don’t care if it’s Liberace,” she answers. “Your family is not your servant.”

  “I never said it was! All I wanted was one bite of crust!”

  “Well, you’re going to have to get up off your ass and walk to the kitchen for it,” she replies. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you go through the dining room and look at what your brother’s been doing. Take a minute for him, instead of the other way around.”

  With that, she leaves, and it’s just me and Tammy again, reading The Red Badge, which is slow going but good. The boy is joining the army against his mother’s wishes. She pleads with him but he won’t listen, so she gives up and packs him eight pairs of socks and says to send them back whenever they get holes in them so she ‘kin dern ’em.’ This makes me feel frantic for a few minutes, the idea of the mother preparing for her own sorrow, filling a cup with blackberry jam and sending it along to the Civil War army.

  Me abandoned last night, left to stumble around alone in the woods, like Petie the retarded neighbor. What’s a sidekick supposed to do without a side? When the side stares at her with blank unreachable eyes and then fades backward into the dark like a message in a Magic 8 Ball: Try again later.

  I dislodge the dog and crawl out before panic can overtake me. On my way to get crust, I go through the dining room, where Raymond has draped blankets over the big table and is under there with a desk lamp, several guns, a G.I. Joe, and the harpoon.

  “See, this is a trench in a battle,” he explains to me, “and we’re dug in, watching for the enemy. Don’t tell Mom I have this harpoon.”

  “Who’s we?” I ask.

  “Uh, nobody,” he says, his eyes flickering toward G.I. Joe, who is clinging to one of the table’s pedestals with a knife in his hand and bare feet. “I’m all by myself.”

  “I can play for three minutes,” I say.

  He hands me a pistol and a kaleidoscope, which he then takes back to demonstrate. “Pretend you’re looking through this to see who’s coming. Actually you’ll see Clyde’s scope colors, but don’t say that; say you’re seeing the enemy.”

  “It’s not Clyde,” I tell him. “It’s like colors colliding together, as in kaleidoscope.” I point it at the desk light and turn it a few times. Pattern after pattern, bright flowers of color sliding around in there. “The enemy seems to be wearing an Easter hat, sir.”

  He stares at me, thinking. “You can just be looking,” he suggests. “And then I’ll ask you to report.”

  Suddenly a head appears under the blanket.

  “I know you have my book, so where is it?” Meg demands.

  “What book?” I ask.

  “This book,” she says, and reaches out, lightning fast, grabs my wrist, and starts twisting.

  “Ow-ow-ow,” I whimper.

  “Ow-ow-ow,” she mimics.

  “Behind the chair,” I gasp.

  She tosses my wrist back to me, and the blanket flaps shut again.

  “Are you going to keep playing?” Raymond asks.

  I rub my arm. This is the worst day of my life, unless you count yesterday.

  “We can say you’re wounded,” Ray suggests.

  A wound is what the boy at Chancellorsville wanted, a red badge of courage, so he wouldn’t have to go on down the road to Gettysburg. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth to this continent bottles of liquor, which they keep in the garage so they can drink while they putter. Mine has the hood of the car up and can be seen from the kitchen window, looking at the engine with a rag in his hand.

  “That’s what I’ll have next—a broken car,” my mother says, peering out.

  “Can I have crust or not?” I ask, sitting down at the table.

  “Are your legs broken?”

  “God, why is everyone attacking me?”

  “Who attacked you?” she asked. “Your sister better not have. I told her something I meant to have stick.”

  “Well, it didn’t,” I say, rubbing my arm.

  The phone rings and my mother takes it off the hook and hands it directly to me.

  “Why aren’t you calling me back?” Felicia asks.

  “Homework,” I say.

  “For Van Leuven? I already read that thing.”

  “Lucky you, lucky her,” I say lightly, cheerleader style.

  Silence.

  “Could you believe what happened last night?” she asks finally.

  “Sort of.”

  “Jed Jergestaad? You’ve got to be kidding me! I got out my yearbook and am just looking at him. I can’t believe it.”

  Silence.

  “Why are you acting like this?” she asks.

  “I’m not.”

  Silence.

  “Because I don’t know what you could be mad about. There wouldn’t be any reason.”

  Silence.

  “Nothing I can think of, anyway,” she goes on. “Not like somebody called you a blow job and I just sat there while it happened.”

  My mother is smoking and staring at me.

  “I still have a lot to read,” I say.

  Felicia slams the phone down.

  “Uh-huh,” I say, looking at my mother, who looks back at me. “Yep… okay… see you tomorrow.”

  She breaks off a disk of crust, warm from the oven, and hands it to me on a plate. “What’s wrong with you and Flea?” she asks.

  I take one bite and the whole thing falls apart. “Nothing,” I answer. “What’s wrong with this crust?”

  “I can take it back if you don’t like it,” she says, peering past me, out the window again. The car hood is closed and my dad has moved out of sight, farther back into the black garage. Try again later. The crust is so delicious it’s putting me in a good mood.

  “I don’t know why you wouldn’t talk to your friend who called you four times.”

  “Mother,” I say patiently. “I. Have. Homework.”

  “You can drop that,” she advises. “Nobody around here was born yesterday.”

  “Anyway, I’d think you’d be happy, since you never could stand her.”

  “What? I never said that!” She returns to the sink, splashes some water around, and then starts attacking the stove with a dishrag. “I said she doesn’t talk; that was all.”

  She talks plenty. It’s that she doesn’t stick by you in emergencies.

  “I may have said that you girls seem too thick at times, to the exclusion of others,” she goes on primly.

  “Well, now other people want to be friends with me, but not with her,” I explain. Why am I talking about this? It can only backfire.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. They j
ust don’t.”

  “Well, she must have done something.”

  “Something about a boy, or something,” I say. I must be more tired than I thought, otherwise I’d know better than this. “That she abandons people when a boy comes along.”

  She stops scrubbing, picks up her cigarette, and points it at me. “I’ll hit the roof if I hear there were boys at that party.”

  “Mother! Are boys going to a slumber party? At a grandmother’s house?”

  She takes a drag. “You tell me.”

  “Okay: no! This is about Flea abandoning people and people not liking it. In a moment of need she’ll stare at you like she doesn’t know you and just walk away, leaving you standing there like somebody’s retarded neighbor.”

  “When did she do that? And did you tell her you were upset?”

  “Not me, Mom. Aren’t you listening? I’m talking about why the other people don’t like her!”

  “But you can’t let other people influence how you treat someone who has been your friend for years.” She sneaks a glance at the garage and then sits down at the table with her ashtray. “That isn’t right.”

  “This isn’t divinity school, Mother, it’s junior high!”

  She blinks at that. “How do you even know what divinity school is?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. Books.”

  “Well, then you know that divinity school is a place where people go to learn how to treat others,” she says, inhaling. “More or less.”

  “That isn’t what it is.”

  “Of course not,” she says, exhaling. “Your mother doesn’t know anything, according to you and your sister.”

  My father is coming up the back walk, carrying something.

  “And I said ‘more or less,’ ” she adds as he opens the door, bumping her chair.

  The phone rings just as my father is putting what he found on the table—a rusted tobacco tin, full of old-fashioned handmade nails.

  “I found these way back in that white cabinet,” he tells me, shaking them out. “And I thought of your metal-shop class—maybe your teacher would want to see them.” They are big and rough; each one looks like a rusted lowercase l. I can smell something on him, vodka out of a sack.

  “Hello,” my mother answers.

  “Aren’t they something?” he asks me.