The Big Shuffle

by Laura Pedersen

  “What?” says Bernard.

  “Darius and I are moving out!” Olivia heads for the stairs.

  Bernard looks stunned. He turns toward me.

  “The plants are going to die if I don't water them right away!” I race toward the back door.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  LOUISE ARRIVES HOME THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY. SHE WAS ABLE to work out a deal where if she attends summer school and goes to gym class four days a week instead of two, she can graduate with her class.

  Dinnertime feels almost like the old days, except, of course, Dad isn't here. And Pastor Costello is dashing around the kitchen in his T-shirt that says, JESUS IS COMING—EVERYONE LOOK BUSY.

  Mom even makes two birthday cakes—one for Teddy, who is turning thirteen today, and the other for Louise, whose birthday we all missed.

  There's a knock on the front door at half past eight and I'm surprised to see Gil standing on the front porch. “Enter at your own risk,” I say.

  He winces at all the commotion coming from inside the house. The kids are supposed to be getting ready for bed but run around chasing each other instead. “Any chance you can go AWOL for a little while?”

  “Meet me in the backyard in ten minutes.” I point toward the open gate on the side of the house that's clogged with bicycles and a plastic slide.

  Mom is in the living room picking up crayons, and I tell her that I'll be out in the backyard talking to Gil.

  “Is everything okay with the children?” she immediately asks.

  “If you mean children as in Gigi and Rose, they're fine,” I say. “If you're talking about Olivia's child, Bernard, I'm afraid that's a different matter.”

  Gil has brought his boom box along and sets it on top of the weathered picnic table. “What was Bernard thinking?” he asks, sounding somewhere between incredibly angry and extremely exhausted.

  “I guess he wants to get them back together.”

  “Well, this time he has gone too far. Olivia and Darius packed up and moved to a bed-and-breakfast over in Timpany.” Gil takes two beers from the cooler bag he brought along and hands me one. “I'm the vice squad tonight.”

  The trees and bushes and anthills begin to disappear one by one, whisked away under the magical cloak of evening, and so I don't worry about Mom or Pastor Costello seeing us through a window. The night is warm and a gentle balmy breeze tussles the leaves in the trees. There's the occasional slamming of a screen door as cats and dogs are let in and out, and the plink plink of a beginner practicing piano a few houses away. In the next breath it will be summer.

  Gil takes out a bag of Mallomars, two quarts of chocolate fudge ice cream, and two large spoons. “Believe it or not, I didn't actually come here to complain about Bernard. He told me about the breakup with Craig, and I've been so busy at work that I never had a chance to tell you that, you know, I'm sorry….”

  My hand automatically reaches for the crystals that hang from around my neck. Though whether it's to hide them or make sure they're still there, I'm not exactly sure.

  “Anyway, I've made you a CD of the best breakup songs,” says Gil.

  “Please tell me ‘The Man That Got Away’ isn't on it,” I say. “It's all Bernard played when you were gone.”

  “Heavens, no! This has Fleetwood Mac's ‘Songbird,’‘ 17 Again’ by the Eurythmics, a few from Sinéad O'connor, an entire Melissa Etheridge breakup album, and Dido singing ‘My Lover's Gone’.” He pulls out another CD. “Once you finish with that there's The Best of Bonnie Raitt. Basically everything of hers counts.”

  Gil cracks open two more beers and hands me one. We sit in silence for a moment staring up at the faraway moon. It looks as if someone took a machete and sliced it into two equal pieces.

  “Cool—it's a perfect half,” I finally say.

  “If this were one of my horrible training classes, someone would ask if it was half empty or half full,” says Gil.

  In the distance the courthouse clock tolls ten times.

  “Bernard says you've turned to the occult to get you through these difficult times.”

  “Not exactly. June just gave me a few crystals to wear.”

  Gil nods and I can't tell if he thinks they're foolish or not.

  “I know that I used to complain when Bernard was in charge of my love life, but it was better then,” I say. “During this recent mess with Craig, he hasn't said anything about my being stupid, right, wrong, or otherwise.”

  “He's preoccupied with the Darius situation. Actually, I think he's about to have a nervous breakdown.” Then Gil looks as if he shouldn't have said that around me because of Mom.

  “Where's my nervous breakdown?” I ask, though not necessarily to Gil, more to the moon.

  “So what happened with Craig, if you don't mind my asking. Bernard was a bit sketchy on the details.”

  “He dropped out of school. And if you love someone, doesn't it mean that you want certain things for that person, and for you, too, for your life together? Or does it mean you should unconditionally support their dreams? I don't know.”

  “My parents had a lot of hopes and dreams for me that I didn't fulfill.” Gil is referring to the fact that they disowned him when he came out of the closet.

  “I know this sounds terrible, Gil. But I don't want to be poor. I don't want to wonder if we'll be able to pay the mortgage and worry that if someone gets sick we may lose our house or car.”

  “I'm with you,” Gil raises his beer toward me. “I hate my job. But I like my car and being able to check out of the grocery store without tallying up the items first. When Bernard and I had our problems I had enough money to rent an apartment for a while.”

  “I'm so tired of money!” I say.

  “Maybe you and Craig are just one of those couples destined to have a love/hate relationship,” offers Gil.

  “I think it's more that I love him and he hates me,” I say.

  Gil's boom box is playing “Born Under a Bad Sign” by Cream, and we hear the lyrics, If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. Only this particular coincidence doesn't make us laugh.

  The windows of the house glow orange, and I occasionally see the silhouettes of family members going through their bedtime routine.

  “What's your gaydar reading on Pastor Costello?” I ask.

  “Church, candles, incense, and robes—all rather theatrical, isn't it?”

  “I feel bad for him because how can he ever have a boyfriend without the people in his congregation finding out?” I say. “Sure, they talk about tolerance, but you know that doesn't apply to their minister.”

  “Cleveland has a big gay population and he could have a social life there.”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “Either I've had too many beers or there's someone on top of your garage.” Gil looks toward the roof.

  “That's Teddy sneaking in,” I say without having to look up.

  “What's he doing out this late?” asks Gil. “It's not as if this town has so much as an all-night diner.”

  “Setting up a meth lab in an abandoned barn for all I know. They way I figure it, if the ones under ten don't die of starvation or get run over on my watch, then I'm doing my job. I don't get paid enough to worry about teenagers.”

  Gil leans in and clinks his beer can against mine.

  “Did you ever have a bad breakup?” I ask him. “I mean, other than the one with Bernard?”

  “What isn't a bad breakup?” asks Gil. “The only thing worse than the breakups was the sneaking around. I'd bring boyfriends home from college and they'd stay in the guest room— at least theoretically. One night my mother was up and caught a man leaving my room, and we told her the ceiling fan in the guest room was broken. Of course she went in and it worked just fine.”

  “I slept with this guy Mike at school last October,” I confess.

  “Mmm,” says Gil.

  I'm not sure what “mmm” means. Gwen asks very specific relationship questions. She would want to know
why why why? Did I like the guy, did I no longer care about Craig, did we have a fight, and so on. “Craig and I didn't have an exclusive arrangement or anything. I mean, he was probably with some other people, too.”

  “Mmm,” says Gil.

  “It's just that I thought if we got married, I mean Craig and me, then he'd be the only guy I'd ever been with, and for some reason I decided that was bad—you know, that we'd have a better shot if I had an idea of what else was out there. That sounds stupid, right?”

  “Comparison shopping is as old as searching for new spices and exotic clothes in foreign lands,” says Gil.

  “It wasn't very good,” I say.

  “Mmm,” says Gil.

  “Though he had a terrific butt,” I add and let out a giggle.

  “ROTC?” asks Gil.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “They always do,” Gil says knowingly.

  The band Green Day comes on with the song “Good Riddance,” and for a moment Gil sings along: “So make the best of this test and don't ask why.”

  When the song is finished, he asks, “Do you still love Craig?”

  “How can you love someone when you don't want the same things?”

  “Mmm,” says Gil.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  TODAY IS THE BIG DAY! MOM ANNOUNCES AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE on Wednesday morning.

  Francie graduates from kindergarten at noon. Only a mother could be excited about such a thing. And would someone care to enlighten me as to why kindergarteners require graduation ceremonies complete with cap, gown, and diploma. Are we celebrating the fact that they've finally stopped counting paste as a food group? Because it's not as if they're about to start jobs down at the auto plant the following week.

  Unfortunately Mrs. Muldoon isn't able to share our joy. Her arthritis flared up, and so I'm in charge of both the twins and Lillian. And with the current situation at the Stocktons’, I don't feel it's appropriate to park Lillian over there.

  While organizing Francie's miniature mortarboard and tiny blue gown I find a crumpled note explaining that she's supposed to bring cupcakes for the party. Mom says she's fine watching the kids while I go to the convenience store. Pastor Costello has already left for church, and I decide four is a bit much, so I take Lillian with me in the car, along with a large plate and some plastic wrap.

  There's another woman in the parking lot transferring cookies from a flimsy cardboard box to one of her own platters. And when I go to throw away the bakery box I see quite a few boxes in the big plastic garbage bin.

  Going back to the car I notice a really cute guy about my age or maybe a year or two older standing next to a pickup truck with Ohio plates.

  “Bake those yourself?” he jokes, and nods at the plate now filled with cupcakes on the hood of the car. Obviously he'd seen me remove them from the box.

  “Yeah, I love nothing more than to get up at six in the morning and put the oven on preheat,” I flirt back. “Where you headed?”

  “Out west—Montana maybe,” he says.

  “What's wrong, the mountains around here aren't high enough?” This is of course a joke because most of Ohio is so flat that if it weren't for all the trees you could see from one end of it to the other.

  Lillian, my ambassador of goodwill, waves at him from her car seat in the back.

  “Sweet little girl,” he says.

  “Oh, she's not mine,” I say. “I mean, she's mine, but she's my sister.” I briefly consider asking him to be my date to the kindergarten graduation. Surely it will be tons of fun, complete with Juicy Juice and Nilla wafers and all the kids singing “I Believe I Can Fly.” And then there are always the one or two kids who actually attempt flight, like my sister Francie.

  At that moment his girlfriend comes out with a pack of cigarettes and they take off, just the pair of them, heading west. She's stunning, tall and slim with wide-set eyes the size of dinner plates and perfectly windblown chestnut-colored hair.

  Those two will be sorry, I can't help but think. They'll get married and it will all be romantic for a year or so. Then the kids will come and they'll start to fight about the bills and whose turn it is to change the baby.

  I meet Mom and the twins at school. All the parents are running video cameras and couldn't be happier. There's no doubt in my mind that this whole thing is a conspiracy created by greeting card companies, bakeries, and electronics manufacturers.

  Francie's kindergarten teacher, Miss Ward, is the approximate size of a small bungalow and from the School of Dieting that says if you can't lose it, then accessorize it. However, she plays a darn good piano, and those kids march around in lock-step as if a drill sergeant had worked them over. And a certain uniformity to the baked goods would suggest that we weren't the only ones to have indulged in a box of convenience store helper.

  FIFTY-NINE

  I HEAR PASTOR COSTELLO DOWNSTAIRS SINGING YOU'VE GOT TO accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative while preparing lunches for the kids who are starting camp today. His latest thing is to write little inspirational sayings on the outsides of the banana peels, such as “A true friend is the best possession” and “Well done is better than well said.” Francie's messages usually pertain to conflict resolution, along the lines of “Quarrels never can last long if on one side lay all the wrong.”

  Pastor Costello has enrolled Francie, Davy, and Darlene into a nearby Christian summer camp. Davy wants to explore the local woods and informs me that he's not going. Pastor Costello has been so good to us that I feel we can't reasonably appeal the decision, especially after he went to the trouble of getting all three kids scholarships. I bargain with Davy—we'll buy him some hiking boots. He wants a two-hundred-dollar global positioning device. No deal.

  I can see that Davy is preparing to escape by running out the back door. Not being much of a churchgoer myself, I hate to employ Christianity in my arguments the way Pastor Costello does, but in this case I make an exception. I grab Davy by his shirt, basically lifting him off the ground three or four inches, and say, “Listen, buster, I dropped out of college to take care of you. And if you don't get your rear end to camp, I'll hit you so hard that you'll really do some exploring, of the stratosphere, because you'll go up in the air like a homesick angel.” Tears form in the corner of Davy's eyes and I feel his body go limp with defeat.

  Teddy is leaving to go around the neighborhood with our lawn mower and offer to cut people's grass. He hasn't bothered with any advertising. If a lawn is overgrown he just rings the bell and quotes a reasonable price. When the person answers, usually a woman, and looks at her yard in comparison with her neighbor's, she's overcome with suburban shame and Teddy is off and mowing. What she doesn't know is that Teddy has a habit of drawing the Druid symbol for “Earth” in the middle of the front yard with weed killer so that it seems to just magically appear a few days later.

  The month of July passes quickly. On the weekends the kids go over to the elementary school playground for baseball and kickball. They basically only show up when they want lunch or Band-Aids.

  At least that's the routine until Bernard opens the new pool on the first day of August. He purchases a van (which instantly becomes a tax deduction when the name of the shop is painted on the side), and picks everyone up at nine o'clock sharp for a day of frolicking in the water. Bernard has hired two teenagers from the high school swim team as lifeguards and swimming instructors.

  There's an ice chest by the side of the pool chock-full of juice boxes and Popsicles, while a stream of delicious snacks comes out of the kitchen. Despite the addition of the girls and all the extra work caring for them, Bernard has not lost his ability to turn ordinary daily events into celebrations. If anything, he's more engaged in doing so now that he has children. In fact, the sheer delight he gets from watching everyone else enjoy themselves occasionally makes me wonder if I want a family of my own someday.

  Mom often sits by the pool while the kids scream and splash while playing Marco Polo or singing �
�The Littlest Worm” at full volume. Though she's not quite back to her old is-that-what-you're-wearing self, Mom can manage the kids on her own when necessary. Sometimes she even holds Lillian and Gigi in the shallow end, one under each arm, so they can practice kicking. It's terrific to see her laughing and absorbing a bit of sunshine, held firm and secure by the extraordinary gravitational pull of Bernard's own personal planet. Mom actually thinks it's funny the way Bernard refers to God as the “Great Stage Manager” when he prays for the rain to hold off and dances a little jig on the patio.

  Ottavio spends his time giving diving lessons in the deep end, and when Olivia comes by to visit her granddaughters, she ignores him. Meantime, Rocky makes delicious blender drinks with fresh peaches, strawberries, and ice cream, topped off with three maraschino cherries.

  Gwen and Jane come home for a few weeks, and if Pastor Costello stays at the house after dinner, then I'm actually able to go and hang out with them at the pizza parlor. I know I'm taking advantage of Pastor Costello's generosity, but he insists that he doesn't mind. Besides, it's not going to be for very long. Gwen leaves soon for an internship at a costume shop in Chicago, and Jane is off to try out for the women's Olympic soccer team. And though they're careful not to talk much about these upcoming adventures, it's clear that certain people are moving on while others remain behind.

  SIXTY

  AFTER MY SIBLINGS HAVE GONE HOME FOR DINNER OTTAVIO AND I pull all the toys out of the pool and hang the wet towels over the fence. Tonight is Gil's birthday dinner, and so Bernard called the girls in early. Ottavio and I sit on the bench in the Chinese tea garden commiserating like two jilted lovers, even though the dilemmas we now find ourselves in are basically our own stupid faults. Ottavio's mouth sags at the corner as he stares at the marble and granite statues of the animals that are known as Lucky Beasts in China because they supposedly bring good fortune to a garden. Scattered among the peonies and peach blossoms are snapping turtles, snails, horses, frogs, winged cats, and two pale pink dragons.