Lucy Unstrung

by Carole Lazar

  When Dad takes me home Sunday afternoon, Gina’s car is parked in front of our trailer. No wonder Ian doesn’t marry her. She never stays home. I lift the dog out of the van and carry her into the trailer. I put her down just inside the door, and go to my room to take off my backpack. By the time I get back to the kitchen, Gina has picked the dog up and has her on her lap. I pretend I don’t notice.

  “Have a good weekend?” I ask Mom.

  “Quiet.”

  I look in the fridge to see if there’s something to drink. I find a little can of juice.

  “Gina and Ian have found a town house,” Mom says.

  My heart stops. I make myself take a breath. I don’t faint or anything, so I guess my heart must have started up again.

  “Three bedrooms,” says Gina. “And Ian won’t have an excuse for not helping me cook or do dishes anymore. The kitchen is big enough for two people.”

  And I suppose they allow dogs.

  “So, when are you moving?” I ask.

  “The end of May.”

  I just nod. The dog is still on her lap. “I’ve got homework I should do.” I start toward my bedroom. There is a small thud and the scratching of little dog nails on the kitchen linoleum. The dog’s jumped off Gina’s knee; she follows me into my room.

  I close the door behind us, but not before I hear Gina say, “So much for dogs being loyal. I think my Lucy’s getting so she likes your Lucy better than she likes me.”

  And so she should. I wouldn’t just dump her with someone else so I could go live with a boyfriend. Gina expects us to treat the dog like a lamp or a coffee table that we’ve been storing for her. As soon as she moves to her new town house, she’ll want her “property” back.

  I’m depressed all evening. At bedtime, I’m so busy praying for the dog that I almost forget I’m supposed to pray for Brandy. When I remember, I just ask God to make her a nicer person.

  sixteen

  God must have his own ideas about how to fix things. I don’t know if Brandy is any nicer on Monday, but she isn’t at school, and that makes it way nicer for me. What I’d really like to pray for is that she’d disappear completely, but I don’t think that’s what Father Tony had in mind when he gave me this penance. Still, it’s such a relief not having her around. I get to walk home from school without going blocks out of the way.

  I’m in a good mood when I get home from school. I even make dinner. My mom is really surprised when she comes home and I have a Thai noodle salad all ready to dish up. She’s especially surprised because we didn’t have any bean sprouts or water chestnuts in the house.

  “I planned it all yesterday,” I say. “I borrowed the stuff I needed from Dad’s place.”

  “Does he know?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, it’s very good,” she says. “And it’s such a luxury to come home and find dinner is all ready.”

  After we clean up, Mom is sitting at the table, going over her bills again. She has this pad of yellow lined paper and she’s written numbers and lists on its pages.

  “Those people accepted our counteroffer today.”

  “So that means the house is sold?”

  She nods. We both look sad.

  “When do we have to move out?”

  “June 15.”

  She goes back to her figures. I’m thinking about what Amy said, about how the house prices are going up so fast that if Mom doesn’t buy another house right away, she won’t ever be able to afford one. What if we have to live here forever and I never get away from Brandy?

  “Dad was looking at places again Saturday,” I say.

  “Did he see anything he liked?”

  “Have you heard about those zero lot line houses? There’s a bunch of them off Eightieth Avenue. They’re two storeys but kind of narrow. The lots are only thirty-three feet wide.”

  “I thought he said he was going to get an apartment.”

  “He might, but now he’s saying maybe he’ll buy a house and rent it out, and then just rent an apartment for himself.”

  She’s looking at her budget pages and twirling her hair around her pencil. “I’m going to use up all of my money from the house just on living expenses. Gas prices are nuts. It costs me fifty dollars to fill my tank now. And look at this hydro bill. It costs as much for this little place as it did for our house, and our trailer is, what? Three or four times smaller?”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I know it doesn’t. The weather’s been mild; we don’t have the heat on that much.”

  “Have you thought it might be something that Randy has in the shed?” I ask.

  “Oh, Lucy, will you quit going on about the shed. He’s not heating that space.”

  “But maybe he has some really strong lights in there.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, “but you can forget it. If he were growing marijuana, we’d smell it. That stuff stinks to high heaven.”

  And since when was she an expert on drugs? Later I take the dog out for her bedtime pee. When I come back, I walk around to the back of the shed. I press my ear to the door. I can hear a humming noise. I move around to the side that faces Mrs. Warren’s trailer. The humming is louder.

  “What are you doing?” a voice asks.

  Mrs. Warren has opened the small window over her kitchen sink.

  “Something’s humming in there.”

  “You don’t know what it is?”

  “No. Randy, our landlord, he keeps stuff in there.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “I’d tell your mother to check that out, if I were you.” She closes the window with a bit of a slam.

  I don’t tell Mom. What’s the point? She’d just ignore me or tell me to mind my own business.

  That night, I have to pray for Brandy again. Whoever heard of a penance that takes all week to do? By the time I finish the penance, I’ll probably have committed a bunch more sins. Anyway, this time I try something a little different. I ask God to help Brandy with whatever the problem is that is making her so crabby and mean.

  She’s not at school the next day, or the day after that.

  Harbie and Kuldeep and I talk about it at lunch on Wednesday.

  “Maybe she’s moved,” I say.

  “Or she might be sick.”

  “More likely skipping out,” says Kuldeep. “I have math with her, and she didn’t have her homework done last class.”

  “Well, that’s not such a big deal,” I say.

  “For Brandy it is,” says Kuldeep. “She’s on probation.”

  I almost choke on my chocolate milk. “What did she do?”

  I can just guess. Probably a really serious assault on whoever it was she hated most before she met me.

  “Not like probation with the police,” says Kuldeep. “She was suspended for skipping and not doing any homework. I hear they let her come back to school but only on sort of a trial basis. If she starts goofing off again, she’ll be expelled.”

  That doesn’t help me. Even if she gets kicked out of school, I’ll still always have to worry about meeting up with her around the trailer park. I’m just hoping she’s moved, maybe to Toronto or Halifax.

  But she hasn’t. She’s back at school Thursday, making rude comments to me in English class and bumping in to me “by accident” in the halls. I take the long route home after school and make it there without seeing her, but I have to take the dog out for at least a bit of a walk. I try to stay as close to our place as I can, so I just walk down the road, past a couple of trailers, and turn around to come back. Suddenly Brandy’s right there. She’s come out of nowhere. I almost bump into her.

  She looks as surprised as I feel, but it only takes her a minute to regain her composure.

  “What are you doing here, bitch?”

  “I live here.”

  She looks around like she’s never seen the place before. “In this dump? I picked you f
or one of those snobby Greenwood Glade or Paradise Ridge types.”

  I wonder how she guessed that that’s where we used to live. I don’t ask her. I just keep my mouth shut. She’s between me and our trailer.

  Then she looks down at the dog.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to be? I hate those little kick dogs. Good for nothing. If I got a dog, it would be a real one.”

  She takes a couple of steps toward us, so I bend over and pick the dog up in a hurry. The dog’s not stupid. She knows a mean person when she sees one. She starts to bark.

  Brandy just laughs. She takes another step toward me; her hands are still at her sides, but they’re clenched into fists. I take a step back.

  “Oh, that’s sure a scary dog,” she says in this sarcastic voice.

  The dog is going crazy. I’m struggling to keep hold of her.

  “I could punch you out and leave you bleeding and unconscious if I weren’t so afraid of your big, fierce guard dog.”

  “Enough!” someone yells in a scratchy old-lady voice.

  Mrs. Warren is standing on her porch with her phone in her hand.

  “If I hit one more number, the cops will be on their way. You get home.”

  Brandy gives her the finger, but she turns and heads back the way she must have come. I’m just sweating like crazy.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “How long has this been going on?” Mrs. Warren asks.

  “Since the very first day I started school here. I don’t know why she hates me.”

  “You better come in and stay with me till your mom comes home. I don’t like the idea of you staying alone.”

  I don’t like the idea much myself.

  “But what about the dog?”

  “It can wait here too. I like animals.”

  I should have guessed that, what with all the pig knickknacks she has around the place. The inside of her trailer is even more cluttered with them than the outside. They are on her dish towels and pot holders. She has a wallpaper border of cheerful-looking pink pigs all around the kitchen and living room area. She’s putting tea bags into a teapot shaped like a pig that’s sitting up like a dog might. She has a whole shelf unit filled with nothing but piggy banks.

  “Wow! What a collection.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got eight hundred and seventy-three pigs if you count pictures like the ones embroidered on the cushions and the dish towels.”

  “How long have you been collecting them?”

  “I started when Herb passed on.”

  “Was Herb your husband?”

  “Yes, he passed away in 2001.”

  The kettle is boiling. She pours the water into the teapot.

  “Do you mind if I use your phone?” I ask. “I always call my grandma when I get home from school. I don’t want her worrying about me.”

  “You go ahead and call her then.”

  I key in Grandma’s number, but no one answers. I wonder where she’s off to this time. Bridge again? But then where’s Granddad?

  Mrs. Warren and I are watching Charlotte’s Web on video when my mom pulls in. I go outside to tell her that Mrs. Warren and I are watching a movie. She says I can stay until it’s finished.

  Dinner’s almost ready when I get home.

  “So, since when were you and Mrs. Warren friends?” Mom asks.

  I tell her what happened with Brandy while we’re eating.

  “This is getting really serious. I wish Mrs. Warren had called the police. Maybe they’d have been able to do something about her.”

  “Father Tony says I should pray for her.”

  “Well, that’s fine, but it’s not keeping you safe right now.”

  That’s something I never understand about God. You’re supposed to have faith and all that, but He is so slow.

  “I wish we had a cell phone,” Mom says. “We could program it to call 911. I wonder what they cost.”

  “Forget it. It would be a waste of money. Brandy would probably send it flying with her first punch. I’d never get it to my ear.”

  Mom starts clearing away our dishes. “I wish I didn’t have to go out tomorrow night. You’ll just have to promise me you’ll stay inside and keep the door locked.”

  She’s at the sink, and it’s like she’s purposely keeping busy so she doesn’t have to look at me.

  “I’ll walk the dog before I leave,” she says.

  “Where are you going? I can’t stay here alone. Why can’t I come with you?”

  “I’ve got to go out for my big date with Jake.” She makes quotation marks in the air with her fingers when she says the word date. “I’ve already made a complete fool of myself by nodding my head at the wrong time, it seems. If I show up for our date with you in tow, that would be just way too embarrassing.”

  “Don’t go out with him at all. Just tell him you didn’t hear him properly, and, if you had, the answer would have been no. What’s so hard about that?”

  “I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I mean, he’s been quite nice. He helped us move and everything. It’s not his fault that I’m deaf.”

  “But you shouldn’t be going out on dates.”

  “I’ll just go out for dinner with him, and, while we’re eating, I can explain my mistake in a funny way. Then I’ll pay my part of the bill and come home. I won’t be late at all.”

  “But I’m scared to stay here alone. Why can’t I go to Dad’s a day early, like I did last week?”

  “So what do I tell him? ‘Can Lucy stay with you, I have a date’?”

  “Well, that’s the truth.”

  “I’d really rather he didn’t know.”

  “Then I’ll call Grandma,” I say.

  “She and Granddad have gone to the Skagit Valley Casino. They won’t be back till Sunday.”

  I am totally shocked. “I didn’t know she was going away. She’s never gone away without me before.”

  “She could hardly be expected to take you to a casino.”

  “But she didn’t even tell me she was going.”

  “It was kind of a last-minute plan. You talk to her every single day. I find it hard to believe she wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “I don’t talk to her every single day. She’s out half the time, and I do have a life of my own, you know. Have you forgotten I was busy making dinner Tuesday night? I can’t always be on the phone.”

  “I suppose you could invite Siobhan over. Would that help?” Mom asks.

  I’d really rather go to Siobhan’s so I’m as far away as possible from Brandy. “That would be better than being alone,” I say.

  I call Siobhan and ask her if she wants to get together tomorrow night. I’m hoping she’ll invite me to her place, but right away she says she’ll ask her mom if she can come over. The trouble is, Siobhan thinks it’s a big treat any time she can get away from all those little kids.

  She’s back on the line in half a minute. “Mom says I can come for the evening, but I can’t stay over. She needs me to babysit first thing Saturday morning.”

  “That should be okay,” I say. “My mom says she’ll be home really early anyway.”

  Mom raises her eyebrows at me.

  “If Siobhan’s dad drops her off tomorrow, can you take her home after?” I ask Mom.

  “Sure. Like you say, I’ll be home really early.”

  seventeen

  Mom drives me to school on Friday, and at lunchtime, I get called to the office because there’s a message for me to phone her at work. When I get through, she tells me that she has made arrangements to work through her lunch hour so she can get off an hour early. She won’t make it to the school until almost four, but she says I can wait in the library. That’s not a place where Brandy is likely to be hanging out, so I give a big sigh of relief.

  When we get home, Mom makes homemade pizza so that all Siobhan and I will have to do is pop it in the oven. After Siobhan arrives, Mom walks the dog and then goes over to see Mrs. Warren. When she comes back, she says Mrs. Warren w
ill watch out for me, and if I have any problems, I can call her.

  About six-thirty, Jake shows up. He looks like he’s just had a shower. He’s dressed nicely. I hate him. See, that’s another sin, and I’m not even going to finish my penance from last week until bedtime tonight.

  “He is so hot,” Siobhan says as soon as they leave. She can’t take her eyes off him. I’m surprised she doesn’t press her nose right up against the window and stare like a kid looking into a candy store.

  “Get a grip,” I say.

  I check the clock. It’s 6:35. Mom says she’ll be home by nine. She better be.

  It’s a good thing Siobhan’s over. It’s hard to keep worrying when she’s around. She is a very distracting person, in a good sort of way. She says she has plans for us, a surprise. She won’t tell me until we finish eating and cleaning up. Then she goes into her backpack and pulls out a white plastic bag.

  “Look what I bought.”

  She opens the bag and a box of Born to be Blonde hair dye and two packages of strawberry-flavored Kool-Aid fall out onto the table.

  “We’re going to do makeovers.” Siobhan’s got long, wavy hair. It used to be really blonde, but it’s getting darker. “You can put in highlights for me.”

  I read the instructions. It doesn’t sound hard. There are plastic gloves in the box. I get out the bleaching gel and the bottle of toner. There’s a plastic cap and something that looks like a crochet hook. I look at the instructions again.

  “Should I wash my hair first?” Siobhan asks.

  “No, just sit down. We have to get this cap on your head.”

  It takes me quite awhile to pull little strands of Siobhan’s hair through the holes in the plastic cap. I try to be gentle, but with long hair, it snarls sometimes, so I have to tug a bit. Siobhan is gritting her teeth. Her eyes are red and watery.

  Once we think we have enough hair pulled through the cap, I paint the strands with the gel and set the timer on the stove. When it goes off, we rinse out the gel and put the toner on. Getting the cap off is another major production. When we’re finished, Siobhan washes her hair and uses the blow-dryer. It looks so cool. It’s a really professional-looking job, if I do say so myself. Siobhan loves it.