But What About Me?

by Marilyn Reynolds

  It’s the rhythm of words, over and over, that finally puts me to sleep—“I love him, he loves me. That’s what matters, don’t you see”—to the tune of the Barney song.

  Thursday afternoon I spend about an hour trying to write just the right thing on the card I bought Danny for our anniversary. I’m almost finished when he calls.

  “Happy anniversary,” he says. “Can you believe it’s a year? So much has happened.”

  “I know. Good and bad.”

  “But you’ve been all good,” he says. “Alex is letting me borrow his car for tonight. I’ll come get you about seven?”

  “Okay. I bought something special for you,” I tell him.

  “I bought something special for you, too.”

  We talk for awhile, then Danny says, “I’ll just honk for you. Be ready. Okay?”

  “Oh, no. My parents would go nuts. You’ve got to come to the door, like that gentleman kind of stuff. Don’t make things worse by honking.”

  “But Pups . . .”

  “No, Danny. I mean it. You haven’t been inside my house since Gramma and Rocky told on us. My dad says you’re cowardly.”

  There’s a long pause. “I am cowardly,” he says.

  “Well, don’t honk. Ring the doorbell like you always used to do,” I say.

  “Okay. Listen. I want this to be special for us tonight. I know sometimes I’m not the best boyfriend in the world. But I want to be.”

  “You’re the best boyfriend for me,” I tell him. I tap three times and he taps four, and we hang up.

  At seven o’clock sharp, Danny rings the doorbell. Rocky runs to answer it.

  “Hey, Rocks,” he says, laughing.

  She throws her arms around him like he’s her boyfriend, not mine.

  He looks so good. Sometimes I still can hardly believe that he’s really my boyfriend. My dad comes into the room and they shake hands, polite, but not exactly friendly.

  “Have a seat,” Dad says, motioning toward the couch.

  “We probably should get going,” Danny says to me. “I have dinner reservations.”

  I pick up the package I wrapped earlier, and the card that took me all afternoon to write, and give my dad a peck on the cheek.

  “’Bye, Rocky,” I say, and walk out the front door with Danny.

  “Everything seems all fine at your house. I don’t know why you were so worried.”

  “I guess everything’s normal on the surface. But sometimes I feel one of my parents just looking at me, like you might look at someone with a handicap, carefully, out of the comer of your eye. Things still feel kind of weird to me.”

  We get in the car. “I’ve never seen this car so clean.”

  “I’ve worked on it all day. I told Alex I’d detail it for him. He lets me use it pretty often—carpets, trunk, everything is spotless.”

  Shinto’s is one of the best restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. It was even written up in a fancy restaurant guide. The waiters are more dressed up than we are, and we’re as dressed up as we’ve ever been, except for last year’s prom.

  Danny orders a soda for each of us. The waiter brings it and then takes our dinner order. I only order a dinner salad because every­thing is so expensive. But Danny orders a Porterhouse steak, which is practically the most expensive thing on the menu.

  “Have more than a salad,” he urges me. “I can afford it.”

  But I’m embarrassed to call the waiter back, so I stick with my order.

  Danny glances around to be sure no one is paying attention, then takes a little Jack Daniels bottle from his pants pocket and empties half of it into his soda.

  “Want some?” he asks.

  I shake my head no.

  “Not even for this special occasion?”

  “No, thanks,” I say, feeling disappointed that he’s even asked— disappointed that he’s brought whiskey with him for our celebra­tion—like being with me isn’t enough.

  Danny pours the rest of the bottle into his soda and takes a long drink.

  “I don’t get why we need two forks and two spoons,” Danny says.

  “I think it’s kind of a show-off thing,” I say.

  “We’re lucky to find one fork at Alex’s,” he says with a laugh. “And that fork usually sits on the table all week long.”

  The waiter brings bread that’s still warm, with a big hunk of butter, not butter divided into equal little pats on cardboard squares, like I’m used to seeing in the restaurants my parents sometimes take us on special occasions.

  “Can you believe we’re here?” Danny says, gesturing with his eyes around the room.

  There are tablecloths on the tables, and cloth napkins, and each table has a real flower in a vase. The hardwood floors are highly polished, and, in the next room, a man in a tuxedo is playing music on a grand piano. We hold hands under the table and talk about all we’ve been through.

  “I’ve decided, it’s time for me to stop messing around. I’ll take the high school equivalency test and then start community college in September. I want you to be proud of me, Pups.”

  “Are you thinking of environmental studies?” I ask, knowing that was his plan last year, when he was applying to colleges, before everything fell apart.

  “Maybe business,” he says. “I think I have a talent for business.”

  “Really?”

  The waiter brings our dinners and Danny orders another soda, which he spikes with another little whiskey bottle.

  “And this, you don’t have to worry. I’m only going to use it for special occasions, not every day anymore.”

  When it is time to pay, I’m surprised to see how much money Danny takes from his pocket. He counts it out carefully, then figures out a tip.

  “Twice as much as the tax is what Alex’s mom told me,” Danny explains. First he tries figuring it out in his head. Then he asks, a little too loudly, to borrow a pencil from a passing waiter. He writes on the check, and I see that he’s having trouble multiplying by two. I guess it’s the whiskey. He puts down enough tip money to eat for a whole month at the Golden Arches, and we leave.

  We go to our secret place and park. Danny kisses me, long, then reaches into the glove compartment for another little Jack Daniels bottle and downs it. He sits, staring out the windshield at I don’t know what. Then he says, “Sometimes, when you’re not around, I feel like I’m floating in space. I need you so much, Pups,” he says.

  “I’ll always be there for you. Danny. You know that,” I say, kissing him, holding him close.

  “I’ve got something for you,” he says.

  “Let me give you yours, first.”

  I hand Danny the gift that took most of my two paychecks to buy. He opens it quickly.

  “Wow. A walkman!”

  “I know you miss your stereo, and you’re always complaining about the music at Alex’s house, so now you can always have your own—here, listen to it. It’s already got a tape in it.”

  Danny puts on the headphones, presses play, and leans his head back, eyes closed. After a minute or so I tap him on the shoulder. He turns it off and takes off the headphones. His eyes are all shiny.

  “It’s a really good one,” I say. “Not one of those cheap kinds that sounds all distorted.”

  “I love you, Pups,” he says. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  He reaches past me, into the glove compartment. I’m afraid it’s for another Jack Daniels, but instead he pulls out a small package and hands it to me. Just as I’m starting to open it. I’m startled by headlights turning onto the road where we’ve never seen anyone else before.

  “Shit!” Danny says.

  “What?”

  “The cops.”

  We watch as the car drives slowly past where we’re sitting and parks not more than fifty feet from us, facing the road. Danny starts the engine and drives slowly out toward the street.

  “Fuckin’ pigs!”

  I turn and look back and see that the polic
e car is following us. I think about the little bottles of whiskey. God.

  On the street. Danny turns left, then makes the first right he can. They follow. Please, please don’t flash your red lights, I urge, trying to send a psychic message back to the police. Please, please don’t let me get arrested again. Don’t make my parents come get me. My hands are sweaty and my heart is pounding. Why? I haven’t done anything wrong. I look over at Danny. He seems sober now, but I don’t know if he could pass one of those line-walking, nose-touching sobriety tests or not.

  We keep driving, under the speed limit, toward my house.

  “Why don’t those bastards work on making the streets safe instead of harassing citizens?” Danny says.

  “Why don’t they either pull us over or leave us alone?” I ask.

  “We should have used your parents’ car tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Then we wouldn’t have had to put up with this,” Danny says, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

  “What difference would that have made?”

  “Alex’s car. They’re always after Alex, just because he’s Joey’s brother. They follow him all around. They’ll never get anything on him, though. Alex is smart. It may not seem like it, but he is.”

  “But why would they be like that?”

  “Once they get it in for you, they can’t leave you alone.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  “Yeah, well there’s a lot that might not make sense to you that I know about,” Danny says.

  He seems all tight and closed now, as he turns into my driveway. The cops pull up to the curb across the street and wait, lights on, engine running.

  “I better take Alex’s car home and get these pigs off my back,” Danny says, glancing again at the car across the street.

  I don’t say anything about the package which still sits unopened on my lap, and neither does Danny. It hasn’t exactly been the perfect anniversary celebration I’d anticipated. I put the box on the dash­board when I get out of the car. Danny is so preoccupied he doesn’t even notice.

  “’Night, Pups,” he says.

  I barely get the car door closed before he’s backing out the driveway.

  In my room I pick up the picture of us at last year’s Winter Fantasy. Danny’s eyes were bright and clear, his face open and unguarded. The corsage I was wearing was an unusual kind of flower that Danny’s mother had helped him choose. I remember feeling so special just being with Danny Lara, who was popular and handsome, and who loved me.

  That night Mark, a football player, had started hitting on me while I was talking to April. When Danny got back from the rest­room, he stood next to me. That’s all he did, and Mark got all red in the face and left. Even if Danny wasn’t a jock, he had a lot of respect. Kids turned to his column first when the Hamilton Herald came out, because he always had something important to say, and it was often funny. I wonder if he’ll ever get back to anything like that? Tonight was the first time I’d ever heard him say anything about having a talent for business. What did that mean?

  Chapter

  14

  You were home a little early last night,” is the first thing my dad says to me when I go to breakfast. “How was your dinner?”

  “Nice,” I say.

  I pour a glass of orange juice and put some bread in the toaster. “I see you had a police escort. What was that about?”

  My dad, the Green Beret. Of course he would notice.

  “It was so weird,” I say, both wanting and not wanting to tell him about it. Wanting to tell wins out.

  “We were parked back by that old hotel, just talking,” I say.

  “Right,” Dad says, sarcastic.

  “We were just talking,” I insist.

  “Sure,” Dad says. “Tell me about the police.”

  “They parked near us and just sat and watched.”

  “They didn’t get out of the car, or ask you to get out of the car?”

  “No. They just sat. So we left, and they followed us here.”

  “They didn’t ever pull you over?”

  I shake my head no.

  “They’re harassing Alex,” I say, repeating what Danny told me. “They follow his car all the time—isn’t there some law against that, Dad?”

  Dad pours himself another cup of coffee and stirs it thoughtfully. “I doubt that the police are the ones breaking the law here,” he says.

  “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” I say.

  “There’s a reason the police are watching Alex’s car. Those boys are into something they shouldn’t be. Where did Danny get enough money to take you to Shinto’s when he doesn’t even have a job?”

  “I don’t know. He saved it, I guess.”

  “Saved it from what?”

  Now I’m sorry I told Dad anything. It’s just another excuse for him to think the worst of Danny.

  “Erica, Danny’s not the same young man he was when you first got together with him. He’s changed, and not for the better.”

  I finish my orange juice and put my glass in the dishwasher. “Sweetheart, I know he’s been through a hard time with the death of his mother, but that’s no excuse for him to continue to float aimlessly along. It’s time for him to find a purpose . . .”

  “Whatever,” I say, relieved to hear April’s car pull into the driveway to take me to school.

  Ms. Lee calls me up to her desk at the end of the period.

  “I’m concerned about you, Erica. You’ve missed three assign­ments recently. That’s not like you.”

  “I’m making them up.”

  “You know, your grade will be lowered because they’re late.”

  “I know.”

  “Is everything all right at home?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Ms. Costanza tells me you’ve fallen back a bit in biology, too.”

  I hate how teachers gossip. Don’t they have anything better to do than sit around talking about how their students are messing up?

  “Are you keeping up with the reading?” she asks.

  “I’ve finished ‘Metamorphosis.’ It was good.”

  “Highly symbolic,” she says. “Organisms metamorphose in many ways. I hope you’re not in the process of metamorphosing into a poor student.”

  She says it as a joke, but on the bus, on my way to work, I think about changes—how I don’t feel as lighthearted as I once did, and how things feel strained between me and my parents, and even at times with April, who I’ve been totally close to for years. I determine not to let myself get caught in a metamorphosis that would totally separate me from my family and friends. I definitely do not want to end up like poor Gregor.

  “Hey, Beauty. Today is bath day,” I tell my patient, taking her from the cage and into what the staff jokingly calls “the spa.”

  I fill the tub with warm water, put on a vinyl apron, and lift Beauty into her bath. As soon as I wet her down she starts trembling.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re going to feel so much better. . .” I carry on a running monologue of what I hope is soothing patter, while I soap and rinse, soap and rinse, careful to shield her eyes.

  After her bath, I put her on the high metal table and secure her with a short leash. I towel dry her first, then use a blow dryer. When she is reasonably dry I take her out to a larger cage in the kennel, where it’s sunny, and brush her. Her black hair shines in the sunlight, and the white markings are truly white for the first time since I’ve known her. The patches on her coat are beginning to fill in and her ears are perky now, as if there might be something worth listening for.

  “You’re still pretty skinny, though,” I tell her.

  When I’m finished grooming her I walk her upstairs to where Sinclair is working in his office.

  “Oh, my,” he says, clapping his hands. “I just love your make­over, girl.” He leans down and pets her. She wags her tail vigor­ously. “We should have before and after pictures,” he tells me.

&
nbsp; “HELLO. HELLO. HELLO.” The parrot screeches from its cage by the door. Beauty stands on her hind legs, trying to get a look at the bird.

  “I have a big favor to ask you,” Sinclair says.

  “What?”

  “You know how my parents never invite me to their holiday gatherings?”

  I nod.

  “Well, they’ve invited me to come to their Christmas Eve party. It’s kind of a big step for them, to claim me in front of their friends.”

  “You should go.”

  “Right. That’s where you come in. I need someone to cover the

  office until six.”

  “Six? On Christmas Eve?”

  Sinclair just sits petting Beauty, looking at me.

  Our family tradition is to wrap packages all that day, and decorate the house while a big pot of albondigas soup simmers on the stove. We eat soup and French bread in the afternoon. Dad always says that proves we are eclectic. Then we go buy a tree and haul it home, trim it and put the packages around. I’ll miss a lot of that if I have to work until six.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask . . .”

  I remember the sadness I felt coming from Sinclair, when he first told me of how he never saw his family for holidays.

  “I can work for you,” I say.

  “Thanks, Erica.”

  “No problem.”

  I take Beauty back downstairs and set her up in an outside pen, where there’s room for her to walk around. I get a clean padded mat and put it under the sheltered area. This is a state-of-the-art facility, with individual kennels that allow for sun, shade, and shelter from the rain. There is no artificial light either in the kennels or in the cat shelter.

  “You’ve got a new house,” I tell Beauty.

  I move her identification card from the infirmary to the new spot, then go back to the infirmary to begin prepping animals for surgery. We’re doing three dogs and four cats today. I help Morris, one of the health technicians, give the animals pre-anesthetics, then we shave and scrub each of them.

  Dr. Franz comes to tell us she’ll take the first surgery at four. April thinks it’s gross to have a job where ovaries and testicles get sent off to a rendering service and turned into fertilizer. What I know, though, is that for every set of reproductive organs removed, there are lots fewer animals whose remains end up strewn around flowers.