The scarecrow shuffles papers on the clipboard. “Just April? Looks like we have a Madonna on our hands.”
Everyone laughs, but I pretend they aren’t real. They are eyeless. They are bowling pins. Giant black bowling pins in chairs, wearing hats and beaded necklaces, hand-woven shawls. They can’t see me, and I can’t hear them.
I climb on stage and sit on the stool. I don’t know what to do with the microphone. Scarecrow must sense that, because he’s almost back to his seat, but he returns to pull the mic closer and angle it at my mouth. “Thanks,” I say, and it echoes through the room, bouncing off the bowling pins.
My first strum sounds wrong and I realize my fingers are not where they should be. I strum again, pretend to fiddle with the tuning. “Okay,” I say into the mic once my fingers are firmly in their starting position.
I strum three times, close my eyes and start to sing:
Your eyes tell me what we’re gonna do,
And it’s not like I haven’t thought it too,
And it’s not like it’s wrong.
No, it’s not like that.
So I close my eyes, and you take my hand.
We’re both in the right place,
And it seems like the right time…
The right time.
I keep my eyelids shut tight and hear my voice coming back to me from the corners of the room. Bowling pins wearing wire-rimmed glasses, the black lines around my eyes, the change from Mrs. Varnick’s car, hot water in a cup. I think of all these things and I see myself on stage, like I’m up in the rafters watching.
When I’m done, there’s applause and it’s loud, and the audience is full of people again. People who like me. It’s not polite. It’s real and it just keeps going. I wait and wait. I adjust my guitar on my lap and the applause dies to a few random claps.
For the next song, I am brave. I sing about my father. I sing, “Don’t forget you made me. Don’t forget you made me the way I am.” And I look right at people in the audience. Right in their eyes, like I wrote the song about them. A guy with dreadlocks, King Neptune, the scarecrow. I sing to Marion Strong and the girl with the white eyelashes. I finish the song looking right into Jim’s eyes. When it’s over, he stands to clap. A few other people stand too, and the applause is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.
They’re still clapping when I get back to my seat. Someone in the far corner whistles. I sit, but I’m also hovering above myself, and smiling so big that my whole body is a grin and my head is warm and fuzzy like the first time Matty kissed me.
Scarecrow gets up on stage and says “Th-th-that’s all folks,” like he’s Porky Pig.
I rest my guitar in its case, latch each of the clips slowly. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want it to be over. I want to climb on stage again to play more songs and keep them clapping. I don’t want to go back to an empty motorhome and my stupid math book.
Everyone collects themselves, pulling on hats and scarves, big sweaters and secondhand coats. People walk past me on their way to the door. A few smile or say, “Good job.” A guy in a tunic gives me a thumbs up.
I dig my mittens and scarf from my bag.
“I’ll walk you out,” Jim says, like that’s what I was waiting for.
“Thanks.”
“Pretty girl. Dark parking lot. You got to.” He shakes his head. It’s fatherly. But that’s how everyone else is too. Fatherly. Brotherly. I can’t picture King Neptune jumping from behind a truck to rape and pillage.
Jim pulls my chair out of the way as I stand. I walk in front of him until we get outside. The James Taylor guy shouts, “Night, Jimmy!”
“Night!” Jim shouts back, then, “Hack,” under his breath like a cough.
“I thought he was good,” I say, letting my feet drag on the parking lot gravel.
“They’re all hacks. You and that Marion girl. You’re the only ones who have any chance of making it. And maybe not even Marion.” He says it like it’s fact, not opinion.
“She’s better than me,” I say, and I know it’s true, but I’m high. My head is spinning. Making it. I have a chance of making it. I have more of a chance than Marion. I don’t even know what it is, and I don’t think Jim is the one who gets to hand it down, but I want it. The air is crisp. My breath makes clouds.
“She’s—don’t get me wrong, she’s good. But you’re the real deal. You’re the whole package. That’s what it’s about. Everyone buys into the package.”
He takes a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and smacks them against his palm until one sticks out. He holds the pack to his lips and pulls the cigarette with his teeth. “Want one?” he says from the side of his mouth.
I shake my head.
“Good girl.” He cups his hand to his face. Lights up. Puffs. “Save those pipes,” he says into the smoke.
“Will do,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Over there.” I gesture vaguely. “I’ll be fine now. Nice to meet you, Jim.” I shake his hand, and sprint to Mrs. Varnick’s car so he won’t follow. The risk of attack is low. The risk of Jim noticing the loose ignition switch is high.
I get the car going again and drive home singing my songs to myself over and over, hearing the applause like it’s filling the car. The drive home isn’t long enough. The exact sound of that clapping starts to slip from my head when I turn down our street.
I park the car in the tire ruts in Mrs. Varnick’s driveway, push the ignition tumbler back in until it pops, and toss the screwdriver in my bag. I walk slowly to the motorhome, memorizing the way it feels to tread the path: the give of the pine needles, the dense winding roots. I am hardwiring my memory, because for the first time it doesn’t feel like this will be the rest of my life.
The motorhome shifts under my weight when I climb inside. I turn on the TV, curl up in the driver’s seat, and fall asleep to black and white static.
* * *
The next day, I fail my math test. I can’t even answer most of the questions.
— Chapter 2 —
This test was your chance to prove yourself,” Mrs. Hunter says, shaking her head at me with fake concern. Her weather-girl hair barely moves. She hands over my paper, marked with red like it has the chicken pox.
I should have held on to my test until the end of class so I could escape before she started grading. But I turned it in early with the smart kids, because there were song lyrics flashing in my head and I had to scribble them in my notebook before I forgot.
“I did prove myself,” I say.
“Ape-rul!” She crosses her arms over her chest, pursing her perfectly lined lips. She was a beauty queen before she was a teacher. I wonder what her talent was.
“I proved I can’t do math,” I say, dropping the test in the trash can by her desk. I stop in the doorway to wave goodbye. Elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, and a big smile like I have Vaseline smeared across my teeth.
“April Sawicki!” she yells after me as I walk away.
I don’t see any point in going to the rest of my classes. I’ve failed so many math tests already this semester that unless I get perfect scores for the rest of the year, I’ll be stuck in summer school not understanding algebra all over again. And it’s not like I’m doing much better in English or science.
I grab my black and whites from my locker, change in the bathroom, and head to Margo’s. When I get there, the diner’s empty, except for Margo, who’s perched at the counter, her pink high heels kicked off, bare feet twisted around the bottom rung of the stool. Her toenail polish matches her shoes exactly.
She’s filling saltshakers and watching The Weather Channel on the little TV over the counter. “Florida’s getting a lot of rain,” she says, shaking her head when she sees me. “Bad for the oranges. They get watery.”
“What’s the forecast here?”
“I missed that part.” She pinches spilled salt from the counter, tosses it over her shoulder for luck. “It’ll roll around again in a minu
te.”
“Sure,” I say, grinning. Margo can tell you what the weather is anywhere else, but she never catches the local report.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at school, young lady?” She screws the top on a shaker and slides the ones she’s finished down the counter to me.
“Failed math. No point.” I grab four shakers in each hand and walk around, placing them on tables.
“I’m harboring a fugitive,” she says, waving her hands in mock horror. “The truant officer is going to have a field day.”
“They don’t have those anymore, I don’t think.” I finish placing the shakers and sit on the stool next to hers.
“Did you at least give it your best shot?”
“Not really.” I twist my promise ring around my finger and avoid making eye contact.
“Well, not everyone’s cut out for school, you know? I didn’t graduate and look at me. I did just fine for myself.” Margo finishes salt and moves on to pepper. “This isn’t because of that Matty Spencer, is it?”
“Naw.”
She raises her eyebrow, scrunches up the corner of her mouth. She’s being polite calling Matty by name. Usually, she calls him Golden Boy, and she doesn’t mean it in a nice way. “That kid could charm the pants off a snake,” she told me once, and I wondered what it made me. But that’s the thing about Matty. No one else knows him like I do.
I tell her the truth to change the subject. “You know that guitar I got for my birthday?”
“Yeah.” She turns her head away from the shakers as she pours, so the pepper dust won’t make her sneeze.
“I played at the Blue Moon last night.”
“Oh, girlie!”
“Just open mic.”
“How’d you do?” she says, holding her fist to her mouth, then, “You did great,” before I even answer. “I know you did.”
“I did okay.”
“Well, where was my engraved invitation? Your dad go?”
“No.” I balance shaker lids in a pile while I’m waiting for her to finish the next pepper. She’s pouting like a little kid. “You’re busy,” I say, “I didn’t want to bother you.” Partly I feel bad I didn’t invite her and partly I’m just embarrassed for her. The pouting isn’t as cute as she thinks it is. She would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that crowd. They were all odd ducks, but Margo, she’s a different kind.
“Well, that’s not a bother; that’s exciting.” Pepper spills. She uses her hand to corral it to the end of the counter and sweeps it into the shaker. Only a little ends up on the floor. “Hey, wait. How’d you get all the way out to the Blue Moon?”
I smile. “You don’t want to know.”
“What are you doing to me?” She swats my shoulder with the towel she keeps tucked in her apron and gets up to go behind the counter. “You know I don’t have money for bail just lying around.”
“I’ll save for my own bail. I have to go to summer school anyway, may as well be for good reason. Can I pull extra shifts? Keep me out of trouble,” I say, batting my eyelashes at her. I don’t tell her Matty and I talked about saving for a wedding. She’ll get too excited about dresses and flowers or launch into another lecture about Matty and how sixteen isn’t old enough to be making the kinds of decisions that aren’t easily undone, and either way, she’ll forget I ever asked about the extra shifts.
“Hon, things are tight.” She looks me over and sighs. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll crunch numbers and check the schedule.”
“You don’t have to pay me overtime or even full on the extra shifts. It’ll be like undertime. Or I’ll just go for tips like I used to.”
She shakes her head. “I double you up on Lorraine, she’ll get pissy with me. There’s not enough tables to have two girls on at the same time.” She looks me right in the eyes. Margo can read my face better than anyone. “Let me think on it,” she says.
* * *
Margo dated my dad in high school and then they tried to date again after my mom left us. That was back when we lived over the Wash ’n Fold on Ames Street, before we got the motorhome. The whole apartment smelled like soapsuds.
When they went on dates, Margo would pick up my dad so she could see me too. She’d braid my hair or help me dress my dolls while he rounded up his wallet, shoes, and keys and checked the score on his radio one last time.
Margo always wore bright pink lipstick. Her red hair was all sprayed up like a helmet of big round bubbles, even though the other women in town were wearing their hair down and getting it feathered. She was thick around the middle, but she always wore miniskirts. When I asked my fourth grade teacher how long a paper had to be, she said, “Like a skirt. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting.” Margo’s skirts were always interesting. They covered everything, but just barely. And when she moved, you couldn’t help but watch, just in case they didn’t. She knew it too.
“You gotta maximize your potential,” she told me once, flexing her foot before slipping it back into her impossibly high pink pump. “I don’t got a bitty waist, but I’ve got killer gams. Play up what you got, toots. That’s the secret.”
I don’t know how long she and my dad tried to date. All I remember is that one day she took me to the lunch counter out at the Wal-Mart in Harristown instead of just eating at her place or making fluffernutters at our apartment. She wore shiny blue cream eye shadow. In the car on the way over, she even let me dig the little plastic tub out of her purse and smear some across my eyelids so we’d match. We had soft pretzels with big white flakes of salt; hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, and relish; and cherry slushies.
“What I want you to remember, girl, is that I’m not breaking up with you,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes. “You and me, we’re still good. Okay? You remember that.”
I tore pieces off my pretzel and shoved them in my mouth, washing them down with slushie without hardly chewing, until I got brain freeze and my eyes teared.
“It’s nothing to cry over, honey.” She spit on her napkin and wiped my cheeks hard. “Your father’s a good man, April. He always means to be a good man. He just… he gets in the way of himself, you know?”
I didn’t know, but I nodded.
“None of this is about you. No one in their right mind would leave you.” Her eyes got wide after she said it, and she put her hand over her mouth. “I mean… I mean… Now, sweetie, you haven’t even touched that hot dog yet.”
I ate it all. Every last bit, like it was my job, to show Margo how perfect I could be when I tried. I didn’t want to give her any reason to break up with me too.
I threw up in her car on the way home. Right on my white tennis sneakers, and she wasn’t even mad. Chunks of pretzel and hot dog, all bright cherry red.
“I can get a new floor mat,” she said, patting my leg. “You aimed good. Except for your shoes.”
Later, my father put my sneaks in the bathtub and hosed them down with the showerhead. Even after he washed them, they had pink splatter stains and smelled like sour milk. “We’ll leave them on the fire escape when you aren’t wearing them,” he said. He never said anything about Margo or the breakup.
After that, on Sundays, when my dad went to his card game, Margo would give her secret knock on the door and we’d go downstairs to do her laundry together. I loved folding her clothes: polyester leopard-print leggings and zebra-striped tunics, dresses with big Hawaiian flowers and shoulder pads. Lace slips and nightgowns. And some of the underpants didn’t have a back, just a string. I couldn’t quite figure out what was supposed to go where, but they were all silky and bright. One pair had a tiny rhinestone heart.
* * *
I wipe down menus and ketchup bottles until eleven thirty, when Ida Winton lumbers in and takes her table in the corner.
“Why aren’t you in school?” she asks, groaning as she slides into the booth, which means her knee is acting up again. Which means we might get rain.
“I learned it all,” I say.
She opens the menu and smacks her tongue against her teeth. “What do I want?” she asks herself in a baby voice.
I wait for her to finish looking at the menu like she doesn’t always get the same thing. If she’s in for lunch, it’s a meatloaf sandwich with American cheese and mayo, no lettuce, no tomato, with a side of cheese fries and gravy. If she’s in for dinner, it’s mac and cheese with a side of cheese fries and gravy.
“April, you know what I want?”
“What?” I put my hand on my hip, make my eyes big, and say it like I’m talking to a little kid, but she doesn’t notice.
“I think I’ll have a meatloaf sandwich, but here’s what I want: Mayo and cheese. American. No lettuce. No tomato, or anything like that.” She wrinkles her face and shivers. As she hands me her menu she says, “Oh, and what the heck, I’ll have a side of cheese fries.”
“Okay,” I say, and take a step like I’m leaving.
“Wait! Can I get gravy for those?”
“Sure thing.”
“Aren’t you gonna write it down?”
“All up here,” I say, tapping my forehead with the pen.
Margo works the kitchen until Dale gets in at noon. She’s slicing tomatoes.
“Order up! Ida special!” I mark an order slip I.S. and clip it to the clothesline over the cutting board.
“Gross,” Margo says. She slides a salad toward me and tops it with three tomato slices. “Mrs. Ivory any minute now. Make sure she takes her pill first.”
Sure enough, when I get to the dining room, Mrs. Ivory is sitting at the end of the counter, handbag on her lap like someone might steal it. I deliver her salad with a bottle of ketchup instead of dressing and a glass of water. “Take your pill,” I say, watching until she does.
* * *
After my dad bought the land and we moved out to the motorhome, I didn’t get to do laundry with Margo anymore. “Stop in and see me after school sometimes,” she said on our last Sunday night at the Wash ’n Fold. So I did, every day after school, because I didn’t like going back to the empty motorhome. I ordered pudding or creamed corn, or whatever I’d rounded up enough change to get. When Margo had something that wasn’t moving, she’d wink at me and say, “Beets are on special today, sweetie. For you, thirteen cents.” If it was slow, she’d tell me the special came with dessert. And whatever the special was, I ate it, even if I didn’t like it, just so I wouldn’t hurt Margo’s feelings. I’d spread my books out on the back table and try to do my homework, but mostly I just watched people.
The People We Keep Page 2