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Authors: Laurie Anderson

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BOOK: Catalyst
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I scrub under my nails. “Nope.”

She puts the bags on the counter. “I can’t believe it’s taking so long. Is there anything I can do? Do you need to talk or something?”

I dry my hands on a blue-striped towel and pick up a ladle. “No, thanks. I’m all good.” Before she can say anything else, I scoot over to the food line.

Chicken and Biscuit Night is simple and profitable. Pay your money and you get a plate and utensils wrapped in a paper napkin. You can choose one biscuit or two. Hand me your plate and I ladle on pieces of chicken and gravy as fast as I can, trying to remember to smile. Drinks are at the end of the line. Desserts are on the preschool table by the upright piano.

The line moves. Dip, ladle, don’t drip. Smile, nod—next! Dip, ladle, don’t drip. Smile, nod—next! The Kate-a-tron has been activated. Dip, ladle, don’t drip. Smile, nod—next!

“Howdy, Miss Kate. How’s it going?” An old man hands me his plate. Mr. Lockheart, our handyman, my savior. One of Dad’s strays. Some of the kitchen ladies don’t like the fact that he drinks whiskey, but I don’t see any of them offering to patch the roof or clean out the nest of squirrels in the attic.

I pile three biscuits on his plate. “Mr. Lockheart, I am so happy to see you.” I dig deep in the pot for hunks of chicken. “Our boiler is broken and we don’t have any hot water.”

He nods once. “Yeah, I heard.” He rubs the white stubble on his neck. “Coulda lost the pilot light. That’d be bad, gas in the basement.”

The fellow behind him, a farmer, leans in. “Gas would mean an explosion.”

“That’d be bad, too,” says Mr. Lockheart. He stares at his plate. I pour on the gravy slowly.

“Course, it could be a loose wire, electric problem,” the farmer says.

“Or the ignition switch,” muses Mr. Lockheart. “That goes at the wrong time, and boom, you got another explosion.”

An executive-type dad fidgets behind the farmer. He butts in. “Can you discuss explosions at your table, please? Some of us have things to do tonight.”

Mr. Lockheart ignores him. “Could be the darned thing just died. It’s old. I’ll take a look after I eat some.”

“Great,” I say, handing back his plate. “Could you try to fix it tonight?”

“I’ll do my best, Miss Kate,” he says solemnly. “Hey, the reverend told me you was running in a big race today. You beat ’em?”

His watery eyes open wide, his smile shows brown, chipped teeth. His wife and children were killed years ago when he drove the family car into a snowplow on Route 81 during a blizzard. He didn’t drink much before then.

“Yes, Mr. Lockheart. I beat ’em. I beat all of them by a mile.”

“That’s my girl!” he cackles. He leans over and gives me a smelly kiss on the middle of my forehead.

“Thanks, Mr. Lockheart. Don’t forget the boiler.”

The farmer gets two biscuits. The ExecuDad gets one, and I’ll be darned, but I can only find flakes of chicken for him. Shucks.

The line shuffles forward and I keep ladling. I’m warmer now, and I don’t think my own particular body odor is stronger than anyone else’s in here, or maybe it’s the smell of the cooked chicken that masks everything. The tables have filled up, and I think the (whisper)
Catholics
are mingling. Chicken and Biscuit Night makes more sense to me than Sunday morning services. If my father ever decides to talk to me about religion again, I’ll point that out to him. People who avoid his sermons turn up here every month.

“Kate?”

It’s Sara. “I’ve been calling and e-mailing constantly. You’ve been, like, nowhere.” She points at me. “What happened? You look terrible.”

The man behind Sara interrupts. “Excuse me, but some of us are hungry.”

Another ExecuDad. What is it with these guys? I dump some gravy on his biscuits, then Ms. Cummings appears next to me and takes my ladle. “Go ahead and eat, Kate. You must be starving.”

I take three biscuits (my wages) and an extra-large helping of chicken and gravy and scoot out of the ladle line. Sara and I take a table in the corner.

Sara strikes people as a vegetarian, save-the-whales type chick, but she loves eating meat. She just says little prayers to whatever she’s eating, thanking it for the sacrifice. She chews her first bite of chicken in silence.

Prayer’s over. She swallows.

“So why are you here?” I ask.

“Well, Mitch was IMing Travis and Travis was talking to me so I heard how you almost had a heart attack in English because you thought your dad had the letter and then I got a message from Amy and she said you blew out your knee at the track meet but she always exaggerates but since I hadn’t heard from you I figured I should come over.” She pauses to inhale. “I thought you could use some moral support.”

I plop one of my gravy-soaked biscuits on her plate. “You are the best friend in the universe. In this entire plane of reality.”


Et toi aussi, ma chérie
. Now tell me.”

I fill her in on everything that sucked about the day while we eat. The noise is at peak pitch now, the har-harhars and ho-ho-hos of good jokes told on a full stomach. The kitchen ladies come out to watch the crowd with satisfied looks on their faces. My brother is laughing with his friends and he hasn’t coughed once. Dad is working the room like a pro, stopping at each table for a joke or two, pats on the back, a few heartfelt glances. Ms. Cummings brings him a plate of food. He takes a seat between the Catholic priest and a woman in a purple sweater who can’t stop blushing.

My dad’s a real charmer. It’s not that he’s hot—just the opposite: he’s shortish, with gray hair and wrinkles. But he must beam security rays. Or maybe women get off on the man-of-God thing. There is always a divorcée or widow trying to get her claws into him. Not that they have a chance. When I was a kid, I overheard him tell somebody that he buried his heart when he buried Mom. It took me a long time to figure out what that meant.

“Is that Jell-O over there?” Sara asks.

I blink back into real time. “It’s alive,” I warn her. “You should not eat food that moves.”

She pushes away from the table and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I want three helpings.”

I tag along behind her as she walks to the dessert table. “I’m serious, Sara.”

She giggles. “Jell-O is the secret to good mental health. Oooh, look, this one has nuts.”

I shiver. Nuts do not belong in Jell-O. I take a slice of apple pie.

On the way back to our table, I catch a glimpse of red. Someone wearing a red flannel shirt is standing in the kitchen with her back toward us.

“Sara,” I hiss. “Is that Teri Litch?”

Sara looks. “Can’t be. Amy said she got arrested. The guy whose tooth she knocked out? His parents are pressing charges. Are you sure you don’t want any of this?”

“I’ll be right back.”

 

The kitchen ladies have shifted into cleanup mode. Betty stands on a step stool in front of the sink, her arms in soapy water up to her elbows. Other ladies are attacking the counters with Comet and the cutting boards with bleach. The floor has been swept and the trash removed. The boxes for shut-ins and the poor are packed and gone. There is no sign of Teri.

I was seeing things. I’ve got Teri Litch on the brain, posttraumatic stress from watching the fight in the cafeteria. I really need some sleep. I reach around Betty and take the chipped teacup off the shelf.

It’s empty. My watch is gone.

“Was Teri here?” I ask Betty.

She stops scrubbing. “That big Litch girl?”

“The one and only. Was she here?”

“She’s gone, honey,” says a woman drying a pot.

“She took my watch.”

“Oh, no,” Betty says. “She couldn’t do a thing like that. She was sweet as can be.”

Betty sends Christmas cards to mass murderers on death row.

A couple of the other ladies have slowed the pace of their scrubbing. They know Litch family stories that go back generations. The oldest woman peels off her yellow rubber gloves with a snap.

“She just left, Kate. If you hurry, you might catch her.”

2.10 Elastic Collision

I spot Teri Litch’s back crossing the graveyard. I want my watch back.

Kate = bull on a rampage. Teri = red flag.

I wait until she’s moving down the hill before I jog after her. Here’s my plan:

1. Make sure that she really has it.
2. Ask her for it. Nicely.
3. Ask her again. Firmly.
4. Walk away humiliated when she laughs.

I need a new plan.

I skirt the cemetery fence and stay low. I don’t want her to see me yet, and she might look back, though it’s unlikely, because if there was ever anybody born without a guilty conscience, it’s Formerly Tubby Teri Litch. I stick to the shadows. This is kind of fun. Maybe I could be a combination Nobel–prizewinning chemist and international spy.

Plan #2

1. Make sure she has watch.
2. Tackle her.
3. Take watch by force.
4. Run like hell.

That one might work. Statistically speaking, the probability is not out of range.

“What about the consequences?” I hear the voice of Mitchell “Afraid of His Own Shadow” Pangborn as clearly as if he were standing next to me. I look around. No Mitch. He’s not here. It’s just me and the dead people and Teri pulling out of sight at the bottom of the hill. I am hallucinating my boyfriend’s voice, another sign that I need more sleep. Consequences. Mitchell is very big on consequences, which explains his virginity. Mine, too, for that matter.

Screw it. I want my watch back. It used to be my mom’s.

I trot down the hill and crouch by the crumbling stone fence. Teri walks past the old barn. Her fists are in her pocket and her sleeves are pulled all the way down, covering her wrists. But I know she’s got it.

As she heads toward the house, I tiptoe into the shadows of the barn and crouch behind the pickup truck. This barn is just about dead. The next good storm will flatten it. The Litches sold off the last of their cows after Mr. Litch went to jail. If they had any sense, they’d sell the land, too, and get out of here.

Teri pauses on the porch steps to watch a red Toyota hatchback come up the driveway. A witness; this could be helpful. The driver gets out. It’s Ms. Cummings. Excellent—a reliable witness who will take my side no matter what.

Teri lights a cigarette while Ms. Cummings takes something out of the back seat. The smoke filters up to the dim porch light. Ms. Cummings carries a box, a shut-in chicken-and-biscuit dinner box, to the porch and speaks quietly.

Teri reaches for the doorknob. A-ha! Step one accomplished. My watch is on her wrist. I can’t believe her. Not only did she flat out steal it—from a church basement, I’d like to point out—she has the balls to wear it. I grind my feet in the dirt, unsure of what to do. Step two, “tackle her,” seems highly theoretical right now.

Teri turns toward where I’m hiding and squints through her glasses. Her left eye is bruised and swollen from the cafeteria fight. She points to me.

Damn.

“Hey, Kate!” Teri calls loudly. “You coming in?”

Ms. Cummings is startled. She looks toward the shadows. “Kate?”

Double damn. How am I going to explain this? I just wanted my watch back, then a long hot shower, a bag of Chee•tos, maybe a couple of hours on-line.

“Come on in, Katie.” Teri sounds like a carnival barker. “Meet the family.”

2.11 Half-Life

In the middle of the Litch living room there are two kitchen chairs, a couch, and a television tuned to a game show, full volume. Broken furniture is piled against the walls, along with file cabinets, a lawn tractor, and a folded-up playpen. A wicker basket of plastic fruit rests on the tractor seat—red apples, two pears, and an orange, all of them covered in crayon graffiti. The ceiling is stained brown from cigarette smoke. The arrangement is lighted by two floor lamps plugged into extension wires that snake under the couch.

“It’s a very old house,” says Ms. Cummings. “The original section must pre-date the Civil War.”

“I bet.”

Just beyond the reach of the light I can see a small rocking chair in the corner. In fact, the whole corner looks like it was set up for a little kid. The floor is covered with a brightly colored
Sesame Street
rug that is scattered with plastic blocks and metal cars. More cars and trucks are jumbled in an old Easter basket. The bookcase under the window is loaded with books and puzzles. The corner is not tidy, but it is clean.

Ms. Cummings shifts the box to her hip. “I didn’t know you were friends with Teri.”

“I’m not. She stole something from me.”

Before she can answer, Teri guides a tiny woman into the room. The woman inches across the floorboards in scuffed slippers. She’s not wearing glasses, but it’s clear she can’t see well. She keeps one hand floating lightly in the air in front of her.

Teri leads the woman to the couch. She sits, barely making a dent on the cushion. Two bobby pins keep her blonde hair out of her face. Her nose is flat and crooked, her eyes vague, her mouth thin. A pink scar interrupts her left eyebrow. It makes her look permanently confused. Even with the nice hair, this is the kind of woman you look at and think “bag lady.”

“This is my mom,” Teri says.

I look to my teacher for a clue.

“It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Litch,” Ms. Cummings says. She sets the box on the floor, steps forward, and gently squeezes one of Mrs. Litch’s hands. “I’m Amanda Cummings, from the church. We met a few weeks ago.”

Mrs. Litch’s face relaxes. “Yes. Thank you for coming.” Her voice is too young for her face. “Have a seat, please.”

“No, I can’t. I just dropped a few things off for dinner.”

“For just a minute?”

Ms. Cummings sits on a kitchen chair. “Okay, but I don’t want to intrude.”

BOOK: Catalyst
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