Going Nowhere Faster (8 page)

So, we fed the ducks (Wonder Bread was a huge hit, spelt, on the other hand, was widely dismissed), and then walked around the lake. Ellen and Olivia played and Chopper and I just sort of stood and watched, trying to force ourselves to believe it was actually happening.

At noon, I bought us franks and sodas from a vendor ($11.14 with tax. I had $12.00 on me).

“These aren’t tofu!” Olivia cried with delight, wolfing hers.

Ellen raised an eyebrow. I shrugged.

“I didn’t know that was your parents’ shop, the natural foods place?”

“Good,” I said.

“They sell a lot of . . . umm . . . interesting stuff.”

“You don’t have to pretend,” I said. “Believe me, I know just how interesting it is.”

Ellen smiled and leaned against me, in a
Ha-ha we’re all in this ludicrous parents thing together
sort of way. I leaned back in an
I’d donate my liver to science if you’d let me kiss you
sort of way.

“Mom’s going to be mad,” Olivia said. “I think I got mustard on my dress.”

Her little face looked so tragic, a big splotch of yellow on her chest, I almost laughed, which would really have made her cry. But then Ellen went into action. She bought a soda water and poured it on the stain and wiped it with napkins and Chopper licked at it, and between them, they almost got it all off.

“Thanks. Thanks.
THANKS!
” Olivia said.

“You’re welcome, welcome,” Ellen answered.

Olivia ran down to the water in big happy relieved circles and Ellen and I sat on a bench, alone, finally.

Saysomethingsaysomethingsaysomething.

“So you went out with Chad Chilton, huh?”

Nonononononononononono!

Ellen laughed. She wiped her brow and wiped her lips and shook her head and coughed. “I cannot believe that’s still going around.”

“What?”

“That rumor . . . it’s like the guy with a hook for a hand grabbing on to the couple’s car when they’re making out, you know? Some kind of legend?”

Makingout?Didshesaymakingout?

“So you didn’t?”

“
That
guy?” Ellen laughed. “He’s, like, older than my dad. . . . Wasn’t he in eighth grade five years in a row?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying on the idea that she was telling the truth. It fit pretty good.

ChadbadChadbadChadbadChad.

“Okay, he comes up to me in the hallway once, right? Not twice, once, and asks a question like
‘Are we having potpie for lunch’
or
‘Is this the way to detention?
or something, and then all of a sudden I was dating him . . . all these people coming up to me,
‘So you’re going out with Chad Chilton, huh?’
. . . I’m like,
no,
but it didn’t matter. The rumor started and that was that. It’s actually pretty hilarious.”

Yeah. Hilarious.
Hahahahahahahaha.

Relief washed over me. And under me. It was like six Christmases, all at once. It was like an Easter morning where the bunny actually showed up with baskets and eggs and then we hung out in the backyard tossing a ball around or working on geometry proofs.

“Well, I bought it,” I said, feeling stupid.

“You and everyone else.”

“I think he wants to beat me up,” I admitted. “Or run me over.”

She laughed. “Chad? I doubt it. He’s a pussycat.”

“I thought you didn’t know him.”

She played with the buckle of her shoe. “Well, you can just tell.”

“You can?”

We watched Olivia, down by the water, demonstrating proper crust-tossing form for a little boy whose bread arcs almost immediately improved.

“I’ve heard some things about you, too,” Ellen said.

“Some things? Like what?”

“Hmm . . . lessee . . . ,” she said, drawing it out, making me wait. “You’re the sneaker kid, right? Duckfoot?”

The sneaker kid?

I nodded.

“You don’t really have webbed feet, do you? Is that why we’re at the lake? Do you live here?”

“Well, I . . .”

She laughed and grabbed my arm. “I’m kidding . . .”

“Oh, right,” I said, blushing.

“And you’re also the math kid.”

The math kid?

What was the square root of “loser” again?

“And the chess kid.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Guilty on all counts.”

“So what’s five thousand one hundred and nineteen times sixty-two?”

I resisted the urge to show off.

For a second.

“Three hundred and seventeen thousand three hundred and seventy-eight.”

“Wow,” she said.

“Yeah, wow. Math.”

She frowned. “Why put yourself down?”

I shrugged. Dr. Felder would have said my shrug was the product of an unconscious need for martyrdom. I would have said my shrug was the product on an unconscious need for a long period of Sunday afternoon Frenching.

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s actually pretty amazing.”

“It is?”

“Of course,” she laughed. “Don’t you know how lucky you are?”

Lucky?
I thought about Chad Chilton. I thought about my mother, and my name, and my failed entry into the collegiate application process. I thought about my webbed feet and how I’d choked in the finals of the Yam Bowl.

“Okay, but if you know about all the other stuff, why are you here with me?”

“What’s so wrong with the other stuff?”

I didn’t know. I held up my hands.

“So how’s Miles?” she asked.

I was about to answer when Olivia ran up, holding some dandelions that had mostly fallen apart. “Ellen?” she said, all easy and straightforward and normal. “I like you.”

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. So simple. Just say it. See what happens.

“Thanks, Big O.”

Ellen picked Olivia up and put her on her lap. They goofed around for a while. Chopper looked at me, annoyed, wondering why I didn’t pick him up and do the same.

“Take one guess,” I told him. He licked a snaggletooth and resumed sniffing my leg. I wanted to be with Ellen alone. More. I decided we could drop Olivia off and then go somewhere. Anywhere.

“Okay, ready?” I said, looking at my watch, which I wasn’t wearing, so really, I was just sitting there looking at my wrist. “Time for your nap, Olivia.”

I was expecting her to protest, some feet kicking, maybe some crying. Instead, Olivia said, “Okay, Stanny” and, when Ellen turned, gave me a wink. It was too much. It made me want to put her in my back pocket and run away to Burma so we could live on the beach (with Ellen, too) just being smart and funny and understanding each other all the time.

But then, of course, the other shoe fell.

The yang to my yin.

The cross to my skull.

The chute to my ladder.

Because when we got to the parking lot, parked right in the center, was the Fry Mobile.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” Ellen asked.

“Grrr . . . ,” Chopper said.

“Mom!” Olivia cried, and ran and hugged my mother’s leg as she stepped out the driver’s side door. She was wearing tie-dyed overalls and her hair was up in some enormous work scarf. She wore big mud-spattered boots and knee pads and looked like some crazed escapee from a lumberjack camp. Of course, she immediately began inspecting the mustard stain on Olivia’s dress. “You didn’t have a
hot dog
hot dog, did you?”

“Let me handle this,” I whispered.

Ellen nodded, unconvinced. I didn’t blame her. My mother was a monument of organic righteousness. She was a pillar of vegan zeal. Also, as we got closer, the Fry Mobile hefted and wheezed and made all the odd inscrutable gurgles it always made. Chopper immediately began licking the bumper. There was no way I was going to let Ellen get in that car.

“Hi, Mrs. Smith,” Ellen said brightly.

“What are you
doing
here, Mom?” I asked.

My mother gave Ellen a big smile. “Your mom called, hon. She was worried you’d forgotten your insulin.”

Ellen blushed.

“Insulin?” Olivia said. “What’s that?

“Shhh,” I said, picking her up and snapping her into the car seat.

“Ellen’s a diabetic,” my mother confirmed, to no one in particular. I looked at her with genuine awe. Not even five minutes and she’d already broken the sound barrier for obliviousness. I had the urge to give her a leather jacket and a medal and sign her up as a spokesman for Quaker State.

“It’s okay,” Ellen said, “but I didn’t forget.” She pulled from her little purse an even littler purse that held the medicine.

“Oh, good,” my mother said, although there was clearly nothing good about it, or just about anything else on the face of the planet.

“I don’t care if you’re diabetic,” I whispered, trying to make it better.

Ellen gave me an odd look. “Why
would
you?”

Oh, crap.

“I didn’t mean —”

“Well, since I’m here
anyway,
” my mother interrupted, “why don’t I give you two a ride home?”

“NO!” I said, biting the tip of my tongue, which hurt. “We’ll walk.”

“Nonsense.” My mother laughed, playing with her hoop earring, which was the size of a manhole cover. It was impossible to take a hint if you had no idea it was there.

“No, really,” Ellen said. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, who’s first?” my mother said, clapping farm-calloused hands together.

“Mom . . . ,” I began.

”C’mon! Up and in!” She giggled, waving us toward the door.

I swallowed hard. Her arms were long and striated and tan from working in the garden. In fact, she was one giant muscle from head to toe from not having eaten a
morsel
of anything that wasn’t Certified Healthy for the last twenty-five years. She was in better shape than Jack LaLanne. She was in better shape than Arnold. My mother could grab Chad Chilton by the neck with one hand and make him weep like a baby.

“Okay. Sure,” Ellen said, frightened.

“Great!” my mother said, as if the outcome were never in doubt. Chopper knew which side his fake-beef tofu was buttered, and scrabbled his fat butt into the backseat. I looked at Ellen, apologizing as much as the side to side movement of my pupils would allow. She shrugged, pushing Chopper as far as he would go, and then got in next to him.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, my mother turned off her book on tape (at least the twentieth biography of Che Guevara she’d read that I was aware of), and eyed us in the rearview. I was mentally preparing to deflect the
We took to the streets, We changed this country, We stopped Vietnam
reverie that seemed to be coming, but she shifted gears on me.

“So, what do they call it now, anyway?”

“What?”

“Like ‘going out,’ or whatever?”

The worst. An absolute disaster.

”God, Mom!” I said, longing for Vietnam after all.

She laughed and wound long graying hair around two fingers. “You know, Ellen, Stan never said anything about a girlfriend to me.” She shook her head comically, gesturing toward Olivia. “Of course, he never says much of anything, at least not anymore. It was a different story when he was a boy.” She paused, for a second, a one-woman Charge of the Light Brigade. “I’ll have to show you some pictures sometime, Ellen! He was such a little cutie!”

I envisioned myself encased in a block of Lucite, like a paperweight. It was peaceful. And airless.

“Umm . . . sure . . . ,” Ellen said.

“I know! You can come over for tacos!” my mother offered, as the Fry-O-Lator swerved in the road. “I make great tacos. How about Friday? What are you doing then?”

“Ummm . . . I’ll have to . . .” Ellen said, stalling hard, but it didn’t matter, because my mother was already onto another thought. I could see it in her eyes, unfocused in the rearview. What was coming? A story about me wetting the bed?
No, too obvious.
Me not shaving yet?
That had potential.
Seeing Dr. Felder?
Conceivably.

“Oh! I know what I wanted to ask!” My mother reached back and patted Ellen’s knee confidentially. “Do we need to talk about protection?”

The Atom Bomb.

The Apocalypse.

Ellen’s eyes were wide open, a thousand-yard stare. She looked like someone had hit her in the stomach with a four iron.

“No? Ha-ha, okay. You know, when I was your age, we used to go parking, too. . . . It’s funny that now you feed the ducks. Ha-ha, things change, huh? Of course,
my generation
had to grow up fast, not like you guys, everything free and easy.”

Ellen turned away, looking out — or at least attempting to look out — the hot-wing spattered window. Even Olivia, half-asleep in the car seat, tried to deflect the nightmare. “Mom, can I have frogurt for dessert tonight?”

“Sure, honey.” My mother pinched her cheek. “Oh! I know what I wanted to ask! Eleanor, were you involved in this
party
the other night? Your mother and I had a little talk about it, and I have to say, I really do not approve
at all.
”

Chopper punctuated her disapproval. Twice.

I held my breath. Ellen held her breath. We were at least ten streets from her house. The Fry Mobile seemed to creep even slower than usual.

“Umm . . . ,” Ellen said. “Ummm . . .”

“Breathe through your mouth,” I whispered.

My mother rambled on. “Well, I assume your behavior was better than
Stanley’s.”

Ellen looked at me quizzically. It was the final blow. The nadir.
Stanley?

“I mean, he came home and started singing! Right there in the middle of the lawn!” My mother hummed a few off-key bars of “Eleanor Rigby.” “
All the lonely la-la . . . where-do they la-la from? . . .”

“Mom?”

“. . . Father McKenzie . . . writing a sermon . . .”

“Mom!”

“. . . do they all belong? . . .”

Chopper began to howl, joining in on the chorus. I groaned, squeezing my head between my hands as hard as I could.

It was not nearly hard enough.

FIVE PLACES I WOULD RATHER HAVE BEEN:

1. Torture volunteer in Turkish prison training film

2. Raw snail-gargling in France

3. On “The Dentists of Southeast Asia” month-long tour