My Life Next Door (28 page)

“I’m not sure sugar counts as recyclable. And definitely not pipe cleaners!” he says, glaring at me as I slap white paint on egg cartons, transforming them into icebergs, which are going to float in our fake aluminum-foil arctic waters.

The kitchen door bursts open and Andy storms through, without explanation, in floods of tears, her wails echoing down the stairs.

“I can’t get these cubes to stay together. They keep melting when I put the glue on them,” Duff says crossly, swirling his paintbrush in the puddle of Elmer’s, which has just dissolved another sugar cube.

“Maybe if we put clear fingernail polish on them?” I suggest.

“That’ll melt too,” Duff says gloomily.

“We could just try,” I offer.

George, crunching, suggests we build the walls out of marshmallows instead. “I’m sort of sick of sugar cubes.”

Duff reacts with a rage out of all proportion. “George. I’m not building this as a
snack
for you. Marshmallows don’t look
anything like glass bricks in a wall. I need to do well on this—if I do, I get a ribbon and next month’s camp costs half off.”

“Let’s ask Dad,” Harry suggests. “Maybe boat shellac? Or something?”

“My
life
is
over,
” Andy sobs from upstairs.

“I think I should go talk to her,” I tell the boys. “You call your father—or Jase.”

I head up the stairs toward the echoing wails, grabbing a box of Kleenex from the bathroom before I go into Andy and Alice’s room.

She’s lying facedown on her bed, in her soggy bathing suit, having cried so hard that there’s a big damp circle on her pillow. I sit down next to her, handing her a wad of Kleenex.

“It’s over. Everything’s over.”

“Kyle?” I ask, grimacing, because I know that’s what it has to be.

“He…he broke up with me!” Andy raises her head, her hazel eyes swimming with tears. “By…
Post-it note
. He stuck it on my lifejacket while I was practicing rigging the jib.”

“You’re kidding,” I say, which I know is the wrong thing to say, but honestly.

Andy reaches under the pillow and pulls out a neon orange square that reads:
Andrea. It’s been fun, but now I want 2 go with Jade Whelan. See ya, Kyle.

“Suave.”

“I
know
!” Andy bursts into a fresh round of tears. “I’ve loved him for three years, ever since he taught me how to make a slip knot on the first day of sailing camp…and he can’t even say this to my face! ‘See ya’?! Jade Whelan? She used to take boys
behind the piano in fourth-grade assembly and show them her bra! She didn’t even need one! I hate her. I hate him.”

“You should,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

I rub Andy’s back in little circles much the way I did Nan’s. “The first boy I kissed was this guy Taylor Oliveira. He told everyone at school I didn’t know what to do with my tongue.”

Andy gives a faint watery giggle. “Did you?”

“I had no clue. But neither did Taylor. He used his like a toothbrush. Yuck. Maybe because his dad was a dentist.”

Andy giggles again, then looks down and sees the Post-it note. The tears resume.

“He was my first kiss. I waited for somebody I really cared about…and now it turns out he was a jerk. Now I can’t take it back. I wasted my first kiss on a jerk!” She curls into a ball on the bed, sobbing even louder.

“Shut up, Andy, I can’t concentrate on my project!” Duff calls up the stairs.

“My world is coming to an end,” she retorts loudly, “so I don’t particularly care!”

At this point Patsy wanders in, having recently learned both to climb out of her crib and to remove her diaper, in whatever state it may be. In this case, fully loaded. She waves it triumphantly at me. “Poooooooooop.”

“Ugh,” Andy moans. “I’m gonna throw up.”

“I’ll get it.” I reflect on the fact that two months ago I had never come in contact with a diaper. Now I could practically teach a Learning Annex course on the many ways of dealing with any potential toileting disaster.

Patsy watches me with detached curiosity as I clean up
her wall (
ew
), change her sheets (
again, ew
), plunk her into a short bath, and re-diaper and clothe her in something sanitary. “Where poop?” she asks mournfully, craning her neck to examine her bottom.

“Gee-ooorge!” a furious voice bellows from the kitchen. I go down to find that George has used the hammer from his Bob the Builder tool kit to smash the remaining sugar cubes while Duff was on the phone with his father. Now George, spindly legs flying, is running out the door, wearing nothing but Superman underpants, with Duff, angrily brandishing the phone as though it’s a weapon, careening after him.

I chase them up the driveway just as the Bug pulls in and Jase climbs out, all loose-limbed grace.

“Hey now.” He reaches out to me. We stand in the driveway with Jase kissing me as though the fact that Harry is making vomiting noises and Duff is about to kill George doesn’t matter at all. Then he loops his arm around my neck, turns to his brothers, and says, “Okay, what’s going on?”

In no time he has it all sorted out. Duff is painting Popsicle sticks white to replace the crumbling sugar walls. Andy’s eating a Milky Way and watching
Ella Enchanted
on the big bed in her parents’ room. Pizza Palace is on its way. Harry’s making a gigantic pillow house cage for Patsy and George, who’re pretending to be baby tigers.

“Now,” Jase observes, “before some or all of that falls apart again, come here.” He leans back against the counter, pulling me between his thighs and smoothing his hands up and down my back.

It’s all so good. My body is singing-happy, my days are full of good moments, my life feels more right than it ever has been before. And that can be, I learn, how it happens. You’re walking along on this path, dazzled by how perfect it is, how great you feel, and then just a few forks in the road and you are lost in a place so bad you never could have imagined it.

Chapter Thirty-six

When I clock out from the B&T the next day, I’m surprised to see the Jetta pulling into the parking lot, and Tim beckoning to me from inside. “I need you,” he calls, pulling up—illegally—in the fire zone.

“What for?” I ask, nonetheless climbing into the car, awkwardly pulling down my short skirt.

“I bagged out on your mom. Well, mostly on Clay. I called and quit. Now I need to get my shit from the office and I need a shield. A—how much do you weigh?—one-hundred-ten-pound shield.”

“One twelve,” I correct. “I don’t even think Clay’s there. He and my mom were doing some factory thing.”

Tim knocks a Marlboro out of the pack stored in the sun visor, sticking it into the corner of his mouth. “I know. I know his schedule.” He taps a finger against his temple. “Maybe I just need you along so I’ll actually do this and not turn chickenshit at the last minute. Maybe I need you to give me a shove in—and out—the door. You gonna help me out?”

I nod. “Sure. But if you’re looking for a shield, Jase is a lot bigger than I am.”

“Yeah, yeah. But lover boy’s busy today, as I’m sure you know.”

I’m not about to admit that I do. Instead I tug my hair out of its braid.

“Man, you’re such a babe.” Tim shakes his head. “Why do all the hot girls want the jocks and the good boys? We losers are the ones who need you.”

I check his expression warily. I’ve never before had any impression Tim was attracted to me.
Maybe my new non-virgin state shows. Maybe I radiate smokin’ sex now
. Somehow I doubt this, especially in my fetching crested lifeguard jacket and navy spandex skirt.

“Don’t stress.” Tim finally lights the dangling cigarette. “I don’t wanna be that lame guy who comes on to the girl he can’t have. I’m just sayin’.” He makes a wide—and illegal—U-turn to go more quickly in the direction of Mom’s local office. “Wanna smoke?” He drops the Marlboros in my lap.

“I don’t. You know that, Tim.”

“What do you do with your time—with your
hands
—that’s the thing I can’t figure out.” Tim takes one hand off of the wheel and shakes it at me vigorously, as though he has an uncontrollable twitch. “What do you hold on to?”

I feel my face heat.

Tim smirks at me. “Oh,
riiight
. I forgot. Besides lover boy and his—”

I hold up my hand in a
stop
motion, changing the subject before he can finish his sentence. “Is it still hard, Tim, not drinking and stuff? It’s been, what, a month?”

“Thirty-three days. Not that I’m counting. And yeah, of course it’s frickin’ hard. Things only come easy to people like you and Mr. Perfect. For me, it’s like every day—a million times a day—I want to get back together with that scorchin’ girl, aka the quart of Bacardi or the bag of coke or whatever, even though I know she’s only going to screw me over again.”

“Tim, you’ve got to get over this ‘everything’s easy for everyone else’ stuff. It’s not true and it makes you boring.”

Tim whistles. “Channeling Jase, are you?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s just…It’s just watching you and Nan…” I trail off. Is there any point to telling him I know he used her work? What does it matter now? He got expelled. Nan got the awards.

“Watching Nan do what?” Tim asks, picking up on the way my voice wobbles when I say her name. He tosses the butt of the first cigarette out the window, reaching for another.

I hedge. “She’s so stressed out, this summer, already, about colleges.…”

“Yeah, well, we Masons do obsession and compulsion well.” Tim snorts. “I generally stick to compulsion and let Nano handle the obsession, but sometimes we swap. I love my sister, but there’s no rest for either of us. I’m always there to provide her with an object lesson of how much it sucks to screw up, and she’s always there to remind me how miserable she is looking perfect. And, speaking of miserable, here we are.”

He wheels into the parking lot by Mom’s office.

Even though Mom’s schedule is jam-packed, I’m somehow still surprised to find the office is full of people, in assembly lines, folding pamphlets, putting them in envelopes and
putting on labels and stamps. People really believe in her, enough to sit in stuffy offices doing boring tasks during the most beautiful days of Connecticut’s all-too-short summer.

As we walk in, two older women at a big central table look up and give Tim broad, motherly smiles.

“We heard a rumor you were quitting on us, but we knew that couldn’t be true,” the taller, thinner one says. “Grab a chair, Timothy dear.”

Tim puts his arm around her bony shoulder. “Sorry, Dottie. The rumor is reality. I’m leaving to spend more time with my family.” He says the last in his Moviefone voice.

“And this is…” The other woman squints at me. “Ah! The senator’s daughter.” She cuts her eyes to him. “And your—girlfriend? She’s very pretty.”

“No, alas, she belongs to another, Dottie. I just pine for her from afar.”

He starts cramming papers and—I notice—office supplies into his backpack. I roam around the office, picking up brochures and buttons advertising Mom, then putting them back down. Finally, I wander into her quiet office.

Mom likes her comforts. Her office chair is top-of-the-line ergonomic, fine leather. The desk is no gray metal one from office supply but a rich carved oak antique. There’s a vase of red roses and a picture of Mom with me and Tracy in matching satin-and-velvet Christmas outfits.

There’s also a big basket of gardening tools, gift-wrapped in shiny green cellophane, with a note saying
We at Riggio’s Quality Lawns are Grateful for your support
.

A couple of tickets to a Broadway show thumbtacked to the
corkboard:
Allow us to treat you to some quality entertainment in thanks for all you do,
from some people named Bob and Marge Considine.

A business card saying
Thanks for giving our bid serious consideration,
from Carlyle Contracting.

I don’t know campaign rules, but all this doesn’t seem right to me. I’m standing there, with a sick feeling in my stomach, when Tim strolls in, backpack hitched onto one shoulder, cardboard box in hand. “C’mon, kid. Let’s get ghost before we have to deal with your ma or Clay. Word is they’re on their way here now. Being on the side of the Morally Superior is new to me, and I might screw up my lines.”

Once we’re outside, Tim throws his box of stuff and backpack into the backseat of the Jetta, then flips the passenger seat forward so I can climb in.

“How bad is Clay?” I ask quietly. “I mean, is he a sleaze for real?”

“I did Google him,” Tim admits. “Helluva impressive resume for a guy who’s only thirty-six.”

Thirty-six? Mom’s forty-six.
So he’s young. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s bad.
Mom listens to him like he’s the one true frequency, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad either. But…but what’s up with the double agent? This is a tiny race in Connecticut, not the Cold War.

“How do you think he got so high up so fast?” I ask Tim. “I mean, really—thirty-six? And if he’s this big star in the Republican firmament, why is he taking the time to help out this dinky state senatorial race? That’s got to be a blip on the radar.”