No Ordinary Life (2 page)

2

F
amily Services, whooee,” Bo says, looking up from the awl he's using to make a new hole in the harness on his lap.

Bo, owner of Bojangles Stables, is my unlikely best friend. Five foot six on a tall day, a day when his arthritis isn't acting up and crimping him at the waist, he's black and wrinkled as an overripe raisin, has an opinion about everything, and isn't afraid to share it. He was the first person I met when Sean and I moved to Yucaipa twelve years ago and has been part of my life ever since.

“Ain't those the people they call on
Law and Order
when they find kids chained to their beds and eating cat food?”

“You're not helping.”

“Sure I am. I'm telling you that going to live with your mom to avoid Family Services is a good idea. Your mom is good people.”

It's been two days since my meeting at the school, the threat of Ms. Glenn's visit compelling me to finally make the decision I've been putting off for months.

“My mom and I can't survive five minutes together. How am I going to live with her?”

“Because there ain't no other choice. Sean ain't coming back, and you in a pickle. That's life, full of more pickles than cucumbers, but that's the way it is.”

“He called last night.”

Bo's hairless brows rise, his black eyes looking straight into the back of my brain. “You talk to him?”

I shake my head. “I hung up.”

Bo nods his approval and returns to his work.

I smooth the muzzle of the horse in the stall beside me and bite back the tears that have threatened every other second since Sean's call.

Hey, beautiful
, he said when I answered, the greeting slow and gravelly, thick with drink and emotion. In the background, there was traffic, and instinctively I wondered where he was. It had been a favorite game of ours, me guessing where he was calling from. Before he would leave for a trip, I would memorize his route, tracing it with my finger in our old atlas and reciting the names of the towns he'd be driving through so, when he called, my guess would be close.

Last night I didn't guess. I said nothing, the whoosh of cars and trucks behind him filling the silence.

How are they?
he said finally, and that's when I hung up.

“You tell him you was leaving?” Bo asks, working another hole through the tough leather, his hands impressively deft and strong for a man so old.

“I told you, I hung up,” I snap.

A smile plays on his thick lips. “Finally getting some fire in your belly. That's good.”

I sneer at him, and his smile grows.

“Mom, wlook,” Molly says, waddling into the barn, the bib of her overalls stuffed with apricots, grinning like she just scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl. Gus, our mangy mutt, stands beside her, his tail wagging as if he had something to do with the accomplishment.

“Theyw're for Mischief,” she says proudly, sticking out her lumpy belly.

Mischief is a horse that doesn't belong to Emily, my oldest, but who Emily thinks of as hers.

“Awre Em and Tom awlmost home?” Molly asks, toddling forward awkwardly, her arms wrapped around her stash.

I look at my watch. “A few more minutes. Should we wait for them by the road?”

“Okey dokey, jokey smokey,” she says, spinning around to change direction, the extra weight throwing off her center of gravity and pulling her around quicker than she expects, causing her to topple over and lose her load.

She busts up laughing as Gus leaps around, barking with delight. Bo and I laugh with her. The kid is downright hilarious.

Molly frowns when she puts the last apricot back in her bib and it causes another to pop out. She does it again with the same result, then again and again, making herself smile with the game. I swear the kid can make fun out of anything.

“How about we give this one to Mitsy?” I say, snatching the one that just plopped on the ground.

“Sounds wlike a pwlan, Stan.”

I hold the apricot out to the mare beside me, and the horse gobbles it up, and again I need to pinch my nose to stop the emotions. In two days we will be gone—no more apricots, no more horses, no more Bo.

“It's not forever,” Bo says, reading my thoughts.

“What's not fowrevewr?” Molly asks.

“Nothing, baby,” I say quickly, painting on a smile. “Let's go wait for Em and Tom.”

I have yet to tell the kids we're leaving. I thought about breaking the news last night but decided to give it one more day. Today is Friday, our favorite day, the day Emily gets to ride Mischief and the day the neighbors come to the stables when the sun goes down for a weekly cookout. Tomorrow is soon enough to tell them we're leaving the only life they've ever known.

We get to the corner as the bus wheezes to a stop. The door opens and Tom ambles down first, his head bent so his gold hair drapes across his face. His backpack dangles from his narrow shoulder, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.

“Hey, buddy,” I say.

He lifts his head and smiles but doesn't answer. I don't expect him to. His voice won't return until the bus is out of sight.

“Wlook, Tom,” Molly says. “I got apwricots for Mischief.”

He gives her a thumbs-up.

Emily bounds down behind him, her colt legs and amber hair flying. A boy taunts her from an open window, and she sticks her tongue out at him. Then one of her best girlfriends yells, “Love you.”

“Love you more,” Emily says back, the two of them declaring their BFF status openly in the way only eleven-year-old girls can do.

The bus rolls away, and Emily skips to where we are. “Hey, Itch. What you got there?”

Itch is Emily's nickname for Molly. On account of Molly's oversized eyes, Molly has been called Bug since she was born. I call her Love Bug or Herbie. Tom has stuck with Bug. And Emily alternates between Itch or Pest depending on her mood.

“I got these fowr Mischief,” Molly announces proudly.

“Good job,” Emily says, patting Molly's apricot belly. “How about we put them in my backpack?”

“Good idea,” Molly says, undoing her bib so the apricots tumble to the ground.

As the three of us squat to put the apricots in Emily's backpack, Tom throws a stick for Gus, laughing as Gus, uncertain of his target, attempts to retrieve the root of a tree instead of the stick, tugging at it with all his might.

“Mom, look,” Tom says, pointing to the comedy, his first words since he got home, totally unaware he said them.

Like a switch, his voice has returned, and relief floods my heart as it does every day when those first blessed words escape. I'm so worried that one day his ability to talk will dry up altogether, not only at school but at home as well.

Beside me, Emily fills me in on her day. I call her the queen of Ridgeview Elementary School, little miss popular, a kazillion friends, captain of every team, class president. Today they dissected worms in science. None of the girls in her group would touch it, so she got to do the cutting. She tells me about the small stomach called a gizzard, and how the intestine was filled with dirt because that's what earthworms eat, and how Willy Jones tried to freak her out by wiping worm guts on her arm, but that she got him back by putting her dissected worm in his lunch.

In the distance, a big rig rumbles toward the freeway, causing Emily to stop her monologue and snap her head toward the sound. She squints down the road and I squint with her, both of us straining to see if the cab is yellow with black stripes.

It's not, and my heart resumes its pulse, my jaw sliding forward as I pretend to be glad it was someone else's truck, that I didn't want it to be Sean.

Emily looks at the dirt, not concealing her disappointment at all.

I put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head, the air heavier as the reality of our life slogs back into focus. He is gone, and unless a miracle occurs, in two days, we'll be gone as well.

3

E
mily is riding Mischief, and Molly, Tom, and I are in the barn with Bo. Molly clambers onto Bo's lap and rests her hand on his shoulder. Bo doesn't look up, but simply adjusts his position to accommodate her weight and threads his right arm around her so he can continue his work.

Tom shifts from foot to foot like he needs to go potty, but I know his restlessness has nothing to do with his bladder.

When Bo finishes punching the last hole in the harness, he says, “What you got?”

Tom puffs out his chest and says with great theatrics, “
I
challenge
you
…” He points from himself to Bo for added effect. “To a throwdown.”

“Motown thwrowdown,” Molly squeals, leaping off Bo's knee and clapping her hands.

Bo's left eyebrow lifts. “You sure?” he says. “If I remember right, last time you challenge me to a throwdown, you and your sister got your lily white heinies whooped, and the two of you ended up mucking out stalls for the rest of the day.”

Molly's brow furrows as she listens. Bo's thick-tongued words make him difficult to understand even if you're older than four and have mastered the English language.

I feel Tom's heart pick up its pace. A Motown throwdown is a dance challenge. Loser pays. If Bo loses, which isn't often, he shells out five bucks each to Tom and Molly. If Tom and Molly lose, they need to clean five stalls. To even the playing field, only one of the two kids needs to beat Bo, and they each get three mess-ups before they're out.

Tom nods. He's ready. He's been practicing every day for a week. I know his motivation. The Croon just released a new album, and he's hoping to earn enough money to buy their new songs for his iPod shuffle. Molly's motivation is always the same, money for chocolate ice cream from the Baskin-Robbins downtown.

Bo stands and stretches his arms over his head, his body creaking as he forces his ancient bones to unfurl.

“Time for a hoedown Motown thwrowdown showdown,” Molly says.

Bo is the one who turned Molly onto rhyming, and since she could string two words together, she's been Dr. Seussing her comments. Each time they're together, he gives her new rhyming phrases to add to her repertoire.

Like now, he answers with, “Slow down, Motown, old Bo need to go down for a few lowdowns before he's ready for a throwdown.”

Molly grins ear to ear, her eyes flicking back and forth as she catalogues the new rhymes for later use. Bo bends over to touch his toes, straightens, then whirls his hips around a few times.

Before Bo went into the horse boarding business, he had been a dancer, and when he got too old to dance, a choreographer. He's too bent to do any professional boogying these days, but whenever he and Tom are together, he teaches Tom what he knows. And like Molly does with everything, she just joins right in.

“Okay, honkers, let's get this on,” he says.

He starts off with a simple shuffle-hop-step that Molly easily imitates then tops with a toe-heel scuffle. Tom goes next, adding a three-beat tap.

On and on they go, round after round, each adding a step or two until they're tapping and kicking and twirling a routine worthy of Fred Astaire. Molly messes up way more than three times, but Bo generously only notices every third one, causing Molly to nearly squeak each time she gets away with her blunder unnoticed.

Bo finally calls Molly on her third miss right after Tom gets his second. “Aw,” she says, really believing she had a shot at it. She shuffles over to where I sit on a bucket and plops to the dirt beside me.

“Could still call it off,” Bo offers Tom.

“You scared?” Tom taunts.

“Whooee, boy. Fine, have it your way. Them stalls calling your name. Your turn.”

Tom nails the routine that Molly just missed then tacks on a move I've never seen before, a bizarre hip thrust that makes it look like his legs have left their sockets.

Because Bo is a fossil, ground flopping, head spinning, and gymnastics are off-limits. But this isn't any of those things. It's just a bizarre move that seems to require the suspension of gravity and the liquefaction of muscle and bones.

Tom grins like a Cheshire cat. He planned this as his kill move.

Bo cracks up, a cackling laugh that shakes his whole body. “You think you gonna beat me with that?” he says. “I taught Michael that move.”

And sure enough, Bo not only matches the routine and Tom's kill move; he performs the move better than Tom did, his chicken legs literally rubberizing as he thrusts out first the left then the right.

Tom's face deflates, his features melting with his disappointment.

“Shoot,” Bo says, scratching his bald head. “Dang it, I lose.”

Tom's brow furrows, then his eyes bulge and he shouts, “You lose. You didn't add a move. You lose. I win.”

“I win too,” Molly says, leaping to her feet.

“Mmm, mmm,” Bo says, shaking his head. “Must be losin' my touch.”

From his front pocket, he fishes out a money clip and peels off a five for each of them.

“Now let me show you how to do that move right. Shake out them vanilla genes and pour in a little smokin' hot chocolate.”

Molly giggles. I don't think she understood a word he said, but the way he said it was worth a laugh.