She's Come Undone (14 page)

“You can look,” I said. “Come on in.”

He had on his cutoffs and nothing else. I looked away. “Man, this heat, huh? You could fry a steak up there on our kitchen linoleum.”

I yanked open the cabinet drawer where Grandma kept tools. “Is it in there?”

His hands fished among the tools, held fistfuls of them. I slid my flip-flops on and off my feet as I watched him. “Everything but,” he said.

“Oh. Well, sorry.”

“That's okay. Motor's probably shot anyway. Just thought I'd crack her open and take a look since I don't have anything better to do.”

“My mother said Rita switched shifts.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks. Oh, by the way. Let me know if you ever want a ride to school. I passed you this morning. I go right by there.”

“You did? You do? Okay, thanks.”

The screen door slapped shut again. The side stairs creaked. I went back to my science chapter.

He was up there on their tiny porch. I heard him whistling.

I washed my face in the kitchen sink, then went up to my room and changed into my pink seersucker blouse. Back downstairs I yanked the fan cord so hard, I thought for a second it was going to snap off. I coiled it around my wrist, slid on my flip-flops, and headed up to him.

He was on the porch floor, his legs dangling over the edge. The only clear thing was the burning end of his cigarette. “You can borrow this one if you want,” I said, holding out the fan. “I'm not really using it.”

“Oh, that's okay . . . unless you're sure?”

“Here.”

There was an unfinished pyramid of beer cans next to him. He
balanced his cigarette out over the edge of the floor and reached for the fan. “You're a sweetheart,” he said. “How about a Coke? Dish of ice cream?”

“No thanks.”

“You sure?”

“Well . . .” I laughed. “Ice cream, maybe.”

He got up and went inside. I turned and watched his bare back as he moved around the kitchen.

“How's school treating you?” he called out. “All we got is vanilla.”

“That's fine,” I said.

I hung my legs over the edge of the porch and shook off my flip-flops. They fell, without a sound, to the ground below. Across the street, Roberta's light went out. I picked up Jack's cigarette and rolled it between my thumb and finger. An inch of ash fell away.

He came out holding my ice cream in one hand and Grandma's whirring fan in the other, a new can of beer in the crook of his arm. He'd plugged the fan into an extension cord that ran back inside. I pushed over and made room for him, sitting cross-legged with the beer cans in front of me.

“How can you tell when you've got an elephant hiding out in your refrigerator?” he said. He sat down next to me and took a swig of beer. His furry leg brushed my leg.

I shrugged.

“There's a set of tracks through the butter.”

My laugh wasn't my natural one. “You crack me up,” I said. “I love listening to your show.”

He gave me a wide smile but said nothing. He sipped more beer. The fan sounded incredibly loud.

“I'm glad somebody out there does,” he finally said. “Station manager says my humor's too—what was his word? Fanciful. Says I've got to get a better understanding of the middle-aged New England audience.”

He took several long drinks from his beer can, then reached in
front of me and added it to his pyramid. “If he doesn't renew my contract, I'm fucked.”

The word made me flinch.

“You should be on a station that plays
decent
music,” I said. “You're too good for those old farts.”

“Now what would your grandmother say if she heard that?” he said.

“Speaking of old farts,” I said.

He let go a laugh. “Aw, come on. She's a nice old lady.”

“That's what
you
think. My mother had this brother who died when he was nineteen? Grandma didn't even cry or anything. Her own son!”

“Maybe she cried in private. People do lots of things in private. How'd he die?”

“He drowned. It's sort of weird, really, because my grandparents—my father's mother and father—they drowned, too. In a hurricane. It was a real long time ago, way before I was born. So, I had relatives on both sides of my family who drowned.”

“Well this conversation sure is cheerful, isn't it?” Jack laughed.

I felt the heat in my face. I shut up and ate my ice cream.

Pierce Street looked different from up here—smaller, more organized. “Well,” I said. “I better get back to my homework.”

But it was Jack who got up. “Don't go yet,” he said. “You're good company. I'll be right back.”

The light went on in their bathroom. I heard him peeing.

He came out with a new beer. “I'd love to make a switch, believe me,” he said. “There's a top-forty station up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that's looking at me, but Rita doesn't want to move.”

“I don't want you to, either. This house was so boring before you guys got here,” I said. “The lady who rented your apartment before you was a drunk. And she had this retarded little dog.”

He was smiling at me, running his fingers through his chest hair. “Oh, yeah?” he said.

“Yeah.”

His hand touched my arm. “How good are you at keeping secrets?” he asked.

The fan blowing against my back caused a shiver. My spoon clinked against the ice cream dish. “Okay,” I said. “Fine.”

“The reason she doesn't want to move is because she's pregnant.”

“Rita? She is?”

He pulled his knee up against his chest, took a sip. “Life stinks,” he said. “Maybe that dead uncle of yours was one of the lucky ones. . . . She's already lost two babies, you know.”

“Two.”

“Which is why we left my last job in Newark. I was up for the morning show—fifty-thousand-listener potential, perfect exposure to the New York guys. . . . You bored out of your skull yet? Just tell me.”

“I'm not bored.”

“She'd go nuts if she knew I was telling you all this. ‘It'll be okay this time, Jackie, I promise,' she says. ‘Even if something happens, I'll be all right.' You may have noticed my opinion doesn't fit into any of these little decisions she makes. You catch that? So now here's this baby coming and Randolph says I'm too—what do you call it?—too fanciful. Says he's waiting to see what happens before he renews me. Wait'll she hears that one—she'll shit the kid right out her other end.”

My stomach heaved a little. “I better go,” I said. But I didn't move.

He looked over at me and smiled. “Dolores Del Rio,” he said. “You and me against the bad guys, right?”

I didn't answer. He reached down and touched my bare foot.

“Right?”

“Right.”

“What are you?” he said. “Ticklish or something?”

The word “ticklish” made me flinch. I let out a nervous laugh. “You
are,
aren't you?” he said. “See, I told you!” His grip tightened around my ankle. His fingertips danced along the sole of my foot.

“Come on,” I said. “Cut it out. I could fall right off this—”

He was on top of me, his knees pressing into my sides, his fingers jumping and jabbing. “You ticklish here? What about here?”

My head thumped back against the porch floor and I bucked and shoved, unable to breathe. I couldn't stop laughing. His hair flapped on and off his forehead as he rubbed against me, tickling and poking.

“Stop it, okay? . . .
Really!”
I squealed. But he wouldn't stop.

My head rocked back and forth and I suddenly saw how close I was to the fan. My leg shot out. The tower of beer cans flew off the porch, clattering down in the alley.

The noise made him stop. He was laughing, breathing heavily. His beer breath came out in damp, sour blasts. “Do you
mind?”
I said. “You're crushing me to death.”

“Phew. Just don't ever let me hear you say you're not ticklish,” he laughed. He got off of me. “Teach
you
a lesson.”

I was coughing. Then crying—hard and without control.

He laughed at me. “Hey?” he said. “Stop it. What's the matter?”

When I could speak, I told him I was sorry.

“For what?”

“For acting so stupid.”

He reached for me but I pulled away.

“What'd I do, scare you or something? I was just trying to cheer us up. All this talk about death and bosses and shit. What'd you
think
I was doing?”

“Don't mind me,” I said. “I'm just an idiot.”

I got myself up and started down the stairs, smearing away tears.

“I still don't get it,” he said. He was leaning over the railing. “First you're laughing your head off, then—what's the matter with you, anyway?”

*   *   *

Up in my bedroom, I heard his knocking and calling down at the back door. I let the phone ring and ring, echoing up the stairwell from Grandma's front hall. All he was trying to do was cheer us up,
I told myself. No wonder nobody talked to me at school. I acted so retarded.

Ma and Grandma were home. I positioned myself on the bed, my science book in my lap. Grandma went by my room, grumbling to Ma about hooligans and beer cans and decent people's property.

Ma came in. She sat down on my bed and brushed my bangs away from my forehead. “I got a strike and two spares tonight. How are you feeling?”

I shrugged without looking up from the book. “Do you mind?” I said. “I'm tired and I have to get this reading finished.”

“Okay, honey. Good night. I love you.”

She waited several seconds for me to say I loved her, too. I
wanted
to say it. Risk it. It wouldn't come out.

Later, in the dark, I hugged myself and thought about Uncle Eddie. Not being able to breathe up there on that porch—having no control of it: that was what his drowning must have felt like.

My right side was sore. There was a long scratch on my arm.

I was still awake when Rita got home from work. Their voices murmured up there together. My foot wouldn't stop twitching. My mind wouldn't shut off. . . . It must have been something else I had felt up there when he was on me, tickling me. His knee or his elbow or something. He and Rita were married, they were having a little
baby
together, for pity's sake. I was just being a pig and an idiot. I was pitiful.

“How good are you at keeping secrets?” he kept asking me.

*   *   *

“Do you take sugar or are you sweet enough?” I heard Grandma say in the cheeriest of voices as I came down the stairs the following morning. Somewhere in the night, a storm had taken away the hot, gluey air. A cool breeze was flapping the living-room shades.

In the kitchen my eyes bounced from Jack's red-striped shirt to Grandma's smile to the brown cardboard bakery box on the table.
Jack was sitting in my mother's place. Ma was in mine, biting into a doughnut.

“Well,
here
she is!” Grandma announced with fake enthusiasm. She dragged the kitchen stool to the table and patted the seat. “Sit down, Dolores, and have one of these delicious pastries Mr. Speight brought us.”

Jack raised one of our coffee cups to his lips and smiled.

The room smelled of aftershave. His red-and-white pinstripes looked so crisp and clean, I wondered for a second if I'd made up the evening before.

“Hey, Dolores,” my mother said. “How can you tell if an elephant's been inside your refrigerator?”

There was a sprinkle of powdered sugar on her khaki blouse. Jack's smile looked more than ever like Uncle Eddie's.

“I don't know.”

“Because he's left tracks in the butter.” She and Grandma grinned in anticipation.

“Oh,” I said. “That's a pretty good one.”

Inside the box were three doughnuts, top-heavy with whipped cream and jam. At Ma's insistence, I lifted one out and onto my plate.

“Is little Rita getting used to her new schedule?” Grandma asked.

“Well, she dragged herself in last night, nodded at me as though she remembered me from somewhere, and then pulled the covers up over her head. She's still snoring up there.”

Ma began telling a story about when my father worked nights right after they got married. I poked at the doughnut and brought a forkful to my mouth. The whipped cream was warm and yellowy. From the corner of my eye, I saw Jack watching.

“Well,” Grandma said, refilling his coffee cup, “you tell Rita for me to lock her car doors when she's driving back and forth after dark. All these cuckoo heads and beatniks these days. Some wild Indians dumped beer cans in the alley last night. I guess they just
like the thought of decent people having to clean up their messes for them.”

The table fan was on the counter, its cord wrapped tightly around the base.

“Did you hear that thunder last night?” Jack said. “Wasn't it something?”

I had slept through it.

“You must be exhausted this morning, Ma?” my mother teased Grandma. “She makes the sign of the cross at every lightning bolt, Jack.”

Grandma made a face. “Well, this house hasn't been struck yet, has it, Miss Smarty-pants?”

I pushed my plate away. “I'm not very hungry,” I said.

“Dolores, Jack said he'd be glad to drive you to school this morning,” Ma said.

“That's okay. I don't mind walking.”

“It's no trouble at all,” Jack said. “Really.”

At the door, Grandma brushed the sleeve of my uniform and clutched me by the wrists. “If those nasty DP sisters give you any trouble this year, just tell the teacher. Or better yet, send them to Mr. Speight and me.”

Her newfound sassiness was all for Jack's benefit. She referred to him as Mr. Speight when talking to me. What a laugh, I thought. Which of us knew Rita was pregnant—me or her? Who did she think he told his secrets to?