The Blonde of the Joke (11 page)

“When?” he asked.

“When. I don’t know. Anytime.”

“Let’s just say…elsewhere,” he said.

“Was Elsewhere any different?”

“No,” he said. “It was just the same.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I tossed my cigarette over the fire escape and watched it fall.

“You feel better now, though, right? I mean, every time I see you it’s like you get a little better. Steady improvement?”

From the way he avoided my question, I had the answer to the question that I had come to investigate.

“Remember that time you and Mom came to visit me here?” he asked. “Right after I moved in?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Things seemed so different then.”

“I know,” I said. “I mean, I was really little. I was kind of too little to understand what was going on. But things did seem different.”

“I always thought you understood everything,” he said. “Even when you were practically a baby. You always seemed like you just sort of knew the score better than anyone.”

I just looked at him like
Are you insane?
and he shrugged back all,
Well, maybe I am, but still,
and actually, he was right. I did know the score, sort of: he had believed in this city, and in this shitty apartment. He had believed in it, and it had failed him.

“I don’t want you to die,” I said. “Can you please not die?”

“I’m not going to die,” he said. “I’m only twenty-four, you know. Not like I’m some old man or something.” But I knew what he really meant to say:
I am barely here now. You won’t even miss me when I’m gone. I’m as good as a ghost.

When I got home, around two, Francie was sitting on my doorstep smoking.

“Hey, bitch,” she said.

“Hey, bitch,” I said.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Elsewhere,” I told her. And then, gay as it may be, I just started crying.

Francie kind of melted. “Hey,” she said. She stood and put her arms around me and it didn’t even feel awkward or anything. I buried my face in the crook of her neck and she mussed my hair. “Don’t worry about it,” she murmured. “Not to worry. We’ll go to the mall; it’ll be all better.”

I wanted to believe her, I truly did.

F
rancie was eating a taco salad. They had put cheese on it by accident, and she was picking it out with her fingers with a look of pure revulsion. Francie hated cheese more than almost anything else on Earth. Just the smell of it disgusted her; I was surprised she was even capable of touching it without rubber gloves.

“I just don’t see the point of stealing all that crap,” Max was saying. “Not that I’m, like, morally opposed or anything. It just seems like a lot of trouble for shit you don’t want.”

“Who says I
don’t
want a hand-powered flashlight?” Francie asked. She pulled the latest score from out of her bag. “Look, you just turn this crank and it lights right up. You don’t even need any batteries. It will charge your cell
phone, too, but you have to get the attachment separate. Even so, who wouldn’t want something like this?”

“Do you? Want it, I mean?” Max asked.

“Not really,” Francie said. “But you’re missing the point.”

Max laughed. “You and the
point.
Everything always has a point with you. Have you ever considered the fact that some things are pointless?”

“No,” Francie said. “That never crossed my mind.”

“Okay, well, in that case, what’s the point? I want to know.” Max leaned in close, chin on his fist.

“The point.” Francie racked her brain and came to a satisfactory answer. “Well, for one thing, it’s not for me. It’s for Val’s brother!” she said. She smiled and batted her eyelashes.

“He’s
dying,”
I added.

Max snorted. “Just what a dying man needs. A hand-crank flashlight.” As soon as the words came out, he stopped, turned to Francie, and tugged at his earlobe. “He’s not really dying, is he?”

Francie just rolled her eyes.

“You guys are both so full of shit,” Max said.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Francie said. She shrugged and shot a reproachful glance in my direction. A few minutes later, Liz showed up, on her lunch break, and sat with us for a while, trying to trick Francie into having a bite of cheese.

“It will never happen,” Francie said. “If someone put a gun to my head, I might consider—
consider
—a bite of mozzarella. But that’s as far as I would go.”

“You’re telling me if someone put a gun to your head you would not eat a bite of Gouda?” Liz asked.

“I would not,” Francie said. “Not even a crumb.” She folded her arms across her chest with cheerful intransigence. She was loving the attention. Attention made Francie stronger. If no one gave a shit about her, I figured, she would just cease to exist.

“What about pizza?” Liz was asking.

I had a hard time figuring out why Liz was always hanging out with us. She was so much older—practically a grown-up. But for some reason she was always around now. She had even called me at home one time just to chat. I’d been flattered, but also nervous and unsure of what exactly to say. We’d just sat on the phone for ten minutes, awkward, the conversation punctuated by long bursts of silence. Then I told her I had homework to do.

Liz had started throwing little balls of cheese at Francie, who was screaming and dodging them while these prissy girls at the next table gave us dirty looks. “Fuck you,” Liz finally shouted at them, and threw some cheese in their direction. “I’m an
assistant manager!”
she snarled.

“Maybe we should go before we get kicked out,” Max suggested.

“They can’t kick me out,” Liz sighed. “My shift’s not over yet. We just got a new shipment, too. Can someone please kill me?”

“Buck up, Liz,” Francie said. “Back to work, all of us. We
need to take some more stuff if we’re going to make our quota for the day.”

Max groaned. “Now you have a quota?”

“I just instituted one,” Francie said. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

“Can’t we do something that’s fun for everyone?” Max asked.

“You don’t have to come if you’re not feeling it,” she replied. “No one’s forcing you. Val and I have a calling. It’s not our concern that you don’t care about anything except that dumb skateboard.”

But Max’s hard-on for Francie wouldn’t allow him to go his own way. He trailed behind us to Express, then hung outside as we stepped in to do our thing.

Express was turning over its merchandise for spring. I took inventory of the clerks in their corners, changing mannequins and unpacking cardboard boxes. My skill inhabited me. Disappearance tingled in my fingers. I twisted the rubber bands at my wrist, ready to pull them tight around sensors, pop them right off. No matter what, the moment before the rip-off would always be exciting—that would never change—but lingering in the entranceway, even with that feeling of anticipation building in the pit of my stomach, I realized there was nothing in the store that I wanted.

Francie’s breath was hot in my ear. “Go for the big score,” she whispered from over my shoulder. “Today could
be the day we finally find it. I’ve got a good feeling about today. I think Max is good luck.”

I took it all in: the candy-colored tanks, the breezy, bias-cut skirts, and skinny jeans, and dressy-casual blouses. It was all crap. And I wasn’t trying to be bitchy, I was just calling it as I saw it. “It’s not like we’re really going to find it at Express,” I said. It was just an observation. But it was the first time that I’d ever questioned her aloud like that.

She frowned. “Jeez,” she said. “You’ll never win with a badditude like that.”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Like I said. Bad attitude. Come on. This one’s all you. I’ll watch your back.”

I could feel Max’s eyes on us from where he sat on a bench outside the store. I knew the point of focus for every clerk in the store and I could easily pick out the manager just from the shininess of her ponytail, along with the assistant manager from the way she kept glancing at the real manager from the register. “I can watch my own back,” I muttered.

Francie pulled back. Her hand flew from its perch on my shoulder blade. “I know you
can.
I was just…” She trailed off and sighed. “Never mind. Do your own thing, babe.”

So I did my own thing. I watched my own back. It wasn’t hard at all.

I didn’t score big that day. I could have if I had wanted to. I just didn’t feel like it. Instead, I aimed low, stealing two camisole tank tops, one for me and one for Francie. It wasn’t
the type of thing we would normally wear, but the weather had actually turned nice and I figured we could celebrate by going sleeveless.

“Just a couple of tank tops?” Francie asked when I showed her what I’d taken.

I shrugged. “It’s Express,” I said. “What do you expect?”

“Well, I get the purple one,” she said. “Purple has always been my color.” Purple had never been Francie’s color. It was just her way of taking control of the situation.

We all decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. It was a couple miles, but the sky was finally blue. Max rattled along on the sidewalk while Francie and I dawdled together at a distance, passing a cigarette back and forth between us. Francie had taken off her heels and they dangled from her fingers. She walked with ginger precision to avoid the broken glass and sharp pebbles on the sidewalk as traffic sped by.

We were both watching Max roll ahead of us on his board, his pants barely hanging on, an inch of boxers poking out from the waistband of his jeans.

“What do you think his deal is?” asked Francie.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, have you noticed he doesn’t have any friends except us? And are we even his friends? I mean, are we really? Consider it.”

“You and I don’t have any friends except each other, either,” I said. “What’s the difference?”

“It’s different for boys,” said Francie. “Everything is
different for boys. The way they travel in packs. The way they hardly seem to care at all about anything. What passes for conversation:
“‘Hey, bro,’ ‘What up, bro,’ ‘What’s goin on, you homo, bro?’”
She gave me a mocking high five and pinched my ass. “There should be, like, five guys skateboarding along with him right now. That’s how it normally works. But it’s just him. Why do you suppose that is? I’ve been thinking about it.”

I took a drag off her cigarette. “Maybe he doesn’t need any friends,” I said.

“I don’t know. He’s not like us,” Francie told me. “Not like me, at least, that’s for sure. You can tell he used to be normal. You can tell from the way he moves, the way he talks.
‘What up, bro, you fuckin’ fag?’
I can totally hear it. He used to be like any of the rest of them. Something happened. What happened? Dark secrets. Mark my words, Val.”

“If you say so,” I sighed. But I didn’t really believe her. “What kind of person actually says ‘Mark my words,’ anyway? Besides a cartoon character?”

Francie raised an evil eyebrow and pressed her fingers together as if contemplating nefarious plans. “Let’s see: a robot. A hologram. Mua-ha-ha-ha!” she cackled. And then her face softened. She dug into her purse, whipped out a rubber band, and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “But he is cute, right? I mean, he just is.”

“He is,” I said. “And he’s, like, totally in love with you. I can tell.”

“I know,” she sighed. “It’s sweet. Those puppy-dog eyes. But I don’t have time for a boy in my life. I’m too busy with my scheme for world domination. I would never let a boy stand in the way of that, no matter, like, how hot.”

“Can’t you rule the world
and
have a hot boyfriend?” I asked.

“Not Max,” Francie said. “He’s the type who’s trouble. The type to fuck up even the best plan.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “What are you basing this on?”

“I’m not basing it on anything,” Francie said. “It’s just what I believe.”

“You’re always saying that,” I said. “Like just the fact that you believe it makes it automatically true.”

“Doesn’t it?” Francie asked, only half-kidding. “I mean, have my beliefs ever failed us?”

I didn’t answer her, just grabbed her hand and swung our arms between us in a wide and sweeping arc.

Francie believed in certain things. It was part of what made her interesting. The things that Francie believed in defined her. But what would happen if one of Francie’s so-called
beliefs
turned out to be wrong?

“D
id you hear you hear about the blonde who thought nitrates were cheaper than day rates?” Francie asked. She was lying upside down on her bed with her legs propped up against the wall and her head dangling off the edge. Her hair reached almost to the carpet.

“That’s the dumbest one yet,” I said, barely paying attention to what she was saying. I was sitting there next to her, scribbling in my notebook. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what she was talking about; we were having one of those moments when it was okay to space out. “It doesn’t even make sense.”

“That’s kind of why I like it,” Francie said. “I found it on the internet. Now they’re telling us we’re stupid for not knowing what a nitrate is? What next? Did you hear about
the blonde who never made it all the way through
Gravity’s Rainbow?”
In one graceful move, she flipped around and was sitting upright, back straight and neck stretched with swanlike poise. She gave me a look of deep inquisition. “What
is
a nitrate, anyway?”

“Something totally gay,” I said. It’s what she wanted me to say.

“I tried to read
Gravity’s Rainbow
over the summer,” Francie said. “Personally I thought it was pretty fucking stupid.”

Did you hear about the blonde who was treated at the emergency room for a concussion and severe head wounds? She’d tried to commit suicide by hanging herself with a bungee cord. Did you hear about the blonde who tried to blow up her husband’s car? She burned her lips on the tailpipe. Did you hear about the blonde whose boyfriend said he loved her? She believed him.

And did you hear the one about the blonde who traveled to the edge of the world and unpacked her suitcase and began throwing everything she owned into the abyss? Did you hear about how her clothes burst into flames when they plummeted into the endlessness, and how she stood there, at the end of everything, naked and watching it all go, and how she wasn’t sad about it at all?

Me either. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it had happened, once, just like that. If it hasn’t, I’m sure it will someday.

There was a knock on Francie’s bedroom door. It was Sandy. She walked in and began rustling through Francie’s stuff.

“Hi,
Mom,”
Francie said. “What are you doing?”

“Can I have a cigarette, dear?” Sandy asked.

Francie reached for the box at the foot of her bed and handed her mother a Misty. “You shouldn’t smoke, Sandy,” she said. “I read somewhere it makes you grow hair on your palms.”

Sandy paid her daughter no mind. She sat down on the floor facing us, and crossed her legs Indian-style. She lit up. Sandy was always trying to hang out with us like this, but it was pretty rare that Francie allowed it, and in general, Sandy followed Francie’s many instructions to the letter. Even when it hurt her feelings. If Francie had told her mother to fuck off, Sandy would have smiled a weak, pathetic smile, chuckled like it was all a joke, and retreated instantly, closing the door behind her with barely a click. But Francie was apparently in a charitable mood, and Sandy was beaming at being allowed into the inner sanctum, even briefly.

“What’s going on, girls?” Sandy asked. “I feel like I never get to talk to you about your lives.”

“Did you hear the one about the blonde who thought a sanitary belt was a drink from a clean glass?” Francie said.

“What’s a sanitary belt?” I asked.

“I don’t get it at all,” Sandy said. “And I’m old enough to know what a sanitary belt is.”

“I don’t get it, either,” Francie said. “I was hoping you could explain.”

Sandy was one of the saddest people I had ever encountered, like, ever. Even sadder than my own cocker spaniel of a mother, and that was saying a lot. Sandy had no friends and no life. She stayed up almost all night and woke up at five or six in the morning, but all she ever seemed to do with all that time was drink red wine, order things from QVC and eBay, and devote herself to her online karaoke hobby, for which she had set up a makeshift studio in the basement. Sandy was desperate for attention but incapable of commanding it. She never left the house as far as I knew, except—I guess—for groceries, which they don’t sell on late-night cable. Although there was that one trip to the Bahamas. She had to have left the house for that. Otherwise never.

The thing that was hardest to conceive, so to speak, was that Sandy had once had sex with a man in order to produce Francie. She was beautiful; it wasn’t that. It was just that I couldn’t imagine her ever associating with any person long enough to do it with him. Where would she have even met a guy? I figured she must have been different in those days. This was confirmed by Francie, who had told me that during her own formative years, Sandy had been a total slut, with a string of asshole boyfriends constantly parading through the house. Things had changed.

In Francie’s room, Sandy was standing at the window,
wiggling her hips to the Smiths, and snapping the fingers that weren’t clutching her cigarette.
“Hand it over/Hand it over/Hand it over.”
“I wonder if they have this song on karaoke?” she said. “Val, do you like online karaoke?”

“Um…” I said. Sandy was being even weirder than usual. She was swaying faster and faster, completely off the beat. She did a little pirouette across the room and tossed her hair and laughed long and loud and openmouthed.

“Leave us alone, Sandy,” Francie said, and her mother nodded and smiled sheepishly and got lost.

It was almost ten o’clock when we discovered that Sandy had disappeared. Actually I was the one who made the discovery. I’d thought it was kind of weird that she wasn’t on her usual perch in front of the television as I was leaving, and that I didn’t hear any caterwauling from the basement, but it wasn’t until I stepped out onto the front stoop that it struck me something could be really wrong. I had stepped out of this door so many times; Francie’s yard was so familiar to me that I knew something was off but couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Standing there in the early-spring nighttime, the streetlights buzzing as if telling me to look more closely, I scrutinized the dim landscape of the lawn. There was the maple tree, just starting to win its leaves back. The weathered picket fence with the broken gate. There was the funny pipe sticking up out of the grass next to the azaleas, and there was the
driveway. And then it came to me: the Jaguar was gone. The Jag had never not been in the driveway. The Jaguar was always in the driveway. It was like looking at a picture of someone with no eyebrows.

“Hey, Francie!” I shouted, poking my head back inside. But Francie already knew what had happened. She was standing in the middle of the living room, flipping the pillows over on the couch and searching for something.

“Mom?!” she called. But I could tell that she was past the point of expecting an answer. “Fuck! Sandy?! I am going to kill you!”

“Francie,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She looked at me, and it was the same look I had seen her give me that night on the stairs with her drunk mother draped around her shoulders. This time, although I was still a little bit scared, I stood my ground. I just had a feeling it was the right thing to do. “Francie,” I said again. “What’s going on?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck” was all she could say. Without being invited, I stepped back inside. I didn’t bother to close the front door. I wanted to do something, but I felt helpless. Francie was flipping out.

“I can’t believe she’s pulling this crap again,” she said. “You should go home.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “No,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Francie was trying to protect me or herself, but either way, I thought I’d earned the right to know certain things.

Francie looked like she was going to argue, but she didn’t bother. “Well, then, do something. Get me the phone.”

Without knowing what was happening, but understanding the sense of urgency, I ran to the kitchen to get the phone. It felt important to have a task. Francie just snatched it from me when I dashed back and punched a number into the speed dial. She fidgeted with her hair while she waited for the pickup. She wouldn’t look at me; she just stared at the ceiling.

“Dan? It’s Francie,” she finally said. “She did it again.”

A pause. Even though she wasn’t looking at me, I could see the familiar eye roll from the way her cheeks tensed. “I don’t care where you are. I need you. Get over here.” And “Asshole,” under her breath when she hung up.

At this point, I didn’t bother asking her any questions. I didn’t try to touch her. I sat on the couch and waited patiently for all to be revealed. She didn’t talk to me for a few minutes, just made herself busy with something or other in the kitchen, but then she reappeared with a bottle of wine and beckoned. “Come on,” she said. “Dan’s coming over. Let’s wait outside.”

Francie and I sat on the stoop together, each smoking our own cigarette and passing the wine between us. I was afraid to say anything, but finally I couldn’t help myself.

“Who’s Dan?” I asked. “You never said anything about anyone named Dan before.”

Francie sighed and took a deep drag before answering.
“He used to be my mom’s boyfriend,” she said. “He lived with us for almost a year, but it was a long time ago. He’s actually not so bad; he’s, like, the closest thing I have to a dad, I guess. Okay, stepdad maybe? Uncle? I don’t know. He stuck around longer than anyone else. And…you know. He helps out sometimes.”

“Sometimes like when?”

“Sometimes like
this,”
she said. “Listen, in case you hadn’t guessed, my mom is crazy. I mean, really crazy. I mean, totally bonkers.” She twirled her finger at her temple as if it was a big joke, and continued. “When this happens, he helps. It’s the least he can do. I mean, really, he could do a whole lot more.”

“Oh,” I said.

Francie tossed her finished Misty onto the lawn and lit another one. “You’re going to see some real insanity tonight, believe me,” she said.

A few minutes later, a red Pathfinder pulled up and a guy climbed out. It was Dan. He was younger than I expected—maybe midthirties—and kind of hot, too, in a gone-to-seed kind of way. He pulled the broken gate aside and walked up to us in a weary lope. I saw a cheesy tribal tattoo inching out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“Francie, I thought I told you to stop smoking those fucking cigarettes. Do you really want to have lung cancer by the time you’re twenty-five?”

“I think if there’s a time for smoking, this is it,” she retorted, and blew a cloud of smoke right into his face. Dan glared at her. She made a face in return. “Anyway, this is Val.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said. “Put the cigarette out.” I did, and he shook my hand.

“Any idea where she went?” he asked Francie.

“I just hope she didn’t go to the homeless shelter again. That was ridiculous.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t believe she thought you were trying to
poison
her.”

I was pretty mystified as to what was going on, but I didn’t push it. I would find out.

“Want me to drop Val off on the way?” Dan asked.

“I’m coming,” I said firmly. He glanced sidelong at me with gentle suspicion.

“Okay,” he said. I reached into my purse and shut off my cell phone so my mom wouldn’t be able to bug me. We all climbed into the Pathfinder, Francie riding shotgun, and took off.

Heading off into the night, in the back of the truck, I felt as if I was embarking on a great adventure. I felt like we might not be coming back, like we were off on a grand quest; those funny gnomes in
The Lord of the Rings
leaving home for the first time and venturing into the unknown to save the world.

But the mood in the front seat was different. All I could see was the back of Francie’s body. From the way she held her head, the way her shoulder was slumped against the window, I could tell that this was no adventure to her. It was a chore, like taking out the trash. Maybe more upsetting, but no less rote. From time to time she and Dan would exchange a fatigued look.

From what I could tell, we were driving just to drive, without any idea where we were going.

“The library’s closed,” Dan said. “She can’t be there.”

“The park would be dangerous. Even Sandy wouldn’t go to the park at this hour. Would she?”

“God,” Dan sighed. “It never changes, does it?”

We were heading into the city, I guess for a lack of anyplace else to go. Francie unrolled the window and lit another cigarette, and this time Dan didn’t bother to say anything about it. Instead, he flipped the radio on and tuned in one of those soft-rock stations that gives gooey dedications into the night. “I would like to request a song for my beautiful lady,” the guy on the radio was saying.

“We should request a song for Sandy,” Dan said. “She loves this show. Maybe she would hear and realize we’re looking for her. She always seems surprised, like it never would have occurred to her that we would be worried.”

Suddenly Francie squealed and tossed her just-lit cig. “I have an idea!” she said, clapping her hands. Her mood instantly changed; nothing cheered Francie like a brilliant
scheme. She pulled out her cell phone and her wallet with her emergency credit card. She looked at the back of the card for a moment, returned it to her purse, and dialed a number. “I’d like to report a stolen card,” she said. “My name is Sandra Knight. I lost it three or four hours ago. Have there been any charges? No, I don’t know the number, but I can give you my Social.”

I could practically see Francie’s ears twitch as she listened to the person on the other end. She gestured frantically for me to give her something to write on, and I rummaged through my purse and tossed my notebook to the front seat. Francie began to scribble.

“Well, it’s official: my mother is crazier than ever,” she said when she’d hung up. “This is going to take forever. She’s checked into almost every hotel in the city.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, she’s been going to hotels all night. She goes to one; she checks in; she leaves. She goes to another one; she checks in; she leaves. Et cetera.”