All We Had (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jealousy

A
nimals are smarter than we are,” Peter Pam declared. “They can predict all kinds of natural disasters. Cows will lie down before it rains and cats and dogs are more likely to run away before an earthquake.”

She and I were sitting in the back booth talking up a storm. Unlike Arlene, Peter Pam couldn't do a single trick. She couldn't even whistle. “My lips just don't purse up right,” she'd explained, puckering them to show me. But I had missed her terribly. It was fall again and I was back in school. I would ride my bike to Tiny's every afternoon just to be with her.

Our chatter, I could tell, was infuriating my mother. I could see her in the corner of my eye wiping and rewiping the tables around us with an irritated edge. It was Arlene's day off so there was no one to distract her.

“And a tsunami will drown us all, but the animals will run for the hills. The entire kingdom will empty out.”

I looked out the window searching for the family of squirrels that lived in the tree across the street, but didn't see a single one.

Tiny's had been quiet for months. Mel took a pay cut so no one else had to, but our bills were piling up. My mother was beginning to lose all her graceful movements. Things she used to savor, like the smell of McDonald's, bothered her. Half the time our chairs out back were an eyesore, a reminder that we didn't have a pool. And Arlene was getting on her nerves.

My mother pushed the chairs in with loud, angry scrapes, but Peter Pam had too much pent-up energy to notice.

“A dog can predict a seizure up to three hours before it happens. Oh my goodness,” Peter Pam said, taking a breath. “I'm all farklemt.” She fluttered her hands in front of her face in an effort to tamp her emotions. “It's so good to talk to you again.” She reached across the table and held my arm.

My mother's lip curled and I wanted to disappear. My relationship with Peter Pam grated on her. She was about to snap, I could tell, but thankfully, a customer pulled into the parking lot. Customers were rare these days, so it was enough to stop her. And this customer drove a brand-new BMW.

The driver's-side door opened slowly and, of all people, Vick Ward stepped out.

“Gross,” I said to my mother. But she was not listening. She chucked her rag down. She ruffled her hair and set it cascading down her face in perfect peekaboo fashion. Then she unbuttoned her top button, shook her breasts down into her bra, and pushed them up again.

When she really wanted something she showed them off like cakes. “You've got to think of them as assets. They can be leverage or incentive or payback,” she'd instructed, as if she were a banker. She'd been taking chicken wings out of the microwave when she
told me this. She held up her lobster-claw oven mitt, pinched it together, and said, “They can be handy like pot holders!”

In the parking lot, Vick Ward straightened his tie and then looked down at his shoes. He took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, bent over, and with two quick flicks of his wrist dusted the toes. Then he shook the cloth out, folded it up, and replaced it in his pocket.

He walked in, stood in the doorway, and looked around. When he saw my mother, he tipped his hat in her direction, then slid into the nearest booth.

My mother was sassy and rude to him like she'd been the day he first came to our house, but things had changed since then. We were broke again, so she did what she thought she had to. She reached over him extra close and flirted while she served him. And it paid off like it always did.

He left my mother a ten-dollar tip on pie and coffee—the only decent tip she got all week.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Betrayal

A
cross the street, Roger lost his job and Patti found part-time work at Walmart. She stopped coming by and they stopped eating at Tiny's. We never thought we would, but we missed them.

In October, the trucks were back, but instead of bringing stuff in, Patti and Roger were selling things and moving it out. This sent my mother further into panic. And when she panicked, it frightened me. She became quiet and removed. Her jaw muscles tightened. I could never tell what she was thinking and I was too afraid to ask.

One night that fall, she was really late getting home from work and I began to worry. So I hopped on my bike and rode to Tiny's.

I pulled into the parking lot and around back.
Pop!
The gravel crunched beneath my tires. I heard Madonna—
“Holiday! Celebrate!”
—my mother's favorite, playing on the stereo as I headed toward the kitchen. The screen door was propped open with a can of tomato sauce.

I stepped in. The overhead light above the grill was on. The mop sat in the sink in a pool of dirty water. I ducked under the handle and walked by. There was an empty bottle of wine and a couple of glasses sitting on the counter. One of the glasses had toppled over and landed against a plate with a lipstick-stained napkin and a few leftover fries. The plate next to it was licked clean. I walked through the kitchen and stood behind the counter. The restaurant was dark but the neon hot dog still flashed in and out of its bun. Then I heard something. A cough. A gag. And it wasn't coming from Madonna. The sound was coming from the bathrooms, so I stepped out from behind the counter and followed it. A slick of light seeped out from under the door of the ladies' room. I pushed it open and walked in. Madonna's voice followed me.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah,”
she grunted through the speakers on the wall.

I heard a heavy sigh then a low whispery moan from inside one of the stalls. I slowly pushed the first door open, but it was empty. The handicapped stall was already halfway open so I took a step forward and peered in.

I could recognize my mother from a million miles away—by the way she swung her arms when she walked or the way she crossed and hugged them to her body when she was cold. I could hear the subtle shift in the tone of her voice before and then after she'd had her coffee. I knew almost everything about her.

But that night, I didn't recognize her until I saw her purse. She was kneeling on it. She was facing the toilet and her head was bobbing up and down, to the rhythm of Madonna.

He was easier to identify—with his hat on backwards, Mel straddled the toilet. His pants were down. His eyes were closed.
His lids were white. His mouth was half open. He gripped the grab bar on the wall. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck.

He must have sensed me standing there because his eyes flew open.

“Jesus!” he yelled over Madonna when he saw me.

My mother lifted her head and turned. Her lipstick was smeared—her mouth glistened bloodred like she'd been eating prey.

A single overhead light flickered. A second passed—not even—and I was out the door, flying through the night. I landed on my bike with my legs already in motion. I pedaled so fast, the sweat on my forehead dried in seconds. A truck pulled up behind me. I stood in my seat and pumped harder. A piece of gravel shot up and ricocheted off the frame of my glasses. But I didn't flinch. I turned my wheels and took the shortcut—a path that led into the woods—just dodging the cloud of dust the truck stirred up in its wake.

The woods were dark and the crickets were throwing a tantrum. I slowed down, tried to catch my breath, but my heart pounded and swelled as if it might burst right through my chest.

The moonlight fell between the leaves in patches and flickered like scratchy film. The ground beneath me shifted. I stopped, got off my bike, and braced myself against a tree.

Every man I ever knew had something dark and horrible hidden inside of him, but Mel was different. He didn't drink. He didn't swear, he never yelled. And he was unlike any man I knew: he never leered at my mother and he was faithful to his wife, even though she really was the Ice Queen. But my mother ruined men.

An owl lifted off the branch above me. A swirl of leaves fell. It felt as though the sky was falling. It had been a fluke that time had passed and nothing bad had happened. Now, it seemed, our luck was running out. Mother Earth was gearing up to shrug us off like flies.

When I got home, my mother was already there. She said something but I walked right past her, microwaved some popcorn, and left her sipping through a straw on her giant cup of rum and Diet Coke. She was drunk and getting drunker.

I kicked my sneakers off so they hit the wall on purpose. I got into bed and flipped through the channels, desperate to lose myself in some overwrought melodrama. Thank God they play reruns of
ER
all the time.

On
ER
there are no regular accidents. There are tornados and plane crashes. Olympic swimmers lose their legs, fourth-degree burns turn movie stars into monsters. The hospital itself catches fire on a regular basis. I found an episode and was hooked right away.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” my mother asked. I hadn't noticed, but she'd followed me and was now standing in the bedroom doorway. I shoveled popcorn into my mouth and ignored her. She shook her ice and took a purposefully loud slurp from the bottom of her cup. Then, in and out, in and out, she pumped the straw through the top so it squeaked. It was so annoying.

On-screen, an explosion outside the hospital shook the IV bags. The lights flicked on and off and the building filled with smoke. One after another, the nurses and EMTs wheeled pa
tients in. And in between all the chaos and coughing the doctors barked a stream of indecipherable orders.

“Don't play this game with me,” my mother sneered.

Half the city was now burning and the place was jammed. The camera shook. Sirens wailed. A woman was convulsing, then the beeping of her heart flattened out. “Clear!” The doctor shouted.

“It's not like I fucked him,” my mother slurred.

In rapid building sequence, from one disaster to another, images flashed back and forth.

“Don't be such a goddamn prude.” My mother turned to go.

“Trash,” I muttered as she headed through the door.

My mother grabbed the doorframe to stop herself from falling forward. She teetered, took a huge breath, swung her head low, and turned around. With her eyes ablaze, she flared her nostrils, raised her head, and the alcohol on her breath ignited. “You think you're so high and mighty, don't you? Well, let me tell you something. If I lost my job right now we'd die on the streets.”

We had always heard home ownership was a pathway out of poverty but it was leading us down a hole to hell. Our monthly mortgage bill had gone up so fast, it had almost doubled. We'd missed one payment already. We'd fallen further behind on all our other bills and my mother had stopped sleeping.

She stepped closer, shook a crooked finger at me, and I turned the volume up.

“You should be thanking me. You think Mel's above it all, don't you? Well, let me tell you, when push comes to shove, he's just like every boss, all he cares about is money. He'd lay me off in a heartbeat if I didn't give him reason not to.”

George Clooney's surgical mask pulsated in and out and
he dripped with sweat. He was cutting through bone when—
splat!
—a piece of bloody flesh flew up and hit him in the goggles.

“Not a single one of them could give two shits about us. You're a fool if you think they do. When it comes right down to it, I'm the one who takes you with me when I go!”

My mother spun around and lurched to leave the room, but missed the door and hit the frame instead. She staggered, and then—
bam
!
—flat on her back she hit the floor.

I looked down at her, registered that she was still breathing, then turned the volume up. I crammed another fistful of popcorn into my mouth.

“Weight gain, insomnia, heart palpitations, diarrhea, and in rare cases death or stroke.” An antidepressant commercial was on and the list of potential side effects made depression itself sound fun.

My mother coughed. Then she gagged. I glanced at her again. A bubble of vomit parted her lips. I sighed, rolled my eyes, tossed my bowl of popcorn aside, got up off the bed, and turned her over. “Not on your back,” I said.

A bruised and bloody woman swaddling a dead baby crashed through the emergency-room doors. A doctor in another room cut a tumor out. He placed the glistening bloody mass neatly on a stainless-steel tray, then a nurse whisked it out as if to serve it hot.

I grabbed my mother by the hips and held her up. “Come on, Mom,” I pleaded, and gave her a little shake. “Spit it up.”

In my dream that night, Anne Frank, Mother Mary, and Hillary Clinton were all sitting at a table. Like writers on a TV show, they were brainstorming my ending.

“She's enslaved in a dungeon. She is starved and beaten. But when she dies, her suffering makes her a hero,” Anne Frank said.

“Don't be stupid,” Mother Mary retorted. “She's worshiped in perpetuity for her submissiveness before man and God.”

Hillary Clinton let out a snort. “Let's be real. This girl's story is going to end exactly how it began. In a run-down, rat-infested hovel with her crazy mother. Now snap out of your stupor. Let's work together and get something done.”