B004XTKFZ4 EBOK (5 page)

“C’mon, catch!” Lucy cried, grabbing a spongy Nerf football off a living room chair and tossing it to me.

“Lucy,” I said, “who’s here? Is your mom here?”

“Nah,” she said casually, catching the red-and-yellow ball as I threw it back to her. “She’s at work. Gets home in a couple of hours.”

I was shocked. For all the madness that had occurred in my home, there had always been someone there when I arrived after school, if only Alba. Lucy was
alone.

“We could go to my house,” I said, the ball flying into my arms again. “My aunt and uncle are there.”

“Why?” she said. “That’s a stupid idea.”

That day we played catch (
in the living room,
I kept thinking, amazed), drank Cokes, and waded around in Lucy’s bedroom, which if anything was even more dramatically chaotic than the rest of the house. Her clothes covered the bed, the desk, the carpet. A Nerf basketball hoop stood crookedly in the corner, a lone blue sock dangling from it. Stuffed animals littered the floor. And she had a huge number of records, all 45 rpm singles, in collapsing piles everywhere.

“Hey, let’s get some music going in here,” she said enthusiastically, pushing away a shirt and bra (
She wears a bra!
I thought) to reveal a little record player on a table in the corner. “My mom gets these from the Yellow Jacket,” she said, flipping through the records. “From the juke box. When they get new ones they just throw the old ones away, so my mom gets ’em for me.” She dropped to the floor on her knees, searching. “Hm…The only problem is that they’re kinda old, you know? But I have a radio, too, to hear the new stuff. Do you listen to the
America’s Top Forty
?”

“What’s that?”

“The show. With Casey Kasem? It’s on every Saturday morning, nine to noon.”

“I—no.”

She made a sour face. “Fran, you’re really out of it, you know that? I need to teach you up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you standing there for, anyway? You look like you got a bus to catch or something. Help me find ‘Frankenstein.’”

I knelt beside her, picked up a few of the records and looked at their titles. At twelve I was only vaguely aware of pop music; none of the names looked familiar to me.

“What’s the Yellow Jacket?” I asked finally.

“That’s the bar where my mom works. It’s downtown. She’s a bartender.”

I thought about it. “I didn’t know there were bartenders who were—you know, ladies.”

“Oh, Fran, you’re such a retard. Hey,
here
it is!” She held up the record triumphantly, moved to place it on the turntable. Soon the guitars and synthesizers and drums were pounding and Lucy jumped up, gyrating, shaking her hair wildly.

“C’mon,” she called, “dance with me!”

I grinned up at her but shook my head.

“Aw, you’re so
lame,
Fran!”

I watched her for a moment, then asked, “What does your dad do, Lucy?”

“Oh, we don’t live with him,” she said, turning away, shaking her shoulders with the beat. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

I looked at her. Halfway through the song she collapsed onto her bed, breathing hard, and picked up one of her stuffed animals, a dog. “This one’s name is Big Sam,” she said. “He’s one of my favorites.” She kissed it several times and then tossed it to me.

“He’s nice,” I said honestly, stroking him.

“And this is Moochie-Mooch,” she said, grabbing another one. “She’s temperamental. And here’s Boo-Boo and Rag-Bag and Gilbert and Uncle Grumpus…” She tossed each one at me, the soft animals bouncing off my shoulders and head. I giggled.

“Where did you get them all?”

“My mom, mostly,” she said. “Some of them I get out of dumpsters and garbage cans in town.”

“Ewww!”

“Hey, you can get nice things in dumpsters sometimes. That’s why I look in ’em. Anyway, I wash ’em in the washing machine, you know. I’m not
dirty
.”

In truth, the animals were clean. “Do you have names for all of them?” I asked.

“Every single one,” she acknowledged. “And I love ’em
all.
I love
this
one,” she said, hurling it at me, “and
this
one, and
this
one…!”

I shrieked and began throwing them back at her. We laughed hysterically, pelting each other with the little fuzzy animals until one careened off Lucy’s shoulder, bounced against the wall, and hit the arm of the record player, creating a terrible scratching sound and stopping the song.

She looked at it, her face deadly serious, then looked at me, her eyes narrow. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

“You ruined it,” she said. “You ruined my
record
.”

My heart beat wildly. “I—I didn’t mean to, Lucy, it just—it just bounced wrong—”

“
You ruined my record!
” she cried, leaping at me suddenly, throwing stuffed animal after stuffed animal in my direction. She jumped on me, trying to pin my wrists, and we wrestled across the floor. I was terrified until I realized that she was laughing. Then I laughed too. We both did, hysterically, breathlessly.

Finally we parted, giggles slowly subsiding within each of us.

“That was funny,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“You were scared,” she said, looking over at me, “weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t scared.”

“Yeah, you were. I bet you pooped your panties.”

“I didn’t poop my panties, Lucy.”

“
Panty pooper!
” The phrase sent us off on another torrent of shrieking laughter.

We heard a car in the driveway then, and Lucy sprang up. “My mom,” she explained. “She’s cool. C’mon.”

I followed her out into the main room, where Ms. Sparrow was just opening the front door. She was an attractive woman with black hair, long and perfectly straight, parted in the middle, as was fashionable then. Big sunglasses hid her eyes. She wore cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a denim jacket with fringes on it like those I associated with country-western singers.

“Mom!” Lucy cried, wrapping her arms around the woman and grinning.

“Hi, Punk!” Ms. Sparrow said, smiling. “How was school today?”

“It sucked.”

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” She moved into the room, dropping her car keys on the table. Just then she noticed me. She pulled off her sunglasses, revealing big silver-gray eyes that immediately reminded me of Lucy’s. “Hi there,” she said tentatively.

“Mom, this is Franny-Fran,” Lucy informed her, skipping over to me and wrapping her arm around my neck.

I giggled again, slipped out of her grasp. “My name is Frances,” I said.

“Well, hello, Frances,” Ms. Sparrow said. “You’re from across the street, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“You’ve got such a pretty smile,” she said. “Look at those dimples. Jeez, Punk, don’t tell me you’ve made a
friend
,”
she said teasingly to her daughter, crossing into the living room and dropping onto the sofa, pulling off her boots. “Lucy hates all the girls in that school. Can’t say I blame her.”

“They’re
bitches
!” Lucy cried mincingly, in a startlingly perfect impersonation of me.

“Well, I don’t know about
bitches
,” her mom said. “But their parents have sure got some rods stuck up their asses. So what’s for dinner, Frances? What have you made for us?”

I giggled. “I didn’t make dinner.”

“No? Goddamn it. And here I was, really hoping. Lucy, what’s in the fridge?”

But Lucy didn’t even have to look. “
Totino’s Pizza,
” she whispered, her eyes bright.

“Oh my God,” Ms. Sparrow laughed. “Frozen pizza again?”

“It’s
good
!”
Lucy cried.

She sighed. “I’m a bad mother. Okay. Totino’s it is. Frances, are you staying with us for dinner?”

I looked at them. Ms. Sparrow had splayed herself out on the sofa, while Lucy had dropped down to the chair beside her. Lucy began methodically massaging her mother’s bare feet, which were atop the arm rest.

“Mom’s feet hurt sometimes after work,” Lucy explained.

I stood there, curiously moved at what I saw. I couldn’t imagine touching my own mother’s feet, let alone those of Aunt Louise.

“I—I have to check,” I said. “May I use your phone?”

“In the kitchen,” Ms. Sparrow smiled, pointing with her thumb.

I ran into the kitchen, picked up the phone, dialed the number. I was sure they would say no, so when Louise picked up I simply said in a rush, “
Hi it’s Frances I’m having dinner at the Sparrows’ across the street okay bye
!” and hung up.

“It’s okay with them,” I said calmly, as I stepped back into the living room.

The dinner, pizza with various items from the refrigerator thrown on top—cheese slices, onion, strips of bologna—was delicious. What’s more, it was consumed in an atmosphere of celebration: we all sat in the living room, laughing uproariously, eating off paper plates (“At least we don’t have to clean them,” Ms. Sparrow said with a wink) and drinking soda out of Dixie cups while the TV played
Hollywood Squares
. This was so different from the somber, tasteless dinners across the street as to seem to belong to another world. In my real home, of course, hundreds of miles away, Alba would eat with me while my parents…but I didn’t want to think about that here, in this delightful company.

“Thank you, Ms. Sparrow,” I said as I finished the last of my pizza.

“Oh, call me Mush,” she said. “Everybody does.”

“Mush?”

“Her name’s Michelle,” Lucy explained, stuffing pizza into her mouth.

“Oh…Okay.” I could hardly imagine calling an adult just by her first name—even with my relatives across the street I always carefully preceded their names with the title
Aunt
or
Uncle—
let alone calling a grown-up a name like “Mush.”

“Well,” she said finally, “this has been lovely, but I’ve got to get back.”

“You’re going back to work?” I asked, surprised. It was nearly eight o’clock;
Hollywood Squares
was finishing up with a few final witticisms from Wayland Flowers and Madam.

“Split shift,” she said, sighing.

“My mom works a lot,” Lucy added.

Soon enough Ms. Sparrow
(Mush,
I corrected myself) had slipped on her boots again, run a brush through her hair, and kissed Lucy goodnight. “I’ll be back, Punk,” she said, “around two. Lock the door behind me. Okay?”

“’Kay.” Lucy saw her mother to the door, accepted a kiss on the top of her head.

“Goodnight, Frances,” the woman said. “Be seeing you. Nice to meet you.”

I nodded, smiling. “Thank you again.”

Once the door was closed and her car had pulled away I looked at Lucy again.

“Lucy,” I said, “are we really alone here?”

She shrugged, looked at me with annoyance. “Sure,” she said. “What’s the big deal? My mom does it all the time. She has to. She’s gotta work.”

“I—” The idea was sad, somehow, yet thrilling too. I was certain that Frank and Louise wouldn’t approve of my staying alone with a girl my age well into the night, but I wasn’t about to check.

“What do you want to do?” I asked. “Watch TV?”

“Nah, TV’s pretty boring,” she said, switching it off. “I mean, I like some shows.
Welcome Back, Kotter
is good. And
Starsky and Hutch.
”

“I like
Little House on the Prairie
,”
I said, realizing as soon as it came out of my mouth that it was a mistake.

She looked at me and laughed, her big throaty bark. “Franny, you are such a
spaz
!”
But she didn’t mock me beyond that; instead she grabbed my hand and pulled me back into her bedroom again. “C’mere,” she said. “We’ll play something
good
.”

I thought that perhaps she was going to bring out a board game, but to my surprise she turned on her radio. She adjusted the station and after a moment I heard the sound of a creaking door, followed by music that sounded like it was from a scary movie. Lucy jumped to the lights and switched them off. The dull greenish glow of the radio dial provided the sole illumination in the room.

“Sit on the bed!” she whispered, as she leapt onto it herself.

I did. On the radio a man began to speak: he bade us to come in and welcomed us.

“What is this, Lucy?” I whispered.

“Shhh!”

The man was talking about fearful things that happen in small towns. After that he said the title of
our mystery drama,
then read some credits and said that he would be back shortly with Act One. Commercials came on.