Blind Squirrels (5 page)

My daddy came home shortly after
Mom.  He worked at Spencer’s Carpets as a salesman.  He made decent money selling
carpet to businesses and individuals, and he believed that he worked ten times
harder than Mom did.  Maybe he did, but I doubted it.  He seemed to have too
much of a good time.   After suddenly noticing my mother’s aging, I decided to
give Daddy a once over.  He still looked the same as always – he carried his
age better than Mom, and he wasn’t even fat.  Daddy was an incredibly handsome
man.  Of course, his jet black hair was receding a little, but what remained
was still curly and thick.  He wore his hair in a short military cut – a style
acquired during his Navy days.  Another memento of those days was the tattoos
Daddy had on each arm.  One was an anchor along with the letters “U.S.N.”; the
other was a dagger through a rose.  Daddy had small blue eyes and they became
tiny slits whenever he laughed or smiled – and that was often.  He had a
straight rounded nose that turned slightly up on the end.   His wide smile
broke into laugh lines and dimples.  Daddy was thin and short, and his skin was
dark brown – suggesting his Cherokee Indian heritage. His most unattractive
feature was a rather large black mole on his right cheek.  Even that blemish
couldn’t undermine his charm.  In every way, he was the perfect daddy.

Daddy sat down in his favorite
chair and turned on the TV.  He’d be there for the remainder of the night,
except during dinner.  Dinner was the one time the entire family got together
and actually spent time together.  Sometimes it was pleasant, but often it
wasn’t.

With no one to talk to, I retreated
to my room.  I walked past my dresser mirror, and I paused to look at myself. 
My hair was dark blond and cut short in back with feathered bangs.  Mitzi, one
of the beauticians at Brenda’s Boutique, told me that short hair would make me
look slimmer.  It wasn’t working.  My face was oval, but my fat cheeks made it
look round.  I wasn’t ugly, but being fat kept most people from noticing.  I
had the high cheek bones of my Indian grandmother and the large eyes of my
mother – although mine were hazel instead of blue.  I had a nose like my father
and even a black mole just like his on my cheek – I called it a beauty mark. 
My smile was mine alone – perfect teeth and thin lips.  I wore wire framed
glasses with tinted lenses – and I hated them.   Even more, I hated my body.  I
was about twenty-five pounds overweight and for someone my age, that might as
well be one-hundred.  Even so, I didn’t dwell on my weight most of the time. 
Quite often I thought of myself as being just like everyone else.  It was only
when I approached a mirror that I became acutely aware of my true size.  Okay,
also when I squeezed into a blue polyester dress.  Ouch.  Or when people called
me names like whale, pig, or behemoth.  Double ouch.

I walked over to my stereo and
popped in an eight-track tape.  Jim Croce’s lamented voice crooned “Operator,”
and I lost myself in one of my little fantasy worlds.  “Rapid Roy the Stock Car
Boy” was just starting when Mom opened my door and said dinner was ready.  In a
rankled voice she added, “And please turn that music
down
.”  Neither she
nor my dad could understand the legendary music Croce left behind.  In their
eyes, if one of the three greats – Hank, Haggard, or Jones – didn’t do it, then
it wasn’t real music.  I reluctantly pulled out the tape and headed for the
dinner table.  It would be enough to dream about Max later.

The rest of that first week was
mostly unremarkable.  I did discover that Max lived on the other end of my
street, and, by Friday, I knew that his last name was Savage and that he was a
junior.  No one had teased me about him anymore, but then no one knew how I
felt about him yet.

I had also learned some things
about Johnny.  His last name was Roberts, he was a sophomore, and Dominique had
a huge crush on him.  I learned the last thing on the way home Friday.  Dominique
was sitting alone in a seat, and Johnny sat down beside her.  He hardly seemed
to notice her, but his presence certainly pleased her.  Aurelia couldn’t
contain herself.  She revealed Dominique’s crush, but she swore me to secrecy. 
I agreed to stay quiet, and we giggled about Dominique’s situation all the way
home.

Everything else was just school. 
It was already becoming a grind.  Getting off the bus Friday afternoon, I told Erma
that I was glad it was the weekend.  Erma and I were becoming distant friends,
but we had little in common.  Erma was rough, bossy, and sometimes mean.  I
feared her much more than I liked her.  Nevertheless, she was someone to talk
to every morning, and she was another person I could sit with on the bus.

Friday – that magic gateway to
the weekend.  Best of all, Donna was spending the night with me.  Her dad was
bringing her over at three-thirty – only an hour away.  I rushed home and
changed into some shorts and my Cat Stevens T-shirt, and then I ate a bowl of
dill pickles covered with BBQ sauce – one of my favorite snacks.  By the time Donna
arrived, I was thirty-six minutes into “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” 

Donna was wearing a red shirt
with balloon patterns all over it and a pair of blue knit shorts.  It was the
same outfit she had on the last time I saw her.  And the time before that.  It
must be her favorite, I concluded.  It never occurred to me that she might not
have as many clothes as I did.

I fixed Donna a glass of Pepsi without
ice – that’s how she wanted it – and a grilled cheese sandwich.  Then, while we
watched the rest of the movie, I told her that my mom was cooking shrimp scampi
for dinner.  To say Donna was jubilant would be the biggest understatement of
all time.  Donna loved shrimp scampi more than anything – yes, even life – and
she only got to eat it when she visited me.  Donna’s brother Thomas was
allergic to shrimp, so their mother had banned all seafood from their house.

It delighted me to please my
friend so easily.  And the shrimp announcement wasn’t the only good news I had
for her.  “Guess what else?”  I knew she’d never guess.

“Glen Campbell is going to be on
The Midnight Special?”  How did she do that?

“Well,” I couldn’t let her know
that she’d guessed my big surprise, “I guess he is.  But better than that, I’m
going to show you where Max lives.”  So it wasn’t a great surprise, so what?

“Um, okay.  Can I meet him?”  Can
you believe she asked me that?

“Meet him?  Of course not!  I
don’t want him to know I like him.  He and I aren’t friends or anything like
that.”  Besides, he might think Donna was cuter than me.  “Let’s finish
watching the movie,” I said to distract Donna from this line of thinking.  It
worked.  Fortunately for me, Donna had a short attention span.

The movie ended at five, and Donna
and I went outside for a walk down Heritage Street, the street I lived on.  “I
don’t know which house he lives in, but it’s down past my bus stop.”

“I thought I was going to see his
house.”  What did Donna expect from me?  I wasn’t a detective.

“Maybe he’ll be outside, and
we’ll see where he lives.”  What were the odds of that happening?  Pathetically
slim, I hoped.

We topped the hill that marked my
bus stop, and then we continued down Heritage on the other side.  The second
house on the left was Erma’s.  I knew this because Erma’s dad ran a TV repair
shop, and the shop’s van was in the driveway.  I immediately noticed some
people were outside at the third house on the right.  It was some of the boys
from the bus stop: Terrance, Amos, and Mason.  They were horsing around in someone’s
front yard.

“Is that him?  Is that him?”  Donna
was loud enough to get the whole neighborhood’s attention.  The three nitwits
stopped and turned to stare at us.

“That’s not him.”  My voice was
hissing worse than a leaky steam pipe.

“Okay, okay.  Just checking.” 
Even if Max appeared, I doubted I’d point him out to Donna now.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Kat. 
And she’s brought a friend.  This doesn’t look like one of your usual fleas,
Kat.”  Mason said.  He was the mouth of the group.  Amos was somewhat reticent,
and Terrance had to get warmed up.

“Ignore them,” I whispered to Donna. 
Too late.

“Hi, I’m Donna.”  She’d honed in
on Mason.  His pimpled face and black horn rimmed glasses didn’t seem to bother
her.  I’d have to warn her later that he was also in ROTC.

“Donna?  You look sort of
familiar.  Maybe I’ve met you before.”  Mason looked as if his brain was
working overtime.  It might burst through his forehead at any moment.

“Center Middle.  You’re Mason
Pearson, right?”  It looked as though she really knew him.

“Donna...,” I openly revealed the
irritation in my voice.  “We need to be going.”

“Why?”  Mason equally displayed
the ridicule in his voice.  “Max can see you perfectly well from here, since he
lives in the house across the street.  Of course, if you’re looking for Johnny,
his house is way over on Bridgeport.  He walks almost a mile to the bus stop
every morning.  He just likes our bus better than the one that goes by his
house.”

“Oh, Kat, did you hear that?  Max
lives right over there.”  Just in case the whole town of Foster’s Bank didn’t
hear her, she pointed towards the house and said, “Right over there at number
227.”

She always found a way to leave
me stupefied.  For several moments I stood by silently while Mason and Donna continued
their chatter.  Terrance kept whispering in Amos’ ear and then chuckling loudly. 
I knew he was mocking me, but I was powerless to fight back for a moment.

When I finally found my tongue, I
said simply, “You can talk to these boneheads all day if you want, but I’m
going home.”

As I turned to walk back towards
my house, I looked at the house across the street.  Max wasn’t outside, but
some other people were.  I guessed that they were Max’s parents.  The man was about
Max’s height.  He’d lost most of his hair on top, and what remained around the
edges was white.  He was wearing black rimmed glasses and a blue uniform like
the ones the carpet installers at Spencer’s Carpets wore.  He was standing
beside an old blue Buick Skylark station wagon with its hood open.  I
recognized the type of car because our family had owned one when I was much
younger.  The woman was standing at the front door watching a little dog run
around in the yard.  She looked like one of those dolls that you can make from
Styrofoam balls: her head was a small ball, her body was a large ball, and her
arms and legs were pipe cleaners.  In her left hand she held a bottle of Miller
High Life beer, and, to prove it was hers, she turned it up and took a long
swig.  She was wearing a red horizontally striped shirt and a pair of skintight
red polyester shorts.  Obviously wanting to be color coordinated in every way,
her nose and cheeks were also a bright shade of red, but her hair was a dull
white-gray mixture.  I guess she had never heard of Nice ‘N Easy. 

“Alex, could you hand me Corky?” 
I heard her ask in a husky voice.  For the first time, I noticed the cigarette
in her right hand.  She moved it hastily to her mouth, and, after a long draw,
she left it dangling between her lips as she took the squirming dog from the
man’s hands.

As I walked away, one thought was
on my mind: What a wonderful mother-in-law she’ll make.

Soon Donna was on my heels. 
“Why’d you leave?  They were sort of friendly.  They might help you with Max.”

“I don’t need their help.  I
guess I don’t need yours either.”  I picked up the pace.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to
embarrass you.”  She sounded sincere enough.  I decided to forgive her.  She
was my best friend after all.

At home, we sat down to shrimp
scampi, salad, and biscuits.  My mom was the best cook in the world.  Donna
thought so, too.  She put away a ton of shrimp.  My dad told jokes and funny
stories that kept us laughing through the whole meal.

Later, Donna and I were talking
in my room.  She was telling me about two boys – both named Steve – that she
liked.  She told me that Steve Jennings was very cute, but Steve Grice had a
better personality.  Both boys liked her, but she couldn’t decide which one she
liked the best.

“What’s Max’s last name?” she
asked.

“Savage,” I told her.  “Why?”

“I don’t know.  I just thought he
might be in Colleen’s old yearbook.  Remember?  She went to WMHS last year
before they changed the school boundaries.”  I did remember, and I thought it
might be fun to see Max’s old picture.

Just then, Donna said she needed
to go to the bathroom.  She left out of the room and I put on my Donny Osmond
album – the one my brother gave me for my eleventh birthday.  It had all my
favorites: “Puppy Love”, Hey Girl” and “Hey There, Lonely Girl”.  At first, I
forgot Donna, so I didn’t wonder why she was taking so long.  But after the
first side of the album ended, I noticed that she still hadn’t returned.

I looked out into the hall, and
the bathroom door was standing open.  I didn’t see Donna anywhere.  As I
stepped into the hallway, I thought I heard Donna’s voice in the living room.  
Slipping around the corner, I saw her standing by the couch with the phone in
her hand; the phone book lay on the couch spread open.  No one else was
present; apparently my parents had gone to bed.  Then I heard Donna say, “She
rides your bus.  Her name is Katrina Kipling or Kat.  Do you know her?”