Dumplin' (21 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“Dumplin'! You have a guest!”

I storm down the stairs. Bo volunteered to pick me up, but I specifically told him to text me when he was outside. I guess he's not one for following directions.

Last night as I was getting into bed, my phone chimed. I should've known better but, for a second, I thought it might be Ellen.

BO: hey you wanna study for that World History test this weekend?

I replied yes without even stopping to think if I should.

Now Bo stands in the kitchen next to my mom, who's still sipping on her coffee. She makes a show of turning her back to him and wiggling her eyebrows at me.

“I'm going to Bo's to study, Mom.”

Her cheeks are so red she could be drunk. “You two behave.”

Bo slides the door open and waits for me to walk out first.

“Don't you forget to get that quote from your dad, sweetie!” she yells to Bo in a singsong voice.

We round the corner into the driveway. “What was that about?” I ask.

“Uh, yeah.” He motions to my house. “We were talking about that front door. My dad, he's a locksmith. But he fixes doors a lot, too.”

We drive in silence for a while before I say, “My mom's a total nut. I'm sorry.”

“You guys look alike.”

I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry as can be. No one's ever said that about me and my mom. It was always Lucy.
You look just like your aunt.
I'm not ashamed of that, but I like the idea of looking like my mother's daughter.

“In a good way,” he says.

Based on what Bo told me about him being on scholarship, I figured he didn't live in a new neighborhood, but I wasn't quite expecting this. His house—with its well-maintained lawn—sits on a street of sagging roofs, chipping paint, and overgrown yards.

Bo pulls into the crumbling driveway. “This is my place.”

I follow him up the walkway to the front door, which has a hand-painted sign hanging from it that says:
Unless you're selling cookies, no soliciting, please.

Bo's house is warm, but not uncomfortably so. It's one story, and considerably smaller than mine. The furniture is at least two decades old, but it all matches. I wonder what it must be like for his stepmom to live in the house his mom made.

The place smells distinctly of incense, which doesn't at
all match everything else. I wonder if maybe my house smelled anything like me to Bo.

I don't know where I expected Bo to live, but it was not here.

“Let me introduce you to my stepmom.”

I follow him the short distance from the front door to where the incense is burning in the kitchen. Bo's stepmom is cursing at the ice machine in the freezer. A small puddle of water with stray cubes of melting ice floats at her feet. She's not as polished as she was when I saw her at the mall, but she's still pretty in a way that my mom isn't. In an unprepared way. Without the manicures and the makeup and the hair spray.

“Loraine,” says Bo, “this is Willowdean.”

She whips around with a big steak knife in her hand. “Oh!” She laughs and drops her arm to her side. “The girl with two names. I remember you.” She turns to Bo. “The one from work?”

Bo nods.

She smiles and hugs me with one arm. Not the knife-carrying arm.

He coughs. “Everything okay with the ice maker?”

She holds the knife up again, like she's about to stab something. “Oh, just all frozen inside. Trying to break some of it up so your dad doesn't have to deal with it. He got called out on a job during breakfast.”

“We're going to study in my room,” says Bo.

Loraine's eyes bounce back and forth between us. I'm waiting for her to say something like,
Maybe you should
study out here
or
Leave the door open.
Instead she says, “Let me know if you need anything.”

His room isn't dirty, but lived in. There are traces of him at every age. Posters for bands I'm surprised he's even heard of, a basketball on his desk with a few signatures, a bowl of red lollipops of all kinds, one of those corner ceiling hammocks filled with stuffed animals, and a framed San Antonio Spurs jersey.

He closes the door behind us, and I think that all the air there is left to breathe in the world is sealed in this room. When it runs out, that'll be it. The death of me in Bo Larson's bedroom.

We sit on pillows on the floor with our books and notes spread out. For a bit, we talk about what might be on the exam, but all I can think is: BO-BO-BO-BO'S-ROOM-HE-SLEEPS-HERE-BO-BO-BO-BO-THIS-IS-WHERE-HE-TAKES-OFF-HIS-CLOTHES.

Beyond Bo's head, hanging on his doorknob, is an oversized ring full of keys.

“What's the deal with the janitor keys?” I ask.

He glances over his shoulder. “Oh. From my dad.” He scoots around and leans against the bed. I do the same.

“I started collecting them when I was a kid. My dad would get me to help him clean out his van by telling me I could keep whatever spare keys I found. They're mostly miscuts or old keys people couldn't use anymore.”

Our hands sit splayed out on the carpet, our fingers not even an inch apart. “Do you still help him?”

He shakes his head. “Things changed when I started
going to Holy Cross. I was always busy with basketball. And friends, I guess. I don't know. Life started feeling too important for his stupid keys. You know how you start getting these big plans for your life and suddenly all the work your parents do feels so meaningless? And I guess I was embarrassed by him. I got pretty used to seeing all the dads at Holy Cross in their polo shirts and khaki pants that I started to beg my dad not to pick me up in his van.” He shakes his head. “I was an asshole. I still am sometimes.”

“I think being embarrassed by your parents is as much a part of growing up as getting taller.”

He smiles with his lips closed. “I used to love watching him pick locks. Just the way he'd stand there listening to the lock like it was his favorite song. And then it would click.”

“I don't know if it matters, but I don't think you're an asshole. For the most part.”

“It wasn't my dad,” he says. “My ex-girlfriend. Amber. I was horrible to her. She wanted so badly to be there for me. She went to all of my games. Even the away games if she could swing it. And all I did to thank her was take her to dark movie theaters to fool around or hang out in her dad's TV room and watch basketball. I thought she was using me as some kind of status symbol, so I figured it didn't matter. But she wasn't getting anything from me she couldn't get anywhere else.”

My mouth goes sour. This scenario sounds too familiar. And it's nothing I want to revisit. “What does Loraine
do?”

His entire body blushes and he covers his face with his hands so that I can barely see him. “She throws romance parties.”

“Wait.” I try so hard not to laugh. “I'm sorry. What did you say?”

He throws his head back against the bed. “Romance parties.”

“Like, um, sex toys?”

He turns an even deeper shade of red.

“My mom works at a nursing home,” I tell him to try to save him even if his blushing may be the most adorable thing ever.

He turns to face me, his color fading. “I thought she was the beauty pageant lady.”

“She is. She's the beauty pageant lady who wipes your grandparents' asses by day.”

“Wow,” he says. “I never would've thought.”

I sigh. “The glamorous life.”

“So you really entered the pageant?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Why?” Everyone seems to have something to say about me entering and I'm sure Bo is no different.

“Well, I've always thought pageants were dumb, but I thought that about Dolly Parton, too.”

I smile. “Right answer.”

“What about your aunt?” he asks. “The one that passed away.”

I swallow. “She didn't work. She was on disability.”

“Oh, so it was kind of expected? I mean, that doesn't make it better. I meant that—”

“No.” My voice is soft, but he hears me. “It wasn't expected.”

He waits for me speak.

“She was big. Not like me. Like, five hundred pounds big. She had a heart attack. She took care of me, though. Like a second parent.”

“I wish there was something better to say than ‘I'm sorry.'”

We sit there for a few minutes watching the shadows created by the blowing tree limbs outside of his plastic blinds.

“I think he was kind of happy when I lost my scholarship.”

“Why would he be happy about that?” I ask, knowing without a doubt who “he” is. He crosses his arm and when he does, his hand brushes mine. Every little thing—hands touching and doors sealing—send a shooting warmth up my spine.

“I don't even mean happy, really. More relieved.” He leans his head back again and watches the mini basketballs hanging from the chains of his ceiling fan. I imagine it must be weird to live in this shrine dedicated to a sport he can't play anymore. “I think I was on this path to get out of here. I was good at basketball. Good enough to get noticed by some smaller colleges, and maybe he saw that, too. But I was never supposed to leave Clover City. Before Holy Cross, I was supposed to live here and die
here, working with my dad.”

Each word is familiar to me. His truth is my truth. There's a version of the future in my head where I stay here forever. I watch my mom work until the day she dies. And then it's just me in that house with its broken front door, full of pageant supplies and Dolly Parton records. Bleak, I know. But, still, there's a bit of comfort that comes with knowing how your life is going to turn out. I've never had a surprise turn out in my favor.

“I don't blame him,” he continues. “It's that feeling of people leaving. It's scary.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I think maybe we're both talking about a different kind of loss. The kind that can't be fixed with a plane ticket.

There's a knock at his door.

“Come in.”

“Hey, son.” Bo's dad is a shorter version of Bo. Sturdy and broad. He notices me and nods.

“Dad, this is Willowdean. We go to school together. She works at Harpy's, too.”

I stand up. “Good to meet you, Mr. Larson.”

He waves a hand at me. “Call me Billy.” He turns to Bo. “I need your help swapping this tire out on the van real quick.”

“Sure.” Bo hops up and promises he'll be right back.

I stand there for a moment. In Bo Larson's bedroom. By myself. On his desk, next to the signed basketball, are three frames. The first one is Bo from a few years ago. He's wearing a Holy Cross jersey and has a basketball tucked
beneath his arm. He looks younger with his close-cropped hair and his stubble-free face, but the outline of his biceps foreshadows the next few years. A promise of the Bo I know today. The next one is old and kind of grainy, like it might have been taken on a cell phone. It's Bo's dad, Bo, and his brother, Sammy. Bo looks no older than nine. The three of them are on a dingy-looking beach—definitely a Texas beach—with the water at their backs. Bo stands alongside his dad, with his arms crossed and his feet spread wide. Mr. Larson holds Sammy over his head like a dumbbell. The final frame is his parents' wedding photo. And now I see where Bo gets his height from. Mrs. Larson had at least three inches on her husband. She wears a light yellow tea-length dress with gold sandals and her hair loose around her shoulders. It's a candid photo. Mrs. Larson's head is thrown back in laughter, while Mr. Larson wears the grin I've seen on Bo so many times.

“She was beautiful. A total Scorpio, too.”

I turn. Loraine stands in the doorway, wearing a quiet smile.

“I'm sorry,” I say, but for what I don't really know. “I was waiting for Bo to get back.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

I chew on my lip for a moment before asking, “Did you know her?”

“Only in passing, but, from what I hear, she was a good one to know.”

I look at the picture once more.

“Come have some iced tea with me,” Loraine says.

Most women in the South take great pride in their iced tea and pass their recipes down from generation to generation. But Loraine is not most women. She mixes her tea with powder from a box. To my mom, powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture.

“You want some lemons?” she asks.

“Yeah, that'd be great.” I squeeze two lemons before taking a sip.
Delicious
. Like frozen lasagna. Wherever my mom is she's just fainted.

Loraine sits down in front of me with a glass for herself. She's one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. “What's your sign, Willowdean?”

“Pardon?”

“Your star sign? Astrology?”

“I—well, I don't know.” According to my mom, astrology is two steps away from demonic possession. “I never really paid attention before.”

She shakes her head and tsks. “I'll never understand how it is people navigate their whole lives without knowing their signs. What's your birthday?”

“August twenty-first.”

“Ah,” she says. “A Leo, but barely.”

I lean in. “What's that mean?” I'm learning a whole new language for the first time.

“You, my dear, are a lion.” She says it with such great dramatics, but it's lost on me. She sighs. “You're the king of the jungle, baby. Walking confidence.”

Yup, this is total bullshit.

She waves a finger at me. “Don't write me off so soon. There's more. You're a fire sign. You love big, but you hurt big, too. But you don't always let the hurt show, because it's a vulnerability. You're the sun. Always there. Even when we can't see you.”