Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (26 page)

“I dated a thief once,” Peach said. Lillian’s pancake, which she’d been carefully trying to skewer for the past few seconds, dropped off her fork. We all looked up at Peach. Relief eased into the crack of the broken silence. I could have hugged Peach. I tell you, those Casserole Queens were really getting to me. Tension danced out of the room like it realized it was at the wrong party.

“Sure, and you wrote to that convict, too, don’t forget,” Harold said.

“This was when I was sixteen. I can’t remember his name. That’s the funny thing you realize when you get older. People and things you think are so important right then, you can’t even remember later. Billy, maybe. No. Bobby? Starts with a B.”

“Burt?” Miz June suggested.

“No,” Peach said. “Anyway, he stole street signs. Had a whole collection in his backyard.
YIELD, STOP, NO PARKING.
No idea how he got them off. Once I was going to help him take a signboard on the corner of Front Street and Alder, but then he yanked the whole damn thing out of the ground, post and all. He’d been shaking it loose for weeks. We put it across the backseat of his car, the pole hanging out one window. He wasn’t too bright. Put the bus stop sign he stole in his front yard and got caught when the bus kept stopping there.” I laughed.

“Bart?” Miz June said.

“No. Jeb! That’s it. Jeb.”

“You said it started with a B,” Harold said.

“I knew it was something that sounded like a hillbilly name,” Peach said.

“I was convinced Mr. Varsuccio was in the mafia,” Miz June said.

“And you dated him,” Peach said.

“He was such a snappy dresser,” Miz June said.

“Though Nine Mile Falls isn’t exactly Mafia territory,” my mom said.

“Yeah, but who would look for him there?” Chip Jr. said.

“Perfect hideout,” I said.

“He didn’t dress so snappy,” Harold said.

“Tell us about your thief,” Miz June said.

It was raw, broken-glass territory that required passing in bare feet. But right then, with darkness falling outside and our reflections beginning to show in the window, with the yellow lights of the restaurant warmly displaying the comforts of life—pies behind glass, swivel counter
chairs, Miz June’s purse with the pinch clasp sitting on the seat beside me—it seemed safe to venture out there. Everyone looked my way except for Chip Jr., who had lifted the bun of his hamburger and was reordering its insides. Even Lillian looked up with bright, expectant eyes. She cleared her throat, as if helping me to begin.

“He had a motorcycle,” I said.

“Ah!” Peach said.

“I saw it sitting on his front lawn.”

“His parents are rich,” my mother said.

“Ann,” Miz June warned. She put two fingers to her lips and pretended to zip them shut. A surge of joy filled me. Like when the teacher finally sees what that bad kid in your class is doing to you under his desk.

My mother took a big, rebellious bite of her hamburger.

“He liked to do dangerous things,” I said.

“Like what?” Peach asked.

“Stand in the middle of Cummings Road. Drive too fast.” I lowered my voice. “Sneak into people’s houses.”

“You ditched him, I’ll bet,” Peach said.

Guilt snuck around my insides. I wished I could tell them it was true, that Travis was gone from me. The door-slammed-and-locked kind of gone, no remnants of cravings. I needed to tell them the whole story, though, I knew that. Somehow it felt important to say it. Somehow it seemed critical. I wasn’t sure I could do the rest of this. My voice was small, barely mine. “He broke into Johnson’s Nursery. I worked there. Libby Wilson is my
mom’s best friend.” God, I was about to cry. My voice shook. I thought I might sob in Denny’s. Maybe a lot of people had sobbed in Denny’s—after all, it was open all night.

“I was there with him.” I heard the glass breaking in my mind. I saw the lit sign
DOG KNOWS WHO YOU ARE.
“I told him where she kept the key. To the cash register.” The tears rolled down my cheeks. I wiped them with the back of my hand.

“I could kill him,” Harold said.

“What, knock him unconscious with your flour sifter? Listen to him, Mr. Macho. You’re a chef,” Peach said.

“I could take that punk,” Harold said.

“Hit him with your rolling pin,” Mom said through another mouth of burger.

“You could chase him with your scary Halloween cookie cutters,” Peach said.

“Well, it looks to me that you won’t be repeating that mistake,” Miz June said.

“He punished himself, anyway,” my mother said. “Cracked himself up on his motorcycle on Cummings Road.”

Lillian shook her head. “Oh, boy,” Peach said.

“Why is it that women always like the bad boys, anyway?” Harold said. “He was probably good-looking, right?”

I nodded.

“It’s not about looks,” Miz June said.

“It’s not?” Peach said. She’d polished off her corned
beef sandwich and was starting in on the pickle skewered with a frilly toothpick. Frilly toothpicks are one of those inventions that make you stop and think that at one point in time, it was someone’s great idea. Imagine some guy in his basement, drinking Orange Crush and picking his teeth and going
Aha!

“It’s not
just
about looks, or even mostly. It’s not that we want something
bad,
it’s just that we want something
big,
” Miz June said.

“True,” Peach said.

“So you find it in some punk? That’s like wanting Mexican food but going to a Chinese restaurant to get it,” Harold said.

“True again, but you’re missing the point,” Peach said.

“The pursuit of love gets mixed up with the pursuit of life,” Miz June said.

“So go climb a mountain,” Harold said.

“Oh, Harold,” my mother said.

“It’s that easy, isn’t it?” Miz June said. “I look at my grandchildren and I still see it. The boys are expected to
do.
Accomplish something. Seek adventure. Sure, they study for careers now, but what are girls still expected to seek? Boys. Boys get mountains, girls get boys.”

“She’s right,” my mother said.

“She
is
right,” Peach said.

“Girls can climb mountains if they want,” I said. “We know that. I don’t like this idea,” I said.

“Like it or not, it happens all the time.” Miz June delicately cut another piece from her veal cutlet. “A man’s
identity is complete through action, a woman’s, when she has a man. Through him. We fall off our high heels into the narrow crevasse of what it means to be female. Let me tell you. You fall in love and you think you’re finding yourself. But too often you’re looking inside him for you, and that’s a fact. There’s only one place you can find yourself.” She patted her chest.

I thought about the painting in Miz June’s living room. Of the man on his knees in front of the woman with her head turned. Miz June, with her pearls and the crinkled skin of a plum left too long in the back of a refrigerator, had years of thoughts stored up on the subject of women and men.

“I thought we were supposed to be over that kind of thing. I thought feminism cured that,” my mother said.

“You can’t possibly believe that,” Miz June said. “Look around. Look at yourself.”

I never would have gotten away with saying that, but Miz June wore pearls. Pearls made everything sound polite. My mother thought about it.

“What about you?” Mom said. “You are always surrounded by men. You are the ultimate lady.”

“Lady has nothing to do with it. I was raised to be a lady. After George died, all these old coots came around wanting someone to wash their socks. A lady I will be, but a man’s accessory, his
handbag,
no thank you. I will not be someone’s ornament. I will not just be someone’s honey, baby, sweetheart.” She stuck out her chin.

“June, you’re preaching,” Peach said.

“This is a book club. We are supposed to discuss things.”

“Surrounded by feminists in Denny’s,” Harold said. “Sounds like a newspaper headline.”

My mother wadded up her napkin and threw it at him. Another napkin sailed in the air. It came from the direction of Lillian’s wheelchair. It barely made it to the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table, but Lillian looked pleased with herself.

“Chip Jr.,” Harold said. “You, me, outta here.”

“I’m not getting into this,” Chip Jr. said.

“Miz June’s right. We need a chance to have adventure,” my mother said.

“We’ve certainly had one today,” Peach said.

“Love can come when you’re already who you are, when you are filled with you. Not when you look to someone else to fill the empty space.” Miz June said. “Not when it’s your definition.”

“To adventure,” Peach said. She lifted her Denny’s water glass.

“To adventure,” we all said, even Harold. We lifted our glasses. Lillian’s ice cubes shook and rattled in the glass, and a sound came from her throat:
to.
Miz June’s pearl bracelet slipped up her wrist as she raised her arm. I clinked my glass with everyone’s, my mother’s last. Her eyes said she would always forgive me.

“Here’s what I think, Ruby,” Miz June said after we’d put our glasses down.

“You’ve already told us. I agree with Peach, for once
in her miserable life. You’re preaching,” Harold said. “I got to put money in the collection box,” he pretended to take something out of his pocket and toss it into the basket that held Miz June’s bread roll.

“So I’m preaching. Fine. This is important,” she said. “You didn’t love that boy, Ruby. You loved his motorcycle.”

Just then Randy came back. He set our check down flat on the table. “You,” he pointed at Lillian. “I just saw you on TV. I told myself, ‘Randy, the colossum mondo misfired.’ But no, man, I’m sure it was you.”

“Oh, yeah,” my mother said. “I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Wong said you were on TV.”

“You’re kidding!” Peach said. “We were on TV? I hope she recorded it.”

“Not us, just Lillian’s picture,” my mother said.

“How could you forget!” Harold said.

“Joe Davis Forgetting Pill,” Chip Jr. said.

“Slow news day,” Peach said. She was just jealous.

“They said she was missing. Wandered away from the rest home. I guess she got found. Celebration dinner, huh?” Randy said.

“No, she’s still missing,” Harold said. “We abducted her. We took her out of there. She’s on the run. For God’s sake, quit elbowing me, Peach, you lethal cow.”

“Jesus, Harold,” Peach said. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“They already know we’ve got her,” Harold said. “I don’t see what the big damn deal is. We’re taking her somewhere she wants to be,” he told Randy.

“Cool!” Randy said finally. “Like
Free Willy.”

Harold looked baffled. To his defense, we hadn’t been able to understand anything Randy said, but I could see Harold consider all the options. Free Willy, some runaway convict? Like Free Willy, some expression of encouragement?

“It’s a movie,” I said.

“About a whale,” my mother said.

“They steal the whale from these bad guys and set it free in the ocean,” Chip Jr. said.

“Free Willy,” Randy said. “Glacially maximum.”

I read Charles Whitney’s book while Mom was next door, settling the old people in their room. I had begun reading it after the night at Johnson’s Nursery. Mom had said it had brought her back to life after my father’s visit. Maybe it could cure me of Travis too, and help me remember that this was just one chapter in a long life, as Mom said. Not only did I have one of the characters asleep in the room next to me, but there was also the practical matter that Charles Whitney’s book was a thick one. I would go into that other world for a long while, and let the distance of it restore me, the way a long sleep, or a vacation, does. If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person’s entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.

“Harold complained about being on the pull-out couch, until Peach said he could get in with her. That shut him up,” my mother said as she closed our door. I set
my book down on the nightstand. Mom slipped off her shoes, fell backward onto the still-made bed closest to the door. “What a day.”

I lay flat across the other bed, staring up at a painting of a Venice canal. Mom’s bed had the same one over it, painted from a different angle. “It seems like it’s been six days long,” I said.

Chip Jr. was in the bathroom. He insisted he be the one to tear off the protective strip on the toilet seat. We could hear him try the shower—on, off. The toilet flushed with such an explosion, it sounded like a rocket taking off.