Look How You Turned Out (12 page)

I look out the window, my phone in my hand. I know the rules. There's Juney. This is Dad's home. He will respect that.

He'll try to.

I squeeze the phone when the door opens, and he steps out, without a shirt. He closes the door behind him. He is ripped, even in this light, and I know every ripple from the many times I've studied him, including our run the first night. His body, like I said before, it arrived in my field of vision right on time. He has made me think, from age twelve, of a world of mysterious possibility. He is a man, a big cat of a man, a Leonardo Da Vinci of a man, a balanced symphony of bone, muscle and flesh. He's a blues song, a rock song, and he's God Bless America.

He leans against the door looking up here. He can't see me.

I hold up my phone and flash the light when I snap a picture that I don't expect anything from. I'm just saying hello, like Tinkerbell, wishing on a star.

He pulls his phone from his pocket and works it over quick, then puts it back in his pants.

My phone vibrates, and I read the text. "Baby, Beauty…I'm looking."

He turns and goes inside.

It's the best goodnight.

The next morning Juney wakes me up. "Bedilia c'mon I've got the Pop Tarts ready and the movie pulled up."

I pry my eyes open. I feel like I'd been drinking the night before. I have a Marcus Stover hang-over. "I'll be down," I say in this voice I don't recognize

My sins parade before the backs of my eyelids. Sexting? For real?

Then the sweetness, the backyard, my boots off the ground, the middle of the street, his hands, his arms under Dad's big coat. Marcus leaning on the door like the gatekeeper to my future-Marry me.

I flop onto my back my arm extending, back of my hand on the bed, fingers curled while the other hand rubs over the deep flutter in my heart.

Juney's back. "Bedilia, it's Jessica. She's walking up to the door."

He says this like the Indians are coming, and we've just buried Pa.

Ding dong.

I sit up and rub over my face. He's scared me.

"Should I get Dad?" he says.

"Um…," I can't get going for some reason. A hundred thoughts are besieging me at once. "No…not your dad."

"We should call for back-up," he says urgently well-schooled by Artie and Marcus on procedure.

I laugh, but it's weak. "Juney…it's fine. Just don't answer. I'll do it. Go on so I can get dressed."

"I'm staying up here," he whispers running across the hall.

I search frantically for my robe and tie it around my waist. I'm thrown, but I'm not afraid now. We're all adults here…well, Juney is.

I hurry downstairs. Marcus is on early shift so he won't have had time to see her unless he's been talking on the phone or texting, and I feel a stab of jealousy among my other emotions, and it's real and wrong.

Ding dong, ding dong. I look out the peephole and see a woman not as young as me, extensions for sure and curled way too tightly to look natural. I'm thinking Shirley Temple here…or Betty Davis. Whew.

She's serious as in angry, okay, pretty enough if you like pinched features and a ton of foundation. She must know every trick. I get on my tiptoes to see more, but she keeps ringing the bell and Juney whisper-yells behind me, "Don't open it whatever you do."

I wave him away behind me. I crack the door enough. "Yes?"

"Where is he?" she says, a hand on the door like she's going to push in. But my foot braces the door, and she can't widen it enough to get past me without a scratch-fest-claw-fest and a chop or two cause Artie taught me some things and put me in Karate because I would only let people touch my arm if I had on my sweater, even in summer. So after two years of an all-boy class, I can stay focused when I'm hurt believe me.

"Slow down," I say.

"For the last two-thousand miles, I've looked at your smug face you little bitch. Think I'm going to step back for you because your daddy is some has-been sheriff?"

Artie always told me, when someone is upset you don't match their emotion. A calm person is a thinking person, a calm person is a leader.

"He's not home, and he wasn't going into work, so where is he?" she says. Whiteners. I'm blind.

"Artie?" I say because it's not my job to read her mind.

"Marcus," she screams.

I am struck at how desperate she is, how angry. She lights up her phone and sticks it in my face, the picture from the market. Amazing nails. She could never stack wood.

"Don't tell me you haven't met," she sneers.

"There's his house," I say, stater of the obvious but some people don't require much creativity so why expend your energy? That's what I say.

"And this is your mug, and he's looking at you." She sticks it in my face again but gives me no time to see the evidence that Marcus can focus on singular objects.

"Your friend took that while I was shopping," I say. "I was standing by the Dentyne and holding a pound of brussels sprouts."

"He's my boyfriend." Big, big 'my' here, and an orator's hand to go with it. I have this flash of Richard Burton playing Mark Antony. Strange, I know.

"Maybe when you calm down you can talk to Officer Stover," I say.

"What the hell do you think you've been doing going behind my back? Did you think I'd take that?"

A laundry list of the things I've been doing runs through my mind, all with Marcus of course, kissing, rubbing, panting, losing it, sexting, jogging, hugging, staring, loving, planning, wanting, wanting.

Here's what I say, though, and it's cold, so cold it must be some latent part of my mother I hadn't needed before, "I don't think of you at all. I don't know you."

I hear Juney on my phone. He's calling his dad.

She takes one step back. That puts one foot on the step another stays on the porch. Her boots have spiked heels so it takes some amazing form to pull this off. But she looks ready to spring up in my grill at the least provocation.

"I go away for four days and…how long have you been back?"

"You need to go home," I say. "I can see how upset you are. But you can't come here like this. Now I'm going to close the door, and if you're not in your car in two minutes, I'm calling Lowland's finest."

Yeah, I said it. Didn't I? I said it and moved my neck.

"Is he here now? Is he?" She steps up. I don't like her boots…at all. I see weapons. "Sharon said you were all over him."

"Sharon…?"

"Coy's wife," she screams.

I put my hand up. Sharon only thinks she saw the good stuff.

I say, "I'm closing the door now. Go home."

I do close the door. She hits it once. I have turned the deadbolt. I listen and wait, I look through the peephole. She gives my door the finger and marches down my sidewalk. That behind…she could do some squats and that's all I'm going to say.

Marcus pulls up.

"Juney," I whisper, then realize he's at the window I'm going to next. I budge in, and my arm is against his.

"She's got an awful temper," he says. "Should we get Artie's rifle?"

I look at him in shock. "You didn't say…."

"Kidding," he says his eyes still on the scene of those boots, and that booty rolling toward where Marcus is getting out of the patrol car with that look he must use on a domestic when he finds the husband on the lawn, belly in the wind, brandishing a weapon and threatening to kill the wife and all her sisters.

I almost say, "Get the rifle," to Juney, but I don't want to be an alarmist. This woman can be defeated with a sharp tongue and a well-aimed hairbrush surely.

Oh, she's engaging him. I can't make it out. I unlock the window and slowly ease it higher, the cold blast of air rechilling me as I realize the open door had done. Juney is bent down with his head in the break. I should send him to my room, but he wouldn't go. I get closer too.

"What is going on?" she's screaming. "You don't answer my calls, and I hear how you're all over this slut," she brandishes a hand toward my house.

Marcus tells her to calm down. He is serious and commanding. "I told you on the phone we would talk when you got here. I never meant for you to be upset when you had that ride home."

"Talk about what? What happened in four days, Marcus! We were talking marriage!"

"You were talking marriage," he says. "I should have told you before you left but I needed time to think of what to say."

"All this time…you're afraid of commitment. You're a commitment-phobe."

"I can't go forward with you."

"What is this a square dance? I thought we were getting serious! You let me think we were you bastard."

"Calm down and lower your voice," he says.

"Don't you dare tell me how to handle this you lying son of a bitch."

"You were moving ahead without me. You don't listen."

"Listen? What else was there but getting engaged? You won't move in with me like a normal boyfriend! Is it Junior? I told you kids take a while to warm up to me. Wasn't I sexy enough? I'm not twenty-two, but I have a few good miles left!" She slaps her own behind and Juney and I groan in unison.

She continues, "You were nothing but can't's. Can't spend the night," my hands go around Juney's ears, and I fight to pull him away from the window and get back in time to not miss one of her rat-a-tat words. "Can't move in together. Can't go to Boise with me to meet my family. Can't go with me to the stylist's convention. Can't be out late on a school night cause Juney waits up."

"I do not," Juney whispers, and I realize his face is right back in the crack.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she mimics in a wicked voice, "I don't love easy. I think it's from my first wife, you say. So get some help, I say. Go to Gloria Gladdon, I say. She's helped me for years with my OCD and my rage issues, but no you say, cops don't get counseling for that kind of thing. It's a matter of the heart, not the mind you say. You liar! And I cried over that. I thought it was like…beautiful! Well, pardon me for trying to get you to a better place. Excuse me! I guess all it took was some new Yang to…," I do plug Juney's ears now. I pull him back and shut the window on the Yang part.

I am livid. "Juney…start the movie," I say coldly.

He swallows. "Don't go out there."

I run to the mudroom and shove my feet in the boots. Hurrying through the living room, Juney is still standing there in his undershirt and Spiderman pajama pants holding Artie's mace. "Take this."

I can't believe he knows where everything is. I grab that mace to keep him safe and point at the television and march to the door yanking it wide.

Marcus looks at me over her head. She is clinging to him, her backside is toward me, and he's patting her…back. He doesn't have a coat on which lets me know when Juney called he came running. He's holding her. She's holding him and crying like a rhinoceros might cry if you could hear one.

I feel ridiculous, and my boots make noise as I take some steps and fold my arms.

He shakes his head no, his mouth a grim line. I throw up my hands the key ring on the mace rattling. I start to retreat, but she sees me. "You'll get yours, bitch," she calls.

I plan on it…I don't say out loud. I only refrain for Marcus's sake.

He's telling her to stop the verbal assault, and she pulls away from him and tells him not to give her that crap.

My work here is done so I turn to go back inside. Juney is there holding my tennis racket. "Get inside," I say like he's crazy. But next thing I know I'm grabbed by the hair and I'm going over backward, and the last thing I see is Juney swinging for all he's worth.

I wake up with Marcus carrying me to the squad car. He's trying to put me inside, and I'm startled, but so is he when I start directing him to let me do it for myself.

"She's alive," Juney yells, and I feel his small arms, and then Marcus is telling him to get back and be careful.

Marcus tells me to hang on.

"I thought I killed her. I thought I killed Bedilia," Juney is crying from the backseat.

"It's alright," I say low, but I have to let my eyes stay closed I can't look around. My hand is raised, fishing for his.

"Juney calm down. Bedilia is fine," Marcus says.

"There's so much blood," Juney cries.

"Bedilia I'm so sorry," Marcus says, and he doesn't sound much better than Juney. Then he's on the radio, and we're moving, and he's talking to the hospital. He has a female with a head injury, possible concussion, he's five minutes out he needs a gurney and a doctor, and tell the doctor to get his behind out of Billy's and be waiting at the emergency room doors, and call Tom, she'll need some x-rays, possibly a cat scan or an MRI. She might be concussed just be ready.

That's what I hear.

"Hold on baby," he says like I've been gunshot.

"You go to med-school?" I say without opening my eyes. Well, the one eye won't open.

"I thought she died," Juney wails.

I'm holding one of Juney's hands, and his other is squeezing the daylights out of my shoulder. "It's okay little man," I say.

"You were brave."

"Juney, sit back now and calm down. Bedilia will be fine," Marcus says, but even I hear the lack of conviction.

"Is like…my brain showing or something?" I ask feebly cause maybe they know something I don't.

Juney cries louder, and Marcus says no. But I lift my head and touch it in back, and it's sticky, and my hand is red goo. I hope it's not brain matter. "Gross," I say.

"She's going to die," Juney wails.

"Juney for the love of God," Marcus says like Kirk Douglas might have said it in an old black and white, all those sounds in his throat you can't hear but your popcorn is in your hand and for a split second you forget to eat it.

"Calm down…both of you," I whisper. I want to help them. I plan on it…if…I live.

In the great mystic stew, I'm still needed as a carrot until I get swallowed for good.

I have lost a patch of hair in the back and gotten some stitches and they've looked at my inside head and yes I have a concussion which is why the room spins every time I get up and I don't quite make it to the bathroom without going left of the door despite my best intentions, and ironically the doctor who cut off some of my hair in back said a good beautician would be able to help with the little bald spot, and when Marcus and I groaned Doc feebly said, "Or not."

I'm not pressing charges, but Marcus made sure Jessica got a ride in the other squad car, got to wear the trash bag ties on the way, got to wait at the station while I decided not to send her to the pokey so she could drop the soap and get hers.

Now I'm stuck in Lowland General for a night of observation. I'm using a wheelchair as I make my way to my father. Juney is with him giving him a play by play I am sure. I round the corner and to my amazement, there's the old man going down the hall in two of the hospital gowns, front and back to hide the crack, thank God, with the white elastic leggings so he doesn't form a blood clot, and the no-skid socks that the hospital gives out so patients can get traction on the mirror shine floors.

Artie is rocking some serious bed hair. It's rising in wisps like it seeks the source of electrical power hidden in the acoustics.

His back is to me, and he's working that walker, as a therapist walks on one side of him.

Juney walks on the other, his small hand in back, holding onto the safety belt Artie wears.

I have to close my good eye, the one not black and swollen from Juney's McEnroe. I rest my head. But the love swell keeps building and breaks itself in…me. Love stains me. It dyes my insides. I'm an Easter egg, immersed in it and I'm turning all the colors of a friggin' pastel rainbow.

I might be a mother.

They must have turned around because Dad and Juney call out together. "Bedilia." It's my Kunta Kinte moment. I just received my name and my greatest role—Mother.

Technically I'm still just Bedilia, but the groundwork is laid. I don't know why I didn't just say that in the first place.

Concussion here!

I open my eyes then and wave. It's taken everything I have to get down here. But I don't want to be anyplace else. Juney says something to Dad then he hurries toward me. "You pushed yourself," he says. He'd wanted to push me.

"I know." He didn't come back for me. Now I see why.

I have to keep my head down and my eyes closed, but Juney is pushing me toward Dad, and when we're close enough I say, "You're doing great."

"Better than you," he says. "I talked to Doc. You're supposed to be in bed."

"I'll take her back," Juney says, and he's pulling me back for a u-ey.

"Dad," I say, and Juney stops. I lift my heavy head. "I think Juney needs to be deputized. He's like…my Legolas."

Dad nods. "Looks like him too, short and fat."

"That's Gimli," Juney says too loud, but it's not like they're going to throw us out.

"Oh, oh my bad," Artie says, and we start to move, and Juney wants to be Aragorn, and the click of the walker grows softer behind us.