Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (5 page)

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Nine

I say goodnight to the kitten, and then
to Spencer. I sound so crazy saying two goodnights. I am a freak!

But I go in my house and I don’t look
back at him, then I do, just once, right before I go in the door I look back
and he is walking away, head bent over the kitten. He is going into Frieda’s
dark house. But at least he’s not alone.

In my house it is like a sagging
balloon, half the air let out but still some shape. Right away I see
Cyro’s
chair. I’ll take it in the morning, and some of the
food.

Mike and Tammy are gone. I already know
she would have dropped Mike off on a corner somewhere, and she would already be
at the
Longbranch
, like the kitten, looking for someone
to take her and her long cleavage home.

I wonder how men do it, take responsibility
for women like that, their big breasts, their lady parts and eyes…eyes that
say, ‘celebrate me, please, please…please.’

I’d run screaming from that, but men go
for it.
At least once.
Especially
drunk ones.
The alcohol has to help.
But so much
responsibility.
So much room…to be wrong.

I could never just want someone to take
my life off my
hands,
just take it, so I wouldn’t have
to feel…my life. Would I?

Mom and her two hands, all the men she
counted there, all the ones she didn’t, let fall between her fingers deciding
not to add them because they didn’t save her…they couldn’t. They had to save their
drowning selves.
 

When I think about molecules and atoms
and super
novas
, water, hydro-carbons, amino acids,
God’s Play dough, forming planets…and the long assembly line of life…me…I can’t
believe it’s meaningless. I can’t believe it’s accidental. That’s what I
remember as I enter the kitchen. So it’s hard to say hello when I’ve just run
along a milky way in my mind…and remembered how lucky I am to be alive.

Spencer.

Spencer?

I’m thinking his name.
Lucky to be alive.
Spencer. Those things feel tied.

In the kitchen, Aaron is here with Christine
while she ‘makes a plate,’ to take home, or robs us blind of a week’s worth of
groceries. Aaron is having a cup of coffee. He is giving Christine a ‘ride
home.’ She shoots, she scores.

Mom is smoking. I see that right away,
smell it sooner even, but I’m just now getting to it.
“Mom!”
I nearly yell.

“What?” she says, “It’s just one little
smoke Sarah,
it’s
not going to kill me.”

Aaron says something about the binders,
like I don’t know my job.
Or his.
Or anyone’s in that
business. Does he not know I’m under-achieving?

But Mom says
Leeanne
has called and I need to handle the table tomorrow morning at the market.

I throw up my hands. I have this whole
freaking kitchen to clean and now I have to do the market?
All
those people.

 
“Mom,” I say,
then
I
can’t say all of it with my boss listening anyway. But doing the market is no
small thing for me. It is already late and by the time I get to bed…and then I
have to stop at
Leeanne’s
and get everything that I’d
already hauled over there earlier, and the tent and the table and I have to go
to the ATM for change. I make a big growl and Aaron looks surprised because
he’s never heard me growl before and few people have.

I go upstairs and get ready for bed and
throw my clothes around, then decide to pick them up and put them in the
hamper. I am back down and Mom is sitting at the table, looking at all the crap
left that she won’t clean up anyway.

“Aaron’s nice,” Mom says, smoothing her
hand over the small part of the table that’s clear right in front of her.

I start to gather dishes.

“When you get the food put away…,” she
says.

“I had it put away and your buddy pulled
it all back out and left it.”

“Don’t be that way Sarah.”

I slap the plastic-ware into the sink. I’m
more careful with the breakables because I can’t stand chips on the plates. I
hate that—ruining what’s already good.

“She takes and takes. She’s a taker,” I
say because there are so many people at the market and
Leeanne
won’t even come to help me.

“Don’t say things like that,” Mom says.

“She took my boss,” I say. She took him
home and not to share the leftovers.
 
But
yeah, talk about sharing leftovers, Christine Horner—leftover!

I know the floor is going to open up and
drop me into hell. I know I’m mean.

But Christine Horner has no limits.
First my mother…now my boss.
Growl.

“Spencer’s nice,” Mom says.

I breathe in and run water in the sink. He
is very nice. And I’m lucky to be alive. He’s got the kitten. Spencer.

“I don’t know why he left though. He
forgot his guitar.” She’s quiet for a few seconds. “Maybe the Alfredo gave him
diarrhea.”

I look back, and she smiles a little,
but she’s sad, Christine leaving with Aaron, Spencer running away.

“Don’t say things like that,” I mimic. But
I end up laughing.
With her.

She’s my mom. What am I going to do? How
many years did she fight for me? So I fight for her.

And that’s when I remember. I’m rinsing
the Glad ware, and I know what it is, why, exactly why Spencer can’t walk with
me.

I remember how protective I felt when Jason
crossed the street and gave that bunchy look to Spencer. I knew I would keep Spencer
safe, and I put my hand on Spencer’s arm and I moved around
him,
put myself between him and Jason. And I kept us moving, him moving, from the
danger.

But for just a second I knew he wanted
to move me out of the way, Spencer did. He made a little gesture like he wanted
to put me behind him so he could be closest to Jason. Then he caught himself
and surrendered to me. He let me lead.

But he’d wanted to protect me.

That’s why he can’t walk with me.

I have to be in front. I have to lead. I
have to be first. I have to face it. And if he goes with me, he will take over.
And eventually, before I even know what I am doing, I will let him. It will
feel too good. It will be too easy…maybe wonderful. And then it will happen…
phase
two…reality.

And it will be his…my walk. And I’ll
pull back…and
back…and
back.

I won’t be able to help. I will be like
them--
Leeanne
and her darkness that takes over, Mom
and Christine looking to give their lives away and not finding any takers.
Tammy ready to smother someone in her pillows until he can’t kick
anymore.
And Mike stuck in a purple haze.
Jason angry
and sometimes cruel.
Cyro
—morose.
Merle and Pearlie, soft and
sweet…just meat.
I will be them…and I will fail them. I will fail.

I will fail.

And I can’t let it happen, can’t ever
let it happen cause the only way I feel safe is to make sure…to put myself
there…my eyes on the path…to be scared…but to never give up, never hide, never
run.

He can’t help me with that. It was given
to me.

I grab some cat-food and go out the door.
Mom doesn’t ask. She’ll just go to bed. I hurry in the dark, in the
night,
I go around the fence and to the front of his house. Light
spills onto the porch from the front room window. I get to the door and I don’t
stop. I want to, but I don’t. I knock. He must be standing right on the other
side cause the door jerks open and he is still holding the kitten and he says,
“Sarah?” like he can’t believe it.

He looks up and down me. He’s scowling. I’m
in my pajamas, shorts and a tank top. I forgot, but it doesn’t matter. I hold
out the cat-food and he widens the door, and just like I thought-- boxes. I’m
not going in.

“I have to tell you something.”

“Oh. Okay,” he says, serious-faced,
taking the food.

I take a big breath, almost forgetting
what it is, but I don’t, “Spencer…I…don’t need three days to decide, you know, about
you and me…walking.” I’m huffing like I ran here. Well I almost did I guess.

He stares for about ten seconds. The
kitten is calm on his arm.

I am already forgetting all the good
reasons I had. They aren’t making sense.

“Sarah?”

“I…,” I take in a shaky breath. There
are so many things, “I have to run my booth at the farmer’s market in the
morning, and I thought, if you’re not doing anything I thought…since you like
vegetables….”

“The Farmer’s Market,
right.
Your mom told me about it. She asked me to go with
her…so you’ll come too? Or I guess you go earlier?”

The old
picture of the
atomic bomb going off someplace like
Nevada…the mushroom cloud in the
desert…
kapow
.
That about sums it up
right now.

“Don’t tell her you walked with me.” I
don’t know where that came from, but it is out there now.

“Okay. Is there a problem?”

“No. No. Just…go with her.”

“But do you need me to come early…help
or something?”

“No,” I say like he’s out of his mind,
then, “No!”

And I’m out of there. I am running now
and he calls me but once I get going, I can’t change direction. Heck no.

Me and Mom Fall
for Spencer

Chapter Ten

I get up at four in the morning. It’s
not human to be up before five and I do not feel human.

I have so much to do. The kitchen is
still a mess and I put more things away while I make a pot of coffee. I pour a
cup and put some in my thermos, and leave the rest for Mom.

Outside I make too much noise. I load up
the back of my truck and after about five trips I’m shutting the tail-gate and
ready to head to
Leeanne’s
. That’s where the real fun
begins.

“Sarah?”

I nearly die. Really nearly scream.

“Spencer,” it’s all I can say.

He looks a little swollen from sleep,
hair crazy, wearing a white t-shirt like always and the beige shorts and I
think he slept in them, and an unlit cigarette in his mouth and his shoes in
his hand.

“How’s the kitten?”

“Good. She’s good. Are you ready?”

“For…?”

“For the market.
Do you need to load anything else?”

“You’re going with Mom.”

“We can text her. She can meet us there
later. She’ll want me to help you, don’t you think?”

Mom never as in ever attends the
farmer’s market. She’s slept with one of the artisans there, a crazy goat cheese
maker and she never goes now. If she asked Spencer it was to be with him. Even
I know that.

“Can I go, Sarah? Can I help? I’d like
to see it.” How can he do this…be so out with it…just simple things
like…begging.

“Yes,” I say. Yes. We will text Mom. I am
worried. I don’t want her to stay home and be sad. But he’s here and he
needs…he needs to come with me. I can feel it. He needs the vegetables
probably, and he needs to help me.

We are in the truck. I am trying not to
look at him, but when I do, I push the brakes and we are thrown a little. “
Cyro’s
chair,” I say.
And the food.
There’s just too much.

“We’ll text your mom,” he says.

“Mom?”
I repeat. Mom doesn’t…she wouldn’t….

So I pull out. Already it is all tangled
up. I don’t let things go. I don’t let things go like this.

But I take a big breath and drive down
to
Leeanne’s
, and it is in the shed in back, all the
food in boxes and coolers, and her pies on the porch, each in a covered box and
he is going on about it in a loud whisper, “Are these as good as yours?” But
it’s too early to talk. He takes the biggest things, the heaviest, and I run to
help and we wrestle some and he grunts, “Sarah, I got it, I got it.”

And I have to let go. So what do I do
with Spencer Gundry?

He is careful.
Too
careful sometimes.
I’m faster. But he has good ideas. He puts the things
in the truck’s bed like puzzle pieces. Everything fits, but we’re fifteen
minutes late already. I don’t know how to say it, but I say, “We have to go.”

And we do. And we go to the ATM next and
I park and run to the machine. I am wearing my white baseball cap and I turn it
backwards. My hair is in a heavy braid against my back
cause
it was wild lion hair when I woke up. I wear a T-shirt and my jean shorts, the
cut-off ones that embarrass me but I didn’t expect him to show up at my elbow
at four. Why was he up at all?

I get the money. It takes forever, but
finally I have what I need and get in the truck and put my money belt on the
seat. He is looking at me, smiling. He taps the bill on the back of my hat. He’s
waking up a little maybe, his eyes are opening wide.

It’s still dark out, the sun way down
deep and barely sending its first pale bleed into the dark.

“How old are you?” he asks me right out,
his long arm on the back of the seat so his hand can touch the bill of my hat
or my braid anytime.

“Twenty-seven,” I say, pulling out of
the bank. The market isn’t far now, down by the tracks.

“Jason and Mike….”

“They’re neighbors,” I say. Just so he
knows. If I was going to…it wouldn’t be them.

“My neighbors too,” he says, but he’s
looking straight ahead now. We drive the rest of the way and get there and it’s
busy, the tents going up. It’s a vegetable and fruit circus.

We are out of the truck, me to the left,
him to the right. We meet at the tailgate. He starts that, “I got this.”

He grabs the tent, I grab a table. He
says, “Hold off I’ll be right back.”

I don’t say anything. He doesn’t have a
clue where to set up. But then he does. He’s standing on my spot. “Here?” he
calls.

I give him a thumbs-up and hoist the
table. I’m very strong.

But I don’t make it to the site before
he’s rushing to help me. And I have to
admit,
when
someone even stronger than me lifts the burden it’s not bad. But it’s not what
I know…have known. We open the awning, he pulls on one leg,
me
another and we snap that thing in place and have a roof over our heads in no
time. Then back and forth we go, laying out things.

I don’t mean to be crabby with him, but
we don’t have much time and it’s not easy to share this. But he’s a very quick
learner and he likes sorting the tomatoes by color and it looks good, what he
does, and I put the pies on the small table and I get the signs and he learns
we sell produce and pies to benefit the no-kill shelter in town. I don’t know
what I could have said that would have gotten a bigger reaction from him. We’d
raised over two thousand dollars this summer, ten over six summers.

“Sarah Sullivan,” he says, flipping the
bill of my cap again,
then
yanking some on my braid. I
readjust my cap and run my hand over the braid and smile at him.
I can’t not smile at him, disturbing as he is sometimes.

But I am quickly snapped out of it
because the old people come first and we get busy very quickly. He asks and I
tell him what to do. And I am busy too, and the two camping chairs I grabbed
off of
Leeanne’s
porch have not seen our butts, not
in those first three hours.

“Sarah you have to try this,” he is
saying to me.

It’s the guy’s chicken on a stick. I
think I’ve tried most of it already, but it’s all new to him, so it’s new to me
as well. I am already getting stuffed. He’s probably spent more than we’ve
made, well no, not possible cause we are cleaning up, but he doesn’t mind
spending to have a good time. He’s like a kid here. Like he’s been let out of
his cage or something, and landed here.

The music has started up. Oh, I should
have brought his guitar.
I text Mom again.
This will
force her to come. ‘Bring Spencer’s guitar,’ I type.

We’ve got a following, but there are lots
of women here.
Leeanne’s
pies are gone except for the
blackberry one Spencer set back and bought for a twenty. He is selling those. He
is crying out, “Buy a pie for twenty, save a dog’s life. Save Sparky. Redeem
Rover.”

And he sells out.

I take a good look at him. He’s happy
about what he’s accomplished. He’s been pretty innocuous. He’s almost too
accommodating. He’s not like me, not shy at all. He talks to everyone. But here
I’m seeing more, watching him with people. I’m listening to him.

“Don’t tell them where you live,” I say.

He has been asked his name a few times. He
tells them, says he’s new in town. He draws a lot of attention. He’s been
invited out for a drink more than once, invited to play at the VFW hall,
invited to ride in a bicycle club. I’ve been here my whole life and I’ve never
even been invited to church!
Except by Mom.

He’s really very beautiful. There, I
said it. He’s…beautiful. I’m shy, and his beauty makes me
more
shy
. But it’s not just me, or Mom and Christine and Tammy. It’s
everyone.

Mom shows up, carrying Spencer’s guitar.
It’s out of the case. I hope he doesn’t mind.

He’s surprised to see it, but he thanks
her and strums and tunes it a little, and she stands there, in white jeans, her
hands folded in front of her, eyes darting. Then he’s out in front of our table
and singing about a tomato growing girl and come buy her tomatoes and save
Fido.

Mom and I are watching. By ten we are
sold out. He’s working for straight-up donations now.

He is doing a gig in the middle of the
tables where various people come to play music. He is surrounded, two or three deep,
and if he wasn’t so tall I wouldn’t be able to see the top of his head.

He comes up with quite a few songs that
have something to do with a dog and he is really, really good. When he’s not
singing he’s strumming and telling stories about famous characters and famous people
who were really dogs. Children laugh. Mothers smile at him.
Of
course.
But fathers smile at him, too.

Spencer has talent.

He says, “The dog you save could be your
own.” He says, “Ask not what your dog-shelter can do for you, but what you can
do for your dog-shelter.”

People give us money. They want to give
us money. We make over three hundred dollars, our biggest day ever.

Mom stays the whole time. I realize I
over-reacted when Spencer said he was coming here with Mom, I got mixed up. But
now we’re fine, we’re all fine.

By twelve-thirty we are on our way home.
Mom has asked Spencer if he wants to ride with her, and he says sure, but they
have to follow me so he can help me unload. I want him to go with me to drop
off the money at the shelter. I say, “Do you guys want to follow me and see the
shelter?”

They agree.

Barb is there cleaning pens, and it’s
crowded and everybody has something to say. Spencer and I walk through while
Mom talks to Barb, and I show Spencer the three black lab brothers that are my
favorites. They’re still young and gangly, and he almost tells me something,
about a dog he had, but then he doesn’t want to tell it, and I know how that
is.

I give him the money to give to Barb, or
I try to, but he insists I do it, and he gives another hundred of his own
money, just insists, and we fight some, but he wins. I give this to Barb and
she’s so happy. It is our best day and Mom tells Barb how Spencer put on a show
and I leave them then and go off by myself. The dogs are going crazy, but when
the new pens are built they can be thinned out better, they can live large.

Spencer has wandered off too and he’s at
a pen, a girl, Golden Retriever, and of course he’s probably in love already. I
tell him we can come anytime and walk some of these guys. He is all over that.

We leave in love with several of the
dogs. It’s such a heart-quake to go in there.

Spencer wants to know everything about
the place and I’m answering his questions. Mom says Spencer should go with me
so we can get moving.

Once we’re in my truck he tells me how
much he liked the market.

“Let’s do it again,” he says. “What’s
the schedule?”

I tell him it is two days a week.

“It’s great in the fall. We sell
pumpkins we grow on
Leeanne’s
family’s land. We plant
them by the pond.
Also good for fishing, if inclined.”

“I haven’t gone fishing since I was a
kid. You keep telling me about all this great stuff I’m going to have to follow
you around every minute of every day.”

I don’t know what the heck to say to
that. I am very quiet because that would be too much. I have a job!

“Sarah?” he says. “I’m kidding.”

“I know,” I lie, and I say it in this
insecure voice that practically squeaks. But he got me there for a minute.

When we get to
Leeanne’s
we have the truck unloaded in no time. She doesn’t come out and ask how we did.
She will, in a couple of days and she’ll be so, so happy when she hears four
hundred and twenty! I put the pie crates on the table and I know she’ll fill
some of them for Wednesday morning.

Mom is back home and I pull the truck in
front
cause
she hates when I block her in. I have to
take the chair to
Cyro
and unload my stuff. I have to
fix a plate. “You can eat with us,” I say.

“I think I’m stuffed, but I have a pie. Your
Mom says you’ll come over with her to look at my rooms. She says you’re a
decorating team.”

“We are not,” I say. Does anyone know
how much I have to do?

“She’s also invited me to church in the
morning,” he says. “I haven’t been to church….”

I’m really thrown. She’s ahead of me. Maybe
I’d like to ask Spencer to do things, but now I don’t have a choice. I’m so
tired. I need to be alone, that’s for sure.

He helps me unload.

“Do you want me to take
Cyro’s
chair to him?” he says.