Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (9 page)

I don’t bring up the bills, but they
come due every month and some of us have to pay for more than the cell phones
and the cable.

“He’s…a good person…Spencer. I think,”
she says, shoulder on the doorframe.

I keep my fingers poised over the keys.

“I just…I don’t want you hurt,” she
says.

“A little late,” I say. God there is no
stopping me today.

She pulls away from the woodwork. “Did
he hurt you?”

“He pulled my hair.” I stare.

“He’s a man, Sarah.”

“I’ve seen that.”

“You’re aware he’s flirting with you? It’s
harmless. He doesn’t mean anything. You seem so…you light up around him. You’re
infatuated.”

“Go downstairs, Mom.”

“Sarah, what’s gotten into you? We can’t
talk about this?”

“No.”

“Well Spencer understands. I made sure
of it.”

“Understands? What?”

She gestures toward me. “That you’ve
been through a lot.”

“What did you say?” I am standing.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t go into detail, I
just said he needs to think again if he’s looking to…well you know how men are.
And I have to go back to work, you’re here all day…it’s not good.”

Do I know how men are? Yes. Oh God, I
know things about men…since I was ten years old. And the men on the web, Mom
and Christine…I know things. I know things. But men like Spencer Gundry? I
don’t know anything.

“Don’t speak about me,” I say.

“You’re my daughter.”

I want to tell my own things. I want to
say them my own way. Why can’t she understand this?

“I’m going to be decorating his
house…that house. I have to be sure he’s upstanding. He’s right next door for
God sakes. Someday you might be a parent,
then
you’ll
understand. But if you just let a man…touch you…he can get the wrong idea, Sarah.
You can’t let him touch you like that.”

“Mom…
go
downstairs.” I’m trying to remember what Merle would say. I’ve tried to look
for the thing Mom and I can gather around. We have the house, and our work. I
have my garden and the shelter and patrol. I have
Cyro
and
Leeanne
and Merle and Pearlie. Mom has Christine
and all the men on her site. And there’s Spencer. Maybe we’ll have to share Spencer.
But we’ve never shared before. And Spencer has his own ideas.

That’s it. Spencer is his own person. He’ll
decide…with each of us. For now, he said we’re friends. He makes songs, he
likes dogs, we took a nap, he pulls my hair, holds my hand, touches my knee,
hypnotizes me.

“Mom, I have to get this done so I can
pick my garden with Spencer.”

“Oh, he’s helping.”

“Yes. He said he wants to.”

She looks at me for a minute. “Sarah…
be
careful.”

“Mom, I have to work.”

She sighs, rubs her temples,
pulls
in a big breath through her nose, her neck growing
longer, her jaw set as she looks toward my window.

I don’t know why she’s home anyway. Sunday
is a big hook-up day usually. After church and chicken she’s usually on the
back of some old guy’s motorcycle by now.

I don’t want her in my room. I don’t
want to talk to her. I have this feeling, this new crazy, awful decision that’s
been made in me, just today at the diner, and I’m just hearing it now. I don’t
want Mom anywhere around. It’s too late for this…her…caring…or pretending to. It’s
too late. I’m not even mad. It just doesn’t matter.

“Mom, go downstairs. I have to work.”

For all she misses, she does not miss
that something has changed. “You’re twenty-seven. You…think of the future
and…it is the future.”

“Okay.”

“Are you alright?”

I will be. Eventually, if I can keep
working really hard and not go crazy…I will be.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Sixteen

I have fallen into the work chasm. By
evening I am so deep in I’ll need a rope lowered with a stretcher to get me
out. That’s when I hear a song…Spencer’s song…about me…so my song. It’s about a
girl, a girl, a computer genius girl who needs to come outside and pick her
tomatoes. I make the sound in my neck and I think I’m his groupie.

I go to my window and there he is
strumming that guitar in front of my garden. He’s come into my yard.
Very brave because Mom is downstairs as she has never gone out.
I should think he was finished with us and all of our twists and turns.

I am standing in front of the window and
the curtains are pushed back and he is looking right at me. He’s finished
singing, but he’s still strumming. I wave. I’m sorry we are us, my mother and
me, and I’m sorry that we are both feeling something for him. Maybe what we
feel is good, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s dark, maybe it’s light, fair or
unfair, too much or not enough, I don’t know…but I want to.

And he’s still playing, and he’s
smiling.

This is the stretcher I need. I look in
the mirror really quickly and I am so alive in this moment, I am so alive. It’s
nothing to write home about, my reflection. Am I pretty? I have no idea. I have
always thought I’m plain. But the happiness I feel, right now, it’s making me
much more…something.

I redo my ponytail and that’s pretty
much it.

Downstairs, Mom is in her room. Her
television is so loud I guess she didn’t hear Spencer’s serenade. I grab my
knife for cutting eggplant and okra and the baskets and go outside, but I don’t
let the screen door slam.

He is at the porch now. The way he looks
at me, it makes me shy and bold at the same time. And he’s so pretty…maybe it’s
rubbing off.

He is laying his guitar on the porch and
he takes a basket. We just smile at one another, neighborly. I guess Marie can’t
stop this…our friendship. Not for him.
And not for me.

“That song is getting pretty long,” I
say.

“There are more verses in the universe
waiting to write
themselves
,” he says.

I have to laugh at that because of the
cheese. He’s quite possibly very full of shit. I don’t tell him I ripped
Cyro
a new one, then had words of some crazy sort with Mom.
I nearly tell him Jason left
Cyro
,
then
I hold back. I don’t know why I want to talk so much when even a fool is
thought wise if she just keeps her mouth shut.

We get to the garden and it is a fine
mess what with not getting picked before now. If plants were milk cows they’d
all be mooing. So I check the beans and Spencer seems bent on picking the
cherry tomatoes, but I’ll never speak of that fruit again without smiling, but
then I’m not smiling because I get slammed with a lightning bolt. Mom told him
I’m a virgin.

I know she gave him something, something
kind of big because she’d want to use my life to hide her own attraction to him
and her crazy rant at the restaurant.

She couldn’t very well say she had a
bitch-fit, but she could say she was just watching out for her little virgin. Damn
it I’d been too busy all day to let this get through, but now that it has I am
mad all over again.

“What’s that noise about?” Spencer asks,
popping a tomato in his mouth.

“What noise?”

 
“I
mean the sound of…one hand clapping.”

“Have you been drinking?”

He laughs. “That sound you always
make…like a bee trapped in your throat,” he clarifies.

“Just…I don’t know. Sometimes that sound
comes out on its own.” Okay, that sounded wrong so I get back to work and feel
a tomato hit my head. I stand up. “Don’t throw the produce.”

He smiles. “Tell me one thing.”

“What?” Am I a virgin? Not telling.

“What was that sound for?” He stands
too.

“What? You’re….” I make a
twirly
finger by my temple and bend back over the chard. But
he keeps standing there looking at me so I straighten again. “What?”

“I talked to your mom.”

“So?”

“Oh, defensive. “
He must deduce how pissed off this line of conversation is already making me. “Just
so you know she apologized for the restaurant thing. She thinks I’m a dirty old
man looking to tie you to the railroad tracks in front of an on-coming train.
That’s after I have my wicked way with you.”

He gets right back to work,
butt
in the air, but that doesn’t last, and he squats and
starts to whistle. He’s just assumed I’m not going to say anything about this.

“What’d she say? She
tell
you my business?”

Soon as he looks at me I look away and
start pinching off the medium sized leaves.

“You didn’t talk to her about it?”

He’s standing
again,
hand on the small of his back. He’s stretching side to side.

I think he is a perfect man. There’s
nothing about him that doesn’t excite me. This is so
phase
one.

“Talk about what?” I say to try and dive
back into whatever it is that seems more important than just
beholding
him in my garden this way.

“Okay what were you thinking just now? You
do that, like pause and I wonder where you go.”

“No place.
I’m right here,” I say.

He reaches in his basket and grabs
another tomato and tosses it at me. It hits my leg and I pick it up.

“Look at us…Adam and Eve,” he says.

That makes me laugh.
For
many reasons.
He laughs too.

“Are you Adam…or the other guy?”

“Oh…God?”

I laugh and throw the tomato back at
him. It hits him in the place, and he groans and bends over. I have my hand
over my mouth, and he looks up with this goofy smirk.

“Liar,” I say. He had me going.

“Takes more than a
cherry tomato to knock out my guys.”

“Your guys?”
I do laugh now. “And please don’t ever say cherry tomato to me again.”

Now he laughs, doubled over. Then he
stays down there and starts picking again, but it’s only a minute before he
hits me with another tomato.

“You’re juvenile. You know that, right?”

“Cherry tomato,” he says like a frog
says ‘
ribet
.’

“Stop,” I whine looking for the tomato,
finding it and returning it.

He keeps up the ‘cherry tomato’ at
intervals. I know she told him.

After we pick the garden he invites me
over to watch his favorite show. He’s going to make his famous French fries, he
tells me. Am I up for it?

I stand by the porch, setting down the
second basket.
Cozy times at Frieda’s?
I hate feeling
this way. It’s not that I haven’t been in there a few times over the years. It
just doesn’t feel good.

“I have to take supper to
Cyro
.”

“We’ll take him some fries.
Your mom, too.”

I don’t know. I don’t know.

I run inside for a Cool Whip container
so Spencer can take some of the cherry tomatoes home. I hear Mom in her room
talking on her cell.

I get the container and meet Spencer on
the porch. “What time?” I still have patrol. It’s not dark yet, but it soon
will be.

“Come over now,” he says scooping
tomatoes in the bowl.
“Or whenever.
Whatever
you need to do.
But soon.
Soon as you can. Five
minutes. Three seconds.”

He’s giving me all the space in the
world, but not really. He stands, the red and yellow fruits in the bowl he
holds against the white T-shirt. He’s backing away, picks up his guitar and
backs down the stairs even.

“Thing about my fries you have to eat
them while they’re hot.” He seems very calm, very sure of himself, but he’s
holding my gaze…too long.

“Okay,” I say because I don’t know what
else to say that will sound acceptable. I just lectured
Cyro
and now I can’t take my own advice? I have to try. And if Spencer and I are
going to
be
friends, then I have to be able to go to
his house sometimes.

So I sort my produce. I’m barely aware. I
slice up a couple of peppers and whip up some dip and put it all on a dish,
real nice, a big one for Spencer and me, a small one on a paper plate for
Cyro
.

As I’m walking to Spencer’s Horny pulls
up at our house. I’m actually glad to see her. Now Mom won’t be alone. I’ve
never had to worry about that before. Mom leaves me. That’s always how it goes.
But now it’s different.

I step onto Frieda’s porch and knock on
the screen door and Spencer appears, a dishtowel thrown over his shoulder. “You
don’t have to knock,” he says holding the door wide and I keep my two stacked
plates close to my body, digging into my stomach actually and I sidle around
him. He closes the door and leads the way into the kitchen.
“C’mon
Miss Sarah.
I’m back here.”

He’s so casual about it, leading me into
the guts of this place. I don’t look around, but I see everything anyway. There
aren’t many boxes, and they are shoved neatly against the wall.
Thee
wall, but that’s from another time.

There is a couch, a coffee table and a
medium sized flat screen.

Unless the boxes are full of
knick-knacks, there are none set around the
room.

The kitchen is different, better
cabinets from what I remember. It’s not very big, never was, but it’s very
functional and a little bit stylish with a dishwasher and dark floor. There’s a
small island and he’s peeling potatoes in the sink then slicing them into fries
on a cutting board on the island.

“You want to peel, or slice, or just
watch?”

I’m on overload again. Plus I’m tired. Sleeping
on the floor the night before hasn’t done much to help me take the sensory load
this house, and its owner inspires.

“Hey I know,” he says, and I wonder if
he’s nervous. “You go sit on the couch and I’ll bring you some tea.”

“You make tea?”

“No. It’s bottled. But it’s not bad.”

But I don’t want to be off by myself. The
house is more bearable when he’s there to distract me, and he always distracts
me.

“I’ll peel,” I say, and he smiles and I
smile and shake my head a little. I set my plates on the island then I go to
the sink and look at the situation. He’s peeling with a paring knife. There are
three peeled already and I count eight more to go. I jump when I feel his arms
come around me.

“Sorry,” he says.
“Apron.
This is wet work.”

Okay. He’s toying with me now, but when
I turn my face he is right there. Right there, so I look at the potatoes and
hold onto the edge of the sink. “You look good at my sink, Sullivan,” he
whispers, tying the apron right over the crack of my ass, to be blunt. A tug on
my ponytail and he’s done.

Holy crap I should say something. But my
mind is white fuzz. I go for the knife. “No peeler?” I say, keeping my head
down.

“Um…no,” he says, standing beside me,
turned in the opposite direction as he works at the island.

One more step over and we’d be cheeks to
cheeks and we could
twerk
. I am smiling, and I need
to take these thoughts captive and throw away the key.

We work that way for just a minute.

“She told me you don’t date,” he said. “I
know you’re wondering. I really wouldn’t do that you know…go around your back
to get to know you.” He turns and waves his knife at me. “It’s too much fun
finding out for myself…all your secrets Sullivan. But she wanted to explain her
protective side.”

“She doesn’t know me like she thinks. I
hear her explain me sometimes…and she’s wrong.” I have said this easy, like my tongue
is Teflon or something, words sliding off. I’ve given him my anger…at her. It’s
not entirely fair or something a decent person does. I’m shit.

“Right.
We talked about her work. She loves to….”

“Talk about herself,” I say.

“…talk about her work.”

I get back to scraping. “You have a
right to talk to her…say what you want. It’s just….”

“
You’re not wanting
to waste,” he says, watching the flecks of peel fly off the white flesh
beneath.

I don’t say anything. Actions are louder
than words. I finish the potato, hand it to him and gather the ones already in
the sink. I lay them behind me on the island. I notice the pan of oil heating
on the stove and the thermometer sticking out of it. “You’re precise,” I say.