Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (6 page)

“Hello,” Patrick had said, “I'm calling about someone who really likes you.”

“Who is this?”

“It's Patrick Cantwell again, from school. Tony and me were talking—”

She had almost hung up, but stopped. What if she could show her boyfriend that other boys liked her? What if her boyfriend could see Tony walking up to meet her on the golf course? Maybe he would be jealous. Maybe then he would start calling her again.

“So, Tony, he really likes me?” she asked.

“Oh, who wouldn't? I mean, yeah, Tony, he likes you,” Patrick said.

“Well, why don't you have him come talk with me on the golf course?”

“Really? Just meet you there some night?”

“Yeah, tonight, right now. By the pond by Suicide Hill.”

“What? You mean right now?”

“Sure, why not? I'll be there in a few minutes. I gotta make a quick call.” She hung up and called her boyfriend, which she'd never done before. She thought she'd be nervous, but she wasn't. She was confident now that another boy liked her, too. Her boyfriend's mom, a woman with a loud, nasally voice, picked up on the second ring.

“Skiiiiiiiiiiiip,” she yelled, “it's your girlfriend again.”

Again? Mimi's stomach tightened. Why would she say again? This was the first time she had ever called.

“Hello?” Skip said sounding eager.

“Skip?”

“Who's this?”

“It's Mimi,” she said with a dry throat whisper.

“Uh … Mimi … um … hi….”

“Yeah, look,” she said clearing her throat, “I have to see you right away. Can you meet me on the golf course?”

There was a long pause and she could hear the TV in the background. “I don't know. We're watching
Hawaii Five O
, and it's right at the good part.”

“Skip, I have to see you.”

He cleared his throat and told her the facts. “Mimi, I've been meaning to call you. I don't know if we really have … a future together.”

“What?”

“I think its best that we—”

“WHAT?” She grabbed the closest thing, a tube of Clearasil, and hurled it across the room where it plunked against the window pane and fell into her white wicker trash basket. “You can't do this!”

“I think its best, you know?”

“You can't break up now, not now. I mailed the letter today.”

“The letter? What letter?”

“You know, the letter I told you I was going to write from Holy Footsteps to my parents, so I could go to Webster.”

“You really did that? I forgot about that.” He sounded like he still trying to watch
Hawaii Five O
while he talked to her.

“I did it for us,” she said.

“Us? Well, look, Mimi—” He tried to break up with her some more. He
was gentle about it, but Mimi kept interrupting and yelling, “Not over the phone, not over the phone!” So he agreed to meet her in a few minutes on the golf course by Suicide Hill to tell her to her face.

Mimi wiped her face with the back of her hand, got off the bed, hung up the phone, washed her face, and put on her pink windbreaker. Her head was swirling as she descended the burgundy-carpeted staircase. She had to leave right away, but casually, without calling any attention to herself. Mimi's sister sat at the piano under the brass sheet music light in her Holy Footsteps Academy uniform. She was playing Chopin's “Nocturne Number Two in E Flat Major” like it was nothing. Her Dad's boss sat on the living room couch in a dark suit and tie with a Dutch Master cigar in his fat hand. Blue smoke hung above the end table lamp. All the adults had mixed drinks and the men wore loosened ties from the office. Their wives, in light spring dresses and adorned with perfume and jewelry, sat in the corner by a plastic potted plant. The boss was telling the men exactly what the baseball Cardinals needed to do with their pitching this year, pointing at them with his cigar at the end of each sentence like it was part of his punctuation. The men nodded in agreement.

“Where are you going?” Mimi's mom asked her.

Mimi stopped. “Oh, nowhere. Just out to get some air.”

“Out to get some air? She's probably got a date,” said one of the wives smoking a Virginia Slim cigarette.

Mimi froze.

They all laughed at her.

“Not my Mimi,” her mom said swallowing some bourbon and water. “She's been accepted to Holy Footsteps Academy, the all girls school. She's too smart for boys.”

The Virginia Slim lady toasted her. “To Mimi, the smartest girl at the party.” The wives all raised their glasses to Mimi, looked at their husbands, and laughed.

“Well, at least put on some proper shoes. You can't go out like that.” Mimi looked down at her feet and noticed they were bare. “You left your shoes in the den, honey.”

Mimi tiptoed into the den. Her younger brother was playing tabletop hockey against a group of junior executives and beating them. She saw her sneakers on the floor by her dad's chair and slipped into them. He can't
break up with me, she told herself. It will ruin everything. But what could she say to make him change his mind? She glanced at the junior executives who moaned in unison when her brother won another point, and then at the neatly folded
Wall Street Journal
on her dad's chair, and then up at the shelf behind the chair. There it was. The hand grenade. It was dark green and oval like a fat egg with a flat bottom and square bumps all over it. She looked around. No one was watching her. The room was dim, except for the orange, leaded glass light above the game table. Her brother scored another a goal, manipulating the sliding rods to pass the puck from the right wing to the center and flick it in the net. One of the junior executives shrugged in defeat while the others slugged back their Old Fashions. Mimi reached up and took the hand grenade and slipped it into her windbreaker pocket.

Through Chopin notes and adult laughter, Mimi's footsteps were silent as she crossed the Persian rug into living room. She cut through the kitchen and out the back door. The storm door banged behind her and she was free. Walking alone under a streetlight, she got out the hand grenade and studied it. “He can't break up with me, not now,” she mumbled. Her fingers unwound the grenade's safety wire, wire that had been twisted tight since her Dad had returned home from Korea. She dropped the wire on the grass and headed towards the golf course. The night air was soft with spring and moonlight, the kind of night Chopin wrote songs about.

“THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT!” Tony said as he and Patrick walked toward the train tracks that separated the neighborhood from the golf course.

“Something must've changed,” Patrick said, “but I don't know what.”

Patrick scuffed along in the same battered Keds, blue jeans, and faded plaid shirt he'd had on after school, even though, at the last minute, he'd combed his hair and brushed his teeth. The blood pulsing through his veins made him a little light headed, and as they reached the tracks he paused and let his gaze follow the gleaming rails down into the distance, the same rails that should be carrying him and Tony away to freedom. And then he kept on going, tagging along with Tony to be near Mimi.

Mimi, Mimi, Mimi. The thought of her propelled them both forward.

“It was probably me raising my hand that changed her mind,” Tony said, adjusting the buttons of his gold paisley shirt with white wing collars. He'd left the top three buttons undone to show off his chest. There was no hair yet, but Tony wasn't waiting.

“I don't know. She sits in front of you. How could she see you?”

Tony stopped to cup his hands in front of his mouth and smell his breath. “One thing, we have to promise.”

“What?”

“If she tries to kiss me and thank me and tell me she loves me—”

“Yeah?”

“Don't let me tell her anything about the snow globe. That has to remain top secret.”

“I know.”

“We have to keep that secret no matter what, or somehow it will get out.”

“You're right.”

“God, if only I could tell her I put the snow globe up there, she would probably want to stick her tongue in my mouth. How's my breath?” Tony leaned forward and breathed on Patrick. It smelled of toothpaste over spaghetti.

“It's okay.”

“I drank a lot of water after you called.” Tony ran his hands around his waist to make sure his shirt was tucked into his skintight brown bell bottoms and adjusted the galloping horse's head belt buckle. “Water always helps.”

As they left the tracks behind them, they headed down the middle of the fairway, Tony's polished brown disco boots leaving a trail of shallow heel prints in the grass. The air smelled of wet grass, warm mud, and honeysuckle—and growing things that promised the school year was almost dead. Up ahead was the hill once crowded with kids sledding. But the winter was forgotten. Suicide Hill was desolate.

“I think I see her.”

Mimi came out of the tall, arching creek tunnel that ran under the train tracks onto the golf course. The creek was low and she had walked through the tunnel in the dark, staying to the sides where the creek bed was dry. The boys could see she had on a pink windbreaker and bellbottom blue jeans, and her hair was breezy. Tony waved to her. She waved back and climbed out of the creek onto the fairway. The boys walked up to her. In the moonlight, they could all see each other's faces plainly. It was quiet.

“Hi,” she said, keeping her hands in her windbreaker pockets.

“How's it going?” Tony said.

“Good.”

That's all she said, kind of blankly, too, so Patrick jumped in. “Mimi, you know Tony, don't you?”

“Sure.” She nodded to him and looked around for her boyfriend. The putting green at the bottom of Suicide Hill was empty. The water on the pond ruffled from the wind.

“It sure was brave of you to raise your hand today,” Tony said, fixing his
hair a little. His hair was as wavy as chocolate cake frosting, and he knew that all girls loved chocolate.

She shrugged and looked around some more. Inside her windbreaker pocket, her right hand was wrapped around the grenade. Her palm was sweaty.

“I don't know if you could see in class,” Patrick said, “but right after you raised your hand, Tony raised his hand … so you wouldn't be in trouble alone. He was the first one.”

Mimi looked Tony in the eyes for the first time. His eyes were brown and lonely; hers were green and sad. For a second she felt guilty using Tony to get her boyfriend jealous. But she blinked and steeled herself for what was coming. “Thanks,” she said.

“You're welcome,” Tony said, looking at her pink lips.

A train horn blew down the line, a freight charging down the tracks. They turned in that direction and could see the headlight sculpting the green baby leaves on the trees that stood along the tracks. The passing engines sent out a vibration across the landscape that went right through them. “I have to go see a man about a horse,” Tony said stepping away.

“What? Where's he going?” Mimi said.

“He'll be right back. He just drank a lot of water.”

Mimi nodded. Patrick looked at her. She was watching the train like she had a lot on her mind. Patrick thought about the other day, Mimi standing sharp against the blue sky in her white underwear; about earlier tonight, Mimi's voice on the phone; and about earlier in the day at school, Mimi raising her hand first. Did she know somehow that he liked her, too? Didn't girls know everything and just pretend not to? He felt guilty for liking her and looked away at the train. He was supposed to be helping his best friend. Tony should be there alone with Mimi. Tony trusted him. So why had Patrick come along? Why was he standing next to Tony's girlfriend wishing she liked him? Patrick decided to leave as soon as Tony came back.

“I have to go,” Patrick told Mimi.

Without warning, Skip from Webster Groves High School walked up to them. He caught them by surprise as they faced the train. He was a handsome guy with the kind of long blond bangs girls love, blue eyes, and a blue jean jacket, bell bottoms, and waffle stomper boots. Patrick had seen him around the golf course and took a step back, wondering what was happening.

What's he doing here?

And then Mimi threw her arms around Skip's neck and hugged him.

Patrick looked around for Tony, but Tony was over in the honeysuckle peeing with his back to the excitement. Patrick noticed Skip's arms hanging limp at his sides. He didn't hug Mimi back. Then Skip took his hands and unpeeled Mimi from around his neck. Skip looked at Mimi's face. Patrick looked at Mimi's face, too. She looked like she was about to cry—like she'd already been crying. Coal cars rattled by. Mimi said something to Skip that Patrick couldn't hear.

“I'm sorry,” he said slicing his hand sideways with finality, “but I'm breaking up with you. I've got a new girlfriend … at school.”

Tony zipped up and struggled to refasten the enormous horsehead belt buckle, still unaware of what was happening.

“If you break up, I'll kill myself,” Mimi blurted.

“Kill yourself?” Skip laughed. “Mimi, get real.”

Patrick and Skip watched Mimi reach in her pocket and pull something out. They blinked, then stared.

It was a hand grenade—the realest looking hand grenade either one of them had ever seen. It wasn't plastic. It looked solid and deadly.

“I'll do it,” she warned. A rusty boxcar passed by—
ka-klunk, ka-klunk, ka-klunk
.

“What the—?” Skip took a step back, mouth hanging open.

Mimi pulled the pin.

Skip and Patrick, like every boy, knew the facts of life, which were that when you pull the pin on a hand grenade, that's it. You only have a few seconds before it blows. Skip pawed the air trying to grab the grenade, but Mimi turned her back to him and stuffed it down her blouse.