The Broken Teaglass (21 page)

“Shucks,” Mona said, snapping her fingers. “Most Courteous is better anyway. It actually means something. I mean, Best All Around? What does that mean, anyway?”

“So what about you, then?” I asked, not wishing to discuss the super-dorky
Most Courteous
any further. “Did you go to a private high school?”

“No. What makes you ask that?”

“I don’t know … Middlebrook College …”

“I see. You think I’m a spoiled brat, don’t you? A rich girl from a white-glove girls’ school.”

I shrugged. “I had wondered about the girls’ school thing, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m not a rich girl. Anything you might see about me that seems moneyed is actually from my stepfather. It’s not
me
.”

“I never thought of you as
moneyed
, exactly—”

“Every luxury I’ve ever had—the expensive college, the plane tickets home for every Thanksgiving, the Honda I drove in high school—”

“Lucky you,” I said, impressed.

“Not so lucky, that Honda. But that’s another story. All that comes from my stepfather. I was never a rich kid until I was twelve. Then my mother was swept off her feet by a high-powered consultant. She was newly divorced, working at a dry cleaner’s. Rob kept coming in with his tailored shirts, and they hit it off. He eventually asked her out. And it changed everything. Double Cinderella, my mother and me.”

“What were you before that?”

“Working class. My dad’s a welder. He and I would go to the dump together on Saturdays, in his pickup truck. I loved it.”

“When did your parents get divorced?”

“When I was eleven. I know it sounds bad to say so, but that was a great year. I really felt like we were taking care of each other, my mother and me. I’d rub her back after work. We’d warm up these frozen pot pies and eat them while we watched game shows. A year later, though, she was married to Rob.”

“Is he a good guy?”

“Sure. Rob is very generous with my mother and with me. It’s like he’s always needed to make a big point of showing that he regards me as his own daughter. He paid for my whole college education.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mona agreed. “But it’s always made me feel a little … mercenary.”

“Why?”

“Because I already have a father. A father who could never afford all that ritzy shit.”

“You shouldn’t feel too bad about it. I’m sure your dad wanted you to get a good education.”

“Sure,” Mona said. “But it’s not so simple.”

“What’s not so simple?”

“Being two men’s daughters. Being a rich girl and a poor man’s daughter at the same time.”

“And that’s why you have two last names.”

“I only have one last name. Minot.”

“What’s Rasmussen, then?”

“When did I tell you about Rasmussen?”

“You didn’t. I saw it on your
TV Guide
.”

“Oh. I see. I forgot that I was dealing with Hercule Poirot here. The
TV Guide
is a gift from my dad. He renews it every Christmas. And
Cosmo
for my birthday.”

“Really? You read
Cosmo?”

“Believe it or not, yes. Not so much the
TV Guide
, though. I used to read
TV Guide
on the weekends when I would visit him. It was the only reading material my father ever had lying around. He got to thinking I really liked
TV Guide
, I guess. I’ve had a subscription now since I was fifteen. I’ve never had the heart to tell him I couldn’t care less about the latest Regis Philbin interview or reality-TV update.”

“So Rasmussen is your real dad’s name.”

“Yes.”

“How did it change?”

“The usual way. Rob adopted me when I was fourteen.”

“Oh.”

“So …” Mona spread out her hands. “Ask me what you’re wondering.”

“What am I wondering?”

“Why I was adopted by one guy when I still had a father somewhere else?”

“Doesn’t stuff like that happen all the time?”

“Does it? When you’re still visiting your real dad once a month?”

“I don’t know. How would I know? So you’re saying you didn’t want to be adopted?”

“No, I’m not saying that. Rob’s a great guy. But he wanted to make sure I’d be treated like one of his own kids if he died. He’s got a few loose-cannon relatives he thought might contest my place in his will.”

“So it’s about money,” I said.

“Well, not really. Because in the end, Rob was more a father to me than my real dad. But I never meant for that to happen, you see? I never meant for one to replace the other.”

“Maybe you’re putting it a little harshly. Rob didn’t replace your father.”

“Um. Well. He sorta did. And when he and my mother asked for my permission on the adoption, I said yes.”

Mona slumped back in the futon and folded her arms.

“What would
you
do?” she wanted to know.

“I … don’t know, actually,” I said. “This broken-family stuff’s a little foreign to me.”

Mona chuckled. “Nice, Billy. Real nice. Let’s put it another way. Let’s say you were married and had a kid, and the marriage didn’t work out. You stay in touch with the kid as best you can, but in the end you grow apart. And then her stepfather wants to adopt her. Wouldn’t you be a little hurt by this?”

Mona’s brown eyes bored into mine with an intensity that bordered on malice. For an exhilarating second I thought she might lean over and bite me.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I guess I would.”

“Thank you,” she said, grimly satisfied. “Of course you
would. A manly man like you. You’d want chest-beating rights.”

“C’mon,” I said. “What makes you all think you can say stuff like that to me? Is a lexicographer with big bones and a letter in football so intimidating that you need to make me feel like a hulking man-child?”

“It wasn’t meant as an insult.”

“So was your dad upset? When Rob adopted you?”

“I think so. We never actually discussed it in person. My mother got his permission. But he never stopped calling me Mona Rasmussen, and he never stopped sending me stuff under that name.”

Mona pulled her legs onto the futon and lay there staring up at my ceiling.

“But you never use the name Rasmussen anymore?”

“No, I don’t use the name at all. But I grow tired of Mona Minot. Mona Minot is a rich kid, whether she likes it or not. And a sellout.”

“And Mona Rasmussen?”

“Mona Rasmussen misses dump-picking with her dad on Saturdays. Once we found a baby carriage that was practically new. I used it for my dolls.”

“Really?”

“And Mona Rasmussen likes Merle Haggard.”

“Who’s that?”

“You’re kidding. ‘We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee. We don’t take our trips on LSD.’ You’ve never heard that?”

“Nope.”

“So … I’ve been meaning to ask.” She paused. “Have you smoked much marijuana?”

I hesitated. It was a typical Mona question—a tad more probing than it should be, but nothing I really minded answering. Not really. I had, after all, asked her earlier that
evening if she’d done any acid. In both cases, we each had a pretty good idea of what the other’s answer was going to be.

I sat there with my mouth open for a second. My silence seemed to surprise her. She gazed at me, cleared her throat, and fumbled for an alternative question.

“Umm … how about ‘Sing Me Back Home’?” she asked. “Heard that one?”

“Don’t think so.”

Mona tipped her head back even further off the futon, and sang a different song—one about dying in prison. She had a pretty voice, a little thin, but sweet. I closed my eyes and listened, wondering why, of all the songs to know by heart, she knew this one.

After Mona left, I decided I’d
give my bedroom a try. I was growing tired of the sleeping bag setup in my living room. So I lay awake on the bed, thinking of the story I’d almost told Mona:

How are you feeling, William?

Like crap
.

That’s what I figured. I brought you something
.

My father handed me a video, clearly taken from the library.
Little Big Man
, with Dustin Hoffman.

I think you’ll like this
.

Probably. But not right now, okay? I don’t feel like watching a movie right now
.

I brought you something else too, William
.

A pause. A sheepish look.

Yeah? What?

He reached into his sport coat and pulled out a little baggie with something fuzzy and green in it. For a moment I thought it was a little stuffed animal of some kind, and felt
sorry for old Dad, suddenly rendered lame and clueless by my illness.

He shook the bag awkwardly.

It’s… uh … the wacky weed. Some say it really helps. Eases the nausea
.

I laughed into my pillow until I found I was crying. When I turned to look at him, he was still standing in the doorway in the same awkward position, with the bag hanging from his hand.

Will you try it?
he wanted to know.

I didn’t tell him that I had already tried it a couple of times, under very different circumstances. I didn’t ask him how a conservative and respected oral surgeon goes about finding a discreet dealer in a suburb like ours.

Only if you’ll try it with me
, I told my father.

The old Victorian’s ancient furnace didn’t
seem to be working the next morning, and I was freezing my ass off. I tried to think of something to motivate me to get out of bed. A trip to the Laundromat? An overambitious cooking project that would leave me with too much food and a bunch of dirty pots?

Ella, my old girlfriend in college, used to keep a bag of Twizzlers in her dresser drawer, across the room from her bed. It was the promise of a mouthful of candy that got her out of bed each morning, she told me. And once she was standing by her dresser, she said, well, she may as well just get dressed…. I thought it was cute at first, on the mornings I was with her, watching her gnaw on a little red twist as she selected her underwear and sniffed her sweaters for freshness. After a few times, though, it didn’t seem like the healthiest of habits. I could imagine, after a few years and a few disappointments, the red candy easily turning into a bottle of Scotch and the whole scene becoming a little repugnant.

In retrospect, I’d probably been a little hard on Ella. I was starting to think it was a decent idea—having a little something just beyond your bed to lure you up and into the cold
morning. The only question was what I could use in place of Twizzlers. I wasn’t sure if any candy would really do it for me.

This would be my project for the morning, to find and purchase my own dresser-drawer incentive.

I groaned and rolled out of bed and pulled on jeans and a couple of sweaters. I went downstairs and stepped into the frigid morning air. Cursing, I turned to lock the door behind me. When I heard someone stirring in Jimmy and Barbara’s apartment, I hurried down the porch steps. Once I was a few paces down the sidewalk, I slowed my steps.

I walked two blocks to the Mobil station, humming madly into the freezing wind. I was the only other customer there besides a white-haired man in a flannel shirt, rhythmically stirring sugar substitute into a small cup of coffee. I liked the rugged, silent camaraderie of the place.

“You got scratch tickets?” I asked the man behind the counter.

“Yeah. What kind you want?” He tapped on a little plastic display case next to the register. There were about twenty varieties at different prices.

“What are the cheapest?” I asked.

“These ones on this side are a dollar.”

I counted my money.

“Thirteen of those, then, I guess.”

“Which one? Casino 500? Break the Bank?”

“Um … Break the Bank, yeah.”

“All thirteen?”

“Yeah.”

After paying for the tickets, I walked out, forgetting that I’d wanted a coffee as well. I considered turning back, but didn’t.

• • •

“Billy!” Barbara opened her front door
as I climbed the porch steps. “That scared me! I was watching from the window. You could’ve been hit!”

“I was in the crosswalk,” I said. “He shouldn’t have laid on the horn like that. It’s the pedestrian’s right-of-way.”

“Well, some of the people in this neighborhood don’t respect that. You really need to be careful. Do you want to come in? Jimmy and I are having some nice tea, and a crisp. We were thinking of calling you to make sure you hadn’t frozen. We just called the landlady about the furnace.”

I stepped into the downstairs apartment. The kitchen smelled like cigarette smoke and home cooking. In the next room, Jimmy was watching an infomercial for a rotisserie oven.

Barbara set a mug on the table and stuck a tea bag in it.

“Thanks,” I said. “This is really nice.”

“I’m just about to start my chanting,” she said. “But Jimmy’ll join you. Won’t you, Jimmy?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said hoarsely over the burble of the television. “We’ll both have a couple heaps of that crisp.”

Barbara went through the TV room and disappeared into a dark curtained area in the corner. Jimmy joined me at the kitchen table.

“Game’s on at three,” he said. “You gonna watch it?”

“What game?”

A low moaning came from Barbara’s curtained corner, then a resonant gonging sound.

“The Pats game.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so. Listen,” I said. “Should we turn the TV off? How can Barbara stand that?”

“She’s used to it,” Jimmy said, pouring our tea. “Says she blocks it out.”

“Hey,” I said. “Before I forget. I wanted to give you something.”

I pulled out my lottery tickets and ripped one off. Handing it to him, I stuck the rest back into my jacket.

Jimmy quirked an eyebrow at me.

“I bought thirteen of them. I didn’t realize until I was on my way home that that was the wrong number to buy. I may have jinxed them all by buying thirteen.”

“So you figured you’d give me the cursed one.”

“I can take it back if you want,” I said, dunking my tea bag up and down.

“No, no,” he said. “I appreciate it. But you sure you want to give this to me?”