The Sharp Time (12 page)

While Bradley showers, I wash out a cereal bowl that has been in the dishwasher for days, for weeks, Cocoa Krispies turned to chocolate pebbles with papier-mâché. I put English muffins on the counter with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of honey that I did not buy. The unheralded world of groceries is my own little BC and AD: I think of how the jar of honey was once in my mother’s palm at the farmers’ market:
Oh, honey, yes, I think we need honey. Sandinista loves honey on her toast
. I open the cabinet a final time to check for any other breakfast delicacies for Bradley. I stare at the Trappist jam for a moment—there’s just a skin of red fruit left at the bottom of the mason jar—and think of my mother spooning it on her sourdough toast. I take it out and put it next to the jar of honey. The digital clock on the microwave oven says 9:13. If I were at school, I would be in Mrs. Bennett’s class.

I hope Alecia Hardaway has the flu. I will her to have some mild bug, visualizing her on the family-room couch eating toast and watching cartoons, her nice mother puttering around in the kitchen. I shower while Bradley eats breakfast. I keep the water as boiling hot as I can stand it, so that my skin is roasting, porcine. When I step out of the shower, I towel off the fogged mirror and look at my body. I can count all my ribs.

And the bruise on my ribs where my desk slammed against me is changing colors: it’s not so dark now, the outline of Italy is fading into a greenish, blurred boot.

When I look out the bathroom window, I see that Bradley has gone into the backyard to smoke. He’s also checking his cell phone and looking up at the sky carefully, as if praying or searching for spacecraft. I study him until it feels bad, like I’m spying, and then I blow-dry my hair.

* * *

I drive Bradley to work, and when he gets out of the car, he offers up a guttural “Baby, that was terrific. I’ll give you a call sometime.” And so there is more laughter and the day lights up, clear sunshine and still some snow on the ground, the air fresh as spearmint. But the second he’s gone into the Pale Circus—why did Henry Charbonneau give me a day off, the last thing I need is a day off—and I’m idling in my car on Thirty-Eighth Street, I start feeling my feelings, as my mother always advised me to do.

My feelings are not so hot.

My feelings are that Catherine Bennett has won at some crazy game that I didn’t realize I was going to have to play. My feelings are that a granite toad tossed through a window is a lame-ass gesture that barely constitutes revenge. My feelings are that Jesus himself would not be all turn-the-other-cheek–esque about Catherine Bennett, that he’d kick it like:
Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me, so don’t be so lame and let Alecia Hardaway s-u-u-ffer.…

I cannot shake this off.

But what else is there to do except drive home with these bad feelings and attend to the business of the day?

Back at home, I do the breakfast dishes. I cannot remember to buy the soap pellets or the little liquid gel-packs for the dishwasher, so I take all the dishes out of the dishwasher and wash them campfire-style, sans stars, sans s’mores, just water and the pan and the bubbles. I sweep the kitchen floor and come away with dustpans full of fluff and detritus. I scrape the last of the Trappist jam out of the jar with a spoon and slam it into the trash. I eat an Almond Joy.

I find my social security check in an avalanche of mail and then drive to Target, where I cash it at the in-store bank and buy tampons, dental floss, toothpaste, Monistat for my recurring yeast infection, and toilet paper: all the products that used to magically appear on the bathroom shelves. Well, what had I thought? That tampons were a perpetually replicating species, packed cotton peeking out from the slit end of the plastic applicator, coquettish and looking for a suitable mate?

While driving back home I realize I have forgotten my cell phone at Target. Of course I have, because I’m
not paying attention
. This could be far worse; I could have left, say, my
gun
at Target, resting on a display of Brawny paper towels. But no, it’s safely tucked away in my glove box and of course I didn’t take the gun in the store with me, but attention deficit disorder makes all things possible and I make a mental note to be careful about where I take it, where I leave it. (The gun isn’t loaded, of course—I have no idea how to insert the bullets.) And so then I drive back and customer service does have my phone, some kind soul has turned it in, and so I’m a little buzzed on the good luck of that, but I come home to no new messages on my machine.

I stand in the living room holding my Target bags, reeling from no call no love no nada zilcherino from the school. I’m wondering how much longer I will be able to take my mother’s absence and my chest feels like it is stuffed with bricks.

I turn on the computer and I surf the Web and I crank up one of my mom’s old Clash CDs and do some deep breathing exercises. But I really can’t take the house—the silence, the sadness—shriveled aloe plants in their terra cotta pots and ancient postcards on the fridge—
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU
, a rueful Jack Kerouac cradling a black and white cat, Carson McCullers with her sad eyes and fetching bob. Mostly the silence of the phone means that I am
out
of here.

* * *

I work out some hippie philosophy: I will know where I’m going once I get there. I avoid the school—a feat that takes some kind of Zen-master stoicism—and I drive downtown.

I cruise aimlessly.

I am Miss Global Warming! Instead of a sash and crown, I will wear a clever smokestack beret and string empty gas cans into an avant-garde necklace. Because I crave motion: I need forward motion. When I drive down Thirty-Eighth Street I am both relieved and embarrassed to see Bradley beneath the striped awning, inscrutable behind his vintage Ray-Bans. When he sees me, he breaks into a huge goofy smile. He walks out to meet me as I slow down and lower the passenger window.

“Sandinista!” He takes off his shades and squats down by the car door so we are eye level. “What are you doing here? Do you need some booze or chocolate?”

“I need neither booze nor chocolate, young man,” I say, my voice dramatic as that of a 1940s heroine in a trim wool suit.

Bradley smiles. He points to St. Joseph’s at the end of the street. “Do you have a boyfriend at the monastery? Or do you have some business at the pawnshop?” Bradley slips into a
Deliverance
accent. “Are you downtown fixing to pawn wedding rings to get ole Billy Joe John Jerry out of jail?”

“No, no, none of that. I’m checking up on you. Once a boy spends the night with me I turn into a total psycho stalker. Word to the wise.”

Bradley smiles at an invisible TV camera somewhere in the distance, and in the jangly bass of a game-show host he says, “You’ll always remember your first stalker: the letters, the calls, the restraining orders, the inevitable purchase of pepper spray and a pistol.” He leans closer, resumes his regular voice. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m good. I just had some errands to run, and so, you know …”

A glimmering black Cadillac Escalade pulls up in front of the Pale Circus. Three boys wearing black wool capes, dark lipstick and nail polish swoop out of the car.

Bradley smiles. “And I’m off to battle the suburban goths.”

“Word to Count Dracula,” I say.

As I pull away, he gives the trunk of my car a pat and heads back into the Pale Circus. I close the window and crank up the heat. As I’m lighting a cigarette I hear rap music, loud as sirens, flooding the street, and then a Volvo wagon parks in front of Erika’s Erotic Confections. Two white college-age guys get out of the car, trailed by the sounds of Common and Kanye West:
I got two kids and my baby mama late, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh
. They go into Erika’s Erotic Confections, the car engine still running, the song still pumping—
I did what I had to did cuz I had the kid, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh
.

I cruise around the block. My cigarette is not even smoked halfway down when the guys walk out of the shop with a large rectangular white bakery box tied with peppermint-striped ribbon. They are laughing and jostling around so much that I have the visual image of the warning sign at every swimming pool, even the bold black letters, the no-nonsense exclamation point:
NO HORSEPLAY
! But the cake is not dropped. They gently set it in the back of the wagon and exchange a high five. Then a fist bump. The hems of their long wool coats swing out and kiss as they turn away from each other and get back into the front seat. There’s the rev of the engine—in the Volvo it comes out as a controlled keening:
ohhh, ohhh, ohhh
—and they’re off.

I crush out my cigarette in the ashtray and enjoy the after-effect: brisk nicotine air in the safety of my car. And then because I don’t have anywhere else to go and I’m a little hungry for something sweet I decide to brave it: I park my car and make my own trip to Erika’s Erotic Confections. The door is galvanized steel with an ominous peephole at eye level. But inside, the walls are painted a deep mango, the floors tiled in black and white squares like a tropical soda shoppe. The air smells sweetly of batter, but beneath it a chemical note: the smell of industrial cleanser, of freshly mopped hospital floors. And from behind the counter: Erika. Her Cloroxed flattop has grown into a bob, colored to a bright cherry cola. She wears false eyelashes and an emerald on a sliver hoop strung through her left nostril.

“Hey there,
you
,” she calls out, as if genuinely happy to see me.

Me?

“Oh, hey,” I say.

Erika stands at a long wooden table, surrounded by pastry bags, bowls of frosting and a huge cake.

“How’s it goin’?” She has a pastry bag in hand, its metal tip sprouting a flourish of sea-foam-green icing.

“Not too bad, not too bad at all,” I say, my voice bizarre with exaggerated casualness. Going closer, my heels striking the pretty tile like a teacup poodle tap tap tapping across the room, I can see what Erika is working on: a cake of a nude woman who has the body of a
Playboy
centerfold.

“I’ll be with you in just one second.” Erika squints and puts both hands around the pastry bag.

At first I think she’s frosting ankle socks on the naked cake. But really, my eyes adjusting as if to bright sunshine, I see now that Erika is icing on a pair of sea-foam-green panties pulled down to the cake’s ankles.

Jesus
, I think,
what company makes that cake pan?
I feel my face warm and redden and know that I am the lamest of the lame: a cake is making me blush.

“There.” Erika puts the pastry bag down. “Can I help you, hon?”

Her tone is sweet, as if she knows I am not here to gawk at the erect marzipan penis standing sentry next to the cash register, nor to flip through the photo album of graphic gateaux on the counter.

“Um … well, I’m just looking around a little.”

“You are?” Erika widens her eyes and smiles.

“Well, I had a chocolate from here one time … it was really excellent.”

“Oh! Thanks for telling me.”

I try to train my eyes away from the marzipan penis, but Erika sees me stealing a quick look.

“My next project is to make a marzipan penis that ejaculates
money
.”

I snort out a real laugh. “Coins or bills?”

Erika smiles. “The fountain effect of gold coins showering down would be pleasing, but rolled bills would be easier, architecturally.

“I’m Erika.” She holds out her hand, and we shake. I don’t know why I’m surprised that she has a mother’s hand, a palm with the flaking roughness of someone who washes dishes.

“I’m Sandinista.”

Erika nods, resolute. “Well, of course you are. Sandinista! Who else would you ever be?” She stares off for a moment. “God, that’s a good album:
Sandinista!
”

She walks to the front cooler and pulls out a tray of triangular dark chocolates dusted with a yellow veneer of crystal sugar. “Names are funny, right? How they reveal a thing or two about your lineage? I have a friend named Flannery. Are her parents retired English professors?” Erika smacks one hand to her forehead, feigning shock. “Why, yes, they are.”

She holds out the tray.

“Oh, they’re so gorgeous!”

“Banana curry robed in fair-trade Venezuelan chocolate.” Erika rolls her eyes. “I’m working on my website. Trying to stop whoring myself out with the tittie cakes. Try one! On the house.”

“Thanks,” I say. I pop one in my mouth and it’s warm and sweet and savory, comforting but also interesting, like you hope the world will be.

“Wow … my God … these … are … just …” I tear up a little, thinking of my mother telling me how we would eat nothing but chocolate when we traveled through Switzerland on our big trip:
Fondues! Ingots! Bricks and bars of chocolate!
We would drink only chocolate, too: hot, with shots of espresso.

“Thanks.” Erika gives me a curious, concerned look, and then walks behind the counter with the tray, takes three chocolates from the plate and arranges them in a little white bakery box. She bothers to tie it up with a peppermint-striped ribbon before handing it to me.

As I reach for my purse, Erika makes a disgusted click sound with her tongue.
Cllllllk!
“Jesus, I can’t really expect you to pay for something you didn’t ask for, Miss Sandinista.”

And I’m thinking how that’s not always the case, when she says, “My treat. You work at the Pale Circus, right?”

“Yes. I’m new.”

She smiles. “I know. I saw you filling out your job application on the bench Monday morning. And smoking under the awning with Bradley on Tuesday. You went into Arne’s shop after work that day. Wednesday, Henry Charbonneau came into work; you and Bradley went to lunch.”

“You’re right!”

And then she reads my mind.

“No, I’m not a stalker. Most people just come to Thirty-Eighth Street for liquor, porno sweets, pawned jewelry, pretty vintage clothes, jam, or Jesus. So a new person taking a job on this street is pretty notable here.”