The Wonder Bread Summer (9 page)

Allie held the phone against her ear as if Beth would reappear on the line. The phone started beeping and then an electronic voice asked her to hang up and dial again. Allie hung up but she didn’t dial again. Instead she went to find more tamales.

Back at the kitchen table, Allie ate and stared at the smeared number on the bread bag. Even if she did get a hold of her father, what would she tell him?
By the way, Dad, I just stole a few kilos of coke and I’m trying to figure out how to give it back—minus the salary Jonas owes me, of course—without getting murdered, killing anyone else, or going to jail.

Consuela was at the kitchen sink, wearing pink plastic gloves and a half-apron with oysters printed on it. She was doing the dishes and singing along with Spanish-language radio. When the song ended, she removed the gloves, wiped her hands on the apron, and looked at Allie. “You look so worried,” she said. “I promise you, Roger will be fine. Do you want me to take you to see him?”

“Um . . .” Allie barely knew Roger. But she did feel she should go see him. She needed to apologize.

“It won’t be scary. Jorge stopped by and said he’s sitting up and pointing and everything.” Consuela smiled.

“Okay, I guess.” Allie looked down at the newspaper that was folded open on the table. There was a boxed-in square with the dates and times for bands at the Hollywood Bowl. Mighty Zamboni was listed. Allie snatched up the paper and looked at the date. It was three days old. Her mother had played here only two days ago.

“It takes me forever to read the paper,” Consuela said as she started to put away the clean dishes that were drying on a dishtowel on the counter. “I just got to that today!”

Allie stood up, holding the paper. “Can I use the phone again?”

“Sí, sí!”
Consuela said. “I promise you, it’s free long-distance!” She waved both hands at Allie as if to shoo her back into the bedroom.

Allie dialed the number for the Hollywood Bowl. A man answered. He sounded whiny.

“Hey, do you know where Mighty Zamboni went after they played there?” Allie asked.

“I’m not Mighty Zamboni’s manager,” the guy snorted.

“I know but they were just there, so they’re probably doing the whole state, right?”

“I have no idea what they’re doing. They’re not a band that interests me.”

“I really need to find them,” Allie said. She switched to a whisper so Consuela wouldn’t hear, and added, “My mother’s the tambourine girl for Mighty Zamboni and I need to find her.”

“Why on earth are you whispering?” the guy said. He talked to Allie as if they’d known each other for years and he was allowed, entitled even, to be irritated with her.

“Because the woman whose phone I’m on thinks my parents are dead,” Allie whispered.

“What is wrong with you that you tell people your parents are dead if they’re not?”

“Please just tell me where Mighty Zamboni is now,” Allie said in her normal speaking voice.

“Fine. Hold on.” There was a clanking sound as the guy let the phone fall.

Allie opened the drawer of Consuela’s bedside table and poked through it while she waited. There was a red leather Bible with a pink feather bookmark. There were also condoms and a tube of K-Y Jelly. Most of the Catholics Allie knew used birth control in spite of the pope’s insistence against it. But she didn’t know anyone who kept their birth control and their Bible in the same place. Allie loved imagining that Consuela and Jorge had a vigorous, hearty sex life. Eat some tamales, put the kids to bed, say a little prayer, and then BOOM. Roll around and make each other happy.

“Miss?” The guy was back on the phone.

“I’m here,” Allie said.

“Leonard, the gaffer, said he talked to some of the Zamboni roadies and they mentioned they were playing the Santa Barbara County Bowl next. He thinks they’re opening for either Blondie or Billy Idol.”

“Blondie or Billy Idol?” Allie said. “How do you confuse Blondie with Billy Idol?”

“Both blonds, I guess,” the guy said.

“All right, well, thanks,” Allie said, and she hung up the phone and stared at it. She had the slightly jittery feeling under her skin that she always had when she knew she was going to see her mother. Allie had spent hours, days, years fantasizing about being with her mother in a traditional way. Fantasy Penny would cook for her, feed her, push Allie’s face into her belly as Consuela had, and let her cry. In reality, she’d never experienced her mother like that. But there was a difference between their past encounters and now, Allie thought. In the past, Allie had never been in a tough situation in which she honestly needed Penny to help her out. But now, with the bag of coke, Rosie holding Beth hostage, and no clear plan, maybe Allie’s mother would rise up and
be
a mother. A mother, Allie assumed, would never let her daughter be murdered by a man named Vice Versa.

Allie picked up the phone, called 411, and asked for the Biltmore Hotel. When she was ten years old, she and her father had driven to Santa Barbara to see Mighty Zamboni play. Allie and Frank had stayed in a tiny, tar-and-gravel-roofed motel just off the freeway. But her mother had stayed at the Biltmore Hotel, on the ocean. Allie had loved visiting her mother at the Biltmore. That night, when she lay awake on the cardboard-feeling mattress in the motel, Allie entered an hours-long fantasy in which she was staying at the Biltmore alone with her mother—breakfast in bed, afternoons at the beach, evenings sitting outside on the patio, eating what was then Allie’s favorite food, mac ’n’ cheese with bacon bits and bread crumbs baked on top.

Allie wrote the number to the Biltmore on her hand. She wasn’t going to mess with a Magic Marker on a bread bag again. And then she punched in the long-distance code and dialed the hotel. It seemed impossible that her mother would stay anywhere else—Penny seemed to identify herself by the things to which she was loyal: she always drove a convertible (only Cadillacs since she’d been with Jet); she always smelled like Giorgio Beverly Hills perfume; and she always wore her black hair as long as, or longer than, Cher’s.

When the front-desk clerk picked up, Allie asked for Penny Klein’s room. As a young girl, she had been embarrassed that she was the only kid in the class (no matter which class or school it was) whose parents didn’t have the same last name. Even Rachel LeBlanc’s parents, who were divorced, had the same last name.

“There’s no one here registered by that name.”

Of course. Penny always shared a room with Jet Blaster. “Can I have Jet Blaster’s room.”

“I’m sorry, there’s no one here with that name either.”

Jet always thought he was so famous that he had to register under fake names. The guy was about sixty years old now, showing up in
People
magazine’s “What Ever Happened To
. . .
” issue. Allie’s mother had been in love with him since she was a young girl. And when she got pulled out of the audience by bodyguards and asked to meet Jet backstage after a Hollywood Bowl concert twelve years ago, six weeks after Penny’s mother, Wai Po, died, she decided to leave Allie and Frank and go on the road with Jet as his tambourine girl. The night before she left, Penny sat on the edge of Allie’s bed, leaned over Allie, and tucked her in so tightly that the blanket felt like a belt.

“I got a better job,” she had said.

“I didn’t know you had a job.” Allie was wearing a fake Lanz nightgown with lace around the bib and hem. She had found a real Lanz nightgown in the JC Penney catalog and shown it to Wai Po, who bought the exact pink floral flannel and sewed the nightgown for Allie within a week. It was Allie’s favorite possession, and, while wearing it, she always imagined herself as a character in her favorite movies:
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
(she’d be Jemima),
The Sound of Music
(Louisa),
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
(Carrie).

“I’m a housewife, a mother, and a wife. Those are jobs.” Penny’s voice was like a prong. “But they’re not the job I’ve always dreamed of having. My dream job is to be the tambourine girl in a band. And now someone’s offering me that job, so—” Penny smiled with her lips pursed, then pushed a coil of red hair behind Allie’s ear and kissed her on the forehead. Penny was twenty-six years old and still looked like a teenager with her straight, shiny hair and her smooth, velvety skin. On the rare times she took Allie shopping, the clerks often asked Penny if she were Allie’s babysitter. These were the moments when Allie felt proud of Penny. But when her teenage-looking mother told her she was leaving to be a tambourine girl, Allie felt a wave of embarrassment. Maybe her mother was too pretty to be a mother. Or too sexy. Penny wore tiny shorts that showed the spot where her thighs met her butt, she had tank tops that exposed the outline of her small breasts. She was rounded like a woman, but the size of a girl, not even an inch over five feet. Allie’s third-grade friend Donna’s father always called Penny “Sexy Pretty Penny,” as in, “How’s that Sexy Pretty Penny? Does she pack you a good lunch every day?” This made Allie and Donna fall into each other with laughter—Allie’s giggles always infused with the discomforting tanginess of shame.

“It’s no big deal. I’ll be home between gigs,” Penny had said. Allie had never heard the word
gigs
before and she said it over and over again in her head as if it were a bell she was ringing.

“Okay,” Allie said.

“Okay?” Penny asked.

“Okay,” Allie said. It didn’t occur to her that she might have some influence in this decision, that she could actually ask her mother to stay home.

When Penny had left the room, Allie retreated to
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, imagining the scene with beautiful Truly as she came in and tended to the children with a lacey long dress and a delicious British accent.

After that conversation, Penny was continually on the road with reunion tours, fund-raisers, and opening for bands that Penny claimed wouldn’t exist today if it hadn’t been for Mighty Zamboni (according to the occasional postcards that arrived). Allie and her father played along with the idea that Penny would be home any day now, any minute. But other than three drop-in appearances on three different Christmas days, the gigs went on through elementary school, junior high, and then high school.

At least once a year, Allie and her father would learn that Penny was coming to town, thanks to the pair of laminated passes that appeared in their mailbox a week before the show. The only concert Allie’s father ever attended was the one in Santa Barbara. The two of them ate catered food with the band in a dining room near the dressing rooms. Allie’s mother dragged Allie around by the elbow, introduced her to everyone, and asked if they looked like sisters. Her father was treated like an old friend with whom Penny had lost touch. When her parents sat on either side of her, eating pasta and talking about the California drought, Allie felt as though they were three strangers seated together on an airplane.

After that, Allie only went to the shows in Los Angeles, always bringing along a friend. Frank would drop them off and pick them up, never asking how the concert, or Penny, was.

“Can I have Gomer Pyle’s room?” Allie asked the Biltmore operator. That was a name Penny once told her Jet used.

“Miss, who are you looking for?” The operator sounded impatient.

“My mother is the tambourine girl in Mighty Zamboni,” Allie said, “and I assume the band is staying there, but I don’t know the name they’re using.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t connect you unless you know the registered name of the guest you’re trying to reach.”

“Okay. What about Alvin Bridgewater?” That was Jet’s given name. It sounded as ridiculous to Allie as Jet Blaster.

“There’s no one under that name either,” the woman said.

Allie heaved in a big breath, then pulled the phone from her ear and hung up. She looked down at the coke and thought about what big trouble one little bread bag had brought. Allie picked up the phone again and called Kathy, who answered on the first ring.

The enthusiasm in Kathy’s voice faded when she heard Allie on the line. Allie felt the rejection stinging in her eyes. “It was great seeing you last night,” she said.

“That was a crazy night,” Kathy said. “I’m not sure things are going to work out for me and Bud.”

“I’m sorry,” Allie said.

“Thanks,” Kathy said, and then there was nothing but silence.

Allie let the silence stretch as long as she could before bursting out with, “So, I just wanted to let you know that Roger had a heart attack in the van last night.”

“What do you mean he had a heart attack? Are you still drunk?” Kathy sounded angry, as if she already knew that Allie was responsible for the heart attack.

“What? What do you mean am I still drunk?” Allie felt confused. What did her being drunk have to do with the fact that Roger was in the hospital?

“You were trashed. It was embarrassing.” Kathy sounded twenty years older than she was, making Allie feel thicker and more ashamed than ever.

“Okay, well, I didn’t drive. I got in the van with Roger, who proceeded to have what seemed like a pretty violent heart attack. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.” Allie looked up at the cross looming over her head. She knew that in not telling Kathy about the coke she had given Roger, she was presenting an alternate story to the truth of what had happened, another lie in the long series of lies that had been accumulating ever since she stepped into the fitting room with Jonas. But right now she couldn’t take any more criticism.

“Am I supposed to tell Bud? ’Cause I really don’t want to talk to him again.”

“No,” Allie said. “I’m sure someone will tell him eventually.”

“I gotta go,” Kathy said. “My friends are waiting.”

A rush of tears moved forward in Allie’s eyes. Was that really it? Last night Allie had felt relieved to let Kathy go, but now when she couldn’t even find her mother in the hotel she
knew
she was staying in, Kathy’s rejection felt like sandpaper against her cheeks.

“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” Allie said, and she sniffed up the snot that seemed to be plummeting from her nose.