Three Good Things (3 page)

We spend the evening sharing a foot-long sub and watching reruns with the lights
out. I study Mom’s eager face in the flickering light as she devours everyone else’s
funny lives, which hardly get a laugh out of me.

Next day, she’s awake before me. I doubt she has even washed her face. But she is
wearing more blush than a
clown. If you can spot poor people at a hundred meters
by their clothes, it is crazy women’s makeup that gives them away. “You’ve overdone
it a bit, Mom.” I hand her a tissue when I come back out of the bathroom.

Do I try to make her look normal for her sake? Or mine?

She takes the tissue from me, frowns at it, then stuffs it in her pocket. “What would
you like to do today?”

Sounds strange coming from her lips.
The zoo? A wander through the mall? A movie?
That’s what any kid in a normal family might answer. Me, I hand her a breakfast bar
from the emergency stash in my bag. “Have something to eat. Then take your pills,
and we’ll go find coffee.”

She swallows a handful before I can check what she’s taken, slurping water from the
bathroom tap. Then she starts on the routine with her supplements.
She holds out
a handful of tiny white pills. “Vitamin D is good for your bones. Improves mood too.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mood.” I break an apple in half and give her a piece.

“Maybe I’ll stay here.” She puts the apple on the bedside table and stretches out
on the bed again. “It’s raining.”

“How can you tell? You haven’t been outside for hours.”

“Ever heard of the Weather Channel?”

I pull back one of the drapes. “It’s not raining. And we need groceries. Proper food
for a change.” I hold out her jacket. “Put this on.”

“You said it wasn’t raining.”

“Do it for me, would you? It will be cold, even if it’s not raining.” I sound like
a kindergarten teacher.

She shrugs it on and hauls her purse over her shoulder. “Let’s go, then, if we’re
going.”

I herd her out of the room and lock the door behind us. “We need gas,” she says as
we walk past the car. “We’ll get cash on the way. When’s the check due?”

“There’s enough in the account for the next few days anyway.”

She never reads the receipts when we withdraw cash.

“We’ll tighten our belts, that’s what we’ll do,” she says cheerfully. “Come on then.
Show me this park you told me about.”

When we get there, Mom looks around happily as she settles onto the bench. I hand
her half of the apple and listen to her take one bite at a time, chew for a bit,
then spit out the skin into her hand.

“You think you can climb that?” She nods toward the jungle gym.

“I could. But I don’t want to.”

“Go on.”

“No, Mom. I don’t want to.”

“Always such a wuss. Other kids? They play lacrosse. Do gymnastics. You just spend
your life at the library. Go on. Or maybe you’re afraid of heights.”

“You climb it.”

“All right. I will.” She flicks her apple core onto the grass.

I pick it up and dump it in the overflowing garbage can. “I didn’t mean it!”

Instead of taking it one rung at a time from the outside, she crawls into the middle
and grabs the highest bar. “Have to warm up before I take this on,” she tells me,
as if she’s about to climb Everest.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll show you how it’s done.” I clamber up the bars from the outside.
“You going to join me?” I ask from the top. I am already regretting playing her crazy
game.

Mom wiggles through, until she’s sitting hunched next to me. “This is cozy.”

“Not the word I would use.” The bars are hard on my skinny butt.

When I see a woman walking her dog toward us, I’m off in seconds. “Come on down now.”

“I like it up here,” says Mom.

“Come on. Please.”

The woman is closer now. More interested in us than in her dog.

“Mom!”

“What?”

“There’s probably some rule about kids only on this stuff.”

“Do you see a sign?” She looks around.

There is no sign. But the woman is getting closer by the second.

“Good morning!” Mom sings out.

“Good morning,” the dog walker calls back. “The number of times I’ve been tempted
to give that a try!”

I sigh a breath of relief.

“You’d have to lose a few pounds first,” Mom tells her. “Thirty, maybe, if you plan
to make it up here.”

My stomach clenches. “Mom!”

The woman goes red and totters off without looking back.

“What?” Mom peers down at me. “What did I do?”

I stare at her.

“Well?”

I shake my head. “Nothing, Mom. Absolutely nothing.” I give her a hand down. “Let’s
just sit here for a bit.”

It’s a quiet morning, almost peaceful. Three crows cackle at each other in a tree
nearby. A small man with a big dog wanders across the other side of the park without
looking our way. “Did you ever have a pet?” I ask, thinking of Jake and Bandit.

“A cat that got run over outside our house. Don’t even remember its name.” Mom frowns.
“My mother…” She looks at me as if she expects me to finish her sentence. “She…”
Mom frowns again.
Shakes her head. “Dad took care of it when he came home.”

“What did your mother do?”

She glances at me, then away. “Nothing. She didn’t do anything.”

“You started to say…”

“I don’t remember. Anyway, I’ve told you often enough. We can’t have a dog until
you’re old enough to take care of it.” It’s funny how normal things sound crazy when
they come out of my mother’s mouth.

“I thought I would go over to the library.” I stand up.

“I’m headed back. My shows come on soon.”

I should persuade her to come. Anything to get her out of that grim motel. But Jake
might be there. “Sure you’re okay?”

“We’ve paid for the room. Might as well use it,” she says. “You get the
groceries,
would you?” She scrabbles in her purse and hands me her bank card.

I don’t really need it. That’s something else she doesn’t know.
Let it be our secret
,
Grand said when he slipped me my own card.
It might be useful sometimes
. Who was
the adult here? Her or me? Talk about blurred lines.

“Do you remember the way back?” I ask.

“I’m not a child. If I get lost, I can ask,” Mom says. She frowns at me. “What’s
the name of our motel again?”

I’d like to think she’s making a joke. I know she’s not.

I skulk around the library for a while, hoping to run into Jake, trying not to look
too obvious. Both computers are busy. So I settle down with the
Architectural Digest
.

I’m wondering who looks after the fancy fountain in front of Rod Stewart’s mansion
when someone nudges my foot. I try to quash the jolt of pleasure
when I see Jake.
“We meet again,” he says.

“Hi.”

“How’s things?”

“Good.” Now that he’s here, I can’t think of a single thing to say.

“I thought you might show up,” Jake says.

“You did?” To distract myself from the heat rising in my face, I check the front
of his jacket. “No ferret?”

“Bandit’s at home with a cold.”

“You kidding me?”

He grins. “You could say.” He holds out a plastic bag. “Libraries are one thing.
But I can’t take him into the grocery store. Anyway. He needs his sleep. Ferrets
are supposed to be nocturnal, though he can’t tell time. But I’m headed home now.
You could come and visit. I know he misses you.”

“Right.”

“Actually, he hardly knows you. So why not come and get better acquainted?” He’s
the one blushing now. I like how it brightens his pale face. He looks toward the
computers. “Or maybe you’re waiting your turn.”

“I’m good.”

He leans forward. “My mom’s home. You’ll be quite safe.”

“Oh. I know. I mean…”

“I have kettle corn.” He shakes the bag.

“Well…can we stop somewhere on the way?”

“Sure. What do you need to do?”

I show him the ticket. “My mom says it’s a winner. Thought I could check this out.”
I shrug, as if it’s a totally normal thing to do. As if it really doesn’t matter
to me.

Before he can answer, my phone rings. “Hello.”

“Good morning, pet. How are you? Your mom there?”

“She’s at home. In our room. I’m at the library.”

“Ah, yes.”

Jake pokes me in the back. “You can’t use that in here.” He points at the librarian
watching us.

Outside, I lean against a huge cement planter that has been used as an ashtray.

“Everything okay there?” asks Grand.

I watch Jake through the window. “It’s good.”

“And your mom?”

“She’s okay. What are you up to today?”

“Tidying up. Got Scrabble club here tonight.”

He and I play sometimes. Mom too. But she makes up her own rules. And is a sore loser—no
surprise there. “We haven’t played for ages,” I tell him.

He must hear the longing in my voice. “I miss you too, pet. But I’m glad things are
okay. I worry. You know I do. You haven’t even told me where you are.” I hear him
scrabbling for paper and pen.

“The Lion Motel. Richmond. I don’t know the street.”

“Richmond?” There’s a pause. “She didn’t go far this time.”

Close enough for you to come and pick us up
, I want to say.
To take us home
. “I’ll
get her to call you later.” I swallow hard. “I miss you, Grand.”

“Me too, pet. Me too.”

He worries. I know he does. But not enough to take us in.

I’m shaking my head at the phone when Jake joins me outside. “You all right?”

“Fine.” I’m not about to explain that I’m almost homeless with a crazy mother while
my grandfather is
worrying but not doing anything about it only a few miles away.
I avoid looking at him and scan the area instead. “So. Which way to your house?”

“I thought you wanted to check that ticket.”

“It can wait. Probably not worth the bother.” All I want right now is to feel Bandit
curled around my neck, sliding down my chest, warming my heart.

We go for a few blocks without talking before Jake breaks the awkward silence. “So
tell me one good thing. From when you were a kid.” He swings the bag at his side.

“Why?”

“Think of it as an icebreaker. It’s something Dad asks when he gets home from a buying
trip. To tell him three good things. Start with one.”

One good thing? I watch a garbage truck thunder past, scraps of paper fluttering
in the air in its wake. “Okay.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m left-handed, right? I
had so much trouble cutting, Mom got me a special pair of scissors.” Heavens knows
where, or how she even noticed. “And some newspaper.” The memory is pulling me along.
“First I cut big pieces. Then smaller and smaller ones. We were outside on the balcony.”
In the middle of the night? I remember this detail, but I don’t mention it to Jake.

“I cut and cut. And soon there were flakes of paper everywhere. Like snow. It must
have been windy out there. Mom grabbed some scissors and paper too. And we went crazy.
Cutting. Laughing. Waving our arms around to make the paper snow fly.”

Jake starts telling me how his dad once woke him in the middle of a snowy night to
go tobogganing. But I’m hardly listening. Cutting paper is normal. But in the middle
of night? On an apartment balcony? Laughing and littering.

That’s something only crazy people would do.

Then another memory sneaks up on me, one I’m not about to share with anyone. When
I was little, Mom would slip notes or pictures under my pillow.
There’s a lovely
dream waiting for you
, she would say.
Go to sleep, and it will find its way into
your head
.

What kid wouldn’t stay awake worrying about little figures worming their way into
her skull? But what also kept me from falling asleep was knowing that as soon as
I opened my eyes, Mom would demand to know what I had dreamed. If I couldn’t remember,
she would get mad. And if I made something up, she would tell me I was lying. Either
way, she would reach under my pillow, grab the paper and tear it into little pieces.

I had no business stealing her dreams, she said. They were too good for me.

Tucking a dream under a kid’s pillow is a nice thing to do. But getting mad when
she doesn’t dream what you want her to?

One good thing does not always lead to another
, I want to tell Jake. But then I would
have to explain what I mean. And I hardly know myself.

Jake’s place looks like any middle-class house on a middle-class tv show. It’s a
split-level with pale yellow siding. The double garage has gray doors. There’s even
a basketball hoop fixed to a tree next to the driveway.

Jake presses a button on a remote, and the garage doors slide up. They must be soundproof.
And smellproof.
Before they are even open halfway, I hear chittering and scrabbling.
And am enveloped in the funky animal smell.

I follow him through a warren of cages big and small, some on the floor, others stacked
on benches. “Rodents over here.” He waves to his left. “Reptiles on the right. Birds
in the back.”

“And
Mustaelida
?”

He grins at me. “You’ve got a good memory. Bandit’s over here.” Under the window,
a wide cage runs the length of the garage. The ferret nudges up against the mesh,
nose poking out, eyes blinking. “See? He remembers you,” Jake says.

“I doubt it. Can he come out?”

“Sure.” Jake opens the cage door and hauls the ferret out by the scruff of its neck.

I take Bandit from him and bury my face in the ferret’s fur. “Smells good.”

“I gave him a bath. In case we had visitors.”

I drape Bandit around my neck while Jake gives me a tour. Some animals peek out of
their woodchip bedding. Others nudge their noses against Jake’s fingers as he reaches
through the mesh to scratch, tickle and fondle them. He’s so patient with them. Ends
up with a handful that he juggles as easily as if they were hacky sacks. He reminds
me of the parents with little kids I see on the street and in coffee shops, juggling
kids, wiping noses. Talking about them fondly.

He shows me the angora rabbits, all white fluff that fill the hutch like huge marshmallows.
“Steph’s favorites,” Jake says.
The ones all the girls like
, I remember him saying.

While I am being peered at and poked and licked and nudged by tiny paws and wet noses,
Jake asks, “You have pets?”

“No. My mom…we’ve never been anywhere long enough, I guess.”

“How come?”

“Oh. Long story.” I look around. “All this must be a lot of work.”

“It is.” Jake takes a binder from a shelf. “
In case the spca ever comes calling
,
Dad says. To Mom it’s just another homeschooling project.” He flips the pages.

“You’re homeschooled?” I ask.

“How else could I get to go to the library in the middle of the day to pick up chicks?”
He blushes. “Just kidding,” he quickly adds. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“School?”

“We just moved. Haven’t registered yet.” It’s the line I always use.

He nods in a way that looks like he doesn’t believe me. “So. Do you want to come
in for that popcorn? Meet Mom and Steph?”

“I should go home. But thanks for showing me this.”

“Why don’t you come back for supper? Dad’s famous spaghetti every Thursday.”

“I don’t know…”

“Go on. And if you don’t want to feel beholden, you can help me clean out a cage
or two afterward.” He looks around like the proud housekeeper my mother will never
be. Me neither.

“Maybe.”

“You don’t have to decide right now.” Jake hauls the garage door closed. “Just show
up at six. Dad will be cool.”

The invitation nags at me all day as Mom and I wander the streets. We browse through
a huge fabric store where Mom spends ages looking through heavy pattern books. She
has never picked up a needle and thread as far as I know. I’m the one who sews on
buttons.

We visit the park again, then come back to the room to watch endless
m*a*s*h*
reruns.
And contests with frantic chefs making inedible food out of stuff I’ve never heard
of.

It is typical day in the life of Grace and Leni Bishop. We won’t be starring in any
reality show anytime soon.

I want to go to Jake’s.

But he was probably just being polite.

If I go, I should take something.

He’s not even cute.

I shouldn’t leave Mom alone too long.

I do like the way he blushes, how his eyes flash when he’s talking proudly about
his furry and feathered charges.

I stare at Mom spread out on the bed, her eye shadow smudged, crumbs on her shirt.

I look away, disgusted and hating myself for feeling that way.

“What is wrong with you?” Mom asks as the credits roll on yet another episode of
The Golden Girls
.

I check my watch. It’s twenty to six. “There’s something I need to look up at the
library.”

“Go.”

“You fine here?”

“Don’t I look fine?”

She’s hugging her purse like it’s a favorite cat. In the mess on the end table next
to her is the tv remote, a box of crackers and a row of pill and vitamin bottles.

She’s got everything she needs. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

The cutlery rattles as Jake deals plates around the table like playing cards. Jake’s
sister, Stephanie, grins at me. “You like basketti?”

“Sure. I love it.” If there’s a sale, I can pick it up for a dollar a can.

“Here we go.” Their dad plunks a huge bowl of pasta on the table. “And here’s the
sauce.”

“Dad’s secret recipe,” Jake tells me.

This is so like an old tv show. Happy families at suppertime.

We each have a cloth napkin rolled up inside a little woven holder. I don’t want
to get mine dirty, so I don’t use it. To avoid flicking sauce everywhere, I coil
a single worm of the spaghetti around my fork at a time. But it still splatters.

“Spaghetti must be the most dangerous food on the planet.” I guess Jake’s dad says
this to make me feel better. But everyone looks at me. They look away again when
they see me blushing.

Dinner takes forever. There’s salad with two kinds of dressing. I eat mine plain.
I don’t want to flood my plate and feel like an even bigger fool. Butter from the
garlic toast dribbles down my chin. When I wipe it off, I see Jake’s mom watching
me.

Everyone talks back and forth. Over and around me.

The food is wonderful. But I can’t wait to get out of there. I’m trying to come up
with an excuse to leave when Jake’s mom asks, “So how’s school, Leni?”

I purposely don’t look at Jake.

“What’s your favorite class?” asks Stephanie. “I like recess best.”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Math, I guess?” Keeping track of our money must count for
something. “But I like English,” I say. Just in case they quiz me on calculus or
something.

Jake’s dad pipes up, “Reading anything good these days?”

“Dad owns Miller’s Books. Did I tell you that?” Jake says.

Crap!
I try to think of a book, any book. Sometimes I swipe a novel from a library
book-sale cart. But I never seem to be able to get through any of them. None of them
have anything to do with my life.

“Jake is whipping through
To Kill a Mockingbird
right now,” his mom chimes in.

“I love this sauce,” I say. Anything to get us off the topic of school and reading
lists. I gulp down my last bite of pasta. “I should go.”

“What about dessert?” asks Steph. “It’s chocolate-ripple ice cream.”

“I’m allergic to chocolate.” I stand up. “Thanks for dinner. But I have to get home.”

Jake’s dad looks at his mom, who looks at Jake.

“I’ll see you out,” he says.

“I’m fine.” There’s an uncomfortable silence as I leave the kitchen. I shove my feet
into my shoes at the front door.

“Why did she leave before we’re done?” I hear Stephanie say. “Everyone likes chocolate.”

Tears are smarting my eyes. I feel stupid and lonely and jealous. Their house would
never make
Better Homes and Gardens
. But everything looks so comfortable. Jake’s
parents are friendly and Stephanie is sweet.

They are such a normal family.

And I am such an outsider.