All We Had (16 page)

I felt queasy now all the time anyway. My cleaning products gave me headaches. And the way my mother acted made me sick. Every topic she brought up was related to Vick. Mostly she talked about his house: it was so big, his things were so nice, the yard was so neat, and he had a pool. “A pool, Ruthie! Can you imagine that?” She went on and on. And she'd cleaned herself up in a way I really didn't care for. Her hair was always neat; she now ironed her clothes. She kept open fashion magazines on the edge of the bathroom sink so when she did her face for him it was a major production, not her usual effortless routine.

With Vick she became girly and stupid as if an idiotic twin had supplanted her. She didn't swear around him because she sensed he didn't like it. And apparently her twin had hearing loss. I tried once at work to tell her she had toilet paper stuck to her shoe, but she brushed right by me with Vick's plate of food, eager to serve him while it was still hot.

And now there was this Lynette! When she finally finished listing off her hobbies, the pillow landed.

“I don't know, what do you think?” my mother asked. “Should
I take up yoga or crocheting? Or should I do both?”

With the pillow now on her lap, she grabbed her bag and fished out her pack of Camels. When she took out a cigarette, bits of tobacco spilled everywhere.

“I knew a woman once who crocheted toilet-seat covers.” She picked off the tobacco crumbs and one by one tossed them on the floor. “She sold them on the Interweb.”

And with that she gave the pillow a swipe with the back of her hand and the pillow landed on the floor. I was just about to scoop it up, brush it off, and restore it to its place at the corner of the couch when I heard a noise. My mother heard it too.

We looked at each other in silence waiting for it again.
Then there it was: the unmistakable squeaking of a mouse. It stumbled out from the wall; a dusting of poison powdered its minuscule snout.

“For fuck's sake,” my mother said, finally sounding more like herself. She stood up, walked over to the wall, and picked up the tennis racket she now used to kill them.

It was afternoon. The sun was bright. I had just cleaned the windows. And the light poured in at a brand-new angle. But she would never notice.

She raised the racket. “I can't wait to get out of this shithole,” she said. And leaving the impression of tightly woven plaid, she smashed the mouse dead.

My mother later told me my face turned a shade of green and that she reached out with the tennis racket to break my fall. What I remembered next was waking up in bed with her sitting beside me. She held my hand and stroked my forehead. “You re
ally scared me,” she said. She took my temperature. She brought me water. She heated up some Campbell's soup. And when I was done with that, she popped a big bag of popcorn and got into bed with me. We watched reruns of
Star Trek
and cracked up over how boyish and stupid the show was. “Beam me up, Scotty,” my mother mocked in a deep voice. When she threw a handful of popcorn at the screen, I didn't care that it landed on the floor. All I did was laugh.

I told myself she'd grow tired of him. I imagined her fixing her makeup, getting ready to break up with him. “His aftershave stinks! His dandruff is gross!” she'd jeer. I could just see her ducking in and out of the bathroom with each exclamation of disbelief. And I pictured the two of us howling.

My mother took my temperature one more time. I thought for sure she'd stay home with me, but at seven
p.m.
sharp she got up. She took a shower. She changed her clothes. I heard the familiar clatter as she pulled her makeup out and chucked it back into her bag.

“I gotta go.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed again. I couldn't look at her. She reached to touch my cheek and I turned away.

Vick was old enough to be my mother's father and just the kind of man she claimed she'd never like.

“Ruthie,” my mother pleaded. She kissed my shoulder. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

But I had never been so unsure.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Loyalty

T
he April of my junior year, I wrote a paper:
“Jesus Has Been Co-Opted by the Devil
:
An Examination of How the Perversion of His Teachings Is Destroying the World.”

I thought it was my best
,
but my teacher, Ms. Simmons, didn't even read it. She claimed that my subject matter had become “too dark.”

Ms. Simmons was not the brightest bulb. Her face was thin and elongated and her features seemed crowded for room, so who knows, maybe she'd been squeezed in some elevator doors and suffered brain damage as a kid.

To humor her, I took my paper back and wrote about something more cheery: the Easter Bunny. And I tried a new angle—instead of just putting my thoughts down, I posed a series of questions. “Would Jesus think the Easter Bunny is doing a good job of representing his values? Through the mere existence of the Easter Bunny, is Jesus trying to tell us something? And if so, what would that be? That life makes perfect sense or that it's a ludicrous joke?” At this point in my paper,
Ms. Simmons had circled
Easter Bunny
several times, drawn a happy face, and written in the margin: “I already like this paper much ­better!”

By the spring of 2008 business at Tiny's had slowed so much, Mel had Peter Pam pumping gas part-time (you can only imagine how it was ruining her nails) and I hardly ever saw her.

Vick Ward became Tiny's only regular customer. He was there every Saturday. He'd sip a cup of coffee for hours, grabbing at my mother and starting conversations. He had no clue that none of us liked him. We found out that he'd written the Hansons' loan and Patti and Roger's, too. His company had filed for bankruptcy but somehow they reorganized and Vick got promoted. He was now some kind of executive VP.

Arlene kept her eye on him. Just a look from her was enough to make him squirm.

One day she and I were standing up against the wall. He sat in the booth right across from us, waiting for his breakfast. “They're all pigs, assholes, greedy pricks.” Arlene was going off on her new favorite topic: bankers and politicians. She was talking to me but looking at him. He stared out the window and pretended not to hear her. He shifted in his seat. “No, you know what they are? They're all a bunch of
thieves
!” Arlene spit the word at him and he flinched.

Just then, my mother came bounding through the kitchen door with Vick's hash browns. She was the only one who liked him. According to her, Vick had no idea the loans he made were bad, but Arlene and I did not believe it. We did not see him losing his house.

Vick looked up at my mother with a big smile and as soon as she put his plate down, he grabbed her and sat her on his lap. She now did this anytime he wanted her to. I tried not to watch, but I couldn't get over what she was doing. And she didn't care who saw it.

My mother tossed her head back and let out a giggle so high-pitched and phony, it left a stench in the air.

Even Arlene was impressed. “I might think he's a son of a bitch, but damn if she isn't good. I've never seen a girl work a man quite like that before.”

Then, suddenly, because he wanted to, he pulled her into him and they started slobbering all over each other like a couple of loose-lipped monkeys.

It was so gross, I just couldn't help myself. I burst through the kitchen doors and dove for the sink, barely making it before I puked. And the next thing I knew, the floor was coming at me and I was leading with my head. Just before I hit the ground,
whoosh!
Arlene swooped up behind me. She caught me by my waist and sat me on a chair.

“Here, sweetheart, have some juice.” And as if by magic she produced a glass. She moved closer and looked at my face. Her eyes were warm and brown.

Her only son had died overseas in the first Iraqi war. Peter Pam had made us swear we'd never breathe a word of it. The mere mention of it could send Arlene reeling off the edge. But I could see then in the tender way she looked at me that her son still lived on inside her.

She brushed a hair off my sweaty forehead. “You have always been a string bean, but you're getting way too thin.” She cupped
my chin. “Now drink up.” She stood back, folded her arms, and waited to see how the juice went down.

“You see,” she said after I took a sip, “you're more resilient than you think.”

On a Saturday morning when the restaurant had emptied out. Peter Pam and I were cleaning up. She finally had a shift inside the restaurant and was gleefully wiping down her tables, lip-synching with a ketchup bottle to Aretha Franklin on the stereo: “
R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me
!
”

With his arms stretched out over the top of the booth and a toothpick dangling in the corner of his mouth, Vick digested his food. He was the only customer left.

When he looked over at Peter Pam, he chuckled. And even though he was probably enjoying her performance—Peter Pam was that good—I took my apron off, balled it up, slapped it on the counter, and headed for his table. I wanted him to leave. I couldn't stand him. He didn't know it but my mother's relationship with him would never last. She hated men like him, finicky and picky about their clothes. And I could just tell, he had no idea how to change his oil or fix a leaky faucet.

I grabbed for his mug, but he stopped me.

“Whoa there, kid-o.” He covered my hand over the top of the cup. “I'm still drinking that.”

I looked down at his hand. He wore a ruby-studded pinky ring. His fingernails were polished, his palms soft and clammy.

I pulled at the mug but he pulled it back.

“I never noticed,” he said, “but you got your mother's pretty
eyes.” He smiled and his eyes twinkled like a pair of artificial gems. I pushed my glasses up. For a moment I was afraid to move.

A reassuring hand touched my back.

“Will there be anything else today?” Mel said, reaching past me, filling Vick's water glass.

Vick let go of my hand on his mug.

“That's it,” he said. “Say, what'd you put in those eggs today? They were extra good.”

Mel ignored the compliment. He slid the check across the table. “Then you can settle up with me.”