Jailbait (5 page)

Frank finishes his cigarette and puts it out against his work boot. Then he stares out in front of him at nothing for a long time. It looks like his eyes are fixed on a spot about two inches in front of his shoes, but there's nothing there. That I can see, anyway. But maybe Frank can see things I can't, like a cat in the dark. Maybe that's another one of his magic powers. I try to fix my gaze on the exact spot he's looking at, but it's hard to tell if I'm successful. I almost think Frank's forgotten I'm even there, but the second I think that, he turns toward me.

“Nice hair,” he says, picking up a strand. “I like my women with long hair.”

I shiver again, but I'm not cold. I
like my women….
Am I one of Frank's women now? I hope so. How many does he have? No one's ever called me a woman before, let alone
his
woman. Frank examines my hair closely, like it's the most interesting thing on the planet. Which it isn't; it's just hair, dark brown frizzy hair that's almost down to my waist and would be in much better shape if I didn't split my ends when I get nervous.

Frank weaves a hank of my hair in and out of his fingers, which are quite tan. And kind of hairy. His fingernails are dirty and I can tell from how short and ragged they are that he bites them. And there's something wrong
with his right pinkie. The top of it is all scarred and wrinkled like it got caught in a meat grinder and his nail is all black and gross-looking. I try not to stare at it, but I'm afraid I'm going to be sick. I'm really squeamish about stuff like that. Like this one time Shirley gave me a tomato to cut up for a salad and I sliced the tip of my finger by accident instead. The minute I saw that first drop of blood I got nauseous and dizzy and if I hadn't grabbed the counter, I definitely would have hit the floor. Not that Shirley cared. She was more concerned with how much blood I was getting on her brand-new yellow dish towel than with the fact that I almost fainted and was practically bleeding to death.

Anyway, Frank must be able to tell I'm feeling a little funny because he grins at me, lifts a handful of my hair, and tickles my face with it. I try not to laugh but I can't help smiling in spite of myself.

“Old enough,” Frank mumbles, and then in half a second he's on top of me. I'm so surprised I freeze for a second before I try to push him off. But it's impossible, so I try to at least get away from the wall, because my neck is all bent out of shape at this crazy angle and the last thing I need right now is my head falling off. I can tell Frank likes the struggle—I can just hear him saying, I
like my women feisty
—so I keep it up even after I'm lying flat on the floor. Frank's still on top of me, and I like the way his body feels. It reminds me of the lead shield my father puts over me at his office (he calls it the Fred Shield) when he X-rays my teeth. It's nice and heavy. Comforting, like a big blanket on a rainy day.

“Ever kiss a smoker?” Frank asks.

Only Fred and Shirley
, I think, but I'm sure that's not what he means. Frank takes my chin in his hand and moves my head so I have to look directly into his eyes, but he doesn't hurt me or anything. I've never kissed a guy before, period, but I'm certainly not going to tell him that.

“Like kissing an ashtray,” he says.

Gross
, I think.
Thanks for the warning.
I wait, but Frank doesn't kiss me; he just lowers his face so close to mine I almost stop breathing. We stare at each other hard again, the way we did in the car, and now I can see he's looking for something, but what? Fear? I'm not afraid. Desire? He's the one who wants something. Frank is so close I can see a tiny version of my whole face reflected in his beautiful brown eyes: a little me in his right eye and a little me in his left eye. The last thing I want to see right now is myself, so I shut my eyes to wait. I don't wait long.

“This your boyfriend's jacket?” Frank asks as he starts to unsnap it. Each snap opens with a little pop.

“My brother's,” I say. “I don't have a boyfriend.” I spit out the word
boyfriend
like a gulp of milk gone sour in my mouth.

Frank doesn't respond to this, just lays open the sides of Mike's jacket carefully, like he's unwrapping a birthday present. Then he unbuttons my sweater slowly, like we have all the time in the world, and that makes me want to scream. I'm wearing a black cardigan over a black T-shirt and when all my buttons are finally
unbuttoned, Frank folds back both sides of my sweater gently, as if they're two pieces of tissue paper covering something delicate. I keep my eyes closed while he's doing all this, but I can see him by looking out from underneath my eyelids.

Frank is kneeling now and staring at me. I feel pretty ridiculous just lying here half undressed but I can tell that even though I'm right in front of him, he's not really seeing me. His eyes are blank, like he's thinking about something or remembering something or trying to make up his mind about something, but I have no idea what. I wonder if I should do something—I mean, what would a girl really named Vanessa do?—but I don't move. I just wait. The back of me is warm against the floor but the front of me is cold, and it's a strange feeling. Like sitting with your back to a warm campfire on a chilly night at the end of August on the last day of sleep-away camp.

Finally Frank shakes his head a little, like he's coming back to life, and then he lifts up my T-shirt. I have to arch my back so it doesn't get stuck and then it's all bunched up under my chin and armpits so my breasts are exposed. Ta-dah. There they are. Under my JCPenney bra, of course.

Frank doesn't touch me and I wonder how long he's going to just stare at me. I suck in my stomach while he studies me. I think he kind of likes me. I hope so, anyway. He seems totally mesmerized by my hooters, which is a good sign. I wonder if he wants me to take off my bra. I mean, am I supposed to be doing something here or what? Just as I'm about to ask, Frank leans down and
does the strangest thing. He runs the tip of his finger from my right armpit to my left hip bone and then from my left armpit to my right hip bone, making a big X across my front. Like X marks the spot. And that's it.

I keep lying there waiting for him to do something else, but he doesn't. And then after a minute, Frank gets up. He doesn't say anything, so I just stay where I am with my eyes half closed, still waiting. Then I hear the strike of a match and smell a cigarette, so I guess he's done with me.

I sit up and pull my T-shirt down, button my sweater, and snap my jacket, doing everything Frank did, only in reverse. I still don't know what to do and I'm kind of disappointed. Is that it? Maybe Frank wanted to do more but once he got a good look at me, he didn't like what he saw. Maybe he likes his women skinny instead of flabby like me.

“C'mere.” Frank's staring out the window and I get up and go stand next to him. He puts one arm around my shoulders and gathers me close. “You're a good kid,” he says, which makes me feel about two years old. I don't want to be a kid. I want to be one of his women.

“I'm not a kid,” I mumble into his shirt. “How old are you, anyway?” My guess is around thirty.

“Old enough,” he says, and then he grinds out his cigarette on the windowsill, which is really gross. God, smokers get on my nerves sometimes, they really do. I'm always picking up after Shirley, and right now I'm tempted to pocket Frank's butt, but that might make him mad, so I don't.

Frank turns and heads downstairs and I follow him
because I don't know what else to do. He holds the front door open for me, shuts it, and then checks to make sure it's all closed up tight, which is stupid since it's not like there's anything to steal in there. Then we walk back to the car without saying anything and get in. Frank sticks his screwdriver into the ignition and pumps the gas pedal. I wonder where we're going now, not that I really care. Frank doesn't say anything and neither do I, though I'm dying to know: does he like me or what?

Just when I'm about to ask where we are, things start looking familiar. There's the sign for the Long Island Expressway that some stupid kid spray-painted so it says Eggs Zit instead of Exit, like that's really clever. And then we pass the turn to my school and then we're back on Farm Hill Road and Frank stops the car in the exact same spot where he picked me up. I put my hand on the car door, but I don't open it right away. Frank just sits there, staring at me. I wish he would say something. Like what—I
had a great timel
Yeah, right. I want to tell him something like
Thanks for the ride
, or
It was nice meeting you
, or even
See ya
, but before I can even get one word out, Frank says, with that smile that makes my stomach turn over, “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.
The most wonderful word in the English language.
Tomorrow.
The way he says it, it's not a question and it's not a command. It's just a simple fact, a statement, you know, like the sky is blue; tomorrow will come; Frank will drive up, and off I'll go with him.

“Tomorrow,” I repeat, nodding in agreement, like I think tomorrow's a wonderful idea, which I do. Then I
pick up my knapsack and get out of the car, closing the door gently as though I'm afraid it might break. Frank drives away and gives me the same old wave he's been giving me for the past month like today's just another ordinary day, and I wave back in my usual way, too, like nothing at all has changed. Yeah, right.

Home, bittersweet home. I unlock the door, and as soon
as I push it open, the burglar alarm starts blaring so loudly I bet my grandmother can hear it all the way down in Florida. Without her hearing aid on.

“Andrea, is that you?” Shirley screams from the living room.

“Yeah, yeah, it's me, it's me.” I run to shut off the alarm, then dash into the kitchen to call the cops and give them our secret password so they know it's only us screwing up again and they don't have to rush over.

“I'm sorry,” I yell after I hang up the phone.

“Andrea, come in here, please.”

Uh-oh. I drag myself into the living room, where Shirley is watching
The Edge of Night, One Life to Live
, or some other stupid soap opera.

“I'm sorry,” I say again before she can start yelling at me. “I didn't do it on purpose. I just forgot to turn it off before I opened the door.”

“That's beside the point,” Shirley says, barely taking her eyes off the TV. “Why can't you be more careful? The police have better things to do than respond to every false alarm in the neighborhood. You've got to focus on what you're doing, Andrea. Why are you so distracted?”

You don't want to know
, I think. Out loud I say, “Well, at least I remembered the password,” unlike Mike, who set the alarm off last year when he arrived home to surprise Shirley for her birthday. Since we weren't expecting him, Mike came home to an empty house and when he set off the alarm he had no idea what was happening. (Mike swears we never told him about the burglar alarm; Fred swears we did. My guess is that Fred's right but Mike was probably so stoned at the time it didn't register.) Anyway, when the cops came and asked Mike the secret password, all he kept saying was “Hey, c'mon. I live here, man.” Well, the cops took one look at him with his long hair and ratty clothes and said, “Sure you do, buddy.” And then they hauled him right off to the station. I bet Shirley will never forget that birthday.

“I'm sorry,” I apologize to Shirley for the third time. “It won't happen again.”

“It better not,” Shirley says. “Now go get me a pack of cigarettes, will you? My nerves are shot.”

Ever the dutiful daughter, I go into the kitchen and open the drawer where most people keep their silverware but where we keep cigarettes—Virginia Slims for Shirley and Lucky Strikes for Fred. “Another twenty nails for your coffin,” I say softly so Shirley won't hear, since the one time I said it out loud she took away my allowance for two weeks.

“Here,” I say, bringing the pack into the living room.

“Thank you.” Shirley takes the cigarettes and looks up to give me the once-over. “Oh, Andrea, do you have to wear pants with patches on the knees to school?” She sighs dramatically. “If you need new clothes, I've told you a hundred times I'd be happy to take you shopping. We could go right now.”

“For your information, this is a style, Shirley,” I tell her. “All the kids at school wear pants like this.”

“Some style.” Shirley strikes a match and lights her cigarette. “Your father works extremely hard, Andrea, and I'm sure he doesn't appreciate his daughter running around looking like we're two steps away from the poor-house. And what happened to that nice pocketbook I bought you? Do you have to go around with that worn-out knapsack on your back like a hobo?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it doesn't do anything for you, Andrea, if you know what I mean.” Shirley directs her attention back to the TV and I study her as she watches her show and puffs away. She holds her cigarette between the second and third fingers of her left hand. Her fingers are long and slender and her nails are shiny and red, courtesy of her
once-a-week appointment at the beauty parlor. And on her fourth finger she wears this band of diamonds that Fred gave her for their twentieth anniversary, instead of the plain gold wedding band he gave her the day they got hitched. She keeps that ring in a velvet box at the bottom of her underwear drawer. The new ring is nice and everything, and you can tell it cost a mint, but I like the old one better. Sometimes I look at it when I put away the laundry. When I was younger, I used to like trying it on, but now it only fits my pinky because compared to Shirley, I'm an elephant, as she constantly reminds me.

“What did you have for lunch today?” Shirley asks during an Alka-Seltzer commercial, as if on cue.

I rack my brain. “Um, an apple and a Dannon vanilla yogurt.”

“Good.” Shirley nods her approval. If she knew I'd had macaroni and cheese, a brownie,
and
a chocolate chip cookie, she would kill me.

“I went to Mrs. Goodman's for lunch,” Shirley tells me, like I care. “She served us fondue, isn't that interesting? Cheese fondue for the main course and chocolate fondue for dessert. Everyone got these cute little forks to dip chunks of bread and fruit with. It was delicious, Andrea. Of course, I have to go right back on Weight Watchers tomorrow, but it was worth it. Maybe I'll make it sometime, but I'm not sure your father would like it. What do you think? You know his taste. Do you think he'd enjoy it?”