The Queen of Everything (15 page)

Since I'd met Gayle D'Angelo, I had begun to
see the name everywhere:
Many thanks to

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Gayle and Wes D'Angelo for their help in
supporting this year's Parrish High
Bugler;
Baseball thanks all the
parent-volunteers this year, Bernie and Sharon Myers, Wes and Gayle D'Angelo,
Art and Donna Hawkins ...
And over the intercom, "PTA vice-presidents of
hospitality Paige Woodruff and Gayle D'Angelo invite all honor roll students to
a luncheon in your honor ..." They were the kind of people who liked to show
themselves. I would have bet Mr. D'Angelo would be at that picnic, making sure
he got the points for being the involved dad. By now, I knew he'd be there. What
I wondered was if my father knew too.

When it started to rain Friday morning, I was
glad. The announcement blared over the intercom that if the weather kept up,
we'd have the picnic in the gym. I figured Dad would drive out to the park and
find a soggy sign pinned to a tree. I hoped the Second Chance Guy would be there
too, in his yellow hat and rain slicker and dorky boots, standing under his
umbrella. Big Mama says second thoughts are God talking a little louder into a
stubborn ear, something most people are too impatient to listen for. I don't
know about that. I just think the Second Chance Guy is easy to ignore; you call
him a dweeb who doesn't like to have any fun, and poof, he's gone.

By afternoon the sun had come out again. Mother
Nature was screwing with the heads of

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the weathermen, who had changed their forecast
midday to predict a late-afternoon storm. You've got to feel sorry for any
weatherman in the Northwest. I think they all ought to give it up and just
simply say,
Well, gang, today we're going to have weather.

Kale Kramer offered to drive me to the picnic.
It was one of those school things you hate but don't want to miss, and now, with
my father going, I felt I had no choice but to go. So I said yes. I had begun to
think I had been wrong about Jackson Beene and the jealousy I thought I saw that
night at the McKinnon family plot. The few times I had run into him since then
made me feel stupid for even imagining it; he'd looked at me as if I were about
as interesting as a change in the temperature. I felt bad about bringing up his
hiking accident. It was a habit I had, saying stupid things at just the wrong
time. If there is an extremely tall woman behind me at the grocery store, that's
when I will surely say something like,
Wow, who in the world is supposed to
be able to reach the stuff on these shelves?
At True You it was the worst.
Big, fat raindrops,
I'd say.
A tight squeeze. Humongous
cantaloupes.
Sometimes I think the little person in charge of the Humorous
Affairs Division of my brain gets a great big kick out of this.

It seemed best to forget about the goofy
feelings I thought I had for Jackson Beene. Anyway, Kale Kramer was the kind of
guy you

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were supposed to like, and there he was,
pursuing me as bad as a bee does a rhododendron bush. And I'll admit, I kind of
liked the special treatment I got because I was with him. People saw in me
something they hadn't before. I started thinking I saw it too. Like the fat
girls at True You who when they lose a little weight, start raising their hands
during discussion time. I don't think it's confidence so much; confidence is
probably something you give yourself. This was more about permission. Someone
else allowing you in a door, and you're suddenly sure that's the place you
belonged all along. Even if you haven't taken a real good look around; even if
you haven't figured out yet it's not so hot a place to be.

So on the last day of school, I said yes when
Kale Kramer offered to drive me out to Point Perpetua for the picnic. Melissa
piled in the back with Andrew Leland and Jason Dale and Jason's girlfriend,
Wendy Williams, who sat on Jason's lap and made slurping noises with him all the
way there. At the park, a few barbecues had already been set up in a row, and
poofs of smoke rose from them. The odor of burning charcoal mixed with the salty
air drifting upward from the strait gave everything the wet, smoldering smell of
camping.

I didn't see Dad or the D'Angelos. A few other
parents, though, had gathered at one of the picnic tables, and Mr. Wykowski the
art

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teacher, in his Cleveland Rock 'n' Roll Hall of
Fame T-shirt, manned one of the stalled Webers. A few students were trying
without much luck to get a badminton net to stick into the rocky ground, and
Custodian Bill stalked around the park wearing a concentrated look and waving a
metal detector around the patches of grass. A group of Franciscan nuns finished
up their picnic and looked anxious to get out of there. They waited in a gaggle
as one of the sisters threw away their picnic trash in one of the
swinging-lidded cans. Whenever I saw them in a bunch, it cracked me up. I always
imagined that if you ran straight toward them they would flap and fly off cawing
into the air, like a group of crows.

"Fuck, this is always so lame," Kale said as he
looked around the park.

"Why do you come every year then?" Wendy
Williams said.

"Free food," Kale said. Andrew Leland
laughed.

"Right," Melissa said.

"Good company." Kale put an arm around my waist
and pulled me to him.

"Don't you have a blanket in the car, Kale?"
Wendy Williams said.

He tossed her his keys. "I'm not your servant
boy."

Mr. Newburg, the football coach and driver's ed
teacher, spotted Kale and waved him over. I

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stood with Kale and smiled politely as he and
Mr. Newburg joked around and hit each other on the arm. The park began to fill
up; the nuns were gone, but there were a lot more students now, and a few more
parents and teachers. Custodian Bill was seriously going at the metal detector
now, letting the thing stop and sniff under the table where the nuns had been.
He reminded me of those clowns with the stupid joke-leashes, that make them look
like they're walking an invisible dog. I saw Ms. Cassaday drinking a can of Coke
and talking to Heck Kwa, who teaches math. The joke is, if you say his name real
fast, it sounds exactly like what the kids in his class say every day after
listening to him teach.

Someone turned on a radio, and Kale and Mr.
Newburg stopped punching each other in their manly fashion, and we walked back
over to Wendy Williams's blanket and sat for a while. Kale took off his shirt,
which made Melissa blush. It wasn't that warm, but I guess if I had a chest like
that, I would probably take any opportunity to show it off too. He rolled up his
shirt and put it behind his head, showing off an intimate fluff of armpit hair.
He pulled me down by him, his chest warm and sweaty against my cheek. I could
smell his deodorant, one of those that's supposed to smell like the woods. I
felt embarrassed down there, where everyone, even Ms. Cassaday, could
see.

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"Too bad I didn't bring any suntan lotion,"
Kale said. "You could rub it on me." He swirled a wide hand over his own
chest.

I sat up. "Too bad," I said.

"Hey, where you going?" he said.

I got to my feet. "I'll be right
back."

Kale sat up on his elbows. "What is it with
girls, they've got to piss every five minutes."

"Truly," Jason Dale said, earning him an elbow
from Wendy.

"Just because guys can hold it for three days,"
Wendy said.

So, you know, the conversation was going
downhill fast. I felt relieved to make my escape. I wanted to poke around, see
if Dad had shown up. I had only gone a few paces when Melissa caught up to
me.

"Thanks for leaving me alone again," she
said.

"You were hardly alone," I said.

"Jordan. You know what I mean." She looked back
over her shoulder to Kale. "I don't see how you could be in such a hurry to
leave him."

"I had to go to the bathroom." No arguing with
that.

"You know, he's really average height for a
short person," she said.

Sometimes I just didn't understand why I liked
that girl.

We stopped at the park bathroom now
that

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I had said that was my plan, and I hurried the
hell in and out of there. If God really wanted to punish you, he'd make you stay
in a park bathroom for all eternity. I mean, fire is nothing. I waited outside
for Melissa. I stood there, breathing through my mouth and listening to the
fuzzy drone of Melissa's voice talking to the girl in the next stall, who she
thought was me. Just stood there, kind of laughing to myself about Melissa
spilling her guts to some chick wearing Birkenstocks.

And that's when I smelled it. Her perfume.
Gayle D'Angelo's perfume. I swear, I smelled it before I saw her. It was not a
smell I could forget, ever. Later I would smell that perfume on some woman in a
department store, and I would feel so sick, I actually gagged. Covered my nose
and mouth with my hand and stood there shaking outside until some woman with a
loaded shopping bag asked if I was all right.

Gayle D'Angelo stood in a sprinkle of other PTA
women, tucking one corner of a red-checkered paper tablecloth over the edge of a
picnic table, as Wendy's mother, Please-Call-Me-Cathy Williams, smoothed the
wrinkles from the surface with her hand. I heard a booming laugh and saw Wes
D'Angelo and the baseball coach, Mr. Chester, hauling either end of another
table, then setting it down to meet the covered one. I thought about Wes
D'Angelo in

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his wedding tuxedo, torn to pieces, and felt a
pang of guilt that I knew what he had looked like on that day. Today he looked
relaxed, joking with Mr. Chester and trying not to bang his shins on the table
as they carried it. Markus D'Angelo stood near the badminton net, which lay in a
heap on the ground, given up on. He was talking with a couple of guys from the
baseball team; he cracked open the top of the drink can he held, took a long
swallow. He looked like his mother, but he seemed shy and nice. One of those
nice guys who does well in school and doesn't step on anyone's toes and becomes
a doctor, or something. Whose Adam's apple bobs when he drinks. Adam's apples
can make a person look so easily hurt.

His brother, Remington, walked up from the car
with a cooler in his arms. He was husky, like his father, with big round
shoulders that bulked from his tank top and carried his load as easily as a
handful of spare change. He set the cooler on the table's bench, opened the lid,
and rummaged around inside. I watched him; the curve of his shoulder blades. I
wondered if he knew, they knew, what I did. I wondered if any of them had seen a
white page in the wedding album and puzzled over why it was empty. I wondered if
I might catch their eyes darting around and trying to find mine. Trying to spot
my father. But Remington only found what he

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wanted in the cooler, popped it into his mouth,
and chewed. He went over and said something to his dad, who clapped him on the
back and made a remark that caused Mr. Chester to laugh and nod. Remington
looked embarrassed but pleased. Wes D'Angelo's big hand stayed on Remingtons
back for a moment, squeezed his shoulder, and dropped.

And then, as if Gayle D'Angelo's perfume rode
on a last drift of dangerous June air and called him forward, my father, at that
moment, strode across the park from the parking lot. I remember reading later,
in one of the books Ms. Cassaday would give me, about those sirens in mythology.
The ones who sat on the rocks and with their singing lured sailors to their
deaths. When I read that, I thought of my father then, walking across the park.
His hands were in the pockets of his khaki pants, and his face wore this
hopeful, uncertain look. Young, that's what he seemed from that distance; not
something you would ever say about him up close, with his eyes with the crinkles
at the edges, eyes that looked like they'd seen some things, and his face so
much a man's face, a father's face. He saw me too. He gave a wave, then poked
his finger in the air to indicate where he was headed, a goofy dance-move
gesture. It made me worry for him, that gesture. Like when you see a kid walking
to school with

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really short pants and you just say to
yourself,
Uh-oh.

"Gee, thanks," Melissa said, stomping out of
the bathroom and drying her hands in the armpits of her shirt. She was right not
to use that endless loop of towel in there. "God, I am so embarrassed. Why
didn't you say you were coming out here? I just described how Andrew Leland kept
putting his leg right up against mine in the car to a perfect
stranger."

"How was I supposed to know you were talking to
me?" I said. "I was out here." I wondered if I might soon be struck by
lightning. Someday I would use my last allowed fib.

"Well he did," she said. "The entire ride
over."

Four people in the back seat, where else could
he put his leg, out the window? But of course I didn't say that to her. "Let's
get something to drink," I said.

I walked over to the row of coolers on the
ground, right next to where Markus D'Angelo stood. I bent over, took a cold can
from the slushy, melting ice. I could see Markus D'Angelo's leg, the tawny hair
on it, could see that the lace of his shoe was coming loose. "I bet that was a
surprise," he said to one of his friends--Gary Redding, I think his name
was--who laughed. "Hell, yes!"