The Queen of Everything (19 page)

"So what's this problem," he said.

The phone rang. "Hell's bells," he said.
"Eugene's," he barked into the phone, crooking it between shoulder and ear as he
taped the box of offensive material. "What?" He listened for a moment. Leaned
back in the squeaky chair. Through the office side door I could see Will Cutty
sweeping up spent fireworks fuses that were scattered on the lot from the night
before. My personal theory was that once Will's face cleared up he'd be good
enough looking to increase business at Eugene's a good 75 percent.

"You gotta be kidding." Grandpa shook his head
in disbelief. "None of your goddamn business." He hung up the phone with a slam.
"You'd think they was selling vacuums," he said. He shook his head again. "You
know what that was?" He didn't wait for an answer. "A goddamn religious
telemarketer. I'm not kidding. You ever heard of that? Wanted to know where I
'worshipped.' Drumming up business for the Church of the la-dee-da. You think
they was selling vacuums," he said again.

"For chrissakes," Grandpa said. "I went to the
Seven-Eleven the other day and got blessed from the kid handing me the Big Gulp.
I said,

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"You hear me sneeze? I want that, I'll ask a
priest. At least he's got credentials.'"

"You should see the woman I work for," I
said.

"I don't want to see, I see enough. So what's
the problem?" He tilted his chin down, looked at me from the top half of his
glasses.

I can see him now, too late. The Second Chance
Guy, poking his head around the corner during that pause. Wearing a big brimmed
hat and standing in a cloud of smoke like a detective in an old movie. Peeking
from underneath that hat, urging me to think it through. That I didn't listen is
just one of those things I will have to live with.

"Dad," I said.

I knew things were getting bigger than me,
that's why I did it. She had been at our house. I had gotten up that morning to
find her downstairs in the kitchen. In our kitchen. She had poured herself a
glass of orange juice. She had been wearing a pair of sweats, the kind that
could make real sweats roll their eyes--dark purple with a monogram in a small
diamond at the neck. She balanced herself with one hand on the counter; the
other gripped her running shoe behind her back in a stretch.

"Good morning," she said. Her hair was up in a
ponytail. She looked like an advertisement for a runner, not a real one. She
looked beautiful.

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The word tastes bad in my mouth when I say it,
but it was true. She looked beautiful.

"What are you doing here?" I said. I was tired.
The night before, Melissa and I had gone to watch the fireworks lit from the
small hump of Jubilee Island. If you listen to that prune Cora Lee at the
Theosophical Society, Jubilee is the most "energized" spot in the San Juans.
We'd been out late. I was in my old robe, my old ragged buddy. Both of us
disapproved of Gayle D'Angelo. Both of us were embarrassed at our own disheveled
condition.

"I think we met once," she said. "Gayle
D'Angelo?" She dropped her shoe and put out her hand. I took it. The nails were
as perfect as the first time, the skin as cool. "Your father"-- she gestured to
the downstairs bathroom--"told me I ought to drop by some morning," she said.
"Such a perfect day for a run. I think summer has
officially
started."

My father emerged from the bathroom. He was in
his own bathrobe, a responsible green plaid, his hair all weary yet rebellious,
as if it had gone and had a party behind its parents' back. If he wasn't in the
shower by now, he'd be late for work. His car had been there when I got home the
night before. I didn't know why he looked so exhausted.

"Oh!" he said. As if I were the one he was
surprised to see in our kitchen.

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"You have company," I said.

"Look at you," Gayle D'Angelo said to him.
"Frazzle boy." She licked her finger, smoothed his eyebrow. I wondered if she
wiped his chin after he drank.

"This is my friend Gayle," my father
said.

"Friends are strangers you haven't met yet,"
she said.

"I think it goes the other way around," I
said.

"I
know,"
she said. She waved her hand
at me, a light, frilly gesture. A baby-doll pajama gesture. Something Bonnie
Randall never would have done. Honestly, she was proving to be the kind of
person you want to push down an escalator.

"Sure you can't stay for breakfast?"

"Oh, no. This is more than I should be having
anyway." She clinked the edge of the juice glass with her nails.

"Right, you're a stick," my father
said.

She smiled. She was one of those thin women who
loved to be told they should eat more. One of those people that think they
deserve congratulations for tight upper arms. You take care of your own body,
hey, wow. You and the guy that finds a cure for cancer ought to get a
medal.

"You see the fireworks last night?" she asked
me.

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"Yes," I said.

"Oh, I did too." She smiled and caught my
father's eye. "They were
great.
As usual."

My father twined the end of his belt around his
wrist. He was actually blushing.

"Well, time is a-wastin'," she said. "Better be
on my way."

"Thanks for coming by," my father said to
her.

Stupid thing was, I believed it. That she had
just dropped by that morning as she had jogged past. Wes D'Angelo, I even
thought, wouldn't be too much of a threat for those few minutes, even if he was
only a half-mile away. I believed it all through their whispered conversation by
the front door, I believed it after my father went upstairs and got showered for
work. I believed it, until he left. When I saw his bedroom door shut tight. When
I went in and saw on his bedroom mirror a message written in lipstick,
you

saved me.

I rode my bike through town, past the nuns at
the ferry docks, past Johnny's Market and Randall and Stein Booksellers. The
town was sleepy and hungover from its late night. Colored wrappers littered the
ground, and the air still carried the smell of lit matches. That gash of
lipstick, in a color that might have been called Cherry Blush or Passion Pink or
Desert Red, sickened me. The way it sat there, so bold. A

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mark, claiming ownership, announcing the fact
that she had been there overnight as I slept unaware in the other room a heavy
and naive sleep. A red mark, like the one left on a cheek after a slap. And my
father had not wanted to wash it off.

I rode to True You to pick up my paycheck, came
out of the cheery rose-colored room and back into summer on Parrish Island,
where the blues are so blue and the sun, in a good mood from months of vacation,
graces everything with bright halos. The air was grassy and warm. I tried to
talk myself out of the fear I had about my father and Gayle D'Angelo. They were
both adults, weren't they? That kind of thing happened all the time, after all.
Every affair didn't end up on the evening news. And it wasn't that I was so
innocent or so morally pure to be shocked. For all I knew, Gayle D'Angelo could
be in an unhappy marriage; she and my father might have found true happiness
together. Or maybe it was only temporary, a passing fling. Maybe I was
experiencing some kind of psycho jealous Freudian thing. Any of those
possibilities I could live with.

Well, that lasted until I rode just past the
doughnut shop. Because down deep I knew my feelings about Gayle D'Angelo and my
father had nothing to do with morality. Not about morality or jealousy. Those
feelings were fear,

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pure and simple, fear that I didn't want to
look at and that I couldn't shake off. Those feelings were about Wes D'Angelo
ripped to shreds in that goddamned photograph. About this desperation I saw in
my father that wasn't there before. Somewhere inside I knew that his wanting was
the dangerous kind, wanting for wanting's sake, the kind that destroys people.
My mother had warned me about that kind of wanting. Nothing,
nothing
about this was temporary. Though I didn't have the word for it then, what I felt
was instinct.
Instinct
isn't about words, anyway, according to Big Mama.
"Instinct," she said, "is God's vibration. That certain something that only one
sockeye in a hundred will feel strongly enough to get him back home."

I don't know if what Big Mama says is true, but
I do know now that it's what made me ride back downtown instead of anywhere
else. Back past Johnny's Market and down a block, where my grandfather's gas
station had been for forty-one years. Where you bought gas and not cartons of
milk, for Christ's sake.

"You can't go accusing lightly" Grandpa Eugene
said to me. He pointed his eyebrows down in a V to let me know what his
disapproval would look like, in case I needed to be reminded.

"I'm not."

He tapped the end of a pencil on his desk.
Marty Abare's desk. The pencil was printed with

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Eugene's gas and garage in dark green. We had
some at home, in the pencil cup by the phone.

"Mister Don Juan," he said. "Is that it? Thinks
he's Mister Don Juan?"

"I don't know," I said. Grandpa had the
air-conditioning blasting. I got little goose bumps up and down my arms. Or
maybe it was just a little thrill at his anger. Or the energy-shiver you get
when someone sees something the same way you do, finally.

The bells on Grandpa's office door banged
against the glass. I stepped away from the door and a man popped his head
inside; a sincere guy in glasses, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie giving
him a struggle in the heat.

"Excuse me," he said.

"You get gas?" Grandpa barked.

"Yeah." The man waved his thumb over his
shoulder in the direction of the pumps.

"Gotta be careful of those hot dogs." Grandpa
chuckled. In spite of his joke, I could see the tightness in his face. The
anger. Grandpa didn't like funny business. That's what he called it, too, the
bad, serious stuff. Funny business. I knew the subject of my father was closed.
Taken care of sure as an overheating radiator.

The man smiled and handed over a credit card.
Grandpa found his old imprint machine under a stack of invoices, stuck the card
in, and yanked the handle over the top. "Get rid of this

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thing," he said to the man as he handed back
his card. "You have a problem with real money?"

"Plastic's a curse all right," the man agreed.
He put the card back in his wallet, took a slip of paper from it. "One more
thing. I gotta find..." He looked at the paper. "You know the Parrish Medical
Building?" He handed Grandpa the paper.

Grandpa read the address, looked at the man
from the top half of his glasses. He eased himself up from the chair, opened the
office door, and we stepped into a blast of warm air. "This street here?" he
said. "Go back the way you came. Out to Front Street. Not more than a mile, mile
and a half, you'll see Alder. Turn right, you'll see a big gray
building."

"Thanks." The man took the slip back from
Grandpa and got into his car. Marty Abare pulled up in his BMW and parked over
by the air and water pumps. He got out, wiped a swag of dust from one
shoe.

"What, no Bobcat Road?" I said to Grandpa. "You
finally listening to Marty Abare?"

"What, are you kidding? Eugene MacKenzie
doesn't take orders." He jabbed his chest with his fingers in case I'd forgotten
who he meant. "Especially not from a guy like that. Look at him, ass out to
here. Walks like a goddamn duck."

"He does," I agreed. We watched Marty Abare
walk toward us.

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"That customer didn't need Bobcat
Road."

"Oh, really," I said.

"What are you, Miss Smarty Pants? I known you
since you was a baby. I say the guy wasn't lost, the guy wasn't lost. Look." He
hooked his thumb at Marty Abare. "Now he's gonna talk to you. You gonna stink
like his frou-frou water all day."

Marty Abare reached us, stuck his hand out to
shake mine and then Grandpa's. "What you shaking my hand for, I saw you an hour
ago," Grandpa said.

Marty Abare ignored him. "School's out? You
enjoying the summer?" he asked. His tiny crocodile eyes were attempting to
calculate my bra size.

"Very much," I said.

"Eugene," he said in a louder voice. "If I
remember right, all customer questions regarding directions were to be referred
to Will."

"Will's busy," Grandpa said.

"Will can be interrupted," he said. "You know,
we talked about this little joke of yours. Any more of it"--he laughed, looked
at me-- "your ass is grass, and I'm the lawn mower." He chuckled. Trying to pour
syrup over the blade of a knife. Grandpa's face looked suddenly sewn shut. His
mouth had these tight lines, like the trussing on a turkey.

"You ever need a summer job, you come
to

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me," Marty Abare said over his shoulder as he
walked away from us toward the office. Inside, I saw him toss his keys onto the
desk.