The Queen of Everything (23 page)

I sat next to my father. On my other side was
Soma's daughter, my older cousin Alison, who was dull and white and plain as an
envelope. The priest was talking about Grandpa's earthly vessel, which I liked
the sound of. It

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sounded like a particularly beautiful ship. I
heard someone whisper behind me.

"I didn't know Eugene was a good Catholic,
having the service here and all," the suspect relative said meanly. She was
becoming a pain in the ass.

We got up and down a lot, and let me tell you
those Catholic things are very confusing and stressful, especially when you are
in the front and you don't know what you are doing and everyone can see you get
up when you aren't supposed to. You've got to shift around a lot to make it look
like you've done it on purpose, pretend you were only adjusting for comfort.
Once our whole row eased up and down by mistake until we all sat down to the
sound of nervous giggles.

"I think we just did the Wave," I whispered to
Alison, which made her scowl at me. Alison was always the good
cousin.

At the end, the priest, a large red-faced man,
swung this little ball of whirling red incense over Grandpa's casket. The smoke
made my eyes burn, and my father cleared his throat once and then again. I
wasn't sure if it was emotion or the strong smell of the stuff. My father looked
like he had aged overnight, or maybe it was just my own fear that he had, now
that Grandpa had moved aside and let my father move closer to the front of the
Your-Turn-to-be-Dead line.

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The limousines got lost on the way to the
cemetery. The driver got twisted up in the heavy summer tourist traffic getting
off the ferry and ended up turning by the oil tank, that day sporting the banner
happy birthday chuck! The driver must have been new. Grandma, too nice to say a
word, poked my leg and I nodded.

"Wasn't that a wrong turn?" my father
said.

"It's all right," Grandma said.

"It's not all right, if it's wrong," my father
said tersely.

The driver ended up going down a dead end, the
sign changed with black tape by some comedian to read, dead wendy . The driver
started to sweat. Actual drops were rolling down the sides of his face. You
should have seen all the cars trying to turn around. Headlights on and these
sashes reading funeral flapping from the windshields.

"There are only two main roads on the whole
goddamn island," my father said.

"Vince," my grandmother said. "Just get back on
Deception Loop, dear," she said to the driver.

So we ended up making a complete circle around
the entire island, the driver apologizing the whole way, and my father getting
more and more hacked off.

"Gosh, I can't tell you how sorry I am," the
driver said again when we finally arrived.

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"You obviously can, because you've done it a
hundred times," my father said.

"It's all right," my grandma said. "It turned
out just fine. You know why? Eugene would have loved the ride."

I got out, then ducked my head back in the car.
"Next time just make a left on Bobcat Road," I said.

Then it hit me. Finally.

He was gone.

My father got stormy after that. Dark and
stormy. One afternoon I stood in the kitchen, cracking ice cubes out of a tray
when I heard my father and Gayle burst in the front door. The door slammed shut.
Gayle D'Angelo was laughing.

"Vince," she teased.

"My God, Gayle," he said. He sounded
scared.

"Vince, relax," she said.

"How can I relax? He knew we were there! He
knew what we were
doing
there."

"You're not at a motel for a round of bridge."
She laughed. "He's just playing games. He's trying to
frighten
you."

"Well, it worked, okay?"

I decided I wanted them to know I was there. I
clinked the ice into my glass noisily. Flicked a cube with my finger so it
skittered

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across the counter and shattered on the
floor.

"Damn," I said loudly.

If they heard me, I couldn't tell.

"Taking your car and leaving his in the parking
spot. Goddamn, Gayle. That's not a game. He's telling us something."

"I told you how he is," she said. "I told you
the way he treats me."

"I can't stand that. You deserve so much
more."

I opened and shut the refrigerator door with
noisy smacks. My father was supposed to be at work. I tried to ignore the sounds
of their kissing by staring at the catsup bottle and the fat container of
mustard and the cartons of milk. What I wondered was, what was happening to the
old ladies who needed their cataracts checked, the ones who came to my father's
office clutching their purses in their laps in case there were thieves lurking
about? What was happening to the seven-year-olds getting their first pair of
glasses?

"If I could leave him I would," Gayle D'Angelo
said. "You know that. You know what he'd do if I left."

My father was over the edge then, make no
mistake about it. The Second Chance Guy had packed his plaid suitcase and was
going through the tunnel toward the airplane door, folded newspaper under one
arm and chewing gum in

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his pocket for the takeoff. The Second Chance
Guy had given up on my father.

I started hearing messages on our answering
machine: "Vince, it's Mother. Where were you yesterday? I needed your help with
those papers of your father's. I'm worried about you...." And, "Vince? Bill.
Where the hell have you been? I got to tell you, Betsy and I are getting
concerned."

My grandma said if Grandpa Eugene hadn't died
right then, she didn't think any of it would have happened. He would never have
done it if his father was alive. She says sometimes a man goes over the edge
when he loses his father.

But maybe that's just the kind of thing you
come up with when you ask yourself why. One of those pale reasons. My father was
a man who never hurt anything in his life, and you ask yourself this question
over and over.

Why?

Maybe Grandma is right. Maybe the strings that
hold us in place are more fragile than we can ever understand.

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Chapter Eleven

Every day for the next few weeks, I made a
point to ride my bike past Eugene's Gas and Garage after work at True You. Two
weeks was all it took before the trucks started to come. First the old pumps
were dug up, replaced with ones you could slide a credit card through. Next the
sign came down. The new one was stuck on a tall pole, abare's in bold red
letters, set on a rectangle that spun an endless, slow circle. Finally Grandpa's
old office was covered in plastic, a sign-- yes we're open!

remodeling to better serve you! --Stuck to the
outside. It made me think of the plastic Grandpa himself was wrapped in before
he was carted off. About Grandma's moment of panic in thinking he couldn't
breathe.

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"Don't tell me about it," Grandma said,
actually clapping her palms against her ears. "Not another word, I can't bear to
hear it."

But I went every day, until the mini-mart was
almost finished. It's amazing how fast those things pop up. That's how I saw
Kale Kramer coming out of Abare's with a Dr Pepper in one hand that day. I just
stood there, straddling my bike, my work clothes stuffed into my backpack in
exchange for the tank top and shorts I had on for the ride home. I should have
turned and pedaled away, but I didn't. The heat of the sun made my tank top
suddenly feel stuck to my back. Kale walked up to me as if he expected me to be
there all along, which he probably did.

"Change your mind?" he said.

"About what?" I said.

"About what." He shook his head. He was
shirtless; tan with the orange glow of an apricot.

"I said I was sorry." He passed me the soda
can, took hold of my handlebars, and stared at me over them. "A mistake, okay? I
call and call. You don't ever call me back. You're making me
miserable."

He gave me his sleepy eyes, leaned in, and
kissed me. His mouth was cold from the drink. "Jesus, you kiss good," he said.
"If you didn't kiss so good ..." I could have said the same thing about him. In
fact, it was his finest quality.

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"You know, I don't know, Kale," I said. There
was a lot of noise from Grandpa's plastic-covered office, the high pitched whine
of a saw.

"You want me," he said.

"No," I said.

"You do."

I was sick of the whole idea of wanting. She'd
been coming over a lot lately, Gayle D'Angelo. Wanting was in my face every time
I turned around. Gayle D'Angelo was there, sitting at the kitchen table at
breakfast time, wearing a Chinese robe. I heard her voice in the night and would
look out to see her car parked plainly in the driveway. She would arrive at our
house, dressed up to go out. Arriving in the car her husband bought her, with
the license plate reading gayle d She bought me presents--little bottles of
perfume, a teddy bear holding a stuffed heart. Everything about my father was
too much, like he was being followed around by this crazy shadow of excess. His
laugh was too bright, his shows of affection were too heartfelt, his
snappishness too harsh. He started drinking wine at night, too much. I started
sleeping badly; the light, ready sleep of an animal. Like salmon, who just float
with an eerie stillness, with their eyes wide open.

I put my hand on Kale's shoulder, just ran my
fingers on that shoulder all warm and solid.

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Beauty can do funny things to you. Like those
stupid photographers who tumble over cliffs because they leaned too far over for
a better shot of the waterfall.

"Shit, you do want me," Kale said.

More kissing. My tongue warmed up that cool
mouth. His tongue gave me some rational excuses for the rabbits. Sometimes, why
think about rabbits?

I handed him back his soda can. "Keep it," he
said. He wore a really big shit-eating grin. "Just think of me when you put your
mouth on it."

"Maybe I'll think of you when I throw it in the
garbage," I said.

"Right," he said. "I'll call you
later."

"Fine," I said.

"That same car," I said to my father. "I've
seen it maybe three days now. With that guy sitting in it."

We got into my father's car. The Ford, not the
Triumph, which still sat under its plastic cover in the driveway. We were
heading to the Front Street Market to do the grocery shopping.

"Don't worry about it," my father said. He
started the engine and backed out of the driveway. The seat of the car was hot
against my legs, and the air inside was baked and suffocating

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from the sun insisting its way through the
windows. I reached for the sliding knob of the air conditioner.

"Broken," my father said.

"You're kidding," I said. I rolled down my
window and stuck my head out. "That guy is following us," I said. "I swear, he
started his car right when we did." I popped my head back inside.

"I said not to worry about it."

"You know him? Jeez, Dad, roll your window
down. It's a hundred degrees in here. Why don't you get this fixed?" I slid the
air-conditioner knob back and forth. My father roiled his window down. His
combed hair started blowing around goofily, like a kid sticking his tongue out
and waving his fingers in his ears.

"You're the one who's always going on about the
upkeep of a car and the responsibility that goes with the privilege and all
that," I said. "You know this guy? Look, he turned right when we did. I think he
really
is
following us. This is getting creepy."

"I see him," my father said.

"Well, who is he? This is weird. I mean, it's
like the movies, or something. He's
following
us."

"It's Gayle's husband," my father said. He
looked over his shoulder to change lanes. "They're separated."

"That's not her husband," I said. "He
doesn't

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look anything like that. That's not their
car."

"Her husband hired him," he said. "Okay?" He
stared at me for too long, making me wish he'd keep his eyes on the road. "It's
nothing to worry about. They're separated," he said again.

"This guy's following you around? You mean an
investigator? Jesus, Dad. Isn't this a little scary? If they're separated and
everything's so fine, why's he following you? Aren't they supposed to hide or
something? Those guys who follow people? This is scaring me."

"Don't worry about it," he said. But when we
reached the store and the other car parked too, the fear I'd been carrying for
weeks settled into a knowing dread. Something bad, bad, was going to happen to
my father. These kind of things did not happen to regular people. Regular people
did not have creepy-looking guys following them around in their cars. This was
the kind of thing you saw on TV right before someone ended up dead. This was not
what happens to a normal girl who goes to school and to her father who helps
lazy eyes be responsible members of the human body.