The Queen of Everything (25 page)

"The
Red Pearl,
Kale?"

"A boat. It's a boat. What'd you think it
was?"

"A skanky Chinese restaurant is what it sounds
like."

248

"Wait'll you see it. A couple of divers in from
Southern Cal. Fully equipped, if you know what I mean. Bunks and booze and hosts
wasted enough not to give a shit. A perfect party."

I hated when people said things like "Southern
Cal." I heard my father's steps coming down the stairs. "I don't think so, Kale.
Dad and I are watching a movie. A religious movie. Nuns and Christ and crosses
and Satan. The actor who plays him looks just like you."

"You gotta be kidding."

"Yeah, he looks like Clint Eastwood. And it's a
western."

"You're actually gonna pass this up to watch a
movie with Pops?"

"You're not that much fun, Kale. I don't even
like westerns," I said.

"What do you think, I'm going to wait around
forever? I'm not gonna wait around forever." From where I stood, I could see my
father standing at the window looking at the sky. He'd been quiet since he came
home from work with a couple of grocery bags full of dinner fixings. He had
poured himself a drink while he cooked. Drinking was something he'd been doing
every night lately. It didn't flatter him. The alcohol did nothing to improve
his mood. Even from behind he looked edgy; his hands jammed in his pockets, his
chin tilted slightly to the sky. It was Sunday

249

night. Dad had always said Sundays were the
days of unmet expectations.

The kitchen window was still open. I could hear
the neighbor's wind chimes pick up speed, a jingly giggly outburst.

"Fine, don't wait then," I said to
Kale.

"I mean, you reach a point where you go forward
or you break it off," he said. "You gotta fish or cut bait."

"You fish. I'm going to watch this western," I
said. "I am against cross-denomination relationships."

"You call if you change your mind," Kale said,
and hung up.

"Right," I said to the phone.

The television had stopped pausing and had gone
on without us. My father had lost interest in cowboys chasing villains on black
horses.

"Too many people washed their cars," I said
about the darkening sky.

"I wish it would just rain and get it over
with," he said.

"Maybe a few more people need to leave their
sunroofs open first," I said.

My father didn't answer. Instead he went back
into the kitchen and came out with another drink. He sat back on the couch and
stared distractedly at the cowboys. His face was somewhere between morose and
needing. That

250

restless craving you get where you want
something--food? company? to be left alone?--but have no idea what.

"You don't have to baby-sit me," he said
crossly.

"I'm not," I said.

"You could have gone out with that boy. He
seems like a nice boy," he said. "He's not," I said.

Dad looked at me. For a second I thought he
truly saw me for the first time in weeks. I saw him in there, the real him,
looking at me through all the complicated layers that had, over the last few
months, clouded his eyes.

The phone rang again.

I often wonder what would have happened if we
had just let it ring.

I got up to answer. Dad apparently wasn't
expecting any calls that night. Or at least any he cared about.

I told him it was her. That's what I said.
"Her." We both knew whom I meant. He ran upstairs to take the call in his room,
actually ran with big bams up the stairs. The sound of her voice pissed me off.
"Vince," she said into the phone just before I hung up. A thread of silvery
anger shot through me. You can say a name and sound like you own it.

It was not a long conversation. A few minutes
at most before he came downstairs again,

251

with a windbreaker on with something stuffed in
the pockets. I don't like to remember that part, the pockets. You put something
in your pocket and it means a plan. But that's the way it was, his pockets
bulged out and puffy like the cheeks of a cartoon chipmunk.

"I've got to go," he said.

"It's going to rain," I said. "It's going to
thunder."

His eyes looked swarmy from alcohol. He reeked
a little, like that stupid plant giving off coffee fumes. "It doesn't matter,"
he said.

"You shouldn't drive," I said. His hands seemed
shaky. I felt a bolt of fear. I could see him crashing into a telephone pole. He
was not someone who should drink. He started to lean a bit, like a bad actor
playing a drunk.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "I don't even
care."

"Dad," I said. I put my hand on his
arm.

"Forget it." He shook me off. He looked for his
keys a really long time, rustling and banging around in the kitchen drawers. I
pushed the stop button on the remote control, and the television gave off loud
static. Dad walked out the front door and let it slam behind him.

"Goddamn dumb-shit asshole," I said. "You're
stupid," I said to the door. "Stupid, stupid, dumb fuck." I paced around. Popped
off the static of the television. I went upstairs, opened

252

my bedroom window, which he had so recently
shut. I wanted to see that he had at least made it down the street. I put my
nose to the screen, which smelled that screen smell of dusty mesh and long-dead
flies. It was eerie how still and warm it was despite the color of the sky. I
wished my father's wish that it would rain and get it over with.

Dad's car was in the driveway. Both cars. The
Ford, the one he usually drove, as well as the tarp-covered Triumph, which
probably wouldn't start if you got down on your knees and asked for a miracle. I
wondered if the alcohol had raced a good deal ahead of him; if he was passed out
on the porch. I went downstairs, opened the front door. The air outside was the
woolen, suffocating kind--the hug of a fat aunt who never really liked you and
had bad breath besides. I didn't see my father.

I went inside the garage, preparing myself for
whatever I might find. I wasn't sure what exactly I was preparing myself for. He
wasn't in the garage either. But my bike was gone.

My bike. If it wasn't so distinctly unfunny, it
might have been hysterical to think of him trying to maneuver my bike in his
condition. Instead, seeing my bike gone filled me with new fury. It was as if he
had taken a part of me and brought it along on whatever this horrible outing
turned out to be. Not only that; the oddity of

253

it scared me. It was so disturbingly strange,
him taking my bike, that I ran outside to the street, looked again to see if I
might find him rounding a corner. No Dad.

I walked back home, sweating from the anger and
the murky heat. "Goddamn it, you stupid, stupid asshole," I said. I noticed he
had left the garden hose on; a pool of water was gathering by the end of the
nozzle, which lay in the grass. I turned the faucet off with a yank. I stood
there with my feet in the soggy grass, trying to decide what to do.

My wet, dirty feet left nasty marks on the
carpet. Marks my father would have been pissed about, if he cared about anything
anymore, which I guessed he didn't. My legs were cold from wetness; I actually
shivered when I got inside and picked up the telephone.

"Be there," I said to the ringing on the other
end, said and felt with an urgency that scared me. Ring, ring, ring, ring. I
almost hung up. If I'd have had to hang up, I might have flung the phone across
the room.

"Yeah." His voice was out of breath when he
finally answered.

"Kale?" I said. "It's me. I changed my
mind."

254

Chapter Twelve

I could hear Kale's car coming halfway down the
street. It had the kind of roar that's a cheap knockoff of thunder. I just stood
there, waiting for him on the porch. I didn't want to be inside that house
anymore.

I opened the door of his car and got in. The
fumes from a recently smoked cigarette hung around all slinky and victorious.
Kale looked over at me and grinned. I noticed he could have used a booster seat
to see properly out the windshield; his chin could have rested on the top of the
steering wheel.

"Look who's here," he said. I slammed the car
door shut. He grabbed a handful of denim from the pant leg of my shorts and
pulled, telling me to scoot closer. He kissed me, running

256

255

his hand up my bare leg. He eased away from me
and released the parking brake. "You have lipstick"--he motioned to the edge of
his own mouth--"right here."

I flipped down the visor and used my index
finger to wipe the stray smear of Tango Red I had applied in the hall mirror
before leaving the house. I looked like someone I didn't know. My eyes looked at
me as if they were someone else's eyes. It was one of those times your body
seems to be walking around and doing stuff without you while you
watch.

I had nothing to say. Kale turned the radio on,
loud, and rolled down his window. I guess he was making sure the cars that
pulled up beside us would turn to look, although I'm not sure exactly what he
thought it was they needed to see. That warm, electric air whipped through the
window and blew my hair in front of my face, in my mouth. I tried to tuck it
behind my ears, watched the trees sway and blow as my hair was. I could feel the
pounding beat of Kale's radio through the soles of my feet.

Kale drove around Deception Loop, the water of
the strait chill and steely looking below. Even visitors had enough sense to get
off the open stretches of rocky beach where lightning was sure to strike, and
where just offshore the whales and porpoises lay still so as not to

256

provoke the violence of nature. It was one of
the rare times of summer that the strips of beach would not be crowded with
tourists tangled up with cameras and binoculars and the straps of knapsacks.
Romantic Couples were now tucked safely in their B&B's, peeking over the
tops of their books for a periodic gape at the show outside, a glass of red wine
on the nightstand.

Kale parked in the lot of the Hotel Delgado,
which was ablaze with lights. Curious faces peered outside from cozy tables in
the restaurant. The staff had forgotten to move some of the outdoor tables in,
and their plastic tablecloths flapped in the wind, held down only by wire
baskets of sugar packets and bottles of catsup and red-netted
candles.

The water of the Delgado Strait was
black-turned-silvery from the lights of the hotel and the whitecaps of waves
that were beginning to build. The dock was full of boats, a concert of nodding
red bow lights. All the cautious sailors had pulled in. You hoped most of them
had half a brain and had taken a room at the hotel for the night; sleep would be
a wild, nauseous ride. Already you could hear the squeak of the rubber floats
hanging from the boats' sides as they screeched and bobbed against the docks,
and the complaining groans of the old wooden pier itself.

A few boats had their cabin lights on.
Those

256

257

foolish couples would regret their cheapness in
the morning, but for now were crammed down in their low beds. It was easy to
guess which boat was the
Red Pearl;
the same thumping music Kale had
played in his car was bumping across the water, sounding like a huge heart that
had exercised too hard. Like one of the fat girls at True You just off the
treadmill, or maybe Grandpa Eugene's heart the night it spun wildly out of
control.

As my eyes got used to the dim light, I could
see the people dotting the decks of the boat. They spotted us at the same time.
A guy in a tank top and shorts waved his arm and shouted something our way which
was lost in the wind. In reply Kale raised up the case of beer that he held at
his side and shouted back.

"Party hearty!" he said stupidly, the wind
throwing his words back in our faces. "I'm gonna get a boat like this someday,"
he said to me. "Ride where I please when I please, meet people."

I walked up the pier beside him. You could feel
it sway a little underneath you. "Hey, say something," he said.

"What?" I said.

"You act like you're going to your grave." He
stopped, took my chin in his hands, gave me a look that was supposed to be
meaningful. "Be happy," he said.

258

"La, la, la," I said. God, my stomach was as
rough and sickened as the churning water of the Sound.

"What are you waiting for?" Wendy Williams's
voice shouted down from the boat. "You're gonna miss Martin slipping raw
ones."

I didn't know what she was talking about and I
wasn't sure I wanted to. If Wendy Williams was here, Jason Dale would be here
too, and Andrew Leland. I wondered if Melissa would be pissed I didn't bring her
along. At that moment I would have given anything to be where she probably was,
in her bandanna decorated room with Boog lying at the foot of her bed and Mr.
and Mrs. Beene downstairs watching a show about slavery on PBS.