The Queen of Everything (6 page)

"You know how much I hate that class," I said.
Which was a lie. I liked the class, but also I liked the idea of being in it. I
liked the word
gifted.
It sounded like I could sit down at a piano and
start to play, music flowing from my fingers. Truthfully, though, if you saw who
was in there, you'd wonder. That's the thing about stupid people and smart
people. Sometimes it can be hard to tell who is who. "I think Kale's parents
bribed the school to get him there," I said.

"You are never going to keep him if you act so
flip all the time."

I heard the rumble of the Beenes' garage door,
a car door slam, and then the scraping slide of the garbage-can bottom against
pavement. A moment later, Larry Beene's voice wafted up. "Swi-ing low, sweet
char-i-ot.

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Coming for to carry me home! Swi-ing low
..."

"He sings that whenever he does chores,"
Melissa said. "I swear, I'm the only normal one in this family."

Sometimes I know when to keep my mouth
shut.

"If your dad's home, I'd better go," I said,
after I was sure nothing else might pop out. "Grandma and Grandpa are coming
over for dinner."

"Well, I want to hear
everything."
She
gave me a long look meant to be significant.
"Not
about your
grandparents."

"I doubt there'll be much to tell," I
said.

"Like I believe that," she said.

Melissa followed me downstairs, leaving poor
Boog stranded on the bed.

53

Chapter Three

I didn't go straight home.

Instead I walked back out behind Melissa's
house and jogged toward Crow Valley. I wanted to see if I was right about my
father's car. Needing to know if you are right or not can be a bad thing. But
when I got out near the D'Angelo home, I could see that the car was gone.
Instead a black Porsche was parked there, and I saw a man, Mr. D'Angelo, I
guessed, walking down the drive toward the group of mailboxes by the
road.

He had the shape that usually comes equipped
with certain extras--a booming voice and obnoxious opinions. A tall, big-chested
guy. Why those men are usually like that, I have no idea. It's not like the
world would overlook

54

them if they happened to be quiet and
thoughtful. Maybe all that space just needs to be filled with something, even if
it's hot air. Anyway, that's the way he looked. Big and
self-important.

He went to his mailbox, pulled open the door
with a hooked finger, and fished out a fat lump of mail. He gave it a casual
look, a quick thumb-through, and a dismissal, which pretty well clinched the
fact that he had a lot of money. I've seen my mother open mail. It is a search
done while she holds her breath, that ends with a particularly good mood if
there are only pizza coupons and flyers for roof cleaning. I could tell Mr.
D'Angelo was someone not often surprised by things he couldn't
handle.

He headed down the driveway toward the house,
and I was about to go home when Mr. D'Angelo stopped suddenly. He turned his
head quickly around as if he'd heard something. I hoped that something wasn't
me. I continued walking casually past the house even though I was headed the
wrong way, and tried to look interested in nature. But it wasn't me he'd fixed
his eyes on; it was the hedge of trees and blackberry bushes that separated his
property from Little Cranberry Farm.

I decided I must have been wrong before; his
life mustn't be as simple as I imagined if he could be so startled by a rabbit,
or whatever he'd heard just then. I never forgot that look; in fact I

55

would think of it later over and over again.
Those eyes both edgy and doubting. You could almost hear the argument going on
inside his head as his eyes darted around those bushes.

I knew that argument. It was the one where
there are only two sides, no middle---jump to conclusions or cover your eyes and
keep both feet on the ground. I had that argument myself many times, later.
Whenever I kick myself for being such an idiot, for not
seeing,
I try to
remember what Big Mama told me.

"You acted out of instinct, is all," she had
said. "You can't fight it, Jordan. When you're afraid, even a little bit, it's
usually all or nothing."

That's one thing about Big Mama. She knows a
lot about instinct.

Grandpa opened the oven door and let out a
cloud of heat. "You sure you can handle this, baby?" he said to me.

"Just like taking a cool drink," I
said.

"Don't encourage him," Grandma said.

"Grandpa's Hotter 'n Hell Hot Sauce," he said
for the hundredth time.

"You're repeating yourself, Eugene," Grandma
said.

My father opened the cupboard door and took out
a stack of plates. He had been there when I arrived home, greeted me the same as
always, as if nothing unusual had happened

56

between us that morning. If it's true what they
say, that anyone who does what he did is crazy, then maybe he was already
beginning the process right then. Who knows if craziness is an instant thing, or
if it takes time to grow, like splotchy green mold on a decent piece of
bread.

All I know is, you wonder.

And I know too that if craziness
does
develop in a person over time, what takes longer is for the family members to
notice. Or admit to noticing. That night, I was relieved to find him his old
self, just Dad, instead of the different people I'd been so busy imagining him
being. I was pleased with that relief. It was a false soothing, though, a drink
of cold saltwater for the guy dying of thirst in the ocean. The car I'd seen in
the D'Angelo driveway suddenly didn't seem like his anymore. Relief put me in a
good mood. Sometimes you realize plain, boring, normal life is the best it
gets.

Grandpa Eugene poked around the pan inside the
oven with a long fork. It was too hot outside to have the oven door open for
that long. When he came back up, his cheeks were rosy. His hair, usually
sculpted into the style of a fifties greaser, was now a fuzzy frenzy that made
him look shocked and alarmed. I've noticed that about people. Lots of times they
stick to the hairstyle they had the last time they felt stylish, even if it was
forty-five years ago.

57

"I like the sound of it, if it's any of your
business. Hotter 'n Hell Hot Sauce. All those H's," Grandpa Eugene
said.

"It's called alliteration," Grandma Margaret
said. She used to be a high school English teacher and advisor to the Debate
Club. Since she was retired and had no one else to teach, Grandpa Eugene usually
got stuck being the student. He wasn't the teacher's pet in her eyes, either,
but the slow kid who never did his homework. He took his role good-naturedly
most of the time, probably because a good part of his day he spent away from
her, at Eugene's Gas and Garage, which he'd owned for forty years and had just
sold. He still got up and went to work down there every day anyway. He said he
had a job to do, which wasn't scooting under cars and pumping gas anymore, but
making sure Marty Abare kept his word about not making his station into one of
those candy-ass places with a mini-mart. "You wanna buy deodorant and breakfast
rolls, you go to the grocery store," he always said. "You want gas, you go to
Eugene's."

"Alliteration, well, la-dee-da. Too bad they
gotta stick a fancy name on everything. What about it, huh? We don't even have
bums anymore.
Street people,
they call 'em. Sounds cleaned up, right
there."

"The word
alliteration
is hardly new,"
Grandma Margaret said. "It's probably been

58

around at least since the time of William
Shakespeare."

"Pretty damn old, then, since you and he went
to high school together." Grandpa laughed. He thought he was pretty
funny.

"Eugene," Grandma said. Dad smiled. He took
after his mother, but it was his father whom he seemed to enjoy more.

"Let's eat," Grandpa said, and clapped his
hands together as if the idea had just come to him. He slid an oven mitt on each
hand and removed the hot pan of ribs from the oven. A towel hung out his back
pocket, taking the place of the grease rag that had been there for years. From
the smell of dinner and the smoke pouring from the oven, I imagined we could all
use a grease rag.

"This is a real treat," my father said. He
opened the sliding-glass door and closed the screen to let in some air. "Someone
cooking for me in my own house. You didn't have to do this, Dad."

"I don't have to do anything," Grandpa Eugene
said.

"It gave him something to do. He's been
planning this all day," Grandma said.

"Show you the poor man's red meat. We can't all
afford steak," Grandpa said.

My father got that tight smile at the corners
of his mouth where you don't know if he's really

59

smiling or not. "Let me do that, Dad," my
father said as Grandpa sawed at the row of ribs. Big food like ribs always makes
me think of the Flintstones.

"I can cut meat. You think I haven't cut meat
before?"

"He's just trying to help, Eugene," Grandma
said. Dad raised his hands up in a
What are you going to do?
gesture
behind Grandpa's back and rolled his eyes.

"I saw that," Grandpa said. "Here, baby." He
freed a clump of ribs and eased them onto my plate.

"How much do you think I eat?" I
said.

"Four million grams of fat never hurt anyone,"
my father said.

"You're too skinny," Grandpa Eugene said.
"Anyway, saves you from asking for seconds. Now, this is a meal you'll be
telling your grandchildren about." He eased a smaller slab onto Grandma's plate.
"This could kill you, you old bird, so go slow."

"If your cooking hasn't killed me yet, I
seriously doubt it will," she said.

I spent most of dinner getting up and fetching
Grandpa more napkins, while Dad filled and refilled Grandma's water glass from
the pitcher on the table and nervously eyed the line of sweat bravely forming on
her forehead. Mostly we talked about how great Grandpa's cooking was, how he
ought to bottle his sauce same as

60

Paul Newman, how he adds just a touch of dry
mustard. It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's,
Ho hum, pass the beans.
A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj
Mahal.

"What do you think of this new guy, Alonzo?" my
father asked Grandpa after dinner.

"Overrated." They both studied the television,
the Mariners playing some preseason game. Grandpa picked a tooth with the edge
of his fingernail. "Look at him. Cocky bugger. Thinks his own shit doesn't
stink."

"Eugene," Grandma said from the chair in which
she'd sunk. She'd untucked her blouse, letting it hang loose over her pants, no
doubt hiding the fact she'd undone the top button. Dinner had me feeling a
little queasy too.

"Why is someone taking that guy's place?" I
pointed to the television, at the player trotting in from first base. "He get
hurt?" My theory was, sports would be okay to watch if they cut it down to the
last ten minutes.

"Designated hitter," Grandpa said, as if that
explained things.

"It means he doesn't run, he only hits," my
father said.

I laughed. "You've got to be
kidding."

"He's an outstanding hitter," my father
said.

"If he hits so well, one would think he would
be capable of running, too," Grandma said.

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"Really," I agreed. "Sounds like whoever bought
him got a raw deal."

"Snookered," Grandma said.

'"Oh excuse me, now that I've made my
outstanding hit I must go sit down.' Puh-leez," I said.

"Prima donna," Grandma said, and shook her head
in the way that meant,
There are some things I will never
understand.

"Another thing that's always bothered me," I
persisted. "The way they call it the
World Series.
I mean, we're the only
one that plays in it, right? I don't see Japan having a shot here, or Russia or
Sri Lanka."

My father sighed and gave me a tired
look.

"Arrogance," Grandma said from the
chair.

"You call that pitching?" Grandpa said to the
television. "They start with this hack and I'm not watching another
game."

"It has suddenly become apparent what I should
be praying for," Grandma said. "Take down the gentleman's name and jersey number
for me, honey."

"Hey, Grandpa," I said. "Did Marty Abare set up
a rack of deodorant yet?"

He ignored me. "Christ," he muttered to my
father. "This guy's makin' a million bucks a year."

"Don't get him started," Grandma said to me.
"He's on thin ice with Marty Abare as it is.

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Marty is not amused by your grandfather's
pranks, which, by the way, he is pulling again. Any more of it and your
grandfather won't be allowed on the premises."