The Queen of Everything (7 page)

"Uh-oh," I said.

"You hear that, Dad? She's calling what you do
at Eugene's
pranks,"
my father said. Grandpa took off his glasses and
wiped them clean with his handkerchief.

"Aw, get outta here. What the hell was that?"
he said to the Mariners with disgust.

"Just consider it a small, quiet rebellion," my
father said to Grandma.

"Rebellion?"
Grandma said. "Foolishness,
I'd say."

"Cut him some slack," my father said. "You only
have to worry about him being ornery. At least he's not passed-out drunk every
night."

"I could only hope for that kind of quiet,"
Grandma said.

I'd seen Grandpa Eugene perform his
pranks
at the gas station before. Just last year I'd spent a lot of time
there after Grandpa hired Dean Forrester, who was this cute guy in my class.
After Grandpa caught on that I wasn't really interested in how to change oil, he
fired Dean Forrester, which I still feel badly about.

I got used to seeing Grandpa do his trick at
Eugene's after a while, but the first time I saw him do it I was shocked. A man
pulled up near the

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office and got out. He was all dressed up; the
car was some expensive type. I could see a woman sitting inside, combing the
edges of her hair with her fingers, all tense, you could tell.

"Can I help you?" Grandpa asked.

"Lost," the man confessed. He reached into the
pocket of his raincoat and felt around, finally pulling out a wrinkled scrap of
paper which he smoothed a bit and read from. "Three-five-three Raccoon Road?" He
looked sheepish, as if he were somehow to blame for the name of his
destination.

"Right," Grandpa said. He looked out to the
street in front of Eugene's. "You see this road here?" he said. The man
nodded.

"You come out here and take a left. Go straight
until you see Spring Street, where you're gonna take a right. Now, keep going
until you see Bobcat Road. With me so far? Another left and a right and just go
through the stop and you're at Raccoon Road."

The man clutched his paper and nodded. "Thanks,
I appreciate it," he said. He gave a half wave and got back in his
car.

"Bobcat Road?" I said as we watched the car
pull out. "Since when is there a Bobcat Road?"

"Since now," he said.

"They'll never find their way after that," I
said.

"It's not my fault they're lost," he
pointed

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out, stubbornly shoving both hands in his
pockets.

"But these people came to you for help!" I
protested.

"They asked for help, I helped. The way I see
it, everyone's going the wrong way anyway," he said. "So what's it
matter?"

"Now they have no chance of getting it right,"
I said. "You can't do that. Did you see that woman? She looked ticked off
already."

"Those're the only ones I do it to. The
ticked-off ones." He jiggled the loose change in his pocket and thought for a
moment. "They don't want to go where they're heading anyway. I'm doing them a
favor. The way I figure, I'm giving them another shot."

"At what? A screaming match at each other when
they're late?"

"No, to figure out where the hell they really
wanna be."

According to Grandma, this logic didn't fly
with Marty Abare. Any more of Grandpa's tricks and he wouldn't be welcome at the
garage he began forty years ago. After a while, I didn't see what the big deal
was. I've gotten directions from gas stations before, and I'd bet a million
bucks they all do the same thing. Maybe not for Grandpa's reasons though. But
the same way you sometimes say
Uh-huh, uh-huh
on the phone, pretending to
take down a

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number you know you're never going to
dial.

"And I don't trust him, not for a minute,"
Grandma said. She looked worried, probably because having Grandpa barred from
Eugene's meant he'd be home with her. "Your grandfather, not Marty Abare, though
I don't think much of him either. I don't like that man's eyes. I've had this
uneasy feeling right in here." She tapped her chest. "Ever since Marty Abare
told your grandpa enough was enough, I can't seem to be rid of it."

"Maybe it's just Grandpa's cooking," I
said.

"No, more than that," she said.

"It's just June," I said.

"More than June, even," she said, shaking her
head slowly.

Just then the phone rang. I'd forgotten all
about Kale Kramer, and I admit my heart jumped around at the sound of it. But it
was my father, not me, who had jolted at the ringing and who had leapt up with
such force that he knocked into the end table, causing Grandma's tea to spill
over her cup in a wave.

"Goodness gracious, Vince," Grandma said, but
my father was already in the kitchen with the phone to his ear. When I went to
get a napkin to mop up Grandma's tea, I saw him there, his back to the kitchen
door, shoulders hunched around the phone like a drawn curtain. His voice was low
and intense--I could hear the

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concentration in his tone, a hint of pleading.
I was glad he was making up with Bonnie.

"He and Bonnie had a fight," I said to Grandma,
and by the time I had soaked up the tea, my father had come back out of the
kitchen, his eyes bright, keys jingling in his hand.

"I'm sorry to do this, but I've got to take
care of something," he said.

"Invite her over for pie," Grandma
said.

My father looked stunned. "It's Bill Raabe. Car
trouble. I'll just be a few minutes," he said. Bill Raabe was a neighbor down
the street and a good friend of Dad's. He and my father had grown up on Parrish
together, left at the same time to go to college, and eventually ended up back
at Parrish as neighbors. Bill Raabe and his wife, Betsy, owned Raabe Realty,
whose green-and-white signs you could see all over the island. Dad and Bill were
in the chamber of commerce together. They and a couple of men from Washington
Bank got together for dinner twice a month.

"He's always been a terrible liar," Grandma
said after my father left. "Isn't that right, Eugene?" This in a loud voice,
more to rouse Grandpa than anything else, since he was now looking pretty comfy
with his stockinged feet up on the couch, his glasses tipped to the end of his
nose.

"Mmm-hmm," Grandpa said.

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"One look at his eyes, and I'd know. 'Vincent
John MacKenzie, are you telling your mother the truth?' I'd say. With that, he'd
usually burst into a torrent of tears."

I smiled. "I guess he doesn't want me to know
they've been fighting."

"Nothing to be ashamed of," she said. "Every
relationship has its little bumps."

An hour later we gave in and had pie without
him. Two hours later and after watching an entire stupid movie about some
teenager who runs away from home and joins a street gang only to be saved by her
avenging mother, Grandma looked at her watch for the hundredth time. "Well, I'm
afraid we really can't wait any longer. I hate driving in the dark as it is.
This really isn't like your father at all."

"Don't worry," I said. I wasn't worried; though
he'd never left in the middle of a visit with his parents before, I figured my
father and Bonnie had a lot to work out. He'd really been horrible to her that
morning. What did worry me was that Grandma might want to keep waiting for him.
Already, I'd been sitting there way too long with a heavy meal in my stomach,
watching some dumb show and listening to Grandpa snoring. Even going to bed
sounded fun.

"Wake up, Eugene." Grandma nudged him. His
glasses were perched on his nose, still working hard and doing their job even
though

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Grandpa's eyes were shut tight. "Your snoring
could wake the dead."

His mouth clamped shut, his eyes opened. "I'm
not snoring, you old coot. And I'm not deaf, either."

Grandma looked him over. "No rhyme or reason to
love, is there?" she said. Then, loudly, "Time to go home, Eugene."

"Where's Vince?" Grandpa said, sitting
up.

"Never came back," Grandma said. "It's not like
him to be so rude. He could have at least called."

"Something wrong with our company? You should
have taught him better manners," Grandpa said.

"Speaking of manners," Grandma
started.

I packed up the leftover Hotter 'n Hell Hot
Sauce and unpacked it again at Grandpa's insistence. "Take some to your mother,"
he said. "I've got plenty more where that came from." I got Grandma's sweater,
which she always remembered to bring, turned on the porch light, and walked with
them to their car parked in the driveway.

"What's he still got this thing for?" Grandpa
said, and knocked on the tarp-covered Triumph with his knuckles.

"He says that all it needs is a paint job," I
said, defending my father even though, truthfully, he'd been saying that for
years.

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"Ha," Grandpa said.

I made sure they were safely off, and gave one
look down the street for Dad's car. We were right; he wasn't at Bill Raabe's
house, which was dark and quiet. The night was cool but clear, the sky heavily
salted with stars. One thing about Parrish Island, you can really see the stars
there, the way you can up in the mountains, even. With no sign of him, I went
inside and went to bed. Kale Kramer never called, which was fine with me. I was
sure that would make Melissa disappointed and ecstatic.

Later that night, when I was sleeping, the
phone woke me. It took me a second to get my head together enough to stumble to
my father's room where the upstairs phone was. When I picked it up and said a
groggy hello, the person on the other end hung up.

I slammed down the phone. I noticed my father's
bed was still made. He was like that. Tidy. Never letting the details
slip.

I had just gotten back into bed when I heard
the key in the lock downstairs. The glowing green numbers on my clock said 3:30
a.m..

"I'm not here," he'd mouthed earlier that day.
I guess that even by then, those words were more true than either one of us
realized.

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Chapter Four

Laytani's sister, Janine, helped

out at True You on Saturdays, so I usually had
the day off unless one of Janine's kids was sick. Mom liked me to come by on the
weekends, and depending on my mood, I sometimes spent the night. So that next
day after Dad had been out all night "fixing Bill Raabe's car," I propped a note
on the coffeepot, stuck the bottle of Hotter 'n Hell Hot Sauce Grandpa wanted to
give to Mom into my backpack, and cruised down the driveway on my
bike.

To get to Mom's from our neighborhood, you've
got to ride down Main Street, connect with the Horseshoe Highway until you see
the old oil tank, then veer off onto Deception Loop. Right about then you start
smelling the waters

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of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a smell that's
cold and wide and deep, and the houses begin to get rambly and far apart, and
then suddenly there's Asher House, sitting in a sea of yellow grass. Dad's
neighborhood is called Whistling Firs, which I haven't said yet, because it's
one of those things that make you feel ashamed even though they're not your
fault. First, most of the firs were cut down to build Whistling Firs, and
second, the few that are left don't whistle. If you've lived around firs, you
know that they do make a nice shushing sound when they are swaying around with
their friends; but alone, with roots loosened, they are more likely to spit
pinecones and even give up altogether, flinging themselves with angry
desperation onto someone's roof.

I guess I don't understand why some
neighborhoods have to be given grand names they don't deserve. Whistling Firs or
Summerhill or Deux Chevaux Estates--it's like we have to be talked into
believing we're someplace really great. Or that we're so dumb we might be fooled
into thinking a neighborhood with basketball hoops on the garage is the English
countryside or the south of France.

Whistling Firs was quiet that morning, no
whistling, no noise at all. The Beenes' blinds were pulled tight to their sills.
I rode down Main Street, the new air cold and wet and gray on my

72

face. The day before, we'd been in shorts; that
day I wore my fisherman sweater under a rain jacket. That was June weather. That
was
Northwest
weather. It was like reaching under couch cushions. You
never know quite what you'll find.

At the end of Main Street I could see a ferry
boat docked at the ferry terminal and Joe and Jim Nevins in their orange vests
sitting on a piling having a smoke, giving the nuns the weekend off to pray and
do nun things. In a few weeks the long asphalt rows painted with white stripes
and numbers would be jammed with cars full of tourists, even at that time of the
morning, and there would be no time for a smoke again until Labor Day, when
Parrish threw its Thank-God-They're-Gone celebration. To be fair, hotel owners
like Jade Starr and Richie and Marty Gregors, as well as Cliff Barton of biplane
fame, usually caused more trouble during the celebration weekend than any
visitors in "I Love Whales" shirts did the entire summer.