To Die For (13 page)

That took me by surprise. The truth was, I had a crush on Jimmy Emmet. I mean, there were guys more well built than him, and plenty of guys a lot more popular. But he had this gentle face. I used to sit behind him in Government, and I’d stare at his hair. He had this cowlick. I was always wishing I could reach out and pat it down for him. And he had these beautiful brown eyes, with long lashes, almost like a girl. Sad eyes, but sensitive too.

“Search me,” I said. “I never really thought about it one way or another. Cute enough, I guess. Why?”

“I think I’m falling in love with him,” she said. Just like that.

“Jeez,” I say. “What are you going to do?”

It was one of these hopeless situations, she said. Where two people are just meant to be together, only they can’t. Here she’d gone and married Larry, thinking he was Mr. Romantic rock drummer, and he turned out to be this stick-in-the-mud workaholic that wants to join the country club like her dad and turn her into a housewife. They were going to have this exciting life, going to concerts and partying and stuff, and now all he wants is to stay home and have a bunch of screaming babies. Where Jimmy loves her for herself. Jimmy’s wild and exciting. Dangerous, of course. Almost like Bonnie and Clyde or something. She knows he’s young. Knows it’s crazy. But they’ve got this fire burning between them. She hasn’t told him what she feels but she can tell he feels the same about her. There’s this electricity between them. You can sense it.

“I can’t believe it,” I say. “I just can’t believe it.”

She asked me if I’d suspected anything. No, I said. Never.

“What about other people?” she said. She figured there were probably a lot of people talking about her—talking about the two of them. She was scared to death the school principal would find out. Or her boss over at the TV station. And then word would get to her parents, and Larry’s parents, and Larry. And everything would be such a mess. She wanted to know what I thought, what were people saying? And how did I think she should handle the talk?

“Nobody talks about you,” I said. I said that to make her feel better. Only for some reason, I don’t think it did.

M
Y REAL DAD TOOK
off before I was born. My mom doesn’t say much about him and I don’t ask. “You get your ears from him,” Ma says. They stick out.

When I was little, we lived in an apartment up over my grandparents, Bubby and Pops. Ma had a job working at the paper mill, second shift, and the rest of the time she had to rest up. So mostly it was Bubby and Pops that took care of me.

Bubby was mean. If you peed in your bed she made you lie in it. She didn’t get around much on account of her varicose veins, but she had this little water gun with ammonia in it. If I touched something I wasn’t supposed to—squirt—she’d shoot me. She had good aim too. Always went for one of my eyeballs.

Pops was nice though. He was scared of Bubby too, so he’d have to sneak off if he wanted to say something to me. He taught me poker. “She’ll be good at that, little liar like her,” says Bubby.

I always wanted a set of paints. At school they’d only let you have three colors at a time and you had to share and the other kids always forgot to clean off their brushes between dipping in the black, say, and the yellow. So the colors always got all cruddy. I was careful with my brush, and I tried to show the other kids how to do it, so we could keep ours nice, but they never paid attention. They just smushed all the colors together till it just looked like throw-up. So naturally the teacher got mad, and never let us have any of the really pretty colors like hot pink or purple.

My seventh birthday, Pops bought me a set of poster paints. Every color in the rainbow and enough brushes so you didn’t even have to wash the same one off to paint a different color. Best birthday I ever had.

I took real good care of those paints too. I only painted small pictures, so they’d last longer. If there was some big area to fill in like sky or grass, I’d water down some of my paint, so I wouldn’t use it all up. I did this one picture of Pops, I still remember it. In real life he used a walker, but I made him sitting on a horse, with a lasso in his hand. To me he was a hero.

Another time I was making this picture of our whole family. Big this time, even though it was going to take a lot of paint. I started it before I went off to school in the morning so I left my paints out on this tray I used till I came home in the afternoon, to finish. It was turning out so good I didn’t want to rush it. I even made Bubby smiling.

When I came home that day, my paints weren’t there anymore. My picture was, but not my tray of paints. Pops was taking his nap I guess. Just Bubby sitting in the kitchen, listening to “PTL Club.”

“What happened to my paints?” I asked. “They were right here on the table when I left for school.”

“Darn tooting they were,” she said. “And what was I supposed to do with a dozen little jars of paint dripping all over the place all day? You think we’re living in Santa’s workshop?”

“Where’s my paints?” I asked her. Then I saw. Instead of all my little bottles, with the blue and the green and the purple and that, she had the big three-quart pickle jar on the counter, and it was full of this throw-up-colored stuff. She had my brushes soaking in ammonia. I knew better than to say anything. Just went to my room, like Pops did.

After Pops died, Bubby got real funny and had to go to the county home. That’s when Ma met Chester, that worked as a nurse there. I never heard of a man nurse before, but Chester was.

He was the first person since Pops that was nice to me. Chester used to give me rides in the wheelchair. Gave me the extra Jell-Os. Called me Princess.

I was real glad when he started coming round our place. It got to where he was over there most of the time, on Ma’s day off, and then he started sleeping over. He kept his razor in the bathroom. He even brought over his Lazy Boy chair, for TV watching, and this pet parrot he had since he was in the service, that was like twenty-five years old named Rat Fink. Rat Fink didn’t have a cage, he just perched on the back of the Lazy Boy chair eating seed out of this bowl Chester kept handy for him and dropping the husks on the floor. But I didn’t even mind that, just Dustbustered up the mess like Bubby was still there watching me.

It seemed like maybe we were going to be a happy family after all. Me and Ma, Chester and Rat Fink, kind of like on “The Brady Bunch.” We’d go to the movies sometimes, and bowling even. Saturdays we always went out for pizza, like a real family. Nights sometimes, real late, after Ma came home from the mill, I’d sometimes hear the sound of their hideaway bed bumping against the wall. I’d think, good. He’s going to stay around.

One night when I was coming out of the shower with my towel wrapped around me, Chester came over to me. Ma was at work naturally, so it was just Chester and me.

“Come here,” he says. “Let me dry your hair.”

“That’s OK,” I say. “I got a blow dryer.”

“You got to be careful with those things,” he says. “They dry your ends right out.” Still, I didn’t like the idea much. I was eleven, twelve maybe. Just starting to develop. You feel self-conscious.

“I do this for the old bags at the home all the time,” he says. “Massage their scalp, stimulate the blood vessels. It’s the big thrill of their week.” Now he’s unwinding the towel off my head, and working his fingers through my hair. “Sit,” he says. I do.

At first I feel uncomfortable, but then I start to like how it feels, the way he works his fingers into my scalp. I get so loose I almost forget where I am. The radio’s on. Chester always listened to this station where they just played polka music.

“You got real pretty hair,” he says. “I like your freckles too. And you’re starting to get yourself a nice body.” That part was nuts and I knew it. “I’m fat,” I say.

“I like my women soft like a pillow,” he says. “Laying on top of your mother is like laying on a brush pile.”

After that it’s like I’m watching a TV show, not my own life. He starts rubbing my neck, then my shoulders. He takes off my glasses. Then he’s lifting the bath towel off my shoulders and working his fingers into my back. “Let’s see your little titties,” he says. I turn around and show him.

He tells me I’m beautiful. All day long at the nursing home he’s scrubbing old dried-up, shriveled bodies, he says. “You’re my fresh peach,” he says. “I could eat you.” And then he starts sucking on me, making these slurping sounds. There’s this little trickle of drool I can see, running down my stomach. I’m wondering if the Brady dad ever did anything like this. I can’t believe the Brady girls would let somebody put their finger up inside them. I can’t picture Mrs. Brady letting him put it in her mouth. On the other hand, I never would’ve pictured Chester doing it either. So who knew anymore what might happen when nobody’s watching?

It lasted as long as one polka. Less, even. When it was over, he just pulled up his pants and handed me the towel. “I’ll bring home some of that coconut conditioner we use at the home,” he said. “For next time. Smells real good.”

That’s when I noticed Rat Fink, sitting on the back of her chair as usual, giving me the evil eye. “Lucky she don’t talk, huh?” says Chester.

And I never talked either. Three-and-a-half years he was doing it to me nights my ma went to work, I never said a word. Even after he left, I couldn’t tell her it was good riddance. We were better off. All I said was, “I sure don’t miss that bird.”

S
HE CAME UP TO
me in the hall that day. I was just getting some stuff out of my locker, heading out for a smoke, and all of a sudden I turn around and there’s Mrs. Maretto standing there. “I’ve got a wild idea,” she says. “My husband’s out of town on a business trip and I don’t have anything to do tonight. How about taking me to that tattoo parlor over at Little Paradise Beach?”

I didn’t know what was going on. The whole thing seemed so crazy to me I just burst out laughing. “You kidding?” I say. One thing about Mrs. Maretto, though. She wasn’t what you could call a joker. I don’t think I ever saw her smile.

“I thought it might be interesting,” she says. She was thinking she could maybe film a report, like, you know, an expose or whatever you call it, on the tattoo business. She said, “Why don’t we just take a drive on over and check it out, anyway? We wouldn’t bring a camera or nothing. Just kind of scope out the scene.” Plus, she loves skee ball. And maybe I’d win her one of those stuffed dogs.

I said I didn’t know. I mean, if she wasn’t a hot-shit TV reporter, I’d sure think this person wanted to get me to ball her. But she’s married, and old. Real pretty, but what does she want with me?

She drove. I’m sitting there in the passenger seat, listening to that Aerosmith tape of hers again. She’s chewing gum and pounding on her steering wheel. It was the same scene all over again. The music. The boner. Only this time she drives to the beach. She parks the car and we head over to the boardwalk, her and me. I’m thinking, what am I fucking doing here? It’s perfect. It’s just what you always dreamed would happen, but when it does you’re scared shitless.

We play a couple rounds of skee ball. She buys some cotton candy, which we share. Jesus, we even had our picture took in one of those machines you sit in and make faces, three for a dollar. The thing is like a phone booth, real tight, so she ends up on my lap. In one of the pictures she puts her two fingers behind my head, to make like the devil sign you know? And then all of a sudden she’s kissing me. Right when the flash goes off.

“I love these type of places,” she says. “They always make you feel so crazy. Like you’re sixteen again.”

Which in my case I am.

After that, you knew we were both thinking about the same thing, but nobody’s saying nothing. She buys some fried dough. I try to get these darts to hit a poster of David Lee Roth or Van Halen for her, but my head’s so messed up I don’t come close.

“I bet you don’t think I’d really get a tattoo,” she says. “I bet you’d dare me.”

Shit, at this point I just wanted to be out of there, I was so freaked. “They’ve got this kind of tattoo that washes off after a few days,” I say. “You could get one of them.”

No, she says. She’s talking about a real one. Like Motley Crüe, but more feminine.

“It hurts,” I tell her. “They tell you it don’t, but they’re lying.”

She says she had an operation one time and they told her she had a high pain tolerance. She’s kind of laughing, like she’s drunk. Only she’s not.

We head over to the tattoo parlor, down by the beach. There’s no other customers, so this dame comes right up to us and says, “Can I help you?” Mrs. Maretto says, “I want this rose over here.”

“Fine,” says the chick. “That’s a very popular one with the ladies. Twenty-five bucks.”

“You wait out here,” she tells me. So I do. Though I got to tell you, I wanted to just run. But I didn’t. I mean, where was I going to go?

After twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five, she comes out. She’s not in such a light mood anymore, and you can tell it hurt. She pays her money. “Well,” she says, “I did it all right.”

“Far out,” I say. Knowing that’s what she wanted me to say. We start walking again, toward the beach.

“So,” she says, “don’t you want to see it?”

“I guess,” I say.

“OK then,” she says, and we step off the boardwalk to this place on the sand where nobody’s at, just some old closed-down arcade and a couple of kids making out way down the sand. It’s like I’m dreaming.

She unbuttons her shirt. She’s got this little pink lace bra on. She don’t have much chest on her. She’s like a little kid, practically.

She pushes the bra down, so one tit’s mostly showing. Then I see it. A rose, like she picked out. “Well,” she says, “don’t you want to fuck me?”

I
KNOW YOU’RE WONDERING
about the tattoo. OK, I’ll explain. It’s the dumbest thing I ever did. But there’s an explanation.

As you know, I was working with these kids on the video. I mean, Russell was an animal, there’s no other word for him. But James actually showed some promise. And then he said he didn’t want to do it anymore. He was dropping out of the group.