“Three weeks, for your information. And you shouldn’t have opened my mail anyway. Federal offense, you know.”
I heard my father sputter, imagining him gripping at his smelly old t-shirt like a slovenly cartoon character. “Federal offense? Goddamn it, Ellie, we’re married!”
“Why don’t you sit down a minute, Jim. You’re raving drunk, for Christ’s sakes.”
“Federal fucking offense! Two wasted years of law school and you think you know every motherfucking—”
He’s been drinking, he’s been drinking, I told myself over and over as I stepped outside, inhaled the smell of lilacs and magnolia in the afternoon heat, and tugged Gunther down the road.
4.
She was pissed at me. Like, big time pissed. Every time I said something, made a noncommittal remark, gestured, sighed, she just went “Mmhmm,” and shrugged. She wouldn’t look at me.
I hated this. Her bad mood was my bad mood. I had to snap her out of it before I lost it.
Jess and I walked past my house, then two blocks past hers, where her dad was probably smoking a cigar and trying to tune out the sounds of his sister’s baby wailing day and night. I don’t know how Jess got any sleep in there with her little cousin keeping her up at odd hours. I was about to ask her, but then I remembered she was giving me the silent treatment.
We went on these walks every Sunday. She’d come over to my house, knock on the door, listen to Mom’s mumbo-jumbo for a few minutes, and then we’d be off without a word. Sometimes I’d fish around in Mom’s purse for cash and bring her back a donut or a latte. I really wished she’d get out more.
We passed the Shop N’ Save where I’d snubbed Jess the other day, past the yogurt store where we’d worked last summer—or barely worked—blasting the dirtiest rap music imaginable when the manager wasn’t there and lobbing chunks of fro-yo at each other while the customers gave us the stink eye. We lasted a month. I was happy to get fired. I hated the hats they made us wear, but Toby thought it was fucking hilarious, thought it made me look like a “professional fag.” He always made a point to tell me so when he came in with Max or a group of bimbos from school. They laughed at me, wind-up doll hyenas with sharp fangs.
Worst of all, they laughed at Jess. Her cheeks burned the color of the raspberry sorbet and she threw her hat in the trash.
We passed the liquor store where a bum sat outside hustling for change. I dropped a quarter in his cup and he nodded at me. He was pretty young. I wondered where his parents were, if he had any. How he’d ended up without a place to crash in this dying town. Jess stopped in front of the tattoo place and stared inside the window. Since it was Sunday, closing time was soon, but we watched the work going on inside for a little while. A woman with long gray hair and wrinkles was getting a big black heart tattooed on her arm. A heart and the name CHARLES, written above it in thorny letters.
“Thinking of getting one?” I tried.
She put her hands in her shorts pockets. They were shorter than anything I’d ever seen her wear before. “Mmm,” she said.
“Think she’s a little old to be getting inked?” I asked. “Charles must be really special.”
Jess popped her bubblegum.
Alrighty then.
I stared at our reflection in the shop window. You might have thought we were a couple, or maybe even brother and sister. We were about the same height, around the same build: lean, tall, with long torsos and heart-shaped faces. I’d read something in Mom’s Cosmo about how you could determine your destiny from the shape of your face. I wondered what ours would be.
I was mumbling my thoughts to myself out loud. I quickly realized and cleared my throat, embarrassed even though I did this accidentally around Jess all the time.
“Who’re you talking to, weirdo?” she asked. She was smiling.
“No one.”
We stood like that for a while. I bumped her shoulder. She bumped me back.
The world righted itself in an instant.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I was a jerk for telling you and the girls to get lost. We were doing a deal, and I didn’t want you involved. I—”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s my mom. My dad wants me to stay with her this month while he helps with his sister with her new baby and everything. They’re staying in my room until she gets her own place.”
I knew that Jess’s aunt was only nineteen. She had just given birth to a baby boy and had nowhere else to go. It was really nice of her dad, I thought. But Jess wasn’t finished. She kicked at a stray bottle cap on the ground and it skittered across the pavement. “My mom’s just been so irritated with me lately, like I can’t do anything right,” she went on. “Like I can’t even breathe correctly. She actually criticized me for sighing too loudly, if you can believe it. She said, ‘Jessica, who sighs like that? Knock it off!’”
I pictured Jess’s hoity-toity mother, all decked out in cashmere and pearls and ironed slacks, even in the California heat. She wanted sunlit verandas to sit on and sip iced tea, country clubs with green, rolling hills, and a beach house on the “right” side of the country. She’d always shown way more interest in moving back to Massachusetts than spending time with her daughter. Except, she had loved Kellie, her favorite daughter.
Kellie Velez. The name was poison. Danger. Don’t think about it. Don’t go there.
I didn’t. Instead, I put my hand on Jess’s shoulder. “You want to get fro-yo and talk about it?”
She pressed her lips together. She desperately needed some Chapstick.
