“Lifting an ironing board?”
“I know. It’s taking awhile. I thought she’d have been at the checkout line by now.”
A woman with Crystal Gayle hair and two large-headed children pushed between us, interested in the paper towel sale.
“Well, she probably wasn’t looking for just any stock boy,” Mr. Cleary said. “She needed a beefy one.”
“No,” I said. “Just a man. Any size. Any age. Because men lift things and solve your problems and kill your bugs, and women make sandwiches and babies.”
He stood there, silent. I assumed he was trying to decide if I was joking, and eventually he decided I was, because he laughed and rolled himself closer.
“So you and your mother aren’t peas in a pod?”
“We are not,” I said, although I thought of fast-food wrappers on sofa cushions.
“You don’t think a man should solve your problems?”
“No.”
“Or kill the bugs?”
“I’m okay with that.”
He laughed again, and he smoothed a wrinkle in his shorts. Maybe he was a runner. I remembered how I’d disliked the way he puffed out his chest while he was watering his yard, but I didn’t see it that way now. He looked like he exercised. He looked solid.
“A women’s libber,” he said. “Who knew? I haven’t had one of those in ages.”
That confused me until I realized he was looking at my drink. It was the kind of look that made it seem like I’d be rude if I didn’t offer.
“You want a sip?” I asked.
“Thanks,” he said.
I hadn’t expected him to accept, but I handed the cup over, and he popped off the plastic cover to drink from the side. I appreciated that he didn’t use my straw.
“Is this where you hang out on a Saturday?” he said, handing back my Icee. “Not the mall or the Dairy Queen parking lot?”
“No,” I said, and now I was the one being slow to recognize a joke. “The Dairy Queen parking lot, Mr. Cleary?”
“That’s what we used to do. You can call me Grant, by the way. Which is my actual name. I’m not a thousand years old or your teacher—I’m twenty-nine. So Grant, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
I looked over my shoulder, checking for Mom again. Mr. Cleary—or whoever—lifted his cart onto two wheels and made a sharp turn, heading toward the cash registers.
“Good luck with the ironing board,” he said.
“Thanks.”
He stopped. “Rachel?”
“Yeah?”
“I liked the shorts better.”
I laughed.
He had disappeared through the checkout lines by the time I finally found Mom, who had gone all the way to the Icee counter looking for me. I carried our ironing board back to the sun-soaked car.
“Bend at your knees,” Mom said as I lifted it into the backseat, trying to catch the right angle. “Bend your knees, Rachel. You’re bending at your back—you know how that can—”
“Mom,” I said. “It’s in the car.”
When I grabbed my copy of Burroughs’s Back to the Stone Age from the floorboard, it was warm, like a pet who’d been waiting. I opened the book before Mom had even turned on the car, and she made a croupy sound that meant You read way too much. I turned the page.
We were stopped at a light, just about to turn left onto the bypass, when Mom’s brake light came on.
“Oh no,” she said.
I put down my book. “What?”
“The brakes.”
She pointed at the dashboard, and I could see the light. There was a line of cars behind us.
“Should we stop at the gas station on the way home?” I asked.
The light turned green, and the car in front of us moved. Mom did not push the gas pedal.
“Mom,” I said.
“Something’s wrong with the brakes,” she said. “That’s very serious.”
The car behind us honked.
“You have to go,” I said.
The car behind us honked again. Somewhere farther down the line, a different car honked.
“Mom! Go!” I said, and I shook her shoulder. Her head jerked back and forth, and when she faced me, her eyes were too wide.
“Step on the gas,” I said, not yelling this time. “Go through the light and make your turn.”
She did it. She drove too slowly, and the car behind us swerved into the other lane, honking again. It didn’t matter, though, because we were on the bypass, and we were moving.
“What if they stop working?” she said. “I’m pumping them a little, and they seem like they’re okay, but, Rachel, if the brakes cut out—”
“It’s a warning light,” I said. “It’s only the light. It just means we should have someone look at the brakes. Keep driving.”
A couple of tears cut a path through her foundation and powder. Her mascara would run soon. A red pickup veered around us, a bald man frowning at us from the passenger window. I looked at the speedometer. She was going twenty miles under the speed limit.
“Pull over,” I said.
“What?”
She stopped panting, at least. She even looked away from the road for a second.
“There,” I said. “In that Chevron. Let me drive. I’ll take care of it, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and her hand landed on mine. Her skin was cold, but I tightened my fingers around hers. That only lasted a second before she recentered her grip, sharp knuckled, on the steering wheel.
“Turn,” I said, pointing. “Turn there. Park in that spot by the dumpster. Now trade places with me.”
She nodded and did what I said. I left my book on the seat, and I switched places with her, waiting until she was buckled before I put the car in reverse.
“You okay?” I asked, and I thought of how it might not be the worst thing to have someone who solved your problems.
“Drive to the place on Carter Hill,” she said. “I think they’re open on Saturday.”
I tapped the brakes, which seemed fine.
I waited for a gap in the cars, and I pulled back onto the bypass, too slowly. I checked the brakes again—still fine—and I thought about
