Crooked Page 2

  Finally Gerri did. She said, “Well, I better go now. When my dad sees this phone bill he’ll have a whole herd of cows.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Clara said in a flat voice. Then, trying to be nice, she said, “Have some fun.” After putting the phone down, she thought how dinky that probably sounded, too.

  Clara went to her room, stared out the window—a black night, patches of dirty snow in the yard, everything still and silent—then put on a flannel nightgown and got into bed. She closed her eyes and pictured herself in the Adirondacks on a strawberry roan—a horse the same color as her hair, like in her father’s old bedtime stories. She pictured herself riding with a straight back and a straight hat and a straight nose. And then she thought of how Gerri’s face always went kind of blank whenever she talked about horses or horse camp. Suddenly Clara knew Gerri would never go to horse camp with her, never in a million years, whether she kept it a secret or not.

  Ham pulled himself onto the bed and nested beside her. Clara snugged close and wrapped her arm around him. “You don’t care about my nose, do you?” she whispered. “And you don’t think my talking sounds dinky.” When she started to massage the base of his ear, Ham began to murmur contentedly. Clara began to feel the calm of sleep coming over her. She glanced at the clock: 11:23.

  When Clara next read the clock, it said 4:17 and something was wrong. It began with a haze of light in the hall and a scratchy dialogue that Clara finally realized was coming from her mother’s TV.

  “Ham?” she whispered.

  Ham’s black fur heaved a little at the foot of the bed, where he wasn’t supposed to be sleeping, and he turned to look at her. Ham was good company, but at night he seemed to consider himself off-duty. Still, he followed Clara down the hall to the flickering light of her mother’s room.

  The door was half-open. What Clara saw, standing unseen just outside the room, was a surprise. Her mother lay propped in bed with the picnic basket beside her. There were foil and plastic wrappers on the bedspread. On the bedstand, next to a single wineglass, the fancy bottle of wine stood half-empty. Clara’s father was nowhere in sight. Her mother picked up a tube of toffees and peeled one off. She was looking at the TV without really looking at it. She seemed about twenty years older than she had when she was getting ready to go to the airport ten hours ago.

  “Hi, Mom,” Clara said from the door in a small voice.

  Clara’s mother turned with a start. Her stretched-out face quickly collected into a false smile. “Oh, hi, sweetie,” she said. “Did the movie wake you up?”

  “Yeah, kinda. Where’s Dad?”

  Her mother made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Some little problem. He couldn’t come. But here you are!” She motioned Clara closer. “Come over here and keep me company.”

  Clara eased onto the bed. “How come you’re watching TV so late?”

  “It’s a Humphrey Bogart film fest,” her mother said, as if this explained something, though it didn’t.

  Clara glanced at the screen. The movie was one of those old ones, in black and white. Clara looked again at the scatter of food on the bed and bedstand. “Wasn’t all this stuff kind of expensive for just eating alone?”

  “Well, now I’m not alone,” her mother said brightly. “Have a stuffed olive. It’s good for your complexion.”

  But Clara knew her parents had money problems. “But where did you get the basket and all this stuff? Couldn’t you have taken it back for a refund?”

  Her mother’s eyes seemed to glaze over. “I got all of it at Kaufmann’s. And no, I couldn’t take it back. Not after I told everybody and his brother that it was for a romantic picnic with your father.”

  “Oh,” Clara said. Kaufmann’s was the gigantic department store where her mother worked to help out with expenses.

  “Humphrey Bogart is the man up in the rocks,” her mother said now, pointing at the TV. “He’s a fugitive.”

  Clara studied the man on the rocks, who was somehow smoking a cigarette while returning police fire. Close by, hiding behind the same boulder, a frightened woman clutched a frightened dog.

  “Know what Humphrey Bogart said a while back?” Clara’s mother asked. “He said, ‘What kind of a sap would go up in those hills with a dog and a dame?’” Clara’s mother let out a laugh, but it didn’t sound very happy. “Know what I say? I say what kind of a dame would go up in the hills with a sap like that?” With a plastic fork, she speared an almond-stuffed olive from a narrow jar. “He’s going to get it, by the way. You just watch. Bogart is not long for this world.”

  Clara hated it when her mother was in this kind of gloom-mood. It happened when her father had been out of town too long or when her mother had decided she would never learn fluent French or look like Candice Bergen or cook like Julia Child. Clara watched the screen with her mother, and it turned out she was right about Humphrey Bogart getting it. First one bullet and then another tore into him. It wasn’t very realistic, though. They had better special effects in their own school play, Clara thought. In this old movie, it looked like the dying man was just having a hard time getting to sleep and then finally did.

  When Clara turned, her mother had tears on her eyelashes. She glanced at Clara and tried to smile. “He was a jerk, but I guess he was a lovable jerk.” She muted a commercial but continued to stare at the screen. “The next movie stars Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who glommed onto him when he was still married. Not that they cared.”

  Clara didn’t know how to respond. After a second or two, she said, “In our school play—the one I told you about—we’ve got this stage gun that shoots paint balls, except we call them blood balls.” She looked at her mother, who seemed not to be listening. “It makes it look like a death scene from hell.”

  Clara hoped the word hell might get her mother’s attention. It didn’t. “You know how late it is?” her mother asked, then seemed to lapse into herself.

  Clara walked to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and saw that the sky was still black. She could see her face in the glass, and although her mother always made a big fuss about Clara’s thick reddish hair and pale skin, Clara saw her nose and touched it automatically, as if perhaps it were clay she could push into a different shape. A truck with a huge, whining motor crinkled the ice in the street and shushed to a stop. The milkman’s boots crunched on the frozen yard. Hello, Mr. MacKenzie, Clara thought, and then, just as he looked up at her window, she remembered her nightgown and let the curtain fall back.

  In an empty voice, Clara’s mother said, “The milkman already. That’s how late it is.”

  On the muted television screen, women with big hair were giving testimonials for a telephone psychic named Jacquelina Vital. Clara tipped the picnic basket and looked inside. Lying at the bottom was a handmade card. White stars stood out against a black sky. Below, it read: Remember the stars over Penacook Falls?

  Clara inhaled. She told herself not to end with innyhoo. She said, “Mom, what happened to Dad?”

  Instead of answering the question, her mother swept some crumbs into her hand.

  “Was Dad’s flight canceled or something?” Clara asked.

  Her mother made an unhappy laugh. “You really do like the last word, don’t you?” she said. She took in a long, tired breath. “No, your father’s flight wasn’t canceled. It turned out he had to stay a few more days in Chicago. Something occurred so late on Friday that he couldn’t call and tell me about it before I drove off to the airport. Something compelling, I’m sure.”

  Oh, Clara thought. “He tried to call here after you left,” she said.

  Her mother clicked off the TV and sighed. She was wearing her peach chenille robe, the one Clara’s father had given her a long time ago. It was dingy now at the cuffs and ragged at the hem, and it reminded Clara of how she used to sleep in her mother’s bed when her father was out of town. She would put on her mother’s robe and fall asleep with a pile of blankets, and then her mother wouldn’t have the heart to move her.

/>   Her mother tried to smile. “Want to sleep in here?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Clara said, even though she didn’t really want to. She wasn’t good at changing her mother’s mood, though her mother could almost always change hers. Clara looked at the opened bottle of wine and the bits of foil that had peeled off the chocolate and stained the sheets. She felt like she had awakened to a terrible adult slumber party where the last, most lonely person to be awake was her mother.

  At odd times—and this was one of them—Clara would wonder if her mother wasn’t somehow like Mary Jemison, the town’s namesake. Clara had heard Mary Jemison’s story about a hundred times at the annual Mary Jemison Pageant. During the French and Indian War, the Jemison farm was raided by Seneca Indians. The Senecas killed Mary Jemison’s parents, but they took Mary, who was fifteen, home to their village. They treated her kindly, and by the time the British came to rescue her, she was married to a Seneca, had a baby, and didn’t want to be rescued. And so she stayed with the Senecas, raised five children, and lived to be ninety-one.

  After the pageant last year, Clara’s family had gone out to eat. Her mother poked at a salad while Clara and her father ate cheeseburgers and fries. Clara’s father had a little dribble of catsup at the corner of his mouth. Her mother looked at him, then pushed away her salad and stared out the window. Finally, in a low voice, almost to herself, she said, “I wonder if Mary Jemison somehow knew she wasn’t in the right place before she’d been kidnapped.”

  Now, in bed, Clara turned toward her mother. “Mom?”

  “What, sweetie?”

  “I don’t always have to have the last word.”

  Her mother made a murmuring laugh. “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” her mother said, and Clara had to stifle herself from adding a final okay.

  In the morning, the picnic basket and fancy bottles were gone. So were the stockings and scarves that had spilled over the cedar chest and the dresser. So was Saucy Monogamy—the bedstand drawer was empty. When Clara opened the closet door, all the lingerie was folded and put away and the old chenille robe hung neatly from its hook. It was as if her mother had re-formed and then disappeared.

  In the kitchen, Clara found a note from her mother that read:

  Sweetie, I’m at work until the normal time. There’s oatmeal on the stove. I’ll make you chicken potpie tonight unless an inheritance comes in the mail and then I’ll take you out (Ha!).

  Love you, Mom

  The oatmeal was gluey, but Clara ate most of it anyway and mixed the rest with Ham’s kibble. Then she took a long hot bath and shaved her legs, following the advice in one of her mother’s magazines. She hoped Gerri might call again but knew somehow that she wouldn’t.

  Clara looked out the window and tried to look forward to spring, and from there to summer, but what if, when summer finally came, Gerri wasn’t her friend anymore and she couldn’t go to horse camp? Five days at the Black Stallion cost $890, and she’d saved only a fourth of her part. Her paper route was fine, but it wasn’t enough. She needed another source of income. She turned to Ham and in a playful voice said, “Maybe I should rent you out, Hambone!”

  And that gave her an idea.

  Girl for rent, she thought. She even said it aloud to Ham as she untangled his leash from the umbrella, walked him four blocks to Banner Variety, and looped his leash around a parking meter.

  Inside, holding a little roll of her horse camp money, Clara started looking for inspiration in the sale bin. Dusty zippers, American flags on toothpicks, red and green crepe paper, a torn picture of Lincoln—nothing that suited her purposes. Finally Clara picked out some plain white stationery in a pale gray box. It wasn’t in the sale bin. It looked like something you might use if you needed to write a thank-you letter to the Princess of Monaco, and was priced accordingly. But she remembered something her mother had liked to say when she was paying tuition when she went back to college. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Clara spent almost all the money she’d brought.

  Then, when she was back outside, something bad happened. It wouldn’t have been bad if she’d had a tissue in her pocket, but she didn’t. And she needed, all of a sudden, to blow her nose just as Amos MacKenzie stepped out of Value Village, the thrift store across the street.

  Amos MacKenzie was in the ninth grade, like Clara, but he seemed older because he was smart and almost never said anything. He had light brown skin, blond hair, and dark brown eyes. It had occurred to Clara, watching him in History, that if he were a horse, he would be a palomino. It had also occurred to her that this was a weird way to think of boys. She had a picture of Amos hidden in her desk at home—last year’s Christmas card from the Cosgrove Dairy, in which the whole MacKenzie family was standing beside the milk truck on a fall day.

  Now, as Clara removed Ham’s leash from the parking meter, Amos and his father were putting a used snow shovel into a rusty white Ford van. So they had money troubles, too. At least Clara’s father didn’t take her to Value Village.

  Clara felt in her pockets for a tissue and came up with a ticket stub from going to the movies with Gerri. When she glanced at the rusty Ford van, Mr. MacKenzie seemed to be looking her way, but Amos was already seated and staring straight ahead. Then Mr. MacKenzie did a slow U-turn that brought them close to the curb. Clara sniffled, pulled on Ham’s leash, and waved, which for some reason made Mr. MacKenzie pull over, lean past Amos, and roll down the window. “Hi,” he said, and grinned. “I suspect you must be Miss Wilson.”

  Clara nodded uncertainly and even blushed a little. She hadn’t ever been called Miss Wilson before.

  “I know because that canine looks familiar,” Mr. MacKenzie said, nodding at Ham, who was happily straining at his leash. “Sometimes he says hello when I bring the milk.”

  “Yeah,” Clara said, “he likes to check everybody out.” She sniffled and brought her hand to the bridge of her nose at the same moment that Ham put his front feet on the van and began to pant in Amos’s face. “Oh, no!” Clara said. She pulled Ham down and rubbed the side of the car for scratches.

  Mr. MacKenzie laughed and in a half-comic voice said, “The value of this van, like all things important to me, goes way beyond surface beauty.” He nodded at Amos, who was blushing. “My son isn’t old enough to see things this way yet. Amos hopes this old boat goes to the junkyard before he gets his license.”

  “Oh,” Clara said, and looked at Amos, who kept his eyes down. This didn’t subdue Ham in any way. He wagged his tail and then lunged for the van again, which caused Clara to drop the Princess-of-Monaco stationery. Several sheets slid out of the box into the dirty slush of the street.

  “How are your parents?” Mr. MacKenzie asked while she was steadying herself.

  “Oh, they’re fine,” she said.

  “I noticed people were up bright and early this morning,” he said.

  Clara wondered if Mr. MacKenzie had seen her standing at the window in her nightgown, and her face got hot. But Amos wasn’t looking at her. He was now leaning out and petting Ham. “Like your dog,” he said, glancing up at Clara. “What’s her name?”

  “Ham. She’s a he.”

  “Oh,” Amos said.

  A car was approaching, and Clara sniffled as quietly and discreetly as she could. If there was anything in the world worse than a runny nose, she thought, it was a crooked runny nose.

  “Well, Miss Wilson,” Mr. MacKenzie said in his easy, familiar way, “we better get moving or the neighbors will talk,” and then, with a saluting wave of the hand, which was accompanied by a stiff nod from Amos, he drove away.

  2

  TUMS

  Amos MacKenzie slumped down in the car seat and tried to slow down his mind, which was bouncing around like a pinball. Ever since eighth grade, when she got pretty all of a sudden, Amos had sneakily paid attention to Clara Wilson. And just now, while they’d been talking, she had acted nervous. Did that mean she cared what he might think? And
could that mean she might like him? A fine layer of sweat rose on the back of Amos’s neck. Could she think he might like her? And why did that make him feel so weirdly happy? Most of the things that made Amos happy worked from the outside in—receiving an A on a test, say, or getting tickets to a World Series game, or eating his favorite German chocolate cake. But what he was feeling now was the opposite. It seemed to come from within him. It worked from the inside out.

  Suddenly, without even meaning to, Amos found himself thinking of Clara Wilson’s hair. In his mind, it was brown, but in the sunlight, it had looked almost red. It was so clean and soft-looking that he imagined himself gathering it into a ponytail with his hand, something his mother always did with his sister’s hair when they were watching TV.

  “Whatcha thinking, slugger?” his father said.

  “Nothing.”

  Amos pretended he didn’t notice his father smiling and glancing over at him. It was something his father did. Whenever Amos’s feelings went fluttering off in every direction, his father not only knew it but found it strangely entertaining. It was just one of about one million things annoying about his father.

  Amos stared out the window and tried to be perfectly still so his father would decide he was mistaken this time. A few blocks passed. Then, on the sidewalk up ahead, Amos spotted a long-legged girl walking alone in tights, fuzzy sweater, long open coat—and with a shock realized it was Anne Barrineau, the Elusive One. At school, she smiled at almost everyone but talked to almost no one. She was smart, pretty, and remote. Rumors flew. She doesn’t date because she already has a boyfriend who goes to Jemison High. Or: Her parents are deaf-mutes, that’s why she never talks. As the van passed her by, Amos sneaked a glance back. Anne Barrineau, as always, was looking straight ahead, smiling.