Authors: John Searles
“Later,” I said and headed down the stairs to my ten-speed.
My mother opened the kitchen window and called to me like I was a little kid. “Do you want something to eat?”
I stared up at her soft face, a burst of white against the brown, BB-punctured aluminum siding. This was the choice my father must have faced all the time. My mother and her warm food, quiet voice, and careful movements. Or Edie and her big house, big tits, and big money.
“I’ll grab something later,” I said, climbing on my bike and pedaling away in the damp air.
As I rode toward Edie’s, I wondered if it would be as easy to kiss her this time as it was the first. The pot would help. I looked down at the black shoes she had given me. Day after day I slipped my warm feet into their soft leather. Now they were scuffed from so much wear. Part of me wanted to turn back and give the shoes a quick polish before showing up at Edie’s. But my heart was beating too hard to turn back. I pushed the shoes out of my mind and thought of licking the teeth my father wanted to kick. The image of my wet tongue against Edie’s hard white smile kept me pedaling up and down side streets until I reached the top of the hill near her house.
In daylight the Victorian looked even more decrepit than last time. Leaves from the red maple had dried, curled, and fallen to where they lay unraked on the dead hairs of grass. The once-white rocks of the driveway were speckled with black, like hundreds of cavitied teeth crunching beneath my bicycle tires. I stopped pedaling and caught my breath. When I took a step toward her porch, I felt choked with nervousness. I wondered if I should have rushed over here like this, if crossing enemy lines like my mother always did with my father was a mistake. After all, Edie had lied to me that night about my father not being in her bed. Every time I thought of that, I told myself I should be pissed at her.
But she
needs
to see me, I reminded myself. With those words in mind I walked to the door, kicking at the shavings of yellow paint that littered the porch. Against the dreariness of everything else, it looked as if pieces of sun had fallen and landed at Edie’s doorstep for her to sweep away. A lion’s-face knocker had turned red with rust and blank in the eyes. I gave the sorry-looking guy a clank or two, then waited.
“Edie,” I called when no one answered. “It’s me, Dominick Pindle.”
A bird squawked in the sky, but no noise came from the house. The place had the feeling of people coming and going. Wandering in and out, like I had last summer. A rest area off the highway. A cheap motel.
Finally I put my hand on the knob and turned. It wouldn’t move, so I walked around back to where my father’s truck had been parked that
night. This time there was Edie’s Cadillac. Edie was turned away from me, loading a tiny red Chiclet of a suitcase into the trunk. After all these months apart, I couldn’t believe the sight of her. She wore a long-sleeved T-shirt that hung down to her knees. Under the blue material she could have been naked, since all I could see were her bare legs and flip-flopped feet.
“Hello, Edie,” I said, using a voice I had been practicing. It was the well-honed deep echo of a cave. The sound of a solemn male soldier.
“Dominick,” she said, turning around. She reached out and hugged me. I felt her arms slip under my arms, wrap around my back, and pull me to her. Her tits and stomach pressed against me. “You’re here sooner than I expected,” she said, and I could feel the heat of her breath against my neck.
My body went into overload—my chest burned, my mouth felt sticky, my dick went hard. I had hoped and hoped that Edie would want to be near me again but was never really sure how she would act when we met a second time. In that moment I knew our kiss had changed her, too. And this is what I told myself: Edie had come to her senses and realized my father was a fuck-up.
When she let go of me, I could see a purple puff of skin under her left eye, like the bruises Leon got after a fight. The flash of color seemed to belong on him. But on Edie the look was like smeared makeup, messy and all wrong. I heard my father say
Size ten right in her teeth
.
“What happened?”
“Do I have to tell you?” she said, closing the trunk. “I’m sure you can put two and two together.”
The bruise was split in the middle by a sharp line of blood. I thought of the painted lips of a doll, deep red dried into a smile. Edie smelled of hampers and used clothing. Her hair was wormy and unwashed.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Yeah,” she said in her raspy, rock-band voice. “Fucking crazy.”
I laughed, unsure whether she meant it to be funny.
“I’m going away for a few days,” she said. “But I needed to see you first. Do you want to come inside for a while?”
I followed her up the short stack of stairs to the house. A seashell wind chime hung by the door, clanking out hollow noises in the breeze. The kitchen had fallen apart since my last visit. The stove, cluttered with dirty pots. The windows, fingerprinted and cloudy. The table looked as if it had been interrupted during a meal—two plates, half emptied of fish sticks and french fries.
Edie brushed her fingers through her mess of hair. Every one of her long nails was gone. All of them bitten down to nothing, like her pinkie nail that first night. “Do you mind if I take a minute to freshen up? Last time you found me in my nightgown. And this time I look like a rag doll. I should at least clean myself up.”
“I’m just glad to see you,” I said, grateful that she gave me an opening to compliment her. “Take your time.”
When she was safely down the hall, I looked for some sign of my father. The desk in the corner was piled with pink and yellow bills the color of baby clothes: $5,614.10 owed to D.T.E. Manufacturers in New Jersey; $2,952.72 owed to Galepsy Dye Incorporated in Alabama; $3,982.19 owed to Marathon Truck Rental right here in Holedo.
FINAL NOTICE. FINAL NOTICE. FINAL NOTICE
. Underneath all that, a blue doctor’s bill asked Edie for $350 even, the “Services Rendered” column neatly torn from the page. The bills of a rich lady, I thought. But why hadn’t she paid?
My stomach grumbled, and I made my way to the fridge. Empty except for club soda, salad dressing, jelly, and assorted crap. If my father had been spending a lot of time here, there would have been Schlitz or Bud. Maybe Edie dumped it all out the way my mother sometimes did. I wandered to the hallway to check out the shoes and to see about that old sneaker I had left behind. But there was just a matted carpet, the color of a brown egg, which led to the door. No high heels. No cleats. No slippers.
Edie’s footsteps shuffled about the other side of the house. A drawer opened and closed. I went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone to dial, carefully muffling the rotary as it wheeled its way back to zero.
“Hello.” It was Leon. I pictured him in his basement bedroom,
doing flies on his bed to build his chest muscles, stopping to grab the phone.
I whispered, “You will never guess where I am.”
“In a fucking jail cell,” he said.
“No. I talked the old lady out of buying the station. So guess where I am.”
“Home, popping the pimples on your ass,” Leon said.
“Try Edie fucking Kramer’s, nipplehead.” Even if the bruise on her face had distracted me from wanting her at the moment, I could still act like I did.
“Pindle. You’re not starting this little fantasy again, are you?”
“It’s the truth.”
“I’d love to hear more, but I’m on my way to fuck Mrs. Lint.”
Lint was the blond algebra teacher who had flunked Leon last year. He was always saying he’d love to give her an F right back. I pictured Leon at home with his mother and her tall skinny glass of vodka tonic clinking with ice cubes as she smoked her mentholated Salems. I hated when Mrs. Diesel’s bitchy personality completely rubbed off on him. He barely believed me the first time I told him about kissing Edie. No way would he believe me again, unless I had proof. “Wait fifteen minutes and call here. When Edie answers, ask for me. Then you’ll see.”
I heard her padding down the hallway so I settled the plan with Leon and hung up. Edie must have made a pit stop, though, because the house was quiet again. When she didn’t show, I made my way over to the back of the kitchen. Through a narrow door I could see a sunroom I hadn’t noticed before. The mattress from the basement covered the center of the white wooden floor. On top lay a zigzagged blanket, some pointy high heels, and a scattering of pillows. I felt the heat of the room press against my skin when I stepped inside.
“The light’s nice in here,” Edie said from behind me. “I put the mattress in this room so I could nap in the afternoon.”
When I turned around, she looked more like the Edie that Leon and I always talked about. Brushed blond hair that curled at the ends. Barn-
red lipstick. A cloud of sweet perfume. She still wore the loose shirt, only now there were black pants beneath.
“Have a seat,” Edie said.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, and she did the same. Between us there was a single unstrapped shoe, red as a cooked lobster. I wanted to ask what she needed but decided to go with the flow the way Leon always said to. This was my chance to be cool.
“Do you get high?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“I used to,” she said. “But I’ve decided to cut back on my vices. You know, clean up my act.”
Just my luck. Everything was all wrong—Edie’s bruises, her messy house, and her clean act. Still, I kept trying. “Too bad,” I said, tempting her. “I have some good stuff.”
“Well, by all means light up. Just because I’m turning into a nun doesn’t mean you have to.”
“Really?” I said. My voice sounded more stretched and thin than I would have liked. It felt stupid to light up and smoke in front of her, but I couldn’t back out. Besides, once she saw all the fun I was having, she was bound to change her mind. I took the joint and the Doghouse matchbook from my pocket. Edie pulled an ashtray from the shelf. A blue-scaled ceramic fish with a wide-open mouth. Edie and the fish watched as I lit the tip and toked. “Monster,” I said when I exhaled. I had heard someone call it that in a movie once. It sounded pretty cool, so I said it again. “Monster.”
“I bet,” Edie said. She kept switching her position on the mattress, folding her legs beneath her on one side, then another. I wanted her to get comfortable so she could concentrate on us.
Thinking of Leon, I looked at the clock in the kitchen. Almost one. The whole day seemed like a blur now—the ridiculous auction, my mother and her secret stash, my father quitting his job. “I wonder what Officer Roget wanted when he called,” I said out loud without meaning to.
“Who?” Edie said.
“Oh,” I said. My tongue had grown an inch, gained a pound. My head felt spongy. “Never mind.”
I took a couple more hits and shook my head, trying to focus on Edie’s lips. Good old Mr. Bruise below her eye kept getting my attention instead. It seemed strange my father had let loose on her like that. For all the talking he did, I had never seen him hit anybody. Not me. Not my mother. Still, Edie’s eye was proof enough. “I’m sorry about your face,” I said.
“Don’t be. You didn’t do it.”
In the reflection of the window I caught a glimpse of myself. My face was the wide-eyed, scrappy kid’s face in the Boys’ Club commercial. Only it was stretched like a caricature of myself around the end of the joint. T-shirts and sweaters never looked right on me, so I covered up with the same gray sweatshirt, the hood carried on my back like an empty, useless pouch. I decided I should anchor myself in a conversation before my mind drifted off into that reflection. “So what do you need me for?” I asked.
Edie tilted her head and looked at me. She was beautiful despite her beat-up face. “I wouldn’t have snuck that note in your mailbox if I had someone else to talk to,” she said.
“Yo comprendo,”
I said and laughed at my Spanish. Edie didn’t seem to think it was funny, though, so I pulled my lips together. Something in my head was shrinking, fading away. I watched the thin line of smoke twist its way through the air between us until Edie spoke again. “Do you love your parents?” she said finally.
That was not the type of question I had expected her to ask. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“Both of them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Then I thought about it. “I guess I love one more.”
“Your mom?” she said.
No matter how stoned I was, I wouldn’t let Edie trash my mom. I could confuse the old lady with opposites. I could take off when she was making lunch. But that was me. “Yes,” I said, defensive.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “Mothers are usually easier to deal with. And your father can be a real prick.”
Trashing him didn’t bug me so much. In fact, it made me feel like I had pulled something over on him. “Yeah,” I said. “A fucking prick.”
“Do you think he and your mom will stay married?” she asked.
I thought of the conversation in the car with my mother. “Yes,” I told her. “They have big plans. They want to buy a house. Drive around on his motorcycle. Make breakfasts together.”
“Breakfasts?” Edie said. “Motorcycle? I didn’t know he had one.”
“Yup,” I said, sounding smug because I knew more about him than she did, even though I’d just found out about the motorcycle an hour ago, and even though he didn’t own it anymore.
“Well, I guess there’s a lot about him I never knew,” Edie said. “That’s no surprise.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I told her, taking another hit of the joint. The smoke in my lungs left me with a confused confidence. I decided to say whatever came to mind. “I’m here now.”
“I’m glad for that,” Edie said, leaning toward me. “Dominick, can I show you something?”
This was it. We were going to kiss again. Maybe even fuck. “Show me,” I said. “Show me anything.”
Edie knelt in front of me and put her hands on the bottom of her shirt. I swallowed hard. The pot had left my head feeling cinder-blocked and messy. For months I had waited for this moment, but I still didn’t feel ready. She needed to look more like the women Leon and I checked out in
Hustler
and
Penthouse.
Splayed and nipple-pinched, gazing off into nowhere like the eyes of that fish ashtray. Instead Edie stared at me intently, her face marked by that bruise. Signs of my father’s love all over her. “Are you ready?” she asked.