“Luli, what the hell are you doing?”
Tammy comes barreling down the staircase, pushing me aside, and I can tell she’s about to do something worse but then she sees Mr. Feld and it’s like she turns from a moth to a butterfly in two seconds flat. She straightens up and tightens her robe around her, fluffing her hair up and smiling pretty.
“Why, Mr. Feld. Whatever in the world are you doing here at this hour of the day, of the morning, I mean? It must be seven-thirty, seven even.”
“it’s actually eight, Mrs. Cutter.”
He looks at her kind of funny when he says her name, like there’s a little joke here they got between them. They’re both smiling now. Tammy starts looking a little red like she’s at the sock-hop. And I have seen this blushing before. It means my dad is on the outs again.
I’m surprised this mister is even talking to her looking like that, sunk-eyed and shabby in her frayed blue robe and last night’s makeup. She keeps adjusting and readjusting herself, like somewhere in the position of her belt lies true happiness.
“I mean, I wouldn’t even have woke up if it wasn’t for Luli and her loud laughing.”
She looks at me for that one. I smile back at her like I’m just as happy as she is and we’re all just one big happy family. She sees my .45 and grabs it out of my hand.
“Oh, Luli, you are just such a little card with that gun.”
She laughs, bashful, swatting her hand at Mr. Feld, covering.
“She don’t mean nothing. She just likes to play.”
“it’s not a gun. it’s a .45.” I repeat it, get it straight.
“Well, that’s nice, dear.”
Tammy smiles and the peeled worm takes a gulp.
“Okay, then, Mr. Feld, if you’ll just let me get dressed, I’ll be right back down.”
She turns my way and smiles like a TV commercial.
“Luli, you better start getting ready for school now.”
All smiles. New and improved soap.
“School don’t start for two weeks.”
She grabs my arm and steers me firm towards my room. I look back at her and she stares right back like she’s daring me to make a move. Tammy’s got a mean backhand. I turn and start getting dressed, careful to stand next to the door so I can keep up. I hear her sigh and giggle, then a little laughing and talking. A guilty little whisper. A sentence, hushed.
Then the screen door slams and just like that they’re gone.
I walk back out to the kitchen and listen to the sound of a smooth kind of car driving off into the distance. Well, that’s that then. If my calculations are correct, he’s not new to her cause there’s already a secret between them. She must have found him at the Hy-Vee or the Kwik-Mart or the Piggly Wiggly. He must have driven his cart into her cart, blushed and feigned an apology, polite. She would have turned round, seen money and they’d be off to the races.
Money.
I open the fridge for something to eat, but there’s nothing but brown peaches and a half-finished jar of relish.
I bet this morning my mama gets bacon and eggs with waffles on the side.
I look through the rest of the cupboards, clacking away, quicker and quicker, until some Saltines make their way into my hands and up to my mouth, stale.
Upstairs I hear the sound of my dad stirring.
I settle down into the chair, collected. He walks down the staircase and squints at me through the doorway.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She left.”
“With who?”
“Somebody.”
“Somebody who?”
“Some guy.”
Something changes in the whiskey sweat air around him. He freezes and gets a little taller altogether, shrinking and getting bigger in the same miracle breath. He looks at the wallpaper like he can see right through it, all the way to wherever and whatever that fancy car has driven off to.
“His name’s Lux. He’s kinda gay.”
“By gay do you mean that he’s a homosexual?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wull, some folks don’t like that word, so you should find a new one.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, something sweet. You’re a girl, girls supposed to be sweet.”
Then he looks at what I’m wearing. Not much.
“You wearing that outta the house?”
“Maybe, why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Seems a little light on the clothing part, don’t you think?”
“Wull, what do you think?”
“I think you look like trouble.”
“Wull, I can change, I guess—”
“No use lookin for trouble, Luli, it’ll find you soon enough.”
He looks at me there, staring up at him from the foot of the staircase, and something strange and wistful takes over his face.
“You know, it’s funny . . . in this light . . . you look just like your mother when I first met her . . . just blond and pretty . . . before she got mean.”
I look up at him, wanting to tell him I’m sorry, wanting to fix him and make him hate her back.
“Don’t get mean, Luli, just stay little and pretty and sweet, how bout that?”
I try to make my face smile but I think I’m turning out more of a grimace, some little girl squint into the sunlight.
“Just stay sweet.”
He stares at me like that for what seems like two weeks.
Then he snaps out of it like some broken spell, looking at me like I’m this demonic Muppet sent to hurl him into the abyss with trouble dressing and stray-cat luring.
“Tell your mama, when you see her, tell her I had some business myself, tell her I had some business out in Shelby and I may be gone for a while, you know . . . paperwork.”
Paperwork.
Now I know that’s a lie.
The last time I saw my dad pick up a pen, I was eight.
Then he barrels past me, quick, grabs his keys off the wall and rushes out the screen door, letting it slam hard behind. I go to the door and watch as he drives away, churning up dust all the way down the dirt road and into the horizon.
He doesn’t look back.
FOUR
I wander off to the barn to consider my options. it’s the day dying down, the hay and the wood smelling sweet and dusty. The grass and the heat of the day coming off the ground, up up up into the giant pink sky.
It may have been that word paperwork. It may have been the way the dust was flying up underneath the tires or the back side of the Nova as it shrunk into a glossy speck on the beige horizon, but something in my gut, sure as sugar, tells me this:
He ain’t coming back.
Now I’m not trying to cry wolf, since I’ve been accused of some such shenanigans before, but I just know this as a fact in the back of my neck and the bottom of my belly. He won’t be back.