Angry Management

  Montana laughs. No wonder Trey Chase talks the way he talks. “Dr. Conroy? Big. Way big.”

  “Would she fight for you?”

  “She offered to take it to the school board. Course that’s just taking it to my dad.”

  “You don’t have to win to win,” Mari says. “Just keep putting it in front of them. The truth rises.”

  “I like that,” Montana says.

  “Tell you what, you get your teacher to take that article to the school board, and I’ll be there; make the case for content.”

  “But if you’re sick…”

  “If I’m sick, that would make my appearance all the better,” Mari says. “You don’t mind taking on your father?”

  Montana laughs. “That makes me feel all better.”

  “Your grandmother’s pretty sick, huh?” Montana and Trey stand beside her car in front of Trey’s house.

  “Yeah, pretty sick.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” he says. “She doesn’t deserve this. It is an ugly way to go.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “You could go to bed with me.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows.

  “Anything else?”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Montana smiles and pecks him on the cheek. “We’ll see.” She slides into the driver’s side of her car, clicks her seat belt, and squeezes his hand through the open window.

  When Montana opens the door three minutes before her curfew, she spots Tara’s suitcase sitting near the wall to the right. Her mother sits at the kitchen table, head in hands. Her father is nowhere to be seen.

  Her mother doesn’t look up as Montana enters the kitchen. “I can’t do it, Montana. She has to go back.”

  “What happened?”

  “She doesn’t want to be here. Whatever I tell her not to do is what she does. Her promises don’t last a day. She’s into everything. Nothing is private. It’s like she has to know everything that’s going on. The more I try to be her mother, the more she fights me.”

  “So you’re giving her away?”

  “I called the social worker, said I needed to take Tara back to the therapist. I guess I sounded more upset than I thought. Your father heard me from the other room, snatched the phone out of my hand, and told the social worker to come get her.”

  “But she’s still here, right? They didn’t come.”

  “She’s in her room.”

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He’s in our room.”

  “Mom, you’re not going to give her up.”

  “I have no choice. I tried to back out, and your father said he wouldn’t hear another word about it. That was it. I picked up the phone to call the social worker”—her voice cracks—“he raised his hand to—”

  “To what? That bastard.”

  “I don’t think he would have. It’s been a long time.”

  “Then tell him too bad,” says Montana. “Why does he get the last word? He didn’t want her in the first place. You were the one who brought her here.”

  “There’s nothing I can do, Montana. He won’t budge.”

  Under her breath, Montana says, “He’ll budge if you make it worth it.”

  “I hope I didn’t hear what I think I heard.”

  Don’t turn it back on me. “How does he always get his way?”

  “Your father is the breadwinner, dear. He’s the reason we have all this.”

  “So what if he died?”

  “He’s not going to die.”

  “You’re probably right. No such luck,” Montana says. “But he could. What if he did?”

  “Don’t be foolish. There’s insurance, and I would get a job. We’d get by.”

  “That’s my point. He works out in the world and you work here, and you work just as hard as he does. Shit, taking care of me is a full-time job. What if you told him Tara was staying and if he didn’t like it he could go?”

  Her mother hasn’t, and wouldn’t, consider that.

  “I’m sorry, Montana. They’re picking her up tomorrow.”

  Montana stands. “I hate you.” She whirls and walks out of the room.

  “Hey, little sis.” Montana stands in the doorway to Tara’s dark room.

  “They’re givin’ me away,” Tara says.

  Montana moves in, sits on the side of the bed. “What did you do?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Was nothin’ poop related?”

  “Maybe. Prob’ly.”

  “Tara, why do you keep doing that?”

  Tara buries her face in the pillow and starts to cry. “I get mad,” she says.

  “I know, but when I get mad, I scream and call names and kick things,” Montana says. “I don’t crap in secret places. Remember, we talked about this.” She wants Tara to say it.

  “They won’t let me take care of nothin’,” she says. “Greg messed up our family. He always got mad and didn’t want to be waked up. You know what always happened with him? He didn’t know the rule about no hitting. He should have to sit on the bed when he hurts me. He’d be there a long time. I wish I could have a great dad, like a new dad. He’d be nice to me. He wouldn’t fight with my mom and me. He’d love us. Greg hit me and put me in the room. He locked Norman in the closet. Norman is better off with Grandma because she knows how to not hit him. It was hard for my mom and Greg. They would fight and then I’d have to be the boss and try to stop them. My mom would put methamphetamine in her or dope an’ beer an’ I’d take care of her. I think about her all the time. Where is she? Who’s takin’ care of her? I get scared nobody’s takin’ care of her. So I get mad an’ then I’m poopin’ someplace.”

  Tara isn’t even poopin’ on the Wests. She’s poopin’ on people she hasn’t seen in months. She’s doing what Montana did all those years ago, and still sometimes does; aching for that mom, that first mom; the one none of us sheds completely. She scoops Tara up; holds her to her chest.

  Tara sobs. “They’re givin’ me away.”

  Montana holds and rocks her. No, by God, they are not givin’ you away. If they give you away, they’re givin’ me away. She lets Tara cry herself to sleep before tiptoeing out and back to the kitchen.

  “I won’t let you do it, Mom.”

  “Montana, it is done. I don’t want to hear another word. Your father—”

  “Fuck my father,” she says, and her mother stands and slaps her face.

  “And fuck you!” she screams. “If she goes, I go!” And even louder. “YOU HEAR ME, DADDY? IF SHE GOES, I GO! You guys don’t even know what’s wrong with her!”

  The quick, heavy pounding of Maxwell West’s shoes on the stairs is followed by his appearance in the kitchen doorway, the vein in his forehead pulsating. “What’s going on down here? What is the matter with you? Did I hear you say what I think you said?”

  Montana stands defiant. “You heard what you heard. What makes you God? At home you take in a little girl, and when the going gets tough, you dump her. I can’t get published in my own school newspaper because the big almighty president of the school board who happens to be my dad will back up the gutless idiots who run that place. Well, that’s fine. I’ll write stupid articles about the football team and the prom and what horrible pressure is put on us by college entrance testing. You can be the fucking power-freak-monger out in the world all you want. Out there it just makes people hate you. But you throw a kid away and you’re breaking something that doesn’t get fixed. You know I’m right, and you don’t care. But if you get rid of Tara, I go with her!”

  Maxwell’s voice goes soft and dangerous. “You listen to me, young lady. You may talk like that in front of your friends, but I will not have you talking like that in my house.”

  Montana’s eyes narrow, and she grits her teeth. “You’re about to ruin a little girl’s life and all you care about is me saying fuck?” She turns to her mother. “You know what Tara said to me? She said she needs you to make her mad. So she can be mad. She needs
you to let her feel the way she feels instead of trying to control her. Nobody has any control around here, and you know why? Because he has it all. I had to turn into a bitch to survive, and tell you what, Mom, you better do the same. You better stand up to him or you’re going to shrivel up and die.”

  “Montana…”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “You want to know why Tara’s going back?” Maxwell asks. “Because I swore I would never again go through what I went through with you. Do you know how close we came to giving you up?”

  “I know how close you are right now,” Montana says. “I’ll be eighteen in three weeks. If I come home from school tomorrow and Tara isn’t here, I’m gone. And I will spend the rest of my time in this stinking town getting even with you. I promise I will.”

  “You leave and you’ll get nothing from us,” Maxwell says. “There will be no money for college, there will be no allowance, there will be no car, there will be no nothing.”

  “If you give her up, I wouldn’t take a bag of Cheetos from you.”

  “You’d be smart to go to your room before you say something you can’t take back. This conversation is over.”

  Montana turns back to her mother, who sits silent, staring at the table. Montana kneels in front of her. “When you guys go to bed tonight and ask each other if I’ll really do it, I’m telling you, my word is gold. I will take my stuff, and I will hate you for the rest of my life.”

  She stalks to her room.

  When Montana sees Tara standing defiant in that corner, she’s looking straight into history. She knows no matter how Tara tries, when she feels like that, it goes one way; a handful of poop where it doesn’t belong. The only explanation is, “I get mad.” What’s happening to Tara now might as well be happening to her, and Maxwell West has put himself in her sights. It boils down to the Maxwell Wests of the world, from blocked newspaper articles to “You are not going out with Trey Chase” to “If you leave here you won’t get a thing” to a throwaway six-year-old girl. She visualizes her mother sitting at that table, defeated, and she wants to slap her into the next county.

  It’s everywhere. Remington and Holden are simply Maxwell Lite; second and third verse, same as the first. If she takes them on, she ends up at the school board meeting, where he wields the gavel. But what the hell. Why not? Mari was right; you don’t have to win.

  “You can stay at my place if you want,” Trey says. The two stand next to Montana’s locker.

  “Right. I’m going to stay at your place after you’ve already propositioned me.”

  “Listen, the safest place in the world for you, if you don’t want me in your pants, is at my grandmother’s place. I’d run into two-hundred-thirty-pound linebackers all day before I’d let her catch me getting birthday suited up with a girl in her house.”

  “I was going to ask Dr. Conroy….”

  “She’s a teacher. She’ll have to get permission from your parents, or go through some legal bullshit to make it cool, and in the end, Maxwell West gets his hooks into it. A lot of work for a place to crash.”

  “You sure she won’t mind?”

  “You got a cell phone?”

  Montana pulls it out of her purse, drops it in his extended hand. He dials. “Grandma…Trey…I know, but you answered anyway…. You’re right, it could have been a telemarketer. You could have bought me something cool. Listen, would it be okay if Montana stays with us for a while?…I don’t know, a while…No, no, none of that…Yup, the room farthest from mine…”

  He holds the cell against his leg. “You’re not on the run, are you?”

  Montana shakes her head.

  Into the phone: “Nope, Grandma, she’s just leaving home, and she’s close enough to eighteen, by the time they got it sorted out…All right, she’ll probably come over after school. I’ll see you after practice.”

  “Reservation for one at the Hotel Mary Jane,” he says, and hands Montana back her cell.

  Dr. Conroy waits in Principal Remington’s office. He will be returning from lunch presently. She has ten minutes before the bell and feels the urge to get this issue into the open. He will be angry, or at least petulant. They’ve been through this, but Montana wants one more shot and is willing to face her father at the school board. She expects him to lay the blame one step above him, so she will have this meeting twice today; once with Mr. Remington and once with Dr. Holden. The answer will be the same, and she will request time at the next school board meeting. Holden will say the school board is drowning in business, and Dr. Conroy will say she will be more than happy to wait till the end of the meeting but they should probably schedule a good bit of time because there will likely be students present. Holden will threaten; Dr. Conroy will remind him she has tenure and is doing this by the numbers. At some point within a month, they will have a hearing on Montana West’s article on medical marijuana.

  Ah, public education.

  “Hey, Trey, could you take me over to Social and Health Services during lunch?”

  “You can get a better sandwich at Subway,” Trey says, turning to shove his backpack into his locker, “but sure. You applying for Social Security?”

  “Huh-uh,” Montana says. “I’m gonna try to find my little sis. Mrs. Crummet—she’s Tara’s social worker—said she’d be happy to talk with me.”

  “A social worker will talk to a kid?”

  “That’s what they do, dummy.” She punches him playfully on the shoulder. Trey has kept his promise to his grandmother to stay away from Montana’s room and to refrain from openly obvious manipulations to get her out of her clothes. Montana has failed to do the same, however, and they are in danger of creating a seriously malevolent grandma. So far, they’ve been more cautious than Mari’s been vigilant.

  “You think they’ll let you see her?”

  “It depends on how she’s doing in her new placement,” Montana says. “If things are going smoothly they won’t, but if she’s the same toilet on wheels she was at our place—at the Wests’ place—they’ll let me see her in hopes it will calm her down. It’ll be up to the family. Hey, I know this system inside out. I operated undercover for years.”

  “Did a little stint myself,” Trey says.

  “Serious?”

  “You notice there’s a generation gap between me and my grandma. Grandma says she played it way too loose with Mom.” He laughs. “It’s taken my family a good long while to learn to control all the uncontrollable substances Grandma got into. My mom was like, all messed up when she had me, and I was born with a positive meconium drug screen. You know what that is?”

  “Sure do. It means your momma was treating herself as your bong, getting you high before you ever saw the light of day.”

  “I didn’t lose her, though, like you did,” Trey says. “We both got placed with Grandma, and when Grandma finally placed my mother somewhere else, I was all for it.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “So I take my anger out on linebackers and you take yours out in bed.”

  “Oh, ha! I’ll show you anger.”

  “She’s having a hell of a time,” Sandra Crummet says to Montana over the table in the interview room at the Department of Social and Health Services. “She’s bossing them around, wandering the house at night like a Village of the Damned kid. They had to put an alarm on her door. She’s chewing on the back of the couch. It’s only temporary, but frankly we’re not having much luck finding a foster-adopt. Tara comes with quite a résumé.”

  “Did you try to get my parents to reconsider?”

  Sandra chuckles and shakes her head. “Of course. The first two tries I got your father, who wouldn’t let me talk to your mother. He told me to stop calling because he forbade your mother to change her mind.”

  “The Great Forbidder.”

  “Anyway, I figured out his crazy work hours and got through to your mom, but I had zero luck. She said you were gone, too. Is that true?”

  “I told them Tara and I were a pack
age.”

  Sandra stares at her knees and shakes her head. “This system puts a lot of stress on folks. If it makes you feel any better, Tara keeps asking for you.”

  Tears well in Montana’s eyes. “It makes me feel worse.”

  Sandra pats her hand. “Well, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Listen,” Montana says. “Tell the foster parents to give her some things to be in control of. When she gets all bossy and shit, don’t just take everything away. It’s not personal. I’m telling you, once you’re like that, you’re like that. You can’t make it go away because people tell you it’s not good for you. Remember how you guys used to call me parentified?”

  Sandra laughs. “God, yes. You were the best four-year-old mom I ever saw. And when your adoptive mother would try to take all your ‘’sponsibilities’ away from you, you pooped in the dryer.”

  “Well, I’m still like that. God, Sandy, anybody pushes me around, I come at ’em like a banshee. I know that’s why I hate my dad so much.”

  Sandra smiles, throwing up her hands.

  “I’m not kidding you, Sandy. Tell the foster parents to give her things to do. And tell them not to worry if Tara makes them feel like shit. She feels like shit, and she needs the company.”

  “That’s not easy to explain,” Sandra says.

  “Want me to talk to them?”

  Sandra looks Montana up and down, from piercing to piercing to black jacket to waist chain to black pants. “Yeah. Maybe you can show them your worm tattoo while you’re at it,” she says. “No, dear, this is not a family who wants to hear from Batgirl.”

  “You know,” Trey says on the way back to school, “there’s this woman my grandmother plays poker with who’s raised at least a dozen foster kids. She doesn’t have any now, but she might go for one more, if Grandma lets her win once in a while.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yeah, you should hear some of the stories this woman tells. I listened to her one night when the game was at our place. Some of the kids she took in would make Tara look like Joan of fucking Arc.”

  “Wait. Wasn’t Joan of Arc crazy?”