T-Backs, T-Shirts, Coat, and Suit

  “Are you crazy? I can’t take a bite of it unless Bernadette okays it.”

  “I thought so,” Tyler said. “That aunt of yours has you spooked, don’t she?”

  Chloë tilted her head back, looked at him out of half-lowered eyes, flared her nostrils, slowly opened her fingers, and allowed the mushroom to drop from her hand.

  * * *

  When they returned to the house, Velma asked Tyler if he had had a nice walk, and Tyler nodded yes without taking his eyes off Bernadette. He squinched up his eyes as if to concentrate and seemed unable to look at anyone else.

  They had been back only a short time when Zack made an announcement that got everybody’s attention.

  “Marie’s quitting,” he said.

  Marie worked Talleyrand, the same as Bernadette, but she didn’t get the good spot.

  “Who’s going to take her place?” Bernadette asked.

  Wanda said, “I am. Velma here is taking over my highway route.”

  Daisy chose that very minute to get up, walk over to Velma, and growl. That deep-in-the-throat, quiet-but-threatening growl that was her specialty. Bernadette allowed Daisy to get in a few good ones before calling her back. Tyler moved from the chair to the sofa beside his mother as if to protect her.

  Wanda said, “I swear, Bernadette, that dog of yours is bewitched.”

  This time Tyler deliberately looked at Chloë and nodded ever so slightly. She didn’t understand, so she returned his look through half-lowered eyes and flared her nostrils again.

  * * *

  It was time for pizza.

  Bernadette asked what everyone wanted and then called in the wrong order. Chloë thought, A person who can remember which welder takes Sweet’n Low and which takes sugar and how many, can surely remember who wants pepperoni and who wants peppers. That is unless that person is upset. Daisy had known before anyone else. That was why she had growled at Velma.

  * * *

  Their guests went home immediately after eating, and Bernadette and Chloë were left with the mess. Working for Zack during the week was bad enough, but having to clean up after him on Sunday was the worst.

  Bad as Zack was, Tyler was even worse. He was so sure of himself. He was too smug by half. Chloë felt as grouchy as she did when she came home from a slumber party. Bernadette looked up from wiping the table, and without either saying a word, Chloë knew that Bernadette was feeling every bit as grouchy as she was, and they finished cleaning up the kitchen in silence.

  Bernadette said good-night and went to her room. Daisy followed.

  What had happened? When the party had started, they had both felt like one and three-in-one. When the party was over, they didn’t feel like it at all. Zack and Wanda, Tyler and Velma had not been company. They had been an invasion.

  Chloë went to her room and took out her stationery. If ever there was a time to write to Anjelica and Krystal, this was it. She would write one letter addressed to both of them and tell them about the blond teenaged boy she had met. It would be easy to leave out the buckteeth, the bad grammar, and the parts of the conversation she didn’t like. She thought about the crazy parts of the conversation that she had had with him and decided not to write a letter after all.

  Instead she wrote a list.

  She wrote a list of words: falcon, tercel, familiar, hood. Then she went into the living room, where Bernadette had her bookshelves, and she looked up each one of those words.

  She had suspected that she and Tyler had not been talking about the same things, but it was not until she had looked everything up that she fully understood that falcons, tercels, hoods, and familiar meant one thing to him and something entirely different to her.

  She had been talking about cars and auto mechanics.

  He had been talking about birds and witchcraft.

  To people in Ridgewood, a Falcon is an automobile manufactured by Ford, and a Tercel is an automobile manufactured by Toyota. Bernadette had once owned a Tercel, which she had traded in for her Firebird. It was the engine under the brightly painted metal hood of her Firebird that Bernadette knew very well; that was what Bernadette was familiar with.

  To Tyler a tercel (spelled with a small t) was a male falcon, a kind of hawk, that people train to kill prey. Trained falcons (small f) wear a hood to blindfold them when they are not hunting.

  To Tyler a familiar meant a witch’s spirit that took an animal form. Birds and dogs were often thought to be witches’ familiars.

  Once again Chloë went over her conversation with Tyler. Tyler was worried about Bernadette’s being a witch. What a joke it would be to convince him that she was. She almost laughed out loud. It would be easy. She remembered the small thrill of satisfaction she had felt as she had watched Tyler edge closer to his mother when Daisy had growled at her. She would multiply that feeling a hundred times by watching him squirm as—little by little—she convinced him that Bernadette was a witch, and that she, Chloë, was learning her powers. It would be fun.

  And it would be easy. For one thing, there was a lot about Bernadette that was mysterious. The way she didn’t allow anyone in her room after she went to bed. The way she never went swimming even though she knew how. The way she knew all about wild food. The way she made Daisy so obedient. Tyler had said, “That aunt of yours has you spooked, doesn’t she?” He was halfway to believing already.

  Chloë smiled to herself. At this very moment, he was probably wondering whether Daisy or the Firebird was Bernadette’s familiar. Once he found out that the Firebird was a car and could not be a familiar, it would be easy to convince him that Daisy was. After all, there was a lot about Daisy that was mysterious. The animal did seem to have a sixth sense about things. Look at the way she had growled at Velma. Daisy would help her convince Tyler.

  Chloë took notes on everything she looked up. She returned the encyclopedias to the shelf under the window seat and thought, How amusing it will be to teach this beardless wonder who was so good at “learning stuff.” He won’t be so smug when he learns that he has been made a fool. So he had touched two poisonous snakes. So what! So he could swim. So what! So he could swim backwards and Rollerblade. He’s just “got a real talent for learning stuff.” So what!

  That’s when the idea hit her. She knew what she would do with the fifty dollars. She would buy two pairs of Rollerblades. A set for Bernadette, and a set for her. She would learn how to Rollerblade and then invite Tyler to the dollar-movie parking lot. She was glad she had not told him about it.

  The more she thought about buying Rollerblades, the more she liked the idea. Rollerblades would make the perfect hospitality present. She wished she could go to a store, buy the skates, and surprise Bernadette, but there was nothing within walking distance of the house except the field where the mushrooms grew.

  Since she couldn’t surprise Bernadette with the skates themselves, she decided to compose a gift certificate and surprise her with that.

  Chloë took a fresh sheet of stationery and made up a gift certificate. She used a book for a straight-edge and printed everything in her best letters, signed her full name in cursive, even though using all four of her names caused her to almost run out of space. She drew a decorative border around the edge. Having black ink made it look very professional. As a matter of fact, she thought her certificate was suitable for framing. It took over an hour to finish, but having it take so long made it seem even more worthwhile.

  She wished she could present it to Bernadette right away, but she knew that this was hardly an emergency, and she had been reminded every night that once Bernadette had gone into her bedroom and closed the door, she was not to be disturbed. She could slip it under the bedroom door, but she wanted to see Bernadette’s face when she got it, so she took it into the kitchen. She thought of putting it on the refrigerator door with a magnet, but she didn’t want to cover up even the tiniest corner of her work, so she propped it up by the Cuisinart.

  She returned to her room and tucked the pages of research notes und
er the lining of the top drawer of her dresser.

  She lay between the clean, crisp sheets and decided that she could deal with Tyler. From not caring if she never saw him again, she couldn’t wait for their next meeting.

  Chloë jumped out of bed the minute she heard footsteps in the hall. She ran into the kitchen, retrieved the gift certificate, and intercepted Bernadette on her way to the bathroom.

  Bernadette had to go back to her bedroom to get her glasses before she could read it, but she looked pleased, really pleased, when she did. “I see I have to cash this in soon,” she said. “We’ll stop at the store right after work.”

  * * *

  Velma was trouble from the get-go. That first morning she and Wanda came to work together, they each wore jeans that fit as tight as cuticle and that Chloë knew from experience would be hot to work in. The shirts they wore were cool: tight but sleeveless. On a man you would call them muscle shirts but on Wanda/Velma, it wasn’t muscle that showed. The women drivers—except for Bernadette—stared as hard as the men. Zack stared and came out of his office three times that morning. He laughed and thwacked his leg and rolled his eyes and said that he was doing his part to keep Florida beautiful.

  Talleyrand was busy that first day that Wanda took over for Marie, so by the time they drove out to the Ritz, Chloë was hot and tired and anxious to finish up so that they could buy their Rollerblades.

  When Bernadette pulled up to the Ritz, one of Zack’s vans was already there, parked where the bulldozers were digging the pool. “Chloë,” Bernadette said, “we have trouble, and its name starts with a T.”

  Chloë stuck her head out the window as they circled the site, but she couldn’t see the driver. As soon as Bernadette stopped, Chloë hopped down from the van and started toward the workers, who were standing three and four deep, lifting their arms over the crowd, either to give the driver money or take supplies from her. There was so much laughing and jostling going on, no one even noticed that Chloë had wormed her way to the center of the half-circle that fanned out from the van.

  There was Velma.

  Velma did not notice Chloë. She was laughing and reaching a hot dog high over her head. She was wearing a bathing suit that covered as little as it left to the imagination.

  When Chloë returned to the van, she said, “It starts with a V, not a T. It’s Velma.”

  Bernadette asked, “What was she wearing?”

  Chloë replied, “Almost nothing.”

  Bernadette said, “That almost nothing is called a T-back.”

  Chloë said, “I didn’t think real people wore them. I had only seen them in magazines or on calendars before.”

  Bernadette said, “I expected it. The minute she walked through the door of my house, I knew that my life would change. When Zack announced that Marie was quitting, I felt a sudden chill go through me.”

  Chloë said, “Daisy felt it too. Remember how she acted? You had to call her into the kitchen and tell her to sit.”

  Bernadette nodded. “When I went to bed, I lay there thinking about Velma, and I knew what she was going to do. I knew she would wear a T-back. And this is only the start.”

  She backed the van out to the road. They never found out if Velma noticed that they had been there. They knew the workmen hadn’t.

  On the way to the commissary, Chloë asked herself, How many women could predict that someone would wear a T-back? And how many dogs could read minds as well as mushrooms? They were going to make it very easy to convince Tyler that Bernadette was a witch and that Daisy was her familiar. Chloë could hardly wait to get good on Rollerblades, so she could make a date with Tyler.

  They went to two sporting-goods stores, one very large toy store, and a Walmart. Comparison shopping proved that fifty dollars hardly paid for a single pair of Rollerblades.

  Bernadette reached into her pocketbook and took out a check. It was made out to Chloë. “Your paycheck,” she said. “I forgot to give it to you.”

  “Is this minimum wage?” Chloë asked.

  “You betcha,” Bernadette answered and checked her watch. “We have time to stop at the bank and cash it if you want. Do you know how to endorse a check?”

  Chloë said that she knew how to use a credit card and didn’t think endorsing a paycheck—even if it was her first—could be any more difficult.

  It was necessary to go to the bank where Bernadette had her account so that she could verify Chloë’s signature. They returned to the sporting-goods store and bought what the clerk called “in-line” skates. He tried to talk them into buying wrist and elbow guards, knee pads and helmets, but Chloë was firm. She would not buy them. She told him that she was a minimum-wage earner and didn’t have money for extras. Furthermore, she did not believe that beginners needed to have all that equipment weighing them down.

  The clerk said that beginners especially needed the extras for protection, but Chloë wouldn’t buy either his argument or his equipment. When he went back into the stockroom, she told Bernadette that he was probably working on commission and would try to sell them anything just to raise his sales volume. “That’s what it means to get paid commission,” Chloë said, “the more money you take in, the more money you make.”

  Bernadette said, “Fancy that. You don’t suppose that that is in any way related to the way I do business, do you?”

  Chloë only meant to show Bernadette that she was an experienced consumer and that all those trips to the mall with Anjelica and Krystal had taught her something. “You told me that the customer is always right. Right here, right now, we are the customers, and we’re not buying any extras.”

  * * *

  Rollerblading looked easy but wasn’t. It was closer to ice-skating than it was to roller-skating. A person’s ankles can turn in on Rollerblades as easily as they can on ice skates. The lot was larger than it appeared to be when they’d been watching from the sidelines. Twice around and a beginner’s ankles can hurt a lot.

  Chloë knew she was getting a blister on the outside edge of her big toe. Not that she had ever before had a blister there, but she knew this was a big one. Probably huge. Probably on both big toes. Forget the sweat. Forget the frizzies. All she could think about was pain. She was experiencing major pain. She made it over to the curb and sat down.

  She searched for Bernadette all over the beginners’ side and couldn’t find her. She stood up and scanned the crowd on the advanced side. There was Bernadette. Skating backwards! Having a wonderful time. It was not fair that someone who was forty-five years old could be that good that fast.

  Chloë sat down again and buried her head in her hands. She had to rethink Rollerblading. She was not asking to be athletically gifted. She had hoped that Rollerblading would give her a chance to have another encounter with Tyler, but now she would settle for a little gain without pain. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about her toes and wished as hard as she did when she blew out her birthday candles that Bernadette would stop. Stop.

  It was getting dark. They hadn’t turned on the lights in the parking lot yet. Peco had almost no twilight. The light can be good one minute and bad the next, and when Chloë next looked up, it seemed to her that night as dark as her thoughts had descended. She stood up, spotted Bernadette, and frantically waved. She finally caught her eye, and Bernadette started skating toward her.

  Her wishes were about to be answered.

  In the dusk it was hard to tell where the curb ended and its shadow began.

  Bernadette tripped.

  As she fell forward, she threw her arms out in front of her to break her fall. It was the worst thing she could do.

  Other skaters who were nearby helped her up.

  Chloë whipped across the parking lot and got to Bernadette just as they helped her into the Firebird. Bernadette sat in the driver’s seat with her feet sticking out the door. Her knees were skinned, but it was her wrist that was hurting. It was already beginning to swell. One of the skaters asked Bernadette if she could drive.
br />   “It’s my left wrist,” she said. “I hardly need it for driving.” Her mouth was so dry, her upper lip stuck on her teeth as she spoke. Once she was behind the wheel, she said, “We have to make a stop at the hospital emergency room.”

  “Is it broken?” Chloë asked.

  “How am I supposed to know? Isn’t that what X rays are for?”

  “Are you hurting real bad, Bernadette?”

  “Not as bad as you’re going to hurt if you ask one more dumb question.”

  * * *

  When they got to the hospital, Bernadette asked Chloë to fill out the forms for her. There were enough questions to fill volume Garrison-Halibut of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chloë copied Bernadette’s social security number from a card she found in her wallet and consulted with Bernadette about allergies and childhood diseases before checking the boxes on the forms.

  Bernadette closed her eyes and rested her head against the emergency-room wall. “Any life-threatening illnesses?” Chloë asked.

  “Not at the moment,” Bernadette said, “but if they don’t get here soon, I may threaten a few lives myself.”

  Chloë began to write and then asked, “How do you spell penumbra?”

  Bernadette answered, “P-E-N-U-M-B-R-A.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Chloë said. She wrote a while longer and then asked, “Is gratuitous spelled with an i before the o-u-s? It means unnecessary.”

  Bernadette said, “I know what it means. G-R-A-T-U …” and then she yelled, “What are you doing?”

  “They asked for a description of the accident.”

  Bernadette said, “You don’t have to try for a Pulitzer Prize, Chloë. Just give them the facts.”

  “Those are the facts. If the light had been good, there would have been no penumbra, and you wouldn’t have fallen gratuitously.”

  Bernadette closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. She held her injured wrist with her healthy hand. Without opening her eyes, she said, “It wasn’t your fault, Chloë, no matter what you were wishing.”