“He’s a jerk,” I said defensively, hearing that judging tone in my own voice, the one I recognized from Lydia Catrell talking to my mother all those mornings.
“He was hoping I’d just lose interest.... He didn’t even have the guts to call me and tell me he had a new girlfriend. He had his mom lying to me, Haven.” She made little hiccuping noises, bumpy sobs. I kept patting her shoulder, trying to help. “God, I was so stupid. I was going to go up there.”
“He’s an asshole.” I could see Rick, someone I didn’t know, lurking at the end of a telephone line, mouthing the words I’m not here. I hated Rick, now.
“It’s so awful,” she said, resting her head against my shoulder and sobbing full strength, while I cupped my arm around her head and held her close. “It hurts.”
I’d never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I’d only watched as others weathered it; my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat curbside with my best friend, Casey Melvin, and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There’s only so much you can do, in these situations. We sat there together in our neighborhood and Casey cried, a short distance down from halfway.
Chapter Eleven
We were down to three days and counting. Things around the house were getting crazy, with the phone ringing off the hook and travel arrangements for the incoming relatives and Ashley having a breakdown every five seconds, it seemed. My mother and Lydia had set up head-quarters at the kitchen table, with all the lists and plans and last-minute invitations covering the space entirely. I had to sit on the counter, with the displaced toaster oven, just to get my Pop-Tart in the morning.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world went on, although it was hard to imagine how. Casey was still suffering, having locked herself in her room and refused to eat for three days, until her mother took her shopping, got her hair permed, and signed them up for another tap-dancing class. Life would go on for Casey, with Rick retreating to just pictures in a photo album.
My father and Lorna had returned from a News Channel 5 promotional trip to the Bahamas, where they’d accompanied a group of viewers who’d won a contest involving sports and weather trivia. My father came back with even more hair, a sunburn, and a set of shell windchimes for me, which I hung outside my bedroom window, where it clanged all night until Ashley claimed it was ruining her sleep and demanded I take it down. I did, but I resented it. I resented everyone lately.
It had started soon after Ashley’s bachelorette party and Casey’s dumping. It was a feeling I’d woken up with one morning, a kind of whirring in my ears and an instability of the world, like things were coming to a head. I faced myself in the bathroom mirror and looked into my eyes, wondering if I would see something new in them, something crackling and different. I felt strong, as if every muscle in my body was taut and lean, not creaky and bony anymore. As if I was growing into myself, finally. I heard things differently, the sound of the neighborhood and the cicadas at night and my own breath, even and full. Everything was heightened, from the blazing blue of the sky to the feel of slippery grass under my feet to the sound of my mother’s voice calling my name from across a room. It was both scary and exhilarating, unsettling and amazing.
The day before Ashley’s wedding was also the first day of the Lakeview Mall Hot Summer Deals Sidewalk Sale, which basically consisted of all the stores taking all the junk they couldn’t sell and putting it outside, slashing the prices in half, and then watching as shoppers gobbled it up. I had to be at work extra early, at seven A.M., to help put one half of every ugly pair of shoes from the storeroom on a table out front, where it was my job to stand and watch for shoplifters while my boss, Burt, shuffled back and forth to the storeroom to find the mates for the shoes on the table. It was loud and crazy in the mall, with people digging through all the merchandise and pushing up against me in their mad dash to find a bargain. But even in all this craziness—with Burt saying in my ear that my sock quota was low so Push Socks, Push Socks and the mall Muzak blaring Barry Manilow and all the hands, all colors and sizes, grabbing at the shoes in front of me—I felt that eerie calmness, that floating feeling, that had followed me for the last few days. It was like I was just above it all, hovering, and nothing affected me.
Out of the blue, a woman grabbed my hand and said, “You call twenty bucks for a kid’s shoe a good deal?” She was wearing a bathing suit with shorts over it, flip-flops, and a big straw hat.
I just looked at her.
“Do you?” She picked up a shoe, one that was yellow and blue and pink, with what looked like Smurfs on it. “I’ll give you ten bucks for this pair. If you have a five and a half.”
“I don’t know . . . ,” I said, looking for Burt, who had disappeared for a bathroom break a good twenty minutes ago. “We don’t really bargain on shoes.”
“You don’t, huh?” she said in a nasty voice, like I’d been rude to her. “Well, that’s just fine. Just find me a five and a half, would you?”
Burt appeared next to me now, smelling like the hand soap we used in the bathroom. “Is there a problem here, Haven?”
“Five and a half,” the woman said loudly, shaking the shoe in my face. I watched the Smurfs blur past, blue and pink and yellow.
“Find the woman a five and a half,” Burt said to me, prodding me in the back with one hand. “I’ll deal with the table for a while.”
I went back in the storeroom and climbed up to the discount shelf, looking for the ugly Smurf shoe. There was a six and a four but no five and a half, of course. I went back out to the table.
“Sorry, it’s not in,” I said.
“It’s not in,” she repeated flatly. “Are you sure?”
“I am indeed,” I said, realizing that I was being a smartass and not really caring. Burt was looking at me. I felt that whooshing in my ears, that powerful evenness. I imagined myself floating down the Lakeview Mall, tied to nothing, the silk of those banners brushing my shoulders.
“Haven, perhaps you can interest the woman in another style,” Burt said to me quickly.
“I want this one,” the woman said, shaking the shoe in front of my face again. Behind her, someone else was saying, “Miss? Miss? I need some help with this shoe, please?”
“We don’t have that shoe in, ma’am,” I repeated to her in a singsong voice, my customer-pleasing smile stretching across my face.
“Well, then, I think I should get another shoe at the same price.” She put one hand on her hip and I watched as the fabric of her bathing suit scrunched, folding over itself at her stomach. People just shouldn’t wear beach attire in public. “It’s only fair.”
“Ma’am, it’s a sale item, we’re out of that size, and I’m sorry,” I said, but already my mind was drifting. Burt was busy untying a bunch of shoelaces and the people were all around me and the Muzak in the mall seemed louder, suddenly. I wondered if I was going to pass out, right there in the middle of the Hot Summer Deals Sidewalk Sale.
“Well, that’s just fine,” the woman snapped. I watched as she tossed the shoe at me. She meant for it to hit the pile probably, but it bounced off a stray saddle shoe in the bin and nailed me in the head, a direct Smurf hit. I was hot all of a sudden, the whooshing in my ears loud and calming, and I felt awake, my skin tingling.
She was walking away, flip-flops thwacking against the floor, as I grabbed the shoe, ducked around the table, and went after her. I could still feel where the shoe had hit me, but that wasn’t what spurred me on and made me rush through the crowd of bargain hunters, following the pudgy lady in the straw hat. It was something more, a giant mass of Ashley’s snide remarks and tantrums, of Lorna Queen’s tiny ears and my father’s new hair, of Sumner standing on our front lawn, abandoned, all those years ago. It was the tallness and Casey’s Rick and Lydia Catrell and Europe, and my mother standing in the doorway watching me leave for my father’s wedding. It was the whole damn summer, my w
hole damn life, leading up to this moment with this stranger in the middle of the Lakeview Mall.
“Excuse me,” I said loudly as I came up behind her, gripping the shoe in my hand so tightly that I could feel the plastic ends of the laces pressing into my palm. “Excuse me.”
She didn’t hear me, so I reached forward and tapped her shoulder, feeling the smooth rubberiness of the bathing suit beneath my finger. She turned around.
“Yes?” Then she saw it was me, and her eyes narrowed, nasty.
I just looked at her, not sure at all what words would come out of my mouth. We were in the middle of the mall now by the giant gumball machine where the ceiling is high and glass. The sunlight was pouring in across the center court, hot and so bright I was squinting. The noises and voices were loud and rising above me, pushing their way to the skylight and the world outside. People were rushing by and the banners were floating above me as I faced this woman, this stranger, every inch of me tingling, electric.
“You forgot this,” I said to her, in a voice that didn’t sound like me, and threw the shoe back at her, hard, and stood watching as it hit her square in the forehead, the same spot where it had hit me. Then it fell to the floor, bounced once, and landed upright, as if it was waiting for a little foot to wiggle into it.
She was stunned, staring at me open-mouthed. She had gold fillings on two back teeth. I noticed this offhand as the crowds pressed around us and the sun beat down and I was suddenly tired, sure I’d never make it the short distance back to the store.
“I’ll have you fired,” she snapped, squatting down to grab up the shoe, and then added on the way back up, “and I’m calling mall security and reporting this. This is an assault.” She looked around at the few people who had seen me throw a shoe at this woman, and pointed to each of them as she added, “Witnesses! You are all witnesses!”
Everyone was looking at me, suddenly, and the place was too bright, and so hot, and all I could see was her face and her open mouth, yelling. I spun around, reaching out like a blind person in the hot glare of that skylight, pushing people aside, and I began to run. I ran down the middle of the Lakeview Mall with those banners swishing overhead, seeing the shocked expressions of people as they jerked out of the way, yanking children and strollers aside. I could hear her yelling behind me, but I didn’t care, couldn’t think of anything as I burst out the main doors into the parking lot and kept running, my feet pounding the pavement. I wondered if this was how Gwendolyn felt, searching the streets for some kind of peace. If at fifteen she’d ever felt the same way, tall and lost, not fitting in or finding a place for herself, anywhere.
I was still running, nearing the edge of the parking lot that led to the road home, when I thought I heard someone—Sumner—yelling my name. I couldn’t stop, not even for him, as I took the turn and headed into my neighborhood, slowing my pace and breathing heavily, the wind swirling in my ears.
I found myself at the neighborhood park, still trying to figure out what had come over me. I walked past the swings and the jungle gym to what was called the Creative Playground, built by a bunch of hippie parents when I was in grade school. It was made of wood, with slides and hiding places, and tires stacked one on top of the other creating vertical tunnels. I crawled underneath the main slide and folded myself small, as small as I’d been in second grade when I first discovered this space. I barely fit now, my knees at my chin, but it was mossy and quiet and somehow right then it seemed like the perfect place to be.
I was fired, obviously. No more Push Socks, Push Socks. I took off my name tag and stuck it in my pocket, wondering what kind of charges would await me when I got home. I wondered if you could get arrested for an assault with a Smurf shoe at a mall. If I’d go to jail. If I could go home.
But soon I wasn’t thinking about that anymore, or about the woman or the Hot Summer Deals Sidewalk Sale. I leaned my head against the slippery wood behind me and thought of better times, of that summer in Virginia Beach. I thought about Sumner running through the sand, chasing a Frisbee as it flew over his head. About the way he made Ashley human and shrimp cocktail at the hotel restaurant and my father’s pink cheeks, his grinning as he slid an arm around my mother’s waist, pulling her close. I thought of Ashley’s high, singsong laugh and that ride down in the Volkswagen with beach music on the radio and the stars overhead, the summer so new with so many days left, each sliding into the next. I wished I could go back somehow and start it all over again, with me and Ashley by the curb waiting and listening for the putt-putt of the Bug to come around the corner. I’d live each of those days the exact same way, when I was no bigger than a minute. When my parents were still in love and Sumner held us all together, laughing, until the day Ashley sent him away without even thinking of what would happen once he was gone. No more laughing, no more drawing together from the opposite sides of the house, all coming together to Sumner’s voice, his laugh. I missed who we all were then. One summer and one boy, and suddenly things weren’t the same.
I walked home. I’d fallen asleep under the slide, dozing off in the mossy quiet, only to wake up confused, having forgotten where I was, the sun slanting down hot on my head. Some little boys were sliding down above me, their voices high and giggly, calling out to their father to watch. He was wearing sunglasses, reading a paper by the tire tunnel, and looked up each time they told him to. I waited until they were gone before I slipped out and unfolded myself to my true size.
I went into the house through the back door, hoping to avoid seeing anyone; but of course there was another power meeting going on at the table, with Lydia and my mother hunched over the clipboard that seemed attached to my mother’s hand lately and Ashley sitting in the doorway that led to the living room.
“Well, obviously we’ll have to replan the whole wedding party,” my mother was saying as I stood on the other side of the glass, invisible. “We can’t have five ushers and four bridesmaids. Somebody’s got to go.”
“I’ve seen it done before,” Lydia said, tugging at her sequined shirt. “Four bridesmaids, three ushers. But it never looked right to me. You need symmetry in a wedding party. You’ve just got to have it.”
“I still cannot believe this,” Ashley grumbled into her hair, which was hanging down one side of her face. “I’m going to kill her, I swear.”
“There’s no time to think about that now,” Lydia said in her loud, brassy Floridian voice. “We can hate Carol later; now we’ve got to come up with some kind of a solution. Quickly.”
“Okay,” my mother said, flipping through some pages on her clipboard. “How’s this: we just find another bridesmaid. Ashley, you could ask one of your friends, right?”
“Mother,” Ashley said in that annoyed voice that I’d heard way too much of in the last six months, “the wedding is tomorrow.”
“I know that,” my mother said wearily.
“There’s no time to get a bridesmaid, get a dress, get it fitted.... We can’t do it. There’s no way.” Ashley picked at the fringe of her cutoffs.
“How about bumping an usher?” Lydia suggested. “There’s got to be somebody we can ask to bow out. For the sake of evenness.”
“We can’t throw someone out of the wedding,” Ashley said. “God, that would be so horrible. ‘Oh, thanks for renting the tux and everything, but we won’t be needing you. Get lost.”’
“Of course we wouldn’t say it like that,” Lydia said sullenly, and they all got quiet, their minds working this over.
I figured this was the best time of any to come in, so I headed straight across the kitchen, over Ashley in the doorway, and made a quick dash for the stairs.
“Haven?” My mother was already after me. I heard her pushing her chair away from the table, that familiar scrape, and then her footsteps coming down the hallway behind me. “Haven, I have to talk to you.”
I stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned to look down at her. She seemed very small. “What is it?”
“Well,” she said, starting
to climb up, step by step, “I got a strange call from Burt Isker. Did you have some sort of problem at work today?”
“No,” I said, turning back around and taking the rest of the stairs, then heading to my room only a few paces away.
“Whatever happened, we can talk about it,” she said quietly, still following me. I felt that stab of guilt, but pushed it away because I was tired of protecting her from my father, forgiving him for leaving us for the pregnant Weather Pet, giving Ashley free reign to hurt me because she was The Bride.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, and even as the words came out I knew the look I’d see if I turned around, the hurt like a slap spreading across her face. But I didn’t turn around, didn’t even stop walking, until I was in my room with my hand on the back of the door, closing it.
“Haven,” my mother said in a louder voice, trying to be stern, “we’re going to talk about this. If you’re accosting the customers and running out on your job, obviously something is going on that we need to discuss. Now I know it’s been hard this summer with the wedding, but this isn’t—”
“It’s not about the wedding. It’s not about the goddamn wedding or Ashley. For once this isn’t about her. It just isn’t,” I said, now looking at her face closely as it changed from authoritative to lost. And then I slammed the door in my mother’s face, so hard it shook the pictures in their frames on the wall of my room. I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door, waiting for me to open it, apologize, pull her close, and save her from everything just like I always did. But I didn’t. Not this time.
A few minutes later, as if conceding defeat, she just said, “Well, don’t forget your father is coming over. You told him you’d go shopping with him for a gift for your sister.” Her voice was soft, and she was trying to sound like she wasn’t upset. She waited another minute, as if this might bring me out, and then I heard her going slowly down the stairs.