Girl Unmoored

  “At least she will not be lazy like you,” M said touching her bump.

  I sat down with my milk and looked her straight in the eye, trying to find some nice words to kill her with, but before I could, my dad walked back inside slapping his neck. “Damn mosquitoes. That screen’s fine. I don’t know how they’re getting in.”

  Neither of us had touched our dinners, but my dad didn’t notice until he sat down and picked up his fork.

  “What’s going on? Apron? I asked you a question.”

  “Malus bonum ubi se simulat, tunc est pessimist,” I told him. Then I snuck a look at my palm, where I had written it. “Pessimus,” I corrected myself. A bad man is worst of all when he pretends to be a good one.

  My dad tightened his mouth. He glanced at M to see what her reaction was, but when he saw it was the same old blank one, he looked back at me. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t too late. M could leave and take that little whatever with her, but I hadn’t looked that sentence up yet.

  “Vos have orator satis,” he ordered me in a dark growl.

  But he was wrong—I hadn’t said enough.

  “Dad,” I said praying, my two hands smashed together in front of me. “Dad. You don’t get it. She doesn’t want a baby girl. She doesn’t want a baby. She hits it.”

  M’s face went stark white and her eyes flickered back and forth so fast she looked like a TV channel that lost its picture. My dad shook his head at me, mad tucked into every wrinkle. “Apron. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the night. Go to your room.”

  I stood. Yesterday, my Save the Seals pamphlets had finally arrived. The baby seal sprawled out next to its bloody stump of a mother on the cover had a better chance of surviving than me around here now.

  I spun away, but before I walked out, I turned back and saw M’s face, still as white as a ghost.

  When it got dark, I sat under my window and looked at the stars. Some of them were shiny, but most of them were dim: here one blink, gone another. I used to love looking at the stars, but now they looked old and used, like they should be swept up and thrown away.

  Later, I tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. My dad’s door was shut, but downstairs I heard him talking. At first I thought it was to M, probably eating a whole tub of ice cream while he rubbed her back, but then I heard him say, “You sure, Dr. Timmons? There’s no chance she can get it?”

  39

  Non si male nunc et olim sic erit.

  Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

  In the morning, when I woke up for the hundredth time since I had first fallen asleep, it was finally seven o’clock. All night long I had nightmares about M holding me down in murky water while my dad and Mike played four square outside on our newly paved driveway. And every time I woke up, dripping in sweat and lifting my head for air, I tried to keep myself awake so I wouldn’t have to go back to sleep and wake up again, remembering how my dad wouldn’t let me work at Scent Appeal.

  But morning was here to stay, you could tell by the birds.

  I walked over to the mirror and right when I lifted my pajama top up to check on my progress down there, the door opened and my dad stuck his head in.

  I pulled my top down. My dad blinked and disappeared, shutting the door quickly. A few seconds later, he knocked.

  “Come in,” I said trying to sound like he hadn’t just seen me naked.

  “Apron,” my dad said sitting on my bed. He looked like he had been up all night. His hair was going this way and that, and he had on the same green pants and dark blue polo shirt he had been wearing yesterday.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said wiggling his toes, cracking them around. “I’ve been thinking that maybe helping your friend Mike this summer would be a good idea.” He looked at me after he said it, but I clenched my teeth and told my heartbeat to knock it off, there were two sides to every story.

  “Why? What does she need now, free flowers?”

  My dad sighed, exhausted. Then he clasped his hands on the back of his neck and looked up. His elbows pointed at me. “Isn’t there any way we can all get along?”

  I looked at the floor, at his toes that had jumped on rocks and kicked in the ocean when he was still that freckle-faced boy in Grandma Bramhall’s picture.

  My dad stood.

  “So. If you help around here before you leave in the morning, and help with dinner when you get back, well, we can try it. All right?”

  I shrugged again. But secretly, every single amoeba sliding around in my stomach was blowing on party horns now. It might be an M-less summer after all.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He put his hand on my doorknob. “And no sharing their cups or using their forks,” he said pointing at me with his other hand. “I don’t care what Dr. Timmons says. I mean it, Apron.”

  Before he turned to walk out, I stepped forward. “Dad?” I asked quietly. “Does this mean Mike has it too?”

  My dad shook his head and said, “I don’t know, Apron. It might.”

  My heart dropped like an ice cube.

  My dad started to leave but then stopped. “Did anyone take The Boss?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Great,” he said. “So you can still visit him then?”

  I nodded.

  “Great,” he said again and closed the door.

  I dropped back down on my bed. Mike looked completely healthy, except for his crooked teeth. I thought about crawling under my sheets and pulling them over me for the rest of my life. But the truth was, it gets hot under there and I already knew that sooner or later you have to come up for air.

  So I finished getting dressed. I had a job to get to.

  On the way downstairs, I heard my dad mumbling something serious in his room. If he was talking to the doctor again, this time I wanted to hear it. I tiptoed closer, and peeked in, M was sitting on the bed with her back turned to him. He lifted his hand to her cheek, but she stiffened and turned farther away. Then my dad dropped his hand. Maybe I wasn’t the only one M hated around here now.

  40

  Si hoc comprehendere potes, grati as age magistro Latinae.

  If you can read this, thank a Latin teacher.

  The Scent Appeal door was unlocked. And when I opened it, Toby wheeled out from around the counter. He was dressed in all white again, with his knees still too close together.

  “Hey, kid,” he said.

  “Where are Mike and Chad?” The air seemed heavier than it should.

  “Mexico.”

  My chin dropped. “Mexico?”

  “Oh hey, little Mexico.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Down around there some place.” Toby waved his hand behind me, toward the street. “I don’t know exactly myself. They’ll be back by lunchtime and I’ll be here with you until then. Mike’s orders.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. Toby always made something in me hurt.

  I walked up to The Boss. “Hey, little guy.” He smiled and twitched.

  “I see we have a new friend,” Toby smiled. “Why are you getting rid of him if he doesn’t smell?”

  “I have to,” I said putting my backpack behind the counter, glancing around at all the new flowers Mike had brought in yesterday, still wrapped in newspaper. “Someone’s trying to kill him.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I know kar-ra-te!” he said, slicing the air with his hands.

  I looked down at Toby’s legs before I could tell myself not to, and then looked away before I could tell myself not to do that, either.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” he said smiling up at me, “of what I can do.” And without any warning, he spun around on one wheel.

  “Wow. How’d you do that?”

  “Practice.”

  I smiled, but then hesitated and pointed to the window. “Hey, Toby. They’re not going to fix it, are they?”

  “Probably jus
t get busted again if they did. That was the third time.”

  “What?”

  I didn’t want them to be gay anymore. I didn’t want people like Mrs. Perry to make a face and step away from them; I didn’t want Mike to shuffle his feet and clear frogs out of his throat whenever he talked to my dad; and I didn’t want Chad to go around making fun of himself so nobody else could. And most of all, I didn’t want them to have AIDS.

  “Yup,” Toby sighed. He had curly dark stubble on his chin and extra dark brown eyes. And his teeth were as white as his shirt.

  “Why don’t they ever do anything back? Like throw rocks at them?”

  He frowned. “Those two?” I shook my head with him. Chad might act mad a lot, but he wasn’t the violent type, and Mike wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  “Listen, little lady, the people who do this kind of thing think if we rub up against them, they’ll catch it. But there ain’t no catching what we got,” he smirked. It was the same thing Mike had said. “Either you is or you isn’t. And if you’re lucky, you isn’t.” Toby’s extra-brown eyes softened. “Life’s hard enough.”

  He looked at me while I thought about this: Being gay wasn’t any different than having freckles. Either you had them, or you didn’t. And if you’re lucky, you didn’t.

  “Well, I came out with these,” I said pointing to my cheeks.

  Toby’s face broke into a smile wide enough for me to see every single one of his teeth.

  “You’re all right,” he nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  “Come on, let’s get the show rolling. Mike says we gotta do exactly what you did yesterday. Said he made a bucket of dough in one afternoon.”

  “Really?” It must have been true. There were only a few of my arrangements left.

  “Yeah. Said some lady with a cat came in and bought the joint. Had a big bridge game or something.”

  “Was the cat on a leash?” I asked looking down at Toby.

  “Don’t know. Now the only thing you ain’t in charge of is the cash register, okay? That’s my gig.” I pretended to be mad. “Hey, man, better to be the beauty than the beast, trust me.”

  I shrugged, but I knew he was just being nice. People with red hair and freckles never play the beauty.

  “Do you know any Latin?” I asked him.

  “Nope.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said, unzipping my backpack and handing him the dictionary, “of what you might know.”

  And that was how we started: me at the sink, cutting and piling, and Toby in his wheelchair, reading Latin phrases and taking notes.

  “Hey, how about this: Amor Tussisque non celantur?” I waited for him to tell me the translation, but when I looked at him, he just stared back at me.

  “Toby, I’m not fluent.”

  “Oh. Mike said you were, like, a genius.”

  I told him my dad was, not me.

  “Love and a cough cannot be concealed.”

  I thought for a moment. “Get Better Soon!”

  “Right on,” Toby smiled, writing it down.

  And pretty soon we had a list of good ones, and a list of pretty good ones in case we got desperate. When we were done, I caught Toby staring at my hair. I put my hand up to brush down the frizz, but Toby said, “You know, I could layer it a bit, calm it down a little.” So I nodded and he smiled.

  I sat on the coffee table while Toby got the scissors. Then he wheeled up to me and started snipping. Red commas fell around my feet, lying there like Ms. Frane’s corrections. When he was done, Toby pushed back and said, “Go see,” pointing to the bathroom for Employees Only.

  I closed my eyes and turned on the light. Then I flipped open my eyes and sucked in a quick breath. I was still red and freckled with a Ping-Pong ball of a face, but I looked so much older—like my mom had died a long time ago now. I raised an eyebrow and watched it fall again. My mom was never going to see this new me. She was never going to see my shirt sprout, or my ears pierced, or even the braces that my dad said he would get me someday when he could swing it. I ran my fingers through my new hair and then I turned off the light and stepped outside.

  41

  Amor caecus est.

  Love is blind.

  By noon, when Chad and Mike walked in, the store was filled with bouquets. We had already sold six, plus two people said they would be coming back later.

  Mike held Chad by the arm when they walked in together, slowly. Chad was wearing dark sunglasses, but he still looked bad. He was so skinny now his pants were hanging off of him and the bones in his face made angles that weren’t supposed to be there. After Mike sat him down on the couch, Chad lay his head back and said, “Howdy, girlfriends, it looks fab,” without even taking his glasses off, or looking around. “In fact,” he said. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen it look in here. Except for last Christmas when we had the petal party, remember Mike?”

  But Mike had gone back outside. “Mike?” he said again.

  “He’s outside,” I told him.

  Chad picked up his head. “What do you know about that? Well, anyway. Remember how we dumped petals everywhere to look like snow?”

  “I do, man,” Toby said. “It was a white Christmas all right.”

  “A white Christmas. Yep, it was.”

  I kept hoping Chad would say something about my new hair. But he didn’t. Toby and I looked at each other for a second, thinking the same thing, that Chad’s voice was different—forced and too loud.

  Chad looked down at his hands. I thought I saw a new black splotch on one of them before he stuffed them both down his pockets. I turned away and started sifting through some willows.

  “So how you feelin’, guy?” Toby asked in a softer voice, wheeling closer to Chad.

  “Pretty good for a dead guy,” Chad said, smiling with half his mouth and shrugging.

  Toby snuck a quick look at me, then leaned in closer to Chad and put his hand on his knee. “How was Mexico, man? You get what you need?” Toby said this very quietly, but I could still hear it.

  Chad nodded. “Proud new member of the Hemlock Society,” he said, all the meanness gone now. “Yeah.”

  Toby looked down and no one looked at me, still poking at those willows, twisting them in between my finger and thumb, anything to look busy. I couldn’t imagine Chad being a member of any society, at least not like the ones Mrs. Perry was in.

  “When are you going to let me turn you into that blond sun-kissed surfer boy?” Toby asked Chad, trying to lighten the mood. “Today? I got time right now.”

  Chad dropped his head back against the couch. You could see his adam’s apple pop out, except it looked like a tennis ball. “I have three pieces of hair left, Toby, which one do you want blond?”

  Toby’s shoulders slackened and I picked up the bucket of willows and moved it to the other side of the table for no reason.

  “All right then,” Toby said loudly this time. “I’m off. I have bangs to pay and people to trim.”

  “Thanks, Tobes,” Chad mumbled, sinking down deeper into the couch.

  “No problemo. That kid’s a great boss. She understands the little people.”

  I smiled at Toby, thinking about Grandma Bramhall’s little people.

  Toby winked at me and I waved, then he rolled himself out the door. I wished he didn’t have to leave and I wished Mike would come back. It seemed like all Chad wanted to do was sleep right there in the flower store, not exactly good for business.

  I walked back behind the counter as quietly as I could and started writing out more Latin phrases on tags. Every time I looked up at Chad, he was sitting there, breathing quietly. Someone opened the door, and I started to say hello in a semi-whisper so they wouldn’t wake Chad, but when I looked up it was Mike, holding a bag from Portland Bagels, that lobster claw pinching the bagel.

  Mike looked over at Chad and then stopped.

  “Chad?” he said, a little panicked, dropping down next to him. “You okay? Want some bagel?”

  Cha
d groaned and sat up. “No,” he said. “Do I have to?”

  “One bite.”

  Mike fished around in the paper bag for the bagel and I walked toward them with some of the new tags. Maybe, if Chad was sitting up and eating, he might want me to read a few of them. I sat down on the coffee table, waiting. Mike winked at me and broke off a tiny piece of bagel and put it in Chad’s open triangle mouth, just another mother bird feeding her baby.

  “Good Chad,” Mike said. “Eat slow.” Which was exactly what Chad was doing, chewing so slowly it looked like he might fall asleep in between each one. Chad should have had an IV, I realized. But an IV cost a lot more than a bagel.

  Mike dug his hand in the bag for more, but Chad pushed it away. “No more,” he said.

  Mike sighed. “All right, but later.” Then he turned toward me, putting a smile on. “How’d it go this morning?”

  “What?” Chad said before I could answer. “Was I not there with you, all morning? Was I not there with you and the vajos?”

  Mike turned back to Chad. “I was talking to Apron, Chad,” he said softly.

  “She’s gone,” Chad said looking right at me.

  My skin stung. Something wrong was in the air.

  Chad kept looking straight at me. Then he pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and blinked. I looked at Mike and then back at Chad, waiting to see if I should say anything.

  “Apron?” Chad said.

  Mike nodded at me slightly.

  “Yeah?” My tongue was bark.

  “Oh,” Chad said squeezing his eyes tight and opening them wide again. “There you are. I didn’t see you before.”

  Mike stood and Chad put his sunglasses back on. “Let’s get you to bed, Chad,” Mike said, scooping him up like a new bride.

  “Bye, Apron,” Chad said, waving to the corner of the table.

  “Bye, Chad,” I said. But I didn’t stand up. I stayed there sipping in that wrong air, until it filled my lungs with knowing that something bad was about to happen.

  “He’s going blind,” Mike explained when he came downstairs, after the old man wearing red Nantucket pants like Mr. Perry’s had walked out the door with his new bouquet of loose French tulips and a tag that read, Qui me amat, amat et canem muem – Love me, Love my Dog.