The Music of What Happens, page 24
Betts talks about what it feels like when his mom calls his dad an idiot in front of him, and how it scares him because he’s a lot like his dad. And then he talks about how his dad probably deserves it, because he’s so mean to his mom.
“I don’t want to be that guy,” he says.
I nod and nod, and Zay-Rod says he gets that, and all I can think of is how it must totally suck to have that in the back of his brain and then hear from us, his best buddies, about how stupid he is all the time. That never even occurred to me, that he had feelings.
Zay-Rod talks about how he’s not over Hailie Thompson, who he dated sophomore year and was his first girlfriend. Also his first time.
“She was special. She’s the one I’ll always compare every girl to,” he says, and Betts says that’s like Shaundra Timmons for him.
All this time, I thought Zay-Rod was cool and emotionless about all girl stuff. Betts too.
They weren’t. Not even close. All this time.
“That’s why with Pam, I just … I don’t know.”
“What?” I ask. We haven’t asked what was up with Pam, and he sure didn’t tell. That’s more Betts’s thing.
“I like her, you know? She’s smart and funny and sexy. She could be, I don’t know. I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Sure,” I say.
“And what about you and Jordan?” Betts asks, and it actually takes me a second to put down the wall that comes up without me even trying. Like part of me is programmed to say, “Mind your business.”
“We’re taking it slow,” I say. “I mean. Not in terms of hanging out, but in terms of the other stuff.”
“Sex,” Zay-Rod says, and again, it’s like I flinch. I don’t want to flinch. So I swallow that response down and say, “Yeah. Sex.”
“You think you’ll be able to at some point?” Betts asks.
“I hope so,” I say, and I get this shiver in my arms. What if I never can? What if Kevin ruined me forever? I can’t think about that. I swallow it down.
“What do you think it would be like if I told the team? That I was gay? That I was dating Jordan?”
Zay-Rod says, “I don’t know. Everyone likes you. Why would that make it different?”
“Yeah,” Betts says. “It’s like, it shouldn’t matter. But with those guys, if you’re a dick they’d probably give you shit about it. But you’re the opposite of a dick.”
“A vagina?” Zay-Rod asks. We all laugh.
My mom knocks on the door. “What are you boys up to?” she asks.
“Just hangin’ out,” I say.
She smiles. “Up to no good if you ask me,” she says.
“I told them about what happened,” I say lightly.
She smiles again and she sits down on the floor. She’s still in her work clothes, and she crosses her legs. “Good,” she says. “Secrets are bad for the soul.”
Zay-Rod says, “We’re working on telling each other our secrets.”
“Good,” she says again. “Teach this boy how to talk, please. He’s just like his dad.”
“Mom,” I say.
She leans over and musses my hair. “Not in all ways. Just the talking one. And you’re getting better.”
We’re ready to go, with our DBA form and a working truck, by Friday morning. We pick it up from the repair shop on Baseline, and it’s still a steaming pile of crap, but at least now it drives when you put it into drive, and reverses when you want without so much shaking. And they put in a side window that we can see through, so we no longer have to drive with the side door open.
It puts us back a couple thousand, and after we pick up supplies at Safeway and head toward ASU for the lunch rush, Jordan tells me where we stand. We have about $1,200 in profits put away toward the $5,000 he owes. The deadline is next Friday.
“If all goes well and the truck holds up, we’ll make it. But we really have to push,” he says.
“Challenge accepted,” I say, and I mean it. We’re gonna make this happen.
We’re like a well-oiled machine once we get going. I flip chicken breasts like a pro, and Jordan has probably picked up his pace on lemonades and on the ordering situation by 100 percent since we started. The line just goes on and on for at least two hours, and I lose count of how much we’ve sold pretty quickly and get in that work zone where I’m loving the heat of the grill and the challenge of what we’re up against. Also I love that I’m doing it with Jordan. It’s amazing how we’ve known each other only a month, and I already feel like meeting him has changed everything for me. I can’t imagine my life without him.
“Two cayenne, one no tomatoes,” he calls back, and with my nongrilling, still-slightly-sore-from-punching hand, I reach back and fondle his thighs below the window, so no one can see.
“What’s that for?” he asks, smirking.
“Stuff,” I say, and his smirk grows.
“Don’t start what you can’t finish,” he says, and he flicks me on the upper thigh so I know he’s joking.
“I think you might be surprised what I can finish,” I say.
His smirk grows yet again.
We work both East Valley farmers’ markets on the weekend, we do lunches at ASU, and it’s about three in the afternoon on Wednesday, at the ASU lunch area, when Jordan takes an order, thanks the woman whose card he’s charged, and then pulls me toward the back of the truck.
His eyes are so unlike the eyes I remember when I first met him, when he was so miserable and his mom was struggling so much.
“We did it,” he says, and he jumps up and down.
“We did?”
“Taking out taxes, taking out your pay, even taking out the next shopping we’ll need to do? We have it. The back-mortgage payment. We did it!”
I hug him tight. “I’m proud of you, dude.”
“Me too!” he says. “Of us.”
“So what are we gonna do with all this cheddar?” I ask Max, as the Friday lunch crush dies down and we start our cleanup. I flash him the bills in my hand — maybe eight hundred more today. Every day has been at least solid in terms of profit, and this time it won’t go to back mortgage, since I handed my mom that money on Wednesday night, which felt amazing.
“I told you already. Don’t do that. Cheddar shit. That’s not you, and that’s not cute,” Max says, and I laugh, because, yeah. Not so cute.
“We should like take a vacation. Take off without the truck for a few days. We’ve earned it. Ever been to Rocky Point?”
He snorts. “That’s white people Mexico.”
“All I know is they have good shrimp there. Fresh right out of the ocean. Back when my mom was normal and my dad was breathing, he used to take us down there some weekends. All I remember is shrimp and tomato juice out of the can. That’s weird, right?”
Max rubs the middle of my back with his palms. “I still remember the first time I tried cream cheese. It was this time my dad and mom took me to Yuma, and we went to a bagel place, and Dad ordered me an everything bagel with cream cheese. I thought it was the best thing ever, and I thought it was only in Yuma.”
“That’s funny how we remember foods more than anything else.”
He squeezes my sides. “That’s why I love this. I mean, I love this for a lot of reasons, and I kinda saved your life and all.” I poke him in the ribs and he grins. “But I love that we make memories. Someone we’ve served in the last few weeks will remember what we made for them for the rest of their life. And we don’t know who or what, but I like knowing that.”
I think about how true it is, and how, before Max, I never gave two shits about strangers. Other people were kinda just there for me and Pam and Kayla to make fun of. Now I see people more. More clearly. Not all the time, maybe. But I’m gonna try. To remember that they’re basically like me, and I’m basically like them, and yeah. In a way I think Max taught me that.
“Me too,” I say. “I like how —”
“Is Lydia Edwards here?” asks a man in a green T-shirt, holding a clipboard. He’s standing at the order window. His shirt reads Tylers Towing. No apostrophe. Genius.
“No,” I say. “That’s my mom.”
“I gotta take the truck,” he says.
I laugh. “Um, no you don’t,” I say.
“But I do. There’s a title loan out on it and no one’s paid and we can’t reach her. It’s not yours anymore. Sorry.”
He walks over to the passenger side and attempts to board, and I lunge over and hold the handle so he can’t. “Wait. What?”
“I just told you. Not your truck no more. Tell you what. I’ll give you five minutes to grab your stuff and get out.”
“We’re not giving you anything until you show us proof,” Max says, and I nod my head, so glad he’s here with me.
The man shrugs, walks back over to the window, and hands the paper through to me.
I read it. Max looks over my shoulder and reads it too.
The amount listed is $27,500. My mom’s signature is at the bottom. The date is May twenty-seventh. Which would be the day after Max and I took over the truck. My stomach drops into my groin, and without even thinking, I crumple the piece of paper up and throw it at the guy.
He shrugs. “We have copies, so, yeah. Throw all you want, kid.”
I look at Max. My throat goes dry. In his eyes I see resignation, which is so not what I want to see. I want him to have the answers. I want him to point out to me that this is obviously a mistake, because it has to be. Why would Mom take a loan out and not tell me, and still make me work the truck and give her money to pay off the mortgage? If she took out a loan, she must have paid it already. Right? Right?
But his eyes look sad, and in them I understand something that is unfathomable to me, and I swallow, look around the truck, and say, “Let’s take the meat and cheese, at least. Can you call an Uber?”
He does.
As we watch Poultry in Motion get towed away, I feel almost nothing. I say nothing. Max reaches down and holds my hand, and he squeezes, but my hand remains limp. Everything feels numb.
We take the Uber back to my place. Mom is on the couch, eating Sweetos and watching an old cartoon. Tom and Jerry, I think. Tom is trying to bop Jerry over the head with a sledgehammer.
She doesn’t turn when I come in. She doesn’t stop chewing. She just yells, “Hey!”
I walk over and sit on the arm of the couch near her head.
“Mom,” I say softly.
The way I say it seems to impact her, kind of. Like she pretends to keep eating but she slows her pace, and I can tell I have her attention.
I repeat it. “Mom.”
“Jordan,” she says, a little edge in her voice.
“You took out a loan on the truck,” I say.
I see her throat constrict. She doesn’t answer. Her eyes stay on the television.
“You did, didn’t you?”
She closes her eyes and pauses the TV. “It’s complicated, Jordan.”
“Mom,” I say. “Mom. What did you do? What’s happening?”
She turns off the TV, but she doesn’t sit up. She just stays staring at the set even though it’s off. “It’s bad,” she says. “It’s really, really, really bad.”
“Mom,” I whisper. “Tell me what’s up. Tell me what you did.”
She closes her eyes. “It’s worse than you think,” she says.
I sit, motionless, as she explains. I know Max is behind me, and I’m half-glad he’s there, and half wish he weren’t because someone else hearing it makes it more true, and I don’t want it to be true.
I should have known. How had I not seen it? Denial is a funny thing.
Of course. My mom has gambled away all the truck money.
I feel like I’ve been robbed at gunpoint. I feel gutted. Like someone has come and taken everything I have, cut everything inside me out. I feel like I want to scream, but screaming is useless.
“The money I gave you for the back mortgage?” I whisper, because my voice is gone.
“I have a problem, sweetheart. I’m so so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I really am.”
“Um,” I say, light as a feather.
“Every time I leave Casino Arizona, it’s like I get on the 101 and the shame is so deep that I just think, ‘I should turn the wheel all the way left.’ Slam into the guardrail. End this all. You’d be better off. Everyone would be. I failed. I failed at life, Jordan, and I know that, and I know it doesn’t help you that I know that, but I want you to understand. I get it.”
The voice that comes from my mouth is not mine. Someone else’s. “Um.”
“For what it’s worth, nothing you could think about me is worse than what I think about me. The level to which I hate me right now? It’s like, an insane amount, Jordan. I beyond want to die. Beyond, Jordan.”
I don’t even repeat um this time.
The rest happens really quickly. Too quickly. I don’t have time to say good-bye. I don’t have the words for it. I guess it’s good that my mom gets that, because it would be worse if she cried. But also it’s not enough. Time. Not enough anything. How do you say good-bye to your world in less than two minutes?
“So I’m gonna go,” I say.
“Probably a good choice,” she says.
I look back at Max. I want him to hold me. I want him to never touch me again. These are not thoughts that go together. This is not a scene that goes together. It’s all jumbled, disjointed. Unfitting.
I turn back to my mom. “Maybe we call nine-one-one?”
“Mercy,” my mom says, and I have absolutely no idea what that means. I should have mercy? Call them because she’s had enough? No idea. I just call, and tell them to come and pick up my mom because she’s a danger to herself. I say this in front of her. She does not stop me or contradict what I’m saying. She looks small, and scared, and not mine. Not anymore.
I mouth Bye to her but the word doesn’t come out. She isn’t looking at me anyway. I focus on her profile. Her left eye, half-closed like she’s wasted. Her expression oddly blank. Then I grab Dorcas’s leash, which makes her run over to me. I leash her up, turn, and walk to the door. Max takes my hand and squeezes. My mom hasn’t moved. She’s not going to. I finally have to look away.
“You’ll stay with us,” he says, and I’m too far gone to say anything other than what I say.
“Thank you.”
Ms. Gutierrez is standing in the doorway waiting for us when we get back from the house where I no longer live. Max must have texted.
She envelops me in an all-encompassing hug. I wrap my arms around her but don’t squeeze. I can’t cry. Bone-dry like the fucking desert we live in.
“I took the rest of the day,” she says, holding me tight. She’s dressed for work. “Of course you can stay here,” she says, answering a question I guess Max must have asked her via text. “As long as you want. As long as you need.”
“Thanks.”
Dorcas shakes her neck collar as if to say, “I’m here too.” Max’s mom pets him.
“Of course you’re welcome too.”
I say “Thanks” again. I don’t know what else to say, or how much I can just be normal right now, which I know they don’t expect but it’s kind of like, I don’t know how to show them what’s real right now.
She says, “Let’s get you situated,” and she leads me to the hallway where all the bedrooms are. I feel like I’m dreaming as I walk the hallway. In what used to be our house, my mom was in the main bedroom, I was across the hall, and the two rooms in between were storage. Here, Max is in one of those two rooms, and one is an office. Across from Max’s mom’s bedroom, the room that was mine at our house, is a guest room, painted bright yellow.
“This will be yours,” she says. “So you have your own space. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Ms. Gutierrez.”
“Rosa,” she says.
It’s weird being here and trying to get through my head that I’m a visitor but not really. That I’m not going back home tonight, because I have none. It’s strange to have one suitcase with clothing and toiletries and my backpack with my laptop, and that’s it. It’s like I’m holding all my possessions. I know I can go back and get more, but really, so much of the stuff that’s in my room back home is things I don’t use. I don’t even want my ’80s bordello room anymore. It’s tainted, because it was Mom and me who bought all that stuff. It was another life.
Mom has probably been picked up from our house now, and who knows where they took her? It feels like the blood has been drained from my veins, and I’m so, so tired.
Rosa lets me get settled, and Max lingers in the doorway.
“You wanna call the girls? I can call the Amigos. We can do a swim thing here.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to see anyone. I love my girls but the idea of everyone pitying me is way too much for me right now.
“You wanna just hang out?” He sits down on my bed.
I nod, and Rosa comes back and tells us she’s gonna do some work in her office unless I need her. When she walks off, I shake my head amazed at how not like my mom Rosa is. Lucky Max.
“So we’ll just hang?” he asks.
“What I really want is my truck,” I say. “Our truck. In some ways, I’m more pissed about that than I am about my mom.”
He winces. “Really?”
I plop down next to him. “No.”
“Yeah. Didn’t think so. I miss the truck too. But that’s your mom.”
I think about the night I took her to Sweeties, and what she said when we were in my room. That I was great just as I am. And I think two things. One, how can I trust that now? Because when she said it, she knew that she was fucking us over and screwing up our lives. And two is how much I can’t believe that as of this moment, I no longer live with her.
“She used to be so different,” I say. “One time a couple summers ago, we did this experiment where we tried to cook an egg on the actual sidewalk in June.” I laugh. “I have no idea why I’m telling you that.”
He laughs. “That’s cool.”
