Alone at 90 Foot (12 page)

Mr. Bartell didn't phone Mrs. Robertson or anything like that. What happened was, Linda went over to Joanne's house after school. Joanne told me all this, in really major detail, about two hours ago on the phone. They were sitting in the family room looking through old issues of
YM
. Out of the blue, Linda just started to giggle. Not about anything, as far as Joanne could tell. Mrs. Robertson was getting supper ready in the kitchen. It's separated from the family room by a low rail.

“What's so funny?” Joanne asked her.

Linda kept on giggling. “I was just thinking of the look on Bartell's face when you called him a slippery old coot.”

Joanne's mom looked up from chopping a green pepper (Joanne even told me what she was chopping). She saw her mom looking, and listening, and the way her eyes got narrow. Joanne made crazy signals for Linda to be quiet.

“Old coot. No kidding, I thought those old eyeballs would pop right out!”

“Joanne?” Mrs. Robertson said. I knew exactly the tone she used. Like the time we spray-painted the
front door orange, was how Joanne described it.

Joanne jumped up. “Mom, don't worry about it. He never heard me.”

Joanne's mom placed one hand on a hip.

Linda was, like, totally oblivious to Mrs. Robertson. “What are you talking about?” She kept on laughing. “Of course, he heard you!”

When Joanne's mom heard that, she got this real hostile look.

By now Joanne was fuming. “Linda. Will you shut up!”

“Joanne Robertson! I am ashamed of you! How could you say such a thing to your teacher?” Mrs. Robertson waved her chopping knife in the air.

“Oops,” said Linda.

“Thanks!” said Joanne.

“Well — gee.” Linda glanced at her watch. “It's getting real late. I guess I'd better go.”

“I hope you apologized,” said Mrs. Robertson, after Linda had left. “You did apologize, didn't you?”

“Well — sort of.”

“You didn't, did you?”

“Well — not in so many words.”

Mrs. Robertson pulled the telephone book from out of a drawer. “Well, in so many words — you're going to do it right now.” She brought it to Joanne in the family room and dropped it in her lap. “Look him up
“

“Mom! I can't call Mr. Bartell! It's ... it's ... it can only be a negative experience!”

“You listen to me, young lady. I'll have many more negative experiences in store for you if you don't phone and apologize to your teacher right now! Honestly, I am embarrassed. How do you think this reflects on me and your dad?”

According to Joanne, that was the very moment Mr. Robertson picked to walk in the door. And, like Joanne and me agreed, dads usually aren't too swift at cluing in to these kinds of “situations.”

“What reflects on me?” Mr. Robertson said cheerily, hanging up his jacket. “Her charming good looks?”

By this time, Mrs. Robertson was really riled. “The fact that your daughter called her teacher an old coot!”

“I didn't mean anything by it!”

“How was he supposed to know that?!”

It was then that Mr. Robertson got the idea that maybe something was just a tad wrong. He held up his hands. “Okay, wait a minute. What did you call him?”

Joanne didn't answer.

“An old coot,” said her mom.

“Really?” Her dad bit his lips so as not to smirk.

“Paul! It's not funny! You're only encouraging
her insolent behavior! Joanne, you're grounded for a week!”

“What? That's not fair! I didn't mean to say it! It just came out! I don't even know what ‘coot' means! I got it from Dad!”

“Me?!”

With this totally ticked-off expression, Mrs. Robertson faced Mr. Robertson. She folded her arms. Joanne sounded real stern when she repeated what her mom said. “And just who were you calling an old coot?”

Mr. Robertson didn't answer.

“Who was your dad calling an old coot? Joanne?”

Her mom was so stressed, Joanne had no choice but to answer, “Grandma.”

Joanne's dad gave her this demon look. Like she was some kind of a traitor or something.

“My mother? You called my mother an old coot?!”

“I don't believe this. How did I get dragged into this?”

“Answer me, Paul. Did you call my mother an old coot?”

Joanne's dad didn't answer. He just made this face at Joanne.

“Paul?!”

“Alright. Alright. I may have. Just once.”

“Just once?”

“Yeah. The time she stood over my back when I was laying her tile floor. ‘It's too far to the left. It's too far to the right. That piece is cracked. Shouldn't the corner come up a bit? It's not level! Do you even know what you're doing?' Man, it was all I could do not to tell the old coot to do it herself!”

“My mother is
not
an old coot! She's a perfectionist, that's all!”

“She's an old coot! What are you going to do, Susie? Ground me too?!”

Mr. Robertson didn't get grounded, but from what Joanne said, their supper was real intense tonight.

She phoned me again five minutes ago. She's still grounded, except for Saturday night. She told her mom, get this, that I was really looking forward to Ortega's party because I had met some guy I really liked. She didn't want to disappoint me by not being able to go. Mrs. Robertson is a pushover when it comes to me, and Joanne knows it. She'd do somersaults off a springboard if she thought it would make me laugh. She'd do anything to make me happy. Including letting Joanne break her curfew. So, I guess I'm going to be seeing John Robbel Saturday night.

June 11th

I found something tonight that I didn't know was missing. But am I ever glad to get it back. This has happened to me a lot in the last few months. I mean, finding something, or maybe I should say discovering something, that I didn't know was gone. I'm not talking about a favorite shirt or anything like that. The things I keep discovering are intangible. I can't touch or see them or even put any kind of label on them. The real importance of them is how they make me feel. Like I said, this
has been happening to me a lot in the last two months. And all of these things I've been finding disappeared with Mom.

I know this sounds really weird, but an example is, like, the comics in
The Vancouver Sun
. Before Mom, I read them every morning before school. I had read them ever since I can remember. It got so, like, if I didn't read them, because the paper was late or I was late or something, I felt like I had missed part of the morning. Not that they're so uproariously funny or anything. But because they made me smile a little. They made me feel kind of good. It was something I just did. Reading them gave me sort of a sense of completion. Like my morning routine was finished and it was time to move on to school.

Whatever, I couldn't read them after Mom died. I couldn't read anything after Mom. I'd read the first two comics or even the first page in a book, and realize I couldn't remember what I'd just read. I had no memory of it and absolutely no concentration to continue on. You can just imagine how hard this made school. Anyway, I can't even remember what I did with my mornings last fall. That's how bad my memory got. All I can remember is that every day was total chaos. It was routine enough. Just, like, completely confused.

It was on the Christmas holidays, seven months
after Mom died, that I discovered the comics again. At first, I read only one or two. Short ones, like
Family Circus
and
Bizarro
. Then, after a few days, I got through
Fox Trot
and
Overboard
. By the end of the holidays, I was reading all of them again. And I've kept it up. It's just one of those things that's put a little order back into my life. Besides, they can be funny every once in a while. I just realized something. I even read a whole book this spring. Cover to cover. And I liked it too. I read
Lord of the Flies
.

What got me started on all this was hearing my dad laugh. When I say laugh in this case, I don't mean like a little chortle or guffaw or whatever you'd call it. I mean one of those big, thunderous, side-splitting outbursts that really means something. Like Grandpa used to have.

It happened when Emily and I were down in the basement watching TV. Dad and Jenn were in the living room above us. I don't know what they were doing or even talking about. That's beside the point. I just heard Jenn's voice and then Dad broke into this big happy laugh. The kind of laugh that comes from deep down inside of you. The kind that takes over the moment. The kind that is only possible when whatever you heard or saw was the focus of your attention. Consuming is what I'd call it. No kidding, it was a consuming laugh. And
the thing of it is, you know it can only come from someone who is completely relaxed.

Right then, Dad's laugh was the focus of my attention. It had been a long, long time since I had heard it. It made me feel so good. It made me think of a lot of things. But mostly about how he used to be funny. And about how much fun we used to have. And I didn't realize until that moment how much I had missed that.

Now I'm wondering how many other things I'm missing that I don't even know about. And if I'll ever get them back.

June 13th

Joanne phoned me at 7:00 this morning to find out what I'm going to wear tonight.

“Are you nuts, Jo? I don't plan on getting up for three hours. The last thing on my mind is what I'm going to wear to Ortega's party!”

“I thought I'd wear my black stretch lace top and my white jeans.”

“Good. I'm glad for you. Now, can I go back to sleep?”

“On second thought...” I could hear Joanne
drumming her fingers against something. She was ignoring me. This was going to take a while. I clutched my knees and curled up on the bed. “No, on second thought, I'll wear my stretch top and black jeans. Yeah, black jeans.”

I yawned. “Even better. You'll look exquisite. Totally awesome. Now I'm going back to sleep.”

“And shoes — should I wear my chunky heels or strappy sandals?”

“Chunky heels.” I thought it best to answer. If I didn't, she'd only drag this out by agonizing over it anyway. Besides, her chunky heels make her taller than me. “Good, you're dressed. Now, I'm going to hang up.”

“Pam — what about my hair!”

“Joanne. At this minute I don't want to hear about your hair. We're going to a lousy party with the same people we see every day. Not exactly to dinner with Jakob Dylan. Mike's parents will be there. In fact, it was their big idea. We'll probably be forced to play Twister and eat Pringles. We won't even get to watch Carl Jenkins puke. Now, I want to go back to sleep!”

“Fine! Just fine for you, Pam. You haven't been stuck in the house after school all week!”

This made me feel a little sorry for her. Joanne is real social compared to me. She likes to be around people. She likes to talk and she likes action. She
gets bored out of her skull when we go walking in Lynn Canyon Park. Still, we've always got along. Probably because when we're together, she gets to talk all the time, while all I have to do is pretend to listen. This works for both of us. When I'm quiet, it makes her think that what she has to say is important. While it leaves me to think of other stuff. Anyway, her mom sure picked the punishment to fit the person. For Joanne, being stuck in her room was truly traumatic. For me, well, for one thing, I don't think anyone would notice.

“Okay,” I said. “What were you thinking for your hair?”

I tried to get out of the party right to the end. Dad was over at Nana Jean's fixing a leaky toilet. When he phoned to say he'd be longer than he'd planned, I thought I had it made. Someone had to stay home and care for Emily.

“That's okay, Dad. Not a problem. I'll stay home and watch Emily. You take as long as you want.”

Dad was quiet as he thought about this. It must have been the calm in my voice that gave me away. “Oh no, you won't. You're going to that party.”

I don't know what it is about him. But I'm sure that if he could arrange my life for me, he wouldn't
leave a single day where I could just be by myself.

“I'll look after Emily.”

He didn't say how he was going to do this
and
fix the leaky toilet, but five minutes later, the phone rang. It was Jenn. She'd be right over.

I wasn't wearing anything devastating or anything like that. Just this sleeveless white shirt Jenn had a lady at one of her executive stores pick out for me. And a pair of khaki pants. But when I opened the door a while later, “Pam, you look stunning!” is what Jenn said. She didn't come in right away, but stood there, just looking at me, moving her head back and forth. Like she couldn't believe it. “Absolutely stunning.”

She gave me this great big hug.

It was nice of her to compliment me. But I thought she was overstating it just a tad. Okay, I guess the tan I picked up in the canyon goes well with my white shirt. And maybe my hair being curled kind of works for me. Aside from that, I'd swept just a little blush high up on my cheeks. Oh, and I used the “nasty” red lipstick Joanne insisted I get because it looked “deadly” on me. But only a tiny touch. But me — stunning? I thought Danielle Higgins set the standard for that.

“What's wrong? Isn't that an okay word?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “It's okay. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It's cool. It's just, I've never
thought I could look anything like that.”

Jenn gave me another big hug. “It's not only your looks, Pam. You're a beautiful young lady, both inside and out.” With her arm around me, she steered us into the house.

I'm almost embarrassed to write this down. It's just that it made me feel kind of good. Kind of, for a moment, happy about myself. Not that I believe it or anything. But because Jenn sounded totally serious, I don't think she was trying to con me at all. If she was, she was pretty good at it.