Read Also Known as Elvis Online
Authors: James Howe
Also Known as Elvis (12 page)
I come this close to saying yes. In fact, it takes everything in me
not
to say yes. But I shake my head no.
“Okay,” the woman says. “But if you change your mind, come find me and I'll let her out. My name's Peg. Okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
When I turn back, Licky is staring right at me, her big smiley mouth still open, full of dopey happiness and hope.
“I hate to break it to you,” I tell her, “but life sucks.” She probably knows this already. Her life brought her to this shelter, after all. But I can't help saying what I feel, and what I feel right now is that life sucks, big-time. I want to take her home with all my heart, but there's no way. Instead, I have to go back to the other storyâthe one with Becca and the puppy she is now holding in her arms, the puppy that is licking
her
face.
“Goodbye, Licky,” I say. “I hope somebody nice takes you home.”
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“Omigod, Skeezie!” Becca says when I join them. “You're not going to
believe
it! There are
two
puppies! They're brothers. Cody is taking Charlie and I'm taking Max.”
“Who's Cody?” I ask, with the tiny piece of my brain that even cares.
“I'm Cody,” says the guy with the low-riding pants. He's holding the other puppyâCharlie, I guessâwhich means that Becca has managed to end up with just the puppy she wanted. How does it not surprise me that her mom was right?
“And guess what! This is
so
awesome. Omigod!” Becca gushes. “Cody lives near us, so we're going to have playdates for the puppies! Right, Cody?”
Is she batting her eyelashes at him? I mean, who does that in real life?
“Truth,” Cody says. And who says
that
in real life?
“What do you say, Skeezie?” Mrs. Wrightsman
asks, appearing over my shoulder. “Don't you think Max is the perfect dog for us?”
“Sure,” I go, as if I'm some sort of dog and family matchmaker. I have no idea if Max is the perfect dog for Becca and her mom. All I know is that Licky is the perfect dog for me, and as my grandma would say, “That and a buck fifty will buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Ooh, ooh, let's take the boys out to the play yard,” Becca says.
“Sweet,” says Cody, turning to his sister. “Cat, you coming?”
His sister's name is Cat. Seriously.
The adults go off in the direction of the office to do the paperwork. Becca, Cody, Cat, and their matching perfect dogs go off in the direction of the play yard. And I stand there, caught between two stories, the one where Becca doesn't say,
Skeezie, you coming?
and the one where I can't stop hearing Licky say,
I'm yours.
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Back at Becca's, we're having pizza and playing with Max when Becca's phone rings. She's so
happy to hear from whoever it is that she runs out of the room, going, “I know, I know, aren't they so cute?” leaving me to hang out with Max. I'll admit it, he's a whole lot of fun, chasing after the rope toy I toss him, then running back and playing tug-of-war. But my mind is on Licky.
I've got to tell somebody about her. I reach for my phone and start to punch in Joe's number, then stop and consider texting Addie. But it's not really either of them I want to tell. It doesn't make any sense, but I punch in the number I've been trying to forget for two years. On the third ring, he picks up.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. “I met this great dog at the shelter today.”
Skeezie: | I just don't get what the stinkin' deal is. |
Steffi: | I know, right? One minute you hate them, the next minute you miss them, then you love them, then you hate them again. |
Skeezie: | Yeah, and you forget all the good parts. Now he's back and I'm remembering stuff I'm not sure I even want to remember. How much fun we had sometimes. How we'd think the same thing at the same time and look at each other like we totally get it. That's something I never have with my mom. |
Steffi: | My dad left four years ago. We had all these little in-jokes and secret codes between us. |
Skeezie: | Do you still see him? |
Steffi: | Oh, yeah. A lot, actually. But it's not the same. Once he left he was too busy |
Skeezie: | That why he left? He had a girlfriend? |
Steffi: | Mm-hmm. He sat my brother and me downâWill was twelveâand cried the whole time he told us. I'd never seen my dad cry before. I couldn't believe the first time wasn't because somebody had died, but because he was telling us goodbye. |
Skeezie: | It |
Steffi: | Tell me. I could hardly breathe. It's like time stopped and I kept waiting for it to go back to before. I don't think I said anything, just sat there trying to make sense of it. I felt like I was going to throw up. |
Skeezie: | Did he tell you about the girlfriend? |
Steffi: | Not right away. Did yours? |
Skeezie: | I don't think there was a girlfriend. Who knows? There is now. Anyways, you're |
Steffi: | Your dad didn't tell you? |
Skeezie: | My sisters, but not me. |
Steffi: | That's awful. |
Skeezie: | Yeah. |
Steffi: | What happened? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. |
Skeezie: | It's okay, I want to. So, they'd been fighting a lot, and they were having this one real blowout. He'd been looking for work and the only job he could find was at McDonald's, and he wouldn't take it because he said he was better than that. My mom was cursing him out something bad. They didn't know I was in the next room. Or they didn't care. Megan and Jessie were out front playing. Anyways, my dad said that my mom and us would be better off without him, and he'd be better off without us. He said he was leaving to get a decent job and he'd send money. |
Steffi: | What did your mom say? |
Skeezie: | She told him if he was going, he should pack his stuff and get the hell out. So he went to pack and I went to hide in this crawl space we have under the house. I watched him loading his stuff on the Harley, then walk back and bend down to where my sisters were playing. I couldn't hear what they said. Megan told me later he told them he was going away for a while to look for work. He wouldn't say when he was coming back. I waited for him to try to find me, but he just stood up and squinted back at the house for a few minutes. Then he revved up his bike and drove away. |
Steffi: | Did he at least call you later? |
Skeezie: | Two weeks later. But I wouldn't talk to him. I couldn't stop thinking how he'd said he'd be better off without us. And how he never looked for me to say goodbye. |
Steffi: | Maybe it was too hard for him. |
Skeezie: | Hey, too bad. He never did the hard stuff anyway. I held Jessie's head for two hours while she threw up the other night. My dad never held my head once. |
Steffi: | And then . . . |
Skeezie: | And then they come back and ride you around in their pickup trucks and take you bowling and looking at guitars. And you can't help it: It feels good. |
Steffi: | What kind of stinkin' deal is that, right? |
Skeezie: | (laughing) Hate 'em, love 'em, miss 'em, hate 'em, love 'em, miss 'em. |
Over the next couple of days, my mom takes mornings off work so she and my dad can meet with a lawyer and get their divorce settled. Thursday morning it rains. Again. Jessie and Megan say that they shouldn't have to go to day camp, and my mom's so tired of fighting them over “nickels and dimes,” as she puts it, that she caves and says they can stay home. Guess who doesn't have to work that morning and gets to stay home with them.
I'm starting to wish my job at the Candy Kitchen was full-time. Every day. Seriously.
I decide that if I'm going to get stuck babysitting Megan and Jessie for four hours when I wasn't planning on it, at least I'm going to have some fun. So I make us waffles and coffee for breakfast and use up all the bacon. And then we
bake cookies together, except we use M&M's instead of chocolate chips, and the colors run so that Jessie says they look like they're finger-painted.
So then we finger-paint.
It ends up that we have a good time, and for once Megan stops being a snark monster and actually resembles a human being.
When my mom comes through the door around noon, she finds us laughing over a contest of who can make the loudest and most convincing fart noises with their armpits. She doesn't ask why we all have our shirts hiked up over one shoulder. She doesn't say, “How nice to come home to the sound of laughter.” She doesn't even look at us. She heads straight to her bedroom and announces, “I'm going to work.”
“Well, hi there to you, too,” I say. “And by the way, I also have to go to work.”
“I am aware of that, Schuyler,” she says in a voice that dares me to talk back one more time. “Megan and Jessie, you're spending the afternoon
with your father. He's waiting outside. Skeezie, he wants to talk to you.”
And
slam
goes the bedroom door.
“Are Mommy and Daddy divorced now?” Jessie asks.
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The rain has stopped. My dad is leaning against the Ranger where it's parked at the curb, arms crossed over his chest, boots crossed at the ankles. He's wearing the same button-down shirt and tie he wore when he came to town last Friday, only now they're both wrinkled.
We nod our heads at each other, the way guys do, with our mouths tight and our eyes down. My hands are shoved in the pockets of my shorts, and I'm trying to think of something to say. Seems like he is, too.
Finally he goes, “What's up?”
“Megan and Jessie'll be out in a minute,” I tell him. “They're getting their girl stuff together.”
He nods, then turns and spits.
“You and Mom okay?” I ask.
This gets him to look at me, and he looks at me like I'm nuts. “We're hashing out a divorce. âOkay' isn't maybe the word. Listen, you want to bowl a couple games and have us some supper tonight? I'll drop the girls off at Aunt Lindsay's, then swing by the Candy Kitchen and pick you up a little after five. That when you get off work?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “But I was thinking about going over to Zachary's. He's got this new game he wantsâ”
“Fine, whatever,” my dad goes. “I've got stuff I can do with Del. No biggie.”
“No, I can change it. I mean, it wasn't definite or anything. Maybe we could mess around with some guitars again.”
“Who, you and me and Del?”
“No, you and me. Wasn't that what you were saying?”
He spits again and says, “Yeah, yeah. That's what I was saying. My head's screwy right now. So I'm picking you up a little after five?”
I nod and say sure. “You going to be wearing that tie?” I ask him, expecting him to laugh.
He doesn't. He just kicks at the grass and looks past me at the house.
“Why do girls have to take forever?” he says. “Huh? Why do they always got to fuss and bother about everything? You're always
waiting
on them. What are they
doing
in there?”
“It's girl stuff, Dad. Like I said. They'll be out in a minute.”
He kicks at the grass again. “Why do they have to make everything so hard? Complicate everything. Why's that, huh? You got an answer for me, Skeezo? You're an expert on girls, aren't you? Living with three of them. What's the answer?”
I shrug and mumble. I don't think he's talking about Megan and Jessie anymore, and even if he were, I wouldn't have an answer for him.
“Girls are a mystery,” is the best I can come up with.
He nods his head and says, “You got that right.”
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The afternoon goes kind of slowly. Donny teaches me how to use the deep fryer, which is cool, except for how it reminds me of when Kevin made a joke about my dipping my hair in the oil. Kevin is about as funny as a funeral. But I don't know that it's humor he's really going for.
Anyways, I make myself a big order of sweet potato fries for lunch, and then, in between waiting on customers, Steffi and I come up with a list of songs we'd have on the jukebox if we owned the place. Because if we owned the place, you'd better believe we'd bring back the jukebox.
When it's my turn and I say, “Crazy,” by Patsy Cline, Steffi goes, “Aha!”
“Don't get your panty hose in a twist,” I tell her. “I don't like that song any more than I did the first time I heard it. I'm putting it on the list because
you
like it.”
