Anything You Want (7 page)

“Of course I would. If you're there, the ocean is as beautiful as Wisconsin.”

“I like whales,” she whispered. “I could be a marine biologist.”

“Then I'll clean the beach sand off our patio, and I'll cook you pizzas for when you get home,” I said.

“I really love you, Taco,” Maggie said.

I loved that evening. All in all, even with the musical trouble and failing my calc quiz, it was the best day I ever had.

Maggie stayed at the master suite until Thursday night.

On Wednesday after school, Mr. Corrigan came over with Misha and Molly and brought us a chicken dinner. That was good because I could've scrounged up some spaghetti and butter or something, but it wouldn't have been top-notch, which is what Maggie expected in life. She'd been living with two parents who had money. I actually spent part of the afternoon having little anxiety attacks about what would happen when Maggie figured out we were essentially foodless at the house (not by my standards but by hers). Would she throw a big hissy fit and indict my character? I will never know because Mr. Corrigan and chicken came to the rescue!

We ate at our dining room table. (I had to move Mom's desktop computer, which blocked a third of the surface, and Darius was none too pleased when he got home and wanted to play
Minecraft
, which made me scared to ask him for some extra food money.) Misha and Molly stared at us while we ate as if Mags and I were wild creatures from space. They mostly stared at Maggie.

Actually, I had to stare a little bit too. Maggie was jamming that chicken into her mouth like she'd just gotten out of jail or something, like that chicken was the best thing she'd ever chomped down.

“You eat like Cookie Monster,” Misha said.

Molly laughed.

“Shut up,” Maggie said.

“Maggie,” Mr. Corrigan said. “Be kind.”

“Sorry,” Maggie said.

Then Mr. Corrigan said, “Have you been getting enough to eat, honey?”

Maggie looked at me for a blink and then said, “I think so. Taco's been really good about filling my plate, Dad. We had pizza last night and toast for breakfast.”

“Okay,” Mr. Corrigan said. “But you need protein.”

Of course, protein! She needed protein. And of course, I wanted to fill the plate of my pregnant girl. I wanted to mash her all the potatoes she could eat, grind her sausages, stir her cheese in a thousand stainless steel vats, but—money. How could I procure foodly riches for my queen without money? Well, I couldn't. Duh.

On Thursday after school, I'd hoped we'd find Darius at home. He always gave me money when we were running low on food. He acted pissed about it sometimes because we didn't have much cash, but he still gave me some. But he wasn't around, and the cupboards were bare—other than spaghetti.

I tried to think. My personal piggy bank had dried up as soon as my allowance disappeared, which was when Mom died. I actually had a bank account with all my swimming pool money, but Darius took the ATM card and hid the passbook. He said that money was meant for me to go to college, not to use on burritos or whatever. I didn't know what to do. I had no access to capital, and Darius was at work. We could've gone to Captain Stabby's, I guess. But Maggie hated fish, and that place smelled like a bunch of dead fish.

Maggie sighed. She was super tired and slow. She sighed again.

I said, “I'm sorry.”

Then she got on the horn to her dad. She whispered. She nodded. She hung up. “Let's go over to my place,” Maggie said.

I really didn't want to, but I agreed. I wanted to help Mr. Corrigan help Maggie (because I would be helping Maggie by doing so).

Mary showed up about ten minutes later. With trepidation, I got in the fantastic Subaru's backseat and rode across town to the Corrigans'.

Hearty protein-rich meat lasagna with a big salad on the side, bread sticks, iced tea, and flourless brownies for desert—this was the proper grub for my pregnant lady. And I couldn't provide it. I felt very lacking.

Other than Mrs. Corrigan, no one spoke to me during dinner. Not the little girls, not the big girls, not Mr. Corrigan, not even Maggie herself. Only Mrs. Corrigan said anything. As I sat down at the table, she asked me if I knew anything about Balinese chicken curses, and then she glared at me for the rest of the meal.

Curses?

The other Corrigans chatted over and around me. They spoke of music lessons and dance lessons and hikes they might go on the following summer and Thanksgiving in Ohio. They were spending the whole following week with their grandma near Cleveland. I'd assumed Maggie wouldn't go and would be with me, which wasn't very bright on my count. I tried to say something, but my voice disappeared like no one could hear me, no one other than Mrs. Corrigan, who gave me that Balinese chicken curse stink eye.

After dinner Maggie decided to stay in her own house because she needed protein for breakfast. She walked me out onto the porch. “Listen, Taco, I make some money at Dairy Queen, but we'll need a ton more if we're going to do this on our own. I have to eat so much right now. It's crazy how many calories I can suck down.”

“I know,” I said. “You're like a she-tiger.”

“Go get a really good job. Then we can get married and start our family, okay? I know that seems hard, but, like, it's all you have to do, so maybe it's not that big a deal,” she said.

“Yeah.” I repeated, “Not that big a challenge.”

Getting a really good job was actually pretty complicated—and not just because I'd signed up for musical auditions. Mom wanted me to be a kid and to concentrate on school. She didn't want me working. Even though Darius isn't the best stand-in parent, he really grabbed hold of that no-work deal, and he followed through on his promises. Still, I had to do it. I had to get a job. I couldn't be a kid anymore. A dad (like me) had to do what a dad had to do.

Maggie said she had to go to bed because she was tired. I kissed her. She smiled. She went back in the house, and I put my face against the window and watched her climb the stairs to her room.

On my walk across town, it was super dark and sad.

When I finally made it home, I found Darius passed out on the front steps. I dragged him inside, and he promptly threw up on the living room carpet. I got him some water. He said, “Kayla won't stop breaking up with me, and now she's getting married. And you…you…you. I want to die, dude.”

“Holy balls,” I said. “This isn't good.”

“It's not good!” Darius cried.

Poor Darius needed my help. I got him ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. He really needed me to be an adult too, right?

That night I dreamed about a wooden chicken statue that came to life. And I knew we were in terrible trouble, dingus.

Maggie didn't show up at school on Friday. I looked for her in the commons, where she often sat yacking with her fellow cheer girls. She wasn't there. Later I eagerly awaited her arrival in English. No go. I began to panic. After English, instead of going to calc like I should've, I went to the computer lab to check my email. She'd written me a note.

Hey, man, I'm so tired right now. Mom and Dad are taking me to the doctor. It's just a regular check-up. Don't worry. I'll call you later.

The thought of Maggie in a paper hospital gown, all alone, her bare butt hanging loose for all to see, getting diagnosed without me, her husband who is not yet her husband, nearly caused me to run over to Southwest Municipal Hospital Clinics so that I could be by her side.

But, no…no. My mom used to tell Darius not to go off “half-cocked.” I had no idea what that meant, but my mom knew everything. And I'd had that dream the night before about the chicken statue, right?

Chicken statue.

During the hearty lasagna dinner at the dinner table in the Corrigans' home, Mrs. Corrigan's constant stink eye scared me. She was a scary person not just for regular reasons. Here's the truth: Mrs. Corrigan actually had access to curses, wooden chickens, and magical knowledge from the nation of Bali.

Maggie told me about it earlier in the summer because I had picked up and played with this wooden chicken statue thing that was on a side table at Maggie's house. “Put that down!” Maggie said. “Never touch that chicken!”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“When she was in college, Mom ran away with her crazy anthropology professor. She followed him to Bali, and she learned all about witchcraft and casting curses on people she hates.”

“So?” I said. “She doesn't hate me, right?”

“That chicken is part of the witchcraft,” Maggie said.

I put the chicken back down very carefully.

“Your mom ran away with her professor?” I asked. “How old was he?”

“Sh,” Maggie had said. “Don't ever mention that again.”

But I was very interested in the story, so I had asked Maggie more about it later. Mrs. Corrigan wasn't married yet. At the time, she was just some young girl named Danielle. Her professor was fifty-two! Danielle's own mother had to go to Bali and pay the police to basically kidnap her back. It took Mrs. Corrigan a whole year to get her head on straight and go to another college. That was where she met young Reggie Corrigan and got pregnant with Mary.

Point is that Mrs. Corrigan knew Balinese witchcraft, dingus. Put that together with my bad dream about the wooden chicken statue and my own sweet mom's warning to Darius about going off “half-cocked,” and I lost my nerve. I worried that if I tried to intervene and go to the clinic, maybe I'd wake up with my eyes pecked out by a Balinese chicken (which was part of the dream I had the night before). Terrifying!

In retrospect, I believe I was overthinking. This overthinking caused a larger crisis. Going off half-cocked can cause lots of trouble too. What's the right way to be? Life can be perplexing.

Anyway, instead of running out of the building, I ran to calc. I was late, and Mr. Edwards was handing back our quizzes from earlier in the week. He looked at me, shook his head, and pointed at my grade. I got a fat effenheimer on it.

“I always thought you were a math guy, Taco” Mr. Edwards said. “You might not have the chops for calculus though.”

Never before had I gotten an effenheimer on anything. Yet there it was, red and gory, scrawled across the top of the page. I choked up.

A few minutes later, Mr. Edwards gave us a problem to work on and left the classroom.

Brad Schwartz leaned over to me. “You're coming undone, dude,” he whispered.

“Truth,” I said.

“Sharma and I'll tutor you this weekend,” Brad said. “We'll get your wheels back on track.”

“Only if Maggie doesn't need me,” I said.

“Man, Taco. What's up with you two?” Brad asked. “Something's afoot. Something bad. Am I right?”

“No. It's all good,” I whispered, still choked up.

“Yeah, but that F isn't going away, Taco. You'll see it again and again if you don't catch up. This weekend, okay? Seriously, I'll help you,” Brad said.

What good would I be to my baby and to Maggie if I flunked calc? I'd be like Darius, unable to move forward in life, stuck in the past, making deep-fried fish forever. I looked at Brad. “Affirmative,” I said. “Thanks, brother. Thanks for being a great friend.”

“You got it,” Brad said.

I had to do better, be better, dingus.

After school I went straight home, even though a bunch of the choir peeps were meeting to practice songs from
The
Wizard of Oz
. If you've never stood around a piano with a bunch of bird-singing ladies and sweet-voiced dudes to learn new music, you haven't lived, pal. It's always hilarious and like a party, and at the same time, you learn the shiz, so it's both entertaining and enlightening.

But I had no time for that because I had to be better, and that meant taking care of Maggie, being ready for her phone call. I didn't know how long her doctor appointment would take, so she could call at any moment. She might have already left a message on the suite answering machine. I ran home as best I could and burst in the door to check for messages, but she hadn't called yet, so I boiled some water for some buttered spaghetti and pulled a dining room chair into the kitchen. I sat by the phone and waited and waited and ate spaghetti and waited.

I sat from twilight to total darkness, staring at the phone that did not bleat. I stood up, sat down, walked in circles, boiled more spaghetti, and sat down, and paranoia started to choke me very badly. Paranoia made me twitch and twist from the inside out.
Is it because you're a poor Taco? A jobless Taco? Did she stop loving you? No!

Maggie Corrigan didn't call. I didn't want to interrupt her at her doctor's appointment, but by 7:45, I figured the clinic had to be long closed.

Wait till eight. Be reasonable
, I told myself.

At 8:00 p.m., I called her cell. It went straight to voice mail.

At 8:05 p.m., I looked in the
Bluffton Journal
job ads online and found an ad for a dance instructor at I Could Dance All Night, a studio downtown where I've seen little girls dressed in puffy ballerina costumes. I called over to I Could Dance All Night. A woman answered. Loud music echoed in the background.

I spoke loudly so she could hear me. “I'd like to be a dance instructor. I'm a good dancer.”

The woman shouted, “Great! Where did you train?”

“I'm freestyle. I dance in my bedroom and at prom.”

“Oh,” the woman shouted. “Sorry! I need a certified instructor. It's in the ad.”

I looked at the computer and saw she spoke the truth. “Shit.”

“Bye now,” the dance lady said.

At 8:25 p.m., I called the Corrigans' landline, a phone that sat on a table next to—wait for it—the same decorative, multicolored, wooden chicken statue from Bali that I'd picked up early in the summer and dreamed about the night before. My mind was really going. No one answered.

Hi. Taco Keller here. Just wondering about… Just calling to get an update on the situation over there. Maggie and the baby. Give me a quick honk on the horn if you have a chance. Thanks so much. This is Taco, by the way. I think I mentioned that…

I waited until 9:00 p.m. Then I pulled on my coat and hoofed it over to the Corrigans'. My ass hurt something special, but I couldn't be stopped.

The Corrigan house was pitch-dark. No light, no life. I rang the bell.

Nothing.

I yelled for Maggie from the sidewalk.

Nothing.

I eyeballed the side of the house and took a deep breath. Then up I went. My plan was to go in through Maggie's bedroom window, take a peak around, and gather some clues as to the Corrigans' whereabouts. But halfway up, my coccyx screaming from exertion, the floodlights flashed on and the alarm began screaming. I nearly fell off the house again, dingus. I froze for a few moments. Afraid to go up or down. What if I fell on my tender ass again? Death?

Then I came to my senses. With the alarm firing like that, cops were likely on the way!

I climbed down slow, careful. When I got to the first-floor window, there, where it hadn't been lit before, I could see a lamp sitting on the table next to the phone, sitting on the table next to the ornate Balinese chicken statue from my dream! The chicken was staring at me, pal! Seriously!

I didn't fall, but I almost did. Instead I clung to the vines as the alarm blared and the neighbors came out. Soon the cops came too.

“What in Sam Hill are you doing, Taco?” Officer Mike Peders asked after he'd pulled me to the ground.

“I don't know. I don't know,” I said.

“What am I supposed to do?” Mike Peders asked the other cop. I didn't know him. “I don't want to arrest the poor kid.”

“Well, hell. All these neighbors are out here watching. We can't just give him a talking to and let him walk. He can't climb people's houses. Folks are going to look for news about this in the paper,” the other officer said. “Maybe trespassing?”

“Dave, come on. That's a class A. He gets Judge Hammond, and he might find himself in the clink for thirty days.”

“No, please,” I said. “I'm not trespassing. This is my girlfriend's house.”

“Yeah, no shit, Taco. That alarm is supposed to keep the place Taco-proof,” Mike said. “Maybe it's got to be trespassing?”

Well, I got real lucky right then, dingus. Another police car pulled up, and it was Mr. Frederick. He and I go way back. His son, Cody, was the assistant coach for my little league team when I was a kid. Cody loves me. He's in college up at La Crosse—second-team quarterback up there. Ever since Mom died, Cody emails me every month or so. His dad is really smart too. Mr. Frederick is a sergeant or something. Not just a regular cop.

He got out of his car and shook his head. “Damn it, Taco,” he said to me.

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

“This is real, you know?”

“Real?” I said. “I know.”

“Mike, just bring him in. Janice will set the charge later.”

“Usually she likes us to know what the charge—”

“Just get the dumb kid down to the station, okay?” Mr. Frederick said.

“Yup, yup,” Mike Peders said.

Janice, who's a county prosecutor, decided I wouldn't get hit with criminal trespass, which could cause me a lot of problems. Mr. Frederick, Officer Peders, and Janice (don't remember her last name) talked in this conference room, and I was issued a misdemeanor citation for disorderly conduct, essentially amounting to disturbing the peace by setting off the alarms. Apparently they got a hold of Mr. Corrigan, and he was fine with that charge. It was all really great news.

Except for the part when Mr. Frederick said he wanted to talk to me and Dad in person. “Will Chuck be back in town over Thanksgiving?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said. “Yeah, I guess.”

“We need to have a sit down, Taco. All three of us.”

That was bad because I'd been able to keep Dad in the dark about everything so far. I didn't like bothering him with drama. He'd gone through enough pain already in his life.

The other bad news was I had to pay a $177 fine and take off school in early December to go up to the circuit court in Lancaster to plead guilty or not guilty (when I surely was guilty of doing what they said) or to ask for the fine to be reduced since I didn't have any money.

Janice said if I pled not guilty, there'd actually be a trial! That sounded pretty cool in some ways. (Imagine me shouting, “You can't handle the truth!” at the judge.) But it also sounded really serious.

I didn't know what to do about the whole deal.

Anyway, no matter what, I count myself very fortunate. If the cops hadn't shown up, I could've been killed by that wooden Balinese chicken, scared into falling headfirst onto the birdbath below.

Darius picked me up from the cop shop after his shift at Captain Stabby's. It was midnight, and he was pissed.

“Dude,” Darius said, driving me in his car, “this must stop. Please! I can't deal with this bullshit all the time. You know I made all kinds of promises about taking care of you, but I can't handle your shit! I can't handle my own shit! You stop or I'll be forced to kill you, okay?”

“You haven't told Dad about my trouble, have you?” I asked.

“He knows about your ass.”

“I know that,” I said. “What about the other stuff?”

“No, but he's going to find out you were arrested. It's going to be on the radio, I bet! People are going to talk, Taco!”

“But you haven't said anything about Maggie?”

Darius shook his head. “No. I'm not going to tell him. That's your responsibility. Hopefully he'll pitch in some cash to help figure out this mess.”

“It's not a mess. It's a baby,” I said.

Darius didn't say anything for a few seconds. He just shook his head. Then out of no place, he screamed, “You have to get your head out of your ass, Taco!”

“I'm sorry, brother,” I said.

We drove the last minute in silence, and Darius tromped off to bed without another word.

Get your head out of your ass
, I thought.

Only later did I realize that I still had no idea where Maggie was.