Becky's Kiss (5 page)

He’d eat it slowly, like he was chewing through leather, poking at the whitened fat bubbles, moving stuff around on the plate like a kid. What was bothering him at work would stay buried inside him, mainly because he didn’t ‘want to burden his baby-girl any more than he already had through the years,’ and the table would be quiet as a graveyard. Of course, Becky would give him his peace and eat silently, completing their polite little family trilogy, all of them doing the right thing yet somehow failing each other.

She opened the side door to the smell of the meat so thick it felt like a hot mist, the spattering of the fat in the frying pan, and the odd sound of a her mother’s voice, seemingly arguing with someone.

The kitchen was a mess, plates and pans all over the place, and the ironing board was out, a black blouse with a sewed-on sash hanging over one side. Mother dearest was sitting at the table in black Capris and no top, her pink bra bunching a bit of skin at the underarms even though she was skinny as a rail. And she was deeply embedded in the conversation she was having with herself, the ‘other person’ talking all gruff, her face twisted with it.

“I don’t know anything about it! You know how many flippin’ years I’ve put in this place? Don’t come in here and blame
me
if you don’t know what you’re doing…”

She saw Becky coming through the doorway and put her hand to her open mouth.

“Hi, baby,” she whispered.

“Ma, the stove!” Becky said. The liver was blackened, and Mother had left her leather purse up there, dangerously close to the gas jets. She’d probably been digging in there for something, then gotten distracted and forgot she was looking. Becky went and pulled it off the rack, and though she had no idea how flammable leather really was, the thing felt hot as hell. She turned off the burner and held up the purse with two fingers at the corner.

“What can’t you find, Mother?”

“Keys.”

“They’re in the ceramic monkey in the laundry room by the door,” Becky said. “You put them there so you wouldn’t lose them.”

They both laughed a little, and Becky sat across from her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sweetie, I don’t know. I don’t want to—”

“You were talking to yourself.” Mother looked down.

“I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I can’t seem to stop.” She glanced up at the ceiling and laughed. “I mean, I try to force myself not to, like when I’m walking in the parking lot, but then I realize that I’m muttering to myself about trying not to talk out loud. It’s a vicious cycle.” She looked off to the side now, and said, “Why does everyone have to be so darned mean?”

“What happened?”

Mother sighed.

“It was last night…well, really two nights ago, when it started. Joan asked me to do a code check of the baby food aisle, and when I found the expired jars I didn’t know where to put them. I had three shopping carts full.” She gingerly rubbed her nose. “So, I wait until Joe Jenkins comes in, the night shift guy, and I ask where to put the expired stock. So, he’s like, ‘Put it in Joan’s office,’ and I’m like, ‘Really?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s where it goes,’ and then he walks into the back, moving stuff around like he always does. So while I’m putting the carts in the manager’s office, it just seems wrong, like this is a gag, like telling the new girl to go find a left-handed smoke shifter or a bucket of steam. So, to cover myself, I write Joan a note, telling her that Joe told me to cram the carts in there by her desk.”

Becky sat back and folded her arms.

“I would have done the same thing.”

Mother shrugged.

“I really have to go, honey. I’m gonna be late.”

“I’ve got that covered. I ironed your pink blouse and the other black slacks last night. They’re hanging in my closet. The stuff in here will smell like, well…dinner. You have a few minutes. What happened?”

Mother’s hands went between her knees, and she shrugged again, sort of keeping it up there in her shoulders. Becky didn’t need to look under the table to know her mother’s feet had gone pigeon-toed.

“Well, I went in this morning for the first part of my double, and there was a note left for me from Joan, who had come in an hour earlier and then left to make an emergency transfer of ice cream to Folcroft. The note said, ‘Delores, please don’t ever put food in my office again. I thought we were a team.’ So of course, I’m livid, right? I look around her desk and see
my
note, except that the part that was written about Joe telling me to put the shopping carts in there has been scratched out! And guess who has access to the office at night?”

“Joe, of course,” Becky said. She’d met him once. He had tattoos that went past the short-sleeve mark, a gold ball earring, a wandering eye, and a thin, hard face. Wiry-strong, her father would have said. People didn’t mess with him, you could tell.

“Of course. And when he came in later to get his pay check, I told him I wanted to show him something in the back. I was shaking I was so mad. As soon as we got back by the baler, I spun around and said, ‘You scratch out my note to Joan?’ and I caught him by surprise, because he couldn’t even look at me. ‘What note,’ he says, and I say, ‘The note I left about you telling me to put the food in the office.’ Then he says he don’t know anything about it and turns his back on me, turns his
back,
and I follow him, and while I’m doing it and chirping away, I have this vision that I’m following your father around, telling him to clear the leaves out of the rain gutters or take those old rolled up carpets in the shed to the dump, and it strikes me that
Joe Jenkins
ain’t my
husband
, and I get even madder. So then I’m around him and in front of him, right by this U-frame of deli trash, and I say, ‘If you got something to say, you do it to my face, you don’t scratch out notes like a school girl,’ and then he starts throwing stuff.”

Becky’s eyes widened.

“Ma, he’s not allowed to—“

“I know he ain’t, be there ain’t no cameras back there.” She gave a little laugh and a shrug and a blink. “My voice sort of just died off, ya know? He chucked some coffee cans over toward the receiver’s shack, then some bottles of cooking oil, smashing ’em against the bay doors, and then he went over to the cardboard Ortega taco display I’d worked a half hour putting together and ripped it apart like he’d lost his weapon and found a terrorist.” She was looking down now, and doing the weird crying she saved for special occasions, the type that scared Becky a bit because her voice stayed monotone and distant, and she wouldn’t acknowledge the fact that she was producing tears, those which were slick and gathering now in the creases of her flaring nostrils.

“So I don’t even realize I’m doing it, but I’m following him, and then I’m apologizing. I told him I was sorry.”

She looked up.

“
I
apologized to
him,
don’t you see?”

Becky reached across and rubbed her shoulder.

“You’re running your mascara, Ma. Go clean up.” She felt horribly cold saying it like that, but when Mother reached rock bottom you had to be a realist and change the subject awkwardly, even though it was obvious and forced and the both of you knew it.

“Hey,” Becky said. Her mother rested her hand on the wall leading to the hall.

“Hmm.”

“You told him, didn’t you? I mean…even though you caved, no man would want to get that mad twice. Too much of a strain, too much work, all the drama, you know?”

Her mother turned back half way. “Yeah. I wore him out, didn’t I?”

“Oh yes.”

“It’s the Michigan way.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s—“

“Go take a shower, Ma. You smell like liver. It’s getting late now, and it’s got to be a quickie.

“Right-O.”

She moved off, and Becky felt it all in her throat. When would it all come loose? When would her mother run her car straight into a light pole, or burn the house down, or walk in front of a train, digging in her purse for that last stick of Winterfresh? And Joe Jenkins? Was he the type to write Mother off as a harmless nut-job, call it even, and walk away nicely? Or was he the kind of man that held a grudge, came to work planning little confrontations that would make Mother look stupid and confused? Who knew? Becky wished she could fight all her mother’s battles for her, but she couldn’t. She could only re-boot the woman’s ‘computer’ every chance she could, lie to her a bit out of love, and wait for the wires to finally fry.

“Hey, Miss Rebecca.”

His voice made her jump, and he came forward into the light looking worn out and bleary eyed.

“Mother burn the liver?” he said.

“Yeah. Do you want me to make you some mac and cheese?”

“No.” He looked down and mumbled, “I’ll just go get McDonalds.”

Becky folded her arms and pouted. “Getting McDonalds” was code for “I’m coming back with a case of Killian’s, my old stand-by.”
Then he’d duck into the dark bedroom again, so he could form the famous Michigan trilogy made up of man, I-Pod, and bottle.

Brett Michigan turned back to the shadows of the laundry room, and then from the dark, came the soft sound of the door closing behind him.

Becky sighed, then wiped the floor, soaked the pan, cleaned the counter, and took out the trash. After kissing Mother goodbye on her way out, she went to her room and hacked out the rough draft of a reflective narrative Mr. Marcus had put on the schedule, then surfed the net for ammunition for a possible compare or contrast that was looming in October. Next, she showered and padded softly down the hall of the dark house, noting that Daddy had never come home. Of course. He was at the bar. New town. Old news. They probably had the Phillies game on there, and she felt her eyes filling. Stood up two nights in a row? He’d promised they’d get to know this team together, and she couldn’t think of anything lonelier than watching it out on the porch all by herself.

Back in her room, Becky didn’t remember falling asleep but she did, and in her dream she was no longer a klutz. On the contrary, she was suddenly quite nimble and coordinated, watching in amazement while her hand performed intricate tricks with a baseball. Her index and middle fingers were pointing straight ahead and spread like a peace sign, and the ball was resting there in the crook made by the backs of her knuckles.

Then she flicked the ball in the air a couple of inches and caught it in the fastball grip of her dream the night before. Artfully, she rolled the ball back over the tips of her fingers and fingernails, returning it to the front knuckles, only to flip it in the air again and catch it in the Cutter grip, Four Seam yet slightly off center in the hand. Then it was resting on the back of her knuckles again, just to be tossed into the air, spinning in a different direction, caught in the ‘Slider’ grip, and then she was doing the trick faster, flicking the ball from the backs of her knuckles to a new grip, faster and faster, like a circus trick, like juggling, like a magician in perfect rhythm, and the background was moving a bit.

She realized that her dream self was walking while doing this amazing and strange little ritual, and she flicked and gripped and flicked and gripped, and starting chanting in her head,
“Four Seam, Cutter, Slider, Curve…Vulcan Change, Sinker, Splitter, Slurve.”

Her dream-self came to a mirror, and the image in the glass was Danny with a clever little smile and a baseball bat on his shoulder. His color was high and his crystal blue eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Dare you to throw it,” he said.

“Really?”

“Bring it.”

She wanted to tell him that he had the most beautiful and delicate face she’d ever seen, all daring lines, hollows, and arches, like something you’d see in a French painting. She wanted to tell him that the sweet etchings at the corners of his eyes and the sharp angle of his jaw made her feel fragile, like she was about to walk straight into one of those guilty pleasure romance novels that everyone laughed off at recess but couldn’t wait to get back to the minute they could sneak home to the bedroom with a snuggly blanket and a hot cup of cocoa. She wanted to tell him all of these things, but all that came out in the end was,

“Ready or not…”

She threw the ball and Danny drew back his bat, the barn she drew in art class fading in as a background behind him. Then was the sound of shattering glass.

Becky screamed. For the mirror stayed intact, proven by the unchanged image of the barn in the background.

It was Danny that shattered, his likeness splintering to jagged slivers that spider-webbed, scissored, and then fell away.

Chapter Seven

Becky got over the shattered image of the boy soon enough. She was a big girl, and like last night’s dream, she just had to shake off the residue. But it was that first part that kept lingering, bothering her in terms of a strange fact she couldn’t make sense out of no matter what twist of logic she tried
. I mean, ‘Vulcan Change?’ Really?
She’d looked it up on Google the minute she’d woken, and there it was, a slowball grip buried in the palm, with the fingers forked out over the ball like the Spock character had done as a sign of greeting on “Star Trek,” like five hundred years ago. So, if she’d had to research it on the internet, how had she known about it five minutes before that in her dream?

It was ‘Baseball Boy’ who was doing this, somehow, some way, and even though she kind of liked that idea, it made her mad too! He was tricking her and getting into her head. Had he drugged her? Was this some kind of new thing that would soon be all over the Internet and the subject of a million high school sex education papers, like school-supplied condoms, gender-specific cyber bullying, and the date rape drug?

But what was the actual harm here? That she was learning intricate pitching techniques against her will?

Well, morally intrusive or ridiculously insignificant, Becky Michigan was going to put a stop to this. The next time sweet Danny decided to show up, she was not going to let him retreat around a corner. She was going to approach him, have a face to face, grab him if she had to, and hold him.