Driving With Dead People (11 page)

The next day my picture was finally in the
Elk Grove Courier
, and not only was I alive, I was a winner.

I began buying every Broadway album I could afford with the money Mom slipped me from Dad’s truck. I listened to
Guys and Dolls
and
Gypsy
, and dreamt about life as an actress in New York City.

Wendy Johnson lived in the neighborhood right behind Maple Creek Cemetery. Although we’d been in school and the White Creek Players together, I’d never been to her house.

Wendy was glamorous, especially the way she applied her brown eyeliner and soft peach lip gloss. She walked by scuffing along on the balls of her feet, heels never touching the ground. I was fascinated by her.

Wendy had long, thick brown hair and huge brown eyes with thick dark lashes, and knew more than I did about boys, about life. She was sophisticated. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d made cocktails or had her legs waxed before doing her homework.

One afternoon she invited me over to ride a new Tri-Rod that her dad had brought home. It was a mini-dune-buggy with three fat wheels covered in impressive squiggly tread.

Carl Johnson owned the local Ford dealership, so Wendy always had cool things to ride. Wendy’s mother, Marianne, had dyed blond hair, pale skin, and bright green eyes. I had never seen hair that color. Mrs. Johnson always wore skirts and stockings with sleek leather high heels. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were older—almost old enough to be Wendy’s grandparents. Their house was stark and modern. The walls were white, the furniture was white, even the doorknobs were white.

Wendy’s room had a white wrought-iron bed with a pink see-through drape hanging down from the ceiling that covered the entire bed, and a thick white shag rug on her floor.

I thought it was strange that there were no toys in the house, even though Wendy was too big to play with toys. Maybe it wasn’t the lack of toys as much as the lack of anything indicating that a child lived there. I couldn’t imagine Wendy as a toddler or in elementary school trying to have fun in that perfect, sterile house.

We walked out to her driveway, where she told me to sit on the Tri-Rod.

“I don’t know how to drive,” I said. She started laughing.

“You aren’t driving it, you’re riding it. It’s not a car,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Turn the key down there by your knee.” I turned the key and the motor started. I felt cool. I had never ridden anything like that before.

“Squeeze the right-hand grip and push it back toward you,” she said, which I did, before hearing the rest of her instructions.

That buggy took off so fast, I didn’t know what was happening. If I’d thought about applying the brakes, I wouldn’t have known where they were anyway. Next thing I knew, I was upside down against a wire fence with the Tri-Rod spinning its wheels in the air right beside me. Wendy raced down the hill.

“You killed the rabbits!” she screamed.

“What?” I was trying to figure out where I was.

“The baby rabbits. There’s a rabbit’s nest right here,” she said, kneeling down in the middle of her yard.

I felt nauseous. I had never killed an animal before, let alone an entire family. This was the worst thing I had ever done at someone else’s house.

Wendy stood up with a small white bunny cupped between her palms. She was pushing away tears with the sleeve of her shirt. I was trying to extricate the back of my blouse from the wire fence so I could stand up and help collect the smashed rabbits.

“You missed them,” she said, relieved. “They’re fine.”

“They’re fine?” I asked.

Suddenly I was mad. What the hell was a mother rabbit doing building a nest right smack in the middle of someone’s backyard? Why hadn’t someone rolled over them with a lawn mower? Rabbits usually burrowed underground. Not at Wendy’s.

I pulled myself up, more worried about her three-wheeler now that I knew the bunnies weren’t dead. I asked Wendy to help me flip it over, but she was inhaling the soft white fur of each bunny. I heaved the Tri-Rod onto its wheels. There was a big dent in the front fender.

“I dented the fender,” I hollered.

“Dad won’t care,” she said, not even looking up.

“It’s seriously twisted,” I reiterated.

“I don’t care,” she said, still distracted.

“Do you want me to drive it back up the hill?” I asked, praying she’d say no.

“Just leave it,” she said.

I turned off the key and walked over to the rabbits. I knelt down on the grass, gently pulling aside the skinny green stalks. Baby rabbits were climbing all over each other.

“Where’s the mom?” I asked.

“She hopped away when she saw you coming. That’s what they do to protect their babies. They run away from the nest hoping you’ll follow them and not find their little ones,” she explained.

I had a headache. Luckily, Mom was pulling into the driveway in her new silver Pontiac.

“I’m sorry about your Tri-Rod,” I said, “but I had a great time. Thanks for having me over.” I wanted to be polite, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“See ya later,” she said, not even walking me to the car—in Elk Grove, people always walked you to your car or the front gate or the back door. That was the neighborly thing to do. When Mom and I pulled out of the driveway, Wendy was still sitting in the grass next to the nest.

I hadn’t seen her parents the whole time I’d been there. I wondered if they were even home.

“How was it?” Mom asked.

“I almost killed myself on a three-wheeler her dad bought her,” I said, checking my knees for bruises.

Mom laughed and asked, “What does their house look like on the inside?”

“It’s hollow,” I said.

“Hollow?” she asked.

“It feels empty, but there’s furniture in there,” I said.

“I bet Mrs. Johnson has excellent taste,” Mom imagined.

“If you like the color white,” I said.

I was thinking about Wendy. I’d talked to her all those years at school, but I didn’t really know her. I’d admired her sophistication, but I could see it came from taking care of herself. She seemed lonely, which was something I understood.

After being at Wendy’s, and spying a picture of Tom Cameron on her dresser, I was ready for a boyfriend.

Julie and I went biking through Maple Creek Cemetery. We called Tim Wright and told him to meet us at Wendell’s grave. Julie was sure Tim had a crush on me.

When Julie and I rode up to Wendell’s and leaned our bikes against the stone bench, I felt clumsy and nervous. What if Julie was wrong, and Tim thought I was gross?

But when he came strolling up, he looked right at me. He was clutching a life-size stop sign made out of plywood that he’d cut and painted himself in shop.

“I made this for you.” He smiled, holding it out.

“Wow, thanks,” I said. It was the first gift any boy had ever given me. It might as well have been a moped or a new stereo.

I carefully took it and laid it against my bike. Tim followed me. When I turned around, he gave me my first kiss. It was so quick and soft, I didn’t realize at first that what I’d spent over a year waiting for had just happened.

“Well, I gotta go,” Tim said. “My brother’s waiting for me in his car.” I looked over his shoulder and there was Ricky sitting in his Chevy Camaro. I waved and Ricky waved back.

“Okay, well, thanks again for the stop sign,” I said.

“Let’s meet at the Liberty sometime,” Tim said. “We could see a movie.”

“Okay,” I said, and he left, climbing into the Camaro. We watched them wind their way out of the cemetery.

“He kissed you. I can’t believe it. He really kissed you.” Julie was jumping up and down in the grass. I started laughing and jumping with her.

“He asked me to the movies,” I cheered.

I wondered if Sarah Keeler was watching; her grave was nearby. She would never have a first kiss or a stop sign. Now that I had both, I felt prettier and much older.

That fall JoAnn was leaving for college—“77” had finally come.

Everyone was moving away. Tim’s family was moving to the Ozarks, where his father, a Baptist minister, had been transferred. We never made it to the Liberty, but we did meet at the Elks Club, where we danced to “Don’t Give Up on Us” by David Soul. Wendy Johnson watched us over the shoulder of her date, Mike Harris, and cried. When I went to the restroom, she followed.

“You two are breaking my heart,” she said. “It’s such a love story.”

I liked the idea of having a boyfriend, but Tim’s leaving was more of a fact than a lost romance. Wendy’s eyes were bloodshot and wet.

“I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” I said, offering her my lip gloss.

She waved it away. “Thanks, but I just got a new one from Lazarus.” She held up a shiny gold cylinder, pulled off the lid, and twisted up bright pink lipstick. She bent toward the mirror, pursed her lips, and carefully followed the lines of her mouth. (I still wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick with color.) When she finished, she walked over to the stall, grabbed a small square of toilet paper, and pressed it to her lips just like Mom did.

“That looks great,” I told her.

She turned and grabbed my shoulders. “There’ll be other boys, Monica. It doesn’t feel that way now, but there will be.”

“I know,” I said.

Tim gave me a gold ID bracelet with his name on it, and I never saw him again.

Compared to Tim, JoAnn would be close by, two hours away at Ohio State University in Columbus. I was sure my chances of ever being cool were going with both of them; I now had no boyfriend and no role model.

I sat on the side steps watching JoAnn pack for college. She was stuffing Mom’s Pontiac with Carole King and Seals & Crofts albums, her acoustic guitar, her chrome desk lamp, and a stereo.

The night after she moved out, I walked across the hall and gingerly pushed open her door. I flipped on the light and sat on her bed—seriously trespassing. I looked at all those BJKs painted on her walls and imagined what it would be like to be a huge success. To have everyone know who you were. To do something really important.

I walked over to the window and looked out. To my surprise, I could see right down into the Whitmores’ bathroom. Had JoAnn ever seen them peeing or shaving?

There was a thick white rope hanging outside JoAnn’s window. In the winter she hung a six-pack of Mountain Dew from it so she could keep them cold without going downstairs to the refrigerator. She was the only person I knew who drank Mountain Dew.

I saw her tennis racket lying against the side of her desk. She must have forgotten it, which meant Mom would be driving it up there sometime within the next week. I picked it up and swung it around a couple of times. She would have killed me if she’d known I touched it. It wasn’t fun sneaking into her room without her living there—not that I ever snuck in when she was living at home.

Becky was downstairs playing the piano. I could hear her starting and stopping and then starting again as she practiced
Für Elise
for the piano lessons we both took on Saturday mornings. I never practiced.

I wandered down the hallway into her room. While JoAnn made me feel challenged and excited, with Becky I always felt comforted. It might have been our closeness in age—the fact that she was just a few steps ahead of me—but Becky felt like an extension of me.

For as long as I could remember, we had shared things (Barbies, bicycles, sandwiches), but a few years before, when Becky hit junior high, I was still in fifth grade, and I didn’t understand that junior high girls want their
own
stuff. That was when all hell broke loose between us. She was in the height of puberty, and I was assuming things between us were the same as always. Then we were still sharing the same room, so borrowing from her was easy.

“I’m gonna kill her!” she yelled at Mom.

“Monica Elizabeth!” Mom hollered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.

“Leave Becky’s clothes alone,” Mom said. “She doesn’t want you wearing her blue sweater.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked, shrugging.

Becky went crazy, flinging her arms all around. “The big deal is that you have your own clothes, and yet you always wear
mine
. LEAVE MY STUFF ALONE!” She was in tears now. “Can’t I get any privacy around here?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, sending Becky barreling toward me. I raced through the hall, hurried into the bathroom, and locked the door behind me. She pounded on it.

“Quit taking my things,” she screamed.

“Quit taking
mine
,” I yelled through the door.

“There’s nothing in your crappy closet I want.” I heard her stomp away.