Everything Is Fine. (9 page)

I look around. I’ve been trying to clean for Dad so there are rags and buckets and Windex and newspaper and stuff all over.

Plus Soft Batch cookies spread on the table.

“Okay,” I say.

Then his face is still pressed against the glass.

“I said okay,” I say.

Still pressed. He isn’t moving.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to get in.”

Then I remember I had put signs on the two doors: “Do not disturb. No one can enter these doors. Maintenance.”

I’d put them up in case Mrs. Peet came over.

I say to him, “You mean the signs?”

“Yeah.”

I bite my lip.

“Yeah, you probably can’t come in,” I say.

“I can’t?”

“I guess not. I forgot about the doors. If I let you in then I have to let everyone in.”

I feel bad he can’t come in because this is the first time since Mom got sick that he wants to, but I didn’t know if Mrs.
Peet was watching our house or something.

Then he says, “What about through the window?”

I think about it and then I say, “Hang on.”

I put my hair behind my ears, get up, do a karate chop, and then go to check on Mom even though Colby’s face is pressed on
my kitchen window. I’ve never let a boy through the window before.

Her door is closed.

I never leave the door closed.

I look down the hall. No one.

“Is someone here? Bill?”

No one answers except my mom’s voice from in her room. “You can come in, Mazzy.”

It’s loud and really her voice.

I look at the door.

It’s brown.

Then I open it and she is sitting up and sort of normal-looking.

“Mom?”

“Hi, baby,” she says.

“You’re awake.”

“Uh-huh.” There is color in her face.

“What are you doing?”

“Just thinking.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“A little bit.”

A little bit. A little bit. She is feeling a little bit better and she is talking to me.

“Dad’s coming home tomorrow,” I say.

“I know.” She smiles. “You’ve been missing him, huh?”

I’m confused. “You know he’s coming home?”

“Yep.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ve been telling me every day for a week, baby.”

I’m still standing in the doorway when she says that and I slump.

“You mean you heard all that?”

“I guess. I mean, yeah. But it was sort of like a dream.”

I bite my lip and watch her move toward the edge of the bed. “Are you getting up?”

“I think so. I think I might take a shower.”

“Really?”

She looks at me and smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile in a month.

“You don’t think I need to? Do I smell that good?” she says.

I knock my head on the door frame. “It’s just, you don’t, it’s just —”

“I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”

“Mom, I’m sorry about your room.”

For the first time she sort of looks around. “What about it?”

“I’m sorry about my clothes and the books and the shoes and everything.”

She smiles again and says, “Go let your friend in.”

She’d heard? She’d been listening. She’d heard.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t need help?”

“I’m okay,” she says.

I turn and start down the hall, but then she says, “Maz?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Could you shut the door?”

She is still sitting on the edge of her bed like it’s a regular Thursday.

“Okay.”

I shut the door and stand there for awhile.

I stand there.

And stand there.

And stand there.

I stand there until I hear Colby knocking on the window again.

My mom is taking a shower and Colby Dean is waiting for me to let him in.

“So?” he says.

“So what?” I say back, and I put a strand of hair in my mouth. I wish I still had the oranges.

“How do I get in?”

“How come you want to? It’s eight o’clock.”

“Just do,” he says.

I think about that as I lean against the counter.

“Okay.”

Then I open the window and pull off the screen and Colby climbs into my house.

Olivia is or I guess was nine years younger than me.

She never saw a boy come through our window.

Colby crawls through the window and knocks down the calendar from last year that’s still up, breaks two glasses, and gets
his hands all wet because the counter has juice on it.

“Sick,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don’t you clean?”

I look around the kitchen.

It never really looks all that good since I got in charge.

I don’t say anything.

He washes his hands and then sits at the table so I sit at the table.

“Do you want a marshmallow?”

“Okay.”

I get out the bag.

“Do you want them cooked?”

“No,” he says, and stuffs three in his mouth.

Then we are quiet. Colby’s eyes are a little cross-eyed without his glasses and he has spiked his hair down the middle. He
looks sort of weird. Not like Colby.

“Did you do your hair?”

“Uh no, Bill Clinton did it for me,” he says, even though his mouth is full of white foam.

“Oh,” I say. “I like it.”

“Of course you do,” he says, and he looks down at his arms. “Do you think I’m getting natural guns?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I mean, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why? Do you want them?”

“Sort of.”

And then we sit.

Then he says, “I’m probably getting contacts.”

“Oh,” I say.

Then he says, “Colored ones.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to know which color?”

“Okay.”

“Yellow.”

I eat a marshmallow and he’s just looking at me.

“Don’t you think that’d be cool?”

I eat another one.

Then I say, “How’s Dixie?”

Colby turns sort of red. “She’s cool.” He stuffs three more marshmallows in his mouth.

Then he says, “My mom said she’s trashy.”

“Trashy? She said that about her sister?”

Colby nods. “She just said that she dresses slutty and that she better do it while she can because Mom says her boobs are
going to drop and her butt will get big.”

“Oh,” I say.

I eat another marshmallow and my stomach is getting inflated.

Colby is drawing circles on the wood table with his finger. “I know it’s weird how my mom says stuff like that about her own
sister.”

“Oh,” I say.

He looks at me. “Aunt Dixie did say one thing about you, though.”

“She did?”

“Well, about your . . .” and then he mouths the word MOM and looks out the door toward the hall.

“What?” I say, but I say it soft.

“They were over for a barbecue and me and Aunt Dixie got left alone at the table.”

He takes another marshmallow and says, “Can you melt this one for me?”

“Later,” I say. I want to know what Dixie said.

“Okay,” he says. Then he wipes something from his nose and looks at it.

“What did she say?” He is taking forever.

“She started asking things about you and your mom and crap.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” he says, and then he stops and his eyes drop.

“What?”

“Like she’d heard what had happened to Olivia and all that.” He stops again and we sit. Then he says, “And she said it was
so crappy how people talk about your mom the way they do.”

I feel something sink in my stomach.

He looks at me.

I look back and say, “What are people saying?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know she’d know people who even knew your mom but I guess my mom and dad say stuff.” He pauses,
pulls a marshmallow apart, and then sticks it to his arm. “Plus, everyone knows because of your dad and everything.”

Dad.

He sticks another one on his arm and doesn’t look at me.

I get up and put the marshmallows on a plate.

“Do you like them burned or not burned?”

“Whatever,” he says. He is making a tower now.

I press start on the microwave and am watching it go around and around when he says, “Randy asks about it too. Almost everyone
does.”

The microwave beeps but I don’t move.

“I just say I don’t know.”

He turns in his chair. “Is that what I should say?”

I shrug.

He looks at his shoes again and then says, “Do you guys have any sugar? I was supposed to come over and ask for sugar.”

C
OLBY AND ME WITH MARSHMALLOWS
: crayon on paper

It all started when Dad got a phone call from the network.

He was up for the job.

Mom didn’t want him to take it.

“Roxie, this is huge. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

“I thought we were waiting for ABC,” she said.

They were talking in the kitchen and me and Olivia were watching
Barney
or something in the living room.

They never fought.

Except about jobs.

Dad didn’t say anything.

Mom did. “Dave, this is ESPN 360. This is curling and foosball,” she said.

“Give me a break,” he said, and he was louder than normal.

All I could think was, Please don’t let us move. Please don’t let us move.

Things were good — and before we got here we had to move and move and move. I liked it here.

Mom didn’t want to leave because she had lots of friends and she had her art studio and her business and Dad was making money
as the local sports anchor and people liked him and everything was how it was supposed to be.

They kept talking and talking and finally Dad yelled something. It made Olivia jump, and she looked over at me, her fat cheeks
red and her mouth open.

“It’s okay,” I said. But then Dad yelled again and Olivia’s face started to scrunch up and soon she was crying.

Mom ran into the room yelling, “See what you did, Dave. You’ve upset Olivia.”

Dad followed her and watched her pick Olivia up. She was whimpering and put her head on Mom’s shoulder.

I looked at the carpet.

“This is a family decision, Dave. What’s best for the family.”

Dad stood in the doorway, silent, while Mom rocked Olivia back and forth. The air was heavy, and this moment I remembered
so well.

It’s almost like it’s frozen.

He said, “Things are going to change, Roxie. What works for you doesn’t always work for me. Things change.”

And then he walked over, kissed Olivia on the nose, nodded at me, and went out the front door.

Three days later it happened.

I never tried to do art before.

She always asked if I wanted her to teach me but I didn’t.

I don’t know why.

Now I want her to.

In Mom’s art room I’ve made it better even if it’s messier.

Like I pulled out her paintings and put them on the walls.

She used to have them out plus some of her drawings of us and the finger painting Olivia had done, but after everything happened,
she took them all down.

Instead, she put up prints of van Gogh or Klimt or someone famous.

Not her own stuff and not our stuff.

Right after she did it I asked her, “Where are all our paintings?” She was scribbling something on a pad of paper at her worktable
and didn’t respond.

“Mom?”

Still scribbling.

“Mom?”

She jumped. “Oh, Mazzy. What do you need?” She sounded mad.

“Nothing,” I said, and then I left and watched TV.

The room looks better now with her stuff and my stuff and Olivia’s finger painting.

I made a chart about boobs.

There are many different kinds.

Norma’s are droopy like melons.

Mrs. Peet’s are big but pushed together and it’s because of a bra.

Dixie’s are round and straight out.

Mom’s are little hills.

Mine are bumps.

B
OOB CHART
: pen on paper

I think Dixie understands me.

I like her bikini and how she doesn’t care.