Going Vintage (13 page)

Participation, not delegation. Once we’re in the car, I scribble that last line down on my arm. Grandma wrote The List. Now she’s given me a mantra how to finish it.

Chapter 10

Possible steadies for my sister, Ginnie:

1. Hector Cortez: aka the Sexy Mexi. He gave himself the nickname, just like Jeremy is the Amazing Asian, and so he might have some toolish tendencies. But he lives up to that nickname. As Spanish club would say, Ay, caramba!

2. Garth Nowak: He plays soccer and I know he’s already in awe of Ginnie. He’s shorter than her, but he has the confidence to pull it off. And, um, he’s also a rumored drug dealer, but love could change him
.

No, Mallory. No future criminals. You’re not that desperate yet
.

YET
.

3. Oliver Kimball: president of pep club, and I’m making Ginnie join, so there’s an opportunity. He’s cute enough. I mean forget
enough
, he’s hipster hot. I don’t know how they would mesh, though. He’s a senior while she’s a freshman. And he still might be a jerk. I haven’t decided yet
.

4. Bennett Williams: because he’s there
.

I have to stay after school so I can finalize all the pep club paperwork in the office. I miss the bus and all my usual rides, so I beg a sophomore band kid named Bennett to take me home. I hesitate because Bennett is young, and California law says something about teens not driving other teens until they’ve had a license for a year, but obviously no one follows that.

Bennett’s the nerdy/skater guy who may or may not be handsome one day. It’s hard to see past the Dickies and hole-riddled T-shirts. He’s in love with Ginnie, and spends the ten-minute ride peppering me with questions about her. He pulls up to my house and cranes his neck, like Ginnie might be sitting in a window, pining for her dream boy to drive up at any minute.

I throw my backpack over my shoulder and open the door. I’m about to tell Bennett to exit Dreamville when I remember
that Ginnie needs a steady. I decide that yes, someday he
will
be hot, once his future girlfriend takes him shopping and talks him out of parting his hair in the middle. He showers regularly and even has a car. Ginnie and I only have so much time to complete this list, so why not Bennett? He’s already smitten. She’ll just need a touch of …
persuasion
.

My sister is totally clueless about guys. She also annoyingly but endearingly has no idea how gorgeous she is, and that when a guy says, “Want to go out?” they usually do, in fact, want to go out. So we go for direct.

“The only way you’re going to get Ginnie’s attention is with a grand romantic gesture.”

Bennett leans forward in his seat. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Giving her sister a ride is a good start.”

“Do you think she’ll go to homecoming with me?” His voice is borderline whiny.

“Not if you ask her in that voice.”

He drops his voice an octave. “Any other pointers?”

“Yes. Be firm. Persistent.”

“Got it.” Bennett scratches the side of his nose a bit too close to the nostril that it’s almost a pick. Okay. So … we’ll work on that too. “Thanks, Mallory. You know what? I don’t care what everyone says. You’re nice.”

‘What everyone says’? So what rumors did Bennett hear now? Do I want to know? Probably not. “Thanks. Tell all your friends.”

I run into the house and throw on a T-shirt and old jeans. Back in the early sixties, girls never wore jeans to school, only
for the most casual of events, and you can’t get more casual then a storage sweep.

My friends think I have the worst job ever, but I honestly love it. I travel with my dad down to San Diego or up to San Francisco to talk with dealers, or to watch him in action at storage or estate auctions. But usually what he pays me to do is to comb through recent acquisitions. I don’t have the same eye as him, so it’s his job to decide if an old video game is a collectors’ item or if an oil painting is an original. I just shift the potential from the obvious trash. And you’d be surprised what trash people hold on to.

My first instinct is to text my mom and tell her I’m home and ready to leave, but with that convenience gone, I walk down to her office to ask for a ride to Dad’s main storage unit. Dad’s been backed up lately, and the unit is jammed with mysterious boxes and trash bags.

Mom doesn’t look up from her computer at first. Her heavily highlighted brown hair is in a ponytail, but still styled, curled, and teased. She has on her standard work uniform—bejeweled designer jeans and a fitted T-shirt, this one with roses curling around a large cross. When we walk into a store, guys always check out my mom first, taking in her tight body and large chest before noticing that she’s in her forties, not twenties. If Ginnie’s around, they usually shift their leering to her. I’m a cute girl—I can say that about myself—but sometimes I feel like a piece of old bologna between two slices of finely crafted artisan bread. Maybe not bologna, but pimento loaf at best.

Mom’s bright pink-and-lime office is all order and cheerfulness. Afternoon sunshine spills through the window onto the leather chair and ottoman she bought on clearance at HomeGoods. Smaller cataloged items are on one white shelf while the larger items are kept in the garage so she doesn’t have to look at them. Her one weekly splurge is the fresh bouquet of flowers she gets at the farmers’ market every Tuesday.

“Mom?”

She jumps and clutches her chest. “Mallory! You scared me.”

“Sorry. Are you cataloging?” I move over to Mom’s desk.

She clicks on something and shifts her body so it’s covering the computer screen. Which doesn’t seem suspicious
at all
. “A little. Just catching up on e-mails and things. You ready to go? Why didn’t you text me?”

I know I can only put off technology for so long before another school assignment comes up or I go to the dentist and they want to do some 3-D X-ray on my cavity. So I need a deadline. Homecoming is next week, and since it was such a highlight in Grandma’s high school existence, the dance seems like a good end point. And once The List is done, well, I don’t really know what happens then. It’s a day-by-day plan.

“I can’t find my phone,” I say.

“You didn’t lose it, did you?” Mom grabs her designer knock-off purse and starts shooing me out of her office. “We can’t afford to buy you a new one.”

“I know. I’ll find it. Besides, it’s not a big deal to walk down the stairs and come get you.”

Mom switches off her lights and closes her door. “I just value my privacy, honey. I like to have some warning first.”

“I’ll knock next time.” Why is she acting so weird? It’s not like I walked into her bedroom. She knew she had to drive me. Ha, maybe Mom has a secret Authentic Life too.

Scratch that. Not funny.

Mom smears on lip gloss in her rearview window, even though she’s not getting out of the car. “I feel so bad that I haven’t even asked you how school went. How are things with Jeremy?”

“Over. Awkward.”

“That’s got to be hard. Are you sure you two are done?” Mom manages to pull out of the driveway and check her phone at the same time. She does not, however, manage to avoid the trash can behind us. The bin clangs to the ground, but mom doesn’t look back. “Wow, there’s a sale at Kohl’s this week and I just got an e-mail with another twenty percent off. I still have those bonus bucks I need to spend.”

I reach over the console of her minivan and grab the phone. “Mom, don’t text and drive. Watch the road.”

She grabs the wheel with both hands. “I’m still paying attention.”

“To answer your question, yes. I’m sure Jeremy and I are over.”

“I won’t ask what happened if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t,” I say.

“But did you at least get closure? Closure can take the edge off the pain. Did I ever tell you about my first boyfriend, Michael? We had the worst breakup, happened at school …”

I look out the passenger window. I appreciate that Mom is asking me these things, because it shows she cares. Even though she’s gone overboard more times than I can count, she also can be very sweet when it comes to life’s little earthquakes. I just don’t want to have this conversation now, if ever. No. I do not have closure. What I do have is a random list written fifty years ago by Grandma, which is as close as I’m going to get. “That’s a good story, Mom. But everything is fine.”

“It doesn’t
sound
fine. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?”

“No,” I say flatly. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

Mom pinches her glossed lips together. “If there’s any way I can help—”

“You can’t,” I say.

“Maybe if you tell my why you broke up—”

“You just said you won’t ask what happened.”

She sits back in her seat and stares out at the road. “You’re right. I did say I wouldn’t ask.”

We pull up to the storage place, and Mom inputs the code. I jingle Dad’s key ring, finding the one with the red dot for this unit’s lock.

“I can stay,” Mom says when I open the car door. “Get some work done on my phone. Or help you unpack. We could talk more.”

“Mom, you dry heave if you even look at an uncombed box. Remember that time we found that family of mice?”

Mom shudders. “You’re right. I’ll be back at six.”

I wait until she drives away to open the unit. It’s true, we did find mice in one garage, and dirty magazines in a travel trunk Dad found at a garage sale in Watts. But we’ve also found
gold coins and an early-eighteenth-century Shaker-style table. You never know what treasures are found in someone’s personal history.

Today starts with duds. Lots of worthless files, yellowed paperback novels, semibroken toys—old stuffed animals are the worst—and bags of clothes that are either too worn or the wrong style/era to net us much of anything. But then I find an old ring box in the bottom of one of the file boxes. Inside are blue jeweled cuff links and a tie pin. Whoa. If the stones are sapphires or something semiprecious, we’re in business.

I stick the case into my pocket and start to bag up the donation pile. Dad sends the clothes that aren’t valuable to a charity in Africa, which gets him a tax break and a feeling of goodwill. I’m folding the clothes when I see a large letter
O
in the pile. It’s an old Orange Park High cardigan made of scratchy wool, orange and black. It’s not sixties, I’d guess more early eighties, but it has a preppy importance that puts Blake’s gavel to shame. This could get some money, especially since it’s a sentimental piece in our geographical area, but I’ll keep it and tell Dad to take it out of my check. Save it for a day that calls for loads of pep.

I see motion to my left and jump. A cockroach scurries out from a sagging box. I squish it with my sneaker and bag up the rest of the clothes. The unit is organized and mostly divided by five thirty, so I lock up and wait the last half hour for Mom. If I had a phone, I could text her and tell her to come early. Or I could call a friend, play a game, look up information on my history paper. I could do something besides sit on a curb
with absolutely nothing to do. Freak, I don’t even have music to listen to.

I open the box of paperbacks, pull out an old romance, all heaving bosoms and bare chests. The hero is the duke of Somewhereshire instead of Eduardo, but this will do. The sun is dipping below the horizon, there’s an insect buzzing nearby, and the breeze holds the promise of fall. Sunrise this morning, sunset tonight. That’s twice in one day that I’m outside like this, just sitting, breathing, waiting, watching, without my fingers tapping out something on my phone.

Now if only I had some soap or wood to whittle. Super-vintage.

I come home to a surprise in the kitchen. A message from Jeremy. Written on a note card. Attached to a bouquet of lilies.

Mallory
,

I’m sorry about class Monday
.