Jersey Angel (2 page)

“Thirteen. I had to quit. I smelled like an ashtray.” That’s ancient history, though, and I’ve been smoke-free for years. I jump up, go around back, get my bike, and walk it over the stones. “Well, I’ll see you later.” I hop on the seat.

“Where are you off to at this hour looking like that? Go put a shirt on. Pull back that crazy hair.”

“Bart, really,” I say nicely. “Don’t you have enough to worry about?”

“Be careful, you.” And there he sits, clutching his blender. Poor guy. “Hey,” he yells as I pedal away. “Happy birthday!”

I ride past the Corner House—
my house!
A warm, sticky breeze stirs the air as I ride, but how nice it feels to be out in the night. I left three messages for Joey but he didn’t call me back. I considered zipping over on my bike earlier tonight, but what I really wanted was for him to call.

Oh, the moon! The blazing moon. I stop and gaze at it and don’t see Cork until he pulls up on his bike and squeals his brakes.

“Just look at that crazy moon,” I say.

John Cork is one of those people who can smile with his mouth open and not look dumb. He’s wearing a red bathing suit with
GUARD
written up the side, and his hair’s in a salty do—dried slicked back after a swim in the ocean. He’s already pretty tan, though it’s only June.

“Just look at that crazy hair,” he says, grabbing a handful of my long, curly mop, which grows to twice its usual size in this weather. “I could lose a hand in there.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

He smiles, closed mouth this time. I’ve known Cork forever, and he’s Inggy’s boyfriend. Funny, they’re both tall, blond, and skinny, though he’s golden and she’s pale as milk. “Why you up?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Twizzler?” He pulls a package from his back pocket.

“Sure.” I take one, and we stand there yanking and chewing. “Sounds like Ing’s having fun.” Cork nods. She and I talked a couple of times today, while I vacuumed the floors and scrubbed the tub, but I wish she was here for my b-day. No matter, we’ll celebrate soon.

Inggy and the O’s are off on a round of college tours—this time Syracuse, Brown, and some other places I can’t remember. She’s headed somewhere good, while Cork and I are probably headed across the bridge to the community college. But Inggy has straight As and the O’s have money, and Cork and I are on the lazy side with no moolah. I’m not complaining, really.

He gives my hair another tug.

“Watch it,” I tease.

Then he leans in and gives me a kiss. A soft, slow one right on the lips.

“Hey there, mister …,” I say, a little surprised.

“Just a little mischief in the wee hours.”

“You badass.” I smile.

“Later, Cassonetti,” he says, hopping on his bike.

I ride over to Joey Sardone’s, a little lavender-colored house on the lagoon. The flower boxes under the front windows are overflowing with his mom’s droopy purple
and white pansies.
Water
, they scream, so I give them a drink with the garden hose and then walk around back to Joey’s window and put my nose to the screen. “Hey, Joe, you awake?” Nothing. “Hey, Sardi.”

His mattress creaks. “Angel?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” The lagoon laps against the dock in little licks. “Get up. For a minute.”

“Man,” he says, dragging himself to the window. He has a hairdo—it sticks up on one side and the front is mashed—and he’s shirtless in boxer shorts. He raises the screen and frowns at me.

Let me tell you about Joey Sardone. He is something. He’s tall and solid with smooth, hard muscles—a middle linebacker on the Ocean Heights High football team—and one of my most favorite people. He has dark hair and dark eyes, and when he lowers those dark eyes, which he does a lot because he’s shy, he’s all dark lashes. Sometimes I wonder if I love him. But if I have to wonder, then maybe not. I reach in and run my fingers along his bare side.

“What?” he says, flinching.

“Why so crabby? How about letting me in?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on.” Usually he’d be popping out the screen and hauling me inside right about now.

“Look,” he says finally, but he doesn’t say anything else, so I lean against the house and wait. He lowers his eyes. “You want me. But you don’t. Right or wrong?”

“It’s not like that—”

“Right or wrong?” he cuts in.

“Listen—”

“Right or wrong?” he asks quietly.

I fold my arms, and he takes that as a “right.” It’s true; Joey and I break up a lot. I guess I like my freedom too much, but for me it’s always only a time-out so I can feel like I’m back in my life with all the possibilities. I like possibilities. But after a time-out, I’m always ready to come back.

“The thing is,” he goes on, “you don’t really want to be my girlfriend, and now for once I don’t want you to be.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I search his face, but he’s not giving anything away. “So who is she?”

He shakes his head. “There’s no one.”

“Seriously?”

But he won’t answer.

“Well,” I say, “how about one for the road?”

“I’m not going to be some horndog, Angel.”

I reach in and slide my hand over his. “I don’t mind a horndog.”

“Nice. Real nice.” He swats a mosquito.

“So this is it?”

He stares at me for what seems like a really long time until I start to squirm. I look up at the moon, glowing in
the dark night like an eye watching us. The wind blows back my hair as if giving me a shove, but I can’t seem to move away.

“I really like you, Angel,” he says finally.

“I know.”

“And happy birthday.”

“I was wondering if you remembered.”

“Why are you here?” He barely looks at me.

“I miss you, stupid.”

“You’ll stop missing me.”

“I’m changing before your eyes,” I say, meaning it. “Won’t you kiss me?”

“Stop.”

“One question. Is it no as in no way, or no as in not now?”

“Go. Don’t beg,” he says. “Sweet dreams,” he adds with a poker face. He lowers the screen, and then the bed squeaks as he climbs in. And that’s the end of that, apparently.

On day two of our mad cleaning spree we’re all hot and in a mood. Plus Mom’s on a diet and stops every hour to fire up the blender with a Slim-Fast shake or some fruit and ice concoction (Tofu Bart was wrong about the beau, but right about the icy drinks). “Do you think it’s easy to get a date at my age?” she says, out of nowhere, holding down the blender lid while the ice whirls at top speed. Her face is sweaty and her hair’s in a messy bun. “I’m eating rice cakes and drinking this junk all to lose a few damn pounds. Do you kids think a woman of a certain age has it easy in this life? Well, she does not!”

Here we go. “Knock it off, Ma,” I say. Lots of guys think she’s hot. The guy at the sub shop, for one. I remind her.

“The sandwich guy, for crying out loud? He has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.”

“The old lifeguard guy likes you too,” Mimi says. “He told Nefertiti’s dad that you have a sweet can. I heard it with my own ears.”

“He’s a whooping bore.” She smiles, though, and I know without a doubt that my old lady likes hearing she has a sweet can, and honestly, who doesn’t.

“Dad likes you,” Mossy says, plopping his sweaty self on the couch.

“Off,” she yells. “I just changed the slipcover. Your dad, pft!”

“What’s wrong with our dad?” Mimi demands.

Mom pours her icy concoction into a glass and takes a grumpy slurp. “Not a thing, but he’s not for me.”

“You didn’t think so when you married him,” Mimi says.

“Well, I changed my mind, didn’t I?”

“So listen.” I peel off my rubber gloves. “Are we cleaning here or are we yakking—”

“You know what I think?” Mimi sloshes her sneaker through a wet puddle on the floor. “Rice cakes taste like Styrofoam.” She does a wobbly pirouette.

“I wouldn’t need to eat Styrofoam if I didn’t have three snot-noses,” Mom says. “Do you know what three pregnancies do to a waistline? Hand me that bucket.”

“Not if you keep calling me a snot-nose.” Mimi does a grand plié, waving her dust rag in the air.

“Now!” Mom yells.

So it’s not a good time, obviously.

•   •   •

By day I’m a cleaning, scrubbing fool, and by night I’m living in the sardine can, where I lie on my narrow bed next to Mimi’s cot, tossing and turning and flipping my pillow for the cool side until it’s just no use; I can’t sleep. Plus Inggy’s still visiting schools, and worst of all, Joey isn’t budging. I thought he’d come around. I really did. I want to give him the chance to miss me. Oh, I want him to miss me.

One night I’m lying in bed, the moon shining in my face, the smell of seaweed blowing in the window, which I’m convinced is some kind of perverted aphrodisiac, and try though I might not to, I rise from the top sheet and put on a string bikini and shorts, let down the crazy hair and give it a shake, spritz myself with some jasmine body mist, and slick on the lip gloss. Then, like a horndog, I get on my bike and head over to Joey’s.

So basically, standing outside his window becomes a regular late-night activity for me. Alongside the Sardones’ shed are crab nets, a rusted outboard motor, and a wobbly barstool. I move the stool over to the window for our meetings—Joey yawning on one side of the window and me perched on the stool on the other. And it goes something like this:

“You again?”

“Me again.”

“Why are you bugging me?”

“I kind of think if I was truly bugging you, you wouldn’t come to the window.”

“I’m kinda wondering when you’re gonna run out of gas.”

And not once does he invite me inside.

We’re cleaning in the Next-Door House and I send Mimi upstairs to scrub the toilet. When I check on her, she’s brushing sparkly purple eye shadow across her lids from a compact she found behind the bowl.

“How do I look?” she asks, fluttering her eyes.

“You want to turn into a slut?”

“No.”

“Then clean up your act.” I swipe at her face with the bottom of my tank top.

“Get off!” she yells, squirming free and jumping on the toilet seat. “Now, I want your opinion. On a scale of one to ten, how obnoxious am I? Because Nefertiti says an eight, but Mossy only says seven.”

“Somewhere right around there.” I take the sparkle shadow out of her little paw, dust my lids, and blink into the mirror.

“Pretty!” She jumps off the bowl and hugs me. “Were you ever obnoxious like me?” She tilts up her face.

“Do you realize, Meems,” I say, rapping on her skull,
“that the bennies arrive in
two days
?” Bennies are the tourists (and our renters) who clog up the island all summer long. They’re called bennies because they’re here for the benefits—summer sun, warm water, the boardwalk—and they take over the place, causing traffic jams and long lines in the A & P, Fat Sal’s pizza, the sub shop, and every store and restaurant along the strip. Worse, they rise bright and early and park themselves on the best spots on the beach. Plus they’re a sight to behold with their zinc oxide noses and peeling sunburns. Picture it: a typical benny takes a wheelie cart up to the beach loaded down with chairs, umbrellas, inner tubes, and Boogie boards, and over their benny shoulders they sling mambo-sized beach bags overflowing with Fritos, towels, thermoses, sunblock.…

I blend in the shadow with my fingers and hand Mimi the toilet brush. “Bennies!”

“The bennies can suck it!” She plunges the brush into the bowl and slops water over the side.

True, but bennies are how we get our moolah. Mom has a mishmash of jobs that don’t bring in much cash.

Now, Mossy’s a different story. The kid works. He doesn’t like it one bit, but he parks himself on a step stool at the kitchen sink and plunges his arms into the soapy water, washing every dusty dish, pot, and pan until his fingers are pruny. I come up behind him and dig my chin into the top of his hot, sweaty head. “How’s it going, little man?”

“No talking,” he snaps.

•   •   •

Finally we finish. The houses are gleaming, and the first bennies pull up to the Corner House in an SUV loaded with suitcases. The dad benny steps out of the car and stands with his hands on his hips, breathing in the sea air. “Just look at him. The fatso,” Mimi whispers, standing next to me on the porch of the House. Mom flies out the door and comes back, waving a rent check in the air. And suddenly I’m feeling pretty darn good.

No matter that I’m living in the sardine can and that someone’s always in the bathroom when I need to get in there. No matter that Mimi is my chatterbox roommate. No matter that bennies walk among us. Summer has officially started, and all these long, sweet days are before us.

Inggy will come back soon and Joey will budge. Summer has begun, and I am filled with hope.

“You gotta stop,” Joey says, coming over to the window.

“Look, I don’t want to come in,” I lie.

He lowers his eyes. “Well, I’m not inviting you.”

“I know.” A cricket chirps nearby, and it’s a warm, lush, star-filled night. I lug over the wobbly barstool and take a seat. “Did I wake you?”

“Not really.”

“So what’s new with you, Joe? Tell me something.”

He rubs his face. “You’re giving me assignments now?”

“I miss talking. I miss everything else, but I really miss talking to you. Tell me what’s new. I have no idea.”

He drags his finger against the screen and thinks for a minute. “I’m really into fancy cheese.”

“Fancy cheese?”

“You asked.”

“Tell me.”

“My cousin Dom’s working in this new deli in the Heights. Kind of upscale, and I went to a cheese tasting last week and had gruyère and stilton.”

“I wonder if I’ve ever had fancy cheese.”

He shrugs. “You probably have a refrigerator full of the usual suspects: American, swiss, provolone, mozzarella, ricotta …”

“Exactly. You haven’t become some cheese snob, have you? American’s okay for like a grilled cheese, right?”

“Listen. I can now tell you without a doubt that American has no excuse for existing.”

“Mozzarella?”

“No soul. Mozzarella has no soul.”