Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (18 page)

Actually it was me I didn’t think Fred
loved. “I don’t want to talk about him, Mom. I do my best to forget he ever
existed.”

“Don’t look in the mirror then,” she
says.

That’s it. I go out even though she
calls after, comes all the way to the door and calls after. Face is pulling up
then. He can deal with her.

We are at Steak an’ Grits. That is how
they sell cow here, with a side of grits. There are only four tables in this
side room of the bar. You come in, get a number if you want to eat, and drink
and dance--if you can find a few feet on the crowded floor--and drink some more
before they call you to your table.

And on Friday and Saturday nights you
can double the wait. But if you’re with someone you love, someone who makes
time melt away because he’s holding you up against himself and talking softly
to you while everyone else mills around you and you don’t even have to run out
of the room at all you are so centered on him, then it doesn’t matter how long
you have to wait for that steak cooked in an iron skillet with a side of grits
that are so well seasoned and flavored and go so well with the meat you can’t
imagine a baked potato ever having the nerve to take their place.

When we get in we have to share the
table, so we’re together on one short bench and we never do say much to the
couple across from us, beyond hello. After that it’s just Spencer and me, his
arm around me, mine around him. I’m telling him how
Leeanne
and me started selling at the market, and I’m telling him how shy we both were
and how
Leeanne
gave things away so she wouldn’t have
to talk to people and some of the vendors got mad and we both packed up and
left and Merle had to go with us a couple of times to ‘get us back in the
saddle.’ We are laughing then and I’m telling him about the bachelor uncles. Well
he is full of questions and I don’t know why he wants to hear all of this
anyway, but he listens so intently like I’m giving him a gift or something.

They bring our food then and we are
digging in and Spencer is so excited, well he loves good food, I sure know
that. He’s chewing and smiling at me, and it’s not long after I look up and see
Mom and Face and Horny and my boss enter. My perfect bubble pops without a
sound.

I have my head over my plate then and
I’m shoveling like this place caught fire. I beat Spencer. “Man,” he says
noting my empty dish, “hungry?”

I can hear Mom’s big laugh over the
crowd in the next room. I know she’s already plastered. I am wiggling my foot. I’m
starting to count the people, figure out how long it will take me to get out,
making a mental picture of myself pushing people out of the way.

I just want to go but Spencer is asking
me if I can eat dessert and I’m saying a sound, no.

He catches my energy it seems. He pays
the waitress and we’re up and moving, his hand on my back as I pick through the
crowd in the bar. Mom calls my name, “Sarah Sullivan,” and the din lowers a few
notches as people look.

If you’ve been here long enough, you
might remember. There have been plenty of crimes since ours made headlines for
a couple of weeks, but some are so sensational you remember. I feel eyes, I see
the faces.

Spencer has stopped, and stopped me, his
hand on my arm. He waves to Mom. “Marie,” he says and she is right there.

“Caught you red-handed,” she says to
him. Face is coming up behind her and Christine and my boss.

Spencer is saying how great the food is,
and Aaron is making his way around everyone to get to me.

“Sarah,” he says, “how’s it going with
the Puritan file?”

“I’m almost finished,” I say. I know my
performance has slowed, but I’m still in the timeframe, just not ahead like
usual. He’s looking at me, one eye to the other like people do when they’re
trying to figure you out.

“I was hoping you could come in this
week. Like Tuesday?
Tuesday at eight?”

“Yeah okay,” I say, knowing I’ll find a
way out of it. I just want to get out of here.

“Did you get a number?” Spencer asks Aaron.

Aaron holds up a number. Christine is
giving me this gooney look like I’ve bagged the big turkey at the shoot. I feel
sweat roll down my back.

“I’ll…be outside,” I say rudely.

Spencer says oh, okay, says good-bye and
we are out.

Shit I can finally breathe a little. “It
was hot in there,” I say to Spencer.

He kisses my temple. “You did fine.”

I look at him. Does he know what I go
through sometimes?

“She was better…your mom. You
guys
talk or something? I thought she’d kill me for asking
you to stay over.”

“She talked. I barely listened.” I have
to smile a little, and he laughs.

We’re in the parking lot and he’s
holding my door open while I climb in the truck when I see him one aisle over. It’s
dark, but I recognize the car, the plates.
The ponytail.

Spencer is in, and he follows my line of
sight, but the man in the car means nothing to him. I want to tell him, but
then, I don’t. I’m eager to get out of here, eager to see if this guy follows
cause
that would be weird.
Too weird.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Twenty-seven

I walk on the sidewalk, the heavy meal
sitting in my protesting stomach. I know it’s not
right,
the man in the blue car, the same blue car that now sits in the driveway of the
rental house. He followed us home, but he seems to live here now, separated
from Spencer’s house by an empty lot.

I don’t hesitate, I walk onto the porch.
See, I’m shy about a lot of things, backwards even I admit, I always have been
the keeper of barbed social skills, but about this, this I can do for those
same reasons.

So I am knocking on the door and he
doesn’t take long to open because like me, he’s a watcher and I’ll bet he saw
me coming.

“Who are you?” I say.

“Who are you?” he says.

“Your neighbor.
You passed me when I was walking, then tonight at the restaurant. Now you’re
here. Who are you?”

“I guess I’m the same as you--your
neighbor.”

I can see behind him, the emptiness.
A pallet on the floor.
An open suitcase
black and soft as butter.

“My stuff hasn’t arrived yet,” he says
smoothly, turning to see what I do.

“I thought you were following me,” I
say.

“Sorry about that. Guess our planets
were on the same collision course.” He says.

“Okay,” I say. We’ve collided.

“You’re what…like the neighborhood
watch?”

“Yeah.”

“How do I sign up for that?”

“It’s my job,” I say, and I’m already
coming off the porch, but I turn, “Your name again?”

“You first?”

“Sarah.”

“Oh. Well A. R.”

“A. R.,” I repeat so he can correct me.

“Yeah.
Which house is yours?”

I point to the left, “Two doors.”

He looks down that way.
“Right.
The dogs.”

I don’t explain. I hope they don’t
bother him too much, but I hope they do. I don’t care.

“Well, be seeing you,” I say. I want to
do the eye thing, point at my eyes, fingers in a
vee
.

And not giving me a name? No problem.
Cyro
will make a call on the plates and we’ll know soon
enough.

So I stop at
Cyro’s
when I reach there and write the number and tell him to find out. I tell him we
have a new neighbor in the rental, give him the
make
of the car. I don’t say anymore. But I could.

“If Spencer is in WITSEC…wouldn’t Colin
know?”

Cyro
puts his head to the side like I’m mental. “He won’t tell me that.”

“Maybe if you ask?”

“If he tells that because I ask, Doe is
good as found.”

What if he’s already found?

I am troubled as I cross the street. Worse,
Aaron’s car rolls up as soon as I make it to my gate. Seems he and Christine
are delivering Mom. She’s drunk off her ass and crying. Christine doesn’t seem
to want Kleenex duty. She literally hands her off to me with apologetic eyes. Apparently
she’s about to get her groove on…again, and suddenly remembers Mom and me are
related. Aaron leans over and asks if I want some help.
Such
a gentleman.
That’s when I tell him I won’t be coming in to the office
on Tuesday. I hear him say, “Sarah,” with some exasperation as I keep going.

So I’m half carrying Mom up the porch
stairs and she’s going on about that son of a bitch. Face must have played his
get out of jail free card or something.

We get inside and she stumbles trying to
take off her shoes and lands on her ass there and she’s on her side then, fetal
position. Her necklace is snaking onto the floor and her manicure looks limp
lying there like someone spit out red pistachio shells. “Mom,” I say nudging
her with my foot.

“Go away,” she says without opening her
eyes.

“Mom
come
on. Get
in bed at least.” I squat beside her and attempt to move her.

She slaps at me, one of the nails
scraping my neck. “Get away from me.”

Since I’m already down there I back up a
little and sit on the bottom step. She goes right back to playing possum again.
I
sigh
big time.

“Stop staring at me,” she says, her
moving lips the only indicator she’s not in a coma.

“I think I’ll take a picture so you can
see yourself in the morning,” I say.

Her eyes pop open. “What? You think
you’re cute?” She pushes up on her hands then.

“You’re drinking too much,” I say.

“Don’t be my mother. You’re not any
better at it than she was.”

I suddenly have a new respect for that
Grandma. Maybe she wasn’t as bad as Mom painted her. I am sure she had her side
of the story.

“What happened?” I ask from long habit. I
really don’t want to know.
Because I probably already do.

Mom sits up a little more, pushes her
hair out of her face as she mutters, “What happened…what happened…I married Fred
Sullivan…got pregnant…that’s what happened.”

Oh, we are going way back.

“Mom…did Face do something?”

She peers at me through her drunken fog.
“Who?”

“
Jace
.
Did something happen?”

She waves her hand. “I need a smoke.” Her
purse is nearby. She reaches for it and gets out her cigs and a light. She lights
it and takes a deep drag and lets it out, her stomach caving, her shoulders
drooping forward like her head weighs a ton. Sometimes, like now, I can see the
shriveling beginning.

“You should be asking what happened to
us…me and you. I think…a man is between us. I never thought that would happen.”
She’s picking at her tongue like there’s tobacco there, but she’s smoking
through a filter.

“Spencer.”

“Who else…
Jace
?
Is
Jace
between us Sarah? Damn get a clue.”

“How is Spencer between us Mom?”

“You’ve turned on me ever since. I don’t
know if you’re jealous or what it is. You’re never here. It’s like you don’t
even want to spend five minutes with me.”

“Do you really feel this way?” I thought
it was something else. I didn’t know what, but not that she felt I was ignoring
her.

“You’ve always…well we’re the two
musketeers.”

“
Mouseketeers
Mom,” I say. I don’t know why.

“It’s changed now. You’re going to be
just like me.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re running after the first good
looking man who is available and you’re going to end up pregnant. Then you’ll
see what I mean when your options go flying out the window.”

“First man?
I’m twenty-seven
Mom
.”

“That’s so young.”

“So I ruined your life.
Me and Fred Sullivan.
We’re to blame for everything. You
have it so bad. Without us you’d be what…a movie star by now?”

“I don’t know why I try to talk to you.”

“You don’t. You never talk to me,” I
say.

“Always pointing
fingers at me.
I’ve been a good mother.
Single mother.
You try it.”

“You just told me how horrible it is, how
I’m going to end up with the same horrible fate.
Motherhood,
right?”

“And marriage to the first guy that
comes along because you want to get away.”

“I don’t want to get away,” I say.

“Yeah you do. You just don’t know it.”

I’m shaking my head. “You don’t know
me.”

“Hah. I’ve been you. That’s how much I
know you.”

“You can’t talk to a drunk,” I say.

She looks ready to choke me. “Miss high
and mighty. How’s the air up there?”

“Come up and see. First you have to get
your ass off the floor though.”

We stare at one another. I don’t know
why I’ve never seen her insecurities before. But then, I’ve never talked to her
like this.

I want her to come back at me, shut me
up, be stronger, have better answers. Then I’ll believe she knows better. But she
has nothing.

I’ve pitied her for a long time.

No wonder she hates me.

“I can’t make it up to you,” I say.

“What?” she asks, using her cupped hand
for an
ashtray.

“Everything.”

“I never asked you to.”

No, she never had. Like I said, we never
talked. But somehow, I knew. Somehow, I fell into it. And she let me.

It’s late when she finally gets into
bed. I have done some work up in my room, mailed off another file to Aaron just
to make sure he’s not going to fire me or anything.

Normally I would say it was too late to
go to Spencer’s. But I’m protecting him now. So I pack my bag and make sure the
doors are locked and I go out and pocket my keys. At his house it is a few
beats before he pulls the door when I knock. He looks a little mad.

“You okay, Sarah?”

“I’m sorry.” I get that out pretty
quickly.

“I said I wasn’t going to push, but I just
didn’t know. I saw them bring her home. I wasn’t sure you were alright.”

“Spencer.”

He stops rattling and looks at me.

“I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He steps back
and I enter the house.

“You’ve got a new neighbor. A. R., he
says.”

“What’s A. R.?”

“His name.
He has a ponytail,” I say.

“Like Face?”

It’s much better groomed than Face’s
bar-be-
que
grill-brush, but I don’t say.

“Maybe he’s…,” he starts and then he
laughs.

“Don’t say it,” I warn. He’s talking
about Mom having a new distraction.

He shrugs and tries to stop smiling. “You
gonna
work while I finish watching the ballgame?”

I see he’s laid out snacks. The dogs are
around me saying hello, but then they are off wrestling lazily with one
another.

So he goes to the bathroom and he’s in
there so long I do open another file and eat some of the popcorn he’s got
there. I throw some to the guys and they are all over it, then they sit there
and watch every morsel as it makes its way into my mouth. So I don’t get much
done, but I see the file, read it actually, many thoughts in my head.

It’s like that, almost like things
resolve themselves without me. Divide and conquer is definitely my brain’s
floorplan
. I am a multiplex theatre with a different movie
in every room and most of the time I’m watching them all.

When he finally gets back he is without
a shirt, just his sleep-pants. He comes right to me and takes me by the hand
and I rise and shut my laptop and set it to the side all at once.

“Miss Sullivan.”

He’s my attendant now. I laugh and
follow after.

The bathroom looks nice, a couple of
candles lit there.

“Where’d you get candles?” I say.

“They were under the kitchen sink. I
guess when they showed this place they wanted to mask the empty dampness.” He
turns to me. “Notice there
are
bubbles. Dish soap, but
it’s the kind nice to your hands so….”

This makes me laugh. “I bathed here when
I was a kid,” I say. When they remodeled they kept the big porcelain tub.

“Really?
So you don’t feel strange in here,” he says.

“I’m working on it,” I say.

“Hey Sarah…I wasn’t thinking. You don’t
have to do this baby. I just thought….”

“It’s fine,” I say. The living room is
harder, but I don’t say.

“You take your time. I’ll be watching
the game if you need me.” He moves a little toward the door.

“You know you make me so happy, right?”
I say.

He moves back to me, takes my hand and
kisses it. “You’re a goddess,” he says.

“Don’t leave.” I clear my throat.

He smiles but his eyes are very serious.

I hold my arms out.
 
“Go…for it.”

His hands move to the bottom of my
shirt.
 
I lift my arms straight up and he
pulls it off. My bra is just a flesh-colored geriatric affair.
 
He steps close, reaches around and unclasps
it in the back and gently removes it.
 
“Miss Sullivan,” he whispers, his eyes on ‘them.’
 
He makes himself look at my eyes, briefly,
smiles a
hoo
-rah, and he’s right back there.