Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (8 page)

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Fourteen

Chicken Part Two

Mom returns to the table, glowing with
the words she has possibly shared or heard about Spencer all over this
land…room. She is checking out the close proximity of his shoulder to mine. I
don’t always catch these things, but I do see this. Before she can comment,
Horny is here pushing her way into our side of the booth while she insists Aaron,
my boss, sit next to Mom.

Mom moves and things rattle and click,
and she steps on my foot under the table but I take it quietly, keep all my
cursing mental.

The waitress is on it, standing at our
table, grinning at Aaron now
cause
I guess he’s
attractive in the way men who look a little bit like women masquerading as men
can be, and I don’t mean transvestites, I mean men who’ve had too many sisters
and learned too much about hair products or moisturizers or something.

Aaron smiles at me
cause
I’ve been staring and Christine is saying to the waitress, yes, two more, and I
like white meat. Then she grins at Aaron, lifts the doo-dad bauble dangling
from her necklace, and presses her lips on it while she stares at Aaron some
more. He giggles and his Adam’s apple bobs a few times and he gets very pink.

I am scrunched against the wall like my
parts have surrendered to one of those space saving vacuum cleaner bags.
Spencer Gundry smiles at me like this is
a good thing, but
this booth is not made for three, not if fork moving is involved.

The waitress brings two more settings
and Christine digs right in to the bowls of food already on the table, the
applesauce, the potatoes and gravy, the green beans and coleslaw. She even
serves Aaron.

Aaron says this all looks great, and
then the waitress brings two small platters of chicken, dark for Aaron and
white meat, barf, for Christine.

I have to put food on my fork, hold my
fork aloft and move my head to my fork to take a bite while my arm stays
frozen. Well I don’t have to, but I want to. It’s my protest.

If I wasn’t so distracted by Spencer’s
close proximity, his hip and thigh especially,
smooshed
against mine…well I’m the left bun on the
twerking
sandwich and who would have thought.

Mom and Christine are laughing and Aaron
is looking at Christine, big smile while he chews. And he eats his fried
chicken with a fork and knife. While I covet his elbow room, I feel it’s
impossible to be his friend. And he is my boss for crying out loud. And I think
it’s the same shirt he wore to game night. Surely he’s been home and returned? Surely…Shirley….

“Sarah Marie?” Spencer nudges me,
offering the green beans. He’s going to serve me, like Christine with Aaron. I
nod and he puts a spoonful on my plate. “More?” he says.

I shake my head and continue to eat like
my elbows are glued to my ribs while Christine tells Aaron and Spencer and Mom
her favorite desserts that they offer here. Her detail is inspiring. She goes
on to tell how to make a really good cake from a boxed cake mix and what kinds
of cakes her mother made her for her many, many birthday parties.

“Sarah, do you pick your garden this
afternoon?” Spencer asks me, perhaps rescuing us from
Horny’s
walk down memory lane.

I am licking potatoes from my fork.
“Maybe.”
I do, but I don’t want to commit myself. I have to
work but for some reason I don’t want to say that in case Aaron is listening. I
don’t want to give him any insight into how I turn out copious amounts of work.
I like him to wonder how I do it. So I shrug and keep licking the tines on the
public fork, and Spencer is watching too closely so I stop and poke a green
bean.

“And the reason I ask,” Spencer says,
low-voiced, “is because I noticed how loaded those little tomatoes are and I
wondered if you wanted some help?”

I picture watching his long, long
fingers working over…the vines.

“You don’t nap?” I say, stalling.

“Once.
At a park.
I was with a girl…it’s a long story. Best
nap I ever had though.”

“Sounds like some of the dates I’ve been
on,” Mom interjects and Christine snorts and has to drink her soda.

“Who naps at a park? Good way to get
mugged,” Christine says.

Aaron launches into a story about
getting mugged. Someone took his bus fare when he was in college. It was
probably high school and the bus fare was his lunch money. I’m smiling.

“What’s that smile for?” Spencer asks
like I’m adorable or something.

“What time?” I say.

“After lunch…after you take off that
pretty dress,” he smiles and nudges me again and it kind of hurts as my other
shoulder is already scrunched on the wall.

The unfortunate dress remark is heard.
By the whole table.
No one is talking now, but Christine
leans forward enough to eye me around Spencer.

I am staring back at her, a green bean
on my fork, and it poised to enter the hangar…my mouth.

Then I look at Mom, and she is glaring
at Spencer. He smiles at her and goes on eating, so she eyes me, with her, ‘I
knew it,’ face like I’m not practically a nun, but a secret whore who can’t
wait for lunch to be over so I can strip for our neighbor Spencer Gundry.

And I’m not denying anything. Not even
to my boss who doesn’t know what the hell is going on. No, he doesn’t think a
thing of Spencer mentioning my dress, as in ‘take it off.’
Just
another day in the outback.
Now he’s telling us his favorite cakes and
not even Christine seems to care.

“You got any kids Spencer?” Mom says. I
lay the green bean down, and the fork it roofs.

“No. I don’t have any children,” Spencer
says smoothly, “remember?”

“None you know about, huh?” Mom says
licking her finger with a loud pop then using her napkin on her hands
like
she’s about to perform surgery.

“Mom,” I say because what the heck?

“I have no children. I told you this
last night,” he says.

“You did. You’ve got an answer for
everything, a nice tidy answer. Four years of college, psychology to political
science. Useless you say.
Former high school teacher.
Wanted a new challenge, a fresh start.
I’ll give you that. Two
women next door, you’ve got nothing but time. You’re young,
uncommonly…everything. And we’re supposed to believe that a man like you has no
other options than to flatter an aging widow and her…impressionable daughter?”

“Mom,” I say again because it’s better
than throwing the applesauce.

“You come
here,
buy a house that’s sat idle for years because Alfred Hitchcock is dead and no
one else wants it for their horror movie. You’re never fazed by anything much, never
ruffled…but you’re a real good singer, and a mean guitar player…not mean. There’s
not a mean bone in your body. That would take some real commitment…meanness. Believe
me, I know. I was married to Fred Sullivan.” She pitches her napkin onto her
plate.

“And I’ve embraced you like a friend. I’ve
been a damn good neighbor, and now I hear you mention my daughter’s dress?”

“I apologize for using that reference…,”
he says.

“Reference you call it?” Mom says.

The waitress appears, “Any dessert?”

“No,” Christine answers, dismissing her
while her eyes are glued to Mom. But Mom won’t look at her, won’t look away
from Spencer.

Spencer…whose hand is calmly holding my
knee says
,
“I was asking Sarah if I could help pick
her cherry…shit…her tomatoes,” he says, suddenly more flustered than I’ve ever
seen him.

 
I
have to laugh at that. I’m sorry. This whole thing, well I’m laughing and if my
mouth was full of applesauce it would be coming out of my nose.

“Sarah?” Spencer says, lightly tapping
my back and also smiling really big even though I think he’s trying to look
serious for Mom. Mom is smiling, but
it’s
evil, that
smile, nowhere near good, the face she wears when interrogating a student.

“You think this is funny?” Mom says. “Don’t
bullshit a
bullshitter
, Spencer.”

I groan because I hate, hate when she
says that.

“C’mon,” Spencer says while I push on
him
cause
I have to get out, “I am sorry about this
misunderstanding. I hope you can forgive me and we’re still friends.” He takes
his free hand, not the one that’s returned to my knee, and holds it over his
empty plate and the rest of the mashed potatoes, for Mom to shake.

“Aw, give a guy a break,” Christine
says, squeezing on Spencer like he’s just knocked on her door with the
Publisher’s Clearing House check.

“Move please,” I’m mumbling now because
the laughing is pretty well over and I’m ready to cut a bitch if Christine Horner
doesn’t get her white meat out of the booth.

Spencer is touching me here and there,
“I’m waiting for Christine, Sarah.
Just a minute.”

Christine finally stops humping Spencer
and stands. Then Spencer unfolds, digging for his wallet and some bills, and I
am out and out. I’m flying around tables and chairs. I run into the lobby and
almost knock poor Pearlie over. There’s my ride home. I tell a kindly blinking
Merle, “I’ll be in your car.”

“Sarah,” Merle calls as I push the glass
door, “it’s locked.”

Outside I go left and right, my arms
swinging. Where in the hell…?

I see Merle’s flesh colored 1981
Cadillac and I head for it like a carrion bird toward a dead bison.

I’m not running from Mom. It’s Spencer.
His hands, his everything.
One more minute that close,
feeling that hand. Shit.

“Where have I been?” I say that out loud.
Then I see him exit the diner and hold the door and out
comes
Merle and out comes Pearlie, and
Leeanne
,
and the four of them head for me.

I
fold
my
hands in front of my throbbing baby maker and wait.

Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer

Chapter Fifteen

Post-chicken: In
the car—and after.

“You’re not going with Mom?” I state the
obvious to Spencer as he approaches and I can’t hold his eyes for long because
he’s just so…damn.

He says to me over the roof of the car,
“Merle says I can hitch a ride with you all.” He’s a southerner now.

Merle is helping Pearlie in, and Spencer
holds Pearlie’s door like he must do something, so in the meantime I have my
door open and
Leeanne
comes around to my side and I
tell her, “Get in.”

And true to
Leeanne
-form
she resists. “I’m not sitting by him,” she says. “You get in.”

“
Leeanne
, get
in,” I say with all this conviction, like Gandalf with the
Balrog
or something.

“You get in…Sarah,” she says and Merle
has come around to the driver’s side and he’s standing there, deep comb marks
in his hair and a red bow tie and gray shiny suit coat. I know the look, and so
does
Leeanne
.
He homeschooled us
same time.

“Ladies,” Merle says, reminding us.

“Geez Merle,”
Leeanne
mumbles. She gets in and I do, but before I can close the door, Spencer opens
it, nearly wrenching my arm out of its socket because I am opposed, but he gets
in and I barely have time to shove
Leeanne
over to
the other door so he doesn’t sit on my lap.

“Shit Sullivan,”
Leeanne
says,
then
she looks at Merle, “Sorry.” She leans
forward, “Sorry Pearlie,” she says.

“What’s that?” Pearlie says to Merle and
he pats her shoulder then rearranges himself and starts the dead bison but even
then you can hear his sigh. He tried. God knows he tried. But we are this.

And Spencer Gundry is beside me, holding
my ponytail on the shelf behind the seat, his long legs open, his knee touching
mine. I am not looking at him, my arms folded, staring straight ahead.

“Sarah,” Spencer says, but I ignore him
and turn to
Leeanne
.

“We made three twenty Saturday.” I
purposely leave out Spencer’s hundred this time.

“Way cool,”
Leeanne
says still looking out the window.

“Hey,” I poke her, “eye contact.”

Merle shoots me a look in the rearview
and I smile. If poor Merle had a nickel for every time he said, ‘eye contact,’
to me or
Leeanne
. We both hated to look at…people.

“Leave me alone,”
Leeanne
says.

I pinch her side.

“Stop it psycho,” she whines, but she
smiles a little.

“Merle,
Leeanne
called me psycho,” I say just for old times.

Merle ignores me and Pearlie says, “My
favorite movie.”

Leeanne
does laugh then, but quietly cause that’s how one laughs at Pearlie.

I feel that tug on my ponytail again. “You
know I was only saying cherry tomatoes, right?” Spencer whispers close to my
ear. His hot breath on my ear is the date-rape drug Rohypnol. I am almost in a
hypnotic state now.

Then Pearlie turns around and grins at
me. “Spencer sure is a handsome man.”

Leeanne
has her head back and her body shakes. We live for Pearlie’s words. Well we
used to. It’s how we got through Merle’s dedication to our educations.

Spencer beams at me. “Why thank you Miss
Pearlie,” he says.

Pearlie doesn’t respond, but she’s
smiling and looking out her window.

I don’t say anything either. But I’m
coming out of my drugged-state.

“Did you hear me?
About
the tomatoes?”
Spencer says releasing another cloud of Rohypnol.

“Yes,” I say, not ‘yes master.’ But
really, beat a dead horse why don’t you.

“So how about it?
We
pickin
’?”

There’s Mom to consider. He’s not
retreating. Mom is not happy. And now he got a different ride home. How did
that help the situation? Well, so did
I
. But he
followed. He follows me all the time. And Mom is used to my rejection. She
counts on it.

“Merle was a handsome man,” Pearlie says
still gazing out the window. “My mom didn’t like him. Remember that Merle? Mother
thought he was a con-man.”

Merle sits straighter in his seat, moves
his thin neck like he’s got a cramp.

“He sold vacuum cleaners door to door. That’s
how we met,” Pearlie says. She’s smiling at Merle. “He’s still handsome,” she
says.

“How many years?”
Spencer asks.

“Sixty two,” Merle says because Pearlie
would never remember if Merle didn’t tell her.

Spencer whistles. “That’s fantastic.” He
yanks on my ponytail again. “Miss Pearlie did your mom come around?”

“No. She waited for him to die so I
could come home, but she died first.”

“Hmm,” Spencer said, close to my ear
again. Then to the front, “Did it bother you, Merle? I mean Pearlie’s mother
hating you?”

Merle looks in the mirror for a brief
second, finds Spencer’s eyes. “Nah,” he growls. “Some people thrive on hate and
some on love. That woman hated me long before I showed up.”

“Good to know,” Spencer says low, more
to himself this time.

“So does that mean you loved Pearlie’s
mom Merle?”
Leeanne
pipes up always a bit of a ball
twister.

“Sure,” Merle says. “After all…she made
Pearlie.”

Merle is just too good for us. Always
has been. But the people in this car, right now, even
Leeanne
with her dark moods, Spencer with his looks and touches, it feels alright. It
feels good. It feels safe.

We get out at Merle’s house.
Leeanne
walks away without saying good-bye. “Bake,” I call
and she flips me the bird without turning around.

She lives by herself since her mom died,
but it is hers, and a little money, so she can get lazy and give in to the
black hole. But when she gets going she is as hard working as…well as me. She’s
always been that way, fighting that dark strangler. She is on anti-depressants
and something for anxiety. But most of the time she does alright.

Once when we fought big, she said I was
my mother’s little baby, afraid of life, and at least she isn’t like me.
But the truth?
She is a lot like me. And I told her that,
and I told her the difference. She uses everything that happened to stay down. I
use it to get up.

She cried bullshit, and we never go back
to that day. I think we both know we can’t survive another round like that and
stay friends. That’s what Merle said that day when he broke us up. He’d heard
the screaming and he talked to each of us separately.

Merle said we must never attack one
another. We have to look at ourselves. We have to change ourselves. He said we
needed a common cause not birthed in tragedy. He called the dog shelter and the
rest is history.

So we haven’t fought for years,
Leeanne
and me, but they don’t go away…the words. I know
what she thinks, and she knows what I think, but she likes to bake and I like
to grow things, and we both love the dogs.

So Spencer and I walk to our houses and
I slap my forehead because I forgot to bring
Cyro
a
dinner. That means I have to make him something. I don’t mind, but he loves
fried chicken. I say this to Spencer.

“Let’s go back there and get him
something,” Spencer says.

I can feel the sand slipping through the
hourglass. Days of Our Lives, I know, but I can feel it and I have so much to
do.

“I’ll go back,” he says.

He asks to take my truck and I say okay.
He drives to the diner and I hurry upstairs to change, or slip into something
more comfortable.
Right Mom.

So I do that, get on my usual Raggedy
Ann ensemble, shorts and a tee-shirt and my flip-flops. Thank God I’ve already
leveled the stalks growing out of my legs. Mom still isn’t home, and a half
hour later she still isn’t home, but forty minutes after that she drives in, Spencer
behind her, blocking her in, but then he doesn’t know better.

He gets out with the dinner and I hurry
down the porch to take it right over
cause
it is
already late. Mom gets out of her car and says something to Spencer and they
are already laughing.

I don’t say anything, but go to Spencer
and take the meal. I try to give him the eight dollars but he isn’t having it,
insists it was nothing.

“Do you want to take this over?” I ask,
hoping he’ll say no because…I do this.

“No you take it,” he says. Then he goes
back to bantering with Mom about the ideas she has for his house. I take the
dinner to
Cyro
all the while marveling that they have
somehow made up. I guess that is what took Spencer so long. I imagine he ran
into Mom at the diner and they talked.

I go up on the porch and set the dinner
on the TV tray there and cup my eyes and look in the door and
Cyro
is in his chair. I knock and he says, “Sarah
come
in.”

So I take the dinner in.

“He’s left,”
Cyro
said. “Jason packed up and left this morning.”

“For the army?”

“He’s staying with a friend until he
goes. I…I think it’s a woman. I’m not sure.”

Cyro
doesn’t ever raise the blinds, but it is dirty in here. Now that Jason is gone,
well before I take over I will clean. “You need to tell me what to do. What you
need.”

He is staring toward the TV and shaking
his head.

“Don’t…don’t.
We talked about it before when he got mad that time. You just have to quit
being so proud and tell me.”

He looks at me. “What good am I?”

Someone hits a homerun on the television
and the crowd, a sea of color, goes wild. I move to a chair and slowly sit.

I know what Merle would do here—say
something great, Shakespeare, to be or not to be. He has a quote—well he has a
bunch and he’s used them all when talking to me and
Leeanne
.
He made us write essays, but there was this one, and I can’t remember the whole
thing, but Merle said it was bad when someone died, but suicide was a crime
against all of mankind. Something like that, but are we talking suicide
cause
…
Cyro
doesn’t believe in it.

“
Cyro
…you want
to talk to Merle?”

“No,”
Cyro
says sharply. “You’re already saddled with your mother, and now me? I’d rather
be dead than put more on you, Sarah.”

“Then do more for yourself,” I say. Oh
shit I don’t mean it. “It’s a pigsty in here. No wonder Jason wanted to leave.”
Oh God, I can’t stop. “You used to G. I. things. That’s what you called it. Now
it’s just dark
..and
sad. It feels really sad in here. And
it stinks. And what’s with peeing in jars? Get your lazy ass up and pee in the
toilet! Then clean the damn toilet now and then,
Cyro
.”
Oh crap I’m standing. “Are you in there? Are you still in there?”

I’ve got so many feelings in me, all
stirred up, all of a sudden. “What are you doing sitting all day? You don’t
laugh, you don’t…you don’t get a special car so you can drive. You were a cop! You
were my hero! You told me to try. You told me to keep trying! But you don’t
try.
You big…hypocrite!”

“Sarah,” he says amazed.

“What?” I yell back. “
Leeanne
does better than you. Mom at least went back to
school. Jason…he’s trying…right? But I don’t know
Cyro
…you
don’t try. You just don’t try.”

I have to get out but I stop at the
door. “I want a list of everything you need me to do. I want a list,
Cyro
. Now…eat your chicken.”

I go out then.

There is no sign of Spencer. Good. I
need to be alone. I run up the stairs to my room and close the door. I’m just
getting started on my files when I hear Mom coming to knock on the door.

“Sarah?”

Crap. “Come in.”

She opens the door, eyes locking on me.

“I’m working,” I say.

She stays in the doorway. “Spencer and
me…it’s better.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t know why
it had to happen in the first place. But it’s just another chapter in the great
book of why.

“I saw. I have to get some work done.”

“Don’t be like this,” she says.