Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost (7 page)

I glanced over at Mrs. Dagnitz. She was still transfixed by the chunk of black soap, as if it were a rock from another planet, which it looked as if it could have been. She sighed and said she wished they had this particular shop in Santa Fe. She wondered if she should go in right now and splurge on some of the black soap, or whether she should come back later. Mark Clark glanced down at his watch. He would stand there forever and let our mother blather on about the stupid soap. I had an idea.

“Come on,” I said. “I need some shampoo and conditioner. Maybe there's something in here that can get rid of the frizzies.” I threw open the door and went inside, passing through an invisible wall of pure odor—fruits, flowers, herbs, cinnamon, vanilla, the beach on a breezy day, and that smell hippie girls love that I can
never pronounce. Working here would give your nose a heart attack. How did anyone do it? Mrs. Dagnitz came right in behind me, stepping accidentally on my heel. I may have become a stranger to Mrs. Dagnitz since she'd been gone, but in a few basic ways she was no stranger to me. She loved buying anything that you could carry away in a cute little handled bag.

Mark Clark planted himself just inside the door. The longer Mrs. Dagnitz was in town, the more he just went along with the program. He picked up a piece of plum-colored soap and put it down without smelling it. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

Mrs. Dagnitz grabbed a basket just inside the door and started filling it up with bath bombs and tubes of cream and hunks of that frightening black soap, happy as could be.

“Oh,” I said, making a show of looking around with a frantic expression. I wrapped my arms across my stomach, hoping to make my situation look desperate, as if I might be on the verge of food poisoning. “I really need to use the bathroom.” I scurried over to the clerk and asked whether they had a restroom. She looked up from where she was piling pink squares of bath salt in a tower. She said sorry—but there was a Starbucks three doors down. Thank you, surly counter-helper girl!

“Ohnnn,” I said, scurrying back toward the front door, where Mrs. Dagnitz was smelling a tangerine-colored bath bomb twice the size of a real tangerine. I
bent over like a bad actor doing a hunchback impersonation. “I'll be right back,” I said.

Mrs. Dagnitz placed the bath bomb back in the bin and looked at me, her tanned face expressionless. I could tell she was trying to figure out what was going on with me. Finally she said, “Mark, go with her.”

“I'm all right!” I said, pulling the door open and hurrying out before Mark Clark could say a word to anyone. I didn't know what I would do if he followed me, since I had no intention of going to Starbucks.

Before entering Paisley's on 23rd, I stopped to reread the sign in the window three times to make sure I wasn't seeing things, to double-check that the business was moving SOON to 222 S.W. Corbett, and not 1222 N.W. Corbett or 2222 S.E. Corbett.

VISIT US SOON AT OUR NEW LOCATION AT 222 S.W. CORBETT, the sign said in blue marker. I was positive that was the address of Angus Paine's family grocery. I stood there for a minute, wondering whether I should text Angus to double-check the address, or whether I would just be using that as an excuse to text him. Why would I want to text him anyway? I already had a boyfriend. Would Kevin care if I was sending random texts to another boy, even if it was a boy I was solving a mystery for? And was I actually solving a mystery for Angus Paine? Hadn't I just said a few hours earlier that I didn't think there was any mystery to be solved? I shook my head like a dog after a bath, to clear my
mind of troubling thoughts that would only slow me down.

Inside, I hurried to the counter and stared down through the glass at a tray of pale yellow snickerdoodles, as if I might want to buy some. It was way too hot for cookies, too hot for anything. The tired ceiling fan stirred around the smells of vanilla and butter.

Where was the counter person, anyway? The longer I stood there, the more wiggly I got. I bounced first one leg, then the other. Any minute now my mother would be standing on the sidewalk, her hands on her hips, staring at me through the pastry shop's big window. I looked back over my shoulder, back out the window. Nothing. Two girls in baggy shorts straggled past, each carrying an icy coffee drink.

I drummed my fingers on the glass counter. Once Mrs. Dagnitz had purchased her soap, she'd be wondering where I'd gotten off to, and why I wasn't back, and what was going on here, had I really needed to use the bathroom or was I just using it as an excuse to run off and call my boyfriend. She sometimes talked about my brothers with their short attention spans, but they had inherited them from her. She was worse than a ferret—obsessed to death about one thing until a minute or two later she was obsessed about something else.

Finally a tall blond man in a white apron came out from the back, wiping his floury hands on his chest. His hair was the same color as the snickerdoodles, and he wore it in a small ponytail. His face was long and pale,
his hands were long and pale, everything was long and pale, like an elf from one of Mark Clark's video games.

“So hey,” I said, “when are you guys moving?”

“Moving?” he said. He scratched his head, then wrapped his arms around his skinny middle. I could tell he didn't know what I was talking about.

“I saw the sign. In the window.”

“Oh, right!” He smiled. His front teeth overlapped. “Not sure. Was supposed to be next month, but now we're just not sure. Can I get you something?”

“Isn't that where the Corbett Street Grocery is? At 222 Southwest Corbett?”

“Where what is?”

“Where you're moving?” Adults could be so irritating. They always got on you about the tone of your voice, never stopping to think that if they weren't so annoying, you wouldn't be forced to give tone. Either Mr. Elf-Man was just the baker and really didn't know anything, or he was hiding what he knew, and why would he do that?

“You'd have to ask Paisley,” he said. “She'll be in tomorrow.”

I thanked the baker, then scooted out the door and into the heat. I could feel his curious stare on my back.

I'd beat cheeks out of there not a moment too soon. Mark Clark and Mrs. Dagnitz walked out of the soap store just as I walked out of the pastry shop.

Mrs. Dagnitz stopped. “Weren't you going to Starbucks?”

“I thought they'd have one in there,” I said. “It was closer.”

“The Starbucks restrooms are always so nice,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. “They're so reliable. They always have a nice piece of art and plenty of toilet paper.”

“This one was fine,” I said. Why did I bother to say anything?

“You should stick to the Starbucks,” she said. “It's a known entity, and known is always better than unknown.”

I shut up. I fell into step behind Mark Clark. We continued our search for gelato, which I didn't even want anymore. Didn't Mrs. Dagnitz know anything about me? That for me, now, the unknown was better? Or at least more interesting? There are three gelato shops on Twenty-third, but only one of them was acceptable to Mrs. Dagnitz, for some reason I didn't listen to, something to do with one hundred percent organic something, or recycled whatnot. But the acceptable gelato shop didn't have any gelato that day because their refrigeration was broken. We drove home with all the windows rolled down. Mrs. Dagnitz had an attack of guilt over using the air-conditioning because it contributed to global warming. I was all for it. Doing our part to keep the polar ice caps good and frozen meant it was too loud to talk, which meant too loud for Mrs. Dagnitz to talk. Her wedding reception was on Saturday. Because I knew I would feel too guilty, I kept
myself from counting the hours and days until she cut her second second-wedding cake and would go home to Santa Fe.

Kevin showed up on his bike just as I was finishing the dishes. We'd had leftover halibut (yuck!), which I'd snuck to Ned, praying to St. Francis of Assisi that there would be no bones. Did dogs choke on bones like people did?

Through the window over the sink I saw Kevin fly up the driveway on his little bike. Usually, just the sight of Kevin made my internal organs feel as if they were part of a dolphin show, flipping and spinning. But not when I saw him on his bike. He was the largest boy I knew, and he rode the smallest bike. Why? I wrung out the sponge and set it on the window ledge. Mrs. Dagnitz went insane when someone left a soggy sponge in the sink. Ned was sprawled on the kitchen floor by his water bowl, panting. I never realized corgis had such thick coats. I nudged him and he rolled over. I pet his tummy with my foot.

My middle older brother, Quills, appeared from upstairs, his bass guitar case dangling from one hand. The case was long and black, sinister looking, as if it held a deadly weapon inside and not a musical instrument. Quills poked me in the side to see if he could get me to jump, then looked out the window as Kevin leaned his bike against a tree. Together, we watched as Kevin answered his cell.

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” he said. “But if you do, don't let Mom find out.”

“Can you believe she changed her name to Dagnitz?” I said. “Deedee Dagnitz.”

“Yeah, well,” he said.

“She's driving me totally insane,” I said. “Was she always this perky-weird, or is it all the yoga?”

“The yoga's actually made her better,” said Quills. He'd put his case down and tore a spotty banana from the bunch on top of the fridge. “Where is she, anyway?”

“They went to a movie, then back to their hotel. But she will see me bright and early in the morning, so she can get in a full day of making me want to pluck out my own eyes.” I picked up the sponge from the window ledge and squeezed it again with all my might. If it had been a live sponge, I would have killed it.

Quills left for band practice without saying when he would be back. Normally, he would have said when he was coming home—he would have left the time on a scrap of paper and stuck it under one of the plastic bug magnets on the fridge. Now that Mrs. Dagnitz was back, he acted as if he could do as he pleased, as if we didn't need to know where he was going and when he would be back.

From the computer room across the hall I could hear cartoon swords clashing, Mark Clark on his video game killing his pretend monsters.

I snagged two Otter Pops from the big box in the
freezer and pretend ice-skated into the backyard, where Kevin sat on the picnic bench picking at a scab on his knee. It was twilight, the Purpley Time, as I used to call it when I was little. I brought him a red Otter Pop, rested it on his bare thigh. Red was his favorite flavor. Red was everyone's favorite flavor. I hated to say this about Kevin, but he pretty much liked everything every other boy I knew liked. World of Warcraft. X-Men movies. McDonald's Big Macs. Skechers. He'd told me he was taking Japanese next year, which I thought made him a brainiac nerd like Reggie, but it turned out that it was just because the teacher was supereasy. Was this bad? Considering he had the most killer deep-mountain-lake-blue eyes?

Kevin tore the top of his Otter Pop open with his teeth. We started a debate about which Otter Pops were better, the red ones or the green ones. Otter Pops are just colored frozen sugar water in a plastic tube, but we compared flavors like we were world-famous creators of frozen confections.

“Green is far superior because it mingles the flavor of sugar, water, and green dye,” I said.

“Red is the Otter Pop flavor of Nickelback,” said Kevin. “It's pure bombdiggity goodness.”

“Green is a cool color, and makes you feel cooler when you eat it.”

“Red is better because it just tastes better,” he said.

“That's just your opinion,” I said. “You need
evidence to back it up.” I sounded like my dad, Charlie, the lawyer.

Kevin sucked on his Otter Pop and shrugged. I got the feeling it was too much trouble for him to think up an answer. He had come over straight after his manny job. Smears of chocolate stained the thighs of his khaki shorts, and Harvey or Otis had drawn a two-headed snake on the back of his hand.

Even though Kevin had been my boyfriend for a while now, it still was strange having him show up at my house. When Kevin showed up, I had to stop whatever I was doing and have a conversation, and there was always the big question of whether we'd kiss. Chelsea de Guzman always had boyfriends, but mostly they just texted back and forth hundreds of times a day. They talked on the phone. They IMed. It was as if her boyfriends lived in Mozambique and this was the only way they could communicate. I knew for a fact that one of her boyfriends lived three blocks away. Still, this arrangement seemed a lot less stressful than having the boy turn up and sit on your picnic table and eat all your red Otter Pops.

Kevin was in the middle of a story about the twins and a praying mantis they had found on a shrub when who should blast up the driveway on his skateboard but my best friend, Reggie. He wore a backwards baseball cap and a baggy T-shirt that said, CALL ME GEEK TODAY, BOSS TOMORROW.

“S'up?” said Reg.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” said Kevin.

Then, silence. Kevin concentrated on slurping the last bit of melted red juice from the bottom of his Otter Pop, and Reg concentrated on flipping the end of his skateboard with his toe.

Can I just say—awkward!

The first time Kevin ever flew up our driveway on his little bike, Reg and I were sitting on the kitchen floor messing around with Ned, tying a red bandanna first around his neck, turning him into a gunslinger (Rootin' Tootin' One-Eyed Ned), and then around his chin, turning him into an old lady (Gramma Neddy). Reg was the king of impersonations. He has a great old-granny voice. Kevin has a great big high horse he sits on once in a while. Is it because he is tall, and a swimmer? He leaned against the sink and texted a friend, refusing to join in the fun. Later that very night, Kevin IMed me that Reg was a dweeb and Reg IMed me that Kevin was a tool.