My Life Next Door (16 page)

Mom takes a slow sip. Her hair is as untidy as it ever gets, a platinum tangle where her bun should be as she tips her head back on the sofa.

Clay skids the highlighter over a few more articles, then looks at Mom. “You’re tuckered,” he says, “I know. But you got what it takes, Gracie, and you need to take that where it’s meant to go.”

Mom straightens up as though Clay’s yanked on her strings. Now she walks over and sits next to him, examining the paper and tucking her hair behind her ears.

The way she is around Clay makes me uneasy. Was she this way with Dad? There’s balance between Tracy and Flip, I see that now, but Mom seems to be under a spell sometimes. I think of those moments in Jase’s room. If Mom feels that way around Clay, it’s not like I don’t understand. But…but the shivers I feel around Jase are nothing like the prickle of anxiety I get now, watching their blond heads duck closer together.

“Was there something you needed, sugar?” Clay asks, noticing me hovering.

I open my mouth, then shut it again. Maybe Tracy’s right and I’m just not used to Mom “having a man.” Maybe, despite everything, I’m protective of my invisible father. Maybe I’m just hormonal. I look at the clock—an hour and a half till the B&T. I picture the cool water, sunlight on its surface, that calm underwater world, broken only by my even steady strokes. I grab my gear and go.

“Sailor Supergirl! You’re on TV!” Harry hurtles himself at me as I come in the kitchen door. “It’s you! Right in the middle of
Mammal Mysteries
. Come see!”

In the Garretts’ living room, George, Duff, and Andy are sitting mesmerized in front of one of Mom’s political commercials. Right now, it’s a shot of her face, in front of the Capitol building.
As women, as parents, we all know family comes first,
she says as the camera shows still photos of me and Tracy in matching dresses with our Easter egg baskets, on the beach, sitting on the lap of the B&T Santa Claus, all with Mom in the background. I didn’t think they’d ever snapped a picture of me
with Santa without me crying, but I look relatively calm in this one. The B&T Santa always smelled like beer and had a drooping, palpably fake beard.
My family has always been my focus.

“Your mommy’s pretty but she doesn’t look like a mommy,” George says.

“That’s a rude thing to say,” Andy tells him as there’s another montage of pictures—Tracy accepting a gymnastics award, me winning a prize at a science fair for my model of a cell. “Oh look—you had braces too, Samantha. I didn’t think you’d have had to have those.”

“I just meant she looked fancy,” George says as Mom smiles and says,
When I was elected to be your state senator, I kept my focus. My family just got a lot bigger.

Next are pictures of Mom standing with a crowd of high school students in caps and gowns, bending next to an old woman in a wheelchair waving a flag, accepting flowers from a little boy.

“Are those people really your family?” Harry asks suspiciously. “I’ve never seen any of them next door.”

Now the camera pulls back to show Mom at a dinner table, with a horde of ethnically diverse people, all smiling and nodding, evidently talking to her about their values and their lives over…a banquet of popular Connecticut foods. I spy a clambake, ingredients for New England boiled dinner, pizza from New Haven, things we’ve never had on our table.

To me my constituents are my family. I will be honored to sit at your table. I will go to the table for you, this November, and beyond. I’m Grace Reed, and I approved this message,
Mom concludes firmly.

“Are you okay, Sailor Supergirl?” George pulls on my arm.
“You look sad. I didn’t mean anything bad about your mommy.”

I snap myself away from the screen to find him next to me, breathing heavily in that small-boy way, holding out the battered stuffed dog, Happy.

“If you’re sad,” he says, “Happy’s magic, so he helps.”

I take the dog, then put my arms around George. More noisy breathing. Happy’s mushed between us, smelling like peanut butter, Play-Doh, and dirt.

“Come on, guys. It’s a beautiful day and you’re indoors watching
Mammal Mysteries
. That’s for rainy days.” I usher the Garretts outside, but not before flicking a glance back at the TV. Despite all the posters and leaflets, the news paper photos, it’s still surreal to see Mom on television. Even stranger to see myself, and how much I look like I belong right there with her.

Chapter Twenty-one

Following Tim’s B&T firing, the Masons, still researching scared-straight boot camps, are trying to keep him busy. Tonight they’ve given him money to take me and Nan to the movies.

“Please,” Nan urges over the phone. “It’s a movie. How bad can that be? He won’t even care—or even notice—if we pick a chick flick.”

But the moment I slide into the backseat of Tim’s Jetta, I know this plan is not going to work. I should get out of the car, but I don’t. I can’t leave Nan in the lurch.

“Tim. This isn’t the way to the movies!” Nan leans forward in the passenger seat.

“So right, sis. Screw Showcase. This is the way to New Hampshire and tax-free cases of Bacardi.”

The speedometer edges past seventy-five. Tim takes his eyes off the road to scroll through his iPod or punch in the lighter or fumble around in his shirt pocket for another Marlboro. I keep feeling the car drift, then lurch back into its lane as Tim yanks the wheel. I look at Nan’s profile. Without turning, she reaches back a hand, grabbing on to mine.

After about twenty minutes of speeding and
weaving, Tim pulls over at a McDonald’s, slamming the brakes so hard that Nan and I pitch forward and back. Still, I’m grateful. My fingers are stiff from clutching the door handle. Tim returns to the car looking even less reliable, his pupils nearly overtaking his gray irises, his dark red hair sticking straight up in front.

“We have to get out of this,” I whisper to Nan. “You should drive.”

“I only have my learner’s permit,” Nan says. “I could get in big trouble.”

Hard to imagine how much bigger trouble could get. I, of course, can’t drive at all, because Mom has put off my driver’s ed classes time after time, claiming that I’m too young and most of the drivers on the road are incompetent. It never really seemed like a battle worth fighting when I could catch rides with Tracy. Now I wish I’d forged Mom’s name on the parental consent forms. I wonder if I could just figure it out. I think of those six-year-olds you occasionally hear about in news stories who drive their stricken grandparent to the hospital. I check the front of the Jetta. It’s a stick shift. There’s no way.

“We need to think of something, fast, Nanny.”

“I
know,
” she murmurs back. Leaning forward, she puts her hand on Tim’s shoulder as he tries, unsuccessfully, to maneuver the key into the ignition.

“Timmy. This doesn’t make sense. We’re going to eat up all the tax-free savings in gas just getting to New Hampshire.”

“It’s a fucking
adventure,
sis.” Tim finally gets the key in, presses the accelerator down to the ground, and burns rubber out of the parking lot. “Don’t you ever crave one?”

The car surges faster and faster. The urgent hum of the engine vibrates through the seats. Tim’s passing other cars on the right. We’ve shot past Middletown and are closing in on Hartford. I check my watch. It’s eight fifty…My curfew is eleven. We won’t be anywhere near New Hampshire by then. Assuming we aren’t wrapped around a tree somewhere. My fingers ache from holding so tightly to the door handle. I feel a prickle of sweat across my forehead.

“Tim, you have to stop. You have to stop and let us out,” I say loudly. “We don’t want to do this with you.”

“Lighten up, Samantha.”

“You’re going to get us all killed!” Nan pleads.

“Betcha you’ll both die virgins. Kinda makes you wonder what the fuck you were saving it for, huh?”

“Timmy. Will you please stop saying that word?”

Of course, this request is all Tim needs. “What word? Ohhhh.
That
word!” He makes a little song out of the word, says it loud, quietly, all strung together. On and on and on with the F-bomb for the next few minutes. Then he puts it to the tune of “Colonel Bogey’s March,” on and on and on again. A bubble of hysterical laughter fights its way to my lips. Then I see that the speedometer has leaped into the 100s. And I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life.

“Shit. Cops.” Tim pulls a wide unsteady turn into a truck stop. I pray that the police car will follow us, but it speeds on by, siren blaring. Nan’s face is parchment. The Jetta squeals sideways to a halt. Tim staggers out of the driver’s seat, saying, “Damn, I gotta pee,” and wanders off in the direction of a gigantic blue Dumpster.

I yank the keys out of the ignition, climb out, and hurl them into the bushes at the side of the parking lot.

“What are you
doing
?” Nan screams, following me, palms outstretched at her sides.

“Making sure we get out of this alive.”

She shakes her head. “Samantha, what were you thinking? Tim had his…bike lock keys on that.”

I’m bending over, resting my hands on my knees, breathing deeply. I turn to look at her. Seeing the expression on my face, she starts to laugh.

“Okay. That’s crazy,” she allows. “But how are we gonna get out of this?”

Just then, Tim weaves back toward us. He slides into the front seat, then drops his forehead onto the steering wheel. “I don’t feel good.” He sucks in a deep breath, wrapping his arms around his ducked head, making the horn honk. “You’re nice girls. You really are. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me.”

Clearly, neither Nan nor I have an answer. We close the side door of the car, and lean against it. Traffic streaks past on our left. So many people. All oblivious. We might as well be stranded in the desert. “Now what?” Nan asks.

Mom’s given me a thousand lectures on what to do in a situation with an unreliable driver. So I call her. I call home. I call her cell. Ugh, Clay’s cell. Tracy’s—not that she could help me from the Vineyard, but…No answer anywhere. I try to remember where Mom said she was going tonight but come up blank. Lately, it’s all a big blur of “economic roundtable” and “town hall meeting” and “staffing support information event.”

So, I call Jase. He answers on the third ring. “Samantha! Hey, I—”

I interrupt to tell him what’s happening.

Nan, who’s checking on Tim, calls, “He’s passed out! I think. He’s all sweaty. Oh my God. Samantha!”

“Where exactly are you?” Jase asks. “Alice, I need help,” he shouts into the background. “Are there any highway signs? What’s the nearest exit?”

I peer around but can’t see anything. I call to Nan, asking what town we last passed, but she shakes her head and says, “I had my eyes closed.”

“Just hang on,” he tells me. “Get in, lock the doors, and hit the hazard lights. We’ll find you.”

They do. Forty-five minutes later, there’s a tap on the car window and I look up to see Jase, Alice behind him. I open the door. My muscles are cramping and my legs are about to give way. Jase wraps his arms around me, warm and solid and calm. I sink into him. Nan, scrambling out after me, raises her head, sees us, stops dead. Her mouth drops open.

After a minute, he lets go and helps Alice, surprisingly silent and forbearing, shove the unconscious Tim into the backseat of the Bug. Tim lets out a loud snore, clearly down for the count.

“What did he take?” Alice asks.

“I—I don’t know,” Nan stammers.

Alice bends, fingers on his wrist, smells his breath, shakes her head. “I think he’s fine. Just passed out. I’ll take these guys home, if she”—Alice gestures to Nan—“tells me where to go, then you swing by and pick me up, okay, J?” She flings
herself into the driver’s seat, jerking it closer to the wheel to accommodate her small frame.

Nan, piling into the Bug next to Alice, frowns at me and mouths, “What’s going
on
?” then mimes putting a phone to her ear. I nod, then take a long, shaky breath. I wait for Jase to ask what the hell I was thinking, going anywhere with someone in that condition, but instead he says, “You did exactly the right thing.”

I scramble to be that girl Jase thinks I am. That calm unruffled girl who doesn’t let things faze her. She’s nowhere to be found. Instead, I burst into tears, those embarrassing noisy ones where you can’t catch your breath.

Of course, he rolls with that. We stand there until I get hold of myself. Then he reaches into the pocket of his jacket and hands me a Hershey’s bar. “Good for shock, Alice tells me. She is, after all, a medical professional in training.”

“I threw the car keys in the bushes.”

“Smart move.” He heads into the thicket, ducking to sweep his hands on the ground. I follow, doing the same.

“You must have some arm,” he says finally, when we’ve searched for about ten minutes.

“Hodges Heroines softball through eighth grade,” I offer. “Now what do we do?”

Instead of answering, Jase walks back to the Jetta and opens the passenger door, gesturing for me to climb in. I do, watching in fascination as he yanks off this plastic piece from the steering column, then pulls off some of the coating on two red pieces of wire and twists them together. Then he hauls out this brown wire and touches it to the red ones.
Sparks fly. “You’re hot-wiring the car?” I’ve only seen that in the movies.

“Just to take it home.”

“How’d you learn this?”

Jase glances at me as the engine revs into high gear. “I love cars,” he says simply. “I’ve learned all about them.”

After we’ve driven for ten minutes in silence, Jase says musingly, “Timothy Mason. I might have known.”

“You’ve met him before?” I’m surprised. First Flip, now Tim. Somehow, because I didn’t know the Garretts, I imagined them in a world completely separate from my own.

“Cub Scouts.” Jase holds out his hand, two fingers up in the traditional salute.

I chuckle. “Boy Scout” is not exactly what comes to mind when I think of Tim.

“Even then he was a disaster waiting to happen. Or already in progress.” Jase bites his bottom lip reflectively.