Olivia (11 page)

“Where the heck you been, girly?” Vicki asked. “I thought you was dead.”

Olivia smiled. “Nah. Still kickin’.”

She took her smokes and change and got back into her car, and drove straight to Garretson. She parked between Kenny’s beat-up LeBaron and Carla’s Caddie, and headed for the time clock with the smile still on her face.

She scanned the cards for hers and when she didn’t find it she hollered out, “Where the hell’s my timecard, Sam?”

“I fired your ass!” Sam hollered back. “Get outta here before I call security.”

Olivia stormed across the hall into his office. “Give me my card back.”

“Go home, Liv.”

“Give me my card back or I’ll sit in your office until midnight and sing to you.”

“Go home, Liv.”

“I’m warning you…”

“Security!”

“
Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,”
she sang as loud and as proud as she could. “
Old times there are not forgotten!
”

“Liv…”

She amped the volume. “
Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixieland!
”

“Liv,” Sam warned.

And added some dance moves. “
In Dixieland where I was born, early on one frosty morn!
”

“Liv!”

“
Look away! Look—
”

“
Liv!
”

“What?”

Sam’s face turned red and his chest puffed out as he stared her down. She opened her mouth to belt out the next line, but he cut her off with a grunt of profanity. He reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out her timecard. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“Thanks, Sam.” She tried to take the card, but he held it tight.

“Is everything ok?” he asked, his voice tinged with concern.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said.

He stared at her for another moment, debating, and then let go of the card. She leaned over the desk and kissed his cheek.

“Thanks, Sam,” she repeated with sincerity.

“Get outta here.” He dismissed her with a wave and a hint of a blush.

Olivia clocked in, found her smock and took a deep breath for courage before pushing through the vinyl curtain to the Quality Control room. At once, she was surrounded by the women who were her nighttime sisters. They gushed and worried and pawed all over her, and as they passed her from one hug to the next she fought back tears. A hundred questions were fired at once. She tried to answer them all without the truth, but Izzie’s eyes settled on the faint, greenish-yellow hue around her eye that still betrayed her circumstances, and Olivia knew in an instant that Izzie knew.

Izzie clapped her hands. “Let’s get back to work and let Liv breathe.” As soon as everyone else dispersed, she asked in whisper, “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I couldn’t,” Olivia whispered in reply. “I’m sorry.”

Izzie wrapped Olivia in a fierce hug. “I’m gonna boil his balls and feed ‘em to my cat for a midnight snack.”

“You don’t have a cat,” Olivia reminded her.

“I’ll buy one special for the occasion.”

Olivia lost the battle with the tears. She held on tight as she buried her face in Izzie’s neck. “I love you, Iz.”

“I love you, too, Liv,” Izzie whispered and squeezed harder.

“All right, you two lovebirds, get back to work,” Sam said, then announced to the room, “Mandatory Saturdays until further notice.”

Everyone groaned except Olivia. She needed the money.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell it to someone who cares.” Sam turned to Stephie. “I need you to spot-check a few pallets for me in Shipping. Here’s the list.”

He shoved a piece of paper at Stephie then locked himself in his office. Stephie’s face fell as she pushed through the curtain into the Shipping and Receiving area. Olivia’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. What the heck was that all about? There was never an actual list of pallets to check. It was just code for a little slapadapadingdong in the racks.

“They split,” Izzie explained in response to Olivia’s surprise as they settled onto their matching stools.

“What happened?” Olivia asked.

Izzie shrugged, but Carla said, “I hear he’s sweet on Yvette.”

“George’s Yvette?” Olivia gasped.
The hussy!

“I heard Stephie’s pregnant, and that’s why Sam dumped her,” Louise whispered a little too loudly over the sound of the whirring conveyor.

Usually the first one to jump in on gossip, Melanie stayed quiet in the corner. Olivia watched her out of the corner of her eye as she leaned in and asked Izzie, “What’s wrong with Mel?”

“Her man was denied parole,” Izzie said. “The wedding’s canceled.”

“What happened? I thought it was a sure thing.”

“It was… until he made a shiv out of his toothbrush and stabbed a guard.”

“Nuh-uh!”

Izzie shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

“Huh.” Olivia huffed. She kept one eye on Melanie as she plugged into her iPod and took a pull off her Dr. Pepper. Melanie glanced up for a moment, eyes to heaven, then immediately turned her attention back to her calipers. Her eyes were red and puffy and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Poor girl. Olivia knew exactly how she felt.

At lunch, Olivia sought Melanie out, but she wasn’t easy to find. After searching the entire plant top to bottom, she finally found her sitting in her minivan, which was one of Garretson’s biggest lunchtime no-no’s. The employee manual stated safety reasons for the rule, but it was bullshit. The real reason was the idiots in upper-management were convinced every single hourly employee was a crack head. Some were, true, but it’s not like they couldn’t get high in the restroom just as easily as they could in their car. Morons.

 Olivia checked to make sure the coast was clear before gently knocking on the window. Melanie turned away from her. Olivia had to do a lot of sweet talking before Melanie would unlock the door for her. Once she did, Olivia slipped inside and carefully closed the door so it wouldn’t slam.

The van smelled of McDonald’s fries, baby wipes and despair. A mess of used Kleenex filled Melanie’s lap like a snotty mound of snowballs, and more tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She gazed off into the distance, toward the flashing light on top of the Juliette water tower, her chin quivering as Waylon Jennings crooned “Green River” over the radio at low volume.

Olivia chewed on her lower lip, unsure what to do or where to start. She knew heartbreak, but poor Mel looked as though her heart had been ripped out, ground up, and then pulverized into an oozy puddle of bloody mush. Given Mel’s fragile emotional state, Olivia knew she should probably ease into the conversation, but they only had six minutes remaining on their lunch break. She skipped the small talk and dove right in there.

“What happened with the parole board?”

Melanie shrugged. “They said he wasn’t sorry enough for almost killing those people on the Interstate. They said he needed more time to consider what he did. But it’s bull-poo, you know?”

Olivia nodded and said, “I know,” even though she kind of agreed with the parole board.

“He said he was sorry and he promised he wouldn’t do it again. I don’t know what more they want from him.”

“I don’t know, either.”

“I mean, do they want him to cut off his arm or something? Cuz he’d do it if it proved he was sorry. He’d do anything to get out of jail. He hates it there. He looks like heck. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t have any friends. He just wants to come home and see his babies.” Melanie blew her nose. It sounded surprisingly dainty for the amount of snot her tears had to be producing. “I can’t sleep knowing how miserable he is. It’s not fair that I’m out here and he’s stuck in there just because he read the sign wrong. He doesn’t read real good, you know? He just got confused.”

“He was high, Mel,” Olivia reminded her.

Melanie turned away, her chin quivering again as she stared out the window. “He said he was sorry.”

Olivia didn’t know what to say. She never was one who was good at comforting other people. She was good at getting people drunk and making them laugh. She was good at annoying people until they either screamed or smiled. But comforting? Not Olivia’s specialty. She looked out her own window and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound fake.

“You know what the really poopy thing is?” Melanie asked.

“What?”

Melanie wiped her eyes. “I already paid all these deposits and I can’t get ‘em back.”

“Deposits for what?”

“Our wedding.” She sniffed. “For the minister and the party. I was gonna have the reception at the Pizza Hut in the party room and they charged me a hundred bucks to rent it and they said it’s non-refundable.” She sniffed again and dabbed at her eyes with an already-used, soggy Kleenex. “They don’t care that there ain’t no wedding. They said it’s too late to cancel cuz they can’t find nobody to take my place, but I think they’re full of diarrhea. They’d get somebody else in there in no time. Everybody loves the Pizza Hut, you know?”

“Yeah,” Olivia agreed. You’d have to be crazy not to love the Pizza Hut.

“And I bought all these balloons and those paper streamers that you twist together. You know the ones? I bought pink and purple for our wedding colors, just like the last time. Oh, and my dress is
real
fancy, Liv.” She turned toward Olivia, her face brightening at the mention of the dress. “It’s super tight and has these big circles cut out of the sides with like metal rivets or something around ‘em so it shows off some skin. I look real hot in it, too. Like I did before I had all my babies, you know? Carl Jr. wouldn’ta been able to keep his hands off’a me.”

“Who’s Carl Jr.?” Olivia asked.

Melanie frowned and looked at Olivia as if she were stupid. “My man.”

“Oh, yeah,” Olivia said. “I knew that.” She didn’t. Or maybe she did… whatever.

“And I bought the girls pretty little dresses that match each other and a tie for C.J.”

“Uh-huh.” Olivia had no clue who C.J. was. She assumed it was a pet name for Carl Jr., but it could have been one of Melanie’s kids, or maybe even her dog. She didn’t want to look stupid again, so she didn’t ask. “Why don’t you get married at the pen? People do that all the time.”

“Carl Jr. says no. He says he won’t let me marry him while he’s a caged man. He said over his dead body would I be spendin’ my honeymoon alone.”

“Oh.” Well, there went that idea.

Olivia chewed on her bottom lip and thought about the poor kids and Melanie sitting around their cramped and shitty Section Eight apartment on the day of the wedding in their dress-up clothes with nowhere to go, and suddenly she had another, better idea.

“Why don’t you have the party anyway?” Olivia asked. The more she thought about it the better it sounded. “Yeah! Let’s all go to Pizza Hut and you can have the minister come out and marry you and Carl Jr. in spirit, and then we can all pig out on stuffed crust and get drunk. Pizza Hut sells beer right?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know,” Melanie said with a sad shake of her head.

“Oh come on, Mel. Let’s go party it up at Pizza Hut and celebrate your love for your man and you can put your ring back on and when he gets paroled we can do it all over again.” Olivia started to bounce in her seat a little from her excitement. “How many people do you know who get to marry the same man three times?”

Melanie turned toward Olivia, a slow smile starting to push away the sadness. “None.”

“That’s right.” Olivia started to bounce in her seat in excitement. “No one else loves their man as much as you do. And you’ll still get your extra assistance for being a single mom, but in your heart you’ll be married.”

Melanie looked down at her left hand. “But I don’t got my ring no more. I had to hock it when Carly got the strep.”

“Where’s it at?” Good gravy, were all of her kids named after her man?

“T.R’s got it. He only gave me fifty bucks, but he wants two hundred to get it back.”

“T.R.’s an ass. Why didn’t you use Dusty?”

Melanie started to cry again.

“Well…” Olivia sighed and thought about it. “Why don’t I ask the girls and maybe we can all pitch in together and get you your ring back. It’ll be our gift to you and Carl Jr.”

“You’d do that for me?” Melanie’s eyes grew wide and her smile got bigger and bigger until it consumed her entire face. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell my babies Mommy and Daddy are married again!”

And so that’s how Olivia happened to be standing in a Pizza Hut, dressed to the hilt in rhinestones and a fire-engine red, strapless cocktail dress on a sweltering afternoon in late-May. She was irritated and cranky, sweating her ass off, and her thighs kept sticking together, but she was there for Mel and that’s all that mattered.

The entire gang from Garretson showed up, along with a dozen or so people from Melanie’s apartment complex. Add to that number Melanie’s three-hundred-pound mother, Melanie’s four screaming kids and all of their screaming friends, two hundred balloons and seven miles of pink and purple streamers, and it made for very tight, very loud quarters in the party room that had a maximum capacity of twenty-five.

The minister showed up ten minutes after Olivia. Despite the sauna outside, he had been in quite the jovial mood when he first arrived, but five minutes in the Pizza Hut was all it took for the heat and the noise to erase his smile and turn his face and neck a shade of red Olivia had never seen before. Olivia had a feeling his funny coloring might also have had a little something to do with the fact that Melanie had not been entirely forthcoming with him regarding the delicate intricacies of this particular ceremony, but it was just a hunch.

Olivia didn’t see what the big deal was, but apparently, a photo of Carl Jr. tacked to a coat rack was not an acceptable second party in a wedding, even if it had been downgraded to a commitment ceremony instead of the traditional vows. The minister huffed and puffed and talked about calling the whole thing off if another human body did not join Melanie under the wire arch. Melanie tried again to explain how Carl Jr. was unfortunately detained, but he was a stickler for the rules. Two bodies, or no vows. When he cried out one last time for Carl Jr. to join his bride-to-be or he was leaving, Melanie panicked.