One Good Hustle (8 page)

The next afternoon, the mood on the porch was sulky. I offered the same gofer services, but refused to hand anything over until
whoever had done the hiring paid up. Mel had stiffed me twenty-five cents the day before.

“Knock it off, kid,” Marlene snarked. “You sound like your old man. Big Man Short-shit.” Her eyelids were thick and her enunciation had gone sloppy.

Mel kept his eyes trained on the sidewalk, and Marlene followed his gaze to two long-haired girls: teenagers in faded denim shorts and kerchief blouses. Mel and Rick were mute as four long, thin legs scissored past.

Marlene snorted. “Could they yank those shorts any higher up their cracks?”

Mel shifted in his chair. A minute later, he announced that he was heading to the store to get his own smokes. He could use the exercise, he said.

“See if I care,” I muttered.

Rick drummed fingers on the arm of his lawn chair.

I moped on the top step and watched the streetcars pass while my mother squinted down the block. Mel stopped on the corner and wangled his way into a conversation with those two long-haired girls.

“Sammie,” my mother hissed. “Go down there to where Mel is and say, ‘Daddy, Mommy wants you to come home now.’ ”

I picked at some dry skin on my foot. “No.”

“Don’t be such a spoilsport. Come on. I’ll give you fifty—I’ll give you seventy-five cents.
‘Daddy, Mommy wants you to come home now
.’ ”

I held out an open palm in her direction. Three quarters later, I trudged down the porch steps.

The girls stood close to one another, arms crossed. Kerchief blouses floated in the traffic heat. Feet set wide like a cowboy, Mel kept one hand on his belt and gestured with his cigarette as he gabbed.

When I reached them, I paused, trying to get up the guts.

Mel eyed me. I stared down at the sidewalk and mumbled my line.

Glancing at her friend, the bonier girl said, “We better get going.”

“She’s not my kid.” Mel smiled at them. “Her old lady just got dumped. You know how it is.” He gave them a wink.

“My boyfriend gets really pissed off when I’m late,” the girl explained.

“He’s mental-jealous,” the other one added. She smirked and tugged the bony one by the belt loop and they walked away.

“Come by for a drink sometime,” Mel called after them.

Shoulders hunched, the girls giggled their way down the sidewalk.

Mel snatched an angry drag off his smoke and headed off toward the store. He didn’t turn his head when he said, “Tell your mother to call her old man.”

I headed back to the house, hopping on the hot pavement.

Marlene was now sitting halfway down Mel’s steps. Rick had disappeared. My mother’s face moved from stony to something like pity as she touched a dry leaf on the sickly hydrangea bush beside her.

I still wonder how Sam found us that day. He’s like that, though. He knows things.

That’s why I know he’ll come looking for me now too. He came that time and he’ll come this time. Because I’m his kid.
I want my kid
. I bet he’s thinking that right now.

It’s hard for him because he works a lot. And he has to travel for work. He’s just really busy. He owns two buildings in Toronto. Probably others that I don’t even know about. All that and he’s never had a joe job in his life. That’s my dad for you. He doesn’t talk, he
acts
.

He hasn’t called me back yet but he will. I’m his kid.

SEVEN

LIGHT SHINES THROUGH
slits in the wine-coloured lace curtain on Jill’s high little basement window. I just dreamed that I was on a trapeze in the circus and Drew was on another one. We kept swinging back and forth. There was no net under us, just a huge bonfire. We weren’t scared, though. We were holding hands and the fire was part of our act. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Kind of disappointing to wake up here in the basement with Jill. It’s summer vacation, though, which means I don’t have to do
anything
.

She’s still sleeping hard. I never saw anyone sleep like Jill. Her arms lie above her shoulders, framing her face, as if she’s posing for
Playboy
. The first time I saw her do that, I thought she was faking—trying to look sexy. She was out cold, though. I guess some people are just naturally glamorous types.

She doesn’t wake up when I get out of bed, so I leave her there.

Upstairs, in the kitchen, Ruby is making pancakes. The house is thick with the smell of bacon fat. I can’t remember the last time I saw pancakes in the morning. And we almost never have bacon at home. Marlene thinks bacon’s a rip-off.
They charge you through the nose for a pound of pork fat
, she says. Sam never cared about stuff like that. When you go grocery shopping with Sam, you can throw whatever the hell you like in the cart: bacon, big thick steaks, fancy cheeses with French names, Coke and 7UP (the real stuff, not the store-brand crap), and genuine maple syrup. We used to have a total ball in the supermarket.

Jill’s dad is at the table. He props his two giant forearms on either side of his plate, and he lowers his bearded face to take a bite off the bacon slice in his right hand. A regular lumberjack. Lou’s like Paul Bunyan. Everything looks miniature when he’s nearby. He lowers his head to his fork and takes a mouthful of pancake. A little syrup dribbles into the fur around his lips.

“How are you this fine morning, Samantha?” he says, sitting upright when he notices me.

Lou is kind of formal. At least with me. So polite I figure he’s joking half the time.

“Ducky,” I say, and sit across from him.

When he smiles, the balls of his cheeks squish right up under his eyes. I try to picture Lou at Oakalla Prison ordering criminals around, rapping his club against iron bars, telling them to shut their damn traps. He must have a desk job.

Lou’s got thick, dark, wavy hair. Like Jill’s. I glance at Ruby’s short steely curls. Marlene would die before she’d let her hair go grey while a guy like Lou sat at her table. She’d sooner go bald.

If you went bald, I’d shine your head every day
.

The phone rings.

Ruby gets up and starts toward the hall off the kitchen but the ringing stops. She keeps going. In the hall, I hear her open the door down to the basement. “You got that, Jill?” she says.

My name is croaked up from the basement as if from the bottom of a swamp.

Ruby steps back into the kitchen. “Sammie, phone’s for you.”

I get up slowly. What if it’s Drew on the other end? I dreamed about him. So it seems like it must be him. I bet Marlene gave him the number here. Now I’m going to get my head chewed off for going AWOL. I don’t blame him. I’m a shitty friend these days. I really am.

Rubbing my hands on my pyjama pants, I try to remember the details of the Drew dream before I pick the receiver up off the hall table. People always like it when you dream about them.

“It’s me,” my mother says. Her voice could cut through bone. “I suppose you’ve got it pretty good over there.”

I stare at the wall. There’s a little notepad in front of me, with a pencil dangling by a string:

Jill—Crystal called
.

Mom—Adele called
.

“Were you planning to come home at
some
point and do this laundry or what?”

“Um.” That’s all I say. From behind me I hear the slow thump of Jill coming up the basement steps.

“What about the dishes? Are you ever going to do
anything
around here?”

“Yeah, I—um.” I glance over my shoulder as Jill reaches the hallway. Eyes squinty, she trudges into the bathroom and shuts the door.

“Jesus Christ, Samantha.” Marlene almost never calls me Samantha.

“I’ll come over. In around an hour?”

“Fine,” she says, and the line goes dead.

Standing in the hallway, I forget which door I was about to go through. I turn toward the basement. I should get dressed.

“Sammie?” Ruby calls.

I come back to the kitchen entrance. “My mom. I just have to go home for a bit. There’s a bunch of laundry.”

Jill steps out of the bathroom and through a yawn says, “What’s going on?” Ruby exchanges a glance with Lou, who doesn’t look at me, just grabs another pancake and mops up the syrup on his plate.

“Call her back and tell her you’re not coming,” Ruby says.

“I just have to do—”

“You don’t have to do anything. Marlene has to clean up her own mess.”

I don’t like the way Ruby says
Marlene
, like it’s a swear word or something.

Jill is right behind me. I can smell her Opium perfume. Her old boyfriend Roman bought her that. (I’d bet anything he got
it hot.) Everything Jill owns is choking with that musky Opium smell. Enough to make you
boke
, as she would say.

I move to the side and let her pass. She just stands there, though, tightens the belt of her fuzzy purple bathrobe and says, “Mom’s right.”

My face is heating up. “Some of it’s mine too. The laundry …”

“That’s fine,” Ruby says.

“I can help her out if I want.”

“You’d be doing her a bigger favour if you said no,” Ruby says.

I bite a hangnail and look at Jill’s fuzzy bathrobe. I wish I could curl up in mountains of purple plush right now.

“Call her back and tell her you’re not coming,” Ruby says again, trying to keep eye contact with me.

I turn back into the hall and look at the phone. I pick up the receiver. There’s a spot of blood where the hangnail used to be and I suck at it, trying to remember my own number.

After a few seconds I take my finger from my mouth and use it to dial.

When Marlene answers, I stutter and stumble on every word. “Hi, um, yeah, I—I’m not coming over.”

There’s a pause at her end. Then she says, “What do you
mean
, Mommy?” Marlene’s voice has turned high and small, as if she’s playing a part. A kid in a scary movie. “When
are
you coming home, Mommy? There’s no food. And you have to do laundry.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I whisper.

“I’m
scared
, Mommy,” she says.

The base of the phone is mounted on the wall. I tug the knotted phone cord and pull the receiver with me into the bathroom.

“Why are you calling me
Mommy?
”

“Because you’re my mommy!” she whispers back.

“If I’m Mommy, then who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Sammie!” Marlene says.

“What are you
doing?
”

“I’m playing games.” Marlene sounds
really
creepy now.

I attempt to close the bathroom door but the cord is too short.

“Oh yeah?” I try to keep my voice low and steady the way they say you should with mad dogs and crazy people. “I’m not playing with
you
. And I’m not coming over there.”

Silence.

“Okay?”

“Fine,” she says, all clipped and pissy. The line goes dead again.

I hang up.

In the kitchen, all female eyes are watching me. Lou picks up his mug and stares into it as if he’s reading tea leaves.

I sit at the table. Jill does too.

Lou pushes his chair back and announces that he’s going out to the backyard to work on the broken part of the fence.

When the back door closes behind him, Ruby says, “How are you doing, Sammie?”

“Fine.”

“Good. Good girl.” She looks out the window, and watches her husband cross the backyard. He kicks at the loose board on the fence, and she says, “I think I might go visit Adele today,” breezy as you please. Just like nothing happened.

Ruby and Jill make small talk about this Adele chick and how ancient she is, five hundred years old and still kicking. Their voices are hyper-cheerful.

I look down at the two pancakes on my plate and decide to throw some bacon on top. I reach for the bottle of pancake syrup, stare for a second at Aunt Jemima’s grinning face, that kerchief wrapped around her head as if she just escaped from
Gone with the Wind
.

Corn syrup. That’s all it is. Fake. Plastic bottle with lousy corn syrup and food colouring. Ruby thinks she’s so much better than us and she can’t even buy real maple syrup.

I flip the cap and squirt it all over my pancakes and bacon and then chew and chew, trying to get full.

EIGHT

AS I WALK
down Kingsway, the traffic roars by and gives me a bit of relief, drowns me out. Kingsway is the main road that cuts through Burnaby. Kingsway feels like a strip mall that goes on forever.

While I was eating those crappy corn-syrup pancakes, Jill asked me if I wanted to go with her to meet Crystal Norris at The Pantry.
Pass
. Although Crystal hasn’t shoulder-checked me lately. Since she discovered that Jill and I are friends she tolerates me pretty well.

Don’t care, though. Don’t feel like talking. Don’t feel like being tolerated.

Anonymity. That’s what I want.

How can I stay in that house? Every day, they know more and more. Both of them yap-yap-yapping and listening to my conversations and telling me what to do.