The Flowers (3 page)

Cloyd Longpre had questions. He was trying to show he was, you know, interested in me. That I mattered to him. It was a show for my mom. He thought it would matter to her. It was hard for me to pretend back. There was nothing I could do about who my mom went out with, and mostly I didn't say or think shit about it. But there was something else I couldn't point to about him, and it made it even longer to sit there.

“You look a lot bigger for your age,” he said.

I should say no? I should say right?

“Built,” he went on. “Strong.” He looked at my mom, stupid smiling. “I could maybe even put him to work now.”

I looked at my mom too. She had an expression that this Cloyd was supposed to see as proud and that for me was to feel proud too. He was only flirting with her, and she was only going along with him.

“You gonna play football?”

I played street and schoolyard football a lot. My side usually won. I played for the junior high team for two games and stopped. I made more touchdowns on kickoffs than anyone, more on interceptions too, and we won, but then I stopped going. I didn't like coaches telling me nothing, yelling. They screamed and shit and so fuck them. I didn't like nobody getting on me, never. Pissed me off bad. I didn't watch sports on TV, college or pro. Sports was in my head, it was just for me to play, a game to keep the brain in shape. I could play but didn't and didn't say any of this to him though, because I could play this game too and already I thought maybe I had to.

“Dile, tell him,” my mom said. “He's an athlete, always the fastest runner.”

She didn't know that. It wasn't even true no more. It hadn't been true since elementary, since sixth grade, when I finally got beat by a black dude who was four legs and I never could beat, hard as I tried and I tried. That other time, hundreds of years ago, was probably the last time I told her about anything that made me happy—or that she heard from me anyways.

“But you like sports?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, my first sound in front of him. That was because I wanted to make my mom happy, not him.

“I like sports,” Cloyd Longpre said. “Though I can't say I get to follow it much these days.”

“Maybe he likes baseball,” my mom told him. “I think that's his favorite.” She came over and sat on the armrest of the couch, next to me. She touched my hair like she did her skirt when she first sat there. “Don't you, m'ijo?” She had no idea. We never talked nothing about me.

He didn't wait to hear an answer from me. “What about huntin'?” he said. “You like huntin'? You ever been?”

“No sir, “ I said.

He smiled and it came out dumb. This was when I saw it that way for the first time. It was that he meant it, it was a real and honest smile, and it came out looking stupid. “No sir you never been, or no sir you don't like it?” When he said
no sir,
I could tell he was making fun of how I said it.

“He's never been,” my mom told him for me fast, defensively.

“That I never been,” I told him. I don't know which I would have answered if my mom hadn't jumped in for me. The truth is, I didn't want to go hunting and especially not with this hillbilly.

“You'd love it,” he said. “Wait till you eat fresh venison or fresh duck. Nothing better.”

I was back to not knowing what to say, or wanting to say something, and it was way quiet.

“I can get you a rifle,” he said.

My mom looked at him sideways, then away from him, then moved like she wanted to stand up.

“Not a big one, Sil. Just a twenty-two. To get the boy used to it.”

“No guns. I don't want him to shoot anybody,” she said.

I didn't say. It didn't seem to be about the gun anyways.

“Well then, what would you like?” he asked me. “What would make you happy?”

My mom stood up, a little nervous, like she didn't know which way to go.

He noticed and spoke to her. “Okay. What say I promise any one big thing? How's that sound?” He ran his fingers through that greased-back hair of his and messed it some. Then to me—“You pick it.”

My mom, for a second or two, made her mad look. Then, like that, she changed, and she went over to Cloyd Longpre and sat on the armrest of that chair. When she was next to him, and she put her hand on his shoulder, scratching him with her polished nails, he looked up at her like he was the luckiest man because her warm body was next to him, thank you, and thank you Lord. She made her eyes go like she's so flattered, and you're welcome. What he didn't know, and I did, was that she went like that lots of times. It was nothing special.

At the same time I watched this, while it seemed like he might have forgot, I thought of something to ask for.

“One thing?” I said.

He had his finger rubbing the belt of my mom's dress, above her butt.

“You name it, partner.” That smile all stupid.

It's that I picked up on what was really going on here, and now I wanted to play too. I wanted to mess with him. “I wanna go to Notre Dame,” I told him. Not that I did, because I didn't. I didn't care. It's what I thought of and I wanted to think of something. It's that I just saw a movie on TV, and people in it were at Notre Dame.

He made a laugh that went along with his smile. My mom was surprised too.

“You gotta get good grades to go there,” he said, “and, son, that has all to do with you and nothing to do with me.”

“No—” I started.

“Oh, I hear you! But I thought you weren't interested in football!” he said. “He wants to see a football game. Are they coming to town soon?”

It took me a couple of seconds. “No, that's not what I mean.” I almost gave it up right there. Then I didn't. “I mean Notre Dame the church. The one in Paris. In France.”

My mom and Cloyd Longpre both laughed like it was the wildest thing they'd ever heard. They didn't think I meant it. That I could possibly mean it.

“Oh,
that
Notre Dame game!” he said.

“Well, you said anything!” my mom said, laughing just like him.

“I did, I did,” he said. “Wouldn't that cost a fortune!” he told her. “The boy don't think cheap, I give that to him.”

His body leaned toward me from the chair.

“You keep your eyes open and you watch me surprise you,” he told me. A couple of times in the sentence, he made fast winks, kind of crooked, like that was to let me know how this was a special communication between us only.

That he didn't believe me, or he did? I say that at first he didn't, but as he looked longer, he snagged something. Didn't catch what I was up to, because there was no way. I was good at not being seen inside, even if I wasn't sure yet how I would hold him to this promise or whatever you call it, or how I was going to make it into a big dream I was counting on. And so yeah he was on to something behind my eyes, because when we looked at each other again, him kind of rechecking, maybe he saw more, and he backed off wondering what I was up to.

I got one of the bedrooms in Cloyd Longpre's two-bedroom apartment. I never really thought about the bedroom I'd been in before that. For a while I'd shared it with my sister, until she made herself one out of the dining room to be alone, which had been where we watched TV, ate dinner, and I'd played with toys. That old bedroom wasn't mine no more than the kitchen or the bathroom or the whole house, but this new bedroom was in a land far
away from my home. It wasn't only because it'd been Cloyd Longpre's son's, who'd left it like this hundreds of years ago with all his junk still in it. For example, a really ugly red checkered bedspread. I never even had a bedspread before. Only my mom put one on her bed back in her room, and she only made it sometimes, when she was in a mood. In my home, I slept with a blanket, once in a while two when I got cold. When you pulled back this bedspread deal here, there was a blanket and it also had one of those sheets under it. I had a pillow for my old bed too, and it was on the side where my head would go when I got in to go to sleep. Here, the pillow was folded into the bedspread at the top, all show, and above it was a headboard, one with a shelf cut to go inside it. That was the only thing I got used to and even liked. It also wasn't because I hated baseball pennants on the wall, but I did hate the one about National Parks in Utah, and the one from Carlsbad Caverns, and the one from the Grand Canyon—I wanted to yank them down without asking. What did that have to do with where I lived? Except why bother when I wasn't going to be here that long, so I liked them there for proof I wasn't staying. Didn't ever move the fishing rods in the corner, or the globe, which I sort of liked really but I didn't spin around or even touch anyways because it wasn't mine, or the bookcase with a bunch of boyscout camping books—which why would I fucking want and so I left exactly there too. But no, I didn't sit down on the bed there thinking how I missed my old bedroom. I didn't have feelings nothing like that. This just wasn't the bedroom back in my home and wouldn't ever be and that's it.

“Whadaya think?” Cloyd Longpre asked me. He was standing at the door, grinning dumb, wearing his work uniform, matching gray pants and shirt, laced high-top work boots. His hair was messed up because he also wore a gray work cap, which he was holding in his hand.

“It's okay,” I said.

“I can get you a studying desk too,” he said, looking at an empty space. “I got the one that was in here out back in the storage unit.” He was trying to be nice, but really it was more have-to-be-nice than nice. It was to make my mom happy, probably.

“It's okay,” I told him, shaking my head no.

“It's not a problem,” he said. “It fits right there. I don't even remember why I took it out.”

“I don't need it.”

“I must have taken it out because it was broken, not just small. Yeah, I think that was what it was. But I can glue it up, make it work for you, and then I'm sure I can find you a chair for it.”

“I don't need nothing, man.” I was sounding nice, I swear.

He looked around and paused, but he was thinking about me. “You gotta study. That's what the Notre Dames want.”

“I can probably just lay on the bed if I have to,” I said, trying, honestly. Still, a few seconds later, I couldn't stop. “Notre Dame, France.”

“Always good to have a desk,” he said, copping attitude.

I was hoping not to talk much more. I didn't like the way it felt, me sitting there on the bed he owned, and him standing above me. “Yeah, thanks, but I don't want it.” I looked up at him for less than a second, which was hard for me to do. “I like it here the way it is now.”

“Have it your way,” he said. Now he sounded ticked at me.

“Thanks though.” I don't know why I didn't want to say it to him directly, but I said it looking away.

“You need anything. …” he said.

“A French book,” I said.

It was almost like he was hearing me talk in French. “Wha'd you say?”

“A French book. I probably need a French book. To study it, you know?”

“O-kay,” he said, making two words.

He almost closed the door behind him, but my mom was next, already pushing it back open. She'd had her nails done. It was how she was holding her hands.

“Is everything fine, m'ijo?”

I nodded.

“Then what's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Nada nada?” She used a mami voice to me.

“Yeah. Nothing.”

“It'll be good living here,” she said. “Don't you think?”

I nodded like I was trying to really mean it.

“You'll see.”

My mom was dressed too pretty to take serious, shampoo in her hair and body lotion smell, and she was trying too hard to sound happy. Nobody'd believe her except her.

“I won't have to work, so I'll even get to cook for you.”

That made me smile because it was almost funny to imagine.

“I can too cook! Don't you laugh at me!”

Sometimes she'd cooked at home. She made enchiladas and tacos fast. What I loved was this deal made with noodles and beef and green chile and cheese and canned creamed corn. She would make one or the other of them for birthdays, although she usually bought our food someplace. I couldn't imagine her in the kitchen more than like once a month. First off, she didn't have the clothes for it. She'd have to buy special clothes. Second, moms who cooked were fat and slobby. And third, they wore their hair like for being home, for vacuuming and watching daytime TV. She never even watched TV. She wasn't any fat, and it seemed like she was always going to a
beauty parlor to try a new hairstyle, which everyone complimented her on because it would like “fit her face so well”—what she'd say the girls said, no matter what style—and she had to wear lots of shining jewelry. Nobody cooks meals wearing hoop earrings and silver bracelets.

She came over and sat next to me on the bed, putting her arm around me like she might make out with me. “Todavía you're my baby boy, you know, and now I'm going to get to be a mother for you. I know I haven't been. I haven't had any time for you, have I?”

I shrugged. This whole scene was beginning to make me pretty much think about, I don't know, studying French, just to mess with everybody.

“I'm so sorry, m'ijito. I really am.” She kissed me right on the lips.

I couldn't remember the last time she kissed me anywhere, unless it was for show when she'd also be drinking. You know, one of those
Qué guapo es my little man!,
and then a hard smooch like she couldn't resist me, leaving her audience, her fans, usually her girlfriends, giggling and aahing. But this was softening me, enough to almost straight out ask her,
So why this Cloyd dude? It ain't funny. What are you thinking?
I already knew her answers, once I took a second. I was older than her in a way that isn't about years, and she even expected me to tell her practical shit. But I still wanted her to tell me herself. I didn't want to only listen in, overhear her talking on the phone. I loved my mom even when I wondered why everyone was supposed to love their mom. Maybe because, if she wasn't drunk, it was so easy to understand her. Simple. Except the part about these men. Especially except the part about this Cloyd man. How could she? I don't mean the practical part. I meant, How was she planning to live here with him every day? How was she gonna get out of here clean? She did not like him. So I wanted her to tell me in
words, to describe it to me kind of, well, so it'd be a story that made sense, and I'd see it that way.