The Key to the Golden Firebird (2 page)
Read The Key to the Golden Firebird Online
Authors: Maureen Johnson
“I don't see any slack to cut,” Palm said with a shrug.
“Come off it. These pictures are too blurry to tell. He was moving too fast.”
“I saw it.”
“You didn't see a thing.” May shook her head. “He was in the pool when you saw him. But he ran right at me. I saw it. And it was what you'd expect. Regular.”
As she squealed to a stop at a red light, Brooks turned a questioning gaze on May.
“And you're comparing him againstâ¦what?” Brooks asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I'm⦔ Now Palm had fixed May with a stare as well. Unless May had been withholding important information, they knew she didn't have a clue what she was talking about. “Guesstimating.”
Palm snorted and fanned the photos out on the backseat.
“Here's one of his butt that's pretty good,” she said, plucking out a picture taken during Pete's hasty retreat. It caught him midrun and was elegant, nearly classical in composition. Pete had the naked flair of an ancient Greek, but his butt was highlighted by the red glow from the Coke machine. Palmer named it
Naked Running Rudolph Butt
, which triggered the laugh attack all over again.
“Okay,” May said, catching her breath. “We have five minutes to get home.”
“Not a problem,” Brooks said.
As Brooks cranked up the music and went into hyperspeed, Palmer and May examined the spoils of war: one pair of jeans (with walletâthat would need to be returned right away), one gray T-shirt, one red-and-white short-sleeved cotton button-down, one pair of boxers imprinted with pictures of chickens (very strange), one pair of gray socks with a thin red stripe. Palm hadn't had enough time to get his shoes, but they could live with that.
Brooks turned down the entrance to their road. The Golds lived in an old suburban development outside of Philadelphia. Back when it was new, it had probably been the neatest, most uniform community in the world, with its six different models of houses randomly and endlessly repeated down meandering tree-lined streets. But in the half century since it had been built, everything had been overgrown, and all of the houses had deteriorated or been altered or rebuilt. Their little corner in particular was the forbidden forest of mismatched additions and sagging garage porticos. They passed the Camps' on the way to their own house and gave a triumphant wave.
As May was in the middle of putting on Pete's shirt, Brooks suddenly turned off the music. May looked up from her buttoning.
“Why did youâ¦?”
May never finished her question because she soon saw what had caused the disturbance. In front of them was a parked
police car with a silently pulsing siren light. It was next to an ambulance and a fire truck.
“What's that?” May said.
Â
At first, May would remember, she thought that something had happened to their elderly neighbor, Mrs. Ross. But as they drove closer, they saw that the ambulance was in their driveway and that the fire truck and squad car were in front of their house. But there was no fire.
Though Brooks accelerated toward the house, to May it felt like the minivan was moving slowly. Now she could see the activity in their garage. Her father's Firebird was neatly parked in its spot, richly reflecting the late afternoon sun from its deep gold exterior. Three or four people in blue uniforms were calmly standing around the car. Some of their neighbors were on their front lawns, watching all of this.
Brooks brought the minivan to a jerky stop and killed the engine. Palm and Brooks ran out. May moved more deliberately, gathering her photos, picking up her purse and locking the doors. Then, when she was ready, she turned and walked toward the garage.
There was a large orange kit in the garage entrance. It sat open, revealing white sterile packages and plastic tubes from unseen devices. There was a stretcher set up by the tool bench. As May and her sisters approached, one of the EMTs pulled a sheet over it. One of their neighbors, Bonnie Stark, was in the driveway. She ran toward the girls, ushering them back. Bonnie had been crying.
“Girls,” Bonnie was saying, “something happenedâ¦.”
May never remembered what it was that Bonnie told them; she only recalled that when Bonnie finished speaking, Brooks ran into the house. May looked down and with complete presence of mind counted every single one of the geraniums in the flower box by her feet. There were thirty-six. There was a whistling noise in her ears as she sat down in the driveway. Palm clung to her. Palm was cryingâscreaming, actually. May absently stroked her hair. It was slightly oily. Her poor little sister. She was so long and skinny, and she was clinging onto May like some violently terrified baby animal grabbing onto its mother's fur. Howling.
May started counting the tiles on the roof of the garage.
The next thing she remembered was walking into the kitchen. This must have only been a few minutes later. Pete's dad, Richard Camp, was there, on the phone. He was tall and thin like Pete and he was slumping a bit when May walked in, so he looked a bit like a drooping plant. He straightened up when he saw her and rapidly finished up his phone call with a curt, “Okay,” and, “I'll call you back.” She didn't really question why he was in their kitchen, on their phone; instead she wondered whether or not to tell him that Pete was stuck at the pool and that he had no clothes.
He hung up and walked over to her and tried to put his hand on her shoulder.
“May,” he said, “I'm so⦔
She moved away.
“Can you tell me, please,” May said, reaching back and holding on to the kitchen counter, “can you tell me what's happening?”
“Your fatherâ¦,” he began. He was speaking in an unnaturally precise manner, and he gripped the top of one of their heavy kitchen chairs until his knuckles were white. “He had a heart attack, May.”
“When?”
It was the only thing she could think to ask.
“About forty-five minutes ago.”
Forty-five minutes. You could save someone in forty-five minutes. That sounded reasonable. You hit them with the electric paddles or you gave them some medicine. Aspirin. She'd heard that aspirin could save you if you took it while you had a heart attack.
“Where is he?” May asked, surprised to hear the low insistence in her own voice. “Where did this happen? Here?”
“In the garage. In the car. He parked it, and then it must have happened.”
“Have they stopped trying to⦔ May didn't know the words. “Those people, are they going to keep trying? You know. To help him?”
Mr. Camp didn't say anything for a moment.
“It was too late when they got here,” he finally managed. “Do you understand?”
“Too late?”
“He was already gone, May.”
No. He wasn't gone, not literally. He was out in the garage.
“He's dead, May.”
May swallowed a few times in an attempt to get the whistling, air-suction noise in her ears to stop. It didn't work.
“Can I go see him?” she asked.
Mr. Camp sighed and ran his hand through his hair. It was straight, unlike Pete's, and turning a steely gray. Her dad had no gray hair.
“I wouldn't. Stay here with me, okay?”
“Where's my mom?”
“She's coming home now.”
“Does she know?”
“She knows something is wrong.”
“I'll call her.” May walked toward the phone.
“She's on her way. She's not at work anymore.”
“Cell⦔
“Why don't you wait?” he asked. “I think that would be better. Safer. She's driving. Is that okay?”
May stopped halfway to the phone and thought about this.
“Safer. Okay. She's driving.”
“Right.” He nodded.
There was a lull. Neither of them moved.
“May,” he finally said, “I'm so sorry.”
“I have to go look for Palm,” she replied. “I'll come back.”
Halfway to the door, May realized that her bra was still dangling out of her front pocket. She yanked it free and threw it on the stairs as she passed. Stepping out the front door, she was shocked at how achingly sunny it was. Somehow she felt like it should have suddenly gotten dark. The paramedics were still there. They gave her sideways glances as she wandered to the quiet street, looked to the left and right, and wandered back toward the house. Another neighbor approached. So many neighbors. They were coming out of the woodwork.
The buzzing in her ears was getting louder.
“Have you seen my sister?” May asked anyone nearby. “Palmer?”
“She's over at the Starks', honey,” one of the neighbors replied.
That's right,
May thought. Bonnie had taken Palm to her house.
The neighbor was reaching out to her, trying to embrace her.
“Oh, right.” May nodded, backing away. “Thanks.”
She walked around the house, straight to the back of the yard, to the narrow, secluded space behind a bush that separated her sisters' pitchback and the shed. It was a damp, spidery spot, but it couldn't be seen from the kitchen window. She sank down into the grass and leaned up against a pile of cinder blocks that someone had stacked there six or seven years ago and never bothered to move. She started to laugh. It was completely automatic and spastic and so forceful that she actually gagged once or twice. She wasn't sure how long she sat there. It could have been five minutes or two hours. She didn't hear anyone approaching.
“May?”
May looked up to find Pete, now dry and dressed, standing next to her. He must have followed along to their house with his mother; she would have gotten the message as well. And of course Pete would know to look for her here. This had been a long-standing hiding spot in all kinds of games when they were kids. As for the incident at the poolâ¦that had been sometime in the distant past or in another dimension.
Pete watched her. No jokes this time. Somehow having Pete standing next to her with a serious look on his face made the whole thing a little more real. And the real was horrible. The
real made her panic. The pressure of his stare caused her laughter to evolve into a different, more logical emotion. She wanted to run, but she knew that she couldn't. Her legs, her armsâshe didn't really know how they worked at the moment.
“Hey, Pete,” she said as the last of the laughter died out of her voice, “I have your wallet.”
- Since there's a baby in it, you'd think babysitting only meant babies. Then again, it also has a sitting. It's one of those things you can't get too literal about.
- Something I first offered to do when I was four or five years old. I told my parents that they should go out because I could take care of Pawmer and Bwooks. They laughed and said that was really cute of me. I think they took it seriously on some level, though, because I feel like I've been doing it ever since. So it's also one of those things you have to be careful about volunteering for.
May Gold's actual name was Mayzie. As far as she knew, this was not a real name. It was a made-up, moon-man-language name based on Willie Mays, one of the most famous baseball players of all time.
All of the Gold girls were named after baseball players, a testament to their father's obsessive love of the game. Brooks was named after Brooks Robinson, twenty-two-year veteran of the Baltimore Orioles. Palmer was named after Jim Palmer, who was considered to be the best pitcher in Orioles history. May's sisters' names had relevance in their lives. They played softball. (Palmer was, in fact, a pitcher.) Also, Brooks and Palmer were kind of cool-sounding names. May could imagine a Brooks or a Palmer working in a law firm or becoming a famous artist. Mayzie was someone who had a washing machine on her front porch and turned up on some trashy talk show for the “My Mom Married My Brother!” episode.
So when the driving examiner, a woman with a helmet of tight, steel-gray curls, a state police jacket, and aviator glasses, came across striding across the lot, calling for “Mayzie Gold!” May nodded stiffly and felt the first tingling of nervous perspiration. She hated hearing that name announced in public.
“Get in, please,” the woman said. It wasn't a friendly request.
May opened the driver's side door of the green minivan and
took her position behind the wheel. This was just a test, she told herself. An easy little test. And if there was one thing May was good at, it was tests. Okay, so she hadn't exactly prepared for this test so well. Who needed more than three or four sessions behind the wheel, anyway? She tried to relax, tried to release the tension-building death grip she had on the steering wheel, tried to send messages of peace along her arm muscles, tried to tell her eye not to spasm.
The woman got into the car. Now that she was so close, May got the full effect of the glasses and the hair and the jacket, and she saw the ashy gray color of the woman's skin and her purple-blue lips. She had a slight wheeze.
“Windshield wipers,” the woman snapped.
May reached for the wiper switch. She had it in hand. Wipers. Definitely the wipers. But flicked the wrong way this switch turned onâ¦the
high beams
.
Brain,
May begged internally.
Brain. Do not send me bad information. DO NOT TURN ON THE HIGH BEAMS.
Flick. Wipers squealed their way along the dry windshield. Flick. Wipers off.
The woman nodded.
“Hazards,” she said.
Hazards. Yes. The panic buttonâthe one you hit when something was going wrong with the car. She knew that one. May clicked the button with confidence, and the car responded with the comforting ticktocking noise of the flashing lights.
“All right, Miss Gold⦔ She snapped May's learner's permit onto her clipboard. “Hazards off and let's go. Straight ahead.”
May turned off the hazards and toed the gas pedal.
“I'd like to finish this test today, Miss Gold. A little faster, please.”
May put her foot on the pedal lightly, cranking the car up to about the speed of a casual bicycle ride. The examiner sighed and made a note. May's eyes flashed over to the clipboard. In the process she rolled five feet past the first stop sign. May hit the brakes hard, coming to an abrupt stop.
Well, that was wrong,
she thought, easing the car back into motion.
Better keep going.
May continued on to the serpentine, the pattern of orange traffic cones set up as a winding path. Unfortunately, the serpentine didn't look like any kind of path to Mayâit looked like a random mass of cones tossed into the road to block her. She dropped the car's speed even more and started trying to pick her way through the mess without hitting anything.
“Speed up,” the examiner said.
May ignored this.
“You missed one of the cones,” the examiner added as May struggled through the forest of orange.
Only one?
May said to herself.
Better than I thought.
From there, she faced the stall for the three-point turn. This was the dreaded part of the exam where she was supposed to pull the car into a tiny box, then had to figure out how to get out of it by backing the car up and only turning it three times. She pulled in carefully.
“All the way into the stall,” the examiner snapped.
“I
am
in,” May offered meekly.
“You're barely halfway in.”
May blinked and looked around her. The low walls of the pen seemed to be coming in at her. It was like the examiner was saying, “Don't just tap that metal divider Mayâ
ram
it. I want to see spare parts and twisted metal
everywhere
.”
“Pull in!” the examiner repeated.
May pulled another half a foot forward.
“Miss Gold,” the woman said with a sigh, “if you don't pull in, you can't complete this part of the exam.”
“I'll hit the barrier.”
“The barrier is over six feet away.”
Six feet? No. It was right in front of her, just over the hood of the car. Any closer and they would be less one minivan. May felt the panic juices start to speed through her system.
Though she would have liked to, she couldn't just leave the car here in the middle of the course. Leave it and run. Off to someplace where cars were not a required feature of life. Maybe Holland, where her mother's parents lived. From what she'd heard, the Dutch had so many trains and trams and boats that no driving was required. She could see the canals and the tulips and try those fries with the weird mayonnaise sauce that her mom said were so goodâ¦.
“Miss Gold.”
“I can't,” May said, looking down at her lap. “I'm sorry.”
“Back out and turn around.”
May managed to recall only one thing from her studies of the art of driving: when facing a collision that is impossible to avoid, relaxâthe impact is less damaging that way. She let her elbows drop, and her breathing became shallow. She slowly turned the car around and managed to wind her way back to
the parking lot in front of the exam building. She stopped the car in the vicinity of the curb and killed the engine. The key stuck in the ignition. She had to wiggle it out.
May was calm through the quiet scribbling on the clipboard. She saw
x
's being made at what had to be the wrong end of a chart. A slip of thin paper was handed to her, which she grasped in a slightly shaking fist and could not bring herself to read.
“I'm sorry, Miss Gold,” the examiner said, not sounding sorry at all. “You'll have to come back.”
“Thanks.” May nodded. It seemed kind of stupid to thank someone for failing her, but it was an automatic response. The woman wheezed once more and exited, and May slid over to the passenger's seat and stared at herself in the side-view mirror. Apparently she was closer than she appeared. Another mystery of driving that she would never understand.
A minute later her mother's face appeared in the car window. She evaluated May with a quick glance, got into the driver's seat, and quietly started the car. She took her sunglasses from their resting place in the gentle blond spikes and put them over her eyes.
“It's no big deal. I failed the first time too,” her mom offered when they were safely up the road.
“Okay.”
“You just need a little more practice. Maybe you can take it again in a week or twoâ¦.”
“Can we talk about this some other time?” May said.
“Sorry.”
May stared into the pile of rubble that had pooled in the
console. Coffee rings with change and grit stuck on them. Wrappers from candies and meal-replacement bars. Crumpled receipts from the hospital parking lot. A french fry container dotted with clear congealed grease stains. So gross. For a nurse, her mom could tolerate a pretty disgusting car. Even if May could have gotten through the test, she probably would have failed for poor automotive hygiene.
“Our car is nasty,” May said, closing her eyes.
“I know.”
Her mom switched on the radio, and they soft-rocked out for a few minutes. Neither of them really liked that kind of music, but it seemed soothing, numbing. One of the other things about May's mom was that she had once been a hardcore punk girl. The spikes in her hair had been harder, stiff with gel, formed into sharp points. Gone forever (but not forgottenâher father had taken a picture to use as blackmail) were the ripped fishnet stockings, the shock-white face makeup, the black eyeliner that stretched all the way out to the hairline, and the combat boots. Now she was a gentle, soccer-mom kind of punk. But the soft rock was still unacceptable.
“I'm working tonight,” her mom finally said. “I asked Brooks if she could take you to work ifâ”
“If I failed. Which I did.”
“I'm sorry I haven't had more time to teach you.”
“It's not your fault,” May replied. “We're just on opposite schedules.”
“Could you make sure Palmer eats some dinner before you go?”
May wanted to say, “She's fourteen. She can feed herself.”
But that would be ridiculous. Palmer would survive solely on Doritos and doughnut holes if she could get away with it. May's father, the security systems salesman, had been the great negotiator of the family, coaxing each bite of roast beef or tuna fish into Palmer with offers of softball catches and water ice. But Palmer was too old for that now, and her mom didn't have the time or energy to think about how things should beâshe only knew how they were. She knew that Palmer needed to have an actual dinner put in front of her and needed to be watched to make sure she ate it. And that kind of job always fell to May. In fact, May didn't have to say anything at all to her mother's request because her mother knew her answer would always be yes. There was no room to say no anymore.
“I don't want to pressure you, May.” Her mom sighed as she turned down the shady entrance of their street. “I'm sorry. You know how much I count on you. Brooks should be more responsible, but we both know she isn't. I need your help. And when you can drive⦔
“It's no pressure,” May lied. “It'll be fine. I just need a little more practice.”
“Right. You'll have no problems the next time.”
She gave May's ponytail a light tug. May forced a smile.
Inside, Palmer was sprawled all over the sofa, her long limbs draped in every direction. She tipped her head up on their arrival, took one look at May's face, and lowered herself back down and focused on the television again.
“You failed,” she said. “Great. Now I still have to ride with Brooks.”
May trudged upstairs, threw herself onto her bed, crawled under the quilt, and fell asleep.
Â
It was late in the afternoon by the time that May woke up. Her room was dark and cold. She rolled out from the warm spot under her quilt, slid into her slippers and pulled on a sweatshirt, and made her bleary-eyed way downstairs. The television was blasting from the living room, and her sore head began to pound slightly.
A glance at the clock told her that her mother had already left for the hospital and that she had less than an hour to get ready for work. She headed to the kitchen to get some dinner together. Along the way, she picked up a cup and a coffee mug from the hall table. There were even more dishes scattered around the kitchen. May gathered them up and loaded the dishwasher. She wiped down the counter. She had to scrub hard to get rid of all the sticky juice and soda and coffee rings. The washcloth had a sour, fishy smell.
Dinner prospects were grim. The edible contents of the refrigerator consisted of one bottle of Brooks's spooky blue post-practice Gatorade (strictly off-limits to anyone else), year-old pickles, some tuna fish salad (age unknown), half a piece of fried chicken, and some brown iceberg lettuce. The pantry wasn't much better. There were some boxes of cereal that contained only dry, dusty evidence of their former contents. Some soups that had been around so long, they had become heirlooms. Crisco. Rejected packets of plain instant oatmeal.
May finally settled on a box of macaroni and cheese. She found some freezer-burned ground beef and decided to warm it
and cook the two together. This “casserole” was one of the few foods that Palmer was sure to eat. Not the most nutritious meal, but probably better than a handful of chips. At least it was the good kind of macaroni and cheeseâthe kind that came with the pouch of cheese goo.
After starting the hot water for the macaroni, May sat at the table and pulled over the stack of textbooks she had piled in the corner. She had just enough time to finish up the set of trig problems for class on Monday. Grabbing a mechanical pencil from the fruit bowl, she set to work.
The phone rang immediately.
She stared at the cordless that sat just two feet in front of her, then smothered it with the quilted toaster cover.
“Get that?” May yelled in to Palmer.
No reply. It rang again.
“Palmer! Get that!” May repeated.
“You get it.”
“I don't want to talk to anyone!”
“That's
your
mental problem,” Palmer replied.
Why did the toaster cover have so many burn marks on it? That couldn't be good.
“What if it's Mom?” May called back.
“What if it is?”
One last ring and the caller was shuttled off to voice mail land.
“Thanks!” May added.
“No problem.”
May heard the television volume increase. The kitchen wall began to vibrate. She got up and marched into the living room.
Palmer was huddled close to the television, basking in its glow. She wore her sweats, her fleece jacket, and nasty fuzzy slippers. Additionally, she had draped the old crocheted living room blanket over her head like a hood and was wearing May's chenille gloves. If she'd had a marshmallow on a stick pressed up against the screen, May wouldn't have been completely surprised.
