The Queen of Everything (10 page)

"You peed in a garbage can," I said.

"So sue me," she said.

"Sue me," I said, "for finding it
disgusting."

She lowered her voice again, pretended to
laugh. "The queen of everything," she said. She turned to Miss Poe, who was
suddenly very interested in a bald man on television shown side-by-side with his
miraculous, bushy twin. "So this is how adolescence gets its
reputation."

That did it. I shot upstairs, slammed my door.
A few minutes later, I heard Big Mama come in from work, heard her and Mom
talking in low voices. But by that time, I already had some clothes and my
schoolwork and my own pillow stuffed into my backpack. I put on my jean jacket
and tossed my hair from my collar; my hair was pretty short then. I could hear
Big

93

Mama's voice. "She's just a young girl, Claire.
They're breathtakingly wise one minute, a child the next. Don't you remember
being that age?"

And my mother: "I don't like the direction
she's going."

"She's a work in progress," Big Mama
said.

I paused on the stairs. And then my mother
said, "I don't know where I went wrong."

I was finished with her then. I wasn't some
project she had messed up on.

"Maybe you'll get it right the next time," I
spat at her when I passed and slammed out the back door. I could have gone out
the front without her seeing me, but that would have been beside the point,
wouldn't it? In a split second you can do something permanent, that's one thing
I know. She opened the back door and called out after me.

I ran into the night, away from the rectangle
of light she stood in, and past Nathan, who was frozen in place, barefoot in the
darkness and holding a pile of ripe tomatoes in the tail of his shirt. That was
the problem in that house for me right then. Too much ripeness. Too much
real-ness.

I rode my bike in a fury to my father's house.
I was probably lucky I didn't get killed on the Horseshoe Highway, riding like
that in the dark. I pounded on the door. I was lucky he was home. I could hear
the sounds of the television

94

in the background when he opened the door. A
poof of garlic smell from the dinner he had eaten escaped out the door for a
night on the town.

He made me hot chocolate, with those teensy
freeze-dried marshmallows already in the packet. I told him what happened. I
told him the garbage-can story. He cringed at the right parts. He laughed a
little. "It wasn't very funny, though, was it?" he said.

"No," I said.

"No," he said. He told me a story about the
time he saw Grandpa Eugene pat a neighbor lady on the rear after he'd had too
many beers at a block party. How he ran away to Bill Raabe's house for the night
and slept on the floor with Bill Raabe's cat. It wasn't exactly the same thing,
but I gave him credit for trying. I told him I didn't want to stay there only
for the night. He thought about this.

"I don't know, Jordan. This isn't up to me," he
said.

"Mom wouldn't care," I said.

"Of course she would care," he said. "And you.
You'd have to change schools."

"I see," I said.

"What? What do you see?"

"I just see, is all." I felt like I might
cry.

"You think I don't want you here?" He took my
chin in his hand. "Look at me. Hey. We

95

haven't lived in the same house since you were
three years old. A baby. Do you even remember?"

"Not really," I said.

"Jordan, that you want to ..." He shook his
head as if it were something he couldn't quite believe. "That you want to come
live with me ... I cannot tell you how lucky that makes me feel."

He moved over for me, that's the best way to
put it. And not with a reluctant, heaving sigh, but with a glad scooch and a pat
on the cushion beside him. Moved his whole life over. At first it was strange,
of course, changing schools, a lot of whispered conversations between him and
Mom, and getting used to being there with him full time. He could come up with
more rules than a recess teacher. Before, I was never uncomfortable with him,
but I was always Dad-formal. Dads are usually the ones you talk to about what
you learned at school, moms you tell what you saw that creepy Louise Schmidt do
in the girls' bathroom.

But after a while, I could relax with him. We
would do just regular stuff, like buy groceries and do homework, and other
times, he would show me his Renaissance art books. Reading about that stuff was
his hobby. I learned that a buttress was not some skimpy costume girl-acrobats
wear, which is what it sounds like. A dream of his was to see the Baptistry in
Florence, which is this small octagonal building

96

they baptized babies in that I guess was
important. In pictures it looks like some little jewelry box a rich lady might
have, but there are some doors on it he said were so beautiful, the people
called them the Gates of Paradise. I really liked that about him, the way his
eyes lit up when he said that.
The Gates of Paradise.

So I got to know him better, and I liked my new
school, and I felt like I fit in there. I would go home to Asher House on
weekends and listen to Big Mama talk about the salmon of six million years ago,
giant beasts with fangs that weighed up to five hundred pounds. I liked to hear
her tell how salmon went on voyages ten thousand miles long, just to reach home.
Mom and I stayed careful of each other. When Max was finally born, I was a
visitor, bringing flowers.

Max had a small scrunched face under a knit
cap, a little hard nose. His fingers were so wrinkled, they looked like they
really had been underwater all that time, like Big Mama's mysterious creatures.
He smelled warm; salty and sweet at the same time, a smell that made you want to
cry. I wanted to put my nose in his wrinkles and smell him forever. I guess this
was where the Second Chance Guy was holding up his sign and waving it around,
trying to get my attention. I decided this was none of his business.

"Just don't show me his belly button," I said
and handed the baby back.

97

And that decided it, for Mom and me both. I
would stay with Dad permanently. Maybe Mom and I were just too
different.

"Nathan's got enough breakfast down there for
twenty people," I said to my mother as she dried her wet hands on the hips of
her jeans.

"No problem. I'm starved," she said.

"You have vageema," Max said to me.

At first, I couldn't understand what he was
saying. You need a pocket translator for two-year-olds. It sounded like
something we learned in history class. Battle of Iwo Vageema. Then he
pointed.

"Oh, gee. Thanks for the news
flash."

"Be nice," my mother said. She said that a
lot.

"I liked it better in the old days when kids
didn't know the real names of everything," I said.

"You're becoming a prude in your old age," she
teased.

We went downstairs, passing Homer on his way
up. He'd had his fill of Miss Poe's scraps, and now had one of Max's old
pacifiers in his mouth. Mom shrugged.

"He's got this oral thing," she
said.

It was just us in the kitchen, and we served
ourselves up a big truck-driver breakfast and sat at the table. From the dining
room, across the yellow meadow, you could see the wide expanse of the Strait of
Juan de Fuca, and in the

98

background, the jagged, snow-glazed Olympic
Mountains. The high stem of Tim Berg, D.D.S.'s, schooner,
The Eclipse,
rocked rhythmically from the dock nearby. One thing about Asher House, you
couldn't beat the view.

Mom followed my gaze. "I ever tell you why I
always brought you to Dr. Gleason instead of Tim? You know how much I love Tim.
But I hear that when you're feeling pain, he just turns his music up
higher."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. That's why they send the tourists to
him. You ever tell him, I'll be mad." She crunched a piece of bacon. Nathan
makes it good and crunchy, not floppy and pale like some people. "So when are
you going to let me in on what's bothering you?"

"Nothing's bothering me."

"Oh, right. Hey, I know you, even though you
don't like to think so."

"Dad broke up with Bonnie."

"Really? I'm surprised."

"Me too."

Mom chewed thoughtfully. "I thought they were
happy together."

"I know it. The weird thing is, I think he's
got someone else."

"That's not so weird. Maybe he needs a change.
Maybe he needs a little excitement in his life."

99

"We're talking Dad, here. Excitement? Come
on."

"Okay, true." She laughed.

"I don't know, something just feels ... not
right." Homer had come downstairs again. He walked like an old man with a lot on
his mind. He flopped down under the table and I rubbed his back with my
foot.

"I'm sure it's fine, Jordan. Your father would
never let anything bad happen."

"Only the predictable can be truly surprising,"
Nathan stated, waving around the hardback Mr.
Jones's Dream
as if in
proof. "Theme of last week's book." Nathan had popped back into the kitchen,
showered and redressed, his hair still wet. "Unlike me, of course. Predictably
unpredictable." He kissed the top of my mother's head.

"That was fast," she said to him.

"Cold water, thanks to the resident apple
flusher."

"Mom still buying you some dead guy's shirts?"
I nodded toward his plaid number. Mom liked to shop at Second Hand
Rose.

"Hey, I picked this." He took a pinch of his
shirt proudly. And then, "Well, I'm off. Bye, Max!" he shouted. "Beer and Books
club," he said to me. "Only for big macho guys who like lots of hot
sauce."

"I didn't know you could read," I
said.

"He reads, he creates, he sings,"
Nathan

100

said. He belted out a one-note
demonstration.

"Maybe not sing," my mother said.

"Beer for breakfast?" I said.

"We usually meet at night, but Bud's repairing
a leaky roof and has the place shut down. Randall and Stein is opening early for
us."

"That's Bonnie's store," I said.

"You could get us the scoop," my mother
said.

"Forget it," Nathan said.

101

Chapter Five

I spent the day playing cowboys and
two-dragons-without-their-
mommy-in-the-forest with Max and helping Mom do
laundry. I decided against spending the night. I wanted to get home. I had a few
questions for Dad.

Around dinnertime I got on my bike and made the
trip back around the Horseshoe Highway. The day had changed its mind and decided
to be almost summer after all, so I wore my coat tied around my waist and looped
my sweater around my handlebars. I cruised up the driveway, and noticed that the
front door was open halfway. The car was parked at a funny angle, rolled almost
to the curb, as if it had tried to make a getaway but decided it was no use. I
set my bike down on the lawn. The garbage can

102