The Queen of Everything (2 page)

And then there she was in front of me. I'd been
so busy being amused by the article's obviousness that I hadn't heard the swish
of the door, or her heels, quiet on the carpet Buddy Waddell had installed
himself.

"Ah, it's so nice and cool in here," she
said.

11

Which was funny, because my very first thought
looking at her was,
I bet this woman never even sweats.
She was lovely,
really. The kind of woman you save that word for, lovely. Dark hair swept up in
a clip, two perfect tendrils coaxed down. Short, sleeveless black dress. This
great shade of nail polish. Expensive earrings, expensive smile. Warm though. It
didn't occur to me then that some people could make a smile warm with the same
deliberate efficiency other folks use to put wool socks on cold feet. I was not
all that well acquainted with manufactured smiles. I hadn't yet bought a car,
met a preacher's wife, or been to a PTA meeting. According to my mother, there
are more fake smiles at a PTA meeting than in a false-teeth factory.

The woman in front of me fanned the air with a
slender hand. A drift of perfume was set free and roamed around the room as if
it owned the place.

"They'll be done in there in a few minutes," I
said. "If you want, you can sit down." I gestured to the chairs in the waiting
area, done in soothing shades of rose and tan.

"Oh, you think..." She laughed. "Aren't you
sweet. I'm not here to pick anyone up. I'm here for
myself."
She leaned
in as if to tell a secret. "We all need a little help now and then, don't we?"
She took a pinch of her side.

12

This disappointed me. Obviously, there was
nothing there to pinch. She probably lived on cups of coffee, doing leg lifts as
she poured it. That's what her body looked like. She radiated charm and money
and capability; I didn't want her to be a self-pincher of nonexistent body fat.
This was the kind of woman I wanted to be someday, who would have considered
alfalfa-sprout hair under her arms to be repellent as venereal disease. She
would even use words like
repellent.
Unlike my mother, she would not be
the type who would pop out her emotions for everyone to see, spraying everyone
in the vicinity in the process, same as Grandpa Eugene with his
dentures.

"Oh," I said. "Well, in that case I'll have to
make you an appointment with our health consultant, Laylani Waddell." I handed
her one of Laylani's business cards that sat in a Lucite holder on the reception
desk. Laylani loved for us to pass them out. Her name gloated in the corner of
those little white cards with the pink stripe across the top. health consultant
, they read, owner. Yep, she was a valid member of the human race. I opened the
wide, loose appointment book. "It'll take about an hour."

"Maybe you can just tell me a little about your
place here," she said. "Since I'm not even sure what it is you do."

I was actually relieved. Maybe the
woman

13

thought we were a gym. I hoped so. I didn't
want her to be one of those diet bimbos we saw so many of, who knew the fat
grams in a pretzel stick, and who only wanted to hear how little they needed
what they came for. Diet bimbos pissed me off. I couldn't imagine what they did
to the truly overweight. On behalf of the real sufferers, I always tried to do
what I could during a diet bimbo's Game Plan Consultation. I'd find slices of
fat they never knew existed and measure them for long periods of time with my
tape. I'd shake my head when I wrote things on the clipboard and mutter "Whew" a
lot. I'd be extra cheerful and say things like,
Now, we shouldn't think
Fritos are the fifth food group!

I didn't think I could be mean to this woman.
"I have a brochure," I said.

"As long as it covers price. My husband tends
to be tight fisted, bless his heart." People tended to say this, I noticed,
whenever blessing seemed the last thing on their minds. "The first time he ever
went to Costco, I swear he got a hard-on."

It's not too often that someone says
hard-on
when you've just met, I thought, but okay, fine. Besides, her
voice had an ever-so-slight Southern lilt, harsh twangs polished smooth; it was
the kind of accent that can make even a word like
hard-on
sound harmless
and sweet as a mint julep drunk from a porch swing.

"Oh, boy," I said. I mean, what do you
say?

14

"Tell me, do we know each other?" she asked,
leaning in to examine me with one eye narrowed. "I never forget a lovely
face."

I actually blushed. "I'm not sure," I said.
Lovely.
It was the word I had thought so perfect for her. I wondered if
it could actually be true. Me, with my curly brown hair (chestnut, my mother
called it), and legs that seemed too long. My mother said I was beautiful,
Melissa said she wished she looked like me, but compliments from your mother and
your best friend don't count. I'm embarrassed to admit what pleasure that
lovely
gave me.

"You must know my sons," she said. "Markus and
Remington D'Angelo? Parrish High? They were new last year."

I did know her sons. At the name Markus an
image swam up. Tall blond boy, quiet. Hands stuck into the pockets of a swim
team jacket. But more than that, I knew her house. It was the recently built one
behind our neighborhood in the Crow Valley. Nothing you could overlook. A huge
new faux Tudor with its own airstrip. It dwarfed the quaint house of Little
Cranberry Farm on the adjacent property. It was the kind of house that made my
mother scream.

"Oh, right," I said.

"I thought you must know them. I'm Gayle." She
extended her cool fingers, and I took them for a moment. I hoped she
didn't

15

notice the shade of pink on my own nails, which
suddenly seemed silly and girlish and was peeling besides. "And you are ...
?"

"Jordan MacKenzie," I said.

"MacKenzie?" She pointed one ear at me as if
offering it a second chance to get it right. "You don't happen to belong to Dr.
Vinee MacKenzie, do you?"

Normally I would have said that I don't
belong
to anyone, but she was so nice that I only nodded and smiled. At
this, she grasped my hand and hushed her voice. "I can't believe meeting you
like this. I think your father is just wonderful."

It was the way a middle-aged woman would react
if she'd just met the daughter of, say, Elvis. I wondered what my father had
done to deserve it. Believe me, if you heard my father sing, you'd know no one
was going to throw their underwear at him, even those waist-high control-top
ones that women my mother's age wear. And I didn't think that a free glaucoma
check or sunglasses frames at cost would cause someone's voice to get all
breathy like that.

"Thank you," I said, which I was embarrassed
for later. It's not as though I could take credit for my choice of the
guy.

"You have his eyes," she said. She studied me.
"Beautiful deep brown. You must have to fight off the boys with a stick! My
goodness, I

16

would kill for that figure of yours. I bet you
are your daddy's little girl."

That thought made we want to gag. "I wouldn't
say that," I said.

"No? Still, you must be close. The
father-daughter bond and all."

"I saw it in a movie once," I said. I don't
know why I said that except that maybe I was trying to let her know the daddy's
girl crap had no place in my life. After I said it though, I felt my conscience
jab me at this small betrayal of my father. I mean, we were close in our own
way. But if we're being honest here, getting truly close to fathers is like
trying to dig out a really old tree stump. You get exhausted with the effort and
don't actually get very far.

Not only was my conscience being Goody
Two-Shoes, but I also started feeling a little embarrassed about what I'd said.
It seemed kind of personal for a first conversation, even with the
hard-on
ice already broken. But Gayle D'Angelo only laughed. I could hear
the rustling of bodies in the weigh-in room, papers shuffling, the sudden burst
of mixed conversations. Laylani was finished. "Our health consultant should be
right out," I said.

"That's all right," Gayle D'Angelo said. "I'm
only here for the information." She waved the brochure in the air.

Melissa popped her head out of the
weigh-in

17

room door. "Show time," she said. She looked at
Mrs. D'Angelo, caught my eye, and raised one eyebrow, a trick I always wished I
could do.

"Nice to meet you," I said to Gayle
D'Angelo.

And it was. Afterward I carried around a
strange thrill. The kind you get when something seems possible that didn't
before, or after you've been truly
seen.
I wondered if she was the
"influential person" my horoscope that day said I'd be meeting. I didn't
consider, until much later, that maybe what I felt were really the
hypervibrations that come with warning; the way your heart pounds when you are
playing hide-and-seek and sense someone is about to spring out at you. Even
salmon, Big Mama says, can sometimes get caught after their instincts have
confused them.

Melissa and I usually walked home together
after work. Whiffs of Gayle D'Angelo's perfume had lounged around True You's
waiting room the rest of the day, and now it was following along behind us.
Though it was early evening, and only the very beginning of June, it was hot
out, unusually so for Parrish at that time of year. Normally that kind of
weather starts mid-August and ends two weeks later. But, hey, if you can guess
the weather in the Northwest, we'll probably crown you ruler of the
land.

Outside, the air was stifling; it felt like
trying

18

to breathe through a knitted scarf. "Wanna get
doughnuts?" Melissa said in the parking lot, as True You's door shut behind
us.

"Maple bar sugar hit," I said.

"Let me see if I've got money," she said. She
swung her backpack off her shoulder and rooted around inside.

"How can we even
think
fried food after
Laylani's lecture?" I mock-scolded.

"Yeah, they usually make me too sick to eat,"
Melissa said to the inside of her backpack. Two cars started up in the parking
lot, one belonging to one of our team members, another to a customer of the dry
cleaner next door, a garment sheathed in thin plastic hanging from her back
window. The door to True You opened again, and a girl just a little older than I
stepped outside. She squinted and blinked, as if the world was more bright and
shocking than she could stand. She had stayed behind for a one-on-one with
Laylani, something Laylani required when she felt on the verge of losing a
customer. The girl looked down, avoiding our eyes when she passed us, and her
huge frame, draped with a floral cotton dress, moved with great effort through
the parking lot and toward the sidewalk.

Melissa held up her wallet. "We're covered,"
she said. She followed my gaze. "Aren't you just entirely sick of
fatties?"

Her voice was loud. Too loud. I could see
the

19

girl flinch, her shoulders lifting ever so
slightly. And then her purse slid from her arm, dropped to the sidewalk, and
spilled. She stopped, stooped down, and balanced on the ball of one foot to
gather her things. Sweat was beginning to darken the armpits of her dress. For a
second, so quick I couldn't even be sure it happened, she looked up at me and we
caught eyes.

And then I did a horrible thing. A cruel thing.
I turned away from those thick fingers picking up loose coins and a half-empty
pack of gum and a small bottle of hand lotion, and I laughed. Loudly. To show
Melissa how much I agreed.

"Entirely sick," I said.

And then Melissa and I walked away. To buy
doughnuts to eat before dinner. Me trying to forget what I had just done, trying
to forget the coin rolling away on its edge and escaping those fat
fingers.

"We'd better be quick," I said. "You know how
pissed Dad gets if I'm not there for dinner."

We hurried past Randall and Stein Booksellers,
the shop my father's longtime girlfriend owned, waited for a break in traffic,
and jogged across the street to Boss Donuts. The doughnut guy was Mel Thurber.
His name should have been Mole Thurber, with his bald head, and eyes that were
always squinting, as if they still hadn't adjusted to life

20

aboveground. I got a squeamish feeling when I
thought of him touching my food, even when he used a square of tissue paper. I
was always glad to get out of there, to escape the smell of hot grease and the
container of pink lemonade that looked as though it had been there forever,
little skin flecks of lemon pulp clinging to the glass sides.

"I can't see how he can stand to drink coffee
in this heat," Melissa said. She was referring to Officer Ricky Beaker, whom we
called the Tiny Policeman, due to the fact that he was barely five feet tall and
had a voice that resembled one of the Lollipop Twins of Munchkin Land. How he
had managed to dodge the height requirement for police officers, no one could
ever figure out. The Tiny Policeman could usually be found sitting in the corner
of Boss Donuts, nursing a cup of coffee as if it were a whiskey in a
cowboy-movie saloon instead of a Styrofoam cup on a sticky table set under
fluorescent lights. His eyes glanced suspiciously about, as they always did. He
was waiting for the bad guys in black to ride up on their horses and step
through the swinging doors. You could tell that he desperately wanted some real
bad guys around. There wasn't much crime on Parrish. The most serious crime
fighting the Tiny Policeman did was taking down the license plates of the
high-school boys who shouted,