The Queen of Everything (20 page)

"He's got a comb in his back pocket, for
Christ's sake," Grandpa said. "Look at that."

"A regular peacock," I said.

"You got that half right. You hear what he said
to me? "Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawn mower,'" Grandpa mimicked in a high
voice. '"Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawn mower,'" he sang. He stuck his butt
out like Marty Abare's and said it a few more times, prancing around.

I started to laugh, and as mad as I could tell
he was, he started to laugh too. '"Your ass is grass,'" he said high and girlie.
"And I'm,'" he pretended to comb his hair. '"The lawn mower.'"

I was laughing hard now. "God Grandpa, stop."
Will Cutty had just slid the contents of another full dustpan into the garbage
can, but now he looked up and smiled grandpa's way.

Grandpa liked this. He stuck his old rear out
and strutted back and forth some more.

'"Your ass is grass,'" Grandpa sang.

"Oh, jeez, he's looking at you."

Grandpa waved to Marty Abare staring at him
from the window.

"Oh, jeez," I said again.

"Hello, you ass-wipe," Grandpa sang.

"Oh jeez, stop," I said, laughing.
"Grandpa."

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Nervous laughing. I didn't want Marty Abare to
see us busting a gut at his expense.

"Man, oh, man," Grandpa was chuckling good now.
He took off his glasses that Dad had gotten for him and wiped his eyes with the
back of his hand. "Sometimes I think I'm the only one who sees clear around
here," he said. He put his glasses back on. His eyes looked kind of big through
the lenses. Big and a little smeary with age.

"You want a frozen burrito? I got a couple we
can pop in the microwave. Don't tell your grandma. She thinks they're gonna give
me a heart attack." He grasped at his chest and made a pretend dying sound.
"Hell, I been eating 'em all my life. I'm gonna start eating some celery
stick?"

"What, use the microwave in there?" I asked,
nodding to the office. Marty Abare was on the phone. He rocked back and forth in
the chair, pretending not to notice us when we were obviously the only thing he
was paying attention to.

"I don't care about that ass-wipe. See that
there?" Grandpa said. He pointed to the sign that bore his name. Eugene's gas
and garage, dark green on white, in letters as bold as Grandpa himself. "Look at
that."

"I see it," I said.

"He can't hurt me," Grandpa said.

***

197

Grandpa had been right. I did stink like Marty
Abare's aftershave, even after a good wind-whipping from the bike ride back. It
was giving me a headache. Loud perfume is basically the same as someone else's
blaring boom box, if you ask me. Once I was home again I tried to wash it off,
and when I came out of the bathroom I saw the message light on the answering
machine blinking. Melissa. "Oh God, oh God, oh God. Come over right away. The
most awful thing has happened."

The first thing I noticed when Mrs. Beene
opened the door was that she'd redecorated the living room again, and sitting on
the fireplace mantel was this big brass urn. It was a serious looking thing,
right in the center. I'd never seen it before.

"Oh," I said. I stood in front of the urn.
"Jeez, Diane, I'm sorry. Is that, uh, Grandpa Lawrence?" I pointed to the urn.
Melissa's Grandpa used to own a drapery business. He was a quiet little guy who,
every time I'd ever seen him, was eating dried apricots out of a bag. Real nice;
he always offered me one.

"What?" Mrs. Beene said.

I pointed to the urn again. "Did he, um, pass
away?"

"My vase? Oh my God, is that what you think?
That it's one of those ... For
ashes?"
Diane Beene grabbed the urn off
the mantel by

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its handles, held it at arm's length and looked
at it with a tilted head. "Tell me honestly, you thought it was one of
those?"

Honestly, yeah, it looked like something some
dead guy's ashes were in, but that seemed kind of indelicately put.

"I don't know," I said.

"It does, doesn't it? Tell me."

"It's just ..." I said. "Melissa called all
upset."

"She's perfectly fine," Mrs. Beene said. "She
just had a slight problem. I told her not to use that facial-hair bleach when
she had a tan. Oh, now I don't know," she said to the urn. "This is terrible.
I'm going to have to give this some thought. I'd hate for people to think I'd
... Larry's mother still has her second husband in the closet behind her
shoes."

Upstairs, I stepped over Boog where someone had
left him in the hall. Melissa sat glumly with her arms looped around her knees.
I tried not to laugh when I saw her, but I probably laughed a little. She looked
like she was sporting a first-rate milk mustache on her upper lip. She could
have been in one of those ads for the Dairy Farmers of Washington.

"It's not that bad," I said.

"Lie."

"Let's see." She moved her arm down so I could
get a good look. The hairs on her lip

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shone all sparkly silver-blond like they were
dressed for the disco. "You won't even see it with some makeup," I
said.

"I tried," she said. I could see that she had.
Squat brown bottles were scattered on her dresser. Also, a round plastic lid
holding a pyramid of white powder and a flat paddle scoop. Stuff anyone
unfamiliar with Jolene Hair Cream might easily mistake for drug paraphernalia.
"I considered doing the rest of my face," she said.

"Oh, jeez, don't do that," I said.

"You don't think I should?"

"It'd probably give you some horrible disease
in ten years."

We played around with Melissa's lip for a
while. I could hear Jackson in his room next door, in a Texas mood, on the
telephone: "If my name isn't Archimedes Pesto ... impeachment is what they
deserve for ignoring the spotted owl..."

"Kale call today yet?" Melissa
asked.

"I haven't been home. I'm sure he will. The
more I ignore him, the harder he tries. You'd think he'd take the hint, all the
times I've hung up on him."

"I'm starting to feel sorry for him," she
said.

"You've got to be kidding."

I'd told Melissa about the rabbits. I left out
the part about my made-up story. I still couldn't bring myself to tell her about
that, or about my

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father and Gayle D'Angelo. It made me feel as
if it were
me
doing awful things. If I had my wish, I'd stuff all of it
in a closet and shut the door, fast.

"Maybe what happened at the park was just
sexual frustration," Melissa said. She seemed to like the idea of this. It was
the way she said the words, swishing them deliciously in her mouth.

"Great. His animal nature makes him want to
kill nature's animals."

There was nothing funny about that night,
though. The horror of it still grabbed me and twisted sometimes. At night sick
pictures flashed in front of my closed eyes. I shuddered when I put the
sprinkler on the front lawn and the cold drops of water splattered my bare legs,
and when a passing car's headlights made a quick slash of light in the dark
living room window. I would have to be desperate or crazy to see Kale
again.

From Melissa's bed where I sat, I heard the
skipping thuds of Jackson going downstairs, and a few moments later, the
bamp
bamp bamp
of a basketball being dribbled in the driveway. The sound was loud
through Melissa's open window. Melissa shoved aside her Venetian blind and stuck
her face to the screen. "You don't even play basketball, you freak," she said,
and let the blind bang back in place again.

"I bet if you sit in the sun the rest of the
day

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your lip will burn and be tan in time for work
tomorrow," I said. I don't know if this was good advice. "I'll go out with
you."

"You probably just want to watch my psycho
brother play imaginary basketball without a hoop," she said.

She may have been right.

"I meant the backyard," I said.

I picked up Boog on the way out and placed him
in the kitchen in front of the refrigerator, where it was cooler and only a
small slide over to his water dish. I swear he smiled at me with his black lips.
Diane leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping a glass of iced tea and
looking at the new vase, which now sat by the back door.

"What's that doing here, Mom? It looked
fine."

"Jordan thought it looked like one of those
urns. For cremated people."

"Jordan, jeez. It looked fine, Mom. Great.
Don't listen to her." She shot me a nasty look. "God," she said when we got
outside. "What did you say that for? Do you know what you're going to put me
through for the next two weeks?"

"Well, it did," I said. "It looked just like
one."

"I know it did," Melissa said. "But jeez."
Melissa pulled out a couple of lawn chairs for us and handed me one to unfold.
"It should

202

have been engraved," I said. '"Grandpa Lawrence
Beene. I never met an apricot I didn't like.'"

"You're sick," she said.

"You love me," I said.

Melissa rolled her eyes. She plunked herself
down on the lawn chair and pointed her milk mustache toward the sun.

It first hit me that I had done something
terribly wrong when I saw Grandpa and Grandma's car in our driveway the next
night. That car, sitting there all solid and functional and, I don't know why,
but
unexpected
and suddenly,
bam!
The "Oh Shit." I had betrayed my
father. Hell, I
told on
my father. And I knew this would matter. A lot.
The car in the driveway would matter. Because my father cared what Grandpa
Eugene thought of him. He cared in a way I thought (I
hoped)
you somehow
got over when you got old enough.

I knew because of the steak. Not just the
steak, but that was one thing. When Grandpa came over, that, not hot sauce on
ribs, was what we usually had. Broiled or barbecued to red, fleshy steaky
perfection. Dad and I rarely ate it when the two of us were alone; not that good
for you, and neither of us liked it that much. But Dad served it whenever
Grandpa came. Because steak meant Dad made enough money to buy steak.

203

Seeing that car, I felt the panicky shame all
tattlers feel. The wish to be back in the group again instead of standing by the
teacher's side, both higher and lower than everyone else. When I went inside it
was with that guilty silence that makes you want to walk on your toes. My father
was still jovial though surprised by their presence, caught steakless. My
grandmother wore a dress that was as nervous and spotted as her old hands. My
grandfather asked me to leave the room.

If I jumped out my bedroom window, I would be
dead on top of the garbage cans; if I put my head under my pillow, I wouldn't be
able to listen. I settled for going to the top of the stairs and plugging and
unplugging my ears, letting chance decide what I would hear. "Well, you know I'm
a grown man." My father laughed that laugh that isn't the least bit funny. And
next, "Fifty years, your mother and I been married," and "That's not the way you
were raised," and my grandmother's voice, "We're only concerned for you,
Vince."

And then, "Not my business? Is it gonna be my
business when he comes after you with a gun?"

And my father "This isn't the movies. This
isn't some make-believe drama you saw on television."

Until I could hear with ears plugged or
not,

204

my grandpa's voice raised to a thunder.
"Goddamn it, you old bird, don't tell me not to get upset! I'm
upset!"

"I'm not a kid, Dad!"

"You oughtta at least think about your
daughter! She's the one that's upset, you know that? Or you too busy in the
bedroom to notice?"

"Eugene!"

"I can handle my own daughter."

The front door slammed, and my bedroom window
rattled. From my room where I'd taken refuge I could hear my grandmother by the
front door, speaking softly now. My ears were so on-edge, I think I could have
heard her thoughts.

It hurts to remember. It hurts, hurts, hurts.
"He's just upset," she said to my father. "Marty Abare let him go
today."

The front door closed. Outside I could hear my
grandmother's voice, surprisingly strong. "I'm driving," she said.

"You're not driving anywhere, you old coot," my
grandfather said.

"Move over or I'll stand here all night," my
grandmother said. "You are not driving in your condition. Look, your hands are
shaking. I'm afraid when you get so worked up."

"Worked up, hell," he said. But he must have
moved over, because a few seconds later Grandma gave the car too much gas as she
backed out of the driveway.

205

My father waited until they were gone, and then
he thumped up the stairs. I was crying by then. Sniveling into my pillow like
the coward I was. He stood in my doorway. That's all he did. Stared at me, with
this look that couldn't decide between contempt and bewilderment. I hated
myself. I wanted to vomit, and he just stood there and stared, his hand on the
door-jamb. His tie still on from work that day, a guilty reminder of everything
he did for me. Then he turned away from me. I heard his keys scrape against the
tile counter as he gathered them up, heard the rattle of the doorknob. Another
slam. His car rumbled angrily to life. I cried hard then. Heaving cries, as I
grasped my pillow to my chest. At that moment, I felt that he was lost to
me.