Wallflower In Bloom (12 page)

I turned away and suddenly I was walking down Main Street in Marshbury and Mitchell was on the same sidewalk, riding a golf cart in my direction. His drum set was somehow slung over his shoulders, and he had long, limp, stringy hair again, just like when we first met.

I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, so I turned and started heading in the opposite direction. A group of junior high boys came out of nowhere and surrounded me.

“What a porker,” one of them said.

“Whoa,” another one said. “She’s a tusker, a real tusker.”

Maybe the second boy was sticking up for me. “What’s a tusker?” I asked.

Sajid Khan came out of nowhere. “Silly girl. A tusker is an elephant.”

“Really?”

He nodded. A pretty girl came out of nowhere, too, and powdered his nose. “And now you have to dance or I want my postcard back,” Sajid Khan said.

“I don’t want to dance,” I said.

“Dance, dance, dance,” they all started to chant, even Ethan and the baby, even Mitchell, who was flooring the golf cart and heading straight for me.

The chant turned into a knock on the door. A loud knock. A knock that just wouldn’t go away.

“What?” I said. I opened my eyes. Downstairs, someone was knocking like crazy on my door.

I tiptoed halfway down the stairs and sat down. My front door had a glass insert, and if I turned my head just right, I could see who was out there without being seen.

The top of a head covered with short curly hair appeared. The knocking started again.

“Open up,” a voice yelled. “Come on, I know you’re in there, Deirdre.”

She who hesitates is lost, but she who doesn’t hesitate might end up even loster
.

W
hat
were you thinking?” Joanie Baloney said when I opened the door.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said. Tag’s golf cart was directly behind her, tilted at a funny angle. I remembered hitting Mitchell, and for a minute I wondered if he’d damaged it. Then I realized I’d managed to drive one wheel onto the bottom step when I parked the cart as close as I could get to make it easier to unload the groceries. I squinted. Mitchell hadn’t even left a dent. What a crybaby.

Crybaby made me think of baby baby—Ethan’s dream baby, Mitchell’s baby-to-be. Sadness flooded over me like sleeping sickness, and all I wanted to do was find my bed again.

“Nice parking job,” my younger sister said.

“Boo!” My six-year-old niece, Jenna, jumped out from behind the golf cart.

“Boo!” My two-year-old nephew, Johnny, jumped out, too.

Joanie and Jenna were wearing matching little purple cotton dresses that were perfect for a six-year-old, and the purple of Johnny’s golf shirt was exactly the same shade. I just knew Joanie’s husband, Jack, was sitting at home in a bigger version of the same golf shirt.
Maybe I’d never had kids, but at least I’d never humiliated any either. Joanie said they all loved to dress alike, but I could only hope they were humoring her.

Jenna and Johnny threw themselves at me, a cross between a hug and a tackle. They both had curly dark hair and shiny brown eyes, and when I looked at them, all I could think was that these apples hadn’t fallen far from the family tree. They could have been us when we were kids.

I squatted down to hug them back. “Hey,” I said. “What’s up, munchkins?”

“Brush you teeth,” Johnny said.

I turned my head. “Sorry. I’ve been working up to that.”

“Can I come watch you be on TV?” Jenna said. “I’m a good dancer.” She pushed away from our group hug and started twirling around on the front yard.

I wasn’t quite following her. I looked at Joanie.

“Okay, kids,” she yelled. “Give Auntie Dee another hug and go tell Daddy Mommy said to push you on the swings.”

“I don’t need a push,” Jenna said.

“Me want a push,” Johnny said.

Maybe all that dressing alike had caused some kind of extrasensory family perception, because a purple-shirted Jack magically appeared at the end of the path that led from their house to mine. He waved. Joanie waved back.

Then she crossed her arms over her chest and walked past me and into the sheep shed.

I followed her inside. “What were you thinking?” she said again.

I started to walk by her in the direction of the refrigerator. “What?” I said. “Tag’s fine. Mom and Dad are with him.”

She grabbed me by the arm. “You look like shit. And it’s all over the news.”

I aimed my breath away from her. “That I look like shit?”

“I can’t believe you took advantage of Tag like that.”

“Like what?” I said. “By quitting?” Fuzziness surrounded my head like a helmet, but just beyond that something was lurking. And it wasn’t a good thing.

Joanie tilted her head. “Uh, Tag beseeches fans to vote his favorite sister onto
Dancing With the Stars
?”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Nice try, Dee,” my little sister said.

I closed my eyes as it all came back. I kept them closed as I tried to come up with a believable story, but my pickled brain cells just didn’t have it in them.

“Of course I didn’t take advantage of Tag,” I said, fighting to concoct a good story as the dread enveloped me. “I just thought it would be great publicity. And, come on, you’ve seen him dance. It’s not like we could send
him
.”

Joanie looked at me. We were a family built on the scaffolding of meetings. A family held together by the glue of conversation. A family of rules. And I’d just broken pretty much every single one of them.

My eyes teared up. “Mitchell’s getting married.” My lower lip started to quiver. “She’s pregnant.”

“I know,” Joanie said. “He stopped by to ask Jack to be one of his groomsmen.”

I couldn’t believe it. “That little shit. What did Jack say?”

“That he’d have to ask me first?”

“Good answer. Do you think we could clone Jack for me?”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Joanie said. “Listen, Tag is going ballistic. Mom and Dad are trying to keep him under control. The way I look at it, you’ve got two choices.”

I couldn’t even think of one.

Joanie dug her fingers into my arm, as if I might try to make a run for it.

“What are they?” I asked eventually.

“Okay, one, you can check yourself into rehab.”

“Right,” I said. “Maybe Kelly Genelavive needs a roommate.”

“I’m not kidding. Rehab gets you out of practically everything these days. You can write a statement from Tag before I drop you off. He’ll look great when he pretends to forgive you.” Joanie let go of my arm and took a step back. “I have to tell you, the way you look right now, a month in rehab couldn’t hurt.”

“Oh, puh-lease. I got drunk one night. And it wasn’t even my vodka.”

“You’re a mess,” Joanie said. “You really need to get your act together.”

“That’s my other choice?” I said.

“No. Your other choice is to do it. To get on a plane and get the hell out of here before Mom and Dad and Tag get home. Have an adventure. Make the most of it. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame.”

I tried to imagine waltzing into a dance studio in Los Angeles, razzling and dazzling everyone with my charming personality, putting on my nonexistent dance shoes and actually dancing. I mean, it’s not like I had to win or anything. I just had to not be the first dancer voted off. Okay, maybe not the second either. But the third would be respectable. I mean, how hard could
that
be?

I snapped out of the fantasy and my eyes teared up again. “The truth is I can’t even make myself check my messages.”

Joanie put her arm around me. “You’re pathetic. I don’t know how Tag puts up with you. Come on, we’ll do it together.”

We started with the voice mails. Actually, Joanie did. She sat at my desk, and I found her a piece of paper and a pen in case there was anything important to write down. Then I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my head again.

Joanie came over and pulled the covers off. “Shower. Now.”

Since I didn’t seem to have much of a choice, I took my baby sister’s advice. Once I brushed my teeth and peeled off my grungy
clothes and let the hot water wash over me for a while, I started to feel almost human again. I mean, any movement felt better than no movement at all, right? Maybe that was my signal, the universe sending me its version of the Nike slogan:
Just. Do. It
.

But wait. She who hesitates is lost, but she who doesn’t hesitate might end up even loster.

I really needed to think things through, but my brain felt like it had been exchanged with the Tin Man’s in
The Wizard of Oz
. Maybe “If I Only Had a Brain” could be my first dance. The costume designers could create a silver metallic ballroom gown for me, which would give the illusion of being some kind of glamorous twist on tin cans. It would be long and flowing, and if I didn’t eat between now and the first show, maybe I’d even look reasonably okay in it. Wait, it wasn’t the Tin Man who didn’t have a brain. The Scarecrow was the brainless one. And right now, I could totally relate.

The knocking started up again, this time on my bathroom door.

“Hurry up,” Joanie yelled. I flashed back to the little three-bedroom ranch we’d grown up in, all three girls sharing one bedroom, Colleen with her own twin bed, and Joanie making the springs creak on the top bunk over my head every time she rolled over. Tag in his tiny solo kingdom across the hall, and my parents sharing the shoe box of a room next to his.

But it was the single bathroom that presented our biggest family challenge, especially once all four kids hit our teenage years one after another like dominoes. My mother attacked it as she did everything, with a family meeting followed by a big paper chart that she attached with magnets to the refrigerator in what my father referred to as our one-bum kitchen. Our scheduled showers were each ten minutes long, with a ten-minute break between each one to let the cranky old water heater fire up again. An egg timer sat on the ledge of the chipped salmon-colored porcelain sink, and we were supposed to set it before we stepped into the tepid water.

Every so often, in my 6:20 a.m. school day grogginess, I’d forget and before I knew it, Joanie, whose turn always came after mine, would be pounding away on the bathroom door.

All these years later, on a hungover Saturday afternoon, her pounding had the same distinctive style.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Bang. Bang. BANG
.

My reaction hadn’t changed either.

“Hold your horses!” I yelled.

Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, especially in a sheep shed with your sister
.

I
wrapped a towel around my head like a turban and pulled on my old terry cloth robe. The white, or at least whitish, robe made me think of Lake Austin Spa Resort, which made me think of Steve Moretti. Why was it again that I’d run away instead of just telling Tag to buzz off and leave us alone?

Joanie was waiting right outside the bathroom door, ready to huff and puff and blow it down if she had to.