I phone Siobhan after school on Monday, but she can’t talk for long. Her mother wants her to help one of her brothers, so she has to hang up. I wonder how we’re going to stay friends if I never get to see her. Mom doesn’t have problems like that. Gina’s got nothing better to do than drive miles to drop in for a coffee. Mom and I are just finishing up the dinner dishes when we hear a car pull up next to the trailer. Mom looks out the window to see who it is.
“Hey, it’s Gina.” She dries her hands and heads for the door.
“Shouldn’t you be at pilates?” I ask as soon as Gina steps inside.
It’s six-thirty and she and Mom always went to a seven o’clock class on Mondays and Fridays.
“I’m playing hooky. It’s just not the same without you,” she says, talking to my mom, not me. She plops herself down at the table, sitting on one chair and putting her feet up on another. “You got anything to drink?”
“Just cola,” says Mom.
Gina shrugs. “Guess that’ll do.”
Mom was figuring out our budget this morning, and she’s left the paper she was scribbling on, along with a couple of bills, in a slot of the napkin holder, which is sitting in the center of the table. While Mom’s getting the colas and putting ice into the glasses, nosy Gina helps herself to a look at our finances.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Just a list to show what I’ve spent this month,” Mom says.
“Hmm, movie rentals $7.00, stamps $5.45. This is so sad! Well, at least you’re not writing down what you pay for every cup of coffee.”
“That’s because I haven’t been able to afford to go out for coffee.”
“It can’t be that bad. Why are you fussing so much about it? I thought Harold was the one who was totally anal about money. When did you start writing down everything you spend?”
Mom looks embarrassed. She skids a pop across the table to Gina. “I guess as soon as Harold wasn’t here to do it.”
Since no one’s paying any attention to either me or the dog, we go to my room. I leave the door open so I can still hear Gina and Mom talking.
“So how long has it been? Three weeks, right?”
“Since I moved in here? Yeah, three weeks this Sunday.”
“Okay already, then that’s quite enough of the hermit act. It’s time you got out and about.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m so broke, and there’s Lucy to think of.”
“She’ll be with Harold on the weekend anyway. Ian and I’ve been talking. We’re taking you clubbing. Our treat.”
“I couldn’t …”
They talk for a good half hour. Mom keeps making excuses, but Gina is very pushy. She just won’t take no for an answer. By the time she leaves, Mom has agreed that Ian and Gina can pick her up at nine on Friday night. What time is that to be going out? It’s almost bedtime!
I’m so upset, I’m almost speechless. As soon as Gina leaves, I confront Mom. “You’re going to a nightclub?”
“So it seems.”
“That’s disgusting. I suppose you’ll wear an indecent dress like that one Gina was wearing in the picture she showed us that time.”
“Don’t I wish! I’ll just wear jeans and my lime floral top. It’s all I have.”
I can imagine what Grandma and Dad will have to say about this. I head for the phone.
“Lucy!”
She doesn’t actually yell, but she says it so sharply I stop like I’ve been slapped.
I leave the phone alone and stomp back to my bedroom. The dog is sleeping on my bed. She could use a walk. I wake her up, go get her leash, and we walk out the door without even looking back at Mom.
Maybe Mom can make me too uncomfortable to use the phone in front of her, but she can’t stop me from talking to Dad when she drops me off at his place on Friday. He’s managed to get home at a decent time, but there’s nothing to eat in the house, so we have to go grocery shopping before we can make dinner.
We’re driving to the store, but my mind is a thousand miles away.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” he says. “Is something bothering you?”
“It’s that Gina again. She and Ian are taking Mom out to a nightclub.”
“She’s going to a nightclub? She never told me she’d like to go to a nightclub. Did she ever mention it to you?”
“No, and it wasn’t her who suggested it on Monday either. It’s all Gina’s idea. Mom even argued about it at first, but you know what it’s like. Gina seems to be able to brainwash her.”
The traffic is heavy, like it always is on Friday nights. Dad changes lanes.
“By the time Gina left, all Mom was worrying about was that she didn’t have a really sexy dress to wear.”
“She’s going to wear jeans and her new lime top.”
I imagine he’ll feel better knowing this. At least she’ll be dressed decently. He knows which top it is; she doesn’t have a lot of clothes.
“She looks cute in that,” he says.
“But do most people go clubbing in ordinary clothes like that?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve never been?”
“No.” He pulls the van into the Save-On-Foods parking lot. Once he’s parked, we get out and he pulls out one of the carts from the stand. He wheels it toward the store.
“When you and Mom were dating, what sorts of things did you do?” I ask.
“We went out for dinner or to a movie sometimes.”
The way he says that, it doesn’t sound like they did that very often. “What else did you do?”
“Other times, we’d just stay home and play cards with your grandma and granddad. On the weekends, we’d take you to the park.”
It doesn’t sound that romantic. We’re in the pasta and sauce aisle. Dad’s pitching boxes of Kraft Dinner into the shopping cart while he’s talking.
“Dad!”
“What?”
I can’t believe he hasn’t noticed. “Look, the store brand is four cents less a box.”
He starts putting the Kraft Dinner back on the shelf. I gather up half a dozen boxes of the store brand macaroni dinner and put them in the cart. This breakup is really affecting him. I wonder if he’s losing it. He’s probably worried too, because he says we need to concentrate more on the shopping.
We’re in the car driving home when he picks up the conversation we were having before.
“We went to a lot of garage sales. Some people would think that was dull, but your mom always liked doing that, and I sort of got in to it. I was living in this dingy bachelor pad, and she was determined to make it into a real home.”
I nod. That sounds like Mom.
“She did too, with bits and pieces we picked up for almost nothing.” He’s smiling a bit as he says this, but by the time we get home, he looks sad again.
He must be brooding about it, because it’s got to be an hour later when, out of the blue, he says, “No wonder she left me.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Probably not. It’s just who I am. That’s the worst of it. It’s not something I can change.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. There’s nothing wrong with who he is. He’s not movie-star handsome, but he’s nice-looking enough. He’s quite tall and he’s not fat. He has short brown hair and eyes that squint at the corners in a friendly way when he smiles. He only wears his glasses when he’s working or when he’s tired.
“I think you’re very nice looking,” I say.
“Thanks, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m so dull and boring. I’m just not a fun kind of person.”
I sort of know what he means. I’m not a fun person either. Everyone says I’m too serious. Sometimes the kids at school give me a hard time about the way I talk. They say I sound like a teacher or something.
“I think part of it is being an only child. Both your mom and I had older parents too. That’s why I thought we were well-suited to each other.”
“Just because you both had old parents?”
“No, because we were both weird only children with no social skills.”
I don’t like him talking like this. It makes me very uncomfortable, probably because I bet some people would say that I’m a weird only child with no social skills too.
It’s time to change the subject.
“You know,” I say, “You could just be feeling down because you need to eat. Look how late it is. Grandma says low blood sugar can really affect your mood.”
I get the loaf of bread out, put six slices on the cutting board, and start buttering them. “Will ham and cheese be okay?”
“Sounds good,” he says.
*
When Dad drops me off at the trailer on Sunday evening, the dog is just crazy-excited to see me. She is jumping all over me and doing those doggy bows that mean she wants to play. She puts her butt up in the air and her chest on the floor, and unless you make a fuss over her right away, she barks.
Mom is lying on the couch, reading a book. She laughs at the dog. “Take her out for awhile, Lucy. She’ll like that and it will calm her down.”
That’s true. I toss my backpack on the chair and pick up her leash from the corner of the counter. I don’t forget the plastic bags.
When we get back, the dog is much calmer. Mom is still lying there, reading. It’s a fat library book, and she’s almost finished it.
“So how was the nightclubbing?” I ask.
“Noisy.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“Well, I guess it was educational.”
What kind of an answer is that? What did she learn? Do I really want to know? “Did you dance?”
“A bit. Mostly we just sat around and talked, which was pretty weird.”
“Why’s it weird to sit around and talk?” That sounds to me like a civilized way to spend an evening. Why go out with your friends if you aren’t even going to talk to them?
“It was weird because we couldn’t hear each other. I spent all evening yelling over the music. My throat was so sore I could barely talk when I got home.”
“Who did you dance with?”
“You don’t really have to dance with a particular person. People just dance in a group sometimes.”
“So you’d dance with Ian and Gina, the three of you being a group?”
“We met Jake there too.”
Who’s Jake? I don’t remember her talking about anyone named Jake. She must notice that I’m puzzled.
“Jake. You remember Jake. The guy who lives down the way here. He helped us the day we moved in.”
How could I forget? He’s the one I thought might be hot if he cleaned himself up a bit. “Did he get cleaned up to go to the nightclub?”
Mom looks at me like I’ve lost it. “Of course he was cleaned up. Did you think he’d crawl out from under the hood of his car and head out to a nightclub just as he was?”
I don’t answer. So he probably looked hot.
“So what did you do yesterday?” I ask.
“Mostly just read this book,” she says. “There isn’t much housework to do around here, is there? It’s not like having a big house.”
“How many drinks did you have at the club?”
“A couple.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, maybe there’s a reason you’ve spent the whole weekend lying on the couch.”
She’s sitting up now, glaring at me.
“You sure you don’t have a hangover?”
“Lucy, go to your room. Right now, before I do or say something we’ll both regret.”
She says this without even raising her voice, which is not like her. Still, she sounds like she means it. I go to my room, but now I’m really worried. When I accused her of having a hangover, I didn’t really think she had one. I just wondered about it because, even if I am a weird only child with no social skills, I know that most people do not go to nightclubs and drink coffee. The way she reacted, though, makes me sure I hit a sore spot. Siobhan and I were reading some brochures Mariah brought us from her Alateen group last week. Most alcoholics feel guilty about their drinking and are really in to denial.