As if I don’t have enough stress in my life, we’re barely finished the dinner dishes when Gina arrives. Has she never heard of the phone? Does she always just have to show up uninvited? She probably wants Mom to go out drinking again this weekend. The dog starts to bark at her. Good for the dog!
“I just made tea.” Mom takes two mugs from the cupboard and goes over and sits down with Gina at the table.
I’m standing there with a dish towel in my hands. There’s nothing left to dry.
“You can finish up there, Lucy. There’s just the pots left.”
Just the pots? We had barbecued ribs! The sauce has baked onto the rack and the pan that goes under it. It will take me all night. I can’t believe this. We are probably the only people in Langley without a dishwasher.
At first I’m banging pots and pans around and not paying any attention to what Mom and Gina are talking about. But then I hear Jake’s name.
“So where are you two going?” Gina asks.
“We’re not going anywhere. I told you, I never said I’d go out with him.”
“Well, that’s not what he told Ian.”
“When did Ian talk to him?”
“That night, while you and I were in the washroom.”
“I don’t know how he got that idea. I went over there yesterday, thinking I could straighten it out, but he’s on a run to California. Randy says he won’t be back till a week Friday.”
“That’s the night he’s expecting you to go out with him. You can’t just meet him on the doorstep and tell him it was all a mistake.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Butt out, Lucy,” Gina says. Then she turns her attention back to Mom. I look at Mom too. She’s glaring at Gina like she’s about to give her a piece of her mind. Then she glances over at me. I just give a shrug. Gina’s always rude. I’m not about to take it personally. Mom goes back to picking at the pattern on her mug like she expects bits of the glaze to flake off.
Gina has skin as thick as a rhinoceros; she hasn’t noticed a thing. “But you like him, don’t you?”
“He seems nice enough.”
“Come on. I think it’s a bit more than that,” Gina says. “You couldn’t take your eyes off him all night.”
“So? What’s that got to do with it?”
“I couldn’t hear him over the noise. I’d catch bits, but a lot of the time, I was trying to fill in the blank parts by lipreading.”
“But you just kept smiling and nodding. He thinks you’re crazy about him.”
Mom blushes. So she should.
“Has anyone bothered to tell Jake that you’re married?” I ask.
They both look at me.
“He knows she’s separated,” Gina replies.
“She’s still married, even if she and Dad aren’t living together. She’ll always be married to him in God’s eyes.”
Gina scowls at me. “Look, Pope Lucy, your mom’s only twenty-eight years old. You can’t expect her to live the life of a nun.”
“Well, I don’t expect her to behave like a slut either.”
“What a mouth you’ve got on you. If you were mine, I’d smack you one. Maybe you should worry about your own sins for a change.”
Mom’s sitting motionless, holding her head in both hands. Then she gets up like she hasn’t heard anything and picks up the dog’s leash. “Come on, Lucy. Let’s go for a walk.”
The dog never needs to be asked twice. She scrambles up from her place on the couch, and she and Mom walk out and leave Gina and me alone in the trailer, looking at each other. We might have started arguing again, but just then the phone rings. I answer it. It’s my dad. I’d have thought things couldn’t get any worse, but they do. When I tell him Mom is out walking the dog, he asks me to give her a message.
“We have an offer on the house. Amy’s bringing it by at six tomorrow. Can you have your mom give me a call?”
“Sure.”
What more is there to say? Why is it such a shock? I knew the house was up for sale. Someone was bound to buy it sooner or later. Still, it isn’t until this minute that it all seems real to me.
“Excuse me,” I say to Gina when I hang up. I go to my room. I don’t feel like talking anymore.
When Mom comes back, I stick my head out and say, “Dad called.”
“For you or for me?”
“For you. Someone’s made an offer on the house. Amy wants to bring it by tomorrow. You’re supposed to call him.”
Mom sits down hard.
“Wow! That’s great news,” says Gina.
“I guess.”
Gina frowns. “What to you mean, you guess? You want to sell the place, right?”
“Right.”
“So an offer is good news, right?”
“I suppose so … it seems so final.”
“I thought you wanted final. I thought you wanted to make a life of your own.”
“You can quit your job. You can take your course. You can buy another house on your own. You won’t have to listen to Harold fussing about finances 24-7.”
“No,” Mom mutters. “I’ll be the one fussing about the money.”
“Well, don’t do it in front of Jake or any other boyfriend you might have. It will completely turn them off.”
Turned off is how I feel. I don’t want to hear any more of this conversation. I just want to be by myself. This place is so small, that even though I’ve shut myself up in my room, I can still hear almost everything they say. I come out of my room and grab the leash.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
“I just walked her,” Mom says.
“She wants to go out again. Look at her.”
The dog is dancing around, all keen and excited. Maybe she’s got a short memory and has forgotten that she just got back from a walk about two minutes ago. I snap her leash on. I’m not afraid to walk her now. If I accidentally pass by Brandy’s place, it won’t matter because it’s dark enough that she won’t know it’s me.
We walk a long time. It seems funny that Gina’s the only one who hasn’t taken the dog for a walk tonight. Some pet owner she is.
The next morning, I ask Mom if she’ll drive me to school.
She looks up from the coffee cup she’s been staring into. “Why? If I drop you off on my way to work, you’ll get there just after eight. That’s way too early.”
“I don’t care. There are worse things.”
“Do you have a lot of stuff to carry again?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you walk?” She glances out the window. “It’s not like it’s raining.”
“Remember how I told you about Harbie and Kuldeep?”
She nods.
“They’re not the only girls I met.”
I tell her about Brandy. She says she’ll give me a ride this morning, but tonight she wants us to find out where Brandy lives so she can go talk to her mother.
“You can’t do that! Brandy will kill me if she finds out I squealed.”
“Well, I’m not going to have you afraid to leave the house because of Brandy’s bullying. Her mother has got to accept some responsibility.”
“I told you about her skirt.”
“You said it barely covered her bottom.”
“And about her hair?”
“I heard you, black with royal blue streaks.”
“So does that sound like she listens to her mother?”
Mom dumps the last of her coffee down the sink. “We’ll talk about it tonight. We need a better plan. You’re not going to be able to avoid her forever.”
She’s right.
At lunchtime, when Harbie and I get to the cafeteria, Rob is sitting at a table with his friend Trevor. They haven’t got any food yet, so they stand up and we all go to the serving tables together. I get a bowl of chili and a cup of chocolate milk. I’m carrying them on a tray and following Rob back to the table. Harbie’s behind me.
We have to pass the table where Brandy’s sitting. I’m right next to it when I trip over something. I stumble forward and my tray hits Rob in the back. He spins around and grabs my shoulder with one free hand so I don’t fall. He drops his tray in the process. I hang on to mine, but the bowl of chili has crashed onto the floor and the whole tray is awash in spilled chocolate milk. It’s all down the front of my skirt and T-shirt. Rob has chili on his back. Brandy and her friends are laughing.
“Jennifer, say you’re sorry. I mean, it’s not your fault your size 10 feet were sticking out, but look what you’ve done,” gloats Brandy.
The girl she’s talking to says “Sorry.”
Then they all laugh some more. I don’t even bother looking at them. I’m looking at Rob. He’s got splatters of pop on the front of his shirt. He’s still hanging on to my shoulder. He’s very close.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod. “But look what I’ve done. I’ve spilled my chili on your back and when you grabbed me, your pop splashed all over.”
He looks down at himself. “Don’t worry about it. I can change in to the T-shirt I use for gym.”
I think then he notices that he’s still hanging on to me because he lets go. We both bend down and start trying to clean up the mess. Someone must have called the custodian, because while we’re still trying to scoop up chili with napkins, he comes along with a mop and dustpan.
Rob’s lost his drink, but his hamburger is okay. I have no lunch at all now, and I don’t have money to buy something else. Like I’d want to anyway. I’ve got chocolate milk all down the front of me. Who wants to sit around like that?
“I’m going home to change.”
Harbie looks at my clothes. “Yeah, you need to rinse out your skirt or it will stain.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I just want to get out of here. I try to walk tall and look dignified as I leave the cafeteria. It’s not easy, being so short and now with food slopped all down the front of me, but I do the best I can.
I drop by the office to tell the secretary that I’m leaving, and then I head for home. The good part is that I don’t have to take some weird circular route this time. Brandy’s still back at school, eating her lunch and laughing with her friends.
The dog is glad to see me and starts barking because she expects a walk. I pick her up, and she’s distracted right away because I smell so interesting. She starts sniffing and licking my shirt. I feel sticky all over, so I strip off my clothes, throw them on the bathroom floor, and step into the shower.
When I’m finished my shower, I put on my grungy bathrobe and go out to the kitchen to make myself a cheese sandwich. I give the dog little tastes. It’s past one o’clock. I told the secretary I was going home to change. So I’ll change. I didn’t say I’d come back. I decide I’m not going to.
I clean up my dishes and hang my dirty, wet clothes on the shower rod. Then I go look for something clean to wear. I put on a pair of jeans. I’m thinking about Rob standing so close to me like that. I wish I could be at least a bit hot. It’s not fair that some girls get all the boobs.
I wander into Mom’s room and start looking in her drawers. She’s got this one really fancy bra. It’s lace and it’s got push-up pads and underwire. I try it on. It fits around my chest pretty well, but there’s not much of me to fill the cups. I go into my own room and get a pair of socks. I stuff one in each side of the bra. It takes a bit of adjusting, but it looks pretty good. I don’t have any cleavage, but if I put a T-shirt on, I bet the boobs would look real. I pull on a T-shirt. It fits tightly now. I can make out the pattern of the lace through the material. It looks sexy but not too obvious.
Things would have been different when Rob found himself holding on to me if I’d looked like this. I start poking through Mom’s makeup. I put on some foundation. Then I try eyeliner and mascara, copying the way I’d seen Mom do it. I stand back to admire the effect. I let my eyelids droop like the models do. Not that I’d look this way at just anyone, only at my husband or maybe my fiancé. I put on lipstick. I have trouble making it even, but if I don’t look too close, it’s okay. I stand back from the mirror to get the whole picture. I pose with my chest out to make the most of my boobs. I pout my mouth and try to look sexy. I imagine what it would be like if I were getting dressed up like this to go out on a date with Rob. He would definitely think I was a hottie.
Grandma wouldn’t approve at all, but there really wouldn’t be anything for her to worry about. I’d never be tempted to go too far. There’s no way I’d ever get naked with a guy when my boobs are a pair of gym socks. I’ll probably stay a virgin forever – and it won’t be because I made a promise to God.
I wash the makeup off and put Mom’s bra and my socks back where they belong. Brandy won’t be home for another hour, so I take the dog for a proper walk while it’s safe to do it. I see Mrs. Warren, the lady from the pig house, eyeing me through her front window. When I get back, I call Grandma. It’s Granddad who answers the phone. Grandma isn’t home. She’s out playing bridge. This is so weird. Grandma never goes out.