“How was your weekend?” Rosie asks when I sit down next to her on the bus returning to Woodstock.
She doesn’t realize what she’s getting into. I tell her all about Katie and Andy. About buying a pair of boots. How when my mother realized I wasn’t going to the party, she called Duane, who tried to get an extra ticket to the play, but they were all sold out. How Duane and my mother said they wouldn’t go, but I told them to. How she called during the intermission to make sure I was all right. How I stayed in my room and cried a little, then took the picture of Andy and me and went out into the hall and threw it into the compactor and then felt bad that I did that.
“I feel better now. I think I’ve worked it all out of my system. And they still are my friends. They both called and wanted to stop by, but I already had plans.”
“Wow, I would have ripped off their faces.” Rosie shakes her head. “I can’t believe that you didn’t scream at them, mangle their bodies into tiny pieces, and throw them to the rats to gnaw. That’s what I would have done.”
“What if the rats are veggies?” The thought of cannibal rats makes me ill.
“They’re not. Those rats’d probably even eat cafeteria food,” Rosie says. “I think you’re being a regular saint about Katie and Andy. I wouldn’t earn a halo on this one.”
I make a mental note never to go out with anyone she’s involved with, not that I ever would.
“You must have been really angry and hurt. Confess, weren’t you?”
Thinking first, I say, “No. I really do like them both. Maybe if Andy were my first boyfriend, it would have been different. But he wasn’t. My first boyfriend was Danny O’Hara in the fourth grade. We went steady until he traded me to Arnold Berman for one of those electronic toys. That time I got really angry. I tried to put Silly Putty up his nose until the teacher stopped me from doing something dangerous.”
Rosie starts laughing and then I start.
People look at us and then turn away.
We keep looking at each other and laughing. We’re all the way to Paramus, New Jersey, before we calm down. After the weekend I’ve just been through, it feels good to laugh.
“How was your weekend?” I ask.
“Fair. Listening to my father play was great. I’m so proud of him. But it’s not easy. My father’s new wife has two kids from her first marriage. They’re seven and five, and they call my father Daddy. Sometimes they’re brats, but mostly they’re pretty okay. It’s kind of weird though, like they’re a full-time family and I’m a part-time visitor.”
“That must be hard,” I say.
She nods. “And I’m a lighter color than any of them. It’s okay, but sometimes it makes me feel a little strange.”
I think about what it must be like for her. I think she’s wonderful and has everything going for her, so she should have no problems. But I guess everyone has some.
We turn the lights on over our seats to get some homework done.
A little kid in front of us, Stevie, is bus-sick. There’s no parent with him, so one of the older kids, who’s also alone, helps him.
There’s a couple halfway back in the bus who are making out like crazy.
Finally the bus driver blinks the lights on and off to let them know they have to stop.
Doing homework under these conditions isn’t easy, but it’s the only real choice.
Two hours and then the bus pulls into Woodstock.
My father’s standing there, waiting for me.
So’s Rosie’s mother.
We pile out of the bus and hug our parents.
“Want to go for pizza?” my father asks.
I think of the big dinner that my mother made, but that was hours ago. “Sure.”
“Want to join us?” he asks Rosie and Mindy.
They accept.
We walk across the Green. It’s much less crowded. Most of the tourists have gone. There are still some street people playing music.
My father takes my suitcase from me.
We go inside and get the little round table by the window.
My father pretends to take orders like a waiter. He goes back to the counter and places the order and then comes back and looks at the bulletin board, where the standings of the baseball teams are listed. Lots of the men in town play. It’s a really big thing. My father says that when he gets to know more people, he’ll join next summer.
When he comes back to us, I’m showing Mindy and Rosie my new boots, which are red and knee-high.
He sits down. “Your mother got those for you, I take it.”
I nod.
“Are they lined?”
“No.”
He shakes his head. “Winters get cold up here. Wouldn’t lined ones have been more practical? At least these don’t have initials. Sometimes I wish Kathy thought more. We’ll still have to get boots that will work up here.”
I wish I’d left them in New York, but then my mother would have felt bad.
Mindy says, “Sometimes it’s nice to have something that may not be practical but just makes you feel good when you wear it. I have a hand-quilted vest like that.”
Everyone gets very quiet at the table. I hope this doesn’t turn into a disaster because my mother’s bought me an expensive pair of boots.
The guy in the back yells out that our order is ready.
“Come on, Jim. Let’s wait on our kids.” Mindy gets up. “I’ll help carry it. I’m not a stranger to waiting on tables.”
My father and she walk to the back. I can tell that she’s saying something to him but can’t tell what it is.
Rosie says, “Don’t get depressed. You know that’s the way divorce parents get sometimes. I’ve been living with it for years. You’ll get used to it.”
“I hope so.”
“You will. I promise.” She watches as I put the boots back in the box. “Phoebe, you know all those novels about divorce? They’re mostly for the kids who are just starting it. There should be one about a kid who’s lived with it for a long time. Then you’d see that we all survive it.”
Jim and Mindy return.
I don’t know what she said to him, but he’s in a much better mood.
Placing the pie in front of us, he says, “There it is—Woodstock Pizzeria’s famous whole wheat pizza, with half extra cheese and the other half sausage. You know which part I want.”
“The whole half.” I pretend to faint.
He pretends to revive me. “No—just no sausage. Honey, your boots are very pretty. Tomorrow let’s go to Woodstock Design and get a pair of leg warmers to go with them.”
Rosie and Mindy start to laugh at the same time.
As my father sits down he says, “Let us in on the joke.”
Mindy wipes a dab of sauce off her chin. “That sounds so familiar. Sometimes I buy something for Rosie that she doesn’t need or even want because her father’s just bought her something.”
“Anything you can do I can do better?” My father hands her a napkin. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it. I thought I was over doing that.”
Rosie and I look at each other.
“I kind of like it,” Rosie says. “It’s one of the advantages of being a divorce kid.”
“Me too.” I pick up a piece of pizza. The extra cheese slithers onto my hand. “How about a trip to Hawaii? Then Mom’ll have to take me to Europe.”
“So much about divorce revolves around money. But then so did marriage.” Mindy takes a sip of my father’s apple cider before she realizes that it’s not her Coke.
Finally we stop talking about divorce and I ask Mindy how her book is going.
She frowns. “It’s rough. I’ve got a writer’s block; nothing’s working. The only writing I’ve done lately is graffiti.”
“Graffiti.” Rosie shakes her head as she puts red pepper on her slice. “My mother writes on walls.”
“You try to bring parents up right, and this is the way they act.” I pretend to sound stern. “Mindy, do you write dirty things on the wall?”
My father says, “I could always do the illustrations to go with the writing.”
I shake my head. “She probably writes them on ladies’ room walls. We’d have to get you into a disguise.”
“A long blond wig,” Rosie suggests.
“What do you write?” my father asks, starting to put salt on his pizza and then remembering he doesn’t use it anymore.
Mindy picks up the salt and puts some on her slice. “My grandfather, who spoke very little English, had a favorite expression for all occasions. Writing it down is a way of keeping his memory alive.”
“I have a feeling that I’ve seen it,” I say.
She fills my father in. “I write ‘Hoo ha—six o’clock.’”
We end up talking about all the stuff that we do that could get us into trouble. I tell the Krazy Glue story. Rosie tells about the time she had to stand in front of the room with gum on her nose as punishment for blowing a bubble in a class where the teacher did not allow gum. That reminds my father of the teacher who said, “Brooks, I want the gum in the garbage can in three minutes or you’ll have detention.” My father said, “But the flavor’s not gone. What if I stand in the can—I can still chew it and the gum will be in the garbage.” He never expected the teacher to say yes, but she did.
Finally my father says, “I hate to break up one of the best times I’ve had for a while, but there’s homework to be done, and the kids have to get up at the crack of dawn.”
“Hoo ha—six o’clock,” I say as we leave.