head.
“So it’s all finally going through?”
The sun fell into Tammy’s lap through the windshield, sealing her thighs to the vinyl seat with sweat. She didn’t look up.
“I guess so,” she said as she chewed on her lip — something she knew, even as she did it, had been picked up from Chris. “Can I have five bucks?” she asked. “Just in case?”
Her mom picked up the white leather purse and opened the car door.
“I’ll walk you. I want to ask Kathy a couple questions.”
Tammy pulled each leg off the sweat-sticky seat individually, using her hands, as if to emphasize the family’s poverty to her mother, the way she made Tammy look in front of others. Everyone else had upholstery. Her mom was the only one who still insisted on giving the money directly to the chaperoning parent. All of her friends got to hold their own. Tammy had an aqua-green velcro wallet with a white grid pattern across it, but what good did it do? With the exception of last year’s class photo of Samantha, and a couple of Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers, the wallet was always empty.
She stood behind her mother as Mrs. Lane knocked on the frame of the screen door. It was Joyce, Samantha’s seventeen-year-old sister, who came and stood on the other side of the screen. Through the black mesh, her perfect face was cut with lines. A dark half-circle rose above her left lid, but not her right. Not a bruise, but Maybelline.
“I was just doing my face,” she said. She reached out and unlocked the screen door. “They’re in the backyard,” she said to Tammy’s mom, but she opened the door anyway. Her arms grew out of her waist, a glut of baby blue material, silver snaps glinting like eyes up and down her shoulders.
“We’ll go around then,” Mrs. Lane said, nodding emphatically — something she always did when she talked to strangers or mere acquaintances. Even for those four words, her voice had risen half an octave.
A wavering sheet of heat vapours hung in the air above the grill. Through it, the lawn chairs seemed to fold up on themselves and the sky became a mushroom cloud. Tammy’s dad always wound up half cursing, lighting and relighting matches, saying, “God —” and “Holy —” always biting his breath back, cutting himself off before he got to the second syllables. Mr. Riley (“Warren,” he insisted) said the trick was the lighter fluid — lots of it — enough to fry a pig in the pen. Samantha crossed her eyes. Tammy saw Warren notice and pretend not to. He blinked and went on without another glance at Sam.
“They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Warren began. “But with your mother —” He pointed the pronged fork at Samantha before pushing it into the steak and flipping it onto the grill “— it was the other way around.”
They had always played darts together, Sturgeses and Rileys, but the gang had broken up a year before when Warren’s marriage did. Sam’s dad was on his way out too, in an unrelated toss of events, coming and going, never staying at the house more than a night in his six-month attempt to move out. By now, he was way off the board: a scud.
Sam had said she was glad, but Tammy knew she cried a lot more now, even though the fighting was done. In a moment, with a word, Samantha’s face would constrict and turn colour. Of course, Sam never cried over her parents; it was always something else.
Yet when the hollering had been at its height, Sam had never cried. Tammy had stared anxiously at the hinges of the tri-sectional door between the Sturges’s living and dining rooms, as if she could peer through the cracks, see whether Mr. and Mrs. Sturges were twenty paces from each other, like cowboys in a showdown. Were their elbows bent and ready, fingers twitching at their hips, itching to grab, if not their pistols, the nearest blunt objects or breakables for throwing? But all Tammy had seen was the yellow light, obscured by the pattern in the frosted
“So it’s all finally going through?”
The sun fell into Tammy’s lap through the windshield, sealing her thighs to the vinyl seat with sweat. She didn’t look up.
“I guess so,” she said as she chewed on her lip — something she knew, even as she did it, had been picked up from Chris. “Can I have five bucks?” she asked. “Just in case?”
Her mom picked up the white leather purse and opened the car door.
“I’ll walk you. I want to ask Kathy a couple questions.”
Tammy pulled each leg off the sweat-sticky seat individually, using her hands, as if to emphasize the family’s poverty to her mother, the way she made Tammy look in front of others. Everyone else had upholstery. Her mom was the only one who still insisted on giving the money directly to the chaperoning parent. All of her friends got to hold their own. Tammy had an aqua-green velcro wallet with a white grid pattern across it, but what good did it do? With the exception of last year’s class photo of Samantha, and a couple of Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers, the wallet was always empty.
She stood behind her mother as Mrs. Lane knocked on the frame of the screen door. It was Joyce, Samantha’s seventeen-year-old sister, who came and stood on the other side of the screen. Through the black mesh, her perfect face was cut with lines. A dark half-circle rose above her left lid, but not her right. Not a bruise, but Maybelline.
“I was just doing my face,” she said. She reached out and unlocked the screen door. “They’re in the backyard,” she said to Tammy’s mom, but she opened the door anyway. Her arms grew out of her waist, a glut of baby blue material, silver snaps glinting like eyes up and down her shoulders.
“We’ll go around then,” Mrs. Lane said, nodding emphatically — something she always did when she talked to strangers or mere acquaintances. Even for those four words, her voice had risen half an octave.
A wavering sheet of heat vapours hung in the air above the grill. Through it, the lawn chairs seemed to fold up on themselves and the sky became a mushroom cloud. Tammy’s dad always wound up half cursing, lighting and relighting matches, saying, “God —” and “Holy —” always biting his breath back, cutting himself off before he got to the second syllables. Mr. Riley (“Warren,” he insisted) said the trick was the lighter fluid — lots of it — enough to fry a pig in the pen. Samantha crossed her eyes. Tammy saw Warren notice and pretend not to. He blinked and went on without another glance at Sam.
“They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Warren began. “But with your mother —” He pointed the pronged fork at Samantha before pushing it into the steak and flipping it onto the grill “— it was the other way around.”
They had always played darts together, Sturgeses and Rileys, but the gang had broken up a year before when Warren’s marriage did. Sam’s dad was on his way out too, in an unrelated toss of events, coming and going, never staying at the house more than a night in his six-month attempt to move out. By now, he was way off the board: a scud.
Sam had said she was glad, but Tammy knew she cried a lot more now, even though the fighting was done. In a moment, with a word, Samantha’s face would constrict and turn colour. Of course, Sam never cried over her parents; it was always something else.
Yet when the hollering had been at its height, Sam had never cried. Tammy had stared anxiously at the hinges of the tri-sectional door between the Sturges’s living and dining rooms, as if she could peer through the cracks, see whether Mr. and Mrs. Sturges were twenty paces from each other, like cowboys in a showdown. Were their elbows bent and ready, fingers twitching at their hips, itching to grab, if not their pistols, the nearest blunt objects or breakables for throwing? But all Tammy had seen was the yellow light, obscured by the pattern in the frosted
Similar Books
