Monday I Love You Page 4

  Our next house was an apartment. It was painted a horrid color, a mixture of gray and brown, both inside and out. Our landlord lived above us and was always snooping around, asking if there was anything he could do. My mother said, “Well, yes, Mr. Barry, if you’d fix the latch on the kitchen door, I’d appreciate it,” and we never saw him up close again. Except for his footsteps climbing the outside stairs to where he lived, he might as well have died.

  And if my father was late with the rent, as he often was, Mr. Barry stationed himself on the far side of the street and stayed there until my father finally sent me out with the cash in an old envelope with the stamp torn off. My father collected stamps in those days. We always paid our rent in cash.

  I never liked a house as much as that Lily Pond Lane one though. I loved that house. No place we’ve lived since has meant so much to me. Maybe because that was the happiest time of my life. Either the house made me happy or I made the house happy. One or the other. Maybe a little of both. It was one of those perfect times that doesn’t have or need an explanation. It just was, and I remember it with love and joy, and probably always will.

  8

  Some people eat supper in front of the TV. Other people, I’ve heard, actually talk to each other during the meal. In our house, my mother switches the radio on just as we sit down to eat. Those droning voices get on my nerves, but it’s her house.

  “When you have your own house, Grace,” she says when I complain, “you can do what you like. But until then …” She smiles, twirling the dial.

  So we listened as we ate our continental supper: fettucine Alfredo out of a box, green beans amandine out of the freezer.

  “I always say what would we do without these frozen people.” My mother never took her eyes off me as she crunched down on an amandine and winced, reminded of her recent root canal. “Would you believe, Grace, in the olden days, there was no such thing as frozen food. Can you believe it?”

  I could and did, wondering about the Eskimos. My mother chewed every mouthful twenty times, as she’d heard this cut down on caloric intake and kept you thin. I couldn’t help noticing that the constant movement of her jaws made her nose move too. She watched me, I watched her nose.

  “You all right?” she asked for the fourth time.

  I nodded.

  “Sure? Maybe a laxative?”

  She was always flushing me out.

  “Why are your eyes so bloodshot, Grace?” A sudden, terrible idea occurred to her. I could see it travel across her face and hit her brain.

  “You’re not on anything, are you?” In her agitation, she put down her fork. “Coke? Heroin? Crack?” She knew all the words.

  “Yeah, Ma,” I said wearily, not having the strength to laugh, “I’m on ’em all.”

  “You can tell me, Grace. You can tell your mother. It’s only a mother’s duty to help her child.” She leaned toward me, forehead creased with worry lines. “You can always confide in your mother, Grace. What’s wrong? Something’s wrong. I can always tell.”

  Why is it, I wondered, that people who can’t handle their own problems, much less other people’s, always want to know what’s wrong?

  “Nothing new,” I told her. “All the same old stuff.”

  “You should get out more,” she said brightly. “Go meet new people, make new friends. That way you’d be happier. You have to make an effort, Grace.”

  Suddenly the announcer’s voice cut in. There’d been a shooting and robbery at the Amoco station out on the highway, he told us, breathless with excitement. I figured that local announcers didn’t get too many chances at dishing out exciting stuff like this.

  “Listen,” my mother commanded, head tilted toward the radio as if that way she’d hear better. As if I wasn’t listening. She loved stuff like shootings and robberies. I guess it was the only drama in her life.

  The gas-station attendant was even at this very moment on his way to the hospital in the county ambulance, the announcer said, which had answered the call for help in a record time of three minutes and eight seconds.

  “Well, I never.” My mother’s eyes darted around the room, checking for possible danger spots. She got up and pulled the curtains closer together. As if he was out there, thinking of breaking and entering our little home.

  “We will keep you informed of any new developments,” the announcer told us. “Stay tuned.”

  “I bet,” I said.

  When I finally escaped, I locked myself in my room and sat on my bed, looking down at myself. I threw out my chest suddenly, as far as it would go. Then I marched over to the mirror and began to strip. I stripped all the way down to my bras, which were still there, guarding the fortress, holding it in. I’d got the crazy idea that if I slept in my bras, I’d wake up and my breasts would be normal size. I needed to see myself as Ashley and the others had seen me. I wanted to know how bad it was.

  Worse than I’d thought. I was a terrible, awesome sight. Even seen through slitted eyes, I knew I was ludicrous. Laughable. Once, when I was a lot younger, B.C. (Before Chest, as I thought of it), I went with my mother to a store where she tried on clothes in a communal dressing room. I remember laughing behind my hand at a woman with humongous breasts. No doubt she’d been aware of me and my amusement. More than once, I’d asked silently for the woman’s forgiveness. Forgive me. I didn’t know.

  What on earth made me think wearing two bras might make me look smaller? All it did was push my flesh around, shoving me up and out. Bulges I’d never had before now bulged significantly. Bulges that, when pushed down, sprang up of their own accord.

  A deep red wave of shame crept over me from waist to forehead. Above the billowing flesh my head looked small, inadequate, my face confused and pinched, as if I’d just been told I had a brain tumor. Or as if I’d been caught in a giant machine and pressed. My head looked flat on top. I was a mess.

  This, then, was the sight that had greeted Ashley’s probing hands and eyes. I threw myself down on the bed, pillow over my face to muffle my cries. She must’ve heard me anyway.

  “Grace! Grace!” My mother’s voice came through the keyhole. “Let me in.” If I hadn’t been so beside myself I might’ve put my mouth up against the keyhole and shouted, “Let me alone!” so loud it would injure her eardrum and make her stop. My mother was a keyhole person, always watching, calling through it. Just because I had my own room didn’t mean I had privacy.

  “I’m thinking,” I called to her, making my voice sound normal. “I have this big essay I have to write, and it requires a lot of thinking.”

  “Oh,” I heard her say.

  I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my chest. Maybe I was having a heart attack. Maybe I was dying. I’d heard of people my age dying. A boy over in Clarksville died after being tackled in a football game. Doctors said he’d had a heart condition that no one knew about until they did an autopsy. Maybe I had a heart condition and was going to die at any moment. They’d lay me out and kids from school would come to the funeral, kids who despised me for the way I looked; kids like Ashley would come and cry loudly so they’d get noticed, then they’d embrace each other, hang on each other outside the church so people would look at them and say, “How sad. They loved Grace so.”

  I waited for another pain to strike. I waited quite a long time. Nothing happened. Finally I sat up and drew my knees up to my chest. I have fat knees, too. Like old ladies you see on buses with their fat knees spread apart to give balance and support. It’s awful, having fat knees.

  I considered eliminating Ashley. Wiping her off the face of the earth. Would it make me feel better? Recently I’d read about an ancient method of torture. It involved putting a person inside a bag of snakes and tying the bag so neither the person or the snakes could escape. I thought about that.

  “Grace.” The voice was at the keyhole again. I remained silent. Maybe she’d think I was asleep or so deep in thought I couldn’t hear.

  “Grace, it’s the telephone.”

  I jumpe
d to my feet, fat knees or no.

  It was probably Estelle. Estelle was the only one who called me. “Is it Estelle?” I asked.

  “No.” My mother’s voice sounded breathless. Excited.

  “Well, who then?”

  “It’s a boy.”

  “A boy? Is that what you said, a boy?”

  “Yes. A boy.” I heard her uneven breathing.

  Goose bumps marched up and down me, across, all over.

  “What does he want?” I whispered through the keyhole.

  “I didn’t ask him. He said he wants to speak to Grace.”

  I put on my red-and-black plaid bathrobe and unlocked the door. My mother clasped her hands and watched me go, wordless, probably saying her prayers. Please, God, make it lovely. For Grace’s sake, make it lovely. For mine.

  “Hello,” I said boldly into the telephone.

  “Is this Grace Schmitt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this is Charlie.”

  The only Charlie was Charlie Oates, who was big and blond and sexy. A hunk.

  “Charlie.” My voice caught in my throat, choking off further words. Charlie Oates.

  “Yes, Charlie. I was wondering if …” The voice came to a halt.

  I almost hung up. I wanted to. I was almost sure it was somebody fooling around. I thought I heard noises in the background.

  But I hung on, hoping against hope.

  “I was wondering if you’d …” Again the voice stopped. “If you’d go to the dance with me Friday.”

  I swallowed and closed my eyes. Spots danced in my eyeballs. I blinked my eyes open. My mother hugged the wall, pale. Listening. Saying prayers. Please, God, please. Be nice. That’s what she prayed.

  “Dance?” I said, and my mother’s face was consumed by joy.

  “Yeah. There’s this dance in the gym Friday. After the game.”

  “Friday. Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Tomorrow.”

  I swallowed again and said, “All right.”

  “Wear your black …” Charlie said, and it was like canned laughter on TV. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, they laughed. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

  I slammed down the receiver. Too late I slammed it down. My mother huddled in the corner, clutching her unanswered prayers in her tightly clenched fists.

  “It was a joke,” I said in a loud, ragged voice. “It was all a big joke. I don’t know why you’re surprised. I certainly wasn’t. The minute you said it was a boy, I knew it was a joke.”

  My mother and I stared at each other. She put her fist to her mouth. I smiled.

  “I knew it all along,” I told her. “He said he was Charlie Oates. He said he wanted me to go to the dance with him Friday in the gym after the game. It was like one of those teenage romances. Unreal. I hate those teenage romances. They make me sick. I have to go now. I have to think some more.”

  My mother put out her hand. I avoided looking at it. I studied a spot over her head.

  “I have work to do,” I said. Then I went into my room and locked my door. Somehow I didn’t think she’d be at the keyhole again tonight.

  I’d barely settled down when the telephone rang again. I could hear it through the thin walls. No, I thought despairingly. They wouldn’t. Not twice in one night.

  I heard my mother come tapping, like a wicked witch, or a ghost, seeking retribution. In a voice as penetrating as a stiletto, she said, “It’s Ms. Govoni, Grace. She wants to speak to you.”

  “Tell her I’m dead!” I shouted. “Tell her I’m having a nervous breakdown. Tell her anything!”

  “She says she wants to ask a favor of you.”

  If it really was Govoni, I thought, I owe her one. She’d been kind to me. I got up, unlocked my door and padded heavily past my mother.

  “Hello,” I said, my neck muscles so tight I could hardly turn my head. If it was another hoax, I planned to tear the telephone out by its roots and hurl it through the window where, by enormous good luck and more enormous coincidence, Ashley would happen to be walking by, and the telephone would nail her, causing permanent brain damage.

  “Grace, it’s Mary Govoni. Could you baby-sit Saturday? I have a lecture I don’t want to miss, and my regular sitter just called to say she has the chicken pox. So I thought of you.”

  Why did you think of me? I wondered. Probably because you know I’m available, am always available. No wild parties for Grace. No bizarre teen behavior with the boys. Grace, the perfect, most reliable sitter. She even does the dishes.

  I hate myself when I get like that. I hate me when I’m bitter. Even if I have good reason to be bitter.

  I wondered if Ashley ever baby-sat.

  I told her okay. It was the least I could do. For all I know, Govoni might be on my side.

  I didn’t even know she had kids.

  9

  William was my first real friend. He had a wide, flat forehead and a snub nose that was so small I wondered how he could breathe through it. When I asked him what he did when he had a cold, he only laughed and punched me. William had beautiful dark eyes. When my mother saw William, she said, “With those eyes, he’ll be a heartbreaker someday.” I didn’t know what a heart-breaker was and imagined William hammering away at a box of heart-shaped candies, the cinnamon kind, which were my favorites.

  That was the summer I was six. William was eight and big for his age. My father was a croupier at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a very responsible job, he said. He worked all night, and sometimes, if I woke early, I went outside and waited for him at the curb. He always took a cab home. He wore a black suit and a very white shirt and black patent-leather shoes just like mine. It was his job to keep an eye on the money at the gaming tables where people bet. Once he saw a man lose ten thousand dollars on one roll of the dice, he told me. Being a croupier was a very demanding job, he said. My mother and father and I rented a little gray cottage a few blocks from the beach. We heard the waves roll in and out and watched the lights from the Ferris wheel and listened to the gulls complain about the handouts they got. Gulls are very greedy and not really nice, though sometimes beautiful. Like some people I know.

  Sand drifted into our clothes, our teeth, our hair. Under our front door. The smell of the sea fought with the smell of saltwater taffy. Sometimes when the wind rose and the tide with it, we’d walk down to the ocean to watch the waves.

  William and I ran back and forth, getting as close to the water as we could without getting wet. William was a daredevil, much more so than me, and once he got caught and was dragged out, out farther than I could reach. I saw his arms sticking up, heard him call. I put my hands over my eyes and looked through my fingers at his head riding the waves. I was terrified. I tried to yell but my voice wouldn’t work. An old man walking his dog waded in and took William by the hair and pulled him to the sand. Up ahead, our mothers, William’s and mine, walked placidly on the boardwalk. They didn’t turn their heads. They hadn’t seen what had happened.

  “You kids get back to where you come from,” said the old man in an angry voice. His face looked yellow, and his narrow shoulders had big moles all over. He was breathing hard. His dog barked until he said, “Quiet, boy.”

  “Tell your mother to keep an eye on you or you might not be so lucky next time,” the old man told us, and we ran away and didn’t even thank him.

  When William’s mother scolded him for getting all wet, we looked at each other and didn’t tell. It was our secret.

  William and I vowed eternal friendship. We might’ve even if William hadn’t been swept out to sea. We thought if we were eternal friends, we would help each other through life. We’d be blood brothers. That’s what William said. First, though, he told me we’d have to cut ourselves and mix our blood together, and that would make us blood brothers and eternal friends.

  “That’s what some American Indians used to do,” William said. I said I was scared of blood. He said it wouldn’t bleed much. He got a shell from the beach and broke it i
nto two sharp pieces with a rock. William said he’d do the cutting. I was scared of being hurt. He said it wouldn’t hurt much.

  “Put up your hand,” he told me, so I did. The shell slashed across my skin like fire, and blood came out all over. He threw the piece of shell away.

  “Suck it, suck it!” William yelled. I sucked as hard as I could. Then William cut himself with his piece of shell, only it was a little cut, not big like mine.

  It hurt, even though William said it wouldn’t. It did hurt.

  We held our hands over another, bigger shell that was shaped like a little dish and let our blood drip into it. William stirred our blood for a while, mixing it.

  “Now we’re blood brothers,” William said.

  Only mine wouldn’t stop coming. We went inside to ask William’s mother’s boyfriend Alfie if he could stop my blood coming.

  Alfie jumped out of his chair and hollered, “What goes on here? You crazy kid!” and I knew he meant William. Alfie bandaged my hand as best he could, and pretty soon it started leaking through the bandage, so Alfie put us in the car and took us to the emergency room at the hospital. They fixed us up there, both William and me, and the doctor wanted to know how we’d got the cuts. William said he was playing with a knife and it slipped and got me. And him too, though his cut was only little. William was a good liar. He always made up stories like that.

  My cut turned out to be in the shape of a V. A big V. William’s looked like a straight line. He was a little disappointed but not much.

  “Now we’re blood brothers,” he told me. I had always wanted a brother and so didn’t mind that it hurt, getting a brother. My mother and father said I better not play anymore with William. I said it wasn’t his fault.

  William’s mother told fortunes in a gypsy tearoom. She was a Russian princess who escaped from Russia in a sleigh pulled by snow-white horses. William’s father was a prince who was eaten by wolves. All this happened before William was born. When William’s eyes got all wide and glistening, I knew he was making it up.