Rusty Summer Page 3

  And she looks so much happier than a couple years ago! Healthier too. She says it’s sure easier to lose weight now that she jogs around the hospital all day. She ordered one of those pedometers so she can see how much she walks. It’s not here yet but my estimate is at least five-plus miles a day. It’s a huge hospital.

  She holds out her arms and I give her a hug. I can totally see over the top of her head now.

  I let down my guard. She squeezes me close for a sec. She smells like baby powder and Mentholatum and Pine Sol and cinnamon toast . . . her familiar, forever perfume. I sniff . . .

  The scent of love.

  Inhaling, I recall tender memories of her devoted mothering.

  Even when I am old I will remember the way my mom smells: comforting and eternal.

  “K, Mama, gotta go! I will see you very soon. I’ll call you after I talk to Beau.”

  “Okay, honey; drive carefully. See you soon!”

  I make it to my house in about five minutes. The van isn’t even warm yet.

  When Beau and I found this house at the beginning of senior year we realized the drawbacks but liked that it was less than three miles from my mom’s house, and about three blocks from school. Close to everything!

  It’s still dusk when I arrive because the days are getting longer. I pull into the driveway, get the laundry, and go inside. I go upstairs with the basket to put my clothes away and leave Beau’s in the hall by his door. I never mind doing laundry for him if it means we’ll waste less energy. Also, he’s my homeboy.

  I head downstairs and Beau is on the couch. He’s on the phone. He waves. Very animated. He’s talking to this guy he knows from school. I wander into the living room while they talk. Beau looks at me and makes the “I’ll wind this up” motion, and I shake my head like, “you’re fine.”

  I listen in as he talks. He’s practically hollering so it’s not hard.

  Obviously this guy asked him about his birthday because Beau says “May twenty-eighth,” which is in a few days. I keep forgetting it’s so soon.

  Beau’s gonna be eighteen! We are going to have a party for him here and invite his parents over. His mom is getting the cake.

  Beau looks good. He’s gotten taller and filled out a little and he’s even cuter than he was last year. He looks happy. He has come to terms with the guy he is and going to be and he’s good with that guy. He likes himself and he likes his life.

  Guess what? At the risk of sounding trite—

  It Got Better!

  Beau stretches out on the beat-up sofa, just blabbing away, now carrying on about subcutaneous shots (which I have learned means aim for the fat and use the little needle).

  I sit down in an equally beat-up chair and covertly watch him. He is laughing like a maniac.

  I listen to them squawk on for a while. He finally hangs up and looks over at me.

  “Hey.” He waves at me from like two feet away.

  “Hey.”

  “Why are you limping?”

  “I pile-dived and bit it.”

  “Gross. Does it hurt a lot?”

  “Yup. My shin is hamburger patty.”

  Beau makes a sympathy-yikes face before changing the subject.

  “How’s Saint Teresa?” We all call her that, or BMT (Blessed Mother Teresa).

  “She’s good. She wants us to come over for dinner and have you help Paul with math.”

  “Sure.” He shrugs and nods. “When?”

  “Whenever’s clever. You call it.”

  “Day after tomorrow?”

  “’Kay. I’ll call her and tell her.”

  We watch TV without paying much attention to it. Beau stretches.

  “How’s Leo?” he asks

  “Skinny. She will bite your head off, but she won’t eat it.”

  He grimaces. “Dang. Still?”

  I nod grimly. “I know. Eleven more pounds to go.”

  “She’s going to look like a skeleton.”

  “The walking dead . . . Leonie the Zombie.”

  “Ahhh! Leo de los muertos!”

  “Wait—all shriveled up with long, red hair? Omg, Beau . . . Leo’s a bog person!”

  Beau shudders and snorts.

  We sit while it gets dark in the living room. It doesn’t take long in spring. When the light fades it gets dark fast. The street lamps illuminate. I get up and turn on a light. Then a bunch of lights. The house becomes bright.

  I gimp into the kitchen to do the dishes. It’s my turn. It’s just some cereal bowls and coffee cups. We mostly eat sandwiches or have dinner with my mom or Beau’s parents.

  They rock, as always.

  His mom, Gina, is as amazing as ever. His stepdad, Matt, is much friendlier, and a lot more calm, than he was when I first met them and he was between jobs. He’s working on a show, writing for TV (or as he calls it, “being gutted by a spork”) and he’s so glad. He’s really chill, and hella nice when not freaking out about unemployment and the economy.

  Actually, I’ve noticed that we’re all nicer when we’re not freaking out about the economy.

  I’m lucky; I’ve got work. I’m still doing Winters’ Sewing Service, sewing people’s projects for money.

  While I finish the dishes I hear Beau upstairs putting his clothes away. The ceiling squeaks when you walk on the floor upstairs. It’s a tired old house but I don’t mind.

  I go outside onto the porch to take a breath of air. I’m sweaty from the hot water. It’s gotten dark but I leave the porch light off.

  It is inadvisable to stand outside under a light in our neighborhood.

  But in spite of the crappiness of the neighborhood, our neighbors rock!

  On one side is a family of like four generations, all living together (or at least in and out all the time so you can’t tell who is taking up all the parking). Very close-knit.

  The family is Filipino and some of the daughters married black guys, and one married a white guy so their kids are all mestizo. Also, Filipinos say “Pinoy.” The guys, anyway; the girls call themselves “Pinay,” pronounced “peen-eye.” Their grandma and grandpa speak Tagalog (ta-GOL-og), one of the languages of the islands. They came here after World War II.

  I’ve learned all this talking to them as they watch their kids in the yard. The family is fascinating to me. They invite us over for parties. Delicious lumpia and chicken adobo! Extreme nom!

  The grandma can do this gross trick with the unfiltered cigarette that she’s always smoking. She can smoke it from inside her mouth—literally—she flips it inside her mouth with her tongue and then smoke wafts out her nose.

  One of her daughters, who is about my mom’s age, told me that her mom learned to do that when she worked in the sugar fields in the Philippines. When the overseers would come to make sure they were working and not smoking, because they were afraid the laborers would set the fields on fire, the workers would all disappear their cigs into their mouths instantly so the overseers couldn’t see they were smoking.

  The grandma, Bibianna, was nine when she started smoking. She got married at fifteen. She has eight surviving kids. Three more died at birth or as babies. She never went to school. She doesn’t drive. She can’t read. She cackles when she sees the horrified look on my face as her daughter Esperanza (which means hope in Spanish) tells me her mother’s life story. Then she (the grandma) starts coughing till she gasps, and horks and hacks up phlegm. And loogies! Seriously, just gobs right in the yard.

  Smoking makes me gag forever.

  On the south side of us live two white ladies who’ve recently bought the house and moved in.

  They look to be in their thirties and are doing a lot of work painting and planning a patio where there’s this crappy-looking weed patch. I can see over the fence into their backyard from my room and I try not to spy too much, but I hear them frequently and they have so many ideas that I kind of do.

  They are planning a barbeque pit with tiles and bricks. It sounds tight. They have a bunch of cats, like three or fou
r. I saw them bring one home, talking about kitty rescue, last fall.

  I like our neighbors. They’re interesting. Sometimes I see Esperanza yakking away with Rebecca and Laura, the two women on the south side.

  I go back inside the house. It’s cold and dark now.

  When I go in, Beau is watching TV on our giant not-flat screen. When I say giant, I mean thick as well as huge. It’s almost as big as a refrigerator. It’s psychotically heavy. You’d have to be Shrek to steal it, so it was perfect for hood life when we found it on Craig’s List for twenty-five bucks.

  He’s watching stand-up comedy. Kathy Griffin is hilarious. She’s trash-talking someone.

  I watch too, while standing.

  “Uncle Oscar knows her. He’s done shows with her,” I say as we watch, though he knows it already. (You all recall Uncle Oscar, our dear drag “uncle” from San Francisco, and his partner, Beau’s uncle Frankie, right?)

  “I know . . . I like her hair better now.” Beau nods, mesmerized.

  I agree with him. It’s longer and wavier.

  “I like how she says ‘my gays,’ ” I say, because I do; it seems really inclusive and friendly.

  “I know, right? I want to be one of her gays.”

  I laugh at him. He has this cute, wistful look on his face.

  “Well, I don’t think there is a sign-up sheet or anything, so you probably are one of her gays. But she’ll get a bunch more plastic surgery one of these days. Then you can be her nurse!”

  “Yeah.” He grins, amused by the thought. “Maybe so!”

  I sit on the other end of the couch to take off my shoes. I nod at him, encouragingly. “Shut up! You will. She will love you! Then when she gets really old you can be her keeper.”

  “Great!”

  “I know! It will be! And then someday she’ll leave you all her dogs!”

  “Yeah? Doesn’t she have like five giant dogs? Yay! My secret dream!!”

  “Yeah! Like twenty-five of ’em!! I can see it, Beau-bro, as I help plan your days with these positive visualizations. . . .”

  “And how much help you are, Rye . . . words fail me.” He nods, deadpan.

  I stand still, staring at Kathy on the telly. Station break; one million commercials, so I bring up a shiny new subject:

  “Birthday! Let’s talk.”

  Beau groans. “Let’s not. I don’t want a big deal. You didn’t have a gigantic party.”

  “Yes, but your mom is really into coming here and making it all birthday-groovy for you, so I’m afraid your party is gonna be a little bigger, pal.”

  He grunts, shaking his head in exasperation.

  “My mom . . .”

  I squawk delightedly.

  “Hee-hee, I know! Your mom is really into you! You unique only child, you!”

  “Yes, I am aware, thank you for mentioning it.”

  “You are sooooo unique! You are so hella, very, quite, extremely, madly, bloody, über, really, uniquely unique!”

  (Pet peeve #11,000: Do not qualify “unique.” If you do, try the word unusual instead.)

  Beau knows this. He knows me. He cuts me off before I get going.

  “Rusty! No! Focus!”

  I stop. I get back on the conversational track. Beau is like the Rusty Whisperer.

  “So, anyway,” I say, “I think we are going to have a fun time.” Which is true; I do.

  “Yup.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “I don’t. But: yay fun!”

  There is some snark lurking.

  “That is, if we try,” I remind him, sweetly.

  He looks at me and sighs. Looks sour. I do not sense gratitude from the young Jedi.

  He attempts to explain his feelings, again.

  “Rust, who wants their parents around on their eighteenth birthday?” Beau’s expression is crabby. “What if I want to get drunk and jump up and down on someone’s car hood?”

  “Omg!” I look at him with my mouth agape in shock and awe. “You would seriously have some ’splaining to do.” But I’m also totally intrigued by the idea. Beau?

  “Well, I’m not. It’s not like I even want to! It’s just—I don’t know, I don’t care how cool my mom and Matt are; having them here’s going to be stupid!”

  Okay. He has a tiny point there. And it’s not them; it’s us.

  All our friends are going to be nice to them, but they are also going to be fake, all pretend-friendly and “Hi!”—and then, when Beau’s parents leave, no matter what, everyone is going to bag on them a little for the rest of the night. Not super maliciously, but whenever there’s a lull.

  Lamentably, Nature is red in tooth and claw. Parents who wander out of their own domain are frequently eaten. It’s horrifying.

  I was lucky for my recent eighteenth. My mom’s too shy to want to be involved in the unknown, even on my birthday. To her, anything more than four people for dinner is a wild all-nighter at the Playboy mansion, so she was happy to be off duty, except for making my cake.

  My “Big 18” was great. The Rat Lab crew came over, the neighbors stopped by, and Leo brought Bommy, but my mom was gone five minutes after they sang “Happy Birthday.”

  Basically she brought the cake and bounced.

  I was fine with that. I know what she likes, and being in any size crowd ain’t it.

  And the cake ruled. Darkly dark chocolaty chocolate with extra chocolaty chocolate on top!

  Cookie-sheet cake. Woo-hoo!

  I pat Beau’s pant leg as I rise from the couch.

  “Dude. It’s gonna be fine. I’m sure she’ll be appropriate. I think she said all she’s going to do is rent a pony.” I dodge as he fake-kicks at me, and head upstairs, laughing.

  Upstairs, I put on my pj’s and touch a lamp. My mom gave me her old touch-light lamps, which I adore. The atmosphere in my bedroom is illuminated yet shadowy.

  I turn on my laptop and open Word.

  I’m writing a short story. I’ll probably write an autobiography someday, but not till I’ve lived enough stuff.

  For now my short story is about the Stone Age: the first Neanderthals to evolve enough to fall in love. Like romantically. They secretly watch these other strange-looking people, Homo sapiens, who have just arrived in the Neanderthal Valley. They look very different, and Neanderthals considered them really ugly. The girl in my story spies on the new people, and when a little child of theirs dies, she watches as they mourn, crying and wailing, and bury the child with grave goods. Then the guy Neanderthal dies of injuries from hunting, and the girl is like the first one of her kind ever to put flowers on the body of her dead boyfriend. Then she feels her eyes and they are wet, but she doesn’t know what tears are because she is the first ever of her people to cry. . . .

  Shut up.

  Writing is hard. It’s also kind of embarrassing, for some reason.

  To get in the mood, I correct a few errors and then just sit waiting, instead of really writing.

  I’m in advanced placement English again this year. Even though I don’t need to be there, I really like it. It’s harder than school usually is—you’d be surprised. I just turned in my senior project. It’s an entire book—about Beau! I’m nervous to hear what the class will think. There aren’t enough AP kids for a full class, as usual, so we are mixed with regular placement kids.

  My teacher, Ms. Spinetti, is awesome. For example: She reads our stories out loud, but since she knows what douche trolls my lil’ school pals are, she doesn’t say whose story she is reading, so that it doesn’t turn into a popularity contest.

  Except that it does anyway.

  Once she read aloud a story I wrote (in first person, about a family of cockroaches that was going to be gassed and how one of the roaches found out, and it was all Watership Down-y and atmospheric, under the dank kitchen sink, etc., very dark and scary!!). Well, when it ended, after the most flattering moment of utter silence I have ever known, everyone in class turned to one of the hot, mean girls, so stupidly popular, and were all, “Oh, Carrie,
did you write that?” and she just sat there, with this smug little smile and looked down and was all, “I won’t say yes and I won’t say no,” so they were all, “You totally did! You know you did!” and telling each other how hella kewl she was and had been their special friend since like kindergarten.

  I just hunched over, stab-drawing on my notebook, seeing spots, panting, thinking I might hurl. I imagined myself exploding and then lurching along, like a savagely spewing sprinkler, projectile puking in sincere streams of acidic protest against their stupid, stuck-up, suck-up douche baggery—then proceeding, upchucking and vomit-clad, to churn through the classroom, cold-cocking my classmates, throwing random hay-makers....

  I soothed myself by visualizing this madly when I noticed Ms. Spinetti at the front of the room, subtly regarding me out of the corner of one dark eye.

  She didn’t say anything, but her half-smile was sardonic and her eyes gleamed behind her glasses. She got up casually and sauntered over to my seat. She handed me a paper like she was giving back a graded assignment. Then she moseyed back to her desk, amid the class’s harsh buzz about what a freaking national treasure Carrie was, only stopping to rap on the desks of the kids who were wearing earphones in class.

  I looked and on the pristine paper she’d written: “The dogs bark, but the caravan passes on.”

  I glanced at her, now back at her desk, and she raised one eyebrow and shrugged minutely, like, “whadaya gonna do?”

  I get it. They’re dogs and I am a caravan (which is a bunch of travelers). She’s saying the “dogs” will yap, but it doesn’t matter, because the caravan (me) has a mission, and I will pass beyond their temporary noise and nonsense and reach my destination. Which is exactly what I plan on!

  I shall overcome, indeed.

  The other thing she told me once was not to “overthink” this place (meaning Baboon High), that all the students who suck up to the popular kids have what’s called Stockholm syndrome (which is when you’ve been hijacked and you kiss up to the terrorists, all overly respectful and adoring).