Buried (9 page)

6

THE FIRST THING THAT ANNOYED ME Saturday morning was the sloppy stacks of magazines on the coffee table. It was a mess again, and I had vowed to keep it neat and organized.
The whole place could use some help,

I thought. I started with the oven. It had brown stains from cooking French fries and fish. I moistened some steel wool and got it soapy. On my knees I scrubbed until the speckled pattern showed once again. I wiped it clean. It gleamed.

Once, when Mom and Linwood had a bunch of friends over to party, she'd told them that I was her maid. I think I was around seven years old.

“Look—I got her trained,” Mom said, throwing a handful of chips on the floor. I rushed over and picked them up and put them on the table like it was a big emergency. Everyone cracked up. I smiled a little. I was a good girl, and they could see that.

I started to walk away, but then Candy tipped over her beer. I ran to the sink and got a roll of paper towels, knelt down, and mopped it up while they laughed over me.

An ashtray dropped beside the beer. “See if she'll take care of that,” someone said.

“No doubt,” Mom said. “She can't let anything go. She's a regular Heloise.”

They roared as the ashes dissolved in the watery mess. I worked as fast as I could, but one by one, the rest of the group added to the pile until I had a mound of beer, pizza crusts, chips, butts, and soda. I kept my mind on the task. If I sniffed, they'd know I was crying, so I let my snot drip onto the mess. I kept my head down and blocked them out.
Eyes on the floor,
I told myself.
Eyes on the floor.
I got the broom and silently loaded the whole pile onto a pizza carton. By the time I spilled it into the garbage can, the laughing had stopped and an eerie silence filled the room.

“Weird,” someone said.

“She's always been like this.” Mom leaned toward me. “You can't stand the clutter, right, baby angel?”

I kept my head down to hide my running nose.

“Candy, you wanna borrow her?” Mom asked.

“No thanks, Serena. She's a little twisted.”

“Hey, watch it. I love her.” Mom grabbed my arm and pulled me to her. “Right, Princess?” My wet face was buried in her dark, wavy hair. It smelled of her vanilla musk and cigarette smoke. She squeezed me hard, and I stiffened. I wiped the snot from her hair and went to my room for the rest of the night.

I shook off the memory. In the living room I looked more closely at the three piles of magazines. I'd divided them equally by topic:
Cosmo, Better Homes and Gardens, People.
For good measure I arranged them left to right in order of importance:
Better Homes and Gardens, People, Cosmo.
Perfect. Except, beside
Cosmo
was something tiny. I held it close. My stomach turned over in recognition. It was a small silver loop. Mom's toe ring. I went through the past few days and tried to remember if I'd set it there. I knew I hadn't, and my stomach flipped over again. But Liz had sat right there, and she might have found it and set it beside the magazines.

I wanted out. I got in the car. At the mailbox I grabbed five days' worth of overflowing mail. I dropped the heap in the passenger seat and wrote out a Post-it reminding me to get the mail every day.

It was mostly junk, but two were bills for phone and power and another was a slim envelope with a shiny window and the name SERENA M. CARBONNEAU peeking out. In the upper left corner was the familiar address. My hands trembled. “Yes!” I said to no one.

I looked in the mirror. With a snap, I unclasped my barrette and let down my hair. Mom's dark lipstick was in the glove compartment. Instant transformation.

I got in line at the drive-through window on the far side of the bank. I signed the welfare check and put it in the vacuum tube.

“Hey, Serena. Cash or checking?” the speaker said.

Shit, who was that? “Oh, all cash please.” It was impossible to see through the other car windows to the person talking, but I waved anyway.

The tube landed with a smack outside my window.

“Don't spend it all in one place!”

I parked in the power company parking lot and stuffed a fat envelope with two months of late payments. I did the same with the phone bill. I dropped each payment in the night depository boxes at their billing offices. It was a good feeling, like when all the socks in the laundry pair up perfectly.

I drove along the shore, watching the horizon line, imagining Mom in rehab. Blue lights flashing froze me behind the wheel. My heart hammered in my chest. I pulled over.

“Miss,” an officer said, tapping on the glass.

I rolled down the window.

“License and registration, please.”

I took them from the glove compartment and handed them to him.

“Do you know why I pulled you over, Miss Serena Carbonneau?” he asked, ducking down to see my face.

Tears appeared from nowhere, and I blinked them onto my cheeks. I looked up at his mirrored sunglasses and through the blur I saw Mom looking back at me. I couldn't turn away.

He patted the roof. “Your back left taillight is out. You'll have to signal manually until you get it fixed.” He waited for a reaction, then smiled, handing back the license and registration. “Registration is due next month, too. On your way, then.” He gave a nod. “And drive safely.”

I crept away from the side of the road, both hands clamped to the steering wheel, watching the cop in my rearview mirror sitting in his car, talking into his radio, getting smaller and smaller. “Only a taillight, only a taillight. Remember to signal.” I counted cars as they passed:
One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five.

I drove around the beach and up to town and back down again until somehow I was in the MacPhees' driveway. I could smell the grill and guessed it was burgers. Brandy barked and came running from around back, with Liz just behind. She leaned into the driver's seat window.

“Are you here to rescue me? Please?”

“I was just out and wondered how you were doing,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “You've gotta save me. Dad's smothering me with love. He wants to be sure I forgive him, so today is all about the family. Frisbee, burgers, and togetherness.” She tugged on my hair. “You look like your mom with your hair down. Come eat and we'll make a plan.”

I walked around back with her, Brandy licking at my hand. I wiped it on my pants.

Mr. MacPhee stood up, spatula in one hand, soda in the other. “Claudina, my girl. Long time.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and opened the grill lid with the spatula. He hadn't called me that nickname in a while. I secretly loved it, even though I claimed to hate it.

“Hey, Tomasina,” I said.

“Ah, you remembered. Please join us. There's tons to eat. Tons.”

I waved to Mrs. MacPhee, who was on the chaise looking pissed off but glamorous in her Jackie Onassis sunglasses. She waved back but didn't say anything.

“Is your mom okay?” I whispered to Liz.

“Shell-shocked, but she'll be fine.”

We got sodas and moved over to the patio. “So, Dad told us he'd been drinking more and now he knows it's time to cut back. If the meetings aren't enough, he wants to look into Jackson Heights, too.”

The condensation on the can was slimy under my hand, and I wiped it on my jeans. “Yeah, you told me.”

“Isn't that great?”

I took a sip. It was too sweet. “I need some water, Liz.”

She fished for a bottled water in the cooler. “It went pretty well.”

My hands were sticky with dog drool. I had to wash them. “I'll be right back,” I said, and went into her kitchen. I filled my palms with blue liquid dish soap and let the water get hot before I rubbed my hands into a lather. I rinsed and did it again. Brandy panted at the door, strings of drool dangling from his jowls. “I don't think so, dog.” I shook off the water and dried my hands with a paper towel.

From the sink I could see into the living room, where Mrs. MacPhee had her collection of crystal figurines. I looked around the corner. My stomach did a flip, and I remembered a sleepover we had in that living room in front of the Christmas tree. The tree reached all the way up to the second-floor balcony.

I heard Mr. MacPhee ask Liz to get the condiments, so I stepped back into the kitchen. She came in and got ketchup, relish, and mustard from the fridge. “What do you want to do after we eat?”

“Anything,” I said.

 
We spent the afternoon at the beach, sitting on the hood of the car, getting the last of the sun and hanging with whoever stopped by. But then Jenna Carver came over, and the energy changed. She was convinced that the three of us should go to the after-football-game party that her brother Jake was throwing at her house. Liz agreed, and they hopped in the car. “Come on, Claude,” Liz said. “You're driving.”

Out the open window, Jenna said, “Jake was awesome. You should've gone. They slaughtered them. Don't you ever go to the games?”

I shook my head and hopped in.

Jenna said, “I love football. Jake's going to introduce me to Ryan. You know, the quarterback? He's hot. So hot.”

Liz and I locked eyes. She looked into the back at Jenna.

“Jenna, take a breath,” she said.

Jenna giggled. “I can't help it. I'm so pumped up.”

“Oh my god,” I mouthed.

Jenna hollered out the window as I pulled into her driveway. There were people pouring in and out of her house, and the music was pumping from speakers placed in the open windows. She hopped out and jumped on her brother's back. “Jakey!” Liz was right behind her.

I stayed in the car, hand on the key. My fingers wouldn't move. Fear tightened my belly, and I looked behind me. Another car was blocking me in. I'd be blocked in.

“Come on,” Liz called. “Her parents gave them the house for the night.”

I shifted into reverse and backed the car around the oncoming car and out of the driveway.

On the way home I kept the windows open and the music off. The trailer was dark and peaceful. The only light was the message light blinking. It was Liz and Jenna saying that a couple of guys wanted to know who the babe with the long, funky hair was.

“They like the new look, Claude. Keep the lipstick. And COME BACK!” They hooted and whooped into the phone and hung up with a bang.

I went into the bathroom and showered off the lipstick and everything else. In order for my hair to not look as kinky as Mom's, I had to condition it a lot. I gooped it with an extra handful of Hot Body and wrapped it in a towel. While it soaked in, I painted Night Rose Red over my Seashell Pink toes and watched the History Channel. I rested my feet on the coffee table and closed my eyes. Whenever they shut, I saw Mom. Her shocked expression, her pleading eyes, her hair in clumps.

I fumbled for the remote and turned up the volume. Beside my right foot was Mom's toe ring. I touched my second toenail. It was dry. I slipped it around my toe. Cool. The silver was perfect with the red.

I opened my notebook to my section of letters.