Dear Life, You Suck (17 page)

I head to my attic asylum to drown my sorrows. I’m like Rooster Cogburn in
True Grit.
We both
love to pull a cork
.

I drank too much last night, so breakfast is a bear. I’m sweating more than the plump Jimmy Deans on my plate. But greasy chow is the best thing for a hangover. And ain’t no one better at dishing up greasy chow than porky nuns.

The only thing tougher than sitting up straight and keeping your elbows off the table when you’re hung heavy is Sunday Mass. And that’s next.

My limbs feel waterlogged, like they’re nailed to the pew. Tough to pay attention to some ignoramus preaching a bamboozling folly when your pores are secreting a boozeoozling jolly. I’d like to crawl up to the altar and chug the priest’s wine to exorcise my way to a miraculous healing. One of them
hair of the dog that bit ya
deals.

One cool thing about church is that you can close your eyes and snoozadoozle and the priests and nuns figure you’re praying extra hard. Well, I’m praying extra hard that I can summon up the courage to knock on Wynona’s front door when something the priest says drips a mystical intravenous prophecy into my pounding veins. It’s from Psalm 26, in the pre-Jesus section of the Big Black Book.

Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage.

Holy guacamole, Batman! Did God just call me a pussy? Ain’t that a kick in the circumcised love staff? I hate to sound all religiously douchenozzled, but heck if the Old Man isn’t ordering me to grow some nads and get my ass over to Wynona’s house to apologize. At least, that’s the way I figure it.

But how can I get away? How can I escape my forty years in the desert of chores? How can I Moses my ass out of Egypt while Mother Maraoh Pharaoh has me chained to a wheelbarrow and rake all day?
Mother Mary Mothballs, let thy orphan go!

Later that morning, the good Lord floats a solution from on high while I’m raking the backyard.

Humbly heeding the Lord’s merciful command, I lean my rake against the sacrificial boulder, gaze into His cloudy face, raise my boot heel to the heavens, and smite my mighty footwear upon the consecrated handle, thus snapping it in twoeth.
The Lord hath spoken
.

Oh my goodness. Whatever shall I do? I am rakeless in the Garden of Should and Needful. How in Heaven’s name shall I complete my chores like the repentant soul I am without my trusty garden staff? O Lord, why hast Thou forsnookered me? But wait. I hear the Lord guiding me again through the darkness of my trials and tribulations.

Driveth thee Prison vaneth to the raketh-changers in the Hardwareth Temple, sayeth the Lord, and purchaseth a neweth tooleth with the nuns’ sacred cardeth of credit.

The only problem is, I need the Lord to thrice blesseth my holy asseth because I don’t know where Wynona liveths. But I know someone who does.

Grubs is sitting in a lawn chair outside the auto repair shop when I pull up. He’s drinking a giant Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which, knowing Grubs, probably doesn’t have a drop of coffee in it. His slippery grin confirms my suspicion.

“Nice van, Reverend Cricket. You come to convert me?”

“Even God’s given up on you.”

“You got that right.” He takes a huge sip and tosses a crooked glance at the orphanage van. “Must be tough to score chicks in that rusty hunk of shit.”

“It belongs to the Catholic Church. Chicks ain’t the objective.”

Grubs laughs and spits out some “coffee.”

A car pulls up to the pump. Grubs lumbers to the shiny silver Audi and jams the handle in the fill hole. He leans over to flirt with the middle-aged woman while the pump clicks. I can tell by the way he’s shifting his head around that he’s peeping down her blouse. After she drives away, he grabs his crotch and flicks his tongue like a lizard. That’s the universal gas station attendant signal for romantic interest in an attractive female customer. He sits down and chugs his drink.

“Wouldn’t mind taking that little MILF up to the love loft for a roll in the hay,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m sure she’d be impressed. Maybe afterward you could treat her to a corndog in the restroom.”

“Fuck you, Rockefeller. At least I got my own place.”

“You live in an attic above a garage.”

“You live in an attic above a cult of frigid nuns.”

I laugh. “Touché.”

Grubs gets up and goes inside. Probably to add more caffeine to his coffee.

I’m dying to ask him where Wynona lives so I can go see her before I lose my nerve, but I don’t wanna just blurt it out. Fortunately, I have a plan.

“Hey, that dude Billy Jo Bidaban lives around here, don’t he?” I ask when Grubs returns with a fresh “coffee.”

“Nah, he’s up in Bangor at community college.”

“Oh, yeah. But he used to live down by the ballpark, right?”

“Nah, he lived in that piss-yellow farmhouse near the sledding hill on Granite. The one with the big horse barn and shit.”

“Oh, right.” I feign interest in watching an old lady wrestling her walker down the sidewalk.

Grubs kicks my ankle. “What gives? You got something going on with Billy Jo behind my back, bro? You better not be motherfuckin’ me, dude. He ain’t around much, but he’s still my best customer.”

Shit.
I don’t want him thinking I’m the kind of slimy prick who’d scam deals under the table. Guess I gotta let the fat out of the hag. “Hell no, I wouldn’t pull that shit. I’m trying to hook up with his little sister.”

Grubs starts
aaaaaahhhhhhhh
ing and banging his fist on his thigh. “No way. You tapping that ass?”

“Not yet, but I’m planning on it.” I’m not planning on it, but what am I gonna say? To be honest, the way he says it makes me wanna knock his fuckin’ head through a gas pump. But I know he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just being Grubs. Plus, what the hell do I care what he says about her?

“That little bitch is a hot hunka meat. I wouldn’t mind boarding that red caboose for a midnight ride to Brownsville Station.” He cracks up at his own joke.

Okay, that was a little much. “Easy, dude.”

“What the fuck, faggot? You soft on this bitch or something?”

“Shit no. She ain’t nothing to me.”

The brakes in my gut screech when I park the van in front of Wynona’s house. There’s no way she’ll talk to me after what I did. She’ll probably slam the door in my face before I can utter a single sorry. No, she won’t do that. She’ll punt me in the pigskin and then slam the door.

Her house is this wicked old farmhouse perched on a hill near downtown Naskeag, with Death Wish sledding hill on one side and a giant cell phone tower on the other. It’s pale yellow with brown shutters. A gross color combination if you ask me.

There’s a screened-in porch across the entire front of the house, which I realize I’m gonna have to enter to knock on the door.
Damn
. Her dad’s landscaping truck is parked in the driveway.
Double damn.

One thorny splinter of hope keeps prickling my potato, though. She came to the Prison to apologize. She didn’t come for some flaky get-in-touch-with-nature walkabout. She came to see me. Now, maybe at first it was just to apologize, but there were definitely moments of sticky eye-canoodling between us. I didn’t imagine that.

Every time I think of that cut I sliced in her face, my stomach somersaults. There’s no way I can knock on that door. What if her stepmom answers? Or worse, her father.

Wynona, sweetie, the gentle lad who filleted your face is at the door. How do you do, Cricket? So nice to meet you. Would you like to come in? I have a lovely set of stainless-steel steak knives in the kitchen. Perhaps you’d like to lop off one of my wife’s breasts?

Oh man, I’m in Troubletown. But I gotta go. Face the music. Take my lumps. Be a man. Just like Mother Mary Maturity said. Grow up. End it before it starts. Exactly. That’s exactly it. No matter how bad it goes, at least I will have done one tiny thing right in my stupid, pathetic life.
Do manfully, and let thy heart take courage.
Jeez Louise! What the hell is that Holy Roller hullabaloo doing tickling my jigglies a Jehovah-loving mischief?

I jump out of the van and shake off the sillies like some epileptic vampire. The house sways as I get closer.
Nuckfuggets
. The whole family’s probably hunkered down beside a window watching me schlep my crazy ass up the gravel walk. For all I know, Mr. Bidaban’s unlocking his gun cabinet at this very moment.

No matter. Just apologize and go. Say sorry and bolt. Ding-dong, sorry, see ya. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing more.

The front steps are enormous pink and gray granite slabs that look like they were dumped there by a passing glacier. I tiptoe up them and open the screen door. It squeaks. I wince and freeze. I’m pretty sure I hear a pump-action shotgun being loaded.

I step forward. My fingers shake as bad as my legs, but I don’t stop. I press the doorbell. Like I’m pressing the On button to the electric chair I’m strapped into.

Please be Wynona. Please be Wynona. Please be Wynona
.

A statuesque man opens the door. He’s huge and square, like the house. His head is bald and shiny, like a bowling ball.

He doesn’t say a word or budge an inch while I struggle to get my words out. He’s got Bluto forearms that could knead my noggin into a spinach quiche. I finally murder the frog choking my vocals. “Excuse me, sir, is Wynona home?”

He looks mad. “Who may I say is inquiring?”

“Cricket Cherpin.”

Now he moves. Not much, just a head twitch. Man, if I had a dime for every head twitch I got when I said my name.

“I’m sorry?”

I squeak out my name again.

He stiffens. “One moment, please.” He closes the door in my face.

I breathe for the first time since I got out of the van.

The door opens and Wynona appears, decked out in frilly Sunday fineries. All white and warm and whip creamy. Seeing her so clean and pretty makes me realize I’m wearing my work grubs.
Shit, I should have cleaned up and changed.

Then I see it. The Band-Aid on her cheek. It’s not as big as I feared. I was expecting her whole head to be wrapped in gauze or something. A stratosphere of air vents from my chest.

Wynona’s staring at me. I can’t tell if she’s happy, mad, sad, or all of the above. Her dad musta taught her that expression ’cause she’s got it down pat. I better speak fast before I lose my chance. And my nerve.

I try to sound manly and confident, but the words leak out mangled and prissy. “I came to apologize.”

She crosses her arms over her chest.

I try to remember the words I’d been practicing all morning. “I’m sorry I freaked out like that. It’s just when you said what you said, I was sure you were messing with me, and it hit me that you’re Pitbull’s girlfriend, and I thought maybe some kind of revenge thing was going down.”

Her head tips a teeny bit to one side. “I told you I broke up with Buster.”

“You never said that. I mean, you did that
paaahh
thing, but . . .”

“But what? I was lying to you? You think I was lying to you?”

“Jeez, you’re saying it like no one’s ever lied to you.”

Her eyes drop and she unfolds her arms. “No, I’ve been lied to.”

There’s a white bracelet on her wrist with little red roses that look real, like they grew there. A tiny vine squeezes through a tiny crack in my Great Wall. “When you said what you said . . . about . . . you know . . . I just . . . I was sure you had to be messing with me.”

She raises her head and wrinkles her forehead. “You mean when I said you were handsome?”

I nod.

“But you
are
handsome. Why would you think I was lying? I can’t be the first girl who’s ever said that to you.”

It’s hard to explain the feeling that consumes me when she says that. The only way I can describe it is this. There’s a fifty-million-horsepower vacuum cleaner hanging over me, and I have a vacuum port on the back of my neck, and someone jams the vacuum hose into my port and turns the vacuum on, and every molecule inside me is instantaneously sucked out, and my port is plugged. Shrink-wrapped, I think they call it. That’s how I feel. Shrink-wrapped.

I must
look
shrink-wrapped, too, because Wynona steps onto the porch and touches my forearm. “Are you okay, Cricket?”

I can’t answer. I don’t know how to say it. Only one thought remains after all the sucking. “I’m not handsome. I’m . . .” I can’t say it out loud.

Wynona steps closer. She smells like coconut. “Cricket, listen to me. If you don’t know you’re handsome, then you’re the one who’s lying to you.”

For a split second, my mind slips and unshackles and swells and—holy shit—I almost let pussy tears dribble out of my eye sockets, but I get ahold of myself. I still can’t think of anything to say, so I just stare at Wynona’s pretty face.

She’s staring at me good. Her lips have shifted a little, and she looks a bit happy. That makes it easier to keep my eyes locked on her. Truth is, it isn’t hard at all to keep my eyes locked on Wynona and not just because of her prettiness. She has this way of staring that makes it okay to stare back. It’s freaky. I’ve never stared at anyone so good and long before, let alone a beautiful girl.

And then it happens. If you had asked me to guess what would happen next, I wouldn’t have guessed it in a million guesses.

Wynona kisses me. She friggin’ kisses me. She leans in, tilts her head, and kisses me. With her eyes open. And I ain’t talking no chicken-lipped peck. She kisses me a real kiss. I mean, she doesn’t jam her tongue down my throat or anything, but she actually kisses me a real kiss right on the lips. She holds the back of my head and mashes her lips all over mine. I mean, she goddamn friggin’ kisses me!

I think I kiss her back—or at least try—but my head’s so dizzy I have no idea what I’m doing with my own mouth.

When she pulls away, she has an even bigger smile on her face. I must have the look of the living dead, because she giggles a guilty giggle and touches my lips with her fingers like she’s trying to wipe away my goofiness.