Flirting With Pete: A Novel (23 page)

“Hello?”

“Hi, baby.”

She swallowed hard. That flat voice alone— flat, greasy, smarmy— made her sick. “Hi, Daddy.”

“How’s my girl? Gettin’ excited?”

Tell him no. Tell him you won’t be here when he gets home. Tell him you’re going away.
“I did everything you asked,” she said. It wasn’t true, but she needed something to say.

“Your mama’s stuff is gone?”

“Yes.” Small lie. Awful job. It would be done by the time he got home.

“Everything out of the drawers?”

“Yes.” Tomorrow. She would do it then.

“It don’t do no good to have reminders. We’re starting over, baby. All that other business is behind us now.”

Jenny hung over the sink, trying to breathe through her nose.

“Not that we didn’t love her,” Darden said, “but she was too jealous for her own good. Jealous and mean. Hey, we can say that. We paid for her death. So now the good times start. Two more nights here, then I’m home. They’re saying it’ll be after lunch on Tuesday before they get the papers right. Can you believe it, fuckin’ dumb bureaucrats,” he muttered. “But it’s okay, it’s okay. It means you can sleep a little longer, take your time getting dressed, doing your hair. You’re wearing it down for me, aren’t you? You know I love it that way.”

“I can’t go,” she blurted out.

The flat voice hardened. “What?”

“I can’t come get you. I have to work.”

“Your old man’s getting out of the can, and you have to
work
? Seems to me I’m reason enough to take the day off.”

Jenny was shaking all over, but what was one more little lie when the alternative was so vile? “There’s a big lunch, big as any we’ve done. It’s at a place in the mountains that’s owned by someone to do with the governor, and people are coming from all over, in private jets, in helicopters even. Miriam needs me.”

“Christ,
I
need you. I’ve been rotting in here for your sake. So who’re you gonna choose, Miriam or me?”

She was close to tears. He always made it as hard as possible. “I’m not
choosing
between you and her. Working just makes more sense. If I could drive there, that’d be one thing, but I can’t. I’ll be done with work in time to meet you at the bus stop in town.”

“Not there.
Here,
MaryBeth.”

“I
can’t,
Daddy,” she pleaded, then had an idea. “Daddy, listen. If I do this big job for Miriam, she won’t argue when I tell her I can’t work after that, so I’ll be able to spend more time with you.”

That quieted him. “You’re not working the rest of the week?”

“No.”

“I suppose that’s okay.”

“Well, maybe not. I mean, I’ll probably be in the way. You’ll be wanting to go off seeing people you haven’t seen all these years—” She stopped without his saying a word. He didn’t have to tell her how silly her talk was. There was no one he wanted to see, no one but her.

In the voice she most detested, the one that said he wasn’t taking backtalk this time around, he said, “I want you waiting at that bus stop, wearing that flowered dress I had the catalog send, and I want your hair all washed and curly and soft. It must be down past your waist by now. I’ll measure it when we get home, right against your skin, so you keep that skin soft under that pretty dress, and you be right there to meet the bus, y’hear?”

Jenny barely got the phone back on the hook before she threw up the little bit that was in her stomach, and even when that was gone she kept gagging. She threw water on her face. She rubbed water on her neck. She poured it into her mouth and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. By then she was crying, big sobs that shook the whole of her, because there were only two days left and she was sick and scared and— and
angry
that
she
wasn’t the one sent to jail or killed right there on the living room floor, because it wasn’t fair, everything she had in her head, and it was only getting
worse
. She didn’t care that he said he had done it for her; he had done it for
himself,
and now he was taking his pound of flesh, and if she tried to stop him he would remind her, bring it all right back until she started to cry, so he could hold her and run his fingers through her hair—

Grabbing the kitchen shears from the drawer, she took a handful of her hated red hair and hacked, took a second handful and hacked again, then again and again until hideous red curls were spattered on the counter, the floor, the kitchen table.

“Hey hey hey,” said Pete in a voice that was deep and resonant and worried. “Jenny, Jenny, what are you doing?” He pried the shears from her hand. “Good Lord, Jenny, what’s wrong?” He tipped up her face and stared into her eyes.

“I hate this hair! It’s
disgusting!”

His thumbs brushed her tears. “Aw no.”

“I mean it. I
hate
it. I swear I’d rather be bald!”

He shook his head slowly, deliberately. “No you wouldn’t.”

“I
would
. You don’t understand! That was my father on the phone. He’s coming home Tuesday. Know where he’s been? Prison. For six years. Know what for? Murder. Know whose? My
mother’s!”
Her insides fell away, just as they had during the trial. This was the first time she had said it as bluntly since then, and the horror of it was awful. Nothing had changed, nothing at all.

Only something had. She hadn’t just told the walls; she had told Pete. Now he knew what the rest of the town knew, and why they had shunned her all these years. She waited for him to back up, waited for the look of disgust that was sure to come, and if not disgust, pity, and if not pity, fear.

But he didn’t back up and the look that came over his face held such a caring kind of pain that she started to cry.

“Oh Jenny,” he whispered, and drew her against him. “I’m sorry.”

She cried harder. He pressed her head to his chest, then moved his hands over her back to clutch her closer. She burrowed in, letting his arms stave off the world. As the tears poured out of her, so did the worst of her dark thoughts. In their place came something warmer and brighter. It gave her strength.

“He loves my hair long,” she said between hiccups. “He runs his fingers through it. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Do you hate him?”

“Yes— no,” she cried. “What can I
say?
He scares me. He does that to people. He
controls
people. Before he went away, he let it be known that anyone who hurt me would be sorry. That anyone who
touched
me would be sorry.” She looked up at Pete. “So people are civil, but they don’t come close. You’re taking your chances by being here.”

He brushed away the last of her tears so that she could see his crooked smile. “About time, I’d say.” The smile grew gentler. His eyes went to her hair. He craned his neck this way and that. “Y’know, it’s not bad. Not bad at all. I can see your face more without so much hair. You may be on to something.” He took the shears. “Can I even it up a little?”

He cut for several minutes, moving around her. Then, bending his knees so that they were on eye level, he took her chin and turned her head from side to side. “Not bad at all,” he said with a grin. “You go shower. I’ll clean up here.” He turned her in the direction of the hallway and sent her off.

Miriam did a double take when Jenny appeared by the open back door of Neat Eats’ van. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Jenny?”

Jenny touched her hair. She had felt confident looking at it back home, but that confidence had been shaken by the stares coming her way during the walk into town. Now she was thinking the same thing those staring people had thought: Darden was going to kill her.

“I wanted a change,” she told Miriam.

“You sure got one,” Miriam said. She slid her trays onto shelves in the van, wiped her hands on the towel tucked into her belt, and took Jenny by the arm. “Let me even it off, at least.”

“Oh, not a problem, Pete did it.”

“Pete? Pete who?”

Jenny wasn’t sure she should have said anything. But it was out. “He’s a friend,” she said, and felt a touch of pride so new that her cheeks went pink. She fingered the latch on the door. “You don’t know him. He isn’t from around here.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Out west.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“Oh, just by accident, after the dance Friday night. Big, tall guy, leather jacket, boots. Maybe you saw him?” She dared a glance at Miriam, who looked puzzled.

“No. I’d have noticed someone like that.”

“He was outside. Maybe that’s why you didn’t see him.”

“I was outside, too. Leather jacket and boots? I’d definitely have noticed someone like that.”

“Well, he wasn’t there the whole time. He kind of came and went. Maybe he was behind a tree at a time when you might have seen him, so you
didn’t
see him. He rides a motorcycle.”

“Ah-ha,” Miriam said with sudden playfulness. “The plot thickens. What’s he doing here?”

“Oh, just passing through.”

“And he’s staying with you? Why, Jenny, you little devil.”

“It’s all completely proper,” Jenny said before she realized that Miriam was teasing. Embarrassed then, she shrugged.

“Pete, huh? And he cut your hair?”

“I cut it. He just evened it off.”

“Well, then,” Miriam said, “I’ll just even it a bit more.”

Jenny thought her hair was fine, but Miriam was her boss, and a neat and steady person if ever there was one. Besides, Jenny couldn’t risk annoying her by saying no.

“There,” Miriam said a short time later. “It was really only the back.”

It hadn’t felt like only the back to Jenny, who was slightly appalled at the length of a few of the pieces of hair that lay on the floor. But Miriam was using the comb now, trying this and that, fluffing Jenny’s hair up, actually smiling. “It really does look nice. More sophisticated. Not so overpowering.” She turned Jenny to the mirror.

Jenny touched the ends that curled forward under her jaw, and the side part that replaced her usual center one.
More sophisticated
. She liked the sound of that. She liked the look of it, too. She might have called it a sleek bob, were it not for the curls.

Then curls and all fell prey to Miriam’s hands, quickly tacked back into the knot she claimed was hygienic. Long after severity took over, though, Jenny clung to the earlier image.
More sophisticated
. She liked that, indeed.

Darden was going to hate it. But not Pete. She smiled. Pete was going to
love
it. She couldn’t wait to show him.

She couldn’t wait to see him, period. Even now, remembering, she felt the warmth she had experienced when he had walked her to the door and sent her off into town.

“Sure you don’t want a ride?” he had asked.

She nodded. She didn’t want people asking who he was and why he was with her. She didn’t want them reporting back to Darden, not until she knew what she was going to say. “I need time to think. I have to decide what to do.”

He had taken her face then, as he seemed to like to do, framed it with his hands like blinders on a horse, blocking out everything else but him. “How can I help?”

She had sworn she wouldn’t beg, but the facts of her life lurked just beyond the touch of his hands. So she said, “Don’t leave. Stay a little longer. Be here when I get home.”

He kissed her on the mouth, on her nose, and on her eyes, which she had closed. Without the distraction of sight, his voice was richer. “I’ll be here. Hurry back.”

Jenny worked quickly. She ran the last of the trays from the kitchen to the van, then from the van into the house where the barbecue was being held, and into the backyard where the grills were set up. She ran from table to table around the pool, setting out cocktail napkins and candles. She ran drinks from the kitchen to the far end of the buffet table, ran baskets of rolls and trays of condiments to the middle of the table, ran paper plates and napkins and plastic utensils to the end of the table nearest the grills.

“Slow down,” Miriam said at one point, but Jenny couldn’t get herself to do it. She figured that the sooner she got things done, the sooner she would be back home with Pete.

Unfortunately, her hands weren’t as good at rushing as her feet were. She had to rearrange napkins when Miriam said they looked messy, had to mop up a whole two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew when it slipped from her grasp, had to return an entire tray of twice-baked potatoes to the kitchen when she set it too close to the table’s edge and it fell.

“Jenny,” Miriam whispered, because the guests had arrived by then, “relax. There’s no rush. Stay
calm
.”

Jenny was more deliberate after that. She concentrated on each task Miriam set her to, and would have done fine if the event’s hostess hadn’t homed in on her to do a dozen little chores. If it wasn’t “The gentleman in the green blazer needs A.1. sauce,” it was “A glass of
tap
water for the woman in blue over there,” or “I want salt and pepper on
every
table,” or “Fill the baby’s bottle with milk from the refrigerator and warm it a little, not much, just a little. You know how to test it, don’t you?”

Jenny did the best she could, but with both Miriam and her client making demands, she couldn’t help falling behind, and when she rushed to catch up, she made mistakes. So she had a bad day. One bad day wasn’t so awful. The food was still good. And anyway, what did it matter if the affair wasn’t perfect, if Miriam was closing down anyway?

None of that made her feel any better, though, when Miriam took her aside after their return and said, “Listen, Jenny, I want you to take the next few days off. I think you’re distracted.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Well, it’s not coming over that way. Take time off until Darden is back and settled in. You’ll feel better then.”

“But I have to work,” Jenny insisted and began wiping down the long stainless-steel table. “He wants me to work. He’ll be upset if I don’t. Take my word for it. It’s
better
if I work.”