Girl Unmoored (10 page)

Right after eight o’clock, when we were watching
Cheers
, something knocked on the front door. Chad looked over at me before starting down the stairs. I followed closely behind. “Who is it?” he asked at the bottom. But we both knew who it was. You could see my dad’s red head through the window. I lifted my hand up to hide my lip.

“I’m looking for my daughter,” my dad said, his voice muffled through the door.

Chad flipped back the lock and waved him in. He wasn’t wearing his wedding clothes anymore, just his same old khakis and green button-down. He nodded at Chad, glanced around at the flowers, and then shot me a look. Bad news was coming and my stomach knew it.

He turned to Chad. “Dennis Bramhall,” he introduced himself, extending his hand. “Thanks for keeping Apron.”

“Chad,” Chad said shaking it. He looked like a ninth grader next to my dad.

They both turned to me.

“Let’s go, Apron,” my dad said. When I dropped my hand down, his face folded. “What happened to your lip? Did someone hurt you?” He stepped toward me. “I saw the window?”

“No, Dad. I tripped outside. On a ladder.”

My dad didn’t look like he believed me. He turned back to Chad, who sunk his hands into his pockets. “We didn’t think she needed to go to the hospital, otherwise—”

My dad sighed hard enough to growl. “Let’s go, Apron.”

I picked up my backpack still on the couch and walked toward the door. “Thanks, Chad,” I said quietly. But it came out wrong, like it was Chad’s fault that my dad found me.

“It’s been real,” Chad said sadly. “See you, Apron.”

“Thanks again,” my dad said. “And here.” He was trying to hand Chad some money, but Chad put up both hands. “No, no,” he said. “I should be the one paying you. She’s like a dictionary of jokes. And she makes a mean bouquet,” he smiled.

My dad nodded, no smile, and flashed a quick look around the room. I was so used to the flowers I couldn’t even smell them anymore. All I could smell now was my dad’s sharp look. “Okay then,” he said, disappearing out the door. “Come on, Apron.”

Chad looked worried, but I shrugged like I was used to getting in trouble, then I waved and followed my dad.

Outside, we walked to our car without talking.

“How’s Grandma Bramhall?” I asked in a small voice when we were both inside.

My dad wrapped his hands around the steering wheel.

“Fine, Apron,” he said. “You knocked the wind out of her, but they let her go as soon as she got to Maine Med. Margie and I brought her home in time for that trunk show she wanted to get to. But you have a lot of explaining to do. You shouldn’t have left with those boys, Apron.” He looked at me. “You have no idea who they are. Look at their window for Christ’s sake. They aren’t the type to be hanging around with.”

“They’re really nice,” I said. “I helped them decorate the church for a real wedding tomorrow.” I realized my mistake and waited for him to get mad, but instead he shook his head.

“Well, you were supposed to stay there.”

“I was there for two hours, dad. Reverend Hunter had to go somewhere so Mike and Chad took me home. And then I forgot to give them back Reverend Hunter’s key so I came here and they wouldn’t let me take the bus home by myself. I tried calling you. Where were you?”

He paused. “Getting married,” he said, starting the engine and backing out of the parking spot.

An elevator dropped in my stomach. “What?”

He put the car in gear again and told me they went to the courthouse right after dropping Grandma Bramhall off at Mrs. Finn’s trunk show. M was still in her wedding dress because she said she wouldn’t take it off until they got married. And my dad said she meant business because he had never seen her cry like that.

Mr. and Mrs. Haffenreffer were their eyewitnesses and my dad tried to call Reverend Hunter’s office, but got the answering machine telling him what time Sunday Service was and to go with God, so he decided maybe Reverend Hunter had taken me out for an ice cream. And the courthouse only had a 5:35 appointment left, so sorry, Apron, but it seemed the best choice at the time.

My dad told me all this without looking at me once. I didn’t look at him, either.

“Apron?” he said finally, turning to me at a red light. “It was a rough day for Margie.”

I looked at my empty wrist. If I hadn’t broken my bracelet, almost killed Grandma Bramhall, smashed my head into a vase, and split my lip open, today would have been a rough day for me, too. “
Nemo sine vitio
,” I mumbled. No one is without fault
.

“
Nemo sine vitio
est,” he corrected me. “And Margie wasn’t the one to knock the wind out of Grandma Bramhall.”

I looked out my window.

“Why did you hit Mr. Perry?” We hadn’t talked about it once since it happened.

My dad didn’t answer for a moment. “He cheated,” he said finally.

“How?” I crossed my arms.

“Illegal tackle.”

I looked over at him. “Why?”

My dad shook his head. “That’s just what some people do.”

I looked back out at the road. A green car switched into our lane too fast, and my dad honked. “Idiot,” he said. And I agreed.

Later, I didn’t get into as much trouble as you might think. But only because a) Grandma Bramhall’s head was all the way back up to speed again and b) I went into the kitchen after we got back from Scent Appeal and looked M straight in the eye and said, “Sorry,” while my dad stood in the doorway watching.

Behind M’s eyes, you could see that she didn’t mean it when she smiled, or when she said, “It’s okay, Aprons. Come to gives me a hug,” opening her arms like a pterodactyl. I had to hug her if I knew what was good for me, so I held my breath and waited for it to be over. You could feel that round bump of little whatever in there.

“My new daughter,” she said trapping me and rubbing my back so my dad could get a good look. Then she stood back and took my shoulders in her hands and laser-beamed me with her brown eyes. “Now we are one big happies of family.”

My dad stepped up. “All right, Apron. Up to bed,” he said, taking M’s arm off of me and wrapping it around his own waist. It was like watching a commercial for life insurance, the two of them standing together, smiling, and only I could see the black tornado spinning toward my dad.

“I have to feed The Boss first,” I said. Except then I noticed his cage wasn’t where I left it. My throat jammed. I glared at M. “What did you do to him?”

She faked a stunned look and my dad’s forehead pinched together. “Don’t talk to Margie like that, young lady. The Boss is in the pantry, on the counter.”

And that’s when I realized she could have poisoned him. Just a little mouse poison and he’d be dead in an hour. A lock wasn’t going to save him anyway.

I narrowed my eyes at M’s lying face. There was no way I was going to make it through a whole summer with her. One of us had to go.

A moaning sound was coming from somewhere inside the house.
I rolled over and looked at my clock. It wasn’t even seven yet and it was Saturday, when my dad went to get the paper at Town Landing. I shut my eyes but then I heard that moan again.

I sat up.

There it was again.

Except this time it was in a small animal kind of way, like a cat had gotten its paws stuck somewhere.

The Boss’s cage.

M
.

I jumped out of bed and practically fell down those stairs. Then I ran through the kitchen and into the pantry, and sighed. The Boss was twitching away in his cage. But behind me the moan happened again. This time, I followed it through the living room and onto the back porch. And when it happened again, I didn’t wonder who it was anymore. It was no cat. It was M.

She was lying on the couch facing away from the door, curled up on her side, making that moaning sound and crying hard in between. My blood turned into a slushy and my feet felt like they were stuck on flypaper.

I had never heard anyone make that sound before, not even the bear at the Portland Zoo. She moaned again. I thought about calling 911, except my dad might end up getting mad at me, and after last night I didn’t want to risk it. I squinted to make sure she was still breathing, which she was. She was wearing a white T-shirt and tan shorts and her hair was sprayed out around the couch cushion.

I was about to say her name, until another groan came out of her. And then she did something that made me stop breathing. She slapped her bump. Not in a nice, tapping way like you did on a fish tank. She slapped her belly hard with the palm of her hand. “Uh! Uh! Uh!” she groaned each time, and then did that moan, and then just cried.

Before I could move, she rolled onto her back and turned her head toward me, slinging her arm over her eyes. I unglued my feet and made a run for the door as quietly as I could. Behind me, I heard her moan again.

Upstairs, I ran into the bathroom and shut the door. That little bump of whatever was just sitting there, growing a leg or an ear like it was supposed to, and then all of a sudden getting slapped for it. Something deep in me burned when I thought about this. Even though it was M’s little whatever, it still didn’t deserve to get hit.

I looked in the mirror at my blotchy freckles and red eyes and fat lip.
Apron
, I told that person,
you have to stop her
.

I opened the door but waited when I heard footsteps. My dad.

I ran downstairs as fast as I could to tell him what I just saw, but when I stepped into the kitchen and opened my mouth and said, “Dad!” M looked over at me. She was holding a tea bag in mid-air, dripping it into my mom’s
Tap Your Life Away!
mug.

“Your father’s not back yet,” she said. Her face was puffy but her hair was tucked back, neat now.

I looked down at that bump.

“Getting bigger, no?” she said trying to sound like a real mom.

A tidal wave of sadness hit me.

She turned away, stirring her tea, and I knew that if my dad walked in right now and I told him how I saw M banging on her bump like she was making homemade pizza dough, he would never believe me.

“I pray to Gods it doesn’t have red hair,” M mumbled, still stirring her tea. She didn’t look at me when she said it, which is how I knew she meant it.

I turned and walked out the door.

Then I walked upstairs and climbed back into bed, remembering in a dream how loud the rock was when it shot through Mike’s window.

When I woke up again it was nine o’clock and everything was quiet.
No moaning anywhere. And downstairs, the kitchen was empty. No M and no
Hello Maine!
I got my cereal, dropped a few pieces of it on the floor, and sat at my lobster.

I had come up with a plan. My dad might not be able to see the M that I could, but there was no way he could miss what a slob she was. My dad was a neat freak and it wouldn’t take long for him to realize he’d just married a mess. And messes can be divorced.

“Morning, Apron,” he said walking in. He was dressed in his usual jeans, yellow button-down shirt, and red hair, but something was new about him, and when he sat down at his lobster, I could see what it was: a gold ring on his left finger.

“Where did you get that?” I pointed to it.

My dad looked down and scrunched up his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “Margie’s idea. I told her I didn’t know how long it was going to last, though. It’s already driving me crazy.” He spun it around with his thumb.

A piece of cereal swelled up like a log in my throat. I had to look away. My dad never wore one for my mother. I waited for him to mention it—that he was sorry he had to marry M. That he’d
just
promised me he was going to stay married to my mom forever.

Except he hadn’t. I swallowed. He hadn’t said that at all.

“So is it me or Perry today?”

I turned back to him quickly. “Did she call?”

“Not yet,” he said flicking open his newspaper and disappearing behind it.

Hope drained out my feet. Rennie wasn’t going to call, but my dad didn’t know that. And this is what he always asked every Saturday morning: who was dropping off whom, at whose house, for a sleepover?

“We’re not friends anymore, Dad,” I said, stirring pink milk.

My dad lowered the paper and looked at me. “What?
Why?
” I wondered if this was the way he talked to his students.
Why
, he might ask,
do you think Maine matters?
He was a Latin professor, but they made him teach a class about Maine too, which is why he wrote the book.

“Forget it,” I said standing up.

“Sit down,” my dad said. He had said that a million times before, but this one surprised me. I sat right away.

“What happened with Rennie?”