Prom (5 page)

I took a deep breath. At least there weren’t any cop cars out front.

But it was still early.

Welcome home.

Me? Please?

No such luck.

I unlocked the front door and went in.

It was still spring, so the living room was a shrine to our baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies. In the fall, Dad made it into a shrine to the Eagles (football). Winter was always a little weird. We’d get Flyers decorations (hockey), 76ers decorations (basketball), and Christmas decorations (baby Jesus, who was a Philly fan from way back).

My brothers were on the couch. First was Shawn, who was twelve and who stayed out of trouble as long as he had enough junk food. Next to Shawn was Billy, four years old and not quite as big as one of Shawn’s thighs. At the far end of the couch, curled up with Harry Potter #5, was Steven, ten, who read because he liked it, not because he had to. Mutt, our deaf, three-legged wonder dog, was stretched out across the boys.

Nobody looked at me when I walked in. The fact that the television was blaring so loudly the walls were shaking probably had something to do with that.

I turned down the television set—

“Hey!” Shawn yelled. “I was watching that!”

“What? I’m sorry I can’t hear you because the TV was so loud my ears are ringing!”

Billy giggled.

“What are you watching?”

Steven answered without taking his eyes off the page. “Napoleon’s march into Moscow. He invaded Russia in 1812.”

“You like this?”

“It’s awesome,” Shawn said. “Their feet froze and their toes fell off and they kept marching.”

“Poor strategy,” Steven added.

“Isn’t it bedtime?”

“It’s not even eight,” Billy said. “We’re not babies. Geez, Ashley.”

Shawn chuckled and Steven smiled as he turned the page.

The Three Musketeers, that’s what we called them. When they weren’t trying to kill each other, they stuck together. Part of me wanted to snuggle with them on the couch, lean up against Shawn, let Billy cuddle with me, and put my feet on Steven’s lap, which he would let me do if I put on clean socks first. I’d even let Mutt sit with us.

There was a sound from the basement like a bowling ball being dropped on a mirror, then our father’s voice screaming, “Goddamnit! This mother—”

Shawn grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

“What’s he doing down there?” I shouted.

“Cleaning up,” Shawn said.

“Swearing,” Billy said.

“He’s working on your new bedroom,” Steven explained. “Remember—you’re happy about it.”

I picked my way across the living room and around the piles of clothes in the dining room. Dad met me at the top of the basement steps, a grocery bag in his arms. His shirt had pit stains, his jeans were torn at the knee, and there was a cobweb in his beard. My father was not a suit-and-tie guy, not by a long shot. He drove a taxicab and helped out buddies with any kind of under-the-table work he could get. But cobwebs in his beard? That was a new fashion low, even for him.

He leaned against the doorframe.

“Hey, honey. Got pizza?”

“Nope. I’m lucky I still have a job.”

“Sucked again, huh?” He shifted the grocery bag to his other arm. It made a tinkling, broken noise.

“What’s in there?”

“I sort of dropped that old punch bowl that we never used for anything. But don’t tell your mother. You know how she gets.”

“Where is she?”

“Hanging laundry.”

“Why?”

“Dryer’s busted again. The washer doesn’t sound too good either. I’ll deal with that later. I’ve gotta finish up your room, princess.”

For the past month he had been waiting on drywall, waiting on some wiring, looking for a guy he could score insulation off of. “My room” was another one of his fantasy plans, like the pool for the backyard, the family trip out West, and season tickets behind first base.

But now he was . . . sweaty. And there was a cobweb in his beard.

He rubbed his forehead on his sleeve. “You’re gonna love it, Ash.”

Was he really fixing the basement up? I had to see for myself. I kicked off my sneakers. “I spilled root beer on these. I need to wash them.”

He took them from me. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t want you down there till I’m finished. Go help your mother. That laundry is heavy.”

I stared at him for a second, but he wasn’t going to budge. I turned to go.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “TJ called.”

“When?”

“While you were at work. Told me all about his new job.”

“My TJ? Job?”

“Yeah. Seemed happy. Said he’d be home by nine if you want to go over.”

“TJ said he has a job?”

“What, we got an echo in here? The boy got a job. About time if you ask me. He’s flying straighter these days. I like that. There’s meat loaf in the fridge. You hungry?”

“Starved.”

Her Royal Highness called as I reached for the meat loaf.

“Ashley? Is that you?”

Swear to God that voice could peel paint.

I crossed the kitchen to the back door.

Ma was hanging sheets on the line. From where I was standing, you might believe Mary Alice Hannigan was a regular mother. She was a little shorter than me, five-six, maybe. She wasn’t super-biggie size fat, but she wasn’t a starving stick woman either. From the back you might think,
The heels are a little high, and the pants are a little tight, but that hair color is good, almost as red as Ashley’s.
You also might think
, It’s a shame she ruins it with that dead poodle tease job on the top of her head. A real shame.

And then Mary Alice would turn around, and you’d have to cover your mouth with your hand so you didn’t say something rude.

The first shock? Let’s begin with the belly. The eight-months-and-counting pregnant belly. You’d think that after four kids, she’d have figured out what was causing it. But wait, it gets better. What could be more embarrassing than that belly that screams to the world that your parents keep having sex? Get a load of that hickey on the left side of Ma’s neck. First time I brought home a hickey, she sent me to confession. But ever since her and Dad renewed their vows on the board-walk last summer, she said hickeys are “a sign of affection” instead of a stain of sin.

And the clothes. My mother was frozen in the eighties. Think early Madonna with a watermelon under her shirt. She loved stretch pants, polka dots on her shirts, and earrings the size of cinnamon buns. Add to that her “attractive,” “sturdy” city bus-driver shoes, and you want to run in the other direction.

You should.

“Ashley!”

If I wasn’t switched at birth, I must have pissed off an evil fairy or something.

I opened the back door.

“Why are you home so soon?” Ma asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I had a chance to get off early so I took it.”

“That’s nice. Turn the light on, will you?”

“It’ll attract bugs.”

“I need to see.”

I flicked the light switch on and walked down the steps to help her. I pulled a Pokémon sheet from the basket and reached for the bucket of clothespins.

“Here, let me do that,” Ma said.

“I can pin it.”

“You don’t pin right.”

“I do, too.”

“You leave marks when you pin.”

I wasn’t letting go of that sheet. “Dad said I should help you. This is heavy. You know your back hurts.”

She stared, hand on her hip.

“All right. You lift, I’ll pin.”

We hung a few sheets without talking, then she asked me the real reason I came home early. I filled her in on the ups and downs of my shift . . . well, I filled her in on the downs of my shift. I exaggerated a little to make it all sound funny instead of lame and finally got her to laugh. I tried to get her to tell me about her day. Ma drove the 32 bus, Northeast Philly, our neighborhood, and beyond. She lied through her teeth and said her bus worked perfectly, her seat was comfortable, and her riders all treated her like a goddess.

Next door at Nat’s, somebody turned up a radio to blare violin and trumpet music. The back door opened, and Nat’s loony grandmother, wearing a bathrobe and her flowered bathing cap, gimped down the stairs, sat in a lawn chair, and talked to the garden gnomes next to their roses.

“She wandered over this afternoon,” Ma said. “Just walked in the kitchen like she lived with us. I found her eating ravioli out of a can at the table. Sitting in
my
chair. Eating our ravioli.”

Nat’s father worked two jobs, and her parents got divorced before they left Russia, so Grandma was on her own a lot.

“She didn’t hurt anything, did she?” I handed Ma the second basket of clothespins. “She’s real good at sewing. You should put her to work, have her fix the boys’ jeans. Maybe she could hang the laundry.”

“She’d need a ladder,” Ma said. “What she really needs is a nursing home. She’s gonna get hurt, mark my words—”

There was a crash inside our house. Shawn screamed that Steven was a imbecile. Steven shouted that if Shawn couldn’t spell imbecile, he wasn’t allowed to call him one.

“Why aren’t they playing outside?” I asked.

“They kept bugging me. I sent them in so I could get some peace.” She squeezed the water out of one of her maternity bras. “Did I hear your father break something before you came out?”

I pulled out one of her nightshirts. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Liar.” She pinned the bra, then the shirt.

I bent over the basket. “I don’t know why he’s bothering.”

“What did you say?”

I held up another sheet. “I don’t know why he’s doing all this work.”

“Ashley—duh. You’re almost out of high school, for Christ’s sake. You can’t be crowded in the same bedroom as Billy and the baby. You deserve your own room.”

“What if I move out?”

She pinned the sheet fast: boom, boom, boom. “You’re not moving out. You’re too young.”

“When you were my age you were married and already had a baby.”

“And you’re always telling me how I screwed up my life. Your father is going to a lot of trouble to fix up the basement. Hand me that towel. You should be grateful.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I didn’t ask him to do it. You guys just assumed.”

“What? You gonna tell me now you have plans? Going to college? Get real, Ash.”

“No, it’s just that . . .”

“What?”

“Don’t yell at me. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet, that’s all.”

“What’s to decide? You’re staying with your family. That’s what families are for.”

“I don’t want to stay here forever.”

“Who said forever? A year? Two years? You can stay as long as you want. This is your home, Ashley.”

“But . . . ”

“But what? You have plans I don’t know about? What are you going to do, move in with TJ? There’s a little baby at that house, too. You move in with him and it’s over. You’ll get knocked up, he’ll have to take a shitty job he hates to pay the bills, and you’ll never, ever get out.”

Ma stopped to catch her breath. Nat’s grandmother shuffled to the fence that divided our yards, raised her fist, and hollered at us.

“What’s she saying?” Ma asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s okay, Grandma,” Ma said loudly. “Go sit down. Talk to your little friends over there.”

Grandma made a hand gesture and spit. She shuffled to the back of their house, pulled out a wading pool, and started filling it with the garden hose.

“Turn that light off, will you?” Ma asked. “It’s attracting bugs.”

There was no point arguing. I walked up the steps and flicked off the light.

Grandma Shulmensky unbuttoned her robe and dropped it on the ground. Underneath she was wearing her red-flowered swimsuit
.

“Bath time again,” Ma said. “I don’t know what it is with that old lady and water. Where’s Natalia? Shouldn’t she be home by now?”

I couldn’t tell her about the prom being cancelled. Prom was one of those subjects that made my normally cranky, pushy, obnoxious mother into a full-blown wackjob. She had been riding my butt since September to get a dress, get shoes, reserve the limo, blah, blah, blah, and I kept telling her no freaking way was I going to spend a fortune on one night of pretend bullshit, until finally the screaming drove my dad around the bend and he made a law saying we couldn’t use the p-word anymore.

“She’s at Lauren’s working on a project,” I said.

Nat’s grandmother sat in the little pool, backstroking her arms through the air.

“She’s a good kid, Natalia.” Ma winced as she tried to yank a heavy blue towel from the basket. “She’ll go far. ”

The towel came out of the basket all at once. Ma teetered and lost her balance.

As she stumbled, I jumped down the steps.

As she fell, I caught her.

I held on tight and staggered backwards a little. She smelled like laundry soap and bleach and her peach body lotion. She pulled me close, dragging me over the top of her belly so her cheek was against my cheek. The baby kicked between us.

She gave me a loud kiss. “Thanks, peanut.”

“You okay?”

She got her feet under her and stood straight. “I’m fine.”

“You need to sit down, old lady.”

She gave me another kiss before she let me go. “You’re right.”

Ma sat on the second step from the bottom. I hung up the rest of the towels and set the laundry basket upside down in front of her so she could prop up her feet. It was quieter now. The television had been turned off inside, and the hammering in the basement had stopped. Nat’s grandmother rolled onto her stomach and worked on her breast stroke.