Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (8 page)

The thermostat by the side of the house read 103 degrees. I could feel the heat through the soles of my tennis shoes. The duplexes shimmered and swayed in the silver light, made of fish scales rather than
brick. One trick of the light and all of Bent Tree would flicker and then disappear. I went inside to the refrigerator, got an egg, and walked out to the sidewalk. I cracked the egg and let it drip out onto the cement. There was a half-hearted sizzle and the bottom turned white, but the top was still gelatinous and runny.

Eddie opened his window and yelled out.

“You got to do it on a car hood.”

I nodded but decided to retreat into the air conditioning instead and read about mummification. I was interested in how the Egyptians pulled the brains of dead people out through their noses with a hook and then held them in jars shaped like cats. I wanted to tell somebody about the cat jars, which were shiny black obsidian, with whiskers cut into the stone and emeralds for eyes, but I knew my mother would just shake her head and say I was morbid. I used to be able to tell her anything, that at times I felt I was a snowy owl, or that I wanted to be a cash register. Not anymore. My dad might be interested, but he was working. I held my View-Master up to my eyes and turned toward the light of the window. Chief Red Feather greeted visitors at the entrance of Knott’s Berry Farm. Click. A stagecoach parked in front of the Old Saloon. I set the View-Master beside me and lay watching the light move over my perfume bottle collection. I liked how it glittered the edges of the glass, how it moved incrementally toward the wall,
illuminating the grains in the paint and the strands of the carpet below. I closed my eyes and started to say the days of the week, waiting for the sun to make the inside of my eyelids red.

At some point I heard a car stop on the street. At the window I saw Sonny get out of a taxi and walk over to Sandy’s car. Her front door flew open and she ran over the grass barefoot in her mini-kimono. I ran down the stairs and swung open the door, the heat hitting me as if from an open oven.

“It’s my car. You gave it to me!”

She was up on her toes, the tendons in her neck defined.

“Well,” Sonny said, not even bothering to turn, “I’m taking it back.” He wore a pale blue golf shirt and white pants. Though it was hot, the material hadn’t wilted. The clothes hung on his thin frame as if on a hanger.

Sandy wobbled down the driveway, her bare feet unsteady on the gravel. He swung around and put his hands on his hips; she moved her fists up and I was sure she was going to beat against his chest, but instead she clasped them to her own heart, her knees swung sideways, and she fell onto the gravel.

Eddie ran down from the duplex in just his white underpants and tennis shoes.

“You killed her!” he said.

“She’s just being dramatic,” Sonny said as he stood staring down at her. I walked over to where she lay,
her long eyelashes closed, her perfect breasts pointed to the sky. Eddie put his cheek down next to his mother’s and her eyes flew open like a doll’s in a horror movie.

“You fucker!” she said. “That car is mine!”

Sonny waved his hand, disgusted by her theatrics.

“Don’t do this,” she said. “
DO NOT TAKE MY CAR!
”

He got into the Porsche and cranked up the engine. Sandy leaned into the open window and grabbed the car’s steering wheel.

“What are you doing?” Sonny said, trying to pry her fingers off the wheel. “Stop this!”

“No.”

I was by the edge of the driveway holding Eddie’s hand.

“Mommy,” Eddie yelled to her, “let go.”

The sound of her son’s voice woke Sandy up a little, and she looked back at us, her kimono fallen open so we could see her black bra and purple panties. Her hair was wild, flying around her head.

“Let go of the wheel,” I said. I wanted to say she was making a fool of herself, that she didn’t need Sonny, that she and I could live together and I’d watch Eddie while she went to night classes.

Sonny put up the automatic window so the glass edge pressed into the skin of her elbow, but she still didn’t budge, so he released the emergency brake and the car jumped forward. Sandy was yanked a few feet until the car picked up speed and she lost
her grip and skittered into the grass by the side of the road.

We ran over to where she was getting up.

“Oh Lord,” she said, “what a fucking jackass.”

She brushed the grass off her hands and we watched the car snake through the subdivisions and head toward the highway. Now that it was over, she seemed to find the whole encounter hilarious.

“I’m going to borrow Woody’s car,” she said, retying her kimono around her waist. “I need you to come with me to Sonny’s. I need a witness.”

“I can’t,” I said. “My mom is still mad I got home so late the last time I watched Eddie.”

Sandy turned to me.

“You want me to just let him get away with that?” she said. I could tell she was getting mad and this time it was at me. “Some friend you turn out to be,” she said, as she walked away.

“I’ll do it,” I said, “but I have to be home before Mom gets back from the grocery store.”

The car Sandy borrowed from the guy in 9B smelled like cigarette smoke and turpentine. An empty fast-food cup with a straw sticking out of the top lay sideways on the floor.

“I really appreciate your support, Jesse,” she said, glancing at her face in the rearview mirror. Her lips were outlined in red pencil and filled in with gloss, and she’d changed out of her kimono into a white lace blouse that showed both her tan skin and the black
material of her bra. Between us on the front seat was a brown paper bag, the cuff of a blue oxford hanging over the top as if trying to escape.

“That shit actually thinks he can take my car,” Sandy said. “How am I supposed to get to work?”

“Don’t say
shit
,” Eddie said.

“Sorry, honey,” Sandy said. “I mean, he brings his laundry over, I wash that man’s underwear. Once I even pulled a tick off his ass.”

“Gross!” I said.

After the tight way the Porsche drove, Sandy was having trouble keeping the Dart in a single lane. I wasn’t sure if she deserved the car or not. I wasn’t sure what women deserved for being mothers and taking care of men, but I had to say something.

“Sonny is mean,” I said.

“I hate old Sonny,” Eddie said. “He never got me that Matchbox carrier he promised.”

“He is terrible at keeping promises,” Sandy said. We drove past a chain of fast-food restaurants like charms on a giant bracelet. I’d been ready to declare that it was over between Sandy and me. But now that I sat beside her I wondered again if I should offer to move in.

“Sorry you had to see that mess,” she said, turning to me.

“I saw it too,” Eddie said.

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

Sandy’s face came apart, her chin dropped, and she wailed and held a hand up to cover her mouth.

“But it is!” she said. “I did all kinds of bad stuff.”

Eddie climbed up on the back of her seat, hugged her head and grabbed her ears. His shirt was on inside out so all the seams showed.

“How you doing, buddy?” she asked, trying to keep the car from running off the road.

“Not that good,” Eddie said. He had been sick over the weekend and he was still pale.

“Why don’t you sleep some?”

He curled his body into the car’s backseat and folded his hands under his head.

“Tell me,” he said. “Why didn’t I bring a pillow?”

“Use this,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a cotton sweater.

“I don’t want Sonny’s old sweater,” he said and started to kick the back of my seat.

We turned into Hunting Hills. So far I’d avoided driving there with my mom, though I had heard her talk about the houses. They had private verandas, butler pantries, and sunrooms made completely out of glass. We passed a stone house with a circular drive and one built to look like a Spanish hacienda. My mother had pointed out the styles to me in her home design book.

“I just want my car back,” Sandy said as she pulled into the driveway in front of a brick Georgian. Her sports car was parked in the open garage.

“I won’t be long.” She walked up to the front door and swung the brass knocker. The door opened, though we couldn’t see who stood in the darkened hallway.

“This is old Sonny’s house,” Eddie said. “We came once to swim in his pool.”

“Does his wife live here?”

“How should I know?”

“How was the pool?”

“OK.”

We watched the house. In one of the top windows I saw the edge of a peach-colored chair beside a pale blue ceramic lamp. The sprinklers were on and spray hit the side of the Dart, throwing droplets up on the passenger-side window.

I wanted Sandy to drop off the bag by the front door and run back to the car so we could go get ice cream and talk about Sonny. I really enjoyed hearing what a jerk the guy was, how he had never done a dish at her house or even scraped his own plate. How he would say she was getting a little chunky and how she had to listen to his same goofy jokes over and over.

Eddie handed me a bunched-up piece of newspaper.

“Open it,” he said.

Inside the paper was a good-looking rock, granite with flecks of mica.

“Thanks,” I said.

He’d been giving me presents lately, including a handful of acorns and a bracelet made of buttercups.

“Don’t mention it,” Eddie said, hanging his freckled arms over the seat.

“In a battle,” he said, “do you think a lion could beat a moose?”

“I’ll say yes.”

“What about a skull? Could it beat a karate man?”

“Unsure about that one.”

He set his cheek down on the top of the front seat.

“Does your mom ever say she’s going to kill herself?”

“Not in so many words,” I said.

“My mom said it.”

“She doesn’t mean it though.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Can I sit on your lap?”

“Sure.”

He squeezed himself into the front seat and onto my lap. His hair smelled like butter and his knees were covered with dirt. He turned the radio dial. All that ever played on the Roanoke radio stations was Lynyrd Skynyrd, with an occasional Little Feat or Allman Brothers song. All day Skynyrd blasted out of car stereos and at night from duplex windows. I twisted the dial down to the far end of the numbers, the one station that played the trippy stuff from the sixties—Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and my favorite song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Eddie showed me how when you pressed your fingertips against your closed eyelids, colors came up, reds and oranges melting into each other.

Sometime later, Sandy came running down the slate path, her mascara smudged around her eyes. I looked up through the windshield. Sonny stared down
at us from an upper-floor window; he had a strange smile on his face.

Sandy swung open the door.

“What happened?” I said.

“Same old shit,” she said. “At first he said he’d give me back the car but then he said he wouldn’t.”

She made Eddie and me get in back and put on our seat belts.

“Hold on,” she said as she jumped the sidewalk and ran over a row of rhododendrons and up onto the lawn. Eddie and I looked at each other and he gripped my hand. She spun the car around the fountain in the middle, shards of grass and dirt flying up outside, before the car bumped over the curb and ran right through a patch of petunias.

“I believe that’s called a donut,” she said, once we were back on the road. She moved the dial to the Skynyrd station and turned the volume up loud.