Tales of the Madman Underground (14 page)

“Because they’d make her do something else with the time she saved.”

“Seems inefficient.” She gunned it to beat her third yellow in a row. “After downtown, which way do I go?”

I directed her through the dark streets between white splashes of glaring streetlights, her headlights sweeping over front porches with columns and high steep steps up from the street, and broken-up crappy plastic toys, rusty bicycles, cars on blocks, vis-orange roll fencing, trash cans with stacked boxes of twenty-four empty Bud cans beside them; now and then a cat’s or dog’s eyes would flash out of the dark at us.

“My house is right here. I’d invite you in to meet my mom while I change, but, uh, at night things are sometimes . . .”

“I’ll wait here.” She killed the lights and engine and switched up the radio.

“See you in a sec.” Seeing the lights that were on, I ran around the back of the house.

I opened the kitchen door, and the stale cat piss and fresh cigarette smoke slammed into my sinuses. Mom was at the kitchen table writing her big loopy scrawl in her notebook. She had four big books, paperweighted with cats, open in front of her: her big old leather-bound astrology guide, a 1958 nautical almanac, her big UFO book with crappy grainy photos of dark spots in the sky, and Nixon’s
Six Crises
.

Of course it
would
explain a fuckload if Nixon was an alien, but even if he was, I didn’t think Mom was going to be the one to prove it.

She looked up from her work, the yellow hair falling around her face, and took a drag from the cigarette that had burned down, unheeded, in her propped-up left hand while she scribbled. “Hi, Tiger. Home for the night?”

“Still have to work.” I thought about not telling her and decided it was better to get it over with. “Uh, Mom, Sunflower got into a fight with that big old coon; she was dead in the yard when I came home from school.”

“How could she be fighting a raccoon in the middle of the day? They only come out at night!” I couldn’t tell if Mom was angry at me, the raccoon, or Sunflower.

“Wilson said Trixie was dragging her around in the yard. He thinks she got killed last night under his lilac bush. I’m sorry, Mom, I know you really loved her.”

She was wiping her eyes, staring down at the table; sometimes she’d just put her head back and howl, sometimes she just shrugged, but for some reason, whenever the coon got one, especially when he chewed up a kitten, she’d be like this, quiet but so sad.

“Uh,” I said, wanting out of there, “I have to get my uniform and get to work and I have a ride waiting.” I let the last few words trail over my shoulder as I charged up the stairs to my room. The door had held; no cat crap to clean up. So far so good.

I yanked off my pants and shirt, pulled the thin polyester trousers over my shoes, zipped up the smock of my McDonald’s outfit. At least the army would mean a much cooler uniform.

When I turned around, Mom was standing at my door. Her makeup was still a little smeared from crying over Sunflower, but she had plastered on a big phony smile. She was making an effort; for some reason that always made me feel better. “So,” she said, acting all bright and happy and all, “how was—”

“School looks pretty good this year. I got all my homework done and got dinner at Philbin’s. I went to the dance, and danced several times, with girls. None of them had to slap me.”

Mom giggled, and now it was real. I could nearly always get her to giggle. “Karl, I wanted to ask you, do you think maybe we could take my paycheck off direct deposit, and stop all those automatic payments?”

“You haven’t bounced a check in six months since we put you on that plan, Mom, it looks like it’s working.”

“I bounced two checks at Mister Peepers last month and now they won’t take my checks.”

“That’s because we get your bills paid first, Mom, the things you
have
to pay. You haven’t bounced a check anywhere that
counts
. Did you sign the checks I wrote out for you?”

She held out a sheaf of unsealed envelopes—I’d learned to always check that she had actually put a check in there and not fucked it up somehow.

I took it. “I’ll record these and drop them by the trustee’s desk at the bank, tomorrow. And I’ll figure what’s in your account for you for your weekend.”

“It’s just kind of hard to have a social life when you and the trustee control all my money,” she said. “And it’s embarrassing to tell my friends that a boy is running my life. And that trustee fee is like a week’s groceries every month.”

Or an ounce of pot
, I thought, but I said, “I’m just making sure you pay your bills. That’s all the trustee does, too. You know you didn’t like it when they used to garnish your wages. The judge said if we do
this
, you don’t have to do
that
. That’s all. I don’t like doing it either.”

“Maybe if you didn’t do it, if I could just have my check the regular way, when I needed some freedom and some space, I wouldn’t have to take money from your jars. I must owe you like a thousand dollars now.”

Actually, two thousand nine hundred thirty-seven. And forty-one cents.
I shoved the thought away like a cat away from my plate. “You did that before.”
You just don’t make as much money as you want to spend.

“I don’t see why I even pay a mortgage on this old place anyway. It’s too big for two people and the neighborhood is all falling down and we’ll never get any money for it when it’s time to sell it, and it just means you have to spend every Sunday working just to keep it up. So I don’t see why I have to pay the mortgage.”

“We’d have to pay someone somewhere anyway, Mom, just to have a roof to live under. Mortgage here is cheaper than rent anywhere else, and nobody’d let you have all those cats.”

She blew a cloud of cigarette smoke into my room, and sighed. “I guess it’s pretty weird that you’re being all adult and I’m being the kid and wanting my freedom. You aren’t going to let me just deposit my checks, are you?”

“Mom, I can’t. The judge says.”

“Yeah, the Man’s really got us all down, doesn’t he?” She sighed again. “Neil told me he’s dumping me, again.”

“He’ll be back, he always is.”

“Yeah.” She dropped her cigarette butt on the carpet in front of my room and crushed it with her toe. “Fuck, first you comfort me ’cause my kitty got killed, and take care of burying it, and then you make sure the bills are paid, and oh god, now you’re consoling me about losing a boy. And I do mean boy. We’re
so
fucking backwards, you know that?” She looked like she might cry again, but then she reached out, put her hand on the back of my neck, and rubbed gently, like I remembered her doing when I was little. “Try to relax. Don’t let it all get to you, Tiger. Your neck is one big ball of tense, you ought to see Judy about some herbal tea or some yoga lessons since you won’t smoke up.” Her hand on my neck felt good, even if I didn’t like her cigarette smoke and we’d just been quarreling; it was something she still did just like when I was a little kid. “Don’t be out too late cleaning up after corporate America. You have better things to do with your life than mopping out bathroom stalls. You are a special child of the universe, and the starlight falls on you. Never forget that. ’Cause if you do, Tiger, Mama gon’ kick yer butt.” Mom had read some book about how to talk positively to your kids, but she had too much of a sense of humor to be any good at what the book said. “Do you know a girl named Martinella? Martinella Nielsen?”

“Uh, yeah, new girl. She’s in a couple of my classes.”

“Well, I met her mother today when she came in to get some office supplies. Rose Lee Nielsen is just a super super lady. We got to talking about, you know, things, and she and I are going out for a little drink later this evening, and I’m going to explain the town to her, and we’re both interested in each other’s projects. So I might not be home when you get back from work. You take care of yourself, ’kay, Tiger?”

“I’m glad you found a new friend, Mom,” I said. I gave her a peck on her soft, clean, dry cheek. My mom was still real pretty whenever she took care of herself; that was what everyone said.

“Um,” she said, “when Neil dumped me—he called me an old bitch and he—”

I reached for my wallet. “Did he hit you or hurt you, or make any threats?”

“You’re not going to the cops about any of my friends.”

“He doesn’t sound like that good a friend to me, but suit yourself. He took the money you had left, didn’t he?”

She looked down at the floor. “Yeah. Yeah.”

What the hell. So I’m an enabler. That’s why I go to AA but not to Alateen. Got an opinion about that? Fuck you.

I handed her a twenty, which would get her drinks and some lunch the next day. “Now don’t be out late and don’t go past second base with boys you don’t know.”

She giggled again and hugged me. “Have a good time, oh Favored Heir of Ronald McDonald.”

“Are my feet growing and is my hair orange?” I asked, walking backwards down the stairs. “Because I’ve always been afraid there was something you wouldn’t tell me about that pair of striped socks you keep pinned to a dried rose in the back of your closet. Pull that door closed tight, please—thanks!” I waved bye-bye and nearly fell over that fat orange hairy slug of a cat. I bent to scritch his ears, said, “Guard, Hairball,” and darted out the door.

Safely back out on the dark street, I plunged into Marti’s car. “Hope I wasn’t too long.”

“Two songs and four commercials. I like the ‘We came up the hard way,’ one. From the way you came out of that house I feel like I’m driving a getaway car.”

“Yeah, well.” I fastened my seat belt. “Hey, Marti? I really appreciate this.”

“You’re welcome. And you’re keeping me from getting home, which is more than returning the favor.”

“If it makes any difference, your mom isn’t going to be there. She’s going out drinking with my mom.”

“Shit,” Marti said.

“Sorry I gave you the bad news.”

“It’s okay, really,” she said, like any Madman said when it sucked right down to the root.

We turned the corner and went three blocks. In the flashes of blue-white light from the streetlights, between the dark under the trees, I could see she wasn’t crying or anything but she seemed to be far away, inside herself. We pulled onto Rolach Street and headed toward the interstate exit where McDonald’s was. After another block, she said, “Can I ask you something personal?”

“Six inches but I tell everyone eight.”

She laughed, that weird fizzing noise, as we pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot.

I said, “They don’t mind if a friend hangs around and talks with me while I clean.”

“That would be
cool
!”

“Watching a guy clean out McDonald’s is cool?”

“First day of school and I’m out late talking with a friend. I feel so normal I could just shit.”

“Well, do it before I clean the ladies’.”

The night crew had left five regular cheeseburgers, a very soggy Big Mac, a heap of dried-out fries under the warming light, and two Quarter Pounders, plus an urn of hot coffee.

“They do that so I can eat what I want and throw the rest out. If you sit here, we can talk while I work. I just clean the customer area, counters, and bathrooms—Pancake Pete cleans the kitchen at four A.M.”

“Don’t they leave food for him?”

“Naw, he gets a huge breakfast after he finishes up. We all call him Pancake Pete—he gets a kick out of it—because sometimes he’ll put away like six orders of pancakes and sausage. He’s a retarded guy, real nice.” I moved all that food to the table on one overloaded tray. “Usually I just grab food and gulps of coffee as I go by, and I’m not fussy about what I grab, so just help yourself and try and make sure your hand doesn’t look like a cheeseburger.”

“My hand’s the one that contains actual meat. I’m not eating your supper, am I?”

“There’s always tons more than I can eat—don’t worry about it.”

I shot around the room, getting tables, counters, and edges wiped down and making sure the sticky spots were gone, grabbing food as I went by, and we talked about everything while I mopped and scrubbed.

“You’re practically done and it’s only been half an hour,” she said.

“The bathrooms and the food counters will go slower, but yeah, these places are designed to be cleaned really fast, and I went through and read the manual, mostly ’cause I got real bored and tired one night and forgot to bring a book and it was snowing like a crazy bastard outside, and I knew I was locked out, so I stayed here to have somewhere warm to sleep and I needed something to read. McDonald’s has this whole system—like, I can finish in about an hour, but they pay me for two and a half, so I study or read till it’s time to clock out. The time I spend studying here, and over dinner, is about all that keeps me afloat in school.”

“I was talking with that girl Bonny and she said you’re always working somewhere.”

“Yeah, Bon’s that way too. We kinda compete to see who can have the most jobs.”

“How many jobs do you
have
?”

“Uh, five.”

“That’s a lot, I guess. One, this one. Two, moving couches for Mister Browning the upholster. Three, I take care of the heavy work in four old people’s gardens plus do some handyman stuff for them and their friends. Four, I sell ads for WUGH, the country radio station here in town. Five, starting Friday night I’m going to hop the counter at Philbin’s for the after-the-movie crowd, weekend nights. I guess that’s all.”

“ ‘That’s all’? Do you
sleep
?”

“Some, but they don’t pay me for it.”

“Are you saving for college?”

“Naw, I’m going into the army. But if I don’t get right in, I want to make sure I can live for a while in a strange town. Because I don’t want to come back here, at all, ever.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that wanted to join the army before.”