The Queen of Everything (17 page)

"God," Melissa agreed. "Truly icky."

"Icky," Andrew Leland said. "I think I actually
heard her say 'icky.'"

Melissa blushed horribly. I thought about
socking him.

"Ow, that's too tight," Wendy Williams
complained.

"Do it yourself, then. She's not your servant
girl," Kale said.

I liked him right then, despite what Ms.
Cassaday had said. That cat wasn't very real to me. She might have been right;
but at that moment I was sitting on Kale's blanket, and the guilt I had about
that fact was quickly turning into Who Gives a Shit, which wasn't truthful but
felt better. That cat incident had been a year ago.

We sat around and ate, and everyone but me went
back for Gayle D'Angelo's Dark Chocolate Brownies. We hiked down to the beach
and threw rocks in the water. When we got back it was getting dark and Custodian
Bill had set up a movie projector, pointing it at the wall of the lighthouse as
a screen. Custodian Bill had pinned

165

a name tag that read Lisa on his green unisuit.
Those guys in Custodial Management were real jokesters.

The students who were left had laid out
blankets in uneven rows in front of the lighthouse, ready to watch the movie.
Someone had lit a fire, and the air became thick and smoky and filled with sharp
pops and crackles, sounding like Miss Poe when she chews gum. Most of the
teachers had left, but Heck Kwa and his wife sat in a pair of woven lawn chairs
in the front row of movie-watchers, waiting for the show to start. Mr. Wykowski
was still there too, sitting way back near the projector, ducking behind his
hand and into a sweet, weedy-smelling cloud. Mr. Wykowski must have a
thrill-seeking nature, because in the parking lot was the Tiny Policeman, clear
as day. He sat alone in his patrol car, the dome light on and illuminating his
tiny head. Just waiting for someone to do something wrong. You had to feel sorry
for a guy like that.

The two picnic tables, now cleared of food,
held only a sprinkle of parents. The talk and laughter there was loud. You were
an idiot if you thought there was only coffee in the couple of thermoses and
white Styrofoam cups that had appeared. My father sat with the holdouts, not
wanting to give up Gayle D'Angelo's company unless he had to. He gave me a big
wave

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when I came up from the beach. His face was
happy with alcohol and company.

Gayle D'Angelo now sat next to him, Wes across
the table. Mr. Chester had gone home to Mrs. Chester. Wendy Williams's dad, tie
loose around his collar, had apparently come straight from work to join Mrs.
Williams who now wore his suit jacket against the cold. Another couple in twin
Mariner jackets also sat at the table, along with Paige Woodruff and Mr.
Woodruff, whose son Michael was on one of the blankets, whispering things to his
girlfriend, Kristine, that were causing her to frown and elbow him.

On my father's other side was Jake Levin's
mother. Jake Levin was this nice guy on the baseball team who I sat next to in
Contemporary Science. He was real quiet, probably because he had a slight lisp,
which nobody cared about but him. His mother was this kooky woman, with hair
down to her butt. In another six months, she would be diagnosed with ovarian
cancer, and neither Paige Woodruff's fund-raising efforts nor the stuff that
prune Cora Lee from the Theosophical Society gave her would make a difference.
Jake ended up moving to Hawaii to be with his father, who was supposedly some
hotshot surfer guy.

But right then Mrs. Levin was still alive and
shooting my father these creepy, flirty looks. Custodian Bill finally got the
film looped in the

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machine properly, and after everyone yelled
"Focus!" at him, a grainy image began flickering against the lighthouse wall. It
was getting cold, and Kale had put his shirt back on; helpfully leaving it
unbuttoned so that we could still peek at his chest, a landscape of tight
rolling dunes that looked like those pictures you see of the Arizona
desert.

"Pink Panther.
I love this," Wendy
Williams said. "Look at those groovy outfits." In the movie, a group of mod
museum-goers were gathered around a dome with a diamond in it. Everything looked
slightly curved from the lighthouse wall, as if we were watching the film
through a peephole. The sound for the movie was small in the huge park, the
voices of little people trapped in tin cans.

"Jordan and I are going," Kale said. This was
news to me, but okay. Maybe if I left, Dad would too. Kale slipped his hand in
my back pocket.

"I want to watch the movie," Wendy
said.

"Find your own way home then," Kale snapped.
Wendy Williams seemed to rub him the wrong way.

"Fine, asshole," she said.

"I need to tell my dad I'm leaving," I
said.

"He'll probably follow us in his car," Kale
said.

A roar of laughter came from the picnic tables.
"Shut up! We can't hear!" someone yelled

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at them. My dad's face glowed red from the
light of the fire. It was way, way past time he went home. He belonged there,
laughing and drinking spiked coffee with the D'Angelos and Williamses and
Woodruffs, as much as I belonged there With Kale. And he, too, felt good being
accepted by them. I knew that. Somewhere inside, I did.

"Miss Texas," Mrs. Williams said.

"You are
kidding,"
Gayle D'Angelo
squealed loudly. "Missouri. I won the talent comp."

"Don't get her started, I'm warning you," Wes
D'Angelo said. Everybody laughed. "You think I'm kidding."

"Pageant girls," Mr. Williams said. "Expect you
to throw roses every time they walk down the hall to put towels in the linen
closet."

"No shit," Wes D'Angelo said.

"Oh, quit," Cathy Williams said. "You don't
know how lucky you are."

"I thought you weren't supposed to admit things
like that anymore," Mrs. Levin said. "Like being a cheerleader. I thought it was
something embarrassing."

No one paid any attention to her. "I can still
fit into my gown," Cathy Williams said.

"Somebody shoot that woman," the lady in the
Mariners jacket said. She looked rough. The kind of face you get when you spend
a lot of time at Smoky Joe's Tavern.

"I
can,"
Cathy Williams said.

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"Sometimes my song just runs through my head at
night," Gayle D'Angelo said. "Like I'm right up on stage."

"Gayle," Wes warned.

I walked up behind my father. "Dad?" I
said.

He ignored me. His eyes were focused on Gayle
D'Angelo. "Sing it," he said.

"Oh, I couldn't," she said. She laughed a
little, stuck her hands in the pockets of her lamb's-wool jacket.

"Dad." I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on. Sing it."

"Gayle," Wes said again.

"It's America,'" she said.

"Dad, I'm going. I'm going with
Kale."

He looked back at me and nodded. "Don't we all
want to hear it?" he said. "Yay come on!" He started to clap. He was making a
fool of himself. Wes D'Angelo looked as if he was struggling not to stand and
wrap his hands around my father's neck.

"Oh sure, come on. We're patriotic," the woman
in the Mariner jacket said. Her hands were folded around her Styrofoam cup like
she was afraid someone might snatch it from her. Her partner nodded and smiled a
glazed smile. He had passed into the land of booze zombies.

"Well," Gayle said. "All right." She stood
up.

"Jesus,"
Wes D'Angelo said.

"Dad," I said.

170

"Just a
minute,"
he said. "The beautiful
and talented Miss Gayle D'Angelo," he announced into his fist. He set it back
down, flat on the picnic table. The only people there who could possibly miss
the fact that she and my father were sleeping together or about to were the ones
too drunk to notice. My father reminded me of Nathan's old cat, Sophie, thinking
she was this great, expert squirrel hunter when all the while she had this noisy
little bell on her collar.

"Miss Martins, I was then," Gayle
said.

And then Gayle D'Angelo began to sing. Oh, God,
she began to sing this horrible, sappy, warbling. She started out low and slow,
with her eyes closed. Built to this peak of emotion that led her to grasp a
handful of her lamb's-wool jacket and raise her face to the sky. My insides
clutched up in embarrassment. So much that my stomach began to hurt. I stared at
my sandals and concentrated. Leather and sandals, cows and leather. Sandals
woven by a woman in a hut in some poor country so that she could feed her
children. I concentrated on that woman weaving.

And then, when the worst seemed over, there was
a second verse. Who knew that song had a second verse? I can still feel the
awful cringe, creeping up along my body when I think of it.
Above thy
frui-ted plain!
That worst kind of humiliation, the kind you feel for
someone else who

171

doesn't have enough sense to feel it
themselves.

She stopped. Thank God, it was finally over. I
looked up from my feet, which I had been staring at so hard. Several of the
movie-watchers had looked over their shoulders to watch, too stunned to be rude.
Wes D'Angelo was gone from the table. With his fist, he was stuffing a pair of
Styrofoam cups into the now over flowing garbage can. Paige Woodruff was drawing
a design on the table with her finger as if she had decided to devote her life
to it. Mrs. Williams's smile looked like it wanted to slink off and hurl itself
into the fire but was being held there against its own will.

"Did she say she won with that?" the broad in
the Mariners jacket said. "Maybe she had a baton or something."

"That was great," my father said.

The bizarre thing was, he seemed to mean it.
His eyes were glossy as he looked at her. Could he have drunk that
much?

"You think?" She beamed.

"God, yes," he said.

"Warms the cock of my heart," Mr. Mariners
jacket slurred.

"Whew, I forget how much that takes out of
you," Gayle D'Angelo said. She fanned herself with her hand.

"Took something outta me too," Mrs. Mariner
Jacket said.

172

"Well," Mrs. Levin said. She rose to leave. Her
Rapunzel hair swung around her shoulders all pissed off-like as she untangled
her legs from the picnic table. She had given up on my father.

"You ought to sing at a baseball game or
something," my father said.

"Over my dead body," the broad in the Mariners
jacket said.

Wes D'Angelo walked back to the group. He
slapped both palms down hard on the table. He was the type to do that kind of
thing--slap his palms, clap his hands together once to make his intentions
known, hit someone on the back too heartily. His eyes were flat. He had lost all
his patience somewhere back at the garbage can. "That's it, Gayle. Time to
go."

My father rose, as if he were the one that was
supposed to obey the command. Gayle tapped her fingernails on the table. "Well,
I may not be ready yet," she said. My father's praise had given her sudden
rights.

"You're making a fool of yourself," Wes
D'Angelo said to her.

"Wait a minute here," my father
said.

The table got quiet.
Please God,
I
prayed,
Let my father sit down and shut up.
Mrs. Levin froze where she
was, looked at the toes of her shoes as if we were relying solely on her
stillness to keep things calm.

"You've had too much to drink, and
you're

173

making a fool of yourself," Wes D'Angelo said
to his wife.

"Hey, now," my father said. "I think you," he
had tapped Wes D'Angelo's chest with one finger. "Ought to apologi--"

Wes D'Angelo yanked away from him. "Get your
hands off me."

"Oh, gosh," Cathy Williams said.

Mrs. Mariners Jacket's eyes were big, like this
was television ice hockey and things were just getting interesting.

"Now, come on, guys," Mr. Williams
said.

But a peacemaker turned out to be unnecessary,
at least then, at that moment. Wes D'Angelo had turned away in anger, strode in
the direction of his car, raising both hands in the air as if to say,
I'm not
looking for a fight.

What I saw next sickened me. Made me realize,
too, that all the rules were beginning to change for my father. I guess inside I
knew this already; I saw what happened next only because I looked for it. My
father sat back down beside Gayle. Under the table he grasped her hand. She let
go. She rubbed her hand up his leg, laid it on the V of his khaki pants and
squeezed. Mrs. Levin saw it too. I saw her eyes, rising from beneath the table.
She turned and left in a hurry, her keys already tight in her fist.

I grabbed Kale by the arm of his jacket. "Let's
go," I said. I didn't care about Ms.