The Summer Kitchen (15 page)

“The small frog did not answer. He only continued to swim round and round in the cream.

“ ‘Oh, this is the end of my life! There is no escape from here! All is lost!’ cried the large frog. He stopped swimming and refused to continue, even when the small frog pleaded with him not to give up.

“Straightaway, he sank to the bottom and died.” MJ made a sad face with a big frown, and Opal caught a breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

“But the small frog swam and swam,” MJ went on. “For a long time, he beat the cream with his feet, even though his legs burned from the effort, and his heart pounded so hard against his chest. Finally, many hours later, the cream became a ball of butter. And do you know what the little frog did?” MJ’s eyebrows went up into the turban, and she waited for me to think it through.

“Uh-uh,” I answered. “Doesn’t seem like it’d be too good to be stuck in a bucket of butter, either.”

Opal nodded like she agreed with me.

MJ’s lips lifted into a smile, and she raised a finger like she always did when she was about to give you the real point. “Ah, but you see, he was a very smart and strong little frog. He climbed right onto that ball of butter and jumped out of the pot, and he did not stop again until he was safely home.”

MJ leaned across the counter, touched the end of Opal’s nose, and winked at me, her eyes twinkling. “So, you see, it is not always important to be the largest frog. Sometimes it is the small but determined one who churns the butter and hops out of the pot.”

“That’s a good story,” I said, and Opal nodded. “I guess Opal and me better go now.” Even though I liked her stories, I was always careful not to hang around at the counter talking to MJ too long. She was the kind of person who got in people’s business, I could tell. Rusty and me didn’t need anybody getting into our business, no matter how nice she was.

“Thanks,” I said, and we headed out the door. Opal held her book and her flower against her chest so tight you couldn’t of got a toothpick between her and her new stuff. My feet were tired, so I decided to skip the Just-a-Buck store and head home. It wasn’t till we were halfway there that I thought about Opal having on one sandal and one tennis shoe. MJ might of wondered why the adults in our house would let her go out like that. I’d have to look again later and see if there were more shoes anywhere in Kiki’s stuff.

We took our time walking back past the white church. The flowers were all done, and the big guy was gone, and so was the wheelchair lady. The pastor dude waved at us, and I waved back. After that, we stopped at the storm ditch to look at some tadpoles. They were living in a little puddle of water where the dirt and the cement came together. I caught a couple and poured them into Opal’s hands and let her see how some of them had legs and some didn’t yet. She stayed with the water dripping on her dress for a long time, just watching the little pool between her fingers. I guess no one had ever showed her a tadpole before.

Rusty’s truck was out front when we got home. I grabbed Opal up and hurried the last little ways, because I was afraid something was wrong. It was two hours past lunchtime.

When I walked in, Rusty was pacing by the bathroom door. Kiki must of been inside.

“What are you
doing
here?” If he kept sneaking off from work, he was gonna get himself fired.

“Geez, where’ve you been?” He lifted his hands and let them smack to his sides. “Kiki was worried about her kid.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. I had to go to the bookstore, so I took her with me. It’s not like her mama’s gonna watch her.”

Rusty checked the bathroom door and then the wall clock, then he gave me a tired look. “Give Kiki a break, okay? She’s in pretty rough shape. The pain pills knock her out.”

Yeah, I’ve heard,
I thought, but I didn’t want to get into another argument about Kiki, because it wouldn’t do any good, and besides, Opal was right there. She sat down in her favorite corner of the sofa and opened her book.

“Why are you here?” I asked Rusty again. “It’s way past lunch break.”

He yanked off his cap, rubbed his forehead, and then put his cap back on. “Kiki needed a ride to work again.” Turning toward the door, he hollered, “Come on, Kiki. We’ve gotta go!”

“You came all the way home for
that
?” I asked. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“She couldn’t get a ride, all right?” He sneered at me like Mr. Snothead big brother. I hated it when he did that.

“Tell her to walk.” I sounded like a snothead, too, but I didn’t care. Rusty needed to catch a clue about Kiki.

“She can’t walk that far. She can barely make it through her shift at work.” He checked the bathroom door again. “Come on, Kiki! I’ve gotta get back.”

“Is she ever gonna give us any money? We don’t have enough to feed her and her kid, too.” On the sofa, Opal looked up from her book, and I was sorry I said it.

“She just needs a few more days, maybe a week, before she’s paid off what she owes her manager.” Rusty paced to the bathroom door and back.

“A
week
?” I hollered, and in the corner of my eye I saw Opal pop her thumb into her mouth and try to disappear between the sofa cushions.

“It’ll be all right, Sal.” Rusty dug in his pocket for his keys as the bathroom door unlocked. “See ya later on, okay? We’ll go to Wal-Mart.”

Kiki dragged herself from the bathroom, pushing off the door frame and looking out-of-it. She swayed on her feet as she stood by the sofa, leaned down face-to-face with Opal, and slurred out the words, “You okay, ba-by? Mama was wor . . . wor-ried.”

Opal bobbed her head slowly up and down.

Kiki kissed her on the forehead and left a big crooked smudge of red lipstick, then swayed upright again and blinked at me with the shiner eye half open. “Take care my ba-by,” she said, as she pulled a pair of massive, red-rimmed sunglasses off her head and put them on to hide the shiner. Staggering back and forth on her high heels, she crossed the room. “Be good, shhhh-sugar.”

I wasn’t sure which one of us was
Sugar,
but when Rusty pulled the door shut behind the two of them, I made up my mind right then and there, if Rusty wasn’t gonna do something, I’d have to. Kiki needed to find someone else to leech off of before we all starved to death, or Rusty got caught sneaking away from the construction site and lost his job.

Kiki had to go.

When I turned around, Opal was all wrapped up in a ball with her arms strung around her legs. Her big lemur eyes were peeking out at me from behind her little bony knees, and then another question went through my mind.

If I get rid of Kiki, what do I do about Opal?

Chapter 9

SandraKaye

My cell started ringing just as the neighborhood filled with the sounds of kids coming home from school. Up to my elbows in paint, I didn’t bother to answer. When the phone rang a second time, I stripped off my gloves and grabbed it from my purse.

Jake’s phone,
the ID said, and my heart jumped. I’d answered by saying, “Jake . . . Jake, is that you?” before I realized it couldn’t be. When Jake had disappeared the night after Poppy’s memorial service, he’d taken almost nothing with him. As far as we could tell after searching his room, everything he’d chosen was tucked into the small backpack he used for his books at college. The cell phone, his high school class ring, the treasured Randall pocketknife Poppy had given him, and his house keys had all been placed on the desk in his room, as if he were turning them in.

His debit card had been used just three times—once to pay for an airport shuttle, once to buy a plane ticket to Guatemala, and once to withdraw the remaining eight hundred dollars of the money he’d earned working at a kids’ camp over the summer. The two thousand Rob had just deposited for college expenses was left behind, as was the debit card, which we found in his car at the airport, locked inside with the keys.

If a person wanted to disappear,
the young police lieutenant said after he checked the car for signs of foul play,
this is how they’d do it.

“Mom, it’s Chris.” Christopher’s voice drove home the sharp thought that I might never hear Jake on the phone again. The sting of loss was followed by the rapid awakening of parental guilt. Christopher had dropped his phone in the swimming pool last week while he was feeding Bobo. Rob had told him to go ahead and use Jake’s.

Rob and I had argued about it later. I’d told him he was acting as if Jake had ceased to exist.

It’s just a phone, Sandra,
he’d said.
We can’t keep putting everything under glass, waiting for Jake to come back.

I don’t want him to get back and think we just . . . gave away his things!
Tears overcame me, and I ran away, feeling split down the middle like a piece of worn fabric. Letting Christopher use the phone wasn’t giving it away—I knew that in some logical part of myself. But even after six months with no word from Jake, keeping everything ready for his return seemed important. It was the only way to retain some control, to avoid the fact that we didn’t know if our son was alive or dead, or if he ever intended to return, or who he’d be if he did. He wouldn’t be our Jake, who smiled and laughed at everything, who knew the world was basically good, and believed that his Guatemalan mother had delivered him to an orphanage because she loved him and couldn’t take care of him. He would be a young man who’d learned some of life’s harsh realities. What would he do if he found out that his mother had tried to sell him in the marketplace before abandoning him there?

“Hi, Chris. What’s up?” The words were overly cheerful—like a picture painted with artificially bright colors. I didn’t want Christopher to think I was sorry it was him instead of Jake.

“Mom, where are you? Are you home?” The statement drifted into space, ending in an eerie pause that caused the hair to prickle on the back of my neck.

“Chris, what’s wrong?”
There’s been some news about Jake. Something bad.
The thought raced across my mind, leaving a white-hot trail. Surely if there was news, Rob would be calling instead of Christopher.

“Where are you?” Chris asked again. A car alarm was blaring in the background, almost drowning out the call.

“Christopher. What’s wrong?”

“Can you just come . . .” A sob choked the end of his sentence. The sound grabbed my lungs and squeezed out a painful breath. This wasn’t the voice of Christopher, the suddenly mature, fiercely independent young man who didn’t need anyone’s help anymore. This was my little boy, who ran home in tears when his friends talked him into vaulting off the edge of the culvert on his skateboard and he broke his arm.

“Christopher, where are you? What’s going on?”

“Near the steak place. In the parking lot. I had a wreck.”

“Oh, Christopher.” The reproach was a knee-jerk reflex. Chris had been involved in fender benders twice already in less than eight months of driving. “Are you all right? Is everyone all right?”

“Yes.” Christopher’s voice trembled, growing faint, so that the car alarm seemed louder and louder. “My head’s bleeding. It’s just a little cut. It wasn’t my fault, Mom. I don’t think it was my fault, but the guy says I cut him off, but I didn’t, I don’t think—”

I interrupted Christopher’s frantic tide of words. “Stay where you are. Just don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right there.” My mind snapped to reality. I wouldn’t be
right there.
I couldn’t be. I was all the way across town.

I tossed the paintbrush into the water bucket. What was I doing here? Why wasn’t I in Plano where I needed to be? “Chris, are you by yourself? Was anyone in the car with you?”

“No. It’s just me. It’s just me and the guys in the other car. They say it was my fault, Mom, but it wasn’t. They called the police. . . .” Chris’s voice turned weepy and uncertain again, almost panicked.

Digging my keys out of my purse, I headed for the door. I imagined an officer taking statements, an adult driver making accusations on one side and my confused teenager babbling almost incoherently on the other.

“Christopher, listen to me,” I ordered, and Chris stopped sniffling and muttering about the accident. “Have you called Dad?”

“The desk said he’s in surgery.”

“All right,” I said as I struggled to open the burglar bars on Poppy’s front door. “All right, listen. I’m all the way across town. It’ll be a while before I can get there. I want you to calm down and think about the accident. Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I can’t, Mom. I can’t. The guys are mad. They’re looking at their car, and yelling and stuff. I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know if my car’ll drive . . . I don’t . . . I’m not . . . the tire’s rammed in . . .”

“Christopher!” I hollered, slamming the burglar bars shut behind me. Two little girls on a porch across the street watched as I rushed to the yard gate to retrieve Bobo. “Is the steak place open? Christopher, is the restaurant open?”

“No. It’s closed. It’s still closed. Mom, they’re coming over here. They’re—”

“Christopher, I want you to get in the car, lock the doors, and wait until the police come. Get in and lock the doors. Right now. Do you hear me?”

“All right. Okay,” he sobbed. “Dad’s gonna kill me. Oh, Dad’s gonna kill me. The car’s messed up. It’s really messed up.”

The incessant blaring of the alarm quieted as Chris closed his car door. “I’m in my car.”

“Good. Just take a minute to catch your breath.
Don’t
try to start the car.” After getting Bobo loaded, I climbed in, backed out of the driveway, and rocketed up Poppy’s street. My fingers trembled on the steering wheel as I waited to turn off Red Bird into traffic, and it seemed ludicrous that I was the one telling Chris to get his wits about him.
Calm down,
I told myself.
Calm down and watch what you’re doing.
“Dad’s not going to kill you, Chris. The main thing is that you’re all right. We’ll figure this out. Now listen. You stay where you are. Don’t get out of your car. I’ll call Holly and get her or Richard to come down there, okay?”