Waiting for Normal (7 page)
Silence. I looked at Elliot. He was turning red right up the neck.
Soula pointed a finger at him. “Gotcha!” she wailed. She burst out laughing, head back, pink mouth wide open.
“Oh, you are
terrible
!” Elliot said, swatting at her. She slapped back, still giggling.
“Hey, Little Cookie? You didn’t let him shave your head too, did you?”
“Oh, Soula!” I gulped. Then I laughed.
“Oh, now that’s
really
bad.” Elliot shook his head and raised one hand in the air to make her stop.
Soula turned to me and sighed. “Ha-ha! I got him good, didn’t I?” I met her hands in a double high five and we laced our fingers together.
“You got me too,” I said, and we held on to each other for a moment longer.
I held Soula’s big dress up around my knees and started home to tell Mommers where I’d be that night. As I crossed the street, I could see Mr. and Mrs. Rose inside the Heads and Roses Laundry Stop. The mannequin heads in the front window were all decked out in black and orange with witches’ hats and spidery wigs and the Roses were placing jack-o’-lanterns between them. When they saw me they started laughing and that made me laugh. I must have been quite a sight. I waved back with big sweeps of my arm.
I was dying to have Mommers see my costume, but when I opened the trailer door I could tell something was wrong.
One cigarette burned in the ashtray by the computer. Mommers held a second one in her lips. She was clawing through the boxes of new office supplies. She brought out two packages of Bic pens, a handful of White-Outs and a box of binder clips, and dumped them on the table.
“Hi,” I said.
She slammed two plastic file boxes into each other and swore. She pushed her fingers into her hair, let a breath out and finally looked at me and her cigarette bobbed up and down.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked.
“Oh God. Look at you.” She rolled her eyes at me.
I had forgotten about my made up face. “Oh yeah.” I grinned. “I’m gonna hand out candy at the minimart tonight.”
Mommers shook her head. “I told you you’re too old for that stuff.”
“I’m not trick-or-treating. Besides, even Elliot dresses up.”
“You just can’t do it the way
I
say, can you, Addison?” She sighed.
“I don’t want to miss out on Halloween,” I said.
“Well, I’m going out,” Mommers said.
“To work?”
“Yes. I’m meeting Pete.”
“Mommers, when is all this stuff going to the office?” I asked.
“This
is
the office. The office is at
my
house.”
“House?” I felt a twinge of sickness inside of me. Mommers was telling lies to Pete.
“When everything gets up and running, we
will
have a house, and then I’ll tell Pete about how little we actually started with. And I’ll tell him about you and—”
“He doesn’t know you have a kid?
Three
kids.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she insisted.
I looked at all the office supplies. “When are you going to set it all up? When do you start using the stuff?”
Mommers looked at the boxes all around her. She took a fast hard drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke back out. “You think I bought too much, don’t you? You know what, Addie? You have to spend money to make money. It’s in every business text and journal across the country. Why …why are you asking me this anyway?” She shook her hair back.
“I just wondered,” I said.
Mommers went into her bedroom and when she came out she flung a small overnight bag onto the table. She disappeared again, into the bathroom this time, and came out with fresh makeup, her hair sprayed up, and new earrings on.
“Pete and I are taking a short business trip,” she said. “A little overnighter. It won’t be a big deal and you can take care of yourself.”
“A trip? But, Mommers . . .”
“Oh, Addie, don’t! Please! Just don’t! I can’t take it. I’m trying to put together a life here!” She shook her head and put her hands up like she was trying to stop something in the air.
I watched her just a second. I knew that she needed me to say it was okay, but I couldn’t do that any more than I could keep her from going. Mommers was like that. If she decided something needed buying, she bought it. If she decided to go out all night, she went.
“Is there bread?” I asked.
Mommers huffed and opened her purse. She took out a ten dollar bill and slapped it on the counter. “There,” she said. She stopped to breathe. “Buy bread from your friends.” She motioned toward the minimart.
I followed her out and watched her marching up the street toward the bus station on her business heels.
I fed Piccolo a little carrot tip—I ate the rest. I slogged back over to the minimart—not because I wanted to anymore, just because there was nothing else to do. It turned out the place was quiet. I guess everyone got their treats and gasoline before the big night so they wouldn’t need to make a stop right in the middle of it. We saw half a dozen customers and I gave candy bars to five of them. The sixth one was a diabetic; he told me.
Soula and Elliot tried to entertain me by putting candy corns and pumpkin shaped marshmallows into the microwave and turning it on high. That was kind of funny the first time and I liked listening to Soula laugh so hard. But it got messy and soon I felt bored with the game. They tuned the store TV in to one of those Fright Night shows. Soula sat in her lawn chair and Elliot hopped up on the checkout counter to watch. I pulled up a milk crate but I didn’t last long.
Around eight thirty, I told them I was going to wander home. It’s hard to
wander
when you only live fifty feet away. I stopped out by the island where the customers pump their gas and wrapped my hand around the pole that held up the rain roof there. I let my weight take me around and around in low swinging dips, my hand squeaking along the column. Each time the Heads and Roses Laundry Stop went by I caught the glowing jack-o’-lanterns in my sight line. I should do our laundry, I thought. I kept going around and around until I could feel heat and a blister coming up in my palm.
I crossed the street, walked back to the rope swing Dwight had put up and turned myself as much upside down on it as I could. Soula’s scarves hung down from my waist and brushed the bottom of my chin. As the swing moved back and forth it whined and I could see first the night sky, then the darkness of the Over Underpass.
When my head got stuffy from being upside down, I sat plain on the swing and toed the busted pavement until I loosened a chunk. I kicked it away. My nose cleared. A fumy sort of stink was in the air. It might have been exhaust. It might have been something I’d put my hand in back at the pump.
I sniffed. So this is the smell and the feel of Halloween this year, I told myself. No sweets. No trick-or-treating. No candy bars to sort and trade. No fun. No Dwight, no Brynna, no Katie. I looked at the dark trailer. No Mommers.
H
alloween was on a Friday night. By Saturday afternoon I had begun to watch for Mommers—
really
watch. The suitcase she’d taken was small.
“She has to come back,” I told Piccolo. My hamster looked up from her belly washing, twitched her whiskers at me and went back to her work. I pressed my nose against the front window and looked up Nott Street thinking I’d see Mommers coming down the hill from the bus stop. The phone rang.
Mommers?
I stumbled over the file boxes to answer it. “Hello?”
“Addie? That you?”
“Dwight! Yes! Hi!” I tucked the phone closer to my ear.
“Did you have a good Halloween?”
“Great,” I lied. “Did you?”
“Pretty good. Missed you though. We got some pictures, honey. The Littles want you to see their costumes.”
“Tell them I can’t wait,” I said.
“Tell ’em yourself.” Dwight was smiling when he said that. I knew without even seeing him.
“Oddie, Oddie!” Katie squealed. “I was a hampister for Holloween! Honnah made me ears. She putted them on a headbond.”
Then I heard Brynna laugh. I was surprised. She seemed to be on her own receiver. “Head
band
!” she said. “She put the ears on a head
band
!”
“Who’s Honnah?” I asked.
“She means
Hannah
.” Brynna giggled.
“Honnah lives all to home at the big, big house.”
“What?”
“She means at the mansion,” Brynna said.
When they gave me back to Dwight, I said, “Did you get another phone?”
“Well sort of. Listen, we moved. Still in Lake George. Better and cheaper. I got a new number for ya. Take this down, okay?” I wrote, then he asked me to repeat it back, which I did.
“Perfect,” he said.
“Dwight?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s
Honnah
, or
Hannah
?”
“Ahh, Hannah. Well …I want you to meet her,” he said, and right away I knew Dwight felt something special for her. “In fact, I’m trying to set something up. I can’t get down there until Thanksgiving, Addie.”
“Thanksgiving? That’s
three
weeks away,” I groaned, and then felt bad.
“I know, I know. But let me see what I can do here.” Then he asked, “Is your mom home?”
“Uh …not right now. She’ll be back soon though.”
He paused. “Okay. Well, this is what I’m shooting for. You can give her the message. I’m coming to Grandio’s for Thanksgiving. That’s a Thursday.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. And then, I’d like to bring you back here with me after that.”
“All right!”
“Think you can spend the night? Maybe Friday and Saturday too? I could put you on the bus Sunday morning if you’re cool with that.”
I thought I was going to pee my pants. “Yes!” I squealed into the phone. “I can take the bus alone. I can come!” I said.
“We gotta check everything with Denise, Addie.”
“I know.”
“Okay, kiddo. How is your mom anyway?”
“Great! She’s real busy. She has an office,” I said. I looked at the empty plastic file boxes near my feet and shut my eyes for a second.
“That’s good to hear,” Dwight said.
“Yep. She’s doing great,” I repeated.
“I’ll check back with you about Thanksgiving, then. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
We said good-bye.
I grabbed a paper shopping bag, boxed it open and packed for the trip. I didn’t care that it was still three weeks away. I wanted to be ready.
Saturday turned into Sunday and Mommers still didn’t show. But I was okay. I still had bread in the trailer, and change from the ten if I needed anything else. And
now
I had something to look forward to.
O
n Monday morning I ate my toast. I stepped out of the trailer still pulling on my backpack and bumping myself with my flute case as I went.
Beep! Beep!
A car horn scared me back a few steps. I looked and there was Mommers in the driver’s seat. She pulled onto the tar patch out front and stopped hard.
“Surprise!” she screamed from the open window.
I grabbed my heart with one hand and steadied myself.
“Get in! Get in! I’ll drive you to school!”
The car just happened to be my favorite shade of blue.
“Addie! Come on!” Mommers got out. She ran around the car, hugged me and sang out, “‘Baby, you can drive my car …’” from some old song I barely recognized. She swung me left, then right, the weight of my pack nearly dumping me over.
“Watch out for the flute,” I said. I held the instrument case up and away from her. She yanked the car door open and pushed me inside.
“This looks like a kidnapping, ya know.”
Mommers went into a huge laughing fit over that. She slammed my door shut and shimmied along the bumper to the driver’s side. She landed hard on the seat, then lay on the horn a few times for fun. “Don’t ya love it? Hot, hot, hot!” I rolled my window up as fast as I could. She let out a few choice swears and hit the horn again.
I caught sight of Soula at that moment. She was standing out in front of the minimart—probably wondering what all the commotion was about.
Mommers giggled and waved at Soula. “Oooh! Look who’s watching us! Woo-hoo! Bye-bye,
big
girl!”
I faked backpack problems so I wouldn’t have to look at Soula. I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard what Mommers had said. Mommers beeped the horn again and I frowned at her. She pouted back but not for real. She stepped on the gas and we were off with a screech.
The car smelled great, like new rugs and plastic. Of course, it wasn’t really new but I thought almost any car smelled great. I couldn’t even remember my last car ride—probably with Grandio months ago. The upholstery felt velvety good under my palm now, and the ride was easy over the potholes on Nott Street. We zipped past Hose Company No. 6.
“Are you gonna ask me?” Mommers finally said. She wiggled in her seat.
“Ask what? Where you’ve been?” I raised an eyebrow.
“About the car,” she rattled back at me.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Well gee, thanks for the support, Addison,” Mommers said.
