You Could Be Home by Now (24 page)

Die Exfrau
indicated the Korral. She asked if Lily wanted to get her face painted, because she was absolutely the kind of girl who wanted to go around with a cute little cupcake on her cheek. She managed a polite “No, thank you.” Company manners. Like they always used to go on about for elementary school field trips: everything you do on this excursion reflects on Forest Park Day. Everything she did today would reflect on Gran.

And on Grandpa.

She'd wanted to wear black for him, but Gran nixed it. Don't be silly, Lily. It's a hundred degrees out. And it was hot, the day brazen blue and completely breathless. All up and down Main Street, banners advertising she-had-no-idea-what hung limp for want of wind.

Per-vet Thales said, “Forget face paint. Lily's got her eye out for bumper cars.” He winked at her now. Maybe it was some kind of facial tic.

“Benjamin!” Gran play-punched him on the arm, and he rubbed his shoulder at the point of contact.

Die Exfrau
looked pained. “Ben holds grudges,” she said lightly to Lily, and then, to Ben, “You've always held grudges.”

Point to Gran.
Die Exfrau
was way overselling her past with the guy.

Ben raised his hands in mock surrender. Gran, whose job today, for the record, should in no way involve playing post-marital referee, said there hadn't been bumper cars last year, like that was the carnival's noteworthy flaw.

Lily wanted to stamp her Velcroed foot and scream. Instead, she said she was hungry. She put on her best smile and somewhere back in St. Louis her orthodontist lit with pride. They stood in line for frybread. Lily tracked the approach of a green balloon, tethered to the wrist of a pudgy little redhead. There was a blue one over by the Hacienda steps and a pink one back by the Kiddie Korral. Her conscience seemed to have developed a serious case of latex-based OCD. She needed to relax, already. Little kids liked balloons. So what? It didn't follow that any of those balloons were attached to Tyson.

Die Exfrau
informed them that she'd loved sarsaparilla as a child and had always bought a bottle at the state fair.

Lily wasn't sure how, exactly, that was meant to advance the conversation. The line moved slowly. Ben fanned his face and complained about the heat; Gran asked if he was holding up okay. The score was tied two-two now, with a point to Gran for looking out for the guy. Bonus points to
him
for that matter. Post a twitchy meltdown like yesterday's, Lily doubted she'd have the guts to go out in public. She was fully dreading her return to Forest Park Day, the inevitable—and owed—conversation with Jennifer Vogler, and whatever drama bombs Sierra was going to lob. She could learn a lot from Per-vet Thales' spine. Something like a small door opened in her mind at that, a door she hadn't known was there. She still didn't like Ben, but she could put on her big-girl pants and acknowledge the possibility that she might come to if he stuck around enough. He gave a great, hacking, old man cough and she looked away. Just because a door was open didn't mean she had to walk through it.

Die Exfrau
paid for everyone's snacks like she was trying to buy an extra point. At the picnic table, Ben picked the seat beside Gran, making the score three-two.
Die Exfrau
launched into SAT word-worthy sycophant mode, the logic evidently being if-Sadie-poaches-my-person-I'll-poach-hers. No one above sixty should be that interested in any blog, much less one about how to dress at sixteen.

Every time Ben looked their way, Veronica made a colossal deal of asking Lily another question. They worked their way through their frybread, which was now the Official Snack of Awkward Conversation. People stared, and not subtly. She should hold up a scorecard. Gran bragged about Lily's rooftop heroism, and Lily wished she could trigger vomit through sheer force of will.
Die Exfrau
mentioned an internship in the new media Lily should apply for next summer. Benjamin Thales licked grease from his fingers. On stage, the mariachis began to play. There were nearly a dozen balloons in Lily's direct line of sight. She took an aggressive bite of her snack. It wasn't like those balloons were out to get her, cartoon-thought bubbles closing in. What was she, four?

She should just calm down. Focus on Grandpa: the baked Alaska he'd made for family birthdays, the concoction of which inexplicably required the use of a hammer, the knock-knock jokes he'd collected years after she'd outgrown them, the wall of travel books he'd organized spatially by latitude and longitude.

Ben and
Die Exfrau
started an argument over whether the mariachis' instrument was called a
vihuela
or a
vinculo
. Tucked away in the woman's $500-plus bag was a $200-plus phone that could resolve the issue in less than ten seconds. Reason
numero uno
that virtual trumped reality: online you argued about stuff you actually cared about instead of quibbling over something that either was or wasn't.

She said, “My grandfather brought me back a mariachi hat from Mexico. I was six.”

“I'd have said eight,” said Gran. “There was a piñata too.”

Lily remembered the piñata, a tasseled sunburst in orange and green. She'd been too young to express the way it made her sad. Someone had made something beautiful with the express purpose of cracking it open. “Six,” she said. “I'm pretty sure. We smashed it for my seventh birthday.”

Die Exfrau
asked where in Mexico they'd gone. Gran said Cozumel and the women launched into a compare and contrast of every vacation they'd ever taken. Ben stretched. Lily heard the crackle in his spine. It turned out the Thaleses and the Birnams had stayed in the same hotel in London, two years apart. Both women chuckled at the memory of the maitre d's impressive moustache. Ben Thales gathered the grease-spattered napkins and stood. She couldn't tell if he was taller than Grandpa had been or shorter. She'd been a child; of course, her grandpa loomed large and rumbly and comforting and bearlike. Ben crossed to a trash can and threw the crumpled wad of napkins. He missed. Gran laughed; Veronica called, “Air ball!”

Grandpa would have made it.

Or if he missed, he'd have shrugged and thrown it out instead of trying again and again like a doofus.

Ben made it on attempt number four. He bowed. Jerk à la mode. Clearing the table hadn't been the point. Getting their eyes back on him had been.

Die Exfrau
complained she was thirsty, getting their eyes all back on
her
.

Gran said limeades were in order, that they'd been delicious last year. Ben's eyes lowered and looked away at the words
last year
, the words like magnets with reversed polarity.
Die Exfrau
chirped on and on about a new bar in Portland that did a fantastic cocktail with lime and muddled ginger. Either Ben hadn't told her that Grandpa died here last year or she was an utter oblivibitch. The limeades were cloying to the nth degree. They walked along sipping them,
Exfrau
-Ben-Gran, with invisi-Lily as tagalong shadow. They turned from the midway onto a side street lined with more booths. And, wham, there was Mona Rosko, halfway down the block, holding fast to Tyson's hand. No balloon. Of course not. Everyone knew she had no cash for frivolities.

Everyone knew, thanks to Lily.

She slurped hard on her straw and hoped for brain freeze.

Gran frowned, and took a genteel sip from her own cup.

“Sorry,” Lily said, because it was good to say it to someone.

Gran saw where she was looking.

“I'm really sorry,” Lily said, before Gran took it upon herself to say something kind.

Ben and
Die Exfrau
drew up beside an array of jewelry. Ben said, “This is the gal who made that bracelet I got Anjali last year.”

The jewelry gal acknowledged this with a smile. Gran fingered a turquoise cuff. The Roskos were too far away for readable faces. Grandmother and grandson stopped to watch a caricature artist at work. The unstinting light cast them in silhouette. Lily saw sunspots when she turned away.

“You okay?” Gran asked her.

“I'm fine,” said Ben, operating under the assumption that it was all about him. His eyes darted, uneasy, to
Die Exfrau
, then to Sadie, then to her. Textbook guilty look.
Someone
hadn't told his ex that he was moonlighting as Captain Public Freakout. He thumped his chest. His voice went genial-hopped-up-on-Pixy-Stix. “I'm fit as a fiddle.”

As a
vihuela
, Lily almost said, as a
vinculo
. But if Mr. and erstwhile Mrs. Thales started in again, the Roskos were guaranteed to spot them.

Gran held up a necklace, a cameo dangling from an intricate chain. “She looks like you,” she said, indicating the cut profile. She asked
Die Exfrau
, “Isn't this absolutely Lily?” Six booths away, then five, the balloon-less Roskos closed in.

Die Exfrau
said that Lily should try the necklace on. Lily shook her head. Gran raised a mesh lariat with a cascade of cut black stones. “This would look good on Lily, too.”

“Yes! With that neck!”
Die Exfrau
agreed, straining her own up like a crane.

“And those collarbones!” Gran actually applauded.

Ben bent low over a tray of rings, evidently content for the first time ever not to be the subject of their adoring focus. Thanks so much, Per-vet. Really. Couldn't he do her the small favor of twitching out again? Maybe she should scream fire. Fire or terrorist. Anything to stop the Roskos from coming upon her like this, a spoiled child among expensive baubles.

“I've got to go,” she said, dodging the jewelry. “You know, to the ladies'.” She crossed her legs at the ankles and she looked at Gran and then her innards crisscrossed.

Lily was worse than Sierra.

She was a bottom-feeding, silt-dwelling sel-fish. Talk about oblivibitch.

The limeades Gran drank last year. The long line for the Port-a-Johns. The reason she wasn't by her husband's side when he fell.

Gran gave a controlled little nod. She held a hand out for Lily's empty cup. She took it like it was porcelain. “See if the Hacienda's open.” Translation: please not the portables.

Lily couldn't say oh-never-mind without making it an even bigger deal. Shame seared her face. “I'll come right back.” She sprinted. She heard Mona Rosko call her name. She passed the line at the Port-a-John. She cut across the food court, around the stage, and beyond the Kiddie Korral. Her dry breath caught and instead of Gran or Grandpa or even the pair of mismatched Thaleses she thought, like a little trained puppy, of Sierra. If she'd figured out yet that Lily was mad. If she'd strike first or try for the kiss and make up. In friend-mode or foe, Sierra's initial approach would be Gran's landline. The blue tangled desk phone would ring and ring.

B
EN FELT PROPERLY SOLID AGAIN
now that the girl was gone. He probably owed Sadie for the fact that she hadn't run her mouth. Veronica would be flying home tomorrow. They might yet make it without having to discuss yesterday's unfortunate conniption. Though with Mona on her way over it'd be fair to say the chance of
that
was diminishing. If ever a woman owed him no quarter. She planted herself square in front of them. You got the sense with Mona that the long hair was what got the big compliments way back when. It would be hard to let a thing like that go. Beside him, the fine lines around Sadie's mouth looked like wires holding her smile in place. “Hello, Mona,” she said. “Ty.”

Mona made a low hum of acknowledgement. Tyson looked up briefly, then away. “Your girl can run,” said Mona. “Speedy Gonzales.”

Veronica winked at the boy. “
¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!
” Even before Tara gave her something to prove, Ronnie could be a right pain around young folks, gunning for
good with kids
like it was an essential line for her resume. The boy gave her a small, baffled smile.

Mona said, “Let's guess. Lily's avoiding us for some mysterious reason.”

Sadie shrugged. “As far as I know, it was just a call of nature.”

“Sure it was.”

“I'm next in line.” Veronica raised her cup. Ice rattled. The dance floor trill of distant mariachis elevated the sound to festive. “We've been drinking these lemonades.” His ex gave an exaggerated lip smack. Veronica probably thought she was his life's great mystery but she was as readable as Dick and Jane. Given the chance, she would side with any given teenaged girl. Christ. When she got like this, he needed an insulin injection.

“Limeades,” he said. “We've been drinking these
limeades
.”

“Sorry. Limeades.” Veronica shook her cup again.

Sadie's answering shake edged toward manic. “Cheers!”

The boy made monkey faces in the jeweler's mirror. Mona seemed oblivious to the fact he'd let go of her hand. She said, “I have something to say to your granddaughter. I can wait until she returns.”

“I'm not sure you have anything to say to her, actually.” Sadie had real steel in her. It was good to know. She and Veronica drew closer together, allied now, friends almost, imagine that. The movement was subtle. A shifting on the periphery. The way their shadows now touched.

Mona raised a pale brow and he remembered what the world had heard him call her. The apology she was owed corked in his throat. She looked the lot of them over like they were a display of overpriced fruit. “One of you tell her then. In case she wants to
help
me some more. Your girl's been a real . . .” She cast a quick look at Ty, who scratched absently beneath his sling. Stephen broke his arm one summer, and when they'd finally cut the plaster away, the grime line had been a thing to behold. Mona thought better of whatever word had coiled in wait. “Well, little pitchers. Let me be as clear as possible. I was letting off steam yesterday, but that was all. I do not now, nor will I ever, want her to set fire to my home.”