Thinking of it reminded me of something Dad used to say to his friends more times than I could count. He’d brag about how he never argued with Mom at home because he got enough of that at work. Everyone would laugh. I’d chuff out with pride because it seemed like proof that my parents had the best marriage in town.
But there had been arguments, I now realized. Lots of them. One in particular came to mind.
Junie was a newborn, pink-faced and squally. I had her on the floor and was staring at her, as I often did. Mom and Dad were talking, that’s what I’d thought, their voices background noise until I heard Mom say she was invisible. That demanded my three-year-old attention. Dad said he could see her just fine, that maybe he saw her too much, and that she’d changed since the baby came. I’d traced Junie’s eyebrows with the tip of my finger.
Changed? Mom still had a belly. When I’d asked her if there was another baby coming, she’d cried. Claude’s and Brenda’s moms started coming over regularly after that, bustling around the house, cleaning and cooking, their faces pinched. Mom was sleeping more, sometimes not getting out of bed until lunchtime. Her face always looked puffy. It wasn’t long before Mom saw Dr. Corinth and came home with her first bottle of pills, but whatever they were supposed to fix didn’t take because she burned off my ear soon after.
But not before she attended that one last party at the Pitts’， the one where Dad told Mrs. Hansen that it was the failed Pan Motor Car factory and the prison that put Saint Cloud on the map, and then he’d taken her below, to the tunnels.
I didn’t know if it was the first or the last time Dad had cheated on Mom or somewhere in between, but I had a hard time breathing, thinking about it, like the air had suddenly grown too thick. Dad had known Mom was hurting, and he’d still messed around with her very best friend.
Mrs. Hansen had been a fixture in my childhood up until the accident, and then she never came over after. My dad did that. Mrs. Hansen, too, but I wasn’t mad at her like I was him.
My dad was a cheater.
I kept sipping at the air, trying to draw a full breath as I biked beneath the pulled-cotton clouds, sweat forming at my hairline. It would be busy at Zayre. The air-conditioning plus it being a Saturday guaranteed it.
“Long time no see!” Ricky crowed when I biked up to the back of the store.
He stood in the shadow of the metal trash bin, same place he always smoked. Other than a pimple coming in like a horn on his forehead, he didn’t look any different than he had before my dad had told me about Ed. He didn’t look like he’d killed anyone, at least.
I chained up my bike.
“We not talking?” he asked, which was funny, because he never used to want to talk to me, except to ask what Maureen was up to, if she was single, but ever since she’d gone missing, he couldn’t seem to get enough of gabbing with me.
“I haven’t got much to say,” I said.
He snickered. “That’s what I like about you, Head. You don’t waste words.”
He ground his cigarette butt into the side of the building, sparks flying, and held the door open for me. “I’m having a party tomorrow. Same quarry as the last one. Quarry Eleven. Want to come?”
I walked past him and into the kitchen. The cool air washed over me, along with the leftover smells of yesterday’s food. Ed and probably even Ricky, you can’t ever change men like them. Women always try, but men like that are born bad. “I’m busy.”
“It’s a party to honor Maureen.”
My hand floated in front of the row of time cards, mine, Claude’s, and Ricky’s in front. We worked the most shifts, so we got top billing. “Why?” I asked.
What I meant was, why would you do that?
He seemed to understand my intent. “She was a good kid, man. I’ve known her my whole life.”
I punched in, turned to him. “Were you dating her?”
He shrugged. “We messed around a few times. No bigs.”
“How about Brenda? You dating her?”
He held up his hands. “Whoa, Columbo, back your truck out of my garage. I like Brenda, sure. She’s a fox. We ain’t dating, though.”
“Ed says you are.”
Ricky’s jaw clenched. “When’d you talk to Ed?”
“Yesterday.”
“Shows you what he knows. Why don’t you ask her yourself next time you see her?”
I sure as heck would, but I wasn’t going to tell Ricky that. I busied myself preparing the front for opening, counting the seconds until Claude showed up. When I heard the back door open, I was so excited I about bowled him over.