As Cool As I Am: A Novel

CHAPTER ONE

Holding his truck door open was my job, dangling there waiting for him and Mom to get it over with. In winter, it was always dark, the reflection of the headlights all we had, the last-gasp reach of the porch bulb, exhaust fog thick and wreathy around us. It was summer now, the air heavy and green-smelling, the sun almost up over the Highwoods, the sky white with it, but he was still leaving.

When they finally came slinking out of the house, I was still hanging off the end of his door like some kind of ornament. Even though Mom was all laughy and leaning on him, her legs these lethal flashes through the slit of her midnight skirt, Dad was looking at me, his usual what-in-the-world-will-happen-to-us-next grin gone AWOL. He kind of barely smiled, sad almost, and I knew Mom had ratted me out.

He peeled himself away from her, and I caught the narrowing of her eyes, her turn toward the mountains, her sudden interest in the day’s progress.

Hey, Luce, Dad said, bending down eye to eye.

I kept ahold of his truck door and looked out toward the mountains, same as Mom.

He brushed his thumb and finger down the sides of my face, stopping at my chin, gently turning my head. Why the sourpuss?

I rolled my eyes.

Letting go of my chin, he gave the top of my buzz cut a rub, the fresh-chopped hair stiff and bristly against his hand. Mame here says you want me to stay.

I fired a razor-edged glance her way.

Dad waggled my head, making me look at him again. This is what I do, Luce.

Leave?

He nodded. Sometimes. I mean, I got to put the bacon in the bank, don’t I? But every time I leave, what does that mean? He waited, but I wouldn’t say anything. It means I come back, doesn’t it? It means we get to have these great big partyland reunions.

Our it-just-can’t-be-beat-to-all-be-together gala events. We could do that every day if you stayed, I said.

Dad stood up, rummaging in his pocket, pulling out a handful of change. He thumbed through the pennies in his palm, pushing aside a bunch of dull ones until he found a brand-new one, shiny as, well, a new penny. See this here? he said, flipping the penny into the air with a flick of his thumbnail. This is us, always new, always fresh, always fun. He caught the penny and held it out to me. These others, he went on, riffling through the motley crowd of copper veterans, never go anywhere, just stick around together all the time. He held them close to my ear. Can you hear them? Yawning? Snoring? They haven’t thought of a new thing to say to each other in years.

I took the shiny penny from him.

You keep that, he said. Lock it up in your private drawer. See what happens.

Nobody’s locking you up, I muttered.

Ho ho, he laughed, rustling his hand over my head again. Sharp as a bowling bowl, Mame, this kid of ours.

I couldn’t help a smile. You go to Canada and all I get is this lousy penny?

He reached for his wallet and shook it upside down. Two singles fell free, floating to the ground. I picked them up. Leaving for months, driving hundreds of miles, thousands, to a place nobody would ever study in any geography class, and he had two dollars.

You’ve raised a holdup artist, Mame, he said. The two of you should take up stagecoaches, banks. As I stood studying the worn-out bills, Dad lunged at me, sweeping me up under his arm, holding me to him desperate-tight. Don’t shoot! he yelled, or the kid gets it!

Chuck, Mom said. Just the way she said his name, I could hear how I was too old to be swung around this way anymore. She’s as tall as I am, for crying out loud. All the figure of a snake, but still.

Dad edged around to the passenger side of the truck, swinging the door open behind his back, turning to throw me in. Make his getaway.

I tightened my body into a torpedo, arms clamped to my sides, legs fused into a tail, not the least thing sticking out that might stop me outside that door. I had never in my whole life been as excited as at that one second, when I thought he might take me with him.

But at the last possible instant, Dad swung me up and away. It’s a trap! he yelled. She’s wired! You thought you had me, didn’t you? He charged at Mom and, without a word of warning, threw me at her, yelling, You’ll have to get up earlier than that to eat this worm!

Mom, though she’s not what anyone would on her worst day call big, didn’t have any choice but to catch me. She staggered back, gasping, Chuck!

He was already there, catching us, wrapping us up in his arms, keeping anybody from hitting the ground. He rocked us back and forth, like when we slow-danced in the living room. He was breathing hard, and I felt that warm, wet air tickling against the top of my skull as he said, What you got to remember, Luce, is the coming home. That’s all that matters. This leaving is nothing. The time away is nothing. You just remember the coming home.

He sounded like a hypnotist. A hopeful magician.

I squirmed, pancaked between the two of them. He didn’t know all he thought he knew. He got to go, see everything out there, stuff we could only dream of. The whole time he was out there in the geography, we sat here, same as always. Waiting.

I got to hit the dusty trail, he said, easing up on us, then squeezing in one last-second bear hug. Hit it before it hits back. Then he let us go. He chucked me under the chin. Remember that, Luce, he said. Always throw the first punch.

He grabbed the sides of Mom’s face the way Pepe Le Pew goes after that cat, and he puckered up for a smooch. They did it that way for a second, like cartoons, but then softened up and glued together and got all squirming and mashy. Right in the street. Mom and Dad were the only parents in the world who kissed like that. It was gross but fun to watch.

I slipped up alongside Dad and shoved the two dollars into his back pocket. Still all vacuum-cleanered to Mom, he rubbed the top of my head. Then he was away from both of us, bounding into his truck. He fired the engine, revving it a couple of times. He stuck his arm out the window, but not his head, not looking back. Starting away, he yelled, After a while, alligator!

I chased him down the middle of the street, him watching in the mirror, going just fast enough that I stayed a foot or two behind the bumper no matter how hard I ran. Later, crocodile!

Adios, amoebas! he called.

See you, see you, wouldn’t want to be you!

He elbowed up his arm in a crisp ninety-degree, signaling right as he swung left at the corner, heading for the one-way. The two old dollar bills fluttered out into the street, and he accelerated, honking and waving and disappearing, leaving me gasping. Leaving me behind.

I stood alone in the middle of the street, hands on my knees, feeling each breath rasping in and out of my lungs until I heard Mom calling from in front of our house. Lucy, get out of the street! You’re stopping traffic.

There was a car idling in front of me, Dr. Ivers up ungodly early for some reason. I reached down for Dad’s money, then stepped aside. Dr. Ivers smiled and waved, driving away, too.

I turned and walked back to Mom. You’re the traffic stopper in this family, I muttered when I got close enough I didn’t have to shout. I couldn’t believe she’d told him what I’d said. A violation of our number one unspoken rule.

She put her arm around my shoulders. Would you look at the two of us? All dressed up and no place to go.

I was wearing a gray logoless sweatshirt, the sleeves cut off. Jeans. Running shoes.

She gave me a friendly shake. Let’s you and me go out and do up the town. Put on the Ritz. She started down the cracked driveway to our narrow, ancient garage, bending low and grunting as she reached to throw up the door. We skinnied around each side of our car, a sun- dulled blue Corvair Dad had found for us-Spell it! It’s practically Corvette!

Mom shoehorned herself in, and by the time I did the same on my side, she already had her visor down, checking herself in the mirror she had tacked up there with clothespins. She smacked her lips, puckering in between, then gave up, reaching into her purse for her lipstick. As she worked it expertly around, I copied her contortions with my own lips. No doubt about it, she said, that man kisses like a plunger.

Where are we going, Mom? I asked. Put on the Ritz? We lived in Great Falls, Montana, what Mom called the last stronghold of the 1950s. It wasn’t quite six in the morning.

Tracy’s, maybe, Mom said. They’re twenty-four/seven.

It was a tiny diner with a metal-plated jukebox on each table. The waitresses wore paper hats and smoked cigarettes they left curling smoke on the counter before bringing your food to the table.

Maybe we should change into something nicer, I said.

Mom grinned. Swines before pearls, she said, and backed out of the dark garage, careful not to break off the side mirror again. Order whatever you want, she called out, waving her arms. Anything at all. Then, in a side whisper, she said, You got his money, didn’t you?

Every last red dime, I said, both of us already filling in for Dad, saying whatever we thought he might. Gutted him like a wish.

CHAPTER TWO

At Tracy’s, Mom swung the door open for me, swishing me in with a dramatic wave of her arm. I knew without turning to look that she was doing her nose-curling routine, waving at the smoke in the air until she was sure both patrons and every waitress had seen her. I moved quick to a booth, feeling like a fresh-sheared lamb.

On Dad’s first morning home last week, me sitting on his lap telling him everything that had happened since he left, the both of us waiting for Mom, he started petting my hair, messing with the few inches I’d managed to grow since the last time he was home. Same as always, I talked faster, trying to hold him off, but when I had to take a gasp or suffocate, he said, Got something of a sheepdog look going here, don’t you, Luce? A little long in the tooth?

You just got here, Dad!

Mom walked in, and I could feel him wink at her as he pulled my hair up, started snipping at it with the scissors of his fingers. Where’s the motorboat, Mame?

The motorboat was what he called the electric clipper, with its prow of teeth that kept the buzz to an even, overall quarter inch long. Like, if he could trim close enough, he might somehow be able to nip the leg off that second X chromosome of mine, shave it down to a Y. Boys R Us. Spent my entire childhood looking just like his one picture of himself as a kid; an indistinguishable face in an army of shaved-head kids, some team or something, a refugee gang, he never said what.

He called the haircut going water-skiing, hamming it up with jumps over my ears, carving turns around the spine bump, roaring outboard noises the whole time. Sometimes I couldn’t help giggling, though it was my head, my hair.

So, at Tracy’s I sat and scrunched down low into the booth, eyes down, feeling like my own refugee—someone to be viewed through barbed wire—and started twisting the jukebox knob, flipping through the selections, the metal pages clanking. Pretty soon Mom would get after me for whining about Dad leaving, and I thought finding something to play might get her humming, might put it off.

When Mom slid in across from me, she palmed a handful of coins across the table. Play whatever you want, honey, as long as it’s got nothing to do with lonesome highways or saying good-bye—any of that heartsick moaning and groaning.

After reading the name of every ancient song, I had to admit, I don’t know if there’s much else in here, Mom. Bunch of sad love songs.

Sad love. Mom sighed. Sounds like something your father would say. She flipped through the pages herself. They haven’t changed these since before I was a kid. The Beatles are going to blow them away in this town. Before the waitress reached us, Mom said, Don’t let on that half of them are already dead.

Dead? Who?

The Beatles. Turning to the waitress, she said, Coffee, please, I said, Two.

The waitress eyed me. I was fourteen years old, but at five-nine, and with how skinny I was, sporting my new crew cut, she probably figured I was sick or something, barely hanging on.

She’s my sister, Mom snapped.

The waitress walked off for the coffee, muttering Sister, my ass low enough that we could pretend she didn’t mean for us to hear. When she came back, clapping two heavy white mugs on the table, filling them from her glass pot, Mom said, Cream and sugar, too, honey. Plenty of it. Real cream, please. None of that powdered horse hoof or whatever.

The waitress gave Mom a look, her lip half curled. She was probably twice Mom’s age, and ugly as a poke in the eye. She didn’t want anybody like Mom calling her honey.

When she pushed the tiny stainless cream pitcher across our table, the steel dull with frost, Mom gave her a wink. Thanks, she said, nudging the cream my way. We’ve been trying to keep her calorie intake up for thirty years. If it wasn’t for that—Mom snapped her fingers-poof! Gone before our very eyes.

Same as my hair, I murmured.

The waitress studied me. There was no way I was anything but a scrawny kid.

As the waitress started off, Mom raised her voice. I’d like one egg, fried, loose but not slimy. No brown crust around the edges. One piece of toast, too, please, no butter.

The waitress turned around. "And your sister?"

A full stack, I said.

Lots of syrup, Mom added.

Once the waitress was gone, I chugged down my water and poured most of my coffee into the empty glass, then reloaded my cup with cream. Pretending to cover her eyes, Mom handed over the sugar. I held the spout above the cup until the whole mess threatened to overflow. Mom bugged out her eyes, sticking her finger down her throat. She called my coffee ritual making ice cream.

When I was done, Mom held her mug out toward me. I clinked mine against it, slopping some, and Mom said, It’s you and me again, baby. Taking a sip, she winced and put her cup down, setting her hands around it. Then she looked at me all serious, the peace treaty about to be broken. The whole vanishing act is wearing thin on you, is it?

Yesterday, in one of the rare seconds they were farther than a foot or two apart, Dad in the bathroom or something, I’d been stupid enough to say, I hate it when he leaves, Mom. Why can’t he get a real job? One where he works here?

She’d gone straight to Dad with it. Our private conversation.

Even now I couldn’t keep from picking at it, like a scab. Well, what makes staying so impossible? She eyeballed me like we’d never been introduced, but I shook my head, not playing that game. I know you hate it, too. Why can’t he just be like other dads?

Mom stared at me long enough I had to look away. That’s what you want? For Chuck to be like other dads?

Well, no.

He’s a logger, Lucy. How’s he going to stay in Great Falls? The place isn’t exactly bristling with timber.

But-

You know how hard it is on him? Leaving us? Did you ever stop to think of that? She shook her head. After all he does, you had to put that screw to him, didn’t you?

Not me, Mom, I said. "I didn’t say a word to him. I’m not the one sprouting stool-pigeon feathers."

She shook a fist at me. Keep it up, sister, and you’ll be wishing you had whole wings. Then she opened her hand and sighed, reaching over to rub the top of my head, feel the bounce of the bristle. He does what he has to, Lucy. If there was a poorer state than Montana, I suppose we’d live there. He’s just following the trees.

Following trees. Like they’d give you a good race. Only Dad. Pounding the pavement, I said.

Chopping down gold.

Putting the bacon in the bank.

Following the greenback’s hard trail.

We could have gone on forever.

It wasn’t until the ride home, cruising Central, that Mom showed any interest in my life. How are you going to fill your day? she asked.

I stared at the boarded-up Bon Marché building, where Mom and I used to look at clothes before making the Kmart run. I shrugged. Drugs. Sex.

Back in that rut, huh?

I looked at her driving. We hadn’t done much together before her job, though sometimes she’d load up a cooler and we’d tool around farm roads in the Corvair, going nowhere. We’d stop at creeks and have lunch. She loved making sailboats out of bark or wood and sending them off, saying, "Bon voyage. She said it voy-aj-ee. Like Bugs Bunny. She pretended she was doing it for me, but long after I’d lost interest, she’d keep at it, standing on the bank, waving farewell to the boats as they headed downstream. She’d call out, See you in Acapulco! See you in Cabo!" Then it was into the white water. No survivors.

Now we didn’t even do that. With Dad gone an hour, I couldn’t remember what I used to do on normal days. The ones without him. It was always like this.

Mom drove, waiting for an answer.

I don’t know. See if Kenny’s around, I guess.

Haven’t seen much of him lately.

She sounded more bored than curious, but I realized that I’d dumped Kenny while Dad was home. Again. Even though I’d promised myself not to.

When Mom pulled over in front of the telemarketing world headquarters, she said, Spent too long over our gourmet breakfasts. I’ve got some fast talking to do about missing last week as it is. Being late is not going to help.

She always said There are no secrets in this house, usually when she wanted me to tell her something, but that all went out the window last year with this job. When she started, it was all hush-hush-It’s about my independence, baby. Not a word that goes over big with your father—but then she switched tacks, telling me the job wasn’t a secret so much as this special surprise she’d spring on him herself. Like I was that dim.

She jumped from behind the wheel, then paused on the sidewalk, smoothing her skirt. She always dressed nice, but not like this, not in her Chuck’s-last-day, let-him-remember-this-while-he’s-out-there- chopping-down-trees outfit. She finger-combed her hair as she walked up to the smoked-glass doors, and I imagined the eyestalks stretching out of the skulls of the guys in the office. If there were any guys. Mom had never let me come inside. There are some places, Lucy, where a mother does not want her child to be able to imagine her. This is one. A rat hole with phones. Press the dial, the food pellet drops down.

I sat in the passenger seat, my hands sticky with syrup, waiting for her punch line, but when she reached out and flung open the office door, I couldn’t stop myself. Mom!

She spun on her heel as if she’d been called back from the edge of a cliff.

Did you forget? I asked, not sure if this was a joke.

About what?

Me.

She laughed, giving her watch a glance. Digging in her purse, she walked halfway to the car. When she found her keys, she stopped and launched them at me. No cruising, she warned. No picking up strange boys. Even normal ones. Straight home.

I caught the keys but stared at her, barely holding in my smile. Mom! I said, starting to laugh. I’m not exactly licensed!

Dad had made a big deal out of showing me the basics during the week he was home, working the stick, lurching figure eights around the light poles in the deserted Sunday-morning parking lot of the University of Great Falls, a tiny Catholic college just off the strip malls on Tenth Avenue South. UBT, Dad called it. University Behind Target. Mom had made me promise not to tell him we’d done the same thing tons of times. More secrets.

Straight home, she said again, heading back to the office. And leave it in the driveway. Don’t go picking any fights with that garage.

Really, Mom?

You’re a natural. It’s in your genes.

But what about you? Tonight?

She threw open the door as hard as she had before. If I can’t bum a ride in this outfit, I deserve to walk. Then she was inside, giving the huge rust-red buffalo statue a friendly whack on the rump as she charged past. The whole buffalo was made out of about a million horseshoes. But it belonged to the bank. Mom worked upstairs, where she said they didn’t waste even a single horseshoe on decor.

I slid across the seat, settling in behind the wheel, trying not to smile. Give a call if you need me to pick you up, I called, but Mom was long gone. I was talking to myself.

CHAPTER THREE

White-knuckling the knobbledy steering wheel, its back grooved for fingers as if somebody had already squeezed it halfway through, I got the Corvair up into third and left it there, timing all the lights. Home was the last place I wanted to go: the floors all echoey, doors booming behind me, each room more silent than the last. The vacuum Dad had left would fade, I knew that, but I was in no rush to knock around in that empty house by myself. I had to go by the park to get home, but it wasn’t an accident that I chanced a look away from the road when I was near the playground, our ancient giant jungle gym. And I saw what I’d hoped for, Kenny spinning around at the very top, up in the stratosphere, only a knee and an elbow hooked over the bar. We were the masters of that move, the supersonic death spiral. Together Kenny and I were the undisputed masters of the entire jungle gym.

Only a block from the yawning hollow of our house, I pulled over. At the last second I remembered to put it into neutral. I screeched back the parking brake, hearing how Kenny would have laughed if I’d jerked and stalled out at the curve. Drive much?

The jungle gym towered yards away, Kenny too high up to see anything but the empty passenger seat, the open window. It wasn’t until I leaned over, peeking up, that I saw Scott there, too. Gross.

Kenny was still spinning, a blur, and they hadn’t noticed me. Who would? Another car pulling up, some mom about to bail out with her snot troopers. Kenny would sure never expect to see me driving up to the park. I was about to swing my door open, say something slick and momlike-You boys need a ride someplace?—just to see the look on their faces, when I heard Scott’s breathy, drooly voice. Then there’s undeniable kiss number seven. All tongue, no lip.

I sat back, invisible. No way I was walking into that.

"No lip at all" Scott went on. Stick your tongue in her mouth, and she does it back, and you don’t touch anywhere else.

I peeked over again, and just as I’d suspected, Kenny was still in the spin. Scott kept talking, all squirmy on his bar, and I missed Dad more than ever. Already.

Then Kenny stopped on a dime, back up on top of the bar. The world twisted in those first few seconds. No lip? he asked. "At all? Scott, an anteater couldn’t do that."

Mom and Dad could, I thought.

Scott shook his head like Kenny would never know anything. Anyway, then there’s number eight.

It sounded a lot like licking out ear wax.

Kenny put the edge of a finger between his teeth, but I knew he bit his fingernails down the same way I did, and I doubted he had anything long enough to work at.

Behind the wheel, Mom’s visor was still down, her mirror staring at me. I puckered up, all plunger, and made a cartoon smack. I almost laughed out loud.

Scott said, If you’re ever going to score with her, you got to pay attention, Kernel.

Kernel. Like that was the funniest thing in the world to call somebody, just because he was small. Once, after everybody started calling Kenny that, I passed him a note in school, spelling it Colonel, like that was what I thought everybody was saying, like it was a cool name. Sometimes he called me General.

I don’t care about scoring with her, Kenny said.

Scott eyeballed him. You should. Lucy Diamond is one of the best lays in town.

I shot back into my seat like I’d been horse-kicked. I had to remember to breathe. I listened to Kenny start down through the bars.

What did you say? he asked.

It’s true.

The hell it is! I wanted to shout. If Dad was here, he’d pinch Scott’s fat head like a pimple. He’d do it in a second. Without a thought.

So soft I almost missed it, Kenny said, I can’t believe I ever told you I liked her.

"Oh, like it’s not so obvious! People at the deaf and blind school can see it."

Sounding like he might puke, Kenny asked, And I suppose you’ve laid her?

I peeked out again. Kenny was almost down to Scott’s level. Scott closed his eyes like he’d finally gotten to pee after holding it for days. Over and over, he said. In and out.

God! Kenny shouted. Shut up! Just for once! Lucy wouldn’t let you get close enough to touch her with an extension ladder!

That’s about how big it is, Scott answered, giving his crotch a grab. When it’s ready for action.

She’d break it off and make you eat it!

Damn right I would. Kenny had told me Scott hadn’t always been this way. Big deal, I’d answered. He is now. You should dump him like a bad rabbit.

So, anyway, Scott kept going, kiss nine is the one that does her every time. You lick up from her Adam’s apple, all the way over her chin and up to her lips, then you-

You moron! Kenny shouted. Girls don’t have Adam’s apples!

I reached up and felt my throat. Attaboy, I thought.

Scott was obviously struggling to picture a single part of a girl that wasn’t supposed to be inside underwear. You know what I mean. From her neck down there. Once you get through licking her titties.

I thought these kisses were so you could get down there in the first place.

Scott stopped again. Kernel, if you would try to listen, you might learn something. A whole new world might open up for you. Lucy Diamond might open up for you.

You have never touched Lucy Diamond in your whole skanky, scurvy life!

I smiled.

Scott eyed him. True, he said. Truth is, I wouldn’t do Juicy Lucy unless-

Kenny snapped around so fast I couldn’t totally see. Spinning on his bar, he planted both feet in Scott’s chest, kicking hard.

I popped out of Mom’s car without knowing I was going to, the same way Scott tumbled over backward, way too slow to come close to grabbing any bar. He smacked an arm, then landed on the ground in the center of the gym.

The gym reached most of the way to the clouds. Dad said it must have been built before lawyers were invented. It had these two old metal signs bolted on down low, the U.S. star with the wings coming out to the sides, the air force symbol, the paint so faded you could barely see it anymore. Dad said it must have been part of some pacification program, winning the hearts of the natives. Or else it’s for recruitment. Any kid that survives, obvious air force material. Half the kids in Great Falls weren’t allowed to go near it.

So when I started toward Scott, it was only to see if he was alive, but before I’d taken more than a couple of steps, it was easy to see that he only had the wind knocked out of him. It was kind of disappointing, not seeing any bones sticking out of his leprous skin. He did that fish-out-of-water thing until a bit of air squealed back in.

Kenny scrambled to the top of the gym. I stepped back to lean against the car. Glaring and gaping at each other, they didn’t notice me.

Scott rolled onto his side, getting back more and more breath. You little fucker. He propped himself up on an elbow. You tiny little fucker. He knew it was hopeless to try to catch the Colonel up on the gym. But Scott was furious, and he was way bigger than either of us. He already shaved