Absolutely Normal Chaos (3 page)

“But—”

“Mary Lou Finney!” When Mom says “Mary Lou Finney,” she means business.

I kept calling Beth Ann, about every fifteen minutes, telling her Carl Ray still was not up and I couldn’t leave until I did maid service for him. Finally, at twelve thirty, Beth Ann said, “It doesn’t sound like you’re ever going to get out of there. I’m going for a ride with my parents.”

Boy, was I mad. When ole Carl Ray finally did stroll out of his room about one o’clock, I nearly pushed him over when I passed him. Sure enough, he didn’t make his bed, so I did, and I picked up all his stupid gum wrappers that he left all over the floor and I vacuumed his stupid room. I was done by one fifteen, but then I had nowhere to go.

All Carl Ray did the whole entire day was sit in front of the television set chewing gum and watching whatever happened to come on. I don’t think he even got up to change the channel. A real live wire, this Carl Ray.

What a boring day, with everyone just wandering in and out of rooms: Maggie avoiding Dad, Dad avoiding Maggie, me avoiding Carl Ray, all of us avoiding Mom, who was doing the laundry and if you get in her way, she makes you fold clothes or iron.

I was so bored, I even went with Dennis and Doug over to the field behind Mrs. Furtz’s house.

There’s a big old tree there that sits in a little dip in the ground and its branches hang real low, so if you crawl into the dip and under the branches, it’s like a fort inside. Anyway, we went in and cleaned out some leaves and junk, and we moved the rocks that cover a hole we dug last year. It was funny to see what we put inside: a box of matches, a newspaper, a red ball, two packs of chewing gum, a treasure map we had drawn (the treasure consists of fifty cents, which we buried in another hole about a hundred yards away), and a deck of cards. Real exciting.

We hung around there awhile, climbing the tree (I have to admit that even though I am thirteen years old, I still love to climb trees), pretending we were looking out for enemies, and playing cards. We should have brought some food. We were going to chew the gum, but it was all gross from being in the ground for a whole year.

It’s funny, but thinking about the fort and the field
now reminds me of something that happened there about four years ago. It’s a stupid thing, but I’ll write it down anyway. I can always rip it out later if it’s too embarrassing.

I guess I was nine years old then, and there was this boy named Johnny White who lived down the street from us. He was Dennis’s friend really, and he was a year younger than I was. Anyway, one day Dennis, Johnny, and I were over in the forest running around the trees and singing some stupid song. Then Dennis said he was going home to get us some sandwiches so we could have a picnic. Johnny and I walked all around the field with the tall grass where there were bunches of buttercups too, and I picked one and rubbed it under Johnny’s chin, which made him laugh because he had never seen anyone do that before. And all of a sudden, I don’t know what came over me, but I just reached over and kissed Johnny White on the lips! I don’t think I had ever kissed anyone but my parents on the lips before. And I was real surprised because his lips were so soft, but they didn’t taste like anything at all. So I kissed him again, mainly just to see if I could taste anything.

We didn’t even hear Dennis coming. The first I knew he was there was when he said, “Hey, what’re you
doing
?”

But then we all just ate our sandwiches and went
back to messing around in the forest, climbing trees, and stuff, and I didn’t think any more about kissing Johnny until the next day.

What a
mess
. Mrs. White called my mother. My mom said Mrs. White was almost hysterical. Mrs. White said that Johnny told her all about our “necking” in the woods, and that it was all my idea, and that I was too old for her son, and her son was too innocent for some “wild girl” (that’s what she called me, Mom said), and she didn’t ever want her son at our house again, and I wasn’t ever to go near him, and if Dennis wanted to play with Johnny he would just have to go to their house, but he wasn’t ever to bring me!

Then Mom asked me to tell her what happened, and I did. She said that someday I would understand why Mrs. White got so upset and that I should wait a few years before I practiced kissing any boys again, because kissing is something you have to be careful about. I asked her why, but she just said she would have to think of a good explanation and I should ask her again in a few years. In a few years!

Well, I think that now I know what she meant, but it’s sad really, because Johnny and I didn’t mean anything by it, and I never got to play with him again. The next time I saw him was about a week later at the drugstore, but he didn’t even look at me.
He doesn’t live on our street anymore and I’ll probably never see him again. I haven’t kissed (or been kissed by) a boy since, and I do wonder if all lips have no taste, like Johnny’s.

Once, when Beth Ann was telling me about Jerry Manelli kissing her at a school dance, I asked her what it tasted like.

“What it
tasted
like?” She looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo.

“Yes, what did it taste like?”

“The kiss?”

“Yes, of course the kiss!”

“Well, nothing.”

“You mean it tasted like nothing at all? It must have tasted like
something
.” She didn’t know about Johnny White and I didn’t want to tell her. For some reason, I made it sound like I knew kisses had to taste like a specific thing.

She started fidgeting around. “Well, now that you mention it…”

“So it
did
taste like something?”

“Well, yes, it did….”

“Like what? What did it taste like?”

She had her eyes closed as if she was trying to remember, and she was moving her lip around. “Well, I guess it tasted like…chicken.”

Now that surprised me. “Chicken? Are you sure?”

“Well, gosh, Mary Lou, I wasn’t paying that much attention. I think it was like chicken, yes.”

It’s not the sort of taste you would expect, is it?

Monday, June 18

Maggie spent the entire day gabbing away on the phone. She called Kenny, and then Kenny called her back, and she called her friend Angie and then Angie called her. Back and forth all day. She is cooking up a plan to get Dad to let her go to that party on Saturday. If anyone can do it, Maggie can. It’s disgusting. About all she has to do is roll her eyes and talk real sweet and she gets anything she wants.

Ole Carl Ray finally decided he’d get out of his bed around noon. You know, I’ve never once seen Carl Ray go into the bathroom. Now, I’m sure he must have been in there (well,
really
), but I know for sure he has not taken a shower yet. You can just tell when he walks by. Lord.

He appeared in the kitchen while I was making lunch and stood there watching me. Finally I said, “Are you going to want lunch?” He makes me so mad, the way he stands around waiting for people to feed him and stuff, and lying around not doing a darn thing.

He said, “Okay.”

Brother.

While we were eating lunch, I said, “Aren’t you going to go out and look for a job?”

He put his sandwich down on his plate and said, to his sandwich it seemed, “Sure.”

Well, that was a good sign. “So where are you going?”

Long pause by Carl Ray. Finally he told his sandwich, “Don’t rightly know.”

“Well,” I said to Carl Ray, “didn’t you ask Dad for some suggestions?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t rightly know.”

Tommy started banging on the table with his cup and going, “Ha! Ha!” and then he would look at us and say, “Ha! Ha!” as if he was practicing how to laugh.

In the middle of this, Carl Ray sat there, eating his sandwich in slow motion, chewing and chewing and staring down at his plate as if we weren’t even there.

I said, “You could look in the newspaper.”

“Where’s that at?” he said.

“The newspaper?”

“Yeah.”

I went and got it and showed him where the help
wanted section was. “What sort of thing are you looking for?”

“Don’t rightly know.”

“It’s kind of hard to look for a job when you don’t know what you’re looking for, Carl Ray. Maybe you should go downtown and walk along the street and look for signs that say ‘Help Wanted.’” He looked up at me and nodded. “You should probably go now, or you won’t have time to see many places.” He nodded. “Do you know how to get downtown?” He didn’t.

So I showed him how to go and told him what he should probably say, and then I told him he should probably change his clothes since he was still wearing the same clothes he had arrived in, and then I told him what sort of clothes to wear, but he said he didn’t have a tie, so I asked him to show me exactly what he did have and it was pitiful: two T-shirts and two pairs of jeans and the shoes he had on.

After he left, I went up and made his stupid bed.

Then I took Tommy and Dougie to the pool, even though it was really Maggie’s day to watch Tommy. I could tell she was going to be useless all day, as long as the phone was working. But swimming wasn’t bad because Dougie and I were teaching Tommy how to swim and he’s so funny. All he really wants to do is jump off the edge and have us catch
him. We finally got him to put his head under by missing him a few times.

Beth Ann met us up there. She has a new bathing suit. It’s all white and you can tell she thinks she is really something in it. I didn’t want to tell her, but you can practically see through it when it’s wet. I’ll tell her some other time.

While we were sitting on our towels during break time, I looked up and saw, of all people, Alex Cheevey on the outside, leaning against the fence. He was looking at us, so I got up and went over to him.

“You looking for somebody?” I said.

“Oh. Not really.”

“Visiting the Murphys again?”

“Huh?”

“Your friends the Murphys—on Winston Road?”

“Oh. Them. Yuh.”

“Are they here at the pool?”

Alex looked around. “Don’t think so.”

“Oh.” When I talk with Alex, I always feel like I’m missing something, like I don’t hear all the words. “How was the party?”

“Party?”

“Christy’s party. Didn’t you go?”

“Oh. Yeah. It was okay. Sort of boring.”

Alex was wearing these cute blue shorts and a
T-shirt with “Ohio State University” printed on it. He asked me who I was with.

“You mean here, at the pool?”

“Yeah.”

“Dougie and Tommy, my brothers, well two of them. And Beth Ann. She’s over there, see?” Beth Ann was stretched out on her back, with one knee bent and her hand behind her head. She can really overdo it sometimes.

“Do you come here every day?” he asked.

“Well, nearly. Don’t they have a pool over where you live?” All of these towns have a community pool, and since we live in Easton, we go to the Easton pool. Alex lives in Norton.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I think you can use a Norton pass here, if you pay twenty-five cents extra. If you wanted to come here, I mean.”

“Yeah. Well, I might someday.”

And then the whistle blew, meaning break was over, and I had to go watch Tommy or he would drown.

Carl Ray magically appeared at dinnertime again. Just as we were putting the food on the table, in he comes and sits right down in the “special” seat. I suppose he thinks that’s his seat now. As usual, he didn’t volunteer any information. In fact, he didn’t
say one word until finally, after Carl Ray had had three helpings of meat loaf, three helpings of corn, and two helpings of potatoes (he would have had more, I bet, but they were all gone), Dad said, “So tell us, Carl Ray, how did the job hunting go?”

Every single one of us looked at Carl Ray, who shrugged his shoulders. We all looked back at Dad, who looked at my mom like it was her turn. She said, “Does that mean you didn’t find anything?” We all looked at Carl Ray.

He nodded. He was pretty busy stuffing food into his mouth.

Dad said, “Does that mean yes, you did not find anything?”

Carl Ray nodded again.

It was getting to be like a tennis match, with us all looking down at Carl Ray’s end of the table and then back up at Mom and Dad and then back to Carl Ray.

About this time, Maggie makes her move. “Dad, would you like me to get you another glass of water?”

Dad says, “Sure.”

Maggie says, “Anything else I can get you while I’m up?”

Dougie says, “Well, I’d like another glass…”

But Maggie just glared at him and went in the kitchen. While she was gone, Dennis starts mimicking her, saying, in this real sweet voice, “Mary
Louuuuu, is there anything I can get for youuuu?” and then, of course, he starts laughing and I start laughing and my dad tells us to be quiet and watch our manners.

After dinner, I heard Dad talking to Carl Ray about where to look for a job and what to say and how to act when he went in. Carl Ray just listened. Then Dad came into the kitchen and said to Mom, “Doesn’t that boy know how to talk?”

Mom said, “Doesn’t seem so.”

“It could drive a person crazy.”

“He’s
your
relative.”

Dennis and I went out to play spud with Cathy and Barry Furtz. Cathy and Barry are twins and they’re Dennis’s age. They’re pretty nice, but I don’t think Mr. Furtz likes it when we play spud in the street. I bet the Furtzes are sorry they moved here. Cathy and Barry had to go in at eight o’clock to take a bath! So Dennis and I just sat on the curb awhile, throwing stones across to the other curb. Carl Ray snuck up on us the way he does. I swear, he’s a real spook sometimes. One minute it was just me and Dennis sitting on the curb, and then all of a sudden there was Carl Ray sitting next to Dennis.

Then Mr. Furtz came out with his hose to water the lawn. Last week he offered me fifty cents to do it for him, though I sure don’t know why he doesn’t pay his own kids to do it. I don’t mind, though.
Anyway, sure enough, he sees us sitting there and he strolls over and says, “Feel like earning some gold?” That’s what he calls fifty cents: gold.