All for One (35 page)

She left the cases of false twinklings behind and moseyed over to a pair of spinable towers rising from the floor near the racks of handbags. Sunglasses sprouted from the towers like the leaves of some stalky plant that held its growth close. Dark, reflective bug eyes stared back at Mandy. She gave one display tower a gentle spin and it began to twirl slowly, creaking at its base and wobbling easily like a top losing its momentum. The stacked bug eyes blurred by row after row, each one capturing her face and flashing it back like a movie shown piecemeal, one dim frame at a time. The face stuttering back at her was frowning.

Mandy turned away. There was no need for frowns. This was a happy day. Saturday. The weekend. Time to get out. Time for fun. She walked away from the towers spinning to a stop and felt her nose crinkle as the scent hit her.

Perfume. Her nose guided her eyes to the counter where bottles were set out, caps off, the fragrances within waiting to be sampled. The smile she’d put on to quash the frown became real as she sniffed the air again. Pretty. It smelled pretty.

Pretty like my drawings
, she thought, heading for the perfume counter, then said softly, “Pretty like me.”

*  *  *

“All right, Bobby,” Vicky Allenton said, putting a hand on her little boy’s head and aiming it away from the football helmets strategically stacked high on a nearby shelf. “Do you like these?” Her hand twisted his head like a dial a few degrees right, at a second pair of shoes she’d pulled from the box; black high tops with some off-brand design on the side. “Or these?” Another turn, this time toward a white canvas model. “Or these?” Finally, a brown pair with hard soles and a 75% off sticker on the box.

Bobby stared sourly at the final choice. “I don’t like those.”

Standing behind her little brother, one hand on each shoulder as her mother knelt at his feet, PJ said, “Get him the black high tops.”

Vicky Allenton eyed the price on the box she’d taken those from. “Five bucks more than the brown ones.”

“He’ll look stupid in those,” PJ said. “Get him the high tops.”

Bobby pointed at the white canvas sneakers. “I want those.”

“These?” Vicky Allenton asked, taking the indicated pair in hand. These were only a buck more than the brown ones. She looked up at her daughter. “These are good...”

PJ frowned. “They’re white, mom. In two weeks they’ll look filthy. The black ones won’t show the dirt.”

“I can wash these,” Vicky Allenton said, and shook the shoes giddily in front of her son’s face. Bobby giggled and grabbed at them, his mother moving them left and right, and up and down, like a trainer working on a fighter’s jabs.

It looked like that, and like something else. Something old, PJ thought. Something familiar.

She had done this. She had been here, doing almost the same thing. At five or six, sitting on the same bench in the shoe department of Gorton’s Department Store, only then it hadn’t been black high tops or canvas sneakers. Then her mother, kneeling on the floor as she was now, had been trying to get PJ to choose between a cheap pair of oxfords and a cheaper pair of patent leather flats with tassels. PJ hadn’t wanted either, so her mother chose the patent leather flats. The patent leather flats that turned out to be more plastic than leather and melted when her mother got the bright idea that she could wash and dry them to keep them clean. She thought any dirt could be gotten rid of with a good wash.

PJ recalled the moment as if it were just a week or two ago, not the five or six years it had been. Except for the giddy joy Bobby was getting out of it, it was like then was now. Nothing had changed.

She was suddenly sad, and close on the heels of that angry. Angry at herself for letting herself be sad. It wouldn’t always be like this. It wouldn’t.

‘You’re so bright. So strong. Don’t put your energy into your fists. Put it into your dreams.’

She had doubted Miss Austin the first time she’d told her that. Then she began to believe.

And she still believed. Was trying hard to believe.

“Mom, can I look around?”

Vicky Allenton skipped the knots her little boy had tied into his laces and simply pulled the shoes off, telling her daughter without looking, “Don’t talk to any weirdoes.”

“I’m not a baby, mom.”

“Ten minutes,” Vicky said, dumping the old shoes into the empty box and slipping one of the white canvas sneakers on her little boy’s foot. “How’s that, my baby?”

PJ left her mother and brother and strolled up one of the aisles, past shelves of toys that she glanced at, but not wantingly. She knew not to want what she could not have. Mostly.

She turned when it would have been better to go straight, down to the displays of boxed dolls that stared blankly, happily through plastic film. Those were no problem. Dolls had never been her thing, so she could have easily just walked on by, or possibly taken one down and pulled the string that poked conveniently from the box.
‘Mommy, I want a bottle.’
Or,
‘Mommy, change me.’
That would be good for a laugh, a baby old enough to talk that needed a bottle and its diaper changed. A perfect, innocent, happy distraction.

Other things, though, that should have been as harmless were not. Not for her. These things she could have no more than the shiny, homeless toys advertised during cartoons and next to the cereal coupons her mother clipped but never seemed to use. But these other things she dreamed of. These other things she wanted.

The aisles of shelves gave way to an open space forested by circular racks of clothing, one after another, on and on toward the cosmetics section her mother visited every other week to replenish her stock. PJ strolled first down the wide center path, boys clothes to the left, girls to the right. She’d begged her mother for overalls from the boy’s section years before, and a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt to go with it. And Converse high tops.

She’d gotten none of it, and now it seemed silly.
Wanting
new boys clothes so bad. She had plenty of jeans and overalls and baseball jerseys from the PTA thrift store up on Roman. Enough now that her entire wardrobe could be swapped with Joey, or with Michael, and little would be different, other than the patches sewn into the knees and the mismatched buttons on the straps of the overalls.

Yes, she had plenty of
those
clothes. But now she was thinking...differently.

She waded slowly to the right, between racks of dresses and skirts hanging prettily, and jeans cut more for girls than boys, and blouses with pads in the shoulders and frills where frills should be. PJ wasn’t sure about the frills, but the rest...well, she could actually see herself wearing them. She thought they’d look...nice on her. And that she’d look...pretty in them. Pretty.

Her hands reached out, fingers feeling the clothes as she moved through the racks. Soft and fresh, she thought. And new. So new. New in many ways.

Past long dresses and short dresses. By turtlenecks and vests with colorful veins embroidered with beads across the front. PJ brushed them and wished. Wished that she could have them. Not all, but some. Enough so she would look like...like...

Like she wasn’t what she was.

She drew her hands away from the objects of her desire and pushed them into the pockets of her jacket. Her third or fourth hand, shabby jacket.

A store speaker announced a special on toaster ovens on aisle six. Shopping carts squeaked that way.

*  *  *

Toaster ovens
, Mandy thought, looking toward the ceiling and listening to the disembodied voice as she wandered away from the perfume counter smelling like ‘
Spring Mélange
, the season you can spray.’ She sniffed the inside of her wrist, giving an approving half smile as she silently asked herself,
Why would anyone want a toaster oven?

It seemed the perfectly logical question. I mean, these people buying toaster ovens must have toasters, and they must have ovens, so why is there this need for something that is both and neither at the same time? I’m smart, not to mention pretty, and I can’t see a reason why someone would need both.

Well, the silly people could waste their money. Mandy would have no part of it. She headed purposely
away
from aisle six and walked slowly along shelves of delicate porcelain knickknacks. Hand painted, some were. Vibrant grape vines twisting around the gloss of a small picture frame. Flowers blooming on teapots.

“Hmmm,” Mandy grunted quietly, stopping to examine a clock, its gleaming white housing ornate with tiny bluebirds and sunflowers painted with smiles.
How gaudy. It’s a clock. You draw on paper and not on clocks. You don’t do certain things on other things.
Her head shook at the timepiece; the bluebirds were atrocious.
I could draw much better bluebirds than those.

And she thought when she got home she just might do that. Yes, she would sit on her bed with her box of crayons and her tablet and go to it. She could draw a flock of bluebirds winging across the sky, in front of white clouds (the blue of the bluebirds would contrast nicely with the white of the clouds), and she would sign it with a green crayon
By Mandy Fine.
Yes. She would do that, and...

She began to smile, in spite of the ugly clock before her eyes.

...she would give the picture to her favorite teacher. Her picture of the bluebirds in the sky. And Miss Mary Austin (
I know her name is Mary, and I wonder if any of the teacher’s pets know that, hah!
) would surely love it. Would adore it. Would—

Mandy’s happy gaze moved ever so slightly from the horrid clock that had been the inspiration of her soon-to-be newest creation, not much but enough that for a split second she had looked past the clock and through a space between the shelves and the merchandise to the opposite side. And on the opposite side she saw something, saw someone, that swatted all thoughts of bluebirds away. Yes, this was much more interesting. Much more.

Mandy pressed close to the shelf and peeked around the clock to watch the poor girl meander through the racks.

PJ ‘Poor Girl’ Allenton. Her name was Paula Jean. Mandy knew that about her because Miss
Mary
Austin had let her enter grades before, and in the grade book it was required the names of all students be spelled out in full, thank you very much. No nicknames like
PeeJay
. So Miss Paula Jean was in Gorton’s, Mandy thought. Looking at (adoring?) actual girls’ clothes!

She can no more afford anything she’s looking at than I can grow wings and poop in the air like a seagull.

But there she was, moving by the racks, her eyes coveting the dresses, the skirts, the blouses, looking so out of place. Looking like Tom Sawyer in the girls’ department, less the straw hat of course. Mandy did not particularly care for Miss Paula Jean. She was one of the pets, after all. But (reluctant sigh), she had done a good thing with the Mr. Guy situation, and Mandy Fine was a proper young lady who knew to give credit when credit was due. She was not rude. Not (too) spiteful. The notes had been enough funning. So she wouldn’t embarrass Miss Paula Jean in person. She would simply...

PJ started to move out of the thicket of racks now, away from the clothes and toward the front of the store. Mandy followed, using the shelves of knickknacks as a shield.

...giggle at her from afar.

*  *  *

There was another thing PJ remembered from her long ago visits to Gorton’s. Something that was priceless, but not expensive, its value instead in its simplicity. In the pleasure it had given her then, for reasons only a child could understand. In the pleasure that it might still give.

She could smell it as she moved toward the front of the store, and hear it as she headed right, leaving the things that ‘cost’ behind. The sweet scent of butter hit her first, then the mild nuttiness of a few errant kernels burning. Gone was the swirling metal arm that had dragged the kernels through sizzling oil. Now hot air did the trick, and threw the finished product against the glass not unlike in the old days, if five or six years in the past could be called the ‘old days’.

And that was what she wanted now. Not the popcorn. She wanted the memory. She wanted the ignorance of that age, when nosing up to the popper’s warm glass to watch the kernels burst to the budded corn was something like watching magic. When not understanding was wondrous. When real life was a million years away.

She wanted that again, if just for a while. The
pop... pop... pop-pop-pop... pop-pop... pop...
guided her, and the smells drew her, and she could almost feel the pleasant heat on the tip of her nose and the prickly pecks of exploding kernels leaping against the glass. She moved closer, passing the inflow to the checkout lanes now, forgetting the stupid girl things. Now all she wanted was to see, and to hear, and to be where she was back then. Back at the popcorn machine at the snack counter. Back to—

PJ froze where she stood, her eyes going owlish at what she saw. At who she saw. At who she saw at the snack counter.

No...

And then, very suddenly, her brain kicked into gear and made her body move. She jumped to the right and ducked behind a tall wire basket that caged countless colorful balls as if they were dangerous toys. The crowded ball display hid her, and allowed her enough room between the wire cage and its contents to keep watching, unseen. To consider what she was seeing. To consider and wonder why.

This ignorance brought no childish bliss. Worry was its offspring.

PJ didn’t know it, but her head was shaking behind the obstruction. Her fingers curled around the stout wire and squeezed hard, gripping it like a prisoner might the bars that confined. Or like one might hold something as an anchor to keep from being pulled away. Or to be kept from bolting away. Bolting from a hiding place to loudly, wildly confront another.

Yes, PJ held tight to the huge ball basket and shook her head. And she watched. She watched and couldn’t understand.

*  *  *

Mandy was seeing it, too.