“He liked my crown,” she said, like that was somehow significant.
The bell jingled over the door to the shop and Cosmo entered, followed by a couple of customers. “Hey, girls,” Cosmo said when he saw us. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said to Amanda. When his eyes met hers, his
expression went all soft and goopy. Then he took her hand and kissed her fingers one by one, and she smiled, and it was like they were the only two people in the world. I could feel my heart expanding.
“We’ll go,” I said.
“Bye, girls. Go turn some heads,” Cosmo said. And even though we knew it was just Cosmo being Cosmo, Phoebe and I both giggled like a couple of dorks.
Amanda walked us to the door. “Violet?” she said. “Give Dudley a chance tonight, okay? Don’t get up to your old tricks.”
“What old tricks?” I asked innocently as we stepped outside.
The three of us walked a couple of blocks farther down Main Street to the Liberty Bakery. Mom had given us some money to buy ourselves a treat, like she did every Saturday, so that she could shop at Costco in peace. The sidewalks were slick with rain, and we had to dart our way in and out of a sea of umbrellas.
The bakery was bright and warm and smelled like yeast and sugar. I bought a Nanaimo bar, and Phoebe and Rosie got fudge brownies. We were just about to leave with our treats when a boy walked in. Phoebe grabbed my arm and pinched me, hard.
“Ow!”
I said.
Then I saw what she saw. It wasn’t just any boy, it was Jean-Paul. He was wearing jeans and a dripping-wet bomber jacket on his lanky frame, and his dark wavy hair was plastered to the sides of his head. It accentuated his nose, which was rather large.
“Oh my God,” I murmured. “He’s adorable.”
“This from the girl who’s vowed to never have a boyfriend,” teased Phoebe, who took every opportunity to let me know that she thought my vow was ridiculous.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the opposite sex on a purely aesthetic level.”
He’d spotted us. “Hi, Phoebe. Hi, Violet,” he said.
“Hi,” Phoebe and I replied in unison. I tried to think of something more to say. “This is Rosie,” I said, pointing at my sister.
“Hi, Rosie,” he said. Then to me, “Nice shoes.”
I was wearing my new Converse high tops with the skull and rose motif.
“Thanks.”
“I’m just buying some bread for my mother,” he said.
“Oh,” I replied.
Silence.
“Well,” Jean-Paul said eventually, “see you in school.”
He was about to move past us into the lineup when I blurted,
“Parlez-vous français?”
His face lit up.
“Oui, bien sûr, je parle français. Mon père vient de Québec. Et toi?”
I stared at him blankly.
“Pamplemousse,”
I replied.
He looked at me like he was trying to figure out if I was making a joke. He must have decided I was because he gave a halfhearted laugh before he joined the lineup.
Phoebe, Rosie, and I stepped outside, pulling up the hoods on our rain jackets.
“Why did you call him a grapefruit?” Phoebe asked.
I groaned. “I thought I was saying ‘fantastic.’”
“That’s
fantastique.
”
“Great. Now he thinks I’m an idiot. Or a French-hater.”
“So? What do you care what he thinks of you?”
“I don’t.”
“Liar. Besides, I think he likes you. He spoke actual words to you!”
I rolled my eyes. I appreciated Phoebe’s belief that a guy like Jean-Paul would even look twice at a scrawny and forgettable girl like me. But seriously. As if.
The three of us turned toward home. We came to Phoebe’s house first. It was new, but designed to look like the other older homes in the neighborhood. Phoebe ran
inside to tell her mom that she was heading to my place. A couple of minutes later, she came running out, clutching a Tupperware container.
“Günter’s apple strudel,” she said. I was pretty sure Phoebe’s parents thought Rosie and I were undernourished because they were always sending Phoebe over to our house with large amounts of homemade food.
Eight houses down, we arrived at our place. It was painted
aubergine
, which is a fancy word for eggplant, which is a fancy word for purple. The paint was peeling. The grass was ankle-high. One of the gutters was broken and dangled over the front porch. The railing leading up the front steps wobbled dangerously. An old love seat that we’d meant to bring to the Salvation Army was still sitting on our porch a year later, its insides hanging out, torn up by a family of mice.
The neighbors were walking to their car. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Bright,” I said, even though I was pretty sure they wouldn’t respond. And they didn’t; they just gave me the hairy eyeball.
The Brights used to talk to us, when my dad was around. They’d even given me a box of musty old books when they found out how much I like to read, and there were a few treasures in there, including an early edition of
Stuart Little
by E.B. White. But once
Dad left, Mom couldn’t keep up with the home repairs. The Brights dropped subtle hints. Then not-so-subtle hints. Then, last year, they called city hall. We knew this because a man came around to our house to follow up on their complaint. He told us that the Brights had called our property “a disgrace to the neighborhood.” Mom lit into the guy, telling him that she’d like to see
him
try to maintain an older home as a single parent raising two kids on a limited budget. He backed right off.
Inside, Phoebe, Rosie, and I peeled off our rain jackets and dumped them in a heap on the floor. Mom was still at Costco, so we sat at the kitchen table and devoured our Liberty Bakery treats and Günter’s strudel all in one go. When we were done and I’d made Rosie have two glasses of milk because her bones were growing, I sent her to the basement to watch a video. That’s right, a video. We had a DVD player in the living room, but Mom had bought the VCR at a yard sale for ten bucks, and since then she’d picked up hundreds of videos for as little as twenty-five cents because no one wanted them anymore.
“Okay,” said Phoebe, belching softly. “Let’s make a list of every single man we know.”
I grabbed a pen and a pad of paper.
SINGLE MEN WE KNOW
by Violet G. and Phoebe S.
Mr. Patil, our teacher. Rumor has it he still lives in his parents’ basement and spends all his money on his model train set.
Daryl, the guy who runs the local pet shop. Nice guy, but weighs about three hundred pounds and smells like gerbil poo.
Mohamed Karami, a student at Mom’s hair design school. Handsome and hilarious; also gay.
Donald Somebody-or-other. Works with Phoebe’s dad. Nice enough, but pretty ancient and supposedly has had both hips replaced.
Frank, the homeless guy. Sometimes hangs out on Main Street and writes poems on scraps of paper.
We both agreed it was a pathetic list. Finding a good man for my mom was clearly going to be a daunting task.
“Hi, Phoebe. Hi, Violet,” Mom said as she lugged bags of groceries into the house.
“Hi, Ms. Gustafson,” said Phoebe as she nonchalantly folded the list and slipped it into her pocket.
“Violet, I need you to help me bring the groceries in from the Rust Bucket.” The Rust Bucket was the name
she’d given to our ‘95 Mazda. “Then I need you and your sister to help me clean up the house. Dudley’s supposed to be here in an hour, and I haven’t even showered yet.”
Phoebe got up. “I should get home, anyway. Cathy and Günter are taking me to a poetry slam tonight.” Phoebe’s parents were always introducing her to new cultural experiences.
I walked her to the door.
“Have you got your questions memorized for tonight?” she asked.
I tapped my head. “It’s all up here.”
“I wish I could watch.”
“Me, too. But it’s better if you don’t. I might need you for down the road.”
“Do you think there’s going to be a
down the road
?”
I took a deep breath. “I seriously hope not.”
C
hew, chew, chew … chew, chew, chew
… I could hear The Wiener masticating his food. There was a rhythm to it, like he was eating to a song that played inside his head. From where I sat on his immediate left, I could see right into his ear, which was full of yellow wax and little red hairs. It was enough to make me lose my appetite. To complete the package, he was wearing a white-and-blue striped button-up shirt with a green and red and black plaid sweater-vest on top.
Ugh.
The Wiener arrived just as Rosie and I finished cleaning the house. We’d had to hang up our coats and put away our shoes and take all our stray toys, books, homework,
dolls, games, sweaters, and socks up to our bedroom. Then we’d thrown out all the granola bar wrappers, snot rags, and strands of dental floss that covered the coffee table in the living room. After that, Mom hauled out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the whole main floor – even under the couches, where the really big dust bunnies lived. I told Rosie I could hear them scream as they got sucked up, which made her cry, so Mom made me apologize. Then, while Rosie escaped to the basement, I had to help Mom wash all the dishes that had piled up during the week. Our house hadn’t been this clean since she’d dated Jonathan.
The Wiener,
aka
Dudley, remembered to knock this time. And he’d brought a gift for the house. It was in a rectangular box, wrapped in pretty metallic paper. Rosie and I gazed at it hungrily, convinced it was chocolates.
“Go ahead and open it,” he said, grinning.
Rosie tore apart the paper and opened the box. “What is it?” she asked, her nose wrinkling like she’d just smelled a bad fart.
“It’s a soap dish,” I told her.
“How thoughtful,” Mom said as she appeared from upstairs, wearing too much makeup and a blouse that was too tight. “Pretty
and
practical.”
I could tell from the look on Rosie’s face that Dudley had just gone down a notch in her estimation. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
——
“What a delicious meal,” Dudley said as he polished off his second helping, smacking his lips. For a moment, I thought he might actually pick up the plate and lick it clean. “You’re an excellent cook, Ingrid.”
“Thank you,” my mom replied. She’d made her famous roasted lemon chicken. I was tempted to point out that it was her
only
famous dish; that she rarely made home-cooked meals these days; that our family survived mainly on food of the heat ‘n’ serve variety – like pizza, chicken strips, lasagna, and fish sticks – because Mom was either too tired to cook after standing on her feet all day, or she had a date. But I had important work ahead of me, so I kept my mouth shut.
“When I cook for myself … well,
lettuce
just say I make a
hash
of it … and afterward, you never
sausage
a mess.” Dudley smiled, waiting for us to laugh.
We didn’t.
Well, Mom did a little, but I was pretty sure it was just to be polite.
“Are you Scottish?” I asked him.
“
Um,
twenty-five percent, yes. On my mother’s side. Why?”
“Your sweater-vest. I thought maybe it was your clan tartan.”
“Violet,” said Mom in her warning voice.
“What? Andrew MacDonald, in my class? He did a presentation on his Scottish heritage and came to school wearing a kilt. He told us each clan had its own tartan.”
“What’s a tartan?” asked Rosie.
“It’s an ugly plaid pattern,” I told her. “Like that.” I pointed at Dudley’s vest.
“Violet!” my mom said again.
“It’s okay.” Dudley laughed. “I don’t have a great deal of fashion sense. In fact, I got this at a yard sale for fifty cents.”
“What a steal,” Mom said, and she actually sounded impressed.
“I get a lot of my clothes at yard sales.”
Gross.
“I love yard sales,” Mom said.
“Really?”
“The plate you’re eating from? Yard sale. The chair you’re sitting on? Yard sale.”
I couldn’t believe it. My mother was bonding with Dudley over his supreme cheapness.
“Perhaps when spring rolls around,” The Wiener continued, “we might visit a few sales together.”
“I’d like that.”
They beamed at each other.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You get five-dollar haircuts and buy your clothes at yard sales. Are you
sure
you’re not Scottish?”
“Violet!”
“What? Andrew MacDonald told us that while it’s a stereotype, all stereotypes are based on an element of truth.”
“Actually, I’m more Austrian than anything else,” Dudley explained to me. He didn’t seem remotely offended by my comments. “On my dad’s side. My great-grandparents immigrated to Canada from Vienna. In Austrian, Vienna is spelled
W-I-E-N
. Hence my last name. It means ‘someone from Vienna.’
Wiener.
”
“That must have sucked growing up,” I said.
My mom put her head in her hands, but Dudley just laughed again. “It did. I got teased mercilessly. I actually thought about changing my last name, but I’m glad I didn’t. Now I’m proud to be a Wiener.”
I’d just taken a drink of milk, which sprayed out of my nose.
“Why don’t we move into the living room for dessert?” Mom said, her voice a little high-pitched. She scraped back her chair so fast, it almost fell over. “Violet, you can help me clear the table.”
“Actually, Rosie’s volunteered to clear the table,” I said, winking at Rosie, who was in on my plan. She tried to wink back, but since she didn’t know how, it was more of a blink. “I’ll keep Dudley company in the other room.”
My mom’s eyes narrowed. As I walked past her, she whispered to me, “Be kind.”
“Of course,” I said.
I didn’t bother adding that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
The Wiener settled onto our red couch. I sat across from him on our gold couch. He smiled. I didn’t. I just stared at him without blinking. I was pretty good at it. He looked away after only a few seconds, like I knew he would.
I always won the stare-down.
He shifted in his seat, like he was trying to get comfortable. “So,” he began, “you’re in seventh grade, is that right –”