Jersey Angel (11 page)

“Do you think God’s sexy?” I ask.

“Hell no.”

“Explain.”

“What kind of a Catholic are you, Cassonetti?”

“I’m not really. I went to church a few times with my
grandma when I was little. I liked the smells. What is it? Wax and incense and something else? I liked the stained glass and the candles. I liked the general mood when no one was talking.”

“Well, if you spent any real time in a church you wouldn’t think God is sexy, and especially not if you went to catechism.”

“That’s a shame.”

“But I’ll tell you what is sexy. This ass.” He slides his hands under my butt and squeezes. “This is one delicious ass and this is one fine tit,” he says, cupping my boob.

“God made this ass and boob,” I say, and laugh.

“Yeah, good one.”

I’d like to ask him about sex in the old art room. On the table. But I never talk with him about the private stuff Inggy tells me. It wouldn’t be right.

I wake around two as Cork is putting on his clothes. “Bye,” he says.

“Bye.”

I toss and turn for a while. Mom’s party must have wound down, ’cause I don’t hear music anymore. I feel kind of restless, both tired and antsy. Not a good combination. I wouldn’t mind some cheese or something, so I throw on jeans and a sweatshirt and dash over to the House in my slippers. When I open the back door, in the dimly lit
kitchen Cork is kissing my mom against the refrigerator. They pull apart and look at me, and I look at them.

“Ew,” I say.

On the table is a half-eaten cheese tray, the slices nicely arranged in a semicircle. I grab a couple and leave.

The back door opens, and I hear her slowly climb the stairs. She kicks off her wedges and leans on the doorframe. She puts one bare foot on top of the other and leans there like a girl. My mother is a girl. She tosses me a napkin full of cheese slices and some jump out and land on the sheets.

“Say something!”

She shrugs, sighs, and then she laughs. She actually laughs, covering her mouth and shaking her head. “Oh, Angel, I’m sorry.”

“You kissed a seventeen-year-old! What is wrong with you?” I throw a pillow at her and it clips her in the face before she catches it.

“I am such an ass,” she says.

“You really are!”

“I can’t even explain.”

I try to get my brain around this. My mom. Ew. My mom! I grab a cheese slice and chew it slowly, filling my mouth with sharpness. Cork cheated on me. On me and Inggy both. There must be others too, I now know as surely
as I know I am sitting on this bed. Cork is suddenly and absolutely a stranger to me, and so is my mother.

“Look,” she says. “What can I say …?”

“I don’t know! But you better say something.”

She sits on the bed and gathers up the scattered slices and stacks them on the napkin.

“Get off.” I slap the bed. But she sinks down on the pillow and rubs her face like she’s really tired. She’s wearing a lot of rings, and I’ve never noticed before, but her hands, decked with all those rings, are old-looking, dry with a million tiny lines.

“Did he start it up? Did he?” I move to the window ledge and lean against it.

“He’s a flirt, that one,” she says. “Look, it was nothing. It didn’t look like nothing but it was nothing. One too many mojitos and a horny boy aren’t a good recipe. Let’s forget it, all right?” Then she bursts out laughing and covers her mouth, looking a little bit shocked. When she recovers, she says, “I am sooo sorry. But you know, Cork and Inggy are ridiculous. Being exclusive all these years. You’re kids, for god’s sake. Has he ever hit on you?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Cork’s got a lot of living in him.”

“Yeah, you think? He’s seventeen.” And an asshole.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

“There’s love, Angel, and there’s sex. And there’s a whole lot more sex than love.”

“I already know that.” I sit on the bed and poke at the cheese, and when she reaches for a slice I pull the napkin away.

“Come on,” she says gently. She dangles her ringy hand in front of me.

“What smells good?” I say. “What is that?”

“Coco.” She holds out a wrist. “It’s nice, right?”

“Why can’t you find anyone? Why are you always looking?”

She gets up and looks at herself in the wall mirror, running her hands through her hair. “Maybe when you’re ready it finds you. Maybe I’m not ready.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” she says, getting annoyed. “Relationships are work, Angel. Maybe that’s why your old mother is alone. Maybe I’m too selfish.”

“God, I can’t believe you!” I replay it in my mind. “You and— Ew!”

“Look, Inggy doesn’t need to know any of this. Not that you’d tell her, but trust me, the Inggys of the world especially don’t need to know these things.”

“Am I selfish?”

“You’re a teenager. You’re supposed to be. But you’re kind, Angel. You are.”

I look out at the bay. The water is dark and smooth, and
the cattails ripple in the wind. All is right with the world out there, but in here it is perfectly wrong. I know one thing: when I’m Mom’s age I’m going to know when to stop being a girl. “What happened to the banker?”

“Didn’t come. Something about the babysitter being sick.” She shrugs. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And she heads down the stairs, dangling her shoes in her hands.

“What did you mean, the Inggys of the world don’t need to know these things?” I call after her.

But she doesn’t answer.

The next morning a low fog hangs over the bay. I stay in bed for a long time, dozing on and off, then finally rise and take a long, hot shower, scrubbing myself very clean.

And then I’m saved.

As I pull on jeans, Mossy pokes his head in the back door and yells, “Your dad’s on the phone.” I jog over to the House with wet hair to find out that Ginger’s mother’s ulcer is acting up, so Ginger’s off to Egg Harbor for a few days. “Come have dinner with us,” my dad says. Better yet, I tell him, I’ll hang out and help him with the girls. So it’s set. I eat a cold piece of French toast from a plate on the counter and tell everybody I’m leaving as I lick my sticky fingers.

“I wanna come,” Mimi says.

Mom sits at the kitchen table, hunched over her checkbook with no makeup on and her hair in a low, sloppy ponytail. She glances at me quickly, smiles, adjusts her reading glasses. “For a few days, huh?”

“Yup.” I pour myself a splash of orange juice. “Bye, little man,” I say to Mossy, who’s curled up the couch in front of the TV. He holds up his hand, and I give him five.

“I wanna come.” Mimi follows me to the door.

“Ride your bike over later,” I say, cupping her head.

I pack a bag, throwing in a toothbrush, mascara, jeans, underwear, and a couple of shirts, and then I am outta there.

It’s nice hanging out with my dad. The first night he cooks a big Italian meal, and we take the kids to the A & P and load up the cart with a lot of stuff Ginger wouldn’t approve of, I’m sure. After dinner I give the girls a bath, and naked and slippery, they dash down the hall and I chase them. I love their bright little faces, their wet eyelashes. When I tuck Abby in, she puts her sleepy arms around my neck. “Oh, isn’t this nice? I want you to come live with me. You can sleep right here,” she says, patting the space next to her.

Cork and I—we don’t say a word to each other at school or anywhere else. Inggy’s out sick on Monday after her Journalists of Tomorrow weekend, so Cork and I keep a good distance.

•   •   •

That night Dad suggests we go out to dinner, and we have another feast, seafood this time, which is clearly not in the Ginger budget. After the girls are in bed, I sit with him on the couch and tell him my receptionist plan.

“Maybe I could, you know, even live in the city.”

He sinks down into the cushions and thinks about it. “The city’s not cheap, and that kind of job isn’t going to pay you much.”

“Well, you gotta start somewhere.”

“You could take a few business classes at Ocean Community.”

“I guess.”

“Hey,” he says. “You know Tom at the marina with the fifty-foot Albemarle? He’s a big shot at some financial firm in downtown Manhattan. We can ask him about a job for you this summer.”

“Financial firm, huh? Could that be a snore?” But somehow I’m feeling pretty okay about this.

“Well, honeybunch, you’d be doing the meeting and greeting, not the calculating.”

“True.” It sorta feels like a plan.

•   •   •

Inggy, I have to say, is one of these annoying people who will come to school sick. So on Tuesday she’s back, stuffed-up and watery-eyed and sneezing, and the three of us talk before homeroom, as usual.

But when we’re alone, not one word passes between me and Cork. And I have to give this a think. Doesn’t he feel the need to say something? Anything? Sorry, even? But no, nothing. So I corner him after science. Get right in his face and stare him down. But he only lowers his eyes and slinks away.

•   •   •

The last night I spend at my dad’s we sit on barstools at the counter and have a beer. How often do I have a beer with my dad? Never.

“I’m glad Ginger’s mom has an ulcer,” I say.

“Me too.” He smiles, knocking bottles with me. “I don’t get to see you enough.”

“Are you happy, Dad?”

“Yes, certainly,” he says, too quickly. Personally, I think this is a question that requires some thought. “I have three beautiful girls, the marina, fishing, my boat, Ginger. You happy?”

I smile.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” We’re quiet, and it’s nice being on side-by-side stools. “Sometimes I wish I could figure out stuff.”

“You know,” he says, “when I was young I thought there’d come a time when I’d feel like a grown-up, when things would click. And it’s true you figure out stuff the older you get, but there’s always confusing, utterly baffling crap-a-doodle-doo. Sometimes you still feel like the kid who knows diddly-squat. The kid with a finger up his nose who’s going ‘Huh?’ ”

“Comforting, Dad.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“Mom still thinks she’s a teenager.”

“She’s still looking, your mother.”

“For a guy?”

“Yeah, that and other stuff.”

“Why’d you split? I mean, I know you were young and all, and fighting, but why really?”

He shrugs. “ ’Cause we both had our fingers up our noses going ‘Huh?’ And technically a relationship can’t handle both of you going ‘Huh?’ at the same time.”

“What pearls of wisdom.”

“Your old dad’s a wise one.”

I peel the wet label off my beer. “Hey, why doesn’t Ginger like me?”

He sighs and kisses me on the side of the head. “I don’t know.”

“Come on.”

“I like you.”

Wednesday, in gym, we dance the fox-trot and the cha-cha. Inggy, still sick and wearing her glasses and looking all foggy-eyed, sits it out in the bleachers with a pack of tissues. Kipper comes gliding over to take my hand, but Cork cuts in and grabs me first. “What are you doing?” I say as his fingers close over mine. Soon we’re fox-trotting around the gym, passing Inggy on every rotation. I feel Cork’s eyes on me so I stare back dead on. He doesn’t seem the least bit sorry or embarrassed; instead he looks like he wants to say
something and is scrambling to find words. When the song slows he lets us fall behind so we’re barely moving. He opens his mouth.

I say, “Just shut the fuck up, Cork.”

I’ll give him this—he does.

Back at home, Mom’s at the sewing machine making Mimi a costume. Mimi stands in front of me in a blond wig that touches her butt. “What are you supposed to be?” I ask.

“The Little Mermaid,” Mossy says, walking through the living room in a zombie getup.

“The Little Mermaid is for like three-year-olds! I’m a
sexy
mermaid!” She holds two clamshells to her flat chest and says, “Fierce. Check me out.”

“Oh brother,” Mossy says. The phone rings and he wanders into the kitchen to answer it.

“Cool,” I say. “But what’s gonna hold up those clamshells?”

“Glue.”

“A flesh-colored bodysuit,” Mom says.

“No bodysuit!” Mimi says.

Mom stops sewing. “You’re wearing the bodysuit.”

Mossy lurches in with zombie arms and tells Mimi, “It’s your stupid boyfriend.”

“Which one?”

“JJ.”

“I haven’t decided if I like him yet,” she says, fluffing up her wig and scampering into the kitchen.

“That child.” Mom takes her foot off the pedal and smiles at me through her glasses. “So, nice visit?”

“Yup.”

“Good. Hold this for me, will you?” I pull up a chair and hold a strip of sequins as she sews them onto the leggings. Her stitching is amazingly straight. She inspects her work and then turns to me. “So hi, Angel,” she says nicely.

“Hey yourself.”

“I made gnocchi for tonight.”

“Good.” I’m not in the mood for the buttering-up routine.

She cuts a new row of sequins and says in a low voice, “So it turns out the banker really did have babysitter trouble. I’m going to see him this week.” She shrugs.

“I’m glad, Ma.” And I sorta am.

Mossy lurches over and puts his hands around my neck. “See my chewed-up brains?” He looks at me with glee. “They ooze out of my head and spill over my ear.”

“Perfect.” I finger his rubber brain.

“Ha!” Mimi says from the kitchen. “I might not even like you!”

“Don’t be a snot-nose,” Mom yells.

Mossy lurches off, practicing his zombie walk.

Mom catches my eye, a small smile creeping onto her face as she shakes her head. “Can you believe your old mother is so dumb?” she whispers.

“I’m not gonna be so dumb.”