Joyride (6 page)

Oh, I remember. The image flashes through my mind before I can stop it. Arden, battered in cream corn and smothered in a delicate 2% milk sauce. And I giggle. “That was reflex,” I explain without remorse.

He grins. “I'll bet.” He purses his lips then. “We can be friends, Carly. We're not as different as you think.”

Yes, we are. But he obviously can't be convinced otherwise, at least not right now. I nod. Pretending to agree seems like the only way he'll let me leave on my bike. And I've got to start dinner before Julio gets home. “Friends,” I say, as if the word is foreign to me.

“Friends.” He grabs the door handle of his truck. “See you in social studies.”

“Okay then.” I turn around and start pedaling, trying to stir up a symbolic dust cloud in my wake.

 

Eight

Arden pulls into the long dirt driveway at 86 Weston Road. Long rows of straggly azalea bushes stand guard on either side of the drive. When in full bloom, this driveway is a sight fit for any Southern gardening magazine. That is, if trimmed properly. From the ruts and holes in the red clay, it doesn't look like Uncle Cletus has even had his driveway smoothed over in some time, let alone paid anyone to clean up the bushes.

And why should he have to pay someone?
Arden thinks to himself.
When he has a perfectly capable nephew with an abundance of time on his hands?

Hating himself more and more, Arden takes the last curve and pulls under the vaulted, monumental carport in front. The grand stone steps that lead to Uncle Cletus's double front doors are covered with last season's leaves and this season's moss; Aunt Dorothy used to keep flowers in the concrete vases at the bottom of the stairs. Now the vases stand purposeless and forlorn and pathetic looking. Up top, two giant lion statues on either side of the front door show their teeth as Arden rings the bell. The elegant noise echoes through the house in an uninviting way, as if to say, “Why bother?”

Not surprisingly, no one comes to the door. Uncle Cletus used to keep a maid, Mrs. Beeman, who came a few days a week to tidy up and prepare meals. She would even play the role of butler and answer the door. It's been a long time since Arden has seen Mrs. Beeman. It's been a long time since the front steps have seen Mrs. Beeman.

Arden retrieves his check card from his wallet and finagles the lock by the doorknob, hoping that the deadbolt isn't set. One minute and a bent check card later, Arden strolls into the enormous foyer. The house smells like a decade-old dust ball mixed with cheese. Dust lies on everything like a second skin. Aunt Dorothy and Mrs. Beeman used to keep the house meticulous. Now it looks like it could be undergoing a remodel, with books and magazines and papers strewn about, along with clothes and shoes and paint cans and pieces of art that fell and were never re-hung.

To Arden's left is the “fancy” room where he and Amber were not allowed to play. That's where the expensive stuff is kept. Vases and tea sets and a grand piano and a china cabinet full of porcelain collectibles and a pink antique couch that had probably accommodated the butts of some very important guests in its day. Now a pile of decaying wood sits by the fireplace in a delicate brass basket.

Arden knows there's no use checking the dining room or the kitchen or the library or any of the bedrooms upstairs. Uncle Cletus prefers to drink himself to death in the ballroom. There he has the perfect setup. The ballroom is empty except for the one corner of it haunted by Cletus Shackleford. Him, his polyester couch, and his old television. It's the only place in the house he claims has enough room for all his “lofty thoughts.”

Arden pushes his shoulder into the ballroom door, which creaks open. This room seems to get smaller and smaller each time he visits. As a child, he always thought it was as big as town, dignified and luxurious but decidedly boring. All shiny baseboards and brass mirrors and chandeliers that cast a kaleidoscope of colors on the floors in the summertime. To Arden, the only thing the ballroom was good for was inside rollerblade hockey. He and Amber didn't need to be worried about oncoming traffic of the street or weather conditions like they did at their own house. And the bonus was that if you wiped out, you just got marble-floor burn instead of asphalt embedded into your bloody knees. Now that Arden thinks about it, it was pansy hockey. Not manly at all.

His steps reverberate through the room that was designed to deliver music to every corner. There's no way his uncle doesn't know he's here. He walks toward the couch facing the far wall, with the TV tucked into it. Two booted feet hang off the end of the sofa, and the channel is turned to some sort of hunting show. Arden hears the swish of a bottle being upturned. He wonders how productive this conversation with Uncle Cletus will be.

“Hey, old man,” Arden calls. The boots don't move. Arden rests his elbows on the back of the couch, looking down at Cletus. His uncle's hair is disheveled, his flannel shirt exposing a stained wife beater, and he's actually wearing an honest-to-God polka-dot bow tie around his neck. Arden nods toward it. “What's the occasion?”

Cletus reluctantly draws his attention away from the TV and fixes his gaze on Arden. “I was wondering the same thing about you.”

Arden almost cringes. “If you wanted people to visit, you should come to the door when they ring the bell.”

“Back door's always open. You know that.”

“After what happened to you the other night, I figured you'd be smart enough to lock all the doors.”

“What do you know about what happened?” Uncle Cletus sits up on his elbows, almost spilling the contents of the bottle, which smells like whiskey.

“Mom told me.” As soon as he says it, Arden regrets it. Now Cletus knows that Arden knows he messed himself. He'd wanted to save his uncle from that indignity.

“Did she.”

“Said some moron held you up for your truck keys, then took off on a bike instead.”

This time Cletus sits up fully and motions for Arden to sit beside him. He takes a swig and waits for the burn to subside before saying, “That kid was a moron. Thought I was driving drunk. Said he was trying to help me.”

“And were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Driving drunk.”

“Now you sound like your mother. It takes a lot to get me drunk, boy. You know that.”

Arden doesn't want to have this conversation. Not face-to-face. It was different when he was anonymously scaring him out of getting behind the wheel. But having a serious conversation with Uncle Cletus feels wrong. What business did a seventeen-year-old boy have telling a seventy-three-year-old man how to live his life? At least, that's what his uncle would say. And Arden would have no answer. Time for a subject change.

“Mom said the clerk came out with a shotgun, threatened to shoot the guy's balls off or something.”

Cletus chuckles. “That Carly. She's a spitfire if I ever saw one.”

Arden would have to agree. “So you know her pretty well then?”

Uncle Cletus's mouth tugs into a scowl. “I know her parents don't have the sense God gave a billy goat. Letting a girl her age work alone at a convenience store on the graveyard shift. I can't help but check in on her every night. I've spent a fortune on vodka I'll never drink. Too bad that stingy old Bagget won't stock whiskey but he'll stock something as useless as vodka. But I guess when you're old enough, that'll be part of your inheritance.”

Arden remembers being surprised when Cletus had dropped the bottle of vodka on the ground last night. Cletus hated vodka, said it tastes like tap water. Arden had just assumed the old man's taste buds had changed. He never guessed his uncle would buy vodka every night just to see Carly.

Cletus takes a sizeable gulp from the bottle, then points at Arden. “You'd learn something from that one, boy. She's a hard worker. A survivor. Gets things done. That girl doesn't know it, but she's going places in life.”

Not what Arden wants to hear. Why is everyone obsessed with going places in life instead of just living life? “Maybe I'll come with you one night and meet her.” Arden grins. “Sounds like my kind of girl.”

Cletus wipes the excess liquor off his chin with the back of his hand. “She's way out of your league, boy. You won't be good enough for her until you get yourself straightened out. Hell, you might not ever be good enough for her.”

This stings more than Arden expects. Even Cletus thinks he's wasting his life. His uncle is the one person who always thought Arden could do anything. What changed? His quitting the football team? What exactly has his mother been telling Cletus? And what's so wrong about slowing down and enjoying life? “I will eventually. Get straightened out, I mean.” But the words fall as flat as they feel. Because to Arden, he is straightened out. More than he's ever been.

“It's been a year, Arden. It's time to let her go.”

Arden balls his fists. “Amber has nothing to do with it.” He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice. He comes here to check on his uncle and now all of a sudden he's under attack. And what if he's not ready to let Amber go? She would want him to move on, he knows. But she doesn't get what she wants. His bending to Amber's will ended when she took her own life.

“Everyone deals with things differently, son. But you don't seem to be dealing with it at all. Your mother says you don't sleep. That you're out gallivanting, stirring up trouble every night. Says your grades are crap. That's not going to get you into FSU.”

Nice. He comes over here to check on his uncle and suddenly his baggage is getting checked. “Who says I want to go to FSU?”

“Things are expected of you, boy. You can't run from that forever. You could get counseling. Heard that helps some folks.”

Arden isn't going to discuss expectations with his uncle. Not in a million years. “Sure,” he grounds out. “Maybe we could go to counseling together. Me for Amber, and you for Aunt Dorothy.”

Cletus opens his mouth to fire back but closes it again. Anger flashes across his face like a strike of lightning. He takes a long drag from the bottle, his way of hosing the fire in his temper. Then another. Each calculated sip would have scalded a lesser man's throat. But not a pro like Cletus Shackleford. When he's done, his face is calm again. “I can see why you think that. But we're different, you and me. I'm an old washed-up man who's done everything I've wanted to do in life. I've got a bank account to prove it.” He waves his hand in a grandiose gesture of the room. “A big, useless house and more land than you could hunt in decades. I was married to the woman of my dreams for forty-three years.”

“You tell me all the time that wealth doesn't matter. That material possessions are just more things to take care of. Now you're telling me to go to college so I can get
stuff
?”

“I'm telling you that you only think you're happy doing what you're doing. You used to have drive, son. I don't care if you're as poor as a church mouse when you get to be my age. Find something that matters to you. Even when it's gone.” At this, his uncle's eyes glisten with threatening tears.

Arden swallows. This house has eighteen rooms. Eighteen rooms full of expensive furniture. Expensive carpets and tapestries and paintings and antique décor. But this house is empty. Empty without Aunt Dorothy.

I don't want anything that matters
, Arden wants to say.
I don't want anything else to lose. The pain isn't worth it.

“I was thinking I could bring over Dad's pressure washer and get your steps in front cleaned up,” Arden says. “And your azalea bushes need more trimming than your ear hair, and that's saying something.”

Cletus huffs. “They could use a trimming, now that you mention it. The azalea bushes too.”

Arden grins. “I'll be back this weekend. Anything else you need done?”

His uncle thinks for a moment. “I can't find my spare keys to the truck—had to have it towed home, did your mom tell you? Maybe since you're not going to be sleeping anyway you could swing by the Breeze Mart and check on Carly. I'm sure she'll be there even after what happened. Did I tell you that girl's a spitfire?”

“I'll try to make time for it,” Arden says, delighted that now he actually has an excuse to see her again. He could tell she wasn't feeling the whole friendship scenario.

She'll get used to it after a while.

On his way out the door, Arden hangs the keys to his uncle's truck on the coatrack. It'll be a while before he finds them there. Especially because he's probably already looked.

 

Nine

I brace myself on the metal steps to the trailer; the door tends to stick when you open it and a few weeks ago I pulled too hard and found myself sprawled onto the broken concrete slab we call a porch. When I step inside, the aroma of whatever Julio's cooking in the slow cooker hits me like a spicy snake slithering up my nose.

Julio insists on doing the cooking because whenever I cook, I make things like hamburgers and pizza or pasta—what he calls American food. Which, of course, I'm proud of. It's something that's mine. Our trailer might be the tiniest version of Mexico you ever saw, but at least my cooking—and my bedroom—are the one place you can experience American culture. Or, you know, whatever American culture I can find at garage sales and thrift stores.

Since Julio won't be home for another hour or so, I set my backpack down and head over to Señora Perez's to see if her washer is available. I knock on the door and am greeted with an invisible wall of stale cigarette smoke when she opens it.

Señora Perez is in her usual pink matching sweat suit with a magazine rolled up in her hands. She's obsessed with keeping flies out of her house; that particular issue of
People en Español
probably has the guts of hundreds of flies on it. “
Que?
” she says.