My Lost and Found Life (19 page)

After a moment's silence, Earl said, “You sound like someone who needs to talk. I'm a good listener.”

“I don't know what you mean,” I answered, and then horrified myself by bursting into tears. I cried until I was drowning in tears. Earl didn't say a word. He just sat there quietly, handing me tissues from his drawer.

Finally, my downpour began to let up.

“This is so stupid and childish,” I hiccupped, blowing my nose loudly and then dropping the gooey tissue into the waste-basket beside my chair. “I don't know what's the matter with me. You must think I'm crazy, bawling like this in front of you.”

“It's not so crazy. You're hurting,” he said matter-of-factly. “It happens to everybody sooner or later, even old coots like me.”

I sniffed some more and began twisting and tearing the tissue in my hands.

“Why don't you tell me about it?” he said.

All my defenses were down, and I began hemorrhaging everything I had been keeping inside me. I ranted about my mother and all the drama that had occurred over the last five months. It was such a relief to let it out.

Luckily, it was late, so there weren't any customers to interrupt me. But at one point, I caught a glimpse of a red Mustang pulling up in front of the pumps and I heard a car door slam.

“Wait back there,” Earl whispered, motioning toward the service bays, and I ducked out of sight.

After the car pulled away, I came back inside and flopped down into the chair.

“What was that all about?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“It's very late,” he said. “Human nature being what it is, it's better if we don't put temptation in anyone's way. There are some wicked people out there, and you're too pretty for your own good.”

I was touched that he wanted to protect me, especially since he looked more like Superman's crusty old grandpa than a superhero. In fact, Earl looked like someone who had broken a few laws and raised a little hell in his time and that made him eligible to understand my situation. I couldn't talk to normal people with happy families. Someone like that couldn't begin to understand the hole I had fallen into.

Finally, I dried up and wound down. For a few minutes the two of us just sat there in silence, listening to the crackle of the space heater in the corner.

Then Earl surprised me by saying, “Tell me about your mother.”

“What?”

“You've told me what your mother has done. Now tell me what she's like.”

“What do you mean? She's like a mother.”

“Mothers are people too. Describe her. I'll bet you look a lot like her.”

I thought about it. “Yeah, we have the same dark hair and hazel eyes, but she's shorter than me and a little heavier. Still, she looks good for her age. I always tell her she should wear clothes with more pizzazz. I love red, it makes you stand out. Diane wears a lot of navy blue. Dull, dull, dull, I tell her.”

“So she's the quiet type who cooks and sews and takes care of you?”

“She doesn't sew, not anymore.” I laughed at the idea. “She used to knit sweaters for me and make me dresses, but she stopped after I started refusing to wear the goofy little outfits she made. Before Jimmy—my jackass father—died, she cooked a lot, but I'm not a big eater, and I don't want pies and rib roasts and stuff like that. Really, it's just easier to order a pizza or eat Lean Cuisine.”

“So what does she do?” He kept feeding me questions.

“Who knows what she's doing now.” I paused, thinking about it. “She used to work a lot. She likes to read, mostly romance novels, and dig around in the yard, planting tulips and primroses. She loves flowers.”

“She sounds nice.”

“She's too nice—that's her biggest problem. She gets all teary when she reads something sad in the newspaper. She buys Girl Scout cookies that we'll never eat because she can't say no
to the cute little girls knocking on the door. She's the world's biggest sucker. Anyone can manipulate her, including, no, especially me.”

“That's not the worst fault I've ever heard,” he suggested, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head.

“Maybe not.” I grimaced. “When I was little, I thought she was perfect. But as I got older, I saw the stupid way she acted around Jimmy. She was so much smarter and better than him, but she knuckled under to whatever he wanted. I lost respect for her, watching him wipe his feet on her.” I broke off. “Why are you asking me so many questions about her?”

“I'm interested. You've told me all the stuff you don't like. Don't you think it's a good idea to remember the good things too? Tell me what you liked about her.”

“There's the niceness, I told you about that. And she believes in good manners. I'm not talking about etiquette and using the right fork, I mean not calling people names or being rude—that kind of manners.”

I smiled to myself, remembering. “She's sort of a neat freak too. She straightens up the magazine racks while she's waiting in line at the supermarket. She always says you should leave a place better than you found it. Once we went on a picnic and she picked up trash—not just ours, but the stuff that other people had left behind. I told her that she couldn't clean up the whole world and she said, ‘But I can try.' ”

My voice trailed off as all the memories came back to me. I wasn't feeling angry anymore, just exhausted and sad.

“So did your mother do all this to you out of meanness, or did she just make a mistake?”

I sighed. “Of course, she just made a mistake, a really big mistake. I know she loves me and didn't mean to ruin my life. But she did. And where is she? Why doesn't she come home?”

“Sometimes coming home is the hardest thing to do, baby doll,” Earl said. He stood up and rubbed his bad arm. “Anyway, it's time to close up. I should have shut the station a half hour ago. I'm an old man and I need to go home.”

I stood up too and gave him a wan smile. “Thanks for giving me a shoulder to cry on.”

“Anytime, anytime. My life isn't that exciting, so I'm happy to hear about yours.”

I chuckled, said good night, and went back to the camper. That night I slept like a baby who had worn herself out throwing the world's biggest tantrum. Apparently, hysterical outbursts and crying jags are better than sleeping pills, because I felt amazingly calm and rested the next day.

After that, I began to wander out for late-night conversations with Earl once or twice a week. I didn't always do all the talking. Over time he managed to get a word in edgewise. I learned that he grew up in Nevada and had traveled the world in the merchant marine. He'd married and been divorced twice. Now he lived with his daughter, a single mom with two kids, a few miles south in San Mateo.

Earl didn't watch as many movies as I did, but he liked to read, so we talked a lot about books. He liked to describe the elaborate plots of spy novels and thrillers to me, and I would tease him that all those conspiracies gave him a suspicious nature.

“Nope, I'm not suspicious, just watchful,” he replied. “We all need to be watchful. The world can be a surprising place.”

“Surprising!” I hooted. “It's shocking and confusing and downright loony. I used to think I knew everything, and now I don't understand one damn thing about life or people, even my mother, the one person I thought I knew better than anyone. It scares me.”

“Don't worry. Old Earl will keep an eye on you till you get it all figured out again.”

“My hero!” I giggled, giving him an affectionate smile. “Earl, why are you so nice to me?”

He snorted as if to dispel any notion that he was nice. “Please, I'm no hero. Just ask my daughter. I wasn't around much when Teresa needed a father, and she got into a whole lot of trouble. She married a real dirtbag, and now she's trying to bring up two kids alone. Maybe you're my way of payback—you know, fixing my karma or whatever they call it. What goes around, comes around. One of these days it'll be your turn to help someone.”

“I'm a mess! How could I help anyone? I feel like I have one foot on a banana peel.”

In fact, I had been worrying lately that Phil might decide to toss me out of the camper. I felt sick to my stomach at the very thought of moving out of my hidey-hole. Much as I hated it, at least I knew what to expect and how to cope. What if some worse disaster lay in store for me when I moved on?

Sleeping in the camper wasn't so frightening when Earl was around. He chased away the bogeymen, and I appreciated the fact that he never offered me any fake sympathy. Instead of giving advice, Earl liked to offer up what he called platitudes. He collected memorable quotations from the books he read
and had an appropriate one for every occasion. “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names” was one he particularly liked. Earl said that one came from President Kennedy.

Another favorite was: “We are what we pretend to be.”

I argued with him about that one, contending that pretending to be smart didn't make you smart.

“Well, now, maybe that's true,” he mused. “But doesn't it make you smarter than pretending to be dumb?”

“I don't know about that. It seems to me that for centuries women have succeeded by playing dumb. Look at Marilyn Monroe.”

“She pretended to be dumb and that made her dumb or else she
was
dumb,” Earl answered. “A smart woman doesn't kill herself over some love affair gone wrong. Learn from her mistake. There's no man worth killing yourself over.”

“Don't worry,” I assured him. “I'm way smarter than that.”

During another late-night visit, I told Earl about how I wanted to live like a normal person.

“Describe a normal person for me, baby doll. I don't think I've ever met one,” Earl said. “There's an old saying...”

“Not another old saying,” I groaned.

“Yup. Are you listening?” He grinned at me. “The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.”

I rolled over, groaning as I slammed my knee against the hard metal back of the camper's sleeping platform. Rain was hammering the roof and I shivered at the sound. The rumbling of cars and trucks surging down the streets signaled it was time to get up.

Although eight weeks had elapsed since I began living here, I still loathed waking up in the cold camper. The past week of nonstop rain wasn't helping my mood. Not only was I sick of the soggy weather, I was just plain tired. Three nights in a row I had stayed up late gabbing with Earl. Now my lack of sleep was catching up to me.

By the time I got to the coffeehouse, I was admittedly grouchy. I lurched around the place trying to keep up with the chaos caused by the early-bird coffee crowd. It was a relief when the pace finally slowed. Then, as I bent over to pick up a dirty cup from one of the coffeehouse tables, I felt a hand on my back.

Snap!
The elastic from my bra made an audible noise as it cracked against my bare skin.

I flinched and whirled around. Jerry was standing there, grinning at me. I reached over and slapped his computer-geek face.

All nine or so of the people in the Madhouse stopped what they were doing to stare at us.

“It was just a joke,” Jerry mumbled.

I grabbed the dirty cup and marched past him to the counter, then turned back to hiss, “Save your junior high school tricks for someone else. And stop watching me all the time.”

From the corner I could hear Mal laughing, of course. Mal always enjoyed any drama unfolding in his establishment.

Jerry flushed red and sputtered, “What?”

My lip curled at the sight of his stricken expression. Didn't the guy have any pride?

“Look, I know you watch me, and I want it to stop. It's extremely annoying.”

“Jerry, my boy,” Mal drawled. “Your obvious appreciation of our lovely Ashley seems to be having a detrimental effect on her disposition.”

“I'm not watching you,” Jerry denied without conviction, then added, “At least, well, it's just that you're so...interesting.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I'm a regular Einstein. I'm sure you're watching my mind. News flash, Jerry: You're not my type.”

“You hear that, Jerry? Don't expect any mercy or sympathy from this girl,” Mal interjected. “Fill us in, Ashley. Tell us all about your type of man. What is the way to Ashley Mitchell's heart?”

Mal's wisecracks were like a sudden splash of cold water in my face.

“I don't think that's anything I want to share,” I said, giving
Mal a stern look. I turned to Jerry and lowered my voice. “I don't want to be a complete bitch, all right? Just give me a break. Keep your hands, your eyes, and your practical jokes to yourself.”

Jerry nodded sheepishly and looked down at his feet. He muttered, “Sorry,” and fled out the front door.

Both Mal and I stared after him, me in chagrin and Mal in amusement.

“Uh-oh. Maybe I overreacted,” I said.

“Don't worry,” Mal retorted. “Jerry is embarrassed, but he'll get over it. The lad is a computer genius, but he's socially challenged. You had every right to call him on his inappropriate behavior. However, try not to make a practice of driving paying customers out of the coffeehouse.”

“Like we could drive Jerry away with a stick,” I said, smiling at the absurdity of it. Mal chuckled and picked up his newspaper to resume reading.

I stood there a moment and then darted into the tiny restroom. I paused to look in the mirror, staring at Ashley Mitchell—bitch, barista, and love object for dorks.

At least part of my outburst had been frustration that Jerry, rather than Patrick, was enamored with me. The charming Irishman seemed immune to my charms. He flirted and joked but never asked me out. At least no one knew about my infatuation. Mal had a sort of radar about that kind of thing, but so far he hadn't caught on.