Authors: Peter Abrahams
“Bye, Mom.”
Maybe not loud enough, because there was no reply. Then Mom was backing out of the garage, lurching just a bit as usual, tires squeaking on the cement floor. The garage door closed—a long whine ending in a thump—and the sound of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, smoother than the Triumph and much less interesting, faded and faded to nothing. Sherlock Holmes deduced from seven spatters of mud that the terrified young lady in his sitting room had had a rough ride in a dogcart. A car honked on the street—Brandon’s ride. The terrified young lady was going mad from fear.
Linda was dictating a memo about the Skyway account into her digital organizer when her cell rang. Deborah, her sister-in-law, married to Scott’s brother, Tom—Linda always caught her breath for a moment when Deborah called. She was excited about something. Linda could hear it just in the way she said, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Are you at work yet?”
“Stuck in traffic.”
“Me too.” Pause, but not a long one. “Did you get Brandon’s results?”
“What results?”
“The SAT.”
“I thought they weren’t coming till next week.”
“That’s if you wait for the mail,” Deborah said. “There’s a number to call as of seven this morning. You just need a credit card and patience—it took me twenty minutes to get through.”
Linda’s dashboard clock read 7:32.
“So you got Sam’s results?” she said. Sam, Brandon’s first cousin, same age.
“Fifteen forty.” The volume of Deborah’s voice went way up, almost an explosion, like some spike caused by a change in atmospheric conditions. Linda held the phone away from her ear.
“Is that good?”
“Have you forgotten? It’s out of sixteen hundred, Linda. Sam’s in the ninety-ninth percentile.”
Somehow she had forgotten; now it all came back. “That’s great,” Linda said, stop-and-go on the exit ramp. The homeless guy who worked this spot stared through her window, rattling his Dunkin’ Donuts cup. It all came back, including her own score, and she added, “Wow.”
“Thanks,” said Deborah. “We kind of expected something good because of his PSAT—they track pretty closely—but still. Some kids do get sixteen hundred, of course, but we probably won’t have him retake it. With his tennis and community ser—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, here’s the number. Good luck.”
Linda tried the number. Busy, and it stayed busy until she was about to enter the parking garage under the building, a cellular dead zone. That was when she got through. Linda pulled over to the side, her foot on the brake, the car in gear. Someone honked. Linda followed the automated menu on the other end, her heart suddenly racing. She needed Brandon’s social security number, which she had in her organizer, and a Visa or MasterCard number and expiration
date, which she had in her head. It cost thirteen dollars. There was a pause, a long one, during which she found she’d actually broken into a sweat, and then the digital voice uttered Brandon’s numbers: “Verbal—five hundred ten. Math—five hundred eighty.”
Linda clicked off and, as soon as she had done so, began to doubt she’d heard right. Five hundred ten? Five hundred eighty? That would be what—1090 on the SAT? Impossible. Brandon was a good student, almost always got A’s and B’s. Those digital voices were sometimes hard to understand—they tended not to emphasize the syllables a normal human being would. Maybe it had been 610 and 680. That would be 1290, the exact score she’d had years before. She didn’t think of herself as smarter than Brandon. It must have been 1290.
Linda tried the number again. Busy. The clock now read eight on the button. She was going to be late. No one up there cared about five minutes or even ten, but Linda had never been late, not in the three years she’d been on the job. She let up on the brake, eased the car back into the long term check-in lane, hit redial. And connected. As she entered the garage, she went through the social security and credit card routine again, paying another thirteen dollars, waited for the long pause. While what? While some computer matched the social security number with the credit card number and activated a voice program. How long could it take? She stuck her parking card in the slot, jammed it in, really, and went through the raised gate as the digital voice said: “Verbal—”
And lost contact, now in the dead zone.
On the elevator, Linda tried once more. The building was seven stories, her office on six. Linda got through to the SAT number as she passed three, repeated the social security and credit card numbers as she was getting out, paying thirteen dollars yet again, listened to the long pause as she walked down the corridor. She opened the office door and saw to her surprise that everyone was gathered around the conference table for a meeting. They all turned to look at her. The digital voice spoke once more: “Five hundred ten. Five hundred
eighty.” This time she caught the percentile too: “Seventy-fifth.”
Brandon got into Dewey’s car.
“Hey.”
“How’s it goin’?”
“I feel like shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
Dewey, the first of Brandon’s friends to get his license, had a joint going, which sometimes happened on the ride home but never in the morning. He passed it to Brandon. Brandon didn’t want to go to school fucked up, didn’t want to go to school at all, but shit. He didn’t take it any further than that, just hit off the joint, passed it back.
“Could use some gas money,” Dewey said.
Brandon handed Dewey three ones.
“Am I driving a lawnmower and I don’t know it?”
Brandon handed over two more, noticing that the fuel gauge read full. But so what? Dewey pulled away from the curb, squealing the tires just a bit. He switched on a CD, some rap about “fuck you, good as new, all we do, then it’s through” that Brandon hadn’t heard before. Not too bad.
“School sucks,” Dewey said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m thinking about dropping out.”
“You mean before senior year?”
“I mean like now.”
“But what about baseball?” Dewey had been captain of the freshman team and had started a few games for the varsity last spring.
“I’m not going to be eligible anyway,” Dewey said. “I’m flunking two courses.”
“Still time to get them up.”
Dewey took a big hit off the joint, breathed out slow. “Right,” he said.
Fuck you, good as new, all we do, then it’s through
.
Not too bad? It was great.
“Who’s this?”
“You don’t know who this is? Unka Death.”
At that moment, Brandon remembered he had an English test third period, counting for 20 percent of the term grade.
Macbeth
. Hadn’t studied for it, had fallen asleep after the first few lines, some weird shit with witches that was meant to be symbolic or ironic or some other term he’d have to define, probably getting points taken off even though he knew damned well what they meant.
“Got an idea,” Dewey said. “Let’s go to the city.”
“What city?”
“New York, for fuck sake. I know this bar in the Village where they don’t card anybody.”
Almost two hours away. Brandon had been to New York maybe a dozen times, but always with his family. “I’ve only got, like, ten bucks on me.”
“It’s cool. I’ve got a credit card.”
“You do?”
“On my mom’s account. For emergencies.”
Dewey started to laugh. Then Brandon was laughing too. Emergencies: he got it. They drove right past the school. Buses were pulling in and the student lot was filling up. Brandon saw people he knew. Dewey beeped the horn. Brandon thought,
Aw shit
, as they went by. Dewey passed him the joint.
“All yours,” he said, ramping up the volume on Unka Death.
The house was quiet. Ruby loved having it to herself. The terrified lady told Holmes:
You may advise me how to walk amid the dangers which encompass me
. Ruby checked the time, stuck in a bookmark, the one with Dilbert’s boss—it had finally hit her that the boss’s pointy hair was meant to make you think of the devil, she was so slow sometimes—and got up. Out the window, she saw a cardinal at the feeder, poking its red head inside. It suddenly turned toward her window, then rose and shot off into the town forest behind the house.
Ruby brushed her teeth with the Sonicare toothbrush
until the inside of her mouth tingled, then smiled into the mirror. Not a real smile with the eyes joining in; this was just an examination of teeth. Dr. Gottlieb said she was going to need braces. How crooked were her teeth anyway? She studied them from several angles. Some days they looked pretty straight. Today she saw a complete jumble.
Brandon hadn’t flushed the toilet, also hadn’t aimed very well. Careful where she put her feet, Ruby flushed it for him and got in the shower.
She chose the Aussie extra-gentle shampoo with the kangaroo on the front because she liked the combination of shampoo and kangaroo, Helene Curtis Salon Selectives conditioner because it said
completely drenched
, whatever that meant, and Fa body wash because it smelled like kiwi. Clean, dry, smelling great, she wrapped her hair in a towel and got dressed—khakis from the Gap, a long-sleeved T-shirt with a silver star on the front, black clogs with thick soles to make her taller—and went down to the kitchen. Zippy awoke at once, sprang up from under the table, bounded toward her, tail wagging.
“Down, Zippy.”
But of course he wouldn’t go down, did just the opposite, raising himself higher, resting his front paws on her shoulders.
“Down.”
He poked his muzzle in her face, gave her a big wet lick on the nose.
“Up,” she said, just as an experiment. Zippy dropped to all fours at once, snagging her T-shirt as he did. Two of the little arms of the silver star now hung loose.
“Zippy. Bad boy.”
He wagged his tail.
His water bowl was empty. Ruby filled it. He ignored the bowl, but as soon as her back was turned she heard him slurping noisily.
Ruby made her breakfast—scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice. No milk; she only drank milk when forced. Next to her bedroom, the kitchen was her favorite room in
the house, the copper pots on the wall, the fruit bowl, now empty but sometimes full of all kinds of fruit, the wooden spoons, the spice rack, the big fridge humming in the corner—she needed both hands to open the door—the walls a lovely light yellow, perfect for the eating of eggs.
Ruby’s seat at the table was in the actual sticking-out part of the breakfast nook, with windows on three sides. She ate her yellow eggs in a pool of yellow sunlight, leafing through
The All-American Girls Book of Braiding
, trying to think of the right name for those star arms, totally content.
Maybe her teeth weren’t so great, but her hair, that was another story. Thick, glossy brown, full of all kinds of tints—it had a personality of its own. Ruby chose the Thumbelina Braid because the look reminded her of Dilbert’s boss. She made two high pigtails, divided each into three strands, braided the strands, coiled them into buns, stuck them in place with bobby pins.
“How do I look, Zippy?”
He poked his head over the tabletop and snatched her last piece of toast, the one with the butter melted in perfectly.
“Zippy!”
He growled at her. She gave him the cold look. Zippy made himself smaller and slunk away, like the coward he was.
Ruby put on her blue jacket with the yellow trim and walked him out back and into the town forest, taking the shortcut to the pond. The banks of the pond were muddy. She let him off the leash.
“Run, Zippy. Make spatters.”
He lifted his leg and peed on a tree.
Were dog spatters different from horse spatters, or was the important difference the one between a dogcart and a horse cart, which would probably stand higher?
“Run, Zippy.”
He didn’t want to run. She tossed him a stick, which he gazed at. She tossed another one into the pond. It disappeared without a splash, which was kind of strange.
“Go get it, Zippy.”
But he wouldn’t. She didn’t blame him. The water, a blue so pale it was almost white, looked cold. She took him home. He lifted his leg at least a dozen times.
“Poo, Zippy, poo.” He finally did, maybe stepping in it just a little.
Ruby loaded the dishwasher, her own dishes and the ones already in the sink, slung on her backpack and left by the front door, making sure it was locked. The school bus pulled up. She got on.
“Hi, beautiful,” said the driver.
“Hi, Mr. V.”
There was only one seat left, beside Winston. He was picking his nose.
“Don’t eat it, Winston,” she said.
But he did.
The bus rolled away. All of a sudden and for no reason, she remembered her book of Bible stories, sent by Gram to make up for the fact that Mom and Dad didn’t go to church. Specifically, she remembered the story of Lot’s wife, who wasn’t supposed to look back. She had the strong feeling that it was very important not to look back right now. But she couldn’t stop herself. The urge grew and grew in the muscles of her neck. Ruby looked back.
Nothing happened, of course. She didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, and the house wasn’t going up in flames. It stayed just the way it always was, not the biggest or fanciest house on the block, but square and solid, white with black shutters, the only color the red brick chimney, maybe a little too … what was the word? Imposing; too imposing for the rest of the house. She’d overheard her aunt Deborah say that the Thanksgiving before last.
Winston tore a Snickers in two. “Want some?” he said.
Ruby gave him a close look to see if this was some kind of joke. But no, he’d made no connection between the nose picking and his dirty fingernails on the candy bar. He was just sharing.
“Maybe Amanda wants some,” Ruby said.
Amanda leaned over, with her goddamn pierced ears—Ruby had to wait another year. “Maybe Amanda wants some what?” Amanda said.
And what was that? She was wearing lipstick?
“Snickers,” Ruby said, all of a sudden feeling the power of those devilish horns on her head. “You like Snickers, don’t you?”
“Oh, my favorite,” said Amanda.
Winston handed her the thing. Ruby watched till she’d popped it in her mouth.