Another Life Altogether_ A Novel

Chapter FOUR



FOR A WEEK OR SO, I SAT AROUND THE HOUSE TRYING TO FOLLOW MY father’s instructions and watch over my mother. I wanted to help him, but just the idea of it made me feel overwhelmed. What was I supposed to do? Keep her away from the kitchen knives? Guard the door so she couldn’t run out and throw herself under the wheels of one of the stray vehicles that passed by our house? There seemed to be so many ways that she could try to kill herself if she wanted. I looked at an electrical cord and wondered if she could use it to hang herself from the banister, took a bottle of Domestos from under the kitchen sink and imagined her swigging it back, the thick, bleachy liquid making the same glug-glug-glug sound when it went down her throat as it did when I poured it into the sink. I looked at my father’s hammer and wondered if it was possible to beat yourself to death, picked up one of my mother’s scarves and wondered if you could strangle yourself. Almost everything around me became a potential instrument of death.
Thankfully, she remained relatively unperturbed, and I wondered if the little yellow pills my father now rationed out to her each day were responsible for this unfamiliar calm. My mother complained that it was treating her like a child to give her medicine to her in small, daily doses. But my father just responded to these protests with “Doctor’s orders, Evelyn, doctor’s orders.” I got the impression that he’d been given strict instructions not to let my mother near any large amount of medication. It was probably for this same reason, I’d deduced, that just before my mother’s return an ancient bottle of aspirin and a dusty bottle of cough syrup had been removed from the medicine cabinet and my father had stopped leaving his razor blades in the bathroom.
One Thursday, a little over a week after the move, I spent the morning watching television, creeping upstairs periodically to sneak into my parents’ bedroom, standing over my sleeping mother and holding my own breath until I could detect the slow and steady rise of hers. The fourth time I found myself there, I heard the loud and repeated toot of a horn. It was coming from just outside the house. Afraid that it would wake my mother and she’d find me there, I tiptoed quickly down the stairs. As the horn sounded again, I opened the front door and saw that a large blue van had pulled into our driveway and a woman was leaning out the window on the driver’s side. “I’m not stopping here all day, you know!” she yelled. “If you want to join up, you’d better get yourself over here sharp.”
I was about to ask her what it was that I was supposed to be joining when I saw the words COUNTY LIBRARY painted on the side of the van. I was relieved to realize that though Midham might not have much going for it, it did have a mobile library.
I bolted out the door. When I reached the back door of the van, the woman opened it up, popped out a set of metal stairs, and I walked inside.
“New here, aren’t you?” she said as she looked me up and down. She was a solid woman, shapeless as a tree trunk, in a sturdy green wool dress. Her face was broad, with big jowly lines around her mouth and a deep frown etched between her eyebrows. Her hair was blue-black, the kind of color that only comes out of a bottle; it gave her skin a grayish tinge, as if she hadn’t seen daylight in a while, and somehow made me feel as if, upon stepping into the mobile library, I’d entered into a fiercely guarded lair. “I heard there was some new people moving in,” she said. “You’d be surprised how much I find out here in this little van. Go all over this side of the district, I do.” I frowned, wondering if somehow she had already picked up some choice snippets about my family. My father would be thrilled. “So, like a good read, do you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Reading, that’s a good quality in children. Beats all that rock and roll—all that nonsense about free love and drugs. All these layabouts you get on the dole. Far as I’m concerned”—she wagged a stern finger in my direction—“you can blame most of the evils of this world on a lack of reading. If more kids these days read instead of watching the box and getting all kinds of rubbish in their heads, the world would be a much better place. Oh, no, you wouldn’t find young girls unmarried and having babies if they’d been reading instead of messing about with some boy, now would you?”
I nodded in agreement. She did, after all, have a point.
“Now, you want to sign up then, do you? Want to take out some books?”
“Yes, please,” I said, eyeing the shelves that lined the van.
“Oh, good, a child with some manners finally. I can’t tell you how many kids these days don’t know the meaning of ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Get you a long way in the world, do those words. Here.” She pushed a form toward me. “Fill out this and you can pick five books. Keep them out no more than a fortnight. I usually come round once a week.”
I filled out the form and handed it back to her. She looked it over and pointed me toward the bookshelves. “Don’t take all day about it, mind. I’ve got to be at the Reatton church hall by twelve. They’ve got the pensioners coming for a browse and a cup of tea with the vicar. They’re a demanding lot, them pensioners. And they’ll be a bit put out today, since the Bleakwick Young Wives Club already took out half my Agatha Christies.” She shook her head slowly to amplify the gravity of this occurrence. “I keep telling them over at the main library to get in more Agatha Christies. But listen to me, do they? Of course they don’t. After all, they’ve all got their fancy degrees from some fancy university. And me—well, I’m just a lowly nobody with nothing but a few O levels and a love of literature.”
I tried to pull an expression that showed deep sympathy for her plight.
“I keep trying to tell them that mysteries and romance is what goes down best with the folk round here. But what is it they send me?” She paused and seemed to expect an answer. I was about to try to give her one when she continued. “Rubbish, that’s what. Well, of course they wouldn’t call it rubbish, would they? But what these hoity-toity types at main think is a good book is not what interests the Reatton Derby and Joan Club, is it? And you should see some of the stuff they send me.” She wrinkled her nose and lowered her voice. “Well, suffice to say it’s not suitable subject matter for the young wives or the pensioners. I prefer to keep it off the shelves.” She began to whisper. “Back there.” She indicated a stack of books immediately behind her. “That’s what I call my slush pile. And slush it is, I can tell you.”
I leaned over the desk, trying to make out some of the titles on the spines of the stack of books. The librarian waved me away. “Like I said, not suitable material. Now you’d better get yourself something picked out. I’ve not got all day.”
There were a lot of books—the tightly packed shelves lined the van from floor to ceiling—but when I began looking at the titles I couldn’t see much that appealed to me. The children’s section, labeled as such in big, handwritten letters, was full of the Ladybird books that I’d stopped reading when I was seven, a lot of children’s novels on religious themes—He Loves Us When We’re Good, Jesus and the Snowman, The Twelve Happy Disciples—a few other books with uninspiring titles, and picture books for toddlers. The adult section, similarly labeled, contained dozens of romance novels—He Swept Her Away, A Distant Affair, Search for Passion—the kind of titles I often found stacked haphazardly on Auntie Mabel’s bedside table, and that I secretly skimmed through to find the parts where the heroes and heroines tussled on four-poster beds amid satin sheets, tousled hair, and torn bodices. Many of the remaining books seemed to be Westerns and mysteries. I wasn’t interested in cowboy stories and though I’d read a few Agatha Christie novels and found them engaging, they weren’t among my favorites. Besides, I thought it best not to reduce the mystery inventory even further and provoke a riot among the pensioners.
“Get a move on, love,” the librarian commanded.
I bent down to scan the lower shelves and saw a few titles of more interest.
“Come on, come on, I can’t wait forever.” The librarian tapped her wristwatch.
I pulled out a copy of Jane Eyre and made my way to the little checkout counter.
“I’ll take this,” I said, handing the book to the librarian, who stood with her date stamp ready in her hand.
She opened the front page, ready to stamp the card in there, when she noticed the title. “Ooh, I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so at all.”
I looked at her, perplexed.
“You got this in the adult section, didn’t you?” she said with gravity. “You have to be over sixteen to take books out of the adult section.”
“It’s for my mother,” I responded. “She’s got a very bad illness. She’s too poorly to come out of the house.”
The woman shook her head solemnly. “Look, I don’t care what’s up with your mother, love. Rules are rules. Besides, the Bront?s were considered pornographic in the nineteenth century, you know.”
Pornographic? It didn’t seem that way in the film my mother and I watched. If the book was pornographic, I definitely wanted to read it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, smiling. “I’ll put it back and pick out something else.” I held out my hand. The librarian kept a tight hold on the book. “I remember exactly where I got it.” I pointed to the shelf from which I’d taken the book. “And I know all about the Dewey decimal system,” I added brightly.
This seemed to convince her, and she handed it over.
I stepped back to the shelf, bent down with book in hand, turned my head to see that the librarian was no longer looking at me, and stuffed it under my sweater. I stepped over to the children’s section, pulled down a couple of random titles, and took them over to her desk, where she stamped the date on their cards, put the cards into her little file box, and said goodbye.
BY THE TIME my father returned that evening, I was more than a hundred pages into Jane Eyre, and if there was anything pornographic in it, it had certainly escaped my attention. I wasn’t disappointed, though, because it was a really good story. The awful tragedy of Jane losing the only friend she had in the world left me brushing tears from my eyes, and next to her terrible experiences in that awful school my own difficulties seemed quite small.
“I’m off to the launderette,” my father announced as he shrugged off his jacket. “We need to get some of this stuff dry.” He gestured toward the sweaters, trousers, and shirts that had been left strewn over every item of furniture. We hadn’t been able to hang the washing outside because it had rained relentlessly ever since we moved in.
I dropped my book. “Can I come?” I began jogging around the living room, grabbing damp clothes in handfuls.
My father frowned over at my mother. “Well, I don’t know … I mean, your mam could probably use your company and …”
“I’m sick of looking at that bloody face of hers; it’s as long as the Mersey Tunnel,” my mother said, waving a limp arm toward me. “A girl her age should get herself outside.”
“But it’s raining.” I pointed at the window, where water drizzled down the glass in thick streams.
“Anybody would think you’d melt.” Suddenly animated, she stabbed the air with the pen she’d been using to fill out the Woman’s Realm crossword puzzle. “Honestly, all you need to do is put a bloody raincoat on and go out there and play. When I was your age …”
I rolled my eyes. Anything either of my parents prefaced with those words was bound to irritate me. They had both spent their early childhoods in the war, a time they recollected as a period of idyllic deprivation. The way they told it, every child would benefit from a good dose of air raids, severe food rationing, and the immediate prospect of a German invasion.
“When you were my age,” I interrupted, “you didn’t get moved into the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.”
“The trouble with you is you’re spoiled.” My mother rolled up her Woman’s Realm and threw it in my direction. It fluttered, pages splayed, at my feet. “Take her with you, for God’s sake, Mike.”
IT WAS A FIVE-MINUTE drive into the village, along a road bordered by thick hedgerows and grass verges speckled with the color of dandelions, daisies, and a variety of pink and purple flowers. The sky was massive, a billowing tent of gray. As my father drove, his silence punctuated every now and then with a weighty sigh, I peered through the rain-spattered windscreen at the shifting shapes of the dark clouds, the way the changing light transformed their boundaries, so that they pushed and merged into one another like waves. I imagined myself falling upward into all that gloom and radiance, flying like the swallows that had their nest in the eaves of our house, soaring, arms pushed behind me in a V-shaped arrow, to somewhere else.
“I think we should do a bit of shopping while we’re here, don’t you, love?” my father said as he parked. He pointed toward a little Co-op supermarket across the street. “We could do with a bit of food in the house.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. For the past several days we’d been subsisting on baked beans, sardines, cheese, or tinned spaghetti on toast. Although I’d never been particularly fond of vegetables, even I was beginning to think at least having something green on my plate might not be such a bad idea.
I helped my father carry the clothes into the tiny launderette, the Midham Wash-It-All, push them into the machines, and place our coins in the slots. Then we dashed through the rain over to the Co-op and launched ourselves into the luster of tightly packed grocery shelves under flickering fluorescent lights.
I was quite excited to discover that Midham had a Co-op. The Coop gave out stamps for everything you bought. These you pasted into books and could redeem for a wonderful array of items—everything from tea cozies (two books) to toasters (fifty books) and portable televisions (three hundred books). Just over a year ago, my mother had started collecting Co-op stamps. In her initial frenzy, she’d filled twenty books in a matter of weeks. She’d decided to aim for the toaster, though I’d tried to persuade her to hold out for the television.
“You could give it to me for a birthday present,” I’d suggested. “Then I can watch the telly in my bedroom and I won’t be a bother to you and Dad.”
The way she’d refused even to acknowledge this proposal, however, implied that she had other things in mind. Indeed, she’d maintained a resolute commitment to the toaster and might well have made it were it not for my father finding out that she had taken to shopping at the Co-op almost every day, buying far more than we needed and stashing the excess under their bed. The discovery had come when he stubbed his toe on a tin of Heinz mulligatawny soup and bent down to discover that the entire floor there was occupied by an assortment of tins, packages, and boxes.
Following this, my father had decided that it was best if my mother took a break from doing the shopping. Soon he and I got into a routine of going together on Friday evenings when the Co-op in Hull had late-night closing and he could go after work. And, having inherited the twenty-seven and a half books my mother had managed to fill, I was able to begin avidly saving for a portable television. Unfortunately, at the rate my father preferred to shop, I calculated that it would take me another five years. So I was constantly trying to buy more items, or at least more expensive ones, and each of our shopping trips became a battle between the two of us, with me surreptitiously trying to place things in the basket and my father taking them out.
During our trip to the Midham Co-op that evening, I spent much of my time trying to get my father to agree to buy a package of Mr. Kipling cream cakes. “We can’t afford them,” he answered wearily.
Both my mother and I loved the adverts for Mr. Kipling. They were set in pretty English cottages or on wide green lawns, the kind where people played croquet following afternoon tea. And they were narrated by a man with a voice that was warm and crumbly, and made you think of a fat Victoria Sponge Cake with jam oozing from its middle. “After all,” he’d say at the conclusion of every advertisement, “Mr. Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes.”
“Ooh, I could do with one of those and a nice cup of tea,” my mother would say, gazing longingly at the television screen. And, indeed, when she was in charge of the shopping we’d have Mr. Kipling cakes at least once a week. “I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it,” she’d say, unwrapping them from the cellophane and arranging them carefully on a plate. I’d gobble mine down in a matter of seconds, but my mother would relish hers, taking small slow bites, closing her eyes and rolling her mouth around their taste. I sometimes thought she looked at her happiest when she was smacking her lips and finishing off a Mr. Kipling custard tart.
“Please, Dad,” I begged, following him around the aisles as he stared glassy-eyed at rows of tinned button mushrooms and processed peas. “Just this once, can we have them? Please.”
“Stop whining, Jesse, and make yourself useful,” he said. “Go and get us some toilet paper, can you? We’re running out.” I returned carrying a packet of Andrex Supersoft toilet tissue. “Not that,” my father said. “Costs a bloody arm and a leg. Get the Co-op brand.”
When my father and I approached the checkout counter, and I had failed to add one single item beyond those on my father’s list, I was feeling decidedly frustrated. Then I noticed a pyramid display of Mr. Kipling chocolate fingers, sited strategically at the end of the aisle, where all the shoppers queued to have their items rung up. They were even on special offer, at five pence off. “Dad,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“I bet those chocolate fingers are really tasty, don’t you?” I spoke cautiously, pointing at the towering triangular display. He sighed as he turned toward me, and I felt my heart sink, sure that he would deny me this one pleasure, and the extra Co-op stamps. But, to my surprise, when his eyes rested on the stack of cakes he seemed to consider them.
“You know, they’d be nice with a cup of tea, they would. I bet your mam would like them as well. Tell you what, get us a packet, Jesse, love.”
“Really?” I asked, a little incredulous.
“Yeah, why not?”
I could scarcely contain my excitement. An entire packet of Mr. Kipling cakes. I could imagine the delicious smell of the chocolate as I tore them from their wrappers, the spongy softness against my fingers as I put them on a plate, my mother’s delight when I set them out in front of her. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, and pulled at the packet nearest to me in the display.
Unfortunately, at that moment I was far too preoccupied with visualizing my parents and me sitting around the table devouring the cakes to consider the obvious consequences of my actions. I soon found out, however, when, having removed one of the packets close to the base of the Co-op’s nicely arranged pyramidal display, the whole thing came tumbling down, boxes of Mr. Kipling chocolate fingers hurling themselves onto my father and me and scattering over the floor in a wide and unruly mess.
“What on earth is going on?” Once the debris had settled, the woman at the checkout stood up. With massive shoulders, a broad face, and a short, fat neck, she reminded me of the female Russian shot-putters I’d seen while watching the Olympics on television.
“It was her,” a woman queuing in front of us said, pointing at me. “She knocked it down.”
“Did she, now?” the checkout woman said, peering over at me.
“It was an accident,” I said weakly, sheltering behind my father, who, much to my consternation, had so far failed to speak up for me. “I just wanted a packet of—”
“Is that child your responsibility?” the checkout woman asked as if she were referring to a troublesome pet.
“Yes, she’s my daughter,” my father answered sheepishly. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to—”
“Well,” she interrupted, “we’ve had plenty of trouble with teenagers. Juvenile delinquents, the lot of them. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll understand our policy, sir. Any trouble and we have to ban them from the shop.”
I looked beseechingly at my father. “Yes, well, I understand,” he said. “Seems like a reasonable policy.” And then he turned to me. “Go on, Jesse, why don’t you wait outside? I’ll not be long.”
“But it was an accident,” I protested, my face burning. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Outside,” he said, this time more firmly. “Do as the lady says.”
I hated him in that moment, for his unwillingness to stand up for me or for himself, for his desperation to not cause a scene. I turned, kicking a path through the scattered boxes and stomping across the tiled floor, until I reached the door and flung it open.
I stood in the middle of the street, waiting for him, not even bothering to seek shelter from the pouring rain. It seeped through my hair to my scalp, drizzled down my face, and worked over the collar of my raincoat to run down my neck. But I didn’t care as I stood staring into the brightness of the Co-op window, willing my father to look over at me and witness my utter misery. “Are you all right?”
I wiped my eyes against my sleeve before turning around to face the girl standing a few feet away from me. She was dressed in knee-high black platform boots, a black leather bomber jacket, and a pencil skirt, the kind that had a slit in the back so you could walk in it without falling over. Standing under a wide red umbrella, she wore her blond hair flicked into two wings that sat at the sides of her face like pulledback curtains, shiny with hairspray. Her eyes, outlined in deep black eyeliner, were an unusual and stunning shade of green. Her eyelashes were dark and exceptionally long. Her lips were broad and full, and moist with pale pink gloss. She was beautiful.
“Waiting for someone?” Her voice was soft. As she spoke, she pressed her lips into a sympathetic smile.
“For my dad. He’s inside.” I pointed toward the Co-op. My father was standing next to the checkout lady, smiling as she rang up the groceries.
“You’re getting wet. Why don’t you come under here with me?” She gestured toward the shelter of her umbrella. “You’ll be a lot better off. You look like a drowned rat right now.” She let out a laugh, and I felt myself blush as I became aware of what a sight I must look. My face was probably red from crying, and my wet hair was plastered across my forehead and draped over my shoulders in sodden strands. I tried to push it back. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll dry out when you get home. But, really, you should come under here before you get worse. Come on, don’t be shy.”
I moved toward the girl and slipped under her umbrella.
“There, that’s better. Nice and cozy.” She sidled up close to me, and I found myself engulfed in the smell of damp leather and a musky perfume.
“Can you hold this for a sec?” she asked, handing me her umbrella.
I took it and watched as she rummaged around in one of her pockets, then brought out a packet of Benson & Hedges, shook out a cigarette, placed it in her mouth, and struck a match. The bristling smell of sulfur filled my nostrils, and as she held the flame to her cigarette she drew in a breath until it glowed orange, and dropped the match to the ground. She looked at me, smiling as she blew out the smoke in a sigh. For once, I found myself not minding cigarette smoke. Instead, I breathed it in avidly until I let out a harsh, spluttering cough. “You don’t smoke, do you?” she said, laughing.
“No,” I said, still coughing as I handed her umbrella back.
“Good thing,” she said, taking another drag. She held the cigarette between her index and middle fingers, and when she pulled it from her lips I noticed that the filter bore a pink imprint from her lip gloss. I looked at the spidery lines and wondered if the print of someone’s lips was as unique as a fingerprint. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked.
“Thirteen,” I said.
“I’m nearly sixteen. But people always tell me I look older.” She inhaled again and turned away, so that I could watch the stark silhouette of her profile as she pouted little puffy smoke rings into the air. “You think I look older than fifteen?” she asked, eyeing me sideways.
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “You look … You look just like a film star.” I knew I sounded stupid, but she made me think of all those old films I had watched on cold and rainy Sunday afternoons. My mother always sighed as she looked longingly at the men: Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature. But they always seemed stiff-jawed and graceless to me. I much preferred the women: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman—their long, tilted necks, loose languid movements, thrown-out chests, their fierce and watery eyes. And the way they smoked, the plumes curling away from them, making their hot breaths visible, filling a room with their fire.
“You’re funny,” she said, slapping my arm gently. “Very funny.” She laughed, a big, delighted laugh that danced through the rainy evening and bounced across the empty street. Just hearing it made a smile tug at the edges of my mouth. “So, what do they call you?” she asked. “Jesse,” I said. “Jesse Bennett.”
“Right,” she said, pausing to take another drag of her cigarette. “I’m Amanda.” She exhaled her name in a cloud of blue smoke. “Amanda,” I repeated. “That’s a nice name.”
“It’ll do.”
“Do you live here in Midham?”
“Afraid so. Up there, on the Primrose Housing Estate.” She nodded toward the end of the street. “Marigold Court.”
“I just moved here,” I said.
“Did you, now?”
“Yes, with my mum and dad. My dad wanted us to move out to the countryside. To … get away from things.”
“Well, he certainly did a good job of that. Not exactly the center of the universe round here, is it?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“But you know what, it could be worse,” she added, grinning and nudging me gently.
“Yes, that’s what I said to my mum. She’s not very happy here. But I told her—” I found myself wanting to confide in Amanda, to tell her something about my mother and about my family, about all the reasons I had found myself here.
“Oh, look, there he is.” She interrupted me to point across the street to where a blue Ford Cortina was pulling up. “That’s my boyfriend, Stan,” she said, dropping her cigarette to the wet pavement, where the shimmering orange end fizzed and died. “Normally he drives a motorbike, a dead-nice one. But, with the weather the way it is, he borrowed a mate’s car. He’s taking me to the pictures. Going to see some horror film. Jaws.” She made her eyes wide and gave a little shiver. “It’s supposed to be dead scary. Sorry I’ve got to go. And I’ve got to take my brolly.”
I didn’t mind at all about the rain, but I wanted her to remain there, standing next to me, to tell the boyfriend, Stan, to go to see the film by himself. I glowered over at the car, wishing it would pull away without Amanda.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s tell your dad to hurry up so you don’t get too wet.” Before I could say anything, she grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the shopwindow. Inside, under the fluorescent lights, I could see my father standing at the checkout stand. “Is that him?” Amanda asked.
“Yes,” I said flatly.
“God, he’s dead slow, isn’t he?” she said.
She was right. He was packing his purchases into a carrier bag, taking each item and deliberately placing it in the bag before reaching for the next. The faces of the women behind him in the queue were taut with impatience. The cashier held out his change and a sheet of Co-op stamps, but he hadn’t noticed. She looked at the other women and rolled her eyes.
“Hey,” Amanda called. “Hurry up.” She rapped hard on the window. Everyone in the shop turned to squint in our direction. “I said, hurry up.” She knocked on the window again. My father frowned and peered toward us. Amanda laughed and knocked again. “Come on, slowcoach, get moving, can’t you? It’s raining cats and dogs out here, and this poor lass is going to catch her death.”
Everyone inside stared at us. My father grimaced, looking from me to Amanda and back to me. It was obvious that he couldn’t understand what she was saying, but what he clearly understood was that he’d been shown up in public for a second time that evening. He turned to the women in the queue. Their mouths were pressed into outraged little O’s. My father appeared to mutter some kind of apology, while they all scowled and shook their heads sorrowfully. There was no doubt about it. I was going to be in terrible trouble when I got home. Still, instead of trying to restrain Amanda I felt liberated by her laughter. Behind the glass barrier of the shopwindow, everything seemed too bright, filled with adults who were eager to judge, and whose world seemed as confined as that little village shop. Outside, in the cool evening, the rain spattering off the pavement and soaking everything, where sensations were real and nothing was protected, this was the place I wanted to be.
“Oh, my God,” Amanda said. “Look at them. Anybody would think they’d never seen someone knock on a window before. Boneheads.” Then she rapped on the window again. “Come on, get a move on,” she said, wagging a finger toward my father. “If you leave her out here much longer, her feet are going to go moldy.” She giggled.
“I’ll grow mushrooms on my toes,” I added, laughing a little myself.
“You’ll have fungus feet,” Amanda said, turning from the window to grin at me.
I wrinkled up my nose and then pointed toward the checkout lady, who was now standing, hands on hips, her angular face creased into a simmering frown. “Yeah, but at least I won’t have a fungus face like her,” I said.
At this Amanda let out a sudden gale of laughter, amusement rippling across her features, leaving her limbs loose and causing the umbrella to veer at broad angles above us. She laughed hard, a convulsion of sound that crinkled the edges of her eyes and left her mouth open, gasping, as she placed a hand on my shoulder. I watched her, for a moment stunned by the delight on her face and the fact that I had put it there. I had never made anyone laugh like that before. It warmed me, flowed through me. I began to laugh myself, leaning into Amanda so that, as I laughed, I found myself gulping her damp leather, smoke, and perfume smells.
“Oh, my God,” Amanda said when she had regained her composure. “You are bloody hilarious.” She slapped my shoulder with the hand she had placed there. “Hilarious,” she repeated. I stood there grinning as she tried to recover her breath.
Just then a car horn sounded from across the street. I looked over to see her boyfriend roll down the window of the waiting Cortina, lean out, and yell, “For f*ck’s sake, Mandy, get a bloody move on!” I couldn’t see him well because of the rain, but I imagined him spotty-faced and ugly.
“Christ, if I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times. I don’t like being called Mandy.” Then, turning toward him, she shouted, “All right, Stan, I’ll be over in a minute!”
“We’re gonna miss the flick if you don’t get your f*cking fat arse over here soon,” he shot back.
I expected Amanda to yell back angrily. Instead, she gave a resigned little shrug. “Men,” she said, taking in the boy in the car and my father, behind the window, still gathering his shopping, in a single, sweeping look. I nodded, as if I agreed with this assessment. But, really, I didn’t understand why she would ever have to put up with someone who talked to her like that. That stupid boyfriend of hers should be grateful that a girl as beautiful as Amanda would even give him the time of day.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” Amanda said. “But it looks like your slowcoach dad is just about ready to leave.” She pointed at my father, who stood next to his packed carrier bag carefully mulling over the change that the checkout woman had put into his palm. A couple of the other customers were still glaring in our direction. Stan hit the horn again. “Bloody hell, I’ve a good mind to make him wait longer. That’d show him,” she said. “Only thing is, I don’t want to miss the film.” She pulled a wide grin and shrugged. “Bye, then.”
“Yes, bye!” I called as I watched her run across to the Cortina, her boots slapping against the street. They made spattering explosions of water as they hit the shiny black tarmac.
She closed her umbrella and climbed into the car. Within seconds, the car squealed away. As they passed, Amanda rolled down the window and waved. “I hope I didn’t get you in too much trouble!” she yelled, her voice fading in a long arc of sound as they sped down the street.
“I don’t care,” I called back. And, really, I didn’t.