Chapter TWELVE
April improvised to her footsteps as she made her way home.
I’m finally out, finally free.
Summer’s here. Just you and me.
We’ll make the most of the time we’ve got.
I’m gonna love you, babe. Gonna love you a lot.
April frowned. Well, that sucked. But she’d just finished her last day of school and she’d have plenty of time to concentrate on her songs, her singing, and finding a band that wasn’t too lame. She saw herself performing in one of those outdoor concerts by the lake. Keith Spinelli would hear this incredible music and wander over to see who it was and would be amazed to see her, April Shea, up there onstage, front and center. She might point to him, a special crumb, as she acknowledged the wild roar of the crowd.
She couldn’t wait for the long days ahead. She and Heather would do some serious tanning—forget what her mother said about skin cancer. Why couldn’t her mother, the only dark cloud on the summer horizon, be more like Heather’s? Why couldn’t she be more like anyone else’s mother?
She considered the options that would keep her away from home as much as possible. She couldn’t hang out with Heather all the time or her IQ would drop a few hundred points. Kelly Honaker lived nearby, but she was such a preppy, two-faced slut that April might catch an STD from just being with her. The inseparable Chandra Zahm and Allyson Cagley were nice, but they had been best friends since kindergarten and had their own strange language that kind of freaked April out. She concentrated on the rhythm of her footsteps to crowd out the thought that when it came down to it, she didn’t really have a best friend besides Heather.
She stopped when she saw the car parked halfway up the driveway to her house. She didn’t recognize it, not being a car nut like her grandfather, who liked to go on and on about his precious Impala. The thought of him brought a pang, since she hadn’t been allowed to see him after the accident, but she forgot all about her grandfather when she got closer to the car and saw that it was a Mercedes. Who did her mother know that drove such an expensive car?
Of course! She ran toward the house. He’d made it big. And he came back, just as he said he would.
April slammed the door behind her.
“Dad?!”
She smelled the perfume her mother used to wear when she and her father would go out. As a kid, she always associated that scent with babysitters and desperate grabs at her departing parents, and over the years she’d occasionally slipped into her mother’s room to open and breathe in the fragrance from the small square bottle—always three-quarters full—that rested on the top of the dresser.
But almost as soon as she smelled the perfume, she saw that the man sitting with his back toward her, facing her mother on the couch opposite, was not her father.
It was Hank Johnson.
Her mom seemed nervous. “Hi, Sweetie,” she said, stepping forward and then back. “You remember Mr. Johnson.”
April took it all in as she approached them: her mom’s nicest dress, the string of pearls, and—now that she was close enough to smell it—Hank’s pukey cologne.
“Hi, April,” he said, standing. “Been a while, hasn’t it.”
April nodded slightly as she shook the hand he extended and got an unsolicited lesson in the basics of a hearty handshake: eye contact, ear-to-ear shit-eating grin, and a bone-crunching grip.
“Mr. Johnson and I have to meet with a potential buyer, and then we have a business dinner, April,” her mother said. “I put your dinner in the fridge. All you have to do is pop it in the microwave and—”
“The Mercedes,” April said. What she had wanted to say was, You drive a Lexus. So the car outside isn’t yours.
“You like it?” Hank asked. “Drove it off the lot not more than an hour ago.” He looked at his watch, and then at her mother. “We’ve got some time, Marcy. Why don’t the three of us go for a ride?”
April looked at the strand of pearls again, then turned and walked toward the stairs.
“April?” her mother called out.
As she took each step, slowly and deliberately, April heard her mother mumble something to Hank Johnson. Hank Freakin’ Johnson’s reply was quite clear. “Not to worry,” he said. “I was one myself.”
She lay on her bed and waited. A moment later, the room filled with her mother’s perfume. April closed her eyes. She heard the door being closed softly.
“I cannot believe what you just did,” April heard. She hadn’t opened her own eyes yet, but she could already feel the heat from her mother’s. “Just where do you get off being so incredibly rude like that?”
“You cannot keep going out with that creep.” April felt the words come down from the poster on the ceiling and through her mouth.
“Sit up and look at me. And keep your voice down. He’ll hear you.”
“I hope so.”
“What is going on with you?”
April waited. She was determined to wait, to not say a word. Let her mother draw her own conclusions. Let her stand there forever if she wants. April would not speak. “Do you have to wear those pearls?” she asked.
“What about these pearls? What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. I’m sure Dad would love to know you still wear them.”
Now her mother paused for more than a moment.
“Let me explain something, young lady. First, your father didn’t buy me these pearls. He preferred to spend his money on other things. Other people. These pearls were my mother’s. Second, I am not going out with this man. We have a business dinner. I’ve told you: Hank—Mr. Johnson—is a very successful realtor. He’s been in the business a long time. He’s given me all sorts of advice. He’s been a huge help to me. And this is how you act?”
April tried to keep her face blank. Indifferent. Repulsed.
“I’m trying to keep things together, April. This is the first job I’ve had where I don’t have to bow and scrape or clean up after someone. I have to make this work. We’ve got expenses. You’re going to college in a couple years and someone’s going to have to pay for that.”
“I’ll ask Dad.”
“Ha!”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
Her mother held her breath. Her features softened. “I don’t hate him. Not anymore. But we’ll talk about that later. In the meantime, as I told you, I’m going to a meeting and then to a business dinner with Mr. Johnson. He’s doing me a favor. Just remember, in case you’re tempted not to like him, that in a way he’s doing both of us a favor.”
“And what favor are you doing him?” April asked.
She hadn’t expected the slap, so it didn’t hurt at first. But after she heard her mother walk back downstairs and talk with Mr. Johnson and the front door close and the house grow silent, her cheek started to burn.
She held back her tears. After a few minutes, she booted up her computer and opened her PITS list. At the top of the list, above her mother’s name, she typed in her father’s. She pressed hard on the keys: P-A-T-R-I-C- K S-H-E-A. She stared at her father’s name. Then she selected it and deleted it. Then she did an undo. Then another cut. Another undo. A final delete. She closed her computer and lay back on her bed.
Her mother made everything suck so much.
She had to get away. As soon as freakin’ possible.
Roxie’s expression seemed to have changed. She was no longer into her music. She was looking directly at April. It was clear Roxie didn’t like what she saw: a wimp who let her mother get away with slapping her for no good reason. A loser whose own mother would rather spend time with a salesman, for chrissake.
And who had Roxie been? Only someone—a woman—with the guts to take her life into her own hands, to pack her bags and head to North Beach in San Francisco and not let anything or anybody stand in her way.
April turned on her stomach. What could she do? She didn’t have money to take a plane or bus or train to San Francisco. And it would be—the rest of June, July, August, and most of September—four freakin’ months before she could even get a learning permit.
Fine, Roxie called down from the ceiling. Enjoy your summer with Marcy and Hank.
April slapped her hand against the bed next to her head. She’d rather be with anyone else, live anywhere else.
She sat up as if Roxie herself had reached down, grabbed April by the shirt, pulled her upright, and started singing at the top of her lungs:
What you thinkin’ ’bout, Mr. Ear Hair
Sittin’ all alone in your newspaper chair?