“Why can’t you shut up?” Kylie said, craning her head around the seat to glare at her sister.
“Mom!” shouted Bailey, pointing.
“I heard it, Bailey.” To Kylie: “Don’t talk like that to your sister. Why aren’t you friends with Stella Piper anymore?”
Another shrug.
“She thinks Stella’s dumb. And her glasses are funny,” Bailey reported. “She says they make her look like a creature.”
“She’s been your friend forever, since you were in kindergarten,” said Jamie.
“I know,” said Kylie, hushed and hissing.
Jamie stopped third in a trail of cars at a light and said, “You shouldn’t be mean to someone just because they look funny.”
Kylie stared out the window.
“Someday someone might think you look funny, and then how’ll you like it?”
Kylie kept staring.
“Well?” Jamie took Kylie’s chin in her hand and turned her head. “Well?”
“I won’t like it.”
Jamie let go and looked up to see a policeman directing all the cars in her lane to the left.
“What’s this now?” said Jamie.
Bailey looked up over the seat.
“What is it? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, for God’s sake,” said Jamie.
She pulled up even with the cop and rolled down the window.
“I need to go straight ahead to the Gulf on Branford.”
“Branford? That side of the highway’s closed for the parade, Miss,” said the cop.
“Fuck me,” Jamie said, remembering.
Spring Fest. The town’s annual parade of toilet-paper-covered floats and high school bands slogging their way through “My Girl.”
“Mom!” the kids shouted, embarrassed.
“Well, Officer, I’m about to run outta gas, so what do you recommend?”
The cop leaned into her window.
“Tell you what, I’ll wave you through to St. Cloud; then you can take a right to Route 1080 and you can get to the Hess over that way.”
Jamie pictured the route in her head and nodded. “That’d be just great, thanks.”
“No problem, ma’am,” said the cop, tapping the roof of the car.
Jamie drove the path laid out for her by the cop.
“I can’t believe you said the f-curse to the police,” said Kylie, a look of quiet shame on her face.
“I’m full of surprises,” said Jamie.
“Can we go past the parade? Miss Ferno’s on a float from her church,” said Bailey.
“What? No, we’re already late for this thing,” said Jamie.
She glanced at both of them. They stared out the window. Someday you’ll think I’m funny, she thought. Someday you’ll tell your friends, No, my mom’s cool. Once she said “Fuck me” right in front of a cop.
Finally, when they got to the Hess, Kylie asked, “Can we split a Reese’s?”
She had yet to outgrow an unwavering devotion to sugar—she would pour maple syrup over Frosted Flakes if you turned your head the other way.
“No, you’re going to have all kinds of crap at this party; you don’t need a Reese’s.”
Then the wailing began—you’d think someone was pricking their cuticles with sewing needles. Jamie held her head and leaned over the wheel, thinking she should have smoked the very last bit of resin in the pipe this morning. She didn’t like to drive stoned, but there wasn’t enough in there to mess her up proper, just enough to help her push through, get to the party where it might be acceptable to have a light beer at noon.
“Enough, stop it!” yelled Jamie, feeling her voice crack, the muscles in her neck tense up. “Fine, go get a goddamn Reese’s. Get me a coffee with a Splenda, please.”
She threw a five in Kylie’s lap.
“Go before I change my mind,” she said.
The girls unbuckled their seat belts and scrambled out of the car. Jamie watched them run into the mini-mart, heard the clicks of their dress-up shoes. She checked her makeup in the mirror and shook her head at herself, then went out to the pumps.
She continued to shake her head, thought, Jesus Christ, do I ever sound like her—her own mother, Gail—“Before I change my mind” and all those threats. First you swear you’ll never be like your mother; then you find yourself sending them to their room and grounding them, and occasionally, once in a while, you hit them once or twice too hard on the back after they say something rude.
Jamie got back in the car and blew air into her hands. Spring Fest my ass, she thought. It was the end of March and still freezing in the mornings and at night, although they’d had more than a few hazy warm days the past two months that fooled everyone into thinking spring was really here; even the black cherry trees were confused—fruit had prematurely formed on the branches, then iced over and broke off the next week in a storm.
The girls had been in the store a long time.
Jamie looked at the time on her phone. 11:32 a.m. They still had to go to Kmart for a gift for Kylie’s friend, which meant they would argue about the under-ten-dollar rule, then engage in negotiations until they got to an under-ten-dollar-without-tax agreement. If there was time, maybe Jamie could browse for something for her aunt Maggie, whose birthday was coming up. Maggie was fond of her, and Jamie didn’t really know why—maybe because she admired Jamie’s pluck, maybe because she’d been a single mother herself after Uncle Stu had left her for a girl in a massage parlor twenty years ago, and she knew how rough it was. Maybe because it was a way to piss off her sister, Jamie’s mother, which she enjoyed doing for a list of reasons either one would tell you all about if you asked them. Jamie ultimately didn’t care about the details since Aunt Maggie had cleaned up in the divorce and got her real estate agent’s license in short order, owned half a dozen homes in the Poconos that she rented out to vacationers, and brokered deals between buyers and the new developments surrounding Denville.
“Goddammit,” said Jamie.
She got out of the car and jogged into the mini-mart, scanned the inside quickly and saw only one other person—a man, looking at a porn magazine.
“Hey,” she said to the fat boy behind the counter. He seemed too old for the braces on his teeth.
He jumped.
“You see two girls in here?”
“Yeah. They went to the bathroom in back.”
Jamie did not say thank you, walked past the guy with the porn and out the back door. She saw Kylie leaning against the cinder block wall, holding a Reese’s cup between her thumb and forefinger like a teacup.
“What the hell, Kylie?” said Jamie.
“She had to pee. She said it was an emergency.”
Jamie stormed past, rapped on the bathroom door and said, “Bailey, come on, let’s move it.”
“I’m washing my hands,” said Bailey from inside.
“You’re done. Let’s go.”
“I’m trying not to touch anything.”
Jamie almost smiled. She had been trying to teach them to line the toilet seat with paper towels, hover above the bowl, and turn the faucets on and off with their elbows in public bathrooms.
“I have Purell in the car. Come on.”
The door opened and Bailey came out. She looked at her mother and covered her mouth with her hands.
“We forgot the coffee!”