“What about Max?”
“Um, maybe.”
Max at a movie lot? Oh dear, he would probably go on a tangent about something and get us kicked off the set. He was really smart but had a problem focusing. We had been friends since kindergarten. Max Randall and Laura Ratliff. Let’s just say we were destined to be by each other’s side alphabetically until graduation. But he was my friend, and even though he was super smart, he didn’t make me feel super dumb. He was on the maybe list.
“Or what about—no. No… I’m not going to push it, but why don’t you just think about—no, no… I’m not going to be that mom. Laura, how about—”
She was trying to say Terrence. My stepbrother. The boy who I shared a bond with now. Both our lives had changed. If I did pick Terrence to go with me, I would make Mom happy, and also Dennis, and of course Terrence, if he was into that kind of thing. I would have so many brownie points with my mother. I could have gotten away with anything with her. And if I could have gotten away with that suspension, I would have said yes. Instead I said I’d think about it. How did I know that was the ticket? She smiled. Patted my knee and said “thank you” in a whisper.
She grabbed her smokes and her lighter, the reason why she came this way in the first place. “So about that suspension,” she said.
“It’s all good,” I said, just thinking about the easy work it was going to be compared with the incompetence of GFHS athletes. (Not all were dumb. I probably should make that clear. Rob Turner went to Vandy, the Harvard of the South, just last year.)
“It’ll be on your permanent record.”
“It won’t.”
“It might. And colleges don’t take too kindly to rebels.”
Oh, the college talk. Planning for the future when we were on the eve of destruction. (There I go again. I’ll probably do it a couple more times. Don’t hold it against me, my fine reader.)
“Don’t worry about it, Mom.”
“I’m your mom. I’m supposed to worry.”
I rolled my eyes and she did too.
“Well, Dennis should be home, so if you want to leave, you can,” she said, going outside to smoke.
Home. That was a four-letter word. I hadn’t had a “home” since my mom’s illicit affair spread like a forest fire.
Chapter Four
Dennis was simultaneously cooking dinner and fixing the broken disposal. Dad never fixed things before. Grandpa would come over and try to fix things, but usually he couldn’t. If Dennis had one good quality, it would be that he was a good handyman. He owned Jennings’s Hardware down on Sixth Street, next to Rudy’s Diner and across the street from Gus’s Garage. We liked our businesses in Griffin Flat to be named by someone. Names were important. Now back to Dennis and his exceptional talent of burning a chicken noodle casserole. “Your mom called and said she’s going to be late, so we should start without her when Terrence gets home.”
Home. That was a funny word. Next to family. That was an equally funny word. I was not bitter—not bitter at all. Dennis tried, and I guess I did too, but it wasn’t exactly an ideal situation. It was ours, though. Part of the problem was how it all went down. And the gossiping. Oh dear God, the gossiping. I was at Brenda Leigh’s Beauty Parlor getting a perm when Terrence’s mom came bursting through the door, calling my mom a tramp, a whore, a bitch, a downright home-wrecker—and then proceeded to tell the entire salon the story in dramatic detail. She had seen Dennis’s truck (it had a logo on the side for goodness’ sake) at the Flat Inn. She’d marched right through the front doors and into the lobby. Scared Paula to death. She demanded to see her husband. Demanded the room number and a key. Poor Paula probably almost peed her pants. She said over and over again, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I cannot do that without a supervisor’s approval.” Mrs. Dianne Wilcox-Jennings, now Ms. Dianne Wilcox. She reverted back to her maiden name after she caught her husband tugging on his belt rounding the corner with my mom, who was clipping an earring on her right ear, an earring that Dad gave her for their anniversary.
“Oh, hell, no,” Ms. Wilcox had said, waving her finger in his face.
“I was just fixing an issue in one of the rooms,” Dennis had said.
But Ms. Wilcox wasn’t buying any of what he was selling. Her attention had moved to my mom.
“Edna, this lady wants a key to a room. She says her husband is staying here—oh.” Paula had stopped talking and backed all the way into the back room and laughed.
Ms. Wilcox knew who I was. She bent down and grabbed my hands and said, “I don’t blame you, child. Your mother made her bed, and she’s going to have to lie in it.”
“With your husband,” Charlene said, sitting under a hair dryer. (Charlene, a twin who was kind of the queen of gossip land. Her twin, Darlene, was next in line for the throne.)
Ms. Wilcox glared. “Well, I just thought y’all should know what kind of hussy this town has.”
Ms. Wilcox left, and no one could stop talking about what happened. Brenda Leigh was in so much shock my hair ended up extra frizzy since she was distracted and added too much ammonium thioglycolate.
I went home to discover my dad and mom fighting. Apparently, Brenda Leigh’s wasn’t the first stop for Ms. Wilcox. Dad moved out that night and a week later to the base. My parents were officially divorced two months later. A month after that, I walked down the aisle as maid of honor at Dennis and Mom’s wedding. Terrence was the best man. Once they were pronounced man and wife, we were officially a dysfunctional family.
“Terrence’s in front of the TV,” Dennis stated. It wasn’t very clear that he wanted me to go join Terrence until he said, “Go on.”
Terrence and I didn’t exactly have a lot in common. We were not in the same social circle. He’s black and I’m white. (I’m stating this as fact in case Hollywood wants to make a movie later on.) The only thing we did have in common was our parents, and I guessed that was better than nothing.
“Hey,” I said, sitting beside him on the living room floor.
TV looked better from down here.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said, looking up and then down trying to do geometry, read a chapter of 1984,[15] and watching MTV[16] all at the same time. “Oh, yeah, congrats on winning the contest. You totally kicked ass.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Who you taking? Dana? Max?” He said Dana the same way Mom did at the hotel.
“I don’t know yet. It’s a pretty big decision.”
“Very.”
I couldn’t tell if he was sarcastic or not. I chose to believe or not.
He went back to his studying and watching MTV, but every so often he’d look up and ask another question about what I thought it would be like and if I would have to miss school, or say that if I was invited to any raging parties, he wanted to go and protect me. And something about Astrid Ogilvie’s number. He was clearly delusional.
For the next thirty minutes I helped him analyze a chapter in 1984. It was poignant. We were living in the age of Big Brother.
“You know you’re going to take Dana,” he said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“You know she’ll make your life miserable if you don’t.”
“She’ll make it about herself, like she won the contest, and I kind of want it to be my own thing.”
“I get you. I get you.”
Mom came in, threw her coat on the coatrack and her purse on top of that, took a seat on the pink chair (the only item of furniture we brought from our house), and closed her eyes as the “Thriller”[17] music video played in the background on TV.
15
It was published in 1949 by George Orwell. He’s an English writer. We’re reading it in English class. We have to write our opinions on it every day. I’m having a hard time with it. Before what happened with my parents, I don’t think I cared if Big Brother was watching, but now—with the tiny town of Griffin Flat commenting on my family situation, I guess I’m more on the side of Winston Smith. Dana’s all, “I don’t get what the big deal is. Who wouldn’t want to be watched all the time? What do people have to hide?” But me? I think I don’t want people watching me, making me think a certain way. The rewriting history part? Well, that doesn’t sound half bad, given what’s happened to the Ratliff/Jennings family.
16
MTV stands for Music Television, which shows music videos. It launched in 1981. Trivia: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles was the first music video ever shown.