Help for the Haunted(7)
Two pairs of cords flew over the top of the dressing room just then, followed by flannel shirts. “Hurry up and try the stuff on,” Rose said. “I have to pee like a pony.”
If there is such a thing as putting away a memory until later, that is what I did. I gathered the clothes from the floor, unable to keep from muttering the word, “Racehorse.”
“Huh?” my sister said from the other side of the door.
“ ‘I have to pee like a racehorse.’ That’s the saying. There’s no pony involved.”
A silence came over my sister that told me she was doing some big thinking. All that brainpower led to her saying, “Are you telling me ponies don’t pee too?”
I had slipped on brown cords and a flannel, half listening as I studied myself in the mirror. Funny that we were discussing horses, because I looked like a stable girl. “Ponies pee,” I said, tugging off the cords. “But that’s not the—”
“Ha! Got you, nerd brain. Now let’s move it, because I really do have to go.”
“There must be a bathroom around here, Rose.”
“Public toilets give me the skeeves. I’ll go at home if I don’t wet myself first.”
My mood had shifted by then, same as it did whenever I thought about Rummel’s questions. And even though I wanted to get dressed and walk out of the store, I needed new clothes so I kept trying them on. Each outfit looked worse than the next, until finally I dressed in the capris and tank I wore to the mall and stepped out of the booth.
“Where are you going?” my sister asked.
“To pick out my own stuff.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
Rose didn’t offer up an answer right away so I turned in the direction of the Junior Miss department, figuring the dress on that mannequin deserved a second look.
“Because I need to watch our budget, that’s why,” she blurted.
I knew we didn’t have much money, not even when our parents were alive. People didn’t pay well for the services they provided. They wrote letters begging for help and only occasionally enclosed a check to cover gas or airline tickets. Or they showed up on our doorstep with a glazed look in their eyes, offering promises to undo the debt later if only my parents could make all that had gone wrong in their lives right again—there, too, money rarely materialized. Instead, we relied on income from my parents’ lectures to support us. Once Sam Heekin’s book was published, however, that income dried up. Still, I’d seen my sister blow plenty on things we couldn’t afford, namely her truck, purchased with insurance money and the sale of our parents’ Datsun after the police released it from impound. When I turned around and reminded her of that, she broke into an all-out fit, her voice pitching higher and higher until she yelled, “Whether you like it or not, Sylvie, I’m your legal guardian now!”
With that, she walked out of the store.
Whenever that phrase passed her lips it caused some part of me to fold in on itself. I remembered, of course, the lawyers, my parents’ nonexistent will, the endless paperwork and court appointments, Norman’s visits and now Cora’s. I remembered, too, the afternoon Uncle Howie had been located somewhere near his apartment in Tampa, days after that night at the church. The way he came around, announcing his intention to take care of us, and the way that ended when Rose and the attorneys raised the issues of his DUIs, a drug arrest, and his lack of any consistent history of involvement in our lives. And yet, the knowledge of how our situation came to be did nothing to keep that feeling away. I stared down at the flat red carpet in JCPenney’s while customers who had been watching our feud slowly returned to their shopping.
“Honey,” a passing clerk said, “are you okay?”
I looked up at the Can I help you? pin stuck to her enormous bosom but did not make eye contact. Instead, I just nodded before heading out to the parking lot. I couldn’t find the truck at first, and I wandered the rows of vehicles, certain Rose had left without me. When I finally did spot it, there was no sign of her inside. The heat of the passenger door warmed my back as I waited. For a place teeming with cars, it seemed strange that so few people were around. In the distance, a woman strapped a wailing baby in a car seat. Farther away, a man in a green uniform arranged bags in his trunk. Other than that, it was just me out there until I heard keys rattle nearby. I turned to see Rose coming my way, sipping a mammoth soda and devouring an oversized bun out of a carton.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“You wasted so much time, I had no choice but to use the scummy restroom. And then I got hungry.”
She unlocked my door, went around to hers. As we climbed inside, Rose said she would leave it to me to explain the way I dress to Cora if the woman stopped babbling long enough to ask again. My sister started the truck, the monstrous engine vibrating the floor beneath my feet. “Besides, I barely notice what you wear when you walk out of the house anyway. More important: there’s nothing I like less than hovering over a toilet seat in some filthy restroom. So don’t make me do it again.”
On the drive back to our faded Tudor hidden among the thinning cedars and birch groves at the end of Butter Lane, neither of us spoke. Rose kept the windows down and failed to signal when she changed lanes, but the radio remained off. As the last of the sunlight vanished, I stared at the dead leaves on the lawns we passed. One family had carved their jack-o’-lantern too soon and, with three days to go until Halloween, already the face was caving in on itself.