Our Crooked Hearts(17)
Something: We were pulled from class one day, made to sit with our parents in the principal’s office. The principal delivered a nonspecific lecture that seemed damning of me as well, about cliques and responsible phone use and accepting our differences. I thought my mom would laser her into pieces with her eyes. Hattie presented me with an apology letter written in green gel pen and covered with shiny puppy stickers, which the principal took as a sweet gesture but I knew to be the passive-aggressive act of an unrepentant monster who’d spent half our freshman year barking at me in the halls.
My dad blustered and brooded through it, one hand protective on my shoulder, while hers didn’t even pretend not to be scrolling on his phone. Her mom wasn’t there. Mine sat in a civilized rictus, nails in her knees and an odd little smile playing over her mouth. At the end she stood and smoothed herself down and with that same slight smile told the principal her intervention was a travesty and she’d be out of a job within the year, before transferring her nails into my upper arm and guiding me out the door.
My mom was right. A couple of months later the principal “resigned” on a wave of rumors having to do with inappropriate texts sent to a very recent graduate. Her departure was my mom’s lucky guess, or maybe the texts had saved her from having to plant heroin in the woman’s car. I wouldn’t put a thing past Dana Nowak.
Hattie’s downfall came sooner. The high school talent show fell on a balmy April night, just a week after she’d flashed her crocodile smile at me in the principal’s office. Along with the rest of the choir I had a bit part backing up a cute tenth-grader’s pitch-agnostic rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” I was back in the audience, covered in polyester-choir-robe sweat, when Hattie took the stage.
She was performing a lip synch of “bad guy,” her blue eyes ringed like Saturn with glitter liner and her hair combed into a wet curtain. I knew how rotten she was inside. That she could look so pretty anyway made me want to cry.
Her performance was wooden and surprisingly graceless, though her friends whooped it up the entire time anyway. Until she stopped cold at center stage. The song went on, but her lips weren’t moving. When she wrapped both arms around her middle, I thought she might throw up.
She didn’t. She did this awkward, cowboy-legged run off stage left, her eyes panicked spotlights in their circles of liner. And it didn’t matter that no one could actually tell what had happened then and there. By the start of the next school day, roughly every kid in every grade knew that cool Hattie Carter had shit her pants onstage.
After she’d run into the wings, when everyone was still shifting and looking around, the quiet broken here and there by peals of nervous laughter, I glanced over at my mother. I’d felt us united in our hatred of Hattie and thought she might look back and smile, or wink, or whisper Serves her right. But she was facing straight ahead, chin coolly cocked, still looking at the place Hattie had stood. Her mouth was curved into that same dangerous smile she’d worn in the principal’s office.
I thought about all that now, held it up against Nate and our matching split lips. And the itchy sense I’d had for years, that the times my mother most felt like a mom was when she was furious on our behalf. Like a bad boyfriend. Like a little girl who didn’t want anyone else playing with her dolls.
“That thing with Hattie at the talent show. It was right after Mom found out she was messing with me.” I hesitated. “And remember Coach Keene?”
Hank made a disgusted sound. “That bigot. Of course I do.”
“They never diagnosed him, right? And he got sick, what, a few days after what he said to you?” I looked at Hank, his big blue Mom eyes a little startling this close. “Do you think … have you ever thought that Mom…”
“Ivy!” He brought a fist down on his leg, then flattened it. “Stop. You’re thinking too hard.”
“I’m thinking too hard?” I flicked him in the temple. “Are you worried I’ll break my lady brain?”
“I’m just saying, Mom is Mom. We know this. And you have nothing to do right now, so you’re making it into a thing. Be grounded. Get it over with. Then move on. And just … don’t worry, okay? There’s no point.”
Across the street a station wagon was pulling into the Paxtons’ drive. I watched as Billy and three other kids spilled out, two girls and a guy I recognized from school. I wondered if one of them was Billy’s girlfriend.
Hank knocked my shoulder so the elbow I was leaning on fell off my knee. “Having a good stare? Paxton got cute, didn’t he?”
I scowled at him. “I’m staring into space! I’m resting my eyes on his house!”
“I bet you wanna rest your eyes on his house.”
Billy was letting his friends through the front door. He paused before stepping inside, looking back at me. I thought of the drawing I’d found in my cigar box, of his younger, star-flecked face, and dropped my gaze. “Hank. Shut up before he hears you.”
“I didn’t know he had supersonic bat hearing. That’s hot.”
When Billy was gone, Hank looked at me sidewise. “What ever happened with you guys, anyway?”
I let my head fall back and groaned. “I was twelve. Was I supposed to be an expert on letting people down gently at twelve? I was embarrassed!”