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“I’ve been working on making a Southerner out of your daughter, Gracie. Hope you’ve got no objection to that.”
“Of course not, sweetie.” She slides onto the stool next to me. “That looks delicious. I’m famished!” Clay gives her two biscuits and ladles on the gravy, and Mom tucks into it like a lumberjack. So much for her usual breakfast of cantaloupe and rye toast.
And so it goes. He’s in our lives, in our house, everywhere now.
That feels like the last I see of Mom for a while. She dashes out the door every morning with her change of clothes for the evening hanging off the backseat hook in her car. The longest conversations I have with her are by text, as she lets me know she’s at a cookout, clam broil, ribbon cutting, fund-raising harbor cruise, union meeting…whatever. She even falls behind on vacuuming, leaving Post-it notes directing me to pick up the slack. When she is home for di
You hear that phrase “he lives and breathes” about people’s enthusiasms, but I’ve never seen it in action quite like this. Clay Tucker lives and breathes politics. He makes Mom, with her relentless schedule, seem like a casual dabbler. He’s turning her into someone new, someone like him. Maybe that’s a good thing…But the fact is, I miss my mom.
Chapter Eighteen
“Ms. Reed! Ms. Reed? Could you please come here?” Mr. Le
I blow my whistle, put the Lifeguard Off Duty sign on my chair after making sure there are no small kids without parents in the water, and head for the Lagoon pool. Mr. Le
Once again Mr. Le
“This”—Mr. Le
“Ohhhhhh,” Tim says. “I get it now.”
“No, you do not get it, young man. Do you call yourself a lifeguard? Is that what you call yourself?” Tim’s expression is familiar, struggling to decide whether to be a smart ass. Finally he says, “My friends are allowed to call me Tim.”
“That is not what I mean!” Mr. Le
He’s only worked at the B&T for a week, so I make a conservative guess. “Um…five?”
“Eight! Eight!” I’m almost expecting Mr. Le
Tim folds his arms and looks at me. “Fraternizing” on the job is worth four demerits, but he’s never said a word—to me or, apparently, Nan—about seeing me and Jase.
“I’m not sure,” I say. None.
“None!” Mr. Le
“It was just this little kid,” Tim interjects. “He wanted to see the view. He was, like, four.”
“That chair is not a toy. You have also left your post without posting the off duty or on break sign—
twice.”
“I was right there by the pool,” Tim objects. “I was just talking to some girls. I would have stopped if someone was drowning. They weren’t that hot,” he adds this last to me, as though he owes me an explanation for this unaccountable sense of responsibility.
“You didn’t even notice me when I stood behind you clearing my throat! I cleared it three times.”
“Is not noticing the throat-clearing a separate offense from not putting up that sign? Or is it three different demerits because of the three times, because—”
Mr. Le
“You”—finger jabbed at Tim’s chest—“do not have the Bath and Te
Tim’s lip twitches, another bad move.
“Now,” Mr. Le
“A week,” she whispers. “A new record, Timmy.”
Mr. Le
“Aw, shit,” Tim says, reaching into the pocket of the hoodie draped over the lifeguard chair and pulling out a pack of Marlboros. “I was so hoping I’d get to keep the cute hat.”
“That’s it?” Nan’s voice rises unexpectedly in both pitch and volume. “That’s all you have to say? This is the fourth job you’ve lost since you got kicked out of school! Your third school in three years! Your fourth job in three months! How is it even possible to get fired that often?”
“Well, that movie theater gig was boring as all fuck, for one thing,” Tim offers, lighting up.
“Who cares! All you had to do was take tickets!” Nan shouts. Tim’s kept his voice low, but Mr. Le
“They charge crazy-ass prices for popcorn and candy—the management was hardly losing money.” Nan puts her hands in her hair, sweat-damp with either heat or frustration. “Then the senior center.
Giving joints out to senior citizens, Timmy? What was that?” Mrs. Henderson has now moved in closer, under the pretext of heading toward the snack bar.
“Hey, Nano, if my ass were in a wheelchair in a place like that, I’d only hope you’d show up with some weed. Those poor bastards needed their reality blurred. It was like a public service. They had them square dancing. They had fake American Idol contests. They had frickin’ fu
“You’re such a goddamn loser,” Nan, who never swears, says. “It’s not possible we’re really related.” Then a surprising thing happens. Hurt slices across Tim’s face. He shuts his eyes, pops them open again to glare at her.
“Sorry, sis. Same gene pool. I could resent you for swimming to the deep end with all the perfect genes, but since they make you so fucking miserable, I don’t. You can have ’em.”
“Okay stop it, you two,” I say, the way I used to when they clashed as kids, rolling around on the grass, pinching, scratching, punching, no holds barred. It always scared me, afraid they’d really get hurt.
Somehow the potential seems so much bigger now that words are the weapons of choice.
“Samantha,” Nan says. “Let’s get back to work. We need to do those jobs we still have.”
“Right,” Tim calls after her retreating back. “’Cause then you get to keep the great outfits! Priorities, right, Nano?” He picks up his hat, puts it on the lifeguard chair, and stubs out his cigarette in it.
Chapter Nineteen
“I’ve got a surprise.” Jase opens the door of the van for me a couple days later. I haven’t seen Tim or Nan since the incident at the B&T, and I’m secretly glad for a break from the drama.
I slide into the van, my sneakers crunching into a crumpled pile of magazines, an empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, various Poland Spring and Gatorade bottles, and lots of unidentifiable snack wrappers. Alice and her Bug are evidently still at work.
“A surprise, for me?” I ask, intrigued.
“Well, it’s for me, but you too, kind of. I mean, it’s something I want you to see.” This sounds a little u
Jase rolls his eyes. “No. Jeez. I hope I’d be smoother than that.” I laugh. “Okay. Just checking. Show me.”