“Your mother’s been worried sick,” Dad said.
Ma rolled across the room like a Humvee and threw her arms around me, smearing her tears and her mascara all over my face. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”
I patted her back. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“What are you, nuts?” Dad asked.
“I was so worried you weren’t coming home,” Ma said. She wiped her nose on my T-shirt and laid her head on my shoulder. “I called everybody we know.”
“Here.” Dad handed Ma the Kleenex box. She took a handful and sank into the recliner. Steven dove out of the chair just in time.
“Ma, settle down, it’s not that big a deal. I don’t care about the prom. It doesn’t matter.”
She waved the Kleenex at me and sobbed. “You’re lying to protect my feelings!”
“Stop making your mother cry. And turn that thing down, Shawnie.”
Shawn didn’t move.
“I’m trying to make her feel better,” I said.
“Stop yelling, George.”
“I ain’t yelling!”
Ma blew her nose like an elephant. “You were going to look so beautiful, Ash. For once in your life, you were going to be a real princess in pink. And I ruined it for you.”
“You’re going off the deep end here, Ma. You should lay down.”
Dad grabbed the remote from Shawn and muted the war. “Mary Alice, look. We’ll find another dress. I don’t know why you women get so obsessed about dresses, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like you totaled the car, is it? I know some guys down at The Haystack, they’ll lend me the money. Just stop crying, Mary, please. You’re killing me with those tears.”
Ma gulped and sniffed. Dad walked over to the recliner and brushed her hair off her face. She leaned her head against his hip. We had half a second of quiet.
“Hold on,” I said. “What happened to my dress?”
Ma wailed, fought her way out of the recliner and waddled into the kitchen.
“Whadja do that for?” Dad asked.
“What?”
Ma came back to the living room, her tears falling on the prom dress in her hands. On what used to be my prom dress. She shoved it at me.
“I ruin everything,” she cried.
“I got to hang drywall,” Dad said. “Call me when it’s over.”
I shook out the dress. The pink was faded and blotchy and stained with thick purple and black streaks.
“I don’t know what happened,” Ma said. “It got into one of the baskets I took to the laundromat.”
“Along with some crayons,” said Shawn.
I rubbed my fingernail on a black streak. “Crayon?”
Ma sniffed. “There must have been bleach in the machine, too, I honestly don’t know, maybe I’m losing my marbles.”
Steven handed her a Kleenex and she blew her nose again. She gave the wet tissue back to him. He tossed it behind the couch.
I folded the dress up. “Chill, Ma. It doesn’t matter.”
“I ruin the most important night of your life and it doesn’t matter? You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
I picked the crayon wax under my fingernail. “Um, Ma? I can’t go to the prom.”
“I know! I ruined it!”
Steven handed her the box of Kleenex and opened his book.
“No, listen. Stop wailing and listen to me. I can’t go. The principal won’t let me. I have too many detentions.”
Ma sniffed. “Huh?”
I explained the whole mess and why I took off after school, and I gave her the name of the bus driver who was rude to me when he dumped me at the airport. By the time I was finished, she had stopped crying, which was a relief.
“So you see, the dress doesn’t matter, ’cause I can’t go. It’s over. I’m beat, Ma. I’m going to bed.”
127.
I slept like a dead person. When I finally woke up, it was quarter after ten in the morning and Binky Rabbit was on the pillow next to me.
Being in the house alone felt like waking up in a Stephen King movie where you are the only person left on the planet and you don’t know why. I turned the TV on to The Weather Channel and cranked the volume so the quiet house didn’t freak me out. I ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich.
I didn’t notice Ma’s note until I poured a giant glass of orange juice. Ash—I called you in sick to school. Do me a favor and get those boxes out of the attic.
To get to our attic, you had to drag the step stool to the second floor, stand on it and reach up on tiptoe to pull down the folding stairs from the ceiling. Once the stairs were down, I snuck up there, hunched over so I didn’t whack my head. I felt like I was in a dollhouse, only all the dolls had been thrown away.
The attic smelled hot and old. I used to like to play there when I was a kid, but now it gave me the creeps.
The three boxes Ma wanted were hiding under a heap of green plastic Christmas decorations. I carried them one at a time down the folding stairs, then down the real stairs to the living room. Stacked against the wall behind the boxes were the pieces of the crib that we had all slept in when we were babies. It took five trips to get the whole thing down to the porch. Maybe Dad had some extra paint I could use to make it nicer. Just because a kid is the last one in a family doesn’t mean it should have an ugly crib.
128.
I was able to ignore the phone the first fifty times it rang, but after that it got on my nerves so I answered it.
“Jesus, Ash, don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what, Ma, pick up the phone?”
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“Ma, how can I be scaring you? You ain’t even here.”
“You didn’t pick up the phone.”
“Yeah, I did. That’s what you’re talking into right now. A phone.”
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”
“Okay, Ma, I’ll stay stupid. Was there a reason you called, or did you just feel like bitching?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m not, but that’s okay. I got the boxes down.”
“Do me a favor and wash them.”
“The boxes?”
“The clothes in the boxes. Duh, Ashley.”
“Can’t. The washer is broken.”
“Your dad got it working after you went to bed last night.”
“No more Laundromat?”
“Don’t get me started. Joanie and Sharon think we should sue that place.”
“Why?”
“For ruining your dress. Pain and suffering. Loss of a significant life event.”
Ma watched too much Court TV.
129.
The laundry room was at the bottom of the basement steps. I dumped the baby clothes out on the floor, sorted the darks and the lights, and stuffed the first load into the machine. I set the temp dial to cold and the cycle dial to delicate and started the machine. I didn’t think of the fabric softener until I closed the lid. Ma always used fabric softener on the baby clothes.
Dad had strung old sheets to separate the laundry room from the rest of the basement. I pushed the sheets aside without thinking.
There it was.
No, not the fabric softener.
My room. My new room. My soon-to-be-room because I, me, Ashley Hannigan, was going to live in my parents’ basement, probably forever. Dad had finished drywalling the front and back walls, and except for the big hole towards the bottom of the front wall, he did a good job. There were two barred windows set high in the side wall that faced Nat’s house. The floor was concrete, one corner stained dark blue from a kicked-over paint can. The tools Dad borrowed were piled in the middle of the floor, along with some coiled-up wire and my old boom box.
The washing machine started beating itself up. The load was unbalanced, maybe, or it was breaking again. I let the sheets drop, walked back to the washing machine, and pulled out the cycle dial. I reached into the wet clothes and moved th
em around, then started it up again, pushing in the dial.
Nothing happened.
I pulled it out. Nothing.
Pushed it in.
Nothing.
I turned the dial an itty-bitty bit to the right and pushed. The washer buzzed like a security alarm. I couldn’t make it stop. I pushed, pulled, twisted, punched buttons and finally, I kicked that stupid-ass machine, I kicked it as hard as I could. I held on to the sides so it couldn’t run away and I kicked it again because it was broken and it wouldn’t shut up and all I was trying to do was to help and I broke it and all the clothes would be ruined proving once again that I was stupid and I kicked it again and cursed it and kicked and kicked and moth erfucking bastard not gonna let me go to the stupid effing dance after I worked so hard for everybody else to have a good time and look so good and be all elegant and princess and grown-up with a limo and flowers and a pink satin gown that swirled when I twirled and I kicked that fucking machine because I was going to be a rat in this basement or I was going to be a baby mama in a grease hole with a stupid boyfriend who thought popcorn was food and I kicked the machine so hard it almost tipped over and the electric plug pulled out of the wall and the buzzing stopped.
130.
I sat down in the dirty baby clothes and cried like I hadn’t cried for a long time.
My foot really hurt.
131.
Don’t know how long I was down there. Long enough for my big toe to swell up like an overcooked hot dog.
I didn’t move until Ma came home, then I limped upstairs and helped her unpack the groceries.
When she saw me limping, she made me sit down, then she sat next to me and yanked my foot into her lap. Raise four kids and you know more than most E.R. docs. Ma ran her fingers along the top of my foot. “Can you wiggle your toes?”
I tried. “A little.”
She moved them a lot more than a little.
“Ow! That hurts.”
She sat back. “Do I want to know how this happened?”
“I kicked the washer.”
“You . . . kicked . . . ”
“Don’t laugh. It’s not funny.”
“Did it jump you? Pull a gun?”
“See, now you’re making fun of me.”
“And now you’re smiling. Nothing’s broken, Jackie Chan.” She went to the freezer and took out a bag of frozen peas, which she tossed to me. “Stick that on your foot. Want some ice cream?”
“I think I killed the washer, Ma. For good. There’s a load of baby clothes in there soaking wet.”
She took the pistachio ice cream out of the freezer, two spoons out of the drawer, and sat next to me. “Something is always broken. Most things can be fixed.” She handed me a spoon. “Eat some ice cream. That usually helps.”
132.
Mid-afternoon I went to Nat’s to help her get ready. With me not going because Gilroy was a jerk, and Nat going to the prom with her father because Jason was a jerk, it was almost as depressing in her bedroom as it was in our kitchen. I did an awesome job on Nat’s hair, but she didn’t want any sparkles glued to her neck or cleavage, and she couldn’t choose between Pink Prism or Mocha Mirage for her nails, so I ended up giving her French tips, which is the most boring thing possible you could do for a prom, if you ask me, but Nat wasn’t asking.
We stared hard at the wheelchair and talked about dressing it up with ribbons or extra fabric her grandmother had, but in the end, she said forget about it. Her butt was already sore from sitting in the damn thing and she didn’t think they’d be staying late.
She took a couple of phone calls from Lauren and Monica about last-minute details. That was when I was working on her toenails. They were Steel Magic, by the way. Looked good with the light blue cast, kind of contrasty and hip.
She hung up the phone. “The DJ’s there.”
“Good.”
“The food is all laid out.”
“Good.”
“They’re all bummed you can’t go.”
I blew on her toes.
“That tickles,” she said.
“Good.”
She threw cotton balls at my head. “Your mom is right. You and TJ should go out someplace nice tonight. It’d be better than staying at home feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m over it. I didn’t want to go in the first place, remember?”
“So why are you flipping out?”
“What are you talking about, flipping out? I’m not flipping out, I’m doing your damn toes, that’s what I’m doing, that’s not flipping out.”
“Oh, please.” She rolled her wheelchair backwards. “You’ve been pouting since you walked in. Ditch that trashy tube top, get out the red lipstick, and make TJ spend some money on you for a change. Make a night of it, Ash. If you don’t do it tonight, when will you?”
“Shut up.”
“What are you afraid of? Having fun?”
I put the Steel Magic polish on her desk. “No.”
“Yes, you are. I double-dog dare you.”
“Shut up, Shulmensky. It’s time to go.”
133.
Half the neighborhood—my parents, Grandma Shulmensky, the Ciangalella family, the Brewsters from two doors down, Miss Patsy and her twins—they were all standing on the sidewalk when Mr. S. carried Nat to their car. They oohed and aahed about her dress, her hair, and her toenails. She did look good, got to give her credit. Especially the toenails.
Mr. S. went back inside for her purse (beaded) and shawl. I helped Nat get comfortable in the front seat.
“Did you take your pain pill?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Did you double up like I suggested?”
“No. I don’t want to spend my prom in a coma, thank you.”
“I still think it was a good idea.” We watched her wiggle her toes. “Your dress looks great, even with you sitting down.”
“Grandma knows from sewing. Tell your mom thanks again for watching her tonight.” She looked at her fingernails. “Grandma likes you, you know.”
“Does that mean I have to take her swimming?”
“Shut up. She told me that you’re a great woman and you can do a lot more than you think you can. End of speech.”
I watched the pigeons sitting on the electric wires crap on my dad’s taxi. “Shut up, yourself. You lied. You took that extra pill.”
She gave me a little shove. “Find your boyfriend and go dancing. Okay?”
“I don’t dance.”
“You’re wrong about that, too. Seeya-bye.”
134.
I sat next to Ma on the porch swing.
“Ain’t that sweet, Nat taking her dad,” Ma said. “Is that a Russian thing?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Jason backed out at the last minute. Nat didn’t have much to choose from.”
Mutt barked at a squirrel across the street. Ma patted his head and he settled down at her feet with a little groan.
“I forgot to give Nat the condoms,” I said.
“When you were little you had that lemonade stand on the corner, remember? Maybe you should open a condom stand outside the high school.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Ma grunted and put her feet up on the dog. “If these ankles swell any more, I’ll be able to walk on water. Look at them—freaking pontoons.”
“I don’t want to look at your feet.”
“Then close your eyes.”
The swing creaked as we rocked. “Where did Dad go?”
Ma smiled. “He had an errand. Knight in shining armor kind of thing.”
“Spare me.”
“If you’re going to be cranky, make yourself useful. Fish the baby clothes out of the washer, wring them good, and hang them on the line.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I swear she chuckled when I went inside.
135.
The basement was cold and damp. I tried to open up the two little windows in my s
o-called future “bedroom” but the locks were rusted shut. I could have banged them open with a hammer and a screwdriver, but I didn’t have the energy. I just wanted some fresh air.
All over town, girls were pinning on corsages and boys were hiding their hard-ons, and parents were smiling and worrying. I wondered if the DJ had turned up stoned, and if the streamers had stayed up, and if the bathrooms were going to flood, if we had bought enough soda, if there would be a fight, if Gilroy would bring in cops to close the place down early, if anybody would miss me. I’d have to wait until Monday and hear about it all over and over and over and over again.
Monday was going to suck, hands down. If I prayed hard enough, maybe I could get hit by a meteor or an out-of-control street sweeper. That way I wouldn’t have to hear about how much fun it was, how awesome it was, how much I missed. On the other hand, if I got accidentally killed, I’d probably wind up in Purgatory, next to some old windbag who would spend the next thousand years complaining about her hemorrhoids.
A pair of feet skipped past the windows. Notice that I said skipped, not walked or ran or shuffled.
I moved two cans of paint under the window to stand on for a better look.
Those were Grandma Shulmensky’s skipping feet. If my grandma Hannigan skipped like that, her arthritis or her lumbago or her disks would have acted up and she would have needed four or five gin and tonics. But the crazy bat next door was skipping.
I grabbed the bars and pulled myself up so I could see into the backyard. Grandma Shulmensky turned on their sprinkler. She clapped her hands when the water came spraying out, clapped and hopped and skipped, her face tilted back, catching the rays of the sun and the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh spray of the water.
136.
When I took the wet baby clothes outside, Grandma S. turned off the sprinkler and scurried into her own house, like I had spooked her or something. The clothesline was the scene of a massacre, a couple dozen action figures my bloodthirsty brothers left dangling. I piled the soldiers by the steps and started hanging up the faded onesies, new-baby sized.