Chapter 5

Chapter 1 : Chapter 2 : Chapter 3 : Chapter 4 : Chapter 5
WARNING: THIS MAY BE A LITTLE ADULT (THOUGH QUITE JUVENILE) AND/OR OFFENSIVE.

Nina is pitched forward against the steering wheel to avoid the sharp glare of a light in her rearview.  She’s driving home after rehearsal, after declining Leonard’s second feeble attempt when he pleaded across the stage with puppy-dog eyes, tried again at her locker before she left the school.

He could have utilized a more charming approach or a million other lines, but, really, nothing would have made a difference.  The next year is too important.  There’s a play, college selections, debate team, soccer, perfect grades—a million things on her plate and too little time.  His head is in the clouds.  He only thinks about himself and the given moment.  He has no thought for the future, won’t get her plans or the demands on her schedule.  She doesn’t know what she was thinking before.  This is the right decision, better off alone and able to focus.

Nina sees her street and turns on her blinkers.  The other car inches closer.  She sighs and rolls her eyes as she sees the blonde curls of the driver—her mom—not the person she wants to see at this particular moment.  She kills the blinkers, passes her street, parks, waits ten minutes, and then drives home.

She pulls into the driveway, grabs her bag and purse from the back seat.  A new set of headlights approaches from the way she came.  They get slower as they get closer.  She pauses in front of her car with the door held open.  The lights bounce off the mailbox at the end of the drive.  A white pickup truck comes into focus.  The truck seems to break for a split second and then quickly speeds up and is down the road.  She doesn’t see who is inside.  It’s gone, just the quiet rustling of pebbles being thrown.

“Don’t have the balls to show yourself, do you?” she screams.  She gathers the rest of her stuff, slams the door.  She looks down the street.  “Damnit.”

Inside the house, in the kitchen, her father, Harold, greets her.  She silently slouches into a seat at the kitchen table.  She looks around the large, vacuous kitchen in all its stainless steel, mahogany, and marble, and misses her childhood home, the small farmhouse kitchen of porcelain, cracked tiles, and finger paintings.

“You okay?”  Harold asks.

“What’s for dinner?”

Harold chuckles.  “You two are so much alike.”  He unloads the dishwasher and tidies the counter.  He’s handsome—tall with thick, graying brown hair, bushy eyebrows, and a sturdy, brick-shaped chin.  The sleeves of his oxford are rolled above sharp, vein-riddled forearms.  He drapes a hand towel over his shoulder, retrieves a glass casserole pan from the fridge.  “We’re having chicken tetrazzini.  You’ll like it.”

Melinda, Nina’s mom, enters the kitchen as Harold expounds the virtues of the casserole.  She wears a scowl on her face along with an old gray sweatshirt draped over her shoulders.  “Harold,” she says.  “Another casserole?  I should have stopped for takeout.”  Not waiting or pretending to want a response, Melinda walks to the dining room.  The kitchen is silent.  Nina hears a pop.  Melinda returns with a full glass and an open bottle of red wine.  “Nina, was that you in front of me?”

“I don’t know.  When?”

Melinda takes a sip and frowns.  “Harold, bring a plate to my room in an hour.”

“I thought we could all—”

“I have work to do.”  Melinda turns and leaves.

Nina wants to escape to her room, but doesn’t want to leave Harold alone.  It’s sad what he’s become.  She remembers him like a giant strong god when she was a kid.  He would pick her up and swing her around and they would play silly word games while running through sprinklers in the back at the old house.  But now he’s like an indentured servant and even worse when Melinda’s around—almost not even a person, just some floating apparition, there to take orders, like one of those robots in the Jetsons.

****

“What it be, Ronnie?” Pete asks.

“Just a beer.  Blatz.”  Ronnie sits alone on the left corner stool of the five-stool bar at Yellow Valley Lanes.  An old, gray-haired fogey, perched at the bar like a miserly crow with a high, gleaming forehead, is on the far opposite.  And Ronnie’s bowling bag—black leather with his name embroidered in gold—sits on the stool to his right.

Pete places the red and white can on the bar.  “Thought it was always Schlitz?”

“You know, they’re really all the same, doesn’t matter either way.  Yep.  There were buyouts.  Same owner, same formula, just different cans.”

Pete flips the channels on the TV.

“Think that’s metaphorical in any way?”

“Wouldn’t know.”

Ronnie stares at bottles of liquor along the mirrored wall.  He listens to the low hum of the jukebox and cracking smack of urethane balls pelting wooden pins.  Pete cleans a glass, twists a rag on the inside, and holds it up to the light.  Ronnie’s engrossed by the process; he couldn’t dream of getting the kids to take their work like that.  It sort of irks him, gets him rocking in his seat.  He takes a long gulp of his beer and fingers the orange tube saddled between his keys and wallet in his front pocket.  “No, not going to do it.”  He pulls his hand back.

“Not going to do what?” Pete says.

“Fucking Christ, Pete.  Why isn’t it like that?”

“What?”

“Nothing.  How comes Al hasn’t had his poker night in so long?”

“He has.  You weren’t invited.”  Pete grins.  “Maybe they’ll let you deal sometime.”

“Horseshit.  Only reason I sit around with those monkeys is to take their money.”

“Hence.”

Ronnie watches Pete diddle with several more glasses.  He doesn’t look behind him but hears a group of girls clamor in.  They step into the space at the bar to his right.  “Suki Tuttle, well I’ll be a tit’s nubbin,” Pete says, affecting his voice with a long, fake drawl, like this is somehow charming.

Ronnie’s interest is piqued.  He leans forward, but pretends not to notice.

Pete whispers, “Doll, they’re on my ass like flies on a dead crow.  They installed cameras.  You know if that weren’t the case, I’d hook you up.”

The girls playfully badger him.  Ronnie can only see skinny backs and long hair.

“Here’s what I’m thinking.”  Pete’s eyes dart at Ronnie for a split second.  “I’ll talk to this nice gentleman over here; I know him.  You all let him roll with you and give him some cash.”  Pete pauses.  “Get the far lane, far from the door, and then I’ll have my buddy take care of the rest.  How ‘bout that?”

They play it cool—no peeps, no giggles—nodding and waiting to confirm the plan.  Pete steps in front of Ronnie and leans forward like he’s about to unload some juicy secret.  “I know you caught all that.  You cool?”

Ronnie hesitates, looks down at the old gray-hair, and knows it’s about as good as he’s got for company.  He knocks his beer back and wipes his mouth.  He shrugs, leans backward and forward, and then nods a couple times.

****

“Ronnie?” Suki says, shocked to see Ronnie outside of work, in street clothes, dressed like somebody’s uncle in jeans and a gray, short-sleeve polo.  She didn’t imagine their lives would ever intersect like this.  She never thought of him that way.  She bites her lower lip and leans against the bar.   “Are you cool with this?”

Ronnie shrugs and does the nervous rocking thing she’s seen him do a million times before.  His eyes are low and avoid direct eye contact.  He looks a bit creepy, pathetic.  He better not slobber on my friends, she thinks.  Lecherous goon.  She looks around and at the other girls.  They just want their beer and a good time.  She could warn them, let them know how big of a weirdo Ronnie is, but then again it’s a public place, they’re just having beers and throwing some bowling balls.  What’s the big deal?  It might not be so bad.  She tips her head, forces a smile, says, “Cool, we’ll see you on nineteen.”

****

Nina watches Harold eat with slow, lumbering lifts of the fork to his mouth, chewing slowly with nothing but time, completely lost in his own world.  It reminds her of Leonard, the way he is able to zone out, how he doesn’t seem to care about the big things in the world—school, his future, what most people think of him.  She wonders what her dad was like when young.  Were they at all the same?

She finishes her plate and clears the table.  Harold goes into the living room.  She hears the channels change on the TV and then it is silent.  She heads up the stairs.  A cop show blares from Melinda’s room and Nina can picture her slipping into a stupor.  Nina stops and considers the effort Harold put into that meal, how Melinda can sit in that room and order him around.  It’s not right.  Nina raises her hand to knock.  She hesitates, lets her hand drop.  Then again, what’s he doing?  What effort has he made?  Right now, he’s on the couch, staring at a wall or a blank screen.  “She’s right here, dad,” Nina whispers to herself.

She goes to her room, closes the door, and picks up her phone.  She sits on the bed for a few minutes, replays the day in her head like a series of Technicolor flashbacks.  Maybe it was mechanical because we were both thinking about the consequences? she thinks.  Maybe he was just as scared?

She puts the phone down and looks around the room.  She gets Lysol and a rag, moves a mirror, a jewelry box, wipes the top of the dresser, picks up the phone again, and dials the first three digits.  She stops, hangs it up, and looks at her bookshelf.  She starts in the A’s, and runs her hand down the line of alphabetized books and then sighs.  “This is stupid.”  She returns to the phone lying in the middle of her bed, sits on her comforter, and picks it up.  She bites her lip, turns the phone on, and dials.  She falls back on the bed, twirls her hair, and pulls her socks off using the tips of her toes.  He answers.  After a moment of silence:  “I don’t know about you, Leonard Kowalski.”

****

Ronnie sits and drinks his beer while the conversations spill around him.  Suki half listens to the other girls, but spends more time watching Ronnie, wondering what this is like for him.  There are four girls besides Suki—Sandra, Linda, Kim, and Monica.  Sandra is the wiseass, Linda the slut, Kim the brain, and Monica the chameleon—unconfident, always changing appearance, quiet until drinking.

Ronnie sits on the end seat, closest to the lanes.  Linda is to his left with her legs crossed.  “Ronnie,” she says.  “You married?”

“Watch her Ronnie,” Sandra says over her shoulder.  She stands with ball in hand ready to chuck it.  “Linda’s sneaky, like a snake.  I think they wrote that song about her.”

“I know which one you’re talking about.  I wasn’t even born yet.”

The girls laugh.  Ronnie acts amused, wipes the sweat from his brow, and takes a swig from his beer.

“What’s that supposed to mean, anyway?”  Linda asks.

“It means your reputation precedes you,” Kim says.

“No offense, Ronnie,” Linda says to him, then returns focus on the group.  “But Ronnie is not my type.”  She pats him a couple times on the thigh.  “No offense, really.”

“Hmmm, I don’t know,” Sandra says.

“Ok, why don’t we all leave Ronnie alone,” Suki says.

Ronnie gets up for his turn, throws a strike, and sits back down.  He runs his hands together.  His sips of beer are quick and nervous.  He rocks in his seat.

“I don’t know,” Monica finally chimes in.  “I think he’s pretty cute.”

All four girls fold into laughter.  They slaps knees, clap hands, snicker, snort, but Suki doesn’t make a peep.  She sits up straight, watches Ronnie, and feels a tinge of pity.  These girls would chew him up and spit him out in a hummingbird’s heartbeat, which seems wrong, like it should be the other way around, like the natural order is flipped—that they’re just kids and what they say or think shouldn’t matter to someone like him.

But it’s not that way.  Their words can be like machetes and his age makes a difference.  It most definitely hurts him.  Like his age plus his position or status in life strips him of simple things like respect or the right to instill a bit of order.  He’s a boss, a dad, but all they see is an old, pathetic, creepy man.

They don’t mean any harm and he doesn’t need to be protected or receive special treatment, but he could maybe use a little acknowledgement, a little nod, or something.  Suki stands for her turn.  She grabs a ball and turns to Ronnie.  “How’d you say I should do this?”

He shows her where to aim, how to bend her knees, and how to release the ball.  She improves, slightly.  When she almost gets a spare, they exchange hi-fives.  He relaxes, livens up.  They talk about favorite TV shows, movies.  Ronnie reminisces about when he was their age.  He says he was a real hell raiser.  “The shit we got into.”  The girls laugh and listen as they play two games and drink three beers apiece before calling it quits and trading in their shoes.  The four other girls go to the bathroom, leaving Suki and Ronnie alone at the front entrance.

“Ronnie, why’d you and your wife break up?”  It immediately seems like a stupid question to ask.  “I’m sorry, is it a sore subject?”

He crosses his arms and rocks a few times.  His face contorts like he’s far off, deep in thought.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.  How you know Pete?” Ronnie says.

“The bartender?”

“Yeah.”

“He was an old friend of my dad.”

“Uh-oh.  What’d Pete do?”

“What?  Oh, nothing.  My parents split.  Dad moved away.  Hey, you think you can give me a ride home?”

“Far?”

“Oh, maybe.  I’m sorry.  I can probably just walk.”

Ronnie’s chin scrunches, wrinkles.  “No.  I was asking about your dad.  Is he far?”

“Oh, no, but might as well.  I never see him.”

“Hmm.”  Ronnie’s mouth opens to speak.  It closes.  He nods his head.  “Yeah, well, my car’s out back.”