13
Vern wanted to start training me right away, but I needed to find a place to live first. He offered up an apartment on the top floor of his house, one he reserved for wrestlers, he said, so we went that same day to look at it. His dog Cookie Dough led the way, walking up the stairs in front of us, moving slowly. When we entered the living room she wagged and smiled at us expectantly, like she was saying, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I liked it immediately. I liked the huge windows looking out into the trees and the wood floors. It felt like a nest, but one that was open and airy, not cramped.
“Who lives here?” Pill asked.
“No one, now,” Vern said. “I was renting it to one of my wrestlers but he moved back to New Mexico.”
Pill flopped onto the bed in the first room. She folded her hands on her stomach and looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Cookie Dough jumped up and lay down beside her, and she curled herself around her and rubbed her fat belly.
“This could be my bed. I could sleep here with Cookie Dough.”
“Cookie Dough has her own bed,” Vern said. “But you can visit her any time.”
In the second bedroom, Pill found a toy sitting on the windowsill and brought it to me. It was a red horse on a pedestal, one of those figurines made of segments internally strung together, and it collapsed when you pushed a button on the base and then sprung back up. She gasped when she saw it.
“You may as well keep it,” Vern said. She did an allover body-spasm, a mini-seizure. Then she became intently still and focused, bringing the toy close to her face and whispering to it.
“So how much is the rent?” I asked.
“Four hundred,” Vern said.
I didn’t know what rent should cost, in Iowa or Chicago or anywhere. But I could see right away that four hundred a month was cheaper than staying in a hotel. For the first time in a long time, I was excited about life. My own place, and a nice one.
We checked out of the hotel and went to a thrift store and got a few dishes and towels, and we found a blanket Pill loved, one with three horses on it, their manes dark against an orange and magenta sunset. There was a used bookstore across the street from the thrift store, so I drug Pill over to it. The place was dark and dank inside, with towers of books stacked on the floor in front of the shelves, leaving cramped aisles to walk through. We descended a ramp into a musty-smelling room with low ceilings, the children’s section.
“I don’t like books,” Pill said. “They smell bad.”
“But you need to be reading.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not in school, and you need something to do while I’m at the gym.”
“I can do the sumo suit.”
“Not for hours.”
“I can help April.”
“I mean something that uses your brain. Before it starts to mold.”
“I hate reading.”
I pulled out a worn paperback. On its cover, Nancy leaned against a stone wall, shining a flashlight up some narrow steps. I showed it to Pill, who stared at it, intrigued at first, but then she said, “Weird.” I found another Nancy Drew and held it out for her to see. A crocodile was springing out of the black water, opening its jaws toward Nancy, who was holding a steak above its nose. “Look at those teeth,” I said. I knew Pill wouldn’t be able to resist, and she couldn’t. She grabbed the book.
“What is she doing with that huge alligator? Is she feeding it?”
“There’s one way to find out,” I said.
She opened the book, studied the words for a second, but then dropped it to the floor and walked away, running her finger over the spines of books.
“Do you know why you need to read?” I said.
“Miss Dietz says it makes you smart.”
“And you’re not in school, so you need to be learning. This is learning. Only it’s fun.”
“But I suck at reading!”
She pulled a few books off the shelves and let them drop to the floor, just to show me, and she folded her arms across her chest and frowned at me.
“Pill, why can’t you work with me just a little?”
“Cause you said we were going home and now we’re not.”
“But I thought you liked the apartment. Our own place, Pill. And there’s Cookie Dough. And doing the Sumo suit every day.”
“You said we were going home.”
“And I changed my mind because I think this will work. I think it will be better for us in the long run. I can make good money.” She removed a book and thumbed through it, though she wasn’t reading, she was just fluttering the pages rapid-fire, the breeze from it blowing a few hairs off her forehead. “That’s an A to Z Mystery,” I said. “I used to love those. Wanna get one?” She shrugged. “Pill, I’m not ready to give up on this yet. If you want to go home, I’ll take you home. I can drop you off, then do this on my own. I would miss you but I’d understand if—”
“No! I wanna stay with you!” She sounded terrified.
“Okay. But you need to listen to me, alright?”
We checked out of the hotel and moved our stuff into the apartment. Pill spread the horse blanket across her bed, and she arranged her toys inside the dresser drawers and threw her clothes on top of it in a heap. I cooked some mac and cheese, and we ate it at a little table pushed up against the wall. It was late by the time we finished, so we lay down in bed and read Vampire Vacation, and she was strangely quiet. Usually when I read to her she squirmed and interrupted. But on that night she just lay there.
“Sam?” she said. “This is a vacation, right?”
“Not really.”
She raised her arms and danced her fingers above her face. “Are we going to live here forever?”
“No, just for now. Don’t you like it?”
She rolled onto her side, away from me. “It doesn’t have a swing set,” she said to the wall.
“Maybe we can go to a park tomorrow.”
She didn’t answer, and after a minute I could hear her breathing, deeper and slower.
I dropped the book on the floor. I wondered what Frankie was doing, if she was still trying to find us. I sometimes thought she didn’t want to be a mother. “I wanted to have you,” she used to say. But it sounded forced, like she was trying to convince herself.
And my father. Who was he? Maybe he really was a famous Sumo wrestler who lived in Japan. One day I’d go there and we’d meet and something would tip us off, a gesture we shared, or a feature in common, something random but so striking you couldn’t ignore it, and one thing would lead to another, and we’d discover the truth of our relationship. We’d be standing in a Japanese garden under the warm sun, and I would fall into his arms, his silk yukata smooth against my face. And I would feel, finally, at home.
14
April thought she had died because it was pretty in a way you’d expect heaven to be, sparkly and blue. But she was freezing, and her lips were stinging, and her shoulder throbbed like a mother-fucker. So no, not heaven. She was in a car, she realized, an old one with chrome gleaming along the dash. She sat up and turned the key in the ignition and the engine cranked slowly, straining. Come on, bitch. She tapped the gas once, twice, and finally it roared to life. She flipped on the heater but it blasted cold air, so she turned it off and dropped back into the seat and curled up under a musty quilt that smelled of gasoline.
A hunger stirred in her gut, but not for food or dope—what was it? Something she was leaning toward, seeking. She closed her eyes, trying to go back to her dreams, to see whatever it was, and there suddenly was Priscilla’s porcelain neck, heat coming off it as she stepped out of the Sumo suit. Big eyes, looking up at her. Tiny fingers digging into her arm, touching the scars, exploring them. “What happened to you?” she said. She couldn’t answer at first. “Battle wounds,” she said finally.
She tried the heater again but it kept blowing cold, so she killed the engine, leaving the key in the ignition where she’d found it, and she got out and covered up the car with a giant tarp that was almost too heavy for her—she struggled to get it up over the top and down the other side. She made her way to the front of the barn or garage or whatever it was, slipping past two other covered cars. Which was a waste, keeping a bunch of fancy-ass antique cars covered up and stowed away. For why? What was the point? People liked to collect shit. It made them feel important. She was glad she was above all that, the constant struggle for possessions, trying to make yourself feel better through material things.
She got down on the ground and wriggled through a gap in the front doors, the gravel scratching her hands and belly. A brick house loomed in front of her, all the windows dark except one on the first floor at the back. A large TV was glowing blue with the morning news, and a man was lying before it in a hospital bed, tubes going every which way and little monitor lights blinking. A guy with thick tattooed arms was injecting something into one of the tubes. He laughed, said something, and gazed down at his patient like he really cared about him, though who knew, really. He could have been putting cyanide into that tube.
The houses in that neighborhood were grand and prissy and set back from the street, and they had beautiful porches that looked more like living rooms, and in front of them, little banners with flowers and cute sayings like, “Welcome, Spring!” Though no one sat on those porches as far as she could see. And they didn’t welcome shit. Last night, as she walking down the street, a man driving by slowed and just followed her, his window lowered. He had silver hair that feathered out over his ears slightly and he was driving a shining luxury sedan. She was sure he would say something, but he didn’t. He just followed her, staring.
She walked faster, wanting to get out of that neighborhood before the sun rose. Eventually she came to a busier street with gas stations and storefronts. She found a diner, and she went in and ordered breakfast, and after she ate she lingered for a while, drinking coffee, thinking about Priscilla. She would see her again today.
After breakfast she went to a store and bought new clothes and a tube of red lip gloss that smelled fruity—Priscilla would like it, she thought—and a bag of candy, and she took a bus to Vern’s gym. She waited in the alley by the back door until he arrived in his rusted pickup. His face seemed to fall when he saw her standing there. She asked if she could use the showers. He sighed and hitched up his jeans, shifting his belly. Just this once, he said, because he was already paying her more than she was earning. Which was a shitty attitude, considering how much she’d made for him back in the day. But she got her shower, put on the new clothes, and she used the wall drier on her hair, the hot air blasting down her neck and shoulders. She put on the lip gloss and stuffed her jacket pockets full of candy, lollipops and smarties and bubble gum, a nice assortment.
When Priscilla and her brother finally showed up she was clutching a book to her bony little chest.
“Whatcha got there?” April said. She took the book and looked at the cover. “Nancy Drew. My cousin used to read these,” she said. “When I was your age. He was our babysitter and I used to think it was so boring because all he’d want to do is sit on the couch and read Nancy Drew.”
“I hate reading. But my brother says I gotta read a whole chapter before I can do the Sumo suit.”
“Do you want me to read with you?”
“I guess,” she said. And she took the book back, sighing heavily.
“Look at you, all mopey! Come on, it’s not so bad. I’ll make it fun.” April led her to the far corner where there was a stack of mats, and they sat down on them, leaning back against a rolled-up mat that was braced against the wall. Priscilla pressed into April’s side and it was cozy. It was heaven, the little body next to hers, warm and fidgety.
Her brother Sam saw what they were doing and came over.
“You don’t have to read to her,” he said.
“I don’t mind,” April said. “I love Nancy Drew.”
“I don’t want to keep you from your job.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
He stood there for a minute. “Alright. But Pill, you still need to do some of the reading on your own.”
“I know I know, you said that already! Can you please just go back to your thing?”
She wiggled her fingers at him, and he turned and went back to his workout. April started reading again. She tried to make it interesting, but it was so boring, Nancy blah blah blah, using her pretty little brains. After a couple of pages she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she closed the book. “Time for a sugar break,” she said. And she pulled a handful of candy out of her jacket pocket and showed it to Priscilla, who reached for a piece, but April closed her hand and drew it back. “Not yet. Your brother will see. In the break room.” She led Priscilla to the bathroom.
“This isn’t a break room,” Priscilla said. “It’s the bathroom.”
“Restroom. It’s where you rest.”
“Ohhhh.” They sat on the bench by the showers, and Apirl offered her the candy again. Priscilla surveyed the handful, biting her lower lip, trying to decide.
“You can have more than one. Just take something already.”
She picked a roll of Smarties, unwrapped them, and shoved all of them into her mouth. She swung her feet and crunched loudly and said, her mouth still full, “Why do they have showers in the bathroom?”
“So you can clean up after your workout. I used to do it when I was a wrestler, back in the day.”
“You were a wrestler?”
“This is where I started. Then I went national.” She undid her fly and pulled open her pants, showing Priscilla the tattoo.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a storm cloud. That was my wrestling name, April Storm.”
“What’s that thing coming out of the cloud?”
“It’s a lightning bolt, but it’s also an arm.”
“Whose arm?”
“It’s just an arm. You can touch it if you want.”
“I’m not going to touch that. It’s almost on your bottom.”
“It’s not on my bottom, silly. It’s on my hip.” But Priscilla drew back and shook her head. Then she turned her attention to a lollipop, unwrapping it and putting it in her mouth.
“Blach! What is this? I thought it was chocolate.”
“Let me see,” April said. She pulled Priscilla’s hand in and held it under her mouth, savoring the sensation of the sharp little knuckles against her palm. She took a long, leisurely lick, checking Priscilla’s expression. “That’s rootbeer,” April said.
“Gross! Why do they put beer in them!”
“It’s pop, you silly. Haven’t you had it before?”
“No, it sounds disgusting.”
“Some day I’ll get you a rootbeer float. That’s where they mix it with ice cream.”
“Blach.” She made a face and offered up the lollipop. “Do you want it?”
“No,” April said.
Priscilla jumped up and ran out of the locker room, and when April caught up to her she was at the free weights, offering the lollipop to her brother. Little shit, ratting her out like that. He gave April a disapproving glare, then he took the lollipop from Priscilla, threw it in the trash, and said something to her in a way that made her deflate. She walked slowly back to April, dragging her feet.
“My brother says I have to finish reading,” she said. “And I’m not supposed to eat any more candy.”
Prick. Like most of the guys in here. They got themselves all puffed up and thought they deserved shit. She was doing him a favor, watching his sister, giving her candy, but whatever. They climbed back on the mats and settled in and started reading again, and this time Priscilla dropped her head on her shoulder, and it was magical. The weight of that little skull on her aching bones—it made everything better. She would do whatever she had to to get more of that, she decided.
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