Between Mom and Jo Read online

  A couple of the guys go over to watch Matt spar with my new training bag. It’s a Typhoon — Jo’s present to me. Mom got me the Kuhli loach and the Leopard Leaf fish I asked for. Neenee and Poppa bought me a laptop, which is cool, but I’ll probably enjoy the fish and kickboxing equipment more. I told Jo that, but she still got mad. Where could she have gone? Neenee left right after I opened the presents. Jo could come back anytime now.

  I see Mom and Kerri stacking the dirty plates from the picnic table and wander over to help. “Where could she be?” I ask Mom.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she replies evenly. Me, I’m mad. At first I was worried when Jo didn’t get back in time for cake and ice cream. Now I’m pissed. She keeps doing this — taking off for hours at a time. Who knows where she goes?

  I see Sasha McLaren, this girl in my class, sitting on the grass petting Lucky 2. Taco pops a balloon in her ear, and she shrieks. It spooks Lucky 2, who hobbles off toward the garage. Sasha looks at me and rolls her eyes. Really, I think. Taco’s a turd.

  The girls gather under the linden tree and start whispering about whatever it is they whisper about twelve hours a day. Sasha meets my eyes again and smiles. My face flares. The guys all gravitate to the punching bag, and I’m wondering what to do now. I never had a boy-girl party. If Jo was here —

  An explosion of sound splits the air. My ears squinch, it’s so loud. Music. Mexican music. Mariachis. Trumpets blaring, like at Casa Consuelo, where we go for nachos. The back door screaks open, and Jo barrels into the yard. “Buenos dias, muchachos. Or is it, much nachos?” She cracks herself up. She’s wearing a sombrero and carrying something under each arm. She pulls up, stomps twice in place, and announces, “Let the games begin.”

  One thing she’s carrying is a donkey piñata, and she lugs it toward the linden tree. On her way past, she winks at me.

  I shrink to disappear. Maybe if I stop breathing; stop living. Because I want to; I can smell it, the beer. She reeks. She’s staggering across the yard like she’s been guzzling for a week.

  My eyes cut to Mom, who’s frozen in her tracks with the carton of ice cream in her hand. A stream of chocolate sluices down her arm, but she doesn’t notice. I notice. It’s the only thing I’m concentrating on — that chocolate river of ice cream streaking toward Mom’s elbow.

  “Okay, who’s firs’?” Jo asks.

  I don’t want to look. My eyes defy my brain. She’s tied the piñata onto a branch of the tree, and now she’s wielding the bat she’d tucked under her other arm. “Who’s on firs’?” she says in a slur. “Wha’s on secon’? I dunno’s on third. ’Member that, Nicky?”

  I meet Jo’s eyes for the briefest moment and fire off a mental command: Don’t. Don’t do this to me.

  “’Member?” she says louder.

  The old Abbott and Costello routine we used to do when I was, like, four. I nod to shut her up.

  “Batter, batterbatterbatter . . .” Jo swings the bat around in a circle, stumbling and nearly falling over. “Up.”

  Matt’s voice enters the vacuum of my brain. “I’ll go first.” He hands me the boxing gloves and saunters across the yard toward Jo. Thank you, God, I pray to heaven.

  Matt takes the bat and slings it over his shoulder. “Back up, everyone,” he says. “I’m the state batting champ.”

  Which is a lie.

  Jo stumbles back an inch, while everyone else moves forward to surround Matthew. He slices the air with the bat, and for a split second I will that bat to smack Jo right in the face.

  I take it back.

  She grins at me again, motioning me over.

  The Mexican music that was drowning out my pulsing anger suddenly stops. Someone switched off the CD player inside. Mom?

  “Nick!” Jo shouts.

  “What?”

  She sweeps an arm up and almost smacks her head.

  My feet carry my spineless, boneless body across the lawn. Matt takes a wide arc at the piñata and misses. Everyone laughs. Jo especially. She’s bent over, clutching her knees and wheezing with laughter. “Oh God. I’m going to pee my pants.” She coughs.

  “That was just a practice shot,” Matt says. His eyes meet mine, and I plead with him to kill that freakin’ piñata; to pound it into dust and pulp and crepe paper confetti.

  Matt hauls back and whacks the piñata. It doesn’t break. The whump of the bat makes me wonder if the donkey is molded in cement or something. That’d be Jo’s idea of a joke.

  “You’re out!” Jo thumbs over her shoulder. “Nex’ batter.”

  Taco steps forward. “Give me that thing,” he says.

  “Nope.” Jo stops him with a stiff-arm to his chest. “Girls’ turn.” She hitches her chin to the clot of girls. “C’mon. Sen’ in your best jock.”

  Sasha looks at me, and I want to die.

  Jo adds, “Oh Jesus H. Christ. Don’t be so girly-girly.”

  My throat constricts. I won’t cry. I feel my fists clench at my sides, and this raging urge to charge Jo, to ram her into the fence, is quelled when Sasha raises her hand and says, “I’ll go.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Jo hands her the bat.

  Sasha takes a good swing and whaps the piñata, but it doesn’t break. She plants her feet. A fierce look of determination seizes her face.

  “Whoo-ee,” Jo calls through cupped hands. “Baa-ad girl.”

  Sasha smacks the piñata. Nothing. I’ll rip that thing off the tree and throw it over the fence. . . .

  “Good try.” Jo tries to pat Sasha on the back as she passes, but misses and almost topples over. “Next up, the birthday boy.”

  Everyone turns to gawk at me. Only for a moment, though. Their eyes drop. A couple of the guys scrape their shoes through the grass.

  “Haul ass, Nick. The candy in there’s turning to donkey dung.”

  I storm over to Jo and wrench the bat out of her hands. Whirling, I club the piñata. Again. Again and again and again. I flail away, seeing red, hearing red. I batter and bruise that bloody donkey. On the upswing, the bat is jerked out of my hands.

  “You’re all such wusses,” Jo says. She takes one swing, and the piñata cracks. Her next smack catches the branch and snags the jute holding up the piñata. It pulls loose, and the piñata rolls on the ground toward me. Before I can grab it, Jo lurches forward, trips, and sprawls on top of the donkey. It bursts apart.

  All I hear is the snickering. And her laughing hysterically as she rolls over and goes, “Olé.”

  Nobody rushes in for the candy and prizes. I wish the ground would open up and swallow me. I don’t hear Mom and Kerri approach from the rear. Mom claps once and says, “Okay, gang. Sorry to break up the party, but it’s getting late.” She loops an arm across my shoulders. “Thank everyone for coming, Nick.”

  Kerri smiles at me thinly. I don’t smile back.

  I wrench away from Mom and charge blindly for the house. Everything’s fuzzy. Not only because I’m blinking back tears of rage. My glasses are gone. In the kitchen, I lift what’s left of my birthday cake off the table and slam it against the wall.

  It’s later. Nighttime. I vow never to emerge from my room. To rot in here until they have to ax down the door to get to my stinking, filthy, decomposing corpse. There’s a knock, but I don’t answer it. I’ve shoved my bureau against the door so no one can thwart my plan. Especially her.

  No one tries.

  Good.

  The house is dead quiet. Almost. Our new house has two stories. Through the heater vent, I hear Mom upstairs in their bedroom, crying. I’d rather hear Jo yelling and know they’re fighting. But they don’t anymore. Jo just leaves.

  My eleventh birthday, I think, staring vacantly at my vaulted bedroom ceiling. It’s one for the memory book.

  There’s a minor glitch in my plan to rot away. By morning I’m starving.

  It’s early when I wake up; scarcely dawn. My glasses aren’t on my CD player, where I usually put them, so I dig out an old pair from my desk. As I pad thro
ugh the living room, I notice a pillow and rumpled blanket on the sofa. I don’t investigate. The last couple of months she’s been sleeping there a lot. Instead, I make as much racket as possible tearing open a new carton of Pop-Tarts and inserting them into the toaster. Someone cleaned up the cake. Mom probably. I retrieve the canister of coffee out of the cupboard and brew a pot. That’s when I see her through the kitchen window, in the backyard.

  She’s punching my Typhoon with her bare hands. Her knuckles are raw and scraped, and she’s smearing blood all over the white vinyl. I watch her methodically beating my bag up. Beating herself up.

  I can’t stand it.

  “Stop,” I tell her, stepping between her and the bag. “Look what you’re doing.”

  Jo gazes down at her hands as if they’re not even attached to her body. She lowers them. She says, “I’ve got a problem.”

  “No shit,” I reply.

  Her head lolls back and I can see she’s hurting. “I made you coffee,” I tell her, thumbing at the mug on the picnic table. “Extra strong.”

  She asks, “Did you spike it with arsenic?”

  “We’re all out,” I answer. “Unfortunately, all I could find was Excedrin.”

  She drags over to the table, and I wrap my arms around the punching bag for a moment, willing myself to be strong. I want to hate her, but I can’t. Not because the emotion isn’t there. It’s just . . . this is Jo.

  As I slide in across from her, she says in a raspy voice, “I’m sorry, Nick.”

  I don’t meet her eyes. “This has to be the last time,” I tell her. “Mom and I can’t take this anymore.”

  Her fingers, threaded around the coffee mug, tighten at the joints. “My parents are both falling-down drunks. Did I ever tell you that?”

  I meet her eyes now. I wondered why, whenever my “other” grandparents were mentioned, she’d always change the subject. “Where are they?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I took off when I was sixteen. Never looked back.”

  She looks . . . beaten.

  “It’s no excuse,” I inform her.

  “I know.” She buries her face in her mug.

  I add, “Kids don’t have to be stupid like their parents. You’re the one who told me that.”

  “When?” She blinks up.

  I don’t remember. It’s something Jo would say.

  The silence between us builds, the way it’s been doing. I hate it. She sips her coffee and sets the mug down. “It’s over, Nick,” she says. Her eyes lock on mine. “I quit. I promise I’ll never take another drink as long as I live.”

  Sure, I think.

  She holds my eyes. Hers are steady, serious.

  She extends her fist for me to knuckle knock. It’s bloody, so I hesitate.

  Or maybe I hesitate because I’m wondering if this is the real Jo, the one who’s as good as her word. Or the other Jo, the one who’s good for nothing, as Mom said last time she got home and found Jo passed out again. I remember something Jo said to me once about Santa Claus. Matthew told me Santa Claus was a hoax, that our Christmas presents were really left under the tree by our parents. I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t want to think that what I’d believed in so long and so hard wasn’t true. Jo said, “Nick, nobody can tell you what to believe in. As long as you feel deep down in your heart that something’s true, then it is. For you.”

  Deep down in my heart I want to believe in the real Jo. I want to believe she’s back, as good as ever.

  I ball a fist. My knuckles rap hers lightly, so it won’t hurt. “I’ll help you quit,” I say.

  “Good.” She cricks a lip. “I’m going to need it.” Sniffling, she wipes her nose on her sleeve and adds, “Shit. I have to quit my job. Your mom’s going to kill me.”

  We both laugh at this. Jo just got this new job a week ago — tending bar at The Sports Grille.

  I say, “I hear Denny’s is hiring.”

  Jo reaches over and smacks me upside the head. She pauses and runs her palm down the side of my face.

  I feel my throat catch, and I slide out the end of the bench. “My Pop-Tarts are burning,” I say.

  Jo calls, “Wait a minute. I’ve got a present for you.” She fishes in her hip pocket and yanks out my glasses; she tosses them to me. “I wouldn’t want you stumbling through life the way I do,” she says. “You might step in donkey doo.”

  I don’t have a memento of that day. Nothing in my scrapbook. There’s only her promise and a blank page where my eleventh birthday oughta be.

  Jo

  “It’s kid’s night,” Jo tells Mom. “Something new they’re trying out at AA.”

  Mom looks at Jo. I know she’s not buying it, but she lets me go. As we’re climbing into Beatrice, Jo pauses and says, “Hold on. I forgot the gun.”

  I flinch. “What?”

  She fumbles in the garage through her mess of tools and scrap wood and car parts and returns with my paintball marker.

  “Why do we need that?”

  Jo slides the gun behind her seat and revs the engine. “It’s part of my twelve-step program.” She shifts into reverse. “Step one: Step on it.”

  I don’t ask. This is Jo.

  She cranks up the radio to earsplitting volume, which I love. We’re tuned to 105 FM, our favorite station. Hot LED. The hard-core rock fissures your bones and fries your brain.

  We’re deaf as rocks when we pull into the parking lot at Tony’s Liquors.

  I narrow my eyes at Jo.

  “Wait here,” she says, flinging open the door and launching out. I watch her open the grated door and disappear inside. A slow burn ignites in my core and spreads up to my chest, through my head, to my ringing ears. She promised. Promised.

  A minute later she hops back in, toting two twelve-packs and another paper bag, all of which she shoves behind us in the cab.

  I’m seething. I’m fuming. The fire from my eyes scabs the plastic on the dash. She says, “Anyone ever tell you you look exactly like your mother when she’s pissed off?”

  I fold my arms and twist my torso to glare out the window.

  Jo sighs. “And you’re just about as trusting.”

  We spew gravel as we peal out. Usually, we holler over the pounding bass to talk, joke around, hurl insults, but we’re not speaking this trip. At least I’m not. Jo heads out to the country.

  We drive for about twenty minutes, beyond the city, the last housing development, and turn onto a dirt road. A NO TRESPASSING sign whizzes by. Jo veers Beatrice directly into the woods and rumbles through the trees. I hang on to my seat as my teeth chatter. We crunch to a stop at the end of the road, and the music cuts out. “Grab the flashlight,” Jo says.

  I sit for a minute, brooding. She promised. Promised.

  “Nick! What’d I say?” she yells from outside. Her door slams.

  It’s pitch black. I grab the Coleman lantern, the only flashlight I can find. I don’t see Jo, and panic.

  “Over here,” she calls.

  My heart’s racing. What are we doing? It’s eerie. There’s no one here. Animal eyes are watching us, though. I can sense them observing our every move, tasting dinner.

  “This is a good place. Set her up.”

  What does she mean? “Set what up?”

  Jo rips into a twelve-pack and lifts out two beers, one in each hand. With her teeth she pops the tops. Tipping the cans, she drains them onto the ground. The beer fizzes and foams at her feet. She sets the emptied cans on an old log behind her and stacks. Four in a row. Three between the four. Two on top. One at the peak. “Give us some light,” she orders.

  There’s a thick crescent moon, but it’s gauzy, like a ghost story. I flick on the lantern and flash the head beams over Jo’s handiwork. She’s building another pyramid on a rock formation to her right, and I notice in the light there are dozens of cans littered around the area. Maybe hundreds. So this is where she comes.

  “Nick, what the hell are you doing? Pick a spot and hang the lamp. Let’s get th
is show on the road.”

  If I poke the nearest limb through the handle, the beams shine in the wrong direction, toward Beatrice, where Jo’s headed. Where’s she going? I decide to wedge the lantern between two branches of a skinny pine tree. It illuminates all the cans, like a helicopter strobe spotlighting debris from a plane crash.

  Jo guns the engine and I freak. Is she leaving me here? I sprint back, tripping over a root and taking a header. My glasses fly.

  I grope around.

  “For my next kid, I’m requesting the coordination gene,” Jo says. I get up and brush the pine needles off my hands and knees. My glasses dangle from Jo’s pinkie finger, and I snatch them off. “What the hell are we doing out here?” I snarl.

  She slugs me on the arm. Hoisting herself onto the truck bed, she extends a hand to me. While I was sucking dirt, she’d backed Beatrice around.

  I don’t need help. She’s got two of our plastic lawn chairs in the truck bed, scootched up close to the cab. As she plops in the left one, she motions me down to the right. I sit. She hands me the marker. Goggles land in my lap. “Still remember how to use this baby?”

  “Duh,” I say. Granted, the marker didn’t get a lot of use. When Jo bought it for me last Christmas, Mom had a cow. She told Jo to return it. Jo refused. “You know I hate guns,” Mom said. “We’ll be careful,” Jo countered. Mom actually shouted, “No! Take it back. I forbid guns in this house.”

  Jo said, “I’m not taking it back.”

  Mom stormed to her room.

  Jo could take it back if they were going to fight about it. I didn’t care. Except . . . I did. I really wanted a paintgun. Matt had a semiauto Spyder. He played paintball with his dad almost every weekend.

  The only time I ever got to shoot was when Jo and I snuck out. We’d tell Mom we were going to a hockey game or something and drive to the firing range. Mostly we’d target shoot. This one time we went to a real field where a tournament was being held — guys in camo flanking bunkers and snapshooting. It looked like a blast. Jo and I were dying to get out there.

  We hadn’t gone to shoot paintball in a while. Not since Jo joined AA.

  “What am I shooting at?” I ask, sighting through my goggles an eternal forest of black.