Читать книгу The Shark Curtain - Chris Scofield - Страница 10

Chapter 6

Jesus’s Secretary

The open window at the end of Judy’s bed is covered with a rice-paper shade. It looks out on a small Oriental courtyard, with the miniature bridge we used to walk our Barbies across before they had a tea party under the bamboo.

We’re both too old for dolls now, but I sometimes think about Barbie, my Barbie, who lives on a tropical island but drives her speedboat to the mainland where she plays piano in a jazz bar.

The magnolia tree in Judy’s courtyard is in full bloom today and shades the front door. Her mom planted it for her the day she was born but Judy hates it. She hates her room too, with its mile of rosy wallpaper between her bed and the small churchy window near her ceiling. Judy hates lots of stuff these days.

I hear them yelling at each other as I stand outside their house. Judy’s voice is loudest. I don’t want to go in but I have to: Lauren’s with Jamie, Dad’s out of town, and Mom’s taking a class at Portland State.

I knock quietly. When the yelling stops, I knock louder and Mrs. Marks finally opens the door.

“There you are,” she smiles. “Come in,” she says, while holding out a plate of homemade sugar cookies. The house smells warm and sweet, and even though she made cookies, her apron is spotless. My mom can’t even walk through the kitchen without getting something on her. I step inside and take a cookie.

“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Mrs. Marks nods to Judy’s door down the hall. “She’s waiting for you.”

Every room in the Markses’ house is modern, colorful, and neat. Especially Rusty’s room, which is weird because in person Judy’s brother is a real slob. He even buttons his shirts wrong. When I walk into Judy’s room, she hands me a bottle of smelly fingernail polish and directs me to sit on the edge of her bed, take off my shoes and socks, and stick cotton balls between my toes. Her hair is in rollers but her bangs are trimmed, straight and shiny.

“I’ve never painted my toes,” I say.

“It’s easy. Just don’t use much.” Three toes later she asks, “Who do you think is the cutest: Adam, Little Joe, or Hoss?”

Judy always asks me that question. It’s our way of saying hi. Sometimes when we’re watching Bonanza the Cartwrights burst through the burning map of the Ponderosa Ranch, stop their horses right in front of us, and smile into the camera wondering the same thing.

“You always ask me that question. Cutest? Adam is, I guess.”

“You guess?”

I look at her guiltily with the little pink brush poised over my big toe. “He’s handsome,” I say, “but he’s a snob.” Even though Judy thinks Adam is “moody and self-centered,” she still likes him best. She likes me best when I agree with her, but sometimes I just can’t. “I don’t like Little Joe either. Dad says he’s ‘slick’ like the guys who sell cars downtown.”

“No he’s not,” Judy grumps. “If Adam died, I’d marry Little Joe.”

Not me. I love Hoss. I want him to love me too. We’ll build a little ranch in the middle of the pines, have a baby, and live happily ever after. Some Sundays we take the bouncy buckboard to the Ponderosa Ranch, and eat lunch in the kitchen with Hop Sing. Outside, after lunch, I rest my head on Hoss’s chest, and he wraps his big arms around me and tells me my hair smells like warm biscuits with butter. Later, we sit in the living room with the stone fireplace. “There’s my big boy,” Grandpa Ben says when we pass him Hoss Junior. Adam stands off to the side, one foot on the hearth, thinking of something moody or self-centered to say.

Hail clicks and clatters against Judy’s window. It never hails on the Ponderosa.

“Hoss,” I smile. “Hoss is my favorite Cartwright.”

Judy sighs. Then, with tears in her eyes, says, “I don’t get you sometimes. Why do you always have to be different? Why can’t you like what I like?”

She looks at me funny, and for a minute I think she’s going to say something important, maybe even share a secret (like why she’s so mean these days), but then her mom walks into the room. Mrs. Marks carries a basket of folded laundry and sets it on Judy’s bed. On top of the clothes is a tray holding two small glasses of milk and more sugar cookies; underneath are neatly folded pedal pushers and a pink two-piece swimsuit.

“Your new Seventeen came today.” Mrs. Marks smiles and tosses the magazine on Judy’s bed, then holds out the tray.

“Thanks,” I say, helping myself to the cookie plate. “You sure are a good cook.”

“So is your mother, Lily.”

“My mom is jealous of your mom,” Judy says.

“Huh?” I stop biting a star shape in my cookie.

“My mom says your mom is beautiful and artistic . . . oh, and happily married.”

Judy talks like her mom isn’t standing right there, blushing.

I smile at Mrs. Marks, nervously. She’s small and skinny with a pointed chin. Mom says she has an “interesting face” which means she’d like to paint her someday. Judy says her mother looks like the Wicked Witch of the West.

“No treat, Judy?” Mrs. Marks asks, still holding out the tray. “Have some milk.”

“I’ll take water, Connie.” When did Judy start calling her mom by her first name?

“I like it better when you call me Mom.”

“Okay, Connie, but no cookies for me. I don’t want to gain weight before my trip to San Diego.”

Mrs. Marks turns and walks out. When the dishes rattle on the tray, I realize she’s shaking, a small nervous tremble like the vibrato Aunt Jamie showed me on her violin.

“Why are you acting so . . .” I start to say, then change my mind when she steps up on her bed, stretching on tiptoes to reach the high church window. Judy calls it “the jail window.” Only her fingertips touch it but she keeps stretching.

“Milk and cookies are fattening, Lily. And water’s important,” Judy sniffs. Is she crying? “People are 85 percent water. The earth is 76 percent water.” Judy’s smart. She always gets As in science.

“If there’s so much water inside us, why do people die of thirst?” I ask.

She ignores my question, plops down on her bed, and opens the latest issue of Tiger Beat to its centerfold of teen idol Bobby Sherman.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re full of water but we still need more?”

“Lots of stuff is weird,” Judy says.

I know that. But, “Why aren’t people born with enough water inside them?”

“How the hell would I know? You talk a lot, Lily.”

“No I don’t.” I look at my toenails. “Just to you.” I don’t like the color. “What color is this, Pukey Pink?”

Judy sniffs. “Yeah, I puked in it. I put snot and scabs and pus in it too. And blood—that’s where the color comes from. I thought you’d like it.”

“I do. Thanks.” Usually when we gross each other out it’s funny, but we’re not joking this time.

“You talk about God a lot too.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do. You believe in Him, right?”

“A little. Sometimes.” God is okay, it’s Jesus I have problems with. He’s a selfish ratfink who doesn’t save drowning dogs or children. I pull Judy’s sewing basket into my lap and begin arranging and rearranging the threads, first by color and then alphabetically. Judy doesn’t mind; she never uses them.

“Do you think if something was wrong,” her voice is softer now, “you know, bad or evil or something, that Jesus would help me even if I don’t believe in Him?”

“I guess. Maybe.”

“Because I saw His shadow on my bedroom wall.”

“Huh?”

“Jesus was outside my window last night.”

My heart beats faster. “Maybe it was your stepdad,” I say. Judy turns red. Did I say something wrong? “Or Rusty, or Sherman.”

“No,” Judy says impatiently. “It was Jesus. Alan saw him the other day too.” Alan is Judy’s boyfriend; they’re going steady but he hasn’t kissed her yet. Next weekend, after Judy gets back from San Diego, is their first official date; Alan’s father is driving them. “Alan saw Him in Bible study, just for a second, standing at the blackboard.”

There’s an illustration of Jesus “standing at the blackboard” in the kitchen at Gramma Frieda’s church too. I saw it when I helped cut pie one Sunday.

“Maybe it was a picture,” I say.

“No, he swore it was true. Do you think, you know, that maybe Jesus came to my house because He wants to help me?” Judy asks. “You said He might help if things were bad.”

“No I didn’t. I don’t know if He’d help you; I’m not Jesus’s secretary.” I can’t concentrate on organizing the threads, so I put aside the sewing basket.

“But you go to church, Lily, and you wear a crucifix, and . . .”

Why was Jesus at Judy’s house? I’m the one who almost drowned. I’m the one who killed my dog. I’m the one who saw Him in the woods, in the jeep, at the bottom of Peace Lake.

Judy crosses her arms on her chest. “Stop looking at me funny!”

“I’m not!”

“You are too. I’m not lying about seeing Him, you know.”

Which means she probably is. “I know,” I say. I flip through her new Seventeen pretending to be interested, then close it.

Jesus was looking for me, and got Judy’s house by mistake. All the houses in our neighborhood look alike, it’s easy to get confused. My hands are sweaty. “How’d you know it was Him if all you saw was His shadow?”

“You’d know it was Him if you saw Him,” Judy answers, snapping her gum. “He wore one of those boy dresses like in the Bible, and He had a beard and long hair.”

“How long?”

“Longer than Prince Valiant’s.” I smile despite myself. It’s a secret that Judy and I both like Prince Valiant; everyone else thinks he looks like a girl, or one of those sissy Dutch guys on cigar boxes. “He didn’t have a crown of thorns though.”

Good, I hate that.

My sweaty fists stick to the glossy magazine cover. When I lift them off the paper they make little prints of baby feet, without toes, that quickly evaporate. “Were you scared?”

Judy shrugs, then burps long and loud from deep in her throat like boys do. I wish I could do that.

She’s three years older than I am—old enough to take a week off from school and go to San Diego with her stepdad. Mr. Marks is the West Coast sales rep for Kenmore. Every time a new furniture or appliance store opens between Seattle and Los Angeles, they send him out. Judy and Mr. Marks leave tomorrow, before school starts, for the biggest appliance convention of the year. But Judy isn’t excited about getting out of school for five days, or buying new clothes; she doesn’t want to go to San Diego, or “anywhere else with my stupid stepfather.” Judy told me she wished he’d never married her mom.

I don’t like Mr. Marks ever since he asked me to check his heart with the stethoscope I got for Christmas, then stuck his tongue in my mouth. “I didn’t know doctors tasted so good,” he said. Gross. When I told Judy about it, she got mad at me as if I’d done something wrong.

Mom must like Mr. Marks though, because when Dad said she flirted with him at the New Year’s Eve party, she turned red. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but people gossip,” he reminded her, “and his first marriage ended in a big ruckus. His own daughter—”

“You know how families are,” Mom cut him off. “And Paul? It was my third martini. We were all pie-eyed, don’t you remember?”

* * *

Mrs. Marks made Judy put her hair up so she’d “look nice at the convention’s big dinner” tomorrow night. I stare at the four soup-can rollers down her part line, the four stiff brush rollers—two on either side—and the three neat rows of pin curls at the nape of her neck.

“You’re staring at me again!” Judy says, pushing her white and pink rhinestone glasses up her nose. “I don’t like people staring at me!”

“Okay, don’t have a cow!” I pause. “Did His shadow have a halo?”

“No,” Judy says. “Halos don’t have shadows; they’re invisible unless you look at a sainted person just right.” Did Jesus wear a halo when I saw Him? I don’t remember. Still, Judy reads a lot; she probably knows. She’s taking two fat library books on her trip.

I hear the front door open and Mrs. Marks step outside. “Rusty!” she yells for Judy’s little brother who’s playing across the street. “Stop wrestling with that dog! Do you hear me? Rusty!”

He loves to play with Louis, the neighbor’s black lab; they even sleep together when Rusty stays over, which he’s doing again tonight because Mr. Marks’s back is acting up. Judy’s mom says Rusty is too loud and “active” to be inside when the weather’s nice. He and Mr. Marks fight a lot so it’s a good idea.

“Look what I did,” Judy says, drumming Tiger Beat magazine with her pencil. “I filled out the contest form to win a ‘Dream Date with Singer Teen Idol Bobby Sherman!’ This and this are true,” she adds, pointing at her neatly printed name and address, “but I fibbed about my age.” She points at 18 on the Your Age line. “If you’re eighteen you don’t need your parents’ permission.” She hugs the magazine to her chest.

I wish it were Mrs. Wiggins sneaking around the neighborhood. The bump, where my tail grows, itches. I try to sound casual when I ask, “Half-person, half-dog. That’s a werewolf, right?”

Judy runs her finger over glossy Bobby Sherman’s glossy lips.

“A dog bite, or a scratch . . . If its blood got inside you—”

“You’re talking about a werewolf, right? There’s no such thing. You just got cut up when your dog drowned, and even if her blood got inside you, it still wouldn’t make you a werewolf. God, Lily!”

“But I killed her!” Suddenly I can’t breathe.

“Okay, you’re a dog murderer! Does that make you feel better?”

I stare at Judy’s starched white dust ruffle.

“Listen,” she says, “you’re not a werewolf. You’re nothing, just a dumb girl like me.” She throws her magazine on the floor. “I’ll never win a dream date with Bobby Sherman.” She sticks her fingertips under her glasses and presses her eyes. “I’m so stupid.”

“No you’re not. I’m not either.”

“You are if you think you’re a werewolf. Maybe you like Hoss so much because you’re both stupid.”

Mrs. Marks sticks her head in Judy’s room and says, “Your father’s home. Sloppy joes in half an hour.” She doesn’t look at either of us. After Judy’s mom leaves, the room feels funny.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” Judy says. She lies on her bed, holding her knees.

I wish Mom didn’t send me over. I don’t need anyone to watch me. Be nice, I tell myself. “I like sloppy joes,” I say. Judy must have them all the time; she’s glaring so hard at the closed door she could burn right through it like Superman. “I wonder if Jesus ever ate a sloppy joe. I bet Hop Sing could make them. He could probably make a Baked Alaska too. And one of those fancy chocolate cakes like I get at Rose’s Delicatessen on my birthday. Does your dad like sloppy joes?”

Now I’m talking too much.

“He’s not my dad,” Judy mutters.

“I know.” Judy’s real father died in Korea.

“Hey, Judy,” I say, arranging the magazines by date, “was there Baked Alaska before Alaska was a state?”

Judy turns red. “Shut up!”

My skin starts to itch. I scratch hard, making my hand into Mrs. Wiggins’s claw.

“Stop scratching!” Judy shouts at me. “Jeez! Have you got fleas?”

Kind of. Only it’s Mrs. Wiggins this time. “The dead want to be remembered,” Frieda says when she explains why she talks to dead Grandpa.

“I can’t help it,” I explain.

Judy closes her eyes. “I’m too old to be your friend anymore. You’re weird.”

I wish I hadn’t said I’d stay for dinner. “Stop being mean to me! I’m going home if you don’t stop!”

“So go! I don’t care. Go home to your beautiful family! I don’t want to talk to you anymore! I don’t want to talk to anyone!”

“I don’t want to talk to you either!” I yell, as I lock myself in the bathroom across the hall.