Читать книгу Pop Tart - Kira Coplin - Страница 12

You know, it’s funny. As it gets closer and

more probable, being a star is losing its meaning.

–Janis Joplin

Brooke’s family lived in a sun-bleached neighborhood of single-family ranch-style homes just minutes from one of the major highway exits. Their well-manicured yet modest concrete stucco home was nestled at the end of what would’ve been a relatively quiet cul-de-sac; quiet, of course, if not for the Parkers. Aside from the nonstop foot traffic of energetic kids who banged doors and rattled windows as they flowed in and out, a revolving door of houseguests added to the liveliness. Friends, neighbors, and relatives came and went as they pleased without question throughout the day, kicking off their shoes and helping themselves to leftovers in the refrigerator. With this sort of hospitality, the twang in their accents that seemed more ‘country’ than Southern, and the kind of neighbors that sat in rocking chairs on their porches–Brooke and I were clearly from different galaxies.

By the time lunch had rolled around, several people had already come and gone from the Parker home and two visitors remained. An overly made-up woman with auburn hair wrapped tightly in a bun–one of Mrs Dianne’s girlfriends from the pageant board–busily blabbed on in the kitchen. Her quick visit to ‘see how Miss Teen Florida was holding up,’ had turned into a two-hour gossip session about a number of topics ranging from a disagreement she had had with one of the contestant recruiters a week ago, the disorganized ice cream social recently held by the elementary school, and a fellow pageant mother who, according to her sources, had allowed her twelve-year-old daughter to take diet pills. ‘Can you believe it?’ the woman rasped loudly from the kitchen. ‘Now I hear she’s got the youngest one on a diet too…’

‘How old?’ Mrs Dianne coated a casserole dish with a sprinkling of handfuls of potato chips over a mixed bowl of chicken, rice, peas, and celery.

‘She’s ten.’

It was Willy’s brother Todd, however, who was the most animated. He had stopped over for beer and to see his ‘favorite, famous niece’ around 9:30 AM. Since he frequently visited, the Parkers had given him a key to the kitchen door so he would no longer have to break in to recover things he’d left behind or to catch his favorite show on T.V. Loud and boisterous, Todd was where I placed the blame for our rude awakening that morning.

Stuffed into a bunk stacked three beds high, it had been nearly impossible to get any sleep on the tour bus the previous night. Passing through highway construction and over beat-up roads, the constant rocking motion was almost nauseating. By the time we actually arrived at the Parkers’, it was pretty late and both Brooke and I shuffled into her bedroom like zombies. Even on solid ground, curled on a mattress on the floor next to Brooke’s bed, I was still haunted by the sickening sensation from the night before. Tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, I finally began to drift to sleep just before sunrise.

‘Z-z-z-z-z-z!’ A loud noise tore me from my sleep just a couple of hours later. Groggy, my eyes darted around the room, struggling to focus for a few minutes. Centering on a pink-and-black argyle valance that matched the comforter wrapped around me, I let out a sigh of exhaustion. Feeling weighted down, I continued to scan the room, examining the mismatched dresser lined with old tubes of lip gloss, bottles of Sunflowers perfume, and half-used bottles of Oil of Olay that sat against the wall across from me.

‘Z-z-z-z-z-z!’ The loud noise seemed to move toward Brooke’s bedroom, disappearing again suddenly. I looked up at Brooke on the black metal daybed. Snuggled beneath its scroll detailing and oak-finished hardwood posts, she was still fast asleep. Unable to see anything out of the window in her bedroom, I dragged my feet down the Pergo floor of the hallway toward the living room, scanning the rows of photos housed inside gold metal frames of varying sizes. Aside from a couple of professional-looking family photos and the twins’ most recent school pictures, the wall appeared to be a shrine to Brooke. The glossy images documented each stage of her life–pictures of her tenth birthday party at the local roller skating rink, in her high school cheerleading uniform, and posing in blue jeans and a cowboy hat at a country music concert with Willy. I smiled. As far as both he and Brooke were concerned, he was her real father–in fact, they were closer than most of the girls I knew were with their dads–you’d never know they didn’t share the same genetics.

Kneeling on the overstuffed off-white leather sectional in front of the window, I peeked through the blinds to see what all the commotion was about. Appearing as two separate whirls of blond hair, the Tweedles zipped around the backyard in circles on motorized bikes. A man in a dirty Florida Gators cap, who looked like an emaciated version of Willy, stood in the middle of the fuss, cheering them on loudly.

‘Guilty as charged,’ said a voice behind me, catching me off guard. I turned to find Willy grinning at me from the kitchen. ‘I admit, that Bozo out there is my own flesh and blood.’ He threw his head back laughing, as Mrs Dianne peered from behind him.

‘Good morning! You must be starving…’

‘Not too bad,’ I said, as if it were an automatic response. ‘You don’t have to go to any trouble—’

‘Nonsense, she’s always cooking up a storm in here,’ Willy smiled. ‘She makes the best French toast in the county; that there is a fact.’

‘Well that’s an offer I can’t refuse then,’ I smiled joining them in their newly remodeled kitchen–one of Mrs Dianne’s passion projects, which Willy had green-lighted as an anniversary present. ‘I just feel bad imposing.’

‘Ya hear that Di? Finally, a houseguest with some manners.’ Willy roared with laughter, glancing back at me. ‘Don’t think a thing of it. The way Todd eats us out of house and home, we’re gonna have to declare bankruptcy.’

Scooting up to her husband at the kitchen table, Mrs Dianne signed, ‘That wouldn’t be anything new.’ She pretended to be annoyed, though her hand on her husband’s leg indicated otherwise. Sinking into the plate she had set down in front of me, I gobbled up the thick slices of bread–which had, as Willy had assured me, been perfectly flavored. It was the first time I’d spent any alone time with Brooke’s parents, and they wasted no time briefing me on their rollercoaster love affair. According to Mrs Dianne, Willy–who was two years her senior–was a star basketball player for the Riviera Beach Hornets, her rival high school. Back then, it was his skills on the court and his classic good looks that routinely drew packed crowds.

‘The moment I laid eyes on her, whew…’ Willy laughed. ‘It was love at first sight.’

‘For him anyway…’ Mrs Dianne nudged him as she took a sip of her sweet tea.

Teasingly, he grumbled, ‘She had a boyfriend…some wimp she went to school with—’

‘Not that he let that stop him,’ she interjected.

‘I chased her damn near all over town–showed up at her parents’ house with flowers, all romantic,’ Willy breathed as Mrs Dianne uncrossed her legs and leaned back in her chair, over-exaggerating the winking of her eye and shooting me a sly smile.

‘Never let a man know you’re interested.’

Interested or not, boyfriend or not, the Intracoastal Waterway divided her life from his in Riviera Beach, an area known for its high crime rates and levels of poverty. Her parents, as Mrs Dianne put it, were ‘less than pleased’ by the frequent and most times unexpected visits from the wrong side of the tracks.

‘She was from another world. Her parents thought I was no good.’

‘Yeah, well it turned out that the jerk I was dating at the time was the one that was “no good.”’ She rolled her eyes and fell silent for a moment and I realized she was talking about Brooke’s biological father. Willy grabbed her hand and let out a sigh.

‘Said he was too young to handle the kind of responsibilities that come along with havin’ a kid,’ she continued. ‘I’ll never forget that day. I was just sittin’ there crying on the porch of my parents’ house when, lo and behold, Willy stops by…and I needed someone to talk to–told him all about it.’ She smiled warmly at him. ‘I’ll never forget what he said to me that day…“What kind of man would be crazy enough to leave a beautiful woman like you? Shit, and a baby on the way? It’s like getting a two for one deal…”

From that point on, no matter how much her parents resisted their union, Mrs Dianne and Willy were inseparable and eventually eloped to Miami.

‘And then during Desert Storm,’ he said, ‘I lost this damn thang.’ My eyes widened, as he held up his arm, revealing the ‘damn thang’ to be his right hand. Almost more shocking than the stump itself was the fact that I’d spent the last day with the Parkers without even noticing. Then again, with all of the pressures and demands brought on by life on the road, I barely had time to sleep let alone pay any attention to Willy’s extremities.

‘Shrapnel?’ I asked. Willy sat there stone faced for a second before erupting into a throaty laughter so boisterous that tears came to the corners of his eyes.

Answering calmly, as if it were her job to bring him back down to earth, Mrs Dianne spoke up. ‘He never made it overseas.’

‘That’s right, I was all ready to enlist–bein’ that I come from a military family–then a damn gator bit the thing right off.’ Willy explaining that he’d ‘been trappin’ gators’ since he was a teenager, though he’d only been ‘state-certified’ since ’90. ‘Lookin’ back, best thing that ever happened to me–my country needed me, but turns out my two-for-one needed me even more,’ he said, looking at his wife. Like the expression Willy was fond of saying–‘you win some, you lose some’–in the very same week his dreams of being a war hero were chewed up and spit out, the couple received an unexpected addition, unexpected because she had arrived two months early.