‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She didn’t ask why.
There were tears pooling in the slit of his left eye and slipping down his right cheek. She started to wipe them away, but she didn’t want to touch him.
‘It’s okay …’ she said. She let her hand settle in her own lap.
She wondered if he was still trying to break up with her. If he was, she wouldn’t hold it against him.
‘Did I ruin everything?’ he asked.
‘Every-what?’ she whispered, as if listening might hurt him, too.
‘Every-us.’
She shook her head, even though he probably couldn’t see her. ‘Not. Possible,’ she said.
He ran his palm down her arm and squeezed her hand. She could see the muscles flex in his forearm and just under the sleeve of his T-shirt.
‘I think you might have ruined your face,’ she said.
He groaned.
‘Which is okay,’ she said, ‘because you were way too cute for me, anyway.’
‘You think I’m cute?’ he said thickly, pulling on her hand.
She was glad he couldn’t see her face. ‘I think you’re …’
Beautiful. Breathtaking. Like the person in a Greek myth who makes one of the gods stop caring about being a god.
Somehow the bruises and swelling made Park even more beautiful. His face looked ready to break out of its chrysalis.
‘They’re still going to make fun of me,’ she blurted. ‘This fight doesn’t change that. You can’t start kicking people every time someone thinks I’m weird or ugly … Promise me you won’t try. Promise me that you’ll try not to care.’
He pulled on her hand again, and shook his head, gingerly.
‘Because it doesn’t matter to me, Park. If you like me,’ she said, ‘I swear to God, nothing else matters.’
He leaned back into his headboard, and pulled her hand to his chest.
‘Eleanor, how many times do I have to tell you,’ he said, through his teeth, ‘that I don’t like you …’
Park was grounded, and he wouldn’t be back at school until Friday.
But nobody bothered Eleanor the next day on the bus. Nothing bothered her all day long.
After gym class, she found more pervy stuff written on her chemistry book – ‘pop that cherry,’ written in globby purple ink. Instead of scribbling it out, Eleanor tore off the cover and threw it away. She might be broke and pathetic, but she could still scrounge up another brown paper bag.
When Eleanor got home after school, her mom followed her into the kids’ room. There were two new pairs of Goodwill jeans folded on the top bunk.
‘I found some money when I was doing laundry,’ her mom said. Which meant that Richie had accidentally left money in his pants. If he came home drunk, he’d never ask about it – he’d just assume he spent it at the bar.
Whenever her mom found money, she tried to spend it on things Richie would never notice.
Clothes for Eleanor. New underwear for Ben.
Cans of tuna fish and bags of flour. Things that could be hidden in drawers and cupboards.
Her mom had become some sort of genius double agent since she hooked up with Richie. It was like she was keeping them all alive behind his back.
Eleanor tried the jeans on before anybody else got home. They were a little big, but much nicer than anything else she had. All her other pants had something wrong with them – a broken zipper or a tear in the crotch – some flaw she had to hide by constantly pulling down her shirt. It would be nice to have jeans that didn’t do anything worse than sag.
Maisie’s present was a bag of half-dressed Barbies. When Maisie got home, she laid all the dolls out on the bottom bunk, trying to put together one or two complete outfits for them.
Eleanor climbed onto the bed with her and helped comb and braid their frayed hair.
‘I wish there’d been a Ken in there,’ Maisie said.
On Friday morning, when Eleanor got to her bus stop, Park was already there waiting for her.
CHAPTER 23
Park
His eye went from purple to blue to green to yellow.
‘How long am I grounded?’ he asked his mother.
‘Long enough to make you sorry about fight,’
she said.
‘I am sorry,’ he said.
But he wasn’t really. The fight had changed something on the bus. Park felt less anxious now
– more relaxed. Maybe it was because he’d stood up to Steve. Maybe it was because he had nothing left to hide …
Plus nobody on the bus had ever seen anybody kick like that in real life.
‘It was pretty fantastic,’ Eleanor said on the way to school, a few days after he came back.
‘Where did you learn to do that?’
‘My dad’s been making me go to taekwando since kindergarten … It was actually kind of a stupid, show-offy kick. If Steve had been thinking, he could have grabbed my leg or pushed me.’
‘If Steve had been thinking …’ she said.
‘I thought you’d think it was lame,’ he said.
‘I did.’
‘Lame and fantastic?’
‘Those are both your middle names …’
‘I want to try again.’
‘Try what again? Your Karate Kid thing? I think that would be less fantastic. You’ve got to know when to walk away …’
‘No, I want you to come over again. Would you?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You’re grounded.’
‘Yeah …’
Eleanor
Everybody at school knew that Eleanor was the reason Park Sheridan kicked Steve Dixon in the mouth.
There was a new kind of whispering when she walked down the halls.
Somebody in geography asked her if it was true that they were fighting over her. ‘No!’
Eleanor said. ‘For Christ’s sake.’
Later she wished that she would have said
‘Yes!’ – because if that had gotten back to Tina, oh my God, it would have made her furious.
On the day of the fight, DeNice and Beebi wanted Eleanor to tell them every gory detail.
Especially the gory details. DeNice even bought Eleanor an ice cream cone to celebrate.
‘Anyone who whups Steve Dixon’s sorry ass deserves a medal,’ DeNice said.
‘I didn’t go near Steve’s ass,’ Eleanor said.
‘But you were the cause of the ass-whup-ping,’ DeNice said. ‘I heard your boy kicked him so hard, Steve cried blood.’
‘That’s not true,’ Eleanor said.
‘Girl, you need to learn a lesson about standing in your own light,’ DeNice said. ‘If my Jonesy kicked Steve’s ass, I’d be walking around this place singing that song from Rocky. Nuh-nuh, nuhhh, nuh-nuh, nuhhh …’
That made Beebi giggle. Everything DeNice said made Beebi giggle. They’d been best friends since grade school, and the better she got to know them, the more Eleanor felt like it was an honor that they’d let her into their club.
Granted, it was a weird club.
DeNice was wearing her overalls today with a pink T-shirt, pink and yellow hair ribbons and a pink bandana tied around her leg. When they were standing in line for ice cream, some boy walked by and told DeNice that she looked like a black Punky Brewster.
DeNice didn’t even flinch. ‘I don’t need to worry about that riffraff,’ she said to Eleanor. ‘I got a man.’
Jonesy and DeNice were engaged. He’d already graduated and was working as an assistant manager at ShopKo. They were getting married as soon as DeNice was legal.
‘And your man’s fine,’ Beebi said, giggling.
When Beebi giggled, Eleanor giggled, too.
Beebi’s laugh was that contagious. And she always had a manic, surprised look in her eyes –
that look people get when they can’t keep a straight face.
‘Eleanor wouldn’t think he’s fine,’ DeNice teased. ‘She’s only interested in stone-cold killers.’
Park
‘How long am I grounded?’ Park asked his father.
‘That’s not up to me, that’s up to your mother.’
His dad was sitting on the couch, reading Soldier of Fortune.
‘She says forever,’ Park said.
‘I guess it’s forever then.’
It was almost Christmas break. If Park was grounded during Christmas break, he’d have to go three weeks without seeing Eleanor.
‘Dad …’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ his dad said, setting down the magazine. ‘You can be ungrounded as soon as you learn to drive a stick. Then you can drive your girlfriend around …’
‘What girlfriend?’ his mother said. She came in the front door, carrying groceries. Park got up to help her. His dad got up to give her a welcome-home tongue kiss.
‘I told Park I’d unground him if he learned how to drive.’
‘I know how to drive,’ Park shouted from the kitchen.
‘Learning how to drive an automatic is like learning how to do a girl pushup,’ his dad said.
‘No girl,’ his mother said. ‘Grounded.’
‘But for how long?’ Park asked, walking back into the living room. His parents were sitting on the couch. ‘You can’t ground me forever.’
‘Sure we can,’ his dad said.
‘Why?’ Park asked.
His mother looked agitated. ‘You’re grounded until you stop thinking about that trouble girl.’
Park and his dad both broke character to look at her.
‘What trouble girl?’ Park asked.
‘Big Red?’ his dad asked.
‘I don’t like her,’ his mother said, adamantly.
‘She comes to my house and cries, very weird girl, and then next thing I know, you’re kicking friends and school is calling, face broken … And everybody, everybody, tell me that family is trouble. Just trouble. I don’t want it.’
Park took a breath and held it. Everything inside of him felt too hot to let out.
‘Mindy …’ his dad said, holding a wait-a-minute hand up to Park.
‘No,’ she said, ‘ no. No weird white girl in my house.’
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but weird white girls are my only option,’ Park said as loudly as he could. Even this angry, he couldn’t yell at his mother.
‘There are other girls,’ his mother said.
‘Good girls.’
‘She is a good girl,’ Park said. ‘You don’t even know her.’
His dad was standing, pushing Park toward the door. ‘Go,’ he said sternly. ‘Go play basketball or something.’
‘Good girls don’t dress like boys,’ his mother said.
‘Go,’ his dad said.
Park didn’t feel like playing basketball, and it was too cold outside without his coat. He stood in front of his house for a few minutes, then stomped over to his grandparents’ house. He knocked, then opened the door; they never locked it.
They were both in the kitchen, watching Family Feud. His grandmother was making Polish sausage.
‘Park!’ she said. ‘I must have known you were coming. I made way too many Tater Tots.’
‘I thought you were grounded,’ his grandpa said.
‘Hush, Harold, you can’t be grounded from your own grandparents … Are you feeling okay, honey? You look flushed.’
‘I’m just cold,’ Park said.
‘Are you staying for dinner?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
After dinner, they watched Matlock. His grandmother crocheted. She was working on a blanket for somebody’s baby shower. Park stared at the TV, but didn’t take anything in.
His grandmother had filled the wall behind the TV with framed eight-by-ten photographs.
There were pictures of his dad and his dad’s older brother who died in Vietnam, and pictures of Park and Josh from every school year. There was a smaller photo of his parents, on their wedding day. His dad was in his dress uniform, and his mom was wearing a pink miniskirt. Somebody had written ‘Seoul, 1970’ in the corner. His dad was twenty-three. His mom was eighteen, only two years older than Park.
Everybody had thought she must be pregnant, his dad had told him. But she wasn’t. ‘Practically pregnant,’ his dad said, ‘but that’s a different thing … We were just in love.’
Park hadn’t expected his mom to like Eleanor, not right away – but he hadn’t expected her to reject her, either. His mom was so nice to everybody. ‘Your mother’s an angel,’ his grandma always said. It’s what everyone always said.
His grandparents sent him home after Hill Street Blues.
His mom had gone to bed, but his dad was sitting on the couch, waiting for him. Park tried to walk past.
‘Sit down,’ his dad said.
Park sat down.
‘You’re not grounded anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘It doesn’t matter why not. You’re not grounded, and your mother is sorry, you know, for everything she said.’
‘You’re just saying that,’ Park said.
His dad sighed. ‘Well, maybe I am. But that doesn’t matter either. Your mother wants what’s best for you, right? Hasn’t she always wanted what’s best for you?’
‘I guess …’
‘So she’s just worried about you. She thinks she can help you pick out a girlfriend the same way she helps you pick out your classes and your clothes …’
‘She doesn’t pick out my clothes.’
‘Jesus, Park, could you just shut up and listen?’
Park sat quietly in the blue easy chair.
‘This is new to us, you know? Your mother’s sorry. She’s sorry that she hurt your feelings, and she wants you to invite your girlfriend over to dinner.’
‘So that she can make her feel bad and weird?’
‘Well, she is kind of weird, isn’t she?’