Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [24]
Never having seen my mother surrounded by men, I watched in bewilderment. I wondered whether Mom was all right or whether I should fetch Grandpa so he could toss these strangers out on their ears.
“Mom?” I said.
She turned from the sink and beamed at me. “Yes, Roz?”
“Should I get Gramps?”
She looked puzzled. “Whatever for? Is there a problem?”
Apparently not. I felt myself frown.
As Mom turned back to the sink, she said something to the men, who erupted in laughter. I suddenly remembered Tillie’s prediction: “Someday your mother will marry again. She’s young and pretty, and I can’t imagine her living the rest of her life alone.”
I took a step backward, and then another, inching slowly away from this scene playing out at the kitchen sink. These men must have found Mom attractive, like she was a lady or something and not a mother, my mother. They might think they could date her, maybe even marry her.
I felt the urge to find Wally. “Mom?”
She turned to me again, looking a little less happy and a little more annoyed. “Yes, Roz?”
“Where’s Wally?”
She surveyed the kitchen with her eyes, as though he was supposed to be there somewhere.
One of the men answered for her. “Last I saw, he was headed out back with the Delaney twins.”
“The Delaney twins?” I echoed.
“Don’t you know them?” The man looked at me from behind dark horn-rimmed glasses. His sleeves were rolled up, and he was swiping at a bread tin with one of our dish towels.
I shook my head. I was having trouble breathing.
“Luke and Lenny Delaney,” he explained. “They live up the street.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, the three of them were carrying some trash out back.”
“Okay.” I turned and ran out the kitchen door and across the dark lawn toward the trash cans by the garage. A couple hours earlier the musicians had moved to the front yard to take advantage of the light of the streetlamps, leaving the backyard littered but empty of partiers.
I found Wally and the Delaney twins sitting on upturned cinder–blocks between the garage and the neighbor’s fence. They all three had small, tightly rolled cigarettes held to their lips. When they realized someone was among them in the dark, there was a shifting, a nervous dropping of hands, an uneasy silence.
Then, “Oh, it’s you, Roz. What do you want?”
“What are you doing, Wally?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, what’s that funny smell?”
“Funny smell?”
“Yeah.” I sniffed deeply. “Like . . . I don’t know. Don’t you smell it?”
The twins snickered. Wally said, “Maybe someone’s burning leaves.”
“Are you smoking?”
“What if I am?”
I didn’t know what to say.
Wally said, “What’d you come out here for?”
“Listen, Wally, some men are helping Mom wash the dishes.”
Silence. Then the Delaney boys exploded into laughter.
“So?” Wally lifted the cigarette to his lips. I saw the end burn red as he inhaled.
Then it hit me. “You’re smoking pot or something, aren’t you?”
Wally exhaled, his head bobbing. “Maybe.”
“You can’t do that!”
More laughter from the twins. They were working on their own cigarettes again.
“Who says I can’t?” Wally’s voice was flat. I felt as though I weren’t talking with my brother at all, but with someone I didn’t know.
“I’m telling Mom,” I threatened.
“No you’re not.”
“Says who?” I took a step backwards.
“Says Hamilton.”
“Who’s Hamilton?”
Wally tightened his lips around what I now understood to be a joint while he rummaged around in his shorts pocket. He pulled out a bill and waved it at me.
I didn’t take it. “That’s a bribe.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m not taking it.”
“You might want to reconsider. It’s ten dollars.”
“Where’d you get that kind of money?”
Wally shrugged. “I’m working, aren’t I?”
The Delaney boys laughed again. I didn’t know what they found so hilarious. One said, “You