Things I Shouldn't Think Read online

  “She was joking, then,” Michael says.

  “Not entirely. That’s why it seemed weird. She looked all riled up, like she really was going to molest this dorky teacher. A Jekyll-and-Hyde situation, maybe?”

  Michael pulls into the store parking lot. “I have one further explanation. I call it the one-size-fits-all explanation, and it’s very simple.”

  “Meaning?”

  “All that glitters is usually not gold, son. Your comely friend Strawberry Shortcake is apparently wackier than a bag of hammers.”

  “Nuttier than rat shit in a pistachio factory?” Malcolm asks, using another expression his father taught him.

  “You want to watch out for girls like that,” Michael says, opening the door to the store. “Girls like Strawberry Nutcake.”

  20

  Beth Solomon moved the dining room chairs into the living room, pushed the table aside, and covered it with an old sheet. Now she’s at the top of a step stool in last year’s capris and a ball cap to protect her hair.

  “When will you be done?” Dani asks. This time she’s intent on getting it right, telling about the weird thoughts. She’s going to start serious and keep it serious. She’s not going to let the conversation become screamingly funny, as apparently happened with Shelley and Mr. Gabler’s testicles. She’s not leaving this room until her mother knows what’s been happening.

  “Probably an hour and a half. I’m not too happy with the job I’m doing. I’d rather work by natural light. This electric lamp is casting shadows and I know I’m missing a few spots.”

  “But if the old paint is white and the new paint is white, what difference does it make?”

  Beth scratches her nose, then checks her hand too late to see if there’s paint on it. “It’s a different shade of white. What do you say on Saturday you help me do the ceiling in your room?”

  Beth had her own real estate firm by age thirty and was the best-selling broker in Hawthorne. Lately she’s said the money from selling houses is chicken feed and she might start selling office buildings. But she still likes houses a lot. She can afford to hire painters and she knows the best ones, but she says she finds painting relaxing. Once Dani heard Beth tell their neighbor Lynette that when she touched all the walls with her own hands she felt like she was making love to her house.

  “I have no complaints about that ceiling,” Dani says.

  “That’s because you’re never home.” A drip forms at the edge of the roller. Beth smushes the drippy edge against the ceiling.

  “Mom, I’m asking when you’ll be done because I need to talk.”

  “You do?” She places her wet roller in the paint pan and climbs down. She appears concerned but also excited—she and Dani haven’t had a good mother-daughter talk in a while. “Should I make us some tea?”

  “No, thanks,” Dani says. “Let’s talk here, like this.”

  Now that she’s built up some momentum, Dani wants to keep going. On her way home Dani rehearsed what she would say to her mother. She decided that when she spoke to her mom she would use the word hurt early on, but to prevent her mother from panicking, she would not use the words stab or kill.

  “Mom,” she begins, “do you ever worry that you’ll lose control?”

  “What do you mean, with men?”

  Dani takes a rag and wipes the paint from Beth’s nose. In a world full of nasty events, her mother can think of only one way things can go wrong.

  “I mean, do you ever worry that you’ll hurt someone, that you’ll get this urge to do the wrong thing and it will happen without your controlling it and later everything will be awful and the whole world will be ruined?”

  “I used to.”

  “You did?”

  Beth puts on the old eyeglasses that are hanging around her neck. “When I started in the business, I stayed awake nights worrying that I had snapped at someone or poached on somebody’s turf or moved too quickly or hurt someone’s feelings. I thought I was making a bad impression and it was all going to come back to me in the end. I agonized over those things. But eventually I saw that I kept getting calls and people seemed to like working with me, so I figured I was doing okay. I’m not sure we should all worry about that stuff as much as we do. Other people can take care of themselves. We don’t have to be overprotective. It’s up to us to take care of ourselves.”

  “Right,” Dani says. She has that feeling, like a premonition, that a line exists between the real world and the world inside her mind, and that someday she will cross the line and the two worlds will become one. Her mother is so innocent and naive, with her freckle phobia and business ethics and paint colors. At the same moment that her mother says “Don’t be overprotective,” Dani feels that she needs to protect her. But then she gets an image of Beth being up on the ladder. In her mind, Dani knocks over the ladder by nudging it with her shoulder. Her mother falls, her head strikes the table. Blood seeps from her reddish-blond hair into the ball cap and overwhelms the smell of paint and Beth’s avocado-cucumber skin lotion. What does blood smell like? Dani’s heart pounds and she feels unsteady. Dani folds her hands in front of her like an old-fashioned girl in an old picture. She squeezes her hands to make sure she isn’t touching the ladder. She has already said hurt. How can she explain what she means without saying stab or kill?

  “Do you feel all right, Dani?” Beth asks. She comes closer. Dani ruffles her mother’s hair to see if there’s blood on her scalp.

  “What’s that, paint?” Beth says. “I’m such a slob when I do this. I just love getting my hands dirty.”

  Dani squeezes the rag between her hands. “I guess I’ll go to bed,” she tells Beth. Dani has noticed that when she’s babysitting, if she gets sleepy she doesn’t have the thoughts. Maybe she’ll go to her room and pick the most boring music or TV show. Sleep will get her away from Mom and the ladder.

  “So early? No tea?”

  “Not tonight.”

  Beth checks her arm for paint and presses it around Dani, a partial hug. “How do you like my advice? Did I answer your question?”

  Dani can’t imagine talking about what’s really on her mind. “I guess,” she says.

  “Are you resting enough? Have you been staying up too late? Is there a boy? Who have you been texting lately?”

  “There is someone,” Dani admits.

  “Is he the one you’re worried about hurting?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Dani says. She goes to her room and puts something droney on the music player. For an hour the images persist: her mother, Alex, Mrs. Alex. It’s hopeless, she thinks. It’s all hopeless. Then she squeezes her hands and thinks, But at least I’m not hurting anyone. Her hands part when she falls asleep.

  21

  “You’re a really nice girl,” Gordy says. “I’m totally impressed with you.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not so nice.”

  Gordy takes her hand. They practiced for a couple hours at his house before he suggested a walk in Havenswood. It’s a perfect May evening, and they’re going to climb a granite boulder called Shark’s Jaw to watch the sunset.

  Dani’s house is big, but Gordy’s is bigger. His father has a dark green office with glass-fronted bookcases, photos of famous musician clients, and a collection of vinyl records. Gordy showed Dani his computer software that scans sheet music and plays the notes.

  Gordy was at the computer and as she stood over him, she could barely resist kissing the top of his head. She’s wearing skinny dark-wash jeans, a white T-shirt with a sweetheart neck, and a pearl hair clip. He complimented her singing voice, her sightreading skills, and her positive attitude in the Hawtones, and he told her she was beautiful. Now on their walk to the boulder his hand feels strong and confident, like the hands of girl tennis players from other schools when Dani congratulates them after a match.

  “So you’re not nice?” Gordy repeats. “In what way are you not nice? I know. You’re an ax murderer and you have bodies piled up in your basement.”
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br />   “Stop,” Dani says. Just when things were going so well. His joke opens a curtain on a scene: an ax, a basement, parts of Gordy beside other parts they shouldn’t be beside. She doesn’t want to have those thoughts. She’s enjoying the walk and doesn’t want to rush away. She wants to watch the sunset, not go home and will herself to sleep.

  “Come on, tell me the bad news,” Gordy says, tugging her hand so she faces him. “Am I your next victim?”

  “Knock it off. I mean it.” She drops his hand and walks ahead.

  “Hey, come back. I’m sorry. I was kidding around. I know, it was gross.”

  Dani turns around. “We don’t even have a basement.”

  “All right, so let’s get back to you not being nice. Does that mean you’re nasty?”

  “Cut it out.” This is better. She acts huffy but smiles.

  “In what way are you nasty? Do you swear too much? Do you cut ahead in the lunch line? Are your library books overdue?”

  “None of the above.”

  Gordy catches up with her. “Press one for more options? I have it: You once stole a dollar from the tip cup at Starbucks! I guessed your secret.”

  Dani squeezes her hands together. I’m not hurting anyone. She gazes at the top tree branches with their soft, green May buds and she breathes out like a smoker exhaling a long plume.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “I guess I’m in a serious mood.”

  They start walking again.

  “I know why you’re upset,” he says. “I should know better by now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way I talk to girls sometimes. With the Starbucks and the library books. Like they’re so different from boys. Innocent. Dainty. One girl I dated called me patronizing.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I wouldn’t patronize you, Dani.”

  “Let’s be quiet for a while. Let’s enjoy the sounds of nature.”

  Gordy listens. “The wind in the leaves, the birds,” he says. “Do you think that’s where people got the idea of creating music, or do you think it came from somewhere else? I don’t usually talk this much. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  Something runs parallel to them before burrowing into the leaves.

  “Chipmunk,” Gordy says.

  “Wow.”

  “I wasn’t raised that way, you know.”

  “What way?”

  “To patronize girls. Neither of my parents tolerated sexism. And my mom, my mom—”

  What everyone in Hawthorne knows about Gordy is that his mom died after they moved to town. She was a lawyer too, like his dad. She signed Gordy up for school while coughing blood into a handkerchief. Dani thinks how awful it would be for his father to go through that and then to find Gordy hacked into pieces in their basement.

  “The sun’s almost setting,” she says. She breaks into a run. He’s beside her. They’re evenly matched.

  “Long legs,” he says, but he’s complimented her so much she can’t hear it anymore; all she knows is she’s having fun again.

  At the base of Shark’s Jaw, Dani crosses the path to Gordy’s side. They’re both panting. She places her hand against the back of his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. She ruffles his hair and checks his scalp for signs of blood. He’s okay, she thinks. I’m not hurting anyone.

  “That felt nice,” he says. “What you just did. You are nice. I know you are. I can feel it.”

  The charge from practicing in his house is still between them, but broken down outdoors and softened, and it passes easily from her to him and back again. He wears a white T-shirt too, so she feels like they’re brother and sister, or twin babies.

  “Time to climb up,” he says.

  “Wait,” says Dani. Her hands drift down to the belt loops of his jeans. “I want to ask you something.”

  “You want me to pay your overdue fines? No way!”

  “No.” She brushes away the joke and presses her cheek into his so he can’t see her expression. “Gordon, have you ever worried that you would hurt someone who trusts you, someone who’s vulnerable?”

  “Dani,” he says, turning her face to him, “I don’t care if you end up hurting me. You can do your worst as far as I’m concerned. Because between now and then, it’s going to be great. It’s going to be spectacular.”

  22

  Dani hates having bad thoughts about Gordy, Shelley, Mrs. Alex, Beth, and Mr. Gabler. But it’s worse having bad thoughts about Alex. If Dani lost control with a friend or an adult, he or she could fight back, but Alex couldn’t. She would be alone with him, and no one would protect him against Dani.

  She calls Mrs. Alex and leaves a message: “I need to talk to you about the job. I need to talk to you about babysitting.”

  23

  Dani rings the bell. No stab or kill, she tells herself. You need to have this conversation without using the words stab or kill.

  Alex appears inside the screen door.

  “You’re not coming till tomorrow,” he says.

  “I know. But I need to talk to your mom. I wasn’t able to get her on the phone. I left a ton of messages saying I need to talk, but she hasn’t called me back.”

  Dani’s babbling. Alex doesn’t need to know all this. He doesn’t care about phone messages. But she keeps talking because he’s the person she owes an apology to. He’s the most important one, not her or Mrs. Alex. His voice was on the recording when she called Mrs. Alex and left a message. His voice stopping and starting while Mrs. Alex, in the background, told him what to say and when to go ahead. How will I tell him I’m finished and I’m not coming back?

  Dani couldn’t get Mrs. Alex to call her back. She had called the house line three times and Mrs. Alex’s cell phone twice. She had even paged the cell phone and called Mrs. Alex at work. She kept calling, kept making it sound important. “I need to talk to you about the job . . .” “I need to talk to you about babysitting . . .” “I need to talk to you about Alex . . .” She even said, “I’m worried about Alex . . . ,” but Mrs. Alex didn’t call her back. Now she has to get her attention but carefully. Sensitively. Without using the words stab or kill.

  “We made you something,” Alex tells her. “It’s for tomorrow, when you come over.”

  “You did?”

  “Hi,” Mrs. Alex says, opening the door. She’s wearing the yoga pants and slippers that say “comfy day at home.” “I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow.”

  “Didn’t you get my messages?” All in all, there had been seven.

  “I did. I just thought it would be best if we talked in person.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “If we talked in person next time we saw each other.”

  “Here it is,” Alex says, pulling her to the couch and climbing on her lap. He gives her a certificate made from a computer template. At the top are the words WORLD’S BEST BABYSITTER, with her name underneath. Under that it says, “The only person who can deal with the chaos of our household and always come through smiling.” A piece of clip art shows a teenage girl with eight arms feeding a baby, playing Ping-Pong with another child, doing her homework, putting a pizza in the oven, talking on the phone, bathing a dog, and vacuuming pet hair from the floor. The certificate is signed by Alex and Mrs. Alex. Alex prefers to sign his name Ax.

  Dani reads the certificate until Alex gets between her arms and blocks the view with his head.

  “That’s you,” he says.

  “That’s really nice, Alex,” Dani says. She feels the gulf opening again and although she’s nervous about having to tell Mrs. Alex, she’s also relieved: This is the last time! The last time I have to be in this house.

  “I picked the picture and Mrs. Alex changed the hair so it looks like you.”

  “I guess she likes it,” says Mrs. Alex. “So what’s up? We’re about to head to my mom’s. She’s indulging her shopaholic tendencies. She wants to get him some beach stuff and I don’t know w
hat all else.”

  “Can you stay five minutes?” Dani asks. “I really need to talk to you, and it won’t take longer than that. It’s about our little guy here.” She flaps her arm chicken-style to make her elbow dig into Alex’s back, and he laughs. “Can we talk privately?”

  “I’m sorry, Dani. I should have returned your calls. But I kept getting this feeling you were calling to quit, and that’s the last thing I need to hear right now.”

  “I told Mom you weren’t quitting,” Alex says. “Because you like coming here, so you would never stop, right?”

  “Can we talk privately?” Dani says again.

  Mrs. Alex still refuses to sit down. She looks indignant. “I think Alex should have a say in who his babysitter is,” she tells Dani.

  I didn’t prepare for Alex being here, Dani thinks.

  “You! You!” Alex chants, pounding his fist on Dani’s leg.

  “This is for grown-ups, buddy,” Dani tells Alex. She eases him to the floor, making his sneakers light up.

  Alex turns around to look at her. “You’re a grown-up?”

  “Okay.” Mrs. Alex sighs. “Let’s set you up in your room with some cartoons. Grammy can wait.”

  “Will you still be here after my cartoons?” Alex asks.

  “I don’t think so,” Dani tells him. She wants to ruffle his hair, not to check for blood but just because she likes him. But this is the day to stop touching him.

  “Are you coming tomorrow?” he asks.

  Mrs. Alex should rush up the stairs with him, but she doesn’t. She stands there. “Well, answer him. Are you?”

  “This is for grown-ups. Really. Shoosh upstairs and see your cartoons, little guy,” Dani says. Does Mrs. Alex have to make it so hard?

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Alex says, scoping the messy room. She must be thinking about all the things that won’t go right, that have teetered on going wrong, without Dani.

  Alex starts upstairs, still looking at Dani. The lights on his sneakers flash between the vertical bars of the railing. Mrs. Alex starts up behind him, moving quietly in her slippers, not rushing in the stiff-legged way she does in her high heels.