Chapter Fourteen Sassy
fourteen SASSY
After about six minutes of boiling, Sassy dumped the noodles into the colander then grabbed milk from the fridge. She lined the bottom of the empty pot with milk and threw in some butter—did anyone actually measure that?—then she tore open the little envelope and poured in the orange dust.
Tom Duncan, she thought for the hundredth time since she’d gotten home. Great.
She slid the noodles into the pot, stirred everything to her preferred consistency of cheesy, then she reached for a bowl and… stopped herself. Why bother? She’d just have to wash it after. She slid a spoon from the drawer, carried the pot to the table, and dug in.
Tom Duncan and his stupid question. What’s jail like? She wished she’d had a good answer for him. She doubted he’d ever see the inside of a cell, with his expensive suit, new-smelling car, and flashing blue eyes. He looked like the perfect capitalist. Just like her father. Honestly. Couldn’t they see how old-fashioned they were? How the world was changing, and they needed to change with it? How old was he, anyway? Thirty?
She huffed and ate a spoonful of her dinner, barely tasting it. What a lousy day.
Her gaze went to the television, which wasn’t turned on, then to the cheery pot of calendula on top of the console. The late-afternoon sun was spilling over the orange flowers like a golden spotlight, and from her seat across the room, she thought she saw one of the buds starting to open. It should cheer her, but not even that was working.
So now she’d be working for Tom Duncan. He was not a fan of hers, obviously. He couldn’t be, not after everything she had thrown at him at the police station, then in the car. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot. She would have to go in to work on Monday, sit at her desk, and keep quiet. Maybe, over time, he’d get past her behaviour, and things between them would get better.
She pictured that curl at the side of his mouth. Even with sunglasses covering his eyes, she could tell he’d been laughing at her. That charming smile must work wonders on the poor suckers buying homes from him.
She took another bite of Kraft Dinner then pushed the pot to the side. She’d lost her appetite. With a sigh, she folded her arms on the table and dropped her head onto them, trying not to cry. She needed another love-in, like at Queen’s Park. An afternoon of sunshine and laughter with friends, maybe in Yorkville. She could bring her guitar and play for the people there like she had at Chez Monique.
She groaned, feeling a pang of loss. That dreamy part of summer was over. So much time had passed since that perfect afternoon, but it felt like months, not weeks. Then she’d blown her job, and pushed a cop… She wasn’t looking forward to whatever was around the next bend, but it had to be better than how she was feeling right now.
Someone knocked on the door, and she debated answering. If Mrs. Levin or Mrs. Romano showed up, all cheery and sweet, she wasn’t sure she could handle it. But Sassy wasn’t the kind of person to hide away from friends, so she went to answer.
“Davey!” she said warmly, then she remembered how he’d let her down and turned back to her living room. “Nice of you to stop by.”
He followed her inside, eyed the pot of noodles, but couldn’t seem to sit down. Figuring he’d join her, she sat on the couch and pulled her feet up, sitting cross-legged.
He stopped walking, but didn’t look at her. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, hurting. He wasn’t usually so callous, and she needed his support. “I thought you’d come see me in jail.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. I got caught up in stuff.”
She resented his cavalier attitude. Sure, he’d been busy, but she needed the focus to be on her. She’d been in jail , after all. Davey hadn’t come to rescue her, and he should have. Why was he skimming over that?
“My dad bailed me out,” she said coolly, making no mention of Tom. “So don’t worry about me. It’s all cool.”
He started to pace again, his eyes on the parquet floor.
“What’s wrong?” she asked at last.
His head dipped side to side like a boxer’s. “I’m ticked off at you.”
“What? Why?”
He dropped onto the couch, staring at the television’s grey screen, his expression pinched. Sassy grabbed his scruffy chin, turning him to face her.
“Why?”
“The protest, man. What you did totally made us look bad. I mean, we’re supposed to be about peace, and you, well, people say hippies are a problem, and because of what you did, they think they’re right. Why’d you have to go and do that?”
She hadn’t seen him angry before. At least, not at her. Her annoyance at being left to rot in jail was swiftly replaced by guilt. She hadn’t even thought of how her little performance might affect the entire movement she was trying to support.
“I… I was trying to help you, Davey. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, I can handle myself, Sass. I’m a big boy.” Then his frown melted into a puddle of apology. “Also, I can’t come see you anymore.”
Her breath caught. “Why? I didn’t mean to mess things up! I said I’m sorry!”
“Nah. It’s not that. It’s Christine.”
Her thoughts flew to that mousy little thing with crooked teeth, bad skin, and no brain. Sassy tried not to be biased, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t see one redeeming feature, except maybe her large breasts.
“Sure, yeah. What about her?”
“I guess we’re getting serious.”
“You guess?”
“She said she wants to. After the fuzz took you away, well, the whole protest kind of fell apart, then she and I talked for a long time. She said, like, she wants to be monogamous.”
She’d caught Christine glaring at her a few times, but this was unexpected. She should have read Davey better, too.
“Is she worth it?” she asked weakly.
He lifted one shoulder, looking like a little kid. “I mean, I like her a lot. But I like you, too.”
“I guess you can’t have everything.”
He dropped his chin. “I’m sorry, Sass.”
“I am, too.”
He got up and held out his arms, and she gave him a tight hug. “Come see me when she drives you crazy.”
“I’ll miss you,” he whispered. “This is a real bummer.”
“Just be happy,” she replied, tears burning behind her lids. She refused to cry, though. Not until he was gone. She did want him to be happy. She just wanted him to be happy with her.
She’d never felt so lonely as she did after he left. Normally, if she was sad, Davey was the one she’d talk to. Sometimes she’d go home to her father for a pick-me-up talk, but now was not the time. With Joey in Vietnam, she had no one. She wished she had a friend she could call.
Outside, she heard the leaves swishing in the trees, and she realized that’s exactly what she needed. Air. A change of pace. She headed for the door then grabbed her guitar case at the last minute. She’d find a quiet place under a tree, in the wind, by herself, then she’d play, and she’d cleanse herself of this awful day. She headed down to the lobby, then remembered on her way out that she should check her mail. There was rarely anything in her mailbox, but it was worth looking.
And there was something. Of course it had arrived today of all days. A letter from Joey, stained, wrinkled, and bearing a loose, hurried printing she’d never seen before. She hesitated, unsure whether to take it back upstairs and read it there, then she tucked it into her pocket and went outside, into the wind.
At the park around the corner, she walked past a bench and over to a cool patch of grass beneath the canopy of a maple. She set her case down, sat beside it, then leaned against the tree trunk while she opened Joey’s envelope.
Sassy didn’t get many letters from Joey, but she forgave him for that. She knew from the television that he was probably deep in a jungle somewhere, lost in the dark with his military brethren. She tried not to let her imagination go any further than that, but Joey was a good, descriptive writer. Over the past year his words had become a journal of sorts, bringing her into the war whether she wanted it or not. His stories about the First Battalion, Third Marines patrolling at Da Nang were so vivid she could almost feel the stickiness of the air and the tension in every heavy branch. The way he talked about his buddies, she felt as if she almost knew them. Then there were the letters he wrote when he got homesick. That’s when his tough veneer gave way to the boy she had always known. Last year around Christmas, she had opened a letter from him while she sat by the window, watching fat snowflakes dance around her yard. Then she read that the thing he missed most at that moment was snow. His simple wish had torn her apart.
She unfolded the letter and stared at printing that hardly looked like Joey’s. His hand had obviously been shaking when he wrote it, and she tried not to picture his fingers gripping his pencil.
I got a bad story, Sass.
That’s how it started. Her stomach dropped, and she knew the wind would not be enough.
We got ambushed last night. Got into a hot zone and Tex got greased right off. I ran to him, even though that was stupid. We’re trained that you gotta look out for yourself first. I didn’t, and I was lucky, because one of the others shot a gook who was aiming at me. My brother saved my life. But then he went down and
There was a space between the words. A smudge of what had to have been Joey’s tears swept across the dirty paper.
God, Sass. This is so hard to write. Everybody tells you not to make friends out here. They say we should just call each other “Jack,” to make it easier. I never could. But I get it now.
Another smear blended the letters, maybe from his thumb, but she saw clearly what he’d written.
I lost my mind. I can’t remember much. I shot everything I saw. I was screaming. I wanted to kill everyone. I still want that, Sass. I want to kill them all, because—
He’d scribbled something out.
My buddy’s head was messed up bad. I wrapped my shirt around it and dragged him out of the way. I don’t remember getting him to the main camp, but I did, and they took him to the MASH unit. I don’t know anything else. I gotta believe he’s alive.
Sassy’s heart was in shreds. Clutching the paper to her chest, she sobbed for her brother, for the others in his battalion, for all the men out there who were trying to survive in a horrible world. She kept visualizing Joey out there, wrapping his shirt around a man’s bloody head, the panic he must have felt, the terror…
She forced her memory to show her the Joey she wanted to see. He’d been one of the smaller kids in the neighbourhood, his thick curls tumbling to his chin, his face and hands always grubby. His eyes were green like hers, and their corners were creased by so much smiling. His laughter was like a baby’s, rolling straight from his gut, and he never seemed to run out of energy.
It made no sense, remembering him like that then reading this. His laughter would have sharpened into screams, his face and hands would have been slick with another man’s blood. But she needed that memory. She needed to see him again as he was.
“Please come home,” she whimpered into the wind.
Her sobs slowed, and she winced at the steel band of a headache now wrapped around her skull. Her nose was plugged from crying. There was nothing she could do, she acknowledged. Nothing but breathe and hope and wait. But how could she not feel his terror ripping through her? How could she not weep at the very idea of him, alone and in danger? How could she ever get past this?
Breathe, whispered a voice in her head. Just breathe.
She closed her burning eyes and inhaled a deep, shuddering breath, which she held as long as she could, focusing on the nightmare visions and the pulse of Joey’s panic. When she could bear it no longer, she let everything out in a long exhale that said, Come home .
There was a push to the air, a heaviness she recognized with a sense of anticipation despite her own pain. A gust of damp air rushed past, blowing her hair in all directions. A thunderstorm was coming, its bank of dark grey clouds rolling off the lake behind the city’s skyscrapers, and she didn’t think she had long before it broke. Long enough, though, to gather her thoughts.
What a day.
Davey, watching her public arrest then waiting until someone else bailed her out to tell her he was done with her.
Tom, the stranger she had attacked for no good reason, who would now be her boss.
Her father, who had quite rightly called her a hypocrite.
And Joey. Broken, afraid, and unreachable.
She sighed, picturing each man, one at a time.
“Davey,” she said out loud, picturing those lion-gold eyes. “I’m sorry I embarrassed you, and I hope we will still be friends.”
She pictured the curl at the side of Tom’s mouth, since his eyes were hidden by his sunglasses. “Tom, I hope you’ll give me a second shot. I made a fool of myself, and I was mean. I want to prove to you that I’m not like that.”
She remembered the look of frustration in her father’s expression. “Dad, I’m sorry. The last thing I want is to disappoint you. I messed up. Thanks for giving me another chance. I won’t mess up again.”
Then she tried to pull Joey’s face to mind, but it hurt too much to picture him as anything but that little boy she’d played with so long before. “Come home, Joey. Let me take care of you.”
In the distance, thunder rolled.
Still shaky, Sassy got to her feet and grabbed her guitar case. The park was empty, and the trees leaned under the force of the wind. She picked up her pace, feeling slightly better. A tiny bit cleansed. Enough that she could begin to imagine something better on the horizon.
If she could get to her apartment before the clouds burst, she would enjoy the tempest from her balcony, as long as the wind wasn’t too strong. Thunderstorms brought the best sort of electricity, and she needed that energy to fill her up. What was it about storms that stirred her? Why did she find herself torn between laughing into the rain and dissolving into tears?
Another gust shoved past, carrying the first spatterings and swirling leaves into cyclones around her. Fat raindrops dotted the sidewalk, filling the air with the warm aroma of petrichor, and Sassy considered the remaining two blocks until she got to Isabella Street. Maybe she could outrun the worst of what was coming. Clasping the handle of her guitar case tight, she ducked her head and sprinted as the rain began to fall in earnest.