Chapter Text
JUNE 1982
FP’s mom dies on a muggy day in June. She goes for a drive after a fight with his dad and is hit by a car full of drunk teenagers on their way back from a party. Her Honda Accord has to be fished out of the river. She didn’t drown though; she was dead on impact. Sheriff Keller told FP’s dad that to comfort him; he was eavesdropping from the kitchen. Keller has a son named Tom, who plays baseball and is three years older than FP. Tom still has a mom; she picks him up from Little League so he doesn’t have to walk home, and bakes cupcakes for school bake sales.
Even when FP’s mom was alive, she never baked cupcakes.
After the funeral Dad tells him there are leftovers in the fridge. A few people brought them casseroles. The he goes upstairs with a bottle of whiskey and tells FP to go out and play. Except it is a sweltering June afternoon and drizzling, warm, sweaty rain. FP sits in the kitchen for a while and looks at the wrinkled, yellowed photos stuck to the fridge. The most recent one is from his first day of kindergarten. Mom crouches next to him at the end of their gravelly driveway, smiling wanly, her hair a frizzy mess.
He misses the smell of her hairspray and the baby powder she put in her shoes. He wants to feel her cracked nails crinkle through his hair. He wants to sit on the couch with her and watch reruns of Charlie’s Angels. Dad doesn’t let him watch TV with him. Dad doesn’t let him do a lot of things that Mom did. The kitchen clock keeps ticking and the faucet keeps dripping. The rain outside lightens a little to a sprinkle, peppering the window.
FP goes outside. Outside is grey and humid and grimy. He dribbles a wet basketball on the back patio, then walks through the tall grass of their cramped back yard. Dad needs to mow the lawn. Mom was fighting with him about that before she died. And other things FP is not supposed to know about. His sneakers are getting soaked. He pokes his fingers through the battered chain-link fence and listens to a neighbor’s dog bark several houses down.
After a few minutes he walks around the side of the house, examining the faded blue-gray paint and the peeling shingles. He comes out in front of the small garage where Dad’s truck is parked, and then he notices the girl. She is staring through the fence at him. She is tall and skinny for her age, which can’t be much older than him. She has stringy blonde hair pulled back from her pointed face with a faded blue scrunchy. Her shirt is too small for her, and her shorts are too big. One sock is falling down around her ankle.
He thinks maybe he has seen her once or twice before, going in and out of the house with a blonde woman with short hair and a hot pink purse. “Who’re you?” he says.
“I live here,” she scrunches up her sharp nose and puckered mouth and scowls at him, voice high and reedy. “I know who you are,” she says it in a sing-song voice, like they’re playing a game at school. “FP Jones. What’s FP short for?”
“None of your business,” FP juts his lower lip out in his best imitation of his father’s sneer. He wishes he was taller. He wishes his hair was shorter. Mom was going to cut it this weekend. Now she can’t. Either Dad will do it or he’ll have to himself with the bathroom scissors. He hates the bathroom scissors and the clack clack noise they make, like a typewriter. He balls his clammy hands into fists at his sides. He hates her scrunched up face and her scrunched up hair and her scrunched up voice.
“Fine, be rude,” the girl says snottily. She crosses her bony arms. “I’m Alice Smith. I live next door. We moved in last week. For your information,” she adds, arching her pale eyebrows.
“You live with your mom,” he says. “I’ve seen her.” He thinks, and then grins, even though he doesn’t know what it means. He just knows it will hurt. “My dad says she’s a slut.”
Alice Smith goes the color of a blank notebook page and then slams her hands up against the face. “Shut up,” she snarls, getting right up against it, like she’d throttle him if she could. “You shut up! Your dad’s a liar! And he’s crazy, my mom said so, he went to Vietnam and killed babies.” She sticks her tongue out against the metal, but pulls back before he can jab it with a dirty finger.
“My dad’s not crazy, he’s a vet-or-in,” FP enunciates carefully, and then glowers. “And he has a truck. Your dad doesn’t even have a car.”
“I don’t have a dad, dumbass,” Alice retorts, and then bites her lip, faltering. She glances down at the muddy ground. The rain has nearly stopped now.
“I don’t have a mom anymore,” FP adds, not to comfort her but because he hasn’t talked to anyone besides Dad in a few days. Even if she’s a bitch and her mom is a slut, like Dad said. “She died. Did your dad die?”
“Shut up,” Alice kicks at some broken glass and rocks. “I don’t know. I never met him. My mom says he was an asshole.”
“My mom calls my dad an asshole a lot,” FP reflects, then frowns. “Um- she called him. She got her neck broke. In a car crash. It was in the newspaper,” he points out almost proudly. The last time they were in the newspaper was when Dad spent the night in jail. He wonders what a broken neck looks like. In the coffin Mom looked okay. Like a big doll version of herself. Her skin was like candle wax. He’d touched her hand. Someone had fixed her nail polish. He liked it better cracked.
“Was there a lot of blood?” Alice whispers with interest, eyes wide. She has green eyes with blue specks in them. They remind him of the beach. His eyes are brown and boring and squinty like Dad’s. Whenever he thinks of blood he thinks of squirting ketchup on a hot dog bun, like when they still had a grill and Dad would barbeque in the summertime, when he was really little. He choked on a hot dog when he was three and Dad hit him across the back until he spit it up and Mom cried.
“I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “I don’t think so. She went in the river. They had to pull her out with a big crane. My dad didn’t let me watch.”
“I wish my dad was dead,” Alice says, with a thoughtful glint in her beachy eyes. “Everyone is nice to you when your mom or dad are dead. But he’s just…,” she shrugs. “Not here.”
“I guess,” FP puffs out his cheeks and then blows a breath of hot summer air. “I wish she was here. She was gonna cut my hair.”
Alice wrinkles her nose and barks a laugh. “You look like a little girl.”
FP flushes bright red. “I don’t! Shut up! I’m not a girl!”
“I said you looked like one. Retard,” she sticks her tongue out again. “Not that you are one. How old are you anyways, six?” Her voice goes all high and scratchy.
“I’m gonna be eight in-,” he counts in his head, “three weeks. I’m not six!” he adds defensively. “I’m gonna grow really soon. The doctor said so.”
“You’re still a baby,” Alice says triumphantly. “I’m gonna be a fourth grader. You’ll just be a third grade baby.”
“Fuck you,” FP’s nostrils flair. He kicks the fence between them. “I’ll kill you.”
“How? With your little baby hits?” she goads, and he looks around for the end of the fence, at the road. He takes a menacing step in that direction, but Alice has already lost interest in her teasing. She looks almost… hopeful. “My mom can cut your hair,” she says, and then a little quieter, “if you don’t call her a slut.”
“What’s a slut?” FP’s question, some of the fire in his cheeks fading.
Alice looks at him like he’s stupid, and lifts her chin up imperiously. “Someone who kisses lots of guys. Don’t you know anything?”
“I know you suck,” he snaps.
“Fine,” she turns dramatically on her heel, shoes squelching in the mud. “Look like a little girl. See if I care, FP. What’s it short for? Fart Puke?”
“Fuck you, fucker!” he kicks the fence again, but she stops pretending to leave. She turns back around. “If you say fucker in front of my mom she’ll beat your ass.”
“Not as bad as my dad,” FP mutters, and they share a brief glance of understanding. He walks down to the street and around the fence, into Alice’s front yard. They stand next to each other for the first time. She is taller than him, but not by too much. If he stands up on his tiptoes they’re almost the same height.
Alice Smith’s house is even smaller and dirtier than FP’s. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors are dusty and it smells musty. Her mom is smoking a cigarette and watching Dallas. She looks a lot like Alice, more like a big sister than a mom. She is tall and skinny like her daughter, with short spiky hair like Madonna. It is a paler shade of blonde than Alice’s, like bleach. Her hands are cold and dry. She tells FP to call her Shelly, and she doesn’t call his dad crazy or a baby killer in front of him.
“What kinda cut you want, kiddo?” she asks, when he is seated on their squashy couch.
FP thinks for a few moments, and then, “Can you cut it all off?”
“You want it buzzed?” Shelly blinks at him, then shrugs. “You’re lucky I still got my ex’s razor. We’ll see what we can do. FP. Weird name, huh? What’s it short for?”
Because she is cutting his hair the way he wants, he has to be nice to her. “Forsythe Pendleton,” he mumbles, staring at the floor. Their carpet is stained in multiple places. Alice shrieks with laughter, then flinches away from Shelly’s smack. “Don’t be rude, Ally.”
“I’m not,” Alice hisses under her breath, but then follows them into the kitchen to watch FP bend his head over the sink while Shelly cuts and then shaves his long, dark hair off. It takes a while. When she is done, he runs his hands over his head. He thinks he feels a bump somewhere.
“Hell, guess you won’t be getting lice anytime soon,” Shelly snorts, and then elbows Alice. “Tell him he looks handsome, baby.”
“You look like ass,” says Alice, who then ducks another blow from her mother, who pulls her hair anyways.
“How ‘bout I shave your head bald too, then, Little Miss Bitchy? Jesus Christ,” Shelly exhales as Alice peels off into the living room. “Girl’s got a mouth on her. Guess she gets it from me. You go home now, FP Jones. Tell your old man I’m sorry about your mom. She seemed like a nice lady.”
“She was a nice lady,” says FP. Everyone said so at the funeral, anyways. She was always nicer than Dad. He spends a while throwing rocks at passing cars down on the corner before he really goes home. Dad is drunk and rattling around in the kitchen. He gapes at FP for a few moments when he comes in, then bellows, “The fuck you do to your hair?”
“I got it cut,” FP edges towards the staircase, still rubbing his head. He likes the way it feels. He looks tough now, like a soldier, like Dad, although Dad doesn’t have much hair at all anymore. “Alice’s mom did it.”
“The hell is Alice?” Dad slurs.
“She lives next door,” FP tries to explain, but the look on his father’s face darkens all the more. He scampers up the stairs, and Dad comes thundering after him. “I didn’t stay there long or anything, she just cut it! She said it was okay!”
“Your mother’s dead two days and you’re already cozying up with the whores next door,” Dad yells, and FP reaches his room, tries to shut the door, then gives up and dives onto the bed instead. Dad’s belt makes a slappy noise when he takes it off, and then the metal parts clink clink. He tries to cry so Dad will feel bad but his eyes just hurt instead.
He lies face-down on the bed until his back stops hurting as much. One day when he’s big Dad will take off his belt and FP will grab it out of his hands and choke it with him like Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars. One day he will ride a motorcycle out of town and be a rock star. One day he will forget the smell of Mom’s hairspray and the feeling of her nails on his scalp. One day he won’t be almost eight anymore, and everything will hurt a little less.
But it isn’t one day yet.