Jersey Angel Read online

  “I really like you, Angel,” he says finally.

  “I know.”

  “And happy birthday.”

  “I was wondering if you remembered.”

  “Why are you here?” He barely looks at me.

  “I miss you, stupid.”

  “You’ll stop missing me.”

  “I’m changing before your eyes,” I say, meaning it. “Won’t you kiss me?”

  “Stop.”

  “One question. Is it no as in no way, or no as in not now?”

  “Go. Don’t beg,” he says. “Sweet dreams,” he adds with a poker face. He lowers the screen, and then the bed squeaks as he climbs in. And that’s the end of that, apparently.

  chapter 3

  On day two of our mad cleaning spree we’re all hot and in a mood. Plus Mom’s on a diet and stops every hour to fire up the blender with a Slim-Fast shake or some fruit and ice concoction (Tofu Bart was wrong about the beau, but right about the icy drinks). “Do you think it’s easy to get a date at my age?” she says, out of nowhere, holding down the blender lid while the ice whirls at top speed. Her face is sweaty and her hair’s in a messy bun. “I’m eating rice cakes and drinking this junk all to lose a few damn pounds. Do you kids think a woman of a certain age has it easy in this life? Well, she does not!”

  Here we go. “Knock it off, Ma,” I say. Lots of guys think she’s hot. The guy at the sub shop, for one. I remind her.

  “The sandwich guy, for crying out loud? He has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.”

  “The old lifeguard guy likes you too,” Mimi says. “He told Nefertiti’s dad that you have a sweet can. I heard it with my own ears.”

  “He’s a whooping bore.” She smiles, though, and I know without a doubt that my old lady likes hearing she has a sweet can, and honestly, who doesn’t.

  “Dad likes you,” Mossy says, plopping his sweaty self on the couch.

  “Off,” she yells. “I just changed the slipcover. Your dad, pft!”

  “What’s wrong with our dad?” Mimi demands.

  Mom pours her icy concoction into a glass and takes a grumpy slurp. “Not a thing, but he’s not for me.”

  “You didn’t think so when you married him,” Mimi says.

  “Well, I changed my mind, didn’t I?”

  “So listen.” I peel off my rubber gloves. “Are we cleaning here or are we yakking—”

  “You know what I think?” Mimi sloshes her sneaker through a wet puddle on the floor. “Rice cakes taste like Styrofoam.” She does a wobbly pirouette.

  “I wouldn’t need to eat Styrofoam if I didn’t have three snot-noses,” Mom says. “Do you know what three pregnancies do to a waistline? Hand me that bucket.”

  “Not if you keep calling me a snot-nose.” Mimi does a grand plié, waving her dust rag in the air.

  “Now!” Mom yells.

  So it’s not a good time, obviously.

  • • •

  By day I’m a cleaning, scrubbing fool, and by night I’m living in the sardine can, where I lie on my narrow bed next to Mimi’s cot, tossing and turning and flipping my pillow for the cool side until it’s just no use; I can’t sleep. Plus Inggy’s still visiting schools, and worst of all, Joey isn’t budging. I thought he’d come around. I really did. I want to give him the chance to miss me. Oh, I want him to miss me.

  One night I’m lying in bed, the moon shining in my face, the smell of seaweed blowing in the window, which I’m convinced is some kind of perverted aphrodisiac, and try though I might not to, I rise from the top sheet and put on a string bikini and shorts, let down the crazy hair and give it a shake, spritz myself with some jasmine body mist, and slick on the lip gloss. Then, like a horndog, I get on my bike and head over to Joey’s.

  So basically, standing outside his window becomes a regular late-night activity for me. Alongside the Sardones’ shed are crab nets, a rusted outboard motor, and a wobbly barstool. I move the stool over to the window for our meetings—Joey yawning on one side of the window and me perched on the stool on the other. And it goes something like this:

  “You again?”

  “Me again.”

  “Why are you bugging me?”

  “I kind of think if I was truly bugging you, you wouldn’t come to the window.”

  “I’m kinda wondering when you’re gonna run out of gas.”

  And not once does he invite me inside.

  We’re cleaning in the Next-Door House and I send Mimi upstairs to scrub the toilet. When I check on her, she’s brushing sparkly purple eye shadow across her lids from a compact she found behind the bowl.

  “How do I look?” she asks, fluttering her eyes.

  “You want to turn into a slut?”

  “No.”

  “Then clean up your act.” I swipe at her face with the bottom of my tank top.

  “Get off!” she yells, squirming free and jumping on the toilet seat. “Now, I want your opinion. On a scale of one to ten, how obnoxious am I? Because Nefertiti says an eight, but Mossy only says seven.”

  “Somewhere right around there.” I take the sparkle shadow out of her little paw, dust my lids, and blink into the mirror.

  “Pretty!” She jumps off the bowl and hugs me. “Were you ever obnoxious like me?” She tilts up her face.

  “Do you realize, Meems,” I say, rapping on her skull, “that the bennies arrive in two days?” Bennies are the tourists (and our renters) who clog up the island all summer long. They’re called bennies because they’re here for the benefits—summer sun, warm water, the boardwalk—and they take over the place, causing traffic jams and long lines in the A & P, Fat Sal’s pizza, the sub shop, and every store and restaurant along the strip. Worse, they rise bright and early and park themselves on the best spots on the beach. Plus they’re a sight to behold with their zinc oxide noses and peeling sunburns. Picture it: a typical benny takes a wheelie cart up to the beach loaded down with chairs, umbrellas, inner tubes, and Boogie boards, and over their benny shoulders they sling mambo-sized beach bags overflowing with Fritos, towels, thermoses, sunblock.…

  I blend in the shadow with my fingers and hand Mimi the toilet brush. “Bennies!”

  “The bennies can suck it!” She plunges the brush into the bowl and slops water over the side.

  True, but bennies are how we get our moolah. Mom has a mishmash of jobs that don’t bring in much cash.

  Now, Mossy’s a different story. The kid works. He doesn’t like it one bit, but he parks himself on a step stool at the kitchen sink and plunges his arms into the soapy water, washing every dusty dish, pot, and pan until his fingers are pruny. I come up behind him and dig my chin into the top of his hot, sweaty head. “How’s it going, little man?”

  “No talking,” he snaps.

  • • •

  Finally we finish. The houses are gleaming, and the first bennies pull up to the Corner House in an SUV loaded with suitcases. The dad benny steps out of the car and stands with his hands on his hips, breathing in the sea air. “Just look at him. The fatso,” Mimi whispers, standing next to me on the porch of the House. Mom flies out the door and comes back, waving a rent check in the air. And suddenly I’m feeling pretty darn good.

  No matter that I’m living in the sardine can and that someone’s always in the bathroom when I need to get in there. No matter that Mimi is my chatterbox roommate. No matter that bennies walk among us. Summer has officially started, and all these long, sweet days are before us.

  Inggy will come back soon and Joey will budge. Summer has begun, and I am filled with hope.

  “You gotta stop,” Joey says, coming over to the window.

  “Look, I don’t want to come in,” I lie.

  He lowers his eyes. “Well, I’m not inviting you.”

  “I know.” A cricket chirps nearby, and it’s a warm, lush, star-filled night. I lug over the wobbly barstool and take a seat. “Did I wake you?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what’s new with
you, Joe? Tell me something.”

  He rubs his face. “You’re giving me assignments now?”

  “I miss talking. I miss everything else, but I really miss talking to you. Tell me what’s new. I have no idea.”

  He drags his finger against the screen and thinks for a minute. “I’m really into fancy cheese.”

  “Fancy cheese?”

  “You asked.”

  “Tell me.”

  “My cousin Dom’s working in this new deli in the Heights. Kind of upscale, and I went to a cheese tasting last week and had gruyère and stilton.”

  “I wonder if I’ve ever had fancy cheese.”

  He shrugs. “You probably have a refrigerator full of the usual suspects: American, swiss, provolone, mozzarella, ricotta …”

  “Exactly. You haven’t become some cheese snob, have you? American’s okay for like a grilled cheese, right?”

  “Listen. I can now tell you without a doubt that American has no excuse for existing.”

  “Mozzarella?”

  “No soul. Mozzarella has no soul.”

  I fake a gasp. “What kind of Italian are you, Joey Sardone?”

  “The fancy-cheese-eating kind.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “And my mom doesn’t want to know about fancy cheese. So I have to hoof over to the deli to buy my own. You’ve never had stilton?”

  I shake my head.

  “Just wait.” And for the first time that night he smiles at me.

  He disappears, and in the dark of his room I can make out his rumpled blanket and his lone pillow and the fan ruffling the edge of his sheet. I know that pillow—too flat—but how I’d like to lay my head on it now.

  He comes back with a wedge of stilton on a cutting board and lifts the screen and makes a table out of the sill. He serves me a slice on the edge of the knife.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow,” I say again.

  “I know.” We laugh with glee.

  I pop another piece in my mouth. “Zingy for sure. I bet we stink.” I breathe on him.

  “Well, I’m not kissing anyone,” he says.

  “I guess I’m not either.” I try to catch his eye, but he won’t look at me. “You know, I wouldn’t mind some horndog with my cheese.”

  He tries hard not to smile, but it doesn’t exactly work, and a slow one creeps onto his face before he can pull it back in. “See, I don’t like that,” he finally says with a straight face. “And I’m going to tell you why.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I don’t want to sleep around. I want to sleep with my girlfriend.”

  “What? You’re a good Catholic now?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t even go to Mass anymore, so don’t give me that.” He thumps his chest. “I’m speaking from here, from what I know to be right.”

  “Um, what about Alyssa?” I remind him.

  “Live and learn, Angel. Live and learn.”

  I broke up with Joe in the spring and he briefly hooked up with Alyssa, a pretty, tiny girl on the cheerleading squad who we always put on top of the pyramid when we’re ambitious enough to make one. Mostly we’re too lazy, but when we do, Alyssa climbs up and stands shakily with one foot on my back and the other on Carmella’s. And before she pitches forward into a perfect somersault she always makes the sign of the cross. Mostly she gets caught at the bottom. So Joey had a fling with her while I was having my own adventures; then Joey and I missed each other too much and patched things up.

  “Well,” I say, smoothing down my hair. “For the record, I like sleeping with you, and I’m not going to feel bad about it.”

  “But why don’t you want to be with me?” he asks, putting down the knife. “I don’t understand you. Why don’t you want a boyfriend?”

  “But I do,” I say quietly.

  “Until you don’t. I don’t understand you at all.”

  “You’re one of my favorite people.”

  “That’s no help.” And all our cheese happiness is suddenly gone.

  He won’t look at me as we finish off the wedge of stilton. I see the price on the plastic—$7.99 for a dinky square that’s about four bites’ worth. “I thought you were saving for a car,” I say.

  “I am, but now that I know about fancy cheese … what can I do?”

  “Then there’s the cracker issue,” I joke. “If you’re going to have fancy cheese you can’t slap it on some cheapo cracker. So that means fancy crackers, right?”

  But he’s not listening to me. He picks up the cutting board and starts to lower the screen.

  “Hey, I can take a hint,” I say. “And for the record, you are an excellent boyfriend.”

  “Don’t kiss my ass, all right?”

  chapter 4

  “Angel, how about a grilled soy cheese?” TB says. It’s his night to take the kids, but here he is, hovering over our stove with a spatula.

  “Have you ever known me to eat a grilled soy?” I say.

  “It’s nice with tomato, but suit yourself. So where is that mother of yours?” His cheeks are flushed and he is clearly a man with hope in his heart, even if he is barking up the wrong tree.

  “Out and about.” I reach for a handful of grapes. Here we go. We’re about thirty seconds from him grilling me about her online adventures, when the screen door creaks open and Mom pads in, in her flip-flops with cotton between her freshly painted pink toenails.

  “Hello there.” TB flips the sandwich in the skillet.

  “Oh, it’s you. Are you messing up my kitchen?”

  “I’m feeding the kids. You want one?”

  “Move it,” she says, sliding around him to get in a drawer. “And for the tenth time, I’m on a diet. Do you ever listen to what I say?”

  Well, that’s my cue, and I am outta there. In the backyard, Mimi comes charging up to me in a polka-dotted bikini.

  “What did one saggy tit say to the other saggy tit?”

  “I have no clue.”

  “If we don’t get some support soon, people will think we’re nuts.”

  I giggle.

  “I don’t get it,” she says. “Mossy gets it but he won’t explain.”

  “I didn’t say I get it or not,” he says.

  “Liar!” she yells.

  To stop the titty talk, Mossy comes after us with the hose and sprays our legs. He chases us down the length of the yards as we duck under the rows of benny beach towels flapping on the clotheslines. At the Corner House, I stop and peer in the back door, wanting to get a good look at who’s living in my house.

  “Nosy!” Mimi says.

  “Shush,” I say. Just then Bart calls the kids in for their sandwiches and they take off. What can I say—the tofu gene is in their blood.

  The house is empty, as far as I can tell, so I slip inside, where it feels and smells like a completely different place. Funny how the bennies can completely make a house a home, even when they’re here for only a week. Strewn around the kitchen are some mangoes, Sun and Sand: A Complete Guide to the Jersey Shore (the benny bible), a neon Frisbee, hot dog buns, a package of Dentyne, and bottles of root beer. I take a handful of barbecue chips from a bag on the counter and head up to the roof deck, where I sprawl out on the chaise, half hidden by the ficus in case I have to make a quick escape. I love this spot. There’s a nice breeze coming off the bay, and the late-afternoon sun blazes low in the sky.

  The chaise—fifteen bucks at a yard sale—has a leopard print and it’s threadbare in places, but it’s awfully comfy. With my late nights these days, I yawn and feel myself drifting off. Luckily I hear the squeaky wheels of a benny cart coming down the street. The cart is pushed by a beleaguered benny guy flanked on one side by the wife, I’m guessing, in a visor, bathing suit, socks, and sneakers, and on the other side by two whining kids, pink as raw meat. I’m pretty sure they’re my bennies, so I flee out the back.

  Since TB’s still at the house, I ride over to my dad’s marina, where I hav
e a part-time job pumping gas, which is kind of the ideal job. I love the smell of gasoline and I get to be outside, and there are lulls when there’s no boat traffic, so I can sprawl out on the dock with a magazine or hang out with the marina dog, a two-hundred-pound English bull mastiff named Joop (short for Jupiter).

  Dad’s sitting at his messy desk surrounded by mounds of paper. He’s cute, my dad. When he started going bald in the worst way—bald top, ring of hair around the sides—he smartly shaved it all off. He’s got a goatee and nice dark eyes, gentle eyes. “Hey, sweetheart.” He looks up at me. “You’re not on the schedule, are you?”

  “Just visiting. I thought we could get something to eat.” I kind of hope we can do something—the two of us—which never happens, but I’ll settle for an invite to his house.

  “Aw, Angel, both kids are sick. They were throwing up last night.”

  “Yeah? Okay.” As if I haven’t been around a sick kid.

  “Here, sit a minute,” he says, jumping up and moving papers from the plastic chair. My dad’s basically a nice guy, but he’s remarried, with two little girls, and the truth is I don’t quite fit in. I mean, he’s my dad and he loves me, but Ginger, the wife, doesn’t exactly like the fact of me. Oh, she’s nice enough, but it’s like I’m a guest in that house. I mean, I can’t hang out, plop on the couch, pour myself a soda. She hovers, all polite. Wouldn’t you think politeness like that would wear off, say, after a couple of weeks? It’s been years. A real cool cucumber, she is. And my dad is overworked. He made some bad financial deal, and the poor guy has debt up the wazoo.

  So I hang out and we talk, during which time Ginger calls twice. When Dad gets up to leave for the day, he jingles his car keys and says, “Look, it’s okay about the kids. Why don’t you come over for dinner.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well …” He sighs.

  “Next time,” I say, quick. All he needed to say was yes, come and I would have.

  As I’m leaving, Rob, who works in the yard, asks me if I want to put in a couple of hours, because the marina’s gotten busy. So I pump gas, and he tosses me a few White Castle burgers from a gigantic bag. Joop hangs out with me on the dock as the boats pull in and out. He’s a gentle giant, a real lovey boy. I lie in front of him and take his big old head in my hands and look into his soulful eyes.