Sugarless: A Novel

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191 s9S A trio of leisure suits was planted in the living room. A man waved the wet mouth of a pipe at me, the wood crucifix over his turtleneck swaying with his reach. A bossa nova record was playing. Had I walked into the wrong house? “Howdja do, Rick?” asked Carl with a grotty chortle in his voice. A surge of winter culottes bearing down the hallway cut me off from an escape up the stairs. Before I knew it, my stepfather ’s fat hand was steering me from the front door to the love seat in the living room. There was a notched border of napkins around a punch bowl. Set evenly among the cheese balls and the chafing dish of cocktail franks and the onion dip and chunky bayberry candles were small pads of paper. Bridge pencils stood in an eggcup and a glass toothpick holder at either end of the credenza. One windowsill was stacked with Bibles, thick and floppy as telephone books. My mother came through the arch with a tray of ham fingers and gutted pineapple. A bow topped a frosted pillow of hair in her upsweep, and she’d pressed her red ruffled hostess apron. It still fit, I thought idiotically. “How did you get home, honey?” she cried with pleasure, having found her men in a nonviolent hold. “The Bacinos drove me. What’s going on?” “It’s Marriage Encounter,” throbbed a familiar voice. I exhaled as I ducked away from Carl and forked Patty Puller’s hand before she could suck me into one of her grinding hugs. Tonight’s miracle was Roy Puller: tall, stooped, pumpkin teeth, a goiter, a wandering left eye. No wonder she was always at our house. “What’s with the pads and pencils?” I asked. “Those are for later,” said Mr. Puller. I looked at his feet. Sad aqua socks drooped at his ankles above white leather pontoons with silver side buckles. “For our feelings.” “That’s right, honeybunch,” said Patty, patting his arm. “HDIF.” “HDIF,” he wheezed, his eye strafing me on a pass-through. Carl, with more of an audience now, asked again how I’d done. My mother was moving in. I dipped into a vest pocket. She had penciled in the beauty mark on her cheek, a first since the divorce. It shouldn’t have mattered, but she was the prettiest mother there. I held out a three-inch brass state of Illinois dangling from a bar stamped IHSA Forensics. “Praise Jesus,” said my mother and Patty. Carl lifted the medal from my palm, turned it over. “Dramatic Interpretation. First Place,” he read from the back. “Oh, God is . . . so so good,” gurgled Patty as I let my mother gather me up. 192 193 She had used some of the last drops of her real perfume. Christmas mornings once included a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from my father. The scent carried me back to the parties she threw with him, the rhinestone clips she slipped onto the mouths of her black high heels, the sound of his cufflinks dinging the ice bucket as he twisted orange slices into Manhattans, the ring of bathing beauty shrimp hanging just over the pool of cocktail sauce, the blankets of spinach over the oysters Rockefeller. “Marie and I prayed for this victory,” I heard Carl say. The moms fluttered and the dads coughed approval. My back stiffened. It’s a sin to tell a lie, and this one was probably the worst I’d ever heard. My hands clenched, then fell from my mother’s waist. “Please,” she whispered into my ear, and let me go. The dyed straw sprouting from Carl’s flushed forehead made him look like a scalded beet. With my tongue I probed the last of the bump from my split lip. I pulled the medal from his fingers. “I get to go to sectionals now,” I said. I took off my boiling parka and tried to ball it up. “How about the Wheaton Central girl?” he asked, another surprise attack. “That’s his rival,” he explained to everyone. He had his arm around my mother, was leaning in, interested and innocent, but his eyes were still tiny and cold. I wanted to board the pineapple crown bobbing in the punch bowl and float away. On the dining room table was a white...