ALBERT C. COOKSLEY is Mom's latest boyfriend. He's been on the scene for over a year now. He likes to think of himself as my dad. He's always saying, "Whatever you need, Princess, you come to me. I'll do my darndest to get it for you." His eyes, shy and toad colored, meet mine, blink, and look away. He jingles the loose change in his pocket.
What he has no idea of is that he can never be my father. He's a nice enough person. In fact he's too nice. It's hard to hate someone who's so nice. But I do my best.
"How can you hook up with someone like Albert?" I ask Mom when it sinks in from a conversation I've eavesdropped on that he's going to be a permanent fixture like the wall stain over the couch.
Mom, in her slip, is on her unmade bed getting ready to go to work. She has her panty hose in her hand, inspecting it for a run. "And what's wrong with Albert? He's a perfectly nice man." She pushes the gooseneck lamp away so she can see me better. "Why aren't you ready for school, Miranda? They don't like all those tardies, you know. That one...Sister whatever...."
"Immaculate," I fill in. That isn't really her name--it's what we call her. Her real name is Mary Claire.
"She calls me at work--a personal call--you know how Mr. Lawston hates personal phone calls--to tell me that you're always late and that sometimes you don't even show up at all." Mom holds me in the solemn beam of her hazel eyes and I feel trapped--as if one of those shopping center spotlights is holding me in place. "If you don't get educated you'll end up like me. You don't want that, do you?" There is a quick shine of tears, gone almost before I even register them.
"You didn't end up so bad." I swallow and reach out to touch her bare shoulder but she's already bent over and is struggling into her pantyhose. My hand flies stupidly through air.
Her big toe, the nail painted bright plum, rams through the end of the stocking. "Oh, shoot," she says. "Get me..."
I reach into the top drawer of her dresser and hand her another sealed package before she can finish her sentence.
"Thank you. Now go on. Get dressed."
I turn and am halfway to the door when she speaks again.
"Albert treats me like I'm the only woman in the world," she says. Her voice is soft.
"He's a toll taker, Mom."
"And I'm a restaurant hostess," she says. "Big deal. Since when have you gotten so snooty?"
"You're a singer, waiting for a break, not a hostess," I say fiercely, reminding her of the dream she's told me ever since I was big enough to hear a bedtime story. "Albert's..."
"Albert's not dumb," she says, guessing--correctly--at what I'm thinking, but she sounds unsure. I know I have planted the beginning of the end of Albert C. Cooksley. It won't be long before Albert is history like Len, Mitchell, and Jase. If it hadn't been for me, Mom wouldn't have realized that Len just pretended to be job hunting while he was living with us. He went to the cheap afternoon shows instead. Mitchell had another woman. It took me a long time to find something to unseat Jase. And even then I had to stretch. Sometimes I think getting rid of Jase was a mistake. Mom took it hard. She still hasn't gotten her fire back after dumping him.
Lureen and Betty are already at the bus stop when I get there. Riding the bus to school has turned into my biggest nightmare since Mom began dating Albert because we have to go over the bridge. So far as I know from the questions I've asked he's never manned the truck and bus entrance to the bridge. But there's always a first time. I just know he'd wave like he knew me.
Once the three of us are jammed in a seat Betty starts talking about where we'll go on our lunch break. Before Albert I never had money to eat out with Betty and Lureen. Albert's taken to leaving coins stacked up in two little neat piles next to my place at the table every morning.
The bus swings wide and suddenly we're at the top of the hill approaching the toll plaza. I can't see the people taking toll yet; the cars themselves are smaller than matchbox toys. Albert should be in the third booth from the right--that's what he's told me. He gets mildly annoyed when I call him a toll taker. He says he's a bridge officer.
I imagine him standing in a booth which is so small he can't bend to tie his shoe. The booths have been redone recently--made smaller to conserve space. Although he doesn't like this, Albert takes it in stride like he takes everything. Two of his old time buddies have quit over it, one because he was too fat.
"If you were too fat to fit what would you do?" I asked him.
"Diet," he answered. He'd reached over and helped himself to more mashed potatoes. "`Course I've never had a problem like that. As you can see food doesn't land on this frame for long."
He loves to tell of the emergencies he's handled--the sights he's seen. Naked people. Crazy people. One woman tried to give him her baby for the toll. Dangerous people. "The abuse I have to take," Albert says letting out a sigh. "It isn't like it used to be out there when people brought you the first apricots of the season."
Mom clucks and looks at him like he's some kind of hero. And he gets that shy proud tucked in smile as if every day in the toll booth is like going to the front line in a war.
When the bus rolls up to the booth, I let go of the pen I keep for this emergency. It plunks onto the floor and slides under the seat.
"How come you can't keep a hold of that thing?" Lureen asks. "You drop it every day."
Not answering, I fumble around her shoes for it. I keep my head low until I can tell we're on the bridge. Then I straighten up and breathe.
"You're getting weirder and weirder, Miranda," Lureen observes. "It's getting hard to be your friend you're getting so weird."
"So be somebody else's. You've got so many to choose from."
"Come on, guys, don't fight," Betty begs. Betty is the person who links us together. Lureen and I wouldn't be friends in a million years if it wasn't for Betty.
"You two going to the Freshman Sports Fair Saturday?" Betty asks. It's for fathers and daughters. She's asked Lureen and me every day for the last week. Much as I like Betty, she can be insensitive. I feel Lureen stiffen beside me. Neither Lureen or I have fathers. I mean, I, at least, had one once; I don't know if Lureen ever had one. I suspect by how prickly at the mention of fathers she gets she didn't. Both of us hate the idea of this annual event.
"No," Lureen says straight off.
I hunch my shoulders. "Actually I think the thing is kind of stupid. I mean, it was all right when I was seven or nine...."
"But now that you're almost fourteen, you're too old?" Lureen interrupts.
"Something like that," I lie. Sports are the one thing I'm really good at. I hold the school's record for the long jump and I'm second in the hundred meter hurdles. My mother's never seen me compete. Sports just aren't her thing. My athletic ability must have come from my dad.
A glance at Lureen tells me she isn't fooled. Betty is. She's already rattling on. I can only catch every few words. The bus has hit the worn patches on an upgrade in the highway. The gears grind. It shakes and roars. I try to imagine asking Albert to go with me. No way! I think.
Mom keeps a picture of my father, Russell Harvey, inside her dresser under her underwear. He was in the Navy and stationed here. Mom met him at a dance and dropped out of high school to marry him five days later. According to her they were married exactly sixteen months. He was sent somewhere, she seems unclear where, and she's never heard from him since. She never bothered to get divorced. I don't think she bothered to track him down either. Mom tends to procrastinate about things.
Sometimes when I am feeling sorry for myself, which isn't as much as it used to be, I pull out his picture and look at it. He only looks about four years older than I am now. In the picture he has a far-away look in his eyes and a stubborn chin. I expect he found marriage, a baby, and debts more than any eighteen year old has a right to be buried under. Mom, when she talks about him, which is only after she's had three glasses of red wine, says he had big plans. For a long time I thought she meant like being an Olympic track star or one of the Blue Angels.
Then I made the mistake of asking her. "Yeah, Russell had big plans all right," she agreed darkly. "Like robbing a bank. Listen, you might as well get any fantasy you have about him straight out of your head. He was a big talker--that's what he was. And he liked big trouble. He's either in jail or dead. One or the other doesn't matter to me. Just don't go telling me he was some kind of wonderful because that he wasn't. I was just too young and ignorant to know it at the time. So here I am and here you are. And we've made the best of it. Albert's a nice guy. So quit comparing him to Russell. I want you to like him."
I just can't. He's too real--like you can see his bones and each breath he takes. Then there's the way he shines his shoes so that you can almost see your face in them.
"How's life treating you, Princess?" Albert asks late that afternoon when he comes in after work. He tosses his uniform jacket over the back of the couch where I am sitting watching TV. His shoes look just as shiny as they did this morning. He's carrying a paper bag. I can tell by the smell it's crab--crab and French bread, which is getting to be Wednesday night dinner.
Mom is thrilled by the fact that Albert brings in dinner half the nights of the week and she doesn't have to cook. Most of the guys she's hung around with aren't enthusiastic about women's lib. They think a woman should work and cook. They think a guy should lie around and be waited on.
I want him to stay in the kitchen but, of course, he comes in and sits down on the couch next to me. It's too much effort to get up, snap off the TV, and go into my room; otherwise I would if for no other reason than to show Albert C. once and for all we are not buddies or friends or whatever else he's hoping we'll be.
He settles into watching the game show I'm watching. Len used to make me change to sports whenever he plunked his fat fanny down. My sideways glances take in the fact that there are damp half-moons under Albert's arms--he's got his hands folded behind his head. According to him the booth is either too hot or too cold--nothing in between. Evidently today it was hot.
"A guy bit me today," he says in a low voice not looking at me, just watching the toothpaste commercial as if it were the most important thing in the world.
"Bit you?" I say, amazed in spite of myself.
"Yeah. I reach for his toll and all of a sudden he grabs my hand, bares my wrist and takes a bite."
Albert rolls back his tan sleeve and sure enough there's the shape of a human mouth on either side of his brown wrist. A couple of the teeth marks are deep and filled in with purple. Only the two front teeth seemed to have broken the skin and those narrow pockets have dried blood in them.
"I sure hope he don't have AIDS. I don't think I'll tell your mother. She'll get all upset. I probably shouldn't have told you. Don't you tell her, Princess. Okay?"
"Did you tell someone?" I ask, not answering his question. I can't believe he let someone bite him and then just stood there taking tolls and saying "Have a good day." I'm not sure that's what he says but it sounds like the kind of thing he would. He's very polite.
"Like who?" He seems confused by my question. His forehead has crumpled up like a plowed field. "He was out of there before I could do anything. He was driving a Volvo station wagon." Albert is shaking his head now, his eyes wide with disbelief. "I'd never think the driver of a Volvo would bite. I wasn't even prepared for anything bad. A VW bus, a black Caddy, a low rider, I brace myself, but a Volvo..." His voice trails off and I suddenly know that after this experience no car will ever just sail through his line again. That he thinks he's lost his ability to judge. And that's shaken him more than the thought of getting AIDS. Albert lowers his sleeve, buttons it. "Let's just keep this between you and me, Princess," he adds again.
I make no promises.
The game show is back on and he's watching. "I hope that blonde lady wins," he says. "She sure looks like she could use $10,000 dollars."
How can he even care about her? I wonder. If someone bit me, that's all I'd think about. But not Albert. I can see he really wants her to win.
If there hadn't been a toothpaste commercial would he have told me about the bite? I know the lady smiling all those white teeth made him remember. I run my tongue over my front teeth and feel the slight overlap. As we watch the woman guess, I find myself circling my thumb and first finger around my wrist which feels as if there isn't any spare skin covering the bone.
Or is he scared and just being brave? The idea of Albert being brave is a new one. It pulls at me all during dinner. He cracks all our crab legs for us, cuts the French bread and there isn't a trace of fear or self-pity. He just is. Asks Mom about her day and listens to her bitch about how two customers lit up in the no smoking area. Sympathized when she said her feet were just killing her. I just can't get the idea of those imprints on his arm out of my mind. I want to say more about the bite but I'm not sure what. I can't believe he can just sit there and eat and not talk about it.
When Mom goes out with the crab shells wrapped tightly in newspaper to the chute in the hall, Albert thunks both elbows on the table, juts his head forward and scowls at me. It's a pretend scowl--he's trying for my attention. Albert has been known to do anything for a laugh. Just crossing his eyes makes Mom giggle.
"You're looking at me crabbier than that old crab we just finished," he says, "and he spent his life scuttling sideways under water before he landed on our supper table."
I don't answer.
"Something bothering you, Princess?" The scowl is gone. He looks directly at me like he wants to help, blinks, and looks away.
"There's this Sports Fair the school's having Saturday," I blurt out. "With fathers." I don't know why I've told him. It was the last thing I planned to do. But there it is standing between us like a huge embarrassment.
He swivels his gaze at me. I expect him to offer to come with me. I expect him to fall all over himself wanting to please--I mean, I know he wants to win me over because of Mom. They've all wanted that--at first. The story changes as we go along. That's when their real behavior comes out. I squint at Albert willing him to say something. Anything. But he stays silent as if he's waiting.
"You want to go with me?" I ask exasperated.
"Sure." His features seem to be melting into each other. Even his eyes are smiling.
"Not that you're my father... or anything like that," I add quickly.
"But close enough--for me, at least," he says. "I don't know about you. You see things different from me. You probably would have spotted that Volvo driver as a trouble maker right off." Albert's looking shyly proud that he's got my attention and he's jammed his right hand in his trouser pocket fiddling with the coins.
"Do you know how to do anything?" I ask him, feeling something fierce and wild rushing through me--some terrible kind of feeling I'm not sure of and which feels scary. I realize I sound mean, ungrateful, which isn't how I mean to sound but I can't stop. "Use a starting gun? A stop watch?"
Albert doesn't take offense. He's thoughtful. "I can barbecue good. Most parties I've been to someone needs to know how to barbecue. You could do the games with the other gals and their dads, and I could barbecue every-body's meat."
I don't say anything. I'm already regretting opening my mouth. I have a vivid, not fun, picture of Albert, wearing his toll takers uniform, standing beside a smoking barbecue flipping hot dogs and hamburgers. It's not even that kind of thing. There'll be people to cook. Although I suppose Albert could give them advice. Or he could stand near the finish line and cheer... for me.
"So are we on? Do we have a date?" he asks, looking so pleased I can't think of what to say.
He's got a bite on his arm, I remind myself. He could this very minute be dying of AIDS. You could be nice to him just once.
"It's Saturday from 11:30 to 3:00. But we don't have to stay more than a couple of hours."
"Unless we're having fun," he says. "Have you seen that bumper sticker, `Are we having fun yet?'" He goes on to tell me that he's been keeping track of that one. He's counted five hundred and twenty-three. "I thought it might be fun sometime to run an ad and invite everybody who has that bumper sticker on his or her car," he says, "and see what kind of a party that turns out to be."
"This isn't exactly a party," I say. "These are just girls in the ninth grade and their fathers. It's not likely to be much fun. I'd just like to go."
"To be like everybody else," he says, nodding. "I know. I've been there."
Mom comes back, newspaper in hand, complaining that the garbage chute is broken--again. Albert gets to his feet and immediately offers to take the crab remains down to a dumpster he knows about near the liquor store at the corner.
"Isn't he something?" Mom asks when the door shuts behind him.
I don't answer. I can't. Something is lodged in my throat, hard and painful as a baseball. I wonder if I accidentally swallowed a piece of crab shell.
"I don't care what you think about Albert," Mom snaps. "I love him. And I don't want to hear one nasty word out of your mouth about him. I gave in about the others. But you're wrong about Albert. I love him," she repeats as if my silence means I've gotten deaf.
I shrug and leave the room afraid that I'll cry. The last time I cried in front of Mom was when I wanted Jase to go to the Sixth Grade Fair with me. He said he would. But he went to the races instead. He won. He even offered to split the $50 with me. But I just couldn't forgive him.
I look at the ceiling and think of Albert jingling the coins in his pocket. I think of the teeth marks on his arm. If Albert says he'll go, he'll go. He'd never back out. Not even if he was dying on that very day. I know that, too.
Mom has these set rituals she goes through every night. She takes a shower, sets her hair--even though nobody sets their hair anymore that I know of, Mom does. I wait until I hear the water running. I know I will find Albert out by the TV still dressed, waiting for her to finish. He'll have spread some papers on the coffee table and be polishing his shoes.
I stand quietly in the doorway for a moment. Albert's not watching TV, although it's on. He's not polishing his shoes either. He's rolled up his sleeve again. He's looking at the bite, pushing at it with his fingers.
"Albert," I say, taking care to keep my voice soft.
He jumps like I've caught him doing something private and quickly rolls down his sleeve. "What is it, Princess?" he asks.
"What did the guy look like?" He knows right off what I mean.
"Like a professor. Wire rim glasses, a beard, his hand was white and very strong."
"He sounds like someone who was fired. I think he was just mad. You asked him for money and he flipped out. I'm sure he didn't have AIDS."
"Why thank you, Miranda," Albert says slowly.
For some reason I can't just drop it. "But maybe you should be tested...just to be sure."
"I'll do that," he says after a second. "Okay?" He doesn't tell me to stop worrying, but I know that's what he means. His face has turned into one giant question mark. Albert doesn't like anybody to worry.
"Okay," I answer. I think it's the first time I've ever answered Albert
directly. But he doesn't seem to notice. All along he's pretended that I
answer. He just expects what you've said or haven't said and responds. Kind of
like saying, "Thank you," I guess, sometimes over 4,000 times a day, to
everyone who hands him a dollar to cross the bridge. 
Copyright (c) 1994 by Marion de Booy Wentzien. Reprinted by permission of the author.
