The Queen of Everything - Couverture souple

Caletti, Deb

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0439976995 ISBN 13 : 9780439976992

Editeur : Scholastic Point, 2003

Synopsis

Jordan thought moving in with her dad - the supposedly 'normal' parent, the boring optometrist - would mean her life might be less weird. But now Jordan's father's in jail, and it's not for something trivial, like insurance fraud. No, Jordan's dad is doing time for murder. The worst thing is, Jordan knows the guy her dad killed, knows his kids, knows his wife - glamorous, treacherous Gayle d'Angelo. Jordan knew that Gayle and her dad were having an affair, but how could she ever have known things would disintegrate in such a shocking, brutal, earth-shattering way? A funny and heart-wrenching debut novel.

A propos du livre

Extrait

Chapter One

People ask me all the time what having Vince MacKenzie for a father was like. What they mean is: Was he always crazy? Did he walk around the kitchen with an ice pick in the pocket of his flannel bathrobe every morning as he poured himself a cup of coffee?

Some ask flat out, as if it's their right to know. Others circle it, talk about the weather first, thinking they're being so sneaky when really they're as obvious as a dog circling a tree.

When they ask I always say the same thing. I say, "He was an optometrist for God's sake. You know, the guy who sits you in the big chair and says, 'Better here, or here?' The ones with the little pocket-size flashlights?" And that's all I say. I try to keep it all in the tone of voice. I don't even add a, If you must know, you insensitive jackass. Well I did say that once. I don't count it though, because it was to an old man who probably had bad hearing.

What I won't do is tell anyone what he was really like.

I won't say that when I think of him now, I see him outside, at places he can no longer go. I see him mowing the front lawn, wearing his University of Washington Huskies cap, holding his hand to his ear to let me know he can't hear what I'm saying over the mower's engine. I see him dumping the basket of clippings into the garbage can, small bits of grass clinging to his sweatshirt. I see him watering the rhododendrons, his thumb held over the end of the hose to make the spray less harsh.

And I see him -- us -- in our house. The house we used to live in. I see him with his tie loosened after work, pouring himself a glass of milk and asking how my history test went. I remember sitting next to my father at the kitchen table, him trying to explain my math homework but making it more confusing. And me, saying, Oh, I see! when I didn't, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

I won't tell anyone his faults either. That he swore when he fixed things and flirted too much with waitresses and swaggered around more than he deserved to when he was wearing a new shirt. Good or bad, I keep those things to myself. I don't want those parts of him, the real him, to turn into something cheap and meaningless. It would make me the kid with no friends, giving out candy on the playground. People would grab up those bits of him like greedy children with a roll of Lifesavers. They'd peel off a piece of him, roll him around in their mouths for a few seconds, and then swallow and forget about him.

Besides, that's not what people want to hear anyway -- that my father was just a normal guy whom I loved, love, with all my heart. It makes them nervous. Because if he was normal, if he wore Old Spice and liked nacho cheese Doritos, then why not their own fathers? Or themselves? Deep Inner Evil -- we like that. It's easier to accept than what Big Mama says, which is that wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another. People want to think that I lay in bed awake at night, my heart pounding in fear of him. They don't want to know that I slept just fine, dreaming I'd forgotten my locker combination just like them.

Or that I went to live with Dad because he was the regular one; that it was my mom who I was convinced was nuts. Claire was the one I never wanted my friends to see. She had this shaggy hair under her arms that always made me think of a clump of alfalfa sprouts in a pita pocket. And you never knew when she might suddenly flop out a boob to nurse Max, which she did once during a parent-teacher conference to the shock of my new math teacher, Mr. Fillbrook. By the look on his face I'm positive Mrs. Fillbrook always got dressed in the dark. Or else she did that trick when you slip your bra through your sleeve every night when she put on her nightgown. All Claire had to say about the whole thing was, "If he was titillated, pardon the pun, that's his problem."

God.

When I lived with my mom, it was her house that embarrassed me, never Dad's. Mom had turned our old house into a bed and breakfast, which is one way to make a living on Parrish Island if you don't want to rent kayaks or work the oyster beds. At Mom's house you never knew who was coming or going. And Nathan's metal sculptures were spread all over the yard, spinning like mad in the wind and hanging from the trees like giant Christmas ornaments. Nathan is my mother's husband; he's ten years younger than she is. He's also an "artist." His work is "kinetic art for the outdoors." That's how I thought of their life. Like it all belonged in quotation marks.

When I moved in with my dad, that's when my life got normal. I moved into a regular neighborhood with a regular house. I transferred from that goofy alternative school I hated, where we made quilts and "worked at our own pace" and where the teachers all wore sandals no matter what the weather, to Parrish High where you had to sit in your seat and learn English and the kids weren't weird. I met Melissa Beene, who lived down the block and whose parents had a big black Weber barbecue and electric garage-door openers. Everyone in my dad's neighborhood mowed their lawn and thought breakfast was the most important meal of the day and got upset if their kids missed their curfews.

Anyway, evil. If anyone was truly evil in all this, it was Gayle D'Angelo. She put that gun in his hands. I don't like to think about her. I hate thinking about her. But Mom and Nathan and everyone else keep telling me that it's healthy to get the feelings out. Big Mama says that even salmon carry their life stories on their scales, the way a tree does with its rings. And my old English teacher, Ms. Cassaday, claims writing this out will be good therapy. "What is therapy after all," she says, "but telling your tale to someone who won't get up in the middle?" So okay, fine. Just so I don't suddenly fall apart one day when I'm thirty-five in an aisle of the grocery store or something. Carried out kicking and screaming while the ladies squeezing lemons pretend they don't notice a thing.

I will think about her. And it will be all right. Because, true, the story starts there, with Gayle D'Angelo. But it does not end there.

I first met Gayle D'Angelo at the True You Health Center. My best friend, Melissa Beene, got me the job at True You. We worked after school, the occasional evening, and more hours in the summer. True You is in a strip mall, in the new part of town that the original Parrish Islanders hate. If you took one of those snoots who say they watch only PBS and dangled a game show in front of their eyes, that's the kind of reaction I'm talking about. I used to think the whole argument was stupid. My mother would go on and on about the yuppies coming from Seattle and Microsoftland with their plastic money, building plastic things, intent on destroying the spirit of the islands. The San Juans had always been an escape from all that, she'd moan.

"And what's with these minivans?" she said once. "I feel like I'm in some sci-fi movie. Revenge of the Pod People. Invading the world in Dodge Caravans. You watch, those people are going to wreck everything. I bet even the whales will get wind of what's happening and stop coming around."

"That's what the farmers said when you hippies started moving out here, Claire," I said. Parrish, and the other large islands of the San Juans, used to be mostly orchards. There were still stretches of sprawling farmland and spots of gnarled apple trees where the deer met up with their friends for garden parties. "And what the Indians said about the farmers."

My mother glared at me. "Jordan," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said. I used to say this a lot, especially when I wasn't in the least. "I just never got that, the way people yelled about trees being cut down as they sat in their own cozy home in front of a blazing fire."

"This is not about selfishness," she snapped. "It's exactly the opposite. It's about having something pure and true, and trying to protect its essence." This is the way my mother talked. She was getting worked up, flushing the shade of a ripe peach. "What's happening is a crime. An abomination. A bête noire."

"What's that, a perfume?" I said.

She sighed.

"Sounds like a perfume. 'Purchase a three-ounce bottle of Bête Noire and receive a one-ounce line minimizer and cosmetic tote as our gift to you.'" I chuckled. I was happy with my misbehavior.

My mother stopped glaring. Now she only tilted her head and looked at me oddly, as if I were, say, the produce guy from Albertson's suddenly in her home. It was a look that said, I know I know you from somewhere, but for the life of me, I can't figure out who you are.

She gathered up her long hair into a ponytail, held it in her fist, and set it loose again. Finally she said, "I should send you to your room for the rest of your life."

"Too late," I had said.

I used to think a lot of stupid things. About Parrish Island, about my parents. But Big Mama says thinking we're ever done being stupid is the dumbest thought of all. Being occasionally stupid is just part of the human job description, she says. Big Mama's voice is like molasses pouring from a bottle. When she calls, I press that phone so hard to my ear, it's as if I'm getting her strength right through the wires. And right when that strength seems to be running out, there she is again, filling me back up.

You can imagine how my working at True You got under my mother's skin. I didn't always purposefully try to get under her skin. I didn't. It's just that sometimes things can be too real. Too intensely real. Too honest and bare. Like the way you feel looking into the eyes of someone who loves you, or someone in pain. Or the way you feel when you hear beautiful music. It can be like looking into the sun. You've just got to close your eyes. Even go inside for a while. Or keep it all at arm's length with words like crazy, covering it with a smooth layer of embarrassment. My mother and Nathan were like that. Parrish Island was like that.

As I said, Melissa got me the job at True You, and at the moment Gayle D'Angelo came in, Melissa was in the large weigh-in room with Laylani Waddell. Laylani and her husband, Buddy, owned True You. Anyone who names their kid Laylani is looking for trouble, if you ask me. You had to be careful with Laylani. She and Buddy were Christians with a capital C, the type who think they've got God's secret phone number. If you let so much as a shit slip, Laylani would start hiding these little religious bookmarks with prayers and sunsets on them in your lunch bag and in your coat pockets. She wouldn't say a word about them, either. I think she really believed we might be so stumped as to who put them there, we'd start suspecting God himself.

I could hear Laylani's voice coming through the weigh-in room door. Her voice sounds the way a maraschino cherry might sound if it could speak. The door was propped open with a small block of wood, the way Laylani demanded. Large people overheated easily, she always said. She worried about this a lot. I think she had a secret fear one of the fat people might have a heart attack on the premises and sue her and Buddy for the house and the RV with the built-in shower. Melissa liked to get revenge for the bookmarks by hiding this block of wood, which would send Laylani scurrying around in a tizzy, sprayed hair releasing in bunches as she searched for it underneath the furniture. Like a madwoman she'd try other propping devices in the door, like the stapler, which would only slide free and shoot across the floor.

When Laylani's inspiring pre-dinner lesson was over, Melissa and I would do weight and measurement. In the meantime I was copying an article, "Recipe for Success," that would be placed in new "team member" folders. This is what people who joined True You were called, the idea being that they were one enthusiastic group fighting a tough but conquerable opponent -- fat -- with the help of Coach Laylani. I sat on the edge of the reception desk and read the article as the copy machine flashed and made its kershunk-kershunk-kershunk sounds. "It's your total diet over several weeks rather than what you eat in a given meal or even an entire day that determines whether you're eating healthfully and weight consciously," I read aloud.

"No kidding," I said to the paper.

And then there she was in front of me. I'd been so busy being amused by the article's obviousness that I hadn't heard the swish of the door, or her heels, quiet on the carpet Buddy Waddell had installed himself.

"Ah, it's so nice and cool in here," she said.

Which was funny, because my very first thought looking at her was, I bet this woman never even sweats. She was lovely, really. The kind of woman you save that word for, lovely. Dark hair swept up in a clip, two perfect tendrils coaxed down. Short, sleeveless black dress. This great shade of nail polish. Expensive earrings, expensive smile. Warm though. It didn't occur to me then that some people could make a smile warm with the same deliberate efficiency other folks use to put wool socks on cold feet. I was not all that well acquainted with manufactured smiles. I hadn't yet bought a car, met a preacher's wife, or been to a PTA meeting. According to my mother, there are more fake smiles at a PTA meeting than in a false-teeth factory.

The woman in front of me fanned the air with a slender hand. A drift of perfume was set free and roamed around the room as if it owned the place.

"They'll be done in there in a few minutes," I said. "If you want, you can sit down." I gestured to the chairs in the waiting area, done in soothing shades of rose and tan.

"Oh, you think..." She laughed. "Aren't you sweet. I'm not here to pick anyone up. I'm here for myself." She leaned in as if to tell a secret. "We all need a little help now and then, don't we?" She took a pinch of her side.

This disappointed me. Obviously, there was nothing there to pinch. She probably lived on cups of coffee, doing leg lifts as she poured it. That's what her body looked like. She radiated charm and money and capability; I didn't want her to be a self-pincher of nonexistent body fat. This was the kind of woman I wanted to be someday, who would have considered alfalfa-sprout hair under her arms to be repellent as venereal disease. She would even use words like repellent. Unlike my mother, she would not be the type who would pop out her emotions for everyone to see, spraying everyone in the vicinity in the process, same as Grandpa Eugene with his dentures.

"Oh," I said. "Well, in that case I'll have to make you an appointment with our health consultant, Laylani Waddell." I handed her one of Laylani's business cards that sat in a Lucite holder on the reception desk. Laylani loved for us to pass them out. Her name gloated in the corner of those little white cards with the pink stripe across the top. HEALTH CONSULTANT, they read. OWNER. Yep, she was a valid member of the human race. I opened the wide, loose appointment book. "It'll take about an hour."

"Maybe you can just tell me a little about your place here," she said. "Since I'm not even sure what it is you do."

I was actually relieved. Maybe the woman thought we were a gym. I hoped so. I didn't want her to be one of those diet bimbos we saw so many of, who knew the fat grams in a pretzel stick, and who only wanted to hear how little they needed what they came for. Diet bimbos pissed me off. I couldn't imagine what they did to the truly overweight. ...

Revue de presse

"Captivating details make this scandalous story seem all too real."

-- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Debut YA novelist Caletti peoples Jordan's world with fascinating characters...Jordan's magnetic voice marks Caletti as a writer to watch."

-- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The book unfolds the drama slowly and suspensefully, creating an everyday teen world that's perceptive, funny, and nuanced in its own right..."

-- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

"Gothic with an edge...The characters leap to life...Caletti expertly succeeds in capturing the way a smart teen can grasp and skewer her world..."

-- Kirkus Reviews

"Entertaining, atmospheric...Jordan's authentic teenage voice...will hold readers, as will the emotional issues...."

-- Booklist

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Scholastic Point
• Date d'édition: 2003
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0439976995
• ISBN 13: 9780439976992
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 384
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible