Rocky Road Read Free Page A

exercise I read about in a magazine. In my mind I pictured Ma unlocking the apartment door to reveal a gorgeoussuite with a plush leather sectional, a floral arrangement on a glass coffee table, and the soothing smell of lavender candles.
    When we reached the door of 418, I stopped the mind-over-matter wishing. Who cared what the apartment looked like? It still beat sitting in a freezing car.
    That night, Jordan and I shared the bed, and Ma slept in the living room on a futon that was pretending to be a sofa. Ma plumped the pillows that had been flattened from the car ride, dug sheets out from the U-Haul, and spread a down comforter she found in the bedroom closet on us. Warm under that soft, cozy blanket, we snoozed like ducklings in a nest.
    The familiar smell of chorizo sausage, onions, and zucchini frying got me up around eleven. Ma’s lunches and dinners are no great shakes, but when she’s up to it, she’s capable of whipping up better Tex-Mex breakfasts than any diner, and I’ve been to every one in Texas north of Raymondville. (The ones that let kids eat free, anyway.)
    “Come and eat, Tess,” Ma called, pointing the spatula at the kitchen stool. I thought she’d be wiped out from that long drive and our crash landing here in Schenectady, but she didn’t show it. Obviously she’d been up early enough to make it to the grocery store. Her wavy black hair was pulled back neatly in a braid, even if the loose gray strands showed she was overdue for her monthly color rinse. (I clip the L’Oréal coupons and apply it for her. She’d let me cut and style too, but I consider hair a specialty best left to cosmetologists.)
    Ma picked this apartment because Jimbo’s wife’s cousin’sstepsister recommended it via e-mail. They offered furnished units for dirt cheap, and Ma liked the dirt-cheap part. Ever since we were evicted from our last apartment, we’d been living on what she calls a girdle budget. Her grocery-store paycheck didn’t stretch far, and she was always quick to add that no matter what the divorce paperwork stated, Pop didn’t pull his financial weight.
    “I get better support from ninety-nine-cent panty hose” is how she put it, but I didn’t think she pushed hard either. Ma said Jake Dobson and responsibility were like oil and vinegar; they didn’t mix. It was five years since the divorce, longer since Pop lived with us, though it didn’t seem like that long to me. I still remember the night Ma kicked Pop out like it was yesterday. He wobbled into the kitchen late on a Friday night, smelling like his favorite Pabst Blue Ribbon and slurring his words, not much different than other Friday nights. Only this time, when Ma frisked his jean-jacket pocket, it was empty. He’d blown through his paycheck, and we were out of eggs, detergent, and hot sauce. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back—Jordan and I put hot sauce on everything—and Ma told him to get packing. He stormed out of the house without so much as a goodbye to Jordan and me, and that made Ma even madder. Just as he reached the truck in the driveway, Ma ran upstairs, yanked their wedding picture off the wall, and flung it out the window. It smashed to pieces on the hood of the truck as he backed out, with Ma shouting, “Good riddance, ya cockeyed cowboy!”
    I knew the only real money we had was in a trust fund my grandmother set up back in Texas, but so far Ma hadn’t touchedit. She called it the Ditch Fund, and many times she told me the story about how her mama and paw spent a lifetime earning that cash the hard way: breeding horses. “With my right hand resting on a tub of horse liniment, I swore that I’d save that chunk of change for when things hit bottom. And then I’d come up with a sound plan to dig out of that ditch.”
    “If you didn’t touch the Ditch Fund, then how can we afford to move here?” I had asked during the ride.
    “I sold my engagement ring and wedding band, and I put in all that overtime at