Crazy for You Read online

  “Bill is another thirty years of stripped pine furniture, high school athletics, and ESPN,” Quinn said, and Meggy glanced at the archway. The room glowed with the dim blue light from the TV and they could hear the faint cheers of some crowd enthused over some play.

  “We got any Cheetos?” Joe called, and Quinn went to get them without saying anything else, feeling guilty about the damage she’d already inflicted on her mother. Her mother liked her boring life. Passion would probably have made her worry.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said on her trip back from the living room. “I shouldn’t have said that stuff. You live the way you want. What do I know about you?”

  “Nothing,” Meggy said shortly, but when Bill came to the front door while Quinn was hauling her clothes upstairs, Meggy opened the door, said, “She’s staying here for a while, Bill, go home,” and slammed it in his face.

  “Way to go, Ma,” Quinn said from the staircase.

  “Was that Bill?” Joe said.

  “Just watch the TV,” Meggy said. “God knows if you paid attention to anything else, you might miss something important.”

  “What did I do?” Joe asked, but Meggy ignored him and went upstairs.

  When Meggy was gone, Quinn went into the kitchen and punched “speed dial” and “one” and waited for Zoë to answer.

  Quinn was “two” on the speed dial.

  Zoë’s husband answered instead. “Hello,” Ben said, and Quinn pictured him leaning against their refrigerator, tall and unflappable, the only man who’d ever loved Zoë and not been driven crazy by her.

  “This is your sister-in-law,” she said. “How are the kids?”

  “Hey, Q,” Ben said. “They’re fine. Harry got an A on his reading test and Jeannie got head lice at nursery school. What’s new with you?”

  “I left Bill,” Quinn said.

  “Oh. Well, you probably want to talk to Zoë then.” He put his hand over the receiver and yelled, “Zo, it’s Quinn.”

  “I guess this means you don’t want to discuss my personal life, right?” Quinn said.

  “Hell, no,” Ben said. “Although I never did think he was good enough for you.”

  “Well, thank you,” Quinn said. “And you couldn’t have mentioned this to me two years ago?”

  “Hell, no,” Ben said. “Zo’s coming. Hang on.”

  “What’s up?” Zoë said, and Quinn said, “I left Bill.” It was almost becoming a mantra; every time she said it, she got more cheerful. “I moved out. I’m at Mom and Dad’s.”

  “You’re kidding,” Zoë said. “So you’re going to live with them now?”

  “Just for a little while.” Quinn boosted herself up on the counter and began to swing her feet and bump the metal cabinet. Lovely déjà vu, talking to Zoë again and kicking cabinets. “I just got here. Nick helped me move some of my stuff, and he’s going back for the rest on Monday, and by then maybe I’ll know where I’m going.” She waited for Zoë to say something about Nick, ask about him, anything.

  “So what happened with you and Bill?”

  “He stole my dog,” Quinn said.

  “What dog?” Zoë said, and Quinn told her the whole story.

  “I’ll be damned,” Zoë said when she was through.

  “So what do you think?” Quinn hunched a little on the cabinets. “Mom says it’s a mistake.”

  “Yeah, and look at Mom’s life.” Zoë’s scorn came cleanly over the line. “You got to do what you got to do, kid.”

  “Mom says I’m nuts to do this over a dog.”

  “It’s not about the dog,” Zoë said and then muffled she said, “Later, do you mind? I’m still getting this myself.” She turned back to the receiver, her voice clear again and said, “Ben thinks Tibbett is like a soap opera. He keeps expecting to hear that somebody’s married her cousin and had her uncle’s baby. He wants dirt.”

  I just got turned on staring at your ex-husband, Quinn thought, but she said, “Barbara Niedemeyer dumped Matthew Ferguson.” She opened the cabinet beside her and went rooting one-handed for graham crackers.

  “Oh, big deal,” Zoë said. “She’s boring, she keeps doing the same thing over and over. Give me something good.”

  “Nick and Lisa broke up,” Quinn said, pushing her luck as she fished a cracker out of the box.

  “Who’s Lisa?”

  “You know, Lisa Webster.”

  “I used to baby-sit a Lisa Webster,” Zoë said.

  “That’s the one.”

  “He was dating somebody I used to baby-sit?”

  “She’s twenty-two,” Quinn said around a mouthful of graham cracker, trying to be fair.

  “And he’s twelve,” Zoë said. “I swear, that man is never going to grow up.”

  “He’s pretty dependable,” Quinn said. “He and Max are doing great with the service station.”

  “I mean socially,” Zoë said. “He still acts like he’s in high school. But he’s not my problem anymore, thank God.”

  “He’s good to me.”

  “He always was,” Zoë said. “I think you’re the only thing he kept out of our marriage. He always said you were the best thing about it.”

  Quinn swallowed. “He did?”

  “Yeah. He said he’d always wanted a little sister and then he got the perfect one in you. He thought you could do no wrong. Like everybody else thought.”

  “And he thought you were exciting,” Quinn said. “Like everybody else thought.”

  “You don’t sound so good,” Zoë said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just tired of being the practical one,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to be dependable anymore. I want exciting.”

  “Good call dumping Bill, then,” Zoë said. “He always bored me to tears. Now go do something that’ll shock everybody and be free for a change. You were the only one who thought you had to be good.”

  “Mom thinks so, too,” Quinn said. “She always said I was the calm one like her, remember?”

  “She’s not calm, she’s catatonic.” Zoë’s voice faded again. “In a minute,” she said to Ben and then came back to Quinn. “I have to go, he’s driving me crazy. Listen, I love you, Q. Don’t let the ’rents make you nuts. If you need to get away, come stay with us for awhile.”

  “I love you, too, Zo. Sorry about the head lice.”

  “I’ll take them over living with Mom and Dad any day,” Zoë said. “Find a place fast.”

  When they’d hung up, Quinn sat on the counter and nibbled on a cracker, staring into space, trying to get her mind around the new wrinkles in her already corrugated life. She didn’t feel guilty about Bill, she really didn’t; well, she felt a little guilty, but not enough to move back, she was never going to go back. No, she’d find an apartment tomorrow, a place of her own—her pulse kicked up at the thought—and then she and Katie could move in. She looked down to see Katie waiting anxiously at her feet and fed her a graham cracker, watching as Katie took it delicately, no grabbing—and she could get some furniture of her own, and maybe Nick could move it for her—

  Do something that’ll shock everybody, Zoë said.

  Dating her sister’s ex-husband would do the trick. She shivered a little at the thought. Nick was the only exciting thing in her entire life; how could she have missed him up till now? He’d always been the wild Ziegler brother, but she’d never quite understood that part because she always felt so safe with him. Until he looked at her like that. Until she’d looked back and really seen him, dark and dangerous and full of infinitely impractical possibilities. Really, he was the perfect guy for her right now: a bad guy who would never hurt her. Excitement without risk. The more she thought about it, the better he sounded and the warmer she felt.

  Now all she had to do was get him to stop screaming and running whenever he looked at her, and she’d be exciting, too.

  Just like Zoë.

  Bill stood in the backyard of the McKenzies’ little white frame house, cursing Quinn’s mother for the nutcase she was