Mrs. Farantino is not thrown off and does not hesitate. Zoe sees no signs of shock or disgust on her face. “Yes. I mean, I think we can see that this all stems from some anger that you’re nursing. After all, Zoe, it was the first day. She mispronounced your name. That’s all. Mistakes like that happen a hundred times on the first day.”
“Maybe. But Mrs. Garrett also has plenty of attitude.”
“So do you.”
“Does she have to go for counseling?”
“No.”
Figures, Zoe thinks. People like Mrs. Garrett never have to change.
Mrs. Farantino lays out all the rules. She is kind, sympathetic, but unbending. When Zoe protests that Fridays are not good for her, Mrs. Farantino offers that Zoe’s mother has the option of arranging for private counseling. Her mother will need to come in and discuss it with the counseling office. Zoe can’t have Mama come in so she concedes. She takes the paper that says she will agree to go to “Support Group” once a week and signs it: Zoe Beth Buckman. She underlines the e in Zoe, knowing a copy will go to Mrs. Garrett. It must be signed by her mother as well in order to get back into class tomorrow. She decides she will go once or twice and then fade out. As she leaves to go to the library, where in-school suspension is being held today, Mrs. Farantino stops her.
“Remember, Zoe, this puts you on probation. Besides needing to keep your grades up, good citizenship is required for all school sports—including tennis.”
Zoe nods. They always know where to stab the deepest. She goes to the library, stakes out a seat in the corner, and stares out the window at a spindly maple planted between the buildings that has never had enough sun or water to grow. After Zoe hands over her pass, the library aide ignores her, too busy with stacks of books and packing lists to be bothered with playing warden.
She has no homework yet. Just time and her thoughts. Too many thoughts. The hours trickle by. If not for tennis, she would probably screw school altogether. She isn’t the greatest tennis player, but good, ranked fourth on the team. She has been playing since she was nine, though in the early years you could hardly call it playing. She thinks about the first time she saw a tennis game. Daddy had dragged her along to the country club where he had to finish some touch-up work on a painting job. While Daddy worked in the clubhouse, she stayed by the courts and watched the ladies in their white skirts, tan-skinned and golden-haired, leaping across the green concrete like they were unicorns in a meadow. Waiters brought them trays of water and iced tea with little lemon wedges. Zoe figured they must own the whole place to be treated so royally. Their little white skirts looked so dainty and Zoe stood transfixed, with her face mashed into the chain-link until a worker shooed her away and she ran back to Daddy.
“I want to play tennis, too,” she told him.
A locker room attendant snickered. Daddy set down his brush and wiped his face with a kerchief from his pocket.
“You’d make a great tennis player, Zoe. The best.” And then he hugged her and she didn’t care that he got smudges of paint on her face and shorts. After he finished his work, he took her straight to the Wal-Mart in Abilene, an hour away, and bought her a racket they had on special for $7.99, and then, when he took not one but two cans of balls from the shelf, she knew he had to think she would truly be the best.
“What about a skirt?” she asked, because that was really what she wanted in the first place. Wal-Mart didn’t carry tennis skirts, so he took her to the girls’ department and bought her a little white skirt that Mama shortened when they got home. Sitting in the living room, with Daddy taking the tags off the racket and Mama hemming her skirt, she felt more like a princess than she ever had in her life.
Even Grandma’s scoffing at the wastefulness and absurdity of a Buckman prancing around on a tennis court couldn’t take away that moment.
“Spending money like it’s water,” Grandma clucked. “Twenty bucks down the drain and putting fool ideas in a child’s head.”
Zoe ignored Grandma and nestled in closer to Mama’s side, feeling the rhythm as Mama pulled the thread with the needle over and over again—all for Zoe. The living room buzzed with life and hope, Daddy imagining how famous Zoe would become, Mama laughing and saying how pretty she would be, and for those few hours, with Daddy on one side and Mama on the other, she felt like all the planets revolved around Zoe Beth Buckman.
In the months that followed, when Mama was at the beauty shop and Daddy was supposed to be watching her and Kyle, he would take them both to the park two blocks away and drop them off to practice while he went across the street to Lena’s Hideaway—“just for an hour to take the parch off,” but then he’d be gone twice that. He always brought back handfuls of pretzels and cans of soda, so the long wait was soon forgotten. While Daddy was gone, Kyle threw balls over the ragged net. Occasionally one would actually come in Zoe’s direction and she would hit it. After that she would practice bouncing the ball in place on the racket because Kyle was only good for ten minutes’ worth of ball throwing. And then, while Kyle dug holes in the dirt with a spoon on the edges of the court, she would practice serving the six balls over the net, run to the other side to gather them all up, and then hit the six back in the other direction. She knew nothing about how tennis was played except that the ladies at the country club had shouted “love” over and over again, so she knew it had to be a very good game.
Daddy had to take the parch off often enough that she got a lot of practice and eventually picked up the rules by watching other people who came to play on the shabby, weed-riddled courts. Her six balls dwindled down to two and lost most of their bounce, but she always wore her white skirt that told everyone she was the center of the universe, at least for one day.
“You can go now. ISS lunch is back in the counseling offices.”
Zoe looks up, unsure what the library aide is saying.
“You can go,” she repeats. “The lunch bell? Didn’t you hear it?”
“No,” Zoe answers. She stands, swinging her backpack over her shoulder.
She had heard nothing except the sound of Mama and Daddy imagining her greatness.
Seven
Zoe shifts her weight. Her right foot aches. She has been waiting in line at the utility office for ten minutes, and the line hasn’t moved. Four people are ahead of her. Every time the door opens, a breeze wafts in, enveloping her in the scent of the man behind her. Without looking, she guesses he probably doesn’t believe in bathing or else he pumps septic tanks for a living and she considers letting him go ahead of her in line, but she really doesn’t want to wait through one extra person either. She holds her breath the next time she hears the bell on the door ring.
The utility office is in the heart of downtown Ruby, sandwiched between Yen’s Donuts and Grueber’s Gun Shop. It’s small, she supposes, since most folks pay through the mail. But a few, like her, have to pay in cash. Their checks and promises are no good. She listens to the lady at the front of the line now, swearing she mailed them a check and if she pays now they better not cash the check, too, or it will bounce for sure because she is not made out of money, ya know, and maybe she just shouldn’t pay at all since it will probably come tomorrow and it was probably their mistake in the first place. She is convincing. Zoe almost believes her. But like the clerk behind the counter, she has heard a lot of excuses, too.
Before Zoe left for school this morning, Mama promised that she was going to the beauty shop today. She pressed the final notice and a twenty-dollar bill into Zoe’s hand and sai
d, “Take care of the rest of this, sugar, will you? I’ll pay you back. Things are just a little tight right now.”
Zoe wonders where the twenty came from, if the man with the hairy legs was so appreciative he chipped in on their electric bill, too.