Me and Mom Fall for Spencer Read Online Free Page A

pick a tomato or something. So I put my back to Gundry
and bend over to grab a tomato that’s fallen…and can’t get up…and I feel a
breeze, and I reach behind me, the skirt, it’s blowing in the wind…like the
answers, and I stand quickly and look back at him…because the same
underwear…surely not…he didn’t…and he’s looking right at me, and he pulls the
cord on the saw…and it roars to life.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Me and Mom Fall for
Spencer
    Chapter Four

 
    The following day I see Spencer out
front of Frieda’s sitting on her stoop picking on a guitar. He hasn’t seen me
so I pretend I haven’t seen him. I hold the box with the plate of rice and meat
and the smaller plate of salad. I take slow steps across the street, my
destination the small house directly across from Frieda’s. Or Spencer’s as we
must call it now.
    Spencer is playing some chords, and he’s
started to sing, and he’s gotten louder and I hear my name in there, in the
song, but I don’t turn. I’m carrying food and I’m not coordinated enough to
look behind me as I walk forward. That’s my story.
    I reach old Cyro’s porch and put the box on the old metal TV tray beside the door and knock on the
old metal screen door. I hear the TV and the afternoon news. I see him in there
in the recliner.
    “Okay,” he says and I can tell he’s been
sleeping.
    I don’t say anything, he knows the
drill, and I have to turn now and walk all that way in front of Spencer and try
to ignore him when he’s playing music and singing about me.
    I can hear more of the words now, as he
keeps turning up the volume. He’s looking right at me while he plays. He looks
cute playing that thing. “She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a tomato growing
girl,” he’s finishing, then he waves, and I wave and keep going toward my
house. No one’s ever composed a song about me before. Not a nice one anyway.  
    “Hey Sarah, wait up,” he says, and he
sets his guitar aside and catches up. By then I am looking over our mail. Not
that I care a fruit fly about it. I slap the door closed on the mailbox and
wait for him to say something.
    “Sarah?”
    I look up. Spencer is wearing a T-shirt,
looks new and Fruit-of-the-Loom-y. He has on beige shorts, loose, to the knee
and old tennis shoes.
    “I saw you walking past my house last
night with a flashlight.”
    “I was on the sidewalk,” I say
defensively. He can’t know how I’m looking back, trying to get used to the eyes
of Frieda’s house being lit again, being alive.
    He laughs. “You don’t have a dog.”
    “He died,” I say softly. I still can’t
talk about it without choking up.
    “Oh. Sorry. I mean…it’s the neighborhood
watch thing, right? Your mom said you started it after….”
    “No I didn’t.” God I’m so defensive
again but when in hell did Mom give him my life story? “Well I didn’t. Cyro started it,” I use the mail to gesture toward Cyro’s house. “I walked it with him…since…ten years old.”
    “Wow.”
    There is this silence and I forget not
to stare at him. I’m so much like Mom. Damn.
    “So you feed him?” he asks.
    “Take him lunch,” I say quickly. Like I’m ready to fight about it. Actually, it’s enough for
two meals. He doesn’t eat as much as he used to.
    Then this blurts out, and I’m always as
surprised as everyone else to hear myself, “Do you have a job?”
    Spencer laughs and pulls a face like I
caught him stealing or something. “No.” He laughs again. “I did have. But…I
left it. To move here. Fresh start.”
    I have work to do. I eat my lunch then I
work until two when I break to do the laundry and feed my cat and walk around
my garden a bit, then take a basket of tomatoes and things over to Leeanne’s for the Wednesday market. She bakes pies and I
send produce and she mans the table at the Farmer’s Market. By two-forty-five
I’m back at my laptop. With my decaf.
    So why did he need a fresh start? Mom
would ask.