Cool in Tucson Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jesus, Sarah, I’m not doing it for the fun of it,” Mom said.” I got laid off, remember?  I mean I’m doing my best, I’ve got applications in all over town and I’m living in a duplex on Lurlene Street, for God’s sake.  A block from Kolb Road where half the traffic in Tucson goes by every day.”
    Kolb Road seemed to feature in all their fights now.  Mom had seemed grateful while Aunt Sarah was helping her get settled in a place she could afford.  But since she lost her job and couldn’t afford much of anything, she brooded about the fact that Sarah’s house was in a nicer neighborhood than hers.  Their brother Howard had the family ranch and Grandma had moved to a new development with a swimming pool in a suburb west of town.  “But Denny and I drew the slum.  If this block gets any noisier we’ll have to wear ear-plugs, is this really what you want for your niece?”
     “What I really want for my niece,” Aunt Sarah said, “is a mother who can get her ass in gear and find another job .  And clean up this house, for God’s sake!”  They yelled at each other like that for a while and then cried and hugged and made up and Aunt Sarah gave Mom some money.  That was about standard for how it went between them when Mom was off the wagon and trying to hide it.  She picked more fights with Aunt Sarah then because she was trying to keep her on the defensive. 
    Aunt Sarah was edgy lately too, probably because she could see her sister was in trouble again and dreaded talking to their parents about it.  Denny had a bigger worry than that:  if her mother went to rehab, she’d probably get sent out to the ranch to live with Uncle Howard and Aunt Jane like the last time.  The ranch was okay and Uncle Howard tried to be nice, but Aunt Jane and the two girls hated her guts and wanted her gone .  So when the fights started between Aunt Sarah and her mother, Denny stayed out of sight till the hugging started.  Lately she even skipped the hugging part if she could manage it.
    The next day after the rent-money fight, Mom got a Mondays-only job in a second-hand clothing store called “Twice Is Nice,” that said its merchandise was “gently used.”  Just a fun gig till the world got serious again, Mom said.  Then she found a waitress job in a bar on Speedway, Friday and Saturday nights only, so she took that too.  After that she countered any criticism of her housekeeping by saying, “Okay, you try being a single mother with two jobs.” 
    At least she made good tips at the bar, she told Denny, so they’d be fine till she could find a real job.  She told many funny stories to illustrate how unreal her present jobs were.  Without knowing how to say it, exactly, Denny saw that her mother was using humor as a shield, to fend off questions about her drinking.  One of her lines was, “Go easy on me, I’m still in recovery from rehab.”  
    Besides tips, though, the other thing Mom made at the bar was a lot of new boyfriends.  They called on the phone and came home with her sometimes, bringing plenty of beer and sometimes pot.  More and more afternoons now she got that hazy look, the little smile and the “hmm?” that meant you could forget about supper unless you fixed your own. 
    Summer was like drifting in a risky swamp, long hours of nothing and then scary times with loud music and new boyfriends in the house.  Mom stayed in bed a lot on her days off, but Denny got her to drive to the library once a week or so.  It took a lot of nagging but was worth it, because with enough books she could stay in her room almost forever and pretend the boyfriends weren’t there.
    Aunt Sarah called often and took her out to dinner and a movie for her birthday.   Mom was supposed to go too, but at the last minute she got a terrible headache.  Denny enjoyed being alone with Aunt Sarah till she started asking over dinner if everything was okay with Janine.  Denny wasn’t going to get caught in the