The Checkout Girl Read Online Free PDF

mongoloids. Stevie could talk. He liked to be around people.
    â€œHazel moved the family to North Tonawanda — you remember that kids’ talent show you used to watch from there — so Stevie could go to a high school for special children. They had lots of money. I wonder what happened to him.
    â€œSome people take in stray animals,” Connie says as she leans over and pulls the newspaper back onto her lap. “You, my gentle-hearted and hopeless daughter, adopt losers.”
    Kathy switches the iron to her left hand and tries to press the sleeve on her right arm. Her mother is sitting with the paper in her lap, staring out at the snow that sifts past the window. One of the toilet paper rolls Connie uses to curl her dyed black hair slipped forward when she picked up the newspaper. Kathy watches Connie push the roll back into place and take the loosened bobby pin and shove it along her scalp, securing the roll to her head. Her mother shakes out the newspaper and begins to read again, but to herself this time.
    There’s a paper bag in the cupboard under the bathroom sink for old toilet paper rolls, overflowing last time Kathy checked. The empty rolls are the exact right size for the large glossy bouffant with an Annette Funicello curl-under that Connie likes to dry set and hairspray into place every night before she leaves for work at Smiles ’n Chuckles. Kathy wonders why Connie bothers, because her hair gets squished under a net every night anyway.
    But that’s her mother, every hair in place, nails manicured, lipstick on, eyebrows plucked to a thin black “Oh really!” line above her green eyes. She looks like a backup singer for some Motown girl group, for Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross. Except Connie’s white and middle-aged. Still, Kathy can picture her in one of those tight Supremes dresses, short and sparkly, Connie all long-line panty-girdled curves with cross-your-heart breasts. Too bad about the Supremes break-up. Diana’s going solo. Kathy wonders if she’s scared about going out on her own.
    â€œStevie Pocock wasn’t a loser,” Kathy says. “He was slow.”
    She reaches the iron around her back and tries to run it up her backbone. She pushes it up as far as she can reach, which isn’t very far.
    â€œWith a name like Pocock… oh, you know, everybody called him Poop-Cock.”
    â€œNow look at Boston,” Connie interrupts. “From last to first. After they got Bobby Orr, they stopped losing, just like you said they would. One more Canadian Bob gone south for the big time. Like Bob Goulet and Bobby Curtola. So tell me why Mr. Smarty Pants Orr didn’t sign with Toronto or Montreal? Keep the talent here in Canada for a change. Like our factories. Paper says they’re being bought up by US companies every day. Pretty soon everything worth anything in Canada will be owned and run from the United States of America.
    â€œBet Boston takes the Stanley Cup this year because of him.” Connie snaps the paper open and starts to read again. A loose piece drifts to the floor.
    â€œBobby never was — and never will be — a loser,” Kathy says. “He signed with Boston because some idiot in Toronto wasn’t smart enough to sign him.”
    Connie repeats what she reads in the sports section when Kathy’s home, but she doesn’t follow hockey on TV, has never gone to a live game. Her mother doesn’t get her passion for hockey, why Kathy insisted on watching Hockey Night in Canada even after Charlie died.
    At first she watched exactly because Charlie had died. Because it was something they’d done together, so she couldn’t imagine not doing it. Then she watched because she wanted to learn, to improve her moves. Without her father to coach her on their backyard rink, without his running commentary at Junior A games at the Aud, she wasn’t getting any better. And she wanted to get better because