Cameron Cassmore blinks through the windshield, fending off relentless sunlight. Should’ve grabbed his sunglasses. Hauling his hungover ass up to Welina at the ungodly hour of nine o’clock on a Saturday morning . . . ugh. Parched, he grabs an open can from the cup holder of Brad’s truck and takes a swig. Some nasty energy drink. With a grunt, he spits out the open window and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, then crumples the can and tosses it onto the empty passenger seat.
“Gotta go deal with what?” Brad had blinked, his eyes
bleary, when Cameron asked to borrow his ride. He’d crashed on Brad and Elizabeth’s couch after playing last night’s epic Moth Sausage experimental-metal show at Dell’s Saloon.
“A clematis,” Cameron had said. From his aunt Jeanne’s panicked phone call, it seemed her douchebag landlord was up her ass about her vines again. Last time, it had ended with the landlord threatening to evict her over that vine.
“What the hell is a clematis?” A half grin spread over Brad’s face. “Sounds kinda dirty.”
“It’s a plant, you idiot.” Cameron hadn’t bothered to add that it was a flowering and vining perennial, a member of the buttercup family. Native to China and Japan, brought to Western Europe in the Victorian era, and prized for its ability to climb trellises.
Why does he remember shit like this? If only he could cleanse his brain of the useless knowledge clogging it up.
Gaining speed after turning onto the highway that runs out to Aunt Jeanne’s trailer park, Cameron rolls down all the windows and lights a cigarette, which he never does anymore, only when he feels like garbage; and this morning he feels like hot, steaming garbage. Smoke trails out the window and vanishes over the flat, dusty farmlands of the Merced Valley.
DAISIES BOB IN the breeze of Aunt Jeanne’s garden. She’s also got some huge bush full of white flowers, a twinkle-light veil-like thing, and this water fountain that he knows runs on six DD batteries because she asks him to help her change them, it seems like, every time he comes over.
And frogs. There are frogs everywhere. Little cement frog statues with moss growing in the cracks, frog flowerpots, a stars-and-stripes wind sock waving from a rusty metal hook featuring three grinning frogs decked out in patriotic red, white, and blue.
Seasonal frogs.
If the Welina Mobile Park had a prize for best yard, Aunt Jeanne would definitely be gunning for it. And winning. But the odd thing about her immaculate yard is its utter contrast with the disaster Cameron knows lies inside the trailer.
The porch steps creak under his work boots. A piece of paper juts out from the handle of the screen door. He lifts the edge to peek: a flier for the Welina Mobile Park Bingo Championship. He crumples it and stuffs it in his pocket. There’s no way Aunt Jeanne goes to those ridiculous things. This whole place is so awful. Even the name. Welina. It means “welcome” in Hawaiian. Sure as shit, this is not Hawaii.
He’s about to jab the doorbell, which is frog-shaped, of course, when shouting spills out from behind the trailer.
“If that old troll Sissy Baker would mind her business, no one would have these absurd ideas, now, would they?” Aunt Jeanne’s voice drips with menace, and Cameron can picture
her standing there in her favorite gray sweatshirt, hands on her barrel-like hips, scowling. He can’t help but smile as he strides around the side of the trailer.
“Jeanne, please, try to understand.” The landlord’s voice is low, patronizing. Jimmy Delmonico. A first-class douchebag for sure. “The other residents are upset at the prospect of snakes. Surely you get that?”
“Ain’t no snakes in there! And who’re you to tell me what to do with my bush?”
“There are rules, Jeanne.”
Cameron trots into the backyard. Delmonico is glaring at Aunt Jeanne, who is indeed wearing that gray sweatshirt. Red-faced, she holds up a clutch of the dense, waxy vines that cover the trellis attached to the back of her trailer. Her cane, with its faded green tennis ball jammed on the tip, rests against the siding.
“Cammy!”
Aunt Jeanne is the only person on the planet who’s allowed to call him that.
He jogs over, then smiles as she wraps him in a quick hug. She smells like stale coffee, as usual. Then he turns to Delmonico, stone-faced, and says, “What’s the issue here?”
Aunt Jeanne snatches her cane and points it accusingly at the landlord. “Cammy, tell him there’s no snakes in my clematis! He’s trying to make me rip it down. All because Sissy Baker said she saw something. Everyone knows that old bat can’t hardly see.”
“You heard her. No snakes in there,” Cameron says firmly, tilting his head at the mass of vines, which have grown thick and lush since his last visit. How long has it been? A month?
Delmonico pinches the bridge of his nose. “Nice to see you again, too, Cameron.”
“Pleasure’s all mine.”
“Look, this is straight out of the Welina Mobile Park bylaws,” Delmonico says with a sigh. “When a resident
makes a complaint, I’m required to undertake an investigation. And Mrs. Baker said she saw a snake. Said she saw, right in that there plant, yellow eyes blinking at her.”
Cameron scoffs. “She’s obviously lying.”
“Obviously,” Aunt Jeanne echoes, but she casts him a puzzled look from the corner of her eye.
“Oh, really?” Delmonico folds his arms. “Mrs. Baker has been a member of this community for years.”
“Sissy Baker’s packed full of more shit than a turd burger.”
“Cammy!” Aunt Jeanne swats his arm, reproaching his language. Which is rich, from the woman who taught him “A is for Asshole” while he was learning the alphabet.
“Excuse me?” Delmonico dips his glasses.
“Snakes can’t blink.” Cameron rolls his eyes. “They can’t.
They don’t have eyelids. Look it up.”
The landlord opens his mouth, then snaps it shut.
“Case closed. No snakes.” Cameron folds his arms, which are at least twice the diameter of Delmonico’s. Bicep day’s been lit at the gym lately.
Delmonico does actually look like he’d prefer to leave. Studying his shoes, he grumbles, “If that’s even true, the snake-eyelid thing . . . there are ordinances. Blame the county for that, if you want, but when someone reports that one of my properties has a pest infestation—”
“I told you, no snakes!” Aunt Jeanne throws her hands up. Her cane lands on the grass. “You heard my nephew. No eyelids! You know what it is? Sissy Baker’s jealous of my garden.”
“Now, Jeanne.” Delmonico holds up a hand. “Everyone knows you have a lovely garden.”
“Sissy Baker’s a liar, and blind to boot!”
“Be that as it may, there are safety codes. If something creates a hazardous situation—”
Cameron takes a step toward him. “I don’t think anyone wants a hazardous situation.” It’s a bluff, mostly. Cameron
hates fighting. But shrimp-on-a-stick here doesn’t need to know that.
Looking almost comically startled, Delmonico pats his pocket, then makes a show of pulling out his phone. “Hey, sorry. Need to take this.”
Cameron snickers. The old fake phone call. This guy sucks.
“Just trim it back a little, okay, Jeanne?” he yells over his shoulder as he crunches down the gravel walkway toward the road.
IT TAKES CAMERON the better part of an hour to prune the clematis, fielding Aunt Jeanne’s picky instructions while balanced on a stepladder. A little more there. No, not so much! Trim down the left. I meant right. No, I meant left. Down below, Aunt Jeanne collects the snipped-off stems and purple flowers in a yard waste bag.
“Is that thing about the snakes true, Cammy?” “Sure it is.” He climbs down the ladder.
Aunt Jeanne frowns. “So, for real, no snakes in my clematis, right?”
Cameron glances at her sidelong as he strips off his gloves. “Have you seen a snake in your clematis?”
“Uh . . . no?”
“Well, there’s your answer.”
Aunt Jeanne grins, opening her back door, shoving aside a stack of newspapers with the tip of her cane. “Stay and visit, hon. D’you want coffee? Tea? Whiskey?”
“Whiskey? Seriously?” It’s not even ten in the morning. Cameron’s stomach lurches at the thought of booze. He ducks under the door frame and blinks, adjusting to the low light inside, letting out a breath of relief at the state of the place. It’s bad, of course. But no worse than last time. For a while, the junk seemed to be breeding with itself like a bunch of horny rabbits.
“Plain coffee, then,” she says with a wink. “You’re getting old, Cammy. No fun these days!”
He grumbles something about having too much fun last night, and Aunt Jeanne nods in her slightly amused way. Clearly, she can tell he’s riding the struggle bus this morning. Maybe he really is getting old. Thirty is a bitch so far.
She shuffles the mess of boxes and papers on her tiny kitchen counter in search of her coffee maker. Cameron picks up the paperback sitting on top of a pile of junk that has nearly buried her rickety little desk, an ancient desktop computer humming somewhere beneath the heap. The book is a romance, one of those ones with a shirtless muscled guy on the front. He tosses it back down, causing a stack of piled-up crap to cascade to the carpet.
When did she get like this? The collecting, as she calls it. She was never like this when he was growing up. Sometimes Cameron passes through their old neighborhood back in Modesto, the two-bedroom house where she raised him. That house was always clean. A few years back, she sold it to help pay off the medical bills from the summer before. Turns out, getting knocked out in the parking lot of Dell’s Saloon costs a fortune, and it wasn’t even Aunt Jeanne’s fault. Some asshole guys from out of town were making trouble, and she was just trying to get everyone to simmer down. Somehow, she took a punch to the side of her head and ended up flat on the pavement. A bad concussion, a shattered hip, months of physical and occupational therapy. Cameron had ditched a decent job with a restoration company, one that could’ve led to an apprenticeship, to care for her, sleeping on her couch so she’d remember her meds and driving her to and from the brain-injury specialist in Stockton. Every afternoon, he met the mailman on the porch, opening the door quietly so she wouldn’t notice. His pathetic savings account held off the collectors for a little while.
When Aunt Jeanne finally sold the house, she had just turned fifty-two, the age requirement for Welina residents. For reasons that still baffle Cameron, instead of getting a regular apartment or something, she decided to use the small amount of cash left over to buy this trailer and move out here. Was that when the collecting started? Is this dump of a trailer park causing it?
Still railing about how Sissy Baker has had it out for her since the misunderstanding at the Welina potluck last summer (Cameron doesn’t ask for details), she sets down two steaming mugs on the coffee table and motions for him to sit next to her on the sofa.
“So how’s work been?” Cameron shrugs.
“You got canned again, didn’t you?” He doesn’t answer.
Aunt Jeanne’s eyes narrow. “Cammy! You know I pulled strings down at the county office to get you on that project.” Aunt Jeanne still works part-time at the reception desk at the county office. She’s been there for years. Of course, she knows everyone. And yeah, the project was a big one. An office park on the outskirts of town. Still didn’t matter: ten measly minutes late on his second day, and the asshole foreman told him to pack it. Was it Cameron’s fault the foreman had zero capacity for empathy?
“It’s not like I asked you to pull any strings,” he mutters, then explains what happened.
“So you screwed up. Royally. Now what?”
Cameron’s mouth twists into a pout. Aunt Jeanne is supposed to be on his side. A loaded silence sits between them; she takes a sip of coffee. Her mug is covered in dancing cartoon frogs with bright red lettering: WHO LET THE FROGS OUT? He shakes his head and tries to change the subject. “I like your new flag. The one outside.”
“Do you?” Her face brightens the tiniest bit. “I got it from one of those catalogs. Mail order.”
Cameron nods, not surprised. “How’s Katie?” she asks.
“Katie’s fine,” Cameron says, his voice breezy. Actually, he hasn’t seen his girlfriend since he kissed her goodbye when she left for work yesterday morning. She was supposed to come see Moth Sausage play, but apparently she was too tired to come out, then he ended up staying out later than planned and crashing at Brad’s. But, of course, she’s fine. Katie’s the type of girl who’s never in trouble, always fine.
“She’s a good catch for you.” “Yeah, she’s great.”
“I just want you to be happy.” “I’m happy.”
“And it would be nice if you could hang on to a job for more than two days.”
Great, this again. Cameron scowls, rubbing a hand across his face. His eyeballs are pounding. He should probably drink some water.
“You’re so smart, Cammy. So damn smart . . .”
He rises from the couch and stares out the window. After a long second, he says, “They don’t just hand out paychecks for being smart, you know.”
“Well, for you, they should.” She pats the space next to her on the couch, and Cameron sinks down, dropping his throbbing head onto her shoulder. He loves Aunt Jeanne, of course he does. But she doesn’t get it.
NO ONE IN the family knows where Cameron got his smarts. And by “family,” he means him and Aunt Jeanne. That’s his whole family.
He can barely remember his mother’s face. He was nine years old when Aunt Jeanne picked him up from his mother’s apartment after she’d told him to pack his bag to stay with his aunt for the weekend. In itself, this wasn’t unusual. He often stayed overnight there. But this time, his
mother never came to retrieve him. He remembers her giving him a hug goodbye, tears running inky trails of makeup down her face. He recalls, with clarity, that her arms felt bony.
The weekend turned into a week, then a month. Then a year.
Somewhere in her cluttered curio cabinet, Aunt Jeanne has these little ceramic tchotchkes his mother collected as a child. Shaped like hearts, stars, animals. Some of them are engraved with her name: DAPHNE ANN CASSMORE. Every so often, Aunt Jeanne asks him if he’d like to have them, and every time, he says no. Why would he want her old crap when she couldn’t get herself clean long enough to be his mother?
At least Cameron knows who he inherited the disaster gene from.
Aunt Jeanne applied for sole custody with the courts, which was granted without contest. Much better this way, he remembers the caseworker saying in a low voice, for Cameron to be with family rather than “entering the system.”
A decade older than Daphne, Aunt Jeanne never married or had children of her own. She always called Cameron the blessing she never expected to have.
With Aunt Jeanne, his childhood was good. She was never exactly like the mothers of his friends. Who could forget the Halloween she showed up for his grade school parade in a homemade Marge Simpson costume, the year he went as Bart? But somehow, it worked.
In school, Cameron did well enough. He met Elizabeth there, then Brad. Surprisingly well-adjusted, he overheard people say sometimes, for a kid in his shoes.
As for his father? It’s possible that’s where Cameron got his smarts.
Anything could be possible when it comes to his father. Neither he nor Aunt Jeanne has any idea who his father is.
When Cameron was a kid, before he understood how baby- making worked and the necessity of, at a minimum, a sperm donor, he used to believe he simply didn’t have one.
“Knowing the crowd your mom ran with, he was probably someone you’re better off without,” Aunt Jeanne always says when the subject comes up. But Cameron has always doubted that. He’s sure his mother was clean when he was born. He’s seen the photos, her hair in soft brown curls as she pushes him on a baby swing at the park. The using, the problems, Cameron is sure, came after.
Came because of him.
Aunt Jeanne starts to get up. “More coffee, hon?”
“You sit, I’ll get it,” he says, shaking the headache off. He picks his way across the clutter toward the kitchen.
As he’s pouring two fresh cups, Aunt Jeanne calls from the sofa, “Say, how’s Elizabeth Burnett doing? She’s due at the end of the summer, right? I ran into her mama at the gas station a few days ago, but we didn’t have much chance to chat.”
“Yeah, she’s about to pop. But she’s good. She and Brad, they’re both good.” Creamer swirls in white streaks as Cameron pours it into his coffee.
“She was always such a sweet girl. I never got why she chose Brad over you.”
“Aunt Jeanne!” Cameron groans. He must’ve explained a million times; it was never like that with Elizabeth.
“Well, I’m just saying.”
Cameron, Brad, and Elizabeth were best friends growing up: the three musketeers. Now, somehow, the other two are married and having a baby. It’s not lost on Cameron that the tot’s going to take his place as Brad and Elizabeth’s third wheel.
“Speaking of which, I should bounce. Brad needs his truck back by lunchtime.”
“Oh! One thing, before you go.” With effort, Aunt Jeanne uses her cane to lever herself up from the sofa. Cameron
tries to help, but she waves him away.
For what seems like a decade, she jostles around the clutter in the other room. Meanwhile, he can’t resist poking through a stack of papers on the table. Old electric bill (paid, thankfully), a page torn from TV Guide (they still publish that?), and a hunk of discharge papers from the minute clinic at the drugstore in town, a prescription form stapled to the top page. Damn, personal shit. But before he can bury the script, he sees something that makes his cheeks burn white-hot. This can’t be right.
Aunt Jeanne? Chlamydia?
Her cane thumps toward the living room. Cameron tries to shove everything back, but to his horror, the whole stack topples, leaving him holding the script. He dangles it from the tips of his fingers, as if the paper itself might be infected. A stationery transmitted disease.
“Oh, that.” She shrugs, nonchalant. “It’s going around the park.”
Cameron feels his insides lurch. He swallows and says, “Well, this shit is no joke, Aunt Jeanne. Glad you got treated.”
“Of course I did.”
“And maybe start using, uh, protection?” Is he really having this conversation?
“Well, I’m team rubber, but Wally Perkins, he won’t—” “Stop. Sorry I asked.”
She chuckles. “Serves you right for snooping.” “Point taken.”
“Anyway. This.” With her slipper, she nudges a box Cameron hadn’t noticed at her feet. “Some things of your mother’s. Thought you might want them.”
Cameron stands. “No thanks,” he says, without a second look at the box.
