Jess Walter
BALLOONS
Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street opened her screen door, pulled me inside and kissed me. It took a second to place the taste, but then I got it: bean with bacon soup.
“My mom said I should check on you,” I said after the kiss.
Her eyes were watery. She leaned in and kissed me again, even harder. She pushed my mouth open with her bean-with-bacon tongue. She grabbed my butt with both hands. Then she pulled back again as if she’d just thought of something.
“You know who’s got a great ass?” she said. “Who?” I said.
“Your brother.”
I had no idea what to say.
Checking on Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street was one of the phony jobs my mom made up for me the summer of 1994, after my first year at community college. She was always looking for ways to sneak me money without having Dad crank- ing on me for not having a job. They were like a sitcom.
“He’s a late bloomer,” Mom would say.
And Dad would say, “Don’t you have to actually bloom to be a late bloomer?” “I think he has a learning disability,” Mom would say.
And Dad would say, “I know he has an earning disability.”
So Mom offered me twenty bucks a week to check on Mrs. Ahearn-across- the-street.
We always called her that. We’d say, Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street backed into our mailbox, or Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street left her car running all night. She was about my parents’ age. Forty-whatever, fifty-blah-blah, I didn’t know. She wasn’t creepy old, and if she wasn’t exactly pretty, either, then she was like . . . the ghost of pretty. Mom always said it was “tragic” that Mr. Ahearn died of cancer and left her a widow so young. But I thought a small part of Mom envied the drama of it all.
“What do you mean check on her,” I asked the first time Mom brought it up.
I was in my room playing Mortal Kombat on Sega.
“Just go over there and see if she needs anything,” Mom said. “Danny did it all last summer, out of the goodness of his heart. He still asks about her.”
It was widely acknowledged that my brother Danny was both a saint and a genius. He was in law school at the University of Washington. I was getting C’s at Spokane Community College.
“But . . . ”I looked up from my game. “What would she need?”
“I don’t know, Ellis. Take out the trash. Shop for her. Rake her leaves.” “So if I rake her leaves, do I get more money?” I asked. “Or is that included
in the twenty? I mean, is there like an hourly component that kicks in?” My mom left my room without answering.
After she kissed me and said that about Danny’s ass, I asked Mrs. Ahearn-across- the-street if she needed anything from the grocery store.
She blinked a couple of times and then disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a twenty-dollar bill, a Safeway coupon and a shopping list. Her eyes were still bleary. The coupon was for Swanson meat pies, four for three dollars. There were only two other things on her shopping list: bean with bacon soup and Canadian Mist whiskey.
“I can’t buy you whiskey,” I said. “I’m a social drinker,” she said.
“No, I mean, I’m not twenty-one,” I said. “How old are you?” she said. “Nineteen.”
She stared at me like this couldn’t be true. “Ah Jesus,” she said. Then she said it again, “Jesus.” And she took her twenty back.
Danny answered on the first ring. “Hey, it’s Ellis.”
“What do you want?”
I didn’t know how to ask what it was I wanted to ask.
“Mom has me checking on Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street,” I said. He was quiet for a long time.
We were both quiet for a long time.
Finally, I said, “Don’t you think I should get extra for raking leaves?” He hung up.
* * *
I took off my headphones. Upstairs, my parents were arguing again. “He should get a job is what he should do,” my dad was saying. “Danny had two jobs at his age.”
“Every kid’s different,” Mom said. “Ellis will find himself.” “He better find himself a job.”
“Let him grow up at his own pace.”
“I worked from the time I was twelve years old,” Dad said, a sentence I think he had uttered every day since he was twelve years old.
I put my headphones back on.
I knocked on the screen door.
“It’s unlocked,” said Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street. I came inside. She was sitting in a chair watching a game show, a meat pie and a glass of whiskey on the TV tray in front of her.
“Where do you want your mail?” I asked. “Kitchen table,” she said.
The kitchen was a mess. I put empty soup cans and macaroni boxes in a gro- cery sack and cleared a space to set her mail. I took the trash out the back door. “Ellis,” she said. “About the other day . . . I wouldn’t tell your parents about that.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant she would not tell my parents or I should not tell my parents.
“OK, cool,” I said.
I got better grades that fall. I talked to a girl in my English comp class. I started applying to four-year schools. Once a week, I checked on Mrs. Ahearn-across- the-street. She didn’t try to kiss me again. I raked her leaves, took out her trash. Once I cleaned a bird’s nest out of her eaves. Mom had me bring carved pump- kins over to her house, and two days later, when some kids stomped them into her porch, I cleaned up the mess.
Then Danny announced he was coming home for Thanksgiving—and he was bringing his new girlfriend. Mom loved to brag about Danny’s new girl- friend. She showed everyone the picture Danny had sent of the two of them at Pike Place Market. His girlfriend had giant boobs. “Isn’t she pretty?” Mom would ask. And I would think, Nope, she just has giant boobs.
* * *
The day I found out Danny was bringing his girlfriend home, I went shopping for Mrs. Ahearn-across-the-street: soup and laundry detergent, hamburger and Hamburger Helper, cheddar cheese and meat pies, but without the coupon.
“Danny’s bringing his girlfriend home for Thanksgiving,” I said from the kitchen as I put her groceries away.
I looked around the corner into the living room. She was in her chair. The bottle of Canadian Mist was on the TV tray, but there was no glass this time. The TV was on Family Feud. She was slumped a little, staring down at her lap.
“His girlfriend?” she asked. “I’m sorry,” I said.
After I finished putting the groceries away I came in and sat in the other chair, which must have been her husband’s.
“What’s she like?” Mrs. Ahearn asked. “Big boobs,” I said.
“Figures,” she said. She offered me the bottle.
I had never had whiskey. Or any alcohol. It was a taste I’d never even imagined before, so I couldn’t say if it was good or bad.
On the Family Feud, Richard Dawson asked the family, “What’s something . . . you fill with air?”
“Lungs,” I said. “Tires,” she said.
But the number one answer was balloons.
“Balloons!” Mrs. Ahearn said, with wonder. Then she laughed, like—who could’ve ever imagined it! Balloons!
That’s the thing—how impossible it is to know a thing before you know it. What whiskey tastes like. What it’s like to kiss someone. What it’s like to lose a husband. And sometimes, after you’ve tried something for the first time, maybe you don’t know any more about it than you did before.
“Can I ask you something, Mrs. Ahearn?” “Sure,” she said.
“How’s my ass?”
She looked over at me. “Not bad,” she said. And she offered me the bottle again.