Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

936 IT'S A SHAME (MY SISTER)

Me, Ziggy, and my mother sat in the back of the car. Ziggy took the middle seat, looking about as un-rock-star as I had ever seen him, buckling his seat belt and looking around like a curious tourist strapping himself onto an elephant.

Remo had the radio tuned to a classic rock station which seemed to cut down the need for conversation. He whistled through his teeth and drummed on the steering wheel as he drove the rental sedan out to a small highway with commercial strip malls.

Absolutely no one in Pizza Hut seemed to notice that three internationally known performers were sitting there eating breadsticks in their midst. Bad Muzak Christmas carols played and my mother kept up a steady stream of empty chatter throughout the meal. Then she got up and went to the ladies room.

Janine checked her watch. "I picked up the late shift at K-Mart tonight. I should get home and take a nap."

"Landon's going to be okay at his dad's?" Remo asked.

"He'll be fine. Really." She sighed. "I'll get him back at church tomorrow."

"Church?" I blurted.

Janine just gave me a look.

Remo went on. "How long's he been in school?"

"Just started in September. He's still only going half day, so I can't take a regular shift anywhere. With Jake working landscaping, sometimes he can pick him up, but not every day. He needs every hour he can log what with it being offseason for it. Thank goodness for seasonal retail."

"Jake's a good dad?"

"Pretty good." She looked over her shoulder toward the restrooms. "He's a much better dad than husband, anyway."

"Oh, really," Remo said, shifting uncomfortably. "Why's that?"

"I don't know, hormones, maybe?" She shrugged and I felt Ziggy next to me holding in a laugh.

"I mean, in what way?" Remo asked.

"You know, man wants to procreate or whatever so he's intensely loyal to his kid. To the woman who carried it, though? Not so much." She shrugged again. "It's why I insisted on divorce. If he's not going to be loyal, what's the point? And at least now he's not keeping me from meeting someone new." Before anyone could reply to that she went on, in a canny imitation of my mother's voice, "No, Jan, that's you keeping yourself from meeting someone because you're such a cow." She picked up another piece of pizza and took an emphatic bite.

Another woman approached the table then, a thin woman wearing an equally thin gray cardigan sweater and her hair in a messy bun. "Oh, Jan, I thought that was you. Just wanted to say hi."

"Oh hey, Dana. Um, this is my brother, Daron, and Remo, and Ziggy." She didn't specify what the relationship was to Remo and Ziggy. "Guys, Dana works with me at Kroger."

Dana seemed uninterested in us. "Is your mom here, too?" she asked, looking back and forth.

"Yeah, in the ladies room."

Dana leaned forward. "I heard about her cancer." She whispered the word cancer. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alr–"

"I know it must be so, so hard." Dana touched my sister's arm. "We'll pray for you."

"Thank–" My sister shook her head as the woman basically fled as if she feared the cancer might be contagious. "I'm getting a lot of that. I don't even know how people started finding out. I didn't tell anyone, but once the word gets out? There you go." She looked behind her again. "Speaking of our cancer patient, she's taking an awfully long time."

"Maybe she's just giving us a break," I said.

"That would be a first," Janine said, and we both snorted. "I'll go check on her."

She set down the half-eaten slice of pizza and went toward the back of the restaurant.

Remo leaned in. "In case it wasn't obvious, your sister is refusing to accept quote-charity-unquote from me, except for the occasional pizza, despite being so strapped for cash she hasn't even bought a Christmas tree."

"Why?" I asked.

"Something about me being a sanctimonious prick with a savior complex."

"Well, she's right, there," Ziggy said, then covered his mouth like he hadn't meant to say that out loud. He turned to look in the direction of the restrooms, where a restaurant manager and a waitress were converging. "Hmmm."

It turned out that Claire had fainted in ladies room. Janine had found her on the floor and although she was awake and alert by the time we got there, no one could be sure if she had hit her head or not. So our next stop was, once again, my least favorite place in the world: the hospital.