The "Duck with Plum Sauce" Series
"One of the Guys"
Chapter One
Some guys come into a woman's life and mess it up forever. Peter Mark did this to me, not forever, just periodically. My name is Tammy Duncan, and you just might remember me from the 'Minnesota Miracle' team, in peewee hockey. Then again, even if you do know of the District Five Ducks, I doubt that you remember ME, because unlike others who were on the team, I went no farther than that one article and a few bronze medals in amateur figure skating. Those bronze medals locked the door on professional figure skating for me, and killed a dream I'd held onto since the age of four.
But anyway, that probably doesn't interest you. Most of the time, it doesn't interest me. I'm twenty-three years old now, and the Ducks are ten years in the past. Of course, the past keeps coming up to blindside me every now and then, seeing as I've never lived outside of the neighborhood where we all grew up. And Peter Mark, the most constant source of those resurfacings of the past, only left District Five to go to juvenile hall.
Peter and I grew up in the same neighborhood with the rest of the Ducks--a blue-collar, wrong-side-of-the-tracks shithole where you had more chance of being mugged walking home from school than tripping over a drunk, but not by much. Everybody was related to someone with shady ties, and for every poor, struggling, honest sap there was a slick, affluent loan shark cousin just waiting for him to fall on hard times.
My mother always said that Peter Mark was nothing but trouble, and that I was to stay away from him. When I asked why, she glared at me and scolded, "You end up alone with that Mark boy" (she always called him 'that Mark boy') "and he makes you do bad things. If anything happens to you because of him, don't come crying to me, Tamara Elaine Duncan!" That was how I knew she was serious, calling me Tamara Elaine Duncan and all. It makes me wonder how Dad ever got her to agree that my brother Tommy and I could play for the Ducks.
My mother was, in that annoying way she had, right about Peter Mark. I ascertained this somewhere between making out with him in the team locker room at twelve, and being holed up in the girls' bathroom with a home-test pregnancy kit at fifteen, praying that it came up negative. Thankfully, it did, but that didn't stop me from trying to strangle the little jerk with a scarf the next time he tried to lay his filthy pervert paws on me.
I wasn't the only girl to fall victim to Peter's filthy pervert paws, anyway. I heard that, by the time he was seventeen and holed up in juvie for holding up Mr. Senya's convenience store with a 9 mm, he had at least five kids by five different girls. I've never felt the need to find proof of it, and I think that five is a consevative estimate besides.
Today is Sunday, and I'm headed back to the old neighborhood for the timeless ritual of Sunday dinner at the Duncan split-level. I'm driving my cherry-red Mazda Miata for what will probably be the last time, because oh lookie, there's the repo man in my rearview mirror.
Hm, a red light. Everybody knows that when you're being trailed by the repo man, red means...FLOOR IT!
**to be continued**
"One of the Guys"
Chapter One
Some guys come into a woman's life and mess it up forever. Peter Mark did this to me, not forever, just periodically. My name is Tammy Duncan, and you just might remember me from the 'Minnesota Miracle' team, in peewee hockey. Then again, even if you do know of the District Five Ducks, I doubt that you remember ME, because unlike others who were on the team, I went no farther than that one article and a few bronze medals in amateur figure skating. Those bronze medals locked the door on professional figure skating for me, and killed a dream I'd held onto since the age of four.
But anyway, that probably doesn't interest you. Most of the time, it doesn't interest me. I'm twenty-three years old now, and the Ducks are ten years in the past. Of course, the past keeps coming up to blindside me every now and then, seeing as I've never lived outside of the neighborhood where we all grew up. And Peter Mark, the most constant source of those resurfacings of the past, only left District Five to go to juvenile hall.
Peter and I grew up in the same neighborhood with the rest of the Ducks--a blue-collar, wrong-side-of-the-tracks shithole where you had more chance of being mugged walking home from school than tripping over a drunk, but not by much. Everybody was related to someone with shady ties, and for every poor, struggling, honest sap there was a slick, affluent loan shark cousin just waiting for him to fall on hard times.
My mother always said that Peter Mark was nothing but trouble, and that I was to stay away from him. When I asked why, she glared at me and scolded, "You end up alone with that Mark boy" (she always called him 'that Mark boy') "and he makes you do bad things. If anything happens to you because of him, don't come crying to me, Tamara Elaine Duncan!" That was how I knew she was serious, calling me Tamara Elaine Duncan and all. It makes me wonder how Dad ever got her to agree that my brother Tommy and I could play for the Ducks.
My mother was, in that annoying way she had, right about Peter Mark. I ascertained this somewhere between making out with him in the team locker room at twelve, and being holed up in the girls' bathroom with a home-test pregnancy kit at fifteen, praying that it came up negative. Thankfully, it did, but that didn't stop me from trying to strangle the little jerk with a scarf the next time he tried to lay his filthy pervert paws on me.
I wasn't the only girl to fall victim to Peter's filthy pervert paws, anyway. I heard that, by the time he was seventeen and holed up in juvie for holding up Mr. Senya's convenience store with a 9 mm, he had at least five kids by five different girls. I've never felt the need to find proof of it, and I think that five is a consevative estimate besides.
Today is Sunday, and I'm headed back to the old neighborhood for the timeless ritual of Sunday dinner at the Duncan split-level. I'm driving my cherry-red Mazda Miata for what will probably be the last time, because oh lookie, there's the repo man in my rearview mirror.
Hm, a red light. Everybody knows that when you're being trailed by the repo man, red means...FLOOR IT!
**to be continued**