All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Using her grandmother’s old cookbook, Wavy starts making dinners so Kellen will have a reason to keep coming to her house once the school year ends. She sends Kellen for groceries, and Kellen runs into Liam, who recognizes the ingredients and asks if Val is making her mother’s meatloaf. Kellen doesn’t know what to say when Liam decides he’s going to Val’s for dinner. Kellen reports the situation to Wavy, who goes to her mother’s room; Val is, as usual, in bed. Once she hears Liam is coming, Val gets up and showers.

Kellen helps Wavy cook and serve dinner. Liam suspects Kellen’s presence has more to do with Val than Wavy. Val can hardly focus on anything other than Liam’s presence. She craves his attention and will do anything to make him happy. She lets Liam think she cooked the dinner; Wavy and Kellen do not argue. Liam tells Kellen he expects him to go to the Myrtle Beach bike rally with him. Wavy as usual can’t eat with people at the table, feeling under threat. Liam tells her repeatedly to eat, not knowing how Wavy’s mother has punished her for eating. When Liam tries to force-feed Wavy, he stabs her lip with a fork, drawing blood. Kellen pushes Liam back into his chair. As they argue over Wavy, Kellen tells Liam about his own childhood, blaming the fact that he is overweight on his father forcing him to eat. Kellen defuses the situation. “The Giant had stopped a train” (50), Wavy thinks, watching Kellen after the altercation.

Wavy calls her mother “Old Val” because she has gotten out of bed, shaved, curled her hair, and put on “the tight clothes Liam liked” to go out (51). Val keeps Wavy out of school and takes her and Donal to Liam’s meth lab, almost forgetting Donal entirely on her way out the door. She complains that Donal has gained weight and wonders what he has been eating. Dee and Ricki, two of Liam’s mistresses, are sitting at the kitchen table in the trailer when Val arrives with the children. Val tells them to get up so that she can sit down, reminding them they are in her house since Liam is her husband. When Liam comes in, he kisses Val and puts his hand between her legs in front of everyone in the trailer. Val tells Liam she is sending the kids to her sister’s house so that she can go with him to Myrtle Beach.

Liam orders Dee to take the children to their aunt Brenda’s house in Tulsa. Dee has to return to the trailer to ask for the address when she realizes Wavy will not talk to her. When she goes back into the trailer, Val is sitting in Liam’s lap, and Dee notices how handsome Liam is with his long blond hair and tan. Val gives her Brenda’s address, and Dee recalls her friendship with Val, before Liam. She feels sorry for Val.

Donal begins to cry in the car, aggravating Dee. Once she arrives in Tulsa, the address turns out to be wrong. Dee starts going house to house to find the children’s relatives. Wavy finally points out Brenda’s house, and Dee deposits the children with their confused aunt.

Driving back, Dee thinks about the bike rally and how she and Ricki will have to entertain themselves without Liam. Liam has asked her to sleep with his men at times, but he would be angry if she did so on her own. When she gets back to the “ranch”—i.e., the meth compound—Kellen is the only member of the group who has not left yet for the rally. She rides with Kellen, deciding to sleep with him when they stop at a hotel even though he is “flat-faced” and “homely as a mud fence” (56). She thinks about another woman’s story about having sex with Kellen; she reported that he was polite but awkward. Alone in the hotel room with Kellen, Dee tries to entice him by coming out of the bathroom in a towel. Kellen engages in almost obligatory sex with Dee, thanks her, and gives her money. He tries to soften the gesture by claiming Liam asked him to give her the money, but Dee knows better.

Amy’s parents argue about Wavy’s presence, but Brenda is concerned about Wavy’s bruises and facial injuries. Wavy no longer responds to the name “Vonnie,” explaining that Kellen calls her “Wavy”; her relatives begin to do the same. Amy’s older sister has less patience for eccentricity, but Amy enjoys bringing Wavy to the last day of school, describing Wavy as her “strange cousin who didn’t eat or talk but who wasn’t afraid to pump a swing as high as it would go and jump off” (60).

Shortly after school ends, Val returns to pick up the children, bringing presents for everyone, including a bracelet for Wavy. Brenda asks Val to let the children come back at Christmas and gives her a bag of hand-me-down clothes. Amy is hurt that Wavy does not look back or say goodbye (even though she worries that Wavy will steal her library book). She finds the bracelet Val gave Wavy under her own pillow that night when she goes to bed.

Wavy has been spending time after school in the motorcycle shop where Kellen works. Wavy does a better job adding the receipts than either Kellen or Old Man Cutcheon, the shop owner, so she is a welcome visitor. However, since summer break, Kellen has not seen Wavy as much. One day he comes in hot and sweating to find Wavy waiting at the desk. He tries to take a sip of her bottle of soda, but she stops him, shouting, “Germs!” (63). Kellen thinks she means his germs, but she explains that her germs are on the bottle, that they might get inside him. He tells her he is not afraid of her germs. Kellen expresses his surprise that she continues to drink from the bottle.

Kellen tells Wavy he just put flowers on his mother’s grave, which explains why he was wearing a nice shirt. When he changes into another shirt, Wavy sees his chest tattoo for the first time: a peace pipe and three arrows representing the three Choctaw chiefs. Kellen tells Wavy about living on the reservation with his grandmother. Kellen feels uneasy watching Wavy study his tattoo, and he quickly puts on a shirt.

On the desk, Wavy points to the calendar with the day’s date encircled in a heart. Kellen explains that it would have been his mother’s birthday, which was why he brought the flowers to the cemetery. Wavy points out July 19 on the calendar, and Kellen asks if that’s her birthday. When Wavy says yes, he ceremoniously writes “Wavy’s birthday” in big letters, drawing a heart around the date. After the exchange, Wavy embraces Kellen, who stands still so as not to frighten her. She sniffs his hair, much to Kellen’s surprise. She asks Kellen to hold her, but Kellen hears Liam arriving in the shop.

Liam demands that Kellen accompany him to a bar to meet two women. Liam kisses a blonde while Kellen attempts to make small talk with a woman he calls “Snake Girl” because of a tattoo on her hand. They all return to the trailer at the ranch, where people are kissing and smoking marijuana from a bong on the coffee table. Liam and the blonde women disappear. Kellen knows Snake Girl was interested in Liam, but when they go out to the porch, he tries to talk to her, eventually inviting her to walk in the meadow with him. She declines, but he lets her put her hand in his pants. Back inside, Kellen encounters Dee, who is upset because Liam is with another woman. Snake Girl sits down next to Kellen on the sofa, and Kellen closes his eyes to escape the chaos and awkwardness of the room. He hears a drunk woman ask about a little girl and sits up, seeing Wavy in the doorway. Before Dee can try to take her home, Wavy steps over other people and the coffee table to sit down next to Kellen.

Wavy mimics erotic gestures she has seen Val and other women use with men. She leans close to Kellen, placing a hand on his belly. She wraps an arm around his neck when Snake Girl tries to talk to her. Dee tells Snake Girl that Wavy only sits on Kellen’s lap and asks Wavy if Kellen is her “boyfriend” (68). Kellen is surprised when Wavy nods.

Wavy invites Kellen to the meadow, and they leave the party with Wavy riding Kellen’s back. They lie in the meadow together as Wavy explains the constellations to Kellen. As they discuss Orion, she moves her hand down his belly to his belt. They watch the Perseid meteor shower together, and Kellen notes that all he wanted in the first place was for someone to come to the meadow with him.