A Collection of Stories Entitled Where the Cottonwoods Grow Jennifer L

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2006 A Collection of Stories Entitled Where the Cottonwoods Grow Jennifer L. Dawson

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

A Collection of Stories Entitled

WHERE THE COTTONWOODS GROW

JENNIFER L. DAWSON

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2006

The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Jennifer L. Dawson defended on March 24, 2006.

______Ned Stuckey-French Professor Directing Thesis

______Elizabeth Stuckey-French Committee Member

______Barry Faulk Committee Member

Approved:

______Hunt Hawkins, Chair, Department of English

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... iv

The Show in the Gray Oldsmobile ...... 1

Burnt Holes in a Blanket ...... 18

Best Daughter ...... 32

One Step Ahead of the Dark ...... 51

Where the Cottonwoods Grow ...... 70

Biographical Sketch ...... 92

iii

ABSTRACT

This collection, entitled Where the Cottonwoods Grow, is built around the theme of family. Whether it is a good one or bad one, every person has a family of some form. In these stories I explore the familial role through such questions as: How and why do we struggle under and perpetuate the deeds of our ancestors? Must the children always pay for the sins of the father? What impact do class and geography have on the family unit? Can sibling relationships fill the void left by broken parental relationships, and on the flip side, can a child learn love from parents who themselves have difficulty loving each other? While each of the stories will deal with the general theme of family in different ways, as a whole they come together to show the human progression through family life—beginning with the child who is trying to understand the dynamics of the adult family members and her place within them, to the teenagers challenging parental authority in their journey towards adulthood, to the young adult who finds she still has much to learn about mature adult relationships and her own parents, to finally the married couple who find themselves questioning everything about each other and the family they have formed. The Show in the Gray Oldsmobile is told in the first person voice of Sarah, a twelve-year- old girl who is sheltered and coddled by her overprotective mother because of her perceived physical weakness—a kidney transplant. Sarah’s platonic relationship with her brother, Martin, who has shared in her physical trauma, contrasts their strict and conservative parents who seem incapable of modeling healthy family relationships. In Burnt Holes in a Blanket, the reader sees through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old into the disruption and bitterness alcohol abuse can sew within a family, especially when it afflicts that family’s lone remaining patriarch. In Best Daughter, a seventeen-year-old is forced to live with the mother she has never known after the death of her beloved father and to deal with the mixed emotions she has for both her parents. In One Step Ahead of the Dark, a twenty-something college student is at a crossroads in her relationships with her live-in boyfriend, Charlie, and with her parents, especially with her overbearing mother. She is forced to see the value in her boyfriend through her parents’ eyes, especially as the dynamic between her and her mother is brought to a new level. Where the Cottonwoods Grow is an examination of a husband-wife relationship over nearly twenty years. Time, children, and unfulfilled promises chip away at their relationship. While it is written in third person, the only story in the collection that is, the narrative focuses on the wife, Mary Jane, who questions the last two decades of her life. Her doubts hinge on one fundamental question—

should she have married this man who has failed to give her the life she longs for? The title, which also serves as the title of the collection, represents an idealized home and family setting that may never be possible, or at least not as the various characters in these stories expect it to be.

THE SHOW IN THE GRAY OLDSMOBILE

It was the summer I realized my brother actually didn’t hate me, the summer of the Olds Cutlass—that rusting, gun-metal gray, boat of a car as my dad called it. It smelled like an old battleship in need of a long spell in dry-dock—stale fish, wet dog, the muskiness of sweat. There was just a tinge of darkness outside—supper-time darkness as the sizzling of frying pork chops sang from the kitchen—the night he brought it home. I could make out the weak beams of its headlights as I watched through the porch screen. The noise radiating from it was more like the rush of the falls outside of town—a sustained, growling roar. The beast charged up our dirt driveway and into the garage. Then I saw Martin’s figure scurry to shut the large double doors and flick on the bare bulb hanging in the rafters. “What on earth was that?” I heard my mother call. “What?” I asked. “Has your affliction spread to your ears, Sarah?” she hollered back. “That horrible racket, that’s what!” I pursed my lips as I saw Martin moving about the garage, breaking up the beams of light streaming through the garage’s loose wooden siding. “A tractor goin’ down the road. Johnson’s probably.” Momma and Daddy had said no car—absolutely not—due to Martin’s many indiscretions. Martin was one of those guys who, well, enjoyed a good story. These tales were usually spun as a cover for some stupid and/or sadistic act at school that Martin just didn’t want to take the credit for. “Ten feet tall and twice as wide” as my father liked to describe these fables. Of course, Daddy being a Baptist minister, his amusement with such behavior was short lived. He’d clear his throat and wrinkle his brow. The corners of his mouth set squarely at the bottom of his round face would drop and he’d commence orating on the eighth chapter of John. His main point didn’t come until forty-four verses in—the one about Satan being the father of all lies—but Martin was expected to sit and listen to all fifty-nine verses. Listening to Martin’s tales and exploits was usually the highlight of my cloistered days. This car explanation was sure to be a winner. My grip tightened around the shabby, red-covered book—Childhood Ailments of the Kidney—I had been pouring over as Martin sauntered towards the porch. His Converse-clad feet were heavy on the steps and stomped extra loud to loosen the excess clay. He swung open the

1 screen door and I could see pearls of sweat and flecks of dirt spotting his face as the light hit it. He brushed right past my wicker chair. I got up and lagged behind him, emulating his long sixteen-year-old male strides, managing only to trip over my own feet, as I did so often in those days. My lower extremities were nothing more than dangling pipe cleaners with clown shoes attached, even making white Keds appear huge. I was small for my twelve years, my growth stunted by my “affliction,” as my mother liked to put it. Daddy was already at the table as I sat down in the high-backed wooden chair that dwarfed me. His wire framed glasses balanced on the bridge of his nose, a plaid tie tight at the collar of his blue starched shirt, and his Bible spread over the white Pyrex dinner plate, his lips forming the words of a verse. I placed my book on my plate and flipped to the last page I had read, my lips moving in an attempt to form the unknown words, Hemolytic ureic syndrome. This rare disease affects mostly children under 10 years of age and can result in kidney failure. “Sarah.” I looked up at the sound of my name and stared into a pair of dark brown eyes that mirrored mine. My mother placed a basket of biscuits beside me. “Take that dirty old book off of your plate. Think of the germs!” I lifted the book and she snatched the plate out from under it, replacing it with a properly sanitized counterpart, and tossing the now soiled one into the awaiting dish water. “I know you’ve read about the immune system in those books. Do you want to destroy what’s left of yours?” Her voice bounced with her body as she plopped down across from me, soft brown curls swishing about her face, like curling chimes in the wind. I wiped my hair out of my eyes. It had the appearance of red straw and there always seemed to be more in my hairbrush than on my head. I was convinced I would be stark bald by the time I was fourteen. Martin collapsed in the seat beside me, his face now grease free, sandy hair smoothed back with a hint of gel. He slouched as always. My mother shot him an eye roll for his lack of table manners. “So, how was your day, Martin?” she asked, doling out pork chops to every plate with the precision of a nurse dispensing spills to her patients. Martin pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his back jeans pocket and handed it to her, his arm snaking through glasses of iced tea, hovering over the salt and pepper shakers. She snipped it from his hand with two pink-nailed fingers as if its contents held a dreaded communicable disease. Her eyes focused on it and then flashed up to the ceiling.

“George, look at this,” she said, waving the note at the tip of my father’s nose. The bits of pork chop were apparently making it into his mouth with the help of radar guidance; he had yet to turn his eyes from the Scriptures. “Hmm,” he grunted, swatting at the floating note, taking it from her hand. “‘Problems at home?’” he pronounced. He dropped the piece of paper just enough for his eyes to focus squarely on Martin. “You skip school because I’m ‘chasing scarlet women’ and your mother is popping pills and pushing…” he paused to focus his eyes at the blasphemy before him. “‘Pushing slices of stale bread into the closet containing your feeble sister!’” I had to giggle at that one. Never had I been so honored as to be a character in one of Martin’s stories. My father was less than amused however. The flying crumpled note nearly landed square in the gravy boat as he tossed it back at Martin. “If you must lie why can’t you have the decency to make up good lies?” my mother said before gulping down her tea. “You know the devil is the father of all lies, Martin” my father said, his eyes dropping back down to his Bible. The Book always came first. “So what important business came between you and learning yesterday?” my mother asked. “Speaking of learnin’ Mrs. Jennings asked about Sarah when she gave me the note.” Martin jammed a whole biscuit into his mouth before he got out the last word. He was a master at deflecting hostile parental questioning by going straight for our mother’s sore spot—me. My mother’s eyes quickly shot over to my face and then back to Martin’s. “Well, what did she want with Sarah.” Martin was still chewing the biscuit, taking his sweet time about swallowing it. “Said she transferred from Eisenhower to McLaine Junior High; said she’ll be teachin’ seventh grade next year.” “So?” my mother shot back. Martin shrugged his shoulders, stretching his tight Eisenhower Patriots T-shirt up his chest, the face of Ike twisting into various smiles and scowls. “Just wanted to know if she’d be seeing Sarah in the fall.” My mother grabbed the bowl of mashed potatoes and began shoveling them onto her plate with quick, wrist-flipping strokes. “High school maybe,” she finally said. “She can go to Eisenhower. I don’t want her with those junior high kids.”

“Why not?” Martin asked. She dropped her voice a notch to a mock whisper, as if somehow I wouldn’t hear her, sitting just two feet across the table. “You know how junior high kids are, Martin. She’s not up to that. Weak and small—just an invalid really.” She looked back into my face, her eyes moist and sentimental, and then she smiled, her lips quivering as she scooped the rest of the potatoes onto my already full plate. “I don’t want anymore,” I said flatly. “You have to eat, baby.” Her hand shook as it clutched the silver serving spoon. “Do you think I want you looking like one of those poor Ethiopian children Dan Rather shows on TV every night?” I cocked my head to one side, running the strange sounding word through my brain. “What’s an Ethiopian?” Martin snorted at my question, nearly choking on his piece of pork. “Yeah, what does she need to go to junior high for? The home schooling’s really working for her!” “The Ethiopian was a eunuch Philip converted on the road from Jerusalem,” my father said. I was all prepared to ask just what a eunuch was but thought better of it upon seeing my father’s concentrated stare—concentrated on Martin. “I believe your mother asked you a question. Why weren’t you in school yesterday?” Martin’s eyes popped up to meet my father’s, as if he was somehow up to the task of staring him down. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and then dropped it on the table next to his empty plate. “I had to go see a man about a car,” he proclaimed as his body ascended from the table, curling upward like a shaky robin stretching its wings. “My car. I drove it home today, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out in the garage with my car.” I smiled down at my heaping pile of cold mash potatoes as I heard the screen door slam. *** Martin’s shadow hovered about through the dusty window of our garage—that sad little light bulb doing its best to illuminate the large building. I peeked over the edge of my red book with every clang or buzz of the drill, peering out of my crow’s nest of a bedroom window. The book was heavy on my bony legs, as if its weight could crush my femurs if it sat on my lap too long. I shifted my body to catch the light of the full moon—it was lights out at 8:00 every night. Even with only the moonlight it was well worth the effort to read about me, the hemolytic uremic syndrome afflicted child.

At the time, it had seemed as if it was just too much of a good time at the county fair— Ferris wheels, bumper cars, cotton candy, the Wild Mouse and hamburgers are a lethal combination for even the strongest adult stomach, let alone that of a seven-year-old. It all came back the following morning as my mother held my long hair up behind my head. Some Pepto- Bismol and off to bed. No big deal. Even if it were gastroenteritis like the book said, it would have gone away in a couple of days—and I did stop puking my insides out by the third day. But then strange things started to happen. My color stayed pasty white and all I wanted to do was sleep—no running, no playing, just staying curled up in my bed. I woke up screaming one afternoon, blood gushing out of my nose. My mother tried to calm me, pinching my nose with a handkerchief, saying that lots of children got nose bleeds for unexplained reasons. She was trying to calm herself. After two days of running faucets of water, encouraging me to go “number one” she faced her fears and took me to the doctor. Doctors and parents don’t explain all the pills and hospitals to seven-year-olds. I suppose there is some reasoning in this. I wouldn’t have understood red blood cells and high blood pressure and dialysis even if they had tried to explain it. It’s strange how a stolen library book can say it so plainly. The progression to acute kidney failure occurs in about half of all cases of HUS, and I was a part of that half. Two days before my eighth birthday, I woke up in a hospital bed with Martin in the bed beside me, his kidney now in the place of mine, a decision that had neither been explained nor discussed since. I was just expected to live with the pills, supplements, special diets, a father who hid behind the will of God, a frazzled and frightened mother, and a brother who resented me. I searched the pages for an answer to my mother dilemma, and what do you know? Good old Childhood Ailments of the Kidney provided me with one: Adults and siblings will undoubtedly increase in stress and conflict. Couples sometimes report increased tension in their marriage when a child is sick and feel the overpowering need to protect said child. Siblings may feel resentment over the huge amount of attention given to their sibling and guilt over thinking bad thoughts about the sick child. I turned the stiff page, but that was all, the end of the family section. Nothing about the healthy sibling who gives up his kidney for his sick seven-year-old sister. *** My mother stood at the bottom of the stairs—a water glass in one hand, two oblong- shaped pills in the other—as I skipped down to her, my book tucked beneath my arm.

“One step at a time, Sarah!” she exclaimed. “What would happen if you fell?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at the thin poles-for-legs sticking out of my denim shorts. “I’d get back up.” “No, you’d probably break a bone and then what?” My stare was hollow, and apparently disturbing, as she dropped her inverted smile and shook her head. “You know you’re supposed to take these right after lunch. Hiding behind that book all day is no excuse.” I smiled at her as I grabbed the pills out of her hand and gulped down the water before skipping the rest of the way down our hardwood hall. I always loved the sound it made—like I was a pony clip-clopping down cobblestone streets. My reflection caught my eye as I danced past the large decorative mirror in the hall. With a thin, sunken face and protruding nose I could have very well passed for a horse. I slowed my pace as I headed down the steps and across the grass to the garage. The ricketiness of the barn-like building was even more obvious in the morning light. Flakes of red fluttered in the breeze, clinging to splinters of wood. The banging and scraping of metal had been coming from inside since after breakfast. Martin was doing his best to avoid our father, not even so much as a nod to him during breakfast and now making as much noise as possible to drown out any parental calls from the house. I placed my book behind the wood pile at the side of the garage and started to climb up the large stumps to get a good peek through the uneven boards. Just as I was about in position, I looked back to see my father, quickstepping across the lawn towards me. I ducked behind the logs and watched as he stopped at the front, standing in the opening of the enormous double doors. “We need to talk,” I heard him shout. My eye focused on Martin’s form, watching as he pounded a few more licks into the sheet metal. He threw it to the side and turned around, his back blocking my father’s face from view. I could only imagine the stare Martin was giving him, that blank poker face of indifference. “You were supposed to save that money for school. We decided—”. “No, you decided,” Martin snapped. “Southwest Baptist is expensive.” Martin turned back to face his piece of battered sheet metal. “I’m not goin’ to some preacher-boy school in Missouri.”

I could see my father’s face now. His mouth was turned downward, pearls of moisture were forming on his balding head from the afternoon heat, but his eyes were fixed on Martin. “That’s where people who want to be preachers tend to go. That’s where I went.” Martin grabbed his piece of precious metal and sat it at the foot of a large gray tarp. “I don’t want to go to college or seminary. For the one-hundredth time, I do not want to be a preacher! This is what I want to do,” he said, waving his arms out and into the air. Daddy squinted at him and then looked around the garage. “You want to do what?” “Work on cars, be a mechanic. Maybe I’ll have my own shop.” Martin crossed his arms, straightening his body with the word “shop.” Daddy shook his head, dropping his shoulders as he turned his back towards Martin. “I’m offering you a chance to go to college—to really do something with your life—and all you want to be is a mechanic!” His voice was in his Sunday shout. He whipped around to look back at Martin. “Why can’t I do what I want to do!” Martin retorted. There was a large bang as he slammed his foot into whatever was beneath that great tarp. “Because it’s never the right thing!” Daddy yelled and then marched out. I flattened my body against the side of the garage when my father walked by, as if I were a roach trying to squeeze through the floorboards in an effort to escape a fluorescent kitchen light. “I just want him to do something right for once,” he mumbled, talking up at the sky. My body slithered down the side of the building. I craned my thin neck in order to peek around the corner when I reached the entrance of the garage. Martin hovered over a pile of wires and pipes and hoses, bending down to scoop up two arms full of the metal pieces. His bare back was covered in sweat and grease as he turned, walking towards me and out the large double doors, I could see the scar on his side, the one that matched mine. I ran my own hand down the side of my torso, trying to locate the similar brand beneath the thin hand-me-down shirt. It hung on my body like a pink sheet blowing on a clothes line. I felt a slight breeze as Martin brushed by me. He said nothing, maintaining a concentrated stare on the piles of metal he was creating. I, on the other hand, had the sudden urge to make my presence known. I walked over to the pile of car parts and grabbed onto a long piece of metal, black and slick with grease. My arms pulled upwards but nothing moved. I let out a little grunt and Martin turned around to look at me. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Helping,” I said, my hands still wrapped around that piece he had been banging on. I realized it was a piece of a door, as I yanked and flexed like a determined weight lifter. Martin crinkled his brow as his light eyebrows rose. “Yeah, right. Put that down before you hurt yourself and my ass gets nailed to the wall—again.” He swatted my hands off of the metal and pushed me back with a firm hand that felt as if it could collapse my chest and lungs if pressed too hard. I backed up against the flat door. “Well, where is it?” I asked. A smile crept across his face as he stuck out his right pointer finger and motioned down the barn at the large, tattered tarp. He nodded and walked towards it, whipping it off as if he were twirling a magician’s cape to reveal a huge four-door sedan with rust running down the hood and sides where racing stripes should be. The Oldsmobile symbol was tied on the hood with a bent wire, yellow foam was pouring out of the upholstery like cheese wiz, and the headliner was sagging practically down to the steering wheel. Martin crossed his arms and leaned against his car, head cocked. “It looks old,” I said. Martin adjusted his body to my statement, rolling his eyes at my obvious stupidity. “It’s a ’72, a classic.” “It’s twelve years old—it’s as old as I am.” Martin sighed and walked back to his pile of cast offs. “Well, just you wait. It’ll be humming by tomorrow night.” “Why, you gonna drive us to church in it?” “No, I have a date with Claudia Carpenter.” Her name rose out of his throat with a slight hack as he placed extra emphasis on the C sounds in her name. “On a church night!” I exclaimed. “Boy, you are askin’ for it.” His eyes danced, any larger and I would have to say he was wild-eyed, as he looked over his shoulder at me. It was as if I was about to be given an insider secret. He whipped something out of his back pocket and handed it to me. “It will be well worth it,” he said in a staccato whisper. I looked down at the school picture of a girl with a slightly round, cheerful face framed by feathered waves of red hair. She could have been Charlie’s fourth angel, not that I was supposed to know what the other three looked like. My father considered it “lurid viewing.” I ran my fingers through my own coarse mane, wondering if I could ever be able to carry off that

look, if I could ever hope to have that hair—thick and bouncy. The green polo shirt with the little alligator on the chest complemented her expressive eyes, which seemed to be just as green and proportioned to her slight upturned nose, not sunken into her face. “Where are you two going?” I asked. “The drive-in.” My ears perked at the mention of the exotic place where you watched movies in your car and had popcorn and hot dogs delivered to your dashboard—at least those were the images I saw in old movies. “What are you going to see?” I asked. “Return of the Jedi,” Martin said as he lifted the hood on the Olds. “I saw it last year when it was at the Imperial so I won’t miss anything while we’re—.” He stopped himself short and stuck his head down into the engine, clanging within the bowls of the car. “Don’t you have some pills to take? Dinner will be ready soon.” “It’s only 5:00,” I said. “Well, I’m sure you have something to do.” I kicked my white Keds at the dirt floor, a puff of gray hovering and then covering them. “I’ve never been to the movies,” I mumbled. “Momma says movie theaters are full of germs— and sin.” “Of course you have,” Martin said, his voice vibrating off the top of the hood. “When? What did I see?” I was shocked that I could possibly forget a trip to the Imperial. I had seen pictures in the advertisements of red velvet seats and a ceiling that looked like the night sky. I had begged my mother to let me go to Ashley Davidson’s birthday party. She was having a movie theatre birthday—her own room at the theatre for the party and then everyone got to see a film with free popcorn. Every girl from church was going, but Momma had said no. Martin stood up and slammed down the hood. “Some Disney movie. The Rescuers I think. I don’t remember. I was too mad.” “Why?” “I wanted to see Star Wars but Momma thought it would scare you. Plus she said Darth Vader was a euphemism for Satan.” He threw his greasy rag into the junk pile and grabbed his t- shirt off the hook on the wall. “So I was the only nine-year-old guy watching a bunch of talking mice while Luke was blowing up the Death Star.”

I was always doing that to him—making him miss out—and he seemed to be calling me on it. I was the reason he missed Star Wars. I was the reason he couldn’t play on the baseball team in junior high, and by high school who wanted some loser who hadn’t played ball in three years. No special dispensations for organ donors. I was the reason that Martin, a perfectly healthy, active, ornery eleven-year-old boy had to have surgery. My mother calling my name pulled me out of my head, and I slinked out of the garage and towards the house, my arms swinging like ropes in a breeze and tripping over myself the whole way. I had my hand on the porch door handle when I heard Martin’s footsteps coming up behind me. “You wanna go for a test drive?” he asked. My fingers clutched the door handle. I could hear my father’s booming voice streaming from his open bedroom window. “Please turn in your Bibles to the sixth chapter of Ephesians. Starting with verse one. ‘Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.’” Could that really be tomorrow’s message? “I don’t guess so,” I finally said. Martin’s face didn’t change, didn’t recognize my answer. Then his eyes moved over my head and stared through the porch screen into the house, down the hall, at my mother working in the kitchen, getting out the eggs and flour, ready to whip up the batter for her homemade biscuits, of which I was only allowed one per meal. They were much too heavy for my small stomach. “Suit yourself,” he said at last. “Thought it might be fun.” He turned and walked back towards the garage. “Sarah, come help wash up the dishes for supper,” my mother called. I watched as Martin disappeared through the great doors of the listing building. Then I heard a rumbling. Not as loud as the other night, but still a muffled roar, a bull ready to charge out of its chute. Black exhaust floated in a cloud out the doors, like an enchanting mist. I didn’t answer her call but instead ran down the steps and across the yard towards the floating exhaust, not tripping a single time. *** We drove for about half a mile down our two-lane street before reaching the turn off for Highway 22. I looked out my window, brushing back the headliner that was obstructing my view of the road that weaved like a long black snake through green open pasture land. “Nothin’ coming from this direction,” I said. “Good,” Martin said as he threw the shifter into park and unsnapped his seat belt. The driver’s side door flew open with a screech as loud as a strangling chicken.

“Oh, are we gonna play Chinese fire drill?” I asked, kicking open my door. Martin pulled at the chest of his t-shirt. “Mature drivers don’t play Chinese fire drill.” The slam of my door rocked the Olds back and forth. I could hear it creaking on its frame. “We’re gonna switch,” he said, as I stood in front of him, leaning against his open door. “What do you mean, switch? I can’t drive; I’m only twelve!” I looked over at the empty driver’s seat. The wheel, the dashboard—the entire car was shaking and shuttering from the roar of that beast of an engine. Martin placed a large hand on the side of my head and gave me a shove towards the driver’s seat. “Then it’s time you learned.” I could barely reach the pedals as I held onto the steering wheel with a death grip, trying to line it up with the road in hopes this would send me on a straight forward motion. “Ten and two,” he said and I moved my hands up the steering wheel into what was closer to an eleven and one position. “Ten and two,” he said again, grabbing them. “Jesus, Sarah, can’t you even tell time!” “Only digital,” I said with a smile, shaking the pink plastic watch on my arm. Martin only frowned. “Gee, of course I can tell time!” The tip of my right foot found the pedal, and I watched as the speedometer went from zero to five and then to ten. The car seemed to crawl by the sign stating 55 MPH. “We’re on a state highway here, Sarah. Give her some gas!” Martin shouted. “This ain’t a Fisher-Price Oldsmobile!” I flexed my fingers around the steering wheel, pieces of chipping black paint sticking to my sweating hands. My teeth locked together, gritting back and forth, convincing me I was Richard Petty about to run my car up some poor suckers tail pipe, the black sedan about 100 feet down the road perhaps. “Ok, brother,” I hissed, stretching my leg down to the pedal, slamming all of my 80 pounds onto it. The car went careening forward and out of my lane. Martin tried to take the wheel from me, but my foot was glued to that little black pedal and I wasn’t about to give back the wheel. The little orange needle flew from the single-digit land on the left to over into the seventies. “Woo-hoo,” I squealed as telephone poles, trees, and cows grazing in their fields went by in blurs. Clouds of dust and gravel flew into the air as the left side tires left the blacktop. “Whoa,” Martin yelled, finally grabbing hold of the wheel, he yanked it to the right to avoid the oncoming fence poles.

“Martin!” I screamed, startled by his passenger seat driving. The car sped from the left shoulder of the highway, across the two lanes, and into green grass, a new set of fence posts headed straight for us. My foot was frozen on the gas pedal as the car roared into the first post, barb wire flying as the second post smashed onto the rusty hood. I jerked the wheel back in my direction, steering the car out of the row of fencing and back onto the highway. Martin wasn’t giving up that easy though. His leg sailed over mine and onto the brake pedal, bringing the car to a hard stop. His hands flew off the wheel and grabbed hold of the shifter, throwing it into park. I waited for him to whip around and commence yelling—or worse. But he just sat there, slouched over, hands holding onto the shifter as if it were the Holy Grail of life. “Why did you do that?” he finally asked, still not moving. “Do what?” I snapped, empowered by the moment of reckless endangerment. “You’re the one who sent us into the fence!” “Unbelievable!” he shouted, grabbing onto my pony-tail and yanking on it until I was back in the passenger’s seat. He surveyed the damage to the front of the car as he walked around to the driver’s side. “Well, nothing’ looks busted,” he said, throwing open the whining door. “How could you hurt this thing?” I retorted. Martin put the car back in drive and set us on a respectable speed of 50. “You’re startin’ to be a real smart ass, you know that?” he said as he eased his body back into the driver’s seat, guiding the car with just his right hand while the left one dangled out the window. He winked at me. “I like it.” I nodded my head to a silent beat as the smile exploded across my face. “So where we goin’?” *** From a distance it looked like a concrete fortress rising out of a flat plain of grass, casting a long shadow from the sun slowly sinking behind it, the Olds just one of several cars migrating towards the structure as we slowed in the line of traffic. I was about to ask Martin what the attraction was when I saw the red sign, “Meadowland Drive-In” with a big gold arrow pointing dead ahead. “Is that the drive-in you’re taking Claudia to?” I asked, craning my neck to read the billboards advertising two-for-a-dollar hot dogs and stereophonic sound right inside your car. “No,” he answered. “That’s the drive-in I’m taking you to.”

My head snapped to the left in order to better focus on him and what he was saying, my eyes growing as large as the giant ice cream cookies on the concession banner. Martin pulled out his wallet and handed over some bills to a short, balled man in a red and white striped suit, reminding me something of a walking peppermint drop. We pulled into a space right in the center—ideal viewing distance. “I can’t believe you brought me to the drive-in!” I squealed. Martin fumbled through his wallet for more money. “Well, I just want to test out the sound and…everything, you know, for tomorrow night,” he said as he hurriedly opened his door. “Now, you want somethin’ from the snack bar? We got about half an hour before the movie starts.” “Yeah, one of everything!” “How ‘bout we start with a hot dog and some popcorn.” The mega-bucket of buttered popcorn sat between us in the middle seat as I balanced a hot dog in my right hand and a 44-ounce Coke in my left, trying to decide which to put down first in order to grab some popcorn. I opted to release the hot dog, continuing to slurp the caramel-colored liquid as if the supply was never ending. It had been so long since I had tasted one. My mother was convinced the caffeine would stunt my growth, as if I could be anymore stunted than I was now. “I want one of those giant ice cream cookies next,” I said. “I don’t think so,” Martin responded, flinging popcorn kernels into his mouth. “Mom should have dinner done about now. I wonder what we were supposed to have.” “Who cares,” I laughed. “I want an ice cream cookie.” “No way! I gotta save some money for Claudia. My real date.” “Oh, and I suppose your scrawny little sister isn’t a real girl?” Martin looked at me with a sarcastic smile. “You said it, not me.” I smiled back, placed the bucket of popcorn on the floor of the car, and punched him in the side, right in the kidney spot. It was a playful punch, but it had all of my weak muscle packed into it. “Damn it, Sarah!” he exclaimed, rolling over into a ball. He clutched his side, coughing and moaning. “Martin, I’m so sorry.” My hands started to rub his back, as if somehow this would help. “I really didn’t mean to.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, he snapped back up like a Slinky on the end of its journey down a long flight of stares. “Gotcha!” he shouted, waves of laughter rolling out of him. “God, I thought you were gonna cry there for a minute.” I grabbed the bowl of popcorn off the floor and placed it in my lap, doing my best to balance it on my boney legs. My eyes focused on the yellow, fluffy kernels as my fingers started to flick them around the bowl. “I am sorry.” Martin let out a huff of air. “I was kidding! Gee, Sarah. Don’t be such a cry baby.” “No, I mean I’m sorry for…everything.” His hand appeared in the popcorn bowl alongside mine. Thick, blistered fingers slipped over mine, then retreated with a palm-full of buttery kernels. “It’s not your fault,” he said before jamming the handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Isn’t it? Losing your kidney, missing baseball, getting held back a grade in school, that scar.” I pulled at his shirt where I had just landed my punch. “You’re the one who almost died.” “So did you!” “What! Who told you that junk?” he asked. I only shrugged my shoulders. “I got an infection and missed too many days of school so they held me back. What of it?” Pieces of popcorn stuck between my teeth as I rolled a pile around in my mouth. “Do you think I’m an invalid?” I asked, a few pieces of popcorn spraying out of my mouth. “Shush, the movie’s starting,” Martin answered as a blast of trumpets filled the Olds. Huge yellow letters marched up the star-filled screen—‘Episode IX: Return of the Jedi’—and lit up the sky that was the perfect shade of late spring darkness. My body leaned forward onto the dashboard, as if it could be sucked out into the galaxy of far, far away at any second. *** “So Darth Vader is Luke’s father? How is that possible?” I asked in disbelief between slurps of my Icy. Martin had consented to one small, frozen treat on our way out. “When I’ve got a couple of free hours I’ll explain it, but I think you’ve received enough Jedi power…for one day.” Martin’s words slowed as he reached back to fasten his safety belt, seeing the lights of a police car up ahead. I buckled mine as well as Martin coasted the Olds back down to the speed limit, and then to a harsh stop. About six cars were parked along side the road, their headlights illuminating the scene. A black and white cow charged down the highway with two men in hot pursuit, their arms waving. It nearly side swiped us as one man

kept after it. The other, dressed in black pants; white dress shirt; and wire-rimmed glasses, stopped at our car. “Where have you been all evening?” I heard my father’s voice before I saw his face. I reached up to turn on the dome light, the sickly yellow glow barely lighting up the interior. He placed his hands on the side of the car. “Your mother about had a conniption fit when she couldn’t find you.” He pointed a finger at me. Martin looked up at my father, their faces inches apart. “What happened, Daddy?” “Somebody wiped out Mr. Dobson’s fence, didn’t even stop,” my father answered in his booming voice. Every conversation seemed to be a warm-up for Sunday sermon. “Mr. Dobson was over in the south pasture. Said it looked like a gray sedan—ran clear off the road and through his fence. You two see anything when you drove by?” “No sir,” Martin answered. A slight grin came across my father’s face as he cocked his head to the left. “Sure,” he said. “I was just askin’ of course. We’ve been out here, tryin’ to round up cows since before sunset, even got the police in on the fun.” His voice was starting to drop. It was getting on towards the serious part of the sermon. “Now, where have you been?” Martin turned his head to look at the scene of cows, cops and farmers roaming up and down the highway, drifting in and out of the gaze of headlights. “We really haven’t been gone that long.” “Just answer me!” “The movies!” Martin shouted back. The sweat on my father’s head seemed to mystically disappear, dried by the heat of his reddening face. “And did you ask your mother or father if you could shirk you chores and take your little sister without permission to the movies in a rickety car you never asked us about in the first place?” He was pacing by this time, back and forth from hood to trunk, drifting in and out of view. “Well, let’s have it,” he said, slamming his fist into the hood. “What piece of vile did you see?” Martin just looked past him, shrugging his shoulders. Daddy walked back up to Martin’s window, dipped his head down into the car. His now black eyes focused on me. “Sarah, what movie did you go see?”

I looked at Martin, hoping for a signal—a cough, nod, wink—some sort of code to tell me what my answer should be. Should I tell the truth or join Martin in his lies? He never flinched, just continued to stare out the windshield. “Return of the Jedi,” I mumbled, quickly looking down at my boney fingers, locked together. My father stood up, his head disappearing above the sightline of the window. “I told you I didn’t want you watching those demonic films, and you took your sister to boot!” His voice boomed. The people up ahead had stopped chasing after the cows, finding the show in the gray Oldsmobile to be more entertaining. “Yeah, I guess she’ll just have to go to hell with me instead of goin’ on to glory with you and mom.” Martin raised his hands in a halleluiah praise as he said it. My whole body cringed as I heard my father’s hand land across Martin’s face. His head flew back against the brown upholstered seat, and his hands latched onto the steering wheel. I had a feeling he wanted to slam his foot on the gas, the hell with the police cars or farmers or cows he might run over in the process. My father’s face was out of sight, blocked by the roof of the car as he stood straight up, but I could hear him, breaths slow and deep, raspy like the villain I had just seen on the movie screen, floating about in the darkness. I wasn’t sure he was going to say anymore, or that he even could. “You better pray that God and I can forgive you.” The words rained down like a final judgment from on high. “Now take your sister home. Her mother’s worried sick.” I watched his rigid body, like that of a starched general, march away from the car, his arms waving as they often did on Sunday mornings, but this time in the faces of cows and farmers. Martin managed to steer us through the cars and roaming cattle as I stared down into my lap, too scared, or guilty, to look over at him. “Should I have lied?” I finally asked. “Told him another movie?” A slight hint of moisture was visible in the corner of his eye. He cleared his throat and choked in a big breath of air. “It wouldn’t have mattered. After all, Mickey Mouse is just as much an agent of the devil as Darth Vader is, right?” I unhooked my seat belt and scooted myself into the middle seat, wrapping my arm around his middle. “What are you doin’?” he asked. “The girl sits in the middle, right?”

“What girl?” My cheek found a place on his shoulder as I looked up at him. “Like in the old movies. Your girl sits in the middle so you can put your arm around her. You’ll need this for tomorrow night.” He lifted his arm, ducking my head beneath it, and draping it over my shoulders. “I see. You’re my best girl, is that it?” I nodded and wiggled my body against his. “Martin, do you think I’m an invalid?” His rough hand patted and then pinched my arm. “You think I’m a liar who’s goin’ to hell?” That was the only answer I needed. The little orange needle was well past the 55 MPH limit now. I closed my eyes to feel the wind gush through the windows, hitting my face and blowing through my hair, giving it body. The engine growled all the louder with each increase of speed as the Olds devoured the asphalt strip running between the darkened fields and the night sky.

BURNT HOLES IN A BLANKET

I didn’t want a fake tree in the first place, certainly not a pre-lit, five-foot PVC scrub pine “with remarkable spinning motion.” Christmas tree shopping had always been about the crunch of fallen pine needles beneath my feet, the sweet stickiness of sap on my fingers, and Uncle Billy bargaining down the chainsaw wielding salesman. It was not about the Sears Holiday Department and “realistic” plastic pines capable of a complete 360 degree revolution. No, I wanted nothing to do with the cheesy thing that my grandmother had insisted be placed in the traditional corner reserved for a robust Fraser fir, so I found it doubly unfair that I was stuck with decorating detail along with my brother Kyle, or as I like to call him Runt. “Why aren’t Mom and Grandma helping us?” Kyle asked, wiping his oozing nose with his blue plaid sleeve. “Because things are different this year, Runt, or have you been too busy blowing snot all over the place to notice?” I pulled a pack of tissues from my black leather jacket. Orange flames shot up the smooth arms, lapping at the Harley-Davidson logos on each shoulder. Last year’s Christmas present from Uncle Billy still had that strong leather aroma, even after constant wear. Kyle gave his nose a good blow and then crawled toward the Christmas tree, fumbling through boxes of glass balls, ceramic angels, and wooden gingerbread men as I searched for the perfect spot to hang a dancing porcelain lamb. A blue collar was painted around its neck and the word “Billy” written in all too feminine cursive on its side. Its female counterpart possessed a sweet closed mouth smile, pink bows in its ears and “Sharon,” my mother’s name, in pink lettering on its side. My grandmother had purchased the ornaments at a tourist gift shop in Gatlinburg in the 1970s. Uncle Billy always broke into a recitation of “Bah, Bah, Blacksheep” every year as he placed his lamb on the tree. “Well, we all decorated the tree before. It’s not fair,” Kyle mumbled. “And I was gonna get to ride the Harley this year. Uncle Billy said I’d be old enough. My wit of passage.” “Rite of passage, dummy,” I said, walking around the tree. “Fine, Miss Know-it-all. You got to ride the Harley tons of times, down the interstate even,” Kyle whined. I couldn’t argue with Runt there. I’d wrap my arms around Uncle Billy’s middle, so tight that first time that he told me to knock off the Heimlich maneuver grip. He’d rev the twin cam

vibrating the whole black cherry pearl frame of the bike, and then tear down my grandmother’s dirt driveway, my mom cringing every moment we were gone. She was convinced I’d wind up splattered all over the highway. As a nine-year-old it was my first taste of awesomely fun danger; by fifteen it was just bad ass cool to be seen on the back of a tricked out Harley, my arms wrapped around the chest of an older man. I hooked the blue ribbon of the lamb ornament onto my finger, zeroing in on the ideal limb, when the tree shifted to the right. I tried again, only to have the tree twirl on me, faster this time. Kyle smiled up at me and erupted with that wicked laughter that only eight-year-old little brothers possess. I grabbed onto a PVC limb and secured the lamb by its baby blue ribbon before Kyle commenced sending it on a twirling ride. “Knock it off, Runt,” I said, reaching down for some gold balls. “You’re not the boss of me,” he said, clicking the lever back and forth, sending the tree through a series of stuttering start-stop motions, until I heard a very distinct snap. It was like the sound of Uncle Billy breaking a pencil in half with just his thumb. He said he always got a jolt out of making people around him nervous. The tree came to a jerking halt. Kyle sat up, holding a yellow plastic lever in his hand. “What did you do, Runt?” I asked, grabbing the piece of broken plastic. I flattened onto my stomach and wiggled beneath the tree, trying to jam the piece back onto the naked screw that was sticking out of the base. At least I hoped that’s where it had come from. “Let me see,” Kyle said, yanking on my ponytail. “I can fix it. I’m a mechanical genius!” “You’re nothing but a screw up. Now get off my back,” I said, kicking my leg. It managed to find some part of Kyle’s anatomy, and he landed a firm punch back at me right between my shoulder blades. “Damn it, Runt!” I yelled, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and yanking him down beneath the tree. There was much grunting and wiggling on his part as I jammed his face into the scratchy lower branches of the tree, but I got a face-full as I felt the weight of the “realistic PVC branches securely held on a metal center pole” coming down on top of me. I crawled out of the branches and looked up at Kyle, who was looking down at Grandma’s pre-lit, spinning Chelsea pine, flat on its side. I lifted the greenery up to reveal shattered glass balls, fragmented angel wings, and

one fractured lamb, the split right down the middle of its body between the “L’s” in Billy’s name. “You smashed the tree!” Kyle said in a hissed whisper. “Who gives a shit about the tree? You broke Uncle Billy’s lamb!” “What was that?” The voice of my grandmother called from the kitchen, accompanied by several footsteps. I craned my neck to see her, followed by my mother, coming down the hall, and jammed the ornament into my back pocket. My grandmother pulled at the neck of her green turtleneck sweater, a reindeer pin made of brown beads and black buttons I had crafted in elementary school riding on her shoulder. “What…Why?” she exclaimed, as her hands landed on her curly, gray head. “Rebecca…” my mother growled. “Oh sure, blame me!” I snapped, making sure to point at Kyle. “You shoved me!” he yelled and punched me in the arm. My grandmother took a few steps forward. “What else?” she mumbled. She dropped her head, focusing her eyes on the floor. A long, wrinkled hand reached up to cover her mouth and she turned and quick stepped out of the room. “Clean it up!” I heard her say as she marched down the hall into the kitchen. Kyle crawled over to my mother, kneeling at her feet. He played up the innocent baby angle to a tee. “You should have helped us,” he said. She placed a hand on her hip and stared back at him, looking something like a mohair sweatered tea cup. “I’d think the two of you would be mature enough to decorate a Christmas tree.” “I think what Runt here is trying to say is wouldn’t you like to help us?” I crossed my arms and tilted my head, reminiscent of the pose my mother struck whenever she was trying to make a point. She met it with a much colder gaze. “You heard your grandmother, clean it up. I’m sick of irresponsible jokers who…” She looked around the room as if she were searching for the end of her sentence. “Just put that tree back up,” she said, and left the room. *** The methodical tapping on the back of the front passenger seat was beginning to grate on my nerves. “Knock it off, Runt,” I said, crossing my arms in my lap.

“Rebecca, do not call your brother that,” my mother ordered as she turned the car left onto Harney Road, just a mile up from my grandmother’s house on the dead end street. “You’re killing his self esteem.” “I’d rather just kill him.” She sighed. “You know, I really don’t believe you two. Your grandmother was crying in her bedroom, you know that?” “We put the tree back up didn’t we?” “Come on Rebecca. Show a little more understanding and just humor her. She’s suffered enough this last year.” I slipped my hand inside my coat and caressed the two pieces of the lamb ornament. Why did we have to pretend she was the only one who was suffering? Kyle and I had to walk on egg shells last Christmas for Grandma, expected to sit patiently with our unopened presents in our laps as she went on about how nutmeg reminded her of Grandpa or smile awkwardly as she hugged us too long and cried. By noon on Christmas Day she had retreated to the bedroom she had shared with him as my mom and Uncle Billy verbally fought it out in the dining room over life insurance, funeral expenses, and, eventually, the will. I couldn’t even look at Kyle sitting in front of the ornate fir tree as a barrage of words I knew he wasn’t suppose to hear spewed from my uncle’s mouth. A slam and the shattering of glass had us both running down the hall to see my mom staring out the back door, its glass frame shattered by a slam so hard it had shook the body of my Grandmother’s little frame house. The Harley’s engine roared as Uncle Billy peeled out of the driveway. The ten-pound turkey was still cooking in the oven. “I guess we should talk punishment.” My mom broke into my thoughts with the dreaded “P” word, her rose-nailed fingers tapping the steering wheel as she deliberated. “You’re both grounded. Kyle for a week, Rebecca until Christmas.” “Why do I get a longer punishment?” I shouted. “You’re older; you’re supposed to know better and be an example.” “Oh, like you were to Billy?” I grounded my teeth into my bottom lip. Mom hit the brakes ten feet in front of the stop sign. She took her hands off the wheel and looked at me. “What is that supposed to mean?” I wasn’t sure. She was, after all, his big sister. She had lived clean, stayed honest, and “honored her commitments,” as she liked to say, especially when discussing Uncle Billy. Was she somehow responsible for his mistakes? An SUV pulled up behind us and laid on the horn.

Mom stepped on the gas and the Buick lumbered up to the four way stop, the same time as a man on a little red Harley Sportster. I watched her hands grip and release the steering wheel again and again. The man waved a gloved hand at her to go ahead, but she only stared back at him until he drove through, the baby Harley attempting a roar. “I mean, even though I’m grounded for two weeks, can I still go to the Jingle Hog Ride?” I asked as she pulled the car forward. “What? No! You’re grounded” she said. “Besides, you don’t have anyone to ride with.” “Uncle Billy’s friends will be there. I can ride with one of them.” “Another good reason why you’re not going,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Oh, and what are you afraid of? That Karl might have talked to him? Mike might actually mention his name? You and Grandma sure won’t.” Kyle popped his head in between the two front seats. “Who’s talked to Uncle Billy? Can I ride the Harley after all?” “Nobody’s talked to Billy,” my mother snapped. “And you’re not going to Jingle Hog and nobody will be riding any Harleys—period.” *** The main drag lined with turn of the century brick store fronts between Jefferson and Ball Streets was filled with a deafening hum, as if a swarm of bees on steroids had come to town, idling right in the middle of Marion Avenue. I cruised down the sidewalk past the sausage vendors and jewelry booths in my Harley jacket and red jeans, matching bandana tied up in my brown hair. I had slipped out the porch door while Mom was yakking away on the phone. She had probably figured out by now that I was gone, and I’m sure she knew exactly where I was. If she wanted to prove her point that bad she could come get me. I couldn’t give a shit. She never did get this side of Uncle Billy, didn’t understand what it was like to straddle a thundering Harley, the wind blowing so hard it could peel your face right off. The December sunshine bounced off the line of chrome as I walked through the tattooed and leather-clad crowd looking for Karl and Mike. I spotted a Heritage Softail at the end of the roped-off street. Silver studded black leather saddle bags, dual chrome exhaust pipes, king-size windshield—the spitting image of Uncle Billy’s bike, only in black. A man in a black vest, his arms bare and red from the sun, stood beside the bike. A pony tail, not as long as Uncle Billy’s but nearly the same outdoorsman blond, draped down the center of his back.

I reached up and gave it a pull. “Hi ya, Mike!” The man whirled around, a soft grin spreading across his leathered face. “Well hey there, Becs,” he said, taking a sip of beer. “Didn’t think I’d see you here. Karl! Look who’s here!” He waved past me, and I turned to see a clean cut guy sporting a bomber jacket and aviator glasses come trotting across the street, dodging the constant flow of motorcycles. “No way!” Karl said, removing the glasses to reveal a set of dark blue eyes. Two pools you could dive into. “Yeah, it’s me,” I smiled, spreading my arms and twirling around. “Just a year older.” “Looks like it’s been one hell of a year,” Karl said, giving my bandana a tug. “So what’s up, Becs?” “Oh, nothing, nothing.” I twisted the end of the bandana around my finger. “What about you guys? Anything…new with you?” Karl shifted his eyes towards Mike, who took another sip of beer. He rolled the liquid around in his mouth for several seconds. “I talked to him, oh…three months ago,” he said, crumpling the silver can in his fist. I stuffed my hands inside my jacket. My left hand fingers touched the smooth, cool porcelain of the lamb. “What did he say?” I rocked back and forth on my heals, my toes squirming inside my boots. Mike crinkled his nose and snorted. “Said the air in Colorado was thin and clean, so clean that it made his chest ache. And that he was gonna call your grandma. Did he?” “If he did, she never said anything, at least not to me. Was that all?” “That was all. They only allow you so much time to talk in rehab you know.” “Well, how did he sound?” I asked, hoping to get something. Mike pitched the beer can into a trash bin. “Sober.” I looked down at my boots and kicked at a little brown centipede crawling across the sidewalk. Karl slammed his hand down on the seat off the bike. “So how ‘bout a ride, Becs? This is the Jingle Hog Ride.” He whipped a set of keys out of his jacket. “Isn’t this Mike’s bike?” I asked. “Nope, I sold it to this punk,” Mike said, punching Karl in the shoulder. “And at a friendly discount to boot!”

I looked at the bike, the echo of my mother’s “nobody is riding a Harley” somewhere off in the distance. “You bet I want a ride,” I said. Karl took the silver open-faced helmet off the passenger back rest and held it out to me. “A helmet? What do I look like, a six-year-old?” “No, just a fifteen-year-old,” Karl said. “Underage girls wear helmets when they’re with me.” I resisted the urge to make a dirty crack as I snapped on the helmet. We headed down the small one way streets of downtown towards the highway—the four-lane, as Uncle Billy called it. I wrapped my arms around Karl and placed my face against his soft, leather-covered back. The wind rippled through the short strands of his black hair, blowing the fragrance of Old Spice into my nostrils. I was nine-years-old again, and on that first ride on the interstate with Uncle Billy, my legs tucked against the leather saddle bags, fingers clinging to his jacket. “We’re not going that fast,” Karl yelled. “You can lean back.” “Do you want me to?” I called. I saw his smile in the mirror. He throttled the bike forward, hugging curves as if we were on a Honda Sport bike rather than a Harley. I closed my eyes and let my body move with the shifts of the bike, my thighs squeezing the back seat. Until something jerked me down. I felt the bike go opposite me, the asphalt tearing at my clothes as my body skidded along the road. I heard the crunching, grating of metal and the deep base of a truck horn as I rolled and then lunged towards the dirt shoulder of the road. I opened my eyes to see the bike at the side of the road, the windshield shattered, the sleek black front fender hanging by one twisted piece of metal. *** The doctor said the arm was broken in two places. I wished it had been my head; then I wouldn’t have to face my mother. Damn that Karl and his helmet! He came through relatively unscathed—a couple of cracked ribs and a skinned up face. My mother slammed through the swinging emergency room doors. Her eyes seemed drained and relieved when she looked at me. She asked polite, short questions of the doctor and only nodded her head as Karl apologized again and again. There was no sobbing or dramatics, no yelling or lecturing. She took my ripped jacket—mud caked onto the shooting flames—and led me to the car by my good arm for the fifteen minute ride of silence. “Cool! A hot pink cast!” Kyle said as I stumbled through the front door. “Can I sign it?”

“Kyle, go to your room,” my mother said, giving him a helpful push down the hall. She stood with her back to me, arms crossed as I lowered my aching body onto the love seat in our living room. “So, what’s next?” She clapped her hands together. “You’ve got the bad ass attitude down, the motorcycle riding—I should say crashing—so do I need to keep a look out for missing bottles from the liquor cabinet?” Her voice was rising. “Or check my wallet to be sure all my credit cards are there?” “Mom, I’m sor—“ “No, Rebecca. I’m not going to play this game again, not with you.” She fell back into the flowered couch opposite the love seat. “Well you can always just run me off too,” I retorted, staring hard back into her face. “You run everybody off—Daddy, Billy, so I ought a just leave too!” Her mouth was slightly open now, head shaking, almost quivering back and forth. “God, Rebecca, is that what you think? They left because…that’s what guys who are losers do—they leave when life actually gets difficult!” “That is not true!” I jumped to my feet, the sore collar bone throbbing in my chest as I shouted the words. “Billy wouldn’t have left if you hadn’t pulled all that shit last Christmas— talking about money and debt, I mean, right after Grandpa died! He wouldn’t have said all those things if you would’ve just let us had Christmas. You’re the reason he left!” The finger of my right hand was pointing at her, jabbing in the air like a frantic spear. “Rebecca, he went off like that because he was drunk, and he’s been a drunk ever since! Maybe longer.” She was on her feet now, staring me down from across the coffee table. We were perfectly matched in height and anger. “Why can’t you just accept that?” “He was hurting and you didn’t do a damn thing about it, Mother.” In a swift reflex, my hand went from an accusing pointer to an open fist, smacking my mother across the face. Her head snapped back, but it was my wind that was knocked out, breathless when there was so much more that I wanted to blame her for, as I watched her sink back into the couch. She looked down at her loafers as little drops of liquid started to fall on them, her head quivering. I grabbed my jacket from the love seat and headed towards the stairs, slower than the quick-step march that was running through my mind. “Do you need any help with your clothes?” she called. “Not from you.”

I heard her start to sob as I shut my door. I reached into the pocket of my jacket and pulled out the lamb, now in three pieces—the back legs broken off. Even the lamb’s face seemed scratched, the mouth faded. The pieces made a soft “ping” as I placed them in the waste basket, throwing the shredded jacket over top. *** Grandma was shaken by my wreck, loading my plate with extra helpings of Christmas morning pancakes. She kept staring at me with hollow eyes as if I could keel over without a moment’s notice. She slapped on an extra big smile and pretended to be festive whenever she caught me staring back. Mom avoided my gaze altogether. Kyle got his wish, signing Runt on my cast in his horrendous third grade cursive. “You’ll know it’s from me,” he said, folding his arms on the table. “That’s a very good point, Kyle,” my mother said. “Your sister knows tons of Kyles but very few Runts.” He jumped out of his seat, grabbed his syrup-covered fork and knife, and commenced banging them on the table to the chant of, “Time for presents, time for presents.” But the rumbling of a car’s engine caused him to drop the utensils. He craned his neck to look around my mother and out the dining room window. “Who’s that?” he asked, squinting his eyes. We all turned to look out the window at a taxi cab rolling to a stop in the driveway. A tall, thin man with short sandy blond hair got out of the back. I was still trying to focus on him when Kyle shouted, “It’s Uncle Billy!” and ran from the table out the front door. I didn’t quite buy it until I saw Kyle leap into the man’s arms and that big, toothy grin spread across Uncle Billy’s face. My grandmother drew her hands up to her chest, then her face, then her head before spinning around in several tight circles, her Christmas tree necklace twirling out from her body. My mother didn’t flinch. She only watched as her son yipped and jumped and punched at the man standing in her mother’s driveway. I sprang from my chair and hugged my grandmother, nearly knocking her in the head with my cast. “I can’t believe he came!” I squealed and ran towards the door, throwing it open as Uncle Billy reached the front step, Kyle over his shoulder like a kicking sack of potatoes. I put my arm around him as he dropped Kyle in the hall. It seemed as if there was less of him to hug than before, his stomach and chest thinner than the body I had held onto while on the back of his motorcycle. I squeezed him as hard as I could. There was no pony tail streaming down

his back. His hair was cut close to his head. As dark as his brown eyes were, I thought they seemed clouded. “Well, I guess that answers the question of are you ok,” he said, pulling me back. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, trying to hide the cast-clad arm at my side. “Karl called, the dumb-ass. I got a mind to beat the shi—”. He saw my mother standing behind me. “The crap out of him.” She looked him over for several seconds and then headed back into the kitchen. The three of us followed her. My grandmother stood at the kitchen sink, her left hand clutching the counter. “Merry Christmas, Momma,” he said, stopping a few feet away from her. She took a step forward but couldn’t release her grip on the counter. She wobbled back and forth for several seconds. “I…I…well, we…didn’t think we’d see you.” He took a few more steps towards her. “I came when I heard about Becs here, or that’s my excuse anyway.” He looked down at the tips of his sneakers sticking out of the bottom of his baggy denim cargo pants. I had no idea he owned anything besides boots. She raised her hand to his clean shaven face. “You never need an excuse to come home. Do you want something to eat?” “No, no, I’m good.” “Do you want something to drink?” my mother asked. He looked over at her. It was the look I gave Kyle whenever he said something stupid. I was tempted to shoot it in my mother’s direction, but it was easier to just not look at her at all. “Milk, coffee, tea, water?” she continued. Uncle Billy walked over to the table and gave her a half smile. “Nope, I’m good.” He lowered his body into the chair Kyle had been in. He rubbed his hands down his face, from his forehead to his cheeks and up again, and then he nodded his head, as if he were agreeing with himself. “I’m good,” he said again. He placed his hands on the table in front of him. They had always been huge, his long fingers able to snag the basketball away from me in one quick swoop when we used to play one-on-one in the driveway. Now those fingers seemed bony and crooked, that they could break in two if I were to hold his hand too tight. And they were shaking. “For seventeen days now,” he continued. He was still staring into my mother’s face. “At least that’s how many I count—seventeen days since they let me out.”

“You’ve been out for over two weeks? Why didn’t you come home?” I asked, lowering myself into a chair across the table. “Yeah, why didn’t you bring the Harley?” Kyle asked, bouncing onto his lap. “You promised I could ride?” “I’m sorry buddy, but I sold it.” “You sold your Harley?” I asked. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle had been his only form of transportation my entire life. He’d once said that cars were for soccer moms and little old ladies. “But you loved that bike!” “I needed the money more than the bike,” he said. “I had…bills to pay.” He looked over at my mother again, but her face hadn’t budged. Her mouth was still tight, eyes concentrated on him. “Well, we were just about to open presents,” my grandmother said, walking in to stand between the two of them. “I didn’t bring any,” he said, rubbing Kyle’s head with his hand. Kyle wiggled out of Uncle Billy’s lap and slouched into the chair next to him. He looked back at Uncle Billy out of the tops of his eyes. “You didn’t bring anything?” I shot a scolding-big-sister stare at him, but I had the same question running through my mind. Uncle Billy had always been our Santa. Every year, he would stride into Grandma’s living room—his boot-clad feet stomping down the hall—wearing his leather jacket, red bandana tied around his head and a Santa beard on his face. He would always have a black garbage bag thrown over his shoulder. That was his Santa satchel. He never wrapped our presents in paper or ribbons, but would slowly pull them out of the black Hefty bag. It was a grand unveiling, complete with our squeals of approval. It was the way he had given me my jacket. He had kissed me on the cheek as he placed it on my shoulders. “Sorry, buddy,” he said to Kyle. “I had some Scrooges who just didn’t care that it was Christmas. There wasn’t anything left for presents.” “Scrooges, huh?” my mother snickered. “I guess not all of us Scrooges will be getting paid this Christmas then.” Uncle Billy patted Kyle’s head and got to his feet, the shaking in hands more pronounced now. “I know I still have some debts to pay off, but it’s Christmas, no money today, huh?” Mom jumped to her feet as if she had been kicked right in the ass, brushing past Uncle Billy and then stopping at the kitchen sink. She stared out the window above it into my

grandmother’s backyard. “Yeah,” she said, in whisper. “Nobody wants a repeat of last Christmas.” She turned her head to find my stare, the first time I’d really looked at her all morning. Uncle Billy threw back his head, running his now still hands through his hair, a sarcastic smile spreading across his face. “God knows you said enough last year Sharon. But I forgive you. Hell, it’s Christmas, right guys?” His arms spread wide as if he was inviting us in for a victorious bear hug. Only Kyle took him up on his offer. Uncle Billy slapped him on the back as Kyle squealed “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.” “Give it a rest, Tiny Tim,” I said, crossing my arms as best I could. Uncle Billy winked at me. “Somebody’s got some Christmas attitude. Peace and goodwill is for sissies, huh Becs!” “She’s got attitude a plenty these days. Proud of that?” My mom had turned her whole body around now, back pressed against the counter, trying hard to keep herself planted there. She stuck out a finger in my direction. “Three days ago, the cops scraped your clone there out of the middle of the highway.” “God, Sharon, look at her.” He walked behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “She’s Becs; she’s fine. We’re not gonna talk about this now, ok?” A nervous giggle came out of Mom’s throat. “When should we talk about? When will we actually see you again?” His hands lifted from my shoulders. He wrinkled his nose and stuck his tongue out in little boy fashion before turning to face my mother. I wanted to jump from my seat and slap him, or at the very least scream at him—why are you doing this? Cut the bad ass routine; it isn’t so cool anymore. My mom crossed her arms, hands clenched onto the sides of her sweater. “When do I get payed off, huh Billy? How about Mike, for posting your bail, Momma for paying off your credit card bills?” “Sharon.” The word came out of my grandmother’s mouth in a squeak. “Do you really think writing out a check can fix everything?” She shook her head. “It’s not just about the money you took.” Uncle Billy was staring at the floor, watching his feet rock back and forth, his hands running through his hair, down his chest, popping in and out of his pockets as if he didn’t know

what to do with them. He looked up and shrugged at me; his eyes seemed almost black now. Two burnt holes in a blanket—that’s what Grandma had always called them. I stood up from the chair and took a few silent steps backwards, turned and walked down the hall towards the front room, my mother’s damnations filling the air, her voice shaking between shouts, cracking into a cry. She called my name to come back, but I didn’t need to listen. All of Uncle Billy’s big talk of the past ran through my head. “I once cracked a man’s skull just for thinkin’ about stealin’ my bike,” he had said one evening as I helped him wash the motorcycle. I was around ten at the time. He was on the ground, threading a rag through the spokes in the front wheel. He rubbed each one until it shined just the way he wanted. “When somebody throws shit at you, don’t stand there and catch it.” He looked up at me and winked. But somebody always had to catch his. I sat down on the couch and stared at the Christmas tree. It was tilting to the left, a few bent branches noticeable from this angle. All the lights seemed to work even though it wouldn’t spin. There were six packages beneath it. I could see the lamb with pink bows and my mother’s name hanging on its silky pink ribbon towards the top. Grandma had said nothing about its missing companion. “I got something for you.” Kyle was standing next to the couch. I ran my fingers through his hair, where Uncle Billy’s had been just a few minutes before. It was all sticking up like the quills of a disgruntled porcupine. “Do I want it though?” “You’ll like it,” he said and walked over to the tree. He pulled a wad of tissues—he was rich in those—out of his pocket, unwrapped them and stuck something on the tree. “Come see,” he said and waved me over. I walked up behind him and placed my chin on his head. There, between a plastic angel and a cotton ball snowman I had made when I was eight was Billy’s lamb, the smeared clear- coat of glue visible in the lights. The crack down the middle made a squiggle between the two “L’s” and the back legs were a bit crooked, but it was one whole lamb again. I lifted my chin off of his head. “How did you get that?” “I found it emptying the trash cans,” he said. “See, I fixed him.” He lifted his hand to touch the lamb’s face with his fingers. I could hear my uncle’s booming voice. Profanities were all he seemed to have in him. I turned my head to look down the hall. My grandmother was pacing, still pulling at the gaudy

green Christmas tree around her neck, while my mother was leaning at the table now, her hand slamming it whenever she couldn’t get the words she wanted out of her mouth. I placed my hand on Kyle’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You sure did fix him, better than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men any day.”

BEST DAUGHTER

The last place I ever thought of living was Florida. It was a place people visited for a week or two, or until their reddened flesh was peeling off like an onion’s skin—whichever came first. Even the rich and famous could only hack it for four or five months. Who besides Mickey Mouse, Swamp Skunk and Shamu actually lived in Florida? Free spirited beach bums with a penchant for painting pictures of palm trees and seascapes for one. As a kid that’s who I thought my mother was, an eccentric woman who was always in a paint smock living in a sunset pink house somewhere on a Florida beach and believed art was more precious than money. That was all a fun idea for a seven year old, but a decade on I was longing for a straight answer about the woman. I was at the kitchen table with my father, dining on his specialty—homemade chili with his secret hot sauce and corn bread—the last time I asked him about her. If you live in Georgia you’d better know how to bake cornbread. That was my contribution to the meal—a little brown on the bottom but I was getting better. He used it like a sponge, chasing the chili around in the bowl, the little yellow square absorbing until it was orange. He popped it into his mouth and rolled his eyes, his typical response to my questions of where my mother was at and why she left. He usually deflected my prodding about her with jokes and sarcasm and half-truths. The story on why my mother had left was understandably one-sided when my dad told it—she didn’t want to be married to “a junk man” who went around trying to turn other people’s trash into treasure. There was no future in it. My father was an antique dealer and auctioneer, so there was some truth to this. Things had been tough when I was a kid but neither of us were complaining now—a nice house on a piece of land outside Atlanta, private school, equestrian lessons. “If only she had stuck it out,” I had said. He had only grunted as he scraped the bowl dry with his spoon. Why she never tried to see me was something he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. The only thing he was clear about was where she was—Florida. Where in Florida was anybody’s guess, at least to hear him tell it. The story always changed—a nurse in St. Petersburg, a cocktail waitress in Daytona Beach, a writer’s mistress in Key West, maybe even a painter with a gallery on South Beach. “I don’t know where, Lindy,” he finally conceded. That was his nickname for me after I came home crying from third grade that Linda was a boring name that nobody cared for. “People

go down there to escape from the rest of the world, mainly themselves. Paradise they call it, but it ain’t. They try to build lives from palm trees and sand until a hurricane comes along and blows some sense into them.” I just continued to stare up at him, at his round eyes and flat nose that looked just like the ones on my face. Underneath his nose and mouth was a three-day old beard he was working on. I hoped if I stared long enough he would break down and tell me the truth this time. He sighed and placed his hand on my cheek. No matter how much he washed his hands, they always wreaked of the chemicals in varnish and paint thinner and all the other mixtures he used to refinish the antiques. “She’s not here with us, so who cares where she is.” He patted my cheek and headed for the TV room. “The Braves game starts in ten,” he called. He knew where she was; I was sure of it. I didn’t know if he was afraid that I could possibly choose her over him—he should have known me better than that—or if he was afraid that he might have to see her again if he told me. Whatever his reasons, that had been the end of it; his last mention of her. Maybe he just wanted more time, but there wasn’t enough of that. There wasn’t enough money or insurance either. Not even a will. Just a safe deposit box with some antique jewelry, which belonged to one of his clients, and an address book with the name and location of my mother. I boarded Delta flight 487 two days after my father’s funeral with everything I could get into one suitcase and a carry on, which wasn’t much. I was headed for Florida and the woman I had wondered about for so long. I felt cornered, contemplating if there was any way to jump from a moving plane without dying. I wished that I could just forget about her, forget that silly notion of a pink beach house that had walls lined with paintings of seashells and flamingos and beaches that stretched for miles against the sea. If she had hurt my father so much that he couldn’t even explain it to me, none of it could be true. But now I couldn’t forget her. I didn’t have any choice. *** Tampa was a decent enough city—nothing in size or traffic compared to Atlanta though. I could only see about six skyscrapers from the interstate, the old Chevy wagon finding every pot hole and uneven piece of pavement the under-construction road had to offer. I kept to my side of the vehicle—looking out the passenger window or straight ahead at the windshield, sure to avoid the silent woman to my left. She had looked like a frightened child, rather than a parent, when I had spotted her from the descending escalator. I had been afraid I wouldn’t know her, but she looked just like the girl inside my father’s wallet. The dirty blonde hair was cut shorter, closer to

her head now, with a tuft of bangs above her eyes. They seemed to blur between blue and hazel. Here in the car, they seemed to be in between, a cloudy gray. Those eyes seemed to look right over me as I had walked towards her through the crowd of business men glued to their cell phones, teenagers with duffels thrown over their shoulders, children calling “Mommy”. “Linda?” she’d asked. My name came out with a squeak. She looked around, as if she still wasn’t sure. “Yeah,” was all I had said. The land along the interstate was becoming sparser now as she drove further and further east—fewer Spanish-style buildings and high-rises, more open fields and little frame houses. She picked an exit and the rusty wagon sputtered down a two-lane road with checker-boards of houses and fields on either side. “Strawberries,” she said, pointing a finger at a field full of well defined aisles of a short green plant. “There are a few tomato patches, but most of those are down south.” The houses close to the road seemed rickety, abandoned, but the cars and plastic toys in overgrown yards argued otherwise. Then there were trailers, entire dead-end roads of them. These weren’t the manufactured-home kind. Some were up on cinder blocks without any lattice underneath. All of them seemed to have rusted aluminum shudders that hung crooked. “You don’t live in one of those, right?” “One of what?” She looked in my direction. “A trailer? Hell no! I’d live under a bridge first.” I smiled, still looking out my window so she couldn’t see. “Good,” I said. It was nice to know she had pride if nothing else. It was a house, cement block, like one big rectangular box. Inside was a couch with matching recliner, a coffee table and a 20-inch television. A light oak, upright piano was in the corner. “Do you play the piano?” she asked “No,” I said, staring at myself in the mirror that hung above the couch. “Do you?” I watched her reflection. She shrugged her shoulders and turned a bit pink. “No, I…I just thought it would be pretty. Your room’s right down there, at the end of the hall.” She pointed. “Your furniture’s not here yet so you’ll have to rough it tonight.” I followed her point down the hall. If halls have a minimum length requirement this one fell far short. Her room was on the right. I looked into mine. It felt like a claustrophobic cell and there wasn’t even anything in it yet. “I don’t think my stuff is going to fit in there.”

She walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder. This is the closest we had been to each other in fifteen years. I could feel her breath in my hair. I stepped forward into the room to put some distance between us. She must have sensed my annoyance because she stepped back. “Well,” and she paused. “We’ll just have to see when it gets here. Are you hungry? You must be hungry after the trip.” She turned and race-walked into the kitchen. “It was just an hour flight,” I said. “It is dinner time.” She stood at the refrigerator, that nervous child so eager to please. “I suppose.” “I know I should have something special,” she said. “But it was frantic this week at work and then cleaning up the place for you.” She opened the fridge and stared inside. You’d think I was her tenth grade English teacher who had just asked if she had her homework. I stood behind her, spotting a tub of butter, an egg carton, a package of deli turkey, a jar of spaghetti sauce. “I can fix us some pasta,” she said, closing the fridge door. “Or, you can take your pick.” She opened the freezer and pointed at the different Healthy Choice dinners stacked inside. There were at least eight of the green boxes. “I’m not really big on cooking.” I could have told her how Dad and I used to cook together, how he was a good cook. He didn’t mind cooking or washing clothes. Sometimes, he actually seemed to enjoy it, always whistling as he separated the darks and whites. He had plenty of recipes he could whip up from scratch—he had even baked a soufflé once. But I wasn’t gonna share any of them with her. We sat at the dinette there in the kitchen—no space for a real dining room. I decided on the baked lasagna while she had tuna casserole. “At least it’s summer,” she said after several minutes of silent chewing. “You won’t have to change schools in mid-semester.” “Hmm,” I grunted. “Have to start all over for my senior year though.” She picked at her food with the fork. “Did you have a lot of friends there, in Atlanta?” “It was Conyers, not Atlanta,” I said without looking up at her. “Sure, I had friends. I only lived there for nine years. That’s more than half my life.” I was sure she was staring at me, glaring I hoped. “Maybe you can meet some people this summer,” she said, her voice a little higher in pitch. “It won’t be as bad that way.”

I chased the lasagna around my plate, stabbed a too large piece of meat and shoved it into my mouth. She put down her fork and rubbed the back of her neck. She smiled and then reached for her glass of water. I could see her fingers shaking. “Any boyfriends?” she asked as she placed the glass back on the table. I rolled the meat around in my mouth. “A few.” Her smile widened, as if she had discovered buried treasure—something we could both relate to. “I think I went out with a different guy every week when I was in high school, that is, until I met your father. We were high school sweethearts.” Her happy chirping dropped to a softer tone. “Did he ever tell you that?” She seemed to be looking off into some invisible distance, getting all misty eyed. “He never mentioned it,” I answered. She nodded her head. “Well, we were. In fact…” Her voiced trailed off as she jumped up from the table and ran around the corner. She came back with a picture album. I watched as she flipped through the pages. All sorts of faces that I didn’t know flashed by. She pointed out a few—her sister who lived in Orlando and had a five-year-old son, her father who was in a nursing home in Lakeland, her mother who was in a cemetery in Lakeland. She was in a hurry though to get to a certain page. She stopped on one of my father, sporting long hair and a full mustache. She was beside him, her blonde hair straight and long like in the picture he had, and pregnant, from the looks of her belly. Her mouth was straight and her eyes that gray color they had been in the car. They were alert and definitely blue now. She pointed to a picture at the bottom of the page. She was smiling, a little, in this one with a chubby little baby in a white dress dotted by lady bugs sitting in her lap. It was me, probably six or seven months old, my toothless mouth opened wide, right arm outstretched towards the cameraman. It had to have been my father. “Isn’t that a cute one?” she said, nudging my arm as she stood next to me. I stared at her face in that picture, searching for a similarity, some evidence beyond the photograph that I was in fact hers. “That’s me,” I said, not really an answer to her question. Maybe I was still trying to convince myself, but I had indisputable evidence now. This strange woman really was my mother. I picked up my plate of half eaten lasagna and placed it by the sink. I leaned my body against the counter, as if I could fall over at any moment. “I…I’d like to

get a summer job, make some money for myself.” The words just fell out of my mouth. I was just saying anything. “Oh,” was all she said, and then a few seconds later, “Save up to get a car?” I shrugged. “Guess so. Dad was gonna get me one for graduation.” I heard her close the picture album, its slick pages collapsing on top of each other. “I’m kind of tired. I guess I’ll head to my room.” The legs of her chair squeaked against the vinyl floor as she stood up. I followed her into the front room. “You’ll have to sleep here on the couch tonight,” she said. “There are some sheets in the bathroom closet.” The red couch with green stripes crisscrossing its cushions was probably as old as me. The bottom cushion had a downward half-circle shape. “Okay,” I said with a sigh and headed across the room to the little hall. “Linda?” I stopped at the door to the bathroom when I heard my name. I looked back at her, sitting on the couch. “Is that what you like to be called, Linda?” I looked back at the bathroom door. My dad had sometimes expanded my nickname to Lindy-Lou, usually when I did something stupid, like the first time I did the laundry by myself and turned all his underwear pink. “Linda’s fine,” I said. “What should I call you?” “What would you like to call me?” I shrugged. What was I supposed to call her? “Estella,” she said. “Why don’t you just call me Estella?” When I first saw her name in the address book, I thought it puffed up and formal—Estella Johnston. I hadn’t expected it. I wondered if Johnston was her maiden name, why our name— Carlson—wasn’t good enough for her? “I’ll call you that then,” I said and walked into the bathroom covered by rose wallpaper and accented by pink towels. I shook my head as I looked at the lacy shower curtain dotted by rosebuds. A Pepto-Bismol nightmare. *** Estella knew a guy named Daniel who owned his own business and had a daughter “just my age,” as if I were a shy seven-year-old in need of an introductory push to make friends. We drove to his shop the next morning. It was about two miles from the house at an intersection that seemed significant in this little Tampa suburb—“suburb” being a stretch. There was a gas station on one corner and a lot full of wooden sheds and gazebos across from it. A red-lettered

sign hung on the fence: “Hand Carved, Hand Delivered.” We were on the corner with the giant smiling cow. A pink bonnet was on her head, a yellow daisy sticking out of it. The sign above her read, “Murphy’s Quality Cuts.” Flipping pre-cut meat for minimum wage was one thing, but actually hacking up a cow was entirely another. “You have a McDonalds in this town, don’t you?” I asked as Estella parked the wagon. “Right down the road.” She pointed. “Why?” “I’ve never had much of a desire to cut up cow carcasses.” She rolled her eyes. “You won’t have to cut up anything.” A sliver bell hanging on the door sounded as we walked in. The place smelled clean enough, like disinfecting bleach. Meat cases wrapped around every wall. A single cash register was by the door. Estella closed the door and the bell sounded again, causing a girl to pop up from behind the register. She smiled with teeth so white they were ready for a Crest White Strips commercial. Her long red hair was pulled back into a horse’s tail—much too long for any pony. “Hi, Estella,” she said, tossing the hair draped down her chest back over her shoulder. The baby blue polo shirt hugged her body the way all us flat-chested girls could only wish for. “He’s in the back; I’ll get him.” “First I want you to meet someone,” Estella said as she grabbed my hand and pulled me next to her. She put her arm around me. I tried to smile at the girl standing behind the counter, but Estella was making it difficult. “Kristen, this is Linda.” The red-headed girl smiled back, but my name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. Then Estella said it. “My daughter.” “Oh right!” Kristen exclaimed. The three of us stood there, smiling at one another for several seconds. “Well, where is your dad,” Estella finally broke in. “He should be in the back. Hey Joel!” she called. “Where’s my dad?” A sandy-haired boy emerged from behind a swinging door. His white shirt had stains of pink but an apron covered his jeans. He smiled at me. “Hey, I’m Joel,” he said, wiping his hand on his shirt before he extended it. “Linda,” I said. I tried to just grab his fingers, they seemed to be the cleanest part, but he latched onto my hand and squeezed—a “real handshake” was how my father would have described it. “Joel,” Kristen said again. “My dad? Where is he?”

“Oh he’s in the back,” he said continuing to smile at me. “I’ll get him,” and he released my numbing hand and disappeared through the swinging door with the diamond-shaped window. He returned with a tall, dark-haired man with a beard. A smile of straight white teeth just like Kristen’s contrasted his dark facial hair. He put his arm around Estella’s waste. “Hey, Baby, what brings you in?” he asked and kissed her on the cheek, then the neck. She giggled and batted at his hands on her hips, though not very hard. I looked over at Kristen. Her face seemed as red as her hair. I cleared my throat and the man looked up at me over Estella’s shoulder. “This must be the young lady you were expecting.” His words came out in a husky voice, the way my father would sometimes say “young lady” to me, a mock sternness. “Yep, this is Linda,” Estella replied. “And she’d like a job.” He crossed his arms and eyeballed me. In the blue plaid shirt, rolled up jeans and work boots he had all the appearance of a lumber jack rather than a butcher. That’s what I had called my father whenever he attempted the bearded look. The tall man asked me what I knew about meat; I told him “absolutely nothing.” He asked if I could operate a cash register; I never had but I was sure I could. He said he’d pay me two dollars above minimum wage but only if I didn’t work like a kid who was making minimum wage. That was fair. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his beard as he thought. My father had always said he grew a beard whenever he wanted to look like a thinking man. He lowered his hand from his beard and offered it to me. “You’re hired,” he said, and I took his hand, trying to give him my best “real” handshake. “Thank you, Mr. Murphy,” I said. My hand seemed to disappear inside his. He placed his other hand over both of them and said, “None of that mister stuff. Everybody calls me Daniel, except for the red-head over there.” He nodded at Kristen. “She has to call me Dad. Now, when can you start?” I shrugged my shoulders as he continued to grip my hand. “I guess as soon as you want.” “How about now?” I looked down at my clothes—slacks and my white dress shirt. I had thought I needed to look nice for the job interview. “Don’t worry,” Daniel said. “Working the register is a pretty clean job.” “Ok then.”

Estella’s entire face disappeared in her smile, as if she had just witnessed some great milestone in my life. “I’ll pick you up at five.” She placed both hands on my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I’m not sure what my face looked like, but I could feel it contorting with every second Estella left her lips against my cheek. Judging by the look on Kristen’s, it must have been something. Maybe Estella thought it would be safer giving me my first kiss in public. I didn’t even turn around to look at her; I couldn’t. I just waited for the little bell to ring, heralding her exit. Daniel coughed and then patted me on the shoulder. “Get her started, Joel,” he said as he walked through the swinging door and into the back. Joel was more than happy to accept the job as my trainer for meat cashier—scanners, bar codes, inventory, the business side of butchering. He flipped the scanner gun around in his hand as if it were a pistol and he was Matt Dillon at high noon in Dodge. I wanted to laugh—he looked like such a moron—but I figured any snickers would only encourage him, and that was the last thing he needed. “I can show her everything she needs to know,” Kristen said as she placed fresh-wrapped packages of pork loin into a case. “And who taught you everything you know?” Joel asked. Kristen didn’t answer, just continued to lay out the meat. “That’s right, I did,” he said, sticking his thumbs into his shirt to hold out invisible suspenders. Daniel came out with a box of chicken breasts for the poultry case. “Yep, Joel’s a veteran cashier,” he said, stacking the packages. “So good he promoted me to a machine operator.” “Moving to the back to cut up the meat is a promotion?” I asked, crossing my arms. “I don’t let just anyone cut up my meat,” Daniel said, breaking down the cardboard box. “It’s too dangerous for starters.” He held up his left hand. The ring finger was noticeably shorter than the rest. He leaned against the register and wiggled it in my face. There was a gold ring at the base. I looked up at him. “That didn’t wind up in somebody’s hamburger did it?” Joel let out a big laugh. “Nah, we swept it out with the other scraps.” Kristen giggled, her pony tail bobbing up and down. She seemed to be the giggling type. “Don’t pay any attention to them. They’re just show-offs.”

Joel took in a deep breath and puffed out his chest. “That’s what we men like to do,” he said in a mock deep voice. “Hmm, along with watching football and scratching yourselves.” I thought Kristen would bust into a fit of hysterics as soon as I said it. Her hair bounced against her back like a stretched bungee cord. She was practically howling. At least Joel knew it wasn’t that funny. He stood with his hands on his hips and exhaled all of the air. “Oh really!” “Don’t get all defensive. Linda’s exactly right.” Daniel winked at me and then walked through the swinging door. Kristen had managed to stop cackling and was now leaning on her elbows at the counter. “What’s the matter Linda? Had too much experience with men?” She raised her eyebrows on the word “experience.” I wasn’t sure just what she was fishing for, but I was pretty sure what she meant when she said “experience.” It wouldn’t have been my first word of choice, but then neither would “rookie.” I rolled my tongue around in my mouth, between my teeth. This was a chance though to get these two wide-eyed, giggling yokels out of my hair. “You mean have I had a few boyfriends?” I asked, punching my code into the register to see if I had it right. “Yeah, I guess so.” “How many is ‘a few’?” Joel asked. I shrugged. Asking a girl how many guys she’s been with is like asking a girl above a certain age how old she is. A guy with even half of a brain wouldn’t go there. “How many girlfriends have you had?” I heard Kristen snort—not a giggle but an actual nasal snicker this time. Joel teetered from one foot to the other, his hands stuck deep in his pants pockets. He was fumbling with the keys and sheepishly grinning. I remembered my dad’s only advice about guys: “If you’ve got ‘em fumblin’ you’re doing something right.” “It’s not nice to kiss and tell,” I said, pouting my bottom lip. “Do you have a boyfriend now?” he asked. I hoped he didn’t see my eye-roll. Obvious and subtle were two antonyms he had to have missed on the SAT. I decided to play it up though. “Yes and no,” I said, flipping my wrist back and forth. “You know how long distant relationships are. Besides, he’s an engineering major at Georgia Tech. Hasn’t got time for too much…romance.” I shut the cash drawer with my index finger. I wasn’t sure if Kristen bought it, but Joel seemed to. He conceded that I knew everything I needed to know—I assumed he met about the cash register—and stalked off to the back.

The rest of the day dragged on and I don’t know when the last time was that I was so happy to see 5:00. Kristen had spent the rest of the day smiling and giggling, which seemed to be what she was good at, while Joel had stayed in the back, in hiding. He was convinced I was either a snob or a slut—maybe both. I was craning my neck, trying to look out the glass door for Estella’s rickety wagon, when Daniel came up to me. “You rang up ten sales today without a glitch—not bad.” He nodded his head, bowing to me. “Thank you.” “Keep up the good work and you’ll do just fine.” He patted me on the shoulder. I heard the honk of a sick sounding horn, like a goose that had just been shot from the sky and was ready to be cooked. I looked out the door and saw the wagon. “That’s my ride,” I said and walked around the counter. Daniel’s hand was still on my shoulder. “We’re all glad you’re hear, Linda,” he said and bent down and gave me a hug, right in front of the glass door where Estella could see. I’m not sure if she had asked him to treat me with kid gloves or if he had taken it upon himself to audition for the part of stepfather. At any rate, I was glad when he finally let go, his bearded face scratching against mine as he stood up. *** “And how was the first day?” Estella was smiling. She hadn’t stopped smiling since I got into the car. “Ok,” I answered. “It’s an easy enough job.” “And Kristen? What did you think of her?” “I’m not really big on cheerleaders.” Estella laughed, something close to Kristen’s giggle. “She’s not a cheerleader! Where did you get that from?” “Could have fooled me. All she does is giggle and bounce around the store. That’s what most cheerleaders do—giggle and bounce.” “Don’t be silly. She’s a lovely girl.” I looked ahead out the windshield. “I’ve don’t want a sister.” Estella’s head snapped in my direction, her blue eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?” “Oh that’s right!” I threw my hands up in the air. “You wouldn’t marry Daniel. He’s already married!”

She looked back at the road. “He’s separated.” “Then why is he still wearing his wedding ring?” Her fingers flexed around the steering wheel. “You’ll have to ask him sometime. So what did you think of Daniel?” Her whole face lit up when she said his name. I didn’t even need to look at her mouth; her eyes were doing all the smiling. She looked nothing like her younger self in the pictures with my father—all droopy-eyed with a nondescript mouth. She was in love with this hairy butcher. “He’s nice enough,” I said. She giggled again, the way she had laughed when he held her in the shop. “He’s more than just nice.” “I’m sure,” I said undoing my seat belt as she pulled into the drive. “Your furniture came this afternoon.” She put the key into the front door. That was something anyway. I quick-stepped down the hall to my room and saw my bed—a hand carved sleigh bed Dad had picked up in New England—but nothing else. “Where’s the rest of it?” Estella crossed her arms and rocked back on her heels. “Out in the shed.” “That furniture can’t stay out there, it’ll be ruined!” “I don’t see how you’re gonna get a dresser and end tables in there with that bed. What do you need a bed that big for anyway?” My mouth hung open several seconds before I answered. “It’s the bed Dad got for me.” I looked around at the different boxes stacked on the floor. “I need the dresser hutch to put my porcelains in.” I stepped over some of the boxes, lifting the flaps and taking inventory. “Why don’t you do that after dinner?” Estella said, rather than asked. “I want to go through my stuff.” I stood and put my hands on my hips, scanning the different boxes around the room. “Where are my angels?” Estella let out a sigh. “They’re on the bed, but I don’t think you’re gonna need the hutch—at least not for them.” I narrowed my eyes and looked from her to the bed. A cardboard box with bent corners sat against the headboard. I opened the flap to see pieces of wings, broken arms, and severed heads among globs of tissue paper and Styrofoam peanuts. One of the angels’ heads was staring up at me from the box. Her face was round with a closed lip smile. Brown swirling hair was

painted onto her head. It had been attached to a sculpted body of billowing blue dress. I had had her since I was a baby. “That was your angel,” I said, holding her face in my hands. Estella wrinkled her brow, her blue eyes of sympathy now confused. “My angel?” “The one you got when I was born.” She nodded her head from side to side. “I’m sorry, Linda. I don’t—” “Dad said you bought it and put it in my nursery!” My voice was a cracked shout. “He wouldn’t lie to me!” “I don’t know why he would have told you that.” I tossed the head back into the box. It cracked further against the other broken pieces. I turned around, trying to breathe, wanting to pace but there was nowhere to go in this closet of a room. I wanted to pick the angel head back up and throw it at her, throw her lies back in her face. Estella placed her knee on the bed and looked into the box. “Maybe we can super-glue some of them.” “No! We can’t.” I whirled around and grabbed the box and wrestled it onto the floor. “You know why?” I was trying hard to breath through my words, to not lose it in front of her. “You know why, Estella, mother, whoever the hell you are? Because there is no we.” I managed to get my body up off the floor. “You were never there!” “Linda,” she said in a whisper. “I know, and we need to talk about it.” I started to laugh, guttural howls that were closer to sobs. She placed a hand on my arm. “I want to help you.” “You want to help me! Then get out of my room.” She didn’t move, but just sat there on the edge of the bed, her blue eyes blinking. “Go on, get out!” My hands landed on her chest and pushed her off my bed and up against the wall. She stumbled out the door and slammed it for me. ***

I tried to avoid her, for weeks I tried. But it’s hard without a car and when you’re forced to live on top of each other in a two-bedroom cracker box. Work wasn’t much of a relief either. It placed a close second to Estella’s on my list of places I wish I didn’t know about. Daniel kept acting nice enough, but he knew about me and Estella—he had to. I was sure she was telling him everything whenever they met for lunch or when they stayed on the porch talking after

Daniel had dropped me off. How I was moody, how I was ignoring her, how I hated her. She had been so eager to play the role of mother when I first arrived so why wouldn’t she go on now about what a disappointment her daughter was—especially to the man she was dying to play house with? It was such a nice family instinct that she possessed—about seventeen years too late. They made a rotten pair—the skinny blonde and the shaggy butcher who was hairier than the animals he hacked up. I wanted to say it to Daniel, now, as he sat in his Explorer’s driver’s seat and howled along to the oldies station on the radio. Something biting, like, “Can’t you see how miserable Kristen is? She hates Estella as much as I do. No loving father would consider her a proper mother for his child.” He never asked me about Estella—I’m not sure he ever talked to his own daughter about her either. It was like I was his girlfriend’s roommate and nothing more. “Do you want to end up like my father, so burned you can’t even stand to say her name?” was what I really wanted to tell him—anything to get him to leave her so she knew how if felt, anything. I sat in the passenger seat, my hands folded in my lap. Listening to Daniel’s barking along to “Hound Dog” was enough to make anybody laugh, no matter what the mood. He winked and jabbed my shoulder with his fist. It was as if his winks meant something special, some buried secret that I hadn’t uncovered yet. The radio went into commercial break as we stopped at the intersection, the only other intersection in town. The McDonalds was on the southwest corner. “You want to talk about anything?” he asked. “No, I’m fine.” I looked down at my hands, my fingers running in between each other. He looked over at me as he stopped the car at the red light. I wasn’t sure he believed me. Perhaps he did actually want to know something, know how I felt about it all. His eyes were narrow as he seemed to stare into me. His trademark smile was missing. The mouth instead was straight, a sliver beneath his beard. I felt small, like I was looking up at him. “Has Estella been telling you…stuff about me?” I asked, looking out of the tops of my eyes. He shrugged his square shoulders. “Just askin’.” His smile came back to his face. He raised his eyebrows. A car behind us honked. “The light’s green,” I said. He drove forward a couple hundred feet before turning his eyes away from me and back on the road.

I heard Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” muffled through the speakers and turned it up. “I love this song. It was one of my dad’s favorites.” “I’m sure it was,” Daniel said. “It’s perfect for you.” I giggled the way I had heard Estella laugh whenever she was on the porch with him. “I had a boyfriend once who used to say the same thing.” “You mean that college guy?” My mouth dropped opened in fake surprise. “That was bad of Kirsten to tell you about that. Can you keep it a secret?” “From who?” he asked. I rolled my eyes. “Who do you think!” My foot bounced against the floor, keeping the beat of the music. I pictured Estella becoming the shocked protective type over my make- believe college boyfriend. It would give us something else to go around about. I blew a hair out of my eye and then stuck my chest out as I tried to pick stray hairs from old Atlanta Braves tee shirt. I never wanted to wear anything too nice to the meat market, even though I just worked the register. The navy tee shirt with the white baseball positioned squarely between my breasts was spotted and faded, worn thin from multiple washings. Purchased for a fourteen-year-old girl, it could barely contain a seventeen-year-old woman. I tried to look out of the corner of my eye to see if Daniel was watching, but I couldn’t tell. I liked the thought of it though. “Your mom not home yet?” he asked as he brought the Explore to a stop in my driveway. “She went to a shower for some girl she works with,” I answered. “Didn’t she tell you?” “She didn’t mention it. Wedding or baby?” “I didn’t ask.” “Baby showers are the happy ones,” he said, his head nodding. “I like wedding showers better,” I said, tilting my head in his direction. “There more fun. You can buy all those little lacy things.” “You can get lacy things for babies too.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. He was a standoffish one. “You know the kinds of things I mean.” We both laughed. “Well, thanks for driving me home.” I leaned closer and gave him a kiss—just a peck on the cheek really. His whiskers were coarse and prickly, stimulating against my lips. I used to kid my dad that kissing him with his beard was like kissing my hair brush.

Daniel’s hands seemed to tense around the steering wheel as I leaned my head back from his cheek. Perhaps “standoffish” wasn’t the right word. I focused in on the fingers of his left hand. “Why do you still wear your wedding band?” I asked. He decided to give me a closer look, taking his left hand off of the wheel and sticking it in my face, ring finger extended. The tip of it was gone, or mangled at least. The fingernail was still there and had grown up and over the new tip, which was fatter than the rest of the finger. It looked like the hat of a mushroom, one of those dancing mushrooms from Fantasia, with a gold band at its base. “You see how the top is bigger?” he asked. “Well, I can’t get that ring off over it. My ex said it was fate, that I could never really get rid of her.” His voice seemed to trail off. “But believe me, I’ve tried.” He wiggled his fingers slowly, watching his ringed stump try to stretch out with the others. “Did you try wire cutters?” I asked. He looked at his finger, turning it to take in all the angles of the ring. “No, no I haven’t.” “Then you must not want it off that bad. Estella doesn’t mind?” I hadn’t said her name in over a week. “No,” he shook his head. “Your mother doesn’t mind.” I raised my eyebrows at the idea of “my mother.” “I would mind.” I touched the tip of it with my index finger and then glided down to the base to tap my nail against the ring. “Did you cry when it happened, or were you a big boy?” “I screamed and let some f-words fly, I can tell you that! I think that was the first time Kristen ever heard me swear.” I puffed out my bottom lip and looked up at him out of the tops of my eyes. “Oh, poor little, Daniel. Let mommy kiss it and make it all better,” I said in my best sarcastic, mocking tone. I kissed the top of his finger and then looked down to unfasten my seat belt. When I looked back up, he hadn’t moved—finger still extended, mouth straight in neither smile nor frown, eyes concentrated, staring at me. This time there wasn’t a car behind us to blow its horn. There wasn’t another human anywhere. I had found my anything. I kissed the finger again, softly and slowly, but I didn’t stop there—I didn’t stop. I opened my mouth and cupped his finger with it, sucking it in. I looked at him out of the tops my brown eyes. His mouth was now a half smile and half opened. The setting sun gave the entire

space of the Explorer that warm, orange glow. There was something in his eyes—not a twinkle or one of his winks, it was more serious than that. I still don’t remember how I got from the front seat with Daniel’s finger in my mouth to the cargo bed of the Explorer, my Braves tee shirt—what was left it anyway—draped over the back seat, and Daniel buried deep within me. We stayed that way long after the street lamp came on, its dim yellow glow replacing that of the sinking sun. I told him we could go inside, to the couch or my bed—wherever he wanted. He said he wanted it there, that Estella would never do it in the car. The digital clock said 9:15 when I told him I had to go. Estella could be on her way, drive up any minute. I said it for his sake. I kept looking out the window, longing to hear the clanging of the Chevy’s engine, to see its rusted body pull into the driveway. “But you don’t want to go,” Daniel said, his lips buried in my ear. I could feel his tongue as he spoke. “I have to,” I said, my cheek pressed against his chin to feel the tingle of his beard one last time. I slipped out of the rear passenger door, as natural as could be, and waved as he pulled away. The house was dark and I found myself stumbling over unfamiliar furniture, my fingers gliding down the walls in search of a light switch just as they had been gliding over Daniel moments earlier, hoping for that surge of light. The overhead light flashed on and I found myself standing in front of the mirror that hung above the couch. My hair was tangled, the pony tail ripped down. The face didn’t seem to be my own, pink and shiny as if a permanent clear- coat had been sprayed on my skin. My eyes, which had been wide and dilated an hour before, blinked and squinted in the light, narrowed to get a focus on this girl in the mirror. *** I was sitting on my bed when I heard the front door open two hours later. I hadn’t even bothered to change clothes. There was a knock on my door. “Yeah?” I called. Estella opened it. She had a tendency to do that, whether I said “yeah” or “come in” or nothing at all. “You look rough,” she said. My eyes looked up to the ceiling. “It was a busy night,” I said after some thought. “I have some pictures of the shower.” “Don’t care,” I said in a sing-song voice, batting my eyes. “Right.” She nodded. “Did Daniel bring you home?”

“Uh-huh.” I twirled my fingers between each other in my lap. “We had a…a good time.” Her eyes narrowed. “He drove you home—big deal.” She was even sour on Daniel these days, and she didn’t know she had something to be sour about. “How is that ‘a good time’?” I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ll have to ask him.” I smiled up at her—the first smile I’d given her in weeks. “Like you said, he’s a nice guy.” She tilted her head, staring sideways at me for a few seconds and then a look of satisfaction spread across her face with her own smile. “I’m glad you’re starting to realize that.” I had to bite my lip with that one. “Close the door, please,” I said, waving my hand at her. “Goodnight,” she said and did as I had said. I flopped myself onto my side. I wasn’t sure what to do with this newly acquired power I had over her. This was the kind of thing that could get better with age if I saved it. Like a fine wine. I felt as if I had drank an entire bottle, my head floating up and down, wondering what Daniel would do when I came into work on Monday—if he would have the guts to come clean to her. I rolled off my bed and kicked at the one last box I had to sort through. It was mostly filled with books and some pictures. The book on top was wide with a red cover. I couldn’t place its contents so I started flipping through it. It was a photo album, an old one at that. They were school pictures—the first grade portrait, the second grade portrait and so on. My class pictures were filled by scrawny girls in Hypercolor shirts and scrunchies around their wrists instead of in their hair. There was my camp picture from the summer I had a bowl cut so short that I looked like a boy. My dad had said it would be cool for camp, no long hair sticking to neck. Fathers don’t always know best when it comes to little girl fashion. I flipped forward through the book, the yellowed pages sticking together. Towards the middle was a two-page spread. On the left were small pictures—wallets and four-by-six shots— of me and my dad. We were at the Braves game in the old Fulton County stadium. I was about seven and wearing a huge Styrofoam tomahawk on my head. Dad leaned over me with his binoculars in one hand, a beer in another. Above it was a portrait from a Father’s Day many years ago. I sat on his lap, my hair finally a decent length a year after that terrible bowl cut. We both sported matching t-shirts. His said, “Best Dad,” mine “Best Daughter.” I didn’t recognize the girl in the picture or in any of them really. The whole book was a record of people that

didn’t exist anymore, at least not hear in this world I had fallen into, like Alice down the psychedelic rabbit hole. “Best daughter,” I mumbled. I felt like I should cry. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I couldn’t make any tears come. I was starting to float back down, little by little, from the gravity of my situation. Everything only seemed to be getting worse, and I cringed at the thought of who was really at fault. On the opposite page was a single picture, an eight by ten of my dad. I stared into the smooth face of my father. He was smiling back at me, his chin resting on his fisted hand. I could feel my body stop—blood, breath, all of it. My lips wanted to move, to say something back to him, but what could I say to a picture? I hate you? I just hated that he was gone, hated that he might be able to look down and see me like this. I’m sorry? It would have been a list of apologies as long as my arm. I love you? He’d always known that. I closed my eyes, tight, like a child fighting off the monsters of a bad dream—praying it was only a dream—and waiting for her daddy to come and drive them all away.

ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE DARK

I was some 500 miles away, standing barefoot on the linoleum of my cramped galley kitchen when my mother told me she was going blind—and that she would be at my front door in 48 hours so she could “see” me one last time. “The doctor wrote you a prescription for new glasses, huh?” I said, squeezing the phone between my shoulder and ear as I fished ice cubes from the freezer. I had been listening to this mantra of impending blindness since I was ten years old—the year my mother turned forty. Her first gray hair had been minor compared to her first pair of bifocals. This was one facial lesion that no amount of Clinique Superbalanced in porcelain beige could cover. I can still remember spending the better part of a June Saturday afternoon watching her try on pair after pair at Visionworks. My father and I both had to be present to provide carefully worded input on which pair of glasses to buy. To alleviate my boredom, I wandered into the children’s section, trying on different pairs with pink rims or flowers, the thin frames tangling in my hair. My mother frowned when I asked “how do I look?” She pulled a pair of thick, brown-rimmed glasses off her face and placed them back on the lighted wall. “Hopefully you’ll never need them” she said and plucked them from my face. Some four hours later she decided on a gold, gaudy frame that dwarfed her face, her lovely hazel eyes rolling around behind the lenses like two lost marbles. She went from reasonably attractive suburban housewife to old maid piano teacher with fifteen cats as soon as she dropped them onto the bridge of her nose. “Are you going to get new frames this time, or just new lenses?” I asked, dropping the ice cubes into the two glasses on my counter. “I haven’t thought about it, Leslie,” she said after a pause. “I’m still trying to get used to the idea of going blind.” Her words crackled through the phone in staccato beats. “And these blasted eye-drops. They’re like a thick mucous. Your father is an absolute klutz with them. I’ve leaned my head over the sink, lain down on the bed—even the floor—but they just go all over my face! The man has no aim. It’s scary to think the Army once trusted him with a gun.” “Whoa, Mom, what eye-drops?” Her sigh crackled through the phone. “For my blindness! Don’t you ever listen to me? Didn’t I just tell you I was going blind?” “You’ve been saying it for ten years now.” I stirred the pot of spaghetti sauce that was starting to bubble.

“The doctor says I have glaucoma.” “Glaucoma,” I said back to her. The television remote was on the other side of the drinking glasses. I grabbed it and turned the volume down. My boyfriend Charlie, in his usual position on the couch, shot me a grimacing look. “What is that—I mean, what does it do?” I could hear her frustrated breaths, as if she was trying to reason with a wide-eyed four year old and not her college-age daughter. “It makes you go blind. Everything’s just…blurry. I guess that’s why upping the prescription didn’t help. Look, I have to finish your father’s dinner, and I assume you’re cooking for Charlie. I’ll call before we leave, hmm?” “Look, Mom, this weekend’s a bit short notice.” “Nonsense, you have a week before the summer session starts. I’m sure you can spare two days for your parents. I so want to see you.” “Of course I want to see you—” “My pot’s boiling over. See you soon.” And she hung up. “Yeah, like in two days,” I mumbled as I placed the phone back on its charger and turned down the pasta boiling on the stove, a little annoyed that at least for this moment I had fallen into the housewife stereotype and she new it. I looked over to Charlie sitting on the couch, a black shirt with the bold gold lettering that screamed “Cosmic,” whoever the hell they were, stretched across his chest. “Why’d you turn the TV down?” I drained the spaghetti and dished it onto the plates, aiming for the faded floral design in the center of each. “My mom says she’s going blind.” Charlie only snorted as he pulled himself up on the bar stool. “Again.” I shot him a sideways glare as I splashed the sauce onto his plate. “What? That’s what you always say.” “And she’ll be here on Friday, with Daddy in tow.” I smiled before I took my first bite. Charlie looked up at me out of the tops of his brown eyes. They were nearly hidden by his long, now bleach-blonde tipped strands. This new punk-rock, free-soul-in-training look he’d been trying out had worn thin on me. It was a far cry from the organized pre-law student I had started dating two years ago. “Scruffy,” one of my mother’s favorite words, was what kept coming to mind whenever I looked at him these days. He cleared his throat, gulping down a large swallow of water before he lowered his body into the barstool. “That’s in two days,” he croaked. “Yeah it is,” I said, swirling the spaghetti around my plate.

“I’m gonna have to meet your parents in two days?” “You’ve been dodging them for over a year.” “No, you’ve been hiding me from them for over a year.” “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “I begged you to meet them before we moved in together.” “Only to ease your conscience.” He shoveled a fork-full of pasta into his mouth. “Now, you don’t even mention my name. It’s like I’m your kept man or something.” I had to giggle at such dramatic defensiveness. “Come on. How often do I talk to my parents about anything?” I patted his hand. “Besides, if I had a kept man he’d be doing better than $7.50 an hour at a bookstore and the biggest indie band groupie for free.” Charlie dropped his fork on the plate and hopped from the bar stool. “Why don’t I go over to Arty’s for the weekend?” “No, I don’t want you to do that. My parents are coming and we’re both going to have to deal with it.” He walked out into the living room, which was approximately three steps from the kitchen. “I just figured you didn’t want your parents to have to deal with your loser boyfriend.” “I never said that.” “That’s what you think, right? You go out for drinks with your little accounting major friends but you never ask me. I bet you don’t even mention that you have a boyfriend.” “That’s not true.” “You won’t go to gigs with me, you never come down to the book store anymore.” “I don’t need any books.” “I meant for the readings.” He sighed and turned around, kicking at the brown shag carpeting with his bare toes. I wrapped my arms around his middle and put my head on his shoulder. “Oh, it won’t hurt that bad,” I said, my lips blowing at his ear. “If you love me you can do this for me.” I felt his hands rub down my arms and stop on my wrists. He grabbed them and yanked my hands off of him. “You just don’t get it. Did you hear anything I just said?” I placed my head back on his left shoulder and nestled my lips against his ear lobe. I kissed it. “What did you say?” I asked. He would have seen me smiling if he had bothered to turn around. Instead he stalked off into our bedroom. Max, my orange tabby, trotted out before Charlie slammed the door.

He was working on his best fake snore when I crawled into bed a few hours later. He flipped onto his side, turning his back in my direction, as I tried to put my arm around him. I could just make out the freckles and birthmarks on his back and decided to play connect the dots, my Periwinkle Prism colored fingernail drawing lines with invisible ink. “I know you’re still awake,” I cooed. “I’m trying hard not to be,” he said. “I have to open the store in the morning.” “Yes, and ten o clock is so early for a book store to open.” I tugged on his ear. “Go to sleep, will ya, Leslie?” He pulled the sheet up, covering his face. I rolled onto my back, staring up into the darkened ceiling. “I’m sorry.” “For what?” I didn’t answer. What did I need to be sorry for? Because I didn’t get it? That was the only thing Charlie was right about; I didn’t get a lot these days. Like, why there were more poetry than law books scattered around the living room floor, or why he was spending more time with Arty than me, or why whenever I asked how his classes were going he just shrugged. I listened as the wall clock ticked the seconds away, and then I heard Charlie start to snore, for real this time. I wanted to give him a good jab in the ribs, to say, “Ok, Mr. Cultural-superiority, what don’t I get? You tell me since I apparently lack the deep introspection that only you and Arty posses!” I thrashed onto my side, my eyes glancing around the little room. The full golf-ball of a moon gave a soft illumination to our sparse bedroom—the second-hand dresser with microscopic scratches, some original and others added by Max. His fifteen-pound frame pinned the sheets beneath him and no amount of my yanking could pry them lose. He refused to sleep on the floor or in the brown vinyl and leather blend chair held together by duct tape and a prayer that was just to the right of the window. And then there was the hideous couch in our living room—navy with loud, pink flowers. Max had all but destroyed the back of it, using it as his stretching and scratching post. There were knots from my stomach to my chest as I thought of my mother measuring and inspecting my trappings. She would have some cute remark like, “Too bad I’m not blind already.” And then when she looked at Charlie—“I thought you were dating a law student?” I could see those eyes running up and down his body as she held her index finger up to her mouth while my father just stood behind her and grunted. As for me, she would smile, her lips painted in red, and hug me, her fingers pitching my side and say, “Hmm, seems there’s more of you than there was last time. You’re eating out too much.” Charlie was the one who didn’t

get it. I had met his mother—a pleasant woman, short and a bit on the round side who was always doting on her baby boy. His picking up the phone and calling her once a weak was more than enough for her to bust out in pride. He had no idea what it was like to grow up with a mother who expected you to do everything she couldn’t, and then some. * * * By Friday evening, the apartment was close to spotless, and somewhat bare. In my frantic cleaning I realized that textbooks, term papers, binders and satchels made up most of the contents of the living room and that our furnishings were sparse and shabby to say the least. I had resorted to shoving many of the books under the couch, the back of which was covered with a towel in my efforts to hide Max’s handy work. I caught a glimpse of a frown on Charlie’s face as I shoved the last of his well-read poetry journals beneath the couch. My copies of Fortune and Money were on the scratch-laden coffee table. “Why don’t you put out some of my reading material,” he said, collecting some of his shirts from the back of the dinette set chairs. “Ok, give me one of your law books and I’ll put that out,” I said. I tried to fluff the flattened and coffee-stained throw pillows on the couch. “I meant my literary journals.” “Like anyone wants to see a second-hand copy of The Missouri Review or any of that other stuff Arty gives you.” I gave up on the pillows and took them over to the hall closet. It was already jammed with old tennis rackets, television boxes and three guitars. Charlie had collected them from some of the bands Arty promoted on the side. He swore they would look great on our wall. “Besides, your coffee table books are a reflection of your personality. Law and accounting are a bit more impressive, don’t you think?” “Did you read that in a Martha Stewart magazine or something,” he answered, wadding the shirts into a ball as he walked towards the bedroom. “Put on one of those nice button shirts you just wrinkled.” “I’m wearing a shirt already,” he shouted from the bedroom. “As soon as my mother sees that AC/DC shirt, she’ll think you’re some sort of rock groupie slacker instead of a serious law student.” “You sure you’re talking about your mother?”

“Just change your shirt!” I yelled back as I tried to close the closet door without any of the carefully stacked junk falling out on top of me. As I slammed the door, there were hard bangs on the front door. I opened it and was instantly grabbed and squeezed by my mother, as if I were an orange in need of a good juicing. I saw my dad standing behind her. He was smiling, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. I was so used to seeing him in his gray Progress Energy work shirt with his name—Joe—stitched on the left breast. His dark hair was strategically combed. It was as if every strand played a crucial role in the battle with his receding hair line. My mother at last released me and stepped back at arms length. Her new glasses were a thin, bronzed wire frame. Her eyes seemed dark and puffy behind them. At least her hair was a respectable shade of auburn. The last time I had seen her it had been a flaming Maureen O’Hara red. A thin line of bright red lipstick framed her mouth. It bent into the shape of a large smile as she seemed to glide into the front room. “Oh, this is…nice,” she said, turning around ever so slowly to get a thorough view. “I’d take you on a tour, but this is pretty much it,” I said as Dad put his arm around me. “Except for the bedroom.” My mother raised her left eyebrow. She had a sly remark ready for me, I just knew it, until Charlie came out of the bedroom. “And this must be Charlie,” my dad said, his voice a bit raspy. “At least I hope so!” Charlie laughed an awe-shucks kind of a chuckle and extended his hand. “Yes, sir.” The top two buttons of his blue and white striped shirt were unbuttoned, showing the top of the black AC/DC tee shirt beneath. At least his hair was out of his eyes for once. “Charlie, this is…” I paused, trying to decide on the best form of introduction. “Mom and Dad.” “Janice and Joseph,” my mother corrected. They were Janie and Joe to everyone else, except maybe the IRS and DMV, and had been since I was a kid. My mother held out her hand, palm-side down, expecting a kiss rather than a shake it seemed. Charlie reached for it with the caution of those men in India who bend down to kiss the heads of cobras. “Please, sit down,” he managed, pointing to the couch, which left me with the bar stool and Charlie with the rickety desk chair. My mother’s eyes fixated on the pink towel draped over the back of the couch. “You two must not do much entertaining,” she said, sitting on the edge of the couch cushion.

“We like to go out,” Charlie said. “Let other people entertain us. It’s cheaper.” He laughed. In the desk chair, he was too far away from the stool for me to kick. “But when we do entertain we do an excellent job. Can I mix you two some drinks?” My mother’s eyes narrowed. She looked from Charlie to me. I could tell already she didn’t like what she saw. I let out a forced laugh. “Oh, he’s just kidding. We don’t have mixed drinks.” “Leslie’s right,” Charlie said, shrugging his shoulders. “Just Coors and Mike’s Hard Lemonade. It think the stuff’s awful—way too tart. But Leslie loves it.” He patted the arm of the couch, inches away from my mother’s hand. She stared back into his face, and after several seconds of silence said, “I’ll have water.” “I’ll take a Coke if you got one,” my dad added. “He’ll also have water,” my mother stated. “Unless it’s a Diet Coke. The doctor told him to cut down on his sugar intake.” Dad rolled his eyes. “A diet Coke is like light beer, huh Joe,” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t know; he doesn’t drink beer,” my mother answered for him. I could smell the chicken in the oven as I pulled two glasses from the cabinet. The oven timer said ten minutes to go. I wondered if we’d last that long. I could hear my father’s knife grate along the plate as I nibbled on a biscuit, my chicken now chilled to a hard, dry rock. I batted a bean across my plate, as if I was eight years old again. My mother looked down at the food, disapprovingly, just nibbling at the chicken. She seemed to pay my dinner no mind as she chirped away like an unhinged mockingbird beneath a late-night street lamp. “And Priscilla with those three nice little boys, too. I mean, it’s one thing to leave a man, but how can you just run off and leave your children!” Dad shoveled in a mouth-full of beans. “I’m sure Leslie doesn’t want to hear the dirt on everyone at church. After all, we came to see her and Charlie.” “Don’t talk with your mouthful, and it’s information, not dirt.” She dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “And since you don’t ever go with me, how would you know?” Dad took a sip from his water glass—Charlie had finished off the last Coke the night before—and looked over at Charlie, who had done nothing to liven up the dinner conversation. “Leslie said you really kicked butt on the LSAT, on your first shot.”

Charlie sipped his beer—at least he had had since enough to pour it into a glass, taking my mother’s words to heart. “Yes sir,” he said “What schools are you applying to?” Dad asked. “Well, I still have plenty of time to get the applications together. It’s only May.” “Dad just wanted to know what schools you were thinking about,” I said. “But don’t feel too bad, Dad, I can’t nail him down either.” Dad and I had a good chuckle, but Charlie just seemed to want to hide under the table. “What kind of law is he going into?” my mother asked me, looking passed Charlie. “He wants to get into corporate law,” I said. Charlie placed his fork on the half-eaten chicken breast and pushed his plate to the side. “Actually, I’m leaning towards environmental law.” “Since when?” I snapped. “What about family law?” my mother asked. “Divorce lawyers make excellent money, and God knows there’s always a need for them. He’d make a fine divorce lawyer I’m sure.” She smiled as she reached for her glass, her thin pink-nailed fingers lifting it with no grip. It landed on the table, invisible liquid racing over the scratched surface of our table and towards my father’s plate. Charlie was quick with his napkin, dabbing at the water. He picked up her plate and took it to the kitchen, a grateful smile on his face. My father seemed unfazed by the incident. “You know clear objects fool you,” he said before picking up his own glass and taking a long drink. My mother wadded up her napkin and threw it into the middle of the table. She picked up his plate and said, “here Charlie, Mr. Watkins is finished.” “You dump your glass, but I’m finished!” “You eat too slow. The rest of us are done.” “What are you talking about? Leslie’s still eating.” “Oh, Leslie’s been rolling that same bean around her plate for the last ten minutes.” I turned around to roll my eyes at Charlie, expecting a similar expression. Instead he was dutifully scraping the plates and rinsing them before placing them in the dishwasher. He needn’t have bothered showing off; my parents were too busy swapping barbs with another. She took her glasses from the bridge of her nose and rubbed her eyes.

“You’re finished eating because it’s time for you to put my eye-drops in,” she said, grabbing her small, canvas bag from beside the couch. “Just what are these eye-drops?” I asked. She walked towards the bathroom, my father at her heals. I watched as she flipped on the light. Her nose scrunched and she pointed at something. “We’ll only be a minute, dear. Why don’t you and Charlie get the air mattress out? It’s in that big blue bag.” Her long finger pointed again, ordering us to a large duffel my dad had left a few feet from the front door. A few minutes later, Dad emerged from the bathroom, drops of liquid visible on his shirt. Charlie was in the middle of the floor, struggling to pump up the air mattress. Dad patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll finish ‘er up,” he said. “How long have you two been doing this eye-drop thing?” I asked as I placed the last glass into the dishwasher. “A while now,” he answered. “Well what are these eye-drops?” “Something I can’t pronounce.” He grunted, leaning his whole body into the plastic pump. This was our typical conversation, at least in the last couple of years, whenever I’d call home. Dad would struggle through one word answers and unimportant questions to make more than a five minute conversation. Work was the same—he couldn’t wait to retire. He’d ask, “What are you studying again?” Accounting was apparently a forgettable major. By this time he should have had my entire career path memorized. My mother had me as a senior accounts manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, complete with my MBA from Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, by the time I was 25. I’d always written his attitude off to the distance in mileage or the impersonal nature of phone conversation, but here in person, his tone seemed the same. “You should have bought one with an electric pump,” I said, watching him lean his body onto the pump. “Too expensive, so your mom said,” he answered. “What’s she doing in there anyway?” “Oh, she’s gone to bed already.” I narrowed my eyes and looked at Charlie, who shot me an equally confused stare. “What do you mean she’s gone too bed?”

“She hates to sleep on this thing, says it bothers her back.” He flopped the blue mattress over and looked up at Charlie, who was holding his chin in his hand, and then over at me. “You two don’t mind?” “Of course not,” Charlie chimed. “After all, you’re our guests.” A slight hiss blew through Charlie’s teeth with the word “guests.” “If Max gives you any trouble, just toss him out,” I said, as my dad stood and started for the bedroom. “Your mom already locked him the bathroom. Night,” he called over his shoulder, and I heard our bedroom door close. *** The next morning, my mother had the “adorable” idea of a his-and-hers outing. “It will give us some girl time,” she said as I watched her scramble eggs on my stove. “And you want your father and Charlie to bond, don’t you?” I was too exhausted from a night of fighting with Charlie for sheets atop an air mattress to object, or to point out that live-in boyfriend did not equal fiancé. Charlie and I had tired to brainstorm some ideas the night before my parents arrived. The last thing we wanted was to spend an entire Saturday at home with them. There was the natural history museum or the antebellum mansions outside of town—my mother loved to look at rotting wood. Charlie’s only suggestion was to browse in the bookstore until the Cosmic concert at 8:00. As the two of us stared at the ceiling, our backs almost touching the floor through the fast- deflating air mattress, he had reiterated that he was going to the concert—alone or with three bodies in tow made no difference to him. And then there was the baseball the game. The team was wrapping up the season before heading to the NCAA regional and then, hopefully, the College World Series in Omaha. Baseball was always a good option. When I was in junior high, Dad would plan his vacations around the Atlanta Braves’ schedule. Every July, the whole family piled into the silver Buick and headed down to Miami to watch them play the Marlins. We’d take in the beach and the malls while we were there, but the trip was all about the game. My brother Mark and I would run down behind the dugout, trying to get autographs from Tom Glavine or Greg Maddux, hoping one of them was going to pitch that night, while Dad had out the camera with the long lens, snapping pictures of batting practice. His photos were as good as any that appeared in Sports Illustrated. Mom always hogged the binoculars, watching the outfielders. The stands would start to empty as the night

wore on, but we always stayed until the very last out. It was a five-day trip once a year and I’d spend the next 360 waiting for it to come around again. My brother and I would relive every pitch on the nights we couldn’t sleep. Those were the nights that my parents’ constant snapping and picking at each other escalated into something much louder. While the stadium of aluminum bleachers wasn’t exactly Turner Field or Yankee Stadium, there was plenty of sunshine and humidity as I flashed the attendant my student ID and paid the two-dollars admission for my mother. She then insisted on paying for lunch—two hot dogs and a 44-ounce Coke, our typical baseball meal. I could feel her hand against the small of my back as we climbed up the steps of the grandstand. It was the way I had once gripped her pants, climbing the stairs of Pro Player Stadium. I balanced the hot dogs in my left hand, the Coke in my right. The brown liquid sloshed over the rim as I felt her trip against me. “We could sit down front,” I said, stopping in the middle of the aisle. “Nonsense,” she replied. “You can’t see the whole field if you’re down too low. I looked over my shoulder as we took a few more steps forward. She was staring down at the steps and her feet, watching each one as it came down on the shiny aluminum. I picked a somewhat sparse row about halfway to the top, tired of feeling like a camel or pack mule or one of those other animals that was forced to carry their body weight and then some. “This is a pretty good spot,” I said. “You won’t have to use your binoculars to look at the outfielders here.” “I used the binoculars, Leslie, because I wanted to get a better look at David Justice and Deion Sanders and guys like that, not because I was blind.” I placed a straw in the Coke and took a sip, wishing it was something stronger. “I just meant we’re closer to the field here; this isn’t a pro stadium.” “No, it’s not that.” “Yeah, no escalators up to the club level.” I laughed. The ding of the aluminum bat against the ball got Mom to her feet. The center fielder flipped down his sun shades and back pedaled towards the wall, but it landed safely in his glove a good five feet from the warning track. She was the only one standing. “I really thought that one was gone.” “You probably lost it in the sun,” I said through a mouthful of hot dog. “The outfielder almost did.”

“It’s the aluminum bats,” she said, descending back into her seat. “When they use a good old wood bat you know if it’s gone, you can just hear it.” “It takes some getting use to. In the bookstore they have tee shirts that say, ‘It don’t mean a thing if you don’t hear that ping.’” “But it would be nice if they painted the ball a bright color,” she said, removing her glasses and wiping them on her shirt. She placed them back on her face and squinted at the batter at the plate. “Yeah, I’m sure the traditionalists would really go for that.” “Maybe that could be an art project for that friend of Charlie’s—designer baseballs,” she said, leaning forward as if just being a few inches closer could somehow improve her view. “What’s his name again?” “Arty.” I took a sip of Coke after I said it. “You’d think I could remember that—art, Arty.” “Well, Dad can give you a full report on him tonight.” She looked over at me. “Why?” “Charlie’s taking Dad to his gallery and then to the bookshop. Of course they’re right next door to each other so it won’t be much of a trip.” “That’s certainly not going to take the entire day.” “It will if Arty gives Dad a guided tour and lecture of every piece in the joint!” “How funny is that? The men are gallery touring and we’re at a ball game!” She shouted over the roar of the crowd as the second batter grounded out to short. “Charlie and I have a very 21st century relationship.” “Meaning?” “We’re not bound by typical gender roles.” I rolled my eyes. “Is that all?” She focused on the batter at the plate—a pop up to the catcher and the inning was over. “Got him!” “What does that mean?” The announcer began reading off our starting line-up for the bottom of the first. “It doesn’t seem like you two are on the same page.” I took a long sip from the cup of Coke. This was my cue to ask for her two cents worth. “Ok mother, why aren’t we on the same page?”

“Because he’s not being honest with you.” She bit into the hot dog and nodded her head at me. “My boyfriend’s lying to me! He’s cheating on me, right? With my best friend no doubt!” I looked over at her. Her eyes were serious and dark, as if someone had punched in her both eyes. They seemed liquefied and drowning in the back of her head. “Charlie doesn’t want to be a lawyer,” she said. “Can’t you see that?” I didn’t answer. After one evening with us—most of which she spent staring and judging and making snide remarks—she had decided she knew more about us, and more about my boyfriend, than I did. Unbelievable! The woman was more of a meddler than I had remembered. I stared back out at the field. “He’s unhappy and an unhappy man will just hold you back,” she said. “Unless you’re the reason the man’s unhappy.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you think you’re going to marry a hot shot corporate lawyer, you’re not.” “Has anyone said anything about marriage?” I jammed the straw around the ice cubes. “So he won’t be a lawyer; he’ll be…something else.” I couldn’t think of what though. “Are you sure you don’t mean somebody else?” “No, that’s what you want.” I kept stabbing my straw through the blocks of ice, but I could have cared less about the brown liquid in between them. “I want you to be happy!” she exclaimed and tossed her hands into the air. “Really.” I watched as the opposing team trotted onto the field. She didn’t say anything else, just took the cup from my hand. I could hear her slurping down the rest of the Coke, then there was the sound of the hot dog wrapper crinkling. She tossed it into the cup. So much for a refill. “I’m going to the restroom,” she said, getting to her feet. “Do you know where it is?” “At the end of the concession building,” I answered. She looked behind us, trying to pinpoint the cream-colored stucco building. “You know, where I got the hot dogs.” “Yes, dear, I know, I know.” She walked between the bleachers and started down the stairs. She looked down at each step, her arms extended as if she were walking a shining aluminum tight rope. Her outstretched hand almost grabbed on to the shoulder of a man sitting on the aisle, but she seemed to think better of it. “Do you want me to go with you?” I called.

She looked back at me with that stoic face I had seen the night before at dinner and waved her hand at me. She took a few hurried steps forward and then went down, as if some unseen force had sucked her into the bowels of the bleachers. I jumped up and ran over to the end of the row. It was hard to make out where she was through the body of people now huddled around her. She was trying to get to her feet when I got to the bottom of the stairs. Embarrassment and nervousness were apparent in her face, along with blood trickling down the side of her head. “I’m all right; I’m all right,” she kept repeating as she tried to lean on me for leverage, oblivious or unconcerned with the bloody wound on her forehead. “I just missed a step, that’s all.” Her voice was as wobbly as her body as she leaned against me, standing like a flamingo on just her right leg. “I would have gone with you,” I said, placing a napkin on the gash. She held up that hand again, waving people off as if she were batting away flies as we started down the few remaining steps. I would have been grateful for the help. The ladies room was pretty much empty—who needed to go to the bathroom in the bottom of the first? I pumped a handful of paper towels from the machine and dampened it, blotting at the wound. She kept draping her hair over her forehead, hoping her reddish strands would hide the darker red of blood. “You may need stitches,” I said. “Nonsense.” She took the towel from my hand and threw it into the trash. “I’m fine. Let’s go back up and watch the game.” “I’m at least taking you back home. And I’m calling Charlie.” “Oh and what will Charlie do for me?” She jerked her hand back, stumbling a bit on an ankle that was certainly sprained. “He’ll bring Dad back and he can deal with you since you won’t cooperate with me.” I crossed my arms, feeling a sudden surge of deja vu. How many times had I heard those similar words from my mother’s mouth? “Your father doesn’t need to know that I’ve busted my ass down a flight of stairs again,” she snapped. “What do you mean again?” I asked. She whirled around, staring at herself in the mirror. Her fingers were still shaking as she unzipped her purse and took out a brush. She ran it through her hair. Then she fished for her

lipstick—the same red that had outlined her mouth when she had arrived at my front door the day before. “This has happened before?” I tried again. She returned the gold tube to the small brown purse. “I guess we should go back to your place. I don’t feel much like watching the game. *** She was silent in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the mixture of trees and buildings and sky we were passing by. I reached down to the radio knob, turning it to the AM dial and the local personalities calling the game. “We might as well see how the boys are doing,” I said, looking straight through the windshield. “They’re not the Braves, but they’re the only game in town.” There was no reply. I began tapping the steering wheel with my fingers. When it was still too quiet, I added my own commentary to the game—“Called third strike; the umps actually wearing his glasses today” and “third inning and still no hits; that Hyde kid’s got an arm and he’s just a sophomore.” My mother just kept staring out the passenger window, silent. She seemed to be in deep concentration, focused on everything outside. She started to rub her eyes. “Are your eyes bothering you?” I asked. “They’re fine,” she said, waving me off again. “It’s just that I forgot to put my eye drops in this morning—that is, your father forgot to put my eye drops in.” “What do you see?” I asked. She turned her head in my direction, the dried blood of her cut snaking down from her hairline. “What are you talking about?” “You’re looking out the window; what do you see?” She turned back to the glass. “Not much. Everything’s going by too fast right now. I have to be able to focus?” “Meaning?” “I have no peripheral vision,” she said, annunciating the syllables. “From the glaucoma?” I asked. “Hmm,” was her answer. “So what caused it?” “Old age I guess,” she answered after several moments, listening to know if the fly ball would stay fair or go foul. “It’s worse at night or whenever the light is bad. I see rainbows

around lights. In oncoming traffic they all glob together into one blur of light and don’t separate until they’re right on top of the car.” She looked down at her fingers, rolling them around in her lap. “Your father won’t let me drive to church on Sunday nights anymore.” She forced a laugh. “I feel like a kid again; no driving after dark without adult supervision.” I laughed with her; I felt she needed me to. *** Despite my mother’s protests of “knowing her body,” I managed to at least get two Tylenol down her and send her to bed. I could only sit on the couch and stare at the TV. I looked in on her ever so often, convinced that she could have a concussion. She would begin vomiting uncontrollably, followed by violent seizures, and most certainly a coma before Charlie and my dad ever made it back home. Max seemed to sense my concern; he stayed curled up on the bedspread at my mother’s feet through my constant tip-toeing into the room. Around 4:00, I heard the key in the door. My dad walked in, alone. “That must not have been much of a ball game,” he said. I shrugged. “We decided to come back early. How was your day?” “That boy of yours is a hoot,” he chuckled. “You oughta hear him recite poetry. And that Arty fella really knows his post-modernism, at least I think that’s what he called it.” “And where is my boy?” “He went back to set up for some concert tonight. I told him I needed a rest though before I could do any head-banging.” He sat down on the couch next to me. I couldn’t remember the last time he had gone into such detail about anything, at least to me. The light of the TV flickered as I began rambling through the 100-channel universe again. I stopped on the talking heads of CNN but I wasn’t really listening to their theories on social security. I dropped the black remote onto the couch cushion between us. “Mom fell down the steps at the game,” I blurted out. He kept staring at the television. “She ok?” he asked a few seconds later. “You tell me,” I said. He picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels. After he had scanned through all of them he stopped on CNN, where he had started. He finally turned his face in my direction. The wrinkles around his eyes creased and thickened as he squinted at me. “Huh?” was all he said.

“Her eyes didn’t get this bad in just a couple of weeks. How long have you guys known.” “She was diagnosed back in November.” I tossed the remote to the floor. “November. I was home for Christmas, I stopped by on Spring Break—why didn’t you say anything?” The news broadcast had shifted to Iraq—smoking cars, people with guns chanting. My father shook his head. “She hoped she wouldn’t have to tell anyone,” he said. “If the eye-drops worked, that would be it.” “But they haven’t?” He shook his head again, this time for me. “So now what?” “Surgery to relieve the eye pressure before further damage is done to the optic nerve.” He put special emphasis on the words “optic nerve,” the consonant sounds harsh and pronounced. I tried to smile at him. “Somebody paid attention at the doctor’s office.” “One of us had to.” “You went with her?” He looked over at me, his eyes narrowing. “Every appointment.” “It’s just…I know you,” I said, but I shrugged my shoulders like I wasn’t sure if I knew him or not. “Doctor’s appointments, class plays, birthdays—it doesn’t matter. It’s all about work.” He rubbed his stubble-coated chin with his hand. “I go to work to fund doctors and birthdays and school you know. Besides, when people’s electricity goes out they tend to want it fixed sooner rather than later.” I rolled my lower lip between my teeth. “I always thought you worked all that overtime because it got you out of the house.” “Is that why you ran away from home, little girl, to get out of the house?” “I didn’t run away from home, I went to college.” “But that is why you moved in with a neo-hippie masquerading as a law student?” I folded my hands across my chest. I could feel my dad smiling at me; he would recognize the pose. “Charlie will be a lawyer. He’s just nervous about his applications.”

“The boy I spent the day with wasn’t performing a plea for a jury.” Dad stood up and reached for the television remote. The broadcaster was stopped in mid-sentence and the screen went black. I could see the reflection of my cross-armed, slumping self in the glass. I could hear him tapping the remote against his hand. “You know, I was supposed to become an engineer,” he said. I looked up at him, surprised he wasn’t shaking the remote at me like a long accusing finger. “So what happened?” I asked. “Your brother happened, and then you. Somehow college money wasn’t as important as rent money and grocery money.” His rough lips stretched into a smile. “And shoes-for-two-kids money!” He dropped the remote on the cushion next to me and turned towards the bedroom. “Would you have been happier if you had been an engineer?” He shrugged his hunched shoulders, his back still turned towards me. “I guess she would have been.” “And you still love her?” I asked. He stopped and stared back at me, his dark eyes round and unsure. “You know she’s disappointed, but you still lover her.” He leaned his frame against my wall, this slouching, tired man who once seemed as straight and tall to me as the power line poles he would scale with his bucket truck. My brother and I would always beg him to take us up in it. “I guess I am somewhat of a disappointment to her.” He looked upward at the ceiling. “I don’t say all the things I’m supposed to say, didn’t do all the things I was supposed to do, but I am the man who puts the drops in her eyes every night before she goes to bed, and every morning—if I don’t forget.” He gave me a wink and softly opened, then closed, the bedroom door. *** Charlie tugged on the sheet and rolled onto his side, placing his back towards me. After two nights of sleeping on an airless air mattress, he was more than happy to see my parents go on their way and was now savoring the softness of our bed. His breathing was heavy now, as regular as Max’s low purring. My eyelids felt as if they were taped open. The moonlight streaming through the window, unfiltered by the thin, blue curtain, made the room surreal, as if it were something out of a cartoon or an impressionist painting, maybe even a post-modern. “Charlie,” I whispered. A rhythmical breathing was all I heard. “You don’t want to be a lawyer, do you?” His breaths stopped, then a loud snort ushered in another round. His body didn’t even flinch. “Then you don’t have to be one,” I said as I poured myself out of the bed and

grabbed my robe. I stood there staring down at him in the bed, his chest rising and falling with every snore. Only Max heard me open the door. He jumped off the bed and followed me down the hall. I turned on the long-necked lamp that sat on our second-hand end table. Charlie’s eyes had lit up when we found it on the side of the road. “Arty and I can paint that table,” he had said. “Any color you want.” It was still covered in its original mix of dark oak wood and chipping white paint. My toe brushed across a pointy corner sticking out from beneath the couch. It was the pile of Charlie’s poetry books and journals. On the top was a thin paperback book with a ripped cover and dog-eared pages. The cover was red, white and blue—red on the top half with the author’s name, Mark Strand, and blue on the bottom third with the title, Blizzard of One, in block letters. In the center was a white glob, like two white rocks or snow capped mountains. The cover reminded me of some of the pieces in Arty’s gallery—minimalist with abstract chunks of color. I flipped through the pages, most of them bent and yellowed, and finally stopped on a poem called “Precious Little.” It sounded incomplete. “Precious little what?” I asked myself. My eyes scanned through the first line: If blindness is blind to itself / Then vision will come. “What does that mean?” Max jumped onto the couch next to me and leaned back on the cushion, his tail waving up and down to its own beat. I kept going: “But listen again. Is it really the wind / Or is it the sound of somebody running / One step ahead of the dark?” I flipped back to the cover. There was a gold stamp in the upper right corner that proclaimed, “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.” I tried out some of the other poems—“The Next Time,” “The Night Porch,” “Five Dogs.” The dog one I got. It reminded me of a poem I had read in high school, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I tossed the book onto the coffee table. It landed atop my latest copy of Fortune. Bold letters on the cover, also in red and white and blue heralded the “Secrets of Greatness: A Dozen Accomplished People Tell What Works For Them.” I blew my bangs out of my eyes and then ran my fingers through my ruffled hair. The hands of the wall clock were in the 3:00 a.m. formation. I whispered the last lines of “Precious Little” as I started towards the bedroom. “‘And if nothing turns out as you thought, then what is the difference between blindness lost and blindness regained?’”

WHERE THE COTTONWOODS GROW

February, 1946 Pete Wilkins leaned against the wooden railing, flipping the nickel pocket watch in his hand as if it were a large coin. The plain polished case caught the lights of the rink, passing by his eyes with every flip as if it were one of the skaters rolling by on the hardwood floor. His light hazel eyes, set deep in a thin face, tried to focus in on the other faces flying past him, particularly the female faces. A few girls had slowed as they circled by, even gave a smile, but he wasn’t convinced any of them were smiling at him. He was the skinniest sailor in that group draped over the rail—hell, Van Johnson appeared more fit for combat romancing canteen girls in Two Girls and a Sailor. It had been one of the regular movies on ship, and the whole crew could recite every line. “Have you really been catching any ladies with that thing?” a voice boomed over Pete’s shoulder. Matt Johnson pushed his way up to the rail, not that Matt really had to push to get anywhere. People just naturally seemed to move, quickly, when they saw him coming. He had could slice through a crowd the way their battleship cut across ocean waves. At 6’6 with searing jet black eyes, a constantly down-turned mouth, and a sheered head that barely fit beneath his sailor’s cap he was the ideal man to hide behind when the Shore Patrol showed up. Matt caught the watch before it could again land safely in Pete’s tiny palm, his thick fingers clamping down and smothering the case. Pete wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the grating of metal and springs. “A few maybe.” Pete stood up, mustering all his strength to puff out his chest and straighten his body. He still only came up to Matt’s shoulder. Matt opened his hand, turning the watch over in his palm, the plain white face flanked by black roman numerals staring back up at him. “How do you get a dame with a pocket watch?” “It’s not the watch; it’s what I tell ‘em about the watch.” Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What line of bull shit are you tellin’ them?” Pete grinned, amused that a guy who never came back to the ship without a smear of red lipstick standing out against his white collar would be interested in his line. “I tell ‘em how my daddy carried it through the trenches of France in the last war, how he gave it to me the night I left to enlist the same way his daddy gave it to him.”

“And that’s not how you got it?” “Hell no. I mean, it might have belonged to somebody’s granddaddy, but not mine. I won it in a poker game the night before we shipped out. Bluffed this guy with a pair of fours!” “Pair of fours!” Matt crowed. “I’m gonna have to deal you in more often. But you won’t get a girl here to fall for a line like that. New York dames are too smart for that shit.” “I guess they are,” Pete said as Matt flipped the watch back into his hand. “Or else you wouldn’t be in a roller rink on your first night as a civilian.” “The way women look at uniforms these days I ain’t in no rush to get back into a civilian suit. Besides, you been paying attention to what’s skating around out there?” Matt’s voice was deep as he towered over Pete. “Sure I have!” The words came out it in a bit of a squeak. “Why do you think I’m here?” “Then you’ve noticed the little brunette that’s been making eyes at you every time she goes by?” Pete’s slightly ajar mouth gave Matt all the answer he needed. He clamped his gorilla hands on Pete’s shoulders and twisted his torso towards the rink, pushing him up against the rail just as a slim girl in a navy blue sweater and pleated plaid skirt appeared at the edge of the skating crowd. Her eyes matched the deep brown of her hair. They seemed to light up as her red lips formed a slight smile. She floated by so close he could smell her sweet mixture of lavender and roses. Pete watched as she skated away, her bobbed hair bouncing lightly on her shoulders. “How…how do you know she’s not checking you out?” Pete stuttered. “Too skinny. You’ll make a perfect pair. Good luck.” Matt slapped him on the back so hard he could have sworn he heard his own ribs rattle. *** Mary Jane Dupree always smiled at the boys in uniform as she skated around the rink. She considered it her patriotic duty. Soldiers with medals hoping to impress, sailors in crisp dress blues always gave her the eye, sometimes even a whistle. She’d be sure to thrust her shoulders back and suck in her stomach—despite the girdle—on her second pass by them. But most of the time they’d just whistle and look. On the nights her sister June skated with her it was twice as much fun—double the girls, double the attention. “Half those plowboys can’t even roller skate!” she’d say to June. “I guess it’s hard to find a rink out in the middle of a cornfield,” June would reply.

It wasn’t an overstatement. They usually were just boys and most of them were from little towns in the South and Midwest, so intimidated by their first time in the big city that they’d hang out at the roller rink even if they couldn’t skate. They’d lean against the rail sipping Cokes, acting all smooth and in control through the perspiration on their foreheads if they did actually skate up to her. These were guys who had crawled across jungle floors on their stomachs and flown bombing missions over Germany, but were so nervous they had to put on an act just to talk to a girl. But Mary Jane figured she couldn’t blame them. She wouldn’t even leave the apartment without June when they first got to New York. As she rounded the curve in the rink where the guys hung over the rail, she looked down at her skirt, picking invisible lint from the pleats. Once she was past them, she sped up, pumping her arms to give her some speed, when suddenly a hand grabbed onto hers. She looked up to see the hazel eyes of the thin sailor she had been watching. He loosened his grip on her, holding her hand—as if he’d known her all his life—as he pulled her around the rink behind him, laughing as he picked up speed, whirling her out into the middle, into that empty donut hole in the center of the rink. He had a deep country kind of laugh, like he should have a piece of straw between his teeth. Just another plowboy, she thought, but she couldn’t help but smile every time he cackled. Mary Jane cleared her throat and stared down her nose. She had to stay cool no matter how much his eyes danced every time he let out a deep laugh. After all, who was in control of this little game? “Are you just going to skate and laugh, or do I get a name?” “The name’s Pete, and what would yours be, ma’am?” Each of the short words sounded like a multi-syllable tongue twister caught in his twang. “Is that accent real, or just something you like to try on for the girls in the big city?” Pete dropped her hand and looked down at his rough rented skates. “You think I want an accent that sounds like this?” “Mary Jane,” she said emphasizing her consonants. “My name is Mary Jane.” “Ok, Mary Jane. You wanna get a malt or somethin’?” Her red lips curved into a smile. “Or somethin’.” She took him to the little diner at the not so bright end of 34th Street, the one she and June would go to when the noise and lights of the city wouldn’t let them get any sleep. But that was what New York was supposed to do. She sat tall, poised, her back straight against the cushion on the booth, her soft sweater cupping her small breasts. Pete shifted his eyes downward, staring

at his drink. He began to blow bubbles. She giggled. It was a nice, soft giggle though. Not one of those high pitched cackles that had a guy wanting to high tail it back to his ship. “What do you do here in New York?” Pete asked. “Live the high life on your daddy’s money?” “Hardly.” She looked down her nose as she said it, puffed-up-like Pete thought. “I’m an usher at the Paramount Theater.” Pete’s eyes narrowed. “You mean you get to stand in the aisle and watch movies all day for pay?” She shrugged her small shoulders, up and then down as if her whole body was taking a breath. “It’s really not that great.” She tried to pass it off as being beneath her, but the truth was she was sick of hearing Kathryn Grayson warble three times a day in Anchors Aweigh, watching Gene Kelly dance with that damn mouse, and seeing Frank Sinatra get stuck with a dizzy blonde in the end. Completely unbelievable. She had seen the real thing, up close—a glimpse of Sinatra back stage before he was whisked out of the theatre. It was like watching a god ascend into the heavens as Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra slowly rose out of the floor and onto to the Paramount stage. Mary Jane, June, and every other female in the house were absolutely giddy—anyone of them better than what MGM was trying to pass off as a love interest. “I didn’t get to see movies on a regular basis until I got on the ship.” “Where are you from, Mars?” “Mango, Florida—about 20 miles outside of Tampa.” “Florida!” Mary Jane almost choked on her gulp of Coke. “I’ve never met somebody who actually lived in Florida. Is your yard full of orange trees? Can you spend every afternoon beneath a palm tree on the beach?” Her mind raced with postcard images. Mango, Florida. The town was named for a tropical fruit. Pete lowered his head to stare down into the brown liquid in his glass. “I don’t care much for the beach or the ocean.” He had been to the coast exactly twice in his life before joining the Navy. The calm Gulf water at Fort DeSoto State Park was like being in a bath tub compared to the Pacific Ocean. Its waters had tossed his ship around like a thin palm frond. And the heat. Below deck, on deck—it didn’t matter. Florida’s July heat couldn’t touch the sizzle and the smell coming off those islands—the Solomons and Guadalcanal. The Solomons were the worst by far. The men on the North Carolina had one task—guard the carrier

Enterprise, protect its supply and communication lines southeast of the Solomons. Japanese bombers and torpedo planes roared in on the battleship, but the gunners stayed on them. They only lost one man that day. Pete’s body was shaking, even hours later, from the force of holding onto that gun. Every man on deck felt invincible, until they caught up with the Enterprise. She had taken three direct hits. Men in flames leapt off of the carrier’s deck into the sea like human firecrackers, their flesh dangling from their bodies by the time they were pulled onto the North Carolina. As he placed men gently on the deck of his battleship, Pete couldn’t help but think he had let them down, these sailors, boys, just like him. At that moment all he wanted was to be back in the pasture, among his father’s herd of Brahmas. The gray of every ship reminded him of them, their silver hides shining beneath the high Florida sun. With the cattle to tend, the tractor to oil, fences to mend there had rarely been time for such luxuries as movies and trips to the beach. “We raise cattle,” he said. “My pappy, that is. He raises cattle.” “So you are a cowboy.” She smiled at him. “Huh?” Mary Jane’s eyes darted away. She could feel herself start to blush as her words came out. “The first time I heard your voice—calling me ‘ma’am’—I thought to myself that boy should be wearing a cowboy hat, not a sailor’s hat.” At that moment she looked into his eyes— they seemed a sage green now, like the fields he drove his cattle through—and realized who he reminded her of. Henry Fonda. The Grapes of Wrath or the My Darling Clementine Henry Fonda. Somewhere between Tom Joad and Wyatt Earp. That soft giggle came out as she thought of it. She looked up to the straw hanging slightly out of his mouth. It could be a piece of yellow hay or one of those long blades of grass plucked from a pasture, grass so high it came to his waist, swaying in an invisible air as an orange ball drifted west behind him. She could see it as she watched him chew the red and white straw. Her eyes darted upward to the ceiling, trying to get her mind on something else. She lowered them back down only to land on his eyes staring at her—no, through her—in a love-struck sort of way. Mary Jane jerked her hand off of the ice-filled glass of Coke as if it were a scalding cup of coffee and grabbed her purse on the seat next to her. “It’s, uh, getting pretty late.” Her words seemed to fall all over one another. “I’d better be getting home. My sister will start to worry.” ***

Pete and Mary Jane strolled slowly down the sidewalk towards the old brownstone walk- up with the blinking yellow sign that proclaimed “Rooms for Rent” in marquis style lettering. “So this is where you live?” Pete asked when she stopped and stared up at the building. “Not that glamorous, huh? June and I have been here, gee, over a year now.” It had been eighteen months of freedom in the big city for two girls from Adrian, Michigan. No dirt roads, no train whistles blowing, no father shaking his head. He had threatened to come and pluck both girls up by their brunette hairs and drag them back to Michigan if they didn’t “make good” at something, preferably at finding husbands. It was a bitter disappointment that his daughters weren’t married and settled. As the oldest, June had always been the main target for his complaints. “A twenty-one-year-old woman should have her life in order,” he would say from the other side of a newspaper at the head of their dinner table. Being female, single, and in New York seemed like the ultimate rebellion, and nineteen-year-old Mary Jane was thrilled to be rebelling along with her. “With eight kids, you know he just wants us gone so there’ll be two less mouths to feed,” June had said as she jammed clothes into her suitcase, punching at the shirts and dresses as if there were someone in them. “He just wants us married so he knows we’re taken care of. He doesn’t believe we can take care of ourselves.” Mary Jane wished she’d had her confidence. She had sat next to the window with her hands folded in her lap, like a scolded child waiting nervously in the corner, watching Michigan disappear as the train sped eastward. “Maybe he was just trying to protect us,” she said. “Suppose we can’t take care of ourselves.” June rummaged through the basket that had contained the turkey sandwiches and deviled eggs their mother had made for the trip. The last smells of home drifted out of the open flap. “You’d rather have Dad put your life in order? Wind up married to a conductor or lineman for the Norfolk and Western? Somebody just like him?” June had snapped back. For Mary Jane, staring into June’s face was like looking into a mirror. They were more like twins than just sisters, and June was the strong twin Mary Jane so desperately wanted to be. She hated to admit it now, but she had arrived in the city as big of a bumpkin as Pete. Hell, who was she kidding? All the fine store-bought clothes from Macy’s couldn’t cover the dust and soot of Adrian. But as she stared at Pete, standing there in his crisp Navy uniform, a line of multi-colored ribbons across his chest, “bumpkin” hardly seemed like the proper word for

him. The yellow light raining down on him from the street lamp seemed to wash away all his awkwardness. Pete clenched his hat in his hands, bunching it beyond recognition. He could see his breath pouring out of his mouth into the cold February air, but he could feel a heat coming from his skin and beads of sweat forming on his forehead. There was dampness beneath his arms. The streetlamp felt like a spotlight shooting down on him, and he was on center stage with an audience waiting for him to speak. He felt as if his fingers could tear through the hat at any moment. What was wrong with him? She was just one girl. He’d met plenty of girls, watched his shipmates talk them into just about anything using a bottle of whisky and lines about their dear mothers back home or how the last girl had left them high and dry or sent a “Dear John” letter. Matt claimed the quickest way to a girl’s bed was with sympathy and alcohol. All the guys had a good howl at that one; Pete wasn’t so sure. He had never even used his watch line on a girl. It just gave him something to boast about when the others were trying to one up each other with their experiences. The last thing he wanted was to be the silent one. Pete watched as Mary Jane climbed the steps of the brownstone, the seams of her stockings snaked up each leg and disappeared beneath her skirt. She seemed to bounce on each foot as she stepped up the stairs, her gloved hand gliding up the iron railing. She wasn’t one of those canteen girls that would fall for anybody’s line; she was too perfect for that. She was like…like his father said she would be. It had been his last night before heading off to boot camp, on the back porch with the hum of crickets and Florida humidity heavy in the air. The old man tossed his soiled cowboy hat onto a rickety table and lit the last cigarette in a pack of Marlboros. “You’ll be ready to come back here.” Pete had been at the opposite end of the porch, his nervous body swaying the porch swing, its chains creaking against the ceiling’s wood beams. “Sir?” was all he was able to muster. He could see the end of the cigarette—the only piece of his father visible in the darkness—moving from the old man’s mouth to his side, dangling from his finger and then back to his mouth. “I know it don’t seem like it now,” the voice said from the darkness. “You think you’re off on some big adventure—gonna tear the whole world up and take it by storm—but you’ll see. You’ll wake up one day on your ship or an island or in some strange city and you’ll be ready.” He took a drag on the cigarette.

“Ready for what?” Pete asked, watching the cigarette float in the darkness. “To come back, ready for a home and someone to share it with. The right someone. That’s when you know you’re a man.” The floor boards of the porch had groaned as his father got to his feet. The cigarette traveled from his mouth downward to an ash tray on the wicker table and then disappeared. The dark figure slowly walked towards him and stopped just in the faint ray of light coming from the kitchen. Pete had looked up into the old man’s face. The corners of his mouth raised the wrinkles just the tiniest bit. It was the only way Pete knew when his father was smiling. He placed a thick hand on Pete’s knee and patted it twice before opening the door into the kitchen. “Better get to bed. Tommorrow’ll be a long one.” Pete had heard the loose glass in the door shake as his father closed it. That and the fading odor of cigarette smoke were his last images of home. Pete looked up at Mary Jane. She had stopped on the third step. The bulbs of the “Rooms for Rent” sign twinkled like giant stars above her. Smooth brown hair framed her angelic face and rested like air against her shoulders. All that was missing was the wind machine blowing a soft breeze through it. Boy gets girl in 120 minutes or less, but this wasn’t a movie. There were no scripted guarantees. “I’m catching the train South tomorrow morning—heading home.” The words stuttered and stumbled from his mouth. “Bet you’re happy about that,” Mary Jane replied. “Yeah, yeah I guess so.” “You’re parents will be glad to see you.” Pete nodded his head. Mary Jane looked down at her feet and took in a breath. “And your girl?” “My girl!” A chuckle came out as a he said it. Pete looked at the hat he was rolling in his hands. “I don’t have no girl.” Mary Jane watched as he kicked at the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe. She expected to hear a “shucks, ma’am” come from his mouth. She could feel her lips form into a smile that lifted her entire face. Mary Jane looked up at the second window on the fourth floor. The light was on. June was home already and waiting. They both had to work the next day, the 11:00 a.m. Saturday matinee. She was surprised June was home this early. Her date with the stockbroker—or was it a producer—must have gone badly. For once Mary Jane was the one

coming in at 3:00 a.m. from a heavy date, not that June would consider a sailor from the roller rink a heavy date. These “unsophisticates” were becoming increasingly below her; she hadn’t been to the rink with Mary Jane in about a month. El Morocco and 21 were where June wanted to be. Mary Jane on the other hand just felt out of place among tuxedo clad men and endless bottles of champagne. The one time they doubled, Mary Jane spent most of the night trying to fight off the Cary Grant look-a-like who claimed to be an actor to boot. She’d never met a guy with so many hands! “Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with you!” June had moaned after their dates had dropped them at the rooming house at 11:00. “We came to New York to get away from roller rinks and movie theaters and hayseeds. I find a guy to take you out, buy you a swell dinner and what do you do? Become Miss Cold Fish!” Mary Jane had just stared into the scratched mirror of the second-hand vanity, methodically pulling the bobby pins from her hair. “And is that how you get the nylons and the hats and the Bergdorf coat—by not being a cold fish?” June unbuttoned the knee-length coat and draped it inside out over her bed’s footboard. Mary Jane could see the rich hues of red and brown and black in the fur lining reflected in the mirror. “God, Mary Jane, you make me sound so dirty!” Mary Jane sensed more pride than defensiveness in her voice. She ran her fingers through her hair, shaking the strands loose from the updo that always gave her a headache. “You make the same $18.50 a week I do, so you tell me?” June had only rolled her eyes before hanging the coat in their cramped closet. The space seemed to be shrinking on a daily basis. The first night that June hadn’t come home, Mary Jane was on the verge of calling the cops. She could only picture her lifeless body dumped in an alley or slumped on the subway steps. When June stumbled in at 7:00 a.m. she only waved a red-tipped finger at her and told her to stop being an annoying little sister. It was all beginning to wear thin. Mary Jane felt like she was at a standstill, waiting on a platform for the subway car labeled “excitement and fulfillment” that just never seemed to arrive, at least not at her station. And now here was this crazy sailor from Florida who seemed to have something. Maybe not excitement and glitter, but something real and tangible. Mary Jane tapped her foot against the step and placed her gloved hand on the doorknob, rubbing its dull brass finish. “I’d better go up,” she said. “It’s getting late.”

Pete dropped his left hand onto his hip pocket. He could feel the soft tick of the pocket watch inside. It seemed to be beating as fast as his heart. “I guess it is kind of late at that.” Mary Jane’s smile dropped as she clutched the door knob. Pete watched as she turned away from him and walked through the open door. His hat felt like a tattered ball of rags, he had bent and twisted it so many times. He took a deep breath and gulped, loudly. “Look, Mary Jane, would ya like to come with me?” “Come with you.” she repeated back to him. Her brown eyes narrowed, squinting at him, before she flashed them upward towards the starless sky. A crystal mist floated from her mouth as she let out a long breath. “You don’t even know me.” Pete climbed the steps up to her, dropping his arms to his sides as he walked. The sailor’s hat was tight in his right hand. “I know everything I want to know. What about you?” Mary Jane’s eyes widened into two black, bottomless pools staring back at Pete. What about her? Did she really know enough, know, as he put it, everything she wanted to know? She thought about June upstairs, about getting up in the morning to work another matinee, about Adrian and her father there waiting for her. Mary Jane was surprised by the sound of her own voice as she asked, “What time does your train leave in the morning?” A puff of mist came out of Pete’s mouth as he answered. “8:00 a.m.” Mary Jane nodded her head as the smile crept back across her face. “That’s only five hours for me to pack. I’d better go up and get started.” *** July, 1964 Mary Jane sat on the edge of the bed, fanning herself with the white envelope. She stared at the windows, draped in a stiff yellow fabric with large green daisies spaced across it, trying to decide whether or not to open them. It was only noon but the white frame house already felt like the inside of an oven that had been baking for over an hour. Opening them would let in a slight breeze—not enough to make a pinwheel budge, but more than enough to blow in that mixed aroma of alfalfa and cow manure coming up from the barn and south pasture. Dampened by the summer humidity, it got up into your nostrils and on your tongue. The stench never seemed to subside until the sun went down. Mary Jane sensed it the worst when standing in the cramped galley kitchen. Those windows had a direct view of the barn. With them open, that pungent odor mixed with whatever she was cooking—usually beef in some variety—always seemed to

turn her stomach. Some days she would just go without food between breakfast and dinner. But that was July in Mango, Florida. Mary Jane rubbed the back of her neck where a sticky wetness had formed, especially at her hair line. She had pulled her brown strands, increasingly peppered with silver, into a bun on her head. The hands of the round clock above the bed formed the time—12:10. Pete and Jimmy would be in for their lunch soon. She stopped fanning and looked down at the envelope with the Chicago postmark. Her pink tipped fingers lifted the flap of the envelope without much of a struggle and unfolded the wrinkled paper. It was well worn, having been read everyday for the last week. Her tired eyes traced the lines of the familiar words: Dear Mary Jane, Carl and I got back from San Francisco last week. And, well, I’ve come to a decision. I guess I should tell you about San Francisco though before I go into to all the other gory details. It’s a beautiful city of bridges and fog and streetcars that go up and down hills, popping you in and out of the fog… June always rambled on, especially when it came to describing her travels. In the eight years she had been married to Carl he had taken her more places than Mary Jane new existed, more places than Pete had taken her in their 18 years of marriage. The twice yearly cattle sales in Arcadia were the only trips that were promised and there was certainly nothing exciting about Arcadia. Although, he had taken her to Miami on their first anniversary. It was like a tropical New York to her, fine stores and hotels accentuated by palm trees and beaches. She could sense Pete’s awkwardness, though, that awkwardness she hadn’t seen since they left New York. Standing on the steps of their little house he’d constructed, and often deconstructed over the years, or striding the back of his horse, the thin, unsure boy was replaced by a tall man. Carl, a lawyer by profession, seemed to be secure anywhere. Even the one time he and June had come to visit, he was never at a loss for words and sat the back of a horse with as much gliding ease as if he were articulating a point in front of a judge. He had taken June to Europe on their honeymoon and then to a different city for every anniversary—New Orleans, San Francisco, skiing in Colorado. June was more than happy to send her a detailed letter or postcard from every one, telling of the sites, her wardrobe, and whatever anniversary present Carl had purchased for her. It was on a walk in the fog that I came to my decision. It was so thick that I could barely see Carl and Carl could barely see me, and we couldn’t see the bridge at all which was why we

are on this walk in the first place. And anyway, we didn’t say a word to each other the entire time—we just walked. The only way I even knew he was there was because I could hear his footsteps. When we got back to the hotel, we both realized it was over. Carl and I are getting divorced. I just don’t want to be here anymore. I want to get away from Chicago and Carl and all of our so-called friends and their whispering. It’s a time when a girl needs her sister. So what about a trip for just you and me? Maybe back to New York—like it used to be? We could stay in a nice hotel this time (on Carl’s money, of course) and maybe go to a couple of shows or even the World’s Fair. I’m sure you need this trip just as much as I do! The screened porch door squeaked and then slammed before Mary Jane could get to June’s plea that she write back—or better still, call collect—and say yes to the trip. She shoved the letter back into its envelope and the envelope back into the drawer of the cherry wood nightstand. Pete was slumped at the kitchen table as she walked in. “Not a cloud in the sky out there,” he sighed as he tossed his yellowed cowboy hat across the table. “Why don’t you open some of these windows?” “I’d rather not,” Mary Jane said as she opened the refrigerator door. “Well there’s a bit of a breeze out there.” “That’s why I’d rather not.” She placed a tray of sandwiches—roast beef and two chicken—on the table in front of him. Pete pulled a blue handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his forehead. There seemed to be more forehead to wipe with every passing year. Only a month past forty and his hair was all but gone. The once boyish face with the hazel eyes was like leather now, as brown as a fine saddle. But that couldn’t be helped. Ranching was a dawn till dusk job. The stock had to be fed, inoculated, branded, taken to sale. The acres of barbed wire had to be checked daily. Calves were born when they were ready to be born; a man couldn’t afford to be more than a day’s drive away when he’s got his own spread to run. It had taken Mary Jane a while to learn this—too long as far as he was concerned. There had been some hard years, sure. In ’51 he’d lost close to half of that spring’s calves to respiratory syncytia. Then back-to-back years of drought. He would ride out into the pastures, the herd’s silver hides so damp with sweat that they glowed like carts of mined diamonds in the sun, hoping not to see one more cow succumb to the heat. Every rancher and farmer east of Tampa was afraid their wells could run dry. The drought knocked down the price of beef, anywhere from $1.00 to $1.50 off of the average. He could chart each of the last 18 years this way, by the ebb and flow of his four-legged livelihood.

“I was expectin’ more than cold sandwiches,” he said, lifting the white bread to stare at the shredded meat. “It’s too hot for a big lunch,” Mary Jane replied, placing two glasses and a pitcher of water on the table. “Well I need a real lunch to last me ‘til dark.” “So come in early for a nice dinner,” she said before turning back to the counter and the sink full of breakfast dishes. “I’ve got daylight until 8:30—why would I come in early,” he said before taking a bite of the roast beef sandwich. Mary Jane wiped her hands on the dirty gingham skirt. They hadn’t had a sit down dinner since March, the last month that early night fall drove him out of the pastures by 6:30. Sunday afternoons were the only guaranteed family meals. Working in a hot kitchen on a July afternoon was a high price to pay for some togetherness. By the time the meal was cooked, her hair that had been so meticulously ironed and pinned for church was sweaty and tied tight upon her head and her makeup was running down her face. She felt too drained to carry on much of a conversation, not that Pete’s conversation ever included anything beyond stock prices, the health of the herd, or the calving season. And now with Jimmy working with him everyday, he had an excellent sounding board. There was a renewed energy in Pete’s cloudy hazel eyes as the two sat on the porch, the father explaining the art and intricacies of ranching to the boy who would one day be his successor. Their daughters seemed to be at that age when friends and boys and all those secrets you didn’t want to divulge to your mother were all that was on their minds. They’d take off to their room or over to a friend’s house after the meal had been ate and the dishes cleared, and Mary Jane would find herself alone at the kitchen table cutting coupons for the coming week’s grocery shopping. The sound of Pete’s and Jimmy’s voices floating in through the open windows—calf birthing and common genetic diseases of Brahmans detailed in low male tones—was all she would hear. “Isn’t Jimmy coming up for lunch?” Mary Jane asked, her eyes staring out the kitchen window at the gray barn a few yards away and at the pasture beyond. “He’ll be along. He’s inventoryin’ the feed; I’ll make a run after lunch if we’re low.” He took a sip of water and then looked behind himself. “Awful quiet. Where’s the girls?” “They’re over at…oh, what is that girl’s name?” Mary Jane rubbed her forehead. “Brenda, they’re over at Brenda’s.”

“They oughta be here helpin’ you. Then you wouldn’t be so worn out every evening.” “It’s Saturday, and a summer vacation Saturday at that.” “So?” Pete mumbled through a mouthful of roast beef. “Thirteen and eleven—they’re old enough to be doin’ some of the housework around here. Won’t even keep their room clean without tellin’ them to.” Mary Jane slapped his coffee mug down on the counter and turned her head to look back at him. He was staring down at his plate, his right hand clamped around his water glass, the left in the shape of a fist next to his plate, crumbs scattered over her white table cloth. It had given up the plates and droppings of breakfast a mere two hours earlier. She turned the rest of her body around, about to tell Pete to keep the crumbs off her just- cleaned table when she heard the squeak of the porch door. A long and lanky boy sauntered in, his tall frame topped by a wide brimmed cowboy hat, not as dirty as Pete’s but still dingy in color. “Hey, Mama,” he said, kissing Mary Jane on the cheek before sitting down at the table opposite Pete. Mary Jane smiled as he approvingly bit into one of the sandwiches. He dropped it, realizing her eyes were focused on his still hat-covered head, and placed his hat next to his father’s. From his thin frame to his green eyes to his full head of dark hair, Jimmy was every bit Pete’s son. “I just carried him for nine months, that’s all,” Mary Jane had said when the women at church all marveled at how much he looked like his daddy. “How’s the sweet feed holdin’ up?” Pete asked. “We’ve got plenty. I wouldn’t worry about it for another couple of weeks,” Jimmy answered, his syllables peppered with his father’s Florida drawl. “Good, I want to ride out to the west pasture, look at the older calves. One with respiratory syncytia is one too many.” Jimmy glanced over at his mother and then back at Pete. “As long as we’re back by six.” “Six?” Pete grunted. “It’s Saturday, I’m taking Virginia to the movies. You said I could.” Mary Jane saw Pete’s scowl. “My, my. Cows, girls—you’re quite a busy man these days,” she said. “Have you taken the time to delve into your summer reading list?” “Reading list?” Pete and Jimmy whined in unison.

Mary Jane crossed her arms and nodded towards her son. “You’ll be in senior English this fall—you’ll have a ton of reading. Shakespeare, Milton, Shaw.” “Unless there’s a book on cures and treatments for bovine respiratory diseases on that list he hasn’t got time to mess with it.” Pete grabbed his hat and jammed Jimmy’s down onto his head. “Well time’s a wastin’ if you want to be back here to get cleaned up for a girl.” Mary Jane glared, giving a slight jump as Pete slapped her on the behind. “There’s more to life than cows you know,” she called after him. He paused before heading out the door when he saw her face. “Maybe I’ll take your Mama to a movie tonight too.” He winked at her before striding out, his bootsteps like a bull’s stomping across the porch’s wooden planked floor. Jimmy pecked her on the cheek and took off after his father. He had seemed genuinely excited about the upcoming school year when he got his schedule, especially the English class. It was the first time Jimmy had let her in on his own interests. He said he was thinking about college even, that he wanted to be a teacher. He had made her promise not to tell Pete; they both knew what he would think of such a notion. *** A Saturday night movie was a constant, not that it was a weekly or even monthly constant. When the children were little they had all piled into the car to head down to the drive- in, or if something special were playing, down town to the Tampa Theater or the Strand. Now, dinner and a movie, or even just a movie, happened with less frequency. Mary Jane had slipped into one of her favorite sun dresses—a blue print with little pink flowers—and given her hair a bouffant up-do, making the most of the occasion. She soon decided, however, that “occasion” was an overstatement as she and Pete rattled down to the Fun-Lan drive-in in his work truck. “Why did we have to take the truck?” she asked as Pete pulled into a space. “Because Jimmy took the car,” Pete answered, stretching out his arm to grab the speaker. “This thing smells like horse feed and cow manure.” “And you can’t expect your son to pick up his girlfriend in a truck that smells like manure and feed. Besides, the truck doesn’t have a backseat,” he said with a wink in his voice. “And what is that supposed to mean?” Mary Jane said, looking straight ahead at the bucket of popcorn dancing with the hot dog across the screen. Pete let out one of his deep laughs and smiled at her. “That a new dress?” “I just haven’t worn it in a while.”

“Hmm, I don’t remember it. Guess it looks different in the moonlight.” He leaned over and gave her a peck on the neck, just below the ear. “You don’t remember it, huh?” Mary Jane said, letting out a bit of a snort before she said it. Pete nuzzled at her earlobe. “Should I?” She eased her body towards the passenger door. “So, what movie are we seeing?” Pete leaned back into his side of the cab. “McClintock!” “Oh, we saw that last fall when it was at the Strand!” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back into the cracked vinyl seat. “Why don’t you ever take me to a movie I want to see? It’s always these John Wayne cowboy flicks.” Pete pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. “What are you talkin’ about? I took you to see that Cary Grant movie, the one where he chased that skinny English girl all over Paris. What’s her name?” “Audrey Hepburn and that was six months ago.” Pete only shrugged and lit a cigarette, blowing a long line of smoke into the cab. Mary Jane coughed, but Pete just stared at the screen, whistling to the music that played as the opening credits rolled. “Do you have to smoke on me?” she said after another warning cough went unanswered. Pete glared over at her and flicked the cigarette out the window, returning his eyes to the screen as John Wayne strolled across it. “Say it’s a good morning, Drago, and I’ll shoot you,” Wayne pronounced as he marched down the steps of his ranch house and towards the buggy driven by Chill Wills. Pete laughed and nodded his head. “That’s what it feels like all right!” he said. Mary Jane looked out the passenger side window at the cars parked around them and wondered if any of their occupants were really watching, if Jimmy and Virginia were out there in the backseat of her Chevrolet not watching. She rubbed the back of her neck where beads of sweat were starting to form. The sun was gone now but it seemed that the humidity hadn’t dropped a bit. Something buzzed around her ear—a mosquito no doubt. She leaned her head against the door beam and looked up for some stars. Too much light. She looked back at the lights of the snack bar, but her stomach wasn’t growling yet. Pete let out a belly laugh, turning her attention to the screen and then at him. He roared at the choreographed fistfight that resulted in all the principle players winding up in the mud and

again whenever Wayne gave Maureen O’Hara her comeuppance—“Indian fighting is good experience for our kind of conversation.” Mary Jane looked back to the screen, at Wayne’s face magnified some five stories tall. It was as familiar as Pete’s; in fact, they were one in the same. That unsure and hesitant Henry Fonda-like boy she had fallen in love with in New York had grown into the Duke’s shoes. When Pete would sit atop Poco, his dapple-gray stallion, wearing a faded blue shirt, a neckerchief he would pull up to keep the dust out of his nostrils, and his spurs that always made a pronounced jingle if he wore them into the house, he looked like a figure from a John Wayne movie. For years now, she had secretly believed that he shouted “forward ho” whenever he drove the main herd up to the barn to be loaded into the trailers and taken to sale. Pete howled as Maureen O’Hara conked Wayne on the head with a whiskey bottle. “That’ll come back to haunt her.” Mary Jane chewed on the inside of her lower lip for several seconds before speaking. “I think he just doesn’t understand her.” “What?” Pete asked, looking over at her. “She doesn’t want to be a rancher’s wife all the time. That’s why she goes to Newport and Washington and those other places without him.” Pete looked back up at the screen. “She doesn’t want to stay in her place. That’s what the movie’s about, him putting her in her place.” “Well I wouldn’t want to stay in that place all the time, sitting around in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cows.” “That’s what ranchers do, that’s what we do.” “And wouldn’t you like to go somewhere, Pete?” He pulled another cigarette out of his pocket, only to put it back when he looked over at her. “Where?” “I don’t know,” she said throwing her hands up in the air. “We could go out West— Texas, Arizona. See the Grand Canyon, see some real cowboys.” “What is that supposed to mean?” he snapped. “You know—the West, cowboys.” Pete only glared. “John Wayne!” She pointed at the screen. “I don’t think John Wayne ever made a cowboy movie in Florida.” Pete rolled his eyes and turned back towards the screen. John Wayne and Chill Wills rolled down the stairs. He didn’t laugh this time.

“We could go to a city,” she said. “Los Angeles—Hollywood—or Las Vegas.” “You’re gonna look for real cowboys in Las Vegas? The only cowboy there is fifteen feet tall and wearin’ neon!” Pete shook his head. “Just watch the movie.” Mary Jane tapped her fingers on the side of the truck, listening to Pete’s chuckles for several minutes. “I got a letter from June last week,” she said. “Hmm, that’s nice,” Pete mumbled. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the movie’s background music. Even after a good washing, there was still dirt beneath his fingernails. It seemed that he never got them clean. “She asked me to come to New York.” “Well you just be sure to write June back and tell her and Carl that we won’t be able to make it this season.” Pete raised his pinky on the word “season.” “I got too much to do before the first sale in September to be traipsing off to New York with June and Carl.” “It would just be me and June,” Mary Jane said, rolling her fingers around in her lap. “Huh!” he snorted. “Carl may let his wife roam all over creation without him, but you’re not goin’ with her.” Mary Jane looked to her left, as if an invisible hand had snapped her neck in Pete’s direction. “And why not?” Pete met her gaze, his eyes wide and mouth ajar. “Are you kiddin’ me, Mary Jane? You think I’m gonna let you run all over New York City with that crazy sister of yours who prances around like a fashion model, makin’ small talk over martinis about people who actually have to work for a livin’?” “At least she’s offered to take me somewhere, even said she’d fly me up there. You never take me anywhere!” “Is that what all this is about? One letter from your idiot sister and now I gotta hear ‘you never take me anywhere,’ which is not true.” “Oh really!” she leaned into the middle seat, her voice raised. “Where have you taken me?” Pete turned his body towards her, holding the fingers of his left hand in her face. “I’ve taken you to Miami and Arcadia and…down to the Floridian Hotel—it was here in town, but it was pretty nice, now wasn’t it?” “Yearly trips to Arcadia and a trip to Miami 17 years ago—wow!” The car next to them blew its horn and the driver waved his fist out the window.

Pete gave her a light push back to her side of the truck. “Everybody around us can hear you bitchin’ at me. You’ve talked through half of the movie.” Mary Jane grabbed the door handle and kicked the truck’s door open with a loud squeak. The entire frame shook as she slammed it. “Where you goin’?” Pete called out the window. Mary Jane leaned her head back in and growled, “to the snack bar.” “Get me a popsicle then.” Pete gave her a sheepish smile as he held out a dollar. *** The drive-in was just about a mile from the white house and the weathered gray barn and the two large pastures surrounding them. Mary Jane had kicked at rocks and the occasional stray bottle all the way. The thought of Pete sitting in the truck, waiting for his Popsicle amused her for a few minutes. But with a shortcut through the Copelands’ field, she soon found herself sitting on the steps of her own porch, wondering if Pete was right, if she had the nerve to write back to June and say yes. She leaned back on the step and closed her eyes, taking in a breath of wind that was at last cool now that the day was over. Her slumped frame shuffled into the bathroom and flipped on the light. It pulsated rays of sickly yellow for several seconds before deciding it would actually come on. Mary Jane pulled the pins from her hair and dropped them into a soap dish that doubled as their holder. She ran her stiff fingers through her hair, trying to loosen it from the hairspray’s grip. Every piece of gray seemed magnified by the poor lighting. The right index finger started at her cheek and moved down to her chin, then up the other cheek to her right eye and the dark circle beneath it. The one beneath the left seemed just as visible, little lines protruding from the sides of them staring back at her in the mirror. She blew her hair with a long sigh. Her sleeveless dress was damp beneath the arms—another item to add to her heaping pile of laundry. The dress pulled tight across her chest and the side zipper puckered down her torso. She hadn’t noticed that when she put it on a few hours ago. It was five years old after all. Pete had bought it for her in a little dress shop in Arcadia after a good sale. It was on a summer clearance rack, which made it a good deal, but he had said he just loved the color and that it would be cool for her to wear to church. That September of ’59 sale had been the first they had actually turned a profit. Jimmy had had new shoes and the girls new dresses to wear on the first day of school.

The bathroom door creaked on its hinges as she pulled it close and then walked to her bedroom. She unzipped the dress and tossed it on the bed and then fumbled through her drawers for a nightgown to replace it—her green one with the blue dots was airy and cool. Her gaze stopped on the nightstand drawer. The white envelope was still inside where she had left it. Her fingers had wrapped around it so tight when she had first read it that they had scrunched the envelope in two. She didn’t want to read it again. The choir of crickets and her own breathing were the only sounds. The insects outside the window were so loud they seemed to vibrate the un-insulated walls of the house, her house at “the bend of the river where the cottonwoods grow.” That’s what Pete had proclaimed it when he added on their new bedroom and gave the old room to Jimmy. It was a line from a John Wayne movie; she couldn’t remember exactly which one. Except there was no river or any cottonwoods, whatever they were. Just cows and acre after acre of treeless pasture and a house with a snaking floor plan that would make the best of architects scratch their collective heads. A barn for humans that got so hot in the summer it seemed to melt you from the inside out and so cold in the winter she had to put her bottle of hairspray on the stove to thaw it out. But he’d built it for her. Mary Jane pulled a box of stationary—pink with a cursive M across the top—and matching pen from the drawer that had concealed June’s letter for so many days now. She placed a blank sheet on the top of the box and stared down at the M, the pen between her teeth. She dropped it onto the night stand when she heard the creak and then slam of the screen door. She listened as the footsteps vibrated through the floor, without jingling this time. Pete had actually remembered to take his spurs off before they went to the movies. Mary Jane sat still on the bed, clutching the stationary box in her lap. Pete pushed the door open and leaned his body against the frame. “Why the hell did you do that? You know, I must have asked every ticket-taker and car hop if they had seen you!” “I wanted to answer June’s letter,” she said without looking at him. “You left me sittin’ in the truck and walked a mile to answer a letter?” She nodded at him. “So, what are you gonna tell her?” “’No.’ That’s what you told me to tell her.” Pete lowered his body onto the bed. “I’m startin’ to get the hint that that’s not what you want to tell her.” “I didn’t say that. I just think we should talk about it.”

Pete turned his head to look at her after several minutes of hearing nothing but the crickets hum. “Ok, talk.” Mary Jane crossed her arms and looked ahead into the mirror hanging above the dresser. She could see the both of them, slouched, tired, sitting what felt like miles from each other. “It’s not that simple.” She watched her reflection, how she flinched when she said the words. Pete got to his feet. She could hear the bed squeaking as it regained its shape, and Pete’s back popping as he walked towards their bedroom door. He stretched his stiff body into a moveable, bow-legged form. “Suit yourself. I’m gonna go shower off. I got kind of sweaty running all over the dang drive-in.” “Sometimes I feel like I could have stayed in Adrian and not have missed a thing.” Mary Jane was surprised by how easily the words came—calm, matter of fact. Pete stopped at the door, his hand gripping the knob. “What are you talkin’ about? You’re whole life’s been here.” She leaned back into her pillow. “You think I wouldn’t have met a guy, gotten married, and had three kids if I had stayed in Adrian?” “What you really wish is that you had stayed in New York and wound up like June.” He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, pulling so hard she was sure they would snap right off in his hand. “One letter from that goof and…and—” “And what!” He ripped off the last button and peeled the shirt from his body. He crumpled it into a ball and threw it on the bed. “You want to go to New York with her? Fine, go. Go be Holly Golightly or whoever the hell you think you’re supposed to be, but be sure you get it all out of your system while you’re up there.” She nodded her head from side to side. “It’ll all just be here waiting when I come back.” He stood there in only his undershirt, staring at her. “You tryin’ to say that I’m the problem?” Mary Jane shrugged. She wouldn’t have put it that way, that he was a “problem” in need of a quick fix. “It’s just…you could do more. We could do more…together.” He snorted and shook his head, the snort escalating to a giggly snicker. “We’re stuck in a hole, Pete. A hole— not a rut. Don’t you see that?” The bedroom door rattled as Pete turned the knob. He stepped into the doorway and then stopped. “Me takin’ you out to dinner or away on a trip isn’t gonna make you happy. Like you

said, everything will be the same when you get back. Nothin’ will make you happy if you don’t want to be happy.” The door closed, squeaking just like the bathroom door at its hinges where he had promised to put some grease. Holly Golightly indeed! She didn’t know Pete could reference anything but cowboy movies. Mary Jane reached to turn off the lamp and then leaned back into the bed. The chirping crickets soon gave way to the sound of water roaring through the pipes. If that’s what he thought about her, he was wrong. She wasn’t afraid to be happy, “to stick out her chin and say, ‘Okay. Life's a fact,’” as George Peppard had put it, but did it have to be the same continuous fact? Mary Jane rolled onto her side and stared out the window. The curtains were blowing in the breeze, a cool but sticky breeze. With that much humidity in the air a rain shower was a guarantee. She tossed onto her other side, thrashing in the sheets. Happy or not, they belonged to each other and Mary Jane knew that. She could hear Pete whistling now. A good cold shower had been all he needed. He was whistling the music from the drive-in, that stupid “Love in the Country” song from McClintock! She sat up and flipped on the light, grabbed her pen and stationary from the drawer and stared at the blank sheet of paper. After a few moments of gnawing on its top, she guided the pen’s tip over the paper in a soft quick cursive: Dear June, It’s so sad to hear about you and Carl. I think you should get away for a nice trip. It will give you time to think and clear the air. I’m sorry I won’t be able to go with you though…” She paused, twirling the pen between her fingers. The water of the shower had stopped running and she could hear Pete’s voice now, “Love in the country, where skies are…” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t remember what came next. “Blue,” she whispered to herself and smiled. She had so many things she wanted to tell June—that Jimmy was thinking about college, how big the girls were getting, how good Pete’s herd looked this year, and that she was so proud of it all that, well…she couldn’t possibly go away.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Jennifer L. Dawson was born in Tampa, Florida in 1980. As a fifth generation Floridian she has taken great pride in attending both Florida State University and the University of Tampa. She graduated with honors from the University of Tampa in 2002, receiving the William Stewart Award for Excellence in English and Literature and recognition as the Distinguished Graduate in Writing. While at Florida State, she has completed the Certificate in Publishing and Editing to compliment her master’s degree. Professionally, Jennifer has used her writing, editing, and communications skills to work both in the publishing field as well as the non-profit sector with such companies as Pineapple Press, Communications Equity Associates, and The American Cancer Society. She currently resides in both Tallahassee and Tampa and is happily single.