WAKING UP DEAD

By

Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

In

Creative Writing

Chair: a )1 ce.~~J /d-rtell~'!c-·c ··~ Andrew Holleran /~/~ Cfiuzr:!-u:.__, Denise Orenstein

Date

2008 American University Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cl ~00 UMI Number: 1460429

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ProQuest LLC 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 WAKING UP DEAD

BY

Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice

ABSTRACT

Waking Up Dead is a novel organized around three generations of women affected both directly and indirectly by the Iraq war. Taylor, an aspiring singer with an independent streak, and Steve, a young Marine about to deploy to Iraq, make the rash decision to marry. The novel explores the consequences of their decision and the notion that history may repeat itself.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

Chapter

ONE TAYLOR ...... l

TWO LANA ...... 72

THREE SLOANE...... 105

Ill CHAPTER ONE

TAYLOR

I tell him about the baby over the phone just after he says it's so hot over there Satan would fry. His response is silence so I say it again thinking it's a bad connection.

"I'm pregnant."

"Shit."

"Shit? That's your response to your wife telling you she's pregnant? Shit?"

It's all muffled as he pulls the phone away and shouts that his wife's having a baby.

There's lots of whooping. Lots of taunts, lots of "guess you gotta give up all those whores."

"What?"

"Shut up, Custodian."

I assume Custodian is the name for someone holding down the fort with him in the desert.

"Steve?"

"Sorry baby, just Custodian being an ass."

1 2

"What kind of name is Custodian?" I ask, knowing full well that there's no good answer.

"Nicer one than it is at home."

"Oh."

"Time's up," he says.

Wind funnels against the phone. A world away and the dessert storms manage to effect life here. That's what it's like in country, the girls say. In country just another euphemism for being fucked in the middle of a war zone.

"Are you happy about this?" I ask.

"You know it. Hey Sarge! I was just saying how I was gonna name my kid after you.

Isn't that right, baby?"

"Funny."

"Talk to you soon."

"I love you."

"Love you too, baby and little baby."

My mother is next. She says she knew this would happen. She is probably staring out of her bay window, sizing up the neighbor's new garden. She says she just knew it. Then she hangs up on me.

The mosquitoes come in through a crack in the screen. I cut a piece of scotch tape with my teeth and hold it against the hole. My belly squishes against the counter. It's gonna take some adjusting to being fat. I'd always been able to wear my jeans low. When

I moved here the owner of the Shoe Salon said I had knees made for cowboy boots. No 3 idea what she meant by that, but I reminded myself of that very fact anytime my self­ esteem was low.

Five minutes later my mother calls back.

"What do you want?"

"What if he never comes back?"

"I'm hanging up."

"You won't even have enough to raise this bastard's child."

"I told you not to talk about Steve like that."

"Oh, honey. Time to face the reality of the situation with him over there and never coming back from the looks of the Channel Four news. I hate to say it 'cause you're my daughter but you don't have any idea. You move down to Texas with this boy and he leaves you behind in a shack while he goes off to play with his guns."

''I'm really hanging up."

"Lighten up, Taylor. It's very brave and all what that boy's doing but now you're knocked up and alone. Soon to be an army widow working at the Walmart."

"I will never work at the goddamn Walmart."

"What are you going to do?"

"See a doctor. My friend Tracey's taking me."

"That's wonderful."

"Uh-huh."

"In a few years you can try again."

"Steve said it's 113 degrees there." 4

"That's if you don't leave him first. Did I tell you I ran into Jimmy Johnson in the

Shop & Save? He was getting some things for his mother and he called me Ms. Carlson with that long voice of his. He asked about you and don't worry I told him you were in school and you'd be back this summer."

"Good to know you're still lying about your only daughter."

"Don't be so sensitive. Just trying to keep your options open."

"I don't need your help."

"Least you only have to deal with those crazy hormones a few more days."

"Seven more months."

"If you're going to the doctor tomorrow it shouldn't be much longer."

"Huh?"

"You said your girlfriend's gonna take you to take care of it."

"I said she was going to TAKE me. I never said I was taking care of it. Steve and I wanna have a baby," I say, not knowing if there's any truth to it. Around here having babies is just the next step and when I'd met Steve he was the first guy I'd wanted to be the father of my children.

"Wish it were that simple, darling."

"It is."

This time I hang up on her and kick the rusty kitchen chair. I've just put lasagna in the oven and the sweet smell spills into the room I've scrubbed the kitchen top to bottom with bleach and paper towels, but everything still green or river brown. This is standard­ issue military kitchen in a standard-issue, one-story clapboard house passed down from 5 one young military family to the next. When we arrived, it was move-in ready: cheap artwork (pastel interpretations of "Green Pastures") hung on the walls; cactus shaped salt­ and-pepper shakers on the table; wilting tulips in an aluminum can. And since we, like the previous tenants, had no income to upscale the decor, we had to accept this as our new home even if there were crusty toothbrushes next to the sink and three used condoms in the trash. We're lucky to get anything at all. Getting a house on base had a mile-long waitlist.

Home sweet home.

Steve had whistled as he swung me over the threshold to our new home and proceeded to peel off my sticky sundress. There on the scratchy "Home Sweet Home" welcome rug is where I first saw the spider webs draped in the room's comers and where we probably conceived the baby now making its home in the wad of skin swelling under my shirt.

I had threatened to leave and head south since my sixteenth birthday. My mother became obsessed with entering me in singing competition; I was North Carolina's reigning Little Miss Baptist. Other mothers with bubble butts, faded jeans, and fake nails drooled on my mother, telling her I was on the path, that I had been given a gift (from

God, my mother lectured as she marched to the local Baptist church and made me join the youth choir). One Sunday after church, after my cheeks had been poked like the bruised apples at the Shop & Save, after what the congregation called a "goose bump 6 thing" of a performance of "Amazing Grace," I told her I was going to Nashville, to become a country star. She was eating grapes for dinner, which was her idea of a sensible meal, and she laughed, flipping her head back, blonde hair flashing like sparklers. She said I'd never do it, that I'd come to my senses. She said all my girlfriends would go off to college and I'd want to be just like them because that's just who I was. She said I was a follower.

According to her, my father had also been a follower, following in behind his father's alcoholism and love of what my mother called skanks. She said "skanks" with such carelessness that it was as though she was saying "Bless You" to a sneeze. I never saw her cry, not even when my father's new girlfriend called to say he'd been in a terrible motorcycle accident and might not recover. He did.

I remembered my father as this tall man with hairy calves who sometimes tied my mother to the bed and left her there. It wasn't until sixth grade that my mature friend

Carly (she had an actual bra with a tiny pink bow) told me that my dad was probably fucking my mom and that's why he tied her up and yelled her name over and over again and why she whimpered and screamed.

After hanging up on my father's new girlfriend, she'd paused for a moment at the phone and swore three times, thinking, like usual, that I couldn't hear.

"Mommy?"

"Finish your cereal."

"Who was it?"

"Your father was in a car accident." 7

"Is he OK?"

"Don't know. Maybe he'll die, maybe not. Hurry up. We can't have you be late for your first singing lesson."

My mother was rational and meticulous. Even death wouldn't stop her from making me into something she could be proud of.

It had been a Monday night in Nashville, the sky like a brand-new chalkboard. I'd just played a set to an enormous crowd of two. Three if you count Jim, the homeless guy

Joe took pity on and let drink for free on slow nights. I was packing up the guitar when someone placed a glass on the stage.

"You look like you could handle whisky."

It wasn't a question. He wore a gray T-shirt, frayed at the seams. The only logical action was accept the drink.

"Thanks."

He nodded towards the bar.

A lanky couple rocked against each other to Patsy Cline.

He sat on a warped stools. I went behind the bar to grab a bottle of Jameison.

"Joe and I have an agreement. I sing for free, I take for free," I said, passing the bottle to him.

"Smart."

"Yeah, well. You figure it's either food or booze." 8

"Only one answer to that problem."

A half hour later his hands scratched against my sweaty back. We're the only ones left, swaying to songs with lyrics like molasses. His said his name's Steve. His smoky breath loosened my neck, made me want to tug at his belt. He's in the Marines; he likes blowing shit up.

"I like blowing shit up."

"Funny."

"I'm serious."

"So, someone says he wants you to blow shit up? You nod. He says welcome to the

Army?"

"Welcome to the Marines, actually."

"Oh."

"Aren't Ready for the Marines Yet."

"What?"

"A. R. M. Y. Aren't Ready for the Marines Yet."

And, later, because I can't shut up I pushed to know if he'd actually blown things up.

Only in practice, he said. He said it'd be soon enough. The President just sent more troops to the dessert. His dad was a sergeant, but died from a freak brain clot. His mother doesn't come up in conversation. I'll find out later that his mother is comatose with depression in some moldy state institution. He was in Nashville for his time before shit hits the fan. I imagined that he must cruise around in a red pick-up truck catcalling trashy girls. In reality, the truck's blue and big enough that he had to help me get up into the 9 passenger's seat. He's a clich_but not a joke. This is someone my mother would hate.

This is not the man to propel her only daughter, product of a single parent home, to

American Dream success. To my mother, Steve is the guy who'll leave the next day.

He drove towards my studio apartment with its warped floors and tissue-paper curtains. In front of the brick apartment building, he parked, half on the sidewalk, half on the empty street. The truck's a mess, empty soda and beer cans crunched under my feet, and I was tom between wanting to run and wanting to slide over and straddle him.

"Thanks for the drinks."

"You needed a drink. I needed company. It all works out."

"Should I say good luck, you know, for when you go?

"Good luck, break a leg, lose a leg ... "

"Oh, right. Losing a limb is hilarious!"

"How about a deal? I'll come back with a leg if you get a sense of humor while I'm gone."

"Um."

This guy was a bit too presumptuous.

"Deal?"

"Uh. Sure .. "

"Good. See you when I see you."

He smiled. His cheeks loosened into dimples. He looked an awful lot like my mother's 1962 Ken doll with the short-short bathing trunks and nothing else. I'd always worshipped Barbie's best friend with his perfectly shiny and tan body until the fourth 10 grade when I saw my neighbor peeing in the bushes and realized no one would ever look like Ken. The fact that I couldn't take Ken out of the box for fear (my mother's) that he might be worth something one day didn't help my obsession with perfection. Three months ago the 1962 Ken doll was a high bid of $9 .41 on EBay.

I struggled with the door handle, accidentally opening and closing the window, unable to lave the filthy cab with its American flag air freshener. I'd almost made it when he reached across my lap, locking the door with his palm. My mother was in my ear yelling for me to run, that I'd for sure just got myself into a mess a crazy guy. If I had a moment to think maybe I would've kicked him in the balls and run, but he had his hand behind my head, fingers tangled in my hair, then on my back, under my shirt, pulling me towards him, my ass hitting the horn. My lips were on his neck, then his cheek, over the scar-like-a-pothole on his lip. My arms around his back. Under the thin shirt. My hands on the cold belt buckle, up the tense muscles; my fingers on his three dog tags as they were Braille and I could read it with my drunken hands. Almost completely naked except for his white boxers I decided are given out to the soldiers in bulk. My jeans were clogged around my hips in what was probably an unattractive mess of a fluorescent green thong and ripped jeans. Wiggling out of the jeans was an almost impossible task until he shifted the seat backwards, dragging me into the cramped backseat. With my right foot pushing against the left, imploring the jeans to just come off, I accidentally hit the radio.

Music ran out of the speakers, filling in the steamy air with Cash's growl.

"So graceful of you."

"Some mood music was needed." 11

"Hang on. I've got some candles in the back. Maybe some roses. White lingerie."

"Shut up."

And then my head pushed against the window, my hair spreading like spider webs.

My hands in the bowl of his lower back, pulling him by his ass into me. It was a miniseries for women. I'll cry with my girlfriends tomorrow. Say that I had a thing with a tortured solider. Describe his tongue on my collarbone. Remember the flag tattoo scorched into his arm. I'll wake up in the green morning, choking on the air that had been recycled all night long.

I woke up to find that I was half naked in his truck, an itchy blanket wrapped around me like a toga. It was a trashy moment. Not my finest. Yet with the sun heating the seats, it seemed romantic.

"Morn' shmunshmine."

He was there in last night's clothes, holding a greasy paper bag with his teeth, mumbling, his hands otherwise occupied with to-go coffee cups. Swinging his legs over the console, he wedged himself into a seated position, spreading napkins like a tablecloth for a picnic of champagne and smelly cheeses.

"A jelly. Old fashioned. Chocolate frosted. Pink sprinkles for you. Unless you like another one better and I'll eat the sprinkles. Except the chocolate frosted. You can't have that."

His lips bent into a smile and because I was still naked and drunk I wanted to push the donuts out of the way and not care if we ended up covered in confectioner's sugar and pink sprinkles. 12

"I'll take the pink. And the coffee."

"I knew you looked like a Krispy Kreme kinda girl."

"What? The belly give it away?"

"A thousand donuts and you'd still be the hottest this side of wherever."

Quite possibly the cheesiest cheesy thing I'd ever heard. I burst out laughing, crumbs spraying like fireworks announcing the fact that this soldier is full of shit.

"Ok, soldier. When do you go?"

"A few months or so. Maybe more, maybe less."

The last bit of pink sprinkles and fluffy dough dissolved on my tongue. Though he was a stranger and for all I knew a crazed maniac gone AWOL, I wanted to keep him around. And though I prided myself on my staunch independence, I wanted him to scoop me up like he'd just returned from the hell of war and I'm the devoted girl glad her hero's home.

"You have a few to come inside for a shower?"

He did. I wanted him to protect me. I took the donut hanging from his mouth and enjoyed the jelly insides. Jellies are my favorite kind.

I've fallen into a sweaty sleep on the couch and am jolted awake by the beeping of the oven timer.

Of course. 13

I'll be the one wife unable to cook a meal and Kristi Lee Smith will start up with her mantra about girls today and their lack of respect for their roles. I'll hold my tongue because she's a bitter woman whose husband has had affairs with the local college girls who waitress at The Shack.

The kitchen is now so hot I swear the linoleum is covered in sweat. I pull the lasagna from the oven, poking the top layer to assess the damage. Crispy, but not burnt, resembling something like vomit baked on asphalt.

The phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Yo, mamacita," says a nasally voice.

"Tracey?"

"Yeah."

"I'm a mess and my lasagna is vomit!"

"You hurled baby sickness into the lasagna for the widow?"

Tracey snickers.

"That's disgusting. I'm over the morning sickness anyway."

"Good. I can't deal with you as pukey-mcpuke."

Tracey had claimed she and her husband Jon were too selfish for kids. They liked to fuck on the kitchen table, on the back porch, in the bathrooms at the base, during neighborhood cookouts. High school sweethearts who'd never felt the need to stop going at it in the back of other people's cars. I learned all of this the first day we arrived in

Sampson. 14

"Thanks. "

"I'll love you when that thing's out of there."

"Great, but could you like me a little today and come over? I'm supposed to bring this over there at 6 sharp."

"Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't want Mrs. Evil causing trouble for the oh-holy-one pregnant girl."

I laugh, sit in a chair, my legs spread like a bad-mannered frat guy.

Two minutes she's in the kitchen, screeching about the heat. Her black hair is piled up on her head. A hot pink plastic straw holds the whole thing together.

"I can't get the AC to work."

"Honey, you flip the switch to "cool" and abracadabra ... AC!"

"Oh."

"You're totally useless."

"I couldn't read the switches ... the letters are all faded."

Tracey's at the thermostat fiddling with buttons. She's wiggling around on the balls of her feet making it clear she's wearing but a thong underneath the oversized "Wives

Softball Team" shirt.

"You do know you're not wearing shorts."

"Shit, you're right. It is really hard to read this. Ughhhhh. OK, got it."

The AC thunders to life. I don't know what I'd do without Tracey. There's something to be said for having a man around, not that that I'd admit that aloud.

"At least I have a shirt on!" 15

I look down at my bra and underwear which both look like they've been plastered on with a glue stick.

"It's too hot! And, I'm in my house! I didn't have to cross the street in my underwear."

"Whatever. It's all women on this cul-de-sac of hell."

"I'd be more worried about the women seeing you in your skivvies than the men who'll appreciate your unreal body."

"Those bitches are just jealous. I haven't been stretched out from slimy, little brats popping out of my pussy."

"You're disgusting."

"C'mon, I didn't mean you, obviously. Yours will be a sparkling little angel that'll slide out like a penis."

Tracey's so pleased with her metaphors. The other women love to gossip about

Tracey. Some can't understand why Jon would choose such a spitfire when he's so reserved. In the end, their gossip is nothing but hot air. Jealousy is more common around here than American flags.

"I told Steve today."

"He says his life's over?"

"He wants a family. He's happy."

Both are lies but I don't know how to admit that to a woman who thinks she knows everything. Truth is I don't know Steve well enough to know what he wants.

"Happy 'til that alien suckles on your tit and he doesn't want you anymore." 16

"You're a bitch."

"I know. So, let me see this lasagna. Bitches like to help other bitches out."

Less than twenty-four hours after our pick-up truck sleepover, Steve had returned to the bar. He stood at the front door chatting with the bouncer, Luis, about machine guns.

As I approached, the two were so into it, so calm, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had been discussing the difference between and a Ford and a Chevy.

"Yo, Squirt. You know this guy?"

Luis pointed at Steve.

Luis had begun calling me "Squirt" my second day at the bar. He claimed I was so short I ought to be a midget, but he didn't mind because "good things come in short packages."

"Yeah, I kinda sorta know him."

"Kinda?"

"She knows me."

"Alright, buddy. I like you and all, but you mess with Squirt and I twist your

balls off with my pinky."

Steve laughed, clearly not realizing that Luis wasn't joking.

"Ok, then. You guys fight it out like men," I said.

"You gotta take him with you. You know how Joe hates people, guys especially, loitering around." 17

Luis flattened a cigarette with one tap from his heel.

You don't argue with Luis so I grabbed Steve, pulling him towards the parking lot.

"Thought you were leaving."

"What's up with that guy?" Steve asked, pointing in Luis' direction.

"I'd watch it because you wouldn't be the first time he hurt someone for me. Aren't you supposed to go play G.I. Joe?"

"Not 'til Saturday. I told you Friday in case you turned out to be a mistake. I didn't want you to be stalking me."

"How sweet of you."

"I thought so. Then you had to go fuck it up."

Steve smiled with teeth that seemed too white and too straight. He scratched his belly through a threadbare USMC t-shirt. I was neither amused nor afraid of him.

Standing there, leaning into the bed of his truck, he knew he was in control of the situation. This take-charge attitude was a welcome change. My mother claimed all men were liars and wanna-be tough guys. She'd always said they thought with their dicks and devoured you with their eyes. Anything else, she said, anything in between, was bullshit.

That was her birds and the bees talk, which she only gave me once, on the night of my first formal dance. That night I cried in the bathroom stall; I wouldn't make out with the captain of the freshman football team and he told me I was a prude.

"Oh?"

"Couldn't stop thinking about you."

"Must've been a boring day." 18

"Best day I've had in a while. Get in."

"My car's here."

"Leave it. I'll bring you back later."

And though I wanted to play the game, the game of hard-to-get, that just wasn't me.

I wanted him. He was presumptuous, demanding, and gruff. He was no-fuss. No matter

how stupid, I wanted him.

He talked my ear off about the Marines and how he was gonna "get some;" he

wasn't referring to sex but to someone he'll eventually kill. Something, anything. The

veins in his hands pulsed as if pumping rage. This was anger I recognized. Anger with a

purpose, a purpose my mother never had. I'd never understood why she didn't stand up to

my father, why she get tough on him the way she was tough on me. I'd felt this urge,

wanting to avenge whatever has got you by the neck and won't let go. When he

announced, with the levelheaded voice of a newscaster, he was gonna "get some"

terrorists, I'm not horrified at his irrational anger. I agreed it was no different than

someone protecting their family to the best of their ability. Self-defense in the most

selfless way.

The truck's cab was musty, windows left open in the rain one too many times. A

dashboard hula dancer was bent over from the heat, her hair flooding her face. A bouquet

of M&M wrappers covered the seat, forming a barrier between the Marine and me. Steve

was all muscle, but he amazingly consisted on a diet of candy and beer. I'd soon learn he

hadn't taken even one second to care whether or not he was doing the right thing by joining the Marines. He wanted to do anything, a need that had been ingrained in him 19 from a young age when his mother was so out of her mind she didn't feed him for weeks.

Everything with Steve was go, go, do, do.

A few right turns later, and a fifteen-minute ride up the freeway, we pulled onto a dirty path. A faded sign welcomed us to Candyland Park. I was none too pleased to be in a shady trailer park full of bright pink or green trailers. Perhaps, I thought naively, his grandparents lived in the one with the family of plastic flamingoes dancing around a tiny fountain.

"My cousin's having a going away party for me."

He grabbed my hand, pulling me across the gravel driveway and around the back of the flamingo trailer.

A teepee of a bonfire burned while a bunch oftwenty-something's threw logs into the blaze and slurped Wild Turkey.

"This looks like a high school party to me," I said.

"Steve!"

A girl with limbs like plastic drinking straws jumped up on Steve.

"Hey, Mary."

She kissed his neck and ear before noticing me.

"Hey."

"Mary, this is Taylor. Taylor, this is Mary."

"What's up?"

She nodded at me as if was the annoying younger sibling and she had to go meet her boyfriend at "make out point." 20

Steve unbent Mary's limbs from his neck and hips. He placed her on the ground like she was a child. And basically she was, a girl barefoot in the damp grass, announcing to the crowd that the man of honor was there.

"My cousin's girlfriend," Steve explained.

"Ah."

"Yo Steve-o. Who's this?"

"Hey man."

Steve kneeled to the ground to smack a dwarf wearing a Superman costume.

"Oh my god, is he OK?"

Steve exploded with laughter, a cackle like the bird outside my window every damn morning.

"Taylor, this my cousin Kreg. Kreg, this is Taylor."

"I think she's afraid of me."

"Uh.. no! No, no. I'm not. I'mjust ... well .... "

"Don't worry. Sometimes kids in the grocery store will run screaming to their fat mothers."

My face reddened.

"He's kidding," said Steve.

"Oh."

"Make yourself at home. We're just gonna enjoy ourselves until Steve-o takes off for the land of the dead," said Kreg with a giant smile.

"Don't be jealous just because the Marines rejected you." 21

"You won't be saying that when your face is raw from sandstorms and I'm here drinking beers, throwing parties and banging Mary."

I laughed despite the slight feeling I might have entered an alternate universe.

"Taylor, it's been nice meeting you. Beers are in the bathroom tub. Liquor's on the deck. I'm sure this asshole will show you the way," Kreg said. "I'm gonna make sure

Mary hasn't burned down the neighbor's trailer. She claims she's gotten better with the grill, but yesterday she torched the neighbor's Jesus in the manger display."

"A manger? It's summer," I say, ever the skeptic.

"Christmas in July," said Steve. "Drink?"

I nodded and let him lead the way. We passed Batman and Catwoman, the Incredible

Hulk, Indiana Jones, Spiderman, five other Supermen, some guys in tight spandex contraptions I couldn't identify, and a weird guy dressed as Bill Clinton. Turned out it was a "hero" party for Steve, but for some reason everyone thought that meant

"superhero." We ate s'mores and too many hot dogs. Got soaked during an out-of-the­ blue thunderstorm. Watched as Steve made Kreg fly while I worried that Steve was drunk enough to drop his cousin. Everyone cheered Superman on. People passed out on the lawn without bothering to remove their costumes. A few hours later and we were the only ones awake. The backyard was littered with bodies, the devastating aftermath of a

superhero bloodbath. The bad guys had won. Steve and I found a hammock in a neighboring yard and didn't leave until a half-naked woman wearing red stilettos and a sleep mask ran us out with a lasso. 22

Steve left early the next morning, just after I made him eggs and burnt toast. He said

I was amazing. I laughed him off and sent him on his way. But two hours and fifteen minutes after his truck turned the corner I cried in the middle of the kitchen while making the 10 for $10 soup I hated but no choice but had to eat.

Steve said he'd call, but I didn't subscribe to that fairytale, the one other girls daydreamed about in their canopy beds with their pink satin sheets. I had that bed and those sheets only because my mother thought that was what beauty queens should sleep in. She might've been happier had I actually been a Barbie doll; she could have dressed me up and bent my arms or legs any which way.

I was as certain Steve wouldn't call as I was that the soup would taste like salt water mixed with cardboard noodles. Steve was probably fucking some whore in Arkansas by now. My mother, in all her infinite wisdom about men, said they were nothing but bombs of desire. Of course, she said, while weighing my special portion of her famous

Jell-o fruit mold, there's only one outcome with men. Devastation for those left in their wake.

I cried over Steve's devastation. I ate my soup, slurped it up through a pathetic display of sniffles. I gave myself a lecture. Pull yourself together you baby. I swore that

I'd be alone forever. Ransacking the cabinets for any sign of chocolate proved fruitless so

I burrowed in the futon with my friends from the Home Shopping Network. The hosts, with their botoxed souls and shiny faces, always seemed sadder than anything I'd managed to get myself into. They made me feel better about myself. 23

The hosts were drooling over a "very believable" pink diamonite ring. Carrie, the host with fingers so big they might as well be coming through the TV to snatch me up, modeled the ring. The cameraman was savvy enough to cut to the bobble-head model with eyes that never blinked. The model waved her hand around as though she were desperately trying to put out a fire.

Just as a woman from Kansas called in to express her love of pink diamonite, my phone rang. If by some miracle it was Steve, I pledged to be nonchalant.

"Hey baby."

I reminded myself that only guys in movies said shit like that.

"Hello."

"Miss me?"

Terribly.

The host flapped her fingers to her palm in an apparent goodbye wave to the woman from Kansas who probably spent her week's paycheck on a fake ring.

"Hello?"

"Sorry. Hi."

"What are ya doing?'

"Oh you know. Watching the Home Shopping Network."

"How is it?"

"Enthralling."

"You're seriously watching it?"

"Yep." 24

"Ok then. I'll let you get back to your fruity candles and stuff."

"No candles. It's diamonite week. Fake diamonds. World's finest. People actually wear this crap for their wedding bands."

"Not all of us grew up in cul-de-sacs with plaid curtains."

"Gingham."

"Huh?"

"Gingham. Not plaid. Plaid is too .... too lumberjack."

Steve either didn't get it or knew I was being an ass.

"Steve?"

"Will you marry me?"

The host preached the merits of their "Stretch-Pay," which made the diamonite ring less than two dollars and change a month for only three months.

Just as much to feed a child in Nigeria!

"Taylor?"

"Can you believe this blond stick figure bitch?"

"Are you referring to yourself?"

"No. Obviously."

"I asked you something."

"Yeah, yeah. Will I marry you?"

"Yes. Will you marry me?"

"Why not."

"Why not?" 25

"Yeah. Let's do it."

"Are you high?"

"Nah."

"So, your answer is you'll do it?"

"I'm sorry. What was the question again?"

"Taylor. Let's get married!"

His cousin knew a judge at the courthouse who said he'd squeeze us in two days later. I danced around my living room naked. No man had ever been like Steve. Just because all the factors worked against us didn't mean that we couldn't try. Steve knew it was crazy, but there were rewards for being a married Marine. Our marriage managed to be practical and impractical all at the same time.

Steve turned his truck around and drove back Nashville. When he arrived, he hung around my apartment watching ESPN and tried to get his buddies to cover him at the base. I never asked how they covered for him. I later learned he was in huge trouble for his evident display of disrespect.

I pulled out my shabby mop and went to work on the tiles that were covered with grime dating back to 1915. The landlord, with her peppercorn eyes, had agreed to let me out of my lease once I mentioned a "situation," "marriage," and "a Marine."

Unfortunately, a wink and a "Ah. Got it!" didn't get me out of "Clean it. Spotless. Before you go!" 26

Steve lounged spread eagle on the futon soaked with 24 hours of sweaty sex and sweatier sleep. His dog tags were twisted to look like a dial on one of those animated dolls.

"Was I thinking with my head?" My mother would ask later, yelling so loud through the phone she rattled the dishes her our sink.

No. I wasn't thinking with my head. Steve made me want to run away from anyone

I'd ever known. Part of me knew this was one sick fantasy. As much as I didn't want to admit that I wanted a man around, I needed it, craved it. If Steve could fire a gun, he might be the kind I imagined. It was half-insane, half-really insane, but whenever I began to doubt it, Steve would flip around on the futon. His lips would form the shape of letters, spelling out something like "you're unreal." Then he'd push me up against the half-cleaned fridge, dragging his lips against my neck.

My mother never hugged. Don't misunderstand. I'm not excusing my rash decision on the grounds that I was starved for love: I don't buy into that shrink BS. The physical body, Steve's hands molding to my cheek, my breasts, and my ass ... it was necessary, satisfying.

On the day we were to get married, my empty studio was as sad as the inside of a discarded refrigerator box no child would ever use for a fort. My bags and two guitars were at the center of the sad box. Steve lay across the bigger bag.

"This OK?" 27

I bought a white dress from the consignment shop down the street and that's what I wore to my wedding. The dress and my cowboy boots. A quick look in the mirror confirmed that the whole "bridal-cowboy" look really wasn't all that classy.

"Aren't I cursing us by looking at you right now?" Steve asked.

"I'm pretty sure all tradition went out the door already."

"Never say never pretty lady."

Steve popped up from his bag and lunged into a kneeling position on my now-shiny floors. A purple velvet box floated on his palm. When he snapped it open, there was an actual ring, and from the looks of it, it wasn't diamonite.

"My grandma gave me this. It was hers and since I'm the only grandkid it's mine.

She said I'd meet a girl who'd make me beg and that's gotta be you."

"Hurry up! I've already set the date."

Steve stood up and slid the ring on my finger.

"Soon I'll own you."

"Oh shut up. You will never."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that."

Steve's hands went up my leg, to my thigh, under the thin cotton of my makeshift wedding dress. We were late to the wedding we had planned in two whole days.

"And the thing is .... fuck me .... "

Tracey grumbles. 28

"You OK?"

"Damnit. Yeah I'm fine. I just bled into the tomato sauce. No one'll know."

"Ew."

"The thing is ... that slut only wants to marry him for his money and I told her I can see right through her whole I'm-so-Martha-Stewart-making-cute-pot-pies act. I'm so gonna bust up that wedding."

Tracey complains about her mother as she whips up another lasagna. She saves me so many times a week I would die without her. People undervalue the importance of a strong personality in a duo. Tracey takes the lead, and in that way she is very much like my mother. But unlike my mother-daughter relationship, our friendship is effortless.

Tracey had come knocking on our front door my second day in Texas. She wanted a rolling pin. She rolled her eyes as she asked and I didn't point out the symmetry. With the bleach blonde hair snaking around her head, her Saran-wrap tight shorts, and her bubblegum popping out so fast I thought it was her tongue, I didn't think she'd get my wit. Turned out I was wrong.

Nowadays I'm perfectly comfortable telling her that I, like all normal people, assumed she wasn't the brightest bulb on the block. That first day I swore we'd be enemies.

After she asked for the rolling pin, I shook my head and let her see into the empty apartment-my few boxes were stacked in the middle of the room.

"Sorry. We just got here. Plus I have no clue how to use a rolling pin."

"Whatever. I needed an excuse to come over and snoop." 29

I asked her in then because I was standing at my new front door in my new neighborhood wearing a tiny t-shirt Steve had shrunk and pink underwear with "Super

Slut" written across the ass. The underwear was an apparent bachelorette gift from

Steve's cousins and friends.

"Nice ass."

I plopped on the couch, motioning for her to do the same.

"Thanks. So, what? Everyone want to know what's up with the new tenants?"

Tracey laughed.

"Honey, we already know what's up. We just wanted to get a good look at you so we have something to gossip about at book club."

I raised my eyebrows. These floral couches were saturated with the bitter smell of bodies and were itchy to boot.

"It's possible my grandmother had this furniture."

"Welcome to Sampson. Things just stay around and never die. People are a whole different story though. I suggest crying your pretty little heart out now and suck it up. Oh, and here. The dumb mail guy delivered it to us next door instead of here."

I remained stunned into silence as she threw a beat-up envelope my way. Turned out to be a card from my father. The envelope had had quite a trip: first my mother's house in

Virginia, the bar, my old apartment and finally my new and extremely intimidating neighbor's house .

I opened the card with all the confidence of a person whose father buys a "My

Dearest Step-Daughter, God Bless Your Marriage!" card and crosses out "Step" with a 30 red marker. He bought the card on clearance at the Walmart. A pink sticker advertised its

bargain price: 75% off! Inside? $25 and a note: Love, Dad & Betty.

I imagined Betty to be a cartoon: all boobs and butt, waist the size of my pinky finger, shiny black hair, and lips like two bananas pumped with hormones.

I spent the $25 on martinis for me and Tracey. She took me to the Shack for my first time where she proposed a hilariously elegant toast to my stepfather and his whore of a

girlfriend.

After Tracey finishes the lasagna, I thank her and rush off to my army wife duty.

Plastering my face with a goofy smile and mmmhmmming isn't that hard when you try

so I do that and feel pretty genuinely bad for Tina O'Brien. After twenty minutes of small talk and compliments about my (Tracey's) lasagna, I excuse myself for work at the

Shack.

Kristi Lee Smith tweets like a dying bird: "A girl like you shouldn't work at a place

like that when she's carrying a baby."

"It's fine," I say and smile, knowing full well that as soon as I leave they'll be talking about what a bad decision I've made working at that sinful bar.

The sinful bar is otherwise known as the Shack- Sampson's oldest and most­ respected Marine establishment. Sun-poisoned stucco and unfinished cement form the building, which appears to be in a permanent state of pause, as if the thought of drinking meant that unfinished walls, however ugly, were good enough. 31

Through two swinging and permanently swollen doors that Sally locks with a padlock is the bar-in-the-round. The bar's mismatched wooden floor slats are so beat-up it's easy to imagine that someone decided this was an artistic choice and left it that way.

A single bulb highlights the stage. The inside is dark, cool, hidden from the midday sun by a combination of curtains and that special power belonging only to a bar - the power to suspend itself from the normal world, which requires light and business causal attire.

In Sampson Township, however, you quickly come to learn that business casual means church wear. Everything else is just casual.

Sally is queen here: She's all white hair worn like a crown, skin grilled by the Texas sun, and teeth, crooked and sharp.

The first time I met Sally she'd worn painted-on-oh-so-tight jeans, a plaid shirt tied up above her belly button like a shrine to a stomach as flat and shiny as my mother's new marble kitchen countertops. A. big, golden cross around her neck sparkled and seemed to blink like a neon "open" sign about to bum out, but instead of announcing Mary Lou's

World Famous Coconut Pie, this one announced my verdict: Sinner! Sinner! Sinner!

She placed one steel toe boot in front of the other. I stood there hoping, possibly praying, that she couldn't strike me dead with her inhuman white hair or her stomach, too amazing to belong to any woman not in Hugh Hefner's bed.

"Yes?"

She spoke with the lilt of a nighttime disc jockey dedicating love songs. She wiped the bar as she talked, stopping every few seconds to check out her hair in the shiny countertop. 32

"I'm looking for a job ... I was told you-"

"Yeah, yeah you were told I was looking. I'm always looking, honey. People come and go from this town faster than your boyfriend can shoot his wad. You got a boyfriend?"

My mouth is down to my collarbone. She's like Grandma Gone Wild and I was expecting Joe, the pudgy bar owner, who rides a Harley and is, of course, soft in the middle.

"Don't look so shocked, babe. This thing ... "

She points to the blinking cross.

"This thing is just to keep the wimpy gossip squirrels from ruining the Shack. Piece of advice little lady, wear a cross, show up to church once in a while and you'll be good to go. Simple as pie. So, boyfriend? Can't have our girls running around here making out with their boyfriends every chance they get just because Daddy doesn't approve."

"You don't have to worry about that."

I wiggle my ring finger at her, hoping the small but sparkly diamond will send the message.

"Oh, honey. You think that's ever stopped anyone?"

"Guess not."

"That's right. Never has. You're a beauty though. Spin."

"What?"

"Spin. Let me get a look at you."

Sally squinted through leopard print reading glasses with foggy lenses. 33

"Yes! I know you now. You're Steve Jackson's girl. Taylor, isn't it?"'

"Yes'm."

"Come here and give Aunt Sally a hug. I've known Steve since he was asking about the thing between his legs, and I'm real proud of him because he's really got his act together."

"Steve speaks very highly of you. Though he was quite reluctant about me coming here."

"Figures. I've got too much dirt on him, and he can't have you knowing everything yet. You two are talk of the town. You tamed Sampson's most wanted Marine which means Mrs. Taylor Jackson has lots of enemies here, and a new job as my bright-eyed, newlywed bartender."

Sally pulled out two shot glasses, poured tequila without looking, and slid a glass stuffed with limes my way. She held up the glass for a toast.

"Normally we don't drink during work, but God ... "

She winked.

" ... God will pardon us this time since we've got family here and weddings are always something to celebrate."

Blame it on the tequila but the Shack already felt like home, and I hoped Sally would adopt me just like she had done for Steve when he was captain of the football team and failing school. 34

Luckily Sally was used to troubled situations. As soon as I'd begun feeling nauseous a month after Steve left, Sally had insisted I go home. She had also called Tracey, demanding Tracey be at my house with a variety of pregnancy tests.

Tracey arrived ten minutes later

"Now that high school slut at Rite-Aid thinks I'm the one knocked up!"

Steve had been gone for four and a half weeks. The ladies gave us all a calendar so we could check off each day like an advent calendar.

I chugged the bottle of cranberry juice. Tracey claimed it'll stimulate the bladder.

"You do know cranberry is useful for a UTI not pregnancy peeing?"

"Shut up and go."

I peed on all ten tests while Tracey burrowed herself in my new down comforter.

She shoveled M&Ms into her mouth.

"Can you not get chocolate on my bed?"

"I want to slice Katie Couric's legs off."

I'm mid-pee.

"That's terrible."

"She's as stupid as my cousin Paul. ... and Paul is retarded."

"You're an awful person."

"At least I'm not going to bring a kid into a single parent, war-torn home!"

I ignored her.

"Are you paying attention to the time? I'm done with the last one."

"Yes. Wipe your ass and come out here." 35

The bedroom was a sight to be seen: It wasn't even ten in the morning and Tracey was already drinking a beer with the bag of M&Ms propped up on her chest. She' wore a stained t-shirt with A.R.W.Y pasted to the front; the "W" stood for wives. The bed was covered in runaway green M&Ms and white plastic strips neatly in rows.

"Tracey." I held up one of the green M&Ms that had become lodged in the lampshade.

"The green are disgusting."

"They taste the same."

"Whatever. Sit down! Your fat ass is blocking my view of The View."

The TV blared The View. An announcer deadpanned the day's topics: the war, minivans, and whether wiping from front-to-back means you're a liberal, as opposed to a conservative who wipes back-to-front.

"Why do you watch this?"

"Makes me pissed as hell."

"So turn it off."

"These dumb bitches think I'm some hick who grew up in a trailer park and who

married the town fuck-up who joined the Marines and knocked me up with three kids.

"But. .. you did grow up in a trailer park and you did marry your high school sweetheart."

"Whatever."

There was no use arguing with her.

"Hey, that blonde one ... " I tried to change the subject. 36

"You mean Quarterback?"

"Quarterback? Her name is Haselback."

"Whatever. Two minutes 'til your fate is decided," Tracey said as she looked down at her watch. "All I know is that that Haselback blonde bobble head person flaps her lips about duty and respecting the troops, but the only troops she respects are the ones that follow her around and fetch her a triple-no-fat-one-shot-of-I'm-a-fucking-idiot-latte."

This was why I loved Tracey. She was surprising and crass, so crass that my mother would be pretending to faint while fanning herself and moaning, "That language. Oh!

My!" My mother hid behind her subtle ways:

The setting is anywhere you see people. The grocery store. The post office. Funeral

Home.

Mother: Why hello, Lucy. What a nice blouse.

Lucy: This 'ole thing?

Mother: (She lightly touches the shirt.) You must've bought this at a fabulous boutique. You always know the best places!

Lucy: Well, actually ... Harold lost his job and I've had to start shopping at Goodwill.

I'll tell you there are some really great deals the---

Mother: Ah, Bloomingdales! What a lovely store. Good to see you Ms. Lucy.

Tracey's phone buzzed. Time to check the strips. Lucky me, all were positive. 37

In Sampson Township there's not much to do, but wait. Everything's in cruise control until they come back. I work at the Shack serving sweaty beers and shots to grunts, to wrinkled and infant newbies, the ones who had to do this for their father or to pay for school, or because, like Steve, they want to fuck things up, avenge someone, anything. I pray to God for a favor, not sure ifl believe in him, but it's the thing to do, so you do. In desperation, I take gossip walks with the other wives, some have gold crosses around their necks, some are veterans of this, some are drunks, some swear a lot, some are pregnant, some are really good at poker. They throw me a baby shower, pile hand me down infant clothes on my messy bed, take me to the doctor, tell me my body will never be the same. We read tabloids, distract ourselves with the bubbles of cellulite on actress' legs, ignore the news, watch romantic comedies with leggy blondes and older­ than-my-father men. The summer's green rusts to gold, but the air is still a tent of dust over the base.

I volunteer to make dinner for the women who've been visited by the man on the steps, his trained voice repeating a mantra of we're sorry for your loss, the government is forever grateful. I curse while making lasagna for what feels like the millionth time.

Halfway through laying the wet noodles layer by layer, I want to scream. Fuck this shit, this goddamn heat roasting my baby. I imagine him to be overcooked, crispy like the turkey I tried to make Steve our first Thanksgiving in Texas. With one hand holding up the cantaloupe of a belly, I resume my wifely lasagna duties, reminding myself to shut up because I'm grateful now. My husband's dressed in camo trying to avoid death by an IED 38 and I'm making lasagna because Sandy Conrad's husband's head was blown to dust in the crossfire.

Before long, I'm eight months along and the chilly air makes its way through the drafty house. The doctor says I'm too close and I'd be better served by bed rest.

Something about high blood pressure and my high risk factor. Tracey thinks he means

I'm an "Marine Wife." Like we're some kind of disease because we're unstable, as if we're nothing without our strong, hero husbands. Sally is too kind about the whole thing, promising to keep my job and giving me a little stipend paycheck. She says I'm like her daughter and she can't wait to meet her little grandbaby.

Tracey's over each day, bringing food from the women, or magazines or soft-core porn. She says she's horny as hell. I tell her I'd be willing to jump on anything that's how bad it is. They say sex will make the baby come, scare it into the world or something like that. I don't know about that, but I do know it has been too long and every part of me begs for human stimulation.

I'm embarrassed by our lack of shame in watching When Harry Bangs Sally, but

Tracey could care less. We eat chocolate and popcorn; she chugs beer and tries to convince me to have some wine, just one glass. When I'm a week from the due date, I relent and she squeals with joy, pours us both glasses, and salutes my last few days of freedom. The wine bums and the baby pounds its fists against my hard stomach.

"That's so ... gross!" She scrunches her face as she feels the kick.

"C'mon, just try it. She's moving so much. I swear she's doing somersaults." 39

The baby continues to kick and Tracey bursts into tears, then full fledge sobs. Her head falls to my belly as she wails louder and louder.

"What's wrong with you?

"I'll never ... .I'll never have one ... "

I rub her head with my swollen fingers.

"I thought you didn't want kids."

"I don't .. .I don't know. Maybe I do. What if yours is too cute?"

"I guess you can wait and see. I'm sure you'll be an amazing godmother."

"Uh-huh."

Tracey snaps up. Mascara mixed with tears make her face look like a bad attempt at zebra couture.

"What did you say?"

"I'd like you to be her godmother."

"What does Steve think?"

"Who cares? He's not here."

"YES!!"

Tracey's screams ricochet through the room.

"That's the best news ever!"

Cupping her hands to my belly, she leans down to talk to her goddaughter: "Hurry up slow poke, we need you out here now."

A few minutes later we're passed out in front of Sluts in Seattle, happily dreaming of kicking babies and our men coming home to fuck our brains out. 40

Two days go by with no baby. I decide I don't care about the doctor's orders and I drive myself to McDonald's. Barely able to squeeze behind the wheel, the only thing keeping me going is the thought of a Big Mac with extra pickles, one of those syrupy shakes, fries dipped in honey mustard, and chicken nuggets.

Being cooped up in bed for the last few weeks gives new meaning to Sampson's commercial strip. Every brightly colored sign beckons with promises. I'm bored and my belly's literally wearing a hole in my shirt. Steve won't be back for the birth. It's the middle of imperative times there, says someone in charge. I appealed twice, each time met with "aw-shucks." Apparently the Marines solve this problem via web cam. So, I ask, it's possible to get high-speed internet there, but it's not possible to send my husband home? Yes, m'am, that's right, they say. There's a stipend for the web cam. Someone'll even come out and install it. I say thanks, but no thanks. Steve will never ever go for seeing it all, all that raw skin stretching and tearing, all that bodily fluid. He can handle the bloody battle wounds, but not this.

I reach McDonald's, park illegally in front, and waddle from the car. The salty smells egg me along. Red and yellow signs advertise new specials, but I don't need a menu. The handful of customers stare. I assume it's at the massive belly, which is so big it's like a whole different entity. I soon realize it's because I'm only wearing a giant shirt that Tracey gave me during the shower. Plastered across the front is an arrow pointing at my face. Bold letters make their point: IT'S HIS FAULT. 41

I don't care what I look like. I'm not out here to impress anyone. I just want my food. Not too much to ask, all things considered. A kind woman working behind the counter offers to carry my feast to a table. Lowering myself to the chair is difficult but I manage. Once my legs are up and I'm spread comfortably, I use my belly as a tray.

Shortens the distance from table to mouth.

I'm slurping on the last bits of delicious vanilla shakes when something stabs me.

Then another sharp pain like someone's pulling hairs from arm. Then a quick pause, followed by a rush of water onto the floor. Someone to my right yaps in Spanish,

"Jesucristo! Jesucristo!"

I don't get to finish my delicious meal because a redheaded woman I don't recognize gathers helpers to get me out of the seat. She says she'll drive me to the hospital. I refuse, say I'll just finish my lunch, and head home. Some nerve she has. She screams that I'm in labor. No shit, I want to say. My entire body feels like a seam about to rip. Sweat pools in my armpits. I feel like a walking ball of nasty. Whoever said childbirth was a beautiful thing must've given birth to a marble. The woman is still screaming. OK, maybe she isn't screaming. Her lips are really red and really big. She sounds like a piping hot tea pot.

The next hours are snippets, someone's squeezing at my stomach, someone's crawling at my crotch, someone's swearing and honking at me. Somehow I get onto a wheelchair at the hospital. I yell about Tracey and the nice redhead woman offers to call. 42

The baby's corning. Nurses get me onto the bed, stretch my legs onto cold stirrups and telling me it'll be OK. I can feel her down there, sticking and pulling at the skin. It's like ripping off a band-aid that's attached by superglue ... except worse.

Four hours later I've lost my voice from screaming. A gorilla-ish nurse commands that I push like a man. I point out that men couldn't do this, can't do this. She isn't amused so I do as she says and I grunt like a man. And just like the finest of male species, my noises lead to bodily fluids, urine mixed with a mucusy blood, fluids that cover the shrieking baby. Her eyes squint shut.; she snuggles into the pink swaddling, already missing her home inside the belly.

Welcome to the world, baby girl.

The day he comes back, the heat wraps the base in a bubble of haze. Getting Sloane from the house to the car feels like going from drive to neutral.

Our street is like being backstage before a circus. Kids run around in diapers, mothers yell from the doorways, their hair covered in curlers. You doubt anything will come together, but it always does, flawlessly. I've learned by now that these mothers are sergeants of their own and one out of place child would throw off the entire mission.

Normally I can drive to the base with my eyes closed, but today I take two wrong turns. I notice new stores (Tina's Trinkets and Loco Larry's Pawn Shop) and the new wrought-iron street lamps. When I run a new stop sign in a dangerous intersection- one 43 the ladies had been pushing for the installing of a 4-way stop-I wonder if I've been asleep for the last year.

Sloane is still asleep when we park. With her head on my shoulder I walk toward the swaying mass. A poster smacks me in the head. I hadn't thought to make any sort of

"Welcome Home" sign like the other families here. It wasn't really home anyway - just somewhere I'd slept for the last eighteen months. I doubt this will ever become home.

Home is not determined by sugary sayings. If home is where the heart is, then mine has been in the desert.

Sloane is awakened by all the chirping excitement. Her wide eyes swallow up the colors and faces.

A small, round woman waddles over to us. She looks like she's made of beach balls.

"Aw. What a li'l cutie-patootie. A cute li'l puppy you are."

Please don't refer to my daughter as a puppy. I smile, hoping she'll skedaddle.

"And those curls! I used to have curls like that, but then I went through the change!

You know what I mean?"

I shake my head, half in shock, half in amusement.

Her round head is covered with a dust ball of gray hair. Her eyes are gray, her skin splotchy and yellow like a bruised banana. She squeezes Sloane's arms.

"Just like a juicy drum stick!"

Sloane scrunches her eyes, then buries her head against my chest. She's afraid of this woman too.

"You waiting for this little chicken's papa?" 44

"Yes'm. It's a very exciting day. Sloane gets to meet her daddy."

A herd of redheaded children push against my legs. An older woman I assume to be the grandmother apologizes then pushes her own way through.

"Oh my sufferin' Jesus on the cross! What a divine day! What a lovely event."

She's clapping her hands together. No one, I think, gets off on other people's lives this much. While I rub Sloane's back, I store up questions for small talk in the event she doesn't leave us alone.

"How long has your husband been gone?"

She picks at her teeth.

"Hmm. Who? Me? Oh, no, no. I'm as single as the one gray pube left down there."

Yes. She points at her crotch.

I wonder if this is Tracey's evil twin, which I know isn't possible since Tracey's stunning and this woman is like the food scraps that accumulated in the sink when the disposal broke last week.

"I like seeing them all come back. Makes me know it's all worth it. Makes me happy."

I nod. I figure she's one of those people who like donating to causes. All the suffering is good because you get to remind yourself that you've got it so good. You don't even have to get dirty.

"Well. It was nice speaking with you, but I must go. Time to feed before her daddy gets here." 45

"Alright sugar. Make sure this one sucks real hard. That's why the good God gave you two nipples. God bless you and your tiny puppy now."

Steve's back in our home, in our bed, his hands grabbing onto my belly, the skin wrinkled like a deflating balloon. The first day he wants me, four times. The next day he claims that he doesn't want me, but his outline is there in the moonlight that night. He's always grabbing at my shorts, pulling them down just enough he can reach his hand around the pubic bone. He wants me to get a wax, a trim, clean that shit up. I'm a useless elastic to him now and he can't get off on his post-pregnancy wife. It's like being a masochist but I don't care. I want him to need me; you know, it's just stress, PTSD.

Everyone says this is normal. The Marines do too. I try to get him to go see someone, thinking they have help for these things. Steve's there everyday, doing some kind of desk job. Then it's out with his buddies drinking a few nights a week. They have a touch football team and I read that exercise is good for anger.

Tracey and I go down to the diner for coffee and three eggs over easy. Guilt steams from me because I have Steve home and she's still alone, waiting. I have a baby with the tiniest fingernails and red popsicle lips. She's got Steve's smirk, the little curl of the lips to one side as if that mouth knows the answers to everything and won't tell.

"What do you expect?"

"Nothing I guess."

"It'll get better. Wear some red lingerie. Bang his brains out." 46

I believe Tracey. I don't tell her that he's squeezed my wrist so tight there are broken blood vessels. The next morning Steve's playing the Rolling Stones and holding the baby.

He's made coffee. As if I'm keeping score.

Tonight, Tracey comes over to baby-sit and we go out dancing. The blue truck's window is down, and I wave my hand in the cool evening air. The pavement glows, covered in puddles of oil mixing with chemicals to make rainbows. The neighborhood girls have drawn a hopscotch game in pink chalk. Each brick house is accented in white, lined up like matching Monopoly game pieces, prizes for the family inside, passed down from the Army family that came before. Stars and stripes stick from each house like toothpicks in mini hot dogs. Pick one up and it's an instant souvenir.

Wondering how I got here isn't an option. I'm glad to be a part of this world where

Steve's actions are part of a bigger thing. There's supposed to pride in your husband being a hero, your family being a part of the government, but I'm having a harder time buying it all. Seems like it's all a big hoax and being a part of it is just another distraction, like reality TV or gambling.

At the Shack, we drink Jack and Coke. We line dance and spin around in a sea of cracked boots, ripped jeans, Army green t-shirts.

"Taylor!"

"Hey, Suze."

"You look fing good. Look at your boobs!"

"Thanks."

"You're a lucky guy, Steve," she says. 47

"You know it."

"Glad to have you back. How's the precious girl?"

"Good. First night away so it's kinda hard," I say.

Suze nods, agrees. She has three of her own and her husband's been deployed three times. Once for each kid, she says. She's got wrinkles marking her face like a check mark for each day Larry's been gone.

"She's just worryin' like a crazy person."

Steve is behind me, hands digging into the fleshy skin above my hips.

"I am not!"

Steve winks at Suze, grabs her hand and pulls her out onto the floor. Her white sundress twirls around her like a hula-hoop. I go for another drink and feel so exhausted that I want to crawl up on the bar and use the bartender's towel for a pillow. Tina

O'Brien clanks a glass of maraschino cherries in front of me. A beer is next. Then an overflowing shot of whisky that pools onto the bar.

"Eat up."

"I'm gonna pass. Too tired."

"Honey, you need this."

"I hate to sound like a Public Service Announcement but I don't think drinking right now is the solution to my problems."

"Honey. Shut up." 48

And I do because Tina's lost her husband and she drinks too much and pissed away the life insurance on new bathroom tiles and a tub with Jacuzzi jets. She boozes and buys in hopes that like aspirin or marijuana it'll dull the emptiness for a few.

That night Steve stuffs his ears with cotton balls. The sky has drained and lightening heads for the ground. The baby cries. This is her first thunderstorm. Steve crawls along the hallway floor.

"Babe, what are you doing?"

I don't think he can hear me.

"STEVE?"

He puts one finger to her lips, motioning for me to join him on the floor. I step over him because the baby's exploding with screams so loud I'm sure the whole neighborhood is awake and gossiping about my horrible parenting skills.

Back in our room Sloane's mouth is wide and her cheeks are so puffy I wonder if

Steve has stuffed his own daughter with cotton balls.

Thankfully he hasn't, but Sloane ferociously pumps her legs up and down. Her fuzzy blankets are twisted at the end of crib.

As I pick her up I'm surprised by her weight, surprised that she feels bigger than me.

I pace around the room, rubbing her back, smelling her hair. Her skin is damp and warm.

"Shh. You're so sweaty." 49

These days I talk to my baby more than I talk to my husband, the one scratching at the already distressed hallway floor.

"Let's change you. Shh. The storm's nothing. See?"

I press against the window. The trees are still. The steam rises from the pavement, and the clouds peel away like a curtain on opening night.

"See the stars? When you can see the stars nothing is wrong."

I strip her of her sweaty onsie, wipe her body down, lingering on her feet, marveling at how her skin is untouched by blemishes. People always say that babies have the cutest fingernails, but her elbows amaze me, the slight slope of her nose, the deep-set eyes, all reminders that she's a hybrid of Steve and me. She's what it looks like when two become one.

"You wanna wear the PJs from Aunt Tracey?"

The PJs were covered in guitars. For your country rock baby, she'd written on the card.

Packaging her up in the PJs is like trying to build something without directions. Legs first? Head? That head is so heavy and sprouting curls. Arms now? Left. Then right.

Now, squeeze those pudgy wrists through the opening. Congratulations. You've now dressed your child.

She's safely in her crib. The light from the little guitar nightlight (also from Aunt

Tracey) shines on her and she looks like a pudgy peach. I don't want to leave.

Back in the hall Steve has curled into a ball and managed to wedge his head into the comer of the hall. His arms are wrapped around his head as if sheltering himself from 50 something above. I kneel, pressing my hand against his shoulder. His sweat has soaked through his shirt. He'll also need new PJs.

"Babe? It's OK."

This is a flashback. Kristi gave me a brochure: "How to Deal with PTSD: The

Flashback." The brochure is retro, circa 1985, the colors bleached by years on the windowsill in the meeting room. Kristi's excuse: No one likes to admit to needing these so we never run out.

"Steve?"

I'm taking deep breaths to control my heart. My instinct is to run, but I'm guessing that's not the most mature approach. Part of me wants to bash his head in for putting me through this. The other part wants to make it all better just after smacking myself for being so selfish.

"Babe?" I ask again.

No response. I try to pry the cotton from his ears. The whole process feels too intimate, like trying to pick lint from someone's belly button. My thumb and pointer finger just about grab a clump of cotton when his hand grabs my wrist. He flips me back first onto the ground. Steve's eyes dart back and forth like two pendulums. He's got both of my arms pinned to the ground. Though I know this isn't supposed to be sexual, it feels like sexual. It will sicken me later when I remember wanting to surrender to him and let him do whatever he felt like.

Steve mouths "shut up." 51

I do. He's on top of me still, his dog tag pinching against my overused right nipple.

I stare at the side of his cheek, his stubble digging into me like painful acupuncture needles. The one-hundred and eighty-five pound Marine is so scared he stuffed his ears so he didn't have to hear. He thinks he's protecting me, but really I can't breathe.

We wake up the next morning still in the hall. Steve has no memory of the night before so I say:

"There was a storm. The baby was scared."

He didn't notice the bruises twisting around my wrist like tattoos.

Tracey has a message. A blinking light is the only constant in her dirty kitchen.

They've already been to her door. One knock and she knew. Her face, drooping lips, big watery eyes, says it all. Sloane chews ·on a plastic ball. Her drool drips off the ball and onto her onesie - no attention to the doorbell.

Tracey's at the door. A commercial for ecological laundry detergent flies across the

TV. A pretty, yet nondescript woman babbles about all that laundry in a house of all boys: Something good for the environment, and good for my family.

In our tiny homes, we can hear everything. Tracey's conversation with the Grim

Reaper:

"Mrs. Timms?"

"Aw, fuck you."

"On behalf of the United States Arm---" 52

"America yadayada. My husband's fucking dead, isn't he?"

"Well, as I said ... "

"Is. My. Husband. Dead?"

Sloane drops her ball. It rolls across the stained rug.

There's a delay, and then, as she realizes that her ball is gone, the floodgates open and Sloane is in hysterics. I assume her screams mean "help!" She feels hopeless, unable to say what she needs.

Tracey's back at it.

"M'am, if only you'll calm down."

"Do you have kids?"

"I. Yes, I do."

"Ok, then. How' d you feel ifl came to your door, made small talk and proceeded to announce your kids had been burned alive in a car wreck?"

I grab Sloane from the ground, pacing to calm her screams.

"I suppose I wouldn't be too happy with you."

"Good. So, why don't you cut the pleasant postman act and spit it out."

"As you wish. Mrs. Timms, your husband was killed in combat when his Humvee drove ran over an IED. He died immediately, probably didn't...um."

"Didn't what? Didn't feel a thing? I don't buy that. Don't fuck with me."

"I'm sure it was a painful death, Mrs. Timms."

"Thank you ... goddamnit. That son-of-a-bitch is a motherfucking idiot." 53

A booming crack filters through our room. Sloane breaks into another round of tears.

I'm guessing Tracey has slammed her fist into the dry wall.

"You alright, m'am?"

"Peachy keen. You want to come in?'

"Cup of coffee might be nice."

Sloane has busies herself with her sweaty little hands. She refuses to stop the siren wailing from her mouth. She's neither wet nor hungry. Her tonsils vibrate with each

scream, and her mouth opens so wide I wonder if the ball will fit.

Tracey's not crying. She clomps down the hall towards the kitchen. The reaper

follows behind.

"No coffee. I'm thinking Jamieson. Taylor?"

She yells from the kitchen.

I waddle to the kitchen with Sloane squirming this way and that. In the kitchen,

sunlight struggles against the flimsy blinds. The kitchen is stuffy and dim, feeling more like a shady Vegas poker room than a dilapidated military kitchen.

"Hello," I say to the Reaper. He's in full uniform. He's standing askew by the fridge.

The fridge is covered in photos of the happy couple: skiing, snorkeling, horseback riding, parasailing, bowling. I still wasn't convinced they Tracey and Jon aren't one of those couples whose fake photos grace the frames you buy at the superstore. Throwing out those photos always feels so good; the couple's happiness is so contrived, you feel their hopeless desperation as you toss them on top of the eggshells.

Tracey and Jon really were that happy, though. 54

"Please excuse her, "I say, referring to the shaking bundle of sobs in my arms. "She needs a nap."

"Whatever," says Tracey as she hoists herself onto the Formica. The liquor cabinet is hidden above the fridge. The tip of her bright yellow thong is eye-level with the

Reaper.

"Jon is dead."

"I'm so sorry, Tracey."

I hope she'll come down soon.

"Got it!" Tracey waves the bottle around like it's a flag.

"Great, why don't you get down now?"

Once glance at the Reaper and he looks like a middle school boy waiting on the sides during a terrible school dance.

"Nah, I'm good!"

She wasn't.

"Let me put Sloane down. I'll be right back."

"Just give little Sloaney a shot and she'll be quiet real quick."

Tracey passes the bottle down and I almost miss it because I'm still trying to juggle the screaming baby wriggling like a fish with one hand and the widower with the other.

The Reaper looks around, probably cursing that his manual doesn't say one bit about dealing with widowers like Tracey. 55

Chugging from the bottle feels like the appropriate amount of support so I do it.

Sloane obviously refrains. The Reaper's next, first glaring at the bottle, not quite sure we aren't crazy and haven't spiked the bottle, but ultimately decides to dig in.

Steve runs his hand over the belly where Sloane used to be. Says it's amazing and five minutes later he's telling me my breasts are too saggy and full of milk. In their over­ inflated state, I guess they aren't of any use to him. And no, I don't say that they are of great use to our daughter because Steve doesn't get it.

These were the little moments just like the moments we had when he pinned me against the brick wall and pressed his cracked lips to my neck and then to my lips. I remember how it feels then. How he needs me, craves me, how I respond to his fingers, and his lips.

Steve is a shot of whiskey. Burns as it goes down, sends you to cloud nine later.

Usually it's worth the wait. I like it.

Sloane gurgles at the sight of him. When he says he wants another one, another kid,

I think, like all the na_ve women before me, that he'd changed.

Tracey is skinny and hyper. I expect her to be skinny and crabby or fat and depressed. She's instead like the female version of Steve, thrilled at life one day, a terrible person the other days. Jon has been in the ground for 8 months and I think it's time. We join a gym, just the one for the enlisted families. All us girls go there while the 56 kids are at daycare. Steve hats the extra pinch of skin under my ass. He's great motivation.

Every other day or so Tracey comes over to talk with Steve. Not to me. While I put

Sloane to bed, they smoke, swinging on the rusty swing set Steve had nailed to the fried grass. There's laughter - that easy, breezy laughter that's Steve's specialty. I hate myself for being jealous. Even if they're helping each other, I want it to be me instead.

Most nights I watch Sloane fall asleep. The fuzzy pink blanket twists around her baby calves. Staring at the bunny nightlight and bunny mobile dance across the ceiling, I pretended this is all family life is supposed to be. I wish Sloane could stay this way - no insomnia or creepy dreams, nothing to interrupt the day-to-day routine. Whoever said birth and death are so different, they're the same, was right. It's what's in between that's the problem, like diving into the Grand Canyon without a parachute. Maybe you'll only break a foot or a leg and things will remain mostly the same. You might die, but the outcome isn't predetermined.

Steve and Tracey always come to that quiet point in a conversation. Smoke floats up through Sloane's open window. Did my mother ever watch me fall asleep? Tums out she hadn't.

I dread sleep, wishing only for my time in Sloane's room almost to the point of obsession. The worries clog up my throat. What if she chokes on her stuffed bunny?

Should I reorganize her wardrobe? Her diaper supply?

Sleep paralysis takes over sleeping. The getting to sleep part is like marching to the firing range. Every night I shake, try to yell, and struggle against a phantom weight. I'm 57 asleep, yet awake. I'm mute, totally desperate for someone to pull me away from whatever is holding me back. If this what it feels like to be buried in a coffin, then I want cremation. The seconds of thrashing feel like two hours. Steve claims I'm in the midst of it for less than five seconds.

As soon as I mention this behavior to Tracey she buries herself in a laptop to diagnosis me through the reliable Dr.Web. Since Jon's death, Tracey had gone all supernatural and new agey, convinced that my dreams meant Jon was trying to contact us.

"Sleep paralysis!"

"Sleep whatsit?"

"Paralysis. You know, like snap your neck, end up in a wheelchair."

"Oh."

"Yeah, good news is you aren't permanently paralyzed."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Don't take this lightly."

"I'm not. It sucks."

"Oh wow. Sleep paralysis is when your mind wakes before your body and you're smack dab in the middle of drifting off to sleep, your body panics because it can't move."

"Who knew," I say.

"And! Are you listening?"

"Uh-huh." 58

"And, some people think it's a symptom of communicating with the dead. Ever feel like someone's sitting on you?"

"Uh-huh."

"My God, I told you."

"What?"

"It's him. I know it. Jon's sitting on you!"

I don't argue, but it's not Jon. It's Steve.

Tracey can now go almost five days without mentioning Jon. She busies herself with a bottle of whatever she finds in our liquor cabinet, or whatever she steals from the

Shack. Every other night she'll come over to play video games with Steve. The two of them sit in the Disney-colored glow of the TV, occasionally yelling at their player or gun

or car or something. Steve makes a point of saying I'm not good enough to play. Tracey

laughs, calls me too much of a priss, and I try to believe they mean it out of love.

At least when Steve is with Tracey he isn't having flashbacks. I don't have to worry that I'll get another call from the police saying they found Steve pissing in front of the

Kwiki-Mart. I don't have to worry when I wake up at 3 a.m. and his side of the bed is still tightly tucked in, a cold pocket where his body should be.

I'm in bed hours before Tracey and Steve call it quits tonight. Shadows of trees flicker across the bedroom ceiling. Wind rumbles through the cracks in the window.

Winter in this drafty house is cool enough that I wear my Christmas socks to bed every 59 night. Sloane is probably freezing. I slide out of bed careful not to disturb Steve's untouched side of the bed. Curtains of frost press against the windowpanes of our bedroom's lone window. The sky is lit with stars.

Once I'm in the windowless hall, the temperature rises. The beeps and dings of some video game echo up the stairs. I tiptoe to Sloane's crib where she has thrown her blankets into a bundle by her feet. The tip of her nose - a nose the size of my fingerprint-is Rudolph red and cold to the touch. Her eyelashes flutter a bit, but she doesn't wake, and I take a minute to thank whoever is watching out for me. When my mother was here, and Sloane started to cry, she'd be right there, ready to lull her back to sleep. Without having to explain, she had sensed Steve's frustration with the constant baby wake up calls and didn't say a word. Now she's gone. Understandable since Steve said he was the man of the house. She wasn't needed once he returned. My mother says she's a lady, and ladies go when they aren't wanted. I never said that I wanted her here.

Satisfied that Sloane hasn't frozen to death, I fumble back to the bed, but the cold keeps me awake and being awake means time to wonder about what's happening between Tracey and Steve or Steve and the curvy nineteen-year-old whore at Walmart.

I'd asked Tracey if she thought I should be worried about the slutty cashier and Tracey said no. When I showed her finger-shaped bruises on my inner thighs and abdomen she said I must've walked into something. When I said they were from Steve, she ignored me. When I said he had grabbed me, digging his fingers into the fleshy parts of my body, whispering that I should get lipo, she said, "He was kidding and boy, did that sound like hot sex." When I showed her the stick-figure cartoons Steve scrawled on the unopened 60 mail, she pointed at the girl with the big bow, giant boobs, and swollen ass and said

"You're cute as a cartoon." And when Sloane had a fever of a 105, Steve was nowhere to be found and I screamed like a "hyena," she said "I was lucky to have a husband and a daughter, because imagine what it'd be like to have neither."

So I developed a new strategy for reigning in my mind: To Do Lists.

Schedule S's annual check-up.

Pick up more shifts.

Send mother a birthday gift.

Steve's mismatched socks. Sort.

Planning tomorrow's errands proves the best strategy yet, far easier than reading one of the boring book club books, and safer than downing the blue Sleepies pills you have to ask the pharmacist for and you have to pay the slutty cashier sleeping with your husband for. Some days I wake up and swear I'll pack us up and leave. I read websites hoping for an answer. I go down to the base and beg someone to talk to me.

They tell me to see one of the counselors. We wait. Sloane and I wait. She fusses, kicking her tiny pink shoes off. She wails, her mouth begging for food. Fifty minutes later I have no choice but to feed her. Since I'm wearing Steve's sweatshirt it's almost impossible to discreetly access my breast. It's an awful thing when you begin to you resent your own child. Fuck this. It dawns on me for the first time that my own mother must've felt this way a million times, tom between her motherly duty and her handcuffs to a child with only one parent. Luckily I've got a husband. Luckily? This is what actual people actually say. "Oh how lucky you must be. A father's love for his daughter is such 61 a wonderful thing." Maybe I'm lucky, I don't know. Sure it's easier with Steve when he's being Steve. My mother, as she reminds me constantly, didn't have such a luxury and so in a way this is easier even when it's not.

Sloane's face wrinkles into a raisin. Salvia drips from her chapped lips. I can't ignore her. The sterile room, with its light green walls and taupe Formica floors, is empty. I'm within my rights to bare my breast. I'm sure that nurturing my baby trumps any sort of public indecency charge. Lifting my sweatshirt just enough so Sloane can latch on is easy and seems discreet enough until some obnoxiously sick person begins coughing up his lung.

"Excuse me."

It sounds like a growl. I turn my head but keep my body away. Sloane is happily feeding and I'm not about to show my breast to some sickly old man.

"Yes?" I ask, practically choking when I find myself face-to-face with a large woman, her gray hair mushroomed on her head, and her excess skin bubbling over the seams of her all-wrong, all-white outfit.

"Mrs. Jackson?"

I nod. The woman's neck skin jiggles as she croaks out the question.

"Delores D. Toops, Counselor. I believe you requested one."

"Oh! Yes. I did. I just... well, you know how it is with a newborn."

"I don't. How is it?"

"I'm sorry. Just assumed ... " 62

"Yes, well, perhaps it's best not to assume in the future," she says as she rests her hand on her lumpy belly. "When you're finished with this ... this ... behavior ... please join me in my office. 206. Right over there."

She motions down the endless hall with its identical office doors, turns on her

squeaky heels and waddles away.

After I've pulled Sloane away, I gather my bag, hoist Sloane into my arms and make my way to 206. This woman scares me, but I'm hoping it's all an act and once I'm in there with the door closed she'll turn all Mother Goose.

Sloane starts to whimper before we even reach the office. Just as I get to the doorway, Delores yells from her desk that she heard us coming and we should hurry in

so as not to disturb others.

The office is as bland as the hallway, with the exception of wilted flowers in an old

Coke can. Delores stares at us while I struggle to sit, juggling Sloane in one arm and then the other.

"OK then. Let's begin. You've already cut your time a bit short and we're booked

solid today. What can I do for you?"

This strikes me as something a loan officer might say while you try to get a

mortgage you can't afford.

"It's my husband. I think he's got serious PTSD. I've been reading about it and I took this online quiz and so I'm not sure what to do." 63

"I see that Sergeant Jackson has been back four months."

"Yes. He's been violent and angry and it worries me with Sloane being so young."

"Perhaps he should be the one sitting where you're sitting."

She might as well have dumped a bucket of ice over my head.

"I've tried that, but he's not exactly the counseling type. I mean you probably see

that a lot. Marines aren't wear-their-hearts-on-their-uniform guys."

"I'd be careful of making such broad statements."

That shuts me up. She's the one with the degree on the wall, but all I notice are her

yellowed fingernails and the makeup stains on the neck of her shirt. I'm not sure what to

say next. Sloane's asleep, drool puddles on my neck and I resist the urge to wipe it away.

Delores is having a staring match with me. This is probably some tactic she learned in

school and I'm pretty sure it's working.

"Has your husband hit you?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

"He's just. I don't know. Mean."

"Mean?"

I nod again. Delores makes me feel like a little kid sitting in front of the principal.

Whatever she says, I'll do. She's the adult and I'm not.

"OK, Mrs. Jackson. Here's what I think. Since the details aren't exactly clear .. .I'm guessing your husband's actions are pretty normal for a Marine who has seen some pretty 64 tough combat and he probably doesn't mean to act the way he does. Send him in and we'll see what we can do."

My nodding is uncontrollable.

"As for you. Perhaps you should join one of the wives' groups."

"Already did," I say. My arm is asleep, but Sloane is superglued to my shmtlder.

"OK then. It was nice meeting you," she says, dragging her piles of skin off her chair with a groan.

I stutter in agreement as she ushers me out the door. Just as I gather my bags on my other shoulder, she says: "And next time you should plan ahead and give her a feeding before."

I take Delores' advice and head out for the daily walk with the girls. Steve says he's good to watch Sloane. I kiss them both and head next door to grab Tracey.

For Texas, this Wednesday morning is freezing, the kind of morning where frost dances on the grass and my breath forms little circles in the air. Tracey is bundled beneath two sweatshirts, a wool cap, and three scarves.

"Oh, I had no idea. Did we move to Alaska?"

"Whatever. It's freezing."

"It's, like, fifty degrees."

"Not everyone can be hot like Taylor Jackson."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" 65

Tracey ignores me and meets the other girl in the middle of the street. Each girl in her own version of athletic attire- pink sweat suits, all-black Spandex outfits, old Marine stuff belonging to husbands long gone, jeans with holes in the knees, ajambalaya of women ready to bond in the not-so-nice suburban streets.

In between chatter about the latest deployment and drama at Suzie's boy's soccer game, I work up the courage to ask about Steve. This mob of women intimidates me.

Groups of women are amazingly helpful and evil at the same time. Never underestimate the power of group think when it comes to Marine wives.

Tracey hasn't said a word the entire walk. She's normally up to the challenge, always ready to butt heads with whoever rubs her the wrong way. Any other time there's been a problem (like when we got randomly booted from the weekly book club for our dislike of that week\s pick) she's the one to stake her place in the sand. These women respect her, which means they respect me by association. Respect is everything.

"So, I'm having a little problem," I say.

Construction workers whistle at us. Men are pigs.

"Oh honey! You trying to get pregnant again?" asks Suze.

Suze's wrong assumption invites a chorus of opinions.

"I've got the name of the best fertility doctor in all of Texas ... "

"Steve's such a great hubby to want another one. George doesn't want any other ones."

"Oh no, no. It's not that." 66

"Obviously. Steve told me he didn't want any other ones," says Tracey. She looks around, finally settling on my face. She shrugs.

A deep breath. She's just emotional. She lost her husband. I tell myself these things because it's better than strangling her, which is exactly what I feel like doing now.

"Steve's just been acting really strange and it's making me nervous ... for Sloane, of course. Just thought you all might have some good advice."

"Honey, he wouldn't be a Marine if he weren't a bit angry. Before you came along

Steve had quite the temper. There was that one time ... remember? Steve ordered those

Mexican creeps shots of dishwasher fluid? They all had to be rushed to the hospital because they were puking up blue gunk,'' Suze says as she acts out the action of these

Mexicans puking.

Her story inspires laughter. I don't see how it's funny.

"OK, maybe he was angry before, but now he's different. Scary."

"Wouldn't you be different if you had to blow a guy's head off in front of his own kids to save your own sorry ass?"

Tracey again. She's now stopped in the street. The rest of the girls pile up around her. It's a pedestrian traffic jam.

"Maybe you should ask your husband what he's going through before you come blabbing to all of us,'' she says.

My shoulders begin their slow hunch, all of the anger and frustration working its way through my muscles. Running on a track, loop after loop, mile after mile, might be less frustrating than this. If my best friend, the only true confidant in this town besides 67

Sally, refuses to help me, I'm lost. I'm up shit's creek without a Marine wife to call a friend.

"Maybe if you weren't around all the time I'd actually have five minutes to talk to my husband," I say with a smile. If she wants to play sweetie, I'll play.

The rest of the girls circle us. This must be what it's like for poor fish in a fishbowl.

"Are you kidding right now? You and Steve are all I have," she says, eyes wide, hands on hips. "No offense to the rest of you."

A tiny gasp escapes from Suze's mouth, but she's the only one to make a sound. No one is ballsy enough to mess with a widow, let a lone a widow named Tracey. Turns out neither am I. Tracey's eyes glaze over, splotches ofred march up her neck and onto her face. If the grieving process really is made up of all those stages, then Tracey is definitely in the angry phase. Tracey stares me down, tears peaking at the corners of her eyes, and with one mumbled "fuck you" walks back towards our neighboring homes. I'm totally frozen, numb from what feels like betrayal, not unlike the moment when you realize your life is nothing you thought it would be, that the whole if-you-work-hard­ you'll-get-what-you-want thing really doesn't happen. Of all the things to be said about the military, loyalty is its best quality. All these had at least one thing in common: an unspoken oath to protect her fellow Marine wives. Maybe I had the general support of all, but all I really wanted was the support of Tracey -- the one who was with me when I thought I'd made a mistake marrying Steve, who listened to me rehash the decision to give up my singing dreams, the one who brought me comfort when our men were fucking 68

around in the dessert, the one who was there when I was in labor and swore I'd rather die than keep pushing.

Zoning out is the only way to get through the rest of the day. Steve takes Sloane over to Sally's for dinner. I say I'm not feeling well and Steve kisses me on the forehead. In that one little gesture I feel like all has been fixed. It's the little details. The extra "love

you." The lingering looks in the kitchen while fixing dinner. The laughter over my

klutziness. Sometimes I think that'll be enough for Steve and me.

Once Steve's gone and the house is quiet, I burrow into the couch, flip on my

favorite sappy movie, and drink wine from one of Steve's just-the-right-size beer mugs.

My thick wool socks are pulled up to my kneecaps. Steve's old Marine sweatpants from

when he first enlisted have a hole in the crotch and are so comfortable I think I'll be

buried in them.

Just as the guy with the floppy hair is about to propose to the girl-next-door,

someone's knocking at the front door. I ignore it. Whoever it is will go away. Plus, I

want to see the end of the movie. I'm thirsty for a happy ending.

"HELLO!"

More banging.

"HELLO?"

Tracey. 69

"I've been knocking," she says as she stomps in and plants herself directly in front of the TV.

"I've been trying to watch the end of this movie," I say.

Tracey contorts her body in order to see the screen.

"The Wedding Planner? You've seen this, like, a zillion times. You've made me watch it at least twenty times."

"Eleven times."

"Eleven times too many. You have the worst taste in movies."

I've heard this particular insult many times. I like what I like and don't need to explain my preferences to anyone.

"You gonna move or what?" I ask. Weighing the options of throwing the remote at her head.

Tracey plops down on the floor. She says she's not leaving until we talk. I draw a line in the sand: keep quiet through the end of the movie and she can say her peace. So, she does just that. Whatever is happening between us is a big enough deal to silence the most talkative girl in all of Texas.

Just before the end credits begin their slow journey across the screen, Tracey leaves her perch on the floor and buries her face in the bundle of blankets across my legs. What starts as a short, gasping breaths turns into full-fledged sobs. Rubbing my hand against her back seems like the only thing to do. Her back is sweaty and her hair sticky with salty tears. 70

"See. The movie really is that good," I say. Maybe a joke isn't the best response, but the truth is I don't know what else to say. If she's still Tracey, she'll understand. She once said the only true test of character was a good sense of humor. Apparently, I passed.

The movie goes to black and the room's only light streams in from the flickering streetlamp. Tracey folds herself into a cross-legged position. She's facing me when she says "that it wasn't a good idea to talk about Steve with the other girls." I'm reminded that what happens inside these hand-me-down-homes is private unless it's good. She's sorry that she's been spending so much time with Steve. "He was there," she says, as if that's enough of an excuse. In a way I guess it is. He's the last one to have seen her husband. He's the one who brought home the "just in case" letter Jon penned before he died. Tracey says we can never understand what they saw over there. I ask if Steve tells her. She shakes her head and I'm pretty sure she's holding back. I try to explain how I feel, how I feel like someone's got their hands around my neck and won't let me breathe.

I say that I'm scared. She says she's got three weeks to be out of her house. Her grace period's over and the Marines need to send another family through Sampson's revolving door. Without a husband, Tracey's not eligible for housing. "These are just the facts of war," she says.

I tell her she'll live with us. I insist, selfishly. Without Tracey I'll drown. She waves off my worries because I've got enough problems for one house (in her own personal opinion). She'll find her own place. "There's life after the Marines," she says. 71

Since we won't know if she's right until she's gone, I suggest we watch the movie again and Tracey says there's nothing she'd like to do more than fall asleep to Jennifer

Lopez finding true happiness. And when the sun bums through the windows and the baby birds desperately chirp for their mothers the next morning, we're crammed onto the couch, Tracey's head on my leg, my mouth hanging open and ready to catch flies, just a regular all-girls' sleepover.

Someone has even turned off the TV and tucked us in.

Steve.

It's one of those little things, just when I was expecting nothing else. And I bury my head back into couch, feeling pretty damn good about having spent the night watching romantic comedies with the girl next door. CHAPTER TWO

LANA

I wake up dead today.

The usual dream - Steve crawling through the drainpipe to strangle me with his abnormally long arms, Taylor saving me, only to later push me out to sea in a rickety canoe-jolts me awake.

I peel the Brillo-pad blanket from my bed. Same thing every morning - feet to the clammy cement, squat over the stainless steel bowl trying not to touch skin to the metal, brush with baking soda toothpaste, sit, and wait.

I wait fifteen minutes until it's time for my class. The Sausage Lady will come with her elephant feet to escort me. Today'll be the first class with a proper sound system.

You can convince anyone of almost anything when you add inmates and exercise and stress-relief. Bitchy women are less bitchy when they sweat it out to the Top 40 hits. The warden liked that logic and somehow we ended up with a room and a real sound system.

I'd always taught my daughter that exercise could cure all of life's problems. For the most part it's true but today something isn't right.

72 73

The Sausage-Lady arrives, stutters, "h-h-he-h-h-hello." I've heard her husband is in the Army. Hatred oozes from her beady eyes. I've told her to just let it out and let go of it all. Her response is always the same: "Honey, I like my job and my freedom - letting it all out would cost me both."

Taking that to mean that she'd squeeze my head off with her meaty hands, I hold my tongue as only proper southern gals can do.

It has been eleven years since my first aerobics class at the Max. Now I have two-­ one Wednesday, one Friday. Good behavior gets you a spot in class. Mostly it's the white collar gals, the ones who shot their cheating husbands, the one who kidnapped a saggy old homeless guy, nursed him back to health, took out an insurance policy on the poor bastard, and ran him over with their Hummer. Sometimes the tougher ones join the class, making things more interesting for me. The difference between them and us? They never learned the laws of etiquette.

In the makeshift gymnasium, a stretch and a double-check of the speakers is all I need to get ready. I straighten up the motivational "success is doing your best" poster. I wait. Again.

"Yo, Grandma Justice."

"Hello Justine."

Justine is a mama of four beauties under the age of seven. She's also a sticky fingered little sprite of a girl who stole so many times she still can't tell the difference between buying and taking. She also shot a cashier at Target. 74

Aerobics is a good time for all the girls, especially for someone like Justine. We do a little step aerobics, some jazzercise, and a bit of crunches to get those bellies in control.

There's always a slacker. I don't like slackers. Today it's Sassie.

"Come on Sassie! You've been sneaking those double-stuffed Oreos again haven't you?"

"Fuck you."

"That's what I thought. Gimme ten!"

Sassie hauls her ass around the room. Her ass is quite like a bag of potatoes,

dimpled and sprouting weeds. Doesn't matter anyhow. Sassie and I are close. She's like my own daughter and we always want the best for our kids.

On the last day of the trial it was clear that the jury had yet to buy the whole protecting your daughter thing. Their wrinkly little faces stared down, all paralyzed by the fact that they were able to send a woman to jail. Except this one, partially balding young man. He stared at me, glaring. He'd done the same thing through the entire trial, failing to look away even when Taylor took the stand, mesmerizing the rest of the jurors with her tears.

Judge Teppy (aka TeePee) waddled to his seat. It was time. The rent-a-cop standing guard picked up the gravel, whacked TeePee in the head like he was a whack-a-mole champion.

OK, obviously that's not what happened. A gal can fib if she wants to. 75

Let's start again.

TeePee, sorry, Teppy, plopped his fat ass into his seat, declared order, and handed me my life's plan.

"We, the jury in the case of the people vs. Lana Tolland, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree."

I wasn't the least bit surprised. The room buzzed. In the middle of the sticky room,

Taylor held a crying Sloane to her chest. Poor thing probably had no idea why she was in this room full ofloud, obnoxious adults. She wailed and wailed. Taylor ignored the friends trying to get in on the hugging action, all of them celebrating something they didn't understand. I wanted to go to them, to be with my girls, to show them it was for the best, but they wasted no time with the handcuffs. The metal grated against the wrist bone. I'd have to wait two weeks for the final sentencing. For Taylor it was over. For me it had just begun.

After class it's time to eat. Sally and Sue, two funny workers in hairnets, put together a plate of nutritiously balanced slop. It's lunchtime at the Max.

At mealtime you sit with your people. I'm lucky because my old age gets me some special attention in this arena. The girls started calling me "Grandma Justice" after I chopped off Krissy Chrissy's bun with my childproof scissors. I had earned the respect of a nickname. 76

Krissy Chrissy had been queen bee of this place. She was notorious for suffocating her teenage son's girlfriend when she found the girlfriend sucking her husband's cock in the garage. When I first heard the story I'd wondered why she hadn't killed the lying hubby instead. When I asked the Sausage Lady, she said something like, "This ain't,

Chicago sweetheart."

That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Female bonding over a cavity search.

My second day at the Max, Krissy Chrissy passed a message through her posse:

"You will never top me in revenge-murder. I've got more balls than you'll ever have,

Grandma."

I sent a verbal telegram in return: "Thought your husband was the one with all the balls just ready and begging to be sucked."

Us girls went on like that for a few, but I'm a classy lady. We'd settle like adults.

My fifth day was full of thunder and rain that rattled the jail. I imagined this was like being inside the tumble cycle of the dryer. I marched to Krissy Chrissy, placed my hands around her damp neck, leaned down and settled it with grace.

"Sweetheart, you've got it all wrong. If I'm anything, I'm loyal. You beat my daughter, I beat you. You mess with Granny, you lose your hair."

It was quick -- a snap like lettuce breaking--and the bun was gone. I held it up like a prize, a trophy of just how tough I'd become.

My toughness meant I had top pickings for friends. Soon my little group formed and word was out - Grandma Justice will cut your hair for a small fee. 77

Within the first two months I'd stocked my cell with cigarettes and books, all bartered for a hair appointment in the luxurious surroundings known as the multi-purpose room.

In the Max anything and everything can be traded. There are rules, unspoken ones of course, but that kept things fair. Before coming here I watched the nightly news with the stories ofleathery inmates who scratched each other's eyes out or started food fights with their own feces. Out in the real world I would've been the first to admit it: those women on the 1 lo'clock news terrified me.

The reality turned out to be much different. Though this little village is walled off from civilization, it's actually much more civilized than the outside world would like you to believe. In fact, the barbed wire is just to keep you all out.

Some of the girls, when they're all soaped up, hair flowing into the sink, ask ifI ever regret it. The answer's always the same. As I snip-snip, I say, "No, I don't regret it." I tell them that having a child means doing what's right, what's selfless. Each of us has their own way of doing it. Most parents are all talk, walking the walk: proud parent of an honor roll student, proud parent of a son headed to a university where ivy covers all the buildings. It's all the same script, learned from months of studying What to Expect When you 're Expecting.

But my mother was different. She taught me to make eggs fluffy. She always said that bullshit is just as smelly as regular shit because your ass ain't that far from your mouth. And even though she'd given this speech everyday for 18 years, they were her last words to me. Nothing profound, awe-inspiring or upsetting. No confessions of 78 adoptions or adultery or confused sexual orientation. All she had to say at the end of her life was the same thing she said to me at the beginning of mine.

If she could only see me now.

I'll have to cancel aerobics the rest of the week on account of a little problem with coughing up blood. Apparently when you cough up blood you win the right to go out into the real world.

After lunch they take me into the streets, beyond the barbed wire to the sterile waiting room of a medical clinic. Out here I read three-month-old tabloids and their fashion faux pas page . Before I become too invested in the problems of rich celebrities, my name's called by a chubby nurse in mismatched scrubs. I feel like a normal person.

Inside the exam room my cuffs come off. I'm propped up in front of the nurse who hems and haws over my blood pressure and weight. A generic "beach" photo is the room's only decor. The nurse taps her fake fingernails against the clipboard, scribbles something on my chart and says the doctor'll be right with me.

Seventeen minutes and thirty seconds later there's a knock. The doctor has arrived.

He's got hair in his eyes and he chews gum. Smack. Smack. Drool forms at the corners of his lips. He must be seventeen.

"It's quite rude to chew with your mouth open."

I get a big and obviously rehearsed smile. This is the smile med school taught him to use when dealing with "difficult" patients." It's the same smile Taylor and I rehearsed before her pageants. 79

The rude doctor's name is Chuck Ruckle. From his baby smooth hands to his slightly askew collar, I wonder if he's really a doctor at all.

"I have some questions, doctor."

"I have some for you as well."

"Ladies first," I say.

My nipples poke through the stiff gown and I'm thinking he could care less.

"What kind of self-respecting parents name their son Chuck Ruckle?"

"Don't know. I'm adopted. Born Chuck Smith. At one I became the giggly baby to the Mr. And Mrs. Joe Ruckle."

"Ah. And from then on you were known as Chuckle."

"Yes m'am I was."

"So, Chuckle. Do you know of a Sloane Libby?"

"The singer?"

"That's the one."

Chuckle nods. I imagine he's thinking of what he'd like to do to her. She's a gorgeous girl.

"Mind out of the gutter young man. That's my granddaughter."

"You ... "

He looks down to his chart and the med school graduate puts two and two together. I imagine that he's nervous to be in a room with a killer. I'd like to explain that I'm a one­ hit wonder in the world of murders. 80

"Don't' worry - you'll get the same treatment. I deal with your people all the time," he says quickly. He doesn't look up.

You people. No, buddy, "you people" is for you. See, it's all relative. If you're on the inside then everyone else is an outsider.

"Now that we have the uncomfortable stuff out of the way, can you please explain why I'm drooling blood? And don't you dare say it's karma," I say with a smile.

"Karma's a bitch,'' squeals a voice from behind the curtain.

"Mrs. Cuddlen, you need to rest."

Chuckle rolls his eyes.

"Lucky for you karma's not something they teach in med school. Let's get some x­ rays and see what we find," he says as he gives me a solid pat on the solider.

Karma turns out to be lung cancer.

Chuckle says I have a few options, but the bottom line? My time is up. He doesn't say it, but he thinks I deserve it. I'm the murderer who killed Sloane Libby's daddy.

I blame the cancer on him. My ex-husband- come to think of it we're not officially divorced, so that could be complicated -- Jack Tolland. The man with a cigarette in his mouth, top lip curled into the nose. He got me try to my first cigarette - wanted to impress him. Then he got me try my first spliff - a half-tobacco, half-marijuana cigarette, he'd learned to make while visiting his parents in England. They lived there for some top­ secret government thing. Jack lived alone in a big periwinkle house in the center of town. 81

A senior in high school living alone seemed like something out of the movies. Jack was cosmopolitan and familiarly American at the same time. He liked football and The Great

Gatsby. He could talk sports with my father over cigars in the den, and five minutes later talk art with my mother who pretended to be cultured.

He was my first. Good little Christian girl loses it to Jack Tolland in the back seat of his Mustang. I loved grabbing at his damp black hair, smoothing out his eyebrows, licking his chapped lips. He cupped my breasts in his calloused hands, running his thumb over my nipples. He'd learned this from other women, but I didn't care. I'd read about orgasms in one of my mother's books she thought I'd never find. I imagined that giant release, an explosion of sensation, shaking down to your feet-that's how the book described it, as if nothing else could compare. Jack said it would happen, and he'd show me how to touch my pink skin, knowing that I'd like it. I did. Soon we did it everywhere we could. Everyone knew. I liked the attention and the all-consuming feeling that I had to be near Jack at all times. Since my parents didn't believe in birth control, I barely cared that pregnancy might be a possibility. My mother's goal for me was marriage, baby. I could've care less if it was baby, marriage.

Turns out she cared quite a bit. A missed period turned to marriage and soon I was led down the aisle to become Mr. and Mrs. Jack Tolland.

After the church, we pulled up in front of our first home - a generous present from his parents. The little pink house with white aluminum awnings looked better than any cake baked at the finest bakery. The house was so perfect I had feared opening the doors. 82

But my new husband said we had to go in. He was in charge and he was proud. The house was ours. Our little cake in a cul-de-sac of other little cakes - some blue, some yellow, some topped with American flags.

The day we tied the knot rain flooded the streets. All of our neighbors were bunkered inside watching TV and eating TV dinners. But we were newlyweds and he insisted on carrying his knocked-up bride over the threshold into happily-ever-after.

Before the happily part we took a few moments to fuck on the linoleum kitchen floor. He spread me open, draped his body over the bulge of my stomach and humped in and out. He was like the cookie press my mother once used to make holiday cookies. I spent many Christmas mornings watching her pump the dough for twenty tree-shaped cookies.

I hoped he wasn't smacking our baby in the head with his penis. We fell asleep on the cold floor. The next morning he begged me to make breakfast while he went to our new bed, a wedding gift from his parents. Everything in that house was a gift.

I ignore Gordon's letters for two weeks after getting the bad news from Dr. Chuckle.

Each letter is full of loopy handwriting. The whole thing is kind of sad.

Gordon's first letter had arrived on my one-month-in-jail-anniversary - almost fifteen years ago today. On a hand-made card he'd written: Congratulation on your

Accomplishments. Stick figures held something I figured were balloons. A week passed before I heard from Gordon again. The next note was a hand-written introduction: His 83 name was Gordon. He said I was the most respectable woman he'd ever seen IMAGINE, he wrote in all caps, IF ALL PEOPLE HAD YOUR MORAL CODE. He wished there was something he could do to get me out, but until then he'd write me every week.

Gordon kept his promise. Each week brought something different: photos of what the weather was doing outside his home, articles about veterans and their atrocities (his words), articles about me with his personal editorial comments scribbled in the margins; poems about my courage; sometimes just a simple (and bizarre) I love you.

At first Gordon was a source of great amusement for the gals and me. I imagined

Gordon weighed five hundred pounds and had never left his trailer. Krissy Chrissy decided he had big, moist lips he licked each time he thought of me. Justine figured he was probably some kind of perv who loved comic books and just wanted to cuddle. I was equally disgusted and flattered by Gordon's attention.

A few months after his first letter, I had to admit that I looked forward to his correspondence. I had tried to reach Taylor and Sloane Libby without success. I knew they wanted nothing to do with me, but I promised myself! wouldn't give up. Six months in jail without word from my daughter was the breakdown point. The days became one never-ending, unfunny rerun on Nick-at-Nite. I needed a hobby besides aerobics. Gordon, whether fat or pervert, was the perfect candidate. It has been nearly fourteen years since I last contacted my girls.

All the other gals here kept journals. Some even took the creative writing classes run by some volunteer with pink hair. They swore by the benefits of letting it out on the page. I declined. I didn't do feelings. Never got you anywhere in life. 84

But one day I'd had enough of staring at the spider-web cracks in the cinderblock. I decided to write to dear Gordon about the trial. From then on I had a co-ed pen pal who, unlike those snarky journalists, treated me like something other than a good headline and quick pit stop on the way to a morning talk show.

Learning to push your way through a swarm of hungry media-types has to be one of the easiest ways to belittle your self-esteem. They grab your hair, your arms, the little flab of skin above your elbow. They step on your feet while wearing offensively drab suits in blue and gray. They may suck your blood for a bit of your time.

I'd never had so much attention. I wore dark suits and my mother's pearls upon the advice of my lawyer. He had these bee-stung lips, droopy eyes, and was indifferent towards me, towards anything really. Not too nice, not too mean, he leveled with me right from the get go.

"We aren't going to get you out of this one, are we?" he asked.

"I killed that son-of-a-bitch. So, probably not."

"Hm. If you want twenty years instead of life you'll need show at least some semblance of remorse."

"I don't lie."

"Of course not."

He winked and licked the powered sugar from his fingers. He loved donuts.

In a little shoebox room we went over the game plan. He mapped out an attack on a white board. 85

Play up Grandma angle. Play down relationship with previous husband Show some emotion.

The lawyer wrote the plan in a purple permanent marker instead of the dry erase kind. Our failed plan is still there for all to see.

Unfortunately the media also followed the same game plan. The plastic looking,

Ann Taylor-wearing newscasters all had the same script: "The real question, Bill, is why a grandmother would do such a thing?"

Each day the lawyer piled a new stack of newspapers in my arms. A few hours later

I'd be covered in newspaper ink tattoos of the outrage against me: Americans who

Murder. Increase in Elderly Violence? Studies Show you Should Fear your Parents.

I was 60 and resented the whole "elderly" thing. Instead of counting sheep I counted the rightness of my actions. At night our cells were swaddled in icy blue lights. The damp cold made me feel closer to Taylor.

When Taylor was a baby, her nakedness had been cold like a skinless chicken breast.

I say that with all kinds oflove and respect. Taylor was a perfect baby, rarely drooled or whined. Anyone who saw her stopped and had to say hello to the girl with the golden hair. She was a little trophy. My trophy. And because she was part me, I felt that her choices were mine. A girl as gorgeous as Taylor always has it easy and I didn't want her taking it for granted. I don't get this whole "everyone is pretty in their own way" crap.

Blaming girls' self-esteem issues on the media, celebrities, whatever, is deranged. Girls 86 stick their fists down their throats because they think everyone is supposed to be pretty - at least that's what her parents say. Lower the expectations, lighten the load.

Taylor had her looks, her hourglass figure, her symmetrical nose, and her round chest. She also had her voice, this timid thing that came out in force when she sang commercial ditties better than the TV. Taylor was a star, and I was determined she succeed. We marched down to the first church I could find (Baptist, I think). I made nice with the choir director. A quick white lie about the tragic death of my husband, the police officer, and my daughter needing the support of God's grace through music and we were m. Taylor quickly became the teen choir leader at the Baptist Church of Dartmouth Pike.

What did she go and do with all that potential?

She gave it all up for him. I told her, as mothers always do, it was a mistake. "But, mom," she said, "I'm in love." Of course she was. She was in love with his big strong arms and uniform. I said it wouldn't last, said it'd be a mistake to fall for these types of illusions. Taylor could've cared less. She'd always been that way, always overly invested in things, crying when she finished a book or when she saw an old man eating at a restaurant alone.

I once asked her if she wanted to be known as that crying girl, that drama queen.

She cried in response. Though many mothers might've felt bad and hugged their sobbing child, I knew it was for her own good. If women want any respect, they need to cut the crap.

Taylor wouldn't stop and didn't care. Even when she was up on the altar singing about a God I told her didn't exist, tears filled her eyes. The congregation said she was 87 an angel sent here to spread the word. Angels were a cheesy marketing concept made up by Hallmark so I decided Taylor could partake in a practical skill; I signed her up for acting class the next day. Soon we joined the pageant world in all its sequined glory.

The choir leader at Dartmouth Pike suggested we sign-up for the state's Little Miss

Baptist competition.

So there, in one of those mega churches you see on TV, the ones that are as sterile and modem as a mall, plastic palm trees placed strategically throughout the theatre-in­ the-round worship space (in the round because we were all equal - unless, of course, we were Jews), Taylor became North Carolina's Little Miss Baptist.

Dressed like a miniature bride, her hair twisted into golden curls, I swore a little halo of fluorescent light followed her wherever she pranced on stage. Had I given birth to a female baby Jesus?

I'd tried the whole baby Jesus idea on the lawyer who gasped, then laughed. He couldn't tell if I was kidding. Neither could I.

Why pretend I hadn't done it when I had?

My lawyer laughed like I was Jay Leno. He said I must've missed out on .the lesson about right and wrong. He said the question was really about cause.

"Did you have just cause? Tough question to answer when your own daughter acts like a destroyed widow."

"I deserve what I deserve." 88

Taylor testified that afternoon. She'd come to the stand in a simple black dress. She wore no makeup, and the deep circles around her eyes gave her a rotten appearance, like a rotting apple gone all mushy in the middle .. Her hair hung like soggy spaghetti. She managed to look devastated and stunning at the same time. Her simple silver wedding band was her lone piece of jewelry.

God, she was good.

Before swearing on the Bible to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help her

God, she passed the baby off to one of the ladies from the base. In accordance with their unwritten code, the ladies stuck by Taylor, even if it meant defending a wife-beater.

The courtroom was silent except for the buzzing air-conditioning. The jurors watched Taylor with the fascination of kids ogling a caged gorilla at the zoo. Taylor admitted that Steve had issues but wouldn't agree that he'd hurt her per se. Those were the exact words from the other side's mouth: so you'd say he hadn't hurt you per se? She said yes, nodded, and looked down at her hands.

I watched enough court TV dramas to know my lawyer should've called foul, but he did nothing. He later said you never question the widow.

What kind of logic is that? I knew she had the bruises to prove it. I could've ripped back her shirt to show the finger marks along her collarbone. If that wasn't enough, she had the interior bruises to prove the necessity of my actions - that's the trouble with controlling psychos like Steve. You have nothing to show as proof. The rest of the world sees him as a good man, a hero.

In my cell after the trial I'd do the whole coulda-woulda-shoulda routine. 89

If only I'd thought to record the incriminating phone conversations. The calls started about a month after Steve returned. I'd finally come back home after staying to help with the baby. Steve was the reason I'd left. He said he was the man of the house and watching him hold his baby girl I believed him. With his devilish grin and strong hands, Steve was a chameleon, and a charming one at that. I even began to wonder ifl'd been wrong.

His third week back he stayed up forty-eight hours straight to finish a handmade crib. He surprised Taylor with a newly renovated baby room. Sometimes I'd catch their sweet moments: the way he'd pull Taylor's head into the space between the chin and the collarbone.

Sure, there were the tiffs I heard through the walls, but it always came to an end as most do -with groaning sex and cursing. Beds thumped against the plaster, and the baby always started to wail. Taylor would take her to the hall on Steve's request. I'd be there waiting to take the baby while Taylor went back to her waiting husband. The banging usually resumed right away and I explained to Sloane that all that noise just meant her parents loved each other.

I only saw Steve get violent one other time before Taylor showed up at my door.

When I think of that day it's all Technicolor like a video game I can't figure out how to play. Taylor and Sloane had just gotten into their little mother-daughter routine: each morning Taylor breastfed Sloane on the tiny back porch. Taylor's girlfriends had all pitched in for a rocking chair, painted pink and monogrammed with "mommy."

"Don't you hate that constant suck? Aren't your nipples sore?" I asked as I peeked out the door and offered Taylor coffee. 90

"Kinda sore. Can you believe how amazing this is? No coffee for me."

"Just wait 'til your boobs are hanging at your knees. Then you'll really be amazed," I

said, glad there was more coffee for me.

I'd only breastfed Taylor a few times until her father made me switch to formal,

saying it felt less primal.

"Can you give us a few? She's almost done, then I need to give her a bath."

I shut the door.

"You seen Steve?" she yelled after me.

"No."

Mothers have a special intuition. I knew that question meant she hadn't seen Steve

since yesterday.

Back in the grimy and bland kitchen -- the only color coming from the clich_ red

checkered tablecloth -- Steve had appeared. He smacked the coffee pot with the palm of his hand.

"You want a fresh pot? I'll do it for you."

I'd just made a pot, but there were sparks in his pretty eyes. I didn't want trouble.

Steve grunted some sort of thanks and began to obviously adjust his balls. The crotch

of his jeans was so threadbare from all that scratching and digging, you could see through to the prized possessions. His white t-shirt was thin, complete with the requisite pit stains.

I was 100% sure he'd worn this very same outfit yesterday morning.

"Where's Tay?" he asked as he reached above the fridge to grab for the plastic container of cookies I'd just brought home from the market. 91

"Outside. Feeding the baby."

He shuffled to the door, ready to put on a show for the whole neighborhood.

"Hey baby," Taylor said with a squeal in her voice.

"Hey ... oh Jesus. Do you have to do that now?"

"I know it's hard to believe, but our baby has to eat."

"Give her some mashed up green shit in those little glass jars. Anything but your giant nipple."

"Why does this gross you out so much? It's part of the whole deal, the birds and the bees."

"Maybe back when we had to milk the cows ourselves this was acceptable, but now the milk comes in cartons and I don't have to look at those things. Sloane's probably suffocating."

"Fuck you. She's feeding. See?"

Steve must've ripped away her robe at this point because there's silence for a few then Sloane's shrill wails. I hurried to them worried Sloane was hurt. What I found was worse. In the early morning haze, Steve was holding Sloane who he'd ripped from her mother's breast. Taylor's hand clamped against her left boob.

"I'm bleeding. You dumb fuck."

Sloane continued to wail with the cadence of a fire truck.

"Boo hoo. Sloane can drink from a bottle and your boobs can go back to serving their purpose." 92

I jumped in to take Sloane away from her daddy, wiping her drooling mouth before taking her inside.

The two lovebirds continued to argue until the door opened. Steve entered, yelling that he expected her ready and in bed in five minutes. I decided right then and there it was time for me to go. Taylor begged me to stay. She made excuses.

"It's just the, the stuff that happened over there and he's all fucked up. He's getting help," she said.

I left anyway, despite the nagging feeling I should stay. I bid farewell to the hell known as the army town. But I could never get far enough from it. Taylor's calls began to punctuate my days. First she'd update me on Sloane. Sometimes she'd pretend she was calling about a new TV show. Had I seen it? Did I like it? I usually had, but I lied and said no. Sometimes she'd hold the phone up to Sloane so I could hear her gurgling and buzzing. I hate to admit it but I found the calls annoying and tedious. I used every trick in the book to get off the line. Just when I thought I'd succeeded, I was bombarded with marital woes: Steve woke up on the front lawn with a gun in his mouth. Steve said I was too flabby and he wouldn't fuck me until I tightened up. Steve spent the whole day in bed staring at the weather channel. Steve's sleeping with some slut who works cashier three at the Walmart. Steve's taking me out for a romantic make-up dinner. Steve swears he's getting help. Steve's an amazing dad. He won't use protection anymore. He wants another baby. I do too. Steve this. Steve that.

Sometimes I had no choice but to hold the phone away from my ears. Multitasking was key. I'd do my aerobics, clip that week's coupons, and file my nails. Whatever it 93 took. I felt like I was dealing with a coke-fiend, up and down, back and forth, ecstatic and miserable.

I told her what I thought she'd want to hear. He'd get better. He was a hero. She was a tough cookie. Taylor had never confided in me and I wanted to run screaming in the other direction.

I keep up appearances for the next few weeks, telling no one, sticking to the typical aerobics classes and hair appointments. The gals and I go through the motions like normal. Trading our best in-cell masturbation tips gets us through the month of

September. Mentioning that masturbation is all but impossible when your pussy's as dry as the communion they serve atjailhouse Mass gets us through the middle of October.

Isn't long, however, before I have to go out for a bunch of treatments. People start to notice. Doctor Chuckle insists these evil chemo appointments are necessary, maintaining that chemicals will prolong my life.

"Honey, in jail every day is one day too many," I counter.

"Hate to break it to you, but you're still gonna die, I'm just giving us enough time to get to know each other better."

Chuckle might've been a wiseass but he was also in the business of saving people a few months of their lives. I figured I'd play along.

Chuckle advises me to get my affairs in order. The fact I have no affairs hasn't even crossed his mind. 94

The flickering overhead light drives me batty. It's something Mrs. Cuddlen typically would've been all over. There's no peep from her.

"Where's Mrs. C?"

"Gone."

"All fixed up?"

"N ah. Dead."

"Excuse me?"

"Surprising, I know. People do die here."

"You should really work on your bedside manner, doctor."

He ignores me, clobbering over to his stool. He wears flip-flops with little beach balls embroidered across the strap.

"You allowed to wear those?" I ask.

"Of course not, but when you're taking care of inmates and deliriously old, mentally insane people I figure I can wear whatever."

"Gotta love all that respect you have for your patients."

Doctor Chuckle stands and flip-flops across the room. He rummages through a pile of papers stacked on top of the dirty-needles-are-in-here-red-thingy.

He waves a magazine in the air.

"I snagged this from out front for you. Thought it might explain why we should postpone the death as long as we can." 95

A glossy magazine flies across the room, smacking me in the forehead. There she is.

My granddaughter: Sloane Libby to marry indie director Jonah Pipps-Hill: Inside the upcoming down-home nuptials, the 2. 5 carat rock, and Sloane's wedding day sadness.

A couple of days later Gordon writes about Sloane. He thinks I should reach out to her. Makes a good case that she wouldn't be anywhere except maybe dead if it weren't for me.

I still haven't broken the news about my lungs to Gordon so I call him up and break my rule. Gordon and I will meet face-to-face for the very first time.

I'd previously shot down the whole visitation thing. If Gordon had turned out to be obese and smelly, all my attachments to him would be in the trash, along with my lunch.

The following Wednesday Gordon arrives all the way from Wyoming. The gals catcall at my clean jumpsuit as I'm led down to the visiting area. Since it's a Monday, and most of us rarely get visitors at all, let alone during the week, the room is empty.

Formica tables are haphazardly spread across the room like the chess pieces of two players who can't handle their whisky. The cinder block is painted coral instead of that soothing concrete featured in our cells. A few paintings of shapes in vibrant colors hang on the wall. The freshly waxed floor scuffs under my clunky black shoes.

Generic love songs sung by screeching sopranos blare from the speaker system. This is the Max's way of tricking friends and family into thinking we're cared about.

A mop of curly hair bobs out from behind a flower display as big as my ass. The flowers are propped in a makeshift milk carton vase. Gordon's well versed in jail rules and knew not to bring actual glass. 96

"Hello," I say, trying to peer over the forest of yellow and purple roses.

Gordon springs up like a jack-in-the-box. His forehead crunches against my chin.

The click-clack of top jaw against bottom confirms the impact.

"Whoa there."

"I'm so sorry babe!" he yelps.

Our faces meet for the first time. Gordon is ... a boy. Thin and lanky with a toothy smile, Gordon is like that goofy hall monitor everyone hates. His shiny skin wrinkles when he smiles. He eventually contains that messy hair into a tattered baseball cap. He straightens his shoulders and blows me a kiss with his thin lips.

"How old are you?"

I refuse to sit down until I know.

"Thirty," he says, as if confirming his name. No big deal to him.

"Are you really Gordon?"

"Yes, my darling."

Gordon wears ill-fitting pants, a faded black shirt, and a lopsided black jacket. He seems as uncomfortable as a kid on school picture day.

As if I don't have enough problems. Now I'll be known as the cradle robber. I move the flowers, sitting despite my better judgment. Face-to-face with this man-boy who had been sending me love letters for the last fifteen years, I beg God to let me drop dead.

"You're more beautiful in person."

"Oh! Shh! Let me get this straight. You were fifteen when you started writing to me?" 97

"Fifteen and a half," his head wobbling around as if I've asked ifhe wants an ice cream cone.

"I see." I don't see, but I feel a bit nauseous. The room reeks of cologne. His, I'm sure.

"I'm mature for my age," he says.

He reaches for my hands. I refuse to let him feel the scaly wrinkles of my old hands.

"Tell me what's up, babe?"

"Stop calling me that."

He purses his gum-stick-thin lips.

"I'm gonna die," I say.

"Profound, just like your letters! Yes, my dear, we're all going to die."

"Yes, well, I'm old. And I have lung cancer."

Gordon's eyes close, snapping open likes eyes belonging to a toy doll. Veins circle his face as if he's a china teacup recently cracked on the cold jail floor. A few excruciating moments later he breaks out into sobs, pounds his scrawny arms against the table, wailing like a hungry bird, and his mouth opening so big I can see his tonsils swinging like a pendulum.

He begs me to hold him. I stupidly oblige, pushing his head against my breast, rubbing his curly hair, wondering why men are babies, always on an endless quest to get their mothers (or understudy mothers) to love them. 98

Day after day. Expert after expert. They had to file in through the wooden doors, an endless stream of proof that motherly love didn't make me kill my daughter's husband.

Just as dull as those talking heads on the nature channel, the experts applauded the army's mental services. A squeaky man with a head like a muffin top said Steve deserved a chance.

Marie Debbey, a hefty beach ball of a woman with fat bursting at the seams of her perfectly matched ensemble, answered her questions with all the excitement of a garbage man.

"Do you think Steve Jackson was a threat?"

"No."

"Did Steve Jackson exhibit violent behavior?"

"No."

"What about memories? Flashbacks?"

"Well. I'm not sure."

"His wife reported numerous events she labeled 'flashbacks."'

"Yes, of course. But all my patients go through the same thing."

"Do you believe Steve Jackson hurt anyone?"

"No."

"Did Steve Jackson mention his family?"

"No one, 'cept his wife. And daughter. He said he would've died for them."

The beach ball hobbled away from the stand and the lawyers prepped for their closing arguments. 99

During the arguments I had chills - it was like the movies without the swelling soundtrack and salty popcorn. The performances were award worthy. I almost believed them:

"We cannot imagine the stress involved in war. This stress is inhuman. Unbearable.

All the experts agree that Steve Jackson had post-traumatic stress disorder, but Steve's not the one on trial here. Do we condone taking matters into our own hands? Of course not. We trust war to the soldiers. We entrust postwar recovery to the caregivers. Lana

Tolland could easily have turned her son-in-law over to those in charge. She didn't.

Perhaps she felt she was protecting her daughter. But it's clear she committed murder.

She has admitted it. She murdered someone who had given so much and needed so much in return."

Oily stains on the courtroom's ceiling might as well have been shit. I was deep in it.

Gordon's only been gone a week when my hair begins to fall out in clumps. I indefinitely postpone aerobics. The gals kindly let me have hotter showers and first pickings of food. Even Sausage Lady is civil, bringing me Bibles, telling me to repent for my sms.

"If only it was that easy," I say.

"It is," she says.

"A little na ve aren't we?"

"What do you mean?" 100

"You think God won't see right through my last-ditch effort to save my soul?"

"Hmmm," she grumbles, continuing to bring religious junk each day.

Gordon sends two more letters. This first one says I'm more beautiful in person. The second says he's decided to become a pacifist, which means he can no longer have a relationship with a murderer. I wonder if a fat lady gave him some pacifist pamphlets, promising that all your problems can be solved by a belief in something.

It had all started with annoying banging at the door, which continued until I finally went to yell at the snotty paperboy for waking me up so early.

"Look young man. If you think this will you give you some kind of tip you're dead wrong!"

Instead of the morning newspaper, I'd found Taylor on the front step.

"Hello, mother."

Sloane is bundled in her mother's arm, strings of drool dripping from her chapped lips.

"Oh, you're not ... "

"The paperboy?"

She slapped the paper wrapped in plastic into my hand.

It was 7:53 a.m. on Sunday. My neighbors were probably all in bed, either avoiding sex with their spouses and/or trying to get out of church. Steam rose from the asphalt; the air smelled like my basement after the flood of '76. 101

"Take those sunglasses off. You look like a bug."

"Can we come in?" she asked as she shifted Sloane form one arm to the other.

"Not 'til you take off those things and tell my why you're here .. .is that a suitcase?"

A bright pink suitcase leaned against the bottom step.

"We may be here a while."

"That's awfully presumptuous of you."

With her free hand, she lifted the sunglasses. Ah, I thought, she's finally listening to her mother.

The typically soft skin around the eyes looks as though she's been stained with red wine. Yellowing skin has swollen into her left eye and blood had dried into crusty mounds like pimples covering a teenager's embarrassed face.

"Fuck."

A sweat-stained baseball cap covered her hair, a baby blue scarf was thrown around her neck.

"Take off the hat," I half-ask, half-command. "And the scarf."

Taylor shook her head and I decided that if she won't do it, I would. And since she wasted her time staring me down, I ripped the hat off her gorgeous little head. But my breath gets caught in my throat and the bile clogged up my throat.

Bruises bent around her neck, fingers left marks like chains digging into her flesh.

Her face no different than a bruised and rotting peach. Patches of hair missing near her ear, the skin full of puss, rotting flesh like moldy cheese. Her scalp is like my lawn - 102 never sufficiently cared for. If people say you'll always find your children beautiful, they've never seen their kid like that.

Sloane slept right through the rest of the morning. I suggest the police. An idea that is immediately nixed. Taylor was shaken, nervous in a way I've never seen her before. It made me nervous. She said he'd had a gun, for safety of course. They'd just returned from a dinner. He started screaming, carrying on about someone chasing him. Taylor claimed he barely recognized her. She said he was a totally different person. I had to make sure she wasn't in shock.

"Are you sure it was Steve?"

"It was Steve, but it wasn't."

"I don't understand that."

Something was definitely wrong because Taylor hadn't even tried to think of a good comeback. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said:

"He becomes someone else but this time he took out the gun. I knew about the gun.

Found it the other day, but he said it was for protection or whatever."

"What are you saying? He thought you were the enemy?"

I'd just watched a melodramatic movie on cable about a soldier with these debilitating flashbacks.

"He knew it was me. He kept blaming me. I don't know ... "

She trailed off. I went off to the kitchen, splashed water on my face, grabbed some glasses and brought out a jug of water, juice, and gin. She could pick her own poison. I 103 figured this wasn't the time to be a pushy mom. Taylor stared off, barely even noticing my return.

"I've got water, juice, gin."

Taylor switched her gaze to me. In her green eyes I saw myself.

"Gin it is."

She swallowed it down with a grimace. I waited for her to talk about it.

"He kept blaming me, yelling and dragging me by my hair. He said we had to get out of there. And the gun pressed against my neck."

I paced, circling around Sloane's makeshift crib on the floor. My friends were waiting for me - we walked the mall on Sundays. We'd called ourselves the congregation of Hills Galleria. Later I'll make up some excuse about a stomach bug. I didn't want to touch my own daughter, but knew that I should. Partially terrified, partially disgusted. I hated myself.

A shower was the only thing to get her off the bed.

"Towels are in the hall closet where they normally are: Got some new ones at the store yesterday."

But Taylor had already gone. The door slammed. Water screeched before it decided to come out of the shower. I imagined that the hot water burned her skin. Maybe she didn't feel the pain. After all, she's my daughter.

Taylor stayed for a week. Steve called every day, four or five times a day. The first night when Sloane screamed from her bed and I went to calm her down (her mother passed out on the couch) I discovered what Taylor hadn't told me - a bruise like those 104 barbed wire tattoos you see on body builders twisted around the meaty part of Sloane's right arm. Sloane had just begun to talk. Want. Need. Mommy. Da (for Daddy). None of the words to tell me what happened.

But I knew. I knew that Taylor was rationalizing. She defended Sloane's bruises like an expert (it was a mistake, he didn't mean to hurt her like he hurt me). I knew that she'd find her way back to him. I'd heard this story before, read the same script, drank the same

Kool-Aid. And if it was just Taylor, I might've let her go. Who was I to stop her from doing the exact thing I'd done to myself? You don't get to realize the truth about this kind of thing until you're on the outside looking in. When they asked why I'd done it, why I shot the shit in the face and left him for dead in a mossy ditch, I said you don't blink when someone's touched your family. And there she was, in the second row, with her hair pinned into a bun, swollen eyes, Sloane bundled in her arms - to this day I swear on my dying lungs she nodded at me, an acknowledgement of what only two mothers can truly know. CHAPTER THREE

SLOANE

People are making a huge deal of this whole country down home wedding. Going back to her roots. Going from Beverly Hills to Beverly Hillbillies.

"This is all grossly misrepresented," I say to Amelia, my publicist and sometimes friend.

She says I don't need to yell to prove my point.

This is when I typically slam my head against my half-painted wall. Deciding between peppermint and sweet mint paint was an impossible task.

"Be a good sport. We could use a little buzz."

"We could use a nap," I say.

"I really need to cut my hair. .. these split ends are terrible."

"My ingrown toenails hurt like a bitch."

"Don't you hate when there's fingerprints on your wall ... "

"Shit. My mom's calling. Call in a bit."

"Don't. Have a date with some model. Talk to you in the a.m," she says and hangs up.

105 106

"Hey Mom," I say as I switch to the other line.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Her voice is tiny through the phone.

"Yes."

"Are you sure you want to get married?"

"I knew what you meant."

She's probably drinking a frosty glass of sweet tea waiting for the laundry to finish.

"Well .. .I'm just sitting here waiting for the laundry and the phone rings. I don't get it, but then it rings again. I worry that it's you so I pick up. It's someone with a squealing voice. She calls me MRS. JACKSON so loud the dogs started barking."

I flop onto my white bed - white everything is this bedroom's motif. The smoggy light from the outside blurs the room's furniture. It's another record hot day in LA and smog dances around the mountains.

"And she says she's sorry to bother me during dinner time, but she was just so excited about the big event. I thought for a second she was talking about the Shack's bartender talent competitions. She wasn't."

"Meryl, huh?"

"That nutjob's gonna be your mother-in-law."

"She's not so bad when you meet her. A bit overbearing. She means well."

"She thinks The Shack is a .. .I'm quoting here ... a high-concept, city-meets-country upscale dining establishment. You better explain to her that her beloved son is getting married in a legitimate shack. .. with a bar inside." 107

The laundry buzzer beeps.

"Gotta go. Laundry's calling," she says, chomping on the last bit of ice. "And please do something about that dreadful woman."

Ladies and gentleman ... my lovely mother, Taylor Jackson.

Two nights later the heat wave has passed. The day's hazy sky has thawed to a blue velvet and I'm pouring gin into a glass with my name engraved in scribbles. I'm also wearing a fluorescent pink necklace adorned with plastic penises.

I sneak to the bathroom before anyone notices I'm gone.

"Honey, you've got dicks around your neck."

I look around, down, up, finally settling on a beefy guy wearing a shirt that resembles wrapping paper gone disco.

"I do?"

"How'd someone do that to you without you noticing?"

Gullible and unfortunately dressed. Definitely a tourist. I bet Louisiana.

"My goodness. I have no idea how this got here," I say fingering the plastic balls of the penis closest to my mouth .

"Could I buy you a drink?"

Disco boy adjusts his own non-plastic penis out of nervousness, or maybe out of excitement.

"You're not from LA, are you?" 108

"Texas born and bred."

Texas is so big you can never get away.

"Well, you enjoy your time in Tinseltown. And just a word of advice from me to you."

I rise on the balls of my feet. His ear is bright red. Wiry hairs shield the inner ear from my voice.

I whisper: "You can't buy drinks here. Only bottles. And lose that shirt. Trust me."

The door to the bathroom swings open and the girls inside could care less about me.

Here I'm just some girl. I love this place.

"Sloane, there are peanuts on the floor. Peanuts!"

"Peanut shells."

"Whatever - it's so unsanitary. I could've thrown you a classy party sponsored by that new green vodka. They don't even have that vodka here."

Amelia shrieks. Her green eyes never meet mine. She's scanning the smoky room for

a quick who's who. Her belly pulsates under her yellow corset top.

"Whatever will you do?"

"Wow, can't believe Dan Tell is at this bar."

"Why?"

Amelia motions around as if to say "look at this shithole."

"Can we back up for a second? You drink green vodka?"

"Uh-huh. It's low carb." 109

This is what you call a bachelorette party. One I didn't want but was told ... forced ... to have. Instead of some ultra-glam affair, I agreed only on the condition that we'd all go to the Little Drummer Boy where you mix your own non-celebrity-endorsed drinks and throw your peanut shells on the floor.

"Sloane!"

"Hey, Lane."

Lane wears a pink tutu dress thing. It's really more of a skirt since the thing barely covers her tits.

"Can you believe it? I can't believe it! Oh my God. You'll be Mrs. Jonah Pipps-Hill in a few days. And you'll have your cute dogs. And soon kids. Oh my God. It's just too cute."

Lane is a talented make-up artist to the stars, but totally talentless when it comes to controlling her lipsticked trap. She once blurted out to the wife of a big time studio head that her beloved Larry, her husband of thirty-five years, had an obsession with sheep.

Turned out Lane was right. Never knew how she knew, but she did.

"I know! Can you stand it?!"

I couldn't stand Lane, but I'd learned early on that it was better to play along.

The Little Drummer Boy is the best dive bar in Hollywood. Not the trendy-it's-hip­ to-have-tattoos-and-ride-mechanical-bulls bar, but the real deal. The owner Earl is a skinny forty-two-year-old kid who wears only white t-shirts and black pants. He's a legend and the first friend I made in LA.

"Libby, you know I'd do anything for you," screams Earl. 110

"I know."

"But I draw the line at making THAT girl a cosmopolitan."

THAT girl is Amelia. She's leaning over the bar wiggling her hips to the beats of

'80s rock. She switches her gaze between adoring men on either side. I fight the urge to run over and warn them that she'll eat their soul.

"Tell her you don't make drinks."

"I did. She said bartenders make drinks so therefore I make drinks."

"I have to say that's pretty sound logic ... "

"She also namedropped you, like, seven times."

Earl glares. His jaw is clenched, the intricate web of bones and tendons pulse under the grind of teeth.

"She's my publicist. Give her a glass and the fixings. I'll help her."

Earl scrunches his nose at me, but does as he's told.

"Honey! Congrats!" Julie kisses me on the cheek.

Julie is Jonah's prissy third-cousin and sometimes model. She's dressed in a maroon dress and giant gold hoop earrings that rival her head. I swear. They're that big. Her white teeth burn a hole into my already hot and greasy forehead.

"Jonah says you're getting marred in Texas? How nice."

"That's right."

"An outdoor wedding in the country, how quaint!"

"Actually, we're having it at my mom's restaurant." 111

"Isn't that sweet? A cozy country inn restaurant sounds so lovely and so different than here."

"Actually it's more like .. .like this bar."

Julie's face melts, her lips form a lopsided 'O,' and her cheeks ripen like a peach.

Jonah had suggested Mom's bar while drunk off some Mexican tequila he'd bought during a shoot. We were drunk and naked in the pool, listening to Ray Charles, and laughing hysterically. The moon was brighter than our paper lanterns.

"I'm serious," he said, swimming towards me.

His mop of curly hair flopped into his eyes. He reached his hands around my hips.

"My mom thinks we're having it at the Beverly Hills Hotel and unless we do something drastic she'll insist," he said.

"And by insist you mean put a gun to our heads?"

"Exactly."

Jonah slid his hands down the curves of my back.

"I don't know ... "

"Anywhere but here!"

"Vegas?" I suggest.

"Seriously? I think Texas beats Vegas."

I agreed to think about it, banking on the fact that Jonah would forget. 112

Jonah has never gone home with me. He didn't know that Texas wasn't like anywhere else. He's grown up surrounded by people who want attention. In Jonah's world nothing was a big deal. In Texas, especially in Sampson Township, everything's a big deal.

Two days later, Jonah had remembered his genius plan. We were eating eggs and

French toast at our favorite sidewalk caf_with its private green umbrellas and mini tables for two. Jonah laid out his plan.

"We'll invite a handful. No paparazzi! Down-home cooking!"

"You sound like an infomercial."

"Everyone will be so happy to go to the country to share in our day."

"You know it's not like the movies say."

"Nothing ever is."

"I'm going to record you next time you talk. You'll see how ridiculous you sound."

But Jonah wasn't even remotely self-conscious. Or if he was, he deflected any awkwardness with humor. When I was with him there was no pressure to try and figure out who I was because Jonah knew the post-Texas me. I liked to believe we were writing a new life.

Mom pretended to be beyond thrilled about the wedding. I didn't believe it for a second. Either way I appreciated the effort.

"I read that you're having wedding day sadness," she said. She must've been smirking.

"What?" 113

"If you're sad maybe you shouldn't go through with it. You're young. Maybe

Jonah's not the one."

"You shouldn't read the tabloids."

"I don't. Tracey tells me."

"I'm going now."

In my fantasy world, the one I think about at night when I can't sleep, I tell my mother how Jonah's the one. She'd give me motherly advice about relationships and sex and warn me to be careful. She'd ask me to retell the story of how we met, how Jonah sought me, practically stalked me, begged me to write a song for his first film even though he couldn't play. And Mom would say that music brought us together, just like it did for her and my father.

In reality, music was more of an accident than a bizarro cupid destined to bring love into my life. Music was mom's dream, a dream she never mentioned until her nosey daughter (me) found the stash of guitars in our moldy basement.

Sometimes she'd hum while mopping the kitchen floor. Occasionally I'd catch her singing along in the car, but the guitars she blamed on my father. Said it was a hobby and she hadn't played in years. Ever since it all happened.

At night after Mom was off to work and Sally was watching me (aka snoring in front of the Home Improvement Network) I'd drag the guitar cases from the closet. Teaching myself how to play was a good excuse to not sleep. I'd hated sleep ever since I started 114 having creepy nightmares: black & white dream where I'm trapped in a room and a cloaked figure attempts to suffocate me. After a few days of secret guitar lessons, rubbery calluses formed on my palms. Wasn't long before music was everything. Lyrics I'd sing to my teddy bears were self-indulgent autobiographies. I needed the outlet so I kept at it.

One night when I thought Mom had gone, I pulled out the acoustic to work on a song the thirteen-year-old girl in me had titled "Colorless."

Banging started at my door. It was my mother, apparently not going to work that evening.

"Will you turn that - "

"Mom!"

She was dressed head-to-toe in flannel. She sniffled into a sad tissue, rubbing the tip of her raw nose.

"What's going on?"

"You didn't knock."

"My house - no knocking necessary. What were you doing?"

"Practicing."

"For what?"

"To be a singer like you wanted to be."

"Who said I wanted ... never mind. Remember what we say. Nothing is ... "

"What you expect."

The nose blowing is a fanfare to her favorite mantra.

"What you expect. That's right," she said as her eyes glazed over 115

I didn't dare start up again until she'd closed the door.

The bacherlorette ends at 4 a.m. Amelia has a complete turnaround, exclaiming to anyone who'll listen that it's her favorite bar. The next day is a total waste. Hungover from the all-night antics, I spend most of the day sleeping by the pool.

Hours pass and the sun dims. I curl under the squishy blanket Jonah's mom paid way too much for. The Pacific pounds against the sand just beyond where I sit. The sky cools to a smoldering pink, a light so perfect, Jonah calls it "magic hour." I wonder if this will ever go away. The sun's setting is a constant anywhere, just as we know we'll die, we know the sun will set. The setting sun is expected, but sometimes here, over the stage of the Pacific Ocean, it's an event.

Most of my days are spent waiting for my luck to give out. No one's dream lasts long around here. I twiddle my thumbs waiting until Jonah's all white, all-glass home collapses from high expectations. I get breathless worrying about someone, anyone, perhaps God, deciding singing isn't my talent. The say Hollywood has an alcoholic's memory.

"Hello?"

Jonah yells from the kitchen.

"My mother thinks she's going to be lynched at the wedding. I swear she called me every fifteen minutes today. Apparently she's sick with worry over her hair and the

KKK." 116

"Hair I can understand."

Jonah appears on the deck. His bony knee pokes out of a hole in his jeans. His green shirt is plastered with little toy army men. The biggest army man has a gigantic dialogue bubble popping from his mouth. He says: "Make Believe, Not War." Only twenty-nine­ year-old movie directors can get away with shirts like that.

"You're funny," he says.

He brushes his lips against the top of my head. He smells like burning hair.

"I know. Smells awful. Stupid extra burnt her hair on a light. Don't ask me how, but she did. Fingers crossed we don't have a lawsuit looming."

Jonah lights a cigarette.

"Just one, I promise. My mom's gonna give me an ulcer before I die of cancer from this."

Jonah is dramatic but also won't put up with anyone else's bullshit. I'd be afraid of him if he didn't have those squishy dimples.

" ... and then she says she hopes there will be champagne at the wedding and what will we do about bugs and bathrooms. I think she's under the impression we're getting married in Somalia."

"I'm still trying to deal with the KKK comment," I say.

"She says, and I quote, 'They don't have our kind there."'

Jonah is Jewish; his mother is crazy Jewish, but fabulously dressed. 117

Jonah stubs out his cigarette in our pink "you-will-die-from-this" ashtray. A calm

British voice informs you of your doomed fate after each use. Jonah bares his perfect teeth.

"What are you doing? You're creeping me out."

"Smiling at you."

"Well, stop."

"Can't believe you agreed to marry into Crazytown, USA."

"Me neither."

I stand from my cocoon. The sun has just slipped below the ocean and a purple light illuminates the ocean's ebb and flow. Wrapping my arms around Jonah's frame, I try to squeeze hard enough that he can never get away.

"You OK?"

"Mmmhmm. What do you feel like for dinner?"

"Sushi's on the counter next to the mail."

"I knew there was a reason to marry you."

It's another three days before I get to the pile of mail stacked on the kitchen counter.

Mostly it's the usual stuff - bills, seven million magazines and catalogs, fliers from the neighborhood association reminding whoever owns the pet pig to clean up after their

"pet." There's also a coffee-stained envelope scribbled with my name, care of my agent.

No return address. 118

If it's another crazy stalker telling me to repent or I'll end up in hell with my grandmother, I'll either hunt them down or chop their hands off. Perhaps I'll just kill the mailman. Amelia was supposedly "taking care of it."

Against my better judgment I tear into it. What's inside is worse than any of the imagined stalker fantasies:

Dear Sloane Libby,

Please forgive me for writing to you. I know you are a big star now and you don't have time for us little folks. I'm writing only because I saw you in one ofthose magazines and it said you were getting married. Can 't believe you 're grown up enough to be married You're an amazingly gorgeous girl and that man is lucky to have you.

I do not know what your mother has said about me over the years and so I'm thinking she would be very upset if she heard about this letter.

When you were just born you use to burst into little fits of high-pitched giggles while I stuck my tongue out at you. Guess that's before you knew what real humor was.

Well, anyway. I am not really going to waste anymore ofyour time. I see you will be in Texas for the wedding. It might be nice to see you before you 're a grown up bride.

Love,

Grandma Lana Tolland

PS-I am going to die. Got about two weeks left to go; lungs are giving up. 119

The next morning I'm wedged into my seat, 60,000 miles above the ground, little squares of green and gold below like a board game, about to murder the woman in the neighboring seat.

Her hairless cat Fur Ball is passed out in a leopard print carrying case underneath the seat. I know the cat's name because she tells me. Explains that Fur Ball hates flying so she gave her a little "catini" (sedatives and tuna juice). I almost vomit on her purple velour sweat suit. She also relates every detail of her yearly trip to visit her sister and her hairless cat, Cher, in Dallas. First they go to the Dairy Dip because the girls (the cats) like cones dipped in strawberry. Then they get mani-pedis at a cat friendly salon. They typically make com dogs and mac-and-cheese, play gin rummy all night, and drink gin until they pass out. I nod, opening my eyes in what I think evokes excitement. I may be a singer, but I'm not crossing into acting anytime soon.

The pilot announces that we've reached our cruising altitude. His voice is warm, and

I'm glad. He sounds like a nice man, and nice men want to get home to their wives and kids, thus making sure we arrive at our destination safely. When the seat belt sign dings off, I'm feeling less panicked. It's time for a cocktail. A trim flight attendant with blue eyes and muscular arms saunters over to attend to my every need. Flying first class does have its benefits.

"Hello, I'm Joe. What can I do for you?"

Date my friend Tom? He's desperate for a cute boy in a uniform.

"Whiskey sour?"

"Whatever you'd like, Ms. Jackson. Though I have to say that's an unusual choice." 120

''I'm an unusual girl."

Joe winks and bows off to make my drink.

Fur Ball's owner pushes her purple reading glasses down to the tip of her nose. The skin around her eyes is full of makeup caked in like dirt on a Manhattan street.

"You two would have beautiful babies," she says. "If you wanna go back there and flirt a little, squeeze that round-as-a-peach fanny, I don't mind. Your secret's safe with me and Fur Ball."

"Oh! I appreciate that. But, actually, you know. I'm on my way to Texas for my wedding next week. So he'd be so great for my friend Tom. You think he goes for cute songwriters of the same sex?"

She steamrolls over my question by bursting into a squeal so loud the cat's probably awake from its drugged stupor.

"Oh my heavens on high. Oh mother tonight! You, you little thing! You're getting married?"

"Married" rolls off her tongue like the name of long-lost cousin, or cat.

"This Saturday."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Let me see it!"

She smacks her hands together in apparent joy.

I'm looking around. The graying man across the aisle from is pumping his fist to the beat of something he's watching on his laptop. Joe the flight attendant has apparently gone to Scotland for my whiskey.

"The RING you silly. Let me see that thing." 121

I do the obligatory showing of the ring, caught totally off guard. In Hollywood everyone has a ring that's bigger or better or newer than yours.

"Oh Mary on the half-shell, would you look at that thing. I think you may have burned a hole in my retina."

Judging from her multi-colored gemstone-encrusted jewelry, Mrs. Fur Ball hasn't seen a ring like this. When my mother saw a photo of it (in a magazine, of course) she said she would've fallen on the floor dead if someone gave her that kind of ring.

"Ladies, are we having a little too much fun over here?"

Joe places my unusual drink, in its typical plastic cup, on my tray table. A few maraschino cherries are stuck on a red plastic stirrer.

"Pumpkin, did you know this gorgeous little thing is getting married?"

"You'd have to be living under a rock not to know Sloane Libby was getting married."

Joe winks. His stance is wide as he balances in the narrow aisle.

"I screamed when I heard you'd be on this plane. We always have celebs on this route, you know going from L.A. and all, but no one I've, like, really, really loved.

You're even more elegant in person, and I'm just so happy to see you before the big day because I know you'll be such a beautiful bride!"

Joe claps his hands together in joy.

Of course. Of course I'm on the one flight with the crazy fan. 122

Mrs. Fur Ball nods her head like a bobble head. Though her perfectly coifed hair doesn't move, her excess facial skin jiggles away. She's looking from me to her lap, and back again.

"Oh my. You're this girl, aren't you?"

She shoves a magazine my way, leaving me face-to-face with a grainy photo of my oversized face. I'm wearing a black dress I can't remember ever owning and a hot-pink caption says it all: Ready for the Funeral? The Grandmother who Wants to Ruin the

Wedding Day.

"Oh. My. God. I totally forgot about that! They did this thing on Entertainment 24/7

News last night about the story. I'm SO sorry this is happening to you," Joe says, placing his hand on my shoulder.

Normally a semi-nervous flier, I'm swearing now that I'll never fly again. I can't breathe. I'm 151 % certain we're about to plummet from the sky. Here I was imagining a relaxing and calm flight before an exhausting and ridiculously stressful week. Obviously, reality is never what it seems.

"Oh, thanks. No worries," I say to Joe, hoping he's tactful enough to leave.

Mrs. Fur Ball babbles:

"You're the first famous person I've ever met! How exciting. Of course I see people like you all the time in Los Angeles but I never have enough nerve to speak to them and I think you deserve your space and privacy. But now that I'm sitting next to you ... are you devastated by your family's sordid past? How do you feel about your grandmother 123 dying? Is she invited to the wedding? I just read that you were going to walk down the aisle alone since your daddy is no longer here,. Oh, honey. Don't cry."

I wasn't. Gulping down the entirety of the whisky sour in one breath makes the eyes water and the throat burn.

"Let's have a little moment of silence and reflective prayer to let you see where your heart leads during this difficult time. Young man, why don't you join us?"

Mrs. Fur Ball says each word with superb diction. She is deeply emotional and caring, or incredibly pretentious. Either way I want to punch her in the face.

"Actually, Joe, get me another drink, and a new seat. Thank you for your thoughts

Mrs ..... uh .... whatever your name is, but I don't think prayer will solve this problem."

When we land, Joe whispers that I'm even better in person and he can't wait to tell all of his friends how I told off a fat woman in velour. I ask him not to do so, knowing full well that the vultures will eat that right up, posting it on a celebrity gossip blogs without a second thought. He says he understands, but I'm not hopeful. Nothing is sacred when people know you too well.

Six years ago, my life story had been revealed for all to see on a music channel's quasi-investigative news show; instead of investigating corruption in African government, or the rising AIDS rates in Washington, DC, the show tore into celebrities' past. It was innovative, groundbreaking work. 124

I hadn't tried to keep the story a secret, I just hadn't been asked. Since I dropped the

Jackson from my singing name, it was rare that anyone made the connection unless someone read an article about my grandmother who, for whatever reason, continued to participate in various interviews. The majority of people just assumed my dad was a deadbeat or a divorcee who married my mother young and left her when she grew old and saggy.

I never gave it much thought, preferring instead to concentrate on my songwriting.

Subconsciously I suppose the truth came out there, but I don't think that deeply about art.

Whatever happens when I'm in the writing groove isn't really predetermined. It is what it

IS.

My memories from that time are confused. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm melding a

TV show I once loved with the little snippets of memories from a room where green paint chipped on the wall next to my crib. One day Daddy was gone and then Grandma was too. I remember thinking they must've gotten lost on their way back from a trip.

Tiptoeing into Mom's room I'd asked if we might go after them and Aunt Tracey just said, "Sorry, honey. She's not feeling well. Why don't you go play in your room?"

Every day after Daddy and Grandma were gone brought more of my mom's friends to the house: they brought food and talked softly. Mom stayed in bed. I think I liked it because it was loud and someone always held me or fed me. Eventually I forgot about finding Dad. It wasn't until the fifth grade that I realized he wasn't coming back from his trip. 125

Lucy Rider, a neighborhood girl whose parents owned a car dealership, had invited herself over. Mom freaked out. Now I understand why. We were poor, and our home was full of hand-me-down furniture. My clothes were hand-me-downs from the other

Marine wives and Mom cut my hair. Lucy liked to brag about going to the salon with her mom; sometimes they'd even get their nails painted the same color.

As soon as Lucy arrived she demanded to go to my room. Once there she walked around like a detective, picking things up, examining them, putting them back down. She opened and closed my closet. The skin above her eyebrows scrunched up like her brain was working overtime to check off all the comparisons (Yes, my clothes are better.

Check. My sheets are prettier. Check. My floor is hardwood; hers is stained and puke yellow. Check. My dressers are white and match my pink-and-white color theme. Check.)

She paused at my night table, grabbing at a glass picture frame.

"These are your parents, right?"

"Yep, when my daddy came back from the war."

In the over-exposed photo, Mom holds me like I'm an awkward pizza box as she kisses Dad, all clean-shaven and serious in his uniform. This picture still has its place in my bedroom - a constant reminder. The iconic photo means we easily could've gone a different direction, could've been on a TIME magazine cover for something good instead of the other stuff.

Lucy placed the frame on the bed (I wanted to scream. That's not where it goes!), and ran over to me, practically knocking us both on the floor with the force of her hug. 126

"I'm just SO SO sorry about your daddy. It must be so sad knowing your evil grandma shot your daddy in the face!"

Lucy's body heaved. She cried onto my shoulder; her snot ran down my back.

"What?" I asked.

"Your. .. your. ... your grandma. She's ... she shot .... she's a murderer."

"My daddy died in a car wreck. Everyone in Sampson knows that."

Lucy pulled away from me. Her lips formed a big round 'O' and I resisted the urge to shove my fist down her throat.

"Nope. Remember your grandma?"

"Not really. My mom and her don't get along."

"Ever wonder why?"

I shrugged.

"She shot your daddy in the face and now she's in jail. Forever."

"You're lying."

"Christians don't lie."

"Whatever."

I made Lucy leave. We never spoke again, but I was secretly happy in high school when the basketball coach knocked her up. Christians might not lie, but they definitely can't keep it in their pants.

When I confronted my mother about Lucy's claims, she ignored me. She reasoned that Lucy's mother was addicted to pills so what did they know? I asked Aunt Tracey next. She never lied to me. 127

"This calls for ice cream,'' she said.

So we drove to the convenience store, bought all remaining pints of no-name ice cream, plus every kind of chocolate candy. We sat on the curb in front of the store, watching the parade of trucks and little cars puttering down the main drag. We made sundaes right in the containers. A police car pulled up, its lights flashing and its engine growling. An officer who looked like a balding chicken shuffled to see the delinquents sitting on the curb.

"Oh, Tracey. Thought you were a couple of delinquent high school kids."

He pointed to a sign post next to me: "No Loitering."

"Nope. Just taking my niece out for some comfort food."

"Hello, Sloane," said the officer.

"Hi,'' I responded through a mouthful of Rocky Road, a dribble of melted ice cream falling to my t-shirt.

"OK then. Stay out of trouble ladies. It was nice to see you again, Tracey."

The officer bowed back to his car.

"We dated once, but he had smelly morning breath,'' said Tracey.

"Ew."

"Exactly. How's the 'cream?"

"Mmmm,'' I said as I scraped the bottom of the carton.

"So to answer your question ... yes, your grandmother is in jail. About thirty miles away from Sampson. When you were two she was tried for the murder of Steve .. .I mean

, your dad." 128

"If he wasn't in accident why is there that cross in the ravine by Cedar Hills Lane?"

"How do you ... "

"I go there sometimes just to .. I don't know. It makes me feel better. That's weird, I

know."

"Nah, it's nice."

''The cross?" I reminded her.

"That's something for Taylor to answer," she said as she wrapped her arms around

me and pulled me in for one of her famous hugs. "If there's any doubt, you know, about

them. You should realize it was complicated. They loved you both."

Mom continued to ignore me, insisting that I spend all of my time studying, not

concerning myself with things that didn't matter. She said this as she emptied our just­

about-broke dishwasher. I can picture exactly how the sun pressed through the widow

above the kitchen sink, casting her skin in an sickly light. Her hair was piled on top of her

head like a bowl of spaghetti .. She wore her ratty blue robe and every bone was visible through the thin fabric. Her bony hips and small breasts looked like they belonged to a

department store mannequin. I thought she was beautiful. I also wanted to throw my

bowl of Frosty Flakes at her head.

My anger began to boil over at inopportune moments. Of course it mattered to me. I

wanted my dad to come to the softball games like all the other dads. When my friends talked about going out in their daddy's truck to get ice cream, I wanted to get in a truck

and eat cookies-n-cream. Sometimes they'd catch themselves and made a big deal of including me (the girl whose father was murdered). 129

"You probably get to buy all kinds of fun clothes with your mom. She's so cool."

OR

"You must tell your mom everything. Sometimes I can't decide if I like my dad or mom more. My mom is mean; my dad gets angry too much."

OR

"You must have so much freedom to do whatever you want. That's so cool."

But it wasn't cool. My mother spent most of her time at The Shack working to pay the bills. Tracey was over all the time but she always had new boyfriends she didn't like because she missed Jon. The only time I'd ever heard of a real murder was when a serial killer put cyanide on envelopes at a Houston bank; seven people died. The guy was still roaming around. My grandmother wasn't around. She was in jail for life all because she

(the woman who gave birth to my mother) was no different than the serial killer running across Texas. When I couldn't sleep, I counted uneven paint strokes on my ceiling. I spent whole nights giving myself a litmus test: "Could I kill if... ?" In biology we learned about DNA and it seemed plausible that my grandmother had passed the winning murder gene on to me .

Mom is at the airport waiting even though I told her Amelia had setup a car service.

Probably embarrassed at the thought of a limo rolling into her modest neighborhood.

"Perhaps you forgot how much stuff I have .. .I'm here for a wedding, my wedding, by the way," I yell before reaching her. 130

She's still as tall and tiny as I remember. It has been three years. Time speeds by when you're on the road, stopping city-by-city like a passing storm. Her normally unruly hair is pulled back into a low bun. Her cheeks are red. Bony knees poke from holes in the tattered jeans. A tight red polo shirt is twisted into a secure knot at her navel.

She is both stunning and foreboding. If she weren't my mother I'd stare.

Her tanned arms wrap around my shoulders and her soft cheek brushes against mine.

She smells of cigarettes; I must remind her to quit this week.

"Hello, baby. I called up that Amelia-person and cancelled the driver. How much luggage could you possibly have?"

The words are warm against my neck. It's a weird feeling to be afraid of your own mother. She is both known and totally strange to me, as if we've been separated in the wild for years and I've only now found my way back to my herd. She releases me, and looks me over from head to toe, eyebrows raised as if to ask what are you wearing and why do you look like that?

"What is this?"

Bony fingers pick at Jonah's grey "I'm Kinda a Big Deal" t-shirt.

"And this?"

She's pulling at my tatteredjean shorts.

"It's my 'I'm-on-a-plane-next-to-a-crazy-woman-with-a-hairless-cat-outfit'."

Mom's chapped lips close with a satisfying smack. Her eyes dart around the busy terminal. From the constant swallowing it's clear that she's nervous everyone's watching us. 131

"Calm down. No one cares about me here. Look at me. This is not how a quote- unquote celebrity looks. No one will even know."

I drag her over to the kiosk with the metal baggage carts.

"I think we'll need two ... maybe three."

"Why not four?"

"You're right. I probably need four."

"Taylor Libby Jackson!"

The full name treatment. I pull two baggage carts and begin to wheel them awkwardly towards carousel four. I hope to avoid any sort of "who do you think you are" lecture.

"GOODBYE TAYLOR LIBBY! HAVE A WONDERFUL WEDDING! GO SEE

YOUR GRANDMA BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"

A voice bellows over the mindless chatter. It's Mrs. Fur Ball, and another rolly-poly woman I assume to be the infamous sister. The sister wears a velour jumpsuit in lime green and pushes a lime green stroller for her hairless cat. Both women wave their floppy arms around in an enthusiastic goodbye.

Any brief hope that no one heard are immediately dashed when the murmurs transform the calm crowd into crashing waves. The noise rolls after us. A handful of teenage girls point and giggle, their faces ripening with color.

Once I'm done with the pictures and the autographs and the "oh my God! you're so awesome!'"s only my bags remain spinning on the carousel. Mom heaves each designer 132 bag onto the baggage carts. Ever since the attack of the teenyboppers, she's been totally silent.

Within minutes we're at the truck and she's throwing the bags into the bed of the pick-up as if they're trash bags of clothes for the local Goodwill. I resist the urge, the nagging Amelia-would-throw-a-shit-fit worries, and refrain from telling her how much the bags cost and how they really aren't meant for the back of pick-up trucks you've had for twelve years.

The truck sputters out of the parking lot, through the maze of winding ramps and gigantic intersections. We travel through concrete cities that fade to massive expanses of freeways. We're on our way to Sampson and it's really no wonder they thought the world was flat. As we speed across the endless freeway, the horizon and the road meet, pressing into nothingness. And each time you think there's nowhere left to go, there's more road ahead, each mile taking me closer to home.

Fifteen minutes later Mom pulls off to a truck stop where we wait in line for gas. I make a beeline for the clapboard house that appears to sell junk food, lottery tickets, and windshield wiper refills. Anything to not have to wait with her.

A top-heavy man in a white shirt and suspenders glances up as I enter. He's reading the local news; the headline: Locals Up in Arms at New Veteran Hospital. My "hello" is greeted by a noise that should belong in the bathroom.

The rows of plastic soda bottles with red caps are like a box of same color crayons.

I grab two, hit the candy aisle, and head to the counter.

"Hello," I say to the grunter. 133

Another grunt. He points to the total on the cashier: $3.76.

A "God Bless America" sticker is pasted onto the counter, along with an NRA sticker, and one of those "support your troops" yellow ribbons. I'm not in L.A. anymore.

"You take care now, young lady," he says as I tell him to keep the change. Of course- I give you extra money and then you'll be nice to me.

Mom is impatiently kicking at the passenger side front tire.

"What were you doing?"

"Having a nice chat with Tim in there."

"Tim?"

"Sure. That's what I'm calling him from now on. Soda?"

Mom shakes the head while scrunching up her nose. This is the universal signal for

"I want to talk to you, young lady."

"If you move, I'll get in the car," I say.

"We'll do this here."

"You sound like you're gonna have your gang beat me up."

"I want to know what that plus-sized woman was yelling about."

"Plus-sized?!"

"Isn't that what you call it? When you're, you know ... "

"Fat?"

"Yes, that's it." "

"Why don't you just call her fat?"

"I'm trying to be respectful." 134

I burst into laughter and the soda burns my nostrils as it spews from both my mouth and my nose.

"What are you doing?"

"Laughing at you being respectful."

"Sloane Libby. I expect the truth from you. Why was that. .. um .... fat woman talking about Lana?"

I finish the first soda in three gulps and release a gut-wrenching burp. Little Miss

Respectful is absolutely horrified, glancing around at the other customers, making sure no one heard her rude heathenish daughter.

"She's dying."

I dig into my pocket where I've been keeping the letter.

"Here," I say. "Try reading this and maybe you'll put down that cancer stick."

Mom glances at the rectangle bulge in her jean pocket - the cigarette package.

She shakes her head, but takes the letter.

Her lips give each word away. She bites the bottom lip, then opens the lips in a gasp, and then presses the lips together in one straight, angry line. She's at the P.S.

"Get in the car."

"That's all you have to say?"

"Get in the car, Sloane Liberty Jackson."

She's got those scary eyes and she's using the full name.

We drive in silence. As the truck bounces over each pothole, I can't help but wonder about the abandoned homes along the side of the road. There are six of them and all are 135 disturbingly empty, curtains still in the windows, flags limp against the front porch, mailboxes with broken lids and rusty hinges. The last home we pass is in the best shape - white fences, green shutters, and gingham curtains frame the kitchen windows, windows that have been left open a crack as if someone had just barely remembered to air the place out.

Mom murmurs about the foreclosures, people with bad loans, and no jobs. The banks own the homes now and the people have gone elsewhere. I imagine them all licking their wounds, living out of suitcases, dreaming of returning. Mom says I'm probably never around this kind of stuff anymore. I don't try to prove her wrong, knowing full well it won't matter because she believes what she wants to. The truth of the matter is that Los

Angeles is a city of dreams built on the labor of others. Extreme differences in wealth are so obvious that it's a rare day when you don't encounter a svelte woman handing a homeless man a venti frappucino with whipped cream before hopping in her top-of-the­ line luxury car. In Texas everyone's basically the same except for the few who belong to

Texas royalty. In Sampson, especially in Sampson, you're known simply by your rank­ everyone and everything has its own label, its own set of rules.

"Did she write to you?" I ask as I kick my feet up on the dashboard.

She concentrates on the road. The skin on her neck is like a deflated balloon. If nature has its way, she'll die before me and I'll be left without ties to this place.

"Hello?'

"What?' she says without looking at me.

"Did Grandma write to you?" 136

"She's not your grandmother."

The crushing of gravel underneath the tires means we've made it home. From the rocks to the oddly shaped cactus lining the driveway, it loos exactly as it looked when I was five.

Mom hasn't moved- her hands still wrapped around the wheel as if she's driving in a terrible thunderstorm.

"OK, did Lana write to you?"

"No."

"That's weird."

Mom snorts. Her eyes widen as if she's surprised by her own response.

"Some writer out in L.A. is trying to get a film made about her, about us," I say.

"This guy contacted Jonah, stalked him basically until Jonah agreed to show me the script. Guess he thought that I would help him get it made or that maybe Jonah would love it so much and we would just drop dead to help him. Figured it'd be terrible, in that whole Lifetime for Women MOW way, but it wasn't. It was fucking good and I gathered from the script that you, your character, really loved Grand ... Lana ... but ... didn't know what to do."

Wind whips sand and leaves against the car. Mom turns to me and inhales deeply with her eyes closed. Her entire body heaves into a sigh before she begins to speak. Her mouth opens.

"What exactly is a MOW?" She asks without the hint of a smile, her tone even and soft, almost as if she's lecturing a second-grader on why you shouldn't eat crayons. 137

"Movie-of-the-Week."

She nods.

"Well, what is this person going to do with it?"

I explain that he'll probably try and sell it, leaving out the part about the serious interest from some young Hollywood heavyweights. I explain that I'm not really in it as a character in hopes it'll somehow soften her up.

Instead she hardens up her face and says: "Will you please tell this person that he's got it all wrong and that I sincerely hope he's got enough money to pay off the lawsuit

I'm gonna slap on him?"

"Mom ... Grandma already ... never mind."

"What?"

"Gran-Lana-talked to the writer. He'd like to talk to you. He'll be at the

wedding."

"That's some nerve you have," she says as she exits the truck, slamming the door as emphasis to her point.

I'm left behind to carry all of the luggage up to the front door, but the door is locked so I bang as hard as I can. Twenty minutes go by before I fuck it and decide to start walking. I'm starving and who knows how long it'll be before she'll let me in.

When I first got to L.A. and had nothing to fill my days with, convinced that I'd easily find a record deal, I drove to the nearest branch of the public library. I was living 138 with three other girls in a one bedroom apartment, all of us living out of our suitcases, waiting on our ticket to be called, wondering if we'd really eat canned corn and cheap soup for the rest of our lives. I told them I was out looking for jobs when I was really holed up in the moldy periodical section. Tenley, the-librarian-turned-wannabe-fashion­ designer, fiddled with her nose ring as I explained that I was looking for anything and everything to do with the Steve Jackson case. Her false eyelashes blinked; she'd never heard of it but she said it'd be easy to pull it all. Probably assumed I was some idiot

UCLA student who couldn't be bothered. She explained that most of these things could be found online. I shook my head wanting to see the printed word, wanting to run my fingers over the names, all of which I kept to myself. Didn't want to be known as that weird girl caressing old books.

The first things Tenley pulled were the basic details from early on. The local Texas papers covered it all. From "Missing Solider Last Seen at Local Bar" to "Killer Grandma

Given Life for Murder of Local Hero." The national papers got a hold of it after his car was found in a ditch, his body flopped over the steering wheel, a single gun wound to the head crusty. The coroner was quoted in almost all the articles: "autopsy reveals surprising developments in this case. From the wound size it's evident this killing did not take place in the car." Police officers who wished to remain anonymous were coy, dodging questions from reporter and barely acknowledging the fact that the case was still under investigation.

On my fifth day in a row Tenley was pleased with herself. She'd found all

kinds of information about the "dead guy." 139

"The story gets crazy--can't believe I never heard about this!"

"Yeah, well ... "

"So apparently the guy's mother-in-law shot him in the head then left him in a ditch to make it look like a suicide. But anyway he was like this total abusive asshole and beat up his wife and kid. Least that's what the mother-in-law said to the Today Show ... I found you the transcripts by the way and I think you can find a clip online. But really ... "

She took a big swig from a massive coffee mug. A few scraggly homeless men shuffled in the room, a warm and relatively calm place compared to the sidewalk just outside. The library was one of our last free rights.

"Why would you want to read about this? Are you one of those sickos who gets off on this stuff? I've heard about those people. I mean, yeah it's really weird but who am I to judge."

She waved her hand Vanna White-style as if to say "look at me, I'm a freak." I smiled and waited, unsure of what to do. When she grabbed my wrist and led me to a small room, I was grateful. The room was one of those private ones you can reserve if you need to study. White walls, tile and florescent overhead lights accented the windowless room. I remember wondering if the room at all resembled Lana's jail cell.

"So this is my favorite one," Tenley said as she shoved a glossy copy of a TIME magazine in my face. "I specially ordered a hard copy. The pictures are always better in color."

Tenley eventually decided it was time to get back to work, leaving me alone in the antiseptic room. The cover was entirely black with only the expected red border. Inked 140 across the white space were the words: "WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO THEM?" The article spanned four pages smack in the middle of the issue. Ignoring the text, I fumbled to find the photographs. The third page was entirely devoted to photos. There he was:

1. Steve Jackson as a baby at his aunt's house in Sampson, Texas.

2. Steve Jackson in his football uniform, proudly clutching his team's championship trophy.

3. Steve Jackson posed awkwardly in his formal Marine photo, his lips halfway between a smile and a frown.

4. Steve Jackson in the desert, dressed in camo, giving the peace sign with one hand and the middle finger with the other.

Steve and Taylor Jackson with their daughter Sloane. The family celebrated Sloane's first birthday.

Picture 5 was blurry and over-exposed. They looked tanned and fuzzy around

the edges. Steve had me propped in his right arm while his left draped across mom's bony shoulders. Steve was smiling, his mouth open as if someone had just said something really funny. Mom was doing the same, her head tilted up to her husband. The picture had captured her profile - the gentle slope of her nose, the rise of her cheekbones, the flash of silver in her ears. I was fat baby. My puffy cheeks were stretched into a gigantic laugh. Obviously I thought Steve was hilarious too because my head was also titled towards his face.

If I hadn't known, I might've thought this was the story of an American hero 141

who got his happy ending: wife, daughter, and joy. But it wasn't. This was the story of the American anti-hero, the young man who went off to fight an unpopular war and returned changed, changed so much that he was able to abuse both his wife and his baby, changed so grotesquely that his own mother-in-law was compelled to murder him, to put an end to it all.

The pictures did nothing to jog my memory. Steve may have been my father, but he was also my obsession and I wanted to know everything and anything about him. The articles said he was accused of almost strangling Mom, and throwing me down the stairs.

Some reports called it "accidental," though Lana's defense hinged upon his "infliction of intentional harm." When I'd first understood Steve's death, I thought I should yell at

Lana. I wanted to tell her how Mom cried at night when she thought I was dead asleep. I planned to tell her that I needed to know my father, wanted to see what parts of him I had, wanted to see if I looked more like him or more like Mom. I wanted to tell Lana how

I pretended to be sick so I could snoop during the day once Mom was at work. I paraded through the house and headed straight for the boxes under her bed. If there was anything to learn it would've been under the bed, the same place she hid Christmas gifts and her vibrator ( a thing I'd only recognized in high school when a friend said her mom had one and she bet mine did too). The boxes were half-empty, half-full of photos of Mom as a little beauty queen, yellowed newspaper articles about her mesmerizing talent, a "Little

Miss Baptist" satin sash and her high school yearbook. It was as if Steve had never 142 existed and I felt like part of me was disappearing. There was a parasite eating away at my memories. No matter how your surroundings are factored into your identity, biology says it loud and clear: your genes make you, you. And there was no doubt Steve Jackson was part of me. But what part? The intense anger, the feeling like you might burst from your skin? Or the charm that made Mom abandon her dreams to come down here to

Texas and make a life for her and her new husband? And if my grandmother was a cold­ blooded murderer, did that make me one as well? Was I capable of hurting those I claimed to love?

The sun begins to set. The road is empty save for the lone trucker who beeps at me walking down the road. My boots crunch the gravel like a cookie monster stuffing his face with stale cookies. After about a mile of desolation I reach Sampson's main drag.

Here cars fill the street's four lanes as they participate in the slow dance to their destination. Not much has changed. This is still a military town -- pay day loan operations snuggle against pawnshops and strip clubs. In many ways, Los Angeles is no different, both are the best and the worst of what the country has to offer, the diamonds mixed in with the cubic zirconia. It's hard to know which really is the more sophisticated.

Since it's a weeknight I'm hopeful the street will remain relatively empty of pedestrians. Only a few more blocks, a sharp right, and I'll be fine. Until then I'm crossing my fingers I don't have any run-ins. Most of my high school classmates are still 143 in town, many have married their high school sweethearts, and many have joined the military in some way, shape or form. And though I try not to judge, I do. Ifl could leave, they could too. Same goes for Mom, who harbors all this anger when really she just needs to pack up and leave it behind. Sampson is the type of place that'll smother you if you let it. Your identity is so wrapped up in the rules and regulations of a town indirectly ruled by the military. Uniforms and gun fire (practice only, of course) are as common here as

Blackberries and Mercedes are in Hollywood.

A neon sign greets me. Mom keeps the place relatively untouched. The front door is propped open and I hear some singer wailing on the stage. Mom has ushered in some semblance of a music community here in Sampson, from open mike nights to Texas­ based bands driving the state in minivans playing shows for whoever will listen, The

Shack is part music hall, part mess hall.

I go unnoticed as I step through the door and head for the back bar where I'm hoping

Tracey'll be. When Mom bought the place from Aunt Sally, my friends thought that meant we'd get to drink whenever we wanted. Sadly Mom wasn't all that interested in being the cool mom so we made it habit of stopping by when Tracey was managing.

Sometimes I had to bribe regulars not to blab to Mom. Usually it only took a pack of cigarettes, which I could buy, from one of those vending machines you never find in any other part of the country unless you're some hipster actor who bought an overpriced one from a vintage store on Sunset Boulevard. Sometimes it took cigarettes and a round of 144 drinks; many disagreements in this bar were settled with drinks. If only life outside were that easy.

Tracey's turned to the bar as she rummages through the liquor.

"Honey we don't have anything like that!" She yells towards the other end of the bar where a car with bleached blonde hair piled on her head like a palm tree waits impatiently.

Tracey turns to me and rolls her eyes. She's mumbling something about the customers when she throws a napkin at me.

"What'll you have?" she asks as she turns back to the bottles.

"The Sloane Special."

Tracey whips around.

"Shut up! Is it you?"

I nod as I duck around a waitress and slip behind the bar. Tracey wraps her arms around my shoulders, burying my head in her wild black hair. My hand flattens against her bony back. She's whispering that she's so glad to see me, that she misses me, and I follow suit. Tracey pulls away. Her face is flushed. Tiny wrinkles snake around her lips and accent her eyes like false eyelashes. For the first time I realize she's getting old, which means mom is getting old, which means there will be a point where I'll be the only one left. My stomach sours. If loneliness feels like a bad hangover, I don't wish it on anyone.

"Mom locked me out," I say as we separate from each other.

"Thought she only did that me." 145

Tracey's already back to the bottles, busy mixing up my signature whiskey sour with a splash of grenadine.

"To the blushing bride," she says as she hands me the overflowing glass.

She motions for me to follow her to the office. Apparently it's her break even though there's no one else working the bar. Tracey isn't exactly Mom's best employee, but she's certainly the most loyal.

"I'm sure she's already filed a missing persons report for you."

Tracey smiles and for the first time I notice how yellowed and crooked her teeth are.

The famous life has certainly taken its toll on the way I look at others. "Everything physical matters," my manager, Todd, said upon first meeting. He'd meant it as advice, a little tidbit to remember when the bloggers started ripping apart the mole on my forehead or the gigantic zit on my chin. He said not to take it personally and so I just started noticing everyone's flaws as if to prove to myself that it was just as normal as noticing the color of someone's eyes.

The next morning I wake to banging. My eyes burn against the light. Apparently I made it home to my bed. I'm still in my clothes from the day before, a puddle of drool collects on the quilt Mom's friends made me on my 16th birthday. My hair is a beehive of tangles. My tongue feels like a lemon slice - bitter and squishy. Staring into the mirror

- a mirror still plastered with my prom pictures - I remember why I'm not allowed to leave the house without makeup. 146

The banging pauses and I'm sure they've gone. Just as I make it to the kitchen in hopes someone's made coffee, the banging resumes. A note tacked to the fridge alerts me that Mom has gone to deal with things and hopes I'll join her soon. Her big block letters translate to "I'm pissed." Again with the banging.

"ONE SECOND!"

I shuffle through the darkened house to the front door hoping it's just the annoying paperboy looking for a tip. The bronze door latch is hot to the touch so I quickly swing the door. Rather than the zit-faced paperboy I'm expecting, I'm met with flashes and screams. A plump woman wearing a boxy suit flashes a smile. Her hair so perfectly arranged and hair-sprayed that even a monsoon won't touch it. This is what my stylist would call "small market newscaster hair." He had a name for every type of hair and no matter where we traveled, he was always hit the nail on the hair.

"Ms. Jackson. Hello. I'm Misty Sims of the Channel 4 News at 5."

A fat hand is shoved towards my head. This woman is quite possibly twice my height.

"Can I help you?"

I don't trust anyone. Though I do shake her hand because Amelia would yell at me for trying to tarnish my image. What's the point though? People will think what they want to. I knew that first-hand. Didn't matter what I did in Sampson, I was still the daughter of Steve Jackson. People gossiped behind my back but when I wanted to know about my father they shut up fast. I guess it's much harder when faced with the living proof that this man had existed. 147

"Yes, well. As you can see you're quite popular around here."

Throngs of girls stare at me from my mom's lawn like little Mother Mary statues.

Each girl is wide-eyed, hands clasped in front of bellies, lips glossed with the lightest of pinks. This is something I'll never understand. I'm not some superhuman being- I fuck­ up, throw up, bleed every month, complain about belly fat, over pluck my eyebrows, bite my nails, cry alone in the bathroom, masturbate, forget to shower, fake orgasms, have fantasies of being pregnant, of being tied up, of being dominated. Celebrity doesn't absolve you of all those things no one wants to admit to. If anything we're all just so afraid the regular people will figure it out and we'll be out of work.

"Uh-huh. How do you all know I'm here?"

"This lovely article, of course. Sampson's awfully excited about your big day and I'd like very much to interview you quickly. If I could just ask you a few questions I'm sure our. .. "

"What article?" I ask cutting her off.

She picks up Mom's newspaper from the top step, unwraps it from its plastic casing and hands the flimsy thing over. The top headline is "Sampson's Own Sloane Libby to

Marry at Local Hangout" and below is a fuzzy photo of me and Jonah at the Grammys.

He's whispering something in my ear that I can't remember now but was funny at the time. The moment feels too intimate, worse than if they'd caught us in a steamy liplock, and I want to smack the news lady with the paper.

"You've sort of got me at a bad time," I say as I motion to my ridiculously wrinkled outfit. "Typically these things are arranged in advance." 148

"Yes, yes, of course they are," she says, laughing in short bursts as if to say she knows how silly she is. "But we saw the crowd of girls and just had to stop to get the whole scoop. Trying to get a promotion you see and you're a big deal around here."

"Thanks. Can we do it later this afternoon? Come by The Shack and we'll do it there."

"Oh gosh, what a great idea. Why didn't I think of that?" She smacks herself on the forehead, which really saves me from having to do it.

"Shall we say three?" I say in a sing-songy voice I've perfected over the years.

Misty agrees, smiles and turns on her heels. I'm glad to rid of her but the gaggle of

girls remains. The noon sun bums against my forehead as the humidity forms a sweat

moustache on my upper lip. These girls must be sweating to death in their pastel t-shirts

and distressed jeans. I bring out a stack of freezer pops Mom stashes in the basement

freezer but soon realize that the heat is nothing to them. They've lived in Texas their whole lives and think its normal; I was like them once. So I suck it up and traipse around

barefoot in the grass while I chat and sign album covers, t-shirts, shoes. All of them want to know what its like to be famous, to get to go to all the parties, to be rich. There's the

usual answer to the question: "Well, actually, I do it because I love it," or there's the

funny answer: "It's just fabulous!" And then there's the truth: "the minute you know

fame is the minute you worry about it going away and then you're stuck in an endless cycle of hanging on by your fingertips."

Mom's in the kitchen pouring water out of a jug into a sparkling glass. She claims

she just got back from her many, many errands. The noise of the water hitting the glass, 149 drip by drip, irritates me and I'm overcome wanting to take the glass away. Something about the deliberation of her movements is insanely aggravating. Same thing happens at restaurants. The waiter comes to take our order, asks if we're ready and I rattle off my dish of choice. Then it's Mom's turn. She stares at the menu, turns the menu over, sighs and closes her eyes. The waiter awkwardly waits with a goofy smile on his or her face while I feel the anger boiling in my throat. Truth is she embarrasses me. Embarrassed by my own mother who was probably embarrassed when she got fat and carried me around while her deadbeat husband was off fighting useless wars. Maybe that's not even true. I don't know. Maybe Steve Jackson was so honorable he was so destroyed by the truth of war. I never know the Steve Jackson who swept my mother off to Texas after only a week. Never had to worry whether I'd walk in on them having sex. Never had to bring boyfriends home to meet my war hero father like all my girlfriends. Never had a male figure to compare Jonah to. Never had to argue over politics and morals because I was more liberal than my old-fashioned parents.

I still had a mom, but we didn't talk like mothers and daughters are supposed to.

Sometimes we didn't talk at all. She was always running from one thing to the next, twirling her hair in her hand when she was stressed. When other girls' moms were home after school to make us snacks or ask about our days, I made a point of mentioning that my mom was working at her very own bar. Of course this was before I understood why the other moms smiled in a "oh-you-poor-thing" kind of way.

"Did you not hear the door?"

"I did, but it was for you." 150

"Yeah, an angry mob sure loves a cranky singer in her ratty PJ s."

"Guess you're a big deal here. They wrote up some kind of article in the newspaper," she said, shoving the paper across the countertop.

Great. Jonah will be thrilled about our so-called private, paparazzi-free wedding.

Mom taps her fingernails against the glass. Her shiny pink nails look freshly painted.

Painted nails mean she has someone to impress. Perhaps she cares about the wedding more than she'll let on.

"My dress is at Sally's. She said she'd do some last minute alterations. You want to come? We can do lunch after."

"Do lunch?" She purses her lips, shaking her ponytail against her cheeks. "You sound very Hollywood."

"How does asking my own mother to lunch sound Hollywood?"

"I have to get to the bar to deal with the food and then I'm gonna call Ray's to deal with the BBQ stuff for the rehearsal. So, you go ahead."

"I'll go with you. We'll go to Sally's after."

She sighs, dumps her water into the sink and wipes her hands on her jeans.

"If you want your day to happen without a hitch then I have to go."

"Great. Fine. Make sure not to lock me out tonight because I'd rather not have to sleep on the lawn."

"You didn't have to sleep on the lawn."

"Nah. I just got drunk enough that I was fine with climbing through the back window,'' I say. 151

"Good to see you haven't lost your charming sense of humor," she says.

The heels of her cowboy boots click-clack across the kitchen floor.

"Good to see you're just as emotionless as always. You'd put the ice queens of

Rodeo Drive to shame," I say.

Before she can get out any kind of rebuttal I sulk off to the bathroom. If this is supposed to be the happiest week of my life, why do I feel like I'm about to cry?

Mold blooms in the corner of mom's old pink shower. She owns this house outright but refuses to make repairs even when I've hired the people and offered to do it for her.

She said she didn't want my pity, which angered me beyond belief. I could never pity her.

She says she learned never to rely on anyone, says she learned this lesson the hard way. She relied on Steve when she shouldn't have. She says she liked leaning on her husband, got some kind of sick thrill out of knowing that there was someone to protect her. This all sounded very old-fashioned to me. Impossible, too. She was one of the only women I knew who fended for herself, who never gave into the advances of various men from the base looking to fill the husband role. I loved this version of Mom and couldn't imagine her taking the backseat to anyone. Even Tracey, one of the most domineering people I've known (even more so than any slimy agent I've ever met in L.A), claims that

Mom used to be that wet mop, willing to go along with anyone, but after Steve died it all changed. Who would've she have been if Steve was still here? 152

Shampoo bums my eyes. The water turns my skin pink - a hot steady stream is the only way to get you really clean. With my eyes closed, I fumble around for the bottle of

"very expensive" shower gel Amelia gave me as a wedding shower gift (without any sense of irony, I might add).

A blob of sticky goo squirts onto my palm. A smell that is some combination of coffee beans and the clove cigarettes I used to smoke in high school fills the shower. I don't have any sort of sponge so my hands will have to do. A sudsy film covers my body and the soap bubbles up near my belly button. The slippery bunch of stomach skin feels like raw chicken and I'm disgusted with myself. Pinching the skin does nothing. The muscles are there but acting like total scaredy cats, hiding under a layer of blubber.

Rubbing the soap near my hips is a failed attempt to get rid of the fleshy bumps that began forming when I turned 20. This is all I have - just the skin I hate, that I pinch in hopes that it'll disappear, that might someday stretch to make room for a child, a baby who probably will destroy my body forever, a thing so powerful it can complete you and destroy you, a body that my father once had but is no long gone, whittled away by bugs and worms, just a rotten piece of fruit becoming one with the earth.

I step out of the shower not wanting to think. Water drips on the tile. I gasp for the steamy air, wishing it to warm me before it disappears through the crack at the bottom of the door. My hair's a mess, tangled up like branches, impossible to comb. I'm cursing at my hair, resigning myself to the fact that I've become spoiled, accustomed to having someone do my hair, makeup and anything else in between, when there's a knock at the door. 153

"Sloane?"

"What?"

''I'm coming in."

This means I have no choice; she never asks, she does.

"Can you hurry? You're letting all the air out!"

Once the door is sufficiently closed, her arms cross in front of her breast, blocking the view of her nipples through a ratty t-shirt. Her bony toes wiggle up, down, around.

"You're naked."

"One tends to be when they're just out of the shower."

She responds with some sort of grunt-sigh noise. From the way she bites her lip I know she's nervous. She's like a child. To see her vulnerable brings up a hurricane of nausea. For a moment I want to hug her, but I don't because I'm naked. Instead I wipe a circle on the foggy mirror. My face is speckled red, like a sunburned cheetah.

I'm not sure why we're both in the bathroom, waiting in total silence. The only noise is the slow drip of the faulty showerhead. I hate her waiting games and fight the urge to burst out with something to fill the void. If she's here, she has a reason.

"Smells like Starbucks in here," she says, finally. Her nose wrinkles up like an accordion.

"Some fancy-dancy lotion. One hundred a bottle," I explain as I hand the bottle over for her inspection. She pumps some lotion onto her hands, the ivory colored whipped cream substance pushes into the fleshy webs between her fingers. With slow circular strokes, she rubs the lotion into her upper arms. 154

"This is no different than the generic stuff you buy bulk at CostRight," she says, handing the bottle back.

I choose to ignore that statement, even if she's right. I occupy myself with lotioning my own legs. First the right leg, then the left. Then to my very dry and scaly feet.

"It's easier not to see her."

She sits on the toilet, lid closed.

I don't follow so I raise my eyebrows and shake my head.

"Lana. Your ... "

"Grandmother."

I'm zapped of the energy to fight. But she looks ready to pounce. Her hair curls around her head, shielding her face from my naked body. She's about to unleash everything.

She doesn't know the truth anymore. She says she misses Steve because they never got a chance to really know each other. She cringes, her voice wobbles, her nose wrinkles as she explains his verbal abuse and how she used to hit her so everyone would just see it for what it was. She says that she doesn't think it was him. She thinks it was the war that made him like a little child throwing tantrums in the candy aisle of the grocery store. This all meant that when he came back she had two children to deal with.

She says it was a few months later when it got really bad - all the cheating, drinking, manipulation. Then came the physical attacks - some sick control tactic. Her lips quiver. 155

"I could handle everything, but you could barely speak when he went after you. And that was it," she says. "It's something you'll only understand when you have kids.

Maybe what Lana did was the same thing."

She doesn't understand it still - how could a woman who gave birth to her be capable of murdering someone and leaving his body to freeze in the ditch underneath the

Highway 5 overpass?

"You're saying that grandma was protecting you ... "

"I guess you could put it that way."

"Well, why not talk to her now? She'll be gone soon."

"You have to be loyal to the Marines above all else. I have the girls here and I can't afford to lose them too. No matter what Steve did he's still a Marine. And he loved you until the end when it got really bad. But before ... his head was right here and you were queen. He was a whole different Steve."

"Do you really think that's a reason why I shouldn't go?"

"Yes .... no, but have to believe it's a reason why I shouldn't go .. Just as my mother believes she did the right thing."

"Does this mean you'll come see her?"

"This is the same woman who ignored all my calls, telling me it'd get better or just leave already. She didn't care until you were there all bruised and asleep on her living room rug. You could say I'm mad at her for waiting. She could've helped earlier and maybe you'd have a father to walk you down the aisle. So, I can't see her. I've closed 156 that part of me up and don't want to reopen it. Even when I miss her, I miss him too.

Doesn't seem right."

And for the first time I go to her. I'm still naked, my skin covered with little goose bumps. I wrap my arms around her waist. Someone watching this whole scene from above might find it all too inappropriate but sometimes things aren't anything at all.

Sometimes it's just me hugging my mother, telling her I love her no matter what.

Sometimes it's just the daughter being the mother instead.

Jonah's flight is delayed. The Texas skies threaten tornadoes. Like mother, like daughter, I cancel his car service, convince Mom to let me drive the big truck and head out here to retrieve my husband-to-be.

With three hours to kill I'm back to the parking lot. The sky is so dark and the clouds so low I'm feeling claustrophobic inside the truck. If there was ever a right time to go visit the Texas State Penitentiary, it was now. Just the right lighting, Jonah'll say later.

Three miles into the journey, the clouds pop. Rain pounds against the truck and I'm rattling around in a giant drum. Visibility is nonexistent. If I was the superstitious type I might see this as a sign. If I was the religious type I might interpret God's message as big blinking message of "THIS IS A MISTAKE." But I'm none of those things so I just grip the steering wheel. Let my fingers turn white. Curse at the slow Cadillac in front of me, beeping instead of bleeping, hoping that she's not already gone. 157

The penitentiary is the lone monstrosity in an endless field of thirsty grass. Just a giant building with no sense of structure, as if some designer decided to glue together a bunch ofLegos in whatever sort of pattern felt right. Four layers of metal fences and barbed wire contain the state's worst criminals. A ghoulish man with deep-set eyes and white hair calmly explains that visiting hours are over in exactly thirty-seven and a half minutes. His cool demeanor surprises me. I've got to stop assuming people'll act one way because of their looks.

Five different security checkpoints slow down the whole process. When I'm finally let into the visiting area I have only twenty-five minutes to get-to-know a stranger about to die. From the whispers of the two guards keeping watch on the visitor's room, I know they've recognized me. Even the woman who asked to see my license had seemed perplexed by the thought of me coming to visit Inmate #335. She then proceeded to ask for my autograph. I obliged because I've learned enough from Amelia to know that you never turn your back to a fan.

The room is empty. You'd think that families would be squeezing every last minute out of these precious hours. But the dingy room, with its cheap fixtures, tells a different story.

A whine from the door and she's here. A female guard unlocks her cuffs with a click. We've got twenty minutes. Face to face with a gaunt, older version of my mother,

I'm frozen in place. Her hair scalp is dotted with red spots in places where hair has thinned or fallen out. She's a skeleton with mom's skin draped across the bones. Same lips, same nose, same classic hourglass figure. I'm sizing her up, waiting for her to talk. 158

"You're just like the photos," she says and shuffles over to a hard plastic chair across me. Her voice is gruff, her dictation thoughtful, and I'm fairly certain I'll never understand how she could look so normal and do something so horrible.

Lana places a cold hand on top of mind. I resist the urge to pull away. Her hand is cold and dry, the skin thin - all veins furiously visible. I worry that a breath, let alone an entire conversation, will blow her over in more ways than one. We sit like this for what feels like forever until I make the small talk. She's not doing very well. They've moved to her to a more comfortable cell so she can live out the last of her days.

"Some system," she says with a smile. "All you gotta do is get deathly ill and they'll start treating you like a human."

It sounds like a joke, but I hold my tongue.

"Shouldn't you be out getting ready for your big day?"

"Eh, I think Mom's got it covered," I say before I realize that I've let the sixty-four thousand dollar word slip.

Mom.

Lana closes her eyes. Fingers crossed that she hasn't died.

"I'm sure she does. She can do anything," she says, eyes still closed.

"I think so too. She's always deflecting the compliment when I tell her she's incredible. Thinks it's all a bunch of bullshit," I say. "Sorry. Are swear words allowed in jail?"

This gets a giant laugh. Her yellowed and jagged teeth remind me of a happy Jack-

0-Lantern. 159

We're down to five minutes and I feel the need to just start babbling. I want to know if she feels guilty. If she ever liked my father. If he was all bad. I want to know how I'm supposed to deal with sharing the same DNA with a murderer and an abuser. But I don't ask. Maybe I don't really want to know the truth.

And as if she can read my mind, she takes both hands in hers and says, "You'll be fine."

The guard begins to cough. It's time.

"I'll be seeing you, kid," she says. She stands, readying her arms for their confinement.

The guard clips the cuffs into place and gives me a short smile as if she's expressing her sympathy. It's sympathy I don't want. Whatever the guard has seen in this room, in this jail, she doesn't know our story.

Lana fights against the guard's grip as she turns to face me again.

"Will you tell her I love her?"

The guard refuses to wait for my response. They begin their slow walk. I watch as my grandmother disappears down the hall, her white hair fading into the concrete walls, until she's nothing but a speck of orange in a sea of orange jumpsuits.