Dandelion Girl

Dandelion Girl a novel by Pamela Sullivan Becker College, BS, 2007 A CREATIVE THESIS submitted to Southern New Hampshire University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing School of Liberal Arts June 1, 2009 This thesis has been examined and approved. ________________________________________ Faculty name and title Thesis Director ___________________________________ Faculty Name and title Dandelion Girl 2 Chapter One August, 1978 Kerri Wallace pulled back the pink curtain in her motel room and let the August sunlight stream through window and onto her face. There was still no sign of the cab. Today was the day, she thought to herself as she fastened an elastic band around her blond ponytail. She had been staying at the Pilgrim Motel in Oakwood, Massachusetts for the last month, since her eighteenth birthday, but Kerri felt like she had been there forever. Nothing in the motel had changed since Kerri arrived. Even the rooms were all the same. A double bed with an olive green bedspread. A small television set up across the room next to a fake potted plant in the corner. The bathroom had a full tub, pink shower curtain, and bad lighting. The carpets in every room were dirty beige. Kerri had gone into all of the motel rooms in her row one day while they were being cleaned, looking for something different in them – anything. But they were all the same, nondescript, anonymous. Kerri supposed it was why the couple across the way from her room chose the Pilgrim to have an affair. Watching them was the most exciting thing Kerri had seen at the motel for the month that she had been staying there, trying to work up the courage to do what she came to Oakwood for in the first place. The couple provided the perfect distraction, a fat brunette and an older man who snuck out of the room across from hers every afternoon. The brunette would walk down the stairs first, smoothing her skirt, fixing a lost strand of hair, and the man would reach for his car keys or a cigarette, walking a few paces behind Dandelion Girl 3 her as if to fool anyone that might happen to see them. Once, the brunette caught Kerri staring at her, but Kerri just smiled knowingly, as if to say, we all have secrets. Kerri looked at the mirror above the dresser in her motel room. She had written the number for a cab company and an address in Oakwood on the mirror with her blue eyeliner. Not that she needed to write the address down anywhere to remember it. She had known it since she was five years old, but looking at it daily was a silent reminder that she came to Oakwood to go to that address. Kerri paced back and forth across the threadbare carpet in front of the bed. She had imagined this day countless times, but she still had no idea what to expect. She applied another coat of eyeliner to her bottom lids and brushed her ponytail again. For all the time she had spent in the motel, it still felt as impersonal as a strange waiting room. She sat on the bed for a minute, got up, and then moved to the tiny table in the corner by the potted plant. She picked up the newspaper and looked at some of the articles, her eyes scanning the words but not really reading them. She didn’t know why she was so anxious, or even why she had put off going for so long. It’s just a house, she thought, no one is there anymore. But she knew it was more than that. It was her house. It was the house. The checkered cab finally glided into the parking lot, and Kerri climbed inside. She gave the address to the driver and settled back, taking deep breaths through her nose and wiping her palms against her jeans. More than once she leaned forward in the cab, her moist hands gripping the shoulder of the front seat. She contemplated telling the driver to turn around, take her back to the familiarity of the Pilgrim’s orange doors and stale peppermints by the check in desk, but then the cab passed Howe’s Fruit Stand, and Dandelion Girl 4 the houses turned smaller, the lawns more unkempt. Instead of flower beds and wrought iron lawn furniture, the yards were littered with toys that had been left out in the rain and rusted, burnt grass and plastic lawn gnomes. Kerri bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t even sure she would recognize the house when she saw it. She thought she could remember the wide farmer’s porch and fenced-in yard and the dirt driveway with her mother’s pink station wagon, but that was over thirteen years ago. Lately Kerri felt like maybe she had just made those details up in her head over the years. When the driver finally slowed in front of a small ranch, Kerri recognized it immediately, a sickly house on the corner of Maple and Pine Street. The house looked like it was molting. At some point, someone had tried to paint the outside, but stopped halfway through. The original white paint had long ago turned gray, peeling off at the corners like a scab that had been ripped off too soon. A white pickup truck had replaced her mother’s station wagon, and a stained sheet hung over the porch railing. Her shoes sent small mushroom clouds of sand into the air as she scuffed her feet along the edge of the curb in front of the house. There was still time to run back to the cab and go home, Kerri thought. But then she reminded herself that home was at the Pilgrim Motel. She had nowhere else to go. She took one more deep breath, then lifted the latch to the chain link fence and walked down the slate sidewalk to the front steps of the house. She knocked, her heart beating wildly. A young man opened the door. When he saw her, he frowned for a second, and then held the screen door open with the toe of his boot. He held a dirty yellow sponge in one hand, and soap bubbles clung to his fingers and the back of his hand. Dandelion Girl 5 Behind him, Kerri could see shafts of light striping the floorboards and furniture in the living room. Dust sparkled through the beams of light, moving in a slow, lazy current, swirling around like a shaken snow globe. Kerri shifted her weight and tried to think of what to say. What she had rehearsed on the drive over sounded stupid to her now. She fought the urge to run off the porch and down the street until the house was out of view. The man opened the door wider and stepped halfway out. Kerri noticed he had the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He was dressed in jeans and a holey white t-shirt. A cigarette bobbed in the corner of his mouth, and he exhaled through his nose for a moment and cleared his throat. “Are you going to say anything or just stand there?” He took the cigarette out of his mouth. He seemed amused. “I can tell you’re not one of those Jehovah’s witnesses or some shit because you’re not carrying those brochures they usually slip under my door.” “I used to live here,” Kerri stammered. Now that she was outside, the sun was a spotlight on her, and she began to sweat. A sticky film of perspiration beaded up on her forehead and in her palms. “Really.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “When?” Kerri couldn’t tell if he was interested or suspicious. “A long time ago, when I was little.” “And?” Kerri traced the toe of her sneaker along the edge of the welcome mat. “I was just in town, and wanted to see the house is all.” Dandelion Girl 6 “That’s it, huh. You want the grand tour?” He gestured behind him. Kerri nodded. She couldn’t decide if she thought he was mean or mysterious, but she hated that she kept blushing when she met his eye. He winked at her. “Okay then, come in. I just got back here myself two nights ago.” He opened the door wider. “I’m Mickey. You want a cold beer?” Kerri stepped through the doorway into her old house. It smelled faintly of oil and paint thinner. A fine layer of dust had settled over the entire house as if no one had lived there for a long time. She walked past a rooster cookie jar, past the copper pots that hung from the peg board above the kitchen counter and the ripped crocheted blanket on the back of the couch. Sheer yellowed curtains hung in the windows, brittle with age. An enormous picture of a young man wearing his army uniform was displayed over the mantle in the living room. Kerri wiped the sweat off her brow and sighed. The house wasn’t like she remembered it at all. She had remembered pink counter tops, but now they were baby blue. The heart wall paper in the living room was gone. The house was smaller than she remembered it, cramped almost, and all the plants that her mother had hanging from the ceiling and stuffed into corners were replaced by mismatched furniture. When she finally made it to the bathroom, she stopped in the doorway.

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