[this is a revised version of the last chapter in my novel-in-progress Two Rooms]
They'd made it. Made it to where they wanted to go in life, not anyone else's idea of what their destination should be. And for this, Lydia was the most grateful. This one thing, that she and Gordon had lived their own adventure, made everything work--it kept Lydia sane, made her work, so that she could live happily with the rest of it.
It was dark now, and the blue-black sky sparkled with crystalline stars. The nearly-full moon was slung low over the bay. Lydia was painting it by candlelight. She'd have to dic the shading in daylight, but the essence of it, she knew, existed now. It was the last night this week for such clarity--a storm was rolling in and would shroud the sky and drown them for the next several days.
By the time she finished, the world would be well hammocked in the still of night. She would descend from her studio on the 3rd floor of their town home, turning out most of the lights, but leaving odd ones on, the ones that made her feel safe.
She would find Gordon where he always was in his favorite chair by the fire, having fallen asleep with the latest issue of Stage and Screen slipping from his lap. More often than not, there would be some article or photo of him. While his roles had dwindled, they had become more distinguished and so had he, which meant fewer trips to LA, but enough income to not necessitate them. It meant he served the acting community on many levels--he ws sought for SAGE officer positions, and the boards of many theaters and artistic causes. It also meant one stunning Oscar, and nominations for three others.
Lydia felt she was only just being born as an artist and would have been thinking of this, and feeling practically giddy as she laid eyes on Gordon in his chair. Not that her early successes hadn't mattered, they just hadn't felt as real. She no longer painted for anyone except herself.
She had learned over the years not to wake him, but to gently take whatever he was reading and put it aside, and to cover him, usually with the Shetland blanket. Eventually, he'd find his way to bed. Even in contented creative exhaustion, Lydia was hardly even ready to sleep. Were she a spirit, she would have floated out the window to dance in the moonlit currents of the bay once she settled Gordon. Instead, she would steal silently back up to the chaise in her studio if she was too restless for the solitude of their bedroom. Sleep almost never overtook her before the first pale hint of daylight began to lighten the sky, which was often the same time that Gordon chose to come shuffling in to bed. Until these last years, he would have had to rise painfully early when she could lie in and rest her fill. Now they could slumber each to his own content.
But this night, Gordon woudl murmur awake at her touch.
"Lydia."
"Shh. Go back to sleep."
"Lydia"
"Yes, Gordon?"
"Is it real?"
"You're talking out of your head."
"No, I mean this. Us. Our life. Is it real?"
"It couldn't be any more real."
"I love you, Lydia."
"I know"
"Do you love me"
"Always."
Then the reading laid aside, and Gordon covered, and Lydia off to the seascapes of her dreams.
And then, the rest of their lives.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Monday, July 13, 2009
Varmint
i
The shots are fired not too close together. The girl looks up from her Cream of Wheat, worried. Her grandmother glances up out of the kitchen window once, and continues to wash dishes.
There has been an indiscretion in the garden, causing the father to fire the shots.
Things are quick, hushed. The man comes to the kitchen door with the evidence. The grandmother knows that the girl must not catch on or another part of her innocence might leave her, part of the part that was left after the innocence that was stolen when the mother walked out and after the white women started spending the night in the house with the father.
The father knows this too, but his hands are bloodied, and he needs a solution. There are muttered instructions from the grandmother before she closes the kitchen door. She steps on the newspaper she has laid in front of the stove to catch the grease from the frying pan as she crossed to take the girl’s breakfast dishes. The problem is that her foot creases the photograph of the father on the metro page before she even has a chance to splatter bacon grease on it. The crease happens on his forehead which makes him look like an alien. In the photo, he stands with his arm around the Sheriff who had been elected for a second term. This makes them appear to be great friends. The grandmother says to the girl that she should go across the street to play with her best friend, and that she should leave by the front door.
The girl sees the photo of the father in the newspaper when she gets up from the breakfast table. She says nothing. She likes the uniform he wears, how crisp it is, how right it makes everything he does, and is afraid of his disappointment when he learns that his photograph has been creased. She did not step on it herself, but he will still be disappointed, she thinks, when he realizes that she didn’t notice the photograph sooner, before the crease.
ii
The grandmother is preparing Sunday dinner. There is cookery on every burner: potatoes in a boiling pot of water, green beans in a saucepan, and gravy for the potatoes in another saucepan. There is a wrought-iron skillet on the fourth burner. It contains meat that is frying in a healthy inch or so of Wesson. The grandmother has dredged it perfectly and turns it occasionally until it is done.
At the table, the girl is uncertain, though the father attacks the meat on his plate with a deadly intent. It is not chicken. They all know this, but the girl states it out loud, more as an inquiry. The grandmother cuts a look at the father and answers quickly that it’s Varmint. The girl takes a tentative bite and decides she likes it well enough not to ask what Varmint is.
iii
When the girl becomes a freshman in high school, the father calls her out into the back yard for what he explains will be an important lesson. She follows him, though her head is full of marching band and football games and the crush she has on the drummer.
When the father pulls a purple velvet Crown Royal drawstring bag from his jacket, the daughter thinks he will pull out a bottle and take a drink; she has seen him do this many times. She does not know what to think when it’s a small gun instead.
The father explains that it’s time she learned to shoot because there are things in this world that she will want to know how to protect herself from and he will not always be on hand to do the protecting.
Before she can say anything, he is standing behind her, placing the gun in her hands and molding his own around them. When he is sure she is holding it correctly, he comes around to the side of her and tells her to target the treeline at the back of the property and squeeze the trigger. She is about to comply when he adds that it might knock her back a bit, and that it will be loud.
Suddenly the daughter is unsure, afraid even, and remembers the pair of phantom gunshots and the meat on her plate. She fires and falls. The father can’t quite catch her before she lands on her bottom, but he helps her up and pats her on the back and tells her that was really good for the first time and that they will practice again soon. She wonders if the rabbit they ate died right away or lay twitching when the father came to the kitchen door to sort out what to do about it’s death.
That night, the daughter has a nightmare. In the dream, it is also night, and the grandmother is wailing because the church has been burned by the men in white. As she is dreaming, the daughter remembers that when these things happen, the father goes to restore peace in his uniform with the Sheriff. She clings to this ribbon of her real mind as the she looks out at the dream-night and fire engulfs the street and the driveway, and the flames part for the men in white to ride their horses onto the driveway.
On a day not long after the nightmare, the father calls the daughter to the backyard for another important lesson. Though her former best friend has moved away, she leaves by the front door and crosses the street to talk with whomever is home before he notices that she is gone.
The shots are fired not too close together. The girl looks up from her Cream of Wheat, worried. Her grandmother glances up out of the kitchen window once, and continues to wash dishes.
There has been an indiscretion in the garden, causing the father to fire the shots.
Things are quick, hushed. The man comes to the kitchen door with the evidence. The grandmother knows that the girl must not catch on or another part of her innocence might leave her, part of the part that was left after the innocence that was stolen when the mother walked out and after the white women started spending the night in the house with the father.
The father knows this too, but his hands are bloodied, and he needs a solution. There are muttered instructions from the grandmother before she closes the kitchen door. She steps on the newspaper she has laid in front of the stove to catch the grease from the frying pan as she crossed to take the girl’s breakfast dishes. The problem is that her foot creases the photograph of the father on the metro page before she even has a chance to splatter bacon grease on it. The crease happens on his forehead which makes him look like an alien. In the photo, he stands with his arm around the Sheriff who had been elected for a second term. This makes them appear to be great friends. The grandmother says to the girl that she should go across the street to play with her best friend, and that she should leave by the front door.
The girl sees the photo of the father in the newspaper when she gets up from the breakfast table. She says nothing. She likes the uniform he wears, how crisp it is, how right it makes everything he does, and is afraid of his disappointment when he learns that his photograph has been creased. She did not step on it herself, but he will still be disappointed, she thinks, when he realizes that she didn’t notice the photograph sooner, before the crease.
ii
The grandmother is preparing Sunday dinner. There is cookery on every burner: potatoes in a boiling pot of water, green beans in a saucepan, and gravy for the potatoes in another saucepan. There is a wrought-iron skillet on the fourth burner. It contains meat that is frying in a healthy inch or so of Wesson. The grandmother has dredged it perfectly and turns it occasionally until it is done.
At the table, the girl is uncertain, though the father attacks the meat on his plate with a deadly intent. It is not chicken. They all know this, but the girl states it out loud, more as an inquiry. The grandmother cuts a look at the father and answers quickly that it’s Varmint. The girl takes a tentative bite and decides she likes it well enough not to ask what Varmint is.
iii
When the girl becomes a freshman in high school, the father calls her out into the back yard for what he explains will be an important lesson. She follows him, though her head is full of marching band and football games and the crush she has on the drummer.
When the father pulls a purple velvet Crown Royal drawstring bag from his jacket, the daughter thinks he will pull out a bottle and take a drink; she has seen him do this many times. She does not know what to think when it’s a small gun instead.
The father explains that it’s time she learned to shoot because there are things in this world that she will want to know how to protect herself from and he will not always be on hand to do the protecting.
Before she can say anything, he is standing behind her, placing the gun in her hands and molding his own around them. When he is sure she is holding it correctly, he comes around to the side of her and tells her to target the treeline at the back of the property and squeeze the trigger. She is about to comply when he adds that it might knock her back a bit, and that it will be loud.
Suddenly the daughter is unsure, afraid even, and remembers the pair of phantom gunshots and the meat on her plate. She fires and falls. The father can’t quite catch her before she lands on her bottom, but he helps her up and pats her on the back and tells her that was really good for the first time and that they will practice again soon. She wonders if the rabbit they ate died right away or lay twitching when the father came to the kitchen door to sort out what to do about it’s death.
That night, the daughter has a nightmare. In the dream, it is also night, and the grandmother is wailing because the church has been burned by the men in white. As she is dreaming, the daughter remembers that when these things happen, the father goes to restore peace in his uniform with the Sheriff. She clings to this ribbon of her real mind as the she looks out at the dream-night and fire engulfs the street and the driveway, and the flames part for the men in white to ride their horses onto the driveway.
On a day not long after the nightmare, the father calls the daughter to the backyard for another important lesson. Though her former best friend has moved away, she leaves by the front door and crosses the street to talk with whomever is home before he notices that she is gone.
Friday, July 10, 2009
K-9
The story goes that one Tuesday, Deputy Cliff finally took a turn at feeding and watering old Adolf. It was a wonder he ate at all, because almost everyone was afraid of him. You’d see the rookies out there, trying to look brave, trying to look like men, darting into Adolf’s pen just long enough to get the food bowls down. They’d hold the bowls out in front of him, letting him smell the food, a kind of distraction.
Deputy Cliff would just laugh. He’d watch them from the break room window and har-dee-har. He’d scared them all in the beginning by exaggerating about how the dogs were trained, how if an officer was walking a dog through the station nobody could move too quickly or even put their hands on their guns because even if you were in uniform, the K-9 would take you down and rip your throat out. Well it had some truth to it. You had to be cautious around the new dogs. But if you knew the commands, you could control almost any situation or any dog. Except Adolf. Most agreed he really wasn’t right.
Some of the deputies claimed he foamed at the mouth. It got so bad that they had to cut a hole near the bottom of the fence to slide the food dish under. They used the end of a crowbar to hook it back, unless the brute gnashed it in his jaws and tossed it away somewhere in the back of his pen. Then they’d just forget about it and keep bringing new ones. Looking in there it seemed like there was a dozen or more empty bowls strewn about the place.
Whenever a deputy wondered aloud why the department kept Adolf or how in the world they got him out of his pen to work with him, Deputy Cliff would say they’d slip him some tranqs in his morning food, then go in and muzzle him and leash him and carry him out. Once he woke up in the cruiser, he seemed to know he was at work and have his head about him. The department liked to use him for riots on appearance alone. He was almost entirely black. They’d named him Adolf because he was the meanest sonofabitch in the pack. He wasn’t the biggest one of them, but he’d stay inside his standard regulation doghouse and as soon as he heard the latch on the gate of his pen, he’d charge the gate with the fury of hell.
But today, Deputy Cliff was not waiting for any tranquilizers, and he was not resorting to any sissy tricks. He clicked the latch. When Adolf charged, Deputy Cliff waited until the dog jumped up in front of the gate and used it as a shield as he pushed himself into the pen. Adolf came back down to the ground. In one movement, Deputy Cliff swung the gate closed and reached for his night stick as Adolf crouched to spring again. He brought the stick down on the animal’s neck just above the shoulders.
Adolf let out a single yelp of pain as he fell, and then he was still. Deputy Cliff half tossed the bowl of food onto the ground. Not hard enough to spill it, but he meant to show what a nuisance he thought the whole exercise to be.
When Deputy Cliff entered the station, all the boys were whooping it up in the break room. When he came into the room, some were tempted to slap him on the back or shake his hand, but something unsaid held them in check. Mostly they just shook their heads in amazement and said things like “man, oh Man!” Deputy Len, who’d been with the department awhile ventured a question: “Didya kill him?”
“Naw.”
Sure enough, a few hours later, Adolf came to, and stood up shakily. Eventually he ate his food. He limped and staggered around for close to a week. No one ever had a problem feeding or working with him again. He became so docile, that instead of riot work, they took him around to schools for career day, but with the muzzle just in case he ever lost his sense again.
This was the story Deputy Scott Larsen told his wife Becky about his best friend Clifford Parker. He loved telling this story. He loved Cliff. When Scott came on at the department, Cliff had helped him right along, kind of like a big strong brother.
Becky had feared German Shepherds since she had been attacked by one as a child, so she believed in the picture-perfect character of Deputy Cliff built up by her husband. That is until she met Cliff. He was arrogant and grotesquely overweight to her. In spite of the way Scott raved about him, and told that stupid story over and over again to whoever would listen, Becky never felt any real warmth about him. She suspected that every show of friendship he made was either to make himself look good, or to get something out of somebody. But she didn’t dare tell her husband how she felt. Scott was just so in awe of the man, and he had made good progress at the station and in the community, so she had no real proof that Cliff wasn’t the man Scott thought he was. And it was her husband’s feelings alone that motivated her to allow Cliff into proximity of her home, her affairs, and her grief when Scott was fatally shot at a riot one night.
At the hospital, Cliff swaggered around the peripheral boundaries of the scene. He showed up in uniform even when he was missing work to be there. He tipped his hat when he said “Becky.” He kept his sunglasses on and paced outside the door to Scott’s room until Becky went to get some coffee or simply had to go home and sleep for a few hours.
During these times, Cliff would hold his wide presence at Scott’s bedside, implore him not to speak and reassure him that everything was going to work out, that he, Cliff, would take care of Becky and keep the riff-raff out of his locker at the station until Scott was back in action.
And when Scott died on his fifth day in the hospital, Cliff did not for one moment allow Becky, the wife of his best friend to become overwhelmed with the fallout. He made all the calls and kept a plump gentle hand just near the small of Becky’s back in case she could not bear to choose a casket. Cliff told Becky not to worry about things like selling the second car, he knew a guy that would give them a decent price. It was the two of them really, Cliff taking care of Becky, and he’d maybe get to keep a little of the money from the sale, since he was—had been—Scott’s best buddy and he’d missed a lot of work over the past couple of weeks taking care of his best friend and now his best friend’s wife.
Throughout the ordeal, Becky found that if she actually listened to Cliff, too many questions and doubts would creep into her mind. So she just listened to Scott, to him telling her he loved her, to him laughing at the TV with her, or complimenting her cooking. Even telling her that damned story, because it kept her from screaming uncontrollably at Cliff.
Night fell on the funeral. The casket was finally closed, and the people went home. Most of the sandwiches made by Cliff’s girlfriend Penny had been eaten between respects paid. Penny had laid her tray of hand-garnished sandwiches on the counter in the kitchen alongside the chocolate chip cookies baked by the minister’s wife, and an anonymous orange and green jello mold. Penny had spent the afternoon in a chair that was nearly too small to hold her 175 pounds comfortably. Her bangs were her best feature. The rest of her dyed black hair hung limply about her thick neck and broad shoulders. Penny and Cliff began dating almost six months before the tragedy of Deputy Scott’s death, just the proper amount of time to establish her right to make sandwiches for her boyfriend’s best friend’s funeral.
Penny understood that Cliff was needed at the Larsen home and did not protest when he told her to go on home, and that he’d call her tomorrow and maybe they’d go bowling. When Becky swallowed the little blue sleeping pill, there seemed to be just enough time to lock the doors and stagger to bed. But somehow, Cliff was still there downing the last of a beer when Becky walked into the kitchen.
When he saw her, he tossed the empty can over to the sink, where it bounced once on the stainless steel and landed on the counter by the bread box. The pill, now taking effect, and the mammoth loss of everything let only half of Becky’s words leave her mouth. Where? Penny? Everyone? You?
Cliff obliged her with need-to-know information. He would see Penny, who understood that he needed to be here tonight, for their date tomorrow. He told Becky she should just relax, that he was going to take care of everything and why didn’t she just head on back and lie down? She didn’t have her Scotty tonight, but he was here and he’d be her Scotty.
Becky believed that if she just crawled under the covers, Cliff would leave. She told herself that Scott would never let anyone hurt her, then felt the stab of reality that Scott wasn’t here to protect her anymore. But instead of the bedroom she walked to the couch. Never to their bed, hers and Scott’s bed.
She half stumbled down onto the couch and Cliff was right behind her. She felt his large hands coaxing her down onto her stomach until her mouth met the cushion and she turned her head so she could breathe. Then he was talking to her again. That’s right, he was saying, and telling her to relax again. He knew how these things were supposed to be. She felt his fat fingers tugging at the zipper of her dress. Scott’s best friend. Didn’t she know, he was saying, that massage could be a stimulant just right to the point of excitement. No, wait. Come on, now, he said above her, Deputy Cliff was just gonna make her feel good, and he even needed a little comfort himself. Him being away from Penny, and her not having her Scotty, he said, they might just need each other. As she fought to stay awake, to stop him, Becky became lost in a sea of yes-no’s and all was dark.
The next morning, she woke on her stomach with her face buried in a pillow. Oh, god, she was in her bed. She crawled out of bed and walked to the dresser. She stepped in front of the mirror and looked clawed at her dress. She had wanted to look beautiful for Scott one last time. She could not get it off, could not get it unzipped all the way. She jerked open the bottom dresser drawer and pulled out a gray police academy sweatshirt of Scott’s. It came almost to the hem of the dress. She shoved her feet into a pair of cross-trainers—no, no, pantyhose missing—and searched the kitchen for her purse and keys.
Down at the station, they all cleared a path for her, even the dispatcher, who seemed to know that she was there to see Deputy Cliff. Becky rounded the corners and followed the sound of laughter toward the break room until she saw Cliff through a hall window. He was leaving the dog pens with a large, bulging burlap sack. He slung it into a metal garbage bin. Though she couldn’t hear anything, Becky jumped when Cliff slammed the metal lid shut. She made her way to the back door and waited for Cliff there.
“Mornin’, Becky,” Cliff said in a loud tone. “How you holdin’ up, honey? First night’s always the worst.”
“I know what you did last night.”
“I know, honey, I’m sorry Penny and I couldn’t stay until you fell asleep. Please tell me your sister came after we left.”
“You’re not going to get away with this . . .”
“Try to stay calm, honey. Let me and some of the boys help you with Scotty’s locker, OK?”
“Help me? I’ll get tested you sonovabitch!”
Cliff leaned in close then. “Now, listen, sweet thing, I don’t want to have to be the one to tell the whole town how you begged me to stay with you at the house last night, and how I had to push you away when you wanted to dishonor my best friend’s memory by sleeping with me before his body was even cold in the ground. You know, beer and sleeping pills are not a good mix.”
No resistance. There’d been no resistance because of the sleeping pill. And his beer can made it look like . . . There was no proof. Becky started to back away, but Cliff caught her arm and pulled close to his side, crushing her with his girth.
“Len! Come on, let’s help Miss Becky with Deputy Scott’s things.” Then to Becky he added, “You shouldn’a driven yourself here, darlin’. We’ll see that you get home. Maybe I’ll take you myself, check on the proceeds from the car sale. You can pick up your car when you’re feeling better.”
As they moved down the hall Len fell in behind them. They passed two approaching officers on their way out, and Becky looked at them as they shook their heads in awe and marveled to each other about how Deputy Cliff had put ailing old Adolf out of his misery with one clean bullet to the head.
Deputy Cliff would just laugh. He’d watch them from the break room window and har-dee-har. He’d scared them all in the beginning by exaggerating about how the dogs were trained, how if an officer was walking a dog through the station nobody could move too quickly or even put their hands on their guns because even if you were in uniform, the K-9 would take you down and rip your throat out. Well it had some truth to it. You had to be cautious around the new dogs. But if you knew the commands, you could control almost any situation or any dog. Except Adolf. Most agreed he really wasn’t right.
Some of the deputies claimed he foamed at the mouth. It got so bad that they had to cut a hole near the bottom of the fence to slide the food dish under. They used the end of a crowbar to hook it back, unless the brute gnashed it in his jaws and tossed it away somewhere in the back of his pen. Then they’d just forget about it and keep bringing new ones. Looking in there it seemed like there was a dozen or more empty bowls strewn about the place.
Whenever a deputy wondered aloud why the department kept Adolf or how in the world they got him out of his pen to work with him, Deputy Cliff would say they’d slip him some tranqs in his morning food, then go in and muzzle him and leash him and carry him out. Once he woke up in the cruiser, he seemed to know he was at work and have his head about him. The department liked to use him for riots on appearance alone. He was almost entirely black. They’d named him Adolf because he was the meanest sonofabitch in the pack. He wasn’t the biggest one of them, but he’d stay inside his standard regulation doghouse and as soon as he heard the latch on the gate of his pen, he’d charge the gate with the fury of hell.
But today, Deputy Cliff was not waiting for any tranquilizers, and he was not resorting to any sissy tricks. He clicked the latch. When Adolf charged, Deputy Cliff waited until the dog jumped up in front of the gate and used it as a shield as he pushed himself into the pen. Adolf came back down to the ground. In one movement, Deputy Cliff swung the gate closed and reached for his night stick as Adolf crouched to spring again. He brought the stick down on the animal’s neck just above the shoulders.
Adolf let out a single yelp of pain as he fell, and then he was still. Deputy Cliff half tossed the bowl of food onto the ground. Not hard enough to spill it, but he meant to show what a nuisance he thought the whole exercise to be.
When Deputy Cliff entered the station, all the boys were whooping it up in the break room. When he came into the room, some were tempted to slap him on the back or shake his hand, but something unsaid held them in check. Mostly they just shook their heads in amazement and said things like “man, oh Man!” Deputy Len, who’d been with the department awhile ventured a question: “Didya kill him?”
“Naw.”
Sure enough, a few hours later, Adolf came to, and stood up shakily. Eventually he ate his food. He limped and staggered around for close to a week. No one ever had a problem feeding or working with him again. He became so docile, that instead of riot work, they took him around to schools for career day, but with the muzzle just in case he ever lost his sense again.
This was the story Deputy Scott Larsen told his wife Becky about his best friend Clifford Parker. He loved telling this story. He loved Cliff. When Scott came on at the department, Cliff had helped him right along, kind of like a big strong brother.
Becky had feared German Shepherds since she had been attacked by one as a child, so she believed in the picture-perfect character of Deputy Cliff built up by her husband. That is until she met Cliff. He was arrogant and grotesquely overweight to her. In spite of the way Scott raved about him, and told that stupid story over and over again to whoever would listen, Becky never felt any real warmth about him. She suspected that every show of friendship he made was either to make himself look good, or to get something out of somebody. But she didn’t dare tell her husband how she felt. Scott was just so in awe of the man, and he had made good progress at the station and in the community, so she had no real proof that Cliff wasn’t the man Scott thought he was. And it was her husband’s feelings alone that motivated her to allow Cliff into proximity of her home, her affairs, and her grief when Scott was fatally shot at a riot one night.
At the hospital, Cliff swaggered around the peripheral boundaries of the scene. He showed up in uniform even when he was missing work to be there. He tipped his hat when he said “Becky.” He kept his sunglasses on and paced outside the door to Scott’s room until Becky went to get some coffee or simply had to go home and sleep for a few hours.
During these times, Cliff would hold his wide presence at Scott’s bedside, implore him not to speak and reassure him that everything was going to work out, that he, Cliff, would take care of Becky and keep the riff-raff out of his locker at the station until Scott was back in action.
And when Scott died on his fifth day in the hospital, Cliff did not for one moment allow Becky, the wife of his best friend to become overwhelmed with the fallout. He made all the calls and kept a plump gentle hand just near the small of Becky’s back in case she could not bear to choose a casket. Cliff told Becky not to worry about things like selling the second car, he knew a guy that would give them a decent price. It was the two of them really, Cliff taking care of Becky, and he’d maybe get to keep a little of the money from the sale, since he was—had been—Scott’s best buddy and he’d missed a lot of work over the past couple of weeks taking care of his best friend and now his best friend’s wife.
Throughout the ordeal, Becky found that if she actually listened to Cliff, too many questions and doubts would creep into her mind. So she just listened to Scott, to him telling her he loved her, to him laughing at the TV with her, or complimenting her cooking. Even telling her that damned story, because it kept her from screaming uncontrollably at Cliff.
Night fell on the funeral. The casket was finally closed, and the people went home. Most of the sandwiches made by Cliff’s girlfriend Penny had been eaten between respects paid. Penny had laid her tray of hand-garnished sandwiches on the counter in the kitchen alongside the chocolate chip cookies baked by the minister’s wife, and an anonymous orange and green jello mold. Penny had spent the afternoon in a chair that was nearly too small to hold her 175 pounds comfortably. Her bangs were her best feature. The rest of her dyed black hair hung limply about her thick neck and broad shoulders. Penny and Cliff began dating almost six months before the tragedy of Deputy Scott’s death, just the proper amount of time to establish her right to make sandwiches for her boyfriend’s best friend’s funeral.
Penny understood that Cliff was needed at the Larsen home and did not protest when he told her to go on home, and that he’d call her tomorrow and maybe they’d go bowling. When Becky swallowed the little blue sleeping pill, there seemed to be just enough time to lock the doors and stagger to bed. But somehow, Cliff was still there downing the last of a beer when Becky walked into the kitchen.
When he saw her, he tossed the empty can over to the sink, where it bounced once on the stainless steel and landed on the counter by the bread box. The pill, now taking effect, and the mammoth loss of everything let only half of Becky’s words leave her mouth. Where? Penny? Everyone? You?
Cliff obliged her with need-to-know information. He would see Penny, who understood that he needed to be here tonight, for their date tomorrow. He told Becky she should just relax, that he was going to take care of everything and why didn’t she just head on back and lie down? She didn’t have her Scotty tonight, but he was here and he’d be her Scotty.
Becky believed that if she just crawled under the covers, Cliff would leave. She told herself that Scott would never let anyone hurt her, then felt the stab of reality that Scott wasn’t here to protect her anymore. But instead of the bedroom she walked to the couch. Never to their bed, hers and Scott’s bed.
She half stumbled down onto the couch and Cliff was right behind her. She felt his large hands coaxing her down onto her stomach until her mouth met the cushion and she turned her head so she could breathe. Then he was talking to her again. That’s right, he was saying, and telling her to relax again. He knew how these things were supposed to be. She felt his fat fingers tugging at the zipper of her dress. Scott’s best friend. Didn’t she know, he was saying, that massage could be a stimulant just right to the point of excitement. No, wait. Come on, now, he said above her, Deputy Cliff was just gonna make her feel good, and he even needed a little comfort himself. Him being away from Penny, and her not having her Scotty, he said, they might just need each other. As she fought to stay awake, to stop him, Becky became lost in a sea of yes-no’s and all was dark.
The next morning, she woke on her stomach with her face buried in a pillow. Oh, god, she was in her bed. She crawled out of bed and walked to the dresser. She stepped in front of the mirror and looked clawed at her dress. She had wanted to look beautiful for Scott one last time. She could not get it off, could not get it unzipped all the way. She jerked open the bottom dresser drawer and pulled out a gray police academy sweatshirt of Scott’s. It came almost to the hem of the dress. She shoved her feet into a pair of cross-trainers—no, no, pantyhose missing—and searched the kitchen for her purse and keys.
Down at the station, they all cleared a path for her, even the dispatcher, who seemed to know that she was there to see Deputy Cliff. Becky rounded the corners and followed the sound of laughter toward the break room until she saw Cliff through a hall window. He was leaving the dog pens with a large, bulging burlap sack. He slung it into a metal garbage bin. Though she couldn’t hear anything, Becky jumped when Cliff slammed the metal lid shut. She made her way to the back door and waited for Cliff there.
“Mornin’, Becky,” Cliff said in a loud tone. “How you holdin’ up, honey? First night’s always the worst.”
“I know what you did last night.”
“I know, honey, I’m sorry Penny and I couldn’t stay until you fell asleep. Please tell me your sister came after we left.”
“You’re not going to get away with this . . .”
“Try to stay calm, honey. Let me and some of the boys help you with Scotty’s locker, OK?”
“Help me? I’ll get tested you sonovabitch!”
Cliff leaned in close then. “Now, listen, sweet thing, I don’t want to have to be the one to tell the whole town how you begged me to stay with you at the house last night, and how I had to push you away when you wanted to dishonor my best friend’s memory by sleeping with me before his body was even cold in the ground. You know, beer and sleeping pills are not a good mix.”
No resistance. There’d been no resistance because of the sleeping pill. And his beer can made it look like . . . There was no proof. Becky started to back away, but Cliff caught her arm and pulled close to his side, crushing her with his girth.
“Len! Come on, let’s help Miss Becky with Deputy Scott’s things.” Then to Becky he added, “You shouldn’a driven yourself here, darlin’. We’ll see that you get home. Maybe I’ll take you myself, check on the proceeds from the car sale. You can pick up your car when you’re feeling better.”
As they moved down the hall Len fell in behind them. They passed two approaching officers on their way out, and Becky looked at them as they shook their heads in awe and marveled to each other about how Deputy Cliff had put ailing old Adolf out of his misery with one clean bullet to the head.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
excerpt from God Brode (Good Bread)
[author's note: this seems like it must be at least the 57th incarnation of this story. I have started it so many times. It is beginning to approach the story I'm after, but it's still missing something. Still, I decided to let it breathe out in the open, so here is one of many rough cuts--I'm sure there'll be many more along the way.]
Phoebe slept next to Niels in his old room. She dreamed of their train ride from Copenhagen to Kalundborg, where his parents met them. Her heart relived the question meant for a girlfriend or a bride-to-be that she still faced as a wife: will they like me? It couldn't be helped. Niels worked, studied, and lived in NY. No one would expect him to meet a Danish girl there. No one except his mother. The distance made it easy for Niels and Phoebe to discourage the Moelsens from coming for the wedding. It also made it easy for Rikke and Eben to agree not to attend.
At the train station there had been a warm hug for her from Eben. He spoke to her in English, and both his voice and his face carried a smile. Rikke offered a tentative kiss and said nothing.
Language remained on the same frequency throughout the dark ride home, with Niels speaking animatedly in Danish to his parents. It continued at the house, with his brother Jesper who had come from the neighboring farm to greet them. Jesper's "hello" had been neither warm like Eben, nor distant like Rikke.
Finally, Rikke led them to their room, Niels's own room, with Niels whispering to Phoebe along the way in English about the family photos on the wall, tricks to get the hot water to work--all the things Rikke would have told Phoebe if she had spoken enough English, or had been willing to try.
Sleep came easy, but Phoebe's dreams suspended her on the train, rocking and ambling away from the lights of Tivoli and toward that unknown part of her husband.
On the train, when Niels got tired of reading, he began telling Phoebe stories of his childhood. Stories of helping with the mink vaccinations, or smelling his mother's homemade bread. She dreamed them again and of the passing countryside, of the fields in the last golden glow of August. Phoebe frowned in her sleep at eh tall golden arches of McDonald's that pierced the horizon.
Then she smiled. Niels was telling her about the pigs again. Before the mink, there had been pigs. Before Eben built out the lower level of the house below Niels's room, it had been, literally, a pig sty. Niels told her how they would grunt and squeal. He said it could sound like thunder when the sows got excited and tore around.
Yes--she could hear it! First right underneath of them, a low rumble. Then they seemed to be in the very room, the troubled ghosts of the sows, stampeding around the room, and somehow now over her head . . . !
Phoebe gasped and opened her eyes. Niels had moved near her in the his sleep and nestled his head on her shoulder. He snorted loudly as Phoebe rolled away. His head fell against the pillow and the rumble of his snores began again.
Phoebe slept next to Niels in his old room. She dreamed of their train ride from Copenhagen to Kalundborg, where his parents met them. Her heart relived the question meant for a girlfriend or a bride-to-be that she still faced as a wife: will they like me? It couldn't be helped. Niels worked, studied, and lived in NY. No one would expect him to meet a Danish girl there. No one except his mother. The distance made it easy for Niels and Phoebe to discourage the Moelsens from coming for the wedding. It also made it easy for Rikke and Eben to agree not to attend.
At the train station there had been a warm hug for her from Eben. He spoke to her in English, and both his voice and his face carried a smile. Rikke offered a tentative kiss and said nothing.
Language remained on the same frequency throughout the dark ride home, with Niels speaking animatedly in Danish to his parents. It continued at the house, with his brother Jesper who had come from the neighboring farm to greet them. Jesper's "hello" had been neither warm like Eben, nor distant like Rikke.
Finally, Rikke led them to their room, Niels's own room, with Niels whispering to Phoebe along the way in English about the family photos on the wall, tricks to get the hot water to work--all the things Rikke would have told Phoebe if she had spoken enough English, or had been willing to try.
Sleep came easy, but Phoebe's dreams suspended her on the train, rocking and ambling away from the lights of Tivoli and toward that unknown part of her husband.
On the train, when Niels got tired of reading, he began telling Phoebe stories of his childhood. Stories of helping with the mink vaccinations, or smelling his mother's homemade bread. She dreamed them again and of the passing countryside, of the fields in the last golden glow of August. Phoebe frowned in her sleep at eh tall golden arches of McDonald's that pierced the horizon.
Then she smiled. Niels was telling her about the pigs again. Before the mink, there had been pigs. Before Eben built out the lower level of the house below Niels's room, it had been, literally, a pig sty. Niels told her how they would grunt and squeal. He said it could sound like thunder when the sows got excited and tore around.
Yes--she could hear it! First right underneath of them, a low rumble. Then they seemed to be in the very room, the troubled ghosts of the sows, stampeding around the room, and somehow now over her head . . . !
Phoebe gasped and opened her eyes. Niels had moved near her in the his sleep and nestled his head on her shoulder. He snorted loudly as Phoebe rolled away. His head fell against the pillow and the rumble of his snores began again.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Manicure
People always thought the worst of women in Coco's line of work. But Coco was nothing like what people thought of her.
Coco was very clean. Pure, even. She stayed healthy, ate clean food, practiced yoga, washed her hands often.
Her clothes were perfect for her work, just right for an up and comer. The dresses and blouses she chose always had a way of showing off exactly what she had without really revealing too much.
Coco was the epitome of style from her soft brown hair, to her impeccable taste in jewelry and accessories--right down to her very clean hands.
Coco felt it was her hands that would eventually get her off of the corner, the street even, and doing things the right sort of way. It wasn't just what she could do with her hands (and that was the problem with the whole business of it in general--the way peole looked at her for just one or two talents but never had a thought for her potential). No, it wasn't just what she did with her hands, but the look of them. They were the color of a few teaspoons of coffee in a cupful of cream. Just the way her grandmother had let her drink it as a little girl, to feel grown up.
Coco chose Paradise Nails. It had to be in the mall because it had to be today. Because tonight she moved in bigger circles.
A round-faced Filipino girl named Apple came to the front of the salon to care for Coco's hands.
The tables looked clean. Coco settled in the chair and spread her fingers. She waited for the little bowls of soapy water. She was pleased that Apple had been handed a sealed plastic kit of manicure tools. The water did not come and Coco wished that she could get up and wash her hands but the moment passed. She shifted her bottom in the pink plastic chair. Apple smiled at Coco. Her little, surprising teeth formed an even row. Not polished. Not at all like piano keys.
Coco looked down. She wanted to watch everything that Apple did so that if it looked like Apple would hurt her (some of them did at times), she, Coco, could stop it.
But the dirt. Oh God. Why was it that every time you came to a place like this, these girls' fingernails looked like they had been out digging up potatoes? Coco wanted to scrub. Scrub Apple's fingernails. The thumbnails. A black line of dirt was caked underneath them. Someone should be told. The manager. But when? Not in the middle of things being done. There could be an injury. After, maybe. The moment passed.
Coco looked away, but felt the little pink buffer scrape her cuticle. She thought of the white powder from her nails. Coco looked at the sink across the room. Now the water would come, it had to. This was a sensible salon and Apple was trained. She had to be. Because she smiled at Coco so rightly.
Apple stopped buffing. White powder everywhere. No water. Apple took a bottle of pink lotion and squirted way too much of it into her palm. And rubbed her hands together. Coco saw the thumbnails again. And right over the white powder. The lotion covered it. Pink lotion. Dirty pink.
Coco shut her eyes and tried to breathe. She must have pulled her hand away by accident because Apple giggled and pulled her hand back, and their hands were slippery together.
When some of the lotion had absorbed into Coco's skin, Apple got up again. The sink . . . water?!
No water. Apple pulled dull slate-blue towels out of a steamer/warmer. At least Coco could see a washing machine beyond the main room. It would be illegal for them not to use it. They'd lose their license.
Apple wrapped Coco's hands in the towels. The steam helped Coco breathe. The towels were hot and wet. It might be OK.
Apple pulled out the little clippers to cut Coco's cuticles, and peeled the towel back from Coco's fingertips. Coco felt clammy. The towels were cooling, and not drying. She considered telling Apple "no, just skip this part." The moment passed.
It happened almost instantly. A cut was made. Apple cut good skin, not just the cuticle. Why was it that every time you came to one of these places, paid your money, sat here, trusted, that you left with your fingers feeling like they'd been shredded by baby barracudas? No, really, why?
Apple seemed to regret her mistake. After her regret, she kept plucking at Coco's dead cuticles and scraping under Coco's nails and wiping the things she harvested on her side of the white towel.
And then there was another liquid, some sort of conditioner, rubbed in, meant to be wiped off, and the damned little Apple tried to--
"No! that's where you've been wiping things!"
You had to tell these people. Exhausting. Apple flipped the towel over to the clean side and wiped Coco's fingers. Coco breathed.
Finally, the color. Her favorite red. Coco never took a chance that a salon would have it. She always brought her own bottle. She loved to watch the way the little brush spread the color across the nail. Apple was very good at painting.
Just as it was looking perfect, Apple raked her thumbnail down Coco's cuticle. Coco tried not to look. It happened a few times. It seemed unnecessary. Coco wished that Apple would stop trying to be so thorough.
Then Apple took out a tool, a small brush with an edge (it almost looked like it was for eye shadow) and dipped it in remover . . . and edged Coco's cuticles with it. Well, why the goddamned hell did she need to scrape with her dirty thumbnails then?!?
Coco breathed. Looking at her hands helped. The look of them was perfect. Off the corner, off the street. Creamy coffee and the best red. The red was called "I'm Not Really a Waitress." Because she wasn't.
Coco was very clean. Pure, even. She stayed healthy, ate clean food, practiced yoga, washed her hands often.
Her clothes were perfect for her work, just right for an up and comer. The dresses and blouses she chose always had a way of showing off exactly what she had without really revealing too much.
Coco was the epitome of style from her soft brown hair, to her impeccable taste in jewelry and accessories--right down to her very clean hands.
Coco felt it was her hands that would eventually get her off of the corner, the street even, and doing things the right sort of way. It wasn't just what she could do with her hands (and that was the problem with the whole business of it in general--the way peole looked at her for just one or two talents but never had a thought for her potential). No, it wasn't just what she did with her hands, but the look of them. They were the color of a few teaspoons of coffee in a cupful of cream. Just the way her grandmother had let her drink it as a little girl, to feel grown up.
Coco chose Paradise Nails. It had to be in the mall because it had to be today. Because tonight she moved in bigger circles.
A round-faced Filipino girl named Apple came to the front of the salon to care for Coco's hands.
The tables looked clean. Coco settled in the chair and spread her fingers. She waited for the little bowls of soapy water. She was pleased that Apple had been handed a sealed plastic kit of manicure tools. The water did not come and Coco wished that she could get up and wash her hands but the moment passed. She shifted her bottom in the pink plastic chair. Apple smiled at Coco. Her little, surprising teeth formed an even row. Not polished. Not at all like piano keys.
Coco looked down. She wanted to watch everything that Apple did so that if it looked like Apple would hurt her (some of them did at times), she, Coco, could stop it.
But the dirt. Oh God. Why was it that every time you came to a place like this, these girls' fingernails looked like they had been out digging up potatoes? Coco wanted to scrub. Scrub Apple's fingernails. The thumbnails. A black line of dirt was caked underneath them. Someone should be told. The manager. But when? Not in the middle of things being done. There could be an injury. After, maybe. The moment passed.
Coco looked away, but felt the little pink buffer scrape her cuticle. She thought of the white powder from her nails. Coco looked at the sink across the room. Now the water would come, it had to. This was a sensible salon and Apple was trained. She had to be. Because she smiled at Coco so rightly.
Apple stopped buffing. White powder everywhere. No water. Apple took a bottle of pink lotion and squirted way too much of it into her palm. And rubbed her hands together. Coco saw the thumbnails again. And right over the white powder. The lotion covered it. Pink lotion. Dirty pink.
Coco shut her eyes and tried to breathe. She must have pulled her hand away by accident because Apple giggled and pulled her hand back, and their hands were slippery together.
When some of the lotion had absorbed into Coco's skin, Apple got up again. The sink . . . water?!
No water. Apple pulled dull slate-blue towels out of a steamer/warmer. At least Coco could see a washing machine beyond the main room. It would be illegal for them not to use it. They'd lose their license.
Apple wrapped Coco's hands in the towels. The steam helped Coco breathe. The towels were hot and wet. It might be OK.
Apple pulled out the little clippers to cut Coco's cuticles, and peeled the towel back from Coco's fingertips. Coco felt clammy. The towels were cooling, and not drying. She considered telling Apple "no, just skip this part." The moment passed.
It happened almost instantly. A cut was made. Apple cut good skin, not just the cuticle. Why was it that every time you came to one of these places, paid your money, sat here, trusted, that you left with your fingers feeling like they'd been shredded by baby barracudas? No, really, why?
Apple seemed to regret her mistake. After her regret, she kept plucking at Coco's dead cuticles and scraping under Coco's nails and wiping the things she harvested on her side of the white towel.
And then there was another liquid, some sort of conditioner, rubbed in, meant to be wiped off, and the damned little Apple tried to--
"No! that's where you've been wiping things!"
You had to tell these people. Exhausting. Apple flipped the towel over to the clean side and wiped Coco's fingers. Coco breathed.
Finally, the color. Her favorite red. Coco never took a chance that a salon would have it. She always brought her own bottle. She loved to watch the way the little brush spread the color across the nail. Apple was very good at painting.
Just as it was looking perfect, Apple raked her thumbnail down Coco's cuticle. Coco tried not to look. It happened a few times. It seemed unnecessary. Coco wished that Apple would stop trying to be so thorough.
Then Apple took out a tool, a small brush with an edge (it almost looked like it was for eye shadow) and dipped it in remover . . . and edged Coco's cuticles with it. Well, why the goddamned hell did she need to scrape with her dirty thumbnails then?!?
Coco breathed. Looking at her hands helped. The look of them was perfect. Off the corner, off the street. Creamy coffee and the best red. The red was called "I'm Not Really a Waitress." Because she wasn't.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Dolly (Identity in three parts)
I.
I remember her clearly, just not her name. Penelope; or Priscilla, maybe.
Mom stitched her for me out of mod pinks and greens that came in her kit. Those colors, her lush lashes, and especially the plastic patent-leather-looking boots she wore made me dream of being a stewardess, just flitting through life and jetting back and forth between Paris and Milan. I had the luggage for it—round pieces and square pieces with round edges, all with signs of the zodiac on them. And somehow, everything that mattered to me fit inside them, even the giant plastic purple hair rollers and all those hairpins.
She made me dream of perfume, and Monte Carlo. But she was blond, which I’d never be. And she was weak in the neck because Mom short-changed her on the stuffing and stitched her too tight there. The way she couldn’t keep her head up, all that bobbing from side to side, really began to bother me. Eventually, I let her be, and she blended in with the other toys and games until we all became old.
Imagine my shock when I found her there, in that box, in the basement. At least she was under the window—gray light is better than none. I saw her yellow hair first, then one spider-lased blue eye looking up at me out of the rubble of our past lives.
I started clearing it away and gently pulled her out. Her pink-toned skin had the one coffee stain blemish. Her clothes were a little faded, but the still said “That Girl” to me. Her little plastic boots shone more towards their original white after I rubbed the dust from them. And her head was still attached at the neck.
II.
When I outgrew darling Penny-Priscilla, I found a new idol. She was from Malibu and was married to a dolt. Of course none of this occurred to the pre-adolescent minds of me and my friends Marcy and Jill. We were just crazy with all of her pink accoutrements.
Her camper was Marcy's, and the townhouse was mine. Jill didn’t have much of anything in the way of Barbies, but she let us haul all of our crap to her basement on hot summer days. And the clothes—we stopped arguing over who’s were who’s. We ignored the fact that we actually had two Barbies, and threw in a Dawn doll and her convertible to keep the peace.
Barbie never kicked us out of her world, never told us it was time to go home. We had to be called. It was usually me who got called home first, unless we had staged everything on my front porch. It was my dad whose voice could find me, even in the depths of Jill's basement. But somehow it was harder to hear him when I was at Marcy's even though she lived right across the street from me—maybe I just never wanted to come home.
I was running home from Marcy's when it happened. Did I mention it was hot? Well I was tearing home to my mom’s friend chicken dinner—and I dropped her. She fell, really. Right onto the scorching driveway. It never occurred to me that Barbie wouldn’t be caught dead eating fried chicken, the skinny bitch.
The next morning, my dad approached me. He had that same twitch in his mouth as he did the day he tried to apologize to me for laughing when I fell in the toilet at age three.
“I found your Barbie doll this morning.”
No connection yet.
“I think you must have dropped her in the driveway—on your way home from Marcy's yesterday.
Oh?
He brought her around from behind his back and held her out to me by the legs. As soon as I took her from him, he bolted. No doubt to spare me another one of his laugh tracks. She’d apparently fallen face down, because her perky little upturned nose, her perfect little boobs, and her pointed little toes were melted flat.
I was a little dispappointed, but I knew my dad would have no trouble replacing her. There were hundreds of them lining the shelves of Wal-Mart, all made from the same plastic mould.
It’s the present me that’s amused. Fucking hysterical with glee. The beauty of it overwhelms me. Thank God I’ll never melt.
III.
By now it’s clear that I never had any real baby dolls, nothing I could honestly nurture or learn to love. There was a Dressy Bessy and her brother Dapper Dan, but I don’t count those. They only taught me what not to wear.
One of the last pieces of artwork to come down after my parents died was the self-cutout I’d done in kindergarten. The teacher stretched out this huge bolt of white paper, and one by one, we all laid down and had somebody trace us from head to toe. Then we cut out the images and painted them in.
There she was, the other little me, still taped to the kitchen door that led me down to the basement. She was taller than I’d imagined. A little faded by the years of hanging in half sunlight, but I remembered her. I remembered who I was that day. My hair was still long. I’d worn it in a ponytail held by one of those “hair doodles,” as my mother called them. I wore a white mock-turtleneck sweater that I was always afraid of getting dirty, and a thick knit skirt that had some kind of intricate Fair Isle pattern in primary colors. It was lined, too. A skating skirt. Or at least I felt like a skater when I wore it. White knee socks, brown shoes. I remember turning my ankles and pointing my toes like a dancer—ok, a skater—instead of just forming my legs into “Ls” like the other kids.
I can’t recall who did the tracing. It tickled. I had the most fun painting in the sweater (it was ok because the paint was a starker white than the paper) and the colors of the skirt. I used the same tree-trunk brown for my hair and shoes. But for my skin . . . I could not find a color to match mine. The “flesh tone” that the teacher shoved at me was all they had. But it wasn’t right. I tried to mix the paints, but even then, I—she—came out so pink!
When I finally peeled her down from the kitchen door after 25 odd years, I marveled at how the masking tape had never given out. How the yellow stripes on the skirt never faded like the other colors.
But there was really nothing I could do with her. She couldn’t come with me. There’d be no point. So I started at the top of her head and rolled her up down to the toes of her shoes. Then I put her out with the trash.
I remember her clearly, just not her name. Penelope; or Priscilla, maybe.
Mom stitched her for me out of mod pinks and greens that came in her kit. Those colors, her lush lashes, and especially the plastic patent-leather-looking boots she wore made me dream of being a stewardess, just flitting through life and jetting back and forth between Paris and Milan. I had the luggage for it—round pieces and square pieces with round edges, all with signs of the zodiac on them. And somehow, everything that mattered to me fit inside them, even the giant plastic purple hair rollers and all those hairpins.
She made me dream of perfume, and Monte Carlo. But she was blond, which I’d never be. And she was weak in the neck because Mom short-changed her on the stuffing and stitched her too tight there. The way she couldn’t keep her head up, all that bobbing from side to side, really began to bother me. Eventually, I let her be, and she blended in with the other toys and games until we all became old.
Imagine my shock when I found her there, in that box, in the basement. At least she was under the window—gray light is better than none. I saw her yellow hair first, then one spider-lased blue eye looking up at me out of the rubble of our past lives.
I started clearing it away and gently pulled her out. Her pink-toned skin had the one coffee stain blemish. Her clothes were a little faded, but the still said “That Girl” to me. Her little plastic boots shone more towards their original white after I rubbed the dust from them. And her head was still attached at the neck.
II.
When I outgrew darling Penny-Priscilla, I found a new idol. She was from Malibu and was married to a dolt. Of course none of this occurred to the pre-adolescent minds of me and my friends Marcy and Jill. We were just crazy with all of her pink accoutrements.
Her camper was Marcy's, and the townhouse was mine. Jill didn’t have much of anything in the way of Barbies, but she let us haul all of our crap to her basement on hot summer days. And the clothes—we stopped arguing over who’s were who’s. We ignored the fact that we actually had two Barbies, and threw in a Dawn doll and her convertible to keep the peace.
Barbie never kicked us out of her world, never told us it was time to go home. We had to be called. It was usually me who got called home first, unless we had staged everything on my front porch. It was my dad whose voice could find me, even in the depths of Jill's basement. But somehow it was harder to hear him when I was at Marcy's even though she lived right across the street from me—maybe I just never wanted to come home.
I was running home from Marcy's when it happened. Did I mention it was hot? Well I was tearing home to my mom’s friend chicken dinner—and I dropped her. She fell, really. Right onto the scorching driveway. It never occurred to me that Barbie wouldn’t be caught dead eating fried chicken, the skinny bitch.
The next morning, my dad approached me. He had that same twitch in his mouth as he did the day he tried to apologize to me for laughing when I fell in the toilet at age three.
“I found your Barbie doll this morning.”
No connection yet.
“I think you must have dropped her in the driveway—on your way home from Marcy's yesterday.
Oh?
He brought her around from behind his back and held her out to me by the legs. As soon as I took her from him, he bolted. No doubt to spare me another one of his laugh tracks. She’d apparently fallen face down, because her perky little upturned nose, her perfect little boobs, and her pointed little toes were melted flat.
I was a little dispappointed, but I knew my dad would have no trouble replacing her. There were hundreds of them lining the shelves of Wal-Mart, all made from the same plastic mould.
It’s the present me that’s amused. Fucking hysterical with glee. The beauty of it overwhelms me. Thank God I’ll never melt.
III.
By now it’s clear that I never had any real baby dolls, nothing I could honestly nurture or learn to love. There was a Dressy Bessy and her brother Dapper Dan, but I don’t count those. They only taught me what not to wear.
One of the last pieces of artwork to come down after my parents died was the self-cutout I’d done in kindergarten. The teacher stretched out this huge bolt of white paper, and one by one, we all laid down and had somebody trace us from head to toe. Then we cut out the images and painted them in.
There she was, the other little me, still taped to the kitchen door that led me down to the basement. She was taller than I’d imagined. A little faded by the years of hanging in half sunlight, but I remembered her. I remembered who I was that day. My hair was still long. I’d worn it in a ponytail held by one of those “hair doodles,” as my mother called them. I wore a white mock-turtleneck sweater that I was always afraid of getting dirty, and a thick knit skirt that had some kind of intricate Fair Isle pattern in primary colors. It was lined, too. A skating skirt. Or at least I felt like a skater when I wore it. White knee socks, brown shoes. I remember turning my ankles and pointing my toes like a dancer—ok, a skater—instead of just forming my legs into “Ls” like the other kids.
I can’t recall who did the tracing. It tickled. I had the most fun painting in the sweater (it was ok because the paint was a starker white than the paper) and the colors of the skirt. I used the same tree-trunk brown for my hair and shoes. But for my skin . . . I could not find a color to match mine. The “flesh tone” that the teacher shoved at me was all they had. But it wasn’t right. I tried to mix the paints, but even then, I—she—came out so pink!
When I finally peeled her down from the kitchen door after 25 odd years, I marveled at how the masking tape had never given out. How the yellow stripes on the skirt never faded like the other colors.
But there was really nothing I could do with her. She couldn’t come with me. There’d be no point. So I started at the top of her head and rolled her up down to the toes of her shoes. Then I put her out with the trash.
"N"
“Say it.”
Lucy felt Todd Phelps’s cold gray stare before she turned to face him. She wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been surprised to see him in the corridor. He was a football player, she was in the marching band. The music room was right across the hall from the locker rooms. Band practice and football practice ended at the same time everyday. Simple. But on this day, Lucy’s private flute lesson had been cancelled.
She stood still and watched him as he closed the space between them. Lucy could never register within herself if she was attracted to any of them, the black boys in her school, or if she could even be friends with the “other black kids.” They were “other” to her, so outside herself, yet so much a part of her, that when her best friend told her that dating Mark Davis, the marching band’s white drummer, was just not something Farley High was ready for, the hurt cut straight through her. So she took another white boy to the dance, Rich Taylor, because she could, and because he was willing to go with her.
Looking at Todd, with his caramel skin and his afro the color of red clay, she might have felt the warmth that young girls do when the muscles of his arms rippled, had it not been for the fists he made of his hands, and the madness in his eyes. She hated the comb sticking out from the back of his afro.
Lucy tried to listen to Todd as he explained with every step, that he wanted her to say one word, just one word, because he just knew her little light-bright ass couldn’t say it right. He kept talking, but his voice became heavy, melted, and Lucy began to hear interference, static. The crack of a hairbrush handle against her head, when her mother hit her for having the hairdresser blow her hair dry straight; Mr. Dawson, her math teacher telling her that even if she managed a “C” in Trigonometry, she’d still fail Calculus because didn’t she see how all the colored kids struggled just be average? And her mother again, saying “You don’t look at Whitey from down here, or from up there, you look at Whitey right here” and pointing at Lucy’s eyes as if she wanted to gouge them out.
Todd stood in front of her now. She stared down at their feet, toes nearly touching. She felt his hot breath on the top of her head.
“Say . . . it” He’d beat her hard, right there, if she didn’t.
Which way could she jump? Which way would she fall? Lucy knew she couldn’t stay teetering on the fence between one shade of black and the next, between the people she called her friends, and the people who would fight for her. And she never could have seen how Kevin Wright would have come around the corner in another half a minute and talked Todd out of his rage; the “A” she’d get in college Calculus; the white man who’d leave her because he couldn’t believe she wasn’t the Italian or Native American or Spanish woman he thought he was dating, and the black men she’d never allowed herself to know because she was making a point, and the man she’d marry because she loved him; how she’d grow her hair and let it do what it does; or how she’d get more out of traveling to Argentina than anything she’d force herself to do in the Black Achiever’s Club the following summer.
So Lucy looked straight into Todd Phelp’s gray eyes, and heard her own voice, smooth and correct, when she spoke to him:
“Nigger.”
Lucy felt Todd Phelps’s cold gray stare before she turned to face him. She wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been surprised to see him in the corridor. He was a football player, she was in the marching band. The music room was right across the hall from the locker rooms. Band practice and football practice ended at the same time everyday. Simple. But on this day, Lucy’s private flute lesson had been cancelled.
She stood still and watched him as he closed the space between them. Lucy could never register within herself if she was attracted to any of them, the black boys in her school, or if she could even be friends with the “other black kids.” They were “other” to her, so outside herself, yet so much a part of her, that when her best friend told her that dating Mark Davis, the marching band’s white drummer, was just not something Farley High was ready for, the hurt cut straight through her. So she took another white boy to the dance, Rich Taylor, because she could, and because he was willing to go with her.
Looking at Todd, with his caramel skin and his afro the color of red clay, she might have felt the warmth that young girls do when the muscles of his arms rippled, had it not been for the fists he made of his hands, and the madness in his eyes. She hated the comb sticking out from the back of his afro.
Lucy tried to listen to Todd as he explained with every step, that he wanted her to say one word, just one word, because he just knew her little light-bright ass couldn’t say it right. He kept talking, but his voice became heavy, melted, and Lucy began to hear interference, static. The crack of a hairbrush handle against her head, when her mother hit her for having the hairdresser blow her hair dry straight; Mr. Dawson, her math teacher telling her that even if she managed a “C” in Trigonometry, she’d still fail Calculus because didn’t she see how all the colored kids struggled just be average? And her mother again, saying “You don’t look at Whitey from down here, or from up there, you look at Whitey right here” and pointing at Lucy’s eyes as if she wanted to gouge them out.
Todd stood in front of her now. She stared down at their feet, toes nearly touching. She felt his hot breath on the top of her head.
“Say . . . it” He’d beat her hard, right there, if she didn’t.
Which way could she jump? Which way would she fall? Lucy knew she couldn’t stay teetering on the fence between one shade of black and the next, between the people she called her friends, and the people who would fight for her. And she never could have seen how Kevin Wright would have come around the corner in another half a minute and talked Todd out of his rage; the “A” she’d get in college Calculus; the white man who’d leave her because he couldn’t believe she wasn’t the Italian or Native American or Spanish woman he thought he was dating, and the black men she’d never allowed herself to know because she was making a point, and the man she’d marry because she loved him; how she’d grow her hair and let it do what it does; or how she’d get more out of traveling to Argentina than anything she’d force herself to do in the Black Achiever’s Club the following summer.
So Lucy looked straight into Todd Phelp’s gray eyes, and heard her own voice, smooth and correct, when she spoke to him:
“Nigger.”
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