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Picture is corky. |
ReTaRdObLoG |
since I met the devil I ain't been the same oh no Wed|09.25 Alone in her parents' house, alone in the summer. It's past midnight, it's past two. She's back to old habits, with no one to shame her out of bed at a decent hour. She's working on a jigsaw puzzle. The carpet she's known all her life rubs against her bare legs as she changes position. She needs the red pieces now, the red and brown ones. Brick and flowers. She listens to the radio and longs for a song she's sure this station wouldn't have. She considers calling and asking. What the hell. It's so late, what else would they play? Why not, if they have it. Her parents don't have an answering machine and they really need one. All she's been doing is answering the phone, transcribing good wishes, talking to people she hasn't talked to in years. Relatives, former neighbors, church members, the families of former neighbors and church members, all wishing her father well. It's boggling, and touching, and she's never enjoyed answering the phone and this isn't helping. They all want to know how the surgery has gone. Where is he, exactly? She has the name of the hospital, which is hours away, written down. When will her mother be back? She's not sure. Why isn't she there? She isn't there, she's here, alone in the house, alone in the backyard, alone in the pool. Alone picking green beans off the vines, checking the tomatoes, grilling meat on the hibachi. She could like this. It was like living, having a house and backyard and food grown and picked and cooked. It was an odd feeling. The bypass was a quadruple, her mother says on the phone. The girl already knows that a quad isn't any more dangerous than a triple or a double; the danger is the operation, not how many bypasses are needed. Her father should be fine. Her mother sounds lost, as she has for weeks now; she passes the phone to the girl's sister and they talk for a little while. Now she curls up on the soft harsh carpet and wishes for that song. She calls, and asks. He has it. She fulfills her chatting obligation. He was just in Boston, she just moved back here from Boston. Blah blah blah. She doesn't have to wait long at all. She twists slowly around the living room, wincing as the carpet tickles her bare feet. The feeling is torturous, but she doesn't stop. Too late, she thinks of taping the song from the radio. She should've bought the record before leaving Boston. She never told me about her life, she never told me she was someone's wife, man with a gun says why'd you buy her a drink? I said I think she likes me that's what I think, I think she likes me that's what I think. When the song ends she scratches her feet to relieve the tickle tickle tickle. Damn she is ticklish. Go away. Begone! A pox on ticklishness. She wakes to the sound of the garbage truck and realizes she's forgotten to put out the trash. She runs down the street in her sleep uniform, hugging a full garbage can against her. The guys laugh. They take it from her, give it back; she carries it home one-handed. In the window next door, she sees her pregnant friend laughing at her. She waves. It's nice out, not yet hot. Later, her friend will come over, and they'll watch "Santa Barbara" while the girl fields more phone calls. She hums the bass line of the song from earlier and picks up the morning paper. She heads for the backyard, where she'll drink a diet coke and see if she's knows anyone who's died or been arrested or had a baby today. She thinks about cereal. super sonic Sat|09.21 They're in the backyard, the two girls. They're 21 or so. One is visibly pregnant. The other has a shorn head, as if she took kitchen shears and went to work on her hair without a mirror. They're playing Scrabble without paying much attention to the board. They make up words and accept them with laughter, neither caring enough to challenge. They aren't keeping score. The yard is open and green. Two big maples shade the table they sit at on the patio. Beyond the trees, a pool shimmers in the summer sun. It's inviting, but the girls are beyond lazy. They've been sitting around like this all summer long, making refrigerator cookies and watching Santa Barbara. "Damn kids," one of them says when a loud car races down the quiet street, and they both laugh. "What kind of cake do you want?" Shornhead asks Almost Mother. She's planning a baby shower for her friend. The grandmother-to-be disapproves of Almost Mother being pregnant and unmarried and still living at home, and probably for working at McDonald's, so her family won't be throwing her a shower. The girls have lived next door to each other since the age of three. Shornhead has graduated from college and has quit three jobs so far, in the few months since she's been out of school. The longest she held out was two weeks; the shortest, four hours. Somewhere in between was Granny's Donuts, where she stood with three other women for eight hours each day, packing fresh-frozen, shrink-wrapped donuts into boxes as the small plastic packages traveled down the conveyer belt. Her coworkers liked to sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and talk about Patch and Kayla's wedding on "One Life to Live." Shornhead saw the wedding, too, of course, but she didn't cry, as these women claimed to. When she gets home, she looks up one of the women in her pregnant friend's yearbook and points her out; the pregnant friend makes a face and says, "Oh, her? Loser. Total loser." On the third day of work, she leaves the donut job during lunch and doesn't go back. Now she listens as her friend describes the cake she'd like for the baby shower. "Will your mom and your aunts come?" Shornhead asks; truthfully, that side of the family scares the crap out of her. Scorn, sarcasm, and dirty looks were bred in that family, and even when offering a standard greeting they sound snotty, at least to Shornhead. But of course they're coming. Shorny is nervous. She decides to bake two cakes, one chocolate with blue frosting, one white with pink frosting. She stays up most of the night before the shower, blasting music. A song refrain gets caught in her head for what will turn out to be the next 15 years. Her parents are out back, enjoying the weather. aRcHiVeS | hOmE |
