by R. A. Nelson
“Keep your voice down! She may be old, but she’s still got ears. I told you what it was like.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean. You really think I’m going to tell you that?”
I turn away and stare out the window. Two rock maples are leaning toward each another, joining leafy hands, framing the view with a natural arch.
“You can skip the gory details,” Schuyler says. “Just what was it like? Being with somebody like that. So much.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me this. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Come on. Maybe it’ll help.”
“You’re pissing me off, Schuyler.”
“Seriously, it might.”
“You don’t want to help; you want to be entertained.”
He frowns. “That’s not fair. We used to talk about this stuff all the time.”
“We did?” I force myself to remember. All those guy-girl trading-secrets-with-the-enemy chats seem like a hundred thousand years ago. “I don’t care. I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, just the first time,” Schuyler says. “What was it like? Just tell me that. Was it like what we thought it would be like?”
Suddenly my temples are pounding. There’s a red fury building behind my eyes. I sit on the edge of the bed clenching my jaw. I refuse to look at him. The carpet needs vacuuming.
“We were stupid,” I say.
“How stupid?”
“Stupid. Just stupid.”
“So educate me.”
Educate me.
Teach.
The room fills up with red. I stand and walk to him mechanically. Drape my arms over his shoulders. Look into his eyes without seeing, without feeling.
“What?” he says.
I kiss Schuyler hard, grabbing his head, forcing my tongue between his lips. I crush my mouth to his, rocking my face almost violently from side to side. It’s all I can do to keep from taking his lips in my teeth, biting hard, letting everything out I’ve been holding in. I want to make him scream, pour it all into him, make him burn in sweet pain, the kind of pain I’ve known.
He’s trying to pull loose; I kiss him harder and harder.
Finally he rips his mouth away. I can taste copper on my tongue. Or maybe I just want to taste it.
Schuyler collapses into my chair. The lower half of his face is red and puffy. I can’t identify his expression. I’m not thinking with my brain; I’m thinking with my skin, my bones, my hair. My face feels flat, detached, not a part of my body anymore. Reason lags behind emotion.
“Nine,” Schuyler says. It’s the most noxious thing he could think to say. The world’s most evil, obscene number.
“Is that what you wanted?” I say.
Mom comes in.
“Children, I—”
The three of us look at each other in shock. A stranger stepping in at this moment would be hard pressed to decide which of us has been the most wronged.
I know.
the inertia tree
Leaves.
Here it is. My last tree fort.
There are no railings, no walls. It’s high up here.
One Sunday a few years ago, Dad came out and built this platform in the crotch of this pecan tree. We used to build all sorts of things together: tree houses, play forts, a toolshed observatory with a roll-off roof. Things changed. This fort was his last attempt to jump the spark gap between father and daughter. I was nearly fifteen.
We still loved each other; that wasn’t the problem. Somewhere along the way, we’d lost our point of contact, two astronauts whose inertia was carrying them apart.
I reach into space.
The rope in front of me is red and white. It was once a rope for towing water-skiers. This is my last swing, my last surviving piece of little kid backyard summers. I used it for a day, just to make him feel good. I was past that sort of thing, irretrievable.
This is where Schuyler finds me.
“Nine?”
His mouth is red. Something about the angle of the sunlight makes him look eyeless, a being from another world.
“Go away.”
“Why? What just happened in there? That’s the second time you—what did I do?”
“Nothing. It’s not about you. Go away.”
“No.”
“Okay, you can sit there and count the grass.”
He pleads with his hands. “Why are you so mad at me?”
I scoot to the edge, dangle my bare legs next to the ski rope. I loop the rope about my neck a couple of times. It would be easy to let myself slip off and fall into emptiness. And then—what beyond that? I uncoil it.
“I’m not mad at you. Not really. I can’t explain it.”
If I thought I could, here is how I would try:
With Mr. Mann, I was in a very big place. Always, every day. Now I’m in a very small place, even smaller than the place I used to be before he came along. I’m constricted and small, and I never want to do anything ever again outside this small place.
“Do you understand what I mean?” I say, as if I’ve been speaking out loud. Maybe I have.
“No,” Schuyler says. “But I don’t want to leave.”
I shrug. “Then I guess you can come on up. I promise not to bite.”
He touches his lip. “I’m not so sure about that.”
He climbs the ladder and sits next to me. It’s crowded up here. I can’t look at him. I look at the head of a nail that is bleeding rust down the bark. Nobody has been up here in a long time.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I want him to go. I want him to stay. I lean my head against his shoulder. He flinches. His shirt smells good, like a strong detergent, something clean. I need to feel that way again.
“Schuyler, tell me I’m not going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy. You’re already there.”
“I’m not joking. Help me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We squeeze hands. It’s a bargain. I pull the rope through my fingers.
“You kids want your peach tea up there?”
Mom.
the cold number
Sunlake.
Another day.
We park farther back this time.
Schuyler’s stuffing his mouth with Crackling Oat Bran from a baggie.
“Looks like you’ve come prepared for a siege,” I say.
He frowns. “This is the first time my folks have ever gone on a vacation without me.” His parents are spending the week in Destin, Florida.
“So throw a party. Blow the house up.”
“Oh yeah. But really, it feels weird.”
“Thanks for staying. I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do without—ouch!”
He frogs my arm.
“You’ve only told me that a googolplex number of times. That’s the number ten raised to the power googol, or the numeral 1 followed by 10100 zeros—”
“I know, I know. But I do.”
“Anyhow, I owed you that.”
“Agreed.” I rub the muscle.
The day is overcast. We watch a braless sex pistol in frayed cutoffs sway to the Laundromat. A FedEx truck rumbles through. A guy with a cast on his arm gets in a Passat and speeds away. Every parking space has an oil stain the size of Nebraska. How is it possible this dreary place has become the emotional center of my universe?
“When he gets here, let’s squirt mustard all over his hood,” Schuyler says, gobbling some bran. “Country says mustard will take off the paint. We could write him a message. Something cool. A damning passage from Camus’ The Stranger—”
“That sounds about like Country’s speed. Besides, mustard only works if you leave it on for a couple of days.”
“Oh. How do you know?”
“Don’t ask. Remember, we’re not here to wreak havoc. This is an exploratory missi—”
It’s Alicia. I didn’t think anybody was home. She’s dressed in a baggy white outfit, frosty curls blown up on top and pinned at the ears. She scampers down the steps, keys twirling on a pinkie, and slides into a cream-colored Toyota. She backs out and comes our way.
We turn our heads, suddenly utterly fascinated by the Dumpsters. “What do we do?” Schuyler says.
“Follow her. Maybe she’s going to meet him.”
I wait a little while, then pull out, keeping two cars between us. Schuyler’s beating his fingers against the dash. His jittery energy is making me nervous. “Does she know Wilkie?” he says worriedly.
“Possibly. But it probably helps that you’re here.” I glance at him and sigh disgustedly. “What are you so strung out about? You’re no fun anymore.”
“Neither is cell block D.”
I shove his shoulder with my elbow. “Like you would know, Puff Dog.”
Schuyler balances his baggie in the ashtray. “Hey, I can watch HBO with the best of them.”
“Then just watch what I do and follow my lead.”
He throws a European salute, the backs of his fingers against his brow. “Oui, mon capitaine.”
“Wouldn’t it be ma?”
“Je ne comprends pas.”
“I’m a girl. Savez-vous? Or have you forgotten already?”
His ears droop; he stares straight ahead. He has to be thinking about the Kiss of Death in my room. We haven’t talked about it much. Probably never will. Maybe it was so awful, he wants to forget.
We head southeast for several miles and exit the interstate. Alicia’s in no hurry.
“She’s even worse than your mom,” Schuyler says.
“She’s about to turn.”
We pass a school yard infested with fourth graders.
“They must be on a different schedule here.”
A few more miles and the neighborhoods are starting to change. Sprawling lawns, older homes. Architectural style: Re-elect Nixon. The children who climbed these trees are on low-carb diets by now.
I stay back as far as I can, but Alicia’s driving so slowly now, I can literally follow without placing my foot on the gas. She has to wonder who we are, what we’re doing.
“She must be looking for somebody,” Schuyler says.
We pass a couple of elderly power walkers and a gray-haired lady snipping yellow roses with orange scissors. What would Mr. Mann be doing here?
Alicia suddenly parks in front of a white ranch-style house that has long black streaks of roof fungus weeping down its shingles. I keep going. In the rearview mirror I see her craning her neck as she gets out of the car.
“She’s seen us,” Schuyler says.
“I know. I’ll circle.”
I round the block and park a couple of houses over behind a museum-vintage station wagon.
“Wish we had binoculars.”
Alicia has made it to the front door of the ranch house. She’s on the porch, talking with an older woman. The woman is shaped like a barrel with pipe stem legs and hair dyed a color in the same zip code as ochre. She suddenly takes Alicia by the arms and hauls her inside.
“Her mom?” Schuyler says.
“I don’t remember her from the wedding. Besides, I don’t think Copperhead would live in a place like this with a wife like that.”
“Copperhead?”
Whoops.
I glance involuntarily at the glove box, hoping Schuyler doesn’t notice. I still haven’t told him about the pistol. “Mr. Sprunk. Alicia’s father. He reminds me of a snake.”
“An occupational hazard.”
We play the radio and wait, watching the house.
Schuyler chatters about Buffalo Bill on the History Channel. “He called his rifle Lucretia Borgia. Dude killed sixty-nine buffaloes in a single day.”
“Lucretia, indeed. The jackass.”
The Crackling Oat Bran is gone. “Viagra,” Schuyler says after a while.
“Huh?”
“How long do we hang around waiting for the stiff?”
“Shut up. I don’t think he’s in there.”
“So what are we doing here? Stakeouts are not particularly exciting, are they, Herr Doktor?”
“Shhh. Something tells me this is important.”
“You think maybe we could stop for onion rings at the—?”
The door opens.
Alicia comes out holding something small and rectangular. A journal? Address book? She waves at the older woman and crosses the lawn, never looking in our direction. Speeds away.
“Tallyho!” Schuyler says. “That’s more like it—lay down some rubber, Seabiscuit!”
“No.”
“But she’s getting away!”
I crank Wilkie’s engine and pull in front of the ranch house and get out. Schuyler scoots over and puts his head out the window.
“Oh no. Come on, Nine. You mean I have to sit here while you—?”
“Both of us. Come on.”
bean genes
Ring the bell.
The house must be well insulated; there is no sense of anyone coming.
“Wait! What are we doing?”
“Like you said. Gathering information.”
“But what are we going to say? We have to get our stories straight!”
I pinch Schuyler’s arm. “Courage, Shadrach.”
The weather stripping makes a sucking sound as Barrel Woman jerks it open. She looks older than Mom, but I suspect it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Her sun-dried face cracks into a hundred pieces of one monster smile.
“Well, hell’s bells! Must be last call for the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes today.” Her voice is raspy, eyes dinner plate blue, nose long and red at the tip. She’s grinning delightedly as if she recognizes us. “Come on in; Ripper’s tied in the basement. Mind the ceramic log.”
We hesitate at the threshold. The blast of her personality is making my head swim. The house smells of stale cigarettes and coffee that hasn’t been advertised nationwide since 1979. Somewhere a television is squawking piteously.
“Ripper?” Schuyler says.
The woman digs him in the ribs and winks at me. “This one’s easy to tease, isn’t he? Well, don’t just stand there halfway in and halfway out.”
She grabs our wrists, instantly affectionate, and pulls us in. Her fingers are thin and cold.
“Hello, I’m—we’re, um—”
“I know, honey, you’re selling something for your school, right? Sweet God, you’re tall. Want to check me for fleas?” She offers the top of her thinning hair, explodes in coughy laughter.
“Well, yes,” I say. “I mean, no! Um, we’re selling magazines, but—”
“Just like Halloween,” the woman says. “You kids know where all the old farts live. Okay, show me what you got. I’m a soft touch, goddammit. You just might hit me up for something.”
“Really, ma’am, we’re—”
“Ma’am’s your mother. Call me Barb. You’re lucky you didn’t catch me bare assed. I was just about to jump in the shower.” She tweaks Schuyler. “I’m just messing with you, honey. Today’s not even wash day—Vince!” She tugs us along the hall and around a corner. “Look who’s come to visit.”
I don’t like this room: circa Brady Bunch. The furniture is covered in smoky blue fabric, sandpaper #5 abrasive. The air conditioning is set to Thule, Greenland.
Vince is sitting in a recliner with duct tape on the arms. He has Miracle Grow eyebrows and a terminal case of White Man’s Feet. He slowly looks up from the TV, antimatter to his wife’s matter.
“‘Lo,” he says, and goes back to watching Melissa Gilbert murder a chicken.
Barb picks up something from an end table. She lights a cigarette and takes a punishing drag. Her words come out in little nicotine-flavored clouds.
“Don’t mind him. Vince’s like a big old wheel. Takes a lot to get him rolling, but lord, the momentum! Back in our navy day
s, we’d dance our legs off. The house was always full of people. There was this big Swede from Minnesota, a CPO named Werkhoven—”
I glance at Schuyler; he’s screaming with his eyes.
“I’d throw together a pot of booze beans and dumplings— only use pintos!—with red wine. That was our first real house, Millington Naval Air Station in Memphis. Twenty minutes from where Elvis the Fat-Ass Pelvis crapped out.”
Barb’s voice is a comet orbiting our heads; it flies out to the aphelion of my consciousness. A question suddenly catches me like a piece of space stone in an interstellar vacuum.
“So?” she says.
“What?”
Barb cackles, lungs full of iron filings. “Keep up, honey, or I’ll have to charge you time and a half. The magazines.”
“Oh! Well. That’s not really why we’re here.”
“Yeah?”
“We—um—we saw somebody we knew in the neighborhood and were wondering if she was a friend of yours? Alicia Sprunk.”
Barb’s face cracks again. “Alicia? Why, hell yes, she was just here! Too bad you missed her. Where’d you know her from?”
“Um—we don’t really know her all that well. We know her husband.”
“Ricky?”
I hate myself for smiling. “Yes. Ricky. Do you know him?”
“Hey, Vince!” Barb screams.
“Yup?”
“Do we know Ricky?”
“Huh?”
Barb sticks out her tongue in Vince’s direction. “See what I mean? Retirement is hell. It’s for the birds. My guy put in his thirty years; now he’s got the personality of a Dutch oven. Don’t do it!”
“About Ricky—have you known him long?”
“Well, I should guess so.” She takes another choking drag. When the words come out, they’re almost blue.
“He’s my son.”
peppercorn ice
Goose bumps.
Mrs. Mann lights a new cigarette from the corpse of the first. She’s between us on the couch, a photo album spread open across her papery knees. We’re looking at a naked baby lying on a fake Persian rug.
A naked baby who would one day grow up to make love to me.
“Those numb-nut navy doctors kept me flat on my back. Ricky went into fetal distress. Thought for a minute we might lose him. But I liked Millington well enough.”
