Apple in the Earth

by C.T. Millis

  Chapter 11

  The florescent lights were flickering in the grocery store. A heady warm hum came from the motors of the cold refrigerated isles. The automatic glass doors opened and closed with the sound of ice skaters coming to a steady halt. James pushed the cart slowly behind his mother. She held a yellow-paper list two feet away from her face and pointed left. James pushed the cart left. The back right tire wobbled, constantly.

  “I just want to be happy, James,” his mother told him in a terse tone, not even turning to look at him. The wheel made it so the cart shook and his hands trembled with it. “You’ll understand, you just need to mature a little,” James thought about how his father always thought he was mature, well beyond his age.

  “That doesn’t sound like you,”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It sounds like something he told you.” The cart was nearly bouncing down the aisles, James kicked the wheel. He took a few steps, and when he realized the wobbling did not cease, he kicked it as hard as he could.

  James did not notice if his mom cursed before or after the wheel flew across the aisle, before or after the spoke of the cart dug deep into the faded linoleum. An old woman, a grandmother of one of the students at the school, said it first;

  “You need to get some control over that boy, he’s a trouble maker.” James scurried for the lost wheel that was making its way down the bread aisle, he heard his mother,

  “I’m doing the best I can, you don’t know how hard it is after-”

  “After what? After you became a widow? You aren’t the first person to raise a kid alone, but it doesn’t look like you’re doing any raising, letting the boy kick-”

  “I didn’t let him do anything, he broke it when I wasn’t watching,” She caught her mistake, but not before the hobble of a woman could reply,

  “He scuffed up the linoleum to the cement when you weren’t looking, so maybe you’d do well to keep a better eye on him.” James got hold of the wheel, and sprinted past the both of them to the cart. He lifted on end of the cart,

  “It’s broken James,” His mom said, “Just leave it-” The wheel connected to the spoke with a muffled snap. James spun the wheel with his hand before standing up and pushing the cart, without the wobble. He tried not to smile.

  “See?” His mom turned to the nosy woman, “Everything is better, no big deal,”

  “Yeah, lady, no big deal- wait until he starts kicking windows, people- starts stealing things,”

  “My son won’t break and steal things. You have no idea what you’re talking about,”

  “Yeah, me and the whole town have no idea what we’re talking about-” and she scoffed down the aisle and towards the registers.

  James’ red face was pressed to the glass window of the car during the ride home. He leaned so far away from his mother that he was closer to standing outside than he was to sitting inside the car. He watched the trees slip past his vision in an echoed fury to the memories of his mother in his head.

  He was eye-level with her hips, draped in a flowing floral dress and supporting a picnic basket.

  “Let me carry that,” James’ dad kissed her, and plucked the basket from her arms.

  “I can handle it,” she yelped,

  “Not while I can!” and he began running with it, giggling, she chased him to the top of a hill where they both sat down and called James over.

  “There’s our boy,” she smiled. She sobbed the same words into James’ hair when he came home one day after school. No one said anything to him, no one knew exactly who from the town died, but they knew how the man died and they knew what James’ dad did for a living. Walking back from school that day he kicked an empty water bottle half the way home and wondered why the school’s flag was drooping so far from the top of the pole. His mother did not tell him anything, just kept saying,

  “Our boy,” over and over, holding James too tight, her face streaked pink, and James knew. That day was covered in clouds before the time they would usually eat dinner, a dark storm drenched James’ town, James’ world. When he woke up the next morning, he decided to go to school instead of stay home. There were twigs and leaves all over his front yard. In his class, people talked to him as they usually would, before they were hushed by the students who already knew, the children of the fast gossipers.

  “Shhh, don’t you know what happened?” and everyone would be quiet. When he got home that day, the twigs and leaves were gone, but there were yellow ribbons tied to the lower branches of the oak tree in his front yard with the ladder someone used to get up there against his house. The fence in front of his house had more yellow on it than white because of all the ribbons tied to it. James had to step around a picture of his father with four candles, folded notes, and bundles of flowers on the sidewalk. He creaked open the gate and walked up to his front door. There was a quiet hum coming from inside. When he opened the door, the neighborhood rushed on him. His back was pat dozens of times, and he was hugged more than that. His mom was sitting down in his dad’s lounging chair, surrounded by three or four older neighborhood women. James later found out they were other widows. His mom looked like she could have been their child. One of James’ neighbors led him around the house and showed him how much food everyone brought. In the kitchen, He saw someone across the street lift a sign that stated,

  ‘Support our Troops,’ while the man’s wife lowered the flag in their front yard half way.

  Passing houses now, months later, several still had ribbons, and there was no lack of signs sticking out of yards and tacked to houses that commanded that James Support our Troops. James thought about their own license plate, given to his family shortly after his father passed. It had the same numbers on it, but had the pattern of the American flag behind the numbers, and an eagle on one side. In small letters below the plate number, there was dialogue almost from the eagle itself,

  ‘Support our Troops,’ it was not until James was in the car with his mother coming back from the grocery store that while he sat in the car, he was surrounded by it in the front and back of the car. ‘Support our Troops,’ became the bread of the car sandwich, James thought. He and his mother were the meat. They were the meat for the entire town to gossip over, pity, loathe, they had no presumptions of their own, but the town viewed them as the cause itself rather than an unpleasant side effect of it.

  James thought about the side effects of his father’s death like it was a sickness. His mother did not eat any of the food that the neighbors brought. She stopped cooking, stopped getting dressed and only shuffled around the house wearing her bathrobe. She stopped showering, could only bring herself into it once or twice a week for the longest time. When James hugged her, he noticed she did not smell bad, or like her perfume. James’ mom stopped smelling like anything, like she stopped sweating, like she stopped living. Her hips narrowed in her bathrobe, her hair thinned and dulled like she was ten years older. Her summer tan faded to an opaque grey and life narrowly escaped from her frozen stone face from what used to be her bright lilting eyes. James’ mom stopped smiling and did not talk to him much. The other widows, who befriended her right away, were the last to stop visiting,

  “You have to hold yourself together, for him,” they pointed about James as if he were furniture when they left through their front door for the last time.

  She improved, she started talking. She did not smile much, she did not hold herself together, but she tried to be there for James. She started cooking again when James finished off the last of the food the neighbors brought, but she did not eat much of it herself.

  When Sophie’s dad moved in she appeared to become like her old self. To everyone else, she was getting better, but James thought she was more like a doll or a puppet of her old self than she was her old self. James missed her being sick, missed a stone face or a sad smile compared to the characture her smile had become when she was around Sophie’s dad. She wore makeup again, but she wore her makeup diffe
rently than she did when James’ father was alive. There was more of it on her face, exaggerating her features. In the car, James looked over at his mother and she turned to face him and gave him a grin framed in bright red lips. James shivered and looked away.

  “He’s out of town for the weekend, some sales conference,” James almost asked who, before he remembered his mother only talked about Sophie’s dad, now.

  “Okay,”

  “Don’t be mad at me, I can’t handle you being mad at me,”

  “I’m not angry at you.” James felt empty at his mother. He wondered if empty was a feeling like anger or love that can be extended onto another person. They pulled into their driveway and his mother pressed the button to open the garage, pulling in she said,

  “You don’t have to help me unload these,” as soon as the car stopped moving, James opened the car door and nearly fell into the yard, and down the street.