The Melting Season

by Jami Attenberg

  “You think because you’re miserable everyone else around you has to be miserable,” she said.

  “You think maybe I might know a thing or two about life?” said my mother. “That maybe I might have gained a little knowledge in my time on this planet?”

  Her mistake was saying it like it was a question instead of a fact, but my mother never knew how to handle the whirlwind that was Jenny. She thought she had it all figured out with me, but I was easy, I was simple, I wanted to be controlled.

  “What I think is that you are a lonely, jealous”—Jenny was spitting now, I could see it from where I stood—“bored old lady who has nothing better to do than mess with my life. That’s what I think about you and your knowledge.”

  She turned away from our mother and toward me. She was wearing someone’s varsity jacket, I noticed (even though it was too hot for much more than a T-shirt), and short blue jean shorts that barely covered the tops of her thighs. Her legs were tan all over. Her hair was as long as mine was at her age, but she did not wear it straight, she wore it wavy. I knew she spent an hour every morning in the bathroom with the curling iron, a thoughtful look on her face as she applied heat and pressure to her head, like if she could just change the texture and shape of her hair, she could change everything else around her, too.

  Our mother shoved open the front door with her elbow—wouldn’t want to put down that beer can, not for a second—and shot the other hand out toward Jenny. But Jenny was too quick and skipped down the stairs away from her. Oh my Lord, I thought, we are officially town trash now, with emotional disturbances on front porches just like the rest of them. Jenny sang this weird little song while she skipped. It made me queasy, that song. Then my mother hurled her beer can at Jenny’s head. She must have been pretty lit because it landed softly on the front lawn, a few feet away.

  Jenny laughed at her and said, “Nice aim, old lady.”

  “Don’t make it worse,” I said.

  Jenny ran behind me, leaned close to my ear and whispered, “She’s crazy.”

  “So are you,” I said back.

  “No no no,” she said. She wrapped her arms tight around the front of me, and I felt her belly, warm and firm, against my back. She hummed in my ear. I should have told her to just hop on like we did when we were kids. I should have just carried her away with me. I should have just watched over her right then, and never let my eyes off her again.

  Our mother moved closer toward us, but then the sight of us embracing stopped her. I think she was touched. Her two daughters hugging in the driveway. We loved each other. There was love in the world, in her life. It existed.

  “Leave me be,” said Jenny.

  “I hope you had fun,” said my mother.

  “I always do,” said Jenny.

  “Just go,” said my mother, and she waved her away.

  Jenny squeezed my fingers once, hard, and then released me. She backed off slowly toward her car, a little red Chevy truck my father had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. There was such hope in that car. It was a gift for the future. I gave her a glance, then stared at my mother, watched her watch Jenny get in the car. I think there were fifty more things she wanted to say, and I could see her lipstick-stained lips holding back the words in the way they bent together in a hard line against the edges of her teeth. She was not crying, but I would not have blamed her if she did. Jenny was her blood. But everyone had to leave home sometime. It was the only way to become part of the world.

  At last, Jenny started the engine behind me and our mother let out a gasp of air from between her lips and the word “curfew” spit out in front of her. It was the first word to make it to the top. “You better be home by curfew,” she said. “Do you hear me, Jenny?”

  Jenny revved the engine and turned on the stereo, and curse words poured from the car, the rapper singing it all so Jenny did not have to. She pulled out of the driveway too quickly and the bottom of the car bumped against the curb and there was a loud crunch between the two. My mother winced when this happened.

  And then Jenny was gone, off probably to a field somewhere, where she would stand against an elm tree and let some boy run his hands up and down her body like he owned her. But that girl did not know anything about love. She only knew about gratification. I walked to my mother and put my arm around her and she leaned against me a little and together we went inside to sit, as we always did, at the kitchen table. My father had made himself scarce. I never bothered asking where he was anymore. It had been months since I had seen him. He had relinquished any sort of ownership of the family.

  My mother pulled two cans of beer from the refrigerator and popped the tops off them. I had always loved that sound. It was the sound of something exciting beginning. She sat down across from me and lit a slender cigarette. Behind her head were six framed prints of sketches of fruit: plums, pears, apples, oranges, bananas, and tomatoes. I remembered how we had sat around the table at dinner and argued sometimes about whether or not tomatoes belonged up there with the rest.

  “I don’t even think it’s an ‘if’ or a ‘when’ anymore,” said my mother. “I think that girl’s pregnant, and she’s going to hide it till it’s too late and we can’t do anything about it.”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “I’ve heard her puking a few times this week.”

  I thought of all the skinny actresses in my magazines, flat boards in profile, and all the articles putting them on deathwatch. “Maybe she’s just bulimic,” I said.

  There was a pause, and my mother and I both burst into laughter. We made mistakes in our family, but we were always hungry. Hungry was how you knew you were healthy. We were not that stupid.

  “We’ve been fighting for days,” she continued. “Weeks, months, I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders sadly. “It just keeps getting worse.”

  I felt bad for my mother, but it made me think I would not come around as much anymore. It was not that I wanted to abandon my family, but I did not think I could do any good there. Once I had moved out of the house, I had become powerless there. I would just get in the way, and I knew it would only get worse. Someone would ask me to choose sides. I was no good with conflicts. I just wanted to be happy. A girl in love, not a girl with problems. Even if they were someone else’s, I still felt marked by them.

  “WHY ARE YOU THAT WAY?” said Valka. “I always think other people’s problems are other people’s problems. Like I got enough to deal with.”

  “You are a liar, Valka. Look at where you are right now. With me. And my problems.” I laughed at her. “And you met me in a bar in Las Vegas. A poor crazy little farm girl on the run.”

  Valka took a swig of champagne and tipped the bottle at me. “Well, you’re not poor now, are you?”

  The money. Yes, that money.

  I LISTENED TO MY MOTHER TALK for a while longer, list Jenny’s crimes against the family, against her. I wished I could talk about Thomas and his surgery. He had forbidden me from doing that. That was the worst part. That I could not tell her what was going on with me. And I was not even sure if she would want to know anyway.

  I wished I could say, “Mom, I can’t feel him. And I don’t know if it’s him or it’s me.”

  And then she would hug me and say, “Hang in there, little girl.”

  Or she would say, “I can tell you how to fix it.” That would have been the best of all.

  But to say anything to her would have been like admitting some kind of failure. All I felt was shame when I thought about it.

  “I thought at least this one would go to college,” my mother was saying, and then she covered her mouth with her hands.

  I looked at her. Maybe I already was a failure in her eyes.

  She pulled a hand from her mouth and put it on my wrist and held it there. “I’m sorry, Moonie.”

  “It’s fine. I like my life.”

  “I’m all over the place these days.”

  “You don’t have to live my life, so don�
��t you worry about it.” I was yelling now. I did not know where this anger was coming from. I stood up. My whole body was tall and felt hard. My forehead was heating up.

  “Moonie,” said my mother. Her voice was cracking, and the cigarette trembled between her fingertips, the smoke wavering with the motion. “Don’t you hate me, too.”

  I could imagine for a moment how sad my mother must have been. She had wanted so much more for herself, and had hoped we wanted the same. If we had been bolder and flew higher, she could have at least lived through us.

  It was a weird logic that ruled her life, though she never would have admitted it: in order to be closer to her, we would make our lives different from hers. Jenny maybe had big dreams, but she let her mistakes get in the way. I was too small town though. I had small dreams. I could only see as far as the edge of the highway in one direction, and the thick forest of cornfields in the other direction. If I were a bird, I would never fly south for winter; I would ask that someone put me in a cage in a nice warm home and raise me as their own. It could be a fine life for my mother, too, if she had only accepted it as her own. She had resigned herself, sure, I saw that every time she pulled the beer can to her pretty, crumbling lips. But she had never accepted it.

  “WHERE DID SHE WANT TO GO?” said Valka. “What did she want to do?”

  “I do not know,” I mumbled. “France, I guess.”

  “But you said she turned right around and came back.” Valka offered me the bottle of champagne again. I shook my head no. “She sounds like a coward to me.” Valka seemed settled with this judgment.

  “Could be,” I said, but I knew that was not the truth either. She got lost in the city. That would scare anyone.

  I TOOK A PULL OFF my beer and when I looked up my mother was trembling. “You know I will always love you and I will never, ever leave you,” I said. She smiled such a brutal smile, like it was at all these angles, pursed in the middle, down on one end, up on the other. I did not even know if you could call it a smile. It was something to see. My mother was really something.

  I did hug her goodbye when I left. I had to touch her. I did not like the idea of her feeling alone, even if she had done it to herself. I pictured her sitting in her bath-robe at the kitchen table, crying into her Budweiser, hungering for the press of flesh upon hers, even just for a few seconds. I thought it was the least I could do. I wanted to tell her to be careful though, to warn her. But she was a grown woman, on her own at the same time. She should be able to take care of herself. A part of me knew though: Who was I kidding? I would be back again.

  “YOU CAN’T ESCAPE your family,” said Valka.

  “Sure you can,” I said, and then at last I took a swig of champagne.

  I THOUGHT ABOUT JENNY and my mother as I drove to the diner. It was just a short ride, through the downtown and just to the other side, past the library, but I drove slow and cautious, my mind thick with worry. I waved to a few people I knew as I drove: Kira Lynn, an old classmate of mine now pregnant with her third baby, who was driving a minivan full of baby seats and drywall for her husband’s construction business; Prairie, a girl who worked in the Internet café and went to school with Jenny; and white-haired Fred Folsom, the town groundskeeper, as he drove around the lawn of the library on his mower. I liked knowing everyone in town. It made me feel safe. My breathing returned to normal. My skin cooled. I was myself again.

  At the diner, I sat on the stool and waited for Timber to finish his business with other customers. There were only a few down at the end of the counter, the last stragglers from the after-church crowd. Not one of the booths was full. I pictured the place when it was full; it was like it was breathing in deep then, sucking in all the life and energy and noise of the town, and then, come 3 P.M, there was a big exhale, and suddenly there was nothing left but a few gasps of air.

  Timber finally came down to greet me.

  “What are you doing up front today?” I said.

  “I’m working the floor now,” he said. “I graduated.” He put his hands over his head and clasped them like a champion. His arms were so skinny. Every part of him had always been narrow. He looked like he would bend with the wind like a willow tree. “Pop said, ‘I’ve been on my feet for thirty years, and you know what? My feet are tired.’ ”

  “I’ll bet they are,” I said.

  Timber nodded and sucked in his cheeks a little bit. That only made his cheekbones look higher. He had always had such a sculpted face, it just took him a while to grow into it. In school he had looked more like a skeleton, his features were so defined. The phantom of the high school. He wore a cape one year for Halloween and eyeliner and mascara and it was just spooky. But now I could see what he had become: a tall, slender, extreme-looking man.

  I placed my order and Timber handed it to Papi in the back. They spoke to each other in Spanish briefly, and Timber laughed. “Loco,” he said. He always had a nice laugh. It rolled right over you, like fingers kneading skin. Papi went back to his work silently. Everything felt like it had shifted a little bit in the diner. Timber seemed bolder, like there was a spotlight on him. I was happy for him. He had earned this moment in his life. And then—damn Thomas to hell!—I suddenly pictured Timber at that glory hole at the dirty magazine store. Timber bent down on his knees, facing the hole. No way. I shook it off.

  I had known him my entire life, practically. I could not recall him ever being the slightest bit deviant. He had gone out with a few girls in high school, and none of them had a cruel word to say about him. And they were the smartest girls from our class, too. Penelope Davis had gone all the way to Massachusetts for college, this very important and prestigious all-girls school there. She was in law school now. I had run into her there at the diner, when she was home the previous Christmas. She wanted to help people, to fight for their rights. I am not sure which people and what rights, but that does not matter. The point is, he had dated quality girls, girls of substance. That meant Timber was all right, that he was not someone about to bend over in a dirty magazine shop, even if it was a pretty-sounding name like “glory hole.”

  Timber leaned forward on his elbows in front of me at the counter.

  “We didn’t see you last week,” he said. It was true; Thomas had been nervous the day before the surgery, and did not want to see anyone he knew.

  “Thomas has been under the weather for a bit,” I said.

  “I heard, I heard.” He nodded slowly. “Some of the guys putting in your pool were around here for lunch the other day. Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of work over there.” He winked at me. “Lots of money being thrown around.”

  “Like it’s going out of style,” I said. “It never ends.” I do not know what happened next, except that I started crying a little bit. I think because I felt comforted there. I had been in that diner a million times. It was a safe haven. Like a church.

  Most of our neighbors actually went to church—there were at least twenty in town. There were a lot of faithful people around. Not me and my husband, though. “Church is boring,” Thomas had said more than once. “All that sitting and paying attention. It feels like class to me.” I agreed with him. I did like to pray by myself though. I liked to shut out all the noise and have a clear space in my head. So there was enough room for me and God, who did not want anything from me but just to listen and help me feel better. Growing up, I only ever went at Christmas and Easter, and Thomas’s dad had abandoned his faith entirely to the love of his farm. No one was missing us at church.

  But Timber would miss us, and we would miss him making us breakfast every Sunday morning. I counted on feeling good at the diner. And yet there I was, tiny hot tears making their way down my cheeks. I had gone from hot to cold to hot again, all in one day. I did not like the change in temperature.

  Timber handed me a paper napkin from the dispenser. I wiped my eyes. Then he put both of his hands on my free hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I looked to see if anyone was looking.
/>   “No one’s in here,” said Timber. “They’ve all gone home. You’re okay. Come on. You’re going to be fine.”

  “It’s just . . . change is hard,” I said.

  “No one ever enjoys home improvement,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. You got all those people in your house, there’s all that noise. And it always takes longer than they say it’s going to take.”

  “I know!” I said. I was happy to talk to someone about it all, even if we were having two different conversations.

  “Pop says I’m crazy, but I’m going to redo this place. I could really do it up.”

  “You should,” I said.

  Papi rang a bell in the kitchen. Timber squeezed my hand and winked again. “Your order’s up,” he said.

  I wiped my eyes again, and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet. I laid it on the counter. Timber came back with our food in a plastic bag that said, “Thanks for your order” on it. It was coming out of the mouth of a smiling cartoon dog wearing a chef’s hat.

  “Those are new,” I said. “They’re cute.”

  “There’s going to be a lot of new things around here,” he said. “Wait and see.” He leaned over the counter and kissed me on my cheek. “You hang in there. It’s all going to be over soon,” he said. And I knew he was right.