Little Wrecks

by Meredith Miller

  Henry laughs now, lying with Isabel on the last patch of grass before the supermarket. His tinkling voice comes back to Ruth and Magda, and Isabel shouts.

  “We flew! Did you guys see that?”

  Right now it’s sunlight and six-year-olds laughing, but in a few hours, it will be dark and the streetlights will come on. Ruth can picture the days opening and closing on that strip, and the stream of people who move through it, always on their way to somewhere else, some pretend place like Highbone Village. She can see the nights and days flickering past like a speeded-up film, and the people moving through them. In fact, you never really get to the other place. You may be on your way somewhere, but you always circle back, for milk and cigarettes and plastic crap you don’t need. Right up here is where everyone is actually going, all the time. People move through this gasoline wilderness like the coming and going of the light itself.

  It has no poetry in the daytime. Just oil stains on the asphalt and women in flowered housedresses buying frozen peas. At night, the normal people are gone, safe in their houses. The fluorescents in the supermarket send their green tinge out to meet the yellow of the sodium lights along the road. Together, they make a light that’s like carnivals and slot machines and strip joints. It has a kind of sick romance. Demented syphilitics from the VA hospital outside Carter’s Bay are drawn to it like moths. They stash their medications and sneak out at the midnight staff change for coffee and doughnuts and cigarettes from the gas station. Sometimes, Ruth and Isabel and Magda come out through their bedroom windows in the small hours and sit at the counter in Dunkin’ Donuts. They buy bottomless coffees and watch the trucks go by, listening to the adrenaline ranting of broken men in mismatched uniforms and planning their escape from Highbone.

  At Ruth’s house, Danny’s car is still in the front yard. Inside, Danny sits on the couch eating granola and watching something black-and-white. He smiles and says hello, combing his hair out of his face with his fingers and casually sliding the ashtray under the couch with one foot.

  “Smooth, Danny,” Ruth says. “Where’s Mom?”

  “I haven’t seen her; I was just going to ask you. We’re supposed to go to the beach tonight for a bonfire. I was gonna help her make tabbouleh and teach her how to make stangle.” Then he notices Henry. “Hey! How’s it going, li’l man?”

  Ruth stops in the kitchen doorway to breathe everything in. There are pictures of Leslie West and Janis Joplin on the refrigerator and a green enamel teakettle on the stove, and it smells like spices and old linoleum and dust. That is their smell, hers and her mother’s. Couldn’t they have just a few months without some sweaty pothead covering it up?

  Isabel fills the kettle and lights the gas burner with a match from the box on the counter. “I like it here,” she says. “Everything just fits. When I have a house, it’ll be like this. No one will have to pretend to be different than they are.”

  “Grass. Greener,” Ruth says.

  “I love you, Isabel.” Henry stands in the doorway next to her, looking torn between their conversation and Danny’s TV movie.

  “I love you too, Henry.”

  “I love you, Ruth, but I’m going to marry Isabel. Dad says I can’t marry Magda.”

  “No one is going to marry anyone, Henry.” Magdalene is washing out mugs at the sink. “Marriage is an outmoded patriarchal institution invented to sustain capitalism and control women. It’s a sucker’s game for everyone involved. Got that?”

  “But I want to marry Isabel.”

  “You better tell him, Isabel.”

  “I’m not marrying anyone because . . . what Magda said. But I can love you forever, Henry. How’s that?”

  “Can we live in the same house?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Henry turns to walk through to the living room, where he hauls himself up on the couch next to Danny and settles in. Isabel is rifling through an inlaid wooden box full of tea bags and herbs at the kitchen table.

  “Ruth, why does your mom have wormwood in here?” Isabel waves a baggie at her.

  “She tried to make absinthe. It’s illegal.”

  “Way to go, putting a label on it,” Magda says to the window over the sink.

  “I like your mom for trying to make absinthe. I like Danny. He’s cool.”

  “He’s temporary, Isabel. Don’t get attached,” Ruth says.

  “Should we take bets?” Magda puts three mugs on the table. “I’m going for six months.”

  “He cooks and he’s already been around for six months. I’ll give him eight, tops. And I should know; I live here. Anyway, if he doesn’t go by then, I’ll throw him out myself. I’m sick of this boyfriend shit.”

  Isabel throws three Sleepytime tea bags at Ruth. “Have some of this and chill out. It’s kind of like Valium, but cheaper. Anyway, Henry likes Danny.”

  “Because he watches bad TV all day,” Magda says from the floor in front of the sink. She’s tightening the handle of a cupboard with a butter knife. “You’d never catch my dad watching Laurel and Hardy. Danny is Henry’s idea of the perfect man. There’s no pressure about the guy.”

  “Yeah,” Ruth says, “but how useful do you think he’d be on one of those days when they’ve turned the electricity off and delivered an eviction notice and the school is calling to see where I’ve been for the past two weeks and there’s nothing in the house to eat but rancid tofu and dry spaghetti? He’s too young.”

  “Young can be good,” Magda says. “He’s not remotely scary.”

  “Yeah, well, scary kind of sneaks up on ya, in case you two haven’t noticed. You guys go in my room. I’ll check my mom’s room for some cigarette money.”

  “What about them?” Magdalene looks through to the living room, where Henry has carefully arranged himself in a slouch identical to Danny’s.

  “Watch me deal with Danny,” Ruth says. “See how it’s done. You go through first.”

  She stops as they pass through the living room and makes urgent, stifling gestures at Danny with her hands. “Isabel is having an . . . um . . . emergency. I’m gonna go in Mom’s room and see if I can find something.”

  “That’s cool,” Danny says. “Leave the little guy with me and Stan and Ollie so he can learn to be a real man.”

  Magda and Isabel are already stretched out on Ruth’s bed when she comes in with a handful of nickels. In her room, stolen clothes from Attic Antiques hang from hooks on the walls, and there are prints of old paintings taped up everywhere.

  “See?” She shuts the door and leans against it, whispering. “Just suggest the idea of menstrual blood and you get all-areas access and free babysitting thrown in.” She opens the lid on a portable record player and moves the needle straight to “Gates of Eden” while Isabel counts out the change.

  “So, Ruth,” Magda says, “check it out. Charlie thinks he can rob Matt Kerwin.”

  “I do actually like Charlie, you know,” Isabel says. “Have you noticed that, Magda?”

  “You don’t like Charlie, Isabel, you need him. He fucks you and then doesn’t call you for three months. Now he’s back around, and you’re acting like his lapdog again. It’s boring.”

  “You don’t sound bored, Magda. You sound pissed off. How is it any of your business who fucks me and what they do after?”

  “Will you two stop it?” Ruth puts a hand up between them. “Of course it’s her business, Isabel. That’s who we are. We watch out for each other.”

  “No we don’t. What about the bonfire? Isabel obviously doesn’t tell us everything, Ruth.”

  “If you’re talking about what I burned, forget it. I’m allowed to have a private life.”

  “Yeah, Isabel, okay. So what is this about Charlie and Matt?”

  “At the mall Charlie told us he was gonna rob Matt Kerwin’s house.” Magda has rolled on her side to look at a print of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson. She speaks to the wall. “If he steals all the pot, Matt can’t call the cops on him. How’s he gonna get caught? Even
for Charlie, it has a certain elegance.”

  “No, wait,” Ruth says. “You guys don’t understand about Matt. He’s complicated. His life, I mean.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We get it, Ruth. Hey, big guy, please could you use me like a condom and toss me out of the car into a badly lit parking lot? It fulfills me.”

  “No, Magda. I’m not an idiot, and I’m not into Matt Kerwin. I’m saying he’s actually a cool person and he’s had a hard time. He’s my mom’s friend. I don’t want Charlie to screw him over for no reason.”

  It isn’t really any of that. It’s just that the sound of Matt’s name coming out of Magda’s mouth makes all the things in her head start circling around again. Matt lives in South Highbone, too. Hearing Magda and Isabel open up his life and talk about it gives her a sick jolt, like a piece of her skin’s been turned inside out.

  “What, you think we should warn him? Why do we have to be the ones with the standards? Don’t you think that’s kind of a scam?”

  This can’t be Magdalene, because for the second time today Ruth doesn’t like what she’s saying, wants to argue with her. Magdalene Warren is the kind of person you follow without thinking about it. When they were little, playing at the Warrens’ house while Ruth’s mother cleaned, Magda was the one who could fix the broken toys and open the locked doors. She could touch the world and make it do what she wanted. When Ruth first learned about magnets, the word made sense to her right away because it sounded so much like Magda. She doesn’t have any memories from before Magda was there, rattling around next to her.

  Dylan says, “There are no kings inside the gates of Eden.” The room spins a little and then stands still.

  “There’s no ‘have to,’ Magda,” she says. “Since when is Charlie Ferguson your moral compass? You’re just not that mean. Not even close.”

  Ruth puts “Gates of Eden” back to the beginning and climbs under an old piece of tulle she has tacked across one corner of her room. There is a big pillow on the floor behind it, where she lies down to listen. Behind the veil she can just drift, because she believes she can. Like Henry. Isabel and Magda are still there on the other side, smoking and talking over each other, but now she doesn’t have to believe they’re real.

  “The truth just twists. Its curfew gull it glides,” Dylan says.

  She wants to think about Doris, where she’s from and where she’ll go next. What it would take to be like her. Maybe not with a biker boyfriend, but definitely with the guts to just ride away whenever you feel like it, and tattoo what you want on your body for the world to read. Sometimes, people drop into your life and change the way you see things. It’s only after it happens that you realize how ready you were.

  She needs to think about Danny and brake systems, too. And what kind of person she actually is now if she isn’t just someone who follows Magda around.

  They’re still talking on the other side of the veil. They might be talking to her, but it doesn’t matter. The space inside Ruth is opening up, filling with people and things that belong to just her. It’s giddy and breathless, suddenly having a purpose and a reason. When it rises up and takes over, nothing outside of her matters.

  She is light and separate, in a world inside the world. Turns out it isn’t that things don’t make sense without Magda; it’s just that Ruth speaks a whole other language.

  “All and all can only fall, with a crashing but meaningless blow.”

  five

  WHEN MAGDA GETS home on Thursday afternoon, Jeff Snyder is in her driveway with the hood up on her father’s Volvo. It’s Magda’s job to keep Henry away while Jeff works on the car. But why would Henry stay away when the hood is up and someone is revving the engine by pulling a pin inside? He is fascinated; he’s never seen the guts of a car. Kids never think about the insides of things until they see them.

  Isabel and Ruth don’t know Jeff, and that’s pretty much what’s good about him. She could mention him, but she doesn’t. She saves up all the days when she comes home and Jeff is there, working for her dad. She keeps them to herself like the rest of the stuff in her pockets, because they shine and have a mechanism all their own. The rules are different. She doesn’t have to be Magda. It’s like having a life inside her life, one where she doesn’t have to be in charge.

  Jeff’s hair isn’t long, but it isn’t short either. It falls down sideways while he leans over the carburetor. She holds Henry up to see the engine.

  “It looks like one of your toys, Magda,” Henry says.

  “That’s the fuel line,” she says, “where the gas goes into the carburetor and gets mixed with air.”

  Jeff twists his head around and raises his eyebrows, but then he smiles at her, not Henry.

  “You should have a car, Magda,” Henry says.

  “You’re not wrong, small guy,” she tells him.

  “Just hang on to him so he doesn’t stick his hand in here.” She can’t help liking him then. Someone else stopping to think about whether Henry might get hurt is such a relief it almost makes a sucker out of her.

  “What are they making you read in English?” He doesn’t turn around or raise his voice. Like if she hears him that’s good but if not that’s okay, too.

  “Sister Carrie. It’s good,” she says, because she isn’t going to pretend not to like English just to impress Jeff Snyder. Leave that to Isabel.

  He knows all about Sister Carrie and about how Chicago grew at the end of the nineteenth century and how big businesses moved out there and the people flocked in, looking for work. Jeff works at Speedy Mufflers, but he’s taking two history classes at Stony Brook. One on Immigration from 1880 to 1920 and one on Westward Expansion and the American Myth. The titles of college classes have actual meanings. Not like “English” or “Math.” Why can’t high school teachers use their imaginations like that?

  “You know, those big dirty new cities were exciting because people actually believed all that American dream crap. They actually thought they could roll the dice and wind up like J. P. Morgan, right up until they wound up living in Hoovervilles with their babies dying of lung disease.” He’s all excited now, waving his hands around. He’s on a roll.

  “Cigarette?” He holds out a Player’s Navy Cut and she likes him a little bit more.

  She looks up at the house. “Um, can’t right now.”

  He nods. “Let’s take a little walk with the small guy.”

  He kind of saunters, so she and Henry can follow him around the corner. It’s afternoon, but the light is still pale, and the maple leaves are that crazy new green they always are in May. She pulls one off a tree to show Henry the caterpillar rolled up inside. The new leaf is thin as a bat wing and tears easy. Around the corner in the Kennedys’ side yard there’s a pussy willow, and Henry wants to touch it.

  Jeff looks up at the corner to make sure the Warrens’ house has disappeared, then smiles with half his mouth. “Cigarette?” he says again, and she takes one.

  Henry is on one of the Kennedys’ swings, pumping his little legs and going nowhere.

  “So, why’d they name you Magdalene?” Jeff asks.

  “It’s a combination of my mother and father. She’s Italian and he’s a snob, so they needed something Catholic, but artsy. I guess Magdalene was it, but it’s a little like a label of doom.”

  He laughs. He gets it. “Smart and funny,” he says.

  She pushes Henry’s swing and tells him about her grandparents stomping grapes in Calabria and coming here to have a farm in mid-island and then a restaurant on 25A. She can’t stop talking because she can see him looking sideways at the details of her. His eyes stop on her hair and then her hands, resting on them like a guy with plenty of money looking at a new car. She can barely hear what she’s saying herself, because all she can think about is what her own body is doing. She feels dizzy and sick and she just wants to get away from those eyes.

  “So, you know why people came here from Italy, don’t you? It’s like I was saying before—”

 
“I gotta go,” Magda interrupts him, and Jeff looks like she slapped him. Then he looks a little insulted.

  “What, I’m talking too much for you?”

  “No, I just have to do stuff.”

  He isn’t looking at her anymore. He’s looking at the end of his cigarette, and Magda has a little, uncontrollable sense of loss.

  “You coming back tomorrow?” she says before she can tell herself not to.

  “Maybe. Depends whether I finish.”

  Magda feels like she stole ten thousand dollars then dropped it off a cliff, just because she didn’t have the guts to spend it.

  Well, that’s another reason not to tell Isabel and Ruth about him. Turns out Magdalene is as desperate as anybody else for somebody to pay attention to her.

  six

  NONE OF IT adds up. Isabel stands with Henry at the entrance to Highbone Park and everything that’s wrong is right in front of them. What does it take for people not to notice? At the other end of Main Street some kind of afternoon service bells are ringing on the Methodist church. There are two perfect rows of maple trees stretching down each side of the park, two paths of asphalt, and one bandstand making the end of the vista, perfectly placed to mirror the end of the pier out in the harbor. And it’s full of bodies.

  Not dead bodies, exactly. Partially present, partially mobile, and they have, in most cases, the majority of their limbs. They are all men, they are all breathing, and several of them have words pouring out of their mouths in steady, free-associative streams. They have been to Vietnam.