by Diane Munier
I can see Jason pushing Cyro across in his chair. Jason is still wearing his white uniform from the store. Cyro holds a box on his lap which means butchered and bloodied cow or pig wrapped in waxy white paper. Jason works in meat.
How has Aaron ended up in Mom’s room? But when I go in back, there is my boss standing in the doorway to my mother’s room and Loonie One and Loonie Two are inviting him into the love-in. Spencer has just shaken Aaron’s hand and squeezed around him. He is smiling at me. My arms are folded. Aaron is being sucked into the star-studded vortex now. Good riddance.
So embarrassing.
“I feel like I just got off the psychedelic bus,” Spencer says, smoothing two hands over his hair.
Not only am I distracted by how tall Spencer seems in our hallway, but Jason is behind me with the box of animal and that is distracting. He’s says something like, “Hey I got meat,” and I say, “Okay.”
Spencer introduces himself and Jason just nods with that bunchy mouth.
“Old lady Frieda’s? Yeah we wondered what fool….”
“It’s a long time ago, right?” Spencer says, leaning near me once again as I fix Cyro a plate.
Spencer says, “Where is this going?” meaning the plate.
So he takes it to Cyro. That’s very nice.
Jason goes to the fridge and unloads the box into the freezer section. “Brought you some chops and chorizo.”
“Thanks,” I say gathering some dishes to be washed.
“You look….” He motions over me like he’s the pope giving a blessing.
This is what I feared, that he’d notice…the effort. I mean, for me it’s like going from zero to five or six.
I hand him a plate as in, fill up that mouth with something besides your next words.
Singing from Mom’s bedroom again. Aaron knows the oldies apparently.
I check the living room. Mike is here with his mom Tammy. Spencer is standing, shaking Tammy’s hand. Mike is already whistling at me saying, “Dang girl.”
I hurry back to the kitchen and Jason is washing his hands. The empty box is on the floor. It feels too crowded now. Usually I go outside and walk in my garden, or in winter I walk in the yard, or I leave on patrol. No one notices.
But tonight I have taken the box Jason brought to the trash cans outside. I smash the box and from in the house I hear laughter and someone starts the music. They’ll dance now. It will get loud and crazy and then it will calm down and then it will be over and I’ll clean.
But I am outside looking up at the real stars when the screen door slaps. “Sarah?”
It is Spencer. “Sarah?” he says again. I can’t believe he came out here.
“I’m right here,” I say, because if he will look to the left, here I am.
He comes down the steps. “Nice night.”
“There are no bad nights. We’re alive.” I nearly groan. What am I talking about?
He has his hands in his pockets. His feet are bare. I guess I’m staring at his feet, mostly wondering if any part of him is just a little gross so I can feel more hopeful about myself.
“I took them off…God in your mother’s bedroom. That sounds…just wrong,” and he laughs.
It does sound wrong.
“Those guys are asking about you,” he says, and I can hear those guys from in the house. Their voices carry. His eyes pick up the light from the moon. I believe the full moon makes people crazy.
“When do we start playing games?” he asks.
I am staring. I’m actually very conversational just not out-loud.
“What games?”
“Um…game night…right?” His smile…it does nice things to his eyes.
“Oh…no games.”
He laughs. He needs to quiet down or they’ll all be out here.
“It’s an old name. It used to mean games but…not since…for a long time.”
He nods, still smiling. He looks beyond me to my garden. “Game night with no games. Got it.”
We’re quiet for a couple of minutes. Then he says, “It looks great even in the moonlight.”
He means my garden. I turn and start walking there.
“I used to plant by the moon,” I say, fully assuming he’s coming along.
And he is. I already know he follows me easy. I reach the corn, the lower ears peeled and stripped or stolen. My tomatoes are healthy and green and bushy. I can see that fruit ripening. We walk through, Spencer and me. He’ll be itchy.
I name each thing. And I feel light-footed, I always do at night, like a fairy, and I skip a little. When no one is with me, I skip and run. But something scurries through the plants. Little life. Little thieves. Garden gnomes.
We reach the back fence, very close to my compost pile. I lean, he leans beside, a breeze picks up a little. Jazz pours from the house.
We look over the garden. We can see people moving in front of the kitchen window in the house and their voices, laughter.
There are a thousand questions in my mind I’d like to ask him, but not one can get out. Mostly, I want him to tell me all about my alternate universe, the life he had before he moved here. Who has he been?
“I can smell the soil,” he says.
“I know. It’s not just the soil, it’s thousands of years. People don’t know, it’s everything that’s been…in that soil. But it’s now, too. It’s now meeting…then.”
He looks at me, but it’s not like anybody else looks at me. I’m not afraid of it. Not in this dark…light.
“Forget I said that.” I don’t want to scare him off and I need a friend who will let me use an eraser sometimes. “I’m talking about a dinosaur’s toenail fertilizing a Burpee’s pole bean, that’s all.”
He studies me for a minute. “She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a philosophizing girl…,” and there he goes again, singing softly, eyes twinkling at me while he plays an invisible guitar. And I’m rooted here like a vine on the fence, I couldn’t move if my scarecrow came to life.
When Jason calls out, standing with the screen open, me and Spencer squat quickly, and we’re both trying not to laugh, but he’s trying harder cause he puts his hand over my mouth, and I lick his palm and he laughs more but he doesn’t take it away, and his palm isn’t rough and it tastes a little like soap.
But Jason goes in and Spencer takes his hand away.
“He thinks I’m walking,” I say.
“He doesn’t have a clue about you, does he?” Spencer says.
We are staring, well I am. He is just receiving my stare with one of his own.
I stand slowly and Spencer does too.
Just like I said, he follows me easy.
“We should probably go back inside.” I don’t know who this girl is talking because I don’t want to be anywhere but right here.
He shoves both of his hands in his pockets, but he’s looking at me with this serious face. I wonder if he’s mad at me. I don’t know what I did. But I could keep looking at him.
“Sarah…,” he sweeps his hand that I should lead, and I walk slowly back through the garden, having this crazy feeling that his eyes are lasers on my back.
We get to the door and his hands are still in his pockets. “You go on in,” he says. “I want to run home and get my guitar.”
“Okay,” I say, but I’ve still got that very weird feeling and I trip up the stairs.
He whispers, “Thanks for the tour.”
I don’t look back cause I’m likely to say anything.
As soon as I get in the blaring lights of the kitchen I can see they are all in the living room. Christine is teaching Aaron how to do some old dance step. Her hands are all over him, and he’s flushed red and laughing it up. Cyro is eating pie, his dinner plate empty. Jason is tipped back on a chair talking to Mike. Tammy and Mom are shaking their tail feathers. Lord.
I step back in the kitchen before they see me. I don’t know what happened out there in the yard…or if it was anything. Am I projecting? Is this phase one? I don’
t know what it is. I just know…I liked it.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Seven
Game Night 3
I’m built like my dad. Mom says this. Well I know I don’t have that booty, the one shaking towards Jason right now. Even Cyro is smiling. Christine and Mom are pretending, sort of, to be doing their sandwich moves on Jason and he’s playing all dirty gangsta, gyrating around, and Spencer is playing along on his guitar with whatever comes out of Mom’s IPod on the dock.
I know what Spencer’s doing. He went for that guitar so he could hide behind it. It’s pretty brilliant. They’ve tried to talk him out of it, but he just smiles and does the troubadour bit. Tammy’s been sitting too close to him, dancing in front of him, shaking her six inches of boob crack practically in his face.
It’s pretty funny. But I remember he is older and maybe it’s not so funny. Maybe that guitar is hiding his chunky. His chunky-junk.
I hold my glass to my lips to hide my smile. His hand was better, Spencer’s hand over my mouth. Not his hand on his junk like Jason’s is now. Cyro rebukes him. First thing he’s said all night. I’m laughing out loud this time. I don’t know why.
Mom mistakenly thinks I’m laughing at how she’s nearly grinding on Jason, young enough to be her son, and pretty much her son in terms of her being a mother figure. It’s adorable that she’s poking her trunk at his junk…well I’m laughing again. I’m my own party.
Horny Christine turns from Jason to Aaron who seems happy enough to dance on his own, in the proximity of Christine’s behind. Who knew my boss liked to get down? Christine embraces Aaron and there is not room for a sheet of paper between them, certainly not a binder. Those are stacked on a kitchen chair, by the way. Useless. All of it’s on-line, and he knows that. He’s probably cleaning out his office. But I know what this really is. Every now and then he makes me come in so he can reassure himself I’m not going to quit but since I wouldn’t…come in…he came here. He must be really worried. Don’t worry, Aaron, it’s the traffic on the bridge just like I told you. Dork.
Like I’d quit. Labels are my life! But he’s insecure. Which makes me think I probably need to ask for a raise. But he pays me well. It keeps me and Mom going. You think we could live on what Mom makes? She can’t even live on what she makes. But I could live on what I make. But it doesn’t make sense to think like that and I don’t know why I just did.
The money I pull in from my garden goes to the no-kill shelter in town. So my garden goes to the dogs. I am laughing again, only this time Spencer looks at me, and you can hear a pin drop in my brain, or a tree, and if there’s no one to hear it did it really fall? That’s what I’m thinking, but I’m also noticing how Spencer’s smile makes me very happy and I am smiling back. I touch my own lips just to be sure, and I am smiling just like I thought.
Mike comes in then, plops beside me. He stinks like weed. Tammy must get a whiff because she backhands him. “Not here,” she yells.
“I went home,” he yells back . Then he turns and smiles at me. He’s a mess, Mike is. Not the tattoos, the piercings, but he’s gotten them done to help himself get found. That’s how he explains it. I’ve tried to listen. They are his road signs, he says.
“Let’s cut a rug,” he says to me because I laughed one time a hundred years ago when he said that and now…every time.
“I’ll get the scissors,” I say, yeah a hundred times on that too, but he laughs like it’s the first.
I leave the hedonism behind and enter the kitchen. I get the plastic stuff out so I can start to divide the leftovers. When they see me do this they know I’ve reached saturation. But they have to see me, and often they don’t, but one of them will eventually stumble in here and word will get out. It’s my job to rescue them from themselves.
Mike doesn’t follow me. I peek in there and he’s getting it on with Christine and Tammy has moved on to Aaron, but I see Christine dart her little eyes that way. Mama knows all about other bitches stealing her man.
So it’s back to the food and I get that cleaned up. Leeanne’s kale chips didn’t get hit very hard. They appreciate them at the market though. She’ll make a batch and sell out quickly in the morning.
I hear Cyro in the hall. He has his leg on tonight so he dressed up for us. He’s standing there, the cane planted solid.
I keep working. He knows I’m going out. I pile the dirty dishes in the double bowled sink and wipe my hands. I get my flashlight off the charger and touch my back pocket making sure I have my cell. I go out back and Cyro follows me. The steps are a little rickety but he knows. He’s slow, but he makes it okay. I walk carefully and he keeps up behind me. We get to the curb out front and I go across the street and stand aside as he makes his way up his porch and he gets to his door.
“I’ll send food with Jason and make sure he brings the chair,” I say.
He nods and goes in. I wait a few seconds and the light comes on. I shoot a last look at my house, alit and noise coming out the front door, and movement behind the sheer curtains. I move away into the dark.
But I’m not far and I hear them, steps behind me. “Sarah?” he says. “Wait up.”
And I’m two ways on it, surprised, and not. Like I said, he follows me easy. I don’t know why.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Eight
He’s behind me. When I turn he is looking at me, walking rapidly to keep up.
“Hey baby, got a light?” he says in this gangster kind of voice.
I shine my flashlight in his face.
He puts his hand up, “Whoa, Sarah,” he’s smiling, but he’ll see stars for a while, not the real ones, not the ones on Mom’s walls, but the kind I just gave him.
I click the light off. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Can’t I walk with you?”
Nobody walks with me. Others have wanted to, but they always lack the dedication and I know that, and some things you don’t give away. If you do, people think you wanted to, and maybe you didn’t and now they think it’s theirs but you still feel like it’s yours, just yours…and now you’ve let it go…as if you wanted to…like it was cheap, but it’s not, it’s the most important thing in the world, the most important thing you do, the most important thing you have, but if you give it, they take it, and then you have to bear it…bear that you gave it away.
“Why do you want to Spencer?”
“Sarah…I just want to walk with you.” He is beside me, but not. He’s one step back.
“Right this minute?”
He touches my arm and I gasp and stop and turn a little, my hand on my arm where he touched me like it’s a wound, like I’m holding in my blood. No one touches me on this walk. Not ever.
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” he asks.
I shake my head, but I keep holding that place.
“Are you upset? Hey, don’t be mad. I just wanted…well you know the neighborhood. Maybe I need to see it, the way you do. Can you show me?”
I don’t know. But he’s said it the best way—that he wants to see it. “There’s no talking,” I say, but I’m torn.
He nods, puts imaginary tape over his lips. I nearly groan frustration and start to walk again and in a second he is right next to me, hands in his pockets but we both know I’m leading.
So we’ve cleared his house. He doesn’t know how every night I make myself look at it, for signs of life. I don’t go too close, but halfway, shining my light over the front of it. Later, when I’m back in my house, I shudder to think I am that brave. I have to be.
You’ve heard how true courage doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid to do something. It means you don’t let the fear stop you. Well I don’t let the fear stop me, especially when it comes to Frieda’s house. But now Spencer lives there. Now he’s moved in to the heart of the place and there’s light on the inside.
So I want to tell him something, but we aren’t talking now, and I don’t know him enough. But he’s moved so casually
into her house. He doesn’t know what it means to me.
Of course it would take an outsider to overlook the history the rest of us can never overlook. It would take fresh blood to build upon the old blood, someone ignorant of what went on before.
I trip. He grabs my arm, but I’m not going down. I rarely fall. But I trip…a lot.
So we have passed Frieda’s and now we pass the extra lot on the other side of Frieda’s and then we get to the rental house with the revolving door, the long line of renters. It’s empty now, but it won’t be for long. They come and go, come and go. I get closer to this place, make sure it’s still empty. I circle it, all the way to the yard. My cat Muffins comes out from the back porch and scares me to death. “Get home,” I say, and she stops and licks her paw and whines at me a little. I shoot the beam over the yard, then back around the front, all the while Spencer follows, and back to the porch and I see the empty bottle. It’s whiskey. Someone was drinking on the porch. It could be workmen, but it wasn’t here last night. I take that bottle to keep it clean and so I can know if there are any more later. I’ll be watching.
Next is Mike and Tammy’s. Mike is still at my house, but many nights he’s on the front porch smoking. We don’t wave. He’s already charged my fence and he knows I’ll never open the gate. I don’t date. I’ve known him all my life, since before his dad left, all the way back. He needs to cut the grass.
Two doors down is Merle and Pearlie’s. I flash my light at the bedroom window, three clicks. I wait and count to five, and a light flashes back from same window, three clicks.
