by Diane Munier
A car passes, and music pours out the windows, leaving a trail of sound that quickly dissipates and it’s just our feet on the sidewalk then, it’s just the cicadas.
A dog sets off barking. The Coopers still haven’t taken their trash cans to the back. Next to them the Strands aren’t home and papers gather on the lawn. That’s almost a week. They didn’t tell me they’d be gone. But they don’t have to. They don’t have the money for a vacation. Even though it’s late, I walk up to their front door and knock. I put my ear against the wood and listen. There is nothing, no heartbeat in this place. Like every night before I walk around, trespassing some might call it, but I have already struck a deal, they know I’m watching and it is quiet in back, the barbecue pit quiet, the shed in back still. On the front lawn I, we, gather the papers and pile them in a corner on the porch. Who gets the paper anymore? The morning paper? The Strands.
We cross the street. I smell the dryer going in front of the house there. The windows are open. This is Leeanne. She needs to get to bed, for market in the morning, but she’s a night-owl. She dries her clothes at night to save on electric.
“You ever afraid?” he asks me. He’s breaking my rule, but it holds on this side of the street too, and I don’t answer him, just click my light once, not in his face, but on his chest.
“Okay,” he laughs a little.
But I’m thinking about it, and already I see the distraction. I’m not paying attention. What I want to say is yes, yes I’m afraid sometimes. But not of the street. Crime out here…there’s room to run.
It’s what people do inside their houses, where they think no one sees, I fear that, living beside it and never knowing, watching TV while a neighbor fights for her life just a few hundred feet away. That’s what I fear.
Next house, next house, until we’re across the street from my house again, and the party has broken up, and Jason is on the porch saying goodnight to Mom, but I look Cyro’s way, at the window closest to his chair and I see the light click, and my light answers.
And Jason, he knows not to talk to me now, he knows, but his hands are in his pockets, his shirt unbuttoned all the way down, a cleaner white undershirt underneath. He sees me walking with Spencer. He’s worked all day and he’s been drinking. He’s always mad about something.
“I figured you snuck out to walk with her.” He’s talking to Spencer.
I click my light in Jason’s face.
He puts his hand up. “Cut it out.”
I don’t know when I put my hand on Spencer’s arm, but it’s after I move around him, curb-side so I’m closest to Jason. We have to keep moving.
“Go on,” Jason says to our backs.
We are. Going on. We are.
We find a kitten at the end of the street, a little yellow one. I don’t know if it belongs to someone but it comes out of the bushes and tells us its troubles.
I pick it right up and carry it along. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Her,” I say, breaking my rule.
“What are you going to do?”
I don’t answer because I’ll figure out if she belongs to someone and if not, I’ll find a home, and if not, I’ll take her to the no-kill in Ramsey.
“She’s not mangy,” I tell Spencer once we reach my house again.
“She might belong to someone,” he says.
I am holding her, looking at her, and he is scratching the back of her neck a little, and his finger are very long, and very close to me.
“Sarah?”
I look up at him. I’m glad I was there…to save this kitten. Or steal her from her owners…but just for a night.
“Thanks for letting me walk with you.”
“You’re staring at me,” I say.
He laughs a little, raises his brows, big smile and the words aren’t coming but I see him searching.
I laugh a little too because…I don’t know why.
“You can’t do it again,” I say. Crap.
“Do…walk with you?”
Now I’m staring. It took the most of his smile when I said that.
“I would like to,” he says.
“I know,” I groan. I turn away and notice Aaron’s car is still here. Well I can hear them in the house, see them even.
“Is that so bad? I won’t talk. I promise.”
“Why? You have better things….”
“See that’s where you’re wrong,” he says, taking the kitten from me, his knuckles lightly brushing me. “What could I do that’s better than rescuing kittens?”
“You….” I can’t get it out, but I am starting to get the ideas. For one this is mine. For two if he goes he will mess it up. For three it’s hard to pay attention when he’s with me. I do this myself. I have to do it myself.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“You will? How long will you need?”
“Three days,” I say, to give myself plenty of space.
“Why three days?”
“Three days, take it or leave it.”
He laughs. “You drive a hard bargain Sullivan.”
I’m not bargaining. He’s trying to bargain. I reach for the cat but Spencer turns so his shoulder blocks me. “She’s okay. I’ll let her spend the night.” He smiles at me. I don’t know why that hangs there between us. But I imagine a lot of things. But one thing I know about Spencer now. He’s the loneliest person I’ve ever met.
But of course I don’t say any of this. I just let him take the kitten.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Nine
I say goodnight to the kitten, and then to Spencer. I sound so crazy saying two goodnights. I am a freak!
But I go in my house and I don’t look back at him, then I do, just once, right before I go in the door I look back and he is walking away, head bent over the kitten. He is going into Frieda’s dark house. But at least he’s not alone.
In my house it is like a sagging balloon, half the air let out but still some shape. Right away I see Cyro’s chair. I’ll take it in the morning, and some of the food.
Mike and Tammy are gone. I already know she would have dropped Mike off on a corner somewhere, and she would already be at the Longbranch, like the kitten, looking for someone to take her and her long cleavage home.
I wonder how men do it, take responsibility for women like that, their big breasts, their lady parts and eyes…eyes that say, ‘celebrate me, please, please…please.’
I’d run screaming from that, but men go for it. At least once. Especially drunk ones. The alcohol has to help. But so much responsibility. So much room…to be wrong.
I could never just want someone to take my life off my hands, just take it, so I wouldn’t have to feel…my life. Would I?
Mom and her two hands, all the men she counted there, all the ones she didn’t, let fall between her fingers deciding not to add them because they didn’t save her…they couldn’t. They had to save their drowning selves.
When I think about molecules and atoms and super novas, water, hydro-carbons, amino acids, God’s Play dough, forming planets…and the long assembly line of life…me…I can’t believe it’s meaningless. I can’t believe it’s accidental. That’s what I remember as I enter the kitchen. So it’s hard to say hello when I’ve just run along a milky way in my mind…and remembered how lucky I am to be alive.
Spencer.
Spencer?
I’m thinking his name. Lucky to be alive. Spencer. Those things feel tied.
In the kitchen, Aaron is here with Christine while she ‘makes a plate,’ to take home, or robs us blind of a week’s worth of groceries. Aaron is having a cup of coffee. He is giving Christine a ‘ride home.’ She shoots, she scores.
Mom is smoking. I see that right away, smell it sooner even, but I’m just now getting to it. “Mom!” I nearly yell.
“What?” she says, “It’s just one little smoke Sarah, it’s not going to kill me.”
Aaron says something about the binders, like I d
on’t know my job. Or his. Or anyone’s in that business. Does he not know I’m under-achieving?
But Mom says Leeanne has called and I need to handle the table tomorrow morning at the market.
I throw up my hands. I have this whole freaking kitchen to clean and now I have to do the market? All those people.
“Mom,” I say, then I can’t say all of it with my boss listening anyway. But doing the market is no small thing for me. It is already late and by the time I get to bed…and then I have to stop at Leeanne’s and get everything that I’d already hauled over there earlier, and the tent and the table and I have to go to the ATM for change. I make a big growl and Aaron looks surprised because he’s never heard me growl before and few people have.
I go upstairs and get ready for bed and throw my clothes around, then decide to pick them up and put them in the hamper. I am back down and Mom is sitting at the table, looking at all the crap left that she won’t clean up anyway.
“Aaron’s nice,” Mom says, smoothing her hand over the small part of the table that’s clear right in front of her.
I start to gather dishes.
“When you get the food put away…,” she says.
“I had it put away and your buddy pulled it all back out and left it.”
“Don’t be that way Sarah.”
I slap the plastic-ware into the sink. I’m more careful with the breakables because I can’t stand chips on the plates. I hate that—ruining what’s already good.
“She takes and takes. She’s a taker,” I say because there are so many people at the market and Leeanne won’t even come to help me.
“Don’t say things like that,” Mom says.
“She took my boss,” I say. She took him home and not to share the leftovers. But yeah, talk about sharing leftovers, Christine Horner—leftover!
I know the floor is going to open up and drop me into hell. I know I’m mean.
But Christine Horner has no limits. First my mother…now my boss. Growl.
“Spencer’s nice,” Mom says.
I breathe in and run water in the sink. He is very nice. And I’m lucky to be alive. He’s got the kitten. Spencer.
“I don’t know why he left though. He forgot his guitar.” She’s quiet for a few seconds. “Maybe the Alfredo gave him diarrhea.”
I look back, and she smiles a little, but she’s sad, Christine leaving with Aaron, Spencer running away.
“Don’t say things like that,” I mimic. But I end up laughing. With her.
She’s my mom. What am I going to do? How many years did she fight for me? So I fight for her.
And that’s when I remember. I’m rinsing the Glad ware, and I know what it is, why, exactly why Spencer can’t walk with me.
I remember how protective I felt when Jason crossed the street and gave that bunchy look to Spencer. I knew I would keep Spencer safe, and I put my hand on Spencer’s arm and I moved around him, put myself between him and Jason. And I kept us moving, him moving, from the danger.
But for just a second I knew he wanted to move me out of the way, Spencer did. He made a little gesture like he wanted to put me behind him so he could be closest to Jason. Then he caught himself and surrendered to me. He let me lead.
But he’d wanted to protect me.
That’s why he can’t walk with me.
I have to be in front. I have to lead. I have to be first. I have to face it. And if he goes with me, he will take over. And eventually, before I even know what I am doing, I will let him. It will feel too good. It will be too easy…maybe wonderful. And then it will happen…phase two…reality.
And it will be his…my walk. And I’ll pull back…and back…and back.
I won’t be able to help. I will be like them--Leeanne and her darkness that takes over, Mom and Christine looking to give their lives away and not finding any takers. Tammy ready to smother someone in her pillows until he can’t kick anymore. And Mike stuck in a purple haze. Jason angry and sometimes cruel. Cyro—morose. Merle and Pearlie, soft and sweet…just meat. I will be them…and I will fail them. I will fail.
I will fail.
And I can’t let it happen, can’t ever let it happen cause the only way I feel safe is to make sure…to put myself there…my eyes on the path…to be scared…but to never give up, never hide, never run.
He can’t help me with that. It was given to me.
I grab some cat-food and go out the door. Mom doesn’t ask. She’ll just go to bed. I hurry in the dark, in the night, I go around the fence and to the front of his house. Light spills onto the porch from the front room window. I get to the door and I don’t stop. I want to, but I don’t. I knock. He must be standing right on the other side cause the door jerks open and he is still holding the kitten and he says, “Sarah?” like he can’t believe it.
He looks up and down me. He’s scowling. I’m in my pajamas, shorts and a tank top. I forgot, but it doesn’t matter. I hold out the cat-food and he widens the door, and just like I thought-- boxes. I’m not going in.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Oh. Okay,” he says, serious-faced, taking the food.
I take a big breath, almost forgetting what it is, but I don’t, “Spencer…I…don’t need three days to decide, you know, about you and me…walking.” I’m huffing like I ran here. Well I almost did I guess.
He stares for about ten seconds. The kitten is calm on his arm.
I am already forgetting all the good reasons I had. They aren’t making sense.
“Sarah?”
“I…,” I take in a shaky breath. There are so many things, “I have to run my booth at the farmer’s market in the morning, and I thought, if you’re not doing anything I thought…since you like vegetables….”
“The Farmer’s Market, right. Your mom told me about it. She asked me to go with her…so you’ll come too? Or I guess you go earlier?”
The old picture of the atomic bomb going off someplace like Nevada…the mushroom cloud in the desert…kapow. That about sums it up right now.
“Don’t tell her you walked with me.” I don’t know where that came from, but it is out there now.
“Okay. Is there a problem?”
“No. No. Just…go with her.”
“But do you need me to come early…help or something?”
“No,” I say like he’s out of his mind, then, “No!”
And I’m out of there. I am running now and he calls me but once I get going, I can’t change direction. Heck no.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Ten
I get up at four in the morning. It’s not human to be up before five and I do not feel human.
I have so much to do. The kitchen is still a mess and I put more things away while I make a pot of coffee. I pour a cup and put some in my thermos, and leave the rest for Mom.
Outside I make too much noise. I load up the back of my truck and after about five trips I’m shutting the tail-gate and ready to head to Leeanne’s. That’s where the real fun begins.
“Sarah?”
I nearly die. Really nearly scream.
“Spencer,” it’s all I can say.
He looks a little swollen from sleep, hair crazy, wearing a white t-shirt like always and the beige shorts and I think he slept in them, and an unlit cigarette in his mouth and his shoes in his hand.
“How’s the kitten?”
“Good. She’s good. Are you ready?”
“For…?”
“For the market. Do you need to load anything else?”
“You’re going with Mom.”
“We can text her. She can meet us there later. She’ll want me to help you, don’t you think?”
Mom never as in ever attends the farmer’s market. She’s slept with one of the artisans there, a crazy goat cheese maker and she never goes now. If she asked Spencer it was to be with him. Even I know that.
“Can I go, Sarah? Can I help? I’d like to see it.” How can he do this…be so out with i
t…just simple things like…begging.
“Yes,” I say. Yes. We will text Mom. I am worried. I don’t want her to stay home and be sad. But he’s here and he needs…he needs to come with me. I can feel it. He needs the vegetables probably, and he needs to help me.
We are in the truck. I am trying not to look at him, but when I do, I push the brakes and we are thrown a little. “Cyro’s chair,” I say. And the food. There’s just too much.
“We’ll text your mom,” he says.
“Mom?” I repeat. Mom doesn’t…she wouldn’t….
So I pull out. Already it is all tangled up. I don’t let things go. I don’t let things go like this.
But I take a big breath and drive down to Leeanne’s, and it is in the shed in back, all the food in boxes and coolers, and her pies on the porch, each in a covered box and he is going on about it in a loud whisper, “Are these as good as yours?” But it’s too early to talk. He takes the biggest things, the heaviest, and I run to help and we wrestle some and he grunts, “Sarah, I got it, I got it.”
And I have to let go. So what do I do with Spencer Gundry?
He is careful. Too careful sometimes. I’m faster. But he has good ideas. He puts the things in the truck’s bed like puzzle pieces. Everything fits, but we’re fifteen minutes late already. I don’t know how to say it, but I say, “We have to go.”
And we do. And we go to the ATM next and I park and run to the machine. I am wearing my white baseball cap and I turn it backwards. My hair is in a heavy braid against my back cause it was wild lion hair when I woke up. I wear a T-shirt and my jean shorts, the cut-off ones that embarrass me but I didn’t expect him to show up at my elbow at four. Why was he up at all?
I get the money. It takes forever, but finally I have what I need and get in the truck and put my money belt on the seat. He is looking at me, smiling. He taps the bill on the back of my hat. He’s waking up a little maybe, his eyes are opening wide.
It’s still dark out, the sun way down deep and barely sending its first pale bleed into the dark.
“How old are you?” he asks me right out, his long arm on the back of the seat so his hand can touch the bill of my hat or my braid anytime.
