by Diane Munier
So with his check in her pocketbook Pearlie tells me to be good and she pats my cheek. I watch Leeanne lead Pearlie’s red hair through the gate beyond our reach.
Then I cry. I’m about to get my period, but still, I cry then, about…everything…Merle, Pearlie, and change. Spencer’s parents dying. Spencer being hurt, leaving his life, his family. Frieda. My dear God, Frieda. Fred…miserable life, awful death. Cyro. Sue. Jason. Leeanne. Little Leeanne.
Mom...her shoulder and the pink strap and all her bad dates from the internet.
For all the dogs in the shelter who will never find homes.
And Leeanne’s uncles, that one who was homeless especially and the other guy going to find him and both of them too weird and according to Leeanne, too disgusting to attract wives.
And finally, I cry a little for me…just a little.
I am just like Ned, the worst…because I’m loved. Love makes me a big cry-baby.
I am so hungry…for Spencer. He drives far enough out from the city, no one around, just us and the Cadillac, and a full front seat, a barge in the big river of life, and I stop crying and take off everything, with his help, and he has his pants around his ankles and his shirt is somewhere in back, where I threw it, and my chest makes a sucking sound against his we are sweaty and worked up and this big car is rocking and the steam on the widows frosts the glass and walls us in, and he knows how to move me, and he slides me one way or another, and he says, “Oh, like that…Baby like that.” And I don’t say a word I just do what I’m told, what he wants, it’s all that matters because he takes care of me, like his guitar, hitting it right, right and good…and we make beautiful music together.
“If you don’t marry me I’ll die,” he says filling me, pump and pump.
“I will,” I tell him. “I already have.”
“Yeah? Tomorrow? You’ll do it tomorrow. I won’t ever let you go.”
“I won’t go.”
“Yeah? Yeah. You’re mine.”
“Yours. Forever.”
No one loves like us, no one could…like us. No one grinds like us, no one gets entwined like us, goes blind like us, designed like us, for us.
I don’t deny him a thing. I let him look, I let him touch. I’m made for this…for him. And I let him know he’s mine and I want to know what he wants, how he wants it…my hands…my lips…my hips and all the dips, all his…just take. And give…until we melt and seep away.
I want to tell you that I marry Spencer and it all goes away, the trouble with Mom, the trouble with Spencer’s family. But of course it doesn’t go away. There is always lemon in the sweet tea, right?
But it does move a little.
Mom…the vagina I came from, moved into the rental house two weeks before I married Spencer right around Thanksgiving. Remember my vision where we were both dressed like pilgrims? Prophetic. Not only did we dress like Chillingworth and Prynne for Halloween, but our anniversary would forevermore be marked by turkey and cranberry sauce.
So Mom goes on more dates and spends time occasionally playing cards with Cyro until she goes on a trip with some teacher friends over Christmas break, Costa Rica, and comes back enlightened.
For one thing she’s all about muumuus. She wants to simplify and takes all of her knick-knacks and most of her non-muumuu clothing she’s left behind in my house, to Good Will. She says she’s a grazer now, just passing through, traveling lightly. She won’t be staying in any one place for long, the world is her home and doors will open or something. And that philosophy takes her from the rental, across the street where she house sits for Leeanne for the rest of the school year. Who knows where she’ll go next?
And Cyro gets a new leg, and Cyro trains Dusty so well he walks him without a leash, walks him every night before bed, down to Leeanne’s, and home, God help us…home in the morning.
Jason goes to basic training in Missouri. Afghanistan is a real possibility.
And winter passes and Spencer wants to tear Frieda’s house down to welcome spring. But I don’t know, I really don’t. It is emotional for me and I become a giant hoarder, hoarding a whole house all of a sudden. This place, it’s an altar for me. I’ve done business here…with the devil, sure, but maybe with God. Frieda for sure. And Spencer…plenty of business with him. So there’s light here. But enough light to cover the sins of my father?
Spencer tells me to make a Sophie’s choice, my house or Frieda’s. Put like that...I pick my house. So he gets the permits, hires the crew to salvage and demolish, eventually making it a smooth dirt patch.
“It’s a grave,” I say.
“No,” he argues, “it’s a fresh start. Isn’t that what a grave is?”
“If heaven is real,” I say, sticking to the basics.
“It is,” he says, his arms coming around me.
And I know it is. God couldn’t have made Spencer…or Frieda or Merle just to end them in a box. I know there’s the stipulation about Jesus, but they have each been a savior to me.
Spencer is willing to remodel my house…his and mine now. But I don’t see the need. So we clean and repaint, but we don’t use beige. He likes Cyro’s yellow kitchen so well he does ours that way and I paint fruit and vegetables on the walls.
The dogs like the big yard because Spencer takes down the fence that divided the properties and cleans the fence row and plants grass. And the garden, it’s bigger this year, all across the back half of the lots we’ve joined. And at the market that June, I sell and he sings and we make a lot of money and the expansion at the shelter begins.
That fall Spencer registers to teach a couple of on-line classes and one for real at the community college. He’s wetting his feet, he says. And I visit my office, and Aaron. He and Christine are engaged. And he’s happy about it, like he can’t believe his luck.
And we host game night and ask the new family who bought Pearlie’s to come over. We ask Mom but she’s going to a play…with Cyro. I can’t believe it, I make her say it twice. So I go home and try not to feel…confused.
So the new neighbors come and we play Catch Phrase and I make Alfredo and Spencer plays his guitar a little and the guy has a banjo and they sound okay together.
And before Halloween we take Leeanne’s dogs to her in Florida because she’s going to spend another winter with Pearlie, too. I don’t recognize Pearlie at first, well either of them because they’ve gone blonde. And Leeanne, she’s easy in the sun, she’s a natural here.
It’s close to Thanksgiving when Spencer and I meet Brenda and Walter outside of Chicago for dinner. He’s right, they are charming, and right or wrong I can tell, they love him.
Brenda asks to be able to see the baby—we’re having one--when he comes in July, and Spencer says he’ll let her know, and in the meantime I promise her I’ll post lots of pictures.
And they tell us Davis suffered Spencer’s fate, only this time it wasn’t a cousin Carolyn cheated with, but Davis’s co-worker.
Spencer plays the world’s littlest violin right there at the table for Brenda and Walter. They stare at his hands seeming to believe he is actually producing music. I can’t believe how serious he is, how serious they all are. I want to tell him to put his ‘instrument’ away, but he’s so self-satisfied I can’t bring myself to ruin his moment.
We are married a year. Winter is losing its punch and I am getting bigger. So on Sunday we drive to the country and visit a piece of property there. Spencer thinks about buying it, living on a small farm, and all the things we could grow. Not right away…but we could buy it now.
And then later…possibly a mule. I say that, but he doesn’t think it’s so funny. He says he’d like a Kubota though, whatever that is.
I still walk the block, now more than ever. With two and sometimes three dogs, it’s not an option. And Spencer goes with me, unless he’s working.
It’s different though, so different.
All those years, I wasn’t looking for bad guys.
I was looking for love.
&
nbsp; Me and Mom…we fell for Spencer. And everything started to change.
