by J. J. Murray
I have to call Mama. She’ll take care of me. She’ll make me some of her good homemade chicken soup and help me out of this.
But … I can’t.
I just … can’t.
Great. Now I’m crying.
Shit.
I can’t use the toilet paper for my tears. It’s probably the only toilet paper left in the house, and paper towels will be cruel to my booty.
Okay, Lana, now what? You can’t call your mama. You’re not a child anymore. You don’t want her pity, anyway. She’ll come over and run the show, ruining all of this solitude. She’ll come over and say, “I told you so.” I came here to be alone. I came here to be myself by myself. I can get through this. I can—
Uh-oh.
My friend should be here.
Why isn’t my friend here?
I know I’m due.
Oh shit.
But we used condoms every time!
Unless that last time with Karl a little juice got in there? No. That’s like a one-in-a-billion shot. No way!
I need to do a little math now.
Okay.
Relax.
Count the days.
It was the Saturday after the second time we played the D.C. Divas. Roger wanted to come over, but I told him my friend was in town. He understood. He was always so understanding. Damn, D.C. Diva bitches ran up the score on us. Seventy points! Twice! We were shut out 140–0 in two games.
I’m supposed to be adding days, not scores.
Okay.
All that was … five weeks ago, thirty-five days.
I’m seven days late.
Seven days.
I was with all three of them this past month.
Oh damn, I’ve just become an episode on Jerry Springer.
I sit up and immediately fall back. My head weighs too much.
Think, Lana, think!
What if you’re pregnant?
Who do you want your baby’s daddy to be?
Well, if it’s Karl, the baby will be muscular and tall with a dark ‘fro. Karl would want it to get pierced ears and a little henna tattoo. Yeah. It would be a cute baby with dark eyes. But Karl’s hairy. So it would be a cute hairy baby with dark eyes.
If it’s Juan Carlos’s baby, it will be shorter, and light-skinned with curly hair. I wonder if it would cry with an accent. Juan Carlos would want to get it baptized, feed it tamales, and teach it Spanish.
And if it’s Roger’s baby … I smile. I’ve already had this dream. It will be a milk chocolate baby with reddish brown hair and light eyes. And Roger will just … he’ll just want to hold it as he used to hold me.
I can’t believe I might be pregnant. They always used a condom, always. But just like everything else made in America, our technology has gone to shit. I wonder if there was a condom recall? How would a condom recall work exactly? “Bring your unopened and your used condoms to Kmart for a full refund”?
Damn, I must be sick … Condom recalls? Only sick people think of this sick shit.
I wake up a few hours later to the phone ringing.
Finally.
“Hello?” I say in my deep, sultry, sexy new voice.
“Miss Cole?”
It’s a child’s voice. A little boy’s voice. “Who is this?”
“It’s Bobby.”
I sit up—almost. I slump against the headboard. “Bobby, are you all right?”
“Yes. Are you?”
Hell no, I’m not. “Um, not really.”
“I heard you broke your ankle.”
“Yeah. Are you calling from school?”
“No. From my house.”
Where has the time gone?
“Does it hurt?”
“Some.” And I’m not lying. Compared to the pains in the rest of my body, my ankle actually feels pretty good.
“Do you have a cast?”
“Yes, and I want you to sign it.”
“When?”
“Oh, I have a nasty cold now, and I shouldn’t be around you, but I promise to be back at school early next week, maybe Monday.”
“Okay. I hope to see you Monday. Bye.”
“Bye, Bobby.”
And then I laugh. It’s not a giggle, it’s not a snort, and it’s not even a snicker. I just … laugh and look up at the ceiling. “He’s a little boy, God, not one of my men,” I say. “That doesn’t count.”
But the more I think about it, the more I know God has answered my prayers. Hearing that little boy’s voice is the wake-up call I need, so I do the best I can to get well, mainly by sleeping through the rest of the week and the weekend. Eventually, Italian dressing replaces the bleu cheese dressing in my nose, my fever breaks, I bathe … I even squirt some baby powder down into the cast to make it smell less funky.
And today—Monday—though I’m sweating rivers pushing Bobby around in his wheelchair, me in a clumping walking cast, at least I’m alive. I let Bobby sign my cast, and I’ll bet that was the first time he’s had a woman’s leg in his lap. I guess he is the only man in my life now. Anyone watching us today would see both of us as cripples, but they’d be wrong.
I’m the only cripple in this tandem.
At least … at least I’m alive.
Thanks for … something … God.
You’re not such a jerk after all.
Chapter 23
My friend showed up a full week later. I’m sure it was all the stress of losing all my friends with benefits, having a broken ankle, and getting the chest cold from hell. Then I let the last part of the school year pass me by.
I was just … floating through life.
No, that’s not right. I had a damn cast on my leg. I was floating through life loudly, only I didn’t hear a sound.
So now, it’s the middle of June, school’s out, I’m still alone, no one has called—not even Mama, who had to have gotten that Aetna statement—and God and I aren’t talking anymore.
No more pushing Bobby around. He’ll spend the summer inside trying to stay healthy, probably playing chess with Sunny as much as he can.
No more football practice or football games. I couldn’t bring myself to even go to any of the remaining games, not that it would have mattered. We still lost, and no one from the team even called to check up on me. I guess they just figured I was done.
No more Sundays with Izzie and her uncooked chicken, edible lotion, and perverted questions. I haven’t really missed her presence at all, but it hurts that she hasn’t even called. I guess I’m not worthy of her attention now that my fantasy life has ended.
No more sexy Mexicans playing air guitar on my bed. My car needs work. My body needs work. I stare at my cell phone and almost call him at work several times a day.
No more aerobic sex with a tattooed African god. I fight the urge to page him, and I have six of the seven digits of his number lighted up on my phone right now. I can’t push that seventh digit.
No more night football in the mud with Roger. I have the most phone numbers for Roger, but I can’t even look at them. I really should delete all their numbers, but I just can’t.
And Mama? Mama hasn’t called me after that day I told her I hated her liver and onions.
And, actually, I could use a whole heaping plate of liver and onions right about now. I haven’t been eating. Well, it’s sort of hard to eat when you haven’t been cooking, and it’s hard to cook when you haven’t been shopping, and it’s hard to shop when you don’t want to get out of bed. It’s also hard to get out of bed when you have nothing clean to wear. Mr. Wilson brought over a brand-new washer and dryer, and set them up in the storage room, but I haven’t used them yet.
I guess I’ve pretty much put my ass on lockdown at my own damn house.
Oh, I go outside when it’s not too hot. I cut the grass even when it doesn’t need cutting, taking special care not to run over any of Jenny’s flowers. I have put some mileage on that tractor, expanding the lawn around the cottage by at least three or four acres. At least the bugs ar
en’t as bad. After Mr. Wilson brought me a truckload of wood stumps, I split it all with an ax, even though I had nowhere to stack it and I was still in the cast. I spent one morning finding the concrete steps to the dock, which over the years had moved some, now looking more like hopscotch squares than steps. I sometimes just take walks around my property, and one day I discovered an old baseball field with its own chicken-wire backstop, sturdy trees growing up at what used to be home plate. I’ll bet the Wilson boys had a high time playing there.
I almost dread when the sun goes down. I’d rather stay outside, since the memories inside the dollhouse are too strong. I hear this “soundtrack” running through my head filled with male voices and the songs we used to listen to, only it skips around like an old eight-track on crack. “Stairway to Heaven” changes abruptly to “Mannish Boy” and skips to “Tender Lover” before getting drowned out by a mean guitar riff, which switches to “Reasons” before morphing into some Bessie Smith blues with a disco backbeat. Just as I start to hum or sing along, the song changes. And I don’t dare play “our” CD collection. I look at them sometimes and almost put them in the boom box. I guess that music has just gone out of my life. I don’t even listen to the radio in the car anymore.
And whenever I close my eyes, I see this “movie” starring three handsome men and me. It’s not always erotic, but when it is, my skin sweats something terrible. I see one of them making love to me as if I’m floating around in the room watching. I watch him go in and out of me, and see the ecstasy on my face, watch my hands grabbing at him, clawing at him, watch my legs wrapped around his back pulling him deeper inside of me. But whenever I want to join in the action instead of watching, the man vanishes, leaving two of me unfulfilled in the room, one on the bed, the other just floating around. And just when I think that I’ve recaptured a gesture, sigh, moment, or touch with one man, the scene shifts to another man … or to me alone, trying to grasp at my thoughts.
One night, after I ate way too much chocolate ice cream, I dreamed all three were, um, getting busy with me, and trust me, it was intense. I suppose it was Izzie’s fantasy plus one. While Karl and Juan Carlos worked on me, I was kissing and talking to Roger. But no matter how much I try to keep these movie dreams going, they always end with me alone and looking out a window. And when I wake up, all I have are some sweaty sheets and the urge to fall asleep again to go back to the dream, but I can never fall asleep because I’m too excited.
And all this is just plain weird. When I was with them, I rarely had any erotic dreams—just that nightmare of me walking naked through a hotel looking for them. Why is it I dream of them after they’re gone? What is my subconscious trying to tell me now?
To keep myself sane, I find myself talking to Jenny, which isn’t exactly a sane thing to do. Sane people don’t usually talk to ghosts, but she’s pretty agreeable as ghosts go. We “talk” mostly about her house and her huge “garden” outside, and I imagine myself sitting where she sat doing her needlepoint. I doubt I will ever have the necessary patience—or skill—to do needlepoint. I’ve found Jenny’s to be, well, priceless, even if they’re not professional looking. I even found a wild-flower pressed inside a Wilson family Bible. I flipped through the Bible and found lots of highlighted passages in Song of Solomon—which is really hot stuff. I’m beginning to think that Mr. Wilson and Jenny had a hot thing going on in this dollhouse.
And, of course, I’m sad about that, and the only thing that seems to break through my sadness is a thunderstorm. I sit on my bed looking out over the pond as the lightning flashes, counting to myself, “One stupid Lana, two stupid Lana, three stupid Lana …” until rolls and echoes of thunder shake the house and long fingers of lightning plunge toward the pond.
Speaking of plunging, I need to plunge the tub. The water hasn’t drained right since Roger and I had our bath, oh, and Karl and I had our shower—
But I’m not thinking about any of that.
Or them.
So now, I’m Lonely Lana, ten crusty toes in the pond, one foot shriveled and a lighter color than the other because of the cast (which I cut off myself), mosquito bites even on my ass. I’m turning blacker and blacker in the sun, not eating, not sleeping, and not caring. The grass needs cutting again, more wood needs splitting, the laundry needs doing, my hair needs tending, and my stuff—
Nah. I’m not going there. My stuff needs a rest. Maybe I’ll have another movie dream tonight. Maybe Roger will make love to me so I can talk to Karl or Juan Carlos.
I want to call Mama and invite her over for a visit, but I just can’t. I’ve been here so long without her help, and I don’t want her (or anyone, for that matter) to think I’m weak. They say that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
I ought to be able to lift Jenny’s dollhouse pretty soon, maybe even with one arm.
Damn. Another mosquito bite. I can’t have much blood left, y’all. Go suck on a bullfrog or something. Go get yourselves some green blood.
I see a huge yellow truck rolling down the dirt road. I watch it park next to my Rabbit. Who’s this?
Mr. Wilson gets out.
He sees me and comes down to the dock.
“Hey,” I say.
Wow.
This is the first time I’ve spoken to anyone since … I can’t remember when. Damn. The last time I spoke to anyone was to say goodbye to Bobby on the last day of school.
“Just came to show Jenny my new truck,” Mr. Wilson says.
No wonder the truck is so yellow.
He sits next to me. “She also said I needed to do some fishin’. You been fishin’ yet?”
Define “fishing.” I hooked a few men, and they all got away, even in my dreams. “No.”
“Want to go?”
“I don’t know.” I should go fishing. I mean, I have nothing else to do … and no one else to do. “Sure.”
“I’ll be back presently with the canoe.”
And then … we fish. I learn the finer points of worm tying and bait casting from Mr. Wilson, who has me throwing my line up into the reeds while we float in the middle of the pond in the canoe.
“Up in those reeds is where the fish are, as hot as it is,” he whispers.
Fishing is a quiet sport.
Oh, I get tangled up and snarled and hooked and every other kind of thing, so much so that Mr. Wilson can barely keep his line in the water. He has to keep reeling in his line to rescue me.
“You aren’t doing much fishing, Mr. Wilson,” I say, casting toward a collection of cattails.
He doesn’t speak for a moment. “Maybe I was just supposed to be your guide today. I never did listen to Jenny all the way through. She whispers ‘Go fishin’, old man’ to me, and I go.”
Creepy.
For the most part, nothing happens. I might make this nothing part of the nothing I usually do all day. It’s relaxing in a sweaty, eye-squinting kind of way. It does give me time to philosophize, ponder, and think. It also gives me time to sweat buckets in a metal canoe roasting the soles of my feet. There’s obviously nothing here but mosquitoes, and I doubt they’d fit on the hook. The fish are taking naps or something. Maybe I’ve infected them with my laziness.
Just then, a bass shoots out from reeds like a shark to take my worm and—bam!
“Keep the rod tip up now,” Mr. Wilson says calmly.
How can he be so calm? I’ve just hooked Moby Dick or something! I fight the hell out of that fish, and the fish fights the hell back, dipping my pole into the water several times and pulling the canoe in circles while I scream and shout.
“Easy … easy,” Mr. Wilson keeps saying, and it’s easy for him to say! My forearms are about to burst off my bones!
I drag the fish to the side of the boat. “Don’t you have a net or something?”
Mr. Wilson reaches into the water … and pulls up my fish by its mouth. “Don’t need one.” He holds the fish lengthwise. “Nice bass. Pregnant, too.”
Moby Dick is really Moby Jane?
>
“You might want to put her back.”
After what I’ve been through, that is so true—and weird—on so many levels. “Yeah.” Damn, I have goose bumps on a scorching hot day.
He removes the hook carefully and “swims” the fish back and forth in the water before releasing her to the deep. “Hard to catch, easy to put back.”
Unlike men, whom I’ve found are easy to catch and hard to put back.
“You done?” he asks.
I smile.
I’m smiling.
I haven’t smiled in …
I’m smiling.
Damn. Did I brush my teeth this morning?
“No,” I say, “I’m just getting started.” I attach another slimy worm to my hook, rigging it Texas-style.
Mr. Wilson nods. “Get to it, then.”
I am a casting fool after that. I have been bitten by the thrill of the hunt. I can taste another catch in my mouth. I can almost see the bass lying in the reeds, their orange eyes looking up at my flopping, flying worm, their salivary glands (if they even have any) dripping and—
A whole bunch more nothing happens for about an hour. All I catch are some rays, and I lose another pound of sweat into the bottom of the canoe.
“It’s getting pretty hot,” I say.
“Nah, this ain’t hot,” he says, paddling us back to the dock. “It ain’t August yet. If we don’t get more rain, this pond is liable to dry up again.”
Oh no! Not the pond I named “Mine”! “Has it happened before?”
“Sure. Plenty of times.” He grabs the side of the dock, holding the canoe steady while I get out. “And trust me, you don’t want to be downwind of this pond when it’s almost empty.”
I hear before I see another vehicle.
“You expecting company?” Mr. Wilson asks.
“No, sir,” I say, and I shield the sun from my eyes.
Mama? Is that Mama’s car.
I stand.
It’s Mama.
I have never been so glad to see her.
Chapter 24
