By Summer's End

by Pamela Morsi

  Sonny Leland was sitting in a corner booth at Proletariat Pizza. He was drinking a beer and conversing with three of his fraternity brothers. Topics for discussion ranged from the Iran-Contra scandal to plate tectonics, the Vols current football season to Professor Dietrich’s chemistry exam. And ultimately to the very attractive waitress who was serving them.

  “She looks like cheerleader material to me,” geeky Brian Posner said. Cheerleaders were far out of his league.

  “Not a chance,” Kerry Denning disagreed. “She’s not athletic enough. Those are jiggle boobs. Cheerleaders carry pom-poms for a reason. She’s way too curvy to pull it off.”

  “I wish she would pull it off,” Larry Gilbert said with a guffaw. “That would really make this Friday night worth it.”

  There was laughter all around. But Sonny’s was a mere chuckle. The bleached blonde with the big hair and broad smile had really captured his attention. He could hardly take his eyes off her.

  For that reason it was especially annoying when a couple of tables over the skinny brunette waitress with stooped shoulders and a tired expression began being harassed by a couple of half-drunk jerks.

  Sonny attempted to ignore their loud, unkind remarks and the blanched expression on the tired young woman’s face. He hoped the waitress would just walk away and the idiots would pick up some other game. But when she tried, one of them reached out and grabbed her. He tried to pull her onto his lap, all the time complaining about her “bony ass.”

  With a sigh, Sonny slid out of the seat.

  “Oh, geez, Sonny,” Larry complained. “Let it go, it’s not your fight.”

  “Save your breath,” Kerry said. “You know it’s wasted. Besides, what else do we have to do on a dateless Friday night?”

  Kerry slid out beside him as Sonny approached the table.

  “Cut it out guys,” he said. “Leave her alone.”

  The short fellow was so surprised at the intervention that he let the girl go and she immediately hurried away.

  His smart-mouth buddy across the table turned Sonny’s words into his own joke. “I think that’s why she’s all shriveled up like that,” he said. “I think guys have been leaving her alone for a lifetime.”

  The three drunken jerks snorted with laughter.

  Sonny grabbed the biggest one by the collar and hoisted him outside. Kerry, Brian and Larry marched the other two right behind them. It wasn’t much of a fight, really. Just a lot of pushing and cursing. The big guy threw a couple of punches at Sonny. He easily managed to deflect them and didn’t even bother to hit back. Within five minutes it was over and the jerks were headed on down the street, screaming epithets in their wake.

  The frat brothers congratulated each other with slaps on the back and they returned to their pizza. Both the skinny brunette and the luscious blonde were waiting.

  The brunette was starry-eyed, ecstatic.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “I don’t know what the deal was with them. One of those guys is in my World History class. He’s never even spoken to me before. I don’t know why he decided to tonight, and why he had to be so mean.”

  Sonny shrugged. “Beer and Friday night. It makes guys do strange things.”

  She nodded. “I’m Sheila,” she said, offering her hand. “I am so grateful for your help.”

  He shook it. “It was no big deal,” he assured her. “We needed the exercise, right guys?”

  There was a murmur of agreement behind him.

  Sonny let his gaze wander to the other waitress, the one who’d so captured his attention. He’d hoped to see the same adoration that shone in Sheila’s eyes. He was doomed to disappointment. She was very matter-of-fact.

  “The good news,” the blonde said. “The dickheads are gone. The bad news, they got out of here without paying the check.”

  Sonny immediately pulled out his wallet, though his conscience pricked him. He’d just cashed his work-study paycheck. That was his pocket money for the next month. His parents were comfortably middle-class. His dad was a physics professor. But college was expensive for anyone and Sonny took some pride in holding down his fifteen-hour-a-week lab assistant job. Paying for the jerks, plus his share of his own table, would put a real dent in his back pocket.

  Still he handed the money to the pretty girl and she smiled at him. Money couldn’t buy a smile like that.

  “So, Sheila,” he said to the brunette as the blonde carried his cash to the register. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  For an instant the brunette looked crestfallen, but she recovered quickly.

  “Her name’s Dawn,” she said. “Lots of guys try to hit on her. She flirts with them all, but when it comes to leaving here with somebody she’s very particular.”

  Sonny took that piece of information in and examined it carefully.

  “Do you think she might get particular about me?”

  Sheila shrugged. “She might.”

  In fact, she did.

  Sonny sent his frat brothers on to pub crawl the rest of the street. He hung around the restaurant until closing, hoping. He sat at the counter now. She mostly ignored him. He didn’t try to distract her or cheat her boss from any time. But he just stayed there, drinking, though he’d switched to limeade. And when she came to wipe down the counter in front of him, which seemed fairly often for a surface that was completely clean, he talked to her.

  “So what’s your sign?” Sonny asked.

  She looked at him like he was an idiot.

  “Wait, wait,” he said, laughing. “I take that question back. What’s your favorite flower?”

  That made her pause.

  “My favorite flower?”

  He nodded. “Everybody’s got a favorite flower.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Truth is, I don’t get a lot of flowers.”

  “Well, you might if you came up with a favorite.”

  “Okay,” she said. “How about yellow roses.”

  “Ahh,” Sonny said. “That’s a good choice. A very good choice. A truly thoughtless answer would have been red roses or white roses. Everybody likes those. And if you picked like orchids or hyacinth it would put you out of the mainstream too far, and I wouldn’t know what it meant. But yellow roses, that works.”

  She shook her head and walked away.

  The next time she was in speaking range he tried to get more information.

  “This question’s multiple choice,” he said.

  “Multiple choice?”

  “Hey, it’s what we’re both trained for, right?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Okay, which would you most prefer for a first date?” he said.

  “What first date?” she asked.

  “I’m not being presumptuous,” he assured her. “Just posing a question. First date A, a movie, not Full Metal Jacket, but maybe Moonstruck. B, picnicking, in the mountains. Maybe we could hike up to Sharp’s Ridge, a jug of wine and loaf of bread and thou. Or C, a fancy dress-up thing, maybe a Sweetheart Dance or a symphony gala.”

  She looked thoughtful and at the same time wary as she continued to wipe down the same spot in a circular motion in front of her.

  “I guess the picnic,” she said, finally. “But I like movies a lot, too.”

  “Whew, that’s a relief,” he teased. “You just saved me a tux rental.”

  She laughed. Sonny loved the way she laughed.

  At 1:00 a.m. he was standing by the back door when she left work.

  “Do you have your own car or may I walk you home?” he asked.

  She hesitated.

  “You don’t have to walk me.”

  “I know I don’t have to,” he told her. “I want to. I hope you’re not afraid of me. I know you don’t know me, but I can be trusted not to try to make some move on you or something. I really just want to walk with you, talk with you.”

  She continued to hesitate.

  “Really, it’s not far,” she said.

&n
bsp; “You live off campus?” he asked, surprised.

  “No, no,” she insisted quickly. “I live…I live in one of the dorms. One of the close ones.”

  Sonny smiled at her. “I’m a Residence Hall rowdy myself. I hope to move into the frat house next year, but I’m still caught in that ‘living on campus’ policy. What about you? Are you a freshman, too?”

  “Uh…maybe,” she said. “Maybe I’m a freshman or maybe not.”

  Sonny raised his eyebrows.

  “A woman of mystery,” he said. “You must know us guys can’t resist romantic intrigue.”

  She laughed.

  They walked up Cumberland. Knoxville’s busy student strip had grown mostly quiet, except for the occasional clanging of garbage cans and one lone intoxicated student singing “Born to Boogie” at the top of his lungs.

  As the two conversed, Sonny couldn’t decide if Dawn was outgoing or shy. While she talked and laughed and flirted with him outrageously, she revealed almost nothing about herself, her life. Even the most innocuous questions, what classes are you in? what’s your major? where’s your hometown? were deflected and unanswered. She wasn’t even being up front about where they were headed, but she led him across the footbridge and came to a stop in front of Strong Hall.

  “Is this where you live?”

  She shrugged. “It might be,” she said. “Or I might just be going in the front door and out the back.”

  Sonny laughed and shook his head. “Does this mean you’re not giving me your phone number?”

  “Guess so,” she answered.

  “So you’re just not interested, huh?” he said with a sigh. “I really gave it my best shot, I thought.”

  Surprisingly Dawn leaned forward and planted a friendly kiss on his cheek. “I like you,” she admitted. “But I’m sure you can understand my problem here. I see this heroic cool guy, he’s tall, has sandy hair, beautiful eyes, quirky grin, great pecs and I say to myself, ‘this guy is way too good-looking to be trusted with my fragile heart.’”

  “You can trust me,” he assured her.

  She shook her head. “I’ve heard that line before.”

  “So you’re not even going to give me a chance?”

  “Better not,” she said.

  Sonny shrugged, fatalistically. “You’re going to miss out on a great guy,” he warned her.

  She smiled at him and turned to go. Then inexplicably she hesitated.

  “I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” she said. “Meet me in front of the pizza place at say eleven, and we could do that picnic. If you don’t show up, well, it’s probably for the best.”

  Sonny did show up, with a backpack of bread and wine and cheese and an armful of yellow roses.

  REAL LIFE

  4

  “You’re snoring!” Sierra said, shaking me awake.

  For a moment I was kind of lost, then I realized that I was still in the front seat of the Dodge, except now it was morning. Despite my nervousness at Mom’s driving, exhaustion must have gotten to me. I woke to find Mom pulling off the interstate into some sort of anonymous downtown city.

  “I want to trade seats with Dakota,” she said to Mom.

  “Later,” she responded a little too abruptly.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Knoxville,” Mom answered quietly.

  A sort of warning flag went off in my brain somewhere. There was something about Knoxville… Sierra’s chattering kept me from pursuing it.

  “We drove through Nashville two hours ago,” she said. “I tried to get Mom to stop. I told her I could get a job in a music studio or something. Wouldn’t that be totally cool? I’d like meet all the musicians. Maybe I could be like the person who tells them what clothes are cool and what’s not.”

  Mom ignored Sierra. She was ignoring us both. She was tired, tired and quiet. But I knew for sure now that she had not been rushing aimlessly down the road. It was morning and she knew where she was going and nothing or no one was going to dissuade her from the direction she’d chosen.

  “Knoxville?” I asked her. “Didn’t you used to live in Knoxville?”

  “Don’t talk to me right now, I’m looking for an address.”

  I kept quiet and glanced back at Sierra. She looked curious, but she had none of the sense of dread and foreboding that I felt. Mom never retraced her steps. She never went back to places we’d been. And I was certain that she’d never intended to return to this place.

  We drove through the neat manicured streets. She pulled over finally in front of an ordinary-looking older home. It sat on a rise above the sidewalk. Three steps up to the long walkway, then four more to the front porch. The house was a mix of brick and wood, painted different shades of green, which made the shrubs and bushes around it blend together. It felt as if the house had been there forever, grown up from the soil as naturally as the grass and trees surrounding it.

  “Okay,” Mom said, taking a deep breath. “What time is it anyway?”

  “It’s almost nine,” I said.

  “Pretty early, I guess,” she responded. “Old people get up early.”

  “Who lives here?” Sierra asked from the back seat.

  “Some people I used to know,” Mom answered. She was deliberately vague. And she was nervous. Mom was never nervous. She checked her makeup in the rearview mirror. I looked at her face, as well. She looked tense and pale and frightened. I suddenly felt exactly the same.

  “Sierra, get me a T-shirt out of that green bag,” she said.

  My sister unzipped the suitcase and rummaged around for a minute.

  “That one’s fine.”

  Mom pulled the one she was wearing over her head and tossed it in the back seat. The replacement was pale pink and not nearly as pretty, but it did cover her chest, completely hiding the heart of roses tattoo.

  She added a smear of lipstick and then smiled at the mirror as if she needed practice.

  “You girls just stay here in the car,” she told us, then reaching into the back seat she squeezed Sierra’s hand. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck, Mom,” my sister responded.

  I rolled my eyes. “Good luck with what?”

  Mom didn’t answer. She got out of the car, walked around the front and headed up the steps toward the house.

  “Good luck with what?” I repeated the question to Sierra.

  She shrugged.

  I turned my attention back to Mom and the house. She was standing on the porch, waiting for somebody to answer the bell.

  “Who lives here?” I asked aloud.

  “Probably some club owner,” Sierra answered. “Mom’s first priority when we hit a new town is getting a job.”

  “But this is not a new town,” I told her. “This is where Mom lived as a teenager. This is where she met our dad. She always said she hated this town and all the people in it. She calls them Knox Villains.”

  Sierra glanced up from her magazine for the first time.

  “Oh yeah, right,” she said, finally as curious as me.

  Up on the porch, the front door had opened. Mom was talking to somebody. I leaned forward in my seat to try to see through the screen. It was impossible. It did seem like Mom was on the porch for a long time. Finally she was invited inside.

  “I wonder if this is one of the houses she lived in,” Sierra said. “It’s a pretty cool neighborhood.”

  I shook my head. “No, Mom never lived here,” I said with certainty.

  From everything I knew about her, Mom’s life in Tennessee had been a long string of bad breaks and tough times. For the first few years her alcoholic mother had passed her around from one unwilling relative to another. Great-aunts, cousins, distant whatevers twice removed. Anyone who could be pressed upon to take her had her dumped on the doorstep. At age ten she officially became a ward of Knox County. She lived in a series of foster homes and after some runaway incidents spent time in a detention center. From the stories she’d told, the places she mentioned, the kind of peo
ple she’d met, there was no question in my mind that she had never lived here. This place felt safe, secure. There was nothing like that in Mom’s history.

  “I’m ready to sit in the front,” Sierra told me. “You know the back seat makes me car sick.”

  I turned to look at my sister and rolled my eyes. “You can’t get car sick when we’re parked,” I told her, but opened my door anyway. It wasn’t worth fighting over.

  I stood by the car as Sierra gathered up her magazines and her makeup bag, her collection of Beanie Babies and her shoes. All had to be transferred to the front seat with her.

  A movement down the sidewalk caught my attention. Some old guy with a little dog was walking in our direction. I always liked dogs. I always wished I had one, but Mom could never see us taking care of an animal. We moved around too much and she “had enough stuff to be responsible for.”

  The dog had longish hair, a terrier of some sort, I guess. His coat was all silver with age, but he was happy, perky. His face gave the impression that he was smiling. Of course, maybe it was just that his mouth was open and his tongue hanging out. The leash he was attached to seemed less like a restriction than a costume. He was leading the man. And letting the man believe that he was in control.

  I smiled and as the dog got closer he hurried over to me, politely sniffing at my sandals.

  “Cute puppy,” I told the old guy.

  He glanced up, surprised. He’d been lost in thought.

  “He’s no puppy, young lady,” he told me. “This dog is almost fourteen.”

  I bent down to pet him.

  “Be careful not to scratch him,” the man said. “He’s got a skin condition that makes him very vulnerable to rashes and infections.”

  I nodded and was careful just to pat.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you,” I promised the dog. “What’s his name?”

  “Rocky,” the man replied.

  I nodded. “Like Balboa? He’s a fighter, huh?”

  “No, I think he was named for the mountains.”

  “Well, he’s really cute,” Sierra said, now standing beside me.

  “Thank you,” the man replied, but when he glanced at Sierra, his smile wavered.