Wide Blue Yonder

by Jean Thompson

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon and nobody was ordering tacos or nachos or watery sodas. Moron, which was actually the nickname he preferred, was scraping down the grill and kicking up grease smells. Bonnie was on the phone with her loser boyfriend for one more of their extended love chats. The fly circled fatly around the room, as if it was bored too, and landed on one of the Star Wars Phantom Menace posters. She hated Phantom Menace. She was never even going to see it. Outside the glass and concrete-made-to-look-like-stucco box, a steady stream of traffic went nowhere. She was seventeen, with nowhere to go.

  Bonnie hung up the pay phone in the vestibule and came back inside, looking dreamy and smug, the way she always did at such times. “How’s Curt?” Josie asked for politeness’ sake.

  “He’s great. We’re gonna rent a garage for him to work on the Camaro—he decided on the color. Candy-Apple Red.”

  “That sounds awesome.” Bonnie never seemed to realize when Josie was making fun of her, and in truth Josie lost track of things herself. Because even though Bonnie had buck-teeth and an ass like an upholstered chair and Curt was prime oaf material, the two of them were happy, pathetic but happy. Josie thought there was something stingy and separate about herself that would keep her from being happy in any of the obvious ways.

  Bonnie ambled over to the heat lamps and checked her lipstick in the metal reflection. Moron was belting out some hip hop song about death threats and the Internet, wa boom, wa boom, wa boom. Josie would get off work in two hours, unless while she wasn’t paying attention she’d already died and gone to hell. Taco Hell.

  Bonnie poured herself an iced tea and wedged one hip against the counter. “Stick a fork in it.”

  “Yup.”

  “At least the Prince of Darkness left early.” This was the manager. Even the jokes were nothing new. Bonnie said, “So …” as a kind of invitation.

  “We’re still broken up and it’s going to stay that way.” Josie shoved a stack of napkins in the dispenser so that it was impossible to draw out less than ten or fifteen at a time.

  “Who’re you going out with now?’

  “Nobody.”

  Bonnie tilted her head but didn’t get to say anything, because right then the door opened and two little kids with their hands full of grubby change came in. So Josie didn’t have to hear one more time how hot Jeff was and other of Bonnie’s opinions. She didn’t hang out with kids like Bonnie and Moron at school, they weren’t really her friends. They were Taco pals, that was all. Bonnie and Moron and their crowd were the lumpen, low-expectations kids, while Josie and her friends were crammed full of expectations: SAT scores and college, the school newspaper, plays, sports, things that looked good next to your picture in the yearbook or on those college applications, what a bunch of nasty little tail-chasing careerists they all were.

  Josie went back through the kitchen, pretending they needed more sauce packets, and sneaked into the walk-in refrigerator. She sat down on a cardboard box of lettuce and started counting, one two three, up to the hundred or so that she figured she could get away with before she had to get back. A hundred wasn’t enough time to even start thinking about all the fucked-up things she had to deal with: Jeff, how many weeks months years she’d feel bad about him, ten, eleven, twelve, her scummy job, which took her all the way up to forty, fifty, her mother, sixty, her father, seventy, her father’s nincompoop wife, eighty, ninety, the rest of her life, a big fat zero. She was only a dumb kid in a dumb town and there was nothing special about her even though she pretended there was. She was stuck here with everybody else in the everyday everything. One hundred. Josie stood up and headed back to the front counter for another round of fast food fun.

  Half an hour before quitting time, the sky framed in the glass windows was piling up clouds like a stack of dirty mattresses. Moron and Josie pushed the door open and tried to smell rain in the air. Moron was bummed because he had his motorcycle. “Shit. Figures. The one day this week I bring it.” Moron’s real name was Jason. He had slick, dyed black hair and subscribed to body-building magazines and he was supposed to graduate this year but hadn’t wanted people getting the wrong idea about him.

  “Maybe it’ll hold off,” said Josie. “I’ll find out.” She put a quarter in the pay phone and dialed. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Local Forecast.”

  She pictured him sitting on the sloping corner of his old couch, which was exactly the color of canned tomato soup, his knees pointed at the television. “Hey, Uncle Harvey, it’s Josie. Can you tell me when it’s gonna start raining?”

  “At three forty-five P.M. Doppler radar indicated a line of strong storms extending from Beardstown to Carlinville, moving northeast at thirty miles an hour. Tornado watch is in effect for Tazewell, Mason, Sangamon, Menard, and Logan Counties until seven P.M.”

  “That sounds pretty heavy.” Josie did some quick wind speed and distance calculations. They could just make it, she figured. “How are you, are you excited? Make sure you go down in the basement if it gets really bad.”

  “Persons in the watch area can expect wind gusts up to fifty miles an hour, torrential rains, damaging lightning, and possible hail. Conditions are favorable for tornado formation. Be prepared to seek shelter.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Thanks, Uncle Harve. I gotta run. Be careful, OK?”

  She hung up and Moron asked, “Does your uncle work for a TV station or something?”

  “He’s really my great-uncle,” said Josie, not wanting to get into a discussion of Harvey just then. “Come on, we’ve got to be ready to punch out the second that clock turns.”

  She drove home through streets that were alive with wind: stray bits of trash skittering across the pavement, flags snapping, trees trying to turn themselves inside out. The western sky was dark and swollen but the rain hadn’t come by the time she pulled into her garage. Her mother wasn’t back yet and the house was dark. She left it that way, liking the feeling of gloom as she walked through the downstairs. In the kitchen the answering-machine light was blinking, probably her mother, so she ignored it. Five o’clock in the afternoon and there was that eerie nonlight you imagined a total eclipse would be like. Thunder rolled out of the sky’s open throat.

  Josie rummaged in the refrigerator. The beam of light made the room even darker. More thunder. She closed the refrigerator, fished a joint out of her backpack, and stepped out the kitchen door to watch the show.

  The first brittle lightning showed above the treeline. It was going to be a great, ripping storm. She felt almost happy standing there, she felt careless and dramatic, like someone in a movie. The first rain spattered down, a few unserious drops.

  “Hey, jose.”

  She yelped. His face was a pale circle, floating toward her from the back of the yard like a balloon. “Jesus Christ,” she spat, furious at being so scared. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s such a stupid thing to say.” She crossed her arms. The lightning was really starting to rock. He stopped a few yards away from her and just stood there, looking pathetic. “Well, you better go now.”

  “I walked.”

  “One more bright idea.”

  He didn’t say anything. “You are such a pussy,” she told him. He’d set her up. Totally. She stared at the joint she wouldn’t get to smoke now. The rain started in so hard and fast that she had to raise her voice. “Hurry up, get inside.”

  He was happy about this, he was getting his way, but he had to act like it was no big deal, like he was so cool that he just naturally slouched his way out of a thunderstorm. While he was still in the yard there was a giant BOOM and the sky split open with white electricity and he jumped for the door.

  Josie stepped aside to let him enter, then she turned on the light, not wanting to sit in the dark with him. He shook himself like a dog. “Woo-ee!” he said, instantly cheerful.

  “My mom’s on her way home.”

  “Uh-huh.” He tried to
smooth his hair with his hands, then gave up and went into the bathroom off the pantry for a towel. She hated how he knew where everything in her house was. She hated his stupid blond good looks that let him get away with things. He was exactly like some big dumb collie that once you petted it, forgot all about everything it had done wrong.

  When he came back in she was sitting at the breakfast table watching the rain bounce off the concrete patio. It was doing that, bouncing. You could see the drops land, then go straight back up. Amazing. Jeff moved behind her chair and pretended to be watching also. She could see him reflected in the lighted window. He was looking down at her, his mouth held shallowly open. Josie bumped her chair away from him. “What?” he said.

  “Go sit down, OK?”

  “Jeez. Attitude.” But he flopped into a chair across from her. The wind was banging thunder around like the sky was a kitchen full of pots. It was a wicked storm. She wouldn’t be surprised if there was a tornado out there with her name on it.

  He said, “Come on. Talk to me.”

  “We already did that.”

  “I mean ordinary, what’s-new talk, not your usual tragic bullshit.”

  “Go to hell, Jeff.”

  “You know what your problem is? You don’t know what you really want. You get PMS or something and all of a sudden you’re too good for me or anybody else. What’d I do that was so terrible anyway?”

  “You’re a collie.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not PMS. It doesn’t have to make sense to you.”

  “Good, because it doesn’t.”

  “Sorry.” And she was. She used to be so crazy about him. He was her boyfriend, that was how you were supposed to feel. You were supposed to keep feeling that way but she didn’t, it had worn off. The lightning seemed to be coming from all directions. She didn’t believe this. It was like Wuthering Heights or something. Except that he wasn’t Heathcliff and she wasn’t Catherine. They weren’t souls bound together throughout eternity. Maybe nobody was these days. There was only the everyday everything, people grubbing for money or tedious fun, and maybe he was right and she wasn’t too good for anything.

  “I just miss you, OK? So shoot me.” He reached across the table and stroked the inside of her arm. “You ever wonder what it’s like to do it in a big storm? Huh?”

  “No,” she said, both to his hand and his question. But her skin was doing a treacherous, creepy sort of dance, and beneath her skin she was going crazy.

  “Just for fun. It wouldn’t have to mean anything.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “We can do it the way you like it.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Come on.” He was behind her again, his hands exploring, pinching slyly.

  “What about my mom?”

  “No offense, but I don’t want to do it with your mom.”

  She laughed and the laughing turned everything loose inside of her. Josie grabbed his hand and they scrambled into the front room, where they figured they could see if the car was coming. For some reason it was lighter in here. When she skinned off her shorts and underpants her bare self looked exceptionally naked, moon-colored. He kept his clothes mostly on, in case they had to stop. The head of his penis kept getting tangled up in cloth and butting loose. A tornado was probably going to rip through the house and carry the two of them, still stuck together, up into the air and deposit them somewhere very public. He smelled like the towel he’d used to dry his hair, a laundry smell. The thunder passed overhead, taking its quarrel eastward. She kept slipping off the edge of the couch. It kept not fitting in right. That was OK, it was just for fun. It wasn’t really the way she liked it. Oh well.

  He was so pleased with himself afterward. Good boy. She couldn’t really blame him. It was his nature to want what he wanted. To know what he wanted. “Hurry up,” she told him. “You really have to go. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  He would have rather hung around and stayed for dinner and acted like everything was back to normal, but she was going to win this one. If they stayed together for the next fifty years, she knew exactly how everything between them would play out. She thought about writing a note for her mother but decided she felt too mean. When they were getting in the car he went to touch her hair, missed, and swiped her across the shoulders instead. When she turned to look at him he gave her a loose smile that was like an apology for itself.

  “You’re so pretty.”

  He wasn’t all bad. Not even mostly. He was just himself. She made him crouch down as they pulled out of the garage. Good thing, because wouldn’t you know it, just as she was shifting out of reverse, her mother’s car appeared, headlights bearing down on her like a charging hippopotamus.

  “Shit. Stay down.” At least it was still raining hard and her windows were fogged. She opened hers just enough to wave. Her mother’s face, already angry, leaned out of the car, her mouth moving. She was saying why didn’t you answer the phone, fold the laundry, start dinner, where do you think you’re going? Josie waved and sped off.

  Jeff sat back up. “Why’ve I got to hide?”

  “Because she doesn’t need to know my business.” She slid in the Paula Cole CD and turned the music up all the way. By the time they reached his house she couldn’t stand it one more minute, wanting him gone.

  “So, I guess I’ll see you later.” He waited, half-out of the car.

  “I don’t know, Jeff.” The rain had turned down one more notch, a gray screen with the evening light filtering in behind it. It was tired, just like she was.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know.” Everything she did was a mistake.

  His face closed down. “Fine. Be weird.” He slammed the door behind him. God she was the most fucked-up mess.

  She didn’t want to go home just yet to do the Mom thing, so she kept driving through the rain-softened streets. There was a big tree limb lying on somebody’s lawn. Josie wondered what kind of tree it was. Trees were one of the million things she knew absolutely nothing about. The lawns themselves were that luminous, nearly radioactive green that you sometimes got with storm light. The gutters were loud with running water. But the storm itself was over. Everything was over except for her, Zero the Great, who would keep staggering on until she collapsed from total idiocy.

  You could still drive through the cemetery even when all the historical stuff was closed. Josie figured the weather would have chased all the tourists off and she’d stand a good chance of having Abe all to herself.

  It was a little embarrassing; she didn’t tell people about her Abe fixation. After all, growing up in Springfield meant you pretty much had Abe for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was like this was Rome and he was the pope. Among Josie’s friends, who had been taken on tours of the Lincoln Home and the Old State Capitol every year from first grade on, who had been made to memorize “O Captain! My Captain” and had watched unlikely looking tall men growing chin whiskers for pageants, it was obligatory to affect a certain casual boredom regarding Abe. She understood all that. She wasn’t sure why it worked differently on her. It was just one more thing about her that was weird.

  Everybody knew about Young Abe, poling his flatboat up and down the wide rivers, way before he even thought about being famous. Then there was Lawyer Abe, riding a horse miles and miles of muddy country road on the Illinois circuit, winning cases with his folksy wit. Candidate Abe, speechifying from a flag-draped platform. Then President Abe, carrying the terrible weight of the war and the entire wounded country. You saw it in every line of his face. It broke her heart. You couldn’t believe you could feel that way about history, something in a book, but it zinged her every time.

  Then there was Dead Abe, who she was on her way to visit. Josie turned off of Walnut into Oak Ridge Cemetery. The fine screen of rain was still falling and the road was edged with shallow puddles. The big oak, she knew it was an oak, thank you very much, had shed patches of leaves like handfuls of torn-out hai
r. She drove past the monuments for Vietnam and Korea. There was one other car in the parking lot, a family with two little kids who looked like they’d waited out the storm here. They were just now getting out of the car and wandering around, trying to salvage some of their Historic Springfield day. Josie ignored them and parked at the farther end. She waited until they gave up and drove off. Then she got out and hiked over to the statue.

  This was an enormous, oversize bronze bust of Abe, emerging from a rough-edged granite boulder. For years people had climbed up to rub his nose for luck, polishing it shiny. The rest of him was all dark and gaunt. Poor man. He’d never been good-looking. They’d done the best they could with the portrait but it was still a pretty gnarly face, all jawbone and sunken cheeks. The shiny nose was a further indignity that he bore with patience and good humor. If Abe was still around, you could bet he’d have something wry to say about it. Like the time visitors came to the house to see Mary and he told them she’d be downstairs as soon as she got her trotting harness on. Mary said Oh Mr. Lincoln, and got that look on her face.

  Josie retrieved the joint she’d held on to all this time and fired it up. “I know,” she said. “One more stupid idea.”

  Abe just stared ahead with his usual bronze forebearance. He understood everything. He’d seen a cruel cruel war and men in numbers no one had imagined until then, dying either very fast or very slow. Brother against brother. Josie didn’t have a brother but she thought she knew something about a house divided against itself.