Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

  “Will they have fire trucks and tractors?” David asked, bouncing on his tiptoes to get a better view, and I could tell he was remembering the tantalizing description of the opening day parade Winston had given him. We were standing on the side of the road, watching the carnival crew’s progress, with King Rex and Weeple only a few paces away. They had joined us on our walk to the post office, and I could only imagine what a strange spectacle our foursome would have made if the dinosaurs hadn’t been invisible to everyone else.

  “Yep, I’m sure of it,” I said. From my memory, the parade was about 90% slow-moving farm equipment and local fire trucks. It certainly wasn’t the glamorous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

  A bright red, many-legged ride, which had been compressed like an accordion was being cranked up to its full height, where it crouched like a giant spider. Two men unceremoniously unloaded the cars of a kiddie rollercoaster; the first car had a head like a Chinese lion. A truck hauled in what appeared to be a HOT WISCONSIN CHEESE stand. I didn’t see the Ferris wheel or Winston’s favorite, the funnel cake booth, yet.

  I had always been amazed by the transitory nature of carnivals. The setting up of rides that looked too rickety to fling people into the sky and reliably return them to earth. How a camp of shabby tents and dull, creaky metal during the day could become something so sparkling and otherworldly at night. And then the next day be gone—the only signs of its existence litter and deep ruts in the ground. Carnivals were pure magic. Looking down at David’s enthralled face, I caught a glimmer of his excitement. I felt almost like the little girl who’d spent nights at the carnival with Jamie and Leah Nola riding the Ferris wheel.

  “You know, the parade and the carnival are this weekend,” I said, as we walked past St. Monica’s on our way home. “Would you like to go?”

  David’s eyes lit up like I’d just handed him a bag of Halloween candy and told him to have at it. “Yes,” he whispered, gripping my arm and tugging it so hard it felt like it might come out of its socket. “Yes yes yes yes yes.”

  So the morning of the parade, which arrived with the worst possible combination of parade weather—darkly overcast, threatening rain, the atmosphere as hot and thick as a bowl of clam chowder—all four of us humans walked to Main Street to watch. Winston had driven down early with three adult-sized chairs, one kid-sized chair, and an old blanket to stake out a prime parade-watching spot, and Duffy had packed a cooler filled with bottles of water, cans of lemonade, and wedges of fresh cut watermelon in baggies. King Rex and Weeple didn’t accompany us to the parade. Maybe, for the moment, tractors and fire trucks trumped dinosaurs. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the reprieve, even though I was so accustomed to David’s sidekicks that I kept doing a double take whenever I noticed they weren’t with us.

  The parade trickled by: fire trucks from nine different townships and villages; the William Payne High School marching band, miserable in their polyester-blend uniforms; a local chapter of Vietnam veterans; clowns on bikes and stilts; and then tractors, tractors, and more tractors. Though it had always held a place in my heart as the most pathetic parade I’d ever seen, the parade had the opposite effect on my son, who was beside himself with joy. And it wasn’t just the Tootsie rolls and suckers that every group who passed by tossed at him, it was his unbridled enthusiasm over all the big machines crawling down the street. The fire trucks that flashed their lights and turned on their sirens and the tractors with wheels that looked better suited to monster trucks. He was Winston’s great-grandson, after all. When he wasn’t wiggling with glee on the curb, he was sitting on Duffy’s lap, dripping watermelon all over (which he had refused to eat at first, until she’d convinced him it was nature’s candy—just as sugary and sweet), or badgering Winston with questions about the farm machinery.

  Maybe I was making a good decision by settling down in the Salsburg area after all. David could grow up with his great-grandparents in his life. He could live somewhere governed by tradition, routine, and small town values—befriending kids in kindergarten he would also learn alongside in high school, attending the Firemen’s Picnic and parade every summer, ice skating and playing hockey on the frozen river every winter. It would be the opposite of the nomadic existence I’d led as a girl—four different elementary schools, two different middle schools, three different high schools, six apartments, twenty-plus of my mom’s loser boyfriends, and except for our occasional Gone with the Wind marathons, not a single family tradition to look forward to every year.

  A blue convertible drove by with a swan-necked teenager in a white dress riding atop the back. The sign attached to the driver’s side door read: Fairest of the Fair, Tricia Lee Haynes, and I recognized something in her haughty expression. Her expression said I’m better than all of you, and one day I’m going to get out of this sad little town and never look back. And I remembered harboring that sentiment myself, once upon a time, and suddenly it depressed me that I was only a few years older than she was and had already returned, defeated.

  Was I just resigning myself, then? I knew I was idealizing Salsburg and its “small town values” a tad and conveniently forgetting about my teenage boredom and disdain for the area, but I’d been so painfully naïve then, sneering at anything that seemed familiar or ordinary. Taking for granted how good predictability could feel. Just because something felt like home didn’t mean that I needed to run from it. That was a lesson I was learning from my grandparents.

  David wrapped his boiling little body around my already hot, sweaty legs, and I looked up to see the horse-poop scoopers and street sweepers trailing past us. At least the rain had held off for the parade.

  Winston folded his chair. “If you all don’t mind, I’m going to go say hello to Joe Larson. He was the one driving the Massey-Harris tractor. I’d be happy to take David along with me. Maybe Joe will let him climb up on the seat.”

  I didn’t think David heard much of this exchange except for the word “tractor,” and that alone would have prompted him to follow Winston to the ends of the earth. It was hard to know who was more smitten with my constantly thoughtful, constantly patient grandfather right then—me or David.

  “You can leave the cooler and chairs here, and I’ll come get them once the traffic’s died down and the street opens up again,” Winston said.

  “Nonsense,” Duffy replied. “Anna and I can carry them home. We’re not delicate flowers, you know. Besides, it looks like rain.” She dumped the remaining ice out of the cooler and slung a canvas chair over each shoulder.

  I packed up the other two and folded the blanket into the smallest square I could. “David, you need to stay by Grandpa Winston’s side at all times, okay?” He nodded impatiently, but I gratefully noticed Winston scoop him up onto his shoulders as they disappeared into the exodus of onlookers. Duffy and I headed in the other direction where slow-moving families with strollers and wheelchairs and high school band members crowded the street.

  “So you and Edna are speaking again?” I asked, as we shuffled along, Duffy saying hi to practically every second person we bumped into. I felt a little guilty that “The Play Date Assault,” as Edna had come to sensationalize it, had become a point of contention between the two longtime friends.

  “We are, but, oh, that woman can be so ridiculous! When her precious Joy bit Kimberly when they were little, I didn’t raise such a stink, and she even broke the skin! If I remember correctly, your poor mother had to get a tetanus shot.”

  I hadn’t realized my mother was close in age to Edna’s daughter; it was hard to believe that Joy had only a four-year-old while my mom had a twenty-two-year-old and was already a grandma. Yikes.

  “Why, look over there!” Duffy, whose eagle eyes could spot a familiar face a mile away, said. “It’s our neighbor, Wendy. Should we say hello?” Before I could respond, she was already elbowing her way through the crowd to the curb where Wendy sat alone in a manual wheelchair.

  I wouldn’t have recognized Jamie’s mother had Duffy n
ot pointed her out; her illness had aged her so much. Wendy’s thick black hair had streaks of steel gray running through it, and her usually pleasant expression was replaced with a bad-tempered look only half hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses. Her legs, once tan and shapely, were now pale and skinny, lifelessly propped up on the wheelchair foot rests.

  “Wendy,” Duffy exclaimed. “How funny to bump into our next-door neighbor across town!”

  Wendy beamed up at her, and ten years melted off her face. “Not so funny when you consider that ‘across town’ is only five minutes away. Where’s Winston?” She smoothed the pleats of her navy shorts, and I could see that her hands were shaking. “And who’s this? This can’t possibly be Anna, all grown up, can it?” She lifted up her trembling arms to me, and I stepped into them, awkwardly accepting her hug.

  “How are you doing?” I murmured into her hair, which improbably smelled like the butter cookies she’d always plied me with as a kid. “You look great.”

  She frowned as I drew away. “You’re lucky I love flattery more than I despise lies. But look at you. You always were a pretty girl, and you’ve really grown into your beauty. I can see why my son has always carried a torch for you. Poor men. They’re helpless against the pretty girls, aren’t they?”

  I smiled to hide my embarrassment. Duffy laughed loudly, shifted the canvas chairs, and patted her heavily hair-sprayed head, which resembled a prom updo from the eighties. “You got that right. Listen, Wendy, do you need a lift? It’s so muggy out here, you’re likely to melt if you sit too long. Winston’s around here somewhere with the car, or Anna and I would be happy to push you home.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Wendy said, “but Jamie’s here with me. He just ran to the car with some things, but he should be back any minute now.”

  As soon as she said it, I unconsciously glanced up, looking for him. And there he was. Cutting through the alley between the Drop In, one of Salsburg’s five bars, and an abandoned storefront that used to be a hobby shop. He spotted me the same instant I spotted him and stopped in his tracks. Our eyes locked, and a tingly feeling coursed through me as I remembered what he’d said on our drive to Milwaukee when I’d told him my fear of never amounting to anything. You already are something, Anna. You always have been. But we hadn’t spoken since our rushed goodbye as I’d left to pick up David, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Probably he figured as a single, unemployed mother with a bipolar ex, I had enough on my plate as it was, which was undeniably true. But being around Jamie felt like curling up with a good cup of coffee, and I wished we could find a way to at least be friends.

  “Speak of the devil,” Wendy said as he approached our little group in the shade. She reached backward to pat Jamie, but her arm jerked, so she returned it to her lap. “Look who’s here,” she pointed out needlessly to him, since he had already spotted us long ago.

  “Hello, Duffy. Anna.” He was wearing a bluish-gray concert T-shirt, and a week’s worth of stubble covered his cheeks and chin. He gripped the handles of his mom’s wheelchair.

  “Glad you’re here to take your mom home,” Duffy said. “There’s so much water in the air, it feels like it’s going to rain any minute.”

  “I hope so,” Jamie said mildly. “Our plants certainly need it. I just hope it stops before the carnival tonight.” He met my eyes for the first time since coming up to us. His gaze felt private and heavy with meaning. “Do you ladies want a ride home?”

  Burdened down by the chairs, cooler, and blanket my grandma had coerced me into carrying, sweat stinging my eyes, and still at least a ten-minute walk ahead of me, I had never wanted to say yes more. But Duffy answered for me.

  “That’s awfully nice of you, but we could use the exercise.” She hefted the chairs and hung them over her shoulders again.

  “Bah! It’s too humid for exercise,” Wendy said. “You just said yourself you were worried about me melting. You’re coming with us, and that’s final.”

  A sideways glance at my grandmother told me that this interaction had backfired on her, but in true Duffy form, she was going to hold her chin high and model polite, neighborly behavior for me. With Jamie pushing his mom’s wheelchair in the lead, we walked a block to where he had parked, Duffy and Wendy remarking on the marching band’s rendition of “God Bless the USA” and the bank’s generous giveaway of both pens and checkbook covers this year. I was expecting to see Jamie’s Demeter Landscaping Services pickup and was therefore surprised to see an unassuming white station wagon with handicapped license plates.

  Duffy and I slid into the backseat, as Jamie went about the business of transferring his mom from her wheelchair to the car. He was both efficient and gentle in his movements—plainly he’d done this many times before—and the love on his face was overwhelming. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes, fiercely wishing that I could dredge up that kind of selfless devotion for my own mother. I wondered if I looked that way when I was taking care of David. I shot Duffy a significant look, but she didn’t notice because she was just as intent on watching Jamie with Wendy as I was. He buckled her in, folded the wheelchair, and stowed it in the back before getting in the car himself.

  The drive to the Presswoods’ house took only five minutes, but it felt much longer in the presence of Jamie, his mother, and my grandmother. Wendy asked after David’s whereabouts, so I had to make my overheated brain function enough to tell her about his newfound obsession with tractors, but the whole time, I felt excruciatingly aware of Jamie’s long fingers expertly handling the steering wheel, his broad shoulders peeking out over the driver seat, his brown eyes darting up every so often to meet mine in the rearview mirror. Despite the air conditioning, I was sweltering. When he pulled into their garage and started unloading our chairs and cooler, I knew it was now or never.

  “Jamie,” I called out, sounding louder and more breathless than I had in my head. “I’m taking David to the carnival tonight.” I tried to ignore the way my grandmother whipped her head around to watch us. “Do you want to come along? For old time’s sake.”

  He straightened up and scratched his scruffy beard. Wendy, craning her neck from her vantage in the passenger seat, looked like she was holding her breath. “Sure,” he finally said.

  “Great! Pick us up at six, okay?” I hurried away, following Duffy across the lawn to our house before I could spontaneously combust into a cloud of girlish energy and glee.

  We had hung up the lawn chairs on their garage wall pegs before Duffy couldn’t hold her curiosity in any longer. “So is this, like, a date?” she asked.

  “No,” I insisted, more for my own benefit than hers. “Just two old friends taking a trip down memory lane and supporting a good cause.” The money raised by the three-day event almost fully supported the volunteer fire department throughout the entire year. “Besides, David’s coming.”

  She climbed up the front steps and held the door open for me. “Hmm. Well, that’s too bad.”

  “Really?” I raised my eyebrows at her. “What happened to your ‘keep your distance from Jamie Presswood’ tune?”

  Duffy pretended to pout. “I don’t know. I guess you could say he’s growing on me. I think it’s nice he brought Wendy to the parade. She doesn’t get out much anymore; her MS has progressed so considerably this past year. Winston and I used to have her over for dinner, but with all the stairs in our house, it just got to be too hard. Joanne Gehring told me she offered to take her to the gardening club meetings, but Wendy turned her down flat. It’s good of him that he’s persuading her to leave the house.”

  “It is good of him,” I said. “He loves his mom, Duffy, and he’s doing the best he can to take care of her and keep that house.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “Not to mention, he’s pretty cute when he’s not dressed like he’s headed to a funeral.” She winked at me and flapped the bottom of her yellow blouse upward to cool herself, briefly revealing her soft, fleshy abdomen.

  I lau
ghed and did my best Duffy impersonation, fluttering my eyelashes and raising my voice an octave. “But what about his troubled past? What about what Edna told Vickie who then told Joanne who then called The National Enquirer…”

  “Okay, smarty-pants. Don’t push your luck. I can see I’ve already said too much.”

  I scavenged through my dresser drawers once more, hoping something different had miraculously appeared there since the last time I’d looked two minutes ago. Jamie had already seen my “go-to” top, the beaded turquoise one I’d worn to Carly’s party, and I needed something that was cute, sexy, and still appropriate to wear to a carnival with my son. I finally settled on my shortest jean shorts and a ruffled, sleeveless top in a soft pinky-peach that Duffy had once declared “my color.” I added a pair of cowboy boots and didn’t bother trying to style my hair beyond a ponytail since I knew the humidity would frizz it up anyway.

  In the living room, David was dangling upside down off the sofa, flying a miniature tractor model over his head. Vivien Leigh stood on her haunches, ineffectively trying to swat the toy from his hand. “Is it time for the carnival?” he asked, bolting upright.

  I peeked out the living room windows to look for Jamie’s red truck in the driveway and was surprised to see him getting out. Before he could ring the doorbell and make things more “high school” than they already were, I called out, “Jamie’s here! David and I are leaving now.”

  My grandparents were in the kitchen, eating a healthy dinner of salad, baked chicken, and steamed asparagus, so that Winston wouldn’t be tempted to eat deep-fried foods at the fair later. Or at least that was Duffy’s hope; I suspected it might have the reverse effect on him. She poked her head through the doorway. “We’ll be leaving in about half an hour, so maybe we’ll see you there.”