Jade is running. “Shannelle, go inside, right now!” She kneels beside Tony, who is getting to his feet with a bloody lip, and he’s mad as hell, struggling against Jade’s admonishments—and her strength. She has a grip on his arm, which he keeps trying to loosen, and she’s not budging. There is a fierce discussion between them, Tony shouting, Jade shaking her head.
“Patty! Get your ass out here!” the drunken father yells, and the brother is on his way to the door, maybe to physically drag the mother out. Jade is on her feet and tackles him before he can get there, but to do it, she’s got to let go of Tony, who is on the father in an instant, and there are punches flying in two fights.
Sirens thankfully roar down the street, a quick response. Everybody halts immediately.
“Let’s get back to dinner,” I say. Close the door. But my heart is thrilled by Jade’s strength. Her visible power. What would that be like? To be so strong you could tackle two men?
I know, I know—again the shriveled bough
Will burgeon sweetly in the gentle rain,
And these hard lands be quivering with grain.
I tell you only: it is Winter now.
DOROTHY PARKER
25
TRUDY
Once the dishes are done, Jo and Rich take Minna over to Jo’s mom’s for pie and coffee. Before they leave, I pause and give my big son a giant hug. “Thanks, kiddo. I know you were taking care of me.”
He pats my shoulder. “I hope you and dad work it out, Mom.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I turn to Jo and hug her, too. In her ear, quietly, I say, “You’re an angel, sweetheart. Thanks for bringing your darlin’ girl over.”
“Oh, Trudy, you are so welcome.” Her hug is tight and sincere, and I think all at once that I am truly blessed.
Annie helps me carry all the pots back into the greenhouse, then wiggles around so much I know what she wants. “Travis’s coming, isn’t he?”
“Do you mind? I don’t want to leave you alone if you’re feeling sad.”
I laugh softly, brush her hair over her shoulder. “Did you guys plan this out? How to keep Mom busy all day so she won’t brood?”
“Yeah, kinda. Do you mind? Colin’s going to call in a little while, too. He promised.”
“I don’t mind. It’s sweet.”
It’s quiet enough after she leaves, though, that in spite of my upbeat resolve, a stealthy sense of sadness steals through the house. Me. The radio is background noise, echoey against the emptiness of the house. It’s not so much the big things that get me, I’m discovering. It’s all the little tiny threads that make up a whole life.
It’s been a good day. I finish straightening, trying not to think of the way things used to be. Not think of the way Rick used to settle in after the feast, kick his feet up on a recliner, turn on the television after everyone had gone, and sigh. Not think, as I put away the last platter of turkey, that turkey sandwiches are his favorite, made with lots of mayo and plenty of salt. He won’t be eating any of these leftovers.
I want to sit down in his chair and put my nose in it and see if I can smell him still, but as I move toward it, I have a sudden vision of where he might be right now. Sitting in Carolyn’s house with her rotten children, drinking beer she bought for him, his feet kicked up on her footstool. I can see him, clearly, as she brings him a turkey sandwich, reaching out to put his hand around her knee, and I halt in my tracks. Jealousy pours like acid through me, and I know I have to do something, break the pattern. What do unmarried people do on holiday evenings?
Go to the movies, maybe? Go to the store?
Go anywhere.
I grab my coat and my keys and slam the door behind me, so anxious to not be here that it’s not until I’m driving down Twenty-ninth Street toward Pueblo Boulevard that I realize what I’m really doing.
Again. It’s like having a bad pair of great-looking shoes. I know they’re going to give me raw blisters, but I still keep putting them on.
In the first month of our breakup, I did this so often that I can do it on autopilot now. It’s dead quiet. I loop through a run-down little neighborhood to the west, and see through the windows the bright happy families within, kids and grandmas and dads and moms. The blister pops and starts to burn. I head down the boulevard, trying to tell myself there’s still time to turn back, that I do not have to do this, that it will only make me feel worse.
I keep driving, and as I get closer to the golf course, an anxious burn starts in my belly, and I wrestle my hands tighter on the wheel because they’re sweating. The radio is on, playing Fleetwood Mac, and I sing along with “The Chain,” and even I can tell it’s bravado, and it embarrasses me enough that I stop singing.
But I don’t turn back. I glance in the rearview mirror like anyone else, anyone not on an insane mission to see how raw she can rub those blisters, but maybe someone on the way home from a great Thanksgiving meal, and I turn on my signal, turn left on Abriendo. Now my heart really starts to pound, because if Rick sees me I’ll have no excuse. I just want his truck to be there, parked in front of his little house, and then I’ll know he’s home, watching television by himself. Maybe missing us.
I slow as I pass the intersection and peer down the street, but of course the truck is gone. I loop around the block, decide to be bold and turn on the street, just to be sure. There are no lights on.
My heart is pounding so hard, I can’t really hear the radio, and there’s a strange, strangled sense of something behind my eyes, and I think I’m an idiot, but I have to just see, so I head back down Fourth Street and drive all the way to the east side, and turn north on Monument, and cruise very, very slowly past Seventh Street. But I don’t have to go that slow. The truck is obvious. Parked boldly right in front, like it belongs there.
The wounds on my heart are screaming now, pouring bloody pus into my chest cavity, making it hard to breathe. My hands are trembling and there’s an almost vicious cackling in my ear. But do I heed the warning?
No. I turn down the narrow little street, a deep fear in me not of what I will see, but that I might be seen doing this. I have to do it anyway. Go see.
As if to facilitate my self-immolation, the curtains on Carolyn’s picture window are open and I can see inside. I can’t see her, but I see Rick, sitting on the couch without his shoes, drinking a beer. He’s watching television under the glow of a lamp, and a young woman is beside him. Not his daughter. Hers. His daughter is out with her boyfriend, her heart shattered.
The tears are dripping off my chin before I realize I’m even crying, and I’ve driven down the short block and around the corner, where I pull over in a dark spot. I put my head down on the steering wheel and let them come, the tears. In great washes, soaking my hands, my face, the wheel.
I’m crying because it hurts and I did it to myself. But I didn’t, did I? He did it to me, and I should hate him for it. Hate him for being so threatened by my quest to find out who I might be for the rest of my life that he had to run into the arms of a nice, nonthreatening bartender who never went to college, either. I should hate him for all the pain he’s caused my family, and hate him for the betrayals he’s heaped upon my head. Hate him for lying, hate him for his idiocy. Hate him for—
But the truth is, what I realize I’m thinking is that I wish he had glimpsed my car through the window and had suddenly come after me, that he turned this way and saw my car and came to driver’s side and peered in and said, “Trudy? Are you okay?”
Seeing this particular fantasy unfolding in my mind, the tears slow, the ache eases a bit, and I raise my head. The neighborhood around me is utterly still with postholiday satiety. A whip-lean dog trots down the middle of the street, cheerfully stopping to sniff a pile of leaves at the gutter. Wind is softly tossing tree branches overhead. I wipe the itchy tears off my face. Why would I want him to come find me demolished and spying on him?
And the answer is pathetic: because it would prove I mean more to him than she do
es.
My nose is disgusting, and I can find only a tiny scrap of tissue in my purse, and I am forced to drive back home marveling at how unbelievably ridiculous the whole thing was. It always is. It’s like some other woman takes charge of my body, turns me into one of those awful women you see on daytime talk shows.
As I pull up in front of my house, I realize that the pressure that had been so agonizing is gone, as if those blisters on my heart were boils, and they’ve drained now. I think about the crying jag I had after Edgar died, the night I got drunk and humiliated myself by calling Rick and pouring my heart out to him. I cried like I would die that night, too, and woke up feeling a hundred times better.
There are lights on at Roberta’s and I suddenly do not want to be alone anymore, not in my head, not in the house I used to love and sometimes now hate. In this very moment, I hate it so much that I pick up a pinecone and throw it, hard, at the side, then rub tear tracks off my face with my sleeve and head next door. Jade and I can talk about crying, and I can eat some of Roberta’s pie. The night, I notice, is crisp and cool, very refreshing. It feels great on my hot face.
I knock and Jade answers, swinging the door wide in pleasure when she sees me standing there. “Hi,” I say brightly. “Are you guys done in yet?”
“Not at all! Come in!” There’s a shimmer or something around her, and I’m wondering, too late, because I’m already inside, if Angel might be there. I also notice a twinge of jealousy over the idea that he’s put this light on her face. Jade steps sideways and I see that not only is Angel there, grinning around a straw at a hand of cards, but so is Roberta, and another man, as big as a football player, dressed neatly in a button-up shirt. He looks very clean somehow.
He’s the first to look up, and gives me a nod of greeting, and I suddenly grab Jade’s arm. In her ear, I say urgently, “Take me to wash my face.”
“What?” She looks at me. “Come on. We’ll be right back.”
And I will love her forever for blocking me as we move toward the bathroom. When we are safely behind the door, she touches my cheek. “What happened?”
I bend over the sink and splash cold water over my hot eyes, rub away the tear tracks, raise my head to see how bad it is, and splash some more. “I did a stupid thing, Jade. But I think I learned something, and we can talk about it tomorrow or something.” I look again, and at least it’s clean. “I need Visine. And maybe a little lipstick or something?”
“You’re gorgeous, Trudy.” She hands me the Visine, then digs in a drawer. “Most of these are way too dark. Try this one.”
It’s dead black when I open it. “This?”
“Trust me.”
I try it, and it goes on with a liquid smoothness, a clear plum that is surprisingly flattering. “Not bad.”
Her arms are folded as she inclines her head. The coppery streaks in her curls glint, bringing out the green in her eyes. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
“Who?” I blot my lips without looking at her.
She smiles softly. “He sure has one on you.”
I meet her eyes in the mirror, raise my eyebrows. A zing of something like excitement zips through my body—there and gone so fast, I barely notice it.
“Hmmm,” is all I can think of to say. “You ready?”
She leans down to see herself in the mirror, adjusts her shirt so a little more cleavage shows. “Sure.”
When we enter the other room, my attention zooms right onto Angel, sitting with his back to the window. He’s been running his hands through his hair, and it stands up a little at the back. If I didn’t know that Roberta wouldn’t allow it, I would think he had been drinking—there is that shiny look to his eyes, a flush high on those angles of cheekbone. An intensity to his gaze, which he fixes on me. “Hello, Trudy,” he says, shuffling cards. “Are you going to play?”
“What’s the game?” I bend down to hug Roberta. “How are you, honey?”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m fine, darlin’. You know me.”
“Rummy,” Angel says. In the way he’s holding his straw between his teeth, I can see him in some tropical place with a little cigar, his shirt open to show his sweaty chest, a fan beating the air, very slowly, over his head. “Roberta”—it rolls over his tongue—“would not allow gambling.”
“Trudy,” Jade says, “this is Rueben, my boxing coach, from the gym, who came by and we snared him. Grandma’s been feeding him since he got here an hour ago.”
It’s a long speech for Jade, and I suddenly realize that he, not Angel, is the source of that glow. And I can see why. “How do you do?” he says, standing to shake my hand. There is such a courtliness to the gesture, and such a roundness to his speaking voice, such a genuineness about his eyes, that I’m instantly trusting.
“Very well, thank you,” I say, and sit down in the chair that he pulls over to the table for me.
It might be only rummy, but it’s rousing. Angel is on high stun—verbal and funny, and runs a commentary on the proceedings as if we are playing high-stakes games in some exotic casino. He flirts outrageously with Roberta, making her laugh, and he defers to Jade’s size and strength, which makes her laugh. I do not think Rueben is as charmed as the rest of us, but he isn’t doing a big-dog bristle, either.
I tell myself that Angel is flirting with everyone, and he is, but he’s also specifically, pointedly flirting with me, in a charming, courtly way that makes me breathless and giddy by the end of the evening, when Angel has amassed about twenty times as many points as the rest of us put together.
Roberta protests as we start to collect the empty glasses and saucers that litter the table. “Y’all just leave all that, now. I’m not crippled.”
Jade gives me a nod. There’s something hopeful in it. I push in my chair and kiss Roberta’s cheek. “Thanks, sweetie,” I say so only she can hear. “I was feeling blue when I got here, but this was great.”
“You don’t go lettin’ nobody turn your head now, you hear me?” Her fingers tighten on mine. “Remember what’s important.”
“Mmm.” My recent humiliation, self-inflicted though it was, is still fresh enough that I feel a throb in my wrist. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Angel walks with me as if it’s the obvious conclusion, and out in the night, he takes a big deep breath. “I like your Thanksgiving, very much.”
“I bet you’re something to see at a poker table.”
He winks. He’s still playing with the straw. It moves back and forth, making me think of his tongue, and I wonder if it’s deliberate. “Dangerous,” he agrees.
I stop in front of my house. “You’re pretty dangerous all the way around.”
He faces me, comes a little closer. “Am I?” He looks at my mouth, takes the straw out of his own.
Time halts. We stand just outside the pool of streetlight, in the shadows. The same soft wind from earlier brushes our hair around a little. Some of his touches his cheek and I am mesmerized by it, not even realizing that I’m swaying closer, that we are suddenly only breaths apart. He touches my hand, weaves his fingers through mine, and I wonder what he’s waiting for, if he wants some signal from me, but I don’t know what it should be.
The heat from earlier comes back, starts to burn in that small hot space between us, and it seems incredible that there should be so much electricity in just standing here, anticipating.
Anticipating.
He’s shifting a little, but I’m so dizzy I don’t know what or how until his hand curls around my neck, and his thumb tilts up my chin, and he kisses it. My chin. Then my cheek, then my eye, and I’m swaying with it, putting my hands up to his hair, which I’ve been wanting to touch for weeks, and it’s as silky as it looks, deep and wild, and so much of it. Our bodies touch lightly down the front.
And then there are car lights coming down the street, blasting across the thinness of my closed eyelids, and I’m jolted back to the mundane. I pull away, worried it might be my daughter, who would then see her mother
kissing someone. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and he touches my hand, once lightly, before he melts into the darkness like a cat.
It is my daughter, getting out of the car, and she slams the door, then startles when she sees me on the sidewalk. “What are you doing out here?”
“Just came from Roberta’s,” I say, and it sounds perfectly legitimate. It’s not, I realize, a lie, but my gaze is drifting toward Angel’s house, where a light comes on his bedroom. I think of him there, skin gilded with lamplight, and I realize I’m going to sleep with him.
Soon.
SHANNELLE’S WRITING WALL
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
DIANE ACKERMAN
26
SHANNELLE
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: how few pages
Dear Naomi,
No, I haven’t had much time to write the past few weeks. The whole Thanksgiving fiasco with my parents is just going on and on—she shows up every other day for sympathy, and how can I not give it to her? She doesn’t have anybody else. It’s causing all kinds of tension with Tony, too, because he doesn’t want to be involved. My family embarrasses him, and I do understand. They embarrass me, which is an awful thing to say, but it’s true.
The good news is, my neighbor across the street, Jade, is a social worker with all kinds of contacts and she found me a dentist who is going to do the work on my mouth for nothing, as long as I let him take pictures and document the “reconstruction.” I saw him last week and he did some stuff to the root of the bad tooth, which made it stop hurting, anyway. He’s really nice, pretty young, and I guess he can use me to write a paper and get some more credentials. So, I’m seeing him every other week until it’s all done. Even Tony didn’t make any noises this time about being charity cases. I think the last two toothaches really scared him.
The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel Page 17
