Story Girl (11 page)

“James, come on. I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“Forget it.”

I tugged at his sleeve, tried hard to pull him back down.

“Just let me go, Tracy.”

“I don’t want to.”

I wrapped my arms around his knees and we both fell onto the hard dusty ground. For a moment, his blue eyes and purple hair were all mine – like a fissure in the prison wall, offering the light of freedom. I put my thumb on his bottom lip and gently pulled it down until I could see the pink of his gum-line.

“James?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

He closed his eyes, “Do this.”

I should have dug my nail deep into the gentle tissue beneath his teeth, but my signals were rapidly scrambling – the circuitry burning itself to the ground, “Please don’t say that.”

He pushed my hand away from his mouth and quickly jumped to his feet, leaving me to stare helplessly at the points of his boots.

“Why don’t you just kick me?” I asked. “It would hurt less.”

He yelled over his shoulder as he walked away, “I just need some space.”

“No you don’t,” I whispered at the small rock I was clutching in my fist.

I wanted to scream after him that he was a fucking quitter, but I threw the rock instead. It landed behind him with a pitiful thud – he didn’t even bother to turn around. I sat up and watched him fade away – his eager strides ever increasing the space between us.

Part
2

A Bingo Hall,

Aunt Mertyl,

and The Used Appliance Prince

chapter
15

I’
D FINALLY ESCAPED
the two-faced temptress.

Ms. Holly Wood. She’d lured me here with her dazzling smile and empty promises, but all she’d ever done was snap my dreams in half. I waved down at her big, white-lettered grin. She was such a tease, after all. But she’d continue on her merry chaotic way long after I was gone – as if I’d been nothing but a non-existent blip on her radar screen.

The flight was long and uncomfortable and I’d decided that I wouldn’t think of James – but it was like trying not to breathe, so I gave in at thirty thousand feet. If he wanted space, I’d give it to him. Loads of it. I’d give him all the space in the world – pasturelands full. He could graze all day on the endless, empty fields of a life lived alone – not a whiff of me ever to be had again.

And I needed to steer clear of the implications – how empty my life would also become – yet moving through my mind was like traversing a gloomy terrain of bottomless pits. I gobbled a bag of peanuts and dug my fingers into the armrest, trying to steel myself against the dread.

But my body shuddered with the memory of his fingers in my mouth. We had stopped short of undressing. I had insisted on it, for a thousand reasons I was no longer sure of.

Damn him.

He was like an explorer determined to discover my landscape, especially the treasures he’d sensed underground – buried deep in stacked boxes against the wall. And I’d been so close to signing over my most guarded territory – fertile soil that might miss out on any chance to bloom.

As the miles between us multiplied, I wondered if the gathering distance might somehow bring us back together – like a boomerang that finds its way back to the hand that flung it away.

I fell asleep and awoke to something strangely familiar and instantly demanding – rendering the immediate past something closer to a dream. I remembered that I was coming home.

Flying over the green of Minnesota felt like drinking water after an endurance test of concrete. The round bushy trees and thick grasses only added to my relief; I watched from the window as the light danced and sparkled and gleamed across the surface of the emerald lakes.

Jenny and Luke met me at the airport. Their outfits matched – crisp ironed beiges and blues. Clarice was wearing a little pink sun-dress, and she happily toddled into my arms. I buried my head in her curls and deeply inhaled their baby smell. We giggled together; it made me feel confident in my decency that tiny children and small animals had no qualms about getting close to me.

“Hey sister,” Jenny said, and flung an arm around my waist. “You look… good.”

I was wearing jeans with holes and construction-type work boots.

“Glad to see Lucy again,” she said, and poked a finger into the carrier.

We all heard the hiss, and I was almost thankful when Jenny’s finger emerged unscathed.

“Alright, listen up,” Jenny said. “Aunt Mertyl and Uncle Harley are coming in tonight, and so are Derek and Trina. Meanwhile,
Luke and I need to pick out a dessert. I want something different, maybe a cherry or vanilla something or even a pudding-filled sponge. And then we need to figure out the place settings. I haven’t decided on the color schemes yet but I’m leaning toward light pink and peach or a bright red apple with an understated gold.”

My sister’s eyes bulged as she spoke, like she wasn’t breathing. Clarice started to cry in a rather mournful way; even Luke looked odd, like perhaps he should be wearing some sort of a leash.

I never wanted to see James wearing that expression.

“Is there time for a salad or something?” I asked.

Jenny let out a long sigh, as if I were an unruly pet in training, “Didn’t you eat on the plane?”

“They didn’t have anything,” I whined.

“They have snack boxes,” she snapped.

I looked at Luke, but he wasn’t able to make eye contact.

“I suppose we can run through a drive-thru somewhere.”

“Thanks.”

“Wait until you see our latest purchase, Tracy.”

I carried Clarice on one arm and my duffel bag and the cat carrier in the other as we walked to their new vehicle: an 8 cylinder giant hog of an SUV.

“Surprise! Isn’t it nice?” Jenny gushed.

I was speechless.

“It’s so wonderfully black – you should see it shine in the sun. And so much room for everything.”

“What do you need room for?” I asked.

“We’re a family now, Tracy. There’s plenty of room for the car seat.”

“Ten car seats,” I said.

All four of us situated ourselves in the dark behemoth. Even Lucy and her little cage got a full seat.

“Must cost a lot for gas,” I said.

Clarice was sitting merrily in my lap, blowing spit bubbles.

“Way too much,” Luke said. He sounded grave and I was slightly startled to hear him speak.

Jenny let out another colossal sigh, as if we were all trying to rip up her pretty flowers.

“It’s just practical for a family to have an SUV, Tracy. You’ll see one day. Think about it.”

“How is it practical?” I asked.

“When our kids get older, they’re going to play sports. They will have
equipment
. You know, hockey sticks and football gear.” Jenny spoke down to me as though I were a complete idiot.

I didn’t really want to get into this, but her snotty attitude deemed it obligatory, “Clarice will play hockey and football?”

“Uh, sons. Duh.”

“What sons?”

“Our sons!”

“So you’re planning on sons in the future?”

“Uh, yeah. Is that so odd?”

“It would be even more cool to let Clarice play hockey or football,” I said.

“No, Tracy. My baby girl will not get busted up playing hockey or football. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“So you bought this thing for your future hockey-football playing sons?”

Luke was making strange sounds, sort of like a choppy wheeze.

“First of all, that’s what people do, Tracy – responsible people, that is. They make plans for the future. Fu-ture, two syllables – sound it out. Second of all, it’s spacious. Luke is six feet tall. Where exactly would you have him put his legs, the glove compartment?”

“5’ 10, sweetie,” Luke interjected.

“You are
not
5’ 10,” Jenny barked.

“Last year, remember? The tailor measured me top to bottom – when I got the custom suit you wanted me to have for Mark’s wedding.”

“You must have shrunk,” she said, her cheeks now a hot rose.

“So I’m really taller than you, Luke?” I asked.

“You are not taller than him.”

“5’ 10 and one half,” I said.

“Yep – you’re half an inch taller,” he said.

“You were definitely six feet tall when I married you,” Jenny said.

“Nope.”

“Yes!”

“I don’t think so, precious.”

“I am not precious!”

Poor Jenny – everything was coming out so wrong, “You guys are upsetting the baby!”

I looked over at Clarice who was happily engaged with an old Smurf key-chain I’d given her.

“I never noticed that I was taller than you, Luke.”

“That’s because I wear higher heeled boots,” he said.

“Fruity boots they used to call them,” I said.

Jenny reached back for Clarice like a mad woman, and I handed her over without delay. The entire scene was endlessly amusing and took my mind off the big jerk that abandoned me in Griffith Park.

“Exactly,” Luke said. “Fruity boots. That’s what they called them back in the seventies. My father had a pair. He’s 5’ 8. So he wore a three inch boost.”

“I think they’re cool,” I said. “Especially on Prince.”

“Well no,” Luke said. “Prince wears a full-blown pump.”

“Stop it!” Jenny screamed. “I did not marry a man who wears heels. And Luke, I do not want you comparing yourself to Prince.”

“I wasn’t. I was just saying he sports a pump and I wear a lift. I don’t need as much extra height as he does, which is a good thing.”

“Or what?” Jenny asked. “You’d wear a pump too? Well that’s just great – maybe we can share shoes.”

I let go a sound that sounded too much like sheer delight.

Jenny turned around again and stared me straight in the eye, “So, do you have a literary agent yet?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Won any writing contests?”

“Haven’t really been submitting for contests.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged.

“Internships? Seminars?”

She had me in a vice-grip, so it was time to remedy the havoc I’d wreaked on her self-image. So, in a performance tailored to a network dramedy, I turned my attention to Luke and tried not to focus on his slender hands holding the wheel, “For what it’s worth, I think that you are the very prototype of what it means to be masculine.”

He looked at me in the rearview mirror, making a face like I’d just opened a bag full of sweaty old rugby togs, “Uh – thanks.”

“I really do. And the shoes could never diminish that in any way – they only add character.”

I turned back to my sister, “I’m sorry, Jenny – what were you asking me about?”

She eyed me with suspicion, but soon calmed down and allowed my absent writing career to continue to wander lost.

Luke pulled into McDonalds and headed for the drive-thru.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“I thought you were hungry,” Jenny said.

“I don’t eat meat – remember?”

“You’re still on that kick?” she asked.

“It’s not a kick.”

“Get a salad then.”

“I can’t eat here on principle.”

Jenny sighed with almost painful resignation, “Fine. But we don’t have time to drive around forever because of your stupid principles.”

“Just take me home. I’ll eat there.”

Luke pulled a u-turn in the parking lot just as Clarice started screaming about “boogers and fwys.”

We arrived at my old house, and I was both relieved and appalled that nothing had changed. Even the row of shrubs along the driveway appeared to be the same size. The dark green brick and white windowpanes looked exactly as they had the day I’d left.

The yard was meticulously kept, and the white picket fence was coated with fresh paint. The three-bedroom/three-storey structure still resonated with a sense of safety, but it also whispered of something else. And I could almost feel the undertones once again – dragging me away to a life far removed.

“Not so close to the house,” Jenny said. “They’ll spot us for sure.”

“They don’t even know we own this thing,” Luke said.

Jenny turned around in her seat to look at me, and I had to recoil from the scary grimace she was wearing.