Playing Favorites

I follow Mom out to our car.  When we're both in and buckled, she glances at me in the rearview mirror.

            “We’re not going to stay long,” she says. “Maybe five minutes. He’s bound to be exhausted.”

            I nod, blow on the window, and draw a smiley face in the condensation. Then I sit back and consider how the five minute visit might play out.

            I want to show him how much I love him. How much I miss him, even though it’s only been a week. A void happens when seven days pass without someone you're used to seeing every day. Feels like there’s an empty bucket in my belly. And it’s blue.

            My plan is to show him my fingernails. How I stopped biting them. Just for him. I haven’t nibbled all week. They don’t yet touch the tips of my fingers, but I painted them anyway. Borrowed Mom’s Avon polish—Peppy Poppy—without asking her. The color reminds me of the cherry hardshell coating you can get on your twisty cone at the Dairy King on Route 60. I lick them. To see if maybe they taste like-- Naw. They're bitter. Chemically. Shiny though.

            Hopefully, Mom'll leave us alone. In the hospital room. So I can hiss to John, “I hate them.” The boys who did this. Because of them, I’ll never sit behind him on his motorbike again. My arms strapped around his midsection. My cheek flush with his shoulder blade. I never really felt safe there and where I hadn’t had a tangible excuse before (besides I’m chicken), now I do.

            ~~~

A week ago, a whole car, a Lincoln Continental, had slammed into John and his Honda. Tossed them both into the air—him left, the bike right. When I picture it in my mind’s eye, I imagine he bounces, then falls back to earth. The black top receives him none too gently.

            The Lincoln was stolen. The driver ignored the red light. All the guys in the car were drunk. High too.

~~~

I change my mind. I'm not going to hiss. I intend to yell.

            “I hate those boys!” Maybe even, “I wish they were dead!”

            My mad words'll ricochet off the almost pistachio green walls (or will they be make-you-squint-bright-white?) and he’ll be satisfied. John will. That I'm on his side. When ninety per cent of the time, I'm nothing but a pain in his butt. That’s how he always introduces me. Never, “This is my little sister.” Instead he usually says, "Her? She's just a pain in my butt. That’s all.”

            After “I hate them,” I 'll say, “It’s too bad.” That he won’t get to do his Steve Martin imitation at his high school's talent show. Not too long ago I’d stood outside his bedroom door, my face smooshed to the wall just out of sight, while he practiced in the mirror. I peeked in and saw him flop a pillow case on his head. He watched himself sing. “King Tut, Tut. Funky Tut, Tut.” I stole another look. Giggled into my hand as he shimmied and crowed. “I’m just one wild and crazy guy.”

            When he finished, I pounced through the doorway with a grin. “You’re the funniest guy ever! For real! They’re gonna love you.”

            That earned me a beating. For being a spy.

            Maybe I’ll apologize too. For the whipping he’d taken that night on account of me. And for all the other times. More than once I’d lied. To my dad. I told the truth that night, but I didn’t always. Sometimes I squealed just because. Truth or no, it didn’t matter. Daddy believed me without fail. For no other reason than I was the only daughter, the youngest child.

            Dad’s face would get super red, especially his nose, and his eyes would go all squinty.

             “How could you do that? She’s just a little girl for crying out loud.”

            John would glare at me. Mouth two words. “Spoiled brat.” That was his favorite thing to throw at me. Besides a fist.

            Whenever I tattled, Dad would grab John in a Vulcan nerve pinch and steer him to another room. In the minute before I heard the siss of Dad’s belt speeding out of its constraints, I’d grin. Snicker. Enjoy a certain satisfaction. But when the thwack sounded--cow skin on boy butt--I winced. Regretted. Power didn’t seem so cool then.

            ~~~

John isn't my only brother, but for some reason, I like him best. I have no idea why. He did, after all, try to kill me once. On the chocolate milk-colored sofa in the basement. After I told him no way he was going to my ninth grade prom. He was too old (two years and three months my senior) and besides, it was my school dance, not his. And did he not know what Tammy Carter did with Joey Howard behind the Convenient Mart? Did he really want to go out with a girl like that?

            He launched at me, hands all T-rex clawed, his metal mouth gleaming through a froth. Crammed my head into the arm of the couch. Choked me until I saw stars, then nothing.

            “Mom,” I yelled after I came to. “John tried to murder me. I blacked out. I’m serious.”

            She didn’t answer. Turned out, she was out back picking zinnias and cherry tomatoes.

            ~~~

I think maybe John and I are like Dad and our cat, Ginger. Dad's forever grouching about what a nuisance she is. All the time honking into the handkerchief he keeps in his front pant's pocket.

            “That blankety blank cat is single-handedly making Benadryl rich.”

            Whenever Ginger perches on the sill outside the living room window, I take the screen off and let her in. Not Dad. He talks to her real nice so she thinks maybe—Then schwing! He cranks the window open super fast and she goes flying into the yard with a yowl.

             And when she sits by the front door, daintily grooming her pumpkin paws, Dad'll stroll up to her and point to his Hush Puppy oxford.

            “Here, kitty, kitty. Let me introduce you to the number nine shoe. I don’t believe you all have met.”

            Once again, she goes flying. With a yowl.

            Ginger loves Daddy anyway. She arches her back under his hand whenever he falls asleep in his Ethan Allen wing chair during the nightly news. She's not stupid though. When he's awake, she holes up under his chair, her twitching tail the only evidence of her presence.
            I think he must like her a tiny bit because one time I saw him give her an empty tuna can to lick. When he thought no one was looking.

            So, yeah. Ginger's just like me. Wants to be around the person who likes her least. Is okay with getting one pat on the back for every hundred times she goes flying with a yowl. Doesn’t make a lick of sense, but she doesn’t care and neither do I.

            I pull out the picture I brought of Ginger. To show John. In case he misses her.

            ~~~

On the elevator Mom tells me John's right arm will be in a sling and his left leg will be casted and in a pulley gizmo over his bed. I roll my eyes. I know, Mom. You’ve said that  a hundred times this week.

            “He may be out of it,” she says. “What with the pain meds and all.”

            My lower lip pushes forward. “I sure hope not.” I glance at my hands. “I want him to see my manicure.” Want him to hear me say, I hate them. And, I’m sorry. And maybe if Mom leaves the room, I’ll grip the side rail of his bed and lean close. "Don't tell anybody," I'll whisper. “But you’re my favorite brother.” Then I'll watch his face, especially his mouth. To see if maybe, just maybe, he'll say . . .

Black Lungs

I’m dying.  The doctor said it, standing there in the hall with my x-ray films, so it must be true.  Now the kids crouch beside me and talk loud, as if I’m deaf.  Coddle me.  Bring me cases of Ensure.  Their whispers are like buzzing flies when they think I’m asleep.

The grandkids beg me to give up cigarettes.  “So you’ll live longer, Gramps,” they say.  “We want you with us forever.”

They don’t know what it’s like to only have one comfort left in the world.  Well, maybe two.  My easy chair in front of the big screen tv consoles me.  Sometimes.  I bought it with money I won gambling.  They tell me to give that up too.  They probably think I'll blow their inheritance on a slot machine.  What?  Do they think I have piles of gold somewhere?  Ha!

~~~

My oldest boy, his wife hired some gals, not much younger’n me, to come and scrub a lifetime of smoke—mine and hers—off the windows.  I tried to tell ‘em—the kids, the gals--I like it there.  Sometimes I press my hand to the coolness.  This was in her body.  Write her name on the glass with my pointer finger.  This grey veil came out of the mouth she kissed me with.

At night when everyone else on the block is sleeping and I can’t, I go room to room.  Hold onto the walls for support.  I guess I’m looking for her, or a trace of who she was. 

She used to bring me coffee in here, when I shaved.  She’d sit on the commode and giggle when I dabbed her nose with shaving cream.

In here, the kitchen she had me paint the color of butter, she cooked my favorites--country ham, red-eyed gravy, fried potatoes.  Orange peel was the secret ingredient in her strawberry rhubarb pie.  I could polish one off in a day, but she never let me.  No one made stuffed pork chops like my Nancy.  No one.

This was the room where we made love and children.  Every Friday night.  She never had a headache.  Not once.  Her tinyness fit into my hands even though I’m not a big man.  Saturday mornings her face would look rashy—razzed by my whiskery, over and over kisses.  I’d brush her cheeks with my knuckles and apologize with my eyes.  I swear, she could still blush, even at 60.

Four children started out in this corner bedroom.  She called the color, Parakeet Green. Looked more like split pea soup to me.  I can still smell the Lysol she used in the diaper pail.  I hated that sharp scent.  Seemed more angry than clean to me.  If I shut my eyes and don’t move, I can hear her croon, “Rock-a-bye Baby” to each hairless, slate-eyed child.  And that one night?  Crap!  I hate this kind of remembering.  She shook me awake.  I thought her fingernails would go right through my skin. 

“Harry!  Get up!  Something’s wrong!  The baby’s not—“

I dug the grave.  Hardly bigger’n a bread box.  I knew the guys at the cemetery.  They let me go over the hill alone with a shovel, to mutilate the red, West Virginia clay.  I swore out loud.  Took the Lord’s name in vain.  Only once though.  She never let me do it at home.  After awhile, my knees hit the frozen sod.  Crushed the silvered grass.  I hollered at the clouds.

“The child was ours—mine and hers.  Yours too.  Why’d you take her?  Why?”

~~~

After we buried little Elaine, Nancy got out her baptism dress almost every day.  She’d press and press it.  Iron and iron it.  She seemed to think if she got out every last wrinkle, she’d get baby Elaine back, or maybe see her again.  Just one more time.  But that dress was Irish linen, passed down to Nancy from her older sister.  I don’t know much, but I know linen is a pain in the ass to press.

When Nancy went in the hospital, she begged me to keep ironing the dang thing.

“First thing, Harry,” she’d say.  “When you get home, try one more time.  For me.  Please?”

So I’d get it out of the closet in the baby room.  Take it down to the basement and try to get it as smooth as when it left Ireland.  Crazy cloth.  I’d get one wrinkle out and wind up with two more.  There at the end though, I got it perfect.  Made every single line go away.  I hung it on its padded, satin hanger and laid it on the back seat of my Buick.  When I showed her, her face became radiant, like--  Like she was already gone.  Somewhere else. 

I felt my face collapse in on itself.  Oh, no!  What have I done?  I jerked it from the hanger.  Balled it up.  Squeezed it smaller, tighter.  Punched it.  Maybe it wasn’t too late.  She tried to yell, but her voice came out sounding like a baby bird’s.  She acted like she was gonna come after me, after the dress, but she couldn’t lift herself more than a couple inches.  Dehydrated as she was, her tears were a flood. 

The doctor called that night, right after I brushed my teeth.  I knew before I answered the phone.  Before I left the hospital really.

~~~

Every Sunday I drive out to the graveyard.  Take her daisies from the fancy new grocery store out that way.  Sometimes I get our little Elaine a sucker.  I unwrap it and stick it in the ground by the bronze Beloved Child marker.  The candy’s always gone the next time I go.

The kids got me some kinda folding chair contraption to take to the cemetery, so I don’t sit on the ground.  My knees lock up these days if I get down low.  Sometimes I do it anyway, ‘cause it feels closer.  To her.  To them.

I don’t smoke when I go to see her.  When she was . . .   There at the end, she made me promise to stop.  It’s the only promise to her I didn’t keep.  The thing is, I want to die.  The living, the young, think dying’s a bad thing.  Not me.  I’m ready right now, this very minute.  So at home, I sit in my easy chair and light up, over and over.  Try to smoke more today than yesterday.  Newsflash, grandkids.  I don’t want to live forever.  The way I see it, the sooner I die, the quicker I’ll be with my two little gals.