Writers & Lovers(61)

I circle the yard. It’s noisy. The ground is covered with dry leaves. The tree is nearly bare. Adam doesn’t rake. He doesn’t garden. The raised beds are thick with dying weeds. My mother was in her yard every weekend. It was the only time I ever saw her in jeans. High-waisted ones, showing off her bum. She had a nice bum. It was high and pert, even into her fifties. I didn’t get that bum. All her neighbors had crushes on her, but she was done with men. They’d come by with cuttings and compost in the spring, bulbs in the fall. They’d linger, ask about her goliath tomatoes or her trumpet vines. ‘I think my husband was half in love with her,’ more than a few women told me at her funeral. But they were not threatened. They loved her, too. They told me stories about how she cared for them during a hip replacement, a car accident, a son’s suicide. How she slept on their couches and cooked meals and ran errands. How she fought the town on pesticides on school property and wrote letters to the editor about gay rights and racial justice. I kick through the leaves. Someone reminded me of her recently. I feel the memory, just out of reach, sweet, as if memory has flavors, a woman about her age. I can’t remember. My mother was a real person. I am not a real person. She had convictions and took action. She had purpose and belief. She helped others. I help no one. She helped found that donation organization. I couldn’t even write one thank-you letter for a refrigerator. All I want is to write fiction. I am a drain on the system, dragging around my debts and dreams. It’s all I’ve wanted. And now I’m not even able to do that. I haven’t been able to go near my book since I spoke to Jennifer Lin.

The crunching of leaves wakes up the dog, and he barks from the mudroom window. I crouch beside the tree trunk and stay still though everything inside me is churning. The ground beneath the leaves is warm, but the air is cold. Something flashes in front of me. It’s my breath. I can see my breath. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in a place where I can see my breath. I am a child buttoned up in a wool coat and white mittens, driving with my mother, sliding on the blue leather of the passenger seat, toes like ice cubes, waiting for the heat to kick in on the way to school or church or the grocery store. Oafie stops barking to listen to the silence. He pushes off from the sill and goes back to bed.

I can’t go inside until I slow down. My heart and mind feel like they are in a race to the death. I watch my breath. I squeeze my muscles one by one. It’s Star of Ashtabula who reminds me of my mother.

I go inside and lie on my futon and wait to explode.





‘It’s a bit late to be playing hard to get, don’t you think?’ Oscar says.

‘I got fired.’

‘Fantastic!’

‘Not for me.’

‘You can do better than that job.’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything. Work in an office. Something with normal hours.’

‘But I want the normal hours for writing.’

‘I have a little job for you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s your fault. They like you too much.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘So I have to go to Provo next weekend and I thought my mother had it on her calendar but she didn’t and she’s going to Lennox on some girls’ weekend. And she won’t cancel. I tried to tell her she was no longer a girl by the most generous standards and most of her friends are so butch they should call it a men’s weekend and she did not think that was funny and hung up on me, and when I tried to call Brenda, you know, down the street, the boys started whining about how all she cooks is shepherd’s pie and she sticks toilet paper up her nose and it comes out bloody and they asked for you. They asked me to ask you to come stay for the weekend. I told them you were working and it was impossible, but now maybe it’s not.’

‘How much do you pay Brenda?’

He laughs until he realizes I’m serious. ‘Two hundred a day.’

‘Okay. I’ll do it.’

Oscar leaves me a check and a note on his fridge.

This is just to say

You can eat all the plums

And all the grapes

And the bananas.

But don’t eat all the kiwis

Or Jasper will weep.

And don’t leave Sunday

Or ever.



I walk down the street to the bus stop. All the other women there are nannies. John comes off the bus quickly, but Jasper moves slowly. The girl behind him looks ready to give him a shove. They’re shy on the way home. I ask them about school, and I get one-word answers. Jasper asks three times when Papa is coming home.

‘What time Sunday night at seven?’ he says, blinking heavily.

John laughs. ‘Here come the waterworks.’

Everyone needs heavy snacks. I bring out all the fruit and set two kiwis cut in half with a spoon in front of Jasper. Oscar prepared plastic containers of cheese, celery, and carrots for this time of day, but I see bacon in a drawer in the fridge and remember what I used to make after school. I cook up the bacon, slather some saltines with mayonnaise and pile each one with chopped onion, bacon, and cheddar and put them under the broiler. They come out perfectly. We devour them. I’m back in sixth grade, eating them. I make more. We devour them, too.

‘Papa says mayonnaise clogs up your arteries,’ Jasper says.