Michael, Antoinette, and Me

 

Part One

 

 

 

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Wind caressed the landscape, my hair flapping behind me like a flag, driven snow biting my face. Grave markers marching off in sloppy rows cut vague shadows from the landscape. I knew his family plot was on the other side of the cemetery, him alone, dead among dead strangers.

The perfect metaphor for his life.

I did not know his family. I did not wish to. I know where the family plot is, the information volunteered without me asking when I queried at the office – a stuffy single room crowded with darkness – as to why Michael had no grave marker.

Mr. Willis – he wanted me calling him Charlie, was a cliché. Old, brittle, too thin to be healthy, stinging my nose with tobacco and stale liquor, his sad yellow eyes drinking me up like Uncle Gropey’s – the drinking up, not the yellow. Again, without a question before him, he explained the disarray.

“You see, little lady, all the stuff’s done by the funeral director, so no one comes to the office here.”

He invited me in. I declined, happy to speak to the partially opened door. “The marker?”

“Oh, yes, yes. I remember them. You a relative?”

“No.”

“A real snotty bunch. No service at the grave you know.”

I did not.

“Seems they wanted to make sure he was put in the ground, then off they went.”

“The marker?” I asked again.

“Mr. Wright said the family didn’t want one.”

I assumed Mr. Wright was somehow connected to the funeral director, the guy who gets stuff done. I removed a glove, digging in my red suede shoulder bag, producing a checkbook and a pen. “How much?”

“For?”

“A marker.”

“That depends on –”

“Simple deal, no long blather about who gave a fuck –”

Willis’ head shot back as if I’d stuck him. “Little lady!”

I shrugged. “His name. Michelle. Make sure it’s Michelle. Maybe dead and forgotten. I’m sure the engraver would be no match for pope or poet, both coming up short explaining what time and flesh had stolen.” I shrugged off his huh. “Is that with a y or an i e?”

“I e. I don’t see many ladies with checkbooks.” He leaned out, watching me write.

“It’s the 80’s, Mr. Willis.”

With less than a little dose of irony, I could see my grave marker and Pamala’s from where I stood looking down on the reddish mound of dirt. This is not a ghost story. Bear with me. I am not a ghost, though I’ve had a difficult time convincing myself of that more than once.

Michelle’s marker mocked me, featuring his first and last name – his middle name and dead and forgotten excluded. Michael, I growled under my breath. The universe couldn’t give her Michelle, which is why she’s dead.

Beloved rested alone under his name. I imagined the engraver puzzled. “I guess everyone would be beloved when they’re dead in the ground,” I said aloud to the marker, the wind, the sky.

29 years old. Dead. Because sometimes that’s just the way this twisted universe works.

 

Michael had a year on me. We first collided in 6^th grade when letters were introduced into math, the curse of being in a progressive school system. Read that affluent white. My family didn’t belong in the neighborhood though white, far from affluent. I knew I was an interloper, in school, in the neighborhood, and in my family.

I suspected Michael had the trifecta, too. He had no friends, came off not interested in making any. A small boy with a China doll face, his expression stuck between annoyed and angelic, his hair yellow white catching the sun, bowl cut in the style of Moe Howard. I’d often see his cobalt blue eyes watching me, which is the only reason I had cause to notice him. His clothes, like mine, were never new.

I was content, enveloped in the warm embrace of school, though surrounded by antagonists – I never took a survey as to why relative strangers were subtility and openly hostile toward me, assuming I was too smart for them, maybe too pretty. Maybe too smart and pretty. Realistically, I knew the other kids were aggressively antagonistic toward me because they sensed I was not one of them. Maybe they could smell it on me. People are never kind to such things.

I welcomed order and relative safety compared with the chaos of Thanksgiving weekend at home, school a tentative soft asylum. The discoloration on Michael’s forehead and swollen eye indicated he had a similar holiday observance.

Unlike today, back in the 60’s, no one much cared if a child was used as a punching bag, particularly boys.

Mr. Thompson was a pompous ass, flattop black hair, large face, beady deep brown eyes, towering over us, head tilted back looking through his glasses and down his nose, lecturing from the top of the mountain as if we should already know the information. I knew the information, for the most part, a demented hobby reading textbooks, my brother, two years older, had me way ahead of the wave. I had a pathological fear of not knowing an answer if ever called on.

Michael struggled with algebra. Thompson repeatedly repeating the same explanation over and over again – yeah, I know, that’s the idea – while pointing at Michael didn’t do anything but cause Michael to squirm in his chair and get many of the kids giggling, sometimes laughing. I wanted to jump up, stamp my black patent leather Mary Jane on the green linoleum, and scream, Learn to teach, man! but I stayed in my chair reviewing yet again the chapters ahead, playing with the word problems.

The surprise math quiz first thing Monday morning was as predictable as the snow, dark clouds rolling in on my walk to school. Snow – and rain, wind, hail, all that good stuff, made the burden of life tolerable. Thirty minutes was allotted for the quiz. I was done in five, daydreaming, watching the snow outside from my desk center room.

Deep sigh.

Ten minutes into my daydream, Michael snarled, ripped his paper in half, then again and once more, launching the confetti into the air. Thompson, at this rich oak desk, paged a dark brown record book, applied his fat, oversized pen – a gift from his grandfather, he boasted – muttering, “That’s an easy test to grade.”

Again, I wanted to jump up, stamp my black patent leather Mary Jane on the green linoleum. Asshole! but no. I had a pathological need to be invisible, to draw no attention.

“Asshole,” came from my left, toward the window, and back. Not even a word, a whisper, a shadow just loud enough to solicit giggles around.

I did not giggle, me sharing the sentiment, a serious evaluation of a person not meant to be funny or even amusing.

“Repeat that, I dare you.” Thompson, erect at his desk, glared at Michael.

“I said you were an asshole, Mr. Thompson,” was delivered matter-of-factly.

The class erupted. I did not, nor did Mr. Thompson.

“Office,” Thompson said flatly.

Michael gathered his books, leaving the classroom.

 

I was anxious to get home, change, and frolic in the snow down by the lake, the afternoon leaking by like the white grains in my mother’s egg timer.

Not looking up from his scribbling, Thompson asked, “Who’s friends with Michael?”

Obviously no one, I wanted to answer.

“Someone needs to drop this by his house.” He waved a single sheet of yellow lined paper in the air. “The assignments for the rest of the week.”

My hand went up.

“You know where he lives?”

I know how to use a phone book. I nodded. That’s how Michael and I happened to collide in 6^th grade.

 

Michael was not dumb. Like my father, he didn’t have the patience for things he did not know, inherently unable to pause, to give himself time to understand.

Mom wanted Dad to hang a picture early one Saturday, Dad wanted to drink his beer and watch television, a favorite pastime obsession of his. Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom, I think, Dad waiting for the bull fights to come on. At 10-years-old, I agreed with Dad. About the photo, not the bull fights. Bull fighting, I thought, and particularly television bull fighting, was just further proof of what assholes people can be when acting collectively.

The photo was a long shot of the farmhouse my mother grew up in up a spalling hill, black & white, dark, in the way Ansel Adams might take the picture if he photographed rundown farmhouses on a hill.  The photo was creepy.

The week before, I’d hung a photo in my room, a full-face picture of a woman in a washing machine ad from Life, cut out and put in an old frame and mat I found among clutter in the attic. I liked her eyes and flowing warm light brown sugar hair. The model could have been a grownup picture of Antoinette Blanc, my constant companion, my best friend and more. My only friend. At the time – dead.

The woman’s face could have been my grown up face, too.

Being able to give myself time to understand shit, I quickly figured out the nail with the hanger had to go in from a high angle.

Simple, huh?

Here’s Dad tapping away straight in with poor results. If he’d only step back and look at what he had in his hand, but no. Something in his DNA prevented it. When tapping didn’t work, he moved onto the only alternative he could think of – hitting harder.

“Let me show you,” I offered, coming up on his right.

Startled and offended, I’m not sure which more, he clocked around aggressively. “I can do this,” he proclaimed, the head of the hammer catching me square across the bridge of my nose and outside orbit.

That’s the first time he’s accidently hit me.

 

I don’t know why my hand went up. Well, I do, and I don’t. I’m not a helpful person, goes with needing to be invisible, my invisibility my superpower keeping me from getting hit at home, outside the attention of Uncle Gropey, and other assorted unpleasant things in school and around the neighborhood. I guess maybe I felt sorry for him, a class of eighteen, no one’s hand went up. I was perturbed with myself, wet footprints up the interior steps at home, climbing from my dark blue pea coat, phonebook under my arm.

Winter had come early, not unheard of. The wind driving the snow was punishing, the way I liked it. Twenty-two Roberts cascaded down the directory, only two in the school district. I thought to flip a coin, deciding rather on the farthest, on the other side of town, the side away from the lake.

Because that’s how the universe works.

 

“What do you want?” he greeted, leaning on the doorjamb.

I shrugged, figuring I’d ask the same question if roles were reversed. “I understand you’re canned for the week. Someone had to bring your assigns by.” I held the paper forward as proof.

“Great.” His tone did not match the concept. He grabbed the folded paper. I didn’t let go.

Holding his eyes, the cobalt blue, looking up, him on the step, I proclaimed, “Thompson’s an asshole.”

“Well, duh.”

“I mean, well, I can explain that math shit in a way you’ll understand it.”

“You think?” Again, should have had rolling eyes with the comment.

“Well, Michael, sure, if you promise not to hit me in the face with a hammer.”

“Eh?”

I shrugged again. “What’s 2 + 4?”

“I’ll play. 6.”

“2 + what is 6?”

“4”

“2 + x = 6. What’s the value of x?

He crossed his eyes. “4.”

“And that’s all there is to it.”

“What about all those rewrites and cross outs?”

“That’s just a way, a method, a map to figure it out.”

“Go around the back.” He bobbed to my right. “I’ll meet you.”

 

Around back was a three-season room with broken windows, cracked concrete floor, an indoor kitchen table with three chairs, and disaster of a purple sofa. The aluminum door to the house shook, rattled, finally opening, Michael emerging, taking the three concrete steps in one stride, presenting his math book. “Show me.”

We sat in the cold. The snow and wind called to me. I labored thirty minutes stating what I felt was obvious. Not being an asshole like Thompson, I didn’t point that out. I did not plan to, nor did I wish to be a tutor.

He closed the book, staring past me. “It’s easy when you explain it. How about I get our civics book?”

As I scrambled for a polite way to say fuck you, the expression on my face must have betrayed me.

“I’m just joking! Civics makes sense.”

 

Mistake one was raising my hand. Mistake number two was answering, “So, what are you going to do the rest of the day?” I really didn’t wish company and I certainly didn’t want what I would later learn was implied.

My place down by the lake was not accessed easily like the other side of the lake twenty feet from the road across a public park. A long struggle through thicket and trees brought us to the clearing, a smooth drop to the snow-covered lake. Michael, brushing snow from my log with gloved hand, sat.

“Kinda nice back here,” he observed, nodding, as if searching for something positive to say.

“I like it.” I hesitated. I’d already revealed too much. I removed my knit hat, shook my hair out, removed my scarf and blue pea coat anyway, draping them on a nearby weed maple branch. If alone, I would have removed more.

In my gray wool sweater, blue plaid skirt to the knee, white thigh-high stockings, and black pull-on winter boots, I danced against the quiet assault of winter’s early visit. Lost in my bliss, I managed to forget, maybe just ignore, Michael watching.

Fifteen minutes melted by. I dropped next to Michael, not bushing the two inches of snow off the log, wiping sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. Deep sigh.

“Ballet,” Michael said.

I shrugged, watching out across the thin iced snow-covered lake down the fifteen-foot slope. “Not very good ballet, but sure. I had a couple of years in church.”

“Church?” His tone ripped the air loaded down with judgement.

“Sure, Trinity, over on Main. They had a dance program for a couple of years. I didn’t know it at the time, but churches usually don’t have dance programs.”

“Not dance. I mean, I just never imagined you going to church. I mean, you’re smart.”

At this point I realized how big of a mistake I’d made. “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

“You’re too smart to believe all that bullshit.”

Standing, I retrieved and wrapped in my scarf, working into my coat, fitting my red knit cap down over my eyes, flipping up the hem. “Time for me to be getting home.” If I’d not dragged company, I’d have made a fire and enjoyed the snow another two hours into the darkness.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t.”

“It’s just, you know, church ­–”

“Michael. Never speak to me of things you have no way of understanding.”

“I know –”

“You don’t have a clue what church is to me. None.”

 

Once upon an early Sunday morning on a beautiful spring day, I’m guessing I was eight years old, I sat on the top step of the porch, maybe sobbing a bit, anxiety seeping from me after the Saturday Night of Terror, my mother and father drunk, going at each other for hours, me hiding under my bed.

Literally.

With the quiet, I wanted to feel the sun on my face, something normal.

“Toby, good morning,” rang sharp from the walk.

“Good morning, Mrs. Martin.” My neighbor, just under a million years old, always shared a greeting.

This morning, she pointed with her oak cane. “Go wash your face, put on that pretty blue dress of yours, the one with the white ruffled collar.”

“Eh.”

“Be quick about it. We don’t have all day.”

I could not deny her vivid brown eyes,  me being excited to go anywhere but for where I was.

Sunday morning, church, Mrs. Martin and if early enough, pancakes became my soft asylum, an oasis in a barren desert.

Mrs. Larkin organized some of us girls for what I later realized a makeshift ballet class once a week on Friday afternoon in the church basement, having nothing to do with the church. Though donations were made, Mrs. Larkin gave us her time, her experience, bought most the dance clothes, shoes herself. After two years of wonderful Friday two-hour classes, the classes abruptly stopped without explanation. Rumor had it Mrs. Larkin was an abomination, fired from the volunteer program, which she created and funded.

I’ve wished I’d spent more time getting to know Mrs. Larkin.

 

Fuck, I thought, leaving for school, the door latching behind me. My first question if I thought to ask questions would have been, How do you know where I live? The answer is obvious: phonebook. The second question I also knew the answer to, the question he asked me when I showed up at his door.

“I wanted to apologize, again,” he said from the bottom of the porch steps.

I held my books to my chest. “OK.”

“I thought I could walk you to school.”

“Why?”

“Well, why not?”

“You’re not even in school this week.”

“Which means I have nothing to do all day. I’m here now, the school is halfway back to my house.”

Mistake number three.

 

Because at the time I was well into 6^th grade I’d yet to have all social skills tromped out of me, we paused outside the school at the bottom of the long three tier concrete steps. “Thanks for walking me to school.”

“We can do it again tomorrow!”

“No, Michael. No.”

“I thought maybe you could be my girlfriend.” Those now sad blue eyes I’d often caught watching me wouldn’t let go, eager, hungry.

To understand the full length and breadth of my response, I must first tell the tale in short at least of Antoinette Blanc, her imagined adult likeness cut from a magazine, framed, hanging on the wall in my bedroom. My pretend friend.

 

Antoinette Blanc was all arms, legs, and hair, her hair a soft milk chocolate brown dropping to her waist. Her complexion was a light-yellow ochre, almost white, her face a perfect oval, her eyes the color of sandalwood. I believe, have faith, that I fell in love with her, love real and true, the first time I saw her.

I was a skittish child, shy they called it, which I cultivated into my power of invisibility. I wasn’t shy, I was terrified of the other children, unable to articulate my feelings not that I had anyone to articulate to. In time, I’d learn I was less unsafe in school than at home depending upon the day and unseen forces working on the other children, school becoming that relative soft asylum, the illusion of a normal universe.

I spent almost three long years plotting how to become Antoinette’s friend. I was too scared to approach her.

My mother presented me with new clothes. The cream dress with puffy half-sleeves, flaring at the waist, breaking on my knee was Antoinette’s, still like new. I realized where my not-new clothes came from, the church new-to-me having clothing drives.

The dress fit like it was tailored for me. Standing in front of the full-length mirror, I realized – maybe – I didn’t love Antoinette. Antoinette was a better version of me with a better life than mine, her clothes always new, given away to the needy when still new, mine often threadbare.

I was in love with Antoinette because she was me – only somehow better. I had dreamed, imagined our entire life together while dancing alone around the fire by my lake, hidden from all eyes, sometimes naked when I dared.

Then, Antoinette Blanc took ill and died, relegated to an ad cut from a magazine, framed, hanging on my bedroom wall.

Because that’s how the universe works.

 

“No, Michael, no,” I repeated.

“Why not?”

I had no answer, no words of scribe or poet I could put to those eyes, that he would understand.

“No, Michael, no.”

“Fine!” He hurried off mad.

I didn’t care.

 

Because children are little human beings and human beings are assholes particularly when they group, I was swarmed on the steps, regaled with “Mike and Toby, sitting in a tree –” more of shouting in corrupt unison than anything close to singing, the eight faces confused as to who should be pushing the baby carriage, they soldiered on.

By my choices, I’d completely ruined the first snowfall of the season. The day before, a dark pall of disappointment hung palatable over the classroom, the kids collectively disheartened the four inches didn’t earn us a snow day.

In a perfect world, things would have gone more like this:

“Hey, Toby. Are you Mike’s girlfriend now?” Joe would ask because the perception of Mike being my boyfriend would be way too much to ask.

Anyway, I’d say, “No, I’m not. I just helped him with his math.”

“Oh,” Joe would say. “That’s great you helped him with his math!”

Since we don’t live in a perfect world, Joe, like Michael a year older than I, I assume behavioral difficulties had him repeat a grade, unlike Michael was a large boy, almost a boy in a man’s body, a victim of precocious puberty, Eastern European features, boisterous and proud of this heritage, Joe led the chorus, faces jumping at me shouting in corrupt unison, a nightmare scenario.

I clutched my books to my chest, willing my invisibility. I’m sure Joe and his merry band of cohorts had no idea what they wished to achieve, but they collectively determined they’d failed, escalating to pushing. With most the snow removed from street and sidewalk on the three-quarter mile walk to school, I left my snow boots in the closet, back to my black patent leather Mary Janes.

My Mary Janes would not hold the frozen, slippery concrete steps, just the right shove, gravity being the bitch she is, my face bounced off the unyielding stone, which, as I remember, wasn’t as bad as getting hit with a hammer.

 

With peroxide on the corner of a towel, I dabbed at the gnash on my cheek until satisfied all the germs were dead, then applied a strip of clear tape, affixing gauze with more clear tape. Dad was at work, Mom thankfully passed out or still in bed. I was late for school.

Thompson demanded a note. I did not have one, which earned me an on report and likely detention. I kind of expected to see eight empty chairs – nine counting Michael’s – with my mugging so public.

Clear tape over a cut is a bad idea.

 

Wednesday morning even before my chair got warm from my butt, long before the bell, my presence was commanded in the principal’s office. “We need to settle this thing once and for all,” Principal Harris said, his rich walnut desk a phalanx against unruly children. “We need to nip this in the bud, dispel all misconceptions.” He spoke as if addressing a large audience.

I knew who Harris was, this my first meeting him, a tall man, out of shape, easily winded, stinking of stale cigarettes, disheveled dark blue suit, tie lose, raggedy brown hair in need of attention. I thought him ill-presented for such an important, prestigious job.

With his greeting, the opening volley, I pegged him a pontificator. Somewhere between sober and maybe a quarter way stupid drunk, my father would pontificate – regale anyone in earshot about almost anything, often a story. My father was one-hundred percent full of shit. Also, his pontificating was his best – maybe his only – quality.

As I dropped to the small, rickety wooden chair uncomfortably three feet from the desk, I asked, “What does that mean, literally, once and for all? For all what?”

“Well, ah.”

“For all time? For all to see?”

He gave me the narrowed eyes. “It’s an expression. It means to settle the matter.”

“What matter are we talking about?”

“I’ve had phone calls, from parents, about what happened yesterday morning.”

“That’s why I was late, put on report.” With a delicate wave of my hand, I indicated my bandage. “I had to dress my wound.”

Harris gave me a long stare, stating as fact, “That was roughhousing.”

 Right there, I understood what misconceptions he was invested in dispelling.

“I was yelled at, pushed around, knocked to the steps.” Again, delicate hand, this time accompanying a glare.

He chuckled inappropriately, sitting back, his hands doing spider pushups on a vertical mirror under his chin. “Toby, Toby, Toby. This wasn’t an assault. Merely good-natured fun amongst friends.”

I assumed those phone calls from parents who were told by their children I had been assaulted. I thought it would have been nice if they’d thought to say something Monday morning before my face bounced off the stone steps. “They aren’t my friends.” Friends wouldn’t do that shit to a friend.

And then came the granddaddy of excuses for bad behavior, the phrase that dogged me and would come up to smack me in the face like Dad’s hammer when least expected. “Boys will be boys, Toby.”

I took the only win I could get. Standing, I said, “So this misconception of my unexcused lateness is all taken care of? Once and for all?

Again, narrowed eyes. I was sure this was the first time he was handled by a child, and he didn’t know what to make of me.

 

Michael ignored me. Two weeks before Christmas, Mrs. Martin died. Three days later, as I and other volunteers were scrubbing the church pews in preparation for the high holiday, Father Sweet approached me – maybe better to say he marched up to me, stopping abruptly. I thought he should salute.

“Toby. We have a problem.”

Dropping my sponge in the bucket, I stood to face him, ready to do my part in solving any problem we might have.

“Lilly Martin was not your grandmother.”

I tilted my head, narrowed my eyes. “I know.”

Father Sweet mirrored my head tilting. “She said you were, which is the only reason you’ve been allowed to attend.”

Not in full grasp of the situation, I retrieved my sponge, squeezed it out, stoking the seat of the pew. “OK.”

“Leave that, Toby. We have members to do that. You must go.”

It was that moment I realized the full measure of what I lost. “No Confirmation class after the holidays, then?”

“Well, if either of your parents were to join, or an actual grandparent.”

Maybe Uncle Gropey. There’s lots of kids around. “I understand, Father Sweet. Thank you for everything. Maybe I’ll find my way back when I turn twenty-one.”

More than once, I’d entertained the idea of taking Antoinette Blanc’s place. I thought their pain was so deep, so blinding, I could wait near the house until they were coming home from somewhere and just follow them in the house. They would be so happy, so relieved to have Antoinette back, they’d not question I wasn’t her.

The evening after my excommunication, I stood in the freezing temperatures wearing an approximation of Antoinette’s cream dress with puffy half-sleeves, flaring at the waist, breaking on my knee, waiting.

The woodgrain white County Squire station wagon rolled into the driveway laden with a fresh cut tree on top, four figures all excited, happy, expelled onto the concrete. I was not aware Antoinette had an older brother and younger sister. They wrestled each other, the four, to free the tree from the car.

I got five short steps into the street when I realized there was no way in any universe I belonged in that family, a family of joyous people obviously drowning in the love for each other. One by one, they quit the task, heads turning in my direction, me forty feet away between streetlights. I hurried back the way I’d come, retrieving my blue pea coat from where I left in behind on the ground.

I had figured I wouldn’t need it anymore.

 

Like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, I was drawn to my sanctuary, a fire already burning, a girl dancing worse ballet than mine. I watched from a distance, feeling both excited and violated. I was excited to learn maybe I wasn’t alone in the darkness.

I felt violated because, well, it’s my sanctuary, my soft asylum. Over the distance in the dark, I couldn’t make out details. She was young and pretty, graceful. I entertained the idea she was a fairy, maybe an imp, but unlike what Michael had assumed, I am too smart to believe all that bullshit.

I had too much magic ripped away over the past month. I wasn’t going to risk more. I backed out slowly and quietly, leaving the imp to do impish things.

 

Keith Oswald, a robust child of northern Mediterranean heritage, lush black hair over his ears, square face, dark disarming eyes, and thick lips lived on the corner, five houses up, knocked on my door. Three years older with puberty slamming into him like a fully loaded tractor trailer, he got gabby the summer before, which was really creepy, us not being friends, barely acquaintances. No flowers, candy, dinner.

I figured his attraction was based on my availability.

At the entreaty, I opened the door wide, which always pissed my mother off, letting the heat out or in the summer, the air conditioning. “Keith,” I greeted, not bothering with the What are you doing here, which is pretty much a stupid question.

“Hey, Toby, how was Christmas?”

“Sucked, a disaster, the only thing I got was a beat down from Dad while Mom cheered him on.”

“Is that how you got the face?”

I shrugged. “Nah, friends at school, you know, boys will be boys.” I didn’t bother explaining how putting clear tape on a cut fucks up the healing process. “How was yours?”

“Christmas was good, New Years was OK until the ski trip, which is the reason for my visit.”

“I wasn’t going to ask about the crutches and the cast.”

“Funny, everyone does.”

“Everyone’s a nosey fuck.”

Mom appeared, pushing me onto the porch into Keith, slamming the door with extreme prejudice. I rolled my eyes. “She has told me about the door a million times.”

Keith struggled, holding his ground, dwarfing me. “Let me lend you my coat.”

“I’m good. I like the cold.” With a head bob, I indicated my house. “She’s an asshole.”

“I need your help.”

“I’m not a helpful person.”

“Hear me out.”

“Listening.”

“I’m going to be in this cast for at least four weeks. I need someone to do my paper route.”

“Really? Me?” I glanced in all directions. “Of all the people in the ­–”

“Toby, if the paper has someone do it, I’ll lose my route. They’ll take it away from me. Given that boys will be boys, I can’t trust any of my friends. I need someone I can count on.”

“You think that’s me?”

“Toby, I know that’s you. Bonus to go with the offer. I got a new bike for Christmas. You can use it.”

“Boy’s bike or girl’s?”

“Does it really matter?”

“I don’t want anyone thinking I’m an abomination.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m glad.”    

 

Delivering sixty newspapers on doorsteps in the afternoon was easier than the weekly collections. On my third week, I invested some of my profit in envelopes to leave with the paper on Thursday for the hard to catch people, to be left for me with payment on Friday.

Like with church, Mom and Dad never bothered to wonder where I got to after school, how I managed to have a new bike, or why I had a newspaper every day, which I read, and a box of rubber bands.

I don’t have a clue how Keith knew I was the right person. When I accepted the job, I vowed to myself to do the very best job I could. Beyond dependable. Every paper at the door, inside the storm door in bad weather. The people who I collected from face-to-face praised my efforts. I did well in tips.

The second week of February, I rode Keith’s bike out ten miles, two towns over, to Smith’s Army Surplus store. As I slipped the second black nine-inch combat boot on, standing, I felt like I was back at my lake dancing by the fire naked. Keith had given me a wonderful gift, a gift I was just beginning to realize.

Home, I tossed my black patent leather Mary Janes, a traditional choice of my mom’s, to the back of the closet. I wasn’t going to have my face bounce off the concrete ever again simply because my shoes were slippery. With my boot black from the same store, I worked my new boots until I could see my face in every side.

 

Monday, light cream dress, slope neck, vertical ruffles, blue sash gathered waist, hem dancing on my thighs, teasing the top of my light gray socks, my socks dropping into my glistening black boots, my light brown sugar hair cutting the sides of my face. I suffocated in confusion watching my image in the cracked full-length mirror hanging on the back of my bedroom door.

 I wanted to fuck me. Maybe it was Antoinette I wanted to fuck. Unlike Keith, my brother, others, puberty flowed up on me like a comforting warm bath. I was not a stranger to masturbation – more like massaging a sore calf muscle after a long bike ride. Talk on the topic at church puzzled me. Now, before the mirror, my face flushed. I was on fire.

I was hot as fuck and had to go to school.

 

I pushed into the February day, anxious to get done with school, the paper route, get home and lock myself in my bedroom. I wanted to toss my blue pea coat forever to the back of my closet, too, another choice of Mom’s. The freezing wind did little to wash the flush from my face. Somehow, I was out of my body, watching me walking, hem dancing around my legs, my hair flapping in the wind like a flag. Then, I glanced Antoinette walking next to me.

Still lost outside objective reality, Joe brought me back to earth with, “You’re wearing your mom’s army boots!” A full head and a half over me, he leaned into my face.

A human face close to mine is beyond disturbing, releasing a cascade of emotions, none of them good. A couple of years before, my parents hosting a summer barbeque for extended family, Uncle Gropey followed me into the upstairs bathroom. Dwarfing me, he easily forced me down on the toilet, him bending, his large hand on my chest.

Masturbating, he cupped my chin, raising my face, his face in mine, his breath stinking of rancid tobacco, beer, hotdog, mustard, and relish. With clenched jaw, a wiggle, and a shake, he was then off to the sink, washing his hands, whistling.

When the door clicked behind him, I worked a towel on my bare thighs, locked the door, and did what I came to do. I knew from a prior encounter not to say anything to Mom or Dad.

 

Evidently, my invisibility cloak failed.

The usual suspects gathered. “Your mother wears army boots!” one kid yelled at me.

“Army boots!” Joe called out, his hot breath raking my face informing me he had bacon for breakfast. The others joined in the second verse. “Army boots!”

Close to panic, I took a deep breath and said, “You’re an asshole, Joe,” casually as if talking about the weather.

“Huh, what?”

“Sorry, I meant to say fucking asshole,” my tenor dismissive.

Distaste, like shock painted his face. His right arm crossed his chest, hand high as if to deliver the backhand of all slaps.

Not feeling much like a punching bag, maybe tired of years of abuse, I crouched six inches, dropped my books, sprang up delivering a concise rabbit punch on his nose. He wheeled back, the threatening hand going to his face, blood squeezing around his fingers. Winding up, I hit him just below the heart with another rabbit punch. He doubled over. As if by instinct, I left the concrete, coming down with a perfect round house to the side of his face.

He hit the steps within inches of where he had bounced my face.

Given that girls will be girls wasn’t a thing, and the pressing need for more bud nipping, I was expelled for two weeks. In retrospect, I should have stayed home, masturbated, taking the on report for being late. I probably should have taken the entire day for myself, giving me an idea, which would later evolve into what I would call a date with myself.

 

“Michael,” I greeted, ten minutes in from my paper deliveries, my front door flung wide open.

“You can call me Mike.” He presented a folded, lined yellow paper.

“I can’t, Michael. It’s a genetic predisposition.”

“You and your big words. Thompson’s an asshole.”

“This wasn’t about Thompson.”

“I meant that as a greeting.”

 “Thompson’s an asshole,” I returned.

“Shut that fucking door!” rang from the interior. At least she didn’t push me outside.

“They don’t have a sunroom in the back, so you might as well come in.”

“Who, they?”

“My parents.”

I plucked Thompson’s note, the door clicking shut. “New coat?”

With an out-of-place blush, he nodded, slipping the blue pea coat from his shoulders. “Yeah. Reminds me of you.”

 

“You have a lot of books!”

I scanned the yellow paper. “Read them all, too.”

He presented a book. “How do you say this?”

“Molecular.”

He whistled. “Explains the big words. Your bedroom is like a library.”

“I like to think my library is like my bedroom. I don’t use big words. I use proper words.” I smirked. “Asshole expects written assignments?”

“I think just to prove you did the homework.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Joe says you walked up to him and started a fight. I’m guessing it was about when he clocked you ­­—”

Again, my eyes rolled, this time up and to the left. “Joe, Jake, Clarence, Harvey, Luke, Wayne, Bruce, Gabe started in with the usual nonsense. I expressed my opinion, Joe got mad, was going to hit me. Evidently one of my many personalities is a prize fighter.”

“That’s not how he tells it.”

“I’d not expect any less. I don’t care what anyone says about me, as long as it isn’t true.”

He gave me narrowed eyes. “You get your face smashed. They laugh it off. Joe gets his face smashed –”

“I think the difference is how much blood was left on the steps.”

“And, that you’re a girl.”

“There is that.”

“I wanted to apologize –”

“No need, really.”

“Not so much apologize as explain.”

He sat at my crowded desk, me on the edge of the bed facing him.

“I am not a fan of apologies.”

“First of all, my parents are religious crazies. Any mention of God, church or religion gets me blind angry.”

I offered a nod. “I can understand that. Not only history, but I’ve personality seen religion make people do some stupid stuff.”

He stared at the closed bedroom door. “That girlfriend nonsense, I don’t mean nonsense, I mean when I blurted out, well, you remember.”

“I do.”

“I’ve watched you for a long time.”

I’ve noticed.

“I’ve thought about this since I asked you, and how crazy I must have sounded, I mean, I think I sounded crazy.”

“OK, Michael. Maybe you have a crush on –”

“No, Toby.” He bit his lip, his eyes coming to mine, falling away. “Sometimes I want to marry you, other times I want to be you,” he blurted out. “How crazy does that sound?”

“That, Michael, does not sound crazy at all.” And I’m not about to confess how I know.

“It doesn’t?”

 

I imagined Michael with soft, brown hair framing his face, wearing my white, ribbed pullover top, my short denim skirt, knee socks to match the top, my black patent leather Mary Janes. With a glance at the door, I wondered whether I could dress him up. I wondered whether he’d want to.

He would make a very pretty version of me.

I stood abruptly, maybe blushing. “Thanks for bringing my assignments by.”

Michael stood with me, close in the cramped bedroom, barely two inches taller than me. “How about I stop over tomorrow after school?”

Frozen in my vision, I saw the girl that he was. I wanted to take her face in my palms and kiss her until I ran out of breath. “No, Michael.”

“OK,” he answered, almost joyously. “See? I’m learning. How about we trade coats?”

“Huh?”

“Yours is old, mine is new. You deserve a new coat.”

I accepted the gift, not the logic. He wanted to wear my coat, which answered one of my many questions. I did not want to jump down that rabbit hole. Plots reeled in my head, schemes by which to make that happen. Like God’s clarion voice to Moses on the mountain, I suddenly understood my mother in the dead of night at the kitchen sink crying, poised to feed her bottle of bourbon to the sewage system, unable to, trapped by her toxic habit.

 

For the next three years, that became our relationship, never speaking, trading coy smiles on occasion, rarer occasion in passing when we got to middle school. For me, the difference between Antoinette and Michael was Michael had flesh, Michael was out there somewhere in objective reality.

Though much time would pass before I returned to the lake after seeing the fairy take my place, in my imagination staring out looking at nothing, I spent many a joyous hour dancing around the fire with Antoinette, with the girl I saw in Michael, with myself, and with the fairy.

I never tried to imagine Michael’s fantasies concerning me. Or himself. That day in my bedroom, I saw Michael and I much alike.

It scared me.

 

Keith decided I could keep the paper route, taking a job three blocks up the highway at a service station as the pit boy. “There’s a hole in the floor. I’ll work under the car,” he explained.

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“I know. You’re welcome to keep using my bike. If I ever need it, I know where to find it.”

Come May, the paper coming to realize what was going on, had a different idea. “We call them paper boys for a reason,” the area supervisor of paperboys told me thus ending that career.

Saturday morning early, Dad and Mom at each other, their struggle du jour starting over the lawn maintenance quickly evolving into Dad’s standard “You can’t talk to me that way!” with Mom trolling him for a good smack. Dad wanted to, as usual, drink beer, watch Saturday morning cartoons.

I liked the Saturday morning cartoons, but not with Dad explaining all the obvious jokes to me, fake laughing. He was pathetic that way, always desperately needy. Mom could have benefited from Saturday morning television with Dad instead of shots of bourbon in the kitchen while banging pots and pans around.

The sun found my face, ensuring me all was good with the universe, me sitting on the top of the steps outside, wishing Mrs. Martin would stroll by, taking me to church, maybe in time for pancakes. I know, church is on Sunday, not Saturday. Mrs. Martin was dead. What day it was didn’t matter.

Mr. Carleton, four houses up, across the street, struggled to start his mower. Like Mrs. Martin, he was just shy of a million years old. I causally wandered up. “Hey, Mr. Carleton.”

He paused, standing upright. “Good morning, Toby.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with his blue sleeve. “How are you this beautiful day?”

“I’m good, thanks. You?”

“Seems my puller isn’t as good as it once was.”

I omitted my if you don’t hit me in the face with a hammer and asked, “May I give it a try?”

He stepped back. “Why, of course.”

Having seen it done, I put a foot on the top of the mower, grasped the rope handle with both hands and pulled, getting a groan and a sputter.

“Almost!” Mr. Carleton said. “Try again.”

I did, wrapping the cord, pulling, bringing the mower to life with bellowing black smoke. Mr. Carleton quickly adjusted the choke.

“Two bucks,” he called over the racket.

“What is?” I called back.

“Mow my grass, front and back.”

“Kick in loaning me the mower to do my lawn, deal.”

“Deal.”

We shook hands.

Before noon, with both lawns neatly mowed, I rode Keith’s bike a mile and a half to the shopping center up the highway, symbolically investing the lion’s share of my $2.00 in two boxes of 50 each 5x7 pink trimmed stationary with envelopes. I’d felt bad leaving my newspaper customers without a word. When I’d taken over for Keith, many people asked about him.

I was tempted to throw the newspaper under the bus. I didn’t want to burn the bridge, thinking someday I might wish to be a journalist or photographer. Squirreled away in my bedroom at my book-cluttered desk, I hand wrote sixty-four short notes all saying basically the same thing. I enjoyed being their paper girl. Other responsibilities. Blah, blah, blah. I included will be available for lawn mowing.

I liked having my own money.

 

Summer vacation came a relief. The usual suspects: Joe, Jake, Clarence, Harvey, Luke, Wayne, Bruce, Gabe still taunted me, always from a healthy distance so it didn’t much matter. As long as my face wasn’t bounced off the concrete steps, as long as faces didn’t come at me, I could ignore anything, a skill I developed living years with two adults who drank too often and too much.

My brother, two years older, had always been an antagonist, never an ally, I think somehow jealous I came along. I did my best to stay out of his way. At fifteen, Dad mistaking Mark for an adult, allowed Mark a beer or two.

Mark, mistaking himself for an adult, thought he should bully me like Dad bullies Mom. Unlike Mom with Dad, I didn’t bait Mark. I didn’t ask for the two beatings Mark gave me that summer. I don’t know who he was mad at. It wasn’t me.

I was available.

The first beating was a couple of good slaps, some pushing around. The second beating was hair pulling, three punches to the face, a gut punch, and a push to the floor. It may have been worse, but I managed to run outside, halfway up the block.

Keith, on the way to borrow his bike, caught me. Blubbering through the tears, I told him what happened. He stormed the house, didn’t knock, returning in five minutes on his bicycle.

“Mark won’t be beating on you again,” he told me, riding off.

 

Toward the end of July, the lean side of midnight, Mom had all the air conditioners in the house on high. Like extreme cold, I didn’t mind hot, my bedroom door closed, my bed stripped to the sheet, me naked, sweat glistening from the distance streetlight, my window open, hot breeze pushing against the screen.

Well away from objective reality, Antoinette and I sat under the stars talking of nothing, exchanging coy glances. Here, sleep found me.

Cool air raked over me, back to hot. An odd, misplace giggle invaded my dream. I wanted to ask what was so funny. I stirred from sleep, realizing I wasn’t alone. Warm goo splashed on my face as my brother laughed, retreating for the door.

Legs over the side of my bed, I spit into my hand, semen dripping down my cheek. I’d spit on the floor, but my hand was easier to wash than scrubbing my rug. Leaning, stretching to the hamper, I grabbed the first soft thing, my underwear, wiping first my hand and then working around my face.

“I should have seen that coming,” I said to the darkness, not meaning a pun. I was given the gift of semen in the face three years before around midnight from Uncle Gropey. I screamed, the semen assault waking me up. Like Mark, Uncle Gropey retreated, laughing.

Mom soon stood over me at that time, dropping a wet washcloth on my lap. “Wipe your face. Don’t be such a big baby. Boys will be boys,” she consoled.

I thought to fake a scream, that Mom would bring a washcloth.

At the time.

At the time, I did not know how fucked up things were. I did not know Uncle Gropey and my brother were not only morally wrong, but they were criminals.

At the time, I knew if I brought a complaint to my parents, my grievance would be dismissed. I thought, there sitting on the side of my bed looking at the doorknob with the broken lock, whether I could talk to Keith. Keith kind of promised Mark wouldn’t be beating on me again. I did not know if that extended to squirting goo on my face.

Come eight hours, I had a day of lawnmowing ahead, first topping my to-do list now was dropping up the hardware store and buying a new lockset and even a chain for my door. Having found the owner’s manual in Mr. Carleton’s garage, I wanted to get oil for a change and a new spark plug anyway.

Dressing – my bright yellow flowered spaghetti strap sundress, black boots, no underwear, my hair in a high ponytail – I washed my face and hands, looped my light red suede bag, which was the find of the month at the thrift store – over my shoulder, leaving the house the far side of midnight.

I no longer felt comfortable without a lock on my bedroom door.

The air, hot and wet embraced me, a canopy of stars appearing and disappearing with the streetlight, my boots tapping out a moderate cadence against the deafening quiet. Having no place to go was a gift, a rare present I would give myself on Keith’s bike when free of lawns to mow.

I thought of the lake, my spot lush with growth, perfect for naked dancing around a subdued fire, the fire’s fingers dancing with me on the surrounding greenery. The vision of the imp still nagged at me. I didn’t wish to be disturbed by her – or disturb her.

Three blocks from my house, a three-lane highway intersected at an angle a two-lane highway, which created a labyrinth of traffic signals. I liked to watch, the occasional car sitting at a red light, no other cars in sight. Rarely, a driver would look around, jumping through the intersection.

The Tower, a small restaurant, 20’ deep, 30’ wide on the outside, was always open. On really hot days, after doing my papers, I’d stop in, get a cold soda with ice, sit on a stool facing the traffic, watching the chaos, the screaming noise of the traffic blotted out.

Sally was a large woman a bit older than my mother, her pink uniform dress pulled at the buttons in the front, her straw hair with chestnut roots in a sloppy ponytail. She greeted me as if an old friend. I welcomed the greeting like a cool washcloth pushed around my face, pulling myself on a stool at the counter.

“Anything particular?” she asked.

“What is?”

“I mean, what would you like?”

I narrowed my eyes at the poster over the grill. “I guess, since you’re famous for your cheeseburgers, I’ll have a cheeseburger.”

Sally laughed, full, free, unencumbered by matters of the flesh. “Oh, I like you. With the works?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, not having any clue what the works may be.

Cigarette dancing between her lips, she worked from the grill to the frier, telling tall tales, making my father’s pontifications seems like a baby’s babbling. “I was going to ask how you like it, but I’m guessing you’ve never had a real cheeseburger, so I made it like it should be.” The plate landed on the counter. “If you don’t like it ­–”

My eyes bulged. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine!” The burger on the toasted bun was topped with fried and raw onion, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. Keeping the burger company on the plate were thick cut French fries, a heathy spoon of coleslaw, and a wedge of dill pickle.

 

Saturday night, soon after midnight, The Tower, a cheeseburger, and Sally became a tradition. She was never short on stories to tell, though sometimes she’d repeat herself, which I did not mind.

“Do you go to church?” I asked one night, thinking she could somehow replace Mrs. Martin.

“Oh, honey, church people don’t care for the likes of me.”

She must have read my face.

“Don’t take that wrong. I like church, raised with church. When my father walked out on us, the congregation was there with food, support. A real sense of community and how good people can be when people decide to be good. We did a soup kitchen in the basement, food drive for the holidays and even clothing drives.”

I pushed mustard around with a French fry. “But?”

“I didn’t have time for their Dark Age nonsense.” Sally watched me carefully.

“I get that, Sally. I really enjoyed Sundays when I went to church. The people were always nice.”

“That’s the thing right there, Toby. Why not be just as nice the other six days of the week?”

I shrugged. “I only knew one of them outside church. She was just as nice, then she died. That’s when I was told to leave.”

“How’s that?”

I offered another shrug. “I liked that place in the world, like dancing by the lake, a soft sanctuary from the other six days of the week.” I watched her mild brown eyes, eyes not unlike mine. “Kind of like here, just after midnight, you and a cheeseburger.”

“Oh, Toby, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

 

By the end of summer, I bought my own lawnmower, an edger, returning Mr. Carleton’s mower to him. I continued to do his lawn at no charge, an ongoing thank you for his kindness.

 

Middle school was an entirely different dynamic, me getting totally lost in a sea of children. On occasion, I’d pass Joe, Jake, Clarence, Harvey, Luke, Wayne, Bruce, Gabe in the crowded hall. They’d greet me like we were long lost friends. I’d give them a subtle nod recognizing the greeting, but not returning it.

I saw Michael often. We’d greet each other with “Thompson’s an asshole.” Much too often to not call creepy, I’d see him off in the distance watching me pass by. I assumed he somehow knew my schedule.

With the start of 9^th grade, I had hopes for school getting challenging.

But alas.

Mr. Collings conjured up distance memories of Sober Dad. Sober Dad was, I think, more like a unicorn, something I made up, a dream I could cling to, a bulwark against hating my father no matter what a waste of human flesh he’d become.

Mr. Collings opened the first day of English with a barrage of background concerning Camus’ The Stranger. He paused in midsentence, looking around the room.

I knew schtick when I saw it.

“Everyone’s read the book, right?”

“Number four on the summer reading list,” I muttered as if to myself because I have no idea how to keep my mouth shut.

“You read it over the summer, then?” Mr. Collings asked.

“Eh, no, a couple of years ago.”

Sarcastic ohs and ahs radiated around the room.

Fuck.

“What did you think?”

“I think I’ll never be an existentialist.”

He laughed, I snickered.

“Who told you that, eh ­–”

“Toby. No one. I read the forward, introduction, and Cliff Notes.”

“Liked it, huh?”

“I wanted to understand why it was considered a great book.”

He nodded, addressing the class, handing out papers. “My point is you need to read the instructions. You are young adults now. You are responsible. This.” He waved the papers. “Is our syllabus. It’s your map to what we’re going to be doing.”

I wanted to like Mr. Collings. Maybe I felt I could have the good father that appeared ever so briefly in the shadows at home. By the second week, I was on the cusp of putting him in my sacred place, a character to sit near the fire watching me dance as I dream out the window.

He asked me to see him after school, an opportunity I jumped on having gone invisible in class to avoid repercussions from the faceless horde around me. School did not afford the soil to cultivate relationships other than saying hey to a familiar face or getting let me copy the homework from faces I barely knew. Given what I suffered with Michael as an almost friend, I wasn’t anxious to make friends anyway.

Bobbie came close, a quiet boy, small for his age. Disarmingly shy, he liked to hide in the last row, conspicuous in his attempt to be invisible. Seemingly with a Herculean effort, he blocked my way in the hall the second week.

“You didn’t say.”

Books to my chest, I took a half step back, looking down, me having four inches on him. “Say what?”

“About Camus. You didn’t say what you found out about The Stranger being such a great book, Collings cutting off the conversation. That’s been the only thing interesting that’s happened so far.”

I rolled my eyes. Coming up on lunch, being late didn’t worry me. “Yeah, that where did you read that was kind of insulting.”

“Adults always dismiss the really smart kids. So, your opinion?”

“Mr. Camus sucks. Well, I like the writing, the story, not so much.”

“Oh, I can’t wait until you tell him that in class!”

“You didn’t read the syllabus. That little canned speech was bait. It’s not on our list this year. Besides, the summer reading list is a suggested list, not a required list.”

He nodded, maybe making a difficult decision. “Look, I noticed you’re not in a clique.”

Great, my first new stalker.

I shrugged.

Talking fast, he delivered prepared material. “I mean, I’m not in any of the stupid cliques, either. You don’t have any friends, I don’t have any friends, we could have our own clique.”

I may have half stamped a foot, rolling my eyes again, this time with extreme prejudice. “Sure, Robert, we can even call it individualists unite.”

 

I may have been a bit too excited about Mr. Collings wanting to see me. I entered the room, a bit too familiar because of the father thing. “Hey, Mr. Collings.” I walked to the desk as quietly as my boots on the gray linoleum would allow.

He did not look up from the stack of papers, a pen in his right hand. “Hello, Toby.” A long moment leaked by as he read, marking two circles on the paper. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, thanks for asking. You?”

He chuckled as if I’d missed a social cue. “I am fine as well.” He looked up, catching my eyes.

I looked to the floor. Eye contact with most people makes my skin crawl.

“I have a group,” he said.

“A group of what?”

“Well, talented, or rather advanced reading students.”

I think it was the adjective reading that stuck in my ear. “Where you meet, sit around, talk about Camus?”

“He is one of the many authors –”

“What about Robert?”

“Who?”

I bit my lip to telegraph my impatience. “Robert, Bobbie.” I swept an arm to my right indicating the desks behind me. “Sits in the back.”

“Oh, the kid with the big ears. It’s really a shame his parents didn’t think to tape his ears down as a baby. They wouldn’t be so profound today.”

I did not join his group.

 

Late September, the day I mowed the last lawn of the season, Dad brought home a friend from work. Notably, he didn’t rush the refrigerator for a beer as he usually did.

Tammy was closer to my age than his, didn’t seem too smart, which I thought an act, blathering nonstop nonsense. My father looked at her oddly. I didn’t think much of it.

When I got home from school two days later, my mother said, “There are two suitcases in your bedroom. Pack everything you want in them. We’re moving.” No further explanation was offered.

Looking at the suitcases and then around my room, I thought minimum clothes, maximum books. More practically, I filled the suitcases with clothes. Twelve miles and three towns over, our new home was a 2^nd floor two-bedroom in a garden apartment complex. The neighborhood was not affluent.

Dad did not accompany us.

Gus, who I understood was a realtor and friend of my father’s, provided a pickup truck. He and Mark wrestled the large things up. The apartment came with a musky, threadbare sofa, which I was informed would be my bed in the living/dining room.

“I’m working nights now, so I need a room of my own. Mark is older. He gets the other room,” my mother informed me with a tone that could not be challenged.

I unpacked my possessions onto the sofa and floor. Gus needed his suitcases back.

 

 

Part Two