by Anne Panning
My mother nodded but seemed suspicious that Rose knew much of anything about her sons. She was putting on her best face, though, and I couldn’t help but feel proud of her. People kept walking around us and cars kept avoiding us by backing out awkwardly, and I knew eventually we had to get out of the way and go inside, but no one seemed to want to pull away first.
“So I was just getting some more cleaning supplies,” my mother said, and nodded down at her bag. “I should probably get back ...” She squinted into the sunshine, and I saw sweat break out across her face.
“You sure you don’t want to join us?” I asked. When I said this, my father looked up at me as if checking my sanity level. I watched my mother register this, vacillate, then decide.
“Well, I suppose I could stop by,” she said. “If it’s all right with you, Peter.” She raised a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. “It’d be nice to see the place.”
My father nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Good,” Rose said. “Then it’s settled.” She was the take-charge type, and for that I was grateful. Apparently my father had been struck mute.
“Ride with me, Nick?” my mother said. “You can show me exactly where it is.” I could tell this was a command, even though she knew precisely where my father lived, right down to the number of his unit.
“We’ll see you there,” my mother said to them. “I have to pick something up at the drug store, so we’ll be a few minutes.”
My father waved us off. Rather, he held up a hand and kept it there until we were out of sight. Rose, in her Lycra shorts and running shoes, looked even taller than she really was, towering over the back of my father’s wheelchair.
My mother started the car and acted as if everything were perfectly normal. “So does she cook for him?” she asked me as she nosed her way out into traffic. “Is that how it works?”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I said.
Her entire body sank down in exasperated frustration at my lack of understanding. “This is good for him,” she said. She accelerated abruptly and made a hard left into the Walgreen’s parking lot across the street. “He needs to see that he can have an independent life again,” she said. “Once he feels he’s a capable, functioning person again, he’ll probably be more comfortable at home.”
“Let’s not go over there,” I said. I rolled down my window and stuck my elbow out. “Let’s just go home and say we had things to do.”
My mother left the car running in the lot. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I have to get your father’s prescriptions.” She gave me a small wave and headed inside, dodging the hot sun.
So this is it, I thought as I watched people go in and out of the drug store. Instead of choosing to fight, my mother was going to wait him out, prove she was still the primary caretaker, the wife, the one who knew the important details and was still watching out for him even though he was no longer under the same roof as her. I knew she was scared about Rose’s role in his new life, but perhaps it was more complicated than that. As I watched her push open the door and walk towards me, I had a glimpse of what she must’ve looked like as a little girl. The slight wind split her bangs apart in the middle and flipped her hair up at the ends. Her walk was determined and straightforward, not a hint of elegance or ease about her. She was so short some clerks in the mall actually directed her to the girls’ section for better fitting clothes. But there was that smile that spoke volumes; it was a smile pushing against all the odds. It was a smile that swallowed sadness and strained for hope. It was a smile that always broke my resolve to defy her.
“We’re going over there, Nick,” she said. “I bought some Mint Milanos as a gesture,” she said. “You know, your father’s favorites.” I held the bag of cookies and knew I couldn’t argue with her. She had to lay claim to him somehow; she had lost so much already. Fortunately, the bell started ringing and the draw gate went down across the bridge, giving us a couple minutes to think and prepare. We both sat silently in the car as we watched the bridge lift to let a boat through. Finally, a small white boat glided past with buoys dangling over the sides like garland. “Darling Jane,” it said across it, and I wondered if the old woman sitting on the deck reading was Jane. The man who I imagined was her husband waved to the bridge master and then to us; good sports that we were, my mother and I both waved back enthusiastically, never for a moment letting up, letting go, letting on.
At my father’s townhouse, my mother and I ate salmon grilled on a cedar plank; that was the kind of cook Rose was, and I watched my mother take it all in as if recording it to tell someone later. There were fresh, feathery sprigs of dill, a light lemon caper sauce, and crusty French bread. Steamed asparagus, my mother’s favorite, was laid out in a milky white dish, which accentuated the vivid green. For dessert, Rose served small bowls of fresh blueberries with vanilla yogurt drizzled on top. She’d politely arranged my mother’s store-bought cookies on a small glass plate shaped like a fish.
Midway through dessert, when the three of them were discussing Harry’s soccer game yet again, I began to silently curse my brother for having so expertly extricated himself from our family and having left me to pick up all the pieces. It simply wasn’t fair that while I sat enduring this awkward meal he loitered around Rebecca’s house watching movies and shooting baskets in the driveway. What was worse, I somehow knew in my heart that Harry, the one who tried the least, cared the least, disappeared the most, would be the one to really make it someday. Yes, my grades were first-rate, whereas his were mediocre; yes, my photographs had garnered some attention in the art department at the high school, whereas he was happy to simply fly under the radar; yes, I was the son both parents looked to to perform and contribute beyond expectations, but still. Harry had what I could never seem to achieve: freedom. As I looked around at my mother, my father, and Rose sipping decaffeinated coffee—my mother regularly glancing at me to see that I was still “with” her—I knew I could never fully escape her no matter how far I fled. This fact settled down on me like the hot, humid storm clouds that had begun rolling in from the southwest and rumbling overhead.
“Nick? Are you okay?” my mother asked. She got up to clear plates, even though Rose told her to just leave them.
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “But we should probably get going.” I stretched loudly like an old man and sighed.
“Well,” my father said, “if you have to.” He wheeled himself away from the table and backed himself closer to Rose.
“You’re sure you’re going to be all right here?” My mother stood up and held the chair in front of her.
My father didn’t answer but looked around with wild eyes as if he were lost.
“Peter,” Rose said. For once, she was flustered and stumbling. The muscles in her tanned legs flexed and flinched. “Peter?”
“It’s all right,” my mother said. “Anyway, we should go.” She went to retrieve her purse in the living room and bent down to embrace my father lightly.
Rose nodded and began clearing the dishes while my father sat silently, his eyes beginning to close.
Outside, it was already growing dark, and the tiny flash of fireflies lit up the squat bushes lining the parking lot. The thunderstorm was still lighting up the sky, but it was far off now and seemed like it might miss us. My mother drove by Rebecca’s house, always lit up like there was a party going on, then over the canal bridge, then past the old movie theater toward home. Our house was completely dark. The wheelchair ramp looked like part of a broken maze. I saw Nomad in the living room window and thought about my camera but didn’t feel any real drive to pick it up anymore.
My mother cut the engine and got out, leaving me behind. Everything at that moment seemed impermanent. In fact, I had every reason to believe my father would be back after he’d had a little time to process the events of his life. I had every reason to believe this was all a phase, a sharp corner we’d all turned that would one day find us back on track. I got out of the car and looked at
the house. My mother was inside and already on the telephone. Nomad hopped off the windowsill and followed her to the kitchen, where I saw my mother shake some cat food into her bowl as she spoke and laughed into the phone. She took off her earring, set it on the kitchen counter, and ran her hand through her hair.
“What a day!” I heard her say as I walked in the back door. Whoever it was she was talking to, she was definitely putting on the bravado.
Upstairs, I peeked into her bedroom: a tangle of patchwork quilt, slippers upended on the floor, a bra hanging on the doorknob, the blinds at half-mast. All the signs of a living, breathing person there. Nothing of my father remained, save their wedding photo nailed above the bed. In it, my mother’s slightly crooked teeth smiled in an overbite that was heartbreakingly familiar to me; my father loomed large in his tuxedo with his big arms wrapped around her from behind. Smiling at the camera, they both squinted into the hard sunshine at a future they could never have seen coming.
I turned away, went to my bedroom, and stood on the bed. I took down some of the pictures I’d taken that year, then put them up again after seeing the big gaps they left on the walls. There were so many possibilities, I thought, so many ways things could have gone. Downstairs, I heard my mother laughing like a teenage girl into the telephone, and then she hung up. Then there was the sound of nothing but the rain, soft and then suddenly hard.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to the following literary journals in which some of these stories, in various versions, first appeared, or will appear:
The Beloit Fiction Journal: “Super America”
The Florida Review: “Five Reasons I Miss the Laundromat”
Terminus: “Pinned”
The Kenyon Review: “All-U-Can-Eat” (forthcoming)
Five Points: “Tidal Wave Wedding” (forthcoming)
Thanks also to the Millay Colony for the Arts for that wonderful month in the woods during which some of these stories got their start.
Thanks to all the good teachers I’ve had over the years, so generous with their time and encouragement: Jonis Agee, the late John Mitchell, Robbie Shapard, Steve Heller, Jeff Carroll, Richard Messer, the late Larry Brown, and Christopher Moore, who started it all.
Thanks to Barb LeSavoy, Dena Levy, Ruth Childs, and Andréa Parada for the “Solution Circle” and years of friendship, laughter, and lunches.
Thanks to Rachel Hall and our writing “group” of two, for reading every single one of these stories and helping them along, and for saying, “Let’s write novellas!”
Thanks to Steve Fellner for his constant encouragement, valued friendship, and always dead-on feedback. What did I ever do without him and his “assignments” that kept us both going even when the writing well seemed dry?
Thanks to Christine Green for her unconditional friendship, love, and support.
Thanks to my family in Minnesota, who—though far away—are never far from my thoughts.
Thanks to the old Augsburg College gang for their complete irreverence, their scathing wit, and their warmth, creativity, and love that still manages to lift and sustain after all these years. And to John Mitchell, of course, for throwing the champagne glass against the wall.
Lastly, thanks to my husband, Mark, who has always supported my writing life, even when it meant giving up time of his own. His good eye and ear for fiction have helped shape many of these stories.
Finally, thanks to my son, Hudson, and daughter, Lily, who have given me more than they will ever know. XOXO.
THE FLANNERY O’CONNOR AWARD
FOR SHORT FICTION
François Camoin, Why Men Are Afraid of Women
David Walton, Evening Out
Leigh Allison Wilson, From the Bottom Up
Susan Neville, The Invention of Flight
Sandra Thompson, Close-Ups
Daniel Curley, Living with Snakes
Tony Ardizzone, The Evening News
Salvadore La Puma, The Boys of Bensonhurst
Melissa Pritchard, Spirit Seizures
Philip F. Deaver, Silent Retreats
Carole L. Glickfeld, Useful Gifts
Antonya Nelson, The Expendables
Debra Monroe, The Source of Trouble
Nancy Zafris, The People I Know
Robert Abel, Ghost Traps
T. M. McNally, Low Flying Aircraft
Alfred DePew, The Melancholy of Departure
Mary Hood, How Far She Went
Dennis Hathaway, The Consequences of Desire
Rita Ciresi, Mother Rocket
Molly Giles, Rough Translations
Dianne Nelson, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America
Christopher McIlroy, All My Relations
Peter Meinke, The Piano Tuner
Alyce Miller, The Nature of Longing
Gail Galloway Adams, The Purchase of Order
Carol Lee Lorenzo, Nervous Dancer
Wendy Brenner, Large Animals in Everyday Life
Paul Rawlins, No Lie Like Love
Harvey Grossinger, The Quarry
Ha Jin, Under the Red Flag
Andy Plattner, Winter Money
Frank Soos, Unified Field Theory
Mary Clyde, Survival Rates
C. M. Mayo, Sky Over El Nido
Hester Kaplan, The Edge of Marriage
Darrell Spencer, CAUTION Men in Trees
Robert Anderson, Ice Age
Bill Roorbach, Big Bend
Dana Johnson, Break Any Woman Down
Gina Ochsner, The Necessary Grace to Fall
Kellie Wells, Compression Scars
Eric Shade, Eyesores
Catherine Brady, Curled in the Bed of Love
Ed Allen, Ate It Anyway
Gary Fincke, Sorry I Worried You
Barbara Sutton, The Send-Away Girl
David Crouse, Copy Cats
Randy F. Nelson, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men
Greg Downs, Spit Baths
Anne Panning, Super America
Peter LaSalle, Tell Borges If You See Him
Margot Singer, The Pale of Settlement