I got a small cart and walked through buying my usual basics.
Preston disappeared down the aisle toward the butcher at the back of the store.
I paid for my things and wondered where Preston was. I waited by the front door.
Suddenly Preston appeared. “Let’s get out of here. This place doesn’t have very good meats. I’m not spending my money on this.”
He grabbed me by the arm and we headed out to the car. I got in the driver’s side and Preston said, “Let’s go!”
We pulled out of our spot and headed toward home.
“Preston, what was that all about? You didn’t get anything?”
I looked over at him and he grinned a big stained-teeth grin at me.
He opened his pea coat and showed me the cellophane packages of ground beef and pork chops all stuffed into a tear in the lining.
“This is what I’m eating the rest of the week. You can have some too little sis.”
The next few days Preston and I sat in the main room, with him drinking coffee, me, nothing much, mostly water, maybe orange juice. Preston finished all the coffee in the kitchen cupboard and when we bought him a big can of Folgers, he made coffee all day and night and stayed up scribbling in a notebook, saying he was writing a story about the cabin, about Grandpa.
Dale took us out for a steak dinner one night. Preston loved that. He ate everything in sight. Dale asked the waitress if we could have more bread. “Better bring more bread before this guy eats the basket.”
At the end of the week I drove Preston to the Greyhound station. It felt good, like we had a solid mutual understanding of the current state of things for us both. I would go to college and work hard to get good grades. He would graduate soon and try to get a job at a small newspaper so he could work on articles while writing the great American novel in his spare time. I couldn’t say I was sorry to see my brother leave though. He was unpredictable in his emotions and impulsive in his actions. I felt like he was a drain when I was trying to be careful. He was too reckless for me.
THE END IN SIGHT
In May, on a Saturday morning, I looked out my picture window at the still frozen lake. Much of the snow had melted in several big thaws but the ice was holding on, grey and dull with old snowmobile tracks crisscrossing the length of the bay in all directions. The sky was bright blue and the temperature was probably going to be in the fifties. I had spring fever. I was thinking of the kids I knew in Chicago, how they’d be getting ready for graduation. How girls would be wearing new spring outfits to school every day. I wondered what was in style this year, I felt so out of touch with city-kid fashion. I decided to try to tune in to a Chicago radio station I could sometimes pick up when it was clear like this. The station that I used to listen to at night, that I used to cry myself to sleep by, was called WLS. I went to the radio on top of the old refrigerator in the kitchen and fished around on the dial. WLS came through faintly.
I smiled as a familiar DJ’s voice came on.
“The high in Chicago on this beautiful spring day? We’re hitting eighty, folks! Eighty degrees for a high today all across the metro area. Summer’s finally coming on strong!”
Eighty degrees? Here I was trapped in this ridiculous never-ending winter. Ice on the lake still! A high just pushing out of the forties and I had been thinking it was a goddamn heat wave. I ran to my bedroom and found my bikini from last summer. I pulled off my stupid long underwear and threw it in the kitchen garbage. I prayed my bikini still fit.
I got the strings tied and I went out to the living room where I could still hear WLS rocking out with a great song by The Lovin’ Spoonful, “Summer in the City.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. I sucked in my stomach. I turned sideways. Okay, this life had not been easy on me. I definitely was going to have to pull it together if I was going back to the real world. I danced to WLS for the rest of the morning in my bikini by the wood stove and then got dressed and jogged up and down the road with my two wild dog companions barking and rough-housing as they chased me.
The end of school was in sight and I had to look great for everything coming up. I was asked to sing my current favorite song for the graduation ceremony. I had bought the sound track to a new musical called The Wiz, which was a soul-music version of the story of The Wizard of Oz. I loved the song “Home.”
The kids at school heard me sing it once and they said it gave them chills. It seemed like the perfect words for my situation so I could belt them out with conviction. But now with the school year ending, the other seniors said it was the perfect song for them too because so many of them would be leaving home for the first time when they turned eighteen and graduated. The choir teacher said I could sing it at the graduation ceremony and he would accompany me on piano. We had to order the sheet music in Virginia. I was really looking forward to the graduation. Mom said she’d be coming up to see me. Preston told Mom not to come to his college graduation because he didn’t want to be part of it anyway, so she was coming to mine.
I wasn’t sure when she was expected, so when Seymour and my mother came rolling into the driveway that afternoon, I was caught off-guard and came running from the cabin. My dogs went crazy, barking and jumping all over, trying to see the new visitors. They were always friendly. They weren’t mean at all and they listened pretty well if I told them not to jump. But as Mom got out of the car, they were all over her, in her lap, and got muddy wet paw prints all over her trench coat. She was mad immediately. As soon as she got out of the car, she got a good look at the melting burial ground the dogs had been working on all winter filled with wild animal bones, fur pelts, and skulls like some kind of Death Valley from the Wild West.
My mother’s keen eye didn’t miss a thing. She stood surveying the property, her property, and I followed her gaze as she stared up at the carport ceiling. I hadn’t noticed, and there wouldn’t have been an easy way for me to do anything about it, but dear old Brandy’s body was thawing out and one of his big paws had come loose from the wrappings and was hanging down from the rafters. My mother uttered, “Good Lord,” and turned to face the cabin.
She stormed down the path and the next thing she saw was the backside of the woodpile where the dogs and I had been pooping and peeing all winter. Now that everything was thawing out, the layers of toilet paper and excrement were visible where once I had covered them with snow. It looked bad. I was embarrassed, but I had survived and now it was finally over.
Within hours of their arrival, Seymour and my mom had assessed the entire situation. They sat me down and said that my puppies were an unsolvable problem. My mother did not waver. They were a threat to the wildlife. With summer folks coming back to the lake, they could not be allowed to run wild and terrorize everyone. They weren’t vaccinated or neutered. I was leaving for college. They were a burden and a liability. On the last official day of school, while I was gone during the day, my mother and Seymour drove them to the vet and had them put down.
With the puppies gone, my mother and Seymour whipped the place into shape. I was heartsick, but I helped them with everything. I went out with a shovel and dug into the thawing earth deep enough to remove all the winter’s mess I had made and bury it way back further in the woods. I cleaned all the wild carnage that my beautiful puppies had strewn across the front of the cabin.
The spring rains came and the dirty snow gave way to the sweet grasses and wild flowers I remembered.
Brandy was buried in the yard with Dale and Seymour’s help and we planted a great clump of wild daisies over his grave and rolled a big boulder for a headstone. We stood in a circle over his grave and I sang the Doxology like we used to in church choir long ago, in what felt like another lifetime, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow … ”
Graduation Day came and I sang the song. The motley group of fifteen graduates all stood on risers in the old gymnasium and we received our diplomas. We stood together dressed in uncomfortable clothes, full of relief over what we had endured and
achieved and in anticipation of what life held in store. I had lost so much but life was full of new possibilities.
COURTNEY YASMINEH is a rock musician and singer-songwriter with a classic rock chick’s frankness, irony, and guts. She has several albums and thousands of road-gig miles to her credit. Renegade is her latest record. A Girl Called Sidney is her first novel.
GIBSON HOUSE connects literary fiction with curious and discerning readers. We publish novels by musicians and other artists with a strong connection to music.
GibsonHousePress.com
facebook.com/GibsonHousePress
Twitter: @GibsonPress
READING GROUP GUIDE
If you are reading this novel with a book group, here are some questions to start the discussion.
The book title is “A Girl Called Sidney” and at that time in America (1960s-70s), the name Sidney was mostly used for a man’s name. What is the significance for Sidney to carry a name that was usually assigned to males only?
What relevance does the subtitle, “The Coldest Place,” have? How many meanings can that title take on for Sidney? Who utters those words in the story?
By the end of the story, Sidney is eighteen years old. At that point, does she understand or know her parents? As we read, are we able to glean a realistic view of either parent through Sidney’s telling of the story?
Is Preston, Sidney’s brother, a character to love or revile? As a reader, would you say that you and Sidney share the same feeling about him?
Are there moments in the story, for Sidney or for her mother, where being female is a drawback? In 1970s white suburban America, these two women were making difficult choices. What strikes you as different from how they could operate as women today?
Could a story like this take place in today’s America? How have things changed or not changed in almost fifty years, especially with respect to families in crisis, teen emancipation, or divorce?
How does Sidney feel about her family home in Chicago? How does she feel about the cabin? What do these places come to signify in the story?
Music is a strong thread throughout the story. What would Sidney’s life have been like without music?
What is your reaction to the assertion that Sidney is betrayed in this story? Where are any obvious, and more subtle, betrayals that unfold?
Does Sidney come out “smelling like a rose”? Who does she hurt? Who does she betray? Could she have changed the course of history for her family if she had conducted herself differently? What should she have done?
FOR AN EDITABLE DOWNLOAD OF THIS GUIDE, VISIT
GIBSONHOUSEPRESS.COM/READING-GROUP-GUIDES
A Girl Called Sidney Page 26