“What are you talking about?” Sylvia laughed.
“I don’t know myself. All I’m saying is we only know about the past. Why not redo it?” JJ looked about as young as he sounded.
Sylvia laughed. “How did you get optimistic? You’re going to redo the past, are you? You went away from here and lost your mind,” Sylvia said, but the fact that JJ believed or even pretended to believe in the power of reinvention (in the redo, the most childish of all rules in any game), made her momentarily buoyant. “Well if it happens I want you to let me know.” Sylvia said.
“I will. Just wait.” JJ grinned at her.
“Where are your babies? You have any?” JJ’s life hadn’t paused in nearly seventeen years since she’d seen him. He might have nearly grown children, of course he might, big boys and girls looking him dead in the eye when they talked to him. “That’s not my business. You don’t have to tell me, JJ.”
“No kids. I’ve never been married and no kids. Lucky or unlucky, I guess. Just been me all these years.” JJ started to say something but seemed to change his mind.
“No kids. Are you sure?” Sylvia asked.
“I’m sure, Mrs. Sylvia.”
“I know you’ve had plenty of girlfriends. If you’re not crazy there’s a line of women for any man these days. Even if you are crazy there’s a line, tell the truth.” Sylvia laughed.
“I don’t mean I haven’t had friends. But you know what, most of them older than twenty-five.”
“You stop that. What if somebody heard you saying some mess like that?” Sylvia pursed her lips, attempted her best disapproving face. She fooled no one. “There’s time if that’s what you want. You’re still young. You know that don’t you?”
“Not that young. But that’s okay. There’s so much time. I believe it,” JJ sat up straighter, excited about what he was thinking. “I was nervous time was running out, at least my time, but since I got back here I feel okay. You know what I mean? I feel like I can reboot. Start again, you know?” JJ asked.
Sylvia smiled. She missed this sweet, silly boy. She never believed that a move could shift everything into clear and brilliant focus. But she saw every day poor women that did. In they’d come to Social Services needing help to move town or sometimes even a couple of streets away, searching for that place that fit. Of course they would infect their children with their wanderlust, always looking for the perfect houses, apartments, the town that once and for all ticked all the boxes. She waited for JJ to continue describing his life on the giddy lip of midlife hysteria. Stay on that funny edge as long as you can, she thought.
“I started to think too much has happened in my life. I started to feel it.” JJ touched his chest like what he felt was there and he might get it out if he just knew how. “I thought maybe I couldn’t get past it. But you know, Mrs. Sylvia, I can.”
“Well, you’re doing the right thing. Build you a house. Make yourself as happy as you can. Get some things you want. This is it. You realize that, don’t you? One go-around. Listen to me, trying to tell you something and my fun for the week is a couple of trips to Food Lion. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“You’re right, you’re right. I’m trying.”
“Anyway as soon as I can I’m getting my Barack plate up. Remember they used to say Clinton was the black president? You remember that or are you too young?”
“I remember. I was a kid, but I remember.”
“You know, I think the black people around here were more excited when Clinton was in.”
“People are going to think you voted for Mitt.” JJ grinned, waited for her reaction.
“What would I look like?” Sylvia laughed.
“Romney thought it was about being rich. Nobody cared if he was rich. Hell, we all want money. We love rich people. He just wasn’t for real. You know what I mean? Authentic, that’s the word.”
Sylvia nodded, but she wasn’t sure what being an authentic human being meant or if she’d ever been one. “That’s harder than it looks, honey.”
“Remember when he was talking to those kids and started saying who let the dogs out? He’s never heard that song in his life. You know it. I know it. He’s an old rich white man. Just be that. Nothing wrong with it. Unless you don’t want to rule the world.”
“Look at you. You’re still young. Old people don’t get excited about nothing. Not one thing. You hear me? You need to trust me on that.”
JJ shook his head. “Like what I think matters. He’s still a millionaire. I’m still not.”
“You must have something. That big house up there didn’t just make itself.” It had been an unusually dry spring. A house that should have taken several months, as long as a year with contractors’ rain delays and juggling job delays, was moving right along, ahead of schedule. A forest became a clearing that became a recognizable structure in no time, like it had been raised up then supported from the back like a picture frame—the house no more substantial than a prop in an old west movie, but there it was.
JJ shrugged. “I’ve got one house money. One.” JJ grinned. “Did you watch the election results?”
“Both times, honey.”
“I was in the car when I heard about the first election. I thought about you.”
Sylvia swirled the remaining tea in the tall glass.
“I thought about how Barack must be wanting his mother.”
Sylvia drained the glass, hoped she hid her face, her emotions too complicated to have to try to explain. “Probably was.”
“I wanted my mother and they weren’t making me the president.” JJ laughed.
“My phone number has been the same.” Sylvia tried to sound harsh or at least firm, she sounded sad.
“Not until I could show you something.”
A word can bring the heart back to life sputtering and spitting like an almost-drowned man, gasping at life. JJ had thought about her. He had wanted her when he felt proud. Sylvia had not become a known person in her town though she had lived there all her life. She was not connected in the ways so many people she knew found anchors to a town and a community. She had very few family members living. She was not a churchgoer or activist, or interested in local government. She would never receive a key to the town or a commendation for service. When she left her job, the few people who had been there more than a couple of years would get her a cake and gift certificate and never again call or see her on purpose. At times she felt unknown in the world, like she sleepwalked unconnected and alone. To know that she had been important to someone moved her in ways she could not have predicted. Wasn’t she easy? Sylvia thought. “I guess we’ll see it now.”
“I’ve been a lot of places. More places than I ever thought I’d go. I’ve lived all over the country for one reason or another, some job or just needing a change.”
“I used to want to travel,” Sylvia said.
“You did? I wouldn’t have thought that Mrs. Sylvia.”
“Just because I’m old now doesn’t mean I always was,” Sylvia said.
“Where did you want to go? Paris? Everybody wants to go to Paris.”
Sylvia thought of Marcus with an easel set up at the Seine, a painter’s pallete in one hand, his silly beret covering one side of his forehead. “What would I do in France? I really wanted to go to Las Vegas.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I’m not kidding even a little bit. I don’t know why.” Sylvia counted her reasons, “Number one, I’m too cheap to gamble. Two, I hate crowds. Three I don’t like nasty buffets or sick, crying drunks. I just wanted to see all those lights and those hotels right there in the middle of the desert. Wouldn’t that be something? But I let it go.”
“You can get there for pretty cheap. They’ve got all kinds of deals you can get online.”
Sylvia smiled. She would never look up any deal online or anywhere else. Her dream to go out there was just a fantasy, and fantasies should stay tucked away in your heart, easy to access for a cheap mental thrill or some
put-up-your-feet thoughts, but forever out of reach. JJ was still young.
“I don’t blame you if you don’t go. It’s all the same, Sylvia.”
“What’s all the same?”
“Everywhere. Some flat, some hills. Big towns, small ones. All the same. But being here matters to me. It’s hard to explain. It’s about time. I’m just starting out. Most people my age are thinking about how to wind down.”
“You might be surprised at what people are doing, JJ. Any kind of pain or crazy I guarantee you there’s somebody in this town that is going through the same thing. We figure out a lot of ways to be unhappy. Trust me on that.”
“I’m going to stay here and settle down,” JJ said.
“This is your home, honey. That means something,” Sylvia said.
“Like it or not.” JJ laughed.
“Take it by day,” Sylvia said softly. “I don’t want you to suffer.” JJ was feeling more and more deeply about the town than the town deserved in her estimation. “The place is different from the way you left it,” Sylvia said.
“You can’t go home again, right?” JJ said. “I know, I know.”
“Have you seen your sister yet?”
“She’s in Columbus, Ohio.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Nah,” JJ said, and shifted his eyes away from Sylvia. Even without the obvious evasion, Sylvia knew he was lying.
“You going to see her now?”
“I’ll talk to her eventually. I remind her of too many bad things.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. What do you mean too many bad things? That’s ridiculous. You’re her brother, her only one.”
JJ shrugged. Sylvia knew as sure as she was sitting in her cluttered little kitchen that JJ had seen his sister and had been hurt by her. It would take some doing to get him back there.
Sylvia wanted to ask him what he knew about his sister’s life, her children, any of the small group of family that had looked the other way when he lived with an unkind stranger over twenty years ago. She knew as well as anybody not to open that manhole cover. Drop in that hole and you might not find your way out.
“You don’t worry. You hear me? You don’t let it get to you. We used to say keep on keeping on. That’s what you’ve got to do. She’ll come around. She will. One day she’ll realize.” Sylvia hoped she sounded convincing, but she was not convinced. Some people figured out life much too late to do anyone including themselves any good.
“Now I need a drink,” JJ said.
“Listen to me. I have to say this. I know you’re here because you think this is home. But you can’t go home because there is none. It’s just you trying to make it in a place that holds some memory for you. That’s not the same as home. People can be like home sometimes and that’s if you are very, very lucky. Are you hearing me?”
JJ’s face looked like he was concentrating, like he listened to what she said.
JJ smiled, sadly Sylvia thought, like every cold fact of wisdom she’d told him he’d already considered, calculated as true, but decided to ignore, put the whole bet on the ridiculous long shot.
“Don’t tell Ava I came by here? Would you do that for me?”
“I’ll let you tell her. Tell her yourself.”
“I didn’t mean for you to know, but you caught me.” JJ pointed his finger at her.
“Listen, JJ, all that mess you went through when you were coming up, and, me too, I’m not leaving myself out.” Sylvia shook her head, trying to coax out the right words. “You try to forget, but you don’t. You never do. This place might be paradise for some people, but it never was for me and it never was for you. Maybe it can be. I hope so. But, honey”—Sylvia leaned in closer to JJ, she wanted him to see her, to really see whatever it was that registered as serious and meaningful on a face—“I don’t want you to count on it. Make sure you aren’t counting on it.”
“I’ve seen a lot out there. I’m not a kid anymore,” JJ said.
“I know. I know you’re a grown man. But you have to know that every child in the world is trying to get away from a dead-end town. Just like this one. Where are they all going to, baby? When they’ve had enough they go back to the town they left. That’s not the same as coming home.”
“I know.” JJ smiled though there was no happiness on his face. “But I’ve got nowhere else. This is it, Mrs. Sylvia.” JJ shrugged his shoulders, opened his hands.
Sylvia understood all about the last stop on the line, the inevitability that only appeared to be a choice. She nodded. “When do we see the house, honey?”
11
Mommies2B.com
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Hello. I’m Ava, I’m new to this site. It’s nice to know you are out there. I won’t go through all the details of the journey. A lot of it is familiar to you I can tell by your posts. I’m so glad to find you all. I have never posted anything (not even a review of a dress LOL). I don’t know where else to go. I can’t tell anybody else. I feel like I’m talking to myself or talking to God. Do you feel like that? Okay, here we go. The newest thing: I am well past my two week wait—2 WW. It has been almost four weeks since ovulation, no period! But I’m scared to death to find out. I ovulate on day 17 through 20 (I know! Way late!) and now I’m waiting. Again!
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I haven’t been on birth control for about nine years. But my first pregnancy was only about six years ago. Followed in three weeks by my first miscarriage. My second miscarriage was eight months ago, the last one was almost five months ago. I have never had a successful pregnancy. NO BABIES. I’m scared. I have had Intrauternine inseminations (IUI) several times, way too many drugs. The doctors don’t know what the deal is. He’s been checked out too, by the way. I had IVF once, but I can’t really afford it again. I will have to get another mortgage on my house and I don’t have enough equity. That’s all the ready money I’ve got. I think this is my last shot. It feels funny to even write that. Wish me luck. Who would have thought after years of trying not to get “knocked up,” I’d be worrying like this. LOL
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Anyway, I don’t have any major symptoms. Did anybody else get a BFP—BIG FAT POSITIVE (don’t you love this language? ☺) without symptoms? My natural pregnancies came on like tsunamis. I guess this is natural too. Assisted is the word, right? I did have one little moment three days after the hormone injection. Six sharp pains in my ovary or at least in that direction. Six of them like little chicken pecks. But nothing since then. PRAY FOR ME. Any information you have will be appreciated. I will pray for you all. Ava2WW
Ava picked up the laptop and moved it from the counter to her kitchen table. She never thought she’d post to one of those sites, telling her business to a bunch of sad strangers. She could talk to Jenny, the youngish white woman at work who had made several overtures of friendship to her. They had gone out for coffee a few times and walked together through town at lunch in their dresses and tennis shoes. They had even gone out to dinner and once to a movie. But Jenny was gossipy and needy, too eager to latch onto someone, anyone, and it didn’t seem to matter who. A couple of times Ava gave in and decided that they would be friends. Why not? Both of them could hold the other as a placeholder until the real friend came along. Wasn’t that better than nothing? Apparently not. Ava just couldn’t stand her. Did people, grown people spend time with folks they couldn’t stand? Sylvia never had, but Sylvia was mostly alone. Not on purpose (but who ever does it on purpose?), Ava had ended up with a life like her mother’s. But she could change, couldn’t she? Just writing the one web message had made Ava feel oddly hopeful, like she waited for the arrival of a friend. Ava could change.
Jenny recommended a Chinese herbalist in Raleigh who had helped Jenny’s hairdresser’s daughter with acupuncture and herbs. The daughter had gotten pregnant right away. Ava couldn’t count how many stories she had heard just like that one. Some woman was struggling with infertility and click, the right switch got turned on from an unlikely source. Ava knew it was p
athetic to believe every story. But you get in too deep, you start to figure what the hell? Why not? What could it hurt? You start to see logic in every dumb idea you heard. One weekend Ava pretended she had a work retreat and drove to Raleigh to visit the herbalist. Turned out the man worked out of an inside booth at the flea market.at the State Fairgrounds. The herbalist watched her walk in, sized her up, looked over her body with not a shred of sexual interest, and then asked her age. When she told him, he’d stared at her like she was crazy, sighed audibly with scornful resignation. “You too old,” he’d said and shook his head. Ava had been so frustrated she felt like crying. The man reached behind his counter and gave her some tea leaves in a mesh sack that she was supposed to brew and drink every morning before she ate. Ava boiled water for the tea one morning, but didn’t drink it. Whatever was in the mix might work against the drugs she already took. She’d later flushed the sack down the toilet.
She backspaced over the PRAY FOR ME. That sounded wrong. She’d never asked anybody to pray for her in her life. She then backspaced over the I will pray for you. She reread the post and retyped I will pray for you. She would pray. In her way she prayed all the time. Ava pushed send and closed the laptop. The women on the site would answer. That she was sure of, since she’d spent entire evenings reading their posts. So many stories just like hers. Some worse. Ava was glad she could reveal herself without shame online. If you had a secret in the old days, your family held your story in the vaults of their hearts until you died or until they did. The weight of the shame, the sorrow, the terror stuck and dragged down a body in the world. But you could survive, if the particulars did not emerge or emerge completely, if the family could be discreet. Ava had never heard of a discreet family.
Ava’s great-aunt Lula, dead for at least thirty years, had not married or had children and had lived in her mother’s house and then her sister’s house until she died. Whatever had made her stay out of the commerce of ordinary life was a mystery that Ava did not know and had never attempted to find out. Maybe she was content or maybe they all wanted to avoid the inconvenience of her pain. What would Aunt Lula have written online to her secret best friends?
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