Sweet Jiminy

by Kristin Gore

  Jiminy remembered what it felt like when her mother had hugged her: like she was a life preserver being clobbered by a drowning woman. Her mom would clutch her tightly, turning her entire world into nothing but dark, fragrant hair. Jiminy and her mother had the same hair, actually, and as Jiminy would breathe in mouthfuls of it, she’d experience the strange sensation of the two of them being tangled up together—unsure of who was who. She’d always had to work to not feel panicked by this.

  In contrast, being held by Bo made her feel calm and safe. And as Jiminy looked up at him—into his smooth, handsome face—she was surprised by the sudden instinctive realization that despite everything, this was the happiest she’d ever felt.

  Lyn remembered the first time she’d laid eyes on Edward, in the fall of 1948, when they were all of sixteen years old. She was visiting relatives a few towns over from Fayeville, walking through an outdoor market, searching for something pretty and cheap for her sister’s birthday.

  So far, she hadn’t found a thing. But rounding the corner of a table full of lucky buckeyes, Lyn stopped suddenly in front of a small booth that she had to lean over to inspect. There were only a few items, but they were gorgeous. Tiny, smooth, impeccable wooden figurines. A horse on its hind legs. A frog mid-leap. A bird taking flight. Little animals in motion, carved out of trees.

  Lyn touched them gently with her fingertips. Something about miniatures had always attracted her, perhaps because they belonged to a world she was guaranteed to dominate.

  Edward had appeared behind the booth. She hadn’t known it was Edward yet, she only knew that he was a tall, serene boy with a lake of a face. One look and she wanted to jump in and drink him up.

  She wasn’t accustomed to such feelings. She’d never experienced them before. So they scared her, and she stepped back.

  “Hello,” he’d said.

  His voice was clear and friendly, which confused Lyn further. She was more familiar with grumbled asides and downcast eyes.

  “You make these?” she’d asked.

  She knew that if he said yes, she would have to marry him. She awaited her fate with one arm twisted behind her back, held in place by her other hand.

  “I do,” he said.

  By the time Lyn returned home to St. Louis two weeks later, she had a wooden bird for her sister and a fiancé for herself.

  As happened whenever Lyn thought of Edward, the sharp sting of losing him was bound up with the guilt over not being good enough for him when he was alive. She thought of this now, punished herself with it, as she polished Willa’s silver, putting each utensil carefully away in the velvet-lined drawer.

  Sometimes Lyn thought that Edward knew everything now. That his eternal perch had granted omniscience and he was able to peer around all the corners of their marriage, into all the cracks of their lives. In those moments, she could only hope that he was forgiving. She only hoped that he understood her love. These last many decades, she’d been doing penance to make sure he knew.

  And what about their Jiminy? Could she see all, know all, too? Lyn didn’t let herself picture this, because her daughter had died too young to understand all the choices that had had to be made, and the necessity of labeling some mistakes “choices.”

  Jiminy’s eyes had been silver-colored. Not the hue of silver that was ripped from the earth and sluiced and smelted and leached and hammered into cold objects that required regular polishing; rather, the tint that revealed itself more naturally: the silver of fish scales flashing, or of the edges of clouds between dusk and dark. Edward used to tell Jiminy that her eyes had dripped from the sky onto her face the night she was born, when the delighted moon had laughed so hard she’d cried. So Jiminy’s eyes were moon tears, Edward had declared, as precious and special as her.

  Those silver eyes had shimmered with an enthusiasm for life that still made Lyn catch her breath. When she thought of her daughter, and of all the joy she’d embodied, Lyn felt her heart fill. She lost herself in that sensation now, as she wiped a cloth gently along the curve of a serving spoon like it was a tiny brow being soothed.

  When Willa came home from poker with Jean, Lyn was still polishing, which surprised both of them.

  “Lyn? Are you all right?” Willa called as soon as she walked in the door. “Lyn?”

  Lyn rubbed harder on a stain as she realized how late it was. Too late to reasonably still be there. She’d been completely lost in memories of Edward and Jiminy, but now here was Willa, to force her back into the present moment.

  “I’m in here,” Lyn replied.

  She didn’t stop polishing when Willa entered the room.

  “Just trying to get this silver all clean,” Lyn said, keeping her head bent over her task.

  “It’s past ten o’clock,” Willa replied. “I was worried when I saw your car. I thought you might’ve fallen and hurt yourself.”

  That had happened once, a long time ago, when Lyn had first become old. Carrying some sheets up the stairs, she’d turned her ankle, tumbled, and ended up unconscious at the bottom. Her ankle had recovered, but her back had never been the same.

  But there’d been no such accidents this night. To the untrained eye, Lyn appeared to be in one piece.

  “Sorry to make you worry,” she said.

  “Well, no matter,” Willa replied. “But why don’t you leave this and pick up with it next time. It’ll still be here.”

  Lyn paused but kept her gaze focused downward, on her old, worn-out hands.

  “I don’t like leaving things unfinished,” she said simply.

  Willa eyed her carefully, her forehead furrowed in concern.

  “Are you all right, Lyn? What’s going on?”

  Lyn sighed and resumed polishing.

  “Just these water stains. But I’m getting ’em. I’m gonna get every last one of ’em.”

  “I’ll get this soon, I swear,” Jiminy informed Bo as she struggled to shift the truck into gear.

  “I have no doubt,” Bo replied. “And then you can drive us to pick up a new transmission.”

  “Shut up,” Jiminy said, smiling. “You’re supposed to be helping me. Am I making any improvement?”

  “You’re showing signs of potential competence,” Bo answered.

  “I’ll try not to let that go to my head.”

  Bo grinned.

  “You’re getting better, definitely.”

  It was true. She’d been able to stutter and glide a little in the high school parking lot. She just needed practice. For Bo’s part, he was happy to help her practice all night. Even in light of all the stop-and-start jerking, he couldn’t think of a single thing he’d rather be doing.

  Which he knew was something his aunt Lyn considered a problem. She hadn’t actually said anything to him about his relationship with Jiminy, and Bo hadn’t offered an opening for commentary. But he could sense the warning in the way she mentioned the weather turning, or the gas price fluctuation, or his need for a haircut. “You’re going places,” she seemed to be saying to him beneath these other words. “Don’t mess that up.”

  Abruptly, Bo noticed he was going someplace with considerably fewer jerks and stutters. They were leaving the parking lot, pulling off into the night.

  After Lyn finally left, Willa opened all the silverware drawers to take stock. Everything was gleaming. There wasn’t a water stain in sight.

  Willa hadn’t brought any silver into her marriage or received any as wedding presents. She’d never been wealthy enough to afford such things. It had all come after Henry’s death, over time, and only because Willa had sifted through hundreds of antique malls over fifty-plus years to procure it. Jean would accompany her on her searches for that one affordable pitcher or ashtray or spoon engraved with someone else’s initials, that she’d scoop up and add to her collection.

  Willa now owned drawers full of silver. And when it was polished, it didn’t matter that it was mismatched and marked by others. It shone, and it was hers.

  The only obstacle
to her enjoyment of her hard-won silver collection had been Lyn’s strong dislike of cleaning it. The polish Willa insisted she use had a powerful chemical stench and gave Lyn a red, painful rash that she’d complained about from the beginning. So for Lyn to voluntarily clean Willa’s entire silver collection meant that something was fundamentally wrong. Or, rather, it meant that the thing that was fundamentally wrong had surfaced and announced itself. Willa wondered what it could all lead to as she picked up a cake knife and studied her reflection. In the glare of the overhead light, the whites of her eyes burned back at her.

  Just south of Fayeville, Interstate 34 sliced through fields and hills, crisscrossing the Allehany River dozens of times. The winding backroads that had existed before the interstate still shadowed it in a twisty, incompetent way, but from the moment it was built, Interstate 34 had been faster, smoother, and straighter.

  As soon as I-34 was completed, new restaurants sprang up near its Fayeville junction. This development, in combination with the grand opening of the HushMart superstore along the access road that led to the interstate, had turned Fayeville’s previously bustling Main Street into a neutered, orphaned remnant of another era. It seemed to take no time at all for McDonald’s and HushMart to become much more popular than Lucy’s Snack Spot or Kurley’s Hardware. Even residents who lived within walking distance of the Main Street stores and restaurants no longer just strolled down the block for the things they needed or desired. They were now much more likely to get in their cars and drive toward the interstate instead.

  Part of the access road that connected the interstate to Fayeville wasn’t as smooth as county officials would have liked. The construction company hired to do the job had failed to adequately take into account the eroding bluff that overhung the planned junction, and as a result, the motorists navigating it were confronted with the added challenge of looking out for falling rocks. Someone from Highway Maintenance was tasked with clearing the rocks out a couple times a week; more frequently when there were storms.

  Bo knew about this danger and was prepping Jiminy for the challenge of potentially having to stop and start again, after she had been so happy flying along in fourth gear, slightly too fast for a curvy road.

  She was preparing to downshift into third when she was suddenly and instantly blinded.

  Bo was, too.

  “What the . . . !” he said.

  He was exclaiming at the strength and brightness of the light burning into their corneas, but he was also aware that Jiminy wasn’t slowing down as planned. He was worried that she might have taken her hands and feet off the controls completely, retracting like a frightened turtle. He couldn’t check to ensure this wasn’t the case, because he couldn’t see anything.

  “Brake!” he shouted as they nearly rammed the pickup truck that was assaulting them.

  It had come quickly around the curve, safe in the boulder-free lane, with its brights on high, trained on their windshield. It swerved now to avoid them, slowed, and came to a stop.

  Bo listened to the sickly crunch of abused machinery as Jiminy brought their own vehicle to an abrupt halt, diagonally across the oncoming lane.

  “Reverse!” he shouted, knowing that another car could come around the curve at any moment and slam into his passenger side door. But Jiminy was too shocked to comply.

  “Reverse,” he said more softly and urgently.

  She looked at him for a moment, then struggled with the gear shift. But it seemed that in her startled fright, she’d regressed to square one. She stared down with a look of complete bewilderment. The gear shift might as well have been a cucumber, for all she could remember of what she was supposed to do with it to make this big chunk of metal move for her.

  Bo was a calm person, but he knew when he was in real danger. He had a flash of what the pain of impact would feel like, how a life of paralysis would change his plans. He opened his door.

  “Scoot over,” he commanded.

  He slammed his door shut, put a hand on the hood of the truck and launched himself over the front of it, half-sliding, half-scrambling to the other side. His feet landed on the asphalt and he wrenched open the driver’s side door to see Jiminy still sitting there, confused.

  “Move!” he shouted, helping her roughly along.

  “You! Stop right there, boy!” a voice shouted from behind him.

  But Bo had seen the glare of headlights on the trees and knew an oncoming car was moments away from their spot, probably driving as fast as they’d been. And now that he’d forced Jiminy into the seat that would receive the impact, he’d be as good as murdering her if he didn’t ignore whoever was yelling at him and act quickly.

  He slid into the driver’s seat, threw the truck into reverse, and jerked them backwards just as an ’86 VW Cabriolet veered obliviously around the corner.

  It was a car Bo and Jiminy both knew well. As they panted to regain their breath, they watched the Cabriolet screech to a halt to avoid hitting the truck that had caused all the trouble in the first place.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Lyn exclaimed, as she looked back to make sure it was Bo and Jiminy she thought she’d seen.

  It was. And here, too, was Roy Tomlins and his grandson Randy, standing outside yelling while their truck blocked up the road. Lyn couldn’t sort these various pieces into an arrangement that helped her understand the scenario she’d stumbled across.

  She took a deep breath and opened her door.

  “I’m warning you for the last time to get outta that car, boy!” Roy was growling.

  He was as old as Lyn, filled with a timeless rage.

  “What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

  Get out of the car, Bo, she mentally beamed down the road. Though she wasn’t positive that this was the best psychic command. If he got out and moved toward them, he’d just be voluntarily coming into range. Perhaps it was better for him to stay in the car, next to the girl. Except for the fact that Roy Tomlins had shouted a direct order that would go unheeded at all of their peril.

  “This ain’t none a yer bizness,” Roy’s grandson Randy snarled at Lyn.

  Lyn addressed her words to Roy.

  “That’s my great-nephew, Mr. Tomlins. And Willa Hunt’s granddaughter.”

  Lyn kept her voice submissive. Roy stared hard at her. Something in her tone, or her look, or the sound of the crickets resuming their night song, made him pause in his fury. He stared another beat, then turned and walked toward Bo and Jiminy’s car. Lyn hurried after him, struggling to keep up, careful to avoid getting too close.

  Inside the car, Jiminy was shaking.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating.

  She was mortified that she’d frozen up. She knew how close they’d come to serious injury, all because of her incompetence. And now these men were yelling at them, and Lyn was there looking worried and beaten down, and Bo had a grimness to his face that Jiminy hadn’t seen before. It scared her. He seemed resigned to some kind of disaster.

  “I need to get out of the car,” Bo said quietly. “But you stay put.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she replied, wishing her voice wasn’t such a whimper.

  “Just stay here,” Bo replied. “Just stay here.”

  She didn’t know why they were being shouted at when they were the ones who’d been blinded. She couldn’t comprehend how a barely avoided accident seemed to be spiraling toward a worse one. She was bewildered by the unfolding events, whereas Bo seemed to understand exactly what was going on.

  Jiminy had an urge to kiss him like she would if he were going off to war. She leaned over to do it, but he gripped her shoulder hard.

  “Why are you trying so hard to get us killed?” he said harshly.

  He opened his door and got out, leaving Jiminy stunned.

  Thank you, Lyn thought to herself. On the walk over, she’d realized that Roy and Randy thought Bo might speed off to escape their wrath, and that they were determined to make sure this di
dn’t occur. Bo wouldn’t do that with Lyn there, but she wondered what his reaction would have been otherwise. Lyn knew it was a very good thing she’d come along, and this was a feeling she was unaccustomed to having.

  She met Bo’s eyes as he stood up straight beside the car, closing the driver’s door behind him.

  “I toldja stop, boy,” Roy said.

  “Yes, sir, but I knew another car was coming and we needed to get outta the way in a hurry,” Bo replied.

  Roy didn’t like logic that disagreed with him.

  “I toldja stop.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Tomlins,” Bo said. “Hello, Randy.”

  Bo and Randy had gone to high school together. They’d played on the same football team.

  “I’d stay quiet if I was you, Bo,” Randy said and scowled.

  He was staring past Bo at Jiminy, still seated in the car. He started toward her but was stopped by Bo, who wouldn’t step aside. Lyn silently cursed and with her eyes urged her great-nephew to move. The girl was not the one who needed protecting.

  “Outta my way, boy,” Randy ordered.

  Bo hesitated for a moment and locked eyes with his old teammate, grappling with a desire to smash his fist into Randy’s face. But feeling his great-aunt’s agitation, Bo reluctantly moved aside instead. Randy pushed roughly past him, rapped his knuckles on the car window, and opened the driver’s side door.

  “You okay?” he asked gruffly.

  Jiminy nodded stiffly.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can speak freely, I won’t let anything happen to you,” Randy said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You with this boy willingly?” Roy called.

  Lyn sucked air into her lungs. Surely Roy Tomlins didn’t think he’d stumbled across a kidnapping. He just didn’t like what he saw, and wanted to dress it up in a costume that would offend others, too.

  Jiminy looked confused.

  “With Bo?” Jiminy said. “Yeah, of course.”

  This answer didn’t bring Lyn any relief, because she observed its impact on Roy and Randy, who were now looking even angrier.