Look How You Turned Out

by Diane Munier

  I send it off, and I'm giddy waiting. Every Christmas of my life has been spent in this room, all of my childish anticipation for all of those gifts, so much excitement it could pulverize an elephant, but nothing comes close to what I'm feeling as I wait.

  It's a few seconds, then it buzzes.

  "Marry me."

  Chapter 33

  When I don't answer right away, he texts, "Where's your big balls now?"

  I don't answer. I think he's joking. After all, we were joking, and I texted my homemade booty, and he joke-texted 'marry me.'

  "Meet me in the street." him

  I shake the balls out of my pants, odd I know and put them on and go to the mudroom and stick my feet in my boots again and put on Artie's big jacket.

  I hurry outside, and he's halfway down his walk, and we meet in the middle of the road. His hands slide into the open sides of the coat, and he's not wearing any protective weather stuff, just his t-shirt still damp from his run.

  "Are you joking?" I ask right away. "You are, right?"

  He doesn't say anything.

  "Was it a joke?" me

  "Do you want it to be?"

  "Oh no, buddy. You are so going out on a limb on this one."

  "Just trying to get a reaction," he says.

  "Like…hysterical…or what?"

  "Is it such a bad idea?"

  "You were joking, right? You don't use that as a test run."

  "What if I didn't?"

  "Just a joke, right?"

  "What if it wasn't?"

  "You're doing it again."

  "What?"

  "Not going out on a limb."

  "I was softening you up."

  "For what?"

  "To the idea. By using it in a…light way."

  "Bull Marcus."

  "Bull Marcus what? You would never think of marrying me? Have you thought of it?"

  "You and Ron Weasley," I say.

  He moves his face closer to me, stares at my mouth. "You don't have a shot with Ron. But I'm right here."

  The kiss…is unfair. Nothing else matters now. He turns me in his big hands and pushes me toward the house. "Go inside. Go to bed."

  I keep walking. I don't wave or anything I just go in. I kick off the boots and drop the coat and do this zombie walk to my phone. I take it upstairs.

  I go in the crow's nest and shut the door. Then I peel off…everything. It is dark in this room, just dark enough. I hold the phone overhead and look up and take the shot. I don't quite like it. I take my hair out of the braid and fix it around me so it covers my bralessness. Then I lean against the wall and extend my arm and click it. I review the shot. It shows to just below my belly button, obviously bare, but my hair covering the tennis balls on my chest. And I have managed, by accident to look…innocent.

  I tag it, 'look how I turned out.' Then I hit send.

  Chapter 34

  I look out the window, my phone in my hand. I know the rules. There's Juney. This is Dad's home. He will respect that.

  He'll try to.

  I squeeze the phone when the door opens, and he steps out, without a shirt. He closes the door behind him. He is ripped, even in this light, and I know every ripple from the many times I've studied him, including our run the first night. His body, like I said before, it arrived in my field of vision right on time. He has made me think, from age twelve, of a world of mysterious possibility. He is a man, a big cat of a man, a Leonardo Da Vinci of a man, a balanced symphony of bone, muscle and flesh. He's a blues song, a rock song, and he's God Bless America.

  He leans against the door looking up here. He can't see me.

  I hold up my phone and flash the light when I snap a picture that I don't expect anything from. I'm just saying hello, like Tinkerbell, wishing on a star.

  He pulls his phone from his pocket and works it over quick, then puts it back in his pants.

  My phone vibrates, and I read the text. "Baby, Beauty…I'm looking."

  He turns and goes inside.

  It's the best goodnight.

  Chapter 35

  The next morning Juney wakes me up. "Bedilia c'mon I've got the Pop Tarts ready and the movie pulled up."

  I pry my eyes open. I feel like I'd been drinking the night before. I have a Marcus Stover hang-over. "I'll be down," I say in this voice I don't recognize

  My sins parade before the backs of my eyelids. Sexting? For real?

  Then the sweetness, the backyard, my boots off the ground, the middle of the street, his hands, his arms under Dad's big coat. Marcus leaning on the door like the gatekeeper to my future-Marry me.

  I flop onto my back my arm extending, back of my hand on the bed, fingers curled while the other hand rubs over the deep flutter in my heart.

  Juney's back. "Bedilia, it's Jessica. She's walking up to the door."

  He says this like the Indians are coming, and we've just buried Pa.

  Ding dong.

  I sit up and rub over my face. He's scared me.

  "Should I get Dad?" he says.

  "Um…," I can't get going for some reason. A hundred thoughts are besieging me at once. "No…not your dad."

  "We should call for back-up," he says urgently well-schooled by Artie and Marcus on procedure.

  I laugh, but it's weak. "Juney…it's fine. Just don't answer. I'll do it. Go on so I can get dressed."

  "I'm staying up here," he whispers running across the hall.

  I search frantically for my robe and tie it around my waist. I'm thrown, but I'm not afraid now. We're all adults here…well, Juney is.

  I hurry downstairs. Marcus is on early shift so he won't have had time to see her unless he's been talking on the phone or texting, and I feel a stab of jealousy among my other emotions, and it's real and wrong.

  Ding dong, ding dong. I look out the peephole and see a woman not as young as me, extensions for sure and curled way too tightly to look natural. I'm thinking Shirley Temple here…or Betty Davis. Whew.

  She's serious as in angry, okay, pretty enough if you like pinched features and a ton of foundation. She must know every trick. I get on my tiptoes to see more, but she keeps ringing the bell and Juney whisper-yells behind me, "Don't open it whatever you do."

  I wave him away behind me. I crack the door enough. "Yes?"

  "Where is he?" she says, a hand on the door like she's going to push in. But my foot braces the door, and she can't widen it enough to get past me without a scratch-fest-claw-fest and a chop or two cause Artie taught me some things and put me in Karate because I would only let people touch my arm if I had on my sweater, even in summer. So after two years of an all-boy class, I can stay focused when I'm hurt believe me.

  "Slow down," I say.

  "For the last two-thousand miles, I've looked at your smug face you little bitch. Think I'm going to step back for you because your daddy is some has-been sheriff?"

  Artie always told me, when someone is upset you don't match their emotion. A calm person is a thinking person, a calm person is a leader.

  "He's not home, and he wasn't going into work, so where is he?" she says. Whiteners. I'm blind.

  "Artie?" I say because it's not my job to read her mind.

  "Marcus," she screams.

  I am struck at how desperate she is, how angry. She lights up her phone and sticks it in my face, the picture from the market. Amazing nails. She could never stack wood.

  "Don't tell me you haven't met," she sneers.

  "There's his house," I say, stater of the obvious but some people don't require much creativity so why expend your energy? That's what I say.

  "And this is your mug, and he's looking at you." She sticks it in my face again but gives me no time to see the evidence that Marcus can focus on singular objects.

  "Your friend took that while I was shopping," I say. "I was standing by the Dentyne and holding a pound of brussels sprouts."

  "He's my boyfriend." Big, big 'my' here, and an orator's hand to go with it. I have this flash of Richard Burton p
laying Mark Antony. Strange, I know.

  "Maybe when you calm down you can talk to Officer Stover," I say.

  "What the hell do you think you've been doing going behind my back? Did you think I'd take that?"

  A laundry list of the things I've been doing runs through my mind, all with Marcus of course, kissing, rubbing, panting, losing it, sexting, jogging, hugging, staring, loving, planning, wanting, wanting.

  Here's what I say, though, and it's cold, so cold it must be some latent part of my mother I hadn't needed before, "I don't think of you at all. I don't know you."

  I hear Juney on my phone. He's calling his dad.

  She takes one step back. That puts one foot on the step another stays on the porch. Her boots have spiked heels so it takes some amazing form to pull this off. But she looks ready to spring up in my grill at the least provocation.

  "I go away for four days and…how long have you been back?"

  "You need to go home," I say. "I can see how upset you are. But you can't come here like this. Now I'm going to close the door, and if you're not in your car in two minutes, I'm calling Lowland's finest."

  Yeah, I said it. Didn't I? I said it and moved my neck.

  "Is he here now? Is he?" She steps up. I don't like her boots…at all. I see weapons. "Sharon said you were all over him."

  "Sharon…?"

  "Coy's wife," she screams.

  I put my hand up. Sharon only thinks she saw the good stuff.

  I say, "I'm closing the door now. Go home."

  I do close the door. She hits it once. I have turned the deadbolt. I listen and wait, I look through the peephole. She gives my door the finger and marches down my sidewalk. That behind…she could do some squats and that's all I'm going to say.

  Marcus pulls up.

  "Juney," I whisper, then realize he's at the window I'm going to next. I budge in, and my arm is against his.

  "She's got an awful temper," he says. "Should we get Artie's rifle?"

  I look at him in shock. "You didn't say…."

  "Kidding," he says his eyes still on the scene of those boots, and that booty rolling toward where Marcus is getting out of the patrol car with that look he must use on a domestic when he finds the husband on the lawn, belly in the wind, brandishing a weapon and threatening to kill the wife and all her sisters.

  I almost say, "Get the rifle," to Juney, but I don't want to be an alarmist. This woman can be defeated with a sharp tongue and a well-aimed hairbrush surely.

  Oh, she's engaging him. I can't make it out. I unlock the window and slowly ease it higher, the cold blast of air rechilling me as I realize the open door had done. Juney is bent down with his head in the break. I should send him to my room, but he wouldn't go. I get closer too.

  "What is going on?" she's screaming. "You don't answer my calls, and I hear how you're all over this slut," she brandishes a hand toward my house.

  Marcus tells her to calm down. He is serious and commanding. "I told you on the phone we would talk when you got here. I never meant for you to be upset when you had that ride home."

  "Talk about what? What happened in four days, Marcus! We were talking marriage!"

  "You were talking marriage," he says. "I should have told you before you left but I needed time to think of what to say."

  "All this time…you're afraid of commitment. You're a commitment-phobe."

  "I can't go forward with you."

  "What is this a square dance? I thought we were getting serious! You let me think we were you bastard."

  "Calm down and lower your voice," he says.

  "Don't you dare tell me how to handle this you lying son of a bitch."

  "You were moving ahead without me. You don't listen."

  "Listen? What else was there but getting engaged? You won't move in with me like a normal boyfriend! Is it Junior? I told you kids take a while to warm up to me. Wasn't I sexy enough? I'm not twenty-two, but I have a few good miles left!" She slaps her own behind and Juney and I groan in unison.

  She continues, "You were nothing but can't's. Can't spend the night," my hands go around Juney's ears, and I fight to pull him away from the window and get back in time to not miss one of her rat-a-tat words. "Can't move in together. Can't go to Boise with me to meet my family. Can't go with me to the stylist's convention. Can't be out late on a school night cause Juney waits up."

  "I do not," Juney whispers, and I realize his face is right back in the crack.

  "I don't know what's wrong with me," she mimics in a wicked voice, "I don't love easy. I think it's from my first wife, you say. So get some help, I say. Go to Gloria Gladdon, I say. She's helped me for years with my OCD and my rage issues, but no you say, cops don't get counseling for that kind of thing. It's a matter of the heart, not the mind you say. You liar! And I cried over that. I thought it was like…beautiful! Well, pardon me for trying to get you to a better place. Excuse me! I guess all it took was some new Yang to…," I do plug Juney's ears now. I pull him back and shut the window on the Yang part.

  I am livid. "Juney…start the movie," I say coldly.

  He swallows. "Don't go out there."

  I run to the mudroom and shove my feet in the boots. Hurrying through the living room, Juney is still standing there in his undershirt and Spiderman pajama pants holding Artie's mace. "Take this."

  I can't believe he knows where everything is. I grab that mace to keep him safe and point at the television and march to the door yanking it wide.

  Marcus looks at me over her head. She is clinging to him, her backside is toward me, and he's patting her…back. He doesn't have a coat on which lets me know when Juney called he came running. He's holding her. She's holding him and crying like a rhinoceros might cry if you could hear one.

  I feel ridiculous, and my boots make noise as I take some steps and fold my arms.

  He shakes his head no, his mouth a grim line. I throw up my hands the key ring on the mace rattling. I start to retreat, but she sees me. "You'll get yours, bitch," she calls.

  I plan on it…I don't say out loud. I only refrain for Marcus's sake.

  He's telling her to stop the verbal assault, and she pulls away from him and tells him not to give her that crap.

  My work here is done so I turn to go back inside. Juney is there holding my tennis racket. "Get inside," I say like he's crazy. But next thing I know I'm grabbed by the hair and I'm going over backward, and the last thing I see is Juney swinging for all he's worth.

  Chapter 36

  I wake up with Marcus carrying me to the squad car. He's trying to put me inside, and I'm startled, but so is he when I start directing him to let me do it for myself.

  "She's alive," Juney yells, and I feel his small arms, and then Marcus is telling him to get back and be careful.

  Marcus tells me to hang on.

  "I thought I killed her. I thought I killed Bedilia," Juney is crying from the backseat.

  "It's alright," I say low, but I have to let my eyes stay closed I can't look around. My hand is raised, fishing for his.

  "Juney calm down. Bedilia is fine," Marcus says.

  "There's so much blood," Juney cries.

  "Bedilia I'm so sorry," Marcus says, and he doesn't sound much better than Juney. Then he's on the radio, and we're moving, and he's talking to the hospital. He has a female with a head injury, possible concussion, he's five minutes out he needs a gurney and a doctor, and tell the doctor to get his behind out of Billy's and be waiting at the emergency room doors, and call Tom, she'll need some x-rays, possibly a cat scan or an MRI. She might be concussed just be ready.

  That's what I hear.

  "Hold on baby," he says like I've been gunshot.

  "You go to med-school?" I say without opening my eyes. Well, the one eye won't open.

  "I thought she died," Juney wails.

  I'm holding one of Juney's hands, and his other is squeezing the daylights out of my shoulder. "It's okay little man," I say.

  "You were brave."

&nb
sp; "Juney, sit back now and calm down. Bedilia will be fine," Marcus says, but even I hear the lack of conviction.

  "Is like…my brain showing or something?" I ask feebly cause maybe they know something I don't.

  Juney cries louder, and Marcus says no. But I lift my head and touch it in back, and it's sticky, and my hand is red goo. I hope it's not brain matter. "Gross," I say.

  "She's going to die," Juney wails.

  "Juney for the love of God," Marcus says like Kirk Douglas might have said it in an old black and white, all those sounds in his throat you can't hear but your popcorn is in your hand and for a split second you forget to eat it.

  "Calm down…both of you," I whisper. I want to help them. I plan on it…if…I live.

  In the great mystic stew, I'm still needed as a carrot until I get swallowed for good.

  I have lost a patch of hair in the back and gotten some stitches and they've looked at my inside head and yes I have a concussion which is why the room spins every time I get up and I don't quite make it to the bathroom without going left of the door despite my best intentions, and ironically the doctor who cut off some of my hair in back said a good beautician would be able to help with the little bald spot, and when Marcus and I groaned Doc feebly said, "Or not."

  I'm not pressing charges, but Marcus made sure Jessica got a ride in the other squad car, got to wear the trash bag ties on the way, got to wait at the station while I decided not to send her to the pokey so she could drop the soap and get hers.

  Now I'm stuck in Lowland General for a night of observation. I'm using a wheelchair as I make my way to my father. Juney is with him giving him a play by play I am sure. I round the corner and to my amazement, there's the old man going down the hall in two of the hospital gowns, front and back to hide the crack, thank God, with the white elastic leggings so he doesn't form a blood clot, and the no-skid socks that the hospital gives out so patients can get traction on the mirror shine floors.