I went back to my mother’s amber-rose confection of a bedroom. I’d done it as part of my portfolio to get in GSU’s competitive interior design program. It was ultrafeminine without being fluffy, and the faint blush of pink in the eggshell walls suited her coloring. She sat in it like a jewel in its proper setting, but just now, she was in a mood much too heavy for the delicate curtains.
“Not cool, Mims,” I said. “Not cool at all. You need to rein it in.”
I had more to say, but as she turned to me, her mouth crumpled up and fat tears began falling out of her eyes. She lunged at me and hugged me. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”
I patted at her, thoroughly disarmed, and said, “Momma . . .” My own name for her, now mostly replaced by Natty’s.
“That was completely out of line, in front of Nathan. Completely.” She spoke in a vehement whisper, tears splashing down. “I’m an awful thing. Just slimy with pure awful, but, oh, Shandi, I can hardly bear it. He’ll forget his Mimmy and be all cozied up and close with that man, that man, that dreadful man! Worse, he’ll forget who he is!”
I breathed through the dig at Dad and said, “He won’t. I won’t let him.”
We sank down to sit together on the bed, her hands still clutching my arms. She firmed her chin at me bravely.
“I want you to put something in the condo, Shandi,” She waved one hand past me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw her favorite picture, from last summer at Myrtle Beach. It showed Mimmy hand in hand with two-year-old Natty, the ocean swirling up around their ankles. She’d blown it up to a nine-by-fourteen, framed it, and hung it in her room. Now it was perched on her bedside table, leaning against the wall. “I want him to remember me. More than that. I want Nathan to never, never forget for a second who he is.”
“Okay,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how Dad would feel about me hanging a big-ass picture of his ex-wife rocking a red bikini. I was positive how Bethany would feel. “I can probably do that.”
“No. No ‘probably.’ Say you will,” my mother said.
I sighed, but Natty had never spent more than a weekend away from Mimmy. He might need the picture. I could hang it in Natty’s room so Dad wouldn’t have to look at it. And Bethany never came south of the rich people’s mall in Buckhead. If she did drop by for some unfathomable reason, I could stuff it under the bed.
“Fine. I’ll hang it.”
Mimmy shook her head, fierce. “I need you to swear. Swear by something you hold absolutely holy that you will hang that at the condo, no matter what.” Her fingers dug into my arms.
I thought for a second. I’d grown up between religions, at the center of a culture war, each side snipping away at the other’s icons until I was numb to much of it. There were not many things I held as holy.
Finally, I said, “I swear on the grave of my good dog Boscoe, and all the parts of Walcott, and—I won’t swear anything on Natty proper, but I could maybe swear this on his eyelashes. Those are the holiest things I know.”
My mother smiled, instantly glorious, her big eyes shiny from the tears and her nose unswollen. She even cried pretty.
“Good,” she said. “Good.”
She stood and dusted her hands off and stretched, then walked past me to the bedside table. I pivoted to watch, but she didn’t pick up the beach picture. Instead, she reached past it, to a much larger rectangle, wrapped and ready to go in brown butcher paper. It was behind the table, but it was tall enough to have been visible.
“I already wrapped Him up.”
I knew what the package was, of course, by size and shape. The Myrtle Beach pic had been a decoy, with the real picture she wanted hung at Dad’s place hiding in plain sight behind it. And she wasn’t angry at all; I should have known that when she didn’t swallow the bite, but I’d missed it. Damn, she was good, and in her arms she cradled Praying Hands Jesus, the Jesus who had hung over my mother’s sofa for as long as I could remember. Man, oh man, had I been played.
My mother dashed her last tears away and added, smiling, “I also pulled down this picture of me and Natty. He asked if he could take it.”
With that she picked both up and left the room, practically skipping as she went to add the weight of Jesus and herself to the pile of things that I was taking to my father’s house.
After lunch, Mimmy had to get to work. She owned the Olde Timey Fudge Shoppe in a nearby mountain village that was surrounded by rent-a-cabins and vacation homes. The village had a picturesque downtown with an independent bookstore, some “antique” marts, local wine-tasting rooms, and half a dozen Southern-themed restaurants. She drifted, mournful, to her car, looking prettier in the sherbet-colored sash-dress uniform than all the little high school and college girls who worked for her. I’d been one of them myself, until last week.
After a hundred hugs from Natty and a thousand promises from me to visit soon, she drove off to hand-dip the chocolates she would never sample. Walcott and I finished loading and got on the road.
Less than two hours’ worth of kudzu-soaked rural highway separated us from the city condo, even with the detour to bounce by Bethany’s Stately Manor to pick up the keys. Still, it wasn’t like The Fridge was going to invite us in for kosher crumpets and a heart-to-heart. I figured I’d be unloaded and moved before sunset. When everything you own will go into a VW Beetle, along with your three-year-old and your best friend hanging his bare feet out the side window, how long can moving take?
We drove along singing, then I told tall tales for a bit. Natty loved Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox, and I had learned the art of packing these tales with filthy double entendres for Walcott. When that got old, Walcott recited poetry, until he got to Emily Dickinson and started freaking Natty right the hell out, what with the corpses hearing the flies buzzing and capital D Death himself pulling up in a carriage. So we canned it, and Walcott plugged his iPod into my port and blasted his Natty playlist, heavy on the They Might Be Giants, as my car ate the miles. We were listening to “Mammal” when I noticed that the kind of quiet that Natty was being had changed.
“You okay, baby?” I called, glancing in the rearview. His skin looked like milk that was just going off.
“Yes,” he said. But he added, “My throat feels tickle-y.”
I shot Walcott a panicky glance. We both knew “tickle-y throated” was Natty-speak for “thirty seconds from puking.” We were in the last few miles of kudzu and wilderness. In another ten minutes, the exits would change from having a single ancient Shell station into fast-food meccas. A few exits after that, we’d be able to find a Starbucks, and then we’d officially be in the wealthy North Atlanta suburbs.
But for now, there was no safe direction I could aim him. Most of his toys were piled high in a laundry basket under his feet, and the thought of cleaning puke out of the crevices of that many Star Wars action figures and Matchbox cars gave me a wave of sympathy nausea. The passenger seat beside him was full of our hanging clothes. Walcott began searching frantically for a bag, and I rolled down every window and hit the gas. A better mother would have realized this move would be spooky for Natty; he got motion sick if he was worried.
An exit appeared, mercifully, magically close, and I yelled, “Hold on, baby!” as we sailed down the ramp. It ended in a two-lane road with a defunct Hardee’s with boarded-up windows on one side and a Circle K on the other. I swung into the Hardee’s parking lot and stopped. Walcott wedged his top body between the front seats and unbuckled Natty, while I popped my door open and leapt out so I could shove the driver’s side seat forward. Natty leaned out and released his lunch, mercifully, onto the blacktop.
“Oh, good job, Natty,” Walcott crowed, patting his back while I dug in my purse for some wet wipes. “Bingo! Bull’s-eye!”
When Natty stopped heaving, I passed the wipes to Walcott and said, “Everyone out!”
Walcott lifted Natty out and cleaned his face, carrying him across the quiet road to the Circle K lot. I moved the car across, too. Walcott set Natty down and the three
of us marched around in the sunshine. After a couple of minutes, Natty’s wobblety walk had turned into storm-trooper marching. He started making the DUN DUN DUN music of Darth Vader’s first entrance, and Walcott and I leaned side by side on the Bug and watched him.
I was thinking we could risk driving on soon when a green Ford Explorer pulled in to get gas. The guy who got out of it caught my attention. Hard not to notice a big, thick-armed guy with a mop of sandy-colored hair, maybe six two, deep-chested as a lion. He was past thirty, his skin very tanned for a guy with that color hair. He was wearing scuffed-up old work boots with weathered blue jeans that were doing all kinds of good things for him. For me, too.
Walcott said, quiet, only to me, “Gawking at the wrinklies again.”
I flushed, busted, and looked away. Walcott liked to give me crap because my first real boyfriend after I had Natty had been thirty-five. The guy after that, the one I’d stopped seeing a few months ago, had been thirty-nine.
The guy in the Explorer finished at the pump and went inside. I had to work not to watch him make the walk, and Walcott shook his head, amused. “It’s like you have reverse cougar.”
“I’m already raising one little boy. I don’t need another,” I said, arch, just as Natty passed.
Natty said, “I would like a brother, please.”
Walcott laughed, and I gave him a fast knuckle punch.
“Maybe later,” I told Natty. His skin had lost that curdling sheen, but he still looked peaked. I got my bank card out and said to Walcott, “Can you fill the car up? I’m going to take Mr. Bumppo here in and get him a ginger ale.”
Walcott waved the card away. “I got this tank. Grab me a Dr Pepper?”
I tossed him the keys, and Natty and I went on in. The door made a jingling noise as we opened it; someone had wrapped a string of bells around the bar for Christmas, and they were still up.
The hot, older guy from the parking lot was standing dead still with his hands clasped in front of him in the second aisle. He was facing us, towering over the shelves, right at our end. As we came abreast, I saw the aisle was a weird mix of motor oil and diapers and air fresheners all jumbled in together. He was stationed in front of the overpriced detergent, looking at a box of laundry soap like someone had put the secret of the universe there, but they’d written it in hieroglyphics.
Natty paused to scrub his eyes; it was dim inside after marching around in the sunshine. I realized I was staring at the guy, maybe as hard as he was checking out the box, but he didn’t even notice. When Natty was with me, I got rendered invisible to college guys, but a kid didn’t stop guys his age from looking. Heck, he probably had one or two himself. While I would never be a certified beauty like my mom, I was cute enough in my red and yellow summer dress with its short, swirly skirt that he should’ve spared a glance.
Especially since it was pretty obvious to me that he was single. Newly. It all added up: the shaggy hair, the interest in detergent boxes. He was trying to learn how to not be married anymore. Divorced guy meets laundry. Walcott said I was getting a little too familiar with the syndrome.
As we passed, I checked his marriage finger for that tattletale ring of paler flesh. Bingo. Add the broad shoulders, the permanent worry lines in his forehead, the wide mouth, serious eyebrows, and there he was: my type, down to the last, yummy detail.
If I’d been alone, I would have sauntered over, done the thing where I tucked my long hair behind my ears, showed him the teeth that Dad had paid several thousand bucks to straighten. If he’d had a good voice, I might have let him take me back to his place and introduced him to the mysteries of fabric softener, maybe let him get to second base on his newly Downy’d sheets. Looking at him, the football player build, I got a flash of what it might feel like to be down under that much man, pinned to fresh-smelling bedding by the great god Thor. It was a sideways thrill of bedazzled feeling, snaking through my belly.
It surprised me, and I found myself smiling. Sex had never quite worked out for me yet. When I looked at this guy, I knew my body still believed it would. Probably. Eventually. After all, I’d only tried sex with two men. Well, two and a half, I guess, because a year after I had Natty, I’d lost my virginity with Walcott, but I didn’t count that at all. He’d been doing me a favor, and we’d never even kissed.
Then Natty tugged my hand, steering me past the hot guy, heading for the candy aisle. Since Walcott wasn’t there to prang me, I gave myself a half second to check out the ass as I went by. Passed, flying colors. But then I went on, because Natty was with me, which meant no other man in the world could claim more than a look or two. They mostly didn’t exist for me in Natty’s presence. Not even Norse godlings. Policy.
Natty paused at the treat aisle and said in solemn tones, “They have Sno Balls.”
“Interesting,” I said, internally shuddering at the thought of Natty puking nuclear-pink coconut down my back as we drove on. “You know what’s even more interesting? They have ginger ale.” I said ginger ale like Mimmy said Jesus, walleyed with excitement, using long, ecstatic vowels.
“That’s not interesting,” Natty said, but he let himself be towed past the Sno Balls with the same good-natured disappointment I’d used to let him tug me past the blond guy.
The refrigerated cases at the back of the store were full of weird zero-calorie water drinks and Gatorade and Frappucinos, all in a tumble. Diet Coke by the Power Milk, orange juices stacked behind the Sprite. While I hunted ginger ale, Natty tugged his hand away to dig his Blue Angels jet plane out of his pocket. He started zooming it around.
I called, “You got ginger ale?” across the store to the scraggly, henna-haired object behind the counter.
“Do what?” she called back. We were closing in on Atlanta, but her Georgia-mountain accent was so thick I knew that she’d been brought up saying you’uns instead of y’all.
“Ginger ale?” I turned so she could hear me.
“Just two liters. And they ain’t cold,” she said.
I shook my head and opened the case to get Natty a Sprite, but I didn’t have any faith in it. Mimmy had raised me to believe that ginger ale and a topical application of Mary Kay Night Cream could cure anything but cancer.
I grabbed a couple of Dr Peppers, too, for Walcott and me. Natty had zoomed his way over to a tin tub full of ice, and as I passed him on the way to the register, I saw that it was full of green-glass-bottle Coca-Colas. The sign said ninety-nine cents. It used to be only country people remembered that green-glass-bottle Cokes tasted better than any other kind, but the in-town hipsters had gotten all nostalgic for them. They cost two, even three bucks a pop inside the perimeter.
If I’d gotten the damn Dr Pepper, Natty and I would have walked out clean, but I wanted a Coke in a green glass bottle. I grabbed one and said, “Just a sec, Natty Bumppo.”
He stayed by the tub, flying the jet low over the ice as I put one soda back. He was in plain sight, so I left him there and headed for the register to pay.
I passed the blond man, still standing at the end of the aisle. He was breathing shallow, eyes slightly unfocused, like he was looking a thousand years into the future instead of at a box of soap.
The girl behind the counter watched me approaching with her mouth hanging slack. She had big boobs, swinging free in a tight knit top that was cut low enough to show me a Tweety Bird tattoo on the right one. Her bobbed flop of dyed magenta hair ended in frizzles, and as I got close, I saw both her front teeth were broken off into jagged stumps.
“That all?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. It was very hard not to look at the teeth. She started ringing me up.
Then the cheery jingle bells on the door rang out. It was an odd Christmas-y sound on a late summer day, unexpected enough to make me look, even though I knew the bells were there.
I glanced at the door, at the stumpy little guy coming in. He had a broad, pale face with a wide nose under a baseball cap, pulled low. Then my gaze stuck. My whole body stopped mo
ving and the very air changed, because the guy brought his hand up as the door swung jangling closed behind him, and I was looking down the barrel of a silver revolver, really old and rusty.
All at once, I couldn’t see the guy behind the gun as anything more than a vague person shape. I only saw the shine of fluorescent light along the silver barrel, only heard a voice behind it saying in a redneck twang, “Get on the ground! Get on the ground right now, before I put shoot holes in you.”
His voice was low and raspy, like he was talking in a growl on purpose, but very loud, and I believed him. He would do it.
“On the ground!”
I couldn’t move, though. My joints refused to bend and take me to the floor. I was closest to the gunman, by the register, then the big guy in the detergent aisle, and beyond him, standing tiny and alone in the path of the gun as it swept back and forth, was Natty. Natty gone still with his plane clutched in his hand.
I felt my head shake, back and forth. No.
A gun had come, rusted with anger and ill use, loaded and alive in human hands, into the same room where Natty stood in his honorary pilot’s cap, hovering his Blue Angels plane over an ice bucket full of Cokes. Natty looked at the gun, his eyes so round that his fringe of thick, ridiculous lashes made them look like field daisies. The gun looked back.
It was not okay. It was not allowed. That gravelled voice told us all again to get on the ground, but I couldn’t get on the ground. I couldn’t move or breathe in a room where Natty stood far, so far away from me, too far for me to get there faster than a bullet could, under that gun’s shining gaze. His little fingers were white, clutched hard onto his plastic jet.
Then the guy by the detergent moved. Just a couple of steps. A step and a half, really. Barely a move at all for a guy that tall and big, but it changed my life a thousand ways.
It wasn’t a threatening move. He moved parallel to the gun, and his palms were up and pointed forward in surrender. He sank down, folding into the seated shape that Natty called crisscross applesauce, palms flat on the ground, spine straight.
My Own Miraculous: A Short Story Page 8