by K B Jensen
It took me all school year, but I got my shit together. I no longer climbed on top of Billy’s back and pummeled him with my shoes. But we seemed to have grown further and further apart. By spring, we barely talked. I was busy with the explorers, riding around in cop cars. I wondered if he was busy with the black-haired girl. Skank, I thought, more out of jealousy than anything else. I’m sure she was a wonderful girl.
But I caught him one afternoon in the school parking lot walking to his car.
“Hey Billy, can I get a ride?”
“You aren’t going to try to beat me up, are you?” he asked. “You know, I could always just crush you like an ant.”
“Fuck you, Billy,” I said, laughing. “I’d take you down. You may be bigger but I’m meaner than you are. Besides, I could always kick you in the balls.”
“You are mean,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “But don’t compare me to an ant.”
I frowned, wishing I could curb my tongue and stop threatening him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Get in the car.”
I sat down next to him on the dirty black leather seat. I had to move a few Mountain Dew bottles to sit down.
“I’m sorry I’m always pummeling you,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“What do you mean, why?”
“You know, it doesn’t hurt much. You’re kind of small.”
I punched him in the arm as hard as I could.
“Okay, that hurt,” he said. “Are you happy?”
“No,” I mumbled. I’m fucking miserable, I thought.
“You know, I miss our sixth grade wrestling matches,” I said.
“I miss them too,” he said, with a raised eyebrow.
“You always lost though,” I said.
“I wouldn’t now,” he said. “But I can still let you win.”
“I keep trying to find some healthy ways to channel my aggression without beating the shit out of you,” I said.
“I can think of a few ways,” he mumbled.
His eyes were downcast but when I didn’t say anything, he looked up into my eyes. It was like a lightning bolt struck. He still hadn’t started the car.
“You know, I don’t really mind,” he said softly.
He reached for my hand and slowly uncurled the fingers of my fist.
“I’m going to teach you a few new moves,” he said softly. He leaned over and kissed me gently, so gently, I wanted to hit him.
“More,” I said. “I want more than that.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said, kissing me harder and pushing himself against me.
“Yes,” I said.
Prom came and I got all dressed up in a satiny, purple gown and high heels. The sparkly heels were about four inches tall and chunky. I wobbled on them as I got ready, but I liked the way they put me up high. I hated being short. I liked the way the shoes glittered under the hallway light – pink, purple and gold. They hadn’t been cheap.
I checked myself out in the mirror. My hair was short but curled, delicately framing my face. I liked the way my toned arms looked in the mirror. I kept turning and checking out my triceps and the round, satiny sheen of my butt.
I went downstairs and peeked out the living room curtains. I watched Billy step out of the back of a limo. I opened the front door, and we grinned at each other. “You look pretty,” he said. I punched him on the arm playfully. I’m not even sure why I did that. Maybe because I wanted him to call me beautiful.
I remember the feeling of him slipping the corsage onto my wrist with his big hands, as my parents took pictures. He looked good in a tuxedo, but who doesn’t?
We danced and danced in the school gym. He was such a gentle teddy bear of a guy. I had my face pressed against his chest and we slow danced to every song, even the fast ones. My red lipstick stained his shirt. We didn’t say much. It was nice just to be together. We stayed until the very last song.
But it was the ride home that I remember most. I guess I’d gotten used to patrolling in a squad car because I kept looking out the dark window, and I couldn’t help but spot a woman fighting off a man trying to take her purse on the sidewalk.
“Stop the car!” I yelled to the limo driver. “Now!”
Billy and I poured out of the doors and the man took off with the red purse clutched under his arm.
“We have to stop him,” I said, taking off my glittery shoes and carrying them in my hands.
Billy and I ran and ran. But the man was faster than us, so I stopped and threw my high-heeled shoe straight at his head. The first shoe missed. The second shoe flashed through the air and struck the back of the man’s head with a thud. To my amazement, he went down cold.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” I asked Billy.
“I’m sure.”
The woman whose purse was stolen walked up behind us. She had just flipped her cell phone shut after calling the cops.
“Thank you so much,” she said, and gave me a little hug.
The cops came within a few minutes. One of them walked up to Billy and shook his hand. “Well, done, kid,” he said.
“It wasn’t me,” Billy said, pointing to me.
“You mean it wasn’t the linebacker that stopped him but this little girl right here?” the policeman chuckled. “Even better.”
I glared at him. “Don’t call me a little girl,” I said.
But I couldn’t help but smile a bit. Billy and I got back in the limo. I was still barefoot in my nylons with a shoe in each hand.
“So tell me, Amy,” he said, putting his hand on my thigh. “When we graduate, are you going to become a cop or a trained assassin?”
“I’m still not sure,” I laughed. “But I do know these are my new favorite shoes.”
* * *
Peter laughed. “It’s cute,” he said. “So you’re a bit of a sadist.”
“Am not,” Julie said. “It’s just a story. My name’s not Amy. And I don’t like fighting.”
“So you changed your name,” he said. “Your hair color and your whole philosophy on life.”
“Aren’t you going to let me have any kind of artistic freedom?” Julie said, gritting her teeth. “It’s not about me, dammit. Why do people always think it’s about me?” Her leg was bouncing nervously.
“So there’s no truth in there whatsoever?” He gave her a funny look. “You don’t have a thing for football players?”
“Nope,” she said.
“Is it based on any real people?” Peter asked.
“Not consciously,” Julie said. “Of course sometimes things do slip through subliminally. Inspiration can strike from the strangest places. But good writing comes from the subconscious mind, at least that’s what I think.”
“Let me see your palm again,” Peter said.
He took off her glove and followed the lines and branches with his pointer finger. His fingers were oddly warm as they danced across her cold hand. “Still can’t see it,” he said. “But you know, I don’t think there’s anything in there about becoming a doctor or a lawyer or accountant, definitely not a cop. You’re just a writer.”
She pulled her hand away from his. She was still wearing his ring. “You know, I think you’ve got an agenda mister. You just like my stories because you like me.”
“Or maybe I just like you because I like your stories,” he said.
His lips were turning purple, she realized. Julie looked around the car. It was as though the rest of the world had turned black and white. The interior of the car was black and gray. Even her bright coat seemed to have lost its color. Outside the windows, everything appeared in shades of white, silver and black. Peter was pale in the dark. That can’t be good, Julie thought. It was a symptom of hypothermia. They were going to freeze to death, weren’t they? Body heat only goes so far. No, she told herself, I’m not going to think about that.
Julie was tapping her foot, arhythmically, trying to regain sensation in her toes. Sh
e should have worn those ugly wool socks her dad got her last Christmas, she thought. She reached up and turned on the overhead light. Maybe the engine was dead but the battery wasn’t yet. It was strange to be flooded with yellow light, but good, she thought. She stared at the condensation flowing down the windows like tears. Peter winced in the sudden brightness, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“It’s not going to make us any warmer,” he grumbled.
“We’ll be easier to see,” she said. “Besides, I like the illusion of warmth.”
Outside, everything seemed blacker than ever, but inside was a different story. Her eyes were getting used to the light, and he was coming into focus. He was pale but there was a flush to his cheeks that was kind of beautiful in a way. She noticed an old candy wrapper on the floor, an empty reminder of food they didn’t have.
“So we did young love. How about old love,” he said. “You have a story about that?”
“Your turn,” she said. “I’m sleepy. You tell me one about that. Amy was a hero in love. You got a story about a hero in love? Why do I always have to be the one sharing my stories? I’m sure you’ve got a few more.”
“Well, there is a story about my grandfather,” Peter said. “Lord knows what he was thinking.”
“Imagine what he was thinking then,” Julie said dreamily.
Little Things
He stared into the old, oval mirror. He didn’t recognize himself anymore. His once blond hair had receded, revealing a pink crown of scalp laced with thin tendrils of white. The skin around his mouth hung in folds and his nose had swollen into a large, red bulb.
Once he’d been a lifeguard doing pushups in front of the beach house at the 57th Street Beach. Now he had a gut. It hung thick and heavy under his T-shirt and blocked the sight of his toes. His chest sagged under the cotton fabric. He ran his hand over the heavy mound of flesh. This wasn’t his body. The weight didn’t belong there.
Who was this guy? He asked himself.
Had he really changed that much? No. He was the same man. He was still nineteen and rowing his white canoe along the beach with Lake Michigan spread out in front of him like a giant dime shining in the sun. It always seemed to be cold even in August. He could still remember diving into the cold water. He could remember the seagulls cawing overhead, as if he had bait in his boat.
“Arthur?” a woman’s voice called. “Are you okay in there?”
It was the only time he got alone these days, in the bathroom. What was her name, he wondered. Fuck, what was her name? It was the little things that were hard these days. The little things were hard. The hard stuff was easy.
Names had gotten hard. It was like they were there and then withered and wilted in his hands. He found himself wringing his hands trying to remember them, trying to match names with faces like a child’s mix and match memory game. The pieces went in and out of focus. He went in and out of focus. The memories flickered and flashed and exploded into nothing.
He came out of the bathroom and there she was. She was familiar, a gray-haired beauty. She took his arm with a gentleness that spoke of love, almost like she was grabbing her own arm, like he was a part of her, belonged to her and always had. He breathed out a relaxed sigh.
“The grandchildren are here,” she said, patting his arm.
He nodded and furrowed his eyebrows. Whose grandchildren? He wanted to ask, but didn’t.
With small, careful steps, she led him to the pool. He stared at the aqua blue water. He had always loved staring at water, the way it lapped at the edges of the pool, the way the sunlight hit it and sprinkled flashes of white across the surface, and taking in the chemical smell of chlorine. A few leaves had fallen in and slowly floated by. They reminded him of big ships in the distance crossing the ocean.
Two children splashed in the shallow end of the pool, a boy and a young girl. Both blond with pale skin turning a light reddish brown in the sun. They floated by on foam noodles. The girl reminded him of his daughter. His daughter was only three years old though. Wasn’t she only three years old? She liked to listen to “pretty music,” her words for classical.
A blond woman stood next to him and the gray-haired woman, too. He sat in a patio chair and pulled his hat over his eyes.
“Dad’s got to go to an assisted living facility, Ma,” the blond woman said, “This is getting to be too much for you.”
“We are not sending him to a nursing home,” the older woman said, gritting her teeth. “You know what those places are like.”
“Assisted living facility,” the younger woman corrected. “And they’re not all bad. Just think about it.”
“Think about it,” the gray-haired woman repeated in a terse tone. “Ok, I’ll think about it.”
Think about it, he thought. Thinking. He wanted to yell at them. He wanted to tell them he was a young man, that he was fine. But the words went in and out, like faulty wiring in his head. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to say anything.
“Poor Dad, the dementia has gotten so bad, Mom,” the blond woman said. “He can’t remember anything anymore. He can’t remember us.”
He glared at her from under his hat. He had pulled up the brim to look. He felt like a ghost in that chair, considering the way they didn’t even turn to look at him.
What does that even mean, anyway? He wondered. Dementia. I remember a lot of things. I was a lifeguard for years. Surely, they were the ones who had it wrong.
The children were oddly quiet, he thought. The boy was toweling off, dripping water all over the sidewalk leading back to the house. He scanned the surface of the pool, but he didn’t see the girl.
The two women were still talking, their voices getting louder.
“I’m worried about you, Mom,” she said. “I’m worried about Dad, too. He keeps wandering off.”
The voices got louder, but he had stopped listening. The water had become too still. Following his lifeguard instincts, he stood up out of the patio chair and walked over to the deep end’s edge. He looked down into the water and saw the wavy face of the little blond girl peering up at him from nine feet below the surface with wide eyes. Without a word or taking off his clothes, he dove in and reached for her little torso under the cold water. He pulled her back up to the surface, gripping her slippery torso from behind, underneath the arms. He swam her to the shallow end and carried her up the steps out of the pool.
She was breathing and crying. She wrapped her little arms around his neck. She was shaking from the shock and coughing out water. My little girl, he thought. My little girl.
“It’s okay,” he mumbled slowly.
The blond woman came up to him and took the child from his arms.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “What were you doing in the deep end?”
The gray-haired woman came up to him and grabbed his wet arm, like she was claiming her own child. She kissed him on the cheek. “Well done, dear,” she said with a tremble in her voice. He could feel a tear from her face press against his wet cheek. “I’m proud of you.”
I still matter damn it, he thought. I still have value. I’m not going to a home. He wanted to scream the words but he was too tired to talk. His mind went in and out. He was out again.
The water was dripping off him and onto the concrete. His clothes felt soggy and cold against his skin. With small, careful steps, she led him back inside and watched as he pulled a pair of dry trousers out from the oak dresser. Where were his socks? Where were his socks? He started opening every drawer. It was the little things that were hard. It was always the little things that were hard. The hard things were easy. The hard things were easy.
She handed him a black pair. He sat on the bed and slowly slipped them onto his feet while she sat next to him and watched. She helped pull on his white polo shirt. She smelled like lavender soap, a familiar scent. She took a towel to his hair, what little of it was left.
They tottered past the old, mahogany table in the dining room, into the living room and she held onto hi
s arm. She grabbed some glossy brochures off the coffee table and threw them into the trashcan by his old desk in the corner.
“Arthur, would you like to dance?” she asked. “It’s been a while.”
He didn’t answer but she hit the buttons on the stereo anyway.
The notes rang out, and he slipped into another state of consciousness full of clarinet and trombone and the rich, gravely voice of Louis Armstrong singing, “What a Wonderful World.”
It was the song they used for the first dance at their wedding. What would his wife think of him dancing with this woman? He wondered. He stared down at her gray hair, and smelled the lavender soap again. He tilted his head down towards hers so that his cheek brushed against the soft, silver strands. He closed his eyes and felt the slow steps moving below him, heard the gravelly, rich cream voice, felt the slight shake of her palm against his hand. Her hands were always shaking.
He sighed. Life was good in this moment. He had his good days and his bad days. It was a good day.
“Arthur, honey,” the gray-haired woman said softly. “I’m going to dance with you as long as I can.”
* * *
“I like that he’s a hero and we get to peek inside his head as he’s slipping away,” Julie said. “But it’s sad, so sad.”
“Do you ever feel like that?” Peter asked. “Like you’re slipping away?” Something about his tone made Julie think that it was a feeling he knew too well.
“Not really,” Julie said. “I’m too young for that.”
“My grandfather slowly slipped away,” Peter said, blinking. “He just stopped talking one day. My grandmother loved him anyway, took care of him until the end. He could still dance. There were pieces of him still in there.”
“God, that’s a sad story,” Julie said. Her head was resting on Peter’s shoulder.
“Is it?” Peter said. “I’d love to have someone stand by me like that. Love me to the end.”