Me and Mom Fall for Spencer

by Diane Munier

  “Hmm,” he says. “Go on.”

  “You’re elegant. More Sherlock than Matlock. It’s like you’ve been away but you don’t have brutality on you…but you’re sad. You haven’t lost hope completely though. But yeah…you’re disillusioned.

  “You’re easy to please, like…it takes nothing to please you.”

  He finally does look at me and his eyes are…soft. “What else?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve said too much.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t hold back when I’m asking. Please.” It’s a little like he was in church, when he nearly crushed my hand.

  I lick my lips. “You think I have the answers. And of course I don’t. I’m so afraid for you to realize that. I’m nothing much. But you…you’ve done things. Seen things. And….”

  “Don’t stop, Sullivan,” he says this with so much feeling.

  “I think you have been in love…maybe more than once. But I could be wrong.”

  He is staring at me now, his mouth open a little, his eyes…something tragic, something magic. I could look into his eyes, fall into his eyes…me.

  “I’m sorry. I…I said too much. I always….”

  He just keeps looking, and I’m a little afraid. I don’t know what this look means.

  “You ah…you can take this first batch over to Cyro if you want.” He looks away and fumbles around in the pantry, coming out with a new, unopened box of aluminum foil.

  He puts the whole first batch in the foil then goes in the living room and comes back in with some wadded up newspaper from one of the boxes and wraps the foil package in that. “Here,” he says handing it to me. “You won’t burn your hands.”

  “Thanks…look, Spencer, if you’re tired or something…let’s just call it a night….”

  “No, it’s alright. It’s fine, Sarah. It’s fine. You just surprised me. I asked for it, remember? I wanted to hear it. I didn’t know…I mean you really thought about it. You’re…you’re observant.” Then in a stronger voice, “You’re wrong…mostly…but…go on and get Cyro done and I’ll finish up here.”

  I just nod, so sorry I said so much. I take the plate of green peppers I made for Cyro and take the foil off the plate I’d made for us.

  Then I leave and I am barely aware of walking out of Spencer’s and across the street. As I walk up Cyro’s porch stairs, I look at the newspaper Spencer wrapped the fries in for the first time. That’s when I see it’s from Chicago. He’s never said where he’s from exactly. At game night I heard him tell Mom he’d lived all over the Midwest. So Chicago is not far-fetched. But there’s something there, like a confirmation--I know I’m not so wrong about him. He left a life…somewhere.

  Me and Mom Fall for Spencer

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cyro is not in his chair. I ask him where he is and he says, “Back here,” and he is in his room.

  I’m not going back there. He’s not an invalid.

  “I’m setting your dinner on the table. You need to eat it right away, while it’s still hot. Okay?”

  “What is it?” he says.

  “French fries. They’re…homemade. Spencer made them.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Need anything?” I call.

  “No,” he says after a beat.

  “I…I shouldn’t have yelled. Before. But…I meant it.”

  Nothing.

  I start to leave, but I look around again.

  “Tomorrow…I’ll be here in the morning. We’re gonna clean,” I say.

  He doesn’t speak so I go out.

  Horny is still at my house. She’ll have lots to tell Mom. Spencer had mentioned taking fries to Mom, but I’m not doing it. I don’t know if he wants me back, and the sun has set. I really don’t know, but I just want to do patrol. I think I said too much and now it feels forced, but he said to come back. He expects me to.

  I knock on Frieda’s door. He is right there. “You don’t have to knock,” he says opening the door for me.

  I see right away he’s got the food set up on the coffee table. He’s waiting for me. But he’s frying the last batch and he goes in the kitchen to take that out.

  I sit on the edge of the couch, stare at the wall, try not to. Mom says she wouldn’t buy a house if someone died in it. She thinks a house should be torn down if someone is murdered there. He never answered about this place, what made him buy it. One thing I know, he bought it sight unseen cause until that day he rolled up here in the rental truck, he’d not looked at this place.

  He comes in the room then, and right away…he’s different. He is nervous. He’s got the television on but the volume low.

  “Spencer…did I say too much before?”

  “What? No.” He puts down the bottle of tea for me and a water for himself and goes to the wall and opens the first box and reaches in and pulls up a frame that he flips back and forth on a stand. It’s sand art, constantly shifting itself as he moves it one way or another. “See? Knick-knack as it gets.” He throws it back in the box. “You’re not right about everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No. Don’t be sorry. Nothing to be sorry about.” He sits down a couple of feet away from me. He’s sat hard enough to jar me. He hands me my drink, cracks the lid off of his and takes a few swallows like he’s parched.

  “Eat up,” he says.

  I don’t want to. I just want to leave, get ready for patrol. I have things to do and…I’m embarrassed now, embarrassed to be here.

  But he puts a heap of fries on the empty plate before him. I can see he’s started on the green peppers. “This dip is excellent,” he tells me, dipping a fry in there.

  He still hasn’t turned the television up. I hope he doesn’t.

  He sits back then, his plate against his flat stomach. “Eat up,” he says to me again.

  I take my fork and get a few potatoes and put them on my plate. We’re using paper towels for napkins and I hold this in one hand a fry in the other and I lean back like him, only I nibble. “Good,” I say.

  He nods but he just keeps eating. “Cyro okay?”

  I decide to tell him about Jason leaving.

  “So you’re what…gonna be responsible for Cyro now?”

  “I’m cleaning his place tomorrow. Starting to anyway.”

  “So that’s a yes? On Cyro?”

  “I don’t know…yes.”

  “Just like that? You take that on?”

  “Why?” I want to say, how’s this your business? I shouldn’t have told him.

  “It’s a big thing. Most people, they’d think it over at least. Sarah…if Cyro needs help Jason shouldn’t assume you’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “What’s better than helping Cyro?”

  He sets his plate on the coffee table and stares at me.

  “You mean that.” He’s not asking, he’s just saying it.

  Of course I do.

  “God,” he whispers looking away, rubbing his hands through his hair. He goes for the remote, turns up the sound, fishes through the channels, flips off the set, sets the remote on the table. “Sarah…,” he looks at me, “you don’t want to watch TV. You don’t want to be here, do you?”

  I shrug. Less all the time if I’m honest. “I have a lot to do,” I say. I get it in my head, the next thing, then there’s no stopping me.

  He looks at me, looks away, laughs, smiles, wipes over his mouth.

  “The fries are really good,” I say, though I have no appetite.

  “You feel sorry for me, don’t you?” he says.

  “No,” I say.

  “You just take care of people. You don’t have to like them, right?”

  “Why are you being like this?” I stand.

  “Are you going to go now?”

  “Yes.”

  He takes my hand. “I’m sorry. I…want you to be here…because I’m…fascinating.” He laughs a little. He lets go of my hand.

  “You kind of are,” I say, soften
ed by the look in his eyes.

  He takes my hand again and pulls me back down. I go along and return my ass to the couch.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he says.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” I say.

  We are like that for a few seconds, letting that sink in and he still has my hand, his thumb rubbing over my knuckles.

  “I don’t,” he says first.

  “I…won’t,” I say.

  “But you were. I knew it.”

  He’d said he was pathetic. He never denied being lonely, said as much.

  “I’m not like the dogs in the shelter,” he says, a sad smile.

  “They’re much cuter,” I say, laughing at his surprise.

  “I said you weren’t so ugly,” he says like I’m getting revenge on that.

  I take my hand away and stand because I don’t know what to do with him now. “I have to….”

  “Can I walk with you?”

  I catch my groan before it erupts. “I should go alone.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s always been that way.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “You didn’t eat.”

  “I…I wasn’t hungry.”

  “That stops you? I admire that.” He laughs a little.

  “I’ll take some home if you…want.”

  “Sure.”

  I pick up my plate but he takes it and piles more on. I tell him again how good they are. He doesn’t reply.

  I am standing there holding the plate. “I’ll go now,” I say, embarrassed to be leaving, too embarrassed to stay. This is why I never date, not that this is a date, is it? No. It’s just neighbors having French fries. But even this I mess up.

  “Well…good-bye.”

  He stands up and laughs. “That sounded so final. You know I don’t think you’re ugly, right?”

  Oh God. I open the screen and I’m on the porch now. I think of the moon walk, one giant step for mankind, or something. I’m almost off the porch. I walk slow but I keep moving.

  “Sarah…I’m joking. You know that right?”

  I don’t answer, I just keep moving.

  Horny and Mom have moved to the kitchen. They are at the table and when I set the fries there they are oohing and ahhing, well Christine is. Mom is quiet. I say Spencer made them and Mom says, goodie,goodie. “I guess you were at his house then. Bastard’s gonna go right ahead. I guess you two never discussed paint chips.”

  “Mom,” I say, hitting the table.

  Christine shoots me a look. Pity. Spencer is right…it’s hard when people feel sorry for you. I hope I haven’t done that to him. I didn’t go over there because I feel sorry for him. But I have to admit, I know how to move toward people if some of that is there…pity.

  “I’m going out,” I say tiredly. I’m leaving things unaddressed, like dirty stinking dishes piled in the sink. I’m not facing things. She called him a bastard, and she’s reaching for his food. I’m so disgusted with Mom right now. But I don’t have the strength to admit how deep it goes.

  Outside, in the dark, I want it to make sense. My flashlight is in my hand. I start to walk past Spencer’s house. I see the orange glow from his cigarette. He’s on the porch. I don’t know what to do, or say. Frieda’s house has not only come to life, it has a heartbeat, it’s staring at me, reaching for me…and it’s Spencer. I don’t wave, I don’t flick my light, I don’t look for long, I just keep moving. I keep moving. I see the rental, cold and empty. No bottles on the porch. I have to make myself pay attention, make myself see, and hear, and I hear the steps behind me.

  “Sarah,” he says. I stop then. I don’t turn. “You were right, you were damn near right…and it pissed me off…it scared me…how right you were. And you just laid it out like that…and I saw it. I..saw it. But you just said it…I don’t know. But…I meant what I said about the pity. If that’s all it is…. I can’t just be that…when I feel this…thrown. I’ve never been…so damn…weak. And I’m trying to figure it out. But…I want to be your friend. Maybe I need you…maybe that’s what I’m saying…but I’m asking you to help me be something good for you. Something more than another stray dog.”

  I click off my light and I turn to him. I get it. I know what he doesn’t want. But I don’t know what he does want. “I’m not…enough.”

  He takes another step, his hand reaching for mine. I still don’t know. I just don’t know.

  His hand is warm, his fingers strong. I’m standing here. He’s real. I can feel so much emotion in him, his displacement. He’s been banished and he’s reaching…for me.

  “You can walk with me again tonight. Just once.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “Are you sure?”

  There is very little I’m sure of. Very few things. But what I am sure of…I guard closely.

  “I’m sure,” I say. And I turn on my light…for us both.

  The next day I am up early. I have slept heavily, dreamed in color, and as soon as I’m awake I come out of the dream, out of another world painted the brightest hues, into the paleness of my room.

  I sit up. Then I get up.

  I slept in my underwear only. I never do that. But I never walk with someone on patrol. I have allowed this twice. But I told him both times only once. That is how I’m not giving it away. It’s mine. He has to know, it’s mine.

  I hit the laptop, make sure Aaron received my work. He’s emailed me more to do. It’s a thick file.

  I let the shower bring me the final laps into the day. Thunder is rumbling as I dig for clothes. Mom is going to work today, fulltime. I look at the clock. She is already gone. But I felt that. As soon as I was up I felt the hallelujah.

  I go to the window, naked, and the storm is kicking up a breeze on my bare skin. I’m so alive. I’m so here, and I feel it, all the past and the great rush of now.

  Dressing is easy, shorts and a tee-shirt, armor against the dirt that awaits me at Cyro’s.

  Downstairs I make oatmeal. I eat this on the back porch and my cat shows up and rubs on my legs.

  The rain can’t quite break free, but the sky is rolling with gray webs. I love this show. I love the way the birds tear across the sky like they have somewhere to go.

  We are all so busy being busy, back and forth, stitching the stitches that hold the illusion together that we’re building something that can’t be touched, that can’t unravel in tiny strokes on the clock. One minute you’re alive, you’re whole, and the next a bullet waffles like a football thrown your way, to tear a furrow in your skin, close to your heart, it’s hot streak melting flesh, making that same heart quiver…because it’s fragile as a bird winging and winging to escape the thunder.

  My finger follows its path beneath the worn out thread on my shirt. The scar keeps me anchored to myself and I know that this day like all the others I have had since…this day is my second chance.

  Cyro isn’t in his chair. He’s in the back room. Says he isn’t getting up. Says to go away.

  I get busy.

  Me and Mom Fall for Spencer

  Chapter Eighteen

  There’s a mouse running around Cyro’s and I have a thing about it. At first I’m being real respectful with Cyro’s stuff but this kind of dirt makes me mad, mad at Jason, mad at Cyro, mad at Mom, myself, Fred. Don’t get me started.

  I’m just mad. I look out the dirty window enough though, once I find it under all those haunted layers of casket lining he’s got over the glass like he can keep out the world, or keep himself in or both, I don’t know.

  I rip it all down and the light, though not bright because the rain won’t fall but it threatens, it’s there, and it’s cooled things off, but even still there’s enough dust in this room to come together and re-skin a full grown man.

  And then I see Spencer over there, what the heck is he up to? Cutting his grass with Frieda’s old mower, the kind without a
motor, just some good spit and muscle behind it, those old blades haven’t tasted the wet green grass in two decades, and I go to the door just to listen, to hear their whirr that’s more like Cyro clearing his throat.

  Spencer has his shirt off and he’s pushing, insisting the thing work, and it is. But man, Spencer is digging in and straining forward. He only has on the beige shorts and his underwear showing around the waistband, and his tennis shoes on without socks. Shirt in his back pocket. I just like looking at him. It gives me some kind of crazy energy. This must be how Horny lives, all this energy. I have it now. I knew she was contagious.

  “Take a picture,” Cyro says finally stumping into the room. I heard his noise, but I didn’t think about it. That’s how wiped my mind is seeing Spencer. “What in the hell are you doing with my stuff? I ain’t leaving that window uncovered like that. What in the hell are you messing with my things for?”

  “Good to hear you care about something!” I yell back because I am not putting those stinking ghosts up at his window. He doesn’t have his zipper up or his belt done. “Snowing down south,” I say because we’re going to have standards.

  He drops into his chair. “It looks like hell in here.”

  “That’s cause you can finally see hell!” I know it’s not kind to say something about the situation. If you’re going to help, keep your mouth shut and help, I say to myself. But it’s hard work and Cyro’s bad attitude on top of it sucks.

  “You can get busy in the kitchen. You’re in my way here,” I say, knowing he’s not going to budge.

  He picks up the remote and turns on his ancient television. I’m surprised it even works with a remote. It’s big and probably heavy as a refrigerator. He turns it up pretty loud. I go to the vacuum cleaner and turn it on and it’s not nearly loud enough, but it coughs out a cloud of dust, like we need more, and it makes a lot of noise but doesn’t pick up shit.

  I snap it off. “Cyro, I swear it’s like your whole life just stopped in the nineties.”