by Diane Munier
“Marie,” Spencer says, “I don’t want trouble. That’s the last thing I want. I don’t mean harm to you or anyone here. Especially Sarah. Did you talk to Cyro or something…have a neighborhood meeting? Cause this little fairy tale you’ve got going is messed up.”
“Colin said we should keep our distance until we knew you better. He said he’d drive by here more often, too.”
“Based on what, Marie? I’d really prefer you didn’t call the cops and put me in a bad light.” Then he looks at me, “We’re living The X-Files! Is this really your mother, or an alien posing as your mother?”
Oh, it’s my mother.
“You stay the hell away from Sarah,” Mom says. Now she’s bar-mom, toughest gal in the place.
“I’m sorry you’re upset about whatever, but that’s more about you than me.”
He walks to my garden then, hands me the other basket.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
And even though I can feel his anger he touches my chin with his knuckles. I’m trying to get out of my head, I really am. I’m not like him, able to come back so honestly and clever. Sometimes I feel so much I can’t get anything out.
Mom throws her drink on the ground and pretty much yells, “More about me? You tell her how you put your hands on me that night at your house?”
“You nearly fell off a chair,” he says, his face flushing red. Then to me, “Sarah she was standing on a chair to measure something and she started to fall and I put my hands on her.”
“You couldn’t get anywhere with me so you go to my daughter?”
Spencer is looking at me. “Sarah...no. No. I’m telling you…it did not happen like that.”
“Sure you’ll deny it, your kind always do.” Now Mom is looking at me, “Don’t you be a fool, Sarah. He’s a snake charmer. He tried it on me too, but I know better. You can ask Christine, honey. She knows.”
Spencer looks at me and says, “Sarah….” Whatever he is going to say dies in his throat.
There is no crash of thunder, no lightening splitting the sky, no rumbling earth under my feet. There is the sound of a loud engine stopping somewhere in front of our house, and Ned is still barking…but I just know. I have already decided.
So I shake my head. “Mom, go in the house. You’re disrespecting Spencer…and yourself.”
I don’t slap her, don’t want to. But her face looks that way.
“Marie Sullivan?”
We all look at the big man dressed kind of like a pirate and standing at the gate to our yard. It’s his motorcycle I heard pull up. Mom will be straddling a hog again.
Ned goes crazy and Spencer has to chase him and subdue him. I figure it’s a great way to get rid of some of the adrenaline that must be coursing through him.
Turns out the pirate is Mom’s date Jace. Like ‘face’ with a J, he says after Mom says, “Jack?”
So Mom turns into someone else, and she takes Jace like face into the house while she finishes getting ready and Spencer and me and Ned are left in the garden of sin.
Spencer is already trying to pick an eggplant.
“You need the knife,” I say. I go there and saw the purple globe free from the stem. I put it in his basket. “You…you may be the first man to ever turn her down,” I say, hoping to explain it some…her tantrum.
He nods. “Sarah, I don’t want to complicate your life. But I don’t know if it’s possible not to. What have I done to cause all this speculation?”
“You’re just…you’re you.” I mean, I hope he’s him…Spencer. “You just can’t be ignored. I mean you’re gorgeous…you’re kind…you play the guitar…you…make great eggs…great…,” I almost say “love”, like ‘you make great love,’ and I almost have a heart attack to think I almost say that, “…and you’re fearless…with the mice…and Cyro’s basement…and Ned…you chase Ned around and…keep him safe. And you stood the real test…pissed off Mom…and you…you shine Spencer. You’re…polka-dotted…,” I laugh because there’s so much paint in his hair, but there are tears in my eyes and more pushing at the damn of my resolve to not let them through.
He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles.
“You don’t feel that way…like I’m using you? God, Sarah….”
“No.” But there is a way I might feel that, if he is hiding something big, like who he is.
“Say it…whatever you’re thinking right now tell me,” he says.
I’m looking at him.
“I’m Spencer,” he repeats, like he does read my mind. “Everything that’s happened between us, every moment has been real. Do you feel that way too or am I imagining more….”
We’ve been holding hands but now we’re closer and we have our arms around each other.
“I don’t care what she says. I knew the whole time she talked….”
“I swear I did not make a play for your mother. God, that sounds so…wrong.”
“In future, let her fall on her ass,” I say.
“Lawsuit,” he smirks and we laugh. “Sarah…why is it like this with you two?”
“It’s just…one day…we were this.”
“You don’t have to tell me…I shouldn’t have….”
“It’s okay. She…I had trouble in school. I’m different.”
He seems to know. He’s listening so intently.
“I’m smart…not boasting…just saying….”
He laughs and squeezes me a little.
“But in,” I take a big breath, “other stuff…behind. I was. I…might still be…I don’t know.”
“Or care?” he laughs.
I smile and pinch his side. “Then my dad. He….” I pull in a breath. No, I don’t want to bring him into this too. “Spencer,” and I feel better calling him that because he’s told me Spencer is real and he is, I’m holding him, “the thing is…I knew when she was talking…I knew…nothing will get in the way of us. Not from me. I choose you. I want you.”
He stares. “Want me, want me?”
“Want you.”
“Like right now?”
“Like all the time.”
“You always want me?”
“Read my mind.”
I am quickly wearing a helmet made from his hands. He closes his eyes. “Oh…yeah. You want me, want me.”
I’m laughing and pretty soon he’s holding me and we end up laying in the row, on the hay there, in between the eggplant and the peppers with Ned snuffling over us and Spencer pushing him away and trying to rebuke him but we’re kissing like this, the sun going down and the bugs kicking up a song, stretching out our limbs entangled, heartbeats banging out an enthusiastic rhythm. Are we in love?
“Spencer I’m sorry I didn’t make her stop. I won’t do that again…let her go on.”
“You know she has to control herself, right?”
“She has no boundaries.”
“Do you with her? Do you have some limits? Where do you say that’s not okay?”
“A lot of what she does isn’t okay. I do try to tell her.”
“I get the feeling, I’m just another way she’s trying to hurt you. You didn’t come home…you got punished.”
Right on cue we hear the motorcycle pull away. I picture her on it, her legs wrapped around Face. Why is she hurtful? Is it really directed at me? She’s gone for Spencer twice now. Is he right about this? Is she really after me?
“I’ve always just thought she was protective,” I say.
“But what is she protecting?” he says.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You need to be away from me,” Spencer states once we finish picking the garden and stashing everything on my porch.
“Are you reading my mind?” I say. It’s weird.
He laughs. “Like a book…a very thick book written in Russian.”
“Russian?”
“Hard to understand…dark, dramatic themes fringed in icicles.”
He stares at me for a minute. �
��You like that.”
I do. This mind reading has got to stop though.
Later, when I go past his house on patrol he is on his porch. I flick my light at him and to my surprise he flicks a light back. I do it again and so does he. I do it twice, he does it twice. I laugh then. And what’s great--he hasn’t asked to walk with me and he doesn’t follow.
The rental house is dark and creepy. But Merle and Pearlie are upstairs and I signal three and Merle signals back and I get choked thinking someday that light won’t be there.
At Leeanne’s I get more aggressive. She doesn’t answer my knock, but I get the key and go in and her little dogs yap.
I still have the smell of straw on my clothes from lying in the garden with Spencer. I can smell this on me as I stand near Leeanne’s bed looking down at her. She hates for me to be this deep in. It’s her sanctuary, and I’m the invader, but I never let that stop me, never have cause she’s a rescue.
So I’m standing there, my flashlight off, a cat curled near Leeanne’s head crabbing at me to back off. “Maybe you could visit them sometimes,” I say.
“You know I won’t.” She’s curled there, and her bare feet look so vulnerable.
I pinch her little toe. She claims it’s the only little thing on her body. “Well…maybe we could go together.”
She looks at me. “You’re such a liar.”
“Maybe….”
“Cut it out or I’m going to throw my clock at you.”
“You have to do the market. I have to clean Cyro’s.”
“No. I’m not doing it.” She rolls on her stomach and buries her face in the part of the pillow the cat isn’t on.
She’s hopeless when she’s like this, and she’s this way more and more.
“What about the shelter? The dogs?”
“It’s all in the kitchen. Even wrapped.”
“Put it on the porch,” I say tiredly. I never argue with a brick wall. Unless it’s Mom.
Why does Spencer put up with me and my crazy surround sounds? I am looking at him as he plays his guitar on this Wednesday market morning. We are here, instead of Leeanne, because Leeanne, the homeschoolie, which is what we call each other instead of weirdo or moron, is still in bed.
So Spencer seemed happy to come to the market. The Wednesday crowd is never as good as Saturday’s, but it’s usually a fifty-sixty dollar day if Leeanne bakes. Well worth our trouble.
With Spencer along we pull in another thirty from his many ballads. And Ned being along doesn’t hurt. I am overjoyed to hear a lady ask if Ned is adoptable and Spencer replies, “There are a lot of good dogs at the shelter needing homes, but Ned is mine.”
“Ned’s yours?” I say to him as soon as we’re in the truck.
He rubs Ned’s big head. “Yeah. He’s my people.”
I can’t help it. I’m crying sort of, wiping wet eyes. “Spencer…?”
“Yes Sarah with the eyes like diamonds,” he smiles, Beatles this time.
“I was wondering…well I think I’m ready to bring Dusty home.”
“For real?” he says. “Two of these guys?”
I nod. I think so. “Ned misses them,” I say.
“Them? Sarah, three would be insane,” he says. But he’s smiling.
So we stop at the shelter and I give Barb the money from the market and Spencer officially adopts Ned and I take Dusty. Lucky is so sad and wild he sends up the worst wailing noise.
“Don’t worry,” Barb tells us. “I’ll put a couple of others in with him. He’ll adapt.
I look at Spencer but he’s saying, “Sarah stop looking at him.” He means Lucky.
So Ned and Dusty are so excited to see each other we have to let them run around in the outside pen for a while. Ned is all worked up to be back here anyway. But Dusty filling his nose, well that is almost too much for him it seems. We let them work some of it off while Barb tells Spencer about the expansion plans.
The dogs are calmer on the ride home, but all my ‘I gotta’s,” are piling and Spencer is telling me he’s going to double coat Cyro’s living room.
So once home he takes the dogs, puts them in his yard. That frees me to make lunch. He knocks and comes inside and helps me finish chopping. He stirs the rice and I put it together with the meat and vegetables. We’re a pretty good team.
Generally, I don’t work in teams. I guess I’ve believed that, but I realize now, that’s not true. I think then of all the teammates I’ve had…Frieda, Cyro, Merle, Leeanne, Jason, yeah when it came to Cyro. Maybe even Aaron.
Now Spencer. I never realized…I’m not always alone.
But when I think of Mom. She and I are a team…right?
I don’t know if we ever were. Gosh, truth has pierced my skull.
She came in late on the motorcycle, she let Face come in, and he’d stayed until two. She didn’t usually do that. I know she got too drunk. I should have gone down and made him leave. I’ve done that before.
Spencer asked me if I had limits with Mom. I said I tried to have them. Then I let this stranger stay in our house. But I flip-flopped between being the rule setter and getting mad and giving up.
She let Face stay to hurt me. Spencer is right. Mom hurts me. She does it on purpose. Why?
So I leave before she is up. And now, of course, she is gone. Just last week I wanted her to watch TV with me. Now?
I am letting go of her. I’ve been hanging on, clinging to her. And I’m let go now.
But saving Mom is my job…right?
Saving her…saves me. Right? Is that what I’ve been doing—with Mom, and with all of them? Is that what I’m doing with Spencer?
“Sullivan,” he says gently taking the wooden spoon from me, “it’s stirred. It’s ready.” He turns off the heat.
He looks at me, smiles a little.
“What?” he says, pulling me close again.
“Nothing,” I say quietly. Everything, I think.
“You like me,” he smirks.
“Stop…reading my mind,” I say.
Last night we did not get together, but after I got home from patrol I asked if he’d do the market with me in the morning and he said sure. So we parted then and he was by the truck when I went down at four-thirty. He was smoking a cigarette and leaning there, Ned’s leash in his hand.
But now, I have the lunch done and we stand in the kitchen, and he holds me there and it is quiet except for Ned barking at Dusty now and then, or the other way around. It is so quiet I hear my cat clock ticking and I am counting the beats of Spencer’s heart. I like his body so much, and the way he is available to me, for hugging, for touching, it is the most incredible thing. He offers himself to me. I can breathe in his shirt and his skin. I can look into his eyes…me.
“What’s the worst you’ve ever done because you were angry?” I ask. Because I can’t imagine these hands that hold me, that play music and take care of Ned and paint and pick vegetables, I can’t imagine these dear hands hurting anyone.
He is quiet for just a minute then he blurts a laugh. “Why are you…that’s a terrible question. Also a good one.” Now he sounds like me.
He is thinking, and I am waiting and listening to the thoughts roaming around in there.
“Any age?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I once threw a rock…wait, I’m about ten…I threw this rock and it hit my…this kid…he was standing in a wagon and teasing me and I just threw the rock at him and it hit him and knocked him clean out of the wagon. I ran up there and he was laying there with blood pouring out of a gash on his head and he said, “Now you’ve done it, you killed me.” And I ran off screaming, but I didn’t go for my Mom, I just went and hid and told myself I didn’t do it.”
He laughs weakly but we don’t move, we keep holding one another.
“God,” he says, “I wonder if that’s when…it started.”
“You throwing rocks at people’s heads?” I ask and I’m laughing a little, but then I’m not. I’m quiet too. He’s not g
oing to answer, I know he isn’t, but I already heard. He wonders if that’s where it started—the running…the hiding…the pretending.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’m wrong.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Twenty-five
That evening, after Spencer has spent the afternoon putting the double coat on Cyro’s living room walls, Spencer and I clean the wood floor and move the furniture in place. I estimate this room has not been this shiny since before Cyro’s wife Karen died in the nineties. We have not moved a couple of things back in—an old chair and a rickety table. They are currently on the curb with the trash. We’ve gotten rid of all the magazines and newspapers. They are also on the curb. Does anyone need twenty-one-years’ worth of Ebony? These had belonged to Karen, not Cyro. I doubt he’d ever touched them since she died, and the ones that had come since he is still piling.
I know we could have tried to sell them on EBay but Spencer nixed it. “Do him a favor and get rid of them, Sullivan,” he said. And I know Spencer parts easily with…things.
So some of these stacks go with permission, some while Cyro isn’t looking, while he is yelling at the television during the ballgame. It looks so good in here we can’t stop staring and Cyro has not asked after a thing. Is he relieved? He might be.
I have already started cleaning the kitchen. Spencer and I stand in there next trying to imagine a brave new world. Spencer wonders if we should paint it yellow. “Your mom said that’s a good color for kitchens,” he says. “And you did that cool ceiling.”
I blow a raspberry. Cyro likes it simple. Yellow might work. Cyro won’t care until we do, then he’ll be full of advice and criticism until he sees the change and his mouth gets stopped and he’s pointing out a drop of paint here or there and saying, this don’t look too bad.
It’s been a long, good, productive day. Earlier we separated Ned and Dusty. Ned is at home in Spencer’s yard. Dusty is in Cyro’s.