I’ve told you before that I don’t think Jack could’ve been a good father, no matter how hard he tried. He didn’t have it in him. Your Grandma Boone said as much. I’ll never forget her on that porch looking me right in the eyes and saying Jack tries, but he just can’t. I went ahead and asked her just can’t what and she said Faye Louise, he just can’t.
Listen to a mother when she tells you about her child. Mamas know.
Jack was good at poker, yes. Too good. Gambling always got him into trouble. And Johnny…wow, Johnny was a terrible man, way worse than Jack, but I’m not taking up for Jack Boone. I learned my lesson there. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I’ll sit here and say he was a good man, because he wasn’t. I used to think he could’ve been a good man if he’d wanted to. I fell in love with that delusion.
Few times a year he’d get all cleaned up on Sunday morning for church, sober and smiling. But Lord have mercy…hell would break loose again. Saturday night always rolled around quick no matter what. And that was the real him: Saturday Night Jack. I was so obsessed with him in high school thinking he was this dreamy bad boy when really, he was just…bad. He was my first love, but the Jack I loved didn’t even exist. My biggest blessing besides you was growing up and out of those lies I kept telling myself.
If I had to think of something nice to say about him I’d say he made good spaghetti sauce and his laugh was so goofy it made everyone in the room laugh along with him. And you’ve seen plenty of pictures, so you know how cute he was. Girl…those eyes got me. Not only do I see him in your out-of-this-world gorgeous eyes…but also in the little sighs you make while you’re sleeping. You got what was good about him and that was the best thing he ever did…passing those things on to you.
I tried like hell to keep Jack from the end I knew in my bones was coming. I think about those months before I got pregnant with you…when I thought he would change…keep a decent job. Stupidly believing he’d stopped gambling and running with those monsters. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was and I was wrong. Dead wrong! I’ve never been more wrong about anything in my life. It was arrogant of me to think that somehow I could make him a better man than he was. Why me? Ain’t nobody that special.
Grandmommy and Granddaddy helped all they could, but if your Uncle Coot hadn’t given me that money to leave town and move on, who knows what would’ve happened? Uncle Coot loves you so much. He finished your bookcase! I’ll send a picture soon. I told him he was going to have to make another one with how much you read. It looks good in your bedroom, right by the window. Sometimes I go in and look at it because it’s so pretty and I miss you so much. Your room still smells like you. Apples!
* * *
To: Faye Taylor
From: Birdie Taylor-Boone
Date: September 14, 2020, 7:12 p.m.
Subject: Re: MENARETRASH
Mama, you ARE special. That doesn’t change just because guys are assholes. ;)
More soon, I promise. I’m so hungry! Gonna go find fries!
* * *
To: Birdie Taylor-Boone
From: Faye Taylor
Date: September 14, 2020, 10:05 p.m.
Subject: Re: MENARETRASH
Ha! Yeah…I never made those same mistakes with any men (assholes) after Jack. Sacrificing my heart, soul, and body. That’s why I never got married, why I never brought any other men into your life besides Uncle Coot. He’s one of the good ones.
I wasted too much time…women waste so much time on men who aren’t worth it! It’s infuriating and I still get angry with myself. : If somebody would’ve told me when I was younger that I would be single and happy in my forties, I would’ve about laughed myself to death. And ta-da! Here I am! Whew.
I know you and Alayna aren’t me and Jack. Far from it. Please do give her my love. ♥
Study hard! Be safe! Crank ABBA! Just because you’re a vegetarian doesn’t mean you can eat fries for every meal! Eat some vegetables, please. For me?
Thank you so much for telling me I’ve been a good mama, because that’s certainly what I set out to do. You’re my only baby and I never wanted to mess this up. See? Sentimental! And yes, I’m crying.
* * *
To: Faye Taylor
From: Birdie Taylor-Boone
Date: September 15, 2020, 12:04 a.m.
Subject: Re: MENARETRASH
I know how much you regret the dumb stuff you did when you were younger. All I see when I look at you is a strong, true, woman, artist, and mother who turned her life around. I’m strong and honest because you taught me how to be. Do you know how much I admire you for telling me everything yourself and not trying to hide it? Not many people would do that. Told you that you were special. I meant it. ♥ Aw, YAY. I love Uncle Coot foreverrrr. I’ll text him about the bookcase soon! Stoked to see it in person.
The fries were delicious by the way. Fries before guys, fries before girls, fries before emails! :P
And I mean, don’t get me wrong. I live in this world. Duh. Granddaddy and Uncle Coot aside, obviously I know MENARETRASH. :p
* * *
To: Birdie Taylor-Boone
From: Faye Taylor
Date: September 15, 2020, 8:33 a.m.
Subject: Re: MENARETRASH
LOL! That’s my girl! :D Have I told you that you’re my favorite daughter?
Counting down the days until I see your pretty face!
The Darl Inn
My mom was having sex with her new boyfriend and I was so used to it, it didn’t even gross me out anymore. She said she’d let us share a beer if Bri and I promised not to come back to the room for at least two hours. We went and sat in the chairs outside by the pool, passed the bottle back and forth, made the mouth of it taste like our pineapple lipgloss. Once we’d finished drinking, I set the bottle down and it rolled on its side; the hollow-emptiness rattled as it slipped into the wet grass.
No one was at the pool even though it was Friday night. I figured there would at least be some dumb guys to flirt with. Maybe even some smart ones. The guys we went to high school with were pretty smart, but they acted dumb. Maybe that’s how everyone was. I hypnotized myself thinking about it—watched the blue-green water lick up the pool steps, shiver in the motel light.
Bri’s mom and my mom had been best friends since high school and Bri’s mom traveled a lot for work. We’d been best friends since we were in utero, like Jesus and John the Baptist. Bri’s dad was rarely around, so she stayed with my mom and me most weekends. We only lived like an hour away, but this weekend my mom said she wanted to get out of town, see something different. “Don’t take being alive for granted, girls,” she said.
We drove to this little town in the country called Darling and got a cheap room at the Darling Inn. I thought it’d be better if they called it the Darl Inn and it was kind of driving me crazy. I wanted to say something to the receptionist lady about it, but she was grumpy and wearing all brown, so I passed.
“Whitney, listen to this,” Bri said, reading aloud from an old Cosmo magazine we’d found in the room. I watched the orange sunset glowing in her rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses. My sunglasses. I’d gotten them last summer from a grocery store in Vegas when I was out there visiting my dad. “Top Ten Things Guys Hate,” she said, lifting the sunglasses so I could see her roll her eyes.
“Let me guess…um, girls who read those lists. No, no. Wait, don’t tell me! Ummm, how about we don’t care what they hate because we can do whatever we want?” I said. Bri snickered like a little cartoon chipmunk.
We played the game we always played where one of us would open the magazine to a random page and we’d both pick our most and least favorite outfits.
“This dress is so pretty I hate it,” I said, tapping my finger on a thistle-colored dress with tiny embroidered hummingbirds swooping over one shoulder.
“Murder me if I ever wear something this ugly,” Bri said, poking the glossy picture of some H-list actress in a dark yellow jumper and matching espadrill
es.
“If this pool was fucking empty I’d skate in it,” someone said and we turned to see some SoCal-looking guys walking through the fence gate—big T-shirts, long, baggy dark-colored shorts, bony hairy guy legs slipped into well-worn skateboarder shoes. All three of them were carrying skateboards. Two of the guys were wearing shadowy T-shirts with monsters on them and the other one was wearing a plain white one, bright as eggs.
“What’s up?” one of the guys said to us. He had on the forest-green shirt with a gray outline of Bigfoot walking across it. He had beer-blond hair and looked like he’d just woken up.
I was wearing a tiny tie-dye bikini and sat up a little straighter, readjusted my straps.
“Who are you guys?” another one of the dudes said. His shirt had some kind of winged dinosaur bird on it with lots of teeth.
“Well, for one, we’re girls. Not guys,” Bri said, closing the magazine and slapping it across her stomach. She pointed at her boobs with her thumb.
“Obviously,” he said.
“Obviously,” she said, laughing at him.
“I’m Whitney. She’s Bri,” I said to the one in the white shirt who hadn’t said anything yet. I liked him the most. He looked like the kind of guy who would help you load groceries into your car without being a creep about it. He pointed to himself and said Jay and he motioned to the monster shirt guys and said Jesse and Jimmy.
“You’re kidding me. Ugh, all of your names start with J?” Bri said. She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head.
“Getting kind of dark for shades, you think?” Jimmy said. He dropped his skateboard on the concrete and sat on it. He rolled back and forth and I liked the sound—chunky, growly. It sounded like such a dude sound to make.
“That’s why I took them off, asshole,” Bri said. She was flirting, but it was probably lost on the guys. Bri’s heart was as hard as a diamond, but it was just as sparkly, too. I loved her so much I barely noticed she was around.
“Where are you from?” Jay asked me.
“Not here,” I said, laughing a little bit.
“Figured.”
“What about y’all?”
“My dad owns this piece of shit motel,” Jay said with that comforting Kentucky coal miner’s lilt. He smirked, real cute. I liked looking at his face. Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” started playing in my head when I looked at him. He was so gloriously American, I had to keep myself from standing and putting my hand over my heart.
“Okay, good ol’ boy. You need to tell your dad to change the name of this place to the Darl Inn instead of the Darling Inn. Get it? Darl Inn? It’s annoying it’s not called the Darl Inn. I can barely stay here. I’d want to leave if the vending machines weren’t so awesome. That one has the spicy chips I like,” I said, pointing across the pool. Bri and I had dyed the tips of our hair soft peony-pink with my mom’s help. I tucked a pale slip of it behind my ear.
“The Darl Inn,” Jay said and nodded.
“The Darl Inn,” Bri repeated.
I looked at the motel sign buzzing up by the road. It was super-pretty. The D was big, old-timey cursive and a dreamy blue color. Maybe that was the color I’d dye my hair next.
“I like it. Your hair,” Jesse said to us, pointing at his own head. It was the first thing that had come out of his mouth.
“Thanks,” I said. Bri stood from the chair and walked to the pool—took the steps real slow like she was in a beauty pageant. She was cracking me up, so I laughed and laughed and shook my head.
“Hey, Jesse James, why do you bring your skateboard to a pool?" Bri asked.
Jesse shrugged. Jimmy started talking. “Why do you keep such a smart mouth all the time? Damn, girl,” he said.
“How old are you losers?” Bri asked, ignoring him. She floated on her back and moved her arms, made snow angels in the water. The sun was hissing out behind the hills. The green-glowy pool lights came on with a soft click—a tender, intimate sound that made me ache for somewhere else. I wanted to drive to California in a gold Camaro with Bri. We’d stop and buy shotguns and gas station lipsticks, blast “American Woman” and “Barracuda” as we drove through the desert.
“Same age as you, probably,” Jay said, “sixteen.”
I nodded. “She’ll be seventeen next month. So will I.”
Jay said they came down to the pool every Friday night, but usually it was moms with their kids and old guys smoking, trying to get drunk on cheap light beer.
“We’re just passing through,” I said.
“You seem like the type to pass through,” he said back to me. I liked how he said it, like we were in a movie and I was mysterious.
Bri was still floating and I stood, knowing the boys were watching every part of me. I walked around, did my prettiest dive into the deep end of the pool. I sank and held my breath as long as I could.
You Should Love the
Right Things
Not how it hurts when you press down on a yellowish-blue, purple-black bruise, but the feeling you get when you lift up. Let go.
And Down We Go!
Sierra is wearing Doug’s oversized Led Zeppelin T-shirt. So black it is nothing. The color matches the smudged rims of her eyes. She considers washing her face before she leaves his apartment, but he’s in the bathroom now and she wants to get out of there.
“Doug, I’m wearing your shirt. I spilled wine on mine last night,” she says loudly after she taps, tells him she is leaving. She looks down, zips and buttons her jeans.
“Cool. I’ll wash it for you,” he says with a muffled toothpaste-mouth. He opens the door.
“I’ll give you a call later?” she says, that question mark hanging over them both, like a puff of gray-white smoke.
“Yeah?” he says. The puff grows. The puff is now a dust tornado.
“Yeah, okay!” she says, adjusting her purse strap up on her shoulder before that tornado blows the whole effing apartment building down.
She is alone now. She smooths her hair and goes in her purse for her compact as the elevator rattles and drops a floor. She licks her finger and wipes some of the eyeliner from underneath her eyes. Reapplies her lipgloss and checks her phone for the time. When the elevator doors open, she has to grit her teeth. She hates Brooks Clark and there he is dressed in his annoyingly perfectly fitting suit with his annoyingly perfectly shined shoes and he doesn’t even look up from his phone as he steps onto the elevator. He stands there scrolling and scrolling and she finally has to ask him if he’s going all the way down.
“Oh. My bad. Thanks. Yeah, I’m heading down to the lobby,” he says, not looking up at her. And duh, of course he is going to the lobby, why wouldn’t he be going to the lobby?
The glowing yellow circle labeled L is already lit up, so she doesn’t have to do anything. The doors shut and the elevator drops again. Sierra can’t help herself from checking out Brooks’s watch and the cuffs of his sleeves and she takes a quick breath to check if he smells good and he does. Entitled asshole.
She sees him laugh at something he reads on his phone and he reaches up to massage his temple before putting his phone in his pocket. He’s probably hungover and woke up with some strange woman in his bed. Dickhead. The elevator lights flicker and shut off, the big metal box they are standing in shakes and comes to a stop. Sierra can hear the screech of an alarm somewhere in the distance. Her heart, her blood, is surely making the same sound, trapped tightly inside of her.
“Shit,” Brooks says into the darkness. Sierra figures some emergency lights will be kicking on soon but right now, nothing. Just deep, static-black and aloneness with some dickhead guy who is a friend of her brother’s.
“I’m sure they’ll fix it soon,” she says, more to herself than to him. She wants to keep calm. She uses the same breathing technique that comes in handy whenever she feels a panic attack rising at the dentist or in large crowds.
“Last time it was out like this, it took three hours. It was some bullshit,” he says. The way
he says it makes her want to laugh, but she won’t give him the pleasure. He sounds so annoyed, it’s hilarious. He doesn’t sound scared.
“It’s Sierra. Tyler’s sister, by the way. You didn’t look up from your phone when you got on the elevator so…,” she says in her bitchiest voice.
“Wow. Forreal? Hey, how are you? Where are you?” He laughs. She feels his hand graze her arm and she grabs his wrist, hard.
“I’m right here,” she says, pushing his wrist back to him. “Will they turn the lights on?”
“They’ll turn them on,” he says plainly. She hates him, but wishes she could see his face so she could read his expression. She takes a seat in the corner because sitting makes her less anxious. A voice booms through the elevator’s intercom system. Neither of them is using their phone flashlights and it is oddly pleasing. She feels a bite of satisfaction. She isn’t going to be the first one to pull her phone out.
“Is there anyone on the elevator?” the voice says.
“Yes. Brooks Clark from 6D and one other person. A woman. Um, Sierra Mitchell. From…”
“My boyfriend, Doug Wilder, lives in 7A,” Sierra rolls her eyes, even though it is too dark for Brooks to see. She hears him sit down. Wonders if he will fuss about getting his precious pants dirty.
So We Can Glow Page 12