by APRIL ASHEIM
"We can’t keep doing this, Lanie." Ernest sighed.
Lanie tried to ignore him as she manually flipped through the channels. Almost all static. Nothing was ever fucking on!
"You’re insane," she hissed, trying not to wake the girls. Chloe and Spring lay motionless on the twin bed, spooned up together for warmth. She could hear them breathing, the deep restful inhalations of the sleeping. "You don’t just walk into a bank and take money. It’s stupid. And illegal."
Ernest smirked. "It’s a small-town bank. I’ve been there a dozen times over the last few years. The security guard is basically Don Knotts. I get the money and we run away to Mexico and live like royalty."
She looked at him, her mouth agape. One thing that TV had taught her was that criminals always get caught. "Ernest, I’ve followed you all these years, but I can’t do this. We have kids to think about. We can’t be on the lam!"
Ernest punched his hand into the bed, trying to put a hole in the soggy mattress. It hesitated but bounced back reluctantly. "We are already on the fucking lam, in case you haven’t noticed! Half the f’ing carnies are 'on the lam!.' I didn’t join because it was 'fun,' goddamnit. I’m tired of running. I just wanna get enough money and settle down. This is my only fucking shot. Can’t you understand that, woman?"
They had been arguing about this for a week now, and Lanie thought he would forget about it, the way he forgot about most things. But he seemed insistent. She slumped down on the bed and placed her fingers between her eyes, trying to ease the pressure that was building in her head. He was serious. He really wanted to rob a bank.
"Ernest," she said. "I love you and I want you to be happy. If you aren’t happy here you need to go and find what gives your life meaning. I had always hoped it was me and the girls, but I see now it’s not. I love you and wish you well, but I can’t be any part of this." Lanie looked at her husband, absorbing him, knowing this might be the last time she ever saw him. He said nothing in response as he grabbed his duffle bag, already packed. He walked to the girls' bed and blew them each a kiss and then made his way to the door. He was really going. He smiled at her, opened the door, and left.
That was the last she heard from him, until a few weeks later when he made headlines in a local newspaper for attempted robbery. He was now serving many years in state prison.
When the girls awoke that next morning she told them their father had gone to see a sick relative, but when Spring saw her father on the newspaper as well, she turned to Lanie with a look that said she hated her. And it was three months before Spring said another word to Lanie, or anyone, for that matter.
Lanie lay naked on the top of her bed, three fans blasting air over her body. She had always looked forward to this time of life, the transition from motherhood to crone-dom. But her ascent into sage-hood wasn’t going as smoothly as she had hoped. Besides the hot flashes and the strange cravings and the weird fluctuations in libido (she would never admit this to a single soul but one day she had even found Sam appealing as he was stirring something in a bowl), there lay a nagging feeling deep down inside of her.
She didn’t feel like a woman anymore. Her eggs were hatched. She was on the other side now, beyond the line that separated the fertile from the unfertile, those who could produce and those whose time had passed. She would never have another baby again. Ever.
She willed up memories of Chloe and Spring when they were infants, tiny bundles of pink flesh, wrapped up like flower bouquets in knitted blankets. They smelled so good. Well, most of the time. And they looked up at her with something akin to godliness as they suckled her, wrapping small fingers around her own. Even her grandchildren did not show her that much love. No one had ever shown her that much love––the love of a child in its first years of life.
She squinted, trying to wring out the few memories of her own mother, but like a dried up lemon, nothing was there to juice. She had left Lanie in foster care when she was six and Lanie must have purposely destroyed any images she had of the woman. Either that, or she was getting senile.
"It all changes when they grow up," she said, returning her attention to Spring and Chloe. "All that admiration, gone in the wink of an eye the first time you forget a holiday." Lanie rolled onto her side, letting the fans beat against her back. The air hit a mole (that must be new) and created a peculiar pulsing sensation. "...We’re all judge and jury of our parents."
An image of Spring’s face in the dark beside her, asking if she had really been a bad kid.
There was a knot in her stomach, a memory knocking, wanting to be let in. Lanie tried to clear her mind and practice her meditation, but this one was insistent.
"Your father couldn’t handle you, and neither can I." She had said this once, when Spring was in the throes of adolescent rebellion. She hadn’t meant it, of course. Hadn’t even remembered it until Spring had asked about their father earlier. The problem with words was once you said them you couldn’t take them back. They hung in the Universe forever like wet sheets that never quite dried.
The real truth was that she wasn’t able to cope with raising two daughters on her own. And the fact that their father was never, ever coming back, and she might be alone for the rest of her life. For all her hellraising about women’s lib in the 60s, she hated to admit that being without a man was the scariest thing she could ever imagine.
"What I’d give for a do-over, learn a real trade, set a good example for the girls." Lanie gritted her teeth. The mole on her back danced in the wind. Maybe she should get it looked at. "I’m too old to cry over spilt milk now," she said, reaching out to stroke her pig. His plastic, hairless body gave her some odd comfort. It wasn’t a baby, or even real, but it was...something.
It was going to be a long night. She wished she had more of Jason’s insomnia medicine, but it was gone the first day he had dropped it by. Sleep. She needed sleep.
She was about to shut her eyes and give it a try when a flicker of pale light in the window caught her gaze. At first she almost ignored it, thinking it was just a ghost. But this ghost had an awfully big head. She squinted in the dark to make it out, and then her eyes grew large as saucers.
Twenty
"Pookie, wake up. Pookie?"
Spring pulled the pillow over her head in an attempt to drown out Sam’s voice and go back to sleep. Sam hastily removed the pillow and the room was suddenly flooded with light. She had been in a dark, dreamless sleep and wasn’t ready for the morning quite yet.
"Sweetie, I don’t want to alarm you but there’s a strange man in our house."
"What?" Spring sat up, dropping the pillow back onto the bed and pulling the sheet to her chest. "Is Mom alright?"
"I don’t know. I saw him in the kitchen and tiptoed back in here to tell you."
"What did you want me to do about it?" she asked. Sam was the man. Why wasn’t he handling this?
He spread his palm helplessly and looked at her.
"Good, God. Fine. I will get up and face the rapist. Better me than you." Spring tied the sheet around her chest and crept towards her bedroom door. Sam tiptoed behind. "Got your cell?"
"No. I dropped it when I saw the murderer."
Spring grunted and opened the door, careful not to make any noise. Sam stood behind her at a safe distance. She squinted down the hall but could not make out anything. "I don’t see anyone."
"He’s in the kitchen. Hurry before he tries to steal the new espresso maker!"
Spring picked up the tail of the sheet and proceeded down the hall. Floor boards creaked beneath her feet.
"Careful, Pookie," Sam whispered encouragingly.
Sam had been right. In the kitchen, drinking from one of Lanie’s coffee cups, sat a man. His face was turned from her but she recognized the odd shape of his body even in the dimness of the morning light.
"Mr. McClure?"
He jumped. "Oh, dear. I’m sorry. I was trying to be quiet. Lanie told me to wait out here while she showered."
"Lanie let you in?"
Spring looked to see where her mother was, half expecting her to be duct taped to a chair.
Mr. McClure lowered his eyes, feigning interest in a sugar cube as it dissolved in his coffee. His hairless head gleamed in the early light of the morning. "Yes. Last night."
"Last night? Why, was she hurt? Are you hurt?"
Mr. McClure dipped his pinkie into his cup and stirred but did not say a word.
"Oh my God. You don’t mean?" Spring shook her head to get rid of the image that was trying to form.
"I’m afraid so. Lanie and I had adult relations."
"Sam," she called, her voice raspy and dry. She needed support. He had run back down the hall. Why was he never around when she needed him?
"Don’t be alarmed. We used protection. I was very clear on that." Mr. McClure held up a cellophane wrapper with a picture of Casey the Condom smiling back at her. "I might be past my prime but Lanie appears quite fertile."
"Sam!" Spring felt dizzy and she stepped back, tripping over the sheet. She fell crashing down hard upon Lanie’s wind up pig. The pig let out one last grunt before dissolving into a pile of gears and springs.
"Your mother is a lovely woman," Mr. McClure said, standing. He walked to where Spring was and offered his hand for support. "She made me see things I hadn’t seen in years."
"Hell, I saw something I hadn’t seen in years too," Lanie clucked, shaking out her wet hair as she trundled into the room wearing nothing but a bath towel fastened around her bosom.
"I need air," Spring said, shaking away Mr. McClure’s hand and crawling towards the door.
"Oh, come on. Ain't like we aren’t all adults here."
Spring turned to see Lanie plant a kiss on Mr. McClure’s cheek.
"...Mr. McClure’s a guest, and we should treat him as such."
"Name’s Bob," he said, his thin lips turning up into a smile at Lanie. "And you’ve already treated me better as a guest than I’ve ever been treated."
In all the years since her father had left, Spring had never seen Lanie with another man. She hadn’t even flirted. And now...an overnight guest? "How did this happen?" Spring regretted the words the second they were out of her mouth. She wanted no details.
"Turns out Bob here is our peeper." Lanie nodded to Mr. McClure who blushed under her gaze. "He thought I had kidnapped his cat. Turns out, he was seeing my pig." Bob chuckled in the background and Spring was still confused.
"His cat ran off a few weeks ago," Lanie went on. "And he saw me petting something and assumed it was his kitty. We worked it out last night and then I invited him in for coffee."
"Coffee is my favorite hot beverage," Mr. McClure added, smiling sheepishly at Lanie. "After your mother apprehended me..."
"What?" Spring pictured Lanie throwing the man down, cuffing him like he were on an episode of COPS.
"Well, she saw me in the window and needed to make sure I wasn’t a pervert. After she caught me, we figured out there had been a terrible misunderstanding. And all is well that ends well." Mr. McClure sat his coffee cup down and straightened his tie. "I must confess though, I did peer a little longer than necessary."
Spring’s fingers locked onto the doorknob but she could not open the door.
"You okay?" Lanie asked.
"No. No, I’m not okay. You don’t date for 20 years and all a sudden you’re having sex with a man you’ve never met before in my house." Spring pulled herself upright, adjusting her sheet so that Mr. McClure, the peeper, would not be getting any more free looks.
"Oh, we’ve met before," Lanie winked. "Bob and me shared a past life. I was a Gypsy slave girl and he was my master."
"No," Bob corrected her, shaking his head. "That wasn’t a past life. That was our role play from last night."
"Oh yeah." Lanie smiled wickedly, batting her eyelashes.
Spring finally collected herself and found her way outside for air. But the air was hot and dry and not a bit of relief. "Fucking Arizona," she muttered.
Sam stood at the entrance to the bathroom, watching Spring splash water across her face. "Our home has become a den of iniquity and sin," he said, raising his eyes to the heavens. "Allah will not be pleased."
"Fuck, Sam. I’m not pleased either. But she’s a grown woman. Who am I to say she can’t have sex?"
Sam shuddered. "Well, that’s not our call. But she needs to do it someplace else. He has a house. Let her do it there."
"For once, Sam, I completely agree with you."
Spring sat on the couch a very long time, a phone in one hand, a broken toy pig in the other. Lanie was sitting outside with Bob, tickling his pointy chin. She had never seen her mother so flirtatious, even with her own father, and the sight was unnerving. Spring thought about closing the blinds to block the sight, but she could hear their pillow talk everywhere in the house.
She dialed the number.
"Hey, Debs, this is Spring. I can’t come in today. I’m feeling kinda sick." A pang of guilt stabbed at her, but she willed it away. It wasn’t a complete fabrication. She had been sick this morning, after all.
"What? Oh, Spring, don’t do this to me. Kimberly is acting really strange. She keeps circling me and asking me if I’ve ever considered getting highlights?"
"Sorry, Debs. I haven’t taken a sick day in a long time and I need one. I mean, I really, really need one."
"Okay." Debbie sighed into the phone. "But I’m getting someone else to deliver the news...there’s no way I’m telling that woman...hey, Becca, wait up. Okay, Spring, gotta go. Feel better."
Spring hung up the phone. In the kitchen, Lanie and Bob were trading Eskimo kisses. Spring went into her bedroom, where Sam was fixing his tie.
"I’m not going to work today," she said.
He shifted his gaze from his own reflection to hers.
"Why not? You can’t let Kimberly bully you forever."
"I really need a break, Sam. I’m running on empty."
Sam turned to look at her and Spring detected a note of concern in his eyes. "Pookie, if you use up this day you won’t have another for when you really need it."
Spring grunted in frustration. "I could use some support here, Sam. Not a lecture. You aren’t my...” She let the word hang in the air.
"What, Spring? Finish out that lovely sentiment, please."
"Father."
Sam paused, narrowing his eyes. He almost spoke, caught himself, and started again. "I never meant to act like your father. But sometimes you act like a little girl. I need you to be aware of that."
Spring nodded absently and went into the bathroom and returned with a brush. He was being condescending, but she would think about that later. She had more important things to attend to now.
"Why do you need to comb your hair to hang around the house?" Sam raised an eyebrow suspiciously and stopped grooming himself while he waited for her answer.
Spring considered carefully what she would say.
"I have some errands to run. And I want to look respectable." Spring knew she had answered right. Being respectable was one of Sam’s top priorities.
He snapped his fingers and dashed for the closet. "I know exactly the little number you should go with. You haven’t even tried on the navy pants suit with the gold embroidery."
"It will make me look like a cruise director."
"It will make you look," he corrected, holding it up against his frame. "...Snazzy."
Spring grunted but obliged. She would acquiesce to anything, if it would shut him up. The suit was uncomfortably warm, too tight in some places and too loose in others, but Sam seemed to like it. Once she dressed and got Sam’s nod of approval, he left for work. When she was sure he was gone she picked up the phone and dialed.
"Trevor? It‘s Spring. I really need to see you today. Are you free?"
Spring drove around the city for several minutes before heading to the apartment building where Trevor said he was staying. She wanted to gain focus and clarity before seeing him. If she had learned one thing about men
, it was that they ran at the first sign of drama. When she had finally calmed herself enough, she headed in the direction of his address and cringed.
This was the apartment building where John Smith said he lived.
"Of course." Spring put on her sunglasses, tied her hair up in a ponytail, and sat in the car, wondering what to do next. She prayed like hell that John wouldn’t see her. She had no idea what apartment he lived in. For all she knew, the two roomed together.
Spring surveyed the apartment. It was an old, well-cared-for, brick building. The lawn was short but lush and must have cost the owner a pretty penny in water bills to maintain. The property sat in stark contrast to the shiny, metallic dwellings that surrounded it.
Spring reached into the backseat and pulled out a dress, a flowery number Sam despised. Ducking down into the seat she shimmied out of her pantsuit––not an easy task, as it clung needily to her body. She discarded it onto the floorboard of the passenger seat. Spring slid the roomy dress over her head and sighed deeply, feeling more like herself. After a brief face check in the rearview mirror, she left the car and headed up the three flights of stairs to the floor where Trevor said he lived. As she scanned the hallway she heard a whistle behind her and jumped.
"You are lucky I’m a gentleman," a familiar voice said and Spring turned to see John behind her.
"Don’t you have a job?" She glowered at him as she quickened her pace, trying to make her way towards apartment 314. Any friendship she had felt for him that night at her house dissipated in her embarrassment over being caught slinking off to see Trevor.
"Nope. I got let go a few days ago. Turns out I’m not Penny Saver material." He smiled good-naturedly, shoving his hands into his front pockets. "You should be nicer to me, young lady. I could save you a whole lot of embarrassment."