Prom Night in Purgatory (Slow Dance in Purgatory)

by Harmon, Amy

  “What the hell, Maggie?” Johnny yelled out, his voice echoing angrily across the water, only to yell right back. “None of it makes any damn sense! Where are you?!” He stood and chucked the rock in his hand as hard as he could throw it. He felt like crying and was suddenly mad as hell and clueless as heaven, and done sitting at the rez, talking to the water. He grabbed his boots and shoved his feet inside and marched to his car, flipping the radio off and gunning the engine. He spun out and headed back into town, the hot summer air whooshing through the windows and merging with the frustrated heat inside his chest.

  Johnny pulled in to The Malt and sighed. He wasn’t fit for company, and he wasn’t dressed for it either. His clothes had dried in the August night, but they were stiff and sandy, and his hair was probably a mess. He ran his hands through it, tugging his comb from his back pocked to put it to rights. He may not be fit for company, but he needed it, and The Malt was as good a place as any to find it, plus he could check on his momma.

  His mother had told him it was over with the mayor. Mayor Carlton, Roger’s dad, was as slick and handsome as his son, without the mean streak. Dolly Kinross said he was nice to her, and she said he was lonely and miserable, and “it really wasn’t like that, Johnny!” she had huffed at him, her hands on her hips in mock outrage.

  “Good, Momma. Then you won’t mind tellin’ Mayor Carlton that he can solve his loneliness problem by gettin’ off his ass and doing the job the people of Honeyville elected him to do. You end it, Momma, or I will!” Johnny had said. “Billy isn’t complaining, but I think Roger Carlton’s been making his life difficult. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with his daddy spending time with you.”

  “Roger?” Dolly Kinross had squeaked out, and she got a funny look on her face. “He’s been giving Billy a hard time?”

  Johnny just looked at her hard, folding his arms and waiting.

  “I’ll tell the mayor we can’t be friends anymore, Johnny. I promise.” Dolly looked sincere. “Roger scares me a little. I didn’t know he was bothering Billy.”

  That was a week ago, and so far so good. Momma had been coming home right after work, and Billy even saw her talking to Chief Bailey yesterday on her lunch shift.

  Johnny walked inside The Malt, and a few friends called out his name. Carter and Peggy had been inseparable since the prom, and they sat at a table in the back, a few other friends surrounding them. Carter had his arm slung around Peggy’s shoulders, and she kept looking at him like he wasn’t a tall, skinny, yellow-haired scarecrow but something special. She was too pretty for him, but they looked good together, and they complemented each other in a way that surprised Johnny. He chatted with them for a minute and looked around, expecting to see his mother waiting tables.

  “Hey Carter, you see my momma tonight? Was she here?”

  “She was, but she hustled on outta here just before you came.” Carter lowered his voice and leaned in to his friend, speaking directly in to his ear. “Roger Carlton was in here. He got a little hot under the collar. He was being a complete nosebleed, if you ask me. Anyway, she dumped a drink over his head to cool him down some, I guess. She apologized, but Val sent her home.”

  Roger Carlton again. He was really gonna have to do something about the kid. He had let things go so far because he’d felt like maybe his mother had been the cause, but Roger just wouldn’t go away. Johnny grabbed a burger and a Coke and headed for the door.

  Momma wasn’t home, though. Neither was Billy. Johnny sat and waited for a while. He showered the reservoir sand and grit off his skin and got ready for bed, revisiting some of his favorite parts in his now favorite book. He was just dozing off when Billy came in. His face was flushed, and he was wearing a pair of sweats and a tee shirt and sneakers. The kid wasn’t exactly an athlete, and he avoided sweating at all costs, but it looked like he was taking up running or something. Billy was always neat as a pin and careful about his appearance. He didn’t look at Johnny as he started to undress, and then he paused, gathered up his clothes and went into the bathroom. Johnny raised his eyebrows at his brother’s retreating back and decided it must be a puberty thing. Billy getting shy about changing in front of him almost made him laugh out loud.

  It was 2 a.m. before his mother came in. Johnny jerked awake and listened, hearing her walk down the narrow hallway between the bedrooms. She flipped on her light and shut her door softly. Johnny eased out from under the covers and opened his bedroom door, wincing as it squeaked loudly. Billy didn’t stir. Johnny tapped on his mother’s door to warn her he was coming in, but didn’t wait for her to give permission. He didn’t want to give her any time to compose herself. Two a.m. meant she had been up to no good, and he was tired of worrying about her.

  She screamed a little and tried to say she was undressing, not to come in, but Johnny didn’t listen. She was fully dressed and sitting on her bed, hands in her lap. She stood and turned quickly, hiding her face from him, but not quickly enough.

  “Ah, shit! Momma!” Johnny flew across the room and spun his mother to face him, sucking in his breath as his eyes landed on her bruised and swollen right eye. Her bottom lip was puffy too, and it was split down the center.

  “Who did this!” he roared, not caring anymore about being gentle or quiet.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” his mother started, folding her arms against his anger.

  “Bullshit, Momma!” He groaned, turning from her and locking his hands behind his head in frustration. “No one smacks a woman in the face, more than once by the looks of it, without understanding exactly what he’s doing.”

  “Johnny Kinross!” his mother hissed, grabbing his arm and turning him to face her once more. “I am a grown woman, and you are my son, and you will watch your mouth around me. I may make mistakes, but you won’t talk to me that way!” Her lips trembled and her eyes fought against the tears that she had probably been holding in for a while.

  “Momma,” Johnny sighed, more softly now. “Me respecting you is not the problem here. You don’t respect yourself.”

  “That’s not it!” Dolly Kinross started up, but Johnny wouldn’t let her continue.

  “Yeah, Momma. It is. You think you deserve to be slapped around and treated like garbage, so you do things you know you shouldn’t do so that when you are mistreated you can justify it. But if you think I’m gonna stand by and allow someone -- the mayor or anyone else -- to put a mark on my mother, then you don’t know me very well.”

  “It’s over, Johnny. It’s done. I’m not seeing the mayor anymore. I promise.” His mother called out behind him as he turned to leave her room. “Please don’t do anything! Just let it go!”

  Billy stood in the hallway between the bedrooms. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his face was creased with sleep. He didn’t just look tired. He looked weary, and Johnny paused a moment, looking into his younger brother’s face.

  “Is she okay?” Billy blurted out before Johnny could say a word.

  “She’s fine,” Johnny soothed instinctively. “She’s just been hanging around the wrong kinds of people in the wrong places, and it caught up with her.” Johnny put his arm around his brother’s shoulders and led him back into their room. “I don’t want you to worry, Billy. I’ll take care of you, and Momma too, if she’ll let me.”

  “She said for you not to do anything, Johnny! What are you going to do?” Billy grabbed Johnny’s arm. “You’re not going anywhere are you? The mayor could throw you in jail if you go after him, Johnny! I don’t want anything to happen to you!” Billy looked as if he were going to burst into tears, and Johnny pushed the anger away temporarily, for the sake of his younger brother who could obviously tell Johnny had revenge on his mind.

  “I’m not going anywhere tonight. Let’s go back to bed. Come on.” Johnny pushed his brother gently back to his narrow bed and then climbed into his own, pulling the thin blanket around his shoulders and closing his eyes to Billy’s worried gaze.

  “You promise you aren�
��t just waiting until I fall asleep?” Billy’s voice wavered, unconvinced.

  “I promise I will be here all night long, and I’ll still be here when you wake up,” Johnny said calmly, fighting the impulse that wanted to send him raging through town, throwing bricks through the windows of certain distinguished citizens’ homes. He lay there silently, perfectly still, until Billy finally fell asleep and the tiny, dumpy house on Julian Street was hushed and still. Johnny would be true to his word; he would be there when Billy woke up, but he hadn’t abandoned his need for revenge, and the mayor was going to pay.

  ~17~

  A Time to Cast Away Stones

  “Maggie! Maggie! Wake up, Johnny’s here!” Irene was shaking her and Maggie winced, not knowing where she was or frankly WHEN she was. She lifted her weighty lids and peered at her aunt. Aunt Irene’s neat grey chignon and eyes lined with years met her bleary gaze and she readjusted herself to 2011.

  “Wh-what?” Maggie moaned, pushing her hair from her face. Her glasses hung from one ear, sliding down her nose lopsidedly before she pushed them into place. She was still wearing Johnny’s white sports coat.

  “Why are you in here?” Irene wondered out loud. “When I woke up this morning you were gone. I thought you were at school. Did you come in here and lay down after I got up?” She halted and gasped, looking at the rumpled red formal Maggie was wearing under Johnny’s sport coat.

  “Where did you get that dress? It looks just like a dress I used to have. I looked everywhere for that dress....” Irene fussed at Maggie, and Maggie just stared down at the red formal and then around the room in wonder. Irene was acting like they hadn’t played dress up and fallen asleep in a tumble of tulle and old memories. Had they? Reality was a bitter old lady with a switch in her hands, waiting for you to turn your back. Maggie closed her eyes and flung herself mournfully back across the bed. She wanted to howl and kick her legs, and she fought the urge to shriek in frustration.

  “Maggie?” Irene questioned, worry tinging her voice. She reached out and rested her hand on Maggie’s brow. “Are you sick? You feel a little warm.”

  “Yes. I think I must be.” Maggie’s voice wobbled, and she pulled a pillow over her face, hiding her despair from Irene. How many times would she have to lose him? The hole was widening and her sorrow was sucking her under. She needed Irene to leave her alone for a while. Maggie didn’t want her to see the messy display that was threatening to boil over.

  “He’s downstairs. He’s seems very agitated, but I’ll just tell him you’re not feeling well, all right?” Irene turned to leave.

  “Wait! Who’s agitated? Who’s downstairs?” Maggie had missed an essential part of the conversation, it seemed.

  “Why, Johnny, dear. I told him you weren’t here, that you were at school. But he said you weren’t at school, that he had already been there this morning looking for you!” Irene’s voice dropped to a girlish whisper. “I told him I would come see if you were here after all.”

  Maggie shot upright, flinging the pillow to the side. “I want to see him. Stall him, please?”

  “Are you sure you feel well enough, dear? He scares me a little. He’s so intense! It’s like he looks right through me and doesn’t like what he sees.” Irene’s voice had faded a little at the end, and Maggie looked back at her aunt, remembering the girl in her peach prom dress, standing in the parking lot in front of The Malt with her whole life in front of her. A pang of loss surged through Maggie, and she turned and wrapped her aunt in her arms.

  “Aunt Irene? I don’t want Johnny to leave. Will you please just tell him to wait. I want to see him, Aunt Irene. I need to see him. Okay?” Maggie released her aunt and stepped back, slipping the white coat from her shoulders. Surprisingly, Irene made no comment about the jacket, she seemed too stunned by the red dress.

  “Irene?” Maggie waved a hand in front of her aunt’s face, jolting her from her reverie.

  “Oh! Okay then. I’ll go....Maggie, you’ve got....something....is that sand? Do you have sand in your hair, Maggie!” Irene’s face wrinkled in confusion.

  “Of course I don’t, Irene!” Maggie lied, and then she laughed, and then she wanted to dissolve into messy, futile tears, remembering how the sand got there. Irene shrugged, turned, and left the room. Maggie brought the jacket to her face and inhaled deeply. Johnny’s face rose up before her, wrapped in his scent. Her knees buckled, and she thought she might not be able to face the boy who waited downstairs. But her need to see him was greater than her dread that nothing had changed.

  She ran up the stairs to her own room and laid the precious white jacket on her bed, shimmying out of the red dress and pulling a brush through her curls as she raced around the room. Oh yeah, that was definitely sand. She yanked on a pair of jeans and her favorite pink shirt, ran back to the bathroom and brushed her teeth twice. Did her hair smell like the reservoir? She sniffed, trying to detect anything fishy. Nothing. Good. She didn’t have time to shower. Her hair still bore some curl from the prom, but her face needed make up. Time travel had left her haggard. Maggie stared at her reflection and tried to get her bearings. She dabbed on a little of this and a little of that and tried to bring her face back to the present. She tried to keep her mind from dwelling on Johnny, just two floors below. She would see him soon enough.

  ***

  He paced from one side of the room to the other, and when she came into the room he stopped, his jean clad legs spread in a belligerent stance, his arms clenched at his sides. He clasped Roger’s scrapbook in his right hand. But the expression on his face wasn’t belligerent; it was undecipherable. He walked toward Maggie and stopped a few feet in front of her. He took the book from under his arm and opened it, skipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

  “Can you explain this to me?” His voice was so low Maggie couldn’t tell whether he was angry or not. His face was carefully blank, and Maggie reached out to take the book from his hands.

  She looked down at the page he had opened to, looking into the laughing visages of Irene and her friends. She had seen that picture before. There was the picture of Johnny and Peggy. A strange lump formed in her throat as her eyes lingered on Johnny’s smiling face. Just last night, just hours before, she has kissed that mouth and danced in those arms, and here he was again with the great stone face.

  And then her eyes fell on a picture that she hadn’t seen before. It was a shot of the dance floor. Couples danced in close proximity, and the effect was slightly blurred as if the cameraman had caught everyone in differing degrees of motion, everyone but the couple in the center of the shot. Maggie gasped as she recognized what she was seeing.

  It was a picture of Johnny and her. They stood motionless, their hands clasped between them. Johnny was staring down at her, and her chin was lifted toward him, her eyes locked on his. Maggie couldn’t pull her eyes away from the picture, and for several hushed seconds the sounds around the room magnified tenfold: the ticking of the clock on the mantle, the chirping of birds outside, the far off sound of a passing car. And her own heart, pounding in her chest.

  “I remember you, Maggie,” Johnny whispered, close to her ear, his breath tickling the hair that hung near her cheek. She raised her eyes to his and the blank, harsh expression was no longer there.

  “I still don’t remember anything after the night of the rumble, but I remember you. I remember this!” He pointed at the picture of the two of them, captured forever in the image on the page. “I don’t know what to think, or how to feel...but I remember you.”

  “You remember me?” Maggie held her breath, not daring to hope.

  Johnny clenched his jaw, and he nodded once and then again, confirming her question. “I remember the prom and the way I felt when you walked in. How we danced and how you stole that damn Edsel. It was so funny, and I was trying not to laugh because you were scared to death.” Johnny laughed harshly, and then the laughter broke off, almost in a sob.

  Maggie dropped the book and reach
ed for his hands, mirroring the way they stood in the picture. His breath was harsh like he struggled to control his emotions, but he let her take his hands. He wouldn’t look at her though, dropping his chin into his chest as if the weight of his memories made his head too heavy to hold upright. She stared at his bowed head and struggled to keep from touching his golden hair.

  “I didn’t remember anything yesterday. This morning it was all there. The memories, the dance, the feelings...everything....all of it in my head, and I don’t know what to make of it. That picture wasn’t here before.”

  Maggie held onto his hands, gripping them and wishing she could explain everything and not knowing how, and not really understanding it herself.

  “Maybe...maybe you didn’t remember because it hadn’t happened yet,” she pondered out loud.

  “What the hell does that mean, Maggie?” His voice wasn’t angry, but pleading, almost begging her to explain.

  “Do you remember what I tried to tell you?” Maggie rushed ahead, trying to make him understand. “You asked me if we had ever met before. You hadn’t met me, but I already knew you.” She forced his chin up, looking into his eyes, pleading with him to listen. His eyes roved over her face, searching.

  “You said time could change its mind. Is that what this is?” Johnny looked away and grabbed the book again, flipping the pages as if his life depended on it. He found the page and slammed his hand down on it. “This is the report I filed with the police! You just disappeared! I thought of you every day, Maggie. I looked for you. Why did you leave like that?”

  Maggie stared down at the missing persons report with her name on it. Her first name but no last name. This hadn’t been in the scrapbook before either. Why did Roger have a copy of this? History had been altered and here was the proof. Quickly her horror was replaced with the realization that Johnny had tried to find her. He had tried to find her! She felt suddenly euphoric and short of breath, and her head spun trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. It had been only hours since she’d fallen asleep in Johnny’s arms, and yet here she stood, decades later, staring down at a police record with her name on it.