Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  “What are you wearing?”

  “My plaid wool shorts and knee socks and I’m freezing to death but I love those shorts….”

  “Go on,” I cut her off.

  “He finishes his cigarette and he’s grinding it with his boot when I get to him and I say, ‘Sugar Baby?’ and hold my little bag out and he says, ‘Sure.’ And then we just start walking.”

  “Where’s Toady?” I mean Jessica.

  “Back in the five and dime looking at magazines. I wasn’t really with her or anything. So he starts walking with me and he says, ‘Where you going?’ and I say, ‘The movies,’….”

  “Did you see ‘Romeo and Juliet?’” I am ready to choke her. We have been planning and planning to see that movie together.

  “No! We saw ‘The Love Bug.’” She says folding her skinny arms.

  Well I’m not happy about that either. “’The Love Bug?’” Making fun of her is preferable to telling her this whole story makes me green.

  “So listen! I pay his way into the show because he’s broke.”

  “He’s like a hippie,” I say. Does she know that?

  “I know. He says he is a non-conformist.”

  “He says that?” That’s pretty smart for someone like him.

  “Well he isn’t very serious. But will you listen to my story?”

  “Go on.”

  “We’re in the show and we eat all of the Sugar Babies.”

  “Wait…what did you do when you ran off with him on Friday?”

  “It was so much fun!” she squeals. “We ran all over the girl’s field and he tackled me and we fell on the grass and looked up at the stars. It was so fun. I did all my cheers and then Ricky came and ruined it. That sausage. He is so mad at you.”

  “At me? He doesn’t have any right in this world to be mad at me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him anyway.”

  “Well tell me the other—the show.”

  “Yeah, about halfway he says, and it’s all kids and their mothers, but we’re in back, and he leans toward me and says, “Hey taste this,” and I get closer and he kisses me and leans away and he says, ‘Taste like Sugar Babies?’ and I can’t say anything because I’m thinking we’ll be making babies.” She dies laughing then, but I’m pretty mad. I’m thrown too. I mean…she had her kiss on Saturday. Mine came on Friday and she’s ruined my news. That’s so unfair. They’ve had so much time while I’ve been a prisoner.

  “You better be careful,” I say. “He’s going to stay here and what are you going to do? He’ll never be accepted by the crowd you run with.”

  “What crowd? I cheerlead. So what?”

  Well I’m too mad to think about it.

  “He’s so free,” she says all dreamily.

  “Did he kiss you again?”

  She is blushing and smiling and not looking at me, just at the ceiling.

  “Abigail May. You cannot go crazy with him.” I feel like a hypocrite.

  “Look who’s talking,” she snaps.

  “Well I know what I’m doing and Easy is much more…grown up than Cap. Cap is fourteen or fifteen now. He doesn’t even have a job or a pair of pants without holes!”

  “He is not materialistic. He doesn’t want his life to be about that!”

  “Hogwash. He’s just a bum!” I say.

  “He is not! But he’ll never go into the army like Easy. He loves Easy, but he will never let the establishment send him into their war!” she yells.

  I can’t believe this is Abigail. She’s talking like…like I did…before Easy came back. She’s the jock. She’s the one that sells out and doesn’t apologize for it. At all. I’m the one trying to make her see…to make her listen and care about more than the next cheer or the next sock-hop and she says non-conformist, and establishment…to me? And now Cap…it’s all about Cap?

  I don’t know why we’re fighting. I feel the same about Easy.

  “You’re so mean,” she says sitting beside me like she’s had the air poked out of her.

  “I know,” I say like it’s a revelation. “But I’m just…I don’t want you to get hurt. Or pregnant like that one girl we heard about.”

  “I won’t,” she says. “I wouldn’t do that. We’ve just kissed.”

  “But he’s free love, right? He’s probably been with lots of girls in Tennessee.”

  “Easy too then. They’re brothers.”

  “But Easy….” I’m thinking how he stopped us. He’s different from Cap. Cap wouldn’t have stopped.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she repeats.

  I look at her, and love is so powerful. I didn’t know before, but I do now. “Promise,” I say.

  “I promise,” she says.

  I put my arm around her then, my hand on her still pointy little head.

  Darnay Road 59

  Granma calls us down to help with supper and my ears are tingling. Abigail May has given me the many details from her time with Cap. He brought a marijuana cigarette to the trestle one night and she took a puff. I slapped her for it. Just hauled off and hit her arm.

  “I didn’t feel any differently!” she yelled.

  “It’s illegal!” I say. “That damn Disbro! Don’t you have any morals!”

  “I have morals just fine! I just wanted to know. Cap says one puff doesn’t even count. You can’t get hooked.”

  “Cap says? Where’s your brain? Remember the movie we just watched with Sonny Bono turning into a monster in the mirror?”

  “I asked Cap and he said that was bull.”

  “You asked the pot-head?”

  “Don’t tell.”

  “You’re the snitch,” I say and it’s not what I wanted to say but I’m so mad at her. I know Disbro has pot. That’s what he put in the steering wheel. But we’ve had enough lectures about not jumping off the bridge with the rest of the lemmings. Abigail May has no conviction!

  At least I took a puff of tobacco. That’s way better. Probably.

  So it’s been a lot, a lot of talking.

  “Lay the plates,” Granma says first thing when we enter the kitchen.

  “Granma…I was wondering,” I’m not supposed to talk to her about me and her stuff in front of Abigail or anyone, but Abigail hears it all the time anyway, and I’m ready to pop at the seams so I say, “Granma I was thinking you could punish me all you want once Easy is gone. I’d stay in for a month if you said, and wash windows. I just don’t think it’s fair….”

  “Easy and that other one are coming to supper. So is May and maybe Ricky,” Granma says without looking at me cause she’s setting the timer.

  I don’t like Ricky coming but I’m so, so happy Easy can I can barely protest anything.

  This big, fat joy hits me. “Oh thank you Granma,” I say. I look into the big skillet of Stroganoff. Life is really good, really fast. Just perfect.

  “You invited all of them? We’ll have a party,” Abigail May says doing the twirl even without a skirt.

  But she seems to notice then, that she’s in a jumpsuit that looks a lot like the sunsuits she wore a hundred years ago. She squeals a little and runs out of the room. I hear her on the stairs.

  “Where you going?” I call from the hall.

  “He can’t see me in this,” she says.

  “He’s not materialistic, remember?” I call after, but she’s already disappeared upstairs to raid my closet.

  Back in the kitchen I go to my Granma and hug her from behind cause she’s working over the stove. “You’re the best granma in the whole world,” I say. And I mean it.

  She goes kind of limp and she’s moving and I step away and she gets to a chair and pulls it out and drops and she’s crying into her hand, her elbow on the table. No sound but shoulders…shaking.

  “Granma,” I get out. I’m almost crying too.

  She sniffs big and sits straighter and wipes her eyes with her apron.

  She looks at me, eyes so red. “I’m going to trust you. You haven’t earned it after that s
tunt last Friday. But you haven’t lost it either. I can’t follow you around. I didn’t raise you to be a fool. Did I?”

  “No,” I assure her.

  “Then don’t be one.”

  “You saying I can see Easy? Like…could we go to a movie and maybe do stuff?” I’m on my knees. I don’t even remember, but here I am.

  “I’m saying one thing at a time and if you don’t give me a reason not to…I’m going to trust you. Can I?”

  “Yes Granma. Yes, oh yes.” I throw myself over her lap and cry a little. I love her so much I’d sign a paper in blood if she asked me.

  She pulls on me a little. “Then get up. Lay those plates.”

  I get on my feet and just like that, it’s over. I don’t know when I’ve felt so happy…well seeing Easy. But I’m ready to burst with it.

  “The plates,” she says, still sniffing while she goes to the refrigerator and digs around.

  Darnay Road 60

  I have just loaded a stack of forty-fives on the living room stereo when there’s a knock on the door. I start the music and pull on the sleeves of my navy blue dress. It is form fitting on the top but it’s a scooter skirt on the bottom. So it looks like a dress but there are shorts built in under a front and back panel.

  It hits above my knees of course, but it’s not super short until I sit down, the shorts move up and you can’t pull them down, but there’s the panel in front that goes to my knees when I’m seated, but it’s not wide enough to cover the sides of my thighs. It’s kind of neat, a mini but not all the way.

  I pretty much love this dress and the little belt around my waist. I had to make an extra hole because my waist is small and Granma says that is very much like my mother was. But I’m wearing this, and a pony tail with a scarf tied around it. I’ve got on navy blue knee socks and my Weejuns. I feel about sixteen, or just so aware of myself in a new way both self-conscious and kind of…powerful.

  I pull the door and it’s Aunt May holding a big chocolate cake and Ricky standing behind her, his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.

  I step back and hold the door wide for Aunt May, then Ricky. He looks me up and down. Ugh.

  I let him close the door himself.

  “You did it now,” he says after Aunt May makes it to the kitchen. “You and your little boyfriend.”

  “Little?” I say. Easy is taller than Ricky.

  Janis Joplin is rasping out “Summertime,” from the living room. She’s singing about a rich daddy, something neither one of us had.

  “Abigail tell you what they’re saying at school?” he says.

  “They say a lot of dumb stuff at school. Can’t imagine who’d start such a rumor.”

  “Not me.”

  “Saint Ricky.”

  He smiles, but it never quite looks happy. “I like that,” he says low moving into the kitchen.

  I turn back to the door to watch for Easy and Cap. They are just entering the yard. It takes my breath like a morning sky and I feel all that hope. Easy is in jeans and a t-shirt and his jacket. Cap is in his torn jeans but his long hair is combed and tied back. I pull the door and Easy is first up the stairs onto the porch. He comes to me and we join hands and he squeezes mine and I think to do the same but we don’t need it he squeezes so hard.

  “I…hello,” I say to him.

  He smiles big, and it’s real, just like he is. He also looks me up and down and wolf whistles very softly and Cap laughs a little and I say hi to Cap and point to the kitchen and Cap follows the good smells and Easy pulls me in the living room, which just takes a little tug on my hand and we’re there and the music, and he says low, “How’s Sing-Sing?” and before I can answer his lips are so warm on mine and before I can breathe he pulls me back into the hall and it’s almost like we didn’t even miss a step.

  In no time we’re in the kitchen and it’s crowded with seven people in that space but I am so, so happy.

  “C’mon, Granma,” Ricky says, “everybody gets an inch. Two inches,” he is saying holding a bottle of wine Granma has had in the refrigerator for a year.

  “For heaven sakes,” Granma says and she doesn’t even stop Ricky from pouring everyone an inch and a half in seven Dixie cups.

  May is laughing at Abigail’s reaction because she takes a little sip and says, “It’s yuck.”

  Cap downs his and holds it toward Ricky for a refill and Ricky drains the bottle into Cap’s cup and it looks like sediment in the dark glass bottle but Cap doesn’t care at all, he downs it.

  “Georgia,” Ricky says handing me the cup, his eyes sliding to my chest and back up right before he swallows his.

  “Georgia,” Easy says and he’s holding his cup and wants to fake-clink cups with me so we do that and it makes me smile, but I only sip and it’s so grody.

  “Here,” I say and I mean to hand it back to Ricky but Cap says he’ll take it so I hand it to him.

  Granma is trying to protest that we’re minors drinking alcohol but May is telling her they do it in Europe all the time, young children even.

  We start to crowd around the table. Easy and I get chairs next to each other. Abigail isn’t so lucky, Ricky gets next to her before Cap does so Cap is left on the corner beside Aunt May, and I’m not so lucky because Easy might be on one side of me, but Ricky is on the other.

  So May is telling Granma how she made the cake and bowls full of food hit the table, nothing fancy like I said before, but very substantial cause my Granma can just make the best food appear in minutes.

  Ricky goes to serve himself some green beans and May says, “Ah, ah, ah,” and makes to almost slap his hand. So we have to bow our heads and May says, “Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive through thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  Granma and Abigail and I say, “Amen,” and make the sign of the cross.

  I look up at Easy and he smiles. I think he’s been watching me. I pick up the mashed potatoes and set them between our plates and I give him a big spoonful, then another.

  He laughs and everyone does like I gave him too much. But I don’t care and I don’t know why they are watching me anyway when this food needs passed so shut-up.

  “I want some,” Ricky says holding his plate up a little.

  “Well keep your shirt on,” I say serving myself. Then I lift the heavy bowl and set it by Ricky’s plate.

  Next it’s green beans, Easy gets those and puts some on his plate and passes me that bowl. I serve myself and hand off to Ricky. Ricky touches my hands a lot. When I give him a dirty look he just smirks. He does it again with the corn so when the stewed tomatoes come by I just plunk them on the table with my elbow over his plate and no ‘excuse me.’ I don’t hand off anything else.

  Cap and Easy about love Granma’s food. Everyone does. She doesn’t cook like she used to, but tonight she’s got a good spread. I’m just lifting my fork to my mouth when I feel it, Easy’s foot next to mine, tapping against the side of my shoe. I look at him and he’s eating away not looking at me. So what I do next is pull my foot back and move it around his like a hook.

  He is wiping his mouth on his napkin then he looks quickly at me and almost no smile at all, just almost. I pull his foot just my way just a little, just an inch.

  “This is delicious,” Cap says and Abigail giggles like he’s said something funny.

  Since he’s across from her I can’t help but wonder where her feet are. Hard telling with Abigail May and she’s very dexterous so anything is possible.

  So then, from Easy’s side I feel this light touch against the bare skin of my thigh where the shorts ride up. I am taking a drink of my water when that happens and I cough a little.

  Ricky looks at me and says, “Calm down Green.”

  Now Aunt May is chattering on about cakes and frosting and Granma says you have to add sugar or something, and I have to remember to eat so I drop the hand toward Easy onto my lap and move it enough and his hand finds mine right away and we are holding hands under
the table.

  Then I feel Ricky’s knee hit mine. It’s just a hit, then it happens again.

  “Watch it,” I say, moving side to side, trying not to disturb my hand-holding with Easy.

  Ricky laughs a little and keeps shoveling his food.

  Then I feel his knee again. I point my knees more toward Easy.

  Granma glances at me, but just a glance.

  “Yes Ma’am,” Easy says and I realize Aunt May asked Easy a question.

  “Well that must have been hard work,” May says.

  “Yes Ma’am but I like to see progress like that,” Easy says. She’s asked about him and Cap working in the hayfields.

  “Well they ran cattle, just enough. Had some horses too.”

  “Your family?” I say.

  “My uncles,” Easy says.

  “You like that work too?” May asks Cap.

  “No Ma’am,” he says, same as Easy with politeness. I’m relieved.

  May knows Cap some from earlier days. “What do you want to do with your life?” May says.

  “Aunt May he’s just a kid,” Abigail says. “He can’t know what he wants to do with his whole life!”

  Cap laughs and you can tell the way he looks at Abigail May he thinks she’s the cutest thing.

  “Trash man,” Ricky says and he laughs and Easy bends forward to look past me at Ricky like he’s curious about him saying that.

  Cap goes on the back two chair-legs, boys always have to do that. “Live off the land. Grow things.”

  “Mary Jane,” Ricky says under his breath and Abigail laughs and Easy looks past me again at Ricky.

  “Be a farmer?” Abigail says in a voice like, ‘say what?’

  “Yeah,” Cap says. “Not a chemical using soil eroding one, but back to the land. You know.”

  “Should a stayed in Tennessee,” Ricky says forking away.

  “I ain’t going back,” Cap says. “I like it here. Lots of small farms in Missouri.”

  I’m surprised again that he has any plan at all. Of course he could also say a hundred other things that could and probably will change. But I can see him as a farmer. Of sorts. I cannot see Abigail May anywhere around a farm. And apparently, now that she’s berating the whole idea, she can’t either.