by Leif Wright
He slammed his eyes shut as the bastard shrieked about something in his room.
“Shut up, goddammit!”
Another shriek. If his head didn’t hurt so bad, goddammit, he’d show that little bastard how to mind.
He knew the bitch would be home soon, filling his ears with meaningless words about which he couldn’t give two shits, telling him how her day went and how this hen friend of hers said this about that other hen friend of hers and how she couldn’t believe two nice people could say such horrible things about each other and how that was the problem with the world and if we could all just learn to love, the world would be so much less stressful.
He rolled his eyes just thinking about it.
Maybe he could drink enough beers to black out before she came home.
44
1973
SHERRY TURNER WAS A LOOKER. THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE SAID. SHE WAS too pretty for grumpy old Richard. Everyone said so. What the hell was she doing with a poor piece of shit who drove a garbage truck? Everyone thought so.
Oh, they saw her. They knew she came to work every day with eyes reddened from crying, that her voice was hoarse from screaming through fights with her old man, that garbage-truck-driving asshole who didn’t know how to treat a good woman. But it wasn’t her fights or the toll they took on her that anyone was interested in, she knew. By following their eyes, she knew what they were interested in. Sympathy over the fights was simply their doorway into those treasures.
She felt their eyes tracing every curve of her ass as she bent over the tables to serve greasy food to greasier diners. She heard the whispers as they spoke to their buddies—or no one at all—about how they would “tear that up” and how she didn’t know what she was missing, saw the elbows traded between men, young and old. She endured their paper-thin apologies for brushing her breasts with their hands as she served food, for “accidentally” grabbing her ass—or for the bolder ones, grabbing between her legs and pretending they hadn’t seen her coming.
She endured the lecherous “jokes”—and then the sarcastic comments when she didn’t throw herself down, legs open, begging them to fuck her for them being so witty. She had learned to stop sighing when she received “tips” that were simply clueless men’s phone numbers written on the bill instead of the money she needed to grab Robby and escape Richard’s increasingly terrifying behavior.
When the tips did come, they were good ones. Her low-cut blouses and short skirts ensured that. She needed the money badly, so the unwanted grabs and jokes and sleazy glimpses would all soon be worth it.
It’s not that Sherry was an angel. She wasn’t, and she knew it. A year ago, Richard would have been right in suspecting her of infidelity. She had been running around on him back then. 1972 had been a crazy year, and when Jim Marks had blown through town looking like Jim Morrison, dishing out Michoacan and Mescal, speaking in Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin song lyrics, Sherry had been caught up in his whirlwind. Maybe it was the fringe on his leather jacket, the tight Levis hugging his ass, maybe the smoldering good looks. Maybe it was the drugs, or the oh-so-meaningful lyrics.
After she had let him into her “red house over yonder”, it was only Robby that kept her from scraping together every penny she had in the world to serve Richard with divorce papers. At night, as she was cradling the baby and walking him around the house to keep Richard from waking up and screaming at them both for him crying, she confessed to Robby over and over, telling him how she was sticking around so he wouldn’t become a pawn in a messy divorce, how she shuddered at the thought of Richard clumsily groping her in the same places that Jim made sing with his touch, how she was biding her time until she and Jim could rescue Robby and all live together in love, peace, and aquarian hope.
And she had really believed it.
It didn’t bother her that Jim was with other women. Love, after all, was too big for the constraints of straights who insisted on an antiquated idea of monogamous bondage that shat all over the entire idea of love. No, she didn’t want to own Jim, to possess him—or to be possessed by him. He could have whichever other women he wanted, and she could have whichever other men she wanted. Infidelity was a false concept concocted by those for whom fidelity itself—an antiquated concept based in the idea that women were men’s property—was more important than happiness, a god they worshipped by sacrificing the very virtues they by nature held dear instead.
No, she hadn’t been one to be caught up in jealousy when Jim was with other women. It was the fact that he lied to her about it. Because the lies indicated that, no matter what he said, Jim didn’t believe a word of it. The lies told her Jim believed it was reasonable to expect fidelity and that maintaining the appearance of it was more important to him than the open, free love and happiness he preached to cast his spell over her. Jim, it turned out, wasn’t the god she had seen him as. He was just another man, saying and doing whatever he thought he needed to get his dick wet.
After she had caught Jim lying, Sherry had gone into a deep depression, though she hadn’t known that was what to call it. She just knew she was down, and she had no idea how to get up. Her husband hated her—hated their son worse—her job was one step up from prostitution, her parents had stopped talking to her when she had insisted on marrying Richard against their wills. Robby was a good listener, but he was too young to understand, to offer Mommy any help, any support. And now he was too old to confess to, because he repeated whatever was said to him. Women at work hated her because she was pretty. Men at work would say and do whatever they could to get into her short skirts. Everything seemed pointless, hopeless. Only Robby gave her the strength to carry on. She had fallen in love with him the moment he was born, and that love was the only true, real love she had ever known.
His beautiful little head—hairless and perfectly round—his curious little wide eyes. His tiny little baby teeth, his giggles when she would blow a raspberry on his neck or his stomach. The way he hadn’t yet mastered the use of his fingers, using them to grab at everything that struck his fancy, cooing as he discovered new textures and shapes. Even his screams when he was hungry, his cries when he was fighting sleep, his messy diapers, his spit-up—they were all bricks in the foundation for what she was sure would be the love of her life, the lone bright spot coming from a marriage she was embarrassed to admit her parents had been right about.
Robby was perfect, her lone hope in the world that was otherwise filled with gropes, lustful glances, sideways compliments, and clumsy attempts and tries to get her to give it up to them. She hated men. Hated them. Robby was the only member of the male gender who she could see no guile in, no evil, no gross sexual desires.
So she served tables, shared her tips with the hostess, brought home half of the rest, and hid the other half in a locker at the bus station, counting it at least three times a week, hoping she had been wrong the time before and there was more money than she remembered. There never was. Robby deserved so much better. She resolved to work harder, to pimp herself out more to the jerks who fantasized they could have her simply by leaving her their phone numbers instead of money.
This was not the life her parents had envisioned for their honor student with a real chance to be valedictorian. They had visions of Ivy League, prestigious degrees, a partnership at an east coast law firm. Country clubs, vacations on the French Riviera, a well-bred, well-connected husband, maybe with a political career.
Certainly not waitressing in a greasy spoon, married to the garbage man, already a kid, hanging out with filthy, drug-taking hippies, and going to the orgies they considered concerts to be. The whole thing disappointed and disgusted them, she knew.
But it’s not like she chose this life on purpose. She had been a teenager—a teenager, for crying out loud, when all this started. Teenagers shouldn’t have to have their lives planned out, shouldn’t have to be so serious and studious. She shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of her actions until she was older, until she felt like an adult. Sh
e shouldn’t have to learn the hard way that the door to college would slam shut over fifteen minutes of drunken pleasure, that she’d forever be relegated to be an object of lust—nothing more—just because she wanted to be a teenager.
She had been forced to quit her senior year of high school because Robby had begun to show in her flat belly, and the school didn’t want girls “in trouble” setting bad examples.
She had taken—and aced—her General Equivalency, but no one had told her colleges viewed that as the same thing as having no diploma. So she had married Robby’s father. She had no other choice.
No one had told her that was such a left turn, either. No one had told her that married equaled invisible. No one had told her anything; they had kept their expectations of her to themselves until it came time to show her how much she had disappointed by not meeting them.
That they seemed to have no problem communicating. What a waste, they said, as if creating and nurturing such a beautiful, perfect boy was a waste of her intelligence, her beauty.
Her life, it seemed, was everyone’s favorite subject and possession. It seemed a cottage industry in her family, ruminating about how badly precious perfect Sherry had squandered God’s magnanimous gifts, how she had scorned her privileged upbringing and thrown it all away for the love of a junkyard dog.
But to her, life had become ensconced in the flood of Robby, the rising tide of his life, his progress as a little person exploring the world around him. Though she could understand everyone’s concerns, all she had to do was look at his knowing face—his brain’s little wheels always turning as he absorbed everything—and she could no longer find it in her to care who thought she was throwing her life away by dedicating it to him.
But that very dedication to him had led to the rest of her support system withdrawing from her, leaving her at the mercy of Richard. Angry, frustrated, petty Richard, whose tirades and rants would have been tolerable if he didn’t think it was okay to hit Sherry—as long as he didn’t leave a mark. She had seen seething hatred in his eyes when Robby played too loud, and it terrified her, because if he snapped, Sherry wouldn’t be able to stop him from hurting Robby.
Richard was skinny, but slinging garbage around all day had made him deceptively strong. She feared one day he really would lose it, and she had worked out the scenario in her mind: she would scoop up Robby, taking any punishment she had to while doing it, then run out the front door screaming for help, not stopping until she got somewhere safe.
But leaving him presented the same old problems: it was already a struggle to make ends meet with both their incomes. She couldn’t imagine trying to do it on her own, with no family to help.
She scooted the dishes from the table into the bus tub. The fat guy had cleaned his plates completely. It looked like he might have even licked the eggs—over easy, but not too easy, sweetie—from the plate. He had patted her ass when she ordered and again when she brought him the ticket. She shuddered thinking about it. The bald guy who had sat across from him had barely touched his food, but had gone through two pots of coffee as the fat guy had grazed enough food for two breakfasts. The thin guy had brushed her breast with his hand as she had set his water on the table.
Her shoulders slumped as she realized they had left no tip. Two pats on the ass and a breast graze—and she had nothing to show for it except for disgust. It made her want to cry. No tip was just a baby step above a phone number left on a napkin, as if she would swoon at the thought and rush to the nearest pay phone as soon as she got a break.
Tonight, it looked like, she might not get to add anything to her secret stash of money, which meant more time enduring the sex-crazed gropes, comments, and outright propositions. And more time walking on eggshells around Richard, hoping tonight wasn’t the night he snapped. She slammed the silverware into the bus tray, drawing a glance from the old man sitting at the counter, nursing his coffee like the final shot of Scotch after last call. She shot a look right back at him and he turned away. She wiped the fat slob’s crumbs off the table and took the bus tray back to the dishwashing station, pausing afterward to compose herself before going out to serve the rest of the customers. She had to be happy, perky, and cute, because men liked their objects to seem like a fantasy. None of them wanted to fantasize about a real woman with real problems—they couldn’t jerk off to that.
Robby. She had to think of Robby to act happy. His adorable little voice as he sang what he could of the ABC song, mumbling most of it, but clapping and grinning ear to ear as he sang “NEXT TIME WON’T YOU SING WITH ME!” at the top of his lungs. Then he would laugh and jump up and down, spinning around as he clapped for himself.
It worked. Sherry smiled as she thought of him being so proud of himself, tiny little teeth clasped together in a huge smile as he looked up at her, beaming.
With that picture in mind, she knew she could smile genuinely and do her job. She smiled and walked out of the kitchen to serve her next table.
45
1973
“RBBBBRRRRRRRRR ROOOOOOOWWWWW!”
The blue and white plastic airplane flew around mountains, valleys, cities, and over oceans. The pilot, dressed in a smart blue suit and important blue hat, was seated next to his dog co-pilot, who wasn’t dressed at all—which was hilarious when you thought about it. The pilot confidently steered the plane through the air, occasionally doing loopty-loops to thrill the passengers—a dad and mom, a little boy, a cat, and the Easter bunny.
“Bbbbbrrrrooowwwwwww!”
The plane thrillingly dipped into a valley and leapt back out of it as the passengers (except for the Easter bunny, who seemed grumpy today) giggled and shrieked loudly.
“Shut the fuck up!” the Easter bunny yelled loudly at the other passengers, who ignored him because they were having so much fun. He sounded far away anyway.
The advantage of being Weeble Wobbles was that, no matter what happened to the plane ride, they could never fall down—they were safe. Robby had tried to hold them down, but they always popped right back up. The mommy Weeble was nice, sweet, and beautiful. She was his favorite Weeble by far. He almost never played with the daddy Weeble, largely because it seemed like just a toy to him, not real like Mommy Weeble was. Easter Bunny Weeble had a scary face, so he never played with it, but today he couldn’t find the policeman Weeble or the fireman Weeble, so the Easter bunny had to fill a spot on the plane. (But Robby was kind of regretting including the Easter bunny, because it was in such a bad mood.)
There was a lot of turbulence on this flight (he had just learned that word after he and Mommy had seen it in a movie, and now he used it as often as possible), but the pilot had it under control.
“Rrraaaaaaaaaaawwww.”
The plane flew low over Mr. Potato Head’s army man farm. Most of the passengers giggled and laughed.
Someone could have taken all of his toys other than the Weeble Wobbles and he would have been perfectly content. In fact, he would have welcomed the decluttering of his room.
The landscape of his room was like a mountain range anyway. Toys that Robby didn’t know had been bought at junk stores and secondhand shops—not that he would have cared—ebbed and flowed in order of their importance to him this week. Wooden blocks with letters and numbers on them bore the scars of owners past: fading paint on the letters, marker tracks, and the chew marks of a dog on the corners.
Army men covered everything, bivouacs made from Lincoln logs, or sippy cups never too far away.
His bed sat tucked away in a corner, his snuggle friend the Unnamed Teddy Bear waiting diligently for bedtime. Robby had no idea that the mattress on the bed was uncomfortable and cheap; he had never known anything else.
“Brrrrrrrrraaaaaawwwww.”
The plane banked sharply to avoid the window. The Weebles (except for the Easter bunny) shrieked and laughed as they wobbled in their seats but did not fall down. Robby’s feet deftly and without thought danced through the room, leaping over piles of the debris of childhood
and landing on the rare clean spots on the floor.
Robby’s daycare had suggested his parents have him tested, because he was already trying to learn to read, which they had never seen in a child so young, but after a long (and loud) discussion, Robby’s dad had won—they just couldn’t afford the $50 it would cost to run the test, so Robby, who didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about anyway—just had to keep on teaching himself. Which was fine with him.
He had already learned that little kids were supposed to shut the hell UP when MASH was on TV. And that clicking your teeth with your fork was a good way to get smacked. And he had learned that Daddy called him Sherry’s Little Bastard, and that to some people, Mommy was Sherry. For some reason, he had learned, Daddy didn’t like him very much. So usually, Robby tried to stay away from Daddy, which seemed to keep Daddy calmer. Usually.
Tonight, Mommy had Pulled A Double. Robby didn’t know what that meant, other than Mommy was gone and he was alone with Daddy. Daddy usually watched TV until he went to sleep in Daddy’s Chair, so Robby had decided it would be best to spend Mommy’s Pulled A Double night in his room with the Weebles.
He was really hungry, but he knew better than to tell Daddy. When Mommy came home looking tired and sad, she always found time to ask Robby if he was hungry, if he wanted to eat mac and cheese or maybe some leftovers. Even after she had Pulled A Double.
The Weebles were hungry, too. In the movie, the people on the plane had been fed by someone called a stewardess, but the Weeble Wobble flight had no stewardess—and no dinner. So they had all—except for the bunny—decided to have fun despite the rumbling of their bellies.
Who could eat anyway with the plane loopty-looping like this?
“Brrrrrrrawwww! Beeeerrrrrraw!”
More giggles and shrieks from the Weeble family.
“Goddammit, you little bastard, I’m warning you!”