by Lee Child
Just fill it right up. And then . . .
I’ll be fixed. I won’t need to do the bad thing anymore.
Because God will be there. Instead. Right? Godplaster.
It’s logical, right? God is love. Replace that cigarette with love, with unselfish behavior, right? That’s spirituality, right? But what if I don’t have enough love?
See, it’s all a matter of relative degree. Because sooner or later, no matter what I do, I will do something. Something. And if that new something that I do isn’t absolutely perfect behavior, then that new something that I do will become the new bad thing. The thing to be cast out.
If thine eye offend thee, cast it out! Right?
Makes sense. Sort of.
Not really. Because if I never did anything bad, then I’d be a fucking saint. And even the major saints weren’t good all the time. They went through all this trouble of being a saint, and still, they were bad sometimes. Imperfect. Augustine and Saint Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, all those guys. Major league saints. Bunch of nutjobs giving themselves a hard time. Because honestly, who wants to be like them? Those guys wore hair shirts and ate dirt and gave away all their worldly goods and all that, and I just think that’s going too far. You know?
And by the way—I’m a human being! Humans are supposed to be bad.
I mean, all us self-improvement people who spend all day obsessing about our own behavior, we’re just this tiny little segment of the world’s population. Not even a majority in the United States. Just this thin, thin layer of humanity, this thin, thin, thin layer, like a layer of scum floating on top of a very big pond, who have either the time or the luxury to worry about whether we are eating too much cholesterol or not getting enough fiber. Or aren’t recycling properly or aren’t getting enough miles to the gallon in our SUVs.
Whether we’ve booked our next Pilates session or yoga class or tooth whitening or colonoscopy. Most of the people in the world have no money.
None. Zero. No bank account. No pocket change. No jar of pennies on the dresser. Nada. All they have are the flip-flops on their feet and the chicken clucking in the yard. Spend all their livelong day searching for clean water and firewood and hope they don’t trip over a land mine while they’re doing it. These people don’t worry about sunblock. Or flossing after meals. Or whether there’s bacteria on the sponge. They don’t. They don’t worry about any of it. And if they get a chance to smoke a cigarette, they smoke it. Whenever they can.
The Summer You Lit Up
by Lauren Sanders
Gray clouds hang over the half-empty parking lot outside the A&P. It’s cold for July but you’re wearing shorts and buffalo sandals, toes painted sparkly Spirit-of-’76 red. Little bumps stitch up your arms and legs.
“That’s gonna stunt your growth,” Vye tsk-tsks, then asks for a drag of the cigarette you just started smoking. She’s being kinda funny, so you hand it to her. She tries pathetically to blow smoke rings, and you both crack up. So hard you almost miss the station wagon turning into the entrance from the side street. It’s your family’s vomit-green car with wood paneling, Michael alone in the front seat wearing the shiny sunglasses the army gave him. He’s flying down to Florida after the Fourth to start training. He doesn’t care that the war is over, the draft as fossilized as the Boston Tea Party. He says we’re still fighting the same war over and over again.
“We gotta go,” you say to Vye, flicking the end of your Marlboro Light and leaning down low.
“Where?”
“Your house.”
“Okay,” Vye shrugs.
“Come on,” you grab her by the arm. “Now.”
She lifts her guitar from the curb and copies your hunched-over walk until you get to the alley between the drugstore and pizza place and run like hell the whole two blocks.
* * *
Top forty songs float out of the kitchen, where Vye’s mom stands over pots of boiling water and sauce for spaghetti. You sneak cigarettes on the porch and pretend to study triangles for tomorrow’s quiz, before everyone clears out for the holiday. Vye and her mom are taking the train to the city on Sunday to see the big ships coming into New York from all over the world.
Whenever you look past the couch and color TV inside, you catch the back of her mom in faded jeans and gauzy pink shirt-dress melting into the music, her long brown hair sweetly ruffled. She turns and drags from an ultralong cigarette like in a magazine ad.
You scrunch your knees in, tugging the sweatshirt Vye lent you over them to keep warm. The air is dark and damp and smells like lavender.
“Vye, honey, you girls ready?” her mother calls, and Vye blows a final mouthful of smoke toward the street before adjusting the guitar on her back.
“You ever take that thing off?”
She shakes her head hard, like she’s flinging bugs out of her scalp, then brushes past you in a way that says you’re a moron for asking. Makes you want to bolt but you follow her inside. The house smells a little bit greasy, a little bit cinnamon-powder donut. You have never been so aware of scents. Candles of different shapes and sizes flicker in front of a picture window. You sit beneath them on a cushioned bench staring into the half-lit kitchen. Normal tiles and white cabinets, shelves bulging with appliances, plates, and bowls. The refrigerator is plastered with political stickers, flyers for rallies—women’s lib and save the planet and Jimmy Carter for President—hours of the local health food store and public library. Vye’s mom’s schedule in the ER where she’s a nurse, more bumper stickers. One with ballooning red letters says LOVE CAREFULLY. Focusing in you see it’s for Planned Parenthood.
“I couldn’t live without them,” Vye’s mom says, and your heart pops, caught. “Magnets.”
“Oh, yeah,” tripping back to yourself. “Our fridge is so boring.”
“I’ll bet your kitchen’s not as sloppy.”
“It’s sorta cleaner but messier. Nobody washes dishes.”
Vye’s mom nods. “This one here can give you a lesson, maybe, she loves washing dishes.”
“The hot water loosens my fingers.”
“Loose fingers?” You look at her.
“For playing.” She flips her guitar around and strums loudly, not really music so it battles the silky voices coming from the radio.
“Not while we’re eating,” her mom says, giving the steaming bowl in front of her a few final shakes of cheese from the green cardboard cylinder. Without a word Vye sets down the guitar, and you wonder what makes her listen. For all the screaming in your house nobody ever hears anything. Vye’s mom scoops garlicky spaghetti with red sauce and vegetables, singing softly with the radio, shoulders rocking as she ladles.
Skyrockets in flight
Afternoon delight . . .
You imagine her down at the ocean on a rainbow towel.
She is divorced from Vye’s dad, who moved back to Puerto Rico a few years ago. Vye said she sees him twice a year, more than you can say for yours, and she seems to like her mom no matter how much she calls her a Nazi for pushing her to graduate early, why she’s taking summer classes with the rest of you just trying to catch up. Her mom knows the names of every teacher and volunteered to help with the Bicentennial celebration—a staged reading from the Declaration of Independence, exactly two hundred years after its first public reading. People are doing it all over the country next week. Earlier Vye’s mom made her try on her outfit, a pair of loose black trousers cut to knickers, blowsy white shirt with a double-knotted bow tie. Those dumb triangle hats you’ve seen for months on TV. Vye keeps saying she’s a pacifist and at dinner you mock, “The American Revolution didn’t have pacifists, they’re from the Vietnam War.” You know because Michael called them sissies and hippies and un-American.
“That’s not true,” Vye’s mom says, not unkindly. “There were many Quakers, especially in Pennsylvania, but some here too. They were for freedom but against fighting. They helped with the wounded soldiers.”
She tells you about the di
fferent religions and cultures slapping up against each other here in the New World, offering seconds of spaghetti that’s more watery now, a buttered roll with a few drops of honey on top. Paul McCartney’s on the radio singing a song about songs on the radio. Vye twirls big forkfuls of spaghetti with both hands. You imitate her movements, rubbing your palms back and forth against the fork, and feel something you haven’t felt in a while: like you can let the air out.
Before you leave you pocket the Planned Parenthood bumper sticker and two you’ve-come-a-long-way-baby cigs from her mom’s pack on the counter.
* * *
He is not your real brother.
His father married your mother when you were little. Now you’re old, with two younger brothers who don’t seem as discarded. You hijack their ears from their father’s perpetual barking (you never called him Dad, though you never knew your own), and he’s been away a lot, working offshore. You have no idea what that means but your mother tells you he’s a hard worker. He wears a suit, takes care of things.
Your mother is a drunk.
None of the doors in your house have locks.
You can’t remember when Michael became Michael.
One day you’re watching Top Cat and flicking Cheerios at each other, the next he’s jammed up in your bed, reeking of beer and onions. He hugs you so tight from behind you can barely breathe, a poke against your back. Then rubbing.
When he says you can touch it, you do. It goes quicker that way. He puts your hand on his dick and shows you how to stroke it up and down, slow at first, then a fierce pump until it squirts. He never put it inside before he got kicked out of college and moved back home, each time telling you it’s what you want. “No one’ll ever know you like I do,” he says.
You think, what if he’s right? Then hold your breath.
After, you sit side by side on your bed, ten thousand pounds of air between. Sometimes he lights a Lucky and gives you a few drags. Flecks of tobacco stick to your lips. Before leaving he says, “Remember, this doesn’t count, it’s just me.” You taste the Lucky in the back of your throat. He leans in so close you see the veins in his eyes, wayward freckles, feel his forefinger dig into your breastbone. “Don’t you ever do this with anyone else.”
* * *
July 4 you case the lot, lousy with groups of kids shooting Roman candles out of beer cans, others looking for rides down to the beach, sussing out who might surrender a real cigarette. The drugstore that’ll sell you closed early, so no Marlboro Lights. All you’ve got is a half pack of pilfered Nows . . . and who the fuck smokes Nows? You know most everyone, at least by eye. Guy in gym shorts, no underwear, and hippie-blond waves kicking a Fibreflex. Girl in white skirt and tight American flag bandanna on top, she’s that stupid skinny from drugs. The dirt bike crew careering in and out of cracked parking lines, stopping only when a black truck with two giant pieces of wood sticking out of the back rolls up under a streetlight. The kids pull out the planks, sandbags and cinder blocks, setting up a jump in a grassy area across from the Fotomat. A seedy guy in faded jeans and matching jacket—burnout leisure suit—shouts tonight’s the night, some Evel Knievel bullshit, as an audience forms. Kids pass around half-gallon bottles of vodka, tightly rolled joints. Two guys climb on top of the Fotomat to throw M-80s and cherry bombs. You are one of the few females, the only one by yourself. If Michael knew he’d say you’re a slut.
When the bottle comes you drink, despite a rambling headache. Before the A&P closed, you’d emptied nitrous from every can of Cool Whip, knowing they’d stock up big-time for barbecues—the cans had stars and stripes shooting around the logo. Huffing surreptitiously under the creepy hum of fluorescents, then carefully slotting each can back in place before taking another, your entire body pulsed cloudy hits of glee. Coming down, you sat on a quiet sidewalk thinking what if you put the can up the other end? The gas might disintegrate whatever’s in there, though it’s the opposite of what the lady said when you called the number on the sticker. The word suction scraped your ears.
You’re saving Vye a few cigarettes, not hard because they’re fucking Nows, the pack stolen from Ms. Bonaventure who always says it’s not misses . . .it’s mizzzzzzzz, so you all call her Mizzzzzzzz Bonaventure, except when you sit on top of the picnic tables in the smoking area, you say it’s Mizzzzzzzz Goodtime (because everyone knows just enough Latin) and the few kids out there laugh. You drink so much vodka the cars crawling up through the dim black night look like robots with raccoon eyes. You shuffle your hips next to the boom box and pick a favorite in the minibike jumps, putting down the few dollars you took from your mother’s wallet while she slept, letting the taco meat burn dusty black. You cheer loudly with the crowd: HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!
When that song you love comes on you howl: Ohhhh, wham bam thank you ma’am.
You shake off your denim jacket and dance harder. Feel the cool air kiss your upper arms.
That cute guy who’s been winning you money as they jack the ramps higher and wider to increase the canyon rumbles up and raises the stakes. What girl will jump with him? he shouts over the motors and gassy fumes. Everyone tosses in bills, sizing up the prospects who one by one back away, even the junkie girl who everyone says’ll do anything.
You go, “I’ll do it. What the fuck?”
They all chant a version of your name you don’t recognize. Roman candles flit overhead in sparky orange explosions.
“Get on,” he says, and you squeeze in.
First you circle the parking lot, your entire body rattling as he pumps his right hand in the air, then he brings it down to accelerate, left fist depressed on the clutch. You feel the air flatten your face, hair slapping across your nose and mouth as the crowd flies by, sulfur up your nose, red glare of the rockets. If you jump off now it won’t work, so you grab tighter around the guy’s stomach, the engine growling so loud you can’t hear the kids or music or fireworks over the raging motor, gears roughly buckling, and a hotness on your calves as you circle once more even faster, dipping so low on the curves your knees almost hit the pavement. He screams a final time, gunning it straight to the ramp. You inch your hands back as the wheels clatter over the wood. A jolt up your entire body and you’re weightless, flying. You reach your hands out—cover his eyes, you’ll crash—but you can’t—air flings your arms up, hang time—then the front wheel bangs down on the ramp so hard your head snaps forward and you grab him again. He pops a wheelie, circling onto the side street, shouting “FUCK YEAH!!!” You cruise back into the crowd a minor celebrity.
She had her hands in the air!
What a pissah!
Legs pure Jell-O, hands still trembling, and head awhirl, you make your way through the kids to your jacket, flipping the box of Nows when someone grabs your wrist.
You smell him before you see him, gut-soaked with booze.
He pulls you back into the alley and shoves you against the bricks. “Where the fuck have you been?”
You don’t answer, hold his eyes with yours.
“WHERE???” He slaps his palm into the wall and winces, shaking back his wrist. “I’m heading out, ya know? You ever think about that? Anything but yourself?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, at dinner.”
“What about . . . ? Tonight . . . it’s a holiday . . .” He ducks his head and you realize he’s hiccuping. Eyes shot red. “You’re out here slutting around.”
“I’m not—”
“Come with me! You’re in real trouble!” he shouts, then pleads pathetically, grabbing at your arms, your face, your tits, trying to pull your face close and kiss you, saying how much you’re gonna miss him, it’s not like you have any friends. You want to scream, yes I do! and kick him off but you feel bad as he pokes at you, crying why why why? Maybe you could have stopped him early on. You wish someone would see and come over, one of the guys you’d just won big money for out there. He’s crying, “You piece of shit! You little slut!”
Out of nowhere you say, “I thin
k I’m pregnant, you asshole!”
The back of his hand smacks your nose, you hear it crack, and for one second you are both stunned. Your face throbs, blood oozing down your upper lip, you taste pennies. He goes to grab you and you sink both sets of fingernails into his forearm like a cat and run toward the crowd. People tap you on the back, say awesome ride, shielding you to the first street of houses, your heart blowing cherry bombs. You zigzag through backyard sprinklers and fences, till you make it to Vye’s.
* * *
Sitting on the toilet with the seat covered, you count rows of brown fish on wallpaper, head spins like you could puke. Vye’s mom kneels in front of you cleaning the crusted blood out of your nostril with an ultralong Q-tip. She nudges your chin up, lightly touching the tip of your nose, and you flinch, don’t touch! but the words won’t come. Black spirals dance in front of you, a searing jab cracks between your eyes and you cry out . . .
“There we go,” Vye’s mom says.
“Is it broken?” Vye asks, balancing on the edge of the claw-foot tub next to you, zooming in and out with a flashlight to inspect your face.
“No,” she says. Then looking at you as she grabs the first aid tape and scissors from the sink. “You’re lucky.”
When they pulled up and found you on the porch, you said you fell off a minibike. Now her mom dabs hydrogen peroxide around your nostrils and says she sees knuckle welts. Says it calmly as she sets the gauze square over your nose. Every ounce of blood drains out of you, stomach curdling like you might have diarrhea.
“Someone hit you . . . who?”
“Don’t be a Nazi,” Vye says. “She fell off a bike.”
“This is assault,” her mom says, and the walls pound. “You’ve been assaulted. Do you know what that means?”
“Mom, stop!”
“Okay,” her mother says, standing up. “But you have to tell your parents.”
She reaches over the sink to put away the supplies.