-- mean to me read, and now I get to be the one introducing
the readers, that's fair, I think.
They're back.
Robert Boswell and Antonya Nelson who
went to school here and graduated.
We couldn't figure out just when.
Somewhere in the vicinity of '81, '82, '83.
I just want to make a couple of announcements first.
One is that there's another reading
as if this is easy enough.
We also have William Kittredge and Annick Smith
they're going to read tomorrow night at the DuVal auditorium
at the hospital.
I know this sounds strange, but there was a reason for this.
There's actually parking there.
And this has been advertised in, not
the Weekly, somehow they missed it, but the rodeo week calendar.
So we're hoping to get a lot of people.
Unsuspecting snowbirds are going to fly into the hospital
and hear about the West.
William Kittredge is a nonfiction writer
and Annick Smith has written a memoir called Homestead.
And they both co-produced the film A River Runs Through It.
So I hope you can all muster your energy and come by at 8
o'clock tomorrow.
You go in the main entrance of the hospital, actually.
And you don't have to check in there
you can just turn to the right to the DuVal auditorium.
There's also a big deal writer's conference here in Tucson.
Terry McMillan is going to be the keynote speaker.
That runs March 1 through 3, through the extended University.
And Terry will be reading Saturday night.
She's the keynote speaker.
And there will be agents and editors.
And then you can come and schmooze
with the New York types, as well as us locals.
I really could not have pulled this together
without the Poetry Center, with Karen Falkenstrom and Mark
Wunderlich.
There's a big learning curve in putting a reading series
together.
What I've been trying to do is resurrect Writers at Work, which
somehow fizzled, I don't know why.
But fiction writers around here really
need to hear it every once in a while.
But you need to hear other people's work besides their own.
I also want to thank the Department of Humanities
and the Department of English and to let
you know that the ASUA bookstore has books for sale
at a whopping 10% discount.
When I wrote the press release for this reading,
I called it Fiction for Four Hands.
Robert Boswell and Antonya Nelson
have between them nine books, two children, one professorship,
and a great dog.
They're both graduates of this program.
So I'm happy to have them here tonight.
Robert Boswell is the author of Dancing
At The Movies, Crooked Hearts, The Geography Of Desire,
Mystery Ride and Living To Be 100.
He has received NEA and Guggenheim fellowships
and the Iowa School of Letters award for short fiction.
He currently teaches fiction writing at New Mexico State
University in Las Cruces, and at the Warren Wilson MFA
program for writers in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
Robert Boswell changed my life.
Eight years ago when I first met him here in Tucson,
he was at least the sixth person in a one year period
to tell me about the Warren Wilson program for writers,
where he was and still is teaching fiction.
He put to rest the many fears I had about MFA
programs, in general, and low residency programs,
in particular.
And since then I have been a student in his workshop
and I have led a workshop with him,
the blurb from my first book.
And he continues to be an influence not only as a fiction
writer, who [INAUDIBLE] turns up the heat under his characters
but as a teacher who showed me by example that it's
possible to give oneself fully to one's writing,
and still have a lot left to give students.
Robert Boswell has duende.
His work is to find it.
He not only turns up the heat, he gets down to the bone.
Please welcome Robert Boswell.
Hi.
Can you hear me OK?
Thanks for that introduction, that was very nice.
Thanks also to Mark and Alan for that reception,
was just at the reception.
And that's terrific.
It's nice to be back in Tucson.
I'm going to read from Mystery Ride, which
is the last novel I published.
And I'm going to read the second chapter.
You don't need to know anything because the first chapter is
set in the past and this is essentially the first chapter
of the main part of the book.
Here goes.
Angela Vorda was not asleep, and was not entirely awake.
She lay without moving at the very edge of the mattress,
her eyes closed, legs crossed at the ankles.
A faded blue sheet covered her haphazardly.
One hand rested on her exposed belly while the other clung
to the bedpost, as if she were in the deep end of the pool
and holding onto a ladder, keeping her head just
above water.
Her husband, Quinn, sprawled beside her, arms and legs spread
open as if in celebration.
He had entered his recurring dream
of hosting a party in a brightly lit ballroom.
The affair was in full swing and orchestra played a Waltz.
Dancing couples circled the floor.
Men in tuxedos laughed and smoked
extravagant cigars and graceful women in gowns
touched Quinn's arm and spoke confidentially of the pleasure
of this party brought them.
It was a dream that often followed, as it had this night,
making love with his wife.
Angela, now a few hours pregnant,
wavered between worlds.
When she shut her eyes, her suburban bedroom
expanded into the darkness of sleep,
and she began to drift away.
But a release to the real yanked her back.
Time and again she leaned in to sleep but could not fall.
Some little misgiving prohibited her.
After two hours of half sleep, she
pulled herself up into a slouch to face the apprehension
and worry her way to its origin.
But as she leaned against the head worn headboard,
she suddenly recalled her first husband.
How the palms of his hands had been softer than a child.
The memory made her dizzy.
She rose from her bed, careful not to wake Quinn,
and took a terrycloth robe from the closet.
Knotting the belt around her waist,
she slipped into the lighted hall.
Instinctive, looked to her daughter's room.
The door was ajar.
Angela pushed it open and found the bed empty.
Her heart sank.
Dulcie had promised to be in more than an hour earlier.
In the kitchen, Angela made herself
a small pot of decaffeinated coffee,
then took 2 cups to the round oak table in the adjacent dining
room and positioned the coffee pot on a coaster between them.
She was 39 years old and not at all looking forward
to turning 40.
Had she known she was pregnant, she
would have been in such a state of agitation
that she would have flown out of the house
and walked through the neighborhood, the skirt
of her robe flapping open, dogs barking at her
from behind closed doors.
Whenever there was trouble, she walked in order to think.
But for now she was ignorant of the new life,
and instead scrutinized the one with which she was familiar.
Dulcie was an odd child.
Angela had to be frank with herself.
And her reasons for breaking rules
were almost exclusively bizarre and cheerfully given
as if she expected complete understanding and not
forgiveness but complicity.
The mystery of her daughter moved year by year closer
to the center of Angela's understanding of the world.
So that when a friend at a party raised the question of what
to do about the homeless, Angela imagined
that Dulcie would one day be among them,
and she suggested that they each take
in one vagrant, an idea that produced little enthusiasm.
She continued to talk about this notion
until she heard someone mention that he'd
lost a friend to a religious cult, which caused Angela
to picture Dulcie as an anonymous shaved head
in an obscure commune.
Only her dedication to the truth kept Angela
from becoming neurotic about her daughter's future.
Whenever she forced herself to be completely honest,
she admitted that Dulcie was merely odd
and that the wild speculations were indulgences.
Honesty now compelled her to acknowledge
that there was no point in thinking about Dulcie.
It would only make her return all the more difficult to gauge.
She considered instead the mysterious things
that had denied her sleep, and the sudden intrusion of Stephen
into her thoughts.
His hands, she knew, would no longer be soft.
When they first met, he had long-- he
had been a college student.
His gentle hands had been one of the reasons she'd loved him.
In the years since, he'd changed in innumerable ways.
He raised cattle now.
His palms would be calloused, rough.
They had stayed married only six years,
but Stephen was the father of her daughter and the first man
she had ever loved.
There were still moments when she longed for him.
She had been 22 when she married him.
They had known each other since she was a senior in high school,
and their courtship had had the slowness of care.
She had been dating Andrew, Steven's younger brother.
And although she had slept with Andrew on their second date,
she did not sleep with Stephen for nearly two years.
The wait a delirious power that surged through them both.
They married and were unreasonably happy for a time,
then they were no longer happy and they divorced.
But now, Angela could not say what had happened.
She'd seen a strength of character in Stephen
that had been absent in other boys.
For that matter, she had never seen that sort of strength
in anyone else.
She had known he would never leave her,
would always love her, but she found
she could not stay with him.
He was a strong and serious man, but what good was it doing him?
He had decided, randomly as far as she could tell,
to become a farmer, and to remain a farmer.
The decision pointed the marriage toward failure.
Life became restricted to the possibilities
of a few cultivated acres of land while the rest of the world
slipped with increasing quickness beyond Angela's grasp.
Now they had been divorced longer
than they had been married.
What was even more remarkable, she
had been married to Quinn Vorda longer than she
was married to Stephen.
Against this fact, she could not account
for the overwhelming feeling that her years with Stephen
had been the bulk of her adult life, while her time with Quinn
was like the bowl of fruit and ice cream
that follows a dinner of many courses.
The --of their suburban house swung open
and her daughter stood silhouetted in the porch light.
"You're up," Dulcie said with delight.
She closed the door and made her way
across the living room floor to the waiting chair at the dining
table.
Dulcie had the most disturbing mix of features
Angela could have imagined.
Like Stephen, she had thick and dark brows
that nearly converged.
And from Angela, she had inherited a too small mouth.
The combination made her face seemed top heavy.
But her large nose, which could have come from either parent,
somehow balanced everything and she was an attractive girl.
She had the appealing expression of one
who was just discovered something.
And her eyes were lit by intelligence and curiosity.
She was an exasperating child, but Angela rarely
stayed angry with her for long.
At this moment, she could not muster even a shadow of anger.
"Now you must watch and listen closely," Dulcie said,
throwing her head back and pursing her lips.
She spoke in a high pitched drone.
"I have been perusing your file, Mrs. Landis,
and it appears you've chosen not to adhere to our [AUDIO OUT]..
Dulcie raised thick brows and wagged her head,
then let the act drop.
"Old fish face, my counselor.
You recognize her?
Everybody says I could be a staggering actor.
Is this decaf?"
Angela nodded.
"Miss Fishbein said that to you?"
"Ms., never miss.
Months ago!
She has a mole on her thigh right here."
Delphi reach between her mother's legs
and pressed her pressed against her thigh just below the pelvis.
"I saw her naked at the gym.
Have you ever wanted to make love with a woman?"
"Not particularly," Angela said, startled.
"Why do you ask?"
"It's interesting, is why."
Dulcie poured herself coffee.
"So anyway," she continued, "I met this boy tonight who showed
me how to be a wrestler.
They have all these rules you can't imagine."
Only then did Angela notice grass stains
on the elbows of Dulcie's long sleeved t-shirt
and the knees of her faded jeans.
"He wasn't very subtle," Dulcie went on, "but otherwise,
I didn't like him.
He kept calling me poncho like he
was the Cisco Kid, who he says autographed
his butt in India ink.
Which was just an excuse for him to pull down his pants."
"My God, Dulcie, what have you been doing?"
"Wrestling, I told you.
Then this boy pulled his pants down
and the group sort of broke up.
It reminded me of that party you had where that one guy started
telling jokes about nigger this and nigger that
and everybody went home.
Waving your butt around has the same effect.
This needs sugar."
She got up from the table, switching on all the lights
as she crossed the room.
Angela watched her on the other side of the kitchen bar
spooning several white mounds into the cup.
"Curfew was 12," Angela said.
"This is the third time this month you've stayed out too
late."
"Yeah," Dulcie said affably, "it makes you wonder," she added.
Which made Angela wonder but Dulcie didn't
continue with the thought.
She took a carton of milk from the refrigerator and return
to the table.
"Sensory deprivation is the thing.
I'm sure that's why you can't sleep.
Your senses are sufficiently depraved."
"Deprived."
"Whatever.
If you just sleep, we wouldn't have to worry about when I get
in, you see."
"Let me smell your hair."
Dulcie leaned forward and Angela grasped her head.
"It's pot," Dulcie said.
"Everybody was smoking.
I only had a little."
"Smoking pot or anything else is strictly forbidden,
you know that."
"Of course," Dulcie said, "I wouldn't think of it.
And besides I only smoked a little.
Listen, did you and Quinn have sex?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"Exactly," she said, standing.
She gulped down the remainder of her coffee.
"Pleasant dreams!"
she called as she walked into the hall.
Angela would have stopped her, but the apprehension
had returned.
It had come back as she sniffed Dulcie's hair.
Her worry had to do with something she had smelled.
She turned off the lights, returned the milk
to the refrigerator, and walked back down
the hall, which was dark now as was Dulcie's room.
Angela closed the bedroom door behind her
and let her robe fall into a puddle at her feet.
In bed on her hands and knees, put her face close
to her husband's hair.
She smelled shampoo and his aftershave,
which was even stronger at his neck.
He lay on his side and she moved next to his chest, his stomach.
She sniffed at the back of his neck
and then his shoulder blades.
An odor, slight but foreign.
His crotch smelled only of their sex
and her head there caused him to shift his legs.
She returned to his shoulder blades.
Angela never wore fragrances of any sort.
But there it was, the remnant of some perfume.
Instantly, she imagined a hurried shower
in a motel bathroom.
Quinn scrubbing his chest, but failing
to wash his shoulder blades.
But as she knelt over him, picturing it,
she suddenly recalled Stephen once more,
his sweet and supple palm.
Angela walked through the neighborhood
in the dark, this skirt of her robe flapping open,
dogs barking at her from behind closed doors.
This was not the first time Quinn had been unfaithful.
Two years ago, a former girlfriend of his
had come by to visit and meet Angela.
The woman had been polite and pleasant.
But the following day, she met Quinn at a motel.
Angela discovered this through his answering service.
A man called to convey the woman's message,
she would be late arriving at the Ramada Inn.
Quinn had already left the house.
Angela spent the remainder of the morning
packing his belongings, which she
had taken by taxi to the motel.
Before she let him return, she made
him agree to marriage counseling.
During those special sessions where
they both swore to be honest, she learned of two other affairs
he'd had during their seven years of marriage.
Both had been with actresses.
Quinn was a theatrical agent.
And both had been brief.
She had been full of rage and grief but by the time
they completed their weeks of counseling,
Angela felt confident that Quinn had reformed.
Now she experienced the awful sensation
of being thrown, lurching, back into what
she thought she had escaped.
How stupid to have thought he would be faithful?
Angela shook her head so powerfully
that her vision blurred.
She stepped blindly from the sidewalk
into a neatly trimmed lawn, blades of grass
brushing against her ankle.
They had lived now for six years in Socorro, a typical Southern
California suburb, with lane after lane
of nearly identical ranch style houses separated
by fenced yards in the back and joined
by an uninterrupted sweep of grass and trees in the front.
Perhaps it was a wealthier neighborhood than average,
Angela conceded.
Then she admitted to herself that it
was an upper middle class neighborhood with a few houses
that were clearly at the very top of the middle class,
and that their house was among them.
A pretentious little place, she thought bitterly,
recalling the days years ago when
she had found a note on her VW.
We don't park on the street here, this is not a Barrio.
She had shown the note to Quinn, saying true enough,
Barrio means neighborhood whilst this is status symbol land.
Quinn had been impressed with status symbol land
thinking it had come from a novel.
Angela had told him the truth, of course,
that it was from an old monkey song.
It hadn't been Quinn's idea to move to Socorro.
They had come for the schools, which
were supposed to be among the best in the state.
And besides she had grown to love their house,
their yard, their fruit trees.
She began walking again remaining in the grass,
circling the block yard by yard.
She acknowledged that Quinn was responsible for these things.
A good provider was the term that
kept pressing itself into her thoughts,
but it was such a cliche that she rejected it.
For she believed cliches were too sloppy to embody the truth.
And the truth was precisely what she was after.
The few times in her life when she had settled for something
less, she had suffered.
And believing that Quinn had reformed
was now another example.
The truth would not escape her this night
even if it meant counting up Quinn's redeeming traits
at a time she [AUDIO OUT] with him.
"One," she said aloud, though softly,
and extended a single finger, "he earns money,
which provides us with a nice house and gives me time to work
at the Center."
She ducked under the limb of a catalpa tree,
and continued her surge forward.
Anyone looking out a window would have seen a mad woman
wearing only a robe talking to herself,
counting with her fingers, walking across grassy yards
with a frightening barefoot determination.
But Angela Vorda was not insane.
Often she believed herself most free of the languor
of the suburbs while tromping through them.
She counted up her husband's good qualities.
Most of them centering around his friendliness,
his ability to make anyone, including herself,
feel deep, feel happy and comfortable.
And he cooked once or twice a week.
He cared deeply for Angela's daughter.
He was pleasant.
He took out the garbage without being asked.
He often helped Angela at the Center for Peace and Justice.
He was a good lover.
He never left little hairs in the sink after shaving.
He liked her cooking.
He read good books and enjoyed talking about them.
He listened to her.
He cleaned the tub.
By the time she'd exhausted this list,
she had trampled more than 20 lawns
and was approaching her own.
She paused to begin her list of grievances against him.
"One," she said, jabbing at the air with her index finger,
"he is a philandering bastard!"
She began walking again in order to concentrate.
Two, he's dishonest."
As she announced this, she halted suddenly
and threw her hand over her heart.
A burglar was breaking into their house.
It took her only a second to realize the person was not
a burglar climbing through a window into her house,
but her daughter crawling out, feet first,
which was how she had left the womb.
The second of silence and fear kept Angela
from charging ahead and spanking her daughters
butt as it emerged.
Instead, she took a step back into the neighbor's yard,
beneath their towering pine and Dulcie dropped to the grass.
What in the name of heaven could she be up to?
The skill with which she lowered herself to the ground,
the aplomb she displayed in closing
the window all but a crack, made Angela think
that she had done this before.
Which frightened her and convinced
her to pursue the plan that had already formed in her head.
She would follow her daughter.
She watched from the tree as Dulcie crossed their yard,
and then the street hurrying up the sidewalk to the corner
where she was immediately bathed in light.
An old convertible was waiting for her.
Had Angela crossed the street before circling the block she
would have walked right by it.
The car coughed to life and pulled to the curb.
Dulcie jumped in the back without opening the door,
tumbling onto the laps of several riders.
As the car pulled away, Angela ran to the house
first pulling shut Dulcie's window until it clicked,
then dashing inside to grab her keys.
Her aging Volkswagen Bug started quickly as it rarely did.
Angela [AUDIO OUT] driving the dark suburban streets
looking for the convertible.
There were no cars anywhere.
Taking a risk, she headed for Ridgeway,
which was the nearest major street and the quickest escape
from the suburbs for restless teenagers.
She made a left onto Ridgeway, but immediately spotted a car
in her rear view mirror, accelerating away from her.
She executed a U-turn and began chasing
the lone car she could see.
Ridgeway was the sort of street that suburban residents
complained about endlessly and where
they spent much of their time.
In contrast to the winding residential lanes,
Ridgeway lay straight and wide, lit by all night
gas stations and convenience stores,
cluttered with the familiar tacky
signs of fast food and grocery chains.
Young people cruised the street, calling out from one car
to another or yelling at any soul unlucky enough
to be without wheels.
At this hour, it was almost abandoned.
The only other time Angela could remember
being on Ridgeway in the middle of the night
had been when Dulcie had run a high fever
and Quinn had dropped the thermometer.
Angela had taken the VW to the 7-eleven to purchase a new one.
The memory created a warmth in her chest for Quinn and Dulcie
making her forget for the moment that she was ready to murder
both of them.
Her doubts about the identity of the car she followed
disappeared when a shiny silver can
came flying out of the back seat,
grazing the trunk before bouncing into the street.
The beer can still rolling along the asphalt
when Angela passed it looked to be the same brand Quinn
purchased regularly, and was probably
from their own refrigerator.
She wanted to brake and retrieve it.
If it was from their refrigerator,
she felt responsible.
But she did not stop for fear of losing sight of the convertible.
Instead she sped up, more angry than ever.
It was bad enough that her daughter was out with a group
drinking on a joyride, but they littered besides.
In the distance, the convertible's tail lights
suddenly veered as the car entered the freeway ramp.
Angela accelerated again to catch up.
The freeway [AUDIO OUT] regardless of the time.
She did not want to lose track of them.
The ramp led to northbound lanes and she
guessed they were heading to Los Angeles, 40 miles up the coast.
Angela imagined that her daughter went there every night
to drink and take drugs, rob laundromats, act
in pornographic films.
Knowing these speculations were exaggerated and more than likely
false, she dismissed them, forcing herself to view
the situation as it really was.
She had no evidence that Dulcie had ever
done this before except the girl's ready talent for it.
She had no reason to suspect that anything awful was going on
in that car except for the few things she could observe.
Drinking certainly, underage, and in a moving vehicle that
didn't even have a top for God's sakes, and speeding she
noted, glancing at her speedometer.
Sneaking around, lying to her mother,
being out with people too old for a 15-year-old to be out
with, blowing curfew to hell, smoking pot, more than likely.
And sex?
Maybe only a [AUDIO OUT] hug, a carefully placed squeeze.
No clothes were flying out of the car.
The convertible exited the freeway and Angela slowed
to avoid following too closely.
The road led to another affluent suburb
and she guessed there was an all night party going
on at the house of a family whose adults were out of town.
But the convertible turned in the wrong direction,
crossing the overpass, leading to who knew where.
Shortly after the overpass, the pavement ended.
The lights of the convertible disappeared.
Angela found herself on a gravel road winding over a grassy hill.
To her surprise, on the other side of the hill, lay the ocean.
She switched off her lights, then killed the engine too.
The red tail lights appeared again moving slowly
along the beach and finally stopping.
Angela let the VW coast.
She was able to roll undetected down the hill
and parked behind a high sand dune,
100 yards from the convertible.
Shouts came from the [AUDIO OUT] She could not
tell what the kids were doing.
She got out of her car and crept forward,
the wind blowing her hair and fluttering the robe.
The light at the top of the car's open trunk
provided a spray of illumination.
A boy lifted logs from the car and tossed them to a squat girl
with short hair.
As Angela drew closer, she could see
that the logs were covered with paper,
the mass produced fire logs sold in groceries.
The girl heaved the logs to a second boy,
who dropped them onto the sand.
Within seconds, the trunk was slammed shut
and a small fire was burning on the beach.
Angela ran in a crouch to the abandoned convertible,
where she kneeled and listened, but could hear only the ocean.
She raised her head just above the door.
Eight kids, she counted them, stood around the measly fire
drinking beer from cans.
They all look to be roughly Dulcie's age,
although one had to be at least a year older to have driven.
Angela identified only Yates, Dulcie's best friend
and Dulcie herself, who had her back to the car.
But Angela recognized her bottom and shoulders, her stance,
the cut of her hair, the jeans they had selected together
at the Socorro mall.
As she watched, Dulcie pointed out
to the ocean, her body swaying gently.
Angela guessed they had a portable tape player,
but she could not hear over the persistent waves.
She raised her head slightly higher
to see if there was something specific
at which her daughter pointed.
She could make out nothing in the darkness.
While she tried to decide whether she
was relieved that they were merely going to the beach
or all the more angry because they
were drinking in an unregulated area,
Angela saw there was another person.
A girl, passed out in the back seat of the convertible.
Except for a pair of black socks and brown sandals,
she was naked.
The sight of her made Angela jump.
She raised herself over the car door
and touched the girl's calf, which was warm.
But Angela could see no evidence the girl was breathing.
Of this one thing she had to be certain
before she went to the fire and retrieved her daughter.
She rounded the car, cinching her robe in the process,
no longer caring if she was spotted, and leaned
over the opposite door in order to touch the girl's chest
and confirm that it was, in fact, rising and falling.
She charged toward the fire.
Managing to glimpse the last two kids, a boy and a girl,
shed their underwear and run hand in hand to the ocean.
The fire did not burn brightly.
Though she waved her arms and screamed her daughter's name,
they were unable to hear her.
If they saw her at all, they probably
assumed their friend had revived.
Angela looked quickly over the piles of clothing
until she spotted Dorsey's jeans, long sleeved t-shirt,
and panties, which Angela could not help herself,
she pressed to her nose.
They did not smell of sex, a small relief.
With the clothing in hand, she ran to the water's edge
where she called out.
From this point, she could see a few dark figures
at a distance and several more not quite so far out.
The farthest ones, if they were in a rip tide, as she instantly
imagined they were, would have to be rescued.
A wave splashed against her legs and the hem of her robe.
The water would make the robe too heavy to swim in.
She could wait for them, but she had the terrible feeling
that if she waited, her daughter would drown.
She called for Dulcie a final time,
then reluctantly, she untied the belt
and dropped the robe, along with Dulcie's clothing, in the sand.
Running through the ocean proved too awkward.
She walked quickly.
The water like a too friendly dog,
slowing her with its caresses.
Before her thighs were covered, a naked boy and girl
abruptly appeared before her, staring at her.
The boy glancing from her breasts to her crotch said,
"Who are you?"
"Get out of the water this instant!"
Angela said it with such conviction
they immediately obeyed.
And put some clothes on!" she yelled at their backs,
before diving in and beginning to stroke.
She was a good swimmer, though out of practice
and out of shape.
By the time she reached the first group of heads,
she was also out of breath and relieved
to find the water was not too deep for her to stand.
Maura Yates was among this group.
While the others gaped at Angela, Maura,
who was mounted on a boy's back, merely said, "Hi, Mrs. Vorda,
are you looking for Dulcie?"
Angela said that she was.
Maura directed her with a beer can to distant, darker waters.
"Get to the beach this instant," Angela told her,
but she was too winded to muster the authority she had earlier.
"We'll wait for you here," Maura said,
the others still too dumbfounded to utter a syllable.
It disappointed but did not surprise Angela
that her daughter would be among those who were the farthest out.
She swam, anger balancing fatigue.
When she finally came close enough to faces,
she saw only two boys treading within a few yards
of one another.
She felt a tremor of panic.
In the dark water between the boys,
Dulcie surfaced wearing a mischievous smirk,
until she noticed Angela.
"Mom?"
she said.
"What are you doing out here?"
Angela demanded, but her voice was hoarse from the swim.
They could not hear her.
"That you, mom?"
Dulcie said.
Close enough now to be heard, Angela
merely grabbed Dulcie's arm and tugged her away.
"Swim," she commanded, and released her.
"Is something wrong?"
Dulcie asked, as she swam.
Angela only glared.
She had left the robe and Dulcie's clothing
too close to the water, and they had washed away.
She had to face the teenagers naked.
One of them had dressed, but the others
were nude, with their backs to the dying fire.
Angela held onto her daughter's wrist.
"Is that girl in the car all right?"
This was the first thing she said,
directing the question to the one
boy who had put his pants on.
However, it was Maura, still naked and still drinking
beer, who responded.
"She's right here, Mrs. Vorda."
Maura lifted the flaccid arm of another naked girl.
Angela glanced down at the girl's black socks
and brown sandals.
One of the boys laughed at this in a loud, throaty voice.
He was sitting in the sand, and Mara leaned against him.
"You will come home with us, Maura," Angela told her.
"It's her car," Dulcie said.
"She's not old enough to have a car," Angela said.
"I have a learner's permit," Mara announced happily,
waving her beer.
The boy she was propped against stood then.
He had his penis in his hand and it was erect.
Angela backed a step away.
Her breathing stopped.
The boy seemed to register her fear.
He smiled at her.
"Hey Dulcie," he said.
But he continued to stare at Angela, [AUDIO OUT] cock,
massaging himself.
"Hey, your mom's got some nice tits."
To Angela's horror, Dulcie laughed.
Angela took cautious backward steps
before turning, jerking Dulcie's arm to make her follow.
"See you guys!"
Dulcie called.
The boy yelled, "Her ass is pretty fine, too."
When Dulcie laughed this time, Angela
slapped her across the face.
"Get to the car," she said sternly,
aiming her in the direction of the VW.
There was nothing in the car to cover themselves with.
Worse, the Volkswagen wouldn't start,
and Angela had time to imagine several degrading towing
scenes before the engine finally turned over.
They drove in silence up the gravel road
and onto the freeway.
Dulcie stared out the car window.
She turned on the radio, which Angela immediately switched off,
then stared out the window again saying, finally, "It was funny.
When someone [AUDIO OUT] funny, I laugh."
Angela, now four hours pregnant, said nothing, her heart pounding
in her throat.
A diesel pulled along beside them.
Stenciled on the side of the driver's door
was the word hostess, in the familiar cupcake script.
Dulcie suddenly lowered her window and yelled, "Hey!"
She motioned with her fist up and down.
The trucker sounded his horn.
Dulcie grinned and raised her window.
"His thrill for the night,: she said, and flicked the nipple
of one of her breasts.
It took all of Angela's concentration to drive.
The night had grown closer and blacker.
Dulcie turned on the radio again and Angela did not
want to look from the road to click it off.
The cool glib voice of a disc jockey
filled the car, anonymously perfect,
like every other disc jockey in the country.
He was selling Flex hair conditioner.
On sale now, creamy, lightly scented.
Angela steered the car through the traffic of the freeway
onto gaudy, abandoned Ridgeway and down the twisting
lanes of dark houses, dark lawns and towering pines.
Thank you.
Second reader tonight, Antonya Nelson
is the author of The Expendables, In the Land of Men,
and Family Terrorists.
Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker and The Best
American Short Stories.
She received an NEA and the Flannery O'Connor award
for fiction, and currently teaches
at New Mexico State University, as well as Warren Wilson
Program for Writers.
Antonya Nelson presides over provocative two word titles.
Naked Ladies, Dog Problems, Family Terrorists.
She does more than hold her own in a two writer family,
she holds sway in the country where the bizarre so often
impinges on the everyday.
Although she began teaching at Warren Wilson after I graduated,
I got to see her in action in Las Cruces
when I was a visiting writer there.
And not only does she balance family and a writing career
with a seemingly flick of the wrist,
she's also a teacher who puts in a lot more
than the required time.
She opens her home to students and has created
an extended family of writers.
There was talk of Chekhov in the kitchen,
Alice Munro in the living room, Flannery O'Connor in the hall.
She's a force to be reckoned with.
Please welcome Antonya Nelson.
I'm going to read a new short story,
and it's a three word title this time: Irony, Irony, Irony.
Lionel took off Elaine's underwear in the yard.
She'd spread a tatty blanket over the grass
and fallen onto it.
The summer sky above her was jam packed
with unknown constellations.
"If my parents open their curtains, they can see us,"
she whispered.
Lionel hesitated in undressing her.
It was freezing in the mountains, even in June,
and goosebumps had risen on her stomach and chest.
They'd been drinking rum and smoking marijuana.
Sticky, sweet, like youth.
They laughed about Elaine's parents, whose bedroom window
went dark a few minutes later.
Their sex was heedless and exciting
as if between strangers.
Afterwards, they ran to the house
wearing various garments, wrapped clumsily
in the damp leafy blanket, leaving Elaine's panties
in the yard, where her father found them in the morning.
They were a bright white.
He thought he'd located one of his handkerchiefs.
Besides handkerchiefs, Elaine's father
carried other mementos of bygone times.
A signature ring, a pocket watch, a money clip.
He belonged to the generation on its way out.
One unable to wholly recover from the Depression
or the Second World War.
One that understood itself lucky simply to survive.
A generation baffled by the whining one that followed it.
Some of his habits, which came with the territory,
annoyed his offspring.
He was cautious with money and took finances unnecessarily
seriously.
He did not believe gender irrelevant.
Feminists made him defensive.
Homosexuals made him queasy.
The Japanese made him nervous.
Addicts made him impatient.
Although Blacks as a rule he felt an obligation to pity,
still influenced as he was by the stretch of the 1960s
and civil rights.
Explosive displays within and without the family
embarrassed him.
He thought children should be seen rather than heard.
Other traits of his pleased Elaine and her siblings.
For example, he had a gentleman's chivalry
and would not tolerate rudeness toward Elaine's mother,
to whom he'd been steadily married for 43 years.
He wished to protect his daughters.
He did not want to know the inner workings of their lives,
but he could not rest without assuming the general outer shape
of them safe and intact.
He honored the cocktail hour.
And when they arrived at his house,
he had waiting their favorite drinks: a margarita for Mary,
dry red wine for Elaine, pink champagne for Deanie.
His son, with whom he had troubles,
would drink whatever there was the most of.
This was the summer home: the frame house in the Rockies.
The place where Elaine's family collected to remind themselves
how badly they got along.
Because the house stood empty for nine months of the year,
the activity of the summer was mending its damage.
Screens, plumbing, painting.
The side yard had seen the weddings of three
of the four siblings.
The fourth, Jonathan, seemed to be homosexual.
The sisters were still debating.
Their father would have been appalled
to learn what they thought.
The original family had fit easily in the house.
Plenty of bedrooms, adequate bath.
But now it'd grown too large.
Three husbands, six grandchildren,
a new baby on the way.
The small children slept like dogs, on the couch,
on the porch, on the floor.
Elaine's youngest sister, Deanie,
had appeared on the 4th of July with her husband,
the misanthrope, and her large belly.
Morosely pregnant.
No one thought her ready for it.
And Elaine, fearing her own unwanted, indiscreet pregnancy,
sighed heavily.
Had she consulted her mother, she
would have been told, not for the first time,
that her two sisters had been accidents.
"Accidents," her mother would say, "but not mistakes. "
The oldest and the youngest, the first and the last,
the unintended parentheses around Elaine and Jonathan.
Her mother would have advised having the baby.
She would have extolled, over-extolled, the virtues
of unplanned children.
Elaine, who already now had a boy and girl of her own,
both planned, indulged the fantasy
of another baby, another pregnancy,
knowing she would not follow through.
She and her husband, Lionel, didn't have the requisite vigor
for another child.
It would exhaust them the way her mother's last child, baby
Deanie, had exhausted her, leaving her dazed and depleted,
emotionally anemic.
Perhaps Elaine's mother had realized earlier,
after Jonathan came along, that the household teams were
no longer evenly matched.
That the parents, outnumbered, would surely lose.
Elaine's younger siblings were the closest
of the grown children, separated from Elaine and her big sister,
Mary, by their dependence on their parents whom they
[AUDIO OUT] because they were still financially beholden.
This despite Jonathan's being 30 years old and owner
of his own business.
This despite Deanie's marriage.
It did not appear that her parents lorded the situation
over Deanie and Jonathan, though Elaine suppose they must,
unwittingly.
Jonathan and Deanie like to complain about their mother
and father, and Elaine and Mary would
feel obliged to act as ambassadors
for parenthood, their mission to explain
why they did what they did.
Without Jonathan, Deanie might surrender.
But with Jonathan on her side, she would not relent.
Her father and mother were monstrous, controlling,
insufferable.
Mary, the oldest and most sentimental,
had the shiny gloss of tears in her eyes.
She couldn't bear their rancor that broke her saintly heart.
"Why do you keep coming back to see them?"
Elaine asks them, sincerely curious.
Neither had an answer, although Elaine
thought she understood their vain hope that someday
their parents would grasp who they truly were, and love them
anyway.
When he wasn't egging on Deanie in her tirades,
Jonathan spent most of the reunion week
underneath his motorcycle, either genuinely repairing it
or pretending to, appearing for meals with oil on his clothing,
black beneath his fingernails, and odor of machinery
in his hair.
Every morning, his shower lasted until the hot water
turned tepid.
Wearing only a towel around his waist,
he stood on the sunny front porch
and blew his nose over the railing.
Elaine's five-year-old son was taking lessons,
using his fingers to close one nostril leaning over
and honking into the grass.
"Doesn't that destroy brain cells?"
Deanie asked, watching from the kitchen.
Her clothes, because she refused to wear maternity outfits,
strained against her body, leaving gaps, revealing
her popped navel like a button.
Elaine said, "Women never do things like that,
have you noticed?"
He was good with children, but Jonathan
said he didn't want his own.
Their father [AUDIO OUT] declaring
in the same peremptory tone he'd once
use to advise a military stint, that of course, Jonathan
would change his mind when the right woman came along.
The sisters exchanged glances while Jonathan turned red.
He'd been the popular one.
Photograph of them had hung above the refrigerator forever.
Dimming, accumulating dust.
The five boys are perched shirtless in their jeans,
smoking their cigarettes, languishing
on the hood of a sky blue Mustang
that it had, over time, faded a radiant white.
This summer, Jonathan took down the photo and blew it off,
then left it lying on top of the refrigerator
instead of hanging on its proper nail.
"They are all dead but me," he told Deanie.
"How can that be?"
Elaine asked later, bewildered by the news,
staring at the same photo while Deanie angrily
threw together dinner.
It was her turn.
"They were dumb fucks," Deanie told her.
"I slept with three of them," she added.
And Elaine wouldn't give her the satisfaction
of asking which three.
Though she was only 24 years old,
Deanie had managed a lot of sleeping around.
There were Carl and Dward and Lenny and Dave,
her brother's hoodlum friends.
The small town sons, lecherous.
Their boyish grins shining up at Elaine from overexposed 1979.
On nights when she couldn't find her own fun,
she'd used to condescend to ride around with them.
Listen to their eight track tapes.
Drink their Coors.
The catalog of their deaths could not surprise.
Drunken drowning, high speed car crash, overdose,
elk hunting fiasco.
But the fatal freakish statistic of Jonathan's survival
made Elaine feel swung into another era,
like his mother, his protector.
"Tough shit if people don't like mushrooms," Deanie declared,
dropping in handfuls of the spongy fungus.
"I hate mushrooms," Elaine's son said later at dinner.
"So do I," said Elaine's father.
"Me too," admitted Mary, and all four of her children.
Deanie grinned, eating her own mushrooms as well
as her nephew's and father's, watching the pushed aside
piles grow on the other plates.
"Maybe you'll give birth to [AUDIO OUT] stool,"
Elaine said to her.
"Or maybe a toad," said Jonathan.
At night they walked around town, a family parade.
The children in front, the grandparents
bringing up the rear.
They made the same comments they made every summer.
Pointed out the same landmarks.
Disparaged the same developments.
Disputed the same history.
Misremembered the same memory.
They ambled through the art galleries
and they bypassed the seductive beery entryways of bars.
Inside the picture window of the Silverjack
sat a placid mountain lion wearing a collar and leash.
"That's different," said Elaine's mother.
"I want a lion," children whined,
hands pressed to the glass.
"I want to drink," whined Deanie,
her hand pressed to her tummy.
The mountain lion blinked lazily,
its tongue curling out of its mouth for an instant,
making the children jump back.
Long time locals called hello.
The 8 o'clock siren wailed, the air went suddenly cold,
and the stars popped on.
At home, there was the bustle of baths and toothbrushing,
evening wheedling and tears, and the shush
of pajama feet on linoleum.
The dining table became the bridge table,
lighted like a campfire in the center of the settling,
whispering dark.
"When are you leaving?"
asked Mary as she dealt cards.
She had few talents beside caretaking.
She liked to know itineraries and plans.
She had a flair for cooking huge quantities of bland food,
and keeping her patience long past the point when
others lost theirs.
They called her Sister Mary because she was too angelic
for her own good.
"Miss Manners advises the following phrasing,"
Jonathan corrected his sister.
"How long will you be able to stay?"
He was methodically scooping up bites of cold cereal
using a soup spoon in a mixing bowl instead
of their ordinary counterparts.
Elaine, who'd purchased the last batch of groceries,
resented her brother's voracious appetite.
He seemed to be loading up at her expense,
storing away fuel for the long winter.
"I'm out of here day after tomorrow," he continued.
"Head over to Tahoe, check out the clubs."
"We're not leaving until school starts," Elaine said.
She and her sister Deanie were the only ones still
on academic schedules.
The only ones to have the whole summer free for Ouray.
Ooh-ray, the tourists called it.
But if you knew what you were talking about you said you-ray.
Elaine's three-year-old daughter named it my-ray.
Elaine's parents had retired from teaching
and now liked to travel around during the summers.
Grown accustomed to hotels, the shabby house
was no longer comfortable to them
and they only used it as a base for their other travels.
Opening it in June for a week or two,
then off to Yellowstone, now back for the annual reunion,
due to leave soon for San Diego.
Sister Mary was a dietician in Dallas
and took her annual vacation to come oversee her family.
Jonathan owned a bar in New Orleans
and came and went as he pleased on his dangerous Harley.
And Deanie, simply broke, looking
for the cheapest place on the planet she
and her husband could crash.
Mary's husband and Deanie's husband
had the same first name, Bill.
Which Jonathan found endlessly amusing as the two men
couldn't have been more different.
Mary's Bill delivered mail and had a knack
for narrating the obvious.
"Well, here we are eating," he would cheerfully note.
Or "Guess I'll get myself a Kleenex now."
Deanie's Bill never said anything.
He hung around in the attic bedroom with his shirt
off listening to headphones and reading library books.
30 years old.
He was a perennial graduate student.
Holder of three master's degrees, history, philosophy,
English literature, and no career.
Elaine suppose that in a clan of teachers, her parents, herself,
her husband, someone like Deanie's Bill
had every right to expect tolerance, even encouragement,
but nobody had much patience for him.
All three sons-in-laws, even Lionel,
passed into eclipse in the presence of the [AUDIO OUT]
Elaine could hardly recall her husband's full personality.
He seemed lusterless and incomplete.
"We'll leave with mom and dad on the 13th,"
Mary let them know for the third or fourth time.
All week long, the family recited the same lines
as if in rehearsal for the real performance.
The 13th was the same day that Elaine and Lionel had set aside
for a trip to Montrose, the nearest city with a clinic.
They'd ask Deanie to watch their children.
They would wait until everyone was gone,
so they wouldn't have to explain their excursion.
Elaine had scheduled an abortion.
Lionel a vasectomy.
It seemed wise to have both procedures done concurrently,
a separate but equal ritual.
A solemn ceremony of finality.
And they wanted to do it before their wedding anniversary, which
was a few days later.
They'd been careless on the lawn seven weeks ago in June,
but they approached the problem reasonably, maturely.
Lionel finally submitting to a vasectomy
after his squeamish objections of the last few years.
Elaine had [AUDIO OUT] finished her fertile life without having
to have an abortion, a luxury almost none of her friends
had enjoyed.
But if she had to get one, she supposed
now is better than other times in her past.
"We have our children," Lionel had reminded her,
patting her on the back.
"We're financially solvent.
Our marriage is good."
But Elaine resented that paternal pat.
She hadn't even wanted to purchase an early pregnancy
kit since the only other time she bought them
when her children had been conceived, intentionally.
She'd only had good associations with the process.
The urinating in the little cup, the wait for a pink dipstick.
Instead, she's insisted on going to the Ouray
ob-gyn, who only came around every Thursday,
like the bookmobile.
And he told her congratulations, she was expecting.
"Jonathan," the children called now from their dark,
makeshift beds.
They preferred him.
His tastes resembled their own.
"Jonathan, tell us about Tommy Torso. " Elaine, who was dummy,
leaned away from the bridge table to listen.
Outside the earshot of the other adults,
Jonathan conjured up Tommy Torso.
The loathsome boy with no arms or legs,
who propelled his skateboard with his big, calloused nose.
A boy so gloriously ugly and unkind,
even his own mother didn't love him.
"We love him," the children swore.
"We love Tommy Torso."
"Who will drive home?"
Lionel asked on the evening of the 12th.
They were whispering in bed after many games of cribbage
and bridge and charades.
The children had stayed up late, popcorn had been popped,
toddies poured.
Old record albums resurrected and played
on the ancient player.
Sam Hinton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Glenn Miller.
"Afterwards, neither of us will be able to drive," Lionel said.
They began laughing, covering their faces with pillows
so that others wouldn't hear.
It was hopelessly hysterical.
Elaine had drunk more toddies than anyone else
just to keep her mood up.
She didn't want to think about tomorrow.
She didn't want to feel the way she felt. Wrong, as usual.
"Deanie will have to come with us," Lionel said.
"With the children?
There won't be anyone here to watch the children of Deanie
drives."
"Except Bill."
"Right, Bill."
They laughed more until Elaine threatened to hyperventilate,
burst into tears.
Her emotional state was an explosive cocktail
churning inside.
Hormones, guilt, liquor, fear.
"Bill can drive and Deanie could stay here," Lionel suggested.
"I don't want Bill to drive.
I think Bill is philosophically opposed to the automobile."
Elaine noticed that she was having difficulty with
philosophically so she repeated it, "Philosophically,
philosophically," until she didn't stumble.
"We'll have to all go together," Lionel said,
pulling her close and folding her in.
Damping down her restlessness.
"An outing."
In the morning, Elaine had a terrible headache
even though she hadn't mixed alcohols,
but stayed within a single family, the Scotch one, the way
she'd heard to do to avoid a hangover.
She felt betrayed.
Downstairs, her mother was busy making beds, delegating duties
to the grandchildren, opening cupboards
and directing what went where.
Occasionally calling for one of her daughters
to stir the oatmeal or check on the biscuits.
This was the traditional farewell breakfast.
Gluey and filling.
"Do you know what Jonathan told me?"
Elaine's mother said to her as they pulled plates
from the cabinet, knives and spoons from the drawer.
Elaine's head throbbed and her stomach roiled.
Her eyes felt like rubber balls.
"What did Jonathan tell you?"
"He said he'd never have children because he
couldn't understand what happened to them."
Her mother held the napkins in her barely quaking hands.
There was a time not so long ago when
Elaine would have delighted in her mother's distress, would
have felt victorious.
"Do you want that, Elaine?"
"No ma'am, I don't."
Elaine understood it perfectly.
She'd successfully squelched a similar feeling
when she decided in favor of having her own children.
"Don't think about it."
"Well of course I will.
He'd be such a good daddy, your brother."
her mother stepped away from the real issues so dexterously,
Elaine was tempted to tell her all the things
her mother refused to know.
"I always wanted a slightly different kind of mom,"
Deanie had told Elaine the day before.
"I wanted the mom who let her kids smoke and curse in front
of her."
"I wanted the mom who liked to go shopping,"
sister Mary had confessed.
"The one who sewed clothes and dressed her kids up like dolls."
Elaine had hesitated.
Her sisters each wanted the kind of mother they themselves
were or would be.
What sort of mother was she, Elaine wondered.
But the truth was that her mother
wasn't the only family member whose casting she
would have altered.
There would have been a more lax father.
One less invested in the outmoded past, [AUDIO OUT]
consequence, less injured by the present.
A wilder, older sister who might warn her
about the dark, slutty side of a girl's life.
A jock brother who could protect her in the arenas her father
had no access to.
And an adoring younger sibling, male or female
it didn't matter which, who like to follow orders.
But her real sisters were waiting
to hear about the mother she secretly desired.
"I wanted to live in a horse farm," she finally said.
"I wanted a couple of stable hand parents."
"Judy Garland," said sister Mary, "and Mickey Rooney."
"The suicide and the midget," Deanie had said.
"Perfect."
"Or maybe I wanted some glamorous academics,"
Elaine speculated.
"Sort of who's afraid of Virginia Woolf-ish."
Her parents' academia was not Ivy League, but
of a commuter college variety.
"Goodbye!
Goodbye!"
Elaine's children called to the family
as the cars pulled away, caravan style.
Jonathan's roaring motor [AUDIO OUT] his bandanna
a receding flash of red.
"I want a motorcycle," Elaine's son said, bursting into tears.
"You wouldn't let me get even one ride," he accused Elaine.
"I miss my grandma," said the three-year-old,
also beginning to sob.
Everyone felt tragic.
Disbanding made them think of death,
Elaine supposed, its chilly guarantee
falling now like a vapor.
"Who wants to go on a trip?"
Lionel finally asked, clapping his hands together
to dispel the fog to inspire levity.
In the car, the little girl began her babble.
"Snapper, Snapper, get me out of here.
Thank you, sir, here's your bumbershoot."
To everything she responded with this stuff.
"Is she normal?"
Deanie asked.
"Of course," said Lionel, "they all do this."
"Dad called her a whippersnapper, I think,"
Elaine told Deanie, who was driving in order to get a feel
for the big, strange family vehicle Elaine and Lionel owned.
[AUDIO OUT] Deanie kept blaming the car.
"Grandpa said I had a big head," the boy put in.
Deanie jumped at this, accelerating around a curve
and sending everyone leaning left.
"Here dad goes, insulting the next generation," she said.
"No wonder we all have inferiority complexes.
He bagged on us constantly."
Elaine was tired of defending her parents.
In her opinion they all had superiority complexes anyway.
She had nothing to say.
Neither did her husband, who was thinking
about surgery on his testicles.
Finally Elaine said to her son, "Honey, you do have a big head,
and I should know since I gave birth to you."
Deanie groaned at the thought of giving birth.
"This whole pregnancy thing sucks," she said.
"They hate it when you say suck," Elaine told her.
"Watch mom's face next time.
She kind of cringes."
"You think I don't know that?"
Deanie asked.
"Do you think I don't know every little thing that pisses them
off?"
After a while the boy said, "I'm carsick."
"Close your eyes.
Open the window.
Give him water."
"Bumbershoot, bumbershoot," said the girl.
"Touchy, touchy.
I have a tail."
"Jonathan would think our trip was funny," Deanie told them.
"Irony, irony, irony."
Outside, Ralph Lauren's ranch went by.
A moment later, there he was, jogging on the highway,
surprisingly short.
"Jonathan calls him the wee haberdasher," Deanie said.
"He's got a ranch the size of Idaho.
And he jogs on the highway.
What a dope."
"Haberdasher," said the girl.
"Haberdasher."
"What's irony?"
the boy asked.
"For the clothes," said the girl,
"with a board and the iron."
She slid her pudgy palm along the front of her car seat
to illustrate.
"I want Jonathan," she said sadly.
"Where is Jonathan?"
"Mom and dad are going to the doctor,"
Elaine told her children at the hospital parking lot.
"You guys get to see Seven Dwarfs with me."
"Seven Dwarfs!
Seven Dwarfs!"
shouted the girl.
"You hear that, Sammy?
Seven Dwarfs!"
"I don't want to go with Deanie,"
the boy said in a voice Elaine recognized as provocative,
probing.
"I already saw Snow White."
He needed his parents' attention.
Something was going on and he knew it and wanted someone
to say so.
"You can wait in the waiting room," Elaine said,
"but it's deadly dull.
And little bean head here would be a pest.
She'll eat cigarette butts and bother people."
Lionel, slow to recognize Elaine's strategy,
pleaded, "Just go with Deanie, Sam.
Do what we ask please."
Lionel had been an only child.
He had no idea how a real family worked.
"I don't want to," Sam declared.
"So he stays here," Elaine said, opening her car door and hopping
out.
Her nauseous stirred up again like a flashback like nostalgia.
"Just don't complain later when you
miss the movie, and the Skittles,
and the popcorn, and the Coke.
Then it'll be too late."
She wished her sister would step in and make
a bid for Sam [AUDIO OUT] for her own fondness.
But Deanie clearly felt her feelings had been hurt
and was sulking.
"I'll go," Sam finally said, twisting his face from his
mother's kiss.
Deanie drove off with them, squealing around the corner.
Elaine watched the backs of her children's heads disappear.
She said, "She's not taking them to see Dwarfs,
she's taking them to something rated R."
Anger swelled in her like a balloon.
"She wouldn't do that," Lionel said.
"Of course she would," but Elaine laughed.
There was satisfaction knowing something so surely.
"Later alligator," Lionel told her at admissions,
pinching her soft bottom.
She didn't want to be touched right now, especially
on the bottom.
"Don't be scared," he added.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said.
"Nobody who performs vasectomies should be named Dr. Dick,"
Lionel said on the way home.
Deanie said, "My ob-gyn always tells the same joke.
At your cervix!"
"You are sitting in the waa-waa seat,"
said the boy to his sister.
"Am not!"
The waa-waa seat.
It was a customary car argument.
Though he claimed not to be tired,
Lionel fell asleep first on the trip back.
His hands cupped chastely on his lap,
protecting the remainder of his tender bunch of genitalia.
Then the girl closed her eyes, and then Elaine dropped off.
Drugged, dreaming of r-rated chase scenes and her brother's
dead friends.
Having foreseen general sleepiness,
she had arranged Sam in the front seat
beside Deanie to keep her company.
But even reliable, vigilant Sam could not
resist shutting his eyes and soon
lay his sweaty head on Deanie's shoulder,
so that steering was difficult.
While Elaine's little brood slept,
Deanie drove 80 miles an hour atop the dangerous cliffs.
At the dark summer house, she braked
before pulling into the driveway,
just to stare at the familiar face the door and windows made.
The porch [AUDIO OUT] broad, wicked
smile in the cold streetlight.
Bats flew crazily as if someone were throwing them around.
Her Bill seemed to have gone out,
not bothering to leave on a lamp for their homecoming.
In that second, Deanie let herself
feel utterly sorry for herself.
Let self-pity collapse around her like a smelly tent.
Her life wasn't going to be anything like her parents'.
It wasn't even going to be like sisters'.
It was going to be a lot harder.
She allowed a tear or two to leak down her face.
She prodded her own belly until her baby woke up
and rolled over.
And she recovered and turned off the engine,
opening her door to fill the car with bright light
and a harassing metronomic beeping.
"Home," she told her passengers.
On the answering machine were messages
from Mary and their mother.
Everyone had arrived safely from their day on the road.
"It was a heck of a trip," sister Mary's cheery voice
admitted, "but we made it, of course."
"Ha!"
Elaine scoffed.
"They think they had a trip."
Trudging toward the room with a hand on her abdomen,
a damp pad between her legs.
"Who's going to carry in the kids?"
she demanded of her pale husband and her irritable sister.
"I feel like a goat kicked me in the gonads," Lionel said.
"How about you?"
"Ditto," said Elaine, "that hung over hell,
that postpartum wooze."
"Pre partum here," said Deanie.
"We're hopeless," Lionel declared.
"Yes, but who's the most hopeless?"
Deanie asked, squatting over a footstool, her skirt blooming
around her like a flower.
"Just leave them there," she said about the children.
"No," Elaine told her peevishly, already planning to wake them
in a few and make them walk.
"No, I'm not going to just leave them there."
Deanie had a lot to learn about parenthood, she thought.
Elaine sort of envied her innocence
while also being exasperated by it.
"Snapper, snapper, get me out of here, you bean head,"
said the three-year-old in her sleep.
She clung to [AUDIO OUT] until Elaine lifted her,
feeling a rush of warmth between her legs as she did so.
But she knew carrying her daughter wouldn't hurt her.
Her baby needed to be held and she felt nothing but good.
Warm with sleep, affectionate, easy.
She was, after all, Elaine's last baby.
In front of her, Lionel faltered as he lifted Sam.
"Did you see Dwarfs?"
he asked the boy.
"I told you I already saw Dwarfs."
Sam dropped his head on his father's shoulder.
Before they went inside, Lionel asked Elaine
if he should go look for Deanie's Bill.
"What would you do if you found him?"
He shrugged.
"Then I see no point in looking."
Later, the three grown ups turned on lights
and made toddies, dealt out cards,
and tuned in a distant gospel radio station.
"Brothers and sisters," a woman sang, "welcome me in."
"She's a big fatso," Deanie guessed.
"A big Black fatty."
She and Elaine cracked sunflower seeds
and made a soggy husk pile between them the way
they always did, as if that might help them feel normal.
From where the children slept on the couch and the easy chair
came heavy, faithful breathing.
Still, the house seemed empty without the others,
as if a wind had blown through, stealing all familiar smells.
The place lacked people.
Ones who had been there just that morning,
and ones who'd been there many years past.
Those who might be there in the future,
and those who would simply never be.