Chapter 1 #18
On “twin bed,” in little bedroom, in “duplex,” on “Crowne Street,” we tried and tried as, in through “open window” came (depending on “direction of wind”) “rose-scented breeze” or “garbage-stink” from “alley,” or, if “no wind at all,” it could be “hot as all get-out,” but “little did we care”!
All that glorious summer we tried, doing it “every which way,” but it hardly seemed like “trying” for the sheer heat-sweaty lovely, longing, grunting, pushing, wanting of it all, and sometimes, from other half of “duplex,” “good old Jeri” would pound on the wall, shouting, “At least do it quiet!” But we would not do it quiet.
No way. “Sorry, Jer!” Lloyd might shout back. “Come over and join us, kid!”
And from over there Jer would cackle.
Lloyd and I were “love match.” So “hot to trot.”
Trying and trying all that summer.
That “summer of ’76.”
That “bicentennial summer.”
“Happy Bday America,” Jeri’s “cute grandbrat,” Melinda, had scrawled in red, white, and blue “sidewalk chalk” across “driveway,” and, all summer long, Lloyd did his best not to wash “that saying” off, with the hose, out there in “elephant bells” (loose at the bottom, tight at the top) or, sometimes, pre-work, getting in some early watering, in full cop regalia, before heading down to the station for his dang shift.
The bride, re-situated, rushed out of the pantry.
Into the arms of the groom, who had somehow lost the two old ladies.
Such a kiss.
Such a kiss they shared.
That seemed to promise many happy future days.
And put me in mind of other kisses, from my bygone days.
Of wishing to kiss; of having kissed; of having kissed too much; of having kissed not enough, of lying in “antique four-poster,” purchased by “Mother,” “on credit,” at “Sears,” her “favorite store,” while imagining being kissed by “Phil Everly,” “pop star”; of longing to be kissed (by someone, anyone, please, God) at “junior high skating party”; of sitting in “front seat” of Chevelle, swollen-lipped, joyful, having just been kissed, kissed, kissed by Daniel Masterson, “lab-partner in biology,” who, leaving Chevelle as if in a daze, stumbled toward “front door” being held open by his “quizzical-looking mom” (“Valerie”); of (ah, yes, here it was) being kissed by Lloyd, for “very first time,” at “stock car race” at “Raceway Park,” and all at once the “bleacher-seats” beneath us seemed to fall away and my hand was on his “blue-jeaned” leg, there beside “mustard stain,” my young mind running wild with thoughts of all the things we might (could, would) do, back in his “Impala,” away from all these—
Golly.
Goodness, gosh.
I used to be a person, a full person, with many small memories, small, lovely—
Such as:
In “front entry,” on “little credenza,” “photos” of “Mom,” “Mom and Dad,” “me and Dad,” and just “Dad” leaning against Chevelle with “cocky look” on face, because “had dimples,” because “cute” and knew it.
And:
You held “Barbie” by her legs and “whack-whack-whacked” her against the much-larger “Mrs. Briggs” doll, “Barbie’s” way of “pitching a fit” because “Mrs. Briggs” had said no, she was not allowed to climb out of “bathtub” to “go on date.”
And:
“Me, Mom, Dad” at “St. Monica’s,” my little body warming up but just on one side in the many-colored light beaming down from “stained-glass window” showing six gaunt gray “Apostles” pulling a net of fish up into their already fish-tilted boat.
Could make left wrist (but not right) crack by giving it “good hard pop.”
In terms of times tables: nines and elevens, easy; twelves not “my cup of tea.”
In “big hallway mirror,” I looked “so long and pretty,” like (Big Deb, mom of my best friend, Little Deb, would say) “a dang gazelle.”
In terms of favorites: Color: green; Season: winter; Candy: “Smarties.”
Dad, watching me looking up all reverent at those Apostles in that tilted boat, gives me a double-pat on the shoulder, as in: You’re good, kid, sure am fond of you, Jillie.
Oh, I felt just sick. I did not want to be THIS THING anymore, this stiff elevated THING, but wanted, instead, to be me, sweet ME again, all the way, and for this whole awful dream (of having been blown up/killed/sent all over the place three hundred and forty-three times in all, so far, to a bunch of dying dopes who didn’t appreciate me at all) to be DONE, so I could be ME again back in that beautiful living body I knew and loved so well and had always so much enjoyed having.
ME, ME again.
With father, mother, friends.
Husband.
Suddenly I knew what I needed to do.
—
As mentioned, I am vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.
So it was no effort at all for me to attain great height and speed east by northeast through the remainder of Texas, then through Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois, arriving, in the span of a single breath, at the border of lovely Indiana, commencing, then, to sail out along and above the familiar Wabash, veering eastward where it narrowed and met the Patoka, then following the Patoka (thin, brown, laced with fishing sheds, choppy and white with night-swells) to the village of Stanley.
Gosh, I barely recognized the place.
I hung there above it, taking stock of the many ways in which it had changed.
Hat factory: gone.
River: dammed at its westernmost end.
New mall (Chesterfield Commons): vanished entirely.
The hill down which Lloyd and pals had mud-sledded was still a hill but the Sinclairs’ rental was gone and that whole area over there was now this ugly new subdivision where three floor plans just repeated and repeated and repeated (Cape Cod/ranch/larger Cape Cod), the whole god-awful mess running out west as far as Union and as far east as Brewer’s Launch Lane.
At that wide bend in Sherwood Ave., among that row of scrawny pines was: no Jardine’s.
Sherwood Ave. itself: thrice-widened.
That row of scrawny pines: sacrificed in the widening.
It might have been a different town altogether. If not for the baseball field at St. Thomas Aquinas and the alley behind it, which ran (as always) due west, past Turner Park, I never would have been able to find Crowne Street, where our dear little duplex was.
Inside of which Lloyd and I had been a total love match.
So hot to trot.
All that summer.
Summer of ’76.
That bicentennial summer.
The summer before my untimely—
Wait.
What?
Where was “duplex”? The entire length of “Crowne Street,” including “laundromat,” was now an ugly, block-long “Regional Data Center.”
Whatever that was!
Lloyd, Lloyd, I thought, where are you, dear?
Young, beautiful, tan, broad-shouldered, lifting up the couch with one hand when drunk, just to show me that you could?
Dancing around the kitchen, in “cop pants,” no shirt, to “Heartsfield” or “Allman Brothers,” sitting patiently beside me as we colored in, with those big honker marker-pens, “Fantasy Forest,” the paint-by-number your mother gave us the day we got engaged.
Speaking of Shirley, Lloyd’s mother, I whisked at once to “Shirley’s house,” i.e., the home of my “mom-in-law,” i.e., Lloyd’s mother, Shirley.
But whisking thoroughly around inside, found: no Shirley, and all the furniture new and different, kind of huge, rather “mod,” and a young couple was in there and some new kind of music was blaring, all wonks and whistles like “robot” might make, in a kitchen that was missing one wall and had gained another, and they were happy, with no memory of any Shirley whatsoever, as they had bought the house not from her, but from the Verhagens, Tom and Kate.
Up in the attic, behind a concealing rafter, I found the one and only item in the place that had the slightest thing to do with me: a box, and inside it, my wedding dress, wrapped in tissue paper, and written on the box, in my handwriting (!), were the words: “J Mr. Mendon, the creep from the drugstore, who could sometimes be nice; Lisa Childs, the cheerleader who’d fallen off the Ferris wheel at Melody Lake while tipsy; eight petite gymnasts from Stanley High, whose bus had overturned coming home from “away game,” who had, it seemed, ever since, been holding hands), some I didn’t know (a threadbare fellow with a musket and a pamphlet; four wiry drowned Iroquois toting a canoe with a busted-out bottom; many simple Indiana working folks, hats in their hands, trying, eternally, to loosen the fancy, too-tight dress clothes in which they’d been buried; a short, fat priest with a goatee who rushed from person to person, urging repentance, but he had this very annoying voice and now, as in life, that voice was causing people to turn away from him while trying not to laugh, and hence no one at all was getting saved).
Forward stepped my grandmother, in the faded green housedress she’d worn pretty much constantly there at the end.
Grandma Gust, we’d called her. Because of her late-life farting. She’d been the first to call herself that. After ripping one at dinner. And then we all picked up on it.
It was actually so funny.
Sweetest grandma ever.
Yes, dear? she said.
Lloyd? I said. Lloyd Blaine.
Grandma cocked her head.
As if in thought.