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| i am the standard deviation of one. | | |
| Corey ran his fingers over the broken plaster in the corner of his room, right behind the door. His mother had finally told his father to leave. Now five years later, as Corey sat with his back against the wall, the conclusion of that relationship was eye level, and his fist still didn’t fill the masculine indentation. The edges had long since smoothed over as Corey repeatedly pulled and replaced items from an assortment of clothing he so masterfully wedged between the propped open door and the fist-indented wall. He could hear the muffled cries of his mother against her friend’s shoulder. He need not even make sure of it, for he had seen that exact image countless times in the past years. He could peek around the corner, barely revealing his head through the doorway. He could get just enough of a glimpse into the stairway to see his mother’s shoulders softly bobbing up and down, with each successive sob. Her friend’s eyes could meet with his own, sending him shyly back into the safety of his room. But he need not even make sure of it. He had left her at that precise moment so many times he didn’t even cry with her anymore. His mother was upset, and his father was gone.
Corey slumped across the scattered floor, gathering t-shirts and Nintendo cords around his ankles. He shook his feet loose of the tangles and climbed into his bed.
He cracked open a book lying bedside. He wouldn’t be reading tonight, however. Corey was waiting.
He waited; he watched the clock until finally the sounds from across the hall came to an end. The glow from the hallway went dark, and Corey went into action. Sliding the blanket back to the foot of the bed, he found his shoes in the dark. The folded paper with his father’s new address was already stuffed into his jacket, along with the scribbled train arrivals and two rolls of quarters. He searched the room for a bag, some sort of bag. He slid across the room toward his closet, stomping his shoes over his heels all the while. He threw aside clothing, shoes, books, a whiffle ball, three hats, another whiffle ball, and retrieved a small green duffle bag. He dumped crayons from the bag, hundreds upon hundreds of crayons.
Corey used to love to color. He loved the easy pictures. He loved the huge solid spaces, favoring them largely over more ambitious, intricate pictures, even as his age dictated that he move on. As he watched Crayolas spill into the tiny spaces between his socks and shoes, he spent no time digging any of them from beneath his feet. He had already been plotting his adventure, his escape. “Shorts or pants. Shorts or pants? A jacket?” he thought to himself.
Two pieces of paper glided gently to the ground, earning Corey’s attention among the waterfall of crayons. They were each pictures of a cat, obviously from the same coloring book. The cat bore overalls, and appeared to be teaching the reader (or colorer) the basics of farm maintenance. His overalls were blue, his fur was purple. “At least its inside the lines,” Corey though to himself. At the bottom corner of the page, in his obtuse, preschool handwriting, he had written, “Corey + Mom + Dad.” On the nights he spent wondering about his dad, Corey frequently rifled through his old things, searching for anything that hinted at better times, of the fond memories that had already begun to fade. This would have been his best excuse for the poor condition in which his room perpetually remained, but instead he usually blamed it on his friends. He could remember the coloring book these pictures came from, and this wasn’t the first time he had come back to for it. It was thick; really thick. These pictures were from a chapter among many others. He pictured a dog wearing a fireman’s uniform, or something. Corey couldn’t remember and his eyelids were growing heavy.
* * *
“Short or pants. Short or pants? A jacket?” he picked up where he left off a few minutes ago, or hours, he couldn’t tell. He hastily threw favorite t-shirts into his favorite bag, and then quickly realized his space limitations. Pulling them back out he reasoned, “Only two t-shirts.” He threw in his camera; he threw in his journal, and some batteries. He pulled out the batteries, “No batteries.” Nothing uses batteries anymore. He threw the bag over his shoulder and carefully eased the door open. Corey slid down the stairs. He placed most of his weight on the railing, easing his feet over the squeaky spots in the floor. As his shoulder slid across the wall, he bumped into a photograph. Slamming his hand against the wall, Corey pinned the frame against the wall only a few inches below its nail. He refused to move, horrified by the possibility that he had awoken either his mother who slept on the other side of that exact wall. After a few seconds of repressed breathing, Corey figured it was probably safe to replace the picture and continue to the bottom of the stairs and the front door.
Corey flung the door open triumphantly, knowing that, unlike the poorly crafted stairs, the door never squeaked. He stepped onto the porch and the cool air jolted his perspiring body. As he threw his bag again over his opposite shoulder, the nighttime breeze caught the door and slammed it shut. Grimacing, Corey knew that such bad luck would eventually run out. After again waiting out possible confrontation, he cracked the door open, slid his hand through, and turned the lock on the knob. After all, he still cared about his mother. The train station was an easy jaunt from his home; turn right, walk 4 blocks, turn left then walk two more. Corey glanced at his watch, 9:47pm.
Moving through the downtown area was easy in a small town; after all, the streets are eerily quiet beyond the hour of 9pm. It was really quiet though, Corey thought to himself. His feet splashed through the fresh puddles on the sidewalk and echoed off the faces of the buildings. The flashing traffic lights lit up the wet pavement in sprawls of red and yellow. “Flashing lights?” Corey thought to himself, again checking his watch. He had never been out this late on his own.
The train station was entirely empty, as one might expect at 11pm on a Thursday night. Corey shoved his hands in his pockets and maintained his pace, in the rather popular teenage idea that this image would be comforting to any adult that might suspect anything from him. While trying to erase the “I’ve never done this before” look from his face, Corey nearly completely bypassed the ticket counter. His shoes squeaked as he turned around, making him feel even more like a child. The counter was empty, however, and completely dark. “Should’ve guessed,” Corey thought, slumping against the counter. Leaving behind his ambition and a greasy face-print on the ticket window, he turned for home. As he made his first few steps down the opposite direction, he heard squealing old breaks from over his shoulder. Corey realized at this point he hadn’t seen a single car since he left his home about an hour ago. Looking around, he saw nothing; no people, no headlights, no squealing breaks. The squealing grew louder, and he knew suddenly what he was hearing. He ran back through the front gates of the train station, and there sat a train, resting idly at the first of two entrance decks. Without thinking, Corey ran straight up to the train, and into the rear door. He quickly found a seat, so as to not bring any more attention to himself. “They must not be too concerned”, he thought to himself as he struggled to find another passengers. The train resumed its journey rather abruptly, with a much shorter wait than Corey had anticipated.
With no one else around, Corey ran his fingers over the address of his father’s house, just two towns away. He pulled out his journal and started writing a note to his father. The train was smooth, and Corey had a lot of things to say. He hadn’t seen him for a long time, longer than Corey could remember. In the letter he wrote about how his mother cried most weeks, at least once or twice. He wrote about what he remembered of their relationship. He pictured what a lot of it had been like, and Corey wrote about that, too. He only really had one memory of his father, although when he came upon his mother telling stories about him, he always pretended to remember them all.
* * *
“Are you ready this time?!” Corey shouted up at his parents as he stood between them, reaching up for their hands.
His parents looked at one another, and then down at his toothless grin. Corey was panting and his nostrils flared with each heaving breath.
“One, two…three!” they all three yelled in unison.
Their six legs took off down the sidewalk together, weaving in an out of oncoming pedestrians. People scowled and put their hands over their cellular phones as each of them whizzed by, three-wide. The downtown buildings rushed by, and Corey completely forgot about the ice cream he had been promised as his feet fluttered past the entrance to Baskin Robins, his favorite. Corey squealed and lifted his knees nearly to his chest as he tried hard to keep up with his parents. Half a block later, Corey grasped each of his parents’ hands. He closed his eyes, his parents lifted him high as they could, and his feet left the ground. He swung lightly back-and-forth, forward and backwards, and pretended he could hear the wind howling in his ears. With his eyes closed, Corey pictured himself thousands of feet above the ground. While he floated back to the ground, Corey eased his eyes open. The sun burst through his eyelids and he squinted as his eyes re-adjusted to the light. When the world returned to focus, two giant purple shoes stood just before him. Corey slowly lifted his eyes to baggy yellow pants that rippled in the wind. From his height, hanging loosely over the yellow pants, Corey could just make out a bulging stomach as a white glove tugged at the matching yellow shirt. Another gloved hand stretched down towards Corey’s face, a balloon animal in hand. Corey grimaced and jumped backwards between his father’s feet, hugging his legs tightly. Peaking through the protection of his father’s tall frame, Corey could see the man’s painted red lips and big round nose. The wind funneled through the buildings and knocked the oversized cowboy hat off the stranger’s head. As he bent over to retrieve it from the ground, his eyes met Corey’s for just a moment. His stomach tightened and his throat burned. Tears welled in the corners of Corey’s eyes, and the wind blew them back towards his ears.
“It’s okay man, he’s just never really liked you guys.” Corey’s father spoke loudly against the howling breeze.
“What do you mean ‘you guys?’ Who doesn’t like a clown?” the man griped.
“Maybe if you didn’t shove stuff in his face, he might be less scared.”
“Well here, lemme just give him this thing. I already made it, and there aren’t any other kids around,” the clown bent his knees slightly and stared down at Corey through his father’s legs.
“No no. I said it’s alright, forget about it man. He doesn’t want it. Just go, ok?”
The clown stood back up, towering over Corey, and still staring at him. He clenched his fists and the red balloon exploded in his hand. Corey never forgot what happened next. When he uncovered his ears and opened his eyes, his father grabbing the clown tightly by a big chunk of his yellow shirt. He pulled him close and said something, but Corey couldn’t make it out over the still-raging wind. The clowns face softened as he returned his gaze back to Corey. He apologized and walked away.
* * *
Traveling via train in the middle of the night didn’t provide for an abundance of entertainment, and Corey quickly remembered how tired he had been earlier in the night. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered out the window. The lights of his small town grew smaller and darker until they could no longer be seen through the glare of the cabin lights. Corey slid his hand over the recline-button on the arm of his seat. He was asleep before he could make himself comfortable.
* * *
Corey frowned as the beeping of his alarm clock seeped into his dreams and reeled him back to reality. Light seeped in through the slits in the blinds on a window across the room, zeroing in on his squinting eyelids. He could feel the warmth creeping up his cheeks as the room slowly filled with the orange morning. As he clenched his fists and stretched his back, a door creaked open and his mother’s voice softly floated through into the room.
“Corey, honey, I made breakfast a while ago. Should I keep anything warm for you?”
“What did you make? Are there any eggs left?”
“Well, a few, but –“
“Wait!” Corey suddenly remembered the previous nights events. His eyes widened with confusion as they focused on a spot on the ceiling, trying to put it all together. He looked back and forth, left to right, several times before refocusing his attention on his mother, who was now a few steps into the bedroom.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Nothing, I just – I dunno…”
“Are you feeling ok—“
“Yeah yeah, Mom, it’s not that…Just…nevermind,” Corey stammered as he rubbed his moistening palms on the jeans he was still wearing from last night. He looked down at his clothes for any sign of a train ride. He was in the same t-shirt, but no jacket, and no shoes. He jammed his hands into his pockets, but quickly remembered he hadn’t gotten a ticket. He pulled a gum wrapper from one pocket, and the other was empty.
“Ok, well I’ll just put your plate in the microwave, okay?” His mother had taken that purposeful, soothing tone as she replied.
Corey dropped his head back into his pillows, still bewildered as to whether the night before had actually happened, or if it had all been a dream. To his left on his nightstand sat two rolls of quarters and his favorite book, but still no sign that he had ever left his room. He stripped himself of his old clothes in favor of a blue pair of sweatpants. As he shuffled about the room in search of a clean shirt, he stepped on the pile of crayons in the middle of his floor, smashing into the carpet a multi-colored mess. His jacket was hung over the back of the closet door when Corey tugged it open. Still intrigued by his lapse in memory from the night before, Corey reached into the left pocket of his jacket and found only the tiny piece of paper with his father’s address on it, not the letter. The waistband was stretched around each of his ankles when his alarm sounded for the second time, and Corey heaved a long sigh and remembered it was only Friday.
The television was roaring from the living room as Corey pounded down the creaky stairs. He leaped from the second stair onto the tile floor and lunged for the microwave. He was already late for school, and he had a ten-minute bike ride ahead of him. Inside the microwave there was only the splattered remnants of a cup of coffee from earlier in the morning.
“Mom, the food!?” Corey yelled over the television.
“Oh Honey! I’m sorry, I completely forgot. It’s in the fridge if you want to –“
“Forget about it,” he interrupted, grabbing a can of juice from the refrigerator. He slammed the door shut so that the entire thing shook and rattled. He had half expected her to forget anyways. Corey had been forced, since he was little, to assume every parent was as emotionally unstable and disorganized as his own. As he slung his backpack over his shoulder, his mother called out to him from her position on the couch.
“Before I forget, honey, I am going to be out again tonight, okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Corey spouted, still angry about his missing breakfast. “Does that mean Mary will be here?”
“Well, you are 10 years old now. Do you like it when she comes?”
“Mom, she talks to her boyfriend on our phone for like all night…She wouldn’t even know if I just left the house all night.” Corey said, pulling the door open.
“So, no babysitter?”
“Nope!” he said walking out to his bike on the front porch.
* * *
“Corey…Corey?” Mrs. Weismann was calling from the front of the classroom. She had solved the first half of a long-division problem from the class’ homework the night before, and she was waiting for him to finish it.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Corey responded, sliding his spiral notebook over the second edition of his letter to his father, “you just take the two and divide it by th—“
“No, I want you to come up here and finish it.”
“Oh…uh. I didn’t finish this stuff last night, I had some family stuff…”
“So you have family stuff every night, it’s seems,” his teacher responded.
“Actually, yeah, I do,” Corey growled under his breath.
Mrs. Weismann’s smirk fell from her face, as her forehead grew stern.
“Well, in that case, I suppose we have some talking to do after class, don’t we?”
The class giggled softly, and Corey slouched in his chair. He pulled the paper out from beneath his notebook and continued to craft, to the best of his memory, a letter similar to the one he had misplaced, the night before. He wrote to his father about the soccer games he had missed, and how he wished someone had taught him how to fish so he didn’t feel so stupid when his friends said, “Really, you don’t know how to fish?” He sounded like a big baby, Corey thought, but he didn’t care. That’s probably how his father remembered him anyways. He told his father that he probably didn’t know that he was really good at skateboarding and science, and that his drawing got put on the back cover of the yearbook last year.
The bell rang and Corey looked up at the clock just above the doorway. Part of him couldn’t believe it was already three o’clock, and another part of him felt as if the second half of Algebra had taken an eternity to pass. He sat through the mess of students zipping and unzipping their backpacks, shuffling through papers. The door opened and there was an explosion of laughter and slamming lockers from the hallway. His pen scribbled hurriedly across the lined paper, smearing the ink as he signed the end, “Sincerely, your son.” Corey finally looked up and the classroom was empty except for his teacher who sat, with her eyes fixed on him, at her desk.
“You seem to have been working hard on everything but math in my class today,” she quipped.
Corey stared back into her eyes for several silent seconds. He couldn’t decide whether to scream at her, to tell her that the night before he had escaped onto a train for his father’s house only to wake up in his own bed the next morning. He thought about telling her that he could barely remember his face, and probably couldn’t at all if it weren’t for the family picture his mother kept in her sock drawer. The one where he had a big read beard and shiny white teeth. He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t even remember whether or not his father had a beard, because in the only memory he still has, his father definitely didn’t have one. He wanted to tell his teacher that his mother told him, every Friday, that she was going out with friends, but that he knew she was going on dates because he would answer the phone sometimes on Mondays evenings when she was watching her shows. A man’s voice would come in through the speaker and for a moment he would pretend it was his father, but then they would say, “Is Lisa there?” instead of, “Is your mother there?”
She wouldn’t have understood any of that, though, and Corey knew that. She might have felt bad for him, pitied him however she could, perhaps not counting off for his unfinished homework, but he didn’t need that. Instead he squeezed his way through the clutter of desks and stray sheets of notebook paper toward the door.
“Excuse me!?” she barked, but the door was already closed, and Corey was already sliding his hand over the locker doors down the hall.
* * *
Upon his third round through the channels, Corey settled for a re-run of an old war movie. He turned the volume up over the sound of his mother’s blow dryer bellowing from her bathroom down the hall. He didn’t care for this habit she had developed of leaving him every Friday night in favor of some guy, and he let her know it. When she came wobbling down the hall in her black heels, the ones you don’t wear out with your friends, she was pinning up the last free remnants of her freshly curled hair.
“You sound like a show-pony with those shoes on,” Corey said without turning around.
His mother tapped him roughly on the head with her knuckles. “I am going to call Mary if all you’re going to do is watch gory movies all night.” She balanced herself by half-sitting on the arm of the couch, just to Corey’s left.
“I didn’t ask you to leave practically ever Friday night. There’s nothing on TV and I can’t get the DVD player to work, okay?” Corey shot back.
“Yeah, your dad was always the one who messed with all that stuff.”
At this, Corey turned around to see his mother struggling to fit two gaudy silver earrings into her ears. She paused when she realized what she had said. Corey knew she never talked about him on purpose, and he resented her for it. Neither of them said a word, and his mother avoided his steady gaze for nearly a minute. Finally she rolled her eyes and met his, shrugging her shoulders. Her bottom lip quivered, and she used her fingertips to wipe away the tears before they could smear her makeup. When she got upset, Corey’s mother’s face aged in a way that hairspray and lipstick couldn’t cover up. The dimples in her chin and the darkness on the insides of her eyes gave her away and made her look like an old woman trying to relive prom-night.
“I’m not going to do this right now,” she quivered.”
“I know,” Corey flopped back onto the couch. He was too used to this to be empathetic.
“I’ll talk to you later tonight, okay buddy?” She kissed him on the forehead on her way out the door. Corey was slightly surprised to see her leave; most nights that started like this one ended with her at the kitchen table drinking wine and crying blackened tears into her friend’s blouse.
He hadn’t time to wonder about the man that made his mother suck back her blubbers and dry her eyes, however. The second-draft of his letter sat idly in his packet as Corey waited to her the second groan of the garage door.
When he was sure she had really left, and not just ended up in her car, wailing over his wayward father, he leapt from his spot on the couch. He ran up the stairs to his bedroom in search of his green duffle bag. He flipped the light on and grabbed the two rolls of quarters once again from his desk. The green bag was back in his closet again, this time sitting atop the pile of clothes his mother must have moved from behind his door. He lugged it across the floor and ripped at the zipper. He grabbed the tab and pulled, but the zipper had caught on something on the inside. Corey wedged the bag beneath both of his knees and pulled with both hands up towards his chest. Corey groaned, and the tab of the zipper broke loose from the bag, sending him toppling backwards into the foot of his bed. Frustrated, he tossed the tab onto his desk and pried open a few inches of the zipper until he found his journal and the same t-shirts inside.
“What happened last night?” he took a second to ponder. Corey had yet to separate reality from the dream he probably had the night before, but he was too excited to stop now. He stuck one arm and his head through the broken duffle bag and flung his jacket over the other shoulder. He jumped down the stairs two at a time and hastily threw open, and then shut again, the front door. He hopped from the concrete of the font porch to the dew-drenched grass of the front yard. Patting each pocket, Corey checked for his money, the second-edition letter, and the train schedule. His watch read 7:45, “just enough time for the eight o’clock train!” he rejoiced within himself. As he crossed the street and headed toward the train station, Corey noticed there a lot more people out on the streets at that time of night. With each jogging step he grew increasingly paranoid that his mother, or one of her friends, might see him. He took an extra right and followed an alley that he assumed would take him straight to the station. The streets were dry and cracked, and when the lights alternated from green to yellow to red, the streets remained in darkness. He tried to remember the rain-splashed streets from the night before, as the colors danced across the glistening pavement. He remembered the splash of the puddles cheering him on like the roar of a distant crowd. Tonight, however, the scraping of the soles of his shoes against the gravel and dirt reminded him of how alone he was, and Corey was frightened. He quickened his pace, tearing down one alley after another, each of them ending with the fluorescent glow of a different convenience store. Out of breathe and completely lost, Corey rounded the corner of a tall brick building and almost ran straight into the ticket office at the train station. He filed through people and luggage toward the window that had been dark and empty the night before.
“Can I help you, son?” an older man with patch grey whiskers spoke through the speaker in the window.
“Yeah, I need to go to Evansville.”
“Where’s your parents at?” the old man asked.
“Well, I am gonna go see my dad…” Corey replied, standing on his tiptoes to see through the glass. The old man stared back at him through the glare of the lights for a long time.
“Do you have 13 dollars?” he asked, speaking noticeably slower. He craned his neck toward the glass to get a better look at his tiny customer. Corey reached up and shoved the two rolls of quarters through the tiny slot at the bottom of the window. They barely fit.
“Twenty dollars,” Corey said, smiling nervously. The old man’s eyes got big and he shuffled around inside his booth. When he turned around again he gave Corey and paper ticket and one of the rolls of quarters.
“Keep this one and buy yourself a candy bar okay?” the old man smiled wide.
“Thanks sir,” Corey smiled back and started to turn around. “Oh, and I want to go at eight this ti—I mean I want to go at eight.”
“Well that there ticket is for the ten o’clock train. You’re too late for the other one.” Corey looked at his watch; 8:19. The man in the booth noticed the disappointed look on Corey’s face and pointed over to a bench across the platform. “You can sit right over there on that bench and come talk to me if you get lonely, alright?”
“Okay.” Corey disappeared into the crowd and emerged nearly twenty minutes later, on the bench, as the crowd settled between the scheduled trains. The hour and a half passed silently, as Corey sat reading and re-reading the letter he had written. He wished he hadn’t scribbled the last parts. The handwriting was bad enough, and Corey didn’t want his father to think less of him. He watched the crowds of people grow and evaporate into trains and cars, on either side of him. If he focused on one spot, the people passing by melded into a sea of waving colors, expanding and shrinking every ten or so minutes. Corey imagined his father breaking through the biggest of the waves and running toward him. He imagined his father surfing a real wave, crashing into the ocean, and then reappearing with a big white smile on his face. He would motion for Corey to join him, and they would spend the rest of the day learning to surf the small waves. He gazed every once in a while through the waves at the white-haired old man spinning in his booth like a top or sometimes like an angry lion in his cage at the zoo.
Finally a train stopped that had numbers matching those on Corey’s ticket, and he climbed stiffly to his feet and handed another older man his ticket. Climbing aboard, Corey made his way to a quiet corner and plopped into an oversized booth. He watched a dad and his two sons emerge from the car behind him with big sodas in hand, and it might have been his desire to be with his father, or it might have been that he was thirsty, but Corey pulled the roll of quarters from his pocket and walked toward the snack car. He bought the biggest Coke they had and used both hands to carry it back to his booth. He sat down and sipped from the two straws he had poked through the lid. Just outside the window, Corey remembered watching the city lights fade into black, and he was comforted as he watched them diminish again.
The first time the giant cup slid from his fingertips, Corey quickly recovered it from his lap and took another giant gulp, checking to see if anyone had seen. The second time, when it fell to the floor and nearly a third of it gushed from the two-straw-sized hole in the lid, Corey decided he had better set it on the table for a while. He tucked his hands underneath his thighs and propped his head against the cold window. Corey pulled the letter from his pocket and began reading it again. A few sentences into it, he hastily folded it back into his pocket, though, as he had already memorized it long ago. He checked his watch and it had been nearly an hour and a half, but before Corey could worry about why the train had yet to stop, he slipped into a blank slumber.
* * *
The alarm resounded through the room as if a storm were bearing down upon Corey’s bedroom. Corey thrashed about underneath his blanket as his fist slammed down on the top of his bedside clock. He squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to open them, but it wasn’t because of the sun blazing through the blinds; they were closed this morning and it was cloudy outside. His shoes were off, his jeans were on, and the television was blaring through the cracked open door. Corey clenched every muscle in his body and his face flushed red as he grew angry with himself and with the impossibility that the past two nights had only been dreams. He rolled out of his bed and yanked his jacket from the back of the chair. Again, he found no letter and only a handful of remaining quarters. He pulled a sweatshirt over his head and crashed down the stairs into the living room. His mother was sitting innocently at the kitchen table working on a crossword.
“Corey,” she said softly, pushing a strand of curled-hair behind her ear, “I should have told you that I was seeing other men, but I just didn’t know how to explain it.”
“What? You should just have told me, Mom. You always tell me not to lie…”
“I know, ugh, I know! And I should have had Mary come over last night, at least then you couldn’t have gotten me all worried like that,” she had crossed her arms, pencil still in hand.
“Gotten you worried about what!?” Corey felt suddenly as if she had the answer to all of his questions. Instead of answering them, however, her severe expression relaxed as if someone had just walked up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders.
“Corey, I’m sorry that you don’t want me to be with other men, but your father, he is gone now,” his mother reached out her hand and brushed his hair back from his forehead. Her face had hardened again, and Corey knew from experience that she was going to fall back into tears.
“He isn’t gone. I know where he is!”
“I know you do, honey,” she was still trying to sooth him out of his frustration.
“I can go there any –“ Corey stopped short of saying it, fearing that if she knew he was trying to reach him, she would take him even further away from his father. Corey hugged his mother tightly, finally crying with her partly out of pity and partly out of guilt for what he was going to do next. “Sorry, Mom,” Corey whispered as he turned back toward the stairs.
“I think I am going to take a nap, okay honey?”
“Yeah Mom, I am going to clean up my room,” Corey lied.
“Okay,” she sighed as she dropped her pencil onto the kitchen table.
They both moved to opposite ends of the house. Corey tied his shoes silently in the living room. He didn’t take his bag this time; he didn’t really even expect to ever get there. But he left the house and the wind whipped against his thin sweatshirt. He didn’t go back for his jacket; instead he made for the bus stop one street over. He didn’t have the heart to try the train again. He didn’t have the heart to face the jumbled reality of his past two trips to the station. Corey leaned against the cutting wind until the first bus came and stopped. There was no city bus schedule to be found, so he climbed the steps and complied as the instructor order him to put a quarter into the metal box by his seat. There were only two other people on the bus when Corey sat down, and neither of them noticed Corey sit down just in front of them. The bus bounced violently over the potholes on every street as it meandered through town. It finally came to a stop at the corner where the bus station sat, connected to a Conoco. Corey stood before the bus came to a stop and was thrown back down into his seat, where he had to fight back embarrassed tears that seemed to be coming easy on that day.
He nearly had to jump to get from the last step to the ground, and as the bus rumbled away behind him, Corey counted his quarters. “Twenty-six quarters,” he whispered to himself. Division was slipping his mind, so he squatted to the ground and began stacking them in fours on the sidewalk. “Six dollars and fifty cents,” he thought, scooping the six and a half stacks back into his cupped fingers. He leaned heavily against the glass door to the bus station. It took nearly all his strength to force it open, making him feel even smaller. Corey tried not to think of his past two attempts at reaching his father; it made him feel lonely and scared. He walked up to the counter and bought a ticket to Evansville. The bus would leave in 10 minutes.
It was just as bumpy on Corey’s second bus trip, although this particular bus was much bigger and cleaner than the city bus. Unlike the city bus, this one was packed two to a seat, and Corey felt uncomfortable as a large overweight man squeezed him against the window. The man wore a sleeveless flannel shirt and with every jolt of the bus, his hairy shoulder brushed against Corey’s cheek like sandpaper. He cried silently, and his shoulders bobbed up and down with the bouncing of the bus. There was nobody there to console him, or even notice that he was crying.
A couple hours passed, and Corey hadn’t come close to sleep. While he watched the trees speed by on the side of the road, Corey realized he had forgotten to re-write the letter. At this point, he could have easily rewritten it all nearly word for word, but all he had was the torn bus ticket in his back pocket. Corey wiggled in his seat until he had retrieved both the ticket and his pen from their two respective pockets.
Corey waited for a smooth spot in the road, and in the margins of the ticket, he wrote, “Dad, why did you leave? Sincer Corey.”
The bumps still decimated his handwriting, but at this point, the message was stripped to its bare essentials anyways. Shortly after the note and pen had been stuffed back into their pockets, the bus groaned to a stop. Everyone around him was standing and pulling their bags from the overhead compartments, but Corey wasn’t quite ready to move. When his seatmate and nearly everyone else had descended the steps of the bus, Corey made eye contact with the driver in his rearview mirror. He wiped his sweaty palms on the fronts of his jeans and walked to the front of the bus.
“Do you know where 143 Easton Avenue is, sir?” His voice sounded weak as he read from the tiny scrap of paper.
“Yes sir,” the bus driver responded happily, “it’s just that way about three blocks, as a matter of fact.”
“Thank you.” Corey turned and stepped out into the balmy air. The wind had ceased and the sun warmed Corey’s clammy skin. He looked around at the hectic street corner, at the new-looking buildings he didn’t recognize. For a moment he almost forgot which direction he was instructed to go, so he hurried along a street named Kilbourne Avenue. Amidst the spring of each quickened step, Corey softly practiced all that he might say to his father when they finally reunited. He had so many questions that his father would answer. There were so many things his father needed to know about the second five years of Corey’s life. He was going to start with the sports he knew how to play now. He probably should have brought a few of his soccer medals, or maybe even his soccer ball so that he could have just showed him. Then Corey would tell him about the time Danny Crane’s father left his family and how a week later Danny apologized for all the mean things he said to Corey about not having a dad. He would tell his father about the time he was dared to kiss Amber during recess, but she was faster than him so he chased her all of recess and when everyone found out he couldn’t catch her they called him Corey The Turtle for the rest of the day. But he would tell his father that that was a long time ago and that soccer had made him faster (although he still hadn’t kissed a girl yet). He secretly hoped his father would say something like, “Corey, there’s plenty of time for kissing girls in high school, you just worry about your grades and your soccer skills.” But most importantly Corey would give him the letter, which was now more of a note you might pass during English while the teacher is turned around writing the correct spelling of “neighbor” on the board. He would tell his father that there was more, but he wasn’t quite sure if that was a dream or not; he was pretty sure it wasn’t, but he pretty much had nothing to prove it.
And just then Corey looked up and noticed he was about to cross Easton Avenue. He stopped and breathed heavily for a few seconds with his hands on his hips. The house on the corner had “143” on top of the garage door, so he paced himself along the crosswalk and into the front lawn. The house was smaller than he had anticipated, but then again, over the past years, Corey had slowly convinced himself his father was probably a millionaire living in a castle. The house was light yellow and a long wooden deck wrapped itself like a snake halfway around the house. The lawn had just been mowed, and Corey felt the itch of grass clippings around the tops of is socks as he made his way to the front door, double and triple checking the address. He reached the front door and stomped his feet free of the scratchy blade of grass. The doorbell sounded like church bells that were way too big for the steeple they echoed out of, and Corey held the button down too long so they started again immediately after they stopped. This made him feel stupid and probably annoying, and he took a step back off of the Welcome mat. He heard footsteps rushing down the stairs and before he had taken a deep breath to get ready, the door flung open.
A man stood in the tall doorway, or maybe he was just shorter than Corey remembered. He had short red hair and a beard that was too well-groomed. His grey t-shirt had a faded outline of Texas and said, “Welcome to Texas!” across the top. Corey tried to remember that shirt, and then tried to remember going to Texas, but he couldn’t. A small bulging belly shown under the loose fitting shirt, and there was lots of wiry, red hair wrapping each exposed forearm. They each stared at each other blankly for several seconds before the man finally spoke.
“Oh my God, Corey…” he sighed, and Corey half-expected him to jump out onto the porch and take him in his arms. But instead, the man spoke again, “How did you get here?”
Corey hadn’t expected the question, and he gulped back all of the line he had practiced over the past three days.
“I took the bus.”
“By yourself? Does your mother know you’re here this time?”
“No – What? This time?” Corey asked. He didn’t recognize this place, and he couldn’t remember ever having been there.
“Dammit, just come inside, okay?” Corey’s father put his hand on Corey’s back as he guided him into the kitchen. He didn’t know whether to feel proud to be back with his father, or ashamed that he had already gotten into trouble. He couldn’t remember what it meant when his father put his hand on his back.
He showed Corey to the kitchen table and set a can of Coke in front of him.
“Do you like soda?” he asked.
“Sure,” Corey smiled, glad to share his first can of Coke with his dad. But instead his father stood from the table and punched numbers into the phone hanging on the wall.
“Lisa? Yeah he’s here….No, he made it all the way to the house this time. No, nobody’s with hi—I told you, here came here by himself.” He looked back and Corey, and he pretended to not be listening to the conversation. His father walked into the other room anyways, and he could no longer hear what he was saying.
Corey looked around the room and walked to the kitchen counter. He felt sick and claustrophobic in the house where he didn’t recognize anything. The walls were plain and clean, and it was hard to imagine that anyone lived inside them. He shuffled through magazines and mail, anything that would give him something to know about his father. He frantically flipped through the stacks of Sports Illustrated and then tossed them down again.
Then he noticed two pieces of paper lying underneath the stack of mail. He pulled them out and saw that they were in his handwriting. They were his letters to his father, Corey immediately felt embarrassed and confused at the same time. He would have rather seen them pinned to the refrigerator or framed in his father’s office, not hidden underneath a copy of Good Housekeeping. His stomach knotted and Corey started to cry in the middle of the foreign kitchen. He cried hard, and his father came running into the room.
“It’s okay buddy, you’re mom is already on her way here to pick you up okay?”
“What!? NO! I wanna stay here; with you!” Corey cried out.
“No. You can’t. I am sorry, but you just can’t be here.” He squatted down and put his red-haired arm around Corey’s back. He pulled him in tight to his body and Corey tried to remember his scent; but he couldn’t. Maybe it was the way his arms around him reminded him of the stuffy bus ride, but Corey had to fight every desire to pull away. It was just something he was going to have to get used to.
And as he was saying this a woman carrying two brown sacks of groceries came bouncing happily into the kitchen where they both stood. Corey’s father stood quickly as she entered the room. It was as if he were an adolescent boy that had just been caught doing something wrong.
“Uh, what’s going on here? Why is he here?” She suddenly looked worried.
“Don’t worry about it, Lisa is coming right now to pick him up right now.”
“Well hello, I’m Tracy, and you must be Corey.” She reached down to shake Corey’s hand, her face taught and forced into a smile.
“Hi.” Corey mustered.
“Hey dad, can we go fill up the pool in the back yard!?” A little boy and girl came running in through the same doorway as the woman, and Corey noticed they were only slightly younger than himself.
“See, this is exactly what I told you would happen!” the woman yelled, throwing her hands helplessly into the air.
“Calm down, Tracy, just give them a second. Corey, this is Daniel and Kim. Tracy is their mother.”
“Well...who is there Dad?” Corey wondered aloud.
“Uh, well I am, buddy.”
Nobody said anything for a couple of minutes as they all avoided eye contact with one another.
“We are going to go out back and fill up the pool,” Tracy said, motion two the two smaller children.
“Okay, honey,” Corey’s father replied, still staring down at his feet.
The two of them were left alone in the kitchen once again. Corey waited patiently for his father to speak again, but it never happened. The last several minutes with his father weren’t anything he could have imagined. It felt more like the time Corey and Danny were both put in detention during recess for fighting with one another. They sat at a picnic table under a tree in a shady area of the playground. The teacher told them they would sit there until they apologized to one another, but each of them refused. Instead they eyed each other from across the old wooden slats, pushing ants through the cracks Corey thought about telling his dad about that time, but then just decided not to.
Shortly after Tracy and the children exited the back door, there was a knock at the front entrance of the house. Corey’s father leapt from his seat and answered it. He returned to the kitchen with his mother just behind him. She had been crying again, and she looked tired.
“I don’t want you to have to come here, and I don’t want to have to bring him home anymore, okay Lisa?” his father said softly, but still loud enough for Corey to hear.
“Yeah, I know. You’ve got all of this now,” and his mother gestured sarcastically with her hands. “We’ll be back out of your life here in about thirty seconds.”
She grabbed for Corey’s hand and they both failed past him and towards the door. His mother walked outside, but Corey stopped just short of the door. He turned around for one last look at his father.
“Hey Dad, you don’t have to worry,” Corey said, “I’m never ever coming back.”
| | |
| Here is an order of the most viewed stories on CNN.com:
coming in at a respectable #3: "Writer reportedly plagiarized"
#2: "Obama in 'bitter' battle"
and the most viewed story of the day at #1: "POLICE: SPEARS HAS MINOR ACCIDENT"
Now I am going to copy and paste this story from CNN.com ust so you can understand what I'm saying. Here it is:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Britney Spears' motoring misfortunes continue.
Britney Spears, seen in December, struck a vehicle on a California highway in her 2008 Mercedes, police say.
The pop star was involved in a minor traffic accident late Saturday.
No one was injured and no vehicles were damaged, authorities said.
California Highway Patrol Officer Patrick Kimball says Spears was driving her 2008 Mercedes on the eastbound Ventura Freeway just east of the 405 freeway when the nighttime accident occurred.
Spears was in stop-and-go traffic when her car struck a 2006 Nissan in front of her that had stopped.
The Nissan then pushed forward into another vehicle. No damage was noted to any of the vehicles.
The Highway Patrol took a report and no one was cited
What the hell? This was viewed by more people than news on the election, the pope coming to america, the war in iraq, and the olympics. Entertainment gossip pumps through our veins where a desire for knowledge, truth, and depth used to exist. SAD SAd SAD | | |
| “Are you ready this time?!” Corey shouted up at his parents as he stood between them, reaching up for their hands. His parents looked at one another, and then down at his toothless grin. Corey was panting and his nostrils flared with each heaving breath. “One, two…three!” they all three yelled in unison. Their six legs took off down the sidewalk together, weaving in an out of oncoming pedestrians. People scowled and put their hands over their cellular phones as each of them whizzed by, three-wide. The downtown buildings rushed by, and Corey completely forgot about the ice cream he had been promised as his feet fluttered past the entrance to Baskin Robins, his favorite. Corey squealed and lifted his knees nearly to his chest as he tried hard to keep up with his parents. Half a block later, Corey grasped each of his parents’ hands. He closed his eyes, his parents lifted him high as they could, and his feet left the ground. He swung lightly back-and-forth, forward and backwards, and pretended he could hear the wind howling in his ears. With his eyes closed, Corey pictured himself thousands While he floated back to the ground, Corey eased his eyes open. The sun burst through his eyelids and he squinted as his eyes re-adjusted to the light. When the world returned to focus, two giant purple shoes stood just before him. Corey slowly lifted his eyes to baggy yellow pants that rippled in the wind. From his height, hanging loosely over the yellow pants, Corey could just make out a bulging stomach as a white glove tugged at the matching yellow shirt. Another gloved hand stretched down towards Corey’s face, a balloon animal in hand. Corey grimaced and jumped backwards between his father’s feet, hugging his legs tightly. Peaking through the protection of his father’s tall frame, Corey could see the man’s painted red lips and big round nose. The wind funneled through the buildings and knocked the oversized cowboy hat off the stranger’s head. As he bent over to retrieve it from the ground, his eyes met Corey’s for just a moment. His stomach tightened and his throat burned. Tears welled in the corners of Corey’s eyes, and the wind blew them back towards his ears. “It’s okay man, he’s just never really liked you guys.” Corey’s father spoke loudly against the howling breeze. “What do you mean ‘you guys?’ Who doesn’t like a clown?” the man griped. “Maybe if you didn’t shove stuff in his face, he might be less scared.” “Well here, lemme just give him this thing. I already made it, and there aren’t any other kids around,” the clown bent his knees slightly and stared down at Corey through his father’s legs. “No no. I said it’s alright, forget about it man. He doesn’t want it. Just go, ok?” The clown stood back up, towering over Corey, and still staring at him. He clenched his fists and the red balloon exploded in his hand. Corey never forgot what happened next. When he uncovered his ears and opened his eyes, his father grabbing the clown tightly by a big chunk of his yellow shirt. He pulled him close and said something, but Corey couldn’t make it out over the still-raging wind. The clowns face softened as he returned his gaze back to Corey. He apologized and walked away. *** Corey ran his fingers over the broken plaster in the corner of his room, right behind the door. His mother had finally told his father to leave. His father left with one more Now five years later, as Corey sat with his back against the wall, the conclusion of that relationship was eye level, and his fist still didn’t fill the masculine indentation. The edges had long sense smoothed over as Corey repeatedly pulled and replaced the assortment of clothing he so masterfully wedged between the propped open door and the fist-indented wall. He could hear the muffled cries of his mother against her friend’s shoulder. He need not even make sure of it, for he had seen that exact image countless times in the past years. He could peek around the corner, barely revealing his head through the doorway. He could get just enough of a glimpse into the stairway to see his mother’s shoulders softly bobbing up and down, with each successive sob. Her friend’s eyes could meet with his own, sending him shyly back into the safety of his room. But he need not even make sure of it. He had left her at that precise moment so many times he didn’t eve cry with her anymore. His mother was upset, and his father was gone. Corey slumped across the scattered floor, and into his bed. He cracked open a book laying bedside. He wouldn’t be reading tonight, however. Corey was waiting. He waited, he watched the clock until finally the sounds from across the hall came to and end. The glow from the hallway went dark, and Corey went into action. Sliding the blanket back to the foot of the bed, he found his shoes in the dark. He searched the room for a bag, some sort of bag. He slid across the room toward his closet, stomping his shoes over his heels all the while. He threw aside clothing, shoes, books, a whiffle ball, three hats, another whiffle ball, and retrieved a small green duffle bag. He dumped crayons from the bag, hundreds upon hundreds of crayons. Corey used to love to color. He loved the easy pictures. He loved the huge solid spaces, favoring them largely over more ambitious, intricate pictures, even as his age dictated that he move on. As he watched Crayolas spill into the tiny spaces between his socks and shoes, he spent no time digging any of them from beneath his feet. He had already been plotting his adventure, his escape. “Shorts or pants. Shorts or pants? A jacket?” he thought to himself. Two pieces of paper glided gently to the ground, earning Corey’s attention among the waterfall of crayons. They were each pictures of a cat, obviously from the same coloring book. The cat bore overalls, and appeared to be teaching the reader (or colorer) the basics of farm maintenance. His overalls were blue, his fur was purple. “At least its inside the lines,” Corey though to himself. Corey also loved going through his old things, which happened to be his best excuse for the poor condition in which his room perpetually remained. He could remember the coloring book these pictures came from. It was thick; really thick. These pictures were from a chapter among many others. He pictured a dog wearing fireman’s uniform, or something. Corey couldn’t remember and his eyelids were growing heavy. * * * “Short or pants. Short or pants? A jacket?” he picked up where he left off a few minutes, or hours, he couldn’t tell, ago. He hastily threw favorite t-shirts into his favorite bag, then quickly realized his space limitations. Pulling them back out he reasoned, “Only two t-shirts.” He threw in his camera, he threw in his journal, and some batteries. He pulled out the batteries, “No batteries.” Nothing uses batteries anymore. He threw the bag over his shoulder and carefully eased the door open. Corey slid down the stairs. He placed most of his weight on the railing, easing his feet over the squeaky spots in the floor. As his shoulder slid across the wall, he bumped into a photograph. Slamming his hand against the wall, Corey pinned the frame against the wall only a few inches below its nail. He refused to move, horrified by the possibility that he had awoken either his mother, or his younger sister, who slept on the other side of that exact wall. After a few seconds of repressed breathing, Corey figured it was probably safe to replace the picture and continue to the bottom of the stairs and the front door. Corey flung the door open triumphantly, knowing that, unlike the poorly crafted stairs, the door never squeaked. He stepped onto the porch and the cool air jolted his perspiring body. As he threw his bag again over his opposite shoulder, the nighttime breeze caught the door and slammed it shut. Grimacing once again, Corey knew that such bad luck would eventually run out. After again waiting out possible confrontation, he cracked the door open, slid his hand through, and turned the lock on the knob. After all, he still cared about his family. The train station was an easy jaunt from his home; 4 blocks right, 2 blocks left. Corey glanced at his watch, 10:47pm. Moving through the downtown area was easy in a small town, after all, the streets are eerily quiet beyond the hour of 9pm. It was really quiet though, Corey thought to himself. His footsteps through the fresh puddles in the sidewalk echoed of the faces of the buildings, the flashing traffic lights lit up the wet pavement in sprawls of red and yellow. “Flashing lights?” Corey thought to himself, again checking his watch. “Before eleven?” The train station was entirely empty, as one might expect at 11pm on a Thursday night. Corey shoved his hands in his pockets and maintained his pace, in the rather popular teenage idea that this image would be comforting to any adult that might suspect anything from him. While trying to erase the “I’ve never done this before” look from his face, Corey nearly completely bypassed the ticket counter. His shoes squeaked as he turned around, making him feel even more as a child. The counter was empty, however, and completely dark. “Should’ve guessed,” Corey thought, slumping against the counter. Leaving behind his ambition and a greasy face-print on the ticket window, he turned for home. As he made his first few steps down the opposite direction, he heard squealing old breaks from over his shoulder. Corey realized at this point he hadn’t seen a single car since he left his home about an hour ago. Looking around, he saw nothing; no people, no headlights, no squealing breaks. The squealing grew louder, and he knew suddenly what he was hearing. He ran back through the front gates of the train station, and there sat a train, resting idly at the first of two entrance decks. Without thinking, Corey ran straight up to the train, and into the rear door. He quickly found a seat, so as to not bring any more attention to himself. They must not be too concerned, however, as there was nobody else in sight. The train resumed its journey rather abruptly, with a much shorter wait that Corey had anticipated. Traveling via train in the middle of the night does not provide for an abundance of entertainment, and Corey quickly remembered how tired he had been earlier in the night. He slid his hand over the recline-button on the arm of his seat. He was asleep before he could make himself comfortable. * * * | | |
| Floor Three, Apartment B By David Hall Mason Buxton rolled up the corner of the rug at the foot of his bed and pressed his ear squarely against the cold, hard-wood floor. He could hear footsteps from an apartment below, and he traced the creaking floorboards from one side of the room to the other. He took short breaths through his nose because breathing through his mouth made it too loud to hear her chair squeak, to hear the television as she flipped through the channels. Mason eased his chest to the floor in his typical position, where he understood the wood panels to be the thinnest; his head tucked just below a corner of his blanket to muffle out unwanted noise. It was 6:30, and the girl below him was listening to his favorite band. He could barely make out the bass drum and a few shouting lyrics, but he wasn’t listening to the music. Had he wanted to hear his favorite band play his favorite song, he could easily have arranged that in his own tiny, one-bedroom apartment. On this day, and on every other day for the past three weeks, Mason listened for Charlene, the neighbor from just a floor below, the tenant of floor three, apartment B. She pulled open drawers, she slammed cabinets shut, and Mason couldn’t help but notice the way the kitchen linoleum squeaked underneath the soles of her wet shoes. Her heels clunked as she took the two small steps it took to move to the sink. Doing dishes again, Mason thought to himself. He sat up and arched his back, stretching his hands far above his head. He yawned as he stretched, and while Mason was blinking away the yawn-inspired tears, his door squealed open. Through the last few blinks, Mason made out the darkened silhouette of his best friend, Jacob Aster. Jacob’s tiny frame and slender shoulders left behind him plenty of room for passers-by to view Mason in his precarious position, cross-legged in the middle of his floor. Two girls about their age passed by, one of them stopping and peaking back just within the frame of the door to get a second look at Mason, caught motionless, arms still half-stretched. Their laughter echoed down the hall as they continued on their way. Jacob shrugged his shoulders and made his way into the bedroom corner of Mason’s one-room residence. The Murphy Bed sagged open from its upright position in the closet, and it took the entirety of Jacob’s meager body weight to move the static, rusty hinges. As the bed crept down to the floor, Jacob finally said his first words. “So what are you doing, you know, in the middle of the floor?” “Oh-uh, nothing. Stretching.” “And by stretching, you mean listening again…” “No. Listening to what?” “Dude….” Jacob said, having witnessed Mason’s eavesdropping once before. “Fine! Fine, I mean yeah; well I could just hear the music and she stomps so damn loud—“ “Mason! You’ve got to be kidding me! Do you have any idea how wrong that is? How would you feel if you looked up and knew there was some creepy dude with his ear pressed against your ceiling, listening to you do your business?! Cut that shit out, man, seriously.” Mason shook his head and shuddered, shaking the imagery from his mind. “I know, I know. I still think it’s her.” Jacob plopped onto Mason’s bed and stretched out onto his back. Mason pulled himself up from the floor and sat down at his computer. After staring at the screen for a few seconds, he turned around in the chair and sat forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Jacob was sliding each of his loafers off his feet, letting the left one hang from only his big toe for a moment before hitting the floor. He tossed a tennis ball up towards the ceiling, catching it just before it hit his chest. He tossed the ball a few more times until it fell once out of reach, rolling across the floor and into the bathroom. Jacob let his outstretched arms fall and bounce a few times off the mattress. Jacob traced the cracks in the water-stained ceiling while Mason licked his thumb and rubbed at a scuff on his shoe. “I just don’t think you’re gonna get it…” Mason was still thinking of the girl from apartment B. “What’s there to get? You had a crush on a girl when you were ten years old. Then she moved away. Now you’re two years out of college, still living in this embarassing apartment, and you think she might, she just might, have just moved into the apartment below you. And none of it even matters because you still can’t just knock on someone’s door. You still can’t just ring a doorbell, take a chance…find out.” *** When Mason Buxton was 6 years old, he spent more time navigating his bike around the weed-filled cracks of the neighborhood sidewalks than anything else. And on this particular day, Mason dashed down the driveway just as the sun burst over the roof of his house. With bright orange cones still barricading the street, and the fresh coat of pavement finally dry, Mason had no choice but to exploit his own personal racing strip with ardent dedication. He didn’t know how long this dream would last, and he hadn’t any time left to try to figure it out. He spent the early hours of the morning weaving in and out of pebbles and empty Coke cans. He raced his long shadow up and down the length of his block, he skidded his tires, leaving long streaks of tread marks behind. His legs burned with fatigue already as he pulled his bike into the grass to watch his father back out of the driveway on his way to work. His father smiled and waved through the glare on the passenger window, and Mason smiled back. He watched as his father pulled up to the orange cones, stopped, and got out to move them just far enough for him to squeeze by. He waited patiently as his white truck melded into the wavy heat lines. As soon as it disappeared over the hill, Mason quickly steered his Roadmaster up the grassy hill in his front yard, all the way to the top. When he turned around to gauge his descent, Mason’s eyes widened as he realized the thrill of the steep hill could end only in triumph. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, and it clung neatly to his forehead. His fingers whitened as his grip grew tight, and without hesitation, Mason took off. Navigating the grass was bumpier than he remembered, and his poor tires struggled to keep the rest of the bicycle upright. Mason quickly regained control as grass turned to pavement, as fright eased into joy. He was still going fast enough to feel the air dry out the insides of his cheeks when he glanced left, swerved right, and flew straight forward; right over the handle-bars. Pain shot down the fronts of his knees and the backs of his elbows as he collided with the concrete. When Mason opened his eyes, a blonde haired girl around his age stood just over him, holding an orange four-square ball. Her mouth dropped open in horror as she eyed a tiny trickle of blood drip from his left palm. Mason panicked and searched his body for significant injury. Two scrapes, one bruise, and a bloody palm, he quickly diagnosed himself. The girl, he noticed, had pulled the front of her dress over her mouth and nose, hiding her concerned face with about six red polka-dots. They both stood their silently inspecting the other, until finally Mason mustered to courage to speak up; “It’s okay; I’m okay….” “Your hand is bleeding, can you see that?” she asked. “Yeah, I think there’s a rock in there.” “Ouch!” she winced, her fists clinching the corners of her dress even tighter. “I think I’m gonna go home.” Mason turned and ran home, leaving his red-tired bike behind. He retraced the bike tracks up the grassy hill of his front lawn and grabbed for the doorknob. Locked! He glanced back over his shoulder towards the middle of the street. Her red polka-dots still shown brightly off the morning sun. She was already guiding the bike back to her house, and Mason watched as her yellow shoes disappeared into the shade of garage. “Hey!” he yelled. After a few seconds, she reappeared back into the brightness of the day, shading her face against the sun with five tiny fingers. She didn’t say anything. “What’s your name?” he continued. “Charlene,” she replied. The two were again silent for a moment, and then hurried into their respective homes. Mason stormed through the kitchen’s double-doors smelling of sweat and hot rubber. He climbed into a barstool and peered over the counter at his mother, half-bent over the oven reaching for a knife resting in its wooden box. “Mom?” “Yeah, honey.” She didn’t turn around. “Do we have new neighbors?” “Um, I don’t know. Maybe. What house?” she asked, scraping the last of the peanut butter from its plastic container. “The blue one. With the mail box that looks just like it.” “Oh. Yeah I think a new family moved in there a month ago or so.” She spun around with a crustless peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. She walked across the room and tossed it onto the counter in front of Mason. “Mom?” he asked again. “Yes honey, I’m getting your milk—“ “There’s a girl…” She paused for a second, milk carton in hand. She smiled faintly, revealing a number of tiny wrinkles just below her nostrils. “I didn’t know they had a daugh—“ “Thanks Mom!” Mason had already escaped back into the sun, grape jelly pasted to the corners of his mouth. He trotted down the front yard with considerable ease, past the crash site, and slowed himself to a speed-walk as he approached the big, blue house with the mailbox that looked just like it. The garage door still stood wide open, but he didn’t dare go in there by himself. He didn’t want to ring the doorbell either. In fact, he had never touched a doorbell. For the past three years, those that Mason had been old enough to trick-or-treat, his parents always rang the bell. At every doorstep, he and his mother would stand-off, each waiting for the other to push it. Mason would stare up at her through the eye-holes of his latex Slimer mask (Mason loved the Ghostbusters), and patiently wait out her stubbornness. Finally, after a line of youngsters had accumulated down the steps and onto the driveway, she would sigh, shrug her shoulders, and ring the doorbell. So there Mason stood, eyeing the porch, deciding whether or not his Roadmaster bicycle with red tires and his own personalized license plate was worth the possibility of talking to a stranger. He sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and swayed back and forth. He knew he couldn’t do it, but he wasn’t yet willing to give up on his bicycle or the rest of the day or the personal race track God had planted right in front of his house. Just as he started counting the days to his birthday, and imagining the colors of his new bike, the sound of the big blue house’s garage door startled him backwards a few steps. Charlene emerged with the bike and walked straight up to Mason. “I can’t keep it, so you can have it back,” she whined, staring at the ground . “Thanks,” Mason replied, “you can ride it if you want to.” “Nah. Do you have Nintendo?” “Yeah. I have Ninja Turtles and Mario and a lot of other games.” “Can I play?” she finally raised her eyes to meet his. Mason squinted his eyes at her. He had never played Nintendo with a girl. He twirled his tongue around the loose tooth just inside his pursed lips as he thought. Finally, he grabbed the bike from her hands and raced back to his house. Mason had to jump to reach the chain that hung from the fan’s light in the basement of their house. He grabbed it and as light shot to the corners of the room, he let go of the chain, rattling it against the plastic light cover and the fan blades. Charlene was still tip-toeing down the creaking stairs by the time Mason was blowing into the first video game cartridge (a trick he had learned from an older boy in the neighborhood). He shoved the cartridge into the Nintendo and flipped the entire thing upside down. “Why do you do that?” Charlene asked, perplexed. “Because that’s how you make it work,” (another secret to getting stubborn games to operate correctly). She sat down in one of the two tiny black leather chairs positioned in front of the television. The basement was half carpeted, and the other half was still smooth concrete to contrast wooden support beams stretching the length of the ceiling. Charlene tried to ignore the dark, creepy corners of the unfinished section, but made sure to check over the back of the chair every once in a while just to make sure. They played each game for only a few minutes, until Mason grew dissatisfied with his unworthy opponent. There was only one game left when he leaned forward to adjust the volume. Charlene giggled as his cat clawed at the seat of her chair. She raised her yellow sneakers up into the air to make room for the cat. White stuffing already seeped from tiny claw marks all up and down the sides of both of the fake leather chairs. She laughed louder as it the cat diverted its attention to the ribbons tied into her hair. She rolled from her chair to the floor, wrestling with the grey and black-striped feline for each of the red ribbons that were now untied and pulled from her pony-tail. After a while the cat took off for the clutter of the incomplete half of the room. Charlene’s laughter stopped, and watched, confused, as the cat disappeared into darkness. Tears slipped from her green eyes, but sadness of the moment was lost as the stairs moaned under the weight of Mason’s mother. “Are you guys still doing okay down here?” she asked just as she found Charlene sobbing at the edge of the carpeted half of the floor. “Your kitty took my ribbon!” “Oh, well I’m sure he will bring it back soon. But right now we have to get you home. Your mom called and she wants you to help her with supper.” “Okay.” Charlene replied. She walked over to Mason’s mother and took her hand. The two of them squeaked up the stairs and out of sight. Mason climbed to his feet and followed close behind. *** The day after his 11th birthday, Mason was told Charlene’s family was going away. Mason woke up early and poked his head through the red curtains in his room. He pressed his forehead against the cold, wintry window and saw the orange semi-truck blocking his view of her big blue house. He sighed, and gave up spying as his breathe fogged the window through which he was looking. Mason slumped over to his closet, slid the wooden door open and pulled out a aged Kansas City Royals duffle bag. He dragged it to the middle of his floor, unzipped it, and dumped out a pile of hundreds of half-used crayons. He sifted through the inch long crayon pieces in search of one sharp enough to craft his goodbye message. He grabbed a sheet of white paper from the printer in the room next to his and folded it in half. Mason dropped to the floor, Indian-style, and formulated his final farewell to his only real friend. He used black first, outlining the paper and rounding the corners with a rough spiral design. He had no idea what he was doing, and he knew the image in his mind would inevitably fail to project itself onto the paper. Mason sighed as he finished the outline, knowing his card, his goodbye message, was only perfect before he had ever touched it. He continued, haphazardly reaching for each of the primary colors, disgusting himself as yellow overlapped blue and orange pushed into purple. He contemplated his message for several minutes, trying to find the right words. When he had finished, Mason sat up, arched his aching back, and examined his finished product. It read: Charlene, You are my best friend. When you move away I will have to find all new friends, but I hope you like it in Milwaukee and we can write each other letters. Maybe a new girl will move into your house haha. I will miss you a lot but maybe we can come visit you. Write me back when you get there, Mason He knew she would tell him she really liked it, but he knew it was pretty horrible. The finished product never made it to the big blue mailbox or Charlene because instead of walking it across the street, Mason folded it into an airplane and tossed it gently out his window. It floated down the breeze and collapsed softly onto a hedge on his neighbors front porch. When Charlene came to the front door a few hours later to say goodbye, Mason couldn’t leave his room. He sat with his back pressed against the closed door, sniveling softly as he heard the squeak of her tennis shoes approaching. He sat silently, and she stood breathing lightly just on the other side door for a long while. Mason fought every inclination to roll over and crack the door open, until she finally spoke. “Mason I am going to Milwaukee now.” The door tapped lightly against its frame as Mason’s shoulders shook up and down with every heaving blubber. He knew she could hear him, but still she waited for his response. He said nothing and listened through his own moaning as she waited calmly. Finally, the squeaking returned as she vanished down the stairs. Mason’s knees rubbed harshly against the carpet in his room as he hastily crawled across the room and back to his window. Charlene was holding her father’s hand as they made their way to the end of their driveway. Mason watched her umbrella bob up and down as she walked down the hill to her house. She jumped over the stream of water running down the edge of the street, opened the door to their car parked just behind the big orange truck, and disappeared. ***
His black chair creaked loudly as Mason leaned back and groaned at Jacob’s reasoning. Jacob was right; Mason knew the thought of walking down those stairs, knocking on her door, and possibly having to look her in the eyes was already making his palms moist with anxiety. The day he noticed “Charlene” printed on the small mailbox by their building’s front door, Mason stopped and stared back at the tiny black print for several minutes. That was the first day he pressed his ear to his dirty wooden floor. It was the first day he heard her friends yelling Charlene from one room to another. He had taken the small detour down her hall and up the side stairwell so many times, and he never once actually considered stopping. Mason would barely let himself turn his head to eye her door, he refused to slow his stride. Somehow he knew it was her, but Mason was just as sure he could never do it. He would take long, falsely purposeful strides down the narrow hall that concluded with her apartment on the left. His heels would pound on the worn carpet as he read the letters on each front door, slowly counting down in his head, “J, H, F, D,” until he quietly waltzed by her door and up the stairs to his place, just one story above. “Fine,” Mason sat up straight, “I’ll do it.” “No, Mason, you won’t,” Jacob casually retorted. “Yeah, I’m going right now, I can’t think about this anymore. And I definitely can’t keep laying here, just…spying.” “Oh I don’t believe this! I’m going with you!” “No – no way,” Mason bent over ad tightened his shoelaces, pressing the long loops down as if he were parting his hair. He stood and moved quickly to the door. As he turned the knob, Jacob came jogging toward him from across the room. Mason cracked the door open just wide enough for his body to fit between it and the frame. He pulled it closed, but not before Jacob could wedge the door open with the toe of his tennis shoe. “Just lemme go with you, I’ll stay out of the way. Please! I have to see this!” Jacob desperately pleaded. But Mason only stared back. “Fine, but you have to come back and tell me about it. I’m going to be listening…” Jacob smiled and mockingly pointed at the floor where he had so often walked in on Mason huddled to the floor. “Okay,” Mason replied. Jacob pulled his foot from the door and it slammed closed. Mason pulled his shoulders back and took in a deep breathe. The stairwell was cold and he could hear voices echoing from several floors above and below him. When he reached the door to the third floor, Mason paused for a second, entertaining the idea of continuing down the stairs and out onto the street. But instead, after another long sigh, he continued on. Within a few steps he found himself gazing at the oversized brass “B” nailed to the baby blue door. Mason stood for a moment staring blankly, not at the door, but into his memory as he tried to imagine what Charlene might look like with nearly 10 years of age and experiences since the last time he saw her. Weeks earlier he had decided she probably still had long, wavy blonde hair. She probably still wore tennis shoes more than most girls, and when she smiled, she still pulled the front of her dress over her face. Her freckles were probably gone by now, he imagined, but she could never have lost the way she stared at the ground when she had to admit she was wrong. And as he was trying to guess how many boys she had kissed, Mason realized he was stalling. So, after a third deep breathe and a tiny prayer to any god that dealt with this kind of thing, Mason tapped lightly on the door. He waited a few seconds, and there was no answer. He didn’t expect her to hear, as the music on the other side of the door was still loud enough to sing along to even from the floor above. Mason rapped on the door loudly, startling even himself with his determination. He waited; his heart beat like a bass drum. Footsteps, oooh god, footsteps, he thought to himself, and before he could recover from the shock, the door with the brass “B” flew open. Music blasted from the room, knocking Mason backwards a step. He gathered himself and looked up at the girl standing in the doorway. The moment his eyes met hers, he knew it was Charlene. The short, choppy brown hair didn’t fool him. Her soft, pudgy cheeks didn’t fool him. Not even the way she stood there, with her hands on her hips and all of her weight on one foot, could overcome his certainty. Her belly sagged lifelessly from just beneath her black tank-top, and her dark purple eye-shadow made her look barely alive. Mason noticed that her green eyes batted just like they used to when she was waiting for him to say something. And at that moment, he realized he hadn’t said anything. “Hello?” her voice was harsh and loud over the still-blaring music. “Hi…” Mason hadn’t planned for this. “Can I help you with something?” Charlene asked, showing no signs of recognizing anything about him. “Well, I just came down here to, uh,” he paused. She was singing softly to the song that had just begun. Mason looked to the ground, shuffled his feet, and realized that he had been wrong. “I think I have the wrong place,” he lied. “Okay, see ya,” she responded as she eased the door closed. When the latch clicked, Mason remained motionless, still not entirely sure of what had just taken place. He dragged himself back up the flight of stairs and into his own apartment. Jacob was sitting at his computer, clicking through pictures of Mason from high school. Mason slumped over to his bed and dropped onto the squeaking mattress, bouncing up and down a few times before he came to rest, face down. A moment later, Jacob closed the computer and spun around in his chair. “So what happened? Did you actually follow through with it?” “Yeah,” Mason replied, his voice muffled under his blanket. “And…?” Jacob continued. “It wasn’t her.” | | |
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