There, There

It’s six hours home, and I hate every second of it. I pass a dozen dead deer, and imagine them all as humans. I mean, what if we left dead people lying about the way we leave deer? Broken open with red meat showing, blood long dried from the sun. Or what about the chunks that lie scattered a hundred yards away from the killing. I see a mother’s hand, a baby’s scalp, and a girl about my age, crushed by something careless and BIG.

Happy thoughts.

Around the three hour mark, I always regret my choice. I should have stayed home, should have just said I was busy. I am busy. That’s one excuse nobody ever argues against.

I have to work. Take your vacation hours.

I have a test the next week. You can study here.

I hate all of you. It’s Christmas, just pretend.

But you say “I’m busy,” and there’s nothing left for them to argue, because busyness is just as much illness as it is choice, and nobody talks about illness.

In fact, that’s how Grandma’s death kinda snuck up on us. Nobody talked about it.

She was under the weather. Then nothing. Then whispers about a tumor, always with the claim that it wasn’t anything big. Then a surgery. Then nothing. Then she was gone.

The next deer I pass (dead, of course) is Grandma. It’s lying face-up with its limbs held awkwardly above it, and I imagine the surgeons gathering around her on the operating table.

They, too, don’t talk about illness. Just things like scalpels and tissues and incisions. No name, no face, just things.

It’s hard to imagine, but I heard it on TV, so I think it’s true.

A surgeon was explaining his method. “I imagine them all as dolls. Fragile like porcelain. It calms my nerves for some reason.”

Fucking creep-o. I wonder what he dreams of at night.

Three hour mark, and I stop at the same gas stop I always do. As I fill up the tank, I look back West where I’m coming from. I could still go back, and it would still be six hours less driving all-in-all.

Before I realize it, I’m back on the interstate, heading East. I’ve never actually turned around, although I think about it every time.

I think it’s healthy to consider options. Like whenever I pick up a knife. I’ll hold the knife in my hand and think about the vein I could slit.

Then I go and chop my veggies.

It’s the freedom of considering what you can do that gives you power, not necessarily the act of doing it. The fact that I could turn around makes me feel better about not doing it.

There, there.

Darkness settles in, and with it, my imagination returns to my clay projects back at school. The three hours breeze by as I make plans for new jars and plates. The series I’m working on is themed “nostalgia.” I’ve got PEZ vases, Barbie, Ken, and G.I. Joe plate sets, and jars that have little dinosaurs as the handle for the lids. I cast them all from the real deal—knick-knacks I find at Spring garage sales and thrift stores—and glaze all of the pieces white with a splattering of colors. Pretty darn chic I think, although my professor disagrees.

She says I’m not doing anything original. Well, actually she said that I’m—and I quote; “sucking the past’s dick.”

I think she was trying to be cool by saying this, but honestly, I don’t think it worked. Sorry hun. And now, every time I see her, I imagine her sucking dick.

It doesn’t help her case that she always eats her lunch during class, and nearly always brings a banana.

Whatever, I laugh a lot more in class now. And that’s good, because I always see him in the hallway right before.

And he always smiles, and I always pretend I didn’t see.

What else can I do?

I smell the dumpster again every time I see him. I smell him.

Why does he smile at me? Does he think it’s some sort of a joke?

Ahh, I let out the deepest sigh I have in me, let it take me there. Let it numb away the pain. For hours. I let that inner silence take me all the way home.

Not the one I’m driving to, but the one inside of me—my heart, if I’ve got one. I settle down there for a bit, until my breathing is an even crashing of waves.

And I’m home.

It’s hard to believe that those were three hours of thoughts, but apparently they were, because I have arrived at heaven’s gate.

No, seriously. My mother thought it would be cool to hang a sign over our front door that reads, “This is heaven’s gate.”

I think it’s supposed to convince the reader that we’ve got our shit in order, and that her marriage is going splendid.

I wonder if anyone’s convinced.

There’s another car in the driveway that I don’t recognize. So pristine-shiny-perfect that I make plans to rub some gravel onto the hood, kick in the fender a bit, and spit on the windshield. Not now, of course, when I leave.

“Hun!” It’s my mother. I realize then where I got the habit of saying that. Shit. She’s in her flower child act again, you know the look; hair parted, unbound, tasseled white linen shirt with no bra beneath it, a thin red headband like a crown on her temple. She’s wearing a pair of slippers that don’t match the rest, making the whole thing look casual—nearly accidental. She doesn’t like people to forget that she went to the original Woodstock, with her mother no less. She was only ten. I’ve heard the story a million times. It’s like she was born that day, and that birth is her greatest accomplishment still, even at her age. Oh yeah, she’s also definitely high right now.

“Hun!” she says again, making a big act of hugging me. “Did you remember the plates?”

Oh, yeah.

“Ummm… let me get them for you.”

I go to my trunk and open it, feigning my surprise when I look beneath my things and find that they’re not inside. “Sorry,” I shrug. “I must have left them by my door on the way out.”

She kisses me on the forehead. “Live and let live.”

I follow her up the steps to the house, but she stops suddenly, in heaven’s gate, and turns to me. “Oh, yeah. Remember Charlie?”

I nod.

“Well he’s here, and he thought it would be great to have us meet my ‘replacement mother,’ so yeah.”

Well this is about to get real awkward.

I think about turning around now, right here in heaven’s gate. It’s only six hours back to school. I think about the knives in the kitchen.

Deep breath, consider the options, then follow my mother inside.

The first person I see is my father. If my mother is a flower child, my father is a cold war kid. I mean he’s as tense and metallic as a stockpile of nukes.

“Hi dad!” I say with a wave, careful not to trigger any sort of explosion.

He smiles back, clenching his whole body in the process. Jaw, fists, arms, and butt cheeks. It’s painful even to look at.

“Hey rascal!” says Charlie. T-boning me from the side, and wrapping me in his hairy arms. Charlie is meatloaf. That’s the best way to put it. A big, hairy hunk of meatloaf. He even smells meaty. He’s as playful as a puppy, too.

He knuckles my hair, like he always does, and spins me around in his arms as easily as when I was half the size I am now. He doesn’t forget to remind me of this, either.

“You were knee-high to a grasshopper, when I first picked you up,” he says.

He says it every time. Sometimes it bothers me, today it’s a refreshing, innocent, and not-tense act that I accept thankfully given the atmosphere of this living room.

I could practically take a bite out of the air if I wanted to.

Instead I keep my mouth shut, I’ve found that’s always safer.

Charlie nods to my backpack. “Bring a boy home in there?” He nudges my dad with his elbow. Brick wall.

“Yeah. Inflatable,” I joke. That’s what I do when I’d rather punch someone in the face, I make jokes.

I bet comedians are all just aching for a fight.

I answer a bucketfull of stupid questions. How the football team did at homecoming this Fall? Have they figured out what happened to my would-be-roommate? How many feet of snow did we get up there? What’s the deal with the pipeline and the protesters?

We won (I actually don’t know.) She dropped out after a week. 25. I don’t know (corporate greed versus youthful zeal, you already know who wins.)

“Charlie got married,” says my dad.

I seriously have no clue where his emotions are, but they’re not in his voice or on his face.

I nod.

Charlie grins. “She’s a dancer.” He laughs and elbows my dad in a way that suggests we should get ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is. “She’s slaving away at some tasty dinner in the other room, but I’m sure she’ll come say hi at some point.”

Charlie elbows my dad again and asks his thoughts on the football season.

I take the first opportunity to leave the room.

That’s where I find her. Weird nobody is with her, but maybe not I guess. She’s a she after all, and the men wouldn’t dare enter a kitchen, and my mom has decided to hate this woman.

If this were a script for a movie, her description would read; ‘beautiful older woman, 60’s although she looks much younger. Great, natural breasts, and silvery hair. Totally fuckable.’

Scriptwriters are horny sick-o bastards, you know.

She’s dicing tomatoes in the kitchen.

“Awh, welcome howme dear!” she calls. Geez, more cheery than my mom and dad together.

“Hi.”

“I’m Susan, Chawlly’s new wife.”

I laugh out loud at the way she says ‘Chawlly’.

She laughs too, so it’s okay.

Replacement Grandma doesn’t seem so bad.

I do judge her a bit, however. Anybody who’s willing to call themselves somebody’s ‘new wife’ needs a good kick in the butt.

“Wanna chawp some onions?”

What a weird accent. My brain is having seizures trying to place it. Nothing but error reports. Also, a very strange question, does she want to make me cry? I mean, we just met like two seconds ago.

I’ve heard that three minutes of crying is the perfect amount; it gets your endorphins running without making your eyes red and puffy, and I didn’t wear make-up today anyways.

I accept the offer, I could go for a brief cry right about now.

We chop—or chawp.

“What’s something you hate?” she asks.

What a bad-ass question, replacement grandma! I’m in love. It’s like she knows me.

“I hate anyone who tries to make their world everybody else’s, mayonnaise, the spice girls, coffee breath, people who—”

“Woah woah woah,” she interrupts. “You’ve gotta take turns. Let’s see… I hate men who hold your hand too tight at dances.” She nods, as if I understand. I don’t think I’ve ever held someone’s hand at a dance.

I’ve held… hips?—with my butt? I don’t know. Modern grind-y dancing is weird as hell.

Oh, my turn again.

“I hate Oprah.”

“What? Why?”

“Too nice. I bet she talks bad about all of them behind their back. Like ‘here’s a car,’ then later she’s mocking their haircut to her stylist. Nobody’s that nice.”

“I mean, maybe Oprah and Jesus and Pope Francis, but you’re right, it’s a lowng-shot.”

The onions are getting to me. Big, burning, stinking onion tears.

“I hate Christmaws,” she whispers.

Now it’s my turn to be surprised.

“I’ve spent a million of them alowne,” she says. “And there’s never anything good to watch own TV when you’re alowne on Christmaws.”

Makes sense. Poor lady. Doesn’t sound fun.

Fucking onion tears, God!

Suddenly I’m back behind that dumpster, the burning tears taste the same as they did that night, and I feel the same shivers on my back—like my skin doesn’t fit.

“I hate frat boys,” I say, tasting again his awful whisky breath and smelling his locker room stench. I can almost feel his cold hands on me, on my—all of me. “I hate them. With their hair and their muscles and their stupid wandering dicks—uh, excuse me. Penises.”

She laughs a bit, then goes silent. Nothing but the chop chop of my knife on the board.

“It’s owkay. My first husband, Richawrd, was quite a dick.”

I’m laughing and crying in a helpless puddle of onion. I chop the last few bits, and throw them into the bowl. She’s been done for a while, and I can feel her staring at me. Reading me. It’s uncomfortable, but nobody’s read me in a long time, and I welcome it.

We stop the game. I chop the peppers while she does the potatoes.

I’m still crying, and it’s definitely been over three minutes by now.

“You don’t get alowng with your family very well, do you?”

Hammer. Nail. Bang.

“No,” I say. “Not really.”

“Have you talked to them abouwt it?”

Shit, she knows. My first thought is panic.

I shake my head ‘no.’

I don’t know how she knows, I mean, I guess my comment about the frat boys was pretty close to a straight up claim. Still, she’s pretty darn intuitive.

We do some other kitchen-y stuff together. I’m not really paying attention, and I don’t cook much anyways, so I couldn’t tell you what we were making even if I wanted to.

“Look,” she says. “If you want to talk abouwt it, I’ll listen.”

I mutter a thank you. I won’t talk to her about it. I won’t. But I add that offer to the list of tricks in my sleeve.

It feels a lot more comforting than the knife in my hand. I put the knife down.

I don’t think I’ll spit on her car or rub gravel into it when I leave, and I don’t think I’ll head home right away either.

We wait in silence for the food to be ready, then I help her to gather up some plates and silverware, and set things out on the table.

“You ready?” she asks.

I nod, and take a deep breath.

I think about my car in the driveway, the key in my pocket, the knife on the counter. Exhale slow.

There, there.

Then I go into the other room, and ask my family to come and eat.