Me and Mom Fall for Spencer (4 page)

“It’s an old name. It used to mean games
but…not since…for a long time.”

He nods, still smiling. He looks beyond
me to my garden.
“Game night with no games.
Got it.”

We’re quiet for a couple of minutes. Then
he says, “It looks great even in the moonlight.”

He means my garden. I turn and start
walking there.

“I used to plant by the moon,” I say,
fully assuming he’s coming along.

And he is. I already know he follows me
easy. I reach the corn, the lower ears peeled and stripped or stolen. My
tomatoes are healthy and green and bushy. I can see that fruit ripening. We
walk through, Spencer and me. He’ll be itchy.

I name each thing. And I feel
light-footed, I always do at night, like a fairy, and I skip a little. When no
one is with me, I skip and run. But something scurries through the plants.
Little life.
Little thieves.
Garden gnomes.

We reach the back fence, very close to
my compost pile. I lean, he leans beside,
a
breeze picks
up a little. Jazz pours from the house.

We look over the garden. We can see
people moving in front of the kitchen window in the house and their voices,
laughter.

There are a thousand questions in my
mind I’d like to ask him, but not one can get out. Mostly, I want him to tell
me all about my alternate universe, the life he had before he moved here. Who
has he been?

“I can smell the soil,” he says.

“I know. It’s not just the soil, it’s
thousands of years. People don’t know, it’s everything that’s been…in that
soil. But it’s now, too. It’s now meeting…then.”

He looks at me, but it’s not like
anybody else looks at me. I’m not afraid of it. Not in this dark…light.

“Forget I said that.” I don’t want to
scare him off and I need a friend who will let me use an eraser sometimes. “I’m
talking about a dinosaur’s toenail fertilizing a
Burpee’s
pole bean, that’s all.”

He studies me for a minute. “She’s a
girl, she’s a girl, she’s a philosophizing girl…,” and there he goes again,
singing softly, eyes twinkling at me while he plays an invisible guitar. And
I’m rooted here like a vine on the fence, I couldn’t move if my scarecrow came
to life.

When Jason calls out, standing with the
screen open, me and Spencer squat quickly, and we’re both trying not to laugh,
but he’s trying harder
cause
he puts his hand over my
mouth, and I lick his palm and he laughs more but he doesn’t take it away, and
his palm isn’t rough and it tastes a little like soap.

But Jason goes in and Spencer takes his
hand away.

“He thinks I’m walking,” I say.

“He doesn’t have a clue about you, does
he?” Spencer says.

We are staring, well I am. He is just
receiving my stare with one of his own.

I stand slowly and Spencer does too.

 
Just like I said, he follows me easy.

“We should probably go back inside.” I
don’t know who this girl is talking because I don’t want to be anywhere but
right here.

He shoves both of his hands in his
pockets, but he’s looking at me with this serious face. I wonder if he’s mad at
me. I don’t know what I did. But I could keep looking at him.

“Sarah…,” he sweeps his hand that I
should lead, and I walk slowly back through the garden, having this crazy
feeling that his eyes are lasers on my back.

We get to the door and his hands are
still in his pockets. “You go on in,” he says. “I want to run home and get my
guitar.”

“Okay,” I say, but I’ve still got that
very weird feeling and I trip up the stairs.

He whispers, “Thanks for the tour.”

I don’t look back
cause
I’m likely to say anything.

As soon as I get in the blaring lights
of the kitchen I can see they are all in the living room. Christine is teaching
Aaron how to do some old dance step. Her hands are all over him, and he’s
flushed red and laughing it up.
Cyro
is eating pie,
his dinner plate empty. Jason is tipped back on a chair talking to Mike. Tammy
and Mom are shaking their tail feathers. Lord.

I step back in the kitchen before they
see me. I don’t know what happened out there in the yard…or if it was anything.
Am I projecting? Is this phase one? I don’t know what it is. I just know…I
liked it.
 

Me and Mom Fall
for Spencer

Chapter Seven

Game Night 3

I’m built like my dad. Mom says this. Well
I know I don’t have that booty, the one shaking towards Jason right now. Even
Cyro
is smiling. Christine and Mom are pretending, sort of,
to be doing their sandwich moves on Jason and he’s playing all dirty
gangsta
, gyrating around, and Spencer is playing along on
his guitar with whatever comes out of Mom’s IPod on the dock.

I know what Spencer’s doing. He went for
that guitar so he could hide behind it. It’s pretty brilliant. They’ve tried to
talk him out of it, but he just smiles and does the troubadour bit. Tammy’s
been sitting too close to him, dancing in front of him, shaking her six inches
of boob crack practically in his face.

It’s pretty funny. But I remember he is
older and maybe it’s not so funny. Maybe that guitar is hiding his chunky.
His chunky-junk.

I hold my glass to my lips to hide my
smile. His hand was better, Spencer’s hand over my mouth. Not his hand on his
junk like Jason’s is now.
Cyro
rebukes him. First
thing he’s said all night. I’m laughing out loud this time. I don’t know why.

Mom mistakenly thinks I’m laughing at
how she’s nearly grinding on Jason, young enough to be her son, and pretty much
her son in terms of her being a mother figure. It’s adorable that she’s poking
her trunk at his junk…well I’m laughing again. I’m my own party.

Horny Christine turns from Jason to Aaron
who seems happy enough to dance on his own, in the proximity of Christine’s
behind. Who knew my boss liked to get down? Christine embraces Aaron and there
is not room for a sheet of paper between them, certainly not a binder. Those
are stacked on a kitchen chair, by the way.
Useless.
All
of
it’s
on-line, and he knows that. He’s probably
cleaning out his office. But I know what this really is. Every now and then he
makes me come in so he can reassure himself I’m not going to quit but since I
wouldn’t…come in…he came here. He must be really worried. Don’t worry, Aaron,
it’s the traffic on the bridge just like I told you. Dork.

Like I’d quit. Labels are my life! But
he’s insecure.
Which makes me think I probably need to ask
for a raise.
But he pays me well. It keeps me and Mom going. You think
we could live on what Mom makes? She can’t even live on what she makes. But I
could live on what I make. But it doesn’t make sense to think like that and I
don’t know why I just did.

The money I pull in from my garden goes
to the no-kill shelter in town. So my garden goes to the dogs. I am laughing
again, only this time Spencer looks at me, and you can hear a pin drop in my
brain, or a tree, and if there’s no one to hear it did it really fall? That’s
what I’m thinking, but I’m also noticing how Spencer’s smile makes me very
happy and I am smiling back. I touch my own lips just to be sure, and I am
smiling just like I thought.

Mike comes in then, plops beside me. He
stinks like weed. Tammy must get a whiff because she backhands him. “Not here,”
she yells.

“I went home,” he yells
back .
Then he turns and smiles at me. He’s a mess, Mike is.
Not the tattoos, the piercings, but he’s gotten them done to help
himself
get found. That’s how he explains it. I’ve tried to
listen. They are his road signs, he says.

“Let’s cut a rug,” he says to me because
I laughed one time a hundred years ago when he said that and now…every time.

“I’ll get the scissors,” I say, yeah a
hundred times on that too, but he laughs like it’s the first.

I leave the hedonism behind and enter
the kitchen. I get the plastic stuff out so I can start to divide the
leftovers. When they see me do this they know I’ve reached saturation. But they
have to see me, and often they don’t, but one of them will eventually stumble
in here and word will get out. It’s my job to rescue them from themselves.

Mike doesn’t follow me. I peek in there
and he’s getting it on with Christine and Tammy has moved on to Aaron, but I
see Christine dart her little eyes that way. Mama knows all about other bitches
stealing her man.

So it’s back to the food and I get that
cleaned up.
Leeanne’s
kale chips didn’t get hit very
hard. They appreciate them at the market though. She’ll make a batch and sell
out quickly in the morning.

I hear
Cyro
in
the hall. He has his leg on tonight so he dressed up for us. He’s standing
there, the cane planted solid.

I keep working.
 
He knows I’m going out. I pile the dirty
dishes in the double bowled sink and wipe my hands. I get my flashlight off the
charger and touch my back pocket making sure I have my cell. I go out back and
Cyro
follows me. The steps are a little rickety but he
knows. He’s slow, but he makes it okay. I walk carefully and he keeps up behind
me. We get to the curb out front and I go across the street and stand aside as
he makes his way up his porch and he gets to his door.

“I’ll send food with Jason and make sure
he brings the chair,” I say.

He nods and goes in. I wait a few
seconds and the light comes on. I shoot a last look at my house, alit and noise
coming out the front door, and movement behind the sheer curtains. I move away
into the dark.

But I’m not far and I hear them, steps
behind me. “Sarah?” he says. “Wait up.”

And I’m two ways on it, surprised, and
not. Like I said, he follows me easy. I don’t know why.

Me and Mom Fall
for Spencer

Chapter Eight

He’s behind me.
 
When I turn he is looking at me, walking
rapidly to keep up.

“Hey baby, got a light?” he says in this
gangster kind of voice.

I shine my flashlight in his face.

He puts his hand up, “Whoa, Sarah,” he’s
smiling, but he’ll see stars for a while, not the real ones, not the ones on
Mom’s walls, but the kind I just gave him.

I click the light off. “Why are you
doing this?” I ask.

“Can’t I walk with you?”

Nobody walks with me. Others have wanted
to, but they always lack the dedication and I know that, and some things you
don’t give away. If you do, people think you wanted to, and maybe you didn’t
and now they think it’s theirs but you still feel like it’s yours, just
yours…and now you’ve let it go…as if you wanted to…like it was cheap, but it’s
not, it’s the most important thing in the world, the most important thing you
do, the most important thing you have, but if you give it, they take it, and
then you have to bear it…bear that you gave it away.

“Why do you want to Spencer?”

“Sarah…I just want to walk with you.” He
is beside me, but not. He’s one step back.

“Right this minute?”

He touches my arm and I gasp and stop
and turn a little, my hand on my arm where he touched me like it’s a wound,
like I’m holding in my blood. No one touches me on this walk. Not ever.

“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” he asks.

I shake my head, but I keep holding that
place.

“Are you upset? Hey, don’t be mad. I
just wanted…well you know the neighborhood. Maybe I need to see it, the way you
do. Can you show me?”

I don’t know. But he’s said it the best
way—that he wants to see it. “There’s no talking,” I say, but I’m torn.

He nods, puts imaginary tape over his
lips. I nearly groan frustration and start to walk again and in a second he is
right next to me, hands in his pockets but we both know I’m leading.

So we’ve cleared his house. He doesn’t
know how every night I make myself look at it, for signs of life. I don’t go
too close, but halfway, shining my light over the front of it. Later, when I’m
back in my house, I shudder to think I am that brave. I have to be.

You’ve heard how true courage doesn’t
mean you aren’t afraid to do something. It means you don’t let the fear stop
you. Well I don’t let the fear stop me, especially when it comes to Frieda’s
house. But now Spencer lives there. Now he’s moved in to the heart of the place
and there’s light on the inside.

So I want to tell him something, but we
aren’t talking now, and I don’t know him enough. But he’s moved so casually
into her house. He doesn’t know what it means to me.

Of course it would take an outsider to
overlook the history the rest of us can never overlook. It would take fresh
blood to build upon the old blood, someone ignorant of what went on before.

I trip. He grabs my arm, but I’m not
going down. I rarely fall. But I trip…a lot.

So we have passed Frieda’s and now we
pass the extra lot on the other side of Frieda’s and then we get to the rental
house with the revolving door, the long line of renters. It’s empty now, but it
won’t be for long. They come and go, come and go. I get closer to this
place,
make sure it’s still empty. I circle it, all the way
to the yard. My cat Muffins comes out from the back porch and scares me to
death. “Get home,” I say, and she stops and licks her paw and whines at me a
little. I shoot the beam over the yard, then back around the front, all the
while Spencer follows, and back to the porch and I see the empty bottle. It’s
whiskey. Someone was drinking on the porch. It could be workmen, but it wasn’t
here last night. I take that bottle to keep it clean and so I can know if there
are any
more later
. I’ll be watching.

Next
is
Mike
and Tammy’s. Mike is still at my house, but many nights he’s on the front porch
smoking. We don’t wave. He’s already charged my fence and he knows I’ll never
open the gate. I don’t date. I’ve known him all my life, since before his dad
left, all the way back. He needs to cut the grass.

Two doors down
is
Merle and Pearlie’s. I flash my light at the bedroom window, three clicks. I
wait and count to five, and a light flashes back from same window, three
clicks.

A car passes, and music pours out the
windows, leaving a trail of sound that quickly dissipates and it’s just our
feet on the sidewalk then, it’s just the cicadas.

A dog sets off barking. The Coopers
still haven’t taken their trash cans to the back. Next to them the Strands
aren’t home and papers gather on the lawn. That’s almost a week. They didn’t
tell me they’d be gone. But they don’t have to. They don’t have the money for a
vacation. Even though it’s late, I walk up to their front door and knock. I put
my ear against the wood and listen. There is nothing, no heartbeat in this
place. Like every night before I walk around, trespassing some might call it,
but I have already struck a deal, they know I’m watching and it is quiet in
back, the barbecue pit quiet,
the
shed in back still. On
the front lawn I, we, gather the papers and pile them in a corner on the porch.
Who gets the paper anymore?
The morning paper?
The Strands.

We cross the street. I smell the dryer
going in front of the house there. The windows are open. This is
Leeanne
. She needs to get to bed, for market in the
morning, but she’s a night-owl. She
dries
her clothes
at night to save on electric.

“You ever afraid?” he asks me. He’s
breaking my rule, but it holds on this side of the street too, and I don’t
answer him, just click my light once, not in his face, but on his chest.

“Okay,” he laughs a little.

But I’m thinking about it, and already I
see the distraction. I’m not paying attention. What I want to say is yes, yes
I’m afraid sometimes.
But not of the street.
Crime out
here…there’s room to run.

It’s what people do inside their houses,
where they think no one sees, I fear that, living beside it and never knowing,
watching TV while a neighbor fights for her life just a few hundred feet away. That’s
what I fear.

Next house, next house, until we’re
across the street from my house again, and the party has broken up, and Jason
is on the porch saying goodnight to Mom, but I look
Cyro’s
way, at the window closest to his chair and I see the light click, and my light
answers.

And Jason, he knows not to talk to me
now, he knows, but his hands are in his pockets, his shirt unbuttoned all the
way down,
a
cleaner white undershirt underneath. He
sees me walking with Spencer. He’s worked all day and he’s been drinking. He’s
always mad about something.

“I figured you snuck out to walk with
her.” He’s talking to Spencer.

I click my light in Jason’s face.

He puts his hand up. “Cut it out.”

I don’t know when I put my hand on Spencer’s
arm, but it’s after I move around him, curb-side so I’m closest to Jason. We
have to keep moving.

“Go on,” Jason says to our backs.

We are.
Going on.
We are.

We find a kitten at the end of the
street, a little yellow one. I don’t know if it belongs to someone but it comes
out of the bushes and tells us its troubles.

I pick it right up and carry it along. “What
are you going to do with it?”

“Her,” I say, breaking my rule.

“What are you going to do?”

I don’t answer because I’ll figure out
if she belongs to someone and if not, I’ll find a home, and if not, I’ll take
her to the no-kill in Ramsey.

“She’s not mangy,” I tell Spencer once
we reach my house again.

“She might belong to someone,” he says.

I am holding her, looking at her, and he
is scratching the back of her neck a little, and his finger are very long, and
very close to me.

“Sarah?”

I look up at him. I’m glad I was
there…to save this kitten. Or steal her from her owners…but just for a night.

“Thanks for letting me walk with you.”

“You’re staring at me,” I say.

He laughs a little, raises his brows,
big smile and the words aren’t coming but I see him searching.

I laugh a little too because…I don’t
know why.

“You can’t do it again,” I say. Crap.

“Do…walk with you?”

Now I’m staring. It took the most of his
smile when I said that.

“I would like to,” he says.

“I know,” I groan. I turn away and
notice Aaron’s car is still here. Well I can hear them in the house, see them
even.

“Is that so bad? I won’t talk. I
promise.”

“Why? You have better things….”

“See that’s where you’re wrong,” he says,
taking the kitten from me, his knuckles lightly brushing me. “What could I do
that’s better than rescuing kittens?”

“You….” I can’t get it out, but I am
starting to get the ideas. For one this is mine. For two if he goes he will
mess it up. For three it’s hard to pay attention when he’s with me. I do this
myself. I have to do it myself.

“I’ll think about it,” I say.

“You will? How long will you need?”

“Three days,” I say, to give myself
plenty of space.

“Why three days?”

“Three days, take it or leave it.”

He laughs. “You drive a hard bargain Sullivan.”

I’m not bargaining. He’s trying to
bargain. I reach for the cat but Spencer turns so his shoulder blocks me. “She’s
okay. I’ll let her spend the night.” He smiles at me. I don’t know why that
hangs there between us. But I imagine a lot of things. But one thing I know
about Spencer now. He’s the loneliest person I’ve ever met.

But of course I don’t say any of this. I
just let him take the kitten.