I pick up her purse and hand it to her. Blushing, she replaces it on top of the wooden box. “Thank you,” she says, offering a handshake. “I’m Arlene, by the way.”
Her crooked fingers point in all directions, withering under a spiderweb of bulging veins and rusty rings. Not surprisingly, her hand is soft in mine; surprisingly, it is quite pleasant.
“I’m Mim.”
She raises the same hand to adjust her beehive. “What an interesting name. Mim. Almost as interesting as those shoes.”
I smile politely. “It’s an acroname, actually.”
“A what?”
“My real name is Mary Iris Malone. Mim is just an acronym, but when I was younger, I thought it was acroname, which made total sense.”
“Acroname. How clever,” says Arlene.
“Mary was my grandmother’s name.”
“It’s quite lovely.”
I shrug. “I guess. It doesn’t really . . .”
“Match the shoes?” she says, nudging me in the ribs.
Arlene is turning out to be a surprise-a-minute, with her Velcro shoes and phraseology, all pizzazz and très chic, non. I wonder if she’d be so likable if I unloaded on her—just told her everything, even the BREAKING NEWS. I could do it, too. Those bright blue, batty eyes are just begging for it.
“So what’s in Cleveland?” she asks, pointing to my backpack. The corner of an envelope is sticking out of a side pocket, its return address clearly visible.
Eve Durham
PO Box 449
Cleveland, OH 44103
I tuck the envelope away. “Nothing. My . . . uncle.”
“Oh?” says Arlene, raising her eyebrows. “Hmm.”
“What?”
“I was just thinking—Eve is an interesting name for a man.”
Like a priest during confession, Arlene doesn’t meet my eyes. She folds her hands across the purse in her lap, looks straight ahead, and waits for me to tell the truth. We’ve only just met, but things like time hardly matter when dealing with a familiar spirit.
I turn, look out the window as the dense forest zooms by in a blur, a thousand trees becoming one. “My parents got divorced three months ago,” I say, just loud enough for her to hear over the hum of the engine. “Dad found a replacement at Denny’s.”
“The restaurant?”
“I know, right? Most people find breakfast.” Arlene doesn’t laugh at my joke, which makes me like her even more. Some jokes aren’t meant to be funny. “The wedding was six weeks ago. They’re married now.” My chest tightens at the sound of my own words. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. “Eve is my mother. She lives in Cleveland.”
I feel Arlene’s gentle touch on my back, and I’m afraid of what’s coming. The catchphrase monologue. The sermon of encouragement, imploring bravery in the face of a crumbling American family. It’s all in the manual. Adults just can’t help themselves when it comes to Words of Wisdom.
“Is he a good man?” she asks. Arlene, it would seem, has not read the manual.
“Who?”
“Your father, dear.”
Through the window, I see the ocean of trees, now in slow motion: each trunk, an anchor; each treetop, a rolling wave; a thousand coiling branches, leaves, sharp pine needles. My own reflection in the window is ghostlike, translucent. I am part of this Sea of Trees, this landscape blurred.
“All my sharp edges,” I whisper.
Arlene says something, but it’s muffled, as if from an adjacent room. The hum of the bus dissolves, too. Everything is quiet. I hear only my breath, my heartbeat, the internal factory of Mim Malone.