SANDRA
Memory is as thick as mud. It rises up, it overwhelms. It sucks you down and freezes you where you stand.
Thrash and kick and gnash your teeth. There’s no escaping it.
Down.
In Georgia, the mud was thick and dark as oil.
Down.
I remember my dad scraping his shoes on the rusted shoe box he inherited from his father, who I met only once, and who had chins like fat rolls of sausage; and my mother, vibrating like a plucked string, hitting high notes of rage, whenever he forgot and tracked mud across the floor.
And further down:
My friend Cissy’s housekeeper, Zulime, smearing cold mud on my arms swollen with poison oak, telling me to hush, now.
The flood of 1987, and the wash of water and silt thundering down the lawn from the river, and the poor turtle on the front porch.
Down and down, until all that’s left is the memory of ghosts.
Trenton’s been slinking around outside, spying, because the cops aren’t gone three minutes before he sticks his head back into the greenhouse. Caroline has gone inside, probably reloading on the sauce. Minna is just standing there, leaning against the shelves, eyes closed, birds twittering through the broken ceiling, sunlight slanting hard as knives.
“What did they want?” Trenton says, trying to act casual.
“Some girl disappeared,” Minna says, without opening her eyes, “from Boston.”
Trenton’s a little less wound up than he was before. His face isn’t so cigarette-ash gray. “Boston? So what’re they doing out here?”
“I don’t know.” She straightens up. “Hey—do you remember Danny Topornycky? Toadie?” Minna waits for Trenton to respond, which he doesn’t. “Forget it. You were too young.”
“What about him?” Trenton says.
“Nothing. He’s a cop now, that’s all. We just ran into him.” She picks at her thumbnail with her teeth. “I always really liked Danny.”
“Don’t,” Trenton says, shoving his hands in his pockets and making for the pantry door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just don’t.” Then he stops, suddenly, and pivots. “Wait. He’s a cop?”
“Yeah. So?” It’s Minna’s turn to play sullen.
Trenton licks his lips, which are dry, full of flaking skin. “You . . . you have to do me a favor.”
“Do I?” But then: “What is it?”
“That person . . . ” he says. “The person who was shot in the house . . . ?”
Minna rolls her eyes. “That’s just a story, Trenton. I don’t even know if it—”
“Just find out, will you?” he says. “Just find out when, and, and . . . who. I’m just . . . curious, okay? Just ask him. For me.”
Minna sighs. “All right,” she says. “I’ll ask. But that was years and years ago. He may not know.”
“He saw her,” Alice whispers, awed. “I told you. He saw her.”
“But he thinks she’s me,” I say. That gives me a nice, long laugh.
Martin better be ready.
I wonder whether he still fiddles with his watch when he’s nervous, whether he still wears socks to his knees, whether his laugh still sounds the same: like a quick explosion.
I wonder whether he kept the letters. Probably burned or shredded them. He knew what I could do, what I would do, if I’d had the chance. He’d fed me nothing but lie after lie until I was choking on them, like one of those geese that gets cream shoved down its throat.
I wonder whether he still does his shopping at Gristedes, and whether it even still exists.
I first met Martin over the watermelons. That’s not one of those expressions, either, that means something dirty even though it doesn’t sound like it. I used to like going to the grocery store, even when I didn’t have two nickels to rub together.
I liked the way the vegetables were all laid out like jewelry in a velvet-lined case: cabbages tucked neatly next to shiny red peppers next to cucumbers next to lettuce, all of it misted over, regular, with a fine spray of water. Sometimes on hot days I’d go to the store just to bend down and put my face over the lettuce and inhale, let the water hit the back of my neck and shoulders, and pretend I was nothing but a cabbage, or a flower in a greenhouse—with nothing to do but be cared for.
Maybe that’s why Caroline was so crazy about her greenhouse. Maybe she liked pretending, too.
I’d seen Martin once or twice in passing. He had the kind of face you remember: broad and flat, with eyes as round as gumdrops, like a little kid’s face that’s just been stretched and pulled a little by the years. He was tall, too: six foot two, and sturdy as a bulldozer. That’s just how I like my men: if I wanted someone I could knock over, I’d start going in for women.
It was July and a heat wave and I’d come to the store to cool off, stick my face in the freezers and under the mist, pick up a refill of tonic and maybe some ice cream to eat for dinner. And there in the center of the produce aisle was a huge display of watermelons: a pyramid of them, stacked halfway to the ceiling, and several of them cut open to show off their insides, juicy and red, winking at me like a promise.
Of all things, it made me think of my mother, how she greased one up in lard before the church social every June, and how the kids would fight to catch hold of it; and spitting watermelon seeds off the front porch and watching the birds swoop down to eat them; and the first bite, letting juice run all the way to your elbow. The heat was making me loopy. It nearly made me start crying to think of how long it had been since I’d had a watermelon.
So I went poking and squeezing and looking for the perfect one, like I’d seen my mother do hundreds of times, working my way around the pyramid and taking my time. I never saw Martin come up. But just when I got my hands around a watermelon, his hands landed on it, too.
“It’s mine,” was the first thing I said, not taking my hands off it.
“I don’t think so,” he said. He didn’t take his hands off, either, so we were standing there, two strangers, holding a watermelon between us.
“Ladies first,” I said.
He laughed. I have a thing for teeth, and he had nice ones. “That’s old-fashioned,” he said.
“I’m old-fashioned,” I said.
“I doubt that.” The smile stayed in his eyes. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“How about we share it?” he said.
So we did. We drove back to my place, and we polished off the whole damn watermelon and a bottle of Glenlivet he picked up on the way. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time, and I was flattered, too. Martin worked on the Buffalo City Council and had his own business selling medical equipment. He wasn’t some lowlife I’d picked up in a bar.
That first night was great. One of the best of my life, I’d say. I pretended not to notice his wedding ring the whole time.