“Twenty-six is plenty rich, Thomas Madison,” I said.
Finally on Sunday he let me go. He sent me into town to get carryout from the diner. “No offense against your eggs,” he said. By then it was a relief. I felt like I had to break free to visit my mother’s house, just for an afternoon. It was not like he was keeping me there, but as soon as I left I let out a giggle, like I was being a bad girl. There was just something in me that needed relief.
“Say hi to your friend Timber,” Thomas said as I left. He said it with a little lisp. Sometimes Thomas was such a child.
At my parents’ house, there were the stirrings of something dangerous. I pulled up in the driveway and saw Jenny standing on one side of the front door, car keys in her hands, and my mother standing on the other side of it. The way their lips were moving, and their stance, even though I could not hear a thing, I knew something terrible was happening. It made me think about the way the sky looked an hour before a storm hit during tornado season every fall, the way it turned so fierce and dark in an instant. The wind always felt so invigorating, even though it was too strong for anything good to come from it. And my mother and my sister were so swollen with beauty when they were riled up. The rosy color in their cheeks, the way their eyes glittered, the thrust of their bodies upward. I sat there and watched them for a minute longer; I allowed myself the luxury of watching the disaster, and then I turned off the car and got out. Once I opened the door I could hear my sister yelling.
“You think because you’re miserable everyone else around you has to be miserable,” she said.
“You think maybe I might know a thing or two about life?” said my mother. “That maybe I might have gained a little knowledge in my time on this planet?”
Her mistake was saying it like it was a question instead of a fact, but my mother never knew how to handle the whirlwind that was Jenny. She thought she had it all figured out with me, but I was easy, I was simple, I wanted to be controlled.
“What I think is that you are a lonely, jealous”—Jenny was spitting now, I could see it from where I stood—“bored old lady who has nothing better to do than mess with my life. That’s what I think about you and your knowledge.”
She turned away from our mother and toward me. She was wearing someone’s varsity jacket, I noticed (even though it was too hot for much more than a T-shirt), and short blue jean shorts that barely covered the tops of her thighs. Her legs were tan all over. Her hair was as long as mine was at her age, but she did not wear it straight, she wore it wavy. I knew she spent an hour every morning in the bathroom with the curling iron, a thoughtful look on her face as she applied heat and pressure to her head, like if she could just change the texture and shape of her hair, she could change everything else around her, too.
Our mother shoved open the front door with her elbow—wouldn’t want to put down that beer can, not for a second—and shot the other hand out toward Jenny. But Jenny was too quick and skipped down the stairs away from her. Oh my Lord, I thought, we are officially town trash now, with emotional disturbances on front porches just like the rest of them. Jenny sang this weird little song while she skipped. It made me queasy, that song. Then my mother hurled her beer can at Jenny’s head. She must have been pretty lit because it landed softly on the front lawn, a few feet away.
Jenny laughed at her and said, “Nice aim, old lady.”
“Don’t make it worse,” I said.
Jenny ran behind me, leaned close to my ear and whispered, “She’s crazy.”
“So are you,” I said back.
“No no no,” she said. She wrapped her arms tight around the front of me, and I felt her belly, warm and firm, against my back. She hummed in my ear. I should have told her to just hop on like we did when we were kids. I should have just carried her away with me. I should have just watched over her right then, and never let my eyes off her again.
Our mother moved closer toward us, but then the sight of us embracing stopped her. I think she was touched. Her two daughters hugging in the driveway. We loved each other. There was love in the world, in her life. It existed.
“Leave me be,” said Jenny.
“I hope you had fun,” said my mother.
“I always do,” said Jenny.