“I try not to worry about you, Henry.” Carrie hesitated and then let out a long dramatic sigh. “That’s the truth.” Carrie opened the door and put her apron back on. “I better get back.” Carrie blew a kiss to Henry. “I’ll see you later. Come before dark, okay? I’ll be there by four.”
Henry went through the drive-through and ate his fries, his greasy fingers marking up the steering wheel. After all these years the memory of Buddy was so strong. Buddy funked up his room when he spent the night with clothes he carried in a pillowcase that didn’t get washed very often. Years before, Buddy had picked up eleven-year-old Henry from school. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said. Buddy’s fingernails were just long enough to be unusual and were painted with clear polish. How had Henry never noticed his nails? Buddy tapped the steering wheel to every tune coming on from the white light rock station, baby, baby don’t get hooked on me, I remember when rock was young, take it to the limit one more time, he sang. Henry didn’t worry in the twenty minutes it took to get to Statesville or even the sixty or so miles they drove to Charlotte. “Welcome to the B side,” Uncle Buddy said and parked the car at a Denny’s just as they reached the city. Only when Buddy had gone inside leaving Henry in the car alone did Henry consider being afraid. Henry counted the few coins in his pocket and added it to the change in the car and called his mother from the phone booth in the parking lot.
“Did you call your mama?” Uncle Buddy asked when he returned.
“Yeah.” Henry nodded and admitted the act, but for some reason he felt ashamed.
“I would have done the same thing. I sure would have. You know,” Uncle Buddy began with his freckled face up close to Henry’s, “I never would have hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” Until that moment Henry had not considered himself in any danger. Henry wanted to ask Uncle Buddy so many things, but even as a child he knew the answers didn’t matter. The only question that meant anything was one Buddy probably couldn’t answer. Did you feel it when your mind slipped like a backbone, like a bad knee?
8
That night Ava had the dream again. The three of them are in their dirty kitchen. Ava is stacking dishes to make room in the sink and runs water into the breakfast pot. Their son is crying softly in the next room because he can’t understand that he can’t go pay, go pay at the park. But they must start the day. The man stirs the bubbling oatmeal as she pours the milk thick as cream into the fancy bottle proven to reduce gas bubbles in little bellies. A fortune in bottles and nipples, her husband says, her brother says, a man she does not recognize says, depending on the night. But she doesn’t need money, not at all. The baby drinks and the cat the baby wants is thankfully still imaginary with imaginary winding around and through their legs, begging in that sullen privileged way cats do.
“Can you please take out the trash please,” she says to him. But there is no please in her voice. Whining, whining, an unbroken record or do what you are supposed to in her tone. Not like he hears or has heard for a long time. He is turned from her. Her brother, her husband, the man she does not know hides his face. She thinks about the days they would dance on this very floor barefoot and light as children. There were times when the food was greasy and fried and they ate with their fingers and wiped them on already soiled jeans. But life is not compromised just because it is tiring, and a small body reaches out for them, calls out to them from other rooms. She will wake from this dream with a feeling like floating, a lightness she will wear for the rest of the day.
9
“I’m drawing you now,” Marcus said.
“You don’t know what I look like. Just don’t draw me ugly.”
“I won’t.” Marcus chuckled. “Do you draw? I know you said Devon does.”
“My hobbies are working and sleeping,” Sylvia said. She poked her tongue in the space where her right molar used to be. Did messing with her teeth count as a hobby? Her dentist said that eventually her teeth would shift away from each other, trying to make up for the hole in their ranks. That was too much for just the dumb movement of the body. If there is space something moves to fill it with no intention to it at all.
“You ever see one of those movies with painters lined up in Paris? They’re all outside and people are strolling by. Do you remember?”
“I think I do. I’ve probably seen one or two”
“I’m going to be one of them.”
“You going to wear a beret?” Sylvia chuckled.
“Everybody looks stupid in them, why not me,” Marcus said.
“Why not you?” Sylvia said. She sometimes thought that Marcus was in another country. When Sylvia was a girl, if a relative moved a state away you might not see them but once a year. If they moved across the country, you might not see them for years or you might never see them again. Your relationship with your people reduced to a few phone calls, hurry up, long-distance! Young people Ava’s age and younger wouldn’t stand for that. What Sylvia and her generation had accepted as obvious was ridiculous to them. Just get on a plane, get in the car, believe in all kinds of possibilities. But who could believe? Before long too many things weighed you down and left you hoping in nothing farther away than the reach of your hand. Sylvia didn’t want that kind of settling for Marcus. He was far too young to have all the doors shut and latched right in front of him.
“I never told anybody that,” Marcus said. “You know I’ve never been anywhere but one time to South Carolina in my life. I’ve never even been on an airplane.”
“You’ll get there. People like us go places every day,” Sylvia said.
“You start thinking about going. Going anywhere. Tay won’t shut up about it. Every single day. I wake up to him begging. I go to sleep to it. Everybody’s thinking the same thing.
“He’s the one to say it so you know he’s messed up.” Marcus laughed.
“Can you talk to him?”
“Nobody can,” Marcus said.
“You’ll be going before you know it. Flying, driving, whatever you want to do.”
“Where do you want to go, Sylvia?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. As soon as I got there I’d just want to be home.”
“Don’t give up, Sylvia. Did you hear that? Did you hear me? Sylvia? Sylvia?”
10
Sylvia opened the back door of her house and the man stood with his back to her in the yard. Some people change dramatically with age. Pictures from their youth look like pictures of another person altogether. Though he was no longer a skinny boy, he looked exactly the same. Sylvia would know him instantly and anywhere. “Look at you.”