She Sends Her Regards
Fifteen minutes left. I count them on a Salvation Army man’s watch, scratched on the face. Sometimes I pretend that it was his;
sent back from a war, or a peace march. Contradictions aside, the impossibility prevails. That he exists at all, past faded
photographs with ruffled shirts; Prom night tuxedo, and that big hair picture of Mom, looking younger than eighteen. He had
scared as hell eyes. I was his little girl, once. I had waited by the screen door, pleading for his arrival, my knuckles bleeding and
raw, after he stopped coming home at all. She insists that everything healed up fine, that I was better for all of it. Better from the
leaving, the going on, and the raising her on the way; all those band-aids over failed marriages, a baby brother; breakdowns,
break-ups, drunken calls from I don’t know where I am. An adolescent raising an adolescent, in reverse.
This band is worn. It leaves stains on my skin sometimes, when I drive home with my arm out the window, capturing wind waves,
with the radio turned up high. At the spin of a bottle, the turn of a dial, I could just keep driving all the way past the familiar off-
ramps. There is nothing waiting at home for me, at least nothing unexpected, or new. Just his breath on the back of my neck, hot
and stale, smelling of motorcycle gas fumes, Marlboro Reds, and late night bottom of the pot Denny’s coffee. I lie there opposite
his face every night, lying, fading away. I watch the shadow of false dance on the wall. I can count to ten once, and then
backwards, flutter my eyelashes, three sighs, and it's done. Then he’ll pass out next to me, snoring too close to my ear, as I teeter
too close to the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets to barely hang on. This is as far as I can go without giving notice; two weeks,
or otherwise. I stare at the wall still, sleepless, my legs sticky. If I move to take a shower he might wake, or I might just let myself
slip down the drain, and empty out into the ocean.
I turn the page down. He tells me that dog-eared books lose their value. That people will notice the carelessness when they
borrow a book, or just pick it up and page through, that they will see. But, he’ll never see this one. I can hear in my head how he’d
scoff at it, shake his head and say that this is what too much television will do to you. He'll hand me yet another copy of Crime and
Punishment, pat my head; only two years younger and still I’m supposed to play the role of Jake’s little girlfriend. As if he can read
the abandonment in my eyes, that need for a father figure, twisted and recalled, recoiled. The fact lost on him that sometimes I
read trash like V.C. Andrews because I need that taste of poison to fill in the empty spots, to make my own family attic look clearer,
saner, less cracked and torn. The page rips as I fold it, my hands betraying me again. I check for scars, for the story they tell,
and I see nothing.
I walk outside; fish my sunglasses out of the bottom of my bag. Where is my lighter? The pink one with glitter. The one I bought
this morning. That guy behind the counter wears too much cologne, I think. He smells like the guys who work downstairs, or the
ones who dance at Rage. (He never wore that much). He said to me, with a smirk. “You like the pink one? not black?” I laugh, roll
my eyes, and palm the green one, also with glitter, on my way out. He doesn’t notice. His eyes are locked on my breasts the
whole time he talks to me, watching the rise and fall of my breathing, the noticeable cold morning air that my sweater cannot
disguise. The lighters remind me of mixed tapes. All those trips up the coast, the way Robert’s tongue felt in my mouth; ever
promising things he would never deliver. I can almost hear the way our voices intertwined back then, all those secrets kept, and
shared. And, the hiccups of betrayal, just like these petty theft lapses of mine. His predilection for giving blow jobs to boys is right
up there with my constant study in the arts of denial. I’m still good at it; lying just seeps so easily from my pores.
I am supposed to forget about him. I am supposed to have left all that unopened hesitation behind me, like the abandoned blank
walls that I stripped the posters off from, leaving only that sticky tape residue behind. I packed up all those boxes, loaded them
into the borrowed office furniture truck, took them to his apartment. I knew that I was leaving pieces of me in the floorboards of my
childhood bedroom, and in the back seat of my broken down first car. A hundred dollars from the junk yard was what they offered
me for her. “But you’ll have to drive it here yourself.” Dropped her off and walked away; might as well have pushed her off a cliff
with me tied to the back bumper. The rear view mirror pops off easily, I should have told them, and has razor blade scratches,
unique grooves in the glass. I wish I had a line of something right now; that familiar burn to sting the back of my throat.
Maybe I could pack everything back up and just say I changed my mind. Take back the middle of April, too. Jake’s birthday
present. How I had faked it even back then; his hand yanking my head back, my hair rough through his fingers. I had opened my
eyes wide and focused on the pain, the map on the wall, that faint smell of burnt toast. I could hear his mother in the kitchen. He
wanted the escape hatch, too, the reason to leave.
My lips feel chapped, raw. I bite down anyway and taste the metallic sting of blood. Count to ten and it’s over. Happy Birthday,
baby (He isn’t you). I sit down against the wall, run my hand slowly across the stucco, and feel the slight tug on my skin, the rough
exterior pull. How easily we can tear, bleed, and heal over again. I'm an expert at looking good as new, at least on the surface. I
pull my knees to my chest, rest my chin. My torn black stockings show from the small gap between skirt and boots. I picked them
up off the floor by the window, had slid them on with shaky hands. The gentle grasp required for fabric so vulnerable, sheer, and
fragile. My fingers could just push through, and rip everything to shreds, even if my nails are bitten down to the quick. My finger
tips always have that slight pink tinge of abuse. My zipper catches, snagging, another run up my leg. But, no one sees it. I pull
the edge of my skirt down lower and fold my body up closer into myself. Inhale. Flick. I’m tempted to touch my flesh with fire just to
feel something besides this lump of doubt in my throat.
The weight of not saying anything is like the nagging sound of an invisible clock, ticking incessantly. As if that big clock in Peter
Pan is buried in the deepest parts of my insides. Big Ben, right? I’ve forgotten my Pixie Dust somewhere along the way, though. I
have forgotten how to fly.
He will tell me this is just another way to prove my immaturity, that it is so ordinary to stumble this way. To have this conversation
at all will seem so unnecessary, to him. We just unpacked, hammered nails into the walls. Hold it still, Jane. Stop shaking. Not
there. Here. Didn’t you study the floor plan I drew up? Pin your hair up next time. You know how it makes your neck look longer.
Now this picture over here. The couch there. I am just part of the drawing, the sketch of a life in his black bound book, Journal
#26. “You are in these pages, don’t worry”, he assures me in that lowered tone, through his own puffs, and exhales. He will say
there is no room here, for this. That’s why my desk had to go, my school schedule, and my college education. “School is just
someone else’s view of the world, we will make our own; the two of us. I’ll show you how it will all work out.” His own design. His,
the two of us; there is only room enough for two.
Standing up I feel slightly dizzy. This skirt is perfect for spinning, hands behind my back as I let myself go. I can hear the music
swell in my ears. Close my eyes and I can feel the sky dim, and turn itself into night. The stars dot a path, carve out a perfect
space and my heart pulses as I let the imagined thump of beats course through me and thin my blood. My feet just walk forward,
though, even as I try to grab onto the nearest lamp post, phone booth, or stranger’s arm.
I need that kind of darkness that a small club with a membership desk at the front gifted me once. I long for that sort of anonymity,
and knowing. The kind of trouble I could drum up back then didn’t play out like this in the end. The screens that flickered and
reflected back were made of easier to mend snags, and missteps. I would turn myself inside out and back again, if I was still
there. I’d find a pathway, a bathroom stall, a reflection, a new song. Grab one of the passed out red cups from the door staff after
hours, in exchange for a black lipsticked kiss. I suppose it was just a different scent of denial, but it felt so much more palpable.
She would know how to solve this. But my hand slips when I pick up the phone, or when I try to bring pen to paper write her.
There has been this pause between us, like a button pushed before the end of the song arrives. I walked out of the room during a
commercial break, and when I stepped back in she was gone. We were gone. Perhaps it was too much to keep my half of the
bargain. The reminders of him painted boldly in black and blue, on pale skin, on the street lines, the call boxes, and in that crease
of concern she would get when she looked at me. I didn’t know how to spell out help. Push me back under, love; water my eyes,
my nose, and my lungs; fill me up until I can no longer take in air, or anything. Then pull me back out, my heart racing, my
expression wide and wild. She would do this now, give me her answers. But then I’d have to embrace it, hold it away from me;
recognition of something that will soon be impossible to hide.
The ice swirls. I spin and shake the straw, pull back the lid, slide ice chips into my mouth, crunching them between my teeth. I
think about how Carrie would laugh and say, “You know what chewing on ice means?” But this is far past sexual frustration. This is
about breaking something, even if only the enamel on my teeth. It is about creating noise in my head as the ice cracks. How it
delays the whispers in my head, the words I’m choosing again to ignore; one more day, one more hour, one more second. Maybe
if I keep chewing, keep walking, keep reading grocery store last minute decision aisle novels. Keep memorizing the lyrics to She’s
Lost Control. Watching his fingers on the strings as he shows me the bass line, again, telling me how easy it could be if I just tried
harder. How he taught himself to play songs like this. How New Order progressed the sound of Joy Division, and that I needed to
grow past my Death Rocker tastes and sensibilities. “Stop wearing so much black, Jane.” I drown out the words as procrastination
takes her predictive place in line. Take the stage, disguised as a half-empty parking lot, front and center, arms in the air; now spin.
I light another cigarette.
My waistline is beginning to betray me. My hand rests unconsciously on my belly. I mouth I’m sorry to my reflection in the store
window, and I can’t do this I whisper out into the air. I pour more ice into my mouth. I count the steps back to the second shift. He is
late again. I look at my watch, and put my weight all on my toe tips, up and down, lift and decline. He knows how much I hate it
when he’s late. I could go back in and unlock the gate, call him from inside, wait for him there. But, that would mean alarm codes,
re-closing the gate, writing down an explanation for re-entry, again. I know Joe is going to start wondering. I see the way his
eyebrow raises when I come in, that look of distrust. I’ve seen it before, like he knows about the stolen pens, and the ten dollars
that one time when my gas tank was empty, and when I’d run out of cigarettes. It all paints this pink glow to my face, guilt. My eyes
invariably darting back and forth, and my lies never taken in clearly, misunderstood his second-language English. I know he
watches the way my hands shake, and how I’m always too quick to volunteer for anything.
So, I guess I’ll stay put. Stand here and wait. My heart skipping a beat every time I see a car, craning my neck to see if this one is
finally him while nightmare storybook pages float through my head. I play act shock and surprise when they break the news to me;
a car accident, a failed robbery, a stabbed victim bleeding internally. I try on how my mask of sorrow would look, practice hiding a
momentary buzz of relief, and freedom. These were the tales I played in my head as a child, too, while I waited in a deserted
playground, Mom ever losing track of time. I would stand there watching every child wave from a car window. Ice cream and
Daddy’s dream, they all were. The mad array of violent endings I saw, that I almost hoped for, just something she could use to
explain, to somehow make the forever waiting worthwhile; and not just me as a forgotten errand, or an afterthought.
I loathe these inner folds of me. The hushed side of who I am. I know most people are fooled by my parochial school past. The
way I can write a perfect essay, play a good game. They laugh at the trappings of a girl gone bad, the witch’s cackle, the smeared
kohl under my eyes, and my thrift shop garb in fifty five shades of black. They think they can look right through me, as they nod in
this smug way as if to say “you can’t fool me” as if I am just a naïve little thing underneath it all; bright and shiny, sewing paths to a
happy ending in some optimism on overdrive fairytale. They all stand in line to walk across me, like I’m some god damn yellow
brick road.
If they took off my clothes they would see the indentations, the boot scuffs, the notches and nicks where the heels dig in. They all
think I love it. Dig it. Dance a tango to the beat of give everything to everyone. The never ending needy push their shopping
carts to me, park them in my driveway, just up and under the eaves, or in the stairwells. They come to tuck themselves in next to
me as I sleep, steal the good blanket, and throw me to the floor. They would all run and hide for cover if they saw beneath my
skin, all the gore, and the doubts. The pathologic writer of tell-tale explanations finally exposed. I spin better than a spider, but no
one squints hard enough to notice the web.
Tonight I think I’ll tell him. Throw it out there over a plate of fries, right before he pulls out his latest scheme dream that will be
forgotten in a month. His plans used as rolling paper to smoke one last joint. “I produce more when I’m stoned”, he says this from
the couch, where he’s sat for the last twelve hours, paging through the free press, the want-ads, the lost and found. He asks for
another five cookies, always better to polish off the whole row, and then the symmetry is complete and intact. And, in his bakery
goods order, or despite it, the space between us widens. Some day I’m sure one of us will fall in, disappear.
Maybe this will finally do it. The words will spill out and a portal will open up in the sky, pull me up by my ears. He will just see my
feet dangle for a second before I’m gone. That look of shock still plastered across his face, the circular twist of argued perspective
and reasons waiting on the tip of his tongue. I am ever holding my breath while he readies his army, lying back as I let them march
on over to me; his hostile takeover. His words shake me until I’m blue in the face. But, I’ll have beaten him to the proverbial
punch. I’ll be gone then, taken through the space portal, and he can just sit back and waft in the titles and role models he'll swear I
could have been. Or maybe, he will take that waitress girl’s obvious pass at him, bang her in the bathroom stall, right next to I heart
Gene Loves Jezebel, and Adam lies, with three exclamation points. Her face pushed up against the chill of the metal door, the
latch barely holding them in; lipstick pink smear smudge leftovers and wrinkles smoothed out of her brown corduroy skirt, as she
placates her way back to work, fixing her hair in the dessert glass. They wouldn’t mind me; I’ll just be floating by, watching. She
sighs a little quieter than I do. The staccato one two three a bit too rushed. But, it will all help him forget, and let go, and all of it
might assuage my guilt.
I hear the brakes squeal. I recognize the impatience even in the way he drives. Somehow the story will reverse and back-up into
me. Responsibility pinned to my sweater, stuck sideways and in through my flesh, and back out again. I slam the door a little
harder than necessary, and sulk into the seat. Somehow my body has twisted and turned itself into adolescence, again. I can
almost hear my Mom telling me to sit up straight, to project my voice to the back of the room, to lose ten pounds, to go to more
parties, and to kiss more boys. All the expectations she never voiced, but just threw at me without words. How she longed for me
to fall, to fail, ditch classes, earn a reputation, open up my legs, and break curfew. Anything that would bring me to her with tear
stained cheeks and choked-up pleadings. She would bravely hold my hand at the clinic, wait for me with a magazine, and the
looks of admiration from the other scared girls who couldn’t tell their own Mothers; she would bask in it. How they would tell her I
was the luckiest.
Maybe she would hold my hand now, eight years too late. Can I cash in a rain check for my teenage rebellion? I press my nose
into the passenger window glass, breathe out hard, blowing. I watch the hot air fog block my view. I’m tempted to etch help with
my fingertips. I remember doing that as a child; smile faces, dogs, my name. Mom would yell back at me “Don’t write on the
windows!” and I’d deny it, forgetting that it would stay there, even after days went by. You’d still see the image, taunting me with its
existence, chiding and singing at me liar, liar pants on fire. Another knot in my stomach, tied in a bow, even though she wouldn't
remember telling me no.
I rest my head on the glass pane; feel the cool shock to my system. Michael Penn is singing about blue jeans. We just passed a 7-
11, and I can almost smell the inside; old hot dogs on that continuous roller thing, with one always left in the back, all shriveled up.
The bleep blips of video games, the warning labels across the magazines, 18 and over or this is not a library; the whir of the
Slurpee machine. I want to shrink three feet and walk through the door, quarters stashed in my pocket for Ms. Pac Man, and
enough money for the biggest size, my own suicide in multi-colors, a Cola and Wild Cherry death. That big straw with the spoon
on the end, Michael tried to see how far up his nose it would go when he was ten, I was twelve.
I catch a young boy staring at me from the window of the car next to us. His own breath shield is almost completely hiding him,
except for the eyes. We make that quick contact, that inner register of I see you, you see me. I don't even turn around to look at
him then. He is driving, humming to the radio, when the words finally come out.
"Jake, I'm pregnant."
Fifteen minutes left. I count them on a Salvation Army man’s watch, scratched on the face. Sometimes I pretend that it was his;
sent back from a war, or a peace march. Contradictions aside, the impossibility prevails. That he exists at all, past faded
photographs with ruffled shirts; Prom night tuxedo, and that big hair picture of Mom, looking younger than eighteen. He had
scared as hell eyes. I was his little girl, once. I had waited by the screen door, pleading for his arrival, my knuckles bleeding and
raw, after he stopped coming home at all. She insists that everything healed up fine, that I was better for all of it. Better from the
leaving, the going on, and the raising her on the way; all those band-aids over failed marriages, a baby brother; breakdowns,
break-ups, drunken calls from I don’t know where I am. An adolescent raising an adolescent, in reverse.
This band is worn. It leaves stains on my skin sometimes, when I drive home with my arm out the window, capturing wind waves,
with the radio turned up high. At the spin of a bottle, the turn of a dial, I could just keep driving all the way past the familiar off-
ramps. There is nothing waiting at home for me, at least nothing unexpected, or new. Just his breath on the back of my neck, hot
and stale, smelling of motorcycle gas fumes, Marlboro Reds, and late night bottom of the pot Denny’s coffee. I lie there opposite
his face every night, lying, fading away. I watch the shadow of false dance on the wall. I can count to ten once, and then
backwards, flutter my eyelashes, three sighs, and it's done. Then he’ll pass out next to me, snoring too close to my ear, as I teeter
too close to the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets to barely hang on. This is as far as I can go without giving notice; two weeks,
or otherwise. I stare at the wall still, sleepless, my legs sticky. If I move to take a shower he might wake, or I might just let myself
slip down the drain, and empty out into the ocean.
I turn the page down. He tells me that dog-eared books lose their value. That people will notice the carelessness when they
borrow a book, or just pick it up and page through, that they will see. But, he’ll never see this one. I can hear in my head how he’d
scoff at it, shake his head and say that this is what too much television will do to you. He'll hand me yet another copy of Crime and
Punishment, pat my head; only two years younger and still I’m supposed to play the role of Jake’s little girlfriend. As if he can read
the abandonment in my eyes, that need for a father figure, twisted and recalled, recoiled. The fact lost on him that sometimes I
read trash like V.C. Andrews because I need that taste of poison to fill in the empty spots, to make my own family attic look clearer,
saner, less cracked and torn. The page rips as I fold it, my hands betraying me again. I check for scars, for the story they tell,
and I see nothing.
I walk outside; fish my sunglasses out of the bottom of my bag. Where is my lighter? The pink one with glitter. The one I bought
this morning. That guy behind the counter wears too much cologne, I think. He smells like the guys who work downstairs, or the
ones who dance at Rage. (He never wore that much). He said to me, with a smirk. “You like the pink one? not black?” I laugh, roll
my eyes, and palm the green one, also with glitter, on my way out. He doesn’t notice. His eyes are locked on my breasts the
whole time he talks to me, watching the rise and fall of my breathing, the noticeable cold morning air that my sweater cannot
disguise. The lighters remind me of mixed tapes. All those trips up the coast, the way Robert’s tongue felt in my mouth; ever
promising things he would never deliver. I can almost hear the way our voices intertwined back then, all those secrets kept, and
shared. And, the hiccups of betrayal, just like these petty theft lapses of mine. His predilection for giving blow jobs to boys is right
up there with my constant study in the arts of denial. I’m still good at it; lying just seeps so easily from my pores.
I am supposed to forget about him. I am supposed to have left all that unopened hesitation behind me, like the abandoned blank
walls that I stripped the posters off from, leaving only that sticky tape residue behind. I packed up all those boxes, loaded them
into the borrowed office furniture truck, took them to his apartment. I knew that I was leaving pieces of me in the floorboards of my
childhood bedroom, and in the back seat of my broken down first car. A hundred dollars from the junk yard was what they offered
me for her. “But you’ll have to drive it here yourself.” Dropped her off and walked away; might as well have pushed her off a cliff
with me tied to the back bumper. The rear view mirror pops off easily, I should have told them, and has razor blade scratches,
unique grooves in the glass. I wish I had a line of something right now; that familiar burn to sting the back of my throat.
Maybe I could pack everything back up and just say I changed my mind. Take back the middle of April, too. Jake’s birthday
present. How I had faked it even back then; his hand yanking my head back, my hair rough through his fingers. I had opened my
eyes wide and focused on the pain, the map on the wall, that faint smell of burnt toast. I could hear his mother in the kitchen. He
wanted the escape hatch, too, the reason to leave.
My lips feel chapped, raw. I bite down anyway and taste the metallic sting of blood. Count to ten and it’s over. Happy Birthday,
baby (He isn’t you). I sit down against the wall, run my hand slowly across the stucco, and feel the slight tug on my skin, the rough
exterior pull. How easily we can tear, bleed, and heal over again. I'm an expert at looking good as new, at least on the surface. I
pull my knees to my chest, rest my chin. My torn black stockings show from the small gap between skirt and boots. I picked them
up off the floor by the window, had slid them on with shaky hands. The gentle grasp required for fabric so vulnerable, sheer, and
fragile. My fingers could just push through, and rip everything to shreds, even if my nails are bitten down to the quick. My finger
tips always have that slight pink tinge of abuse. My zipper catches, snagging, another run up my leg. But, no one sees it. I pull
the edge of my skirt down lower and fold my body up closer into myself. Inhale. Flick. I’m tempted to touch my flesh with fire just to
feel something besides this lump of doubt in my throat.
The weight of not saying anything is like the nagging sound of an invisible clock, ticking incessantly. As if that big clock in Peter
Pan is buried in the deepest parts of my insides. Big Ben, right? I’ve forgotten my Pixie Dust somewhere along the way, though. I
have forgotten how to fly.
He will tell me this is just another way to prove my immaturity, that it is so ordinary to stumble this way. To have this conversation
at all will seem so unnecessary, to him. We just unpacked, hammered nails into the walls. Hold it still, Jane. Stop shaking. Not
there. Here. Didn’t you study the floor plan I drew up? Pin your hair up next time. You know how it makes your neck look longer.
Now this picture over here. The couch there. I am just part of the drawing, the sketch of a life in his black bound book, Journal
#26. “You are in these pages, don’t worry”, he assures me in that lowered tone, through his own puffs, and exhales. He will say
there is no room here, for this. That’s why my desk had to go, my school schedule, and my college education. “School is just
someone else’s view of the world, we will make our own; the two of us. I’ll show you how it will all work out.” His own design. His,
the two of us; there is only room enough for two.
Standing up I feel slightly dizzy. This skirt is perfect for spinning, hands behind my back as I let myself go. I can hear the music
swell in my ears. Close my eyes and I can feel the sky dim, and turn itself into night. The stars dot a path, carve out a perfect
space and my heart pulses as I let the imagined thump of beats course through me and thin my blood. My feet just walk forward,
though, even as I try to grab onto the nearest lamp post, phone booth, or stranger’s arm.
I need that kind of darkness that a small club with a membership desk at the front gifted me once. I long for that sort of anonymity,
and knowing. The kind of trouble I could drum up back then didn’t play out like this in the end. The screens that flickered and
reflected back were made of easier to mend snags, and missteps. I would turn myself inside out and back again, if I was still
there. I’d find a pathway, a bathroom stall, a reflection, a new song. Grab one of the passed out red cups from the door staff after
hours, in exchange for a black lipsticked kiss. I suppose it was just a different scent of denial, but it felt so much more palpable.
She would know how to solve this. But my hand slips when I pick up the phone, or when I try to bring pen to paper write her.
There has been this pause between us, like a button pushed before the end of the song arrives. I walked out of the room during a
commercial break, and when I stepped back in she was gone. We were gone. Perhaps it was too much to keep my half of the
bargain. The reminders of him painted boldly in black and blue, on pale skin, on the street lines, the call boxes, and in that crease
of concern she would get when she looked at me. I didn’t know how to spell out help. Push me back under, love; water my eyes,
my nose, and my lungs; fill me up until I can no longer take in air, or anything. Then pull me back out, my heart racing, my
expression wide and wild. She would do this now, give me her answers. But then I’d have to embrace it, hold it away from me;
recognition of something that will soon be impossible to hide.
The ice swirls. I spin and shake the straw, pull back the lid, slide ice chips into my mouth, crunching them between my teeth. I
think about how Carrie would laugh and say, “You know what chewing on ice means?” But this is far past sexual frustration. This is
about breaking something, even if only the enamel on my teeth. It is about creating noise in my head as the ice cracks. How it
delays the whispers in my head, the words I’m choosing again to ignore; one more day, one more hour, one more second. Maybe
if I keep chewing, keep walking, keep reading grocery store last minute decision aisle novels. Keep memorizing the lyrics to She’s
Lost Control. Watching his fingers on the strings as he shows me the bass line, again, telling me how easy it could be if I just tried
harder. How he taught himself to play songs like this. How New Order progressed the sound of Joy Division, and that I needed to
grow past my Death Rocker tastes and sensibilities. “Stop wearing so much black, Jane.” I drown out the words as procrastination
takes her predictive place in line. Take the stage, disguised as a half-empty parking lot, front and center, arms in the air; now spin.
I light another cigarette.
My waistline is beginning to betray me. My hand rests unconsciously on my belly. I mouth I’m sorry to my reflection in the store
window, and I can’t do this I whisper out into the air. I pour more ice into my mouth. I count the steps back to the second shift. He is
late again. I look at my watch, and put my weight all on my toe tips, up and down, lift and decline. He knows how much I hate it
when he’s late. I could go back in and unlock the gate, call him from inside, wait for him there. But, that would mean alarm codes,
re-closing the gate, writing down an explanation for re-entry, again. I know Joe is going to start wondering. I see the way his
eyebrow raises when I come in, that look of distrust. I’ve seen it before, like he knows about the stolen pens, and the ten dollars
that one time when my gas tank was empty, and when I’d run out of cigarettes. It all paints this pink glow to my face, guilt. My eyes
invariably darting back and forth, and my lies never taken in clearly, misunderstood his second-language English. I know he
watches the way my hands shake, and how I’m always too quick to volunteer for anything.
So, I guess I’ll stay put. Stand here and wait. My heart skipping a beat every time I see a car, craning my neck to see if this one is
finally him while nightmare storybook pages float through my head. I play act shock and surprise when they break the news to me;
a car accident, a failed robbery, a stabbed victim bleeding internally. I try on how my mask of sorrow would look, practice hiding a
momentary buzz of relief, and freedom. These were the tales I played in my head as a child, too, while I waited in a deserted
playground, Mom ever losing track of time. I would stand there watching every child wave from a car window. Ice cream and
Daddy’s dream, they all were. The mad array of violent endings I saw, that I almost hoped for, just something she could use to
explain, to somehow make the forever waiting worthwhile; and not just me as a forgotten errand, or an afterthought.
I loathe these inner folds of me. The hushed side of who I am. I know most people are fooled by my parochial school past. The
way I can write a perfect essay, play a good game. They laugh at the trappings of a girl gone bad, the witch’s cackle, the smeared
kohl under my eyes, and my thrift shop garb in fifty five shades of black. They think they can look right through me, as they nod in
this smug way as if to say “you can’t fool me” as if I am just a naïve little thing underneath it all; bright and shiny, sewing paths to a
happy ending in some optimism on overdrive fairytale. They all stand in line to walk across me, like I’m some god damn yellow
brick road.
If they took off my clothes they would see the indentations, the boot scuffs, the notches and nicks where the heels dig in. They all
think I love it. Dig it. Dance a tango to the beat of give everything to everyone. The never ending needy push their shopping
carts to me, park them in my driveway, just up and under the eaves, or in the stairwells. They come to tuck themselves in next to
me as I sleep, steal the good blanket, and throw me to the floor. They would all run and hide for cover if they saw beneath my
skin, all the gore, and the doubts. The pathologic writer of tell-tale explanations finally exposed. I spin better than a spider, but no
one squints hard enough to notice the web.
Tonight I think I’ll tell him. Throw it out there over a plate of fries, right before he pulls out his latest scheme dream that will be
forgotten in a month. His plans used as rolling paper to smoke one last joint. “I produce more when I’m stoned”, he says this from
the couch, where he’s sat for the last twelve hours, paging through the free press, the want-ads, the lost and found. He asks for
another five cookies, always better to polish off the whole row, and then the symmetry is complete and intact. And, in his bakery
goods order, or despite it, the space between us widens. Some day I’m sure one of us will fall in, disappear.
Maybe this will finally do it. The words will spill out and a portal will open up in the sky, pull me up by my ears. He will just see my
feet dangle for a second before I’m gone. That look of shock still plastered across his face, the circular twist of argued perspective
and reasons waiting on the tip of his tongue. I am ever holding my breath while he readies his army, lying back as I let them march
on over to me; his hostile takeover. His words shake me until I’m blue in the face. But, I’ll have beaten him to the proverbial
punch. I’ll be gone then, taken through the space portal, and he can just sit back and waft in the titles and role models he'll swear I
could have been. Or maybe, he will take that waitress girl’s obvious pass at him, bang her in the bathroom stall, right next to I heart
Gene Loves Jezebel, and Adam lies, with three exclamation points. Her face pushed up against the chill of the metal door, the
latch barely holding them in; lipstick pink smear smudge leftovers and wrinkles smoothed out of her brown corduroy skirt, as she
placates her way back to work, fixing her hair in the dessert glass. They wouldn’t mind me; I’ll just be floating by, watching. She
sighs a little quieter than I do. The staccato one two three a bit too rushed. But, it will all help him forget, and let go, and all of it
might assuage my guilt.
I hear the brakes squeal. I recognize the impatience even in the way he drives. Somehow the story will reverse and back-up into
me. Responsibility pinned to my sweater, stuck sideways and in through my flesh, and back out again. I slam the door a little
harder than necessary, and sulk into the seat. Somehow my body has twisted and turned itself into adolescence, again. I can
almost hear my Mom telling me to sit up straight, to project my voice to the back of the room, to lose ten pounds, to go to more
parties, and to kiss more boys. All the expectations she never voiced, but just threw at me without words. How she longed for me
to fall, to fail, ditch classes, earn a reputation, open up my legs, and break curfew. Anything that would bring me to her with tear
stained cheeks and choked-up pleadings. She would bravely hold my hand at the clinic, wait for me with a magazine, and the
looks of admiration from the other scared girls who couldn’t tell their own Mothers; she would bask in it. How they would tell her I
was the luckiest.
Maybe she would hold my hand now, eight years too late. Can I cash in a rain check for my teenage rebellion? I press my nose
into the passenger window glass, breathe out hard, blowing. I watch the hot air fog block my view. I’m tempted to etch help with
my fingertips. I remember doing that as a child; smile faces, dogs, my name. Mom would yell back at me “Don’t write on the
windows!” and I’d deny it, forgetting that it would stay there, even after days went by. You’d still see the image, taunting me with its
existence, chiding and singing at me liar, liar pants on fire. Another knot in my stomach, tied in a bow, even though she wouldn't
remember telling me no.
I rest my head on the glass pane; feel the cool shock to my system. Michael Penn is singing about blue jeans. We just passed a 7-
11, and I can almost smell the inside; old hot dogs on that continuous roller thing, with one always left in the back, all shriveled up.
The bleep blips of video games, the warning labels across the magazines, 18 and over or this is not a library; the whir of the
Slurpee machine. I want to shrink three feet and walk through the door, quarters stashed in my pocket for Ms. Pac Man, and
enough money for the biggest size, my own suicide in multi-colors, a Cola and Wild Cherry death. That big straw with the spoon
on the end, Michael tried to see how far up his nose it would go when he was ten, I was twelve.
I catch a young boy staring at me from the window of the car next to us. His own breath shield is almost completely hiding him,
except for the eyes. We make that quick contact, that inner register of I see you, you see me. I don't even turn around to look at
him then. He is driving, humming to the radio, when the words finally come out.
"Jake, I'm pregnant."
Louise McGinnis
Louise was born and raised in suburban Orange County, but not in the televised way of life. She transplanted to Los Angeles by way of
music and clumsy choices, and lives there currently where she is often found plotting and planning her next escape. She writes mainly
prose and short chapters of a longer story that she is ever contemplating in the back of her mind (and coffee shop napkins). She has yet to
find a place that feels like home, so she usually sticks to just living in book pages and song lyrics. The title to this piece is taken from her
favorite Leonard Cohen song, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’
music and clumsy choices, and lives there currently where she is often found plotting and planning her next escape. She writes mainly
prose and short chapters of a longer story that she is ever contemplating in the back of her mind (and coffee shop napkins). She has yet to
find a place that feels like home, so she usually sticks to just living in book pages and song lyrics. The title to this piece is taken from her
favorite Leonard Cohen song, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’
