| Moving Rules by Cathie Keenan |
| This is Cathie Keenan's first
publication, Chapter One from her novel Moving Rules.
She is currently working on a new novel, The Bat Lady.
She lives with her husband and dog in the Boston area. MOVING RULE: Don’t look back I floated on my blue raft, smelling the familiar, warm rubber and staring at the clouds above Moffit Beach. Fat, close ones roamed the sky, taking their time folding into each other and pulling apart. It happened in lazy, slow time, not in real time. I imagined the earth flat with the sky forming a dome over us, like Gramma Zee's glass pie-saver over her blueberry pie. Something skittered across my bare belly. I sat up, creasing the raft, as cold water rushed into my lap. A daddy-longlegs wobbled its way to my feet and disappeared into the water. I thought I’d hosed them all away with a winter’s worth of grime, but I shouldn’t complain. Not after Bompa had spent half the morning searching for the raft. What patience! “Just you wait, darlin’, it’s got to be here somewhere.” Between his tools and our stored furniture--Mom’s piano, Dad’s college books, and the bow and arrow Mom took away from Sam--it was a wonder he could find anything in that shed of his. But he did. He always did, unlike us. We were always losing things. One minute Mom would be balancing bologna sandwiches on her knees, slathering mustard with the silver butter knife, and the next minute the knife was gone. Vanished. We could paw through waxed paper and apple cores all we wanted, but we’d never find it. The scent of Baby Oil spiked with iodine filled the air. I adjusted the straps of my new yellow bikini and wondered what Mom would think. “Live a little,” Gramma Zee had said in the dressing room. “Heavens to Betsy, what are you waiting for? You’ve got a cute little figure,” only she pronounced it ‘figger.’ “You’ve got a cute little figger.” Zee stretched out on the hard sand, squinting into the sun. Surrounded by the blue Adirondacks, she waved. I waved back, motioning her in, but she shook her head. That late party of sixteen sure had wiped her out last night. Ordinarily she’d be swimming laps in the deep part of the lake, not lounging on the beach. She pointed to the clouds, and I wondered if she’d be painting any of her “cloud-scapes” today. I settled back down into the raft's firmness and dragged my heels through the water. Zee and I planned our wishes by day under the clouds, tucking them into our heads like arrows in quivers. At night we shot a wish at each new star we saw. Tonight I'd wish this week with Zee and Bompa would never end, and that there'd be no August ragweed to send her hunting for her nebulizer or rushing off into the backwoods to escape the pollen tourists brought on their cars. I’d wish I didn’t have to start over in the new place. Pop's Trailer Park. What a name! New kids, new school in the fall. Dad said we might be there a year or two, but, God, I hoped not. That sounded like forever. Sometimes it felt like moving was the most real part of my life. When we came into a town, it was as if somebody turned on the lights of a movie set and yelled “Action.” When we left, we turned out the lights, and everybody stayed there frozen in time. What would it be like to stop and stay in a place? What if the place was like Cleveland with all that snow or Russell with the cliques? What if I didn't like the kids and couldn't wait to leave? I was a hello and good-by kind of girl, great at beginnings and endings. Why, I’d packed up the kitchen trailer in record time last week. Twenty-seven minutes, to be exact. Sam timed me with Dad’s stop- watch. With the metal rim of the sink biting into my knees, I’d shoved feather pillows into the dish cabinets, taped them shut, and wound grade line rope around the handles to keep them from opening in transit. Not one thing broke! Far off, a motorboat grumbled and sped away. Little waves lapped the sides of the raft. I draped my arms into the lake, cool on my wrists, and let the water swirl around Mark's ID bracelet. It dragged me down. Mom said to wear it on my left hand so it wouldn't interfere with writing, but then it banged against my watch. Three days it had taken to move, all the way from Cleveland to Connecticut. Mom wanted to know why Dad didn't build all the Interstates needed in one place, before moving clear across the country to build another. Stuck in the back seat with Sam, I’d endured his kicks beneath the blanket sticky with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. "Red car" he’d screamed in my ear every five seconds, even though I wasn't playing. Finally, Mom put the bag lunch on the seat between us and said enough was enough, no more car games. My last day at school had played over and over in my head all the way across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The same scene began now behind my closed lids. After I’d given Miss Hemple the note, Fanny Smith started to cry. That caught on like the flu until all the girls in the back had joined in the crying jag. The ones that cried never cried for me. They cried for themselves, because somebody’s cat had died or somebody’s father had yelled. I'd closed the classroom door behind me, walked across the gym, and was struggling with the metal bar on the outside door, when Mark called my name. Lindy ricocheted through the empty gym, off the movable bleachers, through the basketball hoops, and into the large clock pinned behind the metal grating. Goosebumps paraded up my arms. I watched him approach with long steps, knowing he was hurrying, yet he came in slow motion. It wasn't his kiss, my first, or his breath smelling of cherry cough drops, or even the gift he'd shoved into my hand, that I replayed, but the excitement—watching him rush toward me, hearing his footsteps echo off the hardwood floors. Nothing to do but wait for him to reach me. As Dad took the last curve out of town, I opened my hand on the ID bracelet Mark had shoved at me. Solid silver. Now the weight of it hung heavy on my wrist. Water swirled through the links and around his initials scratched on the back in little dots from an engraving pen at the fair. He was probably already regretting that he'd given it to me. He wasn't stupid. He knew we'd never see each other again. There were always a few kids who didn't get it, but not Mark. Cold water dribbled down my belly as I thumbed open the clasp and slid the bracelet over my wrist. Holding it in the palm of my hand, I lifted it up and down to feel its weight, before I let it go. It sank so quickly. Mom probably would’ve done the right thing and sent it back to him, but I didn’t think he’d miss it. After the beach and an early dinner of baked beans and Gramma Zee's blueberry pie, I sat on the closed toilet seat and watched her put on her make-up in front of the mirror. From the midnight blue vial she dabbed Evening of Paris into a lace hanky and tucked it into her breast pocket. "Helps the tips," she said with a wink. She placed a drop behind her ears and another spot beneath her nose, so she could smell it, too. "You need something for your eyes," I told her. She laughed, showing off her little eyeteeth that looked like sugar cubes dunked in coffee. "But I can't see to do it without the bifocals." "I'll do it," I said and drew thin blue lines through her puffy eyelids. "Now keep your eyes closed." For rouge I dotted her papery cheeks with lipstick. "Okay, you can look now." She snapped open her black eyes and pushed the bows of her pointy glasses through her permed hair. "Not bad for an old girl," she said. She pinched her cheeks for added color and air-kissed me with her Revlon Fire Engine Red lips. "Wow'em, Zee," I said. She trotted down the driveway and up the hill to Lullaby Lodge. I settled into the porch swing and punched the mildewed cushions she threatened to replace each year. Bompa's snores erupted through applause on the TV no one was watching in the living room. Perry Como's honeyed voice traveled out to the porch. Zee liked his V-neck cardigans and how he perched on the edge of a stool when he sang. She'd even gotten Bompa a sweater like his, but he said it made him too hot. "Whoa, Dolly!" Bompa ordered in his sleep. He'd be sitting up in his easy chair, pulling on imaginary reins. Every night he plowed his father's fields with that horse team, and every night that horse lagged behind or sprinted ahead before Bompa was ready. "Whoa, Dolly!" Zee had been so edgy with Bompa's driving when they'd picked me up from the train yesterday. You'd think he hadn't been hauling lumber or spreading cold patch on these mountain roads most of his life. Or that she would have gotten used to him by now. She pleaded to drive, saying she loved to drive, but he didn’t let her. "Edward, Edward, wake up, Edward," she kept saying every time his chin grazed his chest. "Edward!" Up shot his head. "What, what?" he said in a hurt, angry voice. "You're falling asleep, Edward." "I am not." He gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands. "Well then, give me some gum," he said. She'd unwrapped three or four sticks, and let the silver foil smelling of mint slip from her painted nails, out her window, past mine. He chewed the gum violently, deliberately working his jaws, murdering the Doublemint to stay awake for us. He couldn’t help the sleeping sickness. Fireflies blinked from the vegetable patch. The white powder we'd dusted on the potato leaves shone in the moonlight. I'd helped him stake the Big Boy tomatoes, but they wouldn't be ripe before I left. Plants took longer in the mountains. Bats swooped from the shed and hovered around the garden with as much respect for the Carmen Miranda scarecrow, as the crows gave her in daylight. In an old housedress and three strands of pop-beads, she wasn’t working. Never mind that she looked ridiculous in that straw hat with dented plastic oranges and bananas. Zee said Carmen had all the fun, dancing through life with a bonnet full of fruit. Maybe I'd change my name to Carmen or Esmeralda in this new place. I'd wear long, gypsy skirts and arms of bangle bracelets. Be somebody else, not just the hello-goodbye girl. "Call me Esmeralda," I'd say and shimmer like the Northern Lights. I pushed off with my toes, setting the swing creaking from rusty chains hooked into the ceiling. The swing jerked left and right before I got it going straight out toward Oak Mountain and the Aurora Borealis beyond. Great sheets of blue and red quivered above the mountains as I waited for Zee to return. Wrapped in the tattered afghan, I wished on the first stars I saw in the June sky over Oak Mountain. The Big Dipper was easy to find. And the three perfect stars of Orion’s belt. But where was that North Star? Dad said I’d never be lost if I could find it. He said to draw an imaginary line from the bottom stars of the Big Dipper, and there it would be, but it never was. There were too many other stars to choose from. He explained about sailors and navigation, about sextants and astrolabes, but that didn't help. Instead I fixed my eyes on the Milky Way, held my breath, and watched for that pinprick of moving light, the Russian Sputnik. By the time Zee appeared, a luminous figure in her white uniform, the moon had traveled clear across town and hung over Lullaby Lodge. "Are you still up?" she called. Her voice carried clearly, like words across the lake. A doggy bag was tucked under her arm, and, as she walked, her shoulder bag bounced off her hip. Folded bills poked out from her pockets, and coins jangled as she joined me on the swing. She smelled of French fries. "Here, brought you something," she whispered. "My favorite." I sunk my teeth into the molasses cookie as sugar filtered into my lap. "Not as good as you make, Zee, but they'll do." She'd had a good night even if the locals were inconsiderate and stayed past closing time. "They know what time we close. Mrs. Tucker had to remind them three times. And the new girl got stiffed from some out-of-towners. Oh, well," she said, “nobody ever got rich living up here. That's for sure." She giggled. "You been out here the whole time?" she whispered. "What do you think of the name Esmeralda?" I asked. She wrinkled her forehead. "It's a nice name." "No, but what do you really think?” She reached over and cupped my knee. "You're going to do just fine in Connecticut." “Maybe I’ll get some bangle bracelets and a big, full skirt. Be a gypsy.” She kept the swing going with another push. "Okay, just one more wish and I've got to go shower." "That isn't fair. I've already used up all my wishes." She laughed with her mouth so far open I could see her gold molar. "C'mon, I'm giving you one more wish. Life doesn't wait. There," she pointed, "on that comet. Quick, before it's gone." "Ah, ah, a tragedy, then. I wish for a tragedy." Something to hook that flat feeling on. The words rose like bubbles from the lake. "Oh, God." I clamped my hand over my mouth, but it was too late.
|
| Top |
|
