Waiting on the World to Change ch. 3

My alarm went off at 8:45 a.m. I crawled out of bed. I had been wearing the same clothes for the past two days and I was beginning to smell. I jumped in the pool out back and scrubbed up. The hair on my skin stood up as it soaked in the cold water. My skin felt numb. I stayed in a little longer. I arrived at the barbeque at ten. Two cases of beer were already gone. Children were sporting went suits, jumped in and out of the golf course’s water hole.
         “Just look at them kids,” Mrs. Clare Nosy Robinson said. “They just love that lake. Kids are so easily pleased.”
         “Jane,” Mrs. Wacko said. She came running over to me, spilling her Long Island Ice tea as she hobbled on her two stumps. “I had a vision last night and you were in it. I was walking down by the watering hole over there, and I saw you standing in the bushes. I could only see your face and arms, so I yelled to you to come over. My arthritis was killing my legs, you see. I don’t know how I got that far from home in the first place. So you came from behind the bushes and you were a centaur.”
         “A centaur?” I asked.
         “Oh, yes. You had a very nice black coat, and very clean hooves,” she continued. “And then I woke up.” I starred at her for a moment and she starred back.
         “You’re going to win the lottery, my dear,” she said.
         “The lottery?” I asked. “Really because I heard centaurs in dreams mean the person is going to die a horrific death, or at least that’s what my psychic tells me.”
         “No, no my dear,” she said pulling at my arm. “Centaurs are lucky. Any one who turns into a centaur is by far the luckiest person you’ll ever meet.”
         “I’m going to go try my luck with the biggest shot of Tequila I can find,” I said, pulling her hand off my arm.
         “Alright, but mind the centaur,” she said hobbling across the street to her house.
         I poured myself the biggest shot of Tequila and downed it. I hated Tequila, but it got you drunk on your ass faster than anything else.

         The towns’ folk were sitting around the bon fire, performing amateur renditions of “The Time I Stole a Tractor,” “My Bachelorette Party,” and “I Got Skunked.” One after another, alcohol induced caricatures and monologues were told to a knee slapping, choking on their own laughter crowd. They were all old. They didn’t live anymore, so they talked about the times they did live, to make the days shorter. I had drunk half a bottle of Tequila and my legs wanted to dance. My voice wanted to sing out, sing a song I had sung in my youth when I was in chorus, or tell a story of how I had been balled out of jail in two o’clock in the morning. But my brain wouldn’t let them. It kept playing the same reels in my head. New York. The smell of resin. I couldn’t stop smiling. “No, you can’t audition. No, no, NO.” Long, slow drive. New York again. I wasn’t smiling this time. Phone rang, “We’re sorry to inform you Miss. Wallace, but you have not been accepted to the New York School of Ballet.” I wished I was a centaur. I wish I had all the luck in the world. I had nothing, but a half empty bottle of Tequila. I stole Mrs. Snobby Faces car and peeled out of the drive way.
         
I banged the bottle of Tequila hard against the door. Rudy, wearing nothing but boxer shorts opened the door.
“Mary Jane. What are you doing here?” Rudy asked. He looked over at the clock on the wall. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”
         “What were they like?” I asked.
         “What the hell are you talking about, Mary Jane?” he said. “You should be at home, sleeping.”
         “My parents, what were they like?” I asked.
“Hell, Mary Jane, you should know better than anyone,” he said. He opened the door wider and let me into the house. He took a beer form the fridge and took a drink. He looked at the ceiling as if my parent’s lives were playing on the popcorn ceiling. “I remember the first time I met your dad. I was a little scrawny kid getting picked on. I was in sixth grade, he was in eight and he told all those other damned kids to mind their own business. Don’t get the wrong idea; I just didn’t like your dad because he kept my ass from getting beat. He was my best friend, through and through.”
“They were a good pair, weren’t they?” I said.
“The best,” he said. I cried for an hour. I cried everything out, my lungs, my heart, and my soul. All of it, I cried out up into the atmosphere, and I would never get it back.
“Why did they. . . I mean how did it happen?” I asked.
“It won’t do you any good wallowing on that; get on with your life Mary Jane. They would have wanted you to,” he said.
“Please,” I said. “Please.”
“I wasn’t here. I was stationed overseas,” he said, taking a drink of his beer. “I got a letter from your dad a week before it happened. He was sad, torn apart. Nothing else he could be.”
“Can I see it?” I asked. He looked at me for a moment and opened his mouth to refuse, but instead he got up and went into his bedroom. He came back with an old yellow envelope. It smelled like vodka and sweat. I opened it and read:
         Dear Rudy,
I hope I find you in better spirits than I am. Still there is no advancement in Jane’s case, and I can not bear to go and visit her anymore. Joanna visits her daily and reads her a chapter from a book. The doctor’s gives us no hope for. . . I don’t know how I am going to live without her Rudy. I feel so tired, so lost. For once I can say I must know what it was like for you in the war, losing all those men. It’s all our fault, Rudy. She wouldn’t have gone to Cambodia, if it weren’t for us. It’s all our fault she’s. . . Rudy, I don’t know how we’re going to go on. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. I feel empty. Oh, so empty. I hope you are coming home soon. It would be good to have a friend to talk to right now.
Your friend,
Tom Wallace

A full barrel. Six bullets. More than enough. I opened to the back door to my parent’s house and let in the familiar cold air. I joined it in the garden. They’ll finally have their wish; we’ll be together forever now. I hope there are doors with locks in heaven. Mrs. Clare Nosy Robinson’s dog growled in the background. It sounded like a squeak toy being pressed over and over and over again. It shoved its way through a broken link in the fence and was standing at my feet, squeaking, doing back flips and peeing itself. It was smart. It knew it couldn’t scare anyone, so it annoyed the shit out of people instead, same effect. One: Its leg flew off towards the side of the house; two: a toenail was blown off; three: a gap in its stomach let the green grass push through, still squeaking; four: bullet in the ground; five: no more squeaking. I really hope there is no heaven. Six.


Rudy and I were walking in fog, gray, slimy fog that stuck to my hair and chin.  We had to fight our way through to the door. It wasn’t the door I expected. Its paint was chipped and it was the familiar color red. For a moment I paused, could this be? I swung the door open and entered the foyer. The house looked the same as it had twenty years ago, the mirror still hung crooked on the hallway wall. I saw my aunt’s and my face staring back at me from our last road trip: next to it, a picture of my dad as a boy fishing, and a family picture from Christmas. My mother and father were standing in the living room. I felt pressure on my hand, and I looked at the man holding it. Rudy was taller,  bigger, and broader than I had ever seen him before, standing next to me, holding my hand. My parents stood in the center of the living room, clinging onto one another; my mother’s arms were wrapped around my father’s body, her fingers interlocked on the other side. I wanted to speak, but my voice had vanished. I knew what I would have said, it was playing in my head: “Please come back,” but I knew they never could, “I don’t blame you.” I moved forward, but was caught by Rudy’s grip. They didn’t run to hug me up in a giant bear hug, to touch my face or to say how much they missed me. They smiled at me, it said “we love you”, but did not beckon me to join them. Rudy’s grip grew stronger. I could feel his heartbeat in my hand, in my arm, in my own heart. My parents nodded and smiled so big, the gleaming white consumed them.

“Twenty, Jane. I’ve been in love with you for twenty years. Now stop being so damn selfish. I’m going to need you,” Romeo said. He was standing over the hospital bed, holding my hand.
“Damn it Romeo,” I said as well as I could, with a tube shoved through my chest. “Why do you keep saving me?”
“Wasn’t me this time,” he said looking over his shoulder.
Rudy stood in the corner, hugging my aunt. He mouthed, “They weren’t ready for you yet.” I smiled at him the best I could.
“I thought you might like to see these,” he said pulling the box of spring cleaning junk from under the bed.
“Yeah, I would,” I said and he set the box on my lap. “That’s a fucking huge fish. Oooo, tell me a story Romeo, won’t you?”
“It all started with a hook, some corn and a lot of patience.”