Love & Darts (9781937316075) (13 page)

But it wasn’t ever a matter of her withholding
permission. She didn’t ignore her children, or neglect her
children, or refuse to answer to her children; there just wasn’t
any money. So nothing mattered when the sparrow was holding their
mother’s interest. Her thoughts were simple and repetitive. Such
wings, such ugly wings, were all you needed to fly.

Marylyn’s mother was ruled by the tiny bird. He was
her prince, but she was little if anything to him. Attention and
the power of her longing stare were all he needed to go on with his
brash, unforgiving tirades. “This and that about the morning dew!
And who but the Murphys, with their splintery old feeder, to forget
my breakfast! Never had a mind to go anywhere else, but the winds
of this place are atrocious! Too much work to leave!” Then
Marylyn’s mother would bow, nodding an apology.

Flight is the only animate form of perfection. Yet
the ugly little sparrow was always bitching about something. The
children’s mother, those mornings, stared, amazed at such a pompous
spectacle. She usually smiled. A vague hesitant smile. It’s good to
know that humans aren’t the only pompous fools.

This was the way things were. There was nothing to
be done. He was right. Every morning he would scold her, and then
rush off in a huff, while Mother shook her head, missing him.
Hoping he would come back if she did the dishes.

Or cleaned up a bit in the living room.

Marylyn—this is back when she was the little
razor-backed girl—stood in the doorway out of her mother’s view,
watching the sparrow too. But she had different thoughts. Come to
think of it, those mornings must have been Sunday mornings. There
wouldn’t have been time to linger any other day. Mothers who work
will know. Busy and tired. Always, always, busy and tired. And
probably running late. “Ask me again later, dear.”

Anyway, the little girl grew up that way. Her
yellow-walled room closed in on her, and the mother passed away.
Always buying and wrecking cars in his mind, the brother talked on
about his own big plans and ended up making do with somebody else’s
bad habits. He was too used to hand-me-downs, I guess. No big
surprises. “Isn’t it a shame about the Baxter boy?” “Oh, well, how
could you really expect otherwise—what with a mother like that?”
There were plenty of looks of concurrence, nods of assent, but then
one intrepid white-hair might point out, “But look at his sister.
She’s doing quite well.” “Marylyn?” “Yes. Odd, no doubt. But happy.
Doesn’t it seem?” And a quick round of nods would hurry across the
circle, followed closely by a plate of vanilla sandwich cookies and
more coffee.

Inside, alone, Marylyn hated
mirrors on account of her teeth. They were mostly straight except
one in the front that overlapped the one next to it, and they were
all different sizes. Just another gift of charity, I suppose. It
seemed as though all the teeth had been taken from other heads and
thrown into her smile.
 

You’re not from a small town. It’s hard to make you
understand. In cities and big places you need names and made-up
identities. Names aren’t necessary in little places because you
know the people and they know everything about who you are. Names
are only slipshod approximations. They’re cop-outs really. There is
more time in small towns. You can watch a person live her whole
life in a stereotypic small town. And a name, any one arbitrary
word, cannot possibly describe a lifetime like Marylyn’s.

Anyway they all watched it happen; she got older and
so did her teeth. She bought the pet store and walked to work every
morning, with a fresh sweet roll wedged in her jacket pocket.

Some said she knew the baker quite well. It usually
wasn’t nice when they said this. Others said she was too, well, too
something to know quite a bit of anyone. But she walked every
morning from the old house on Lincoln Street to her tiny pet shop
on the square. She’d get there and look over her shoulder, the
folks in the courthouse said, before she ever fished her key out of
a hidden pocket and began to unlock the rattling door.

Lights on, blinds up. Then—and this is what the
people all loved—she took a careful half-hour setting up a most
elaborate tangle of twigs and vines outside on the sidewalk.
Weather didn’t seem to matter. Someone mentioned to me in passing
once that her brother had built the bizarre sculpture for her out
of gnarled branches from the woods where they used to play. Who
knows how much truth there is in that tidbit? Most people say he
hasn’t been much use in years. But Marylyn would set up those
branches, so carefully, and bring out a tiny sparrow, which no one
would think to buy, and place it, so gently, on a curving twist of
a twig.

Customers stopped in through those years of days,
ringing the old cow bell that hung above the door. Marylyn always
said, “Welcome. Glad you stopped in,” and doled out goldfish like a
miner, sold turtles to every eight-year-old with a jarful of
pennies. So much to be done. There were questions to be answered
about this or that newt. And paperwork on health and cleanliness.
There was money to be counted and saved. Once a pretty old lady
asked if her poodle’s pink satin claws could be manicured. No one
ever heard whether Marylyn had done it; the lady was from out of
town. But I believe she probably painted those claws whatever color
the lady wanted. She must have. Why would Marylyn say no? She swept
the floor, periodically, and invited summer kids to watch a ferret
run through the heating shafts along the floor. At night, when the
first streetlights came on, she’d start her closing-up routine,
which was rhythmic and tidy and grim.

Even during all this, though, there were long
periods of tame times when she would sit at that pet store window,
with one foot pulled up underneath her on a stool, looking out,
watching her sparrow flit around in its tangle of branches. Such a
creature to hop and cock his head and proclaim mightily that there
was so little to know which he could not tell you. Marylyn was
obliged to listen. Every night he returned to a cage.

A violent, vibrant storm rushed in and then
vanished leaving a stupid, ripped flag all tangled in our
do-it-yourself rose arbor. The one my wife never felt was a good
enough incarnation of her dreams. So I took the neighbor’s kid,
this cute little girl, to use the flag box in front of the post
office. It was a week ago. My wife wouldn’t have allowed it. But.
She was with our three cats at the vet.

I don’t think she’ll leave me. She’s
mentioned it twice in the past eight months. But. Hopefully she’s
not serious. I think she just wants me to get a job. I want to get
a job, too. Her staying or leaving really won’t change how fast
that happens.

I was a chemist. Sort of. Ran gels in a lab
until the grant money disappeared. The other two lab techs got
spots in the department. They’re involved. They do all the stuff
you’re supposed to do to keep jobs: play the musical chairs, put in
five bucks for birthday cakes, talk to the professors and
researchers about hockey. I’ve never been good at that stuff.

There’s a thing, you know. Some kind of guy
thing. I don’t have it. I’m not queer. Been married for almost
twelve years. Just never figured it was worth spending a lot of
energy pissing all over each other, jockeying for power or whatever
like guys are supposed to do. But sometimes it gets me.

I was talking with my sister last night. We
were having a theoretical kind of debate. She said she hates being
passive, resents it. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Except
that I hate having to be some kind of hero on a stupid old-time
white horse. Like it’s my responsibility to stop all the robbers on
trains. That’s not my business. Why don’t they just not rob
anybody. Problem solved. Plus, no one’s ridden horses in a hundred
and twenty years. But. People don’t care. They still think I’m
supposed to save the day. There’s no way I’d rescue the
pucker-lipped damsel in distress tied to the tracks, punch out some
bad guy, run along the roof jumping from one passenger car to the
next while a picturesque steam engine blows whistle shrieks into
the desert sky.

I don’t know. All I know is I saw my
neighbor’s kid, a little girl about three years old with gold hair
that’ll no doubt end up losing its curls and shine, outside. She
was dancing in a flag. The storm had been terrible. During the
worst of it the flag, a pretty large one maybe four-by-six feet,
blew off its pole near the cemetery. It got caught in the rose
trellis behind my house. When I first saw her running like a bull
through a toreador’s cape the sky was still purple. July is like
that. The sun on one side gleaming. Dark clouds on the opposite
horizon grudgingly moving on.

God, she was having fun.

Okay. Now this little girl next door lives
under a strange mix of incoherent rules and inefficient
supervision. I don’t really look out for her. My wife and this
little girl’s mother are archenemies. I don’t remember why. I tried
to block it out while it was happening. Conflict’s not my thing.
But. My wife is basically right. The mom’s kind of a nut. So it’s
not like I’m babysitting. But. I just kind of make sure this little
girl’s okay out there—not in the street when cars go by if she’s
running around out front and not falling down into the ravine if
she’s spinning in circles out back. I don’t even think her mom
would notice if she ran into the street or fell in the ravine, you
know? But I do know that if I instructed her kid even once that
woman would come out of nowhere to hunt me down. I can just see her
with her big rack flopping everywhere saying I was way out of line
and keep my mouth out of her family business. I don’t need that
shit. I just think it’s stupid to let a kid run wild everywhere.
Especially when she’s in my yard half the time.

So. I stay away from the mother but me and
this little girl became some kind of companions after I lost my
job. Nothing dirty. I don’t have any weird thing for little girls.
But. I make sure she doesn’t succumb to an accidental death without
anyone noticing. It’s good. She gives me hope. Well, hope for a
second before I remember no one else much cares. So. I’ve been
known to turn the sprinklers on. To leave new beach balls on the
lawn. Most days this summer I’ve watched her race across my yard.
And I won’t apologize for it.

Anyway a week ago after the storm that wet
flag tangled in the trellis surged. And while the wind whipped the
red, white, and blue material the little girl raced under it and
around the roses, burst straight into the stripes as the wind
switched directions and snapped the flag back. She laughed and
screamed one or two of those really self-confident little-girl
yelps. I had to smile. The sun shone through the colors and
highlighted her damp gold hair as the dark clouds receded slowly
taking the big winds with them.

Humidity returned. The sky’s contrast
drained to hazy gray. Her glorious flapping toy dropped to a
deadweight curtain, so suddenly tragic—trapped—after just being so
brilliant and bold. As if the little girl knew I’d be watching from
the window she whirled on me and demanded help with an intense
brown-eyed stare.

She’s looked at me like that once or twice
in the past. I’ve always stayed inside to avoid that mouth on the
woman next door. But last week I felt as sorry for the little girl
as she did for that hung-up flag.

I thought of a lawsuit, of the neighbors
worrying unnecessarily about an adult man and their little girl,
but no matter how whacked-out her mother can be, the moment
mattered more.

I ambled across the yard, kneeled down next
to that cute little girl, and awaited my instructions.

“We have to help it.” She started to cry and
hugged me.

Women. Can’t hardly please any of them.

For I don’t know how many years my wife went
on and on about how she wanted a rose trellis. I don’t know what
kind of grand scale she felt would be worthy. But she was always
pointing out pictures from landscaping books from the library. What
was I supposed to do? She’s the one who files the tax return. But I
did what I could and finally installed one as a surprise on our
anniversary.

Shouldn’t have bothered. She was immediately
disappointed with it. Said the color was wrong. Said it was too
rickety. Said the weight of the branches would crush it. Said there
was no point growing roses anyway. Threw herself on the bed in a
fit of rage because she was too old to start training roses over an
arbor in the backyard at this point. But I’d spent a good four
hundred dollars on the thing. And paid a guy seventy-five more to
dig a few holes, pour some cement, and figure out how to get it
propped up. We might not ever live anywhere like that Amalienborg
Palace she always talks about going to see but we’re not even close
to too old for anything. So I started the climbing roses
myself.