I
t is the Fourth of July, and someone is shooting a shotgun off into the air down the street. Her mother is watching TV, and Dale is peeling off her Blockbuster shirt for the last time.
Independence Day,
she thinks. She can’t leave until Friday, because she needs to pick up her last paycheck, but she still feels liberated. She stands naked in her room, looking at herself in the mirror. She can feel every fiber of the pink carpet under her feet. She smiles until her cheeks hurt.
After she got out of work she went next door at the strip mall to the beauty parlor and got her hair cut. She usually cuts her own hair, trims her bangs once a month or so. Cuts off the dead ends. And so when the beautician asked her what she wanted to do with her hair, she had no idea.
“You tell me,” she said. She was feeling brave. Adventurous.
“Well, you’ve got a real pretty face,” she said. “But I think the bangs are hiding your eyes. And they just make your face look rounder. I think we should do something to get them off your face, thin you out a bit. Show those pretty brown eyes. What do you say?”
She’d taken off her glasses while the woman washed her hair and left them off as she started to cut.
“What’s the occasion?” the woman asked. “You got a date?”
“No,” she said. “I’m going on a trip.”
“Oh, how nice! A little summer vacation? I always try to get to Palm Springs for a week in the summer. Sometimes the girls at work and I go down to Rocky Point.You been to Rocky Point?”
Her nails felt good on Dale’s scalp. She watched her fuzzy reflection in the mirror and waited until the beautician had pulled the plastic apron from around her neck before she put her glasses back on.
She looked different without bangs. Naked. She tugged self-consciously at the hair that now came only to her chin.
“A bob will help lengthen your neck, make you look taller.”
She felt the bare back of her neck with her hand and shivered a little. It was like her nerves were exposed, raw. Like she was feeling something for the very first time. It felt great.
“I love it,” she said. And she tipped her twenty dollars on the way out.
“Have a good trip!” the beautician said, waving as Dale pulled out in the Bug, checking her new look in the tiny rearview mirror.
“What have you done?” her mother asked.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, honey,” she said, consoling, as if Dale should be upset.
“I like it,” Dale said, pulling away. “It elongates my neck.” As she said this, she felt herself stretching, thought of that Tenniel drawing of Alice in Wonderland.
“Well, at least it will grow out quickly,” her mother said. And she walked behind her, pulling what was left of Dale’s hair behind her head in a stubby ponytail. “I just like your hair back so much, like when you were a little girl.”
“Well, I’m not a little girl.”
Her mother has no idea that she’s leaving.
Dale hears a series of pops and cracks, fireworks. She grabs a glass and pours herself a big tumbler of Chardonnay from the box in the fridge. She looks toward the living room and then gets another tumbler from the cupboard.
“Hey, Ma, come watch the fireworks with me?”
Her mother is half asleep on the couch. Pookie is curled up on top of her.
“Go without me,” her mother says.“
CSI
’s on.... It’s a good one.”
Alone on the back patio, Dale watches the intermittent flashes of light. Hears more shotguns exploding. She drinks her glass of wine and then the other one.And she touches the back of her neck with her hand, tickles that exposed skin and smiles.
A
lice has the Internet at her house, but it’s only dial-up, and the connection is as slow as Moses. Finn whistles, taps his fingers impatiently on the computer desk as he waits for the page to load. Her mom is working again, and they are in her mom’s bedroom where the computer is. It’s smaller than Alice’s room. And nothing in here is purple. The picture on Maggie’s desktop is of Alice making a goofy face.
“God, you’re impatient. I thought surfers were supposed to be all
chill,
” Alice says, trying on the word like a little girl trying on her mother’s heels.
Earlier she had scoured the kitchen for something for them to eat. Usually their fridge is filled with leftover food her mother has brought home from the diner, but today there’s nothing. “I’m hungry. What are you looking for anyway?” she asks.
“I need to know when these damn things can be harvested. They’re not doing me any good right now.”
He has almost no pot left. Last night he rolled a joint out of the twigs and seeds left in the Baggie and climbed up onto the roof of the cottage to watch the pissant display of fireworks over the lake. It hadn’t gotten him stoned, and the fireworks, if you could even call them that, were done in about ten minutes. In San Diego, they could see
three
different displays from their house: the ones off the pier, the ones in Mission Bay, and the Sea World fireworks. They didn’t even have to leave their deck. His parents used to throw huge parties for the Fourth. All of their parents’ friends got loaded; one year one of his dad’s friends set his chest hair on fire trying to set off a Roman candle. Finn and Franny were always allowed to hang out with the grown-ups during the Fourth parties, even when they were little. Finn has memories of sitting underneath the dining room table watching everybody’s feet. When they got older, they snuck beers from the ice chests and hung out on the beach, three hundred and sixty degrees of lights over their heads. Sometimes he and Franny would paddle out on their boards and watch the fireworks from the water. On a still night, you couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down from the lights reflecting off the water.
He wonders if there’s any way Misty could mail him some weed. He’s never going to make it through the summer without it, unless he plans to never sleep again. He wouldn’t even know about where to find any in Quimby.There were a couple of shady looking kids hanging out by the Cumberland Farms the last time he was in town, but he’s pretty sure he might get more than he’s asking for approaching a bunch of rednecks. Most of the locals aren’t nearly as friendly as Alice, it seems. There’s one neighbor down the road who comes out of his house and glares at them whenever the woody drives past. He’s got a dog too, and it chases their car every single time they drive by. Finn keeps hoping it will run under the wheels one of these days. Fucking bastard and his fucking inbred pitbull.
He prints out the pages he needs: how to take care of the plants, their life cycle, how to harvest the crop. It looks like he’s going to have to wait until at least late August before he can get anything smokeable. They’ll be back in California by then.
“You know anybody who sells?” he asks Alice.
“Sells what?” she asks.
Sometimes he forgets that she’s only fifteen. She looks a lot older, and she’s smarter than most fifteen-year-olds too. But she’s so naïve.
Country
, Misty and her friends might say.
Innocent,
he thinks.
“P-O-T.”
“My friend Ruby’s brother smokes.” She shrugs. “He’s kind of an asshole though.”
They ride their bikes all the way into Quimby, and lo and behold Alice signals for them to pull into the Cumberland Farms parking lot.
They get off their bikes, and a kid in a dark denim jacket says, “What the hell you want?” to Alice.
“Don’t give me any grief, Muppet,” she says. “I’m here for a corn dog and a slushie. My friend’s the one who needs something.”
“Hey, California,” he says, nodding at Finn.
How does everybody here know his story? This place gives him the creeps.
Within three minutes,Alice has her corn dog, a slushie and a candy bar, and Finn has enough grass to get through another couple of weeks.
They ride home fast; it feels good to make his legs work hard. His lungs feel like shit though; he needs to quit smoking cigarettes. They leave the bikes at Alice’s house and take a walk to the secret garden.
“Want a Kit Kat?” she asks, offering him one of the sticks from her bar. “I love these. My dad always used to use them to bribe me when I was little. I’ll do anything for a Kit Kat.”
At the garden, Finn pulls the folded up instructions out of his back pocket. “We’ve got to weed. And we’ve got to get rid of the males.”
“Just tell me what to do,” Alice says. Her lips are red from the slushie. It makes Finn smile.
T
here must be a word for this
. This being alone but together. Sam retreats to the loft after dinner, listening to the quiet sounds of Finn and Mena below. No voices, just the shuffling of feet, the opening and closing of doors. The music from Finn’s room, the clink clank of dishes, the cadence of pots and pans and running water in the kitchen. Mena has her first rehearsal tonight, but she said she would be home by ten.
He pulls the bottle of capsules out of the drawer, pops two in his mouth and swallows them dry. He can feel them as they make their way down his throat, to his chest, and finally when they dislodge and make their way to his gut. He will try again, he thinks. He just needs to keep trying.
He pulls a book out of the pile on his desk, thumbing through the pages he’s marked with Post-its.
During World War II, at the University of Minnesota, a physiology professor named Ancel Keys solicited volunteers in an experiment in starvation. The experiment, involving thirty-six men, was aimed at determining the physical and psychological effects of starvation and how the people who had suffered from starvation during the war might be brought back to health. The men who joined were, for the most part, conscientious objectors, pacifists (Mennonites, Brethrens and Quakers) committed to nonviolence but eager to make a contribution in the efforts at postwar rehabilitation of the war’s victims.And so in November of 1944, these thirty-six men all volunteered to be starved. This was their contribution to their country. Their patriotic gesture.
He imagines the way these men must have felt on that cold November afternoon, walking into the university’s lab, where they would systematically be fed and then deprived.
Sam closes his eyes tightly and sees the young man he is beginning to recognize: the worn wool cap over pale red hair, the spray of freckles across his nose, the wire-rimmed glasses that are perched there. He sees him rub his hands together and blow into them for warmth. He sees him smile and nod at another young man who is also standing at the building door, waiting.
Sam looks closer.
The man is not really a man but rather a grown boy, maybe twenty years old. He has a girlfriend at home in Boston. A mother with sad eyes and bad dreams. His father died last year. An accident at the mill where he worked.
Sam imagines what the young man must be feeling as a sharp gust of wind whips across the campus green and cuts through his threadbare coat. As he looks at the brick building where, for the entire upcoming year, he and the other volunteers will feel nothing but hunger.
A
s Mena pulls up to the Town Hall on Tuesday night, she is still trembling. On the way here, that stupid dog that lives down the road from them came after her car and she nearly went off the road trying to avoid it. She’s rattled from the near-accident, and nervous about being here. She thinks about turning back, leaves the car running even after she’s parked.
It’s a beautiful night though, so clear that the sky is almost bright even after the sun is gone. She sits in her car, fumbling around in her purse, stalling. When she looks up again, there is a man at her window.
Startled, she thinks about the time she almost got carjacked in Chula Vista. It had started like this too. It takes a second to remember where she is and roll down the window.
“You must be
May,
” the man says, extending his hand for a shake.
“Hi,” she says, smiling.
“Old Man. But you can call me Hank. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Mena,” she says, and shakes his hand.
He opens the door for her and she gets out. Now there’s no going back. Inside there’s a card table set up with an urn of coffee and a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Oh, should I have brought something?” Mena asks Hank.
“We take turns,” he says. “My grandson works over to the Shop’n Save, so I’m usually good for a deli platter or two.”
“You’re from Quimby then?” she asks.
“Third generation.” He smiles. “I’m guessing you’re not from up here.”
“No, but we just bought a place at Lake Gormlaith. The Carson place? We used to come here in the summers when our children were small.”
“Flatlanders,”
he says, shaking his head knowingly, teasing her.
She thinks of the rocky cliffs their little bungalow is perched on and smiles. “My husband grew up here. Samuel Mason?”
“I know Sammy Mason!” he says, slapping the top of the table with his hand. “The only celebrity to come outta Quimby.”
Mena laughs.
“You want a donut?” he asks.“I already ate all the jelly ones, but I think there might be some chocolate left over.”
Lisa and the girl who is stage managing the show, Anne, are sitting on the stage, their legs dangling over the edge. Jake Rogers and the kid they cast as Martin are sitting in a pair of folding metal chairs at the foot of the stage. She takes a seat next to the kid. He can’t be that much older than Finn.
“Hi,” she whispers. “I’m Mena.”
“Kyle,” he says softly. “You remember Jake?”
Mena nods, and Jake leans over Kyle to shake her hand. She notices Jake’s fingers are long and thin, square nails. His skin is rough and warm.
They start rehearsal with an icebreaker. Lisa has them put the chairs in a circle, and she asks each of them to fill out a brief questionnaire about themselves.
Name, Age, Sex. Where are you from? What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you have any scars? If so, how did you get them? What do you love? What do you hate?
Lisa gives them each a fresh pencil and a clipboard. When they are finished, she has them all introduce themselves. Mena is first.
She takes a deep breath, confused again for a moment about where she is. She remembers that awful place she and Sam went, the place the doctors recommended after Franny died.That group met in a church basement.
Caring Friends
. That’s what it was called. A whole room full of people who had lost their children. The stories were exhausting, horrific. As if their own grief wasn’t enough to handle. It was too much. After the first night they never went back.
“My name is Mena Mason. I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, but I’ve lived in San Diego for the last twenty or so years. Right now, I am living with my family up at Lake Gormlaith. I’m forty years old ... though I guess I’m probably supposed to lie about that, right?” She laughs nervously. “What do I want to be when I grow up? I used to think that I wanted to be an actress. Then I became a mom. And a caterer. Now, I think I might like to be an actress again.” She smiles. Everyone is looking at her. “I have a scar from a car accident I had when I was little. We hit a school bus, and I ...” She points to the place on her cheek. “It’s hard to see now. But I know it’s there.” She looks at Lisa. “These are just physical scars you want, right, not emotional?” and immediately regrets this.
“That’s up to you,” Lisa says.
“Well, I suppose I have a lot of those,” she says. Her throat aches. “Actually just one big one, and it’s pretty new. So, anyway.” She takes another big breath. “I love my mother, Greek food ... I’m one hundred percent Greek, second generation American on both sides.... I love cooking, the beach. I love collecting sea glass. I love my family.” She feels her throat constrict. “And I hate pitbulls. Sorry if any of you have one but, God, there’s this awful dog that chases my car every time I drive past his house. I almost ran him over on my way here.”
“Thanks,” Lisa says, and squeezes her hand.
“Jake, you’re next.”
Jake smiles. He’s shaved his beard. He looks younger without it. His cheeks have that sort of flush red that usually comes with childhood, with winter weather.
“I’m Jake Rogers. I moved to Quimby from DC about six years ago when I got divorced. I’m thirty-seven years old. I wanted to be a fireman when I grew up, but now I make violins for a living. Potato, potahto.”
Everyone laughs.
He looks down and taps at his chest. “I have a scar from a surgery I had when I was an infant ... a hole in my heart. I love music, all kinds, but especially violin. Go figure. I love playing football with my brothers on Thanksgiving. I love snow. I love the cold.” He looks down at his clipboard, reading. “I love traveling to places no one usually wants to go. I’ve been to Iceland. To eastern Europe. To the far northern provinces of Canada.” He looks at Mena. “I
love
Greek food.”
Mena blushes and then feels embarrassed for blushing. He didn’t mean anything by that; what is wrong with her?
“And I hate liars. Oh, and mayonnaise.”
After everyone has finished, Lisa hands out a fresh questionnaire with the same set of questions. “Now I want you to fill this out for your character. And when we go around the circle, I want you to become your character and introduce yourself.”
This part is easy. As they go around the circle, going in the opposite direction this time, Mena feels herself becoming May. Losing everything that is Mena. It all falls away like a discarded dress. By the time it is her turn to speak, Mena is already long gone.