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False Goddess
by Laura Stout I sat brooding on the front steps of my family’s farmhouse, a rat trapped in a maze of summer boredom. The heat stomped down with the weight of a battleship and bound my limbs with lethargy as I stared at my bike abandoned in the dry, dead grass of our front yard. Something needed to happen, something mouth –gapingly awesome, something that would knock the days upside down. So when that fiery red Corvette barged down the dirt road kicking up plumes of dust, I had every reason to believe a summer savior had arrived. The stones in the driveway popped and crunched beneath the roadster’s fancy white wheel tires. It glided to a stop, purring like a leopard in heat. The woman inside checked her face in the mirror. Then the engine shut off and the door clicked open. A goddess emerged and stood in one long, evocative rise. Black hair skimmed naked shoulders. Pale white thighs streamed from a too short skirt. In between, cleavage was all I would ever remember. My mom crashed out the front door as if the house was on fire. The two women squealed out each other’s names and hugged until I thought their bones would crack. They walked arm in arm, straight at me. My mouth went dry, and my heart skidded around inside my scrawny chest. My mom’s friend squatted down right in front of me. Pewter gray eyes snared me whole. I couldn’t look away. She was a dopamine flood in my blood stream. “Well, this must be Louis. He’s much more handsome than you told me, Evie. Looks just like you. Has your eyes; sharp, green eyes. And you said he just turned eleven. So tall for eleven. Nice to meet you Louis.” She took my hand, limp and damp from the heat. Words were beyond me, kidnapped and held for ransom, every letter, every sound, gone. “Come inside, Suzie. I’ve got us some cool drinks waitin’,” said Mom. Suzie stood. “Well, what are we doin’ out here in this god-awful heat then?” Pent-up giggles bubbled out as the two of them scrambled up the porch steps. Mom paused at the screen door and smiled at me. “You go on and leave us be for a while, darlin’. Okay?” My shoulders sagged. My mouth opened, but no words came out. Mom untangled herself from Suzie, swept back out to the lawn and threw her arms around my neck. Her silky hair tickled my cheeks as she kissed my forehead. “You’re an angel, Billy,” she whispered in my ear. Her breath was citrusy and warm. After the screen door slammed behind them, I scurried into the living room and spied on them from over the top of my dad’s leather chair. Suzie chattered nonstop admiring every snapshot clinging to the refrigerator door. “How adorable.” She pointed to my five-year-old school picture. “Evie, you’re breathtaking.” She held my parent’s tenth anniversary photo in pale, pink-tipped fingers. She popped her gum and opened cabinets, inspecting their contents. “Let’s use these,” she said, pulling two Superman jelly jar glasses from a shelf. “Bring them over,” said Mom as she mixed drinks in a ceramic pitcher. She added gin from the bottle above the refrigerator. I’d never seen it pulled out at two o’clock on a Tuesday before. I spied on them all afternoon: from the laundry room window with the dryer humming against my back, from the garage where I fiddled with the gears of my bike. Black oil stained my fingertips. They lounged out back on a concrete slab dressed up with potted geraniums and white plastic furniture. Suzie was a fireball spitting rivers of far-flung memories straight into Mom’s veins, slipping them under her skin until she glowed like a full moon. Stories, sometimes weepy and tender, sometimes lewd and shameless, flew across the tabletop. I flinched as obscene expressions spilled from Suzie’s tongue like rain. Mom’s face flushed with laughter and heat. She tossed her hair and made grand gestures with her hands. She smoked a cigarette, flicking the ash onto an empty plate like she’d done it all the time. Before it all ended, Mom brought out the transistor radio from the kitchen. She found a station playing a song from long ago. Their voices split the heat soaked air, opened a chasm, blended like silky braids of rope. When the sky turned orange, and a crescent moon appeared ghostlike above the barn, we all went out front for farewells. “Goodbye handsome.” She ruffled my hair and placed her cool palm against my cheek. She hugged Mom hard and then slipped away down the dirt road: tires spinning, horn honking. I’d thought it wondrous, the pinnacle of my summer. Suzie had charged into our August afternoon and radiated those magic memories around Mom. They had made her beam like white lightning. But what I didn’t think about, was too young to consider, is what happens when that bright sun slips away and leaves shadows in places it hadn’t felt so dark before; when the shock of ordinary life is all that remains. Mom went straight out back. She pushed aside the clutter of empty glasses and plates, reached for the pitcher, poured a thin ribbon of what remained into a glass. She switched the radio back on, fiddled with the dial until she found something slow and mournful. Sipping her drink, she opened an old photo album, flipped through the pages, stopped on one, in particular, touched it with her fingertips. I had been watching her, face pressed against the screen door until my legs ached. But when I saw her shoulders heave, I hurried out, mesh marks flourishing on my forehead. “You okay, Mom?” She looked up, startled. “I’m fine, Billy. Just fine.” The bloom in Mom’s face had withered. Her eyes mused, longed, for what I didn’t know. She sighed. That breath broke my heart. I hated saviors then. She closed the album and slid it across the table. “Can you throw a TV dinner in the microwave, Sweetie?” “Sure, Mom.” “Think I’ll just watch it get dark.” She took my hand and pressed my fingers, held them like a life line. I stayed and watched the darkness flood the cornfields, waited for her resurrection. |
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