Sugar-Plum Road
by Vivian Zenari



“What do you think of a country where you can pick up sugar-plums along the road?” Margot asked Sandra suddenly.

Sandra said, “Sugar-plums aren’t plants.”

Sandra and her roommate Margot were sitting together under the crab-apple tree in their drug dealer’s backyard. They were waiting for him to come home so they could score some heroin.

Sandra wore a red hoodie with the word “Electric” in white script across the front and a pair of grey yoga pants. Her legs stretched out in front of her. She flicked her ankles forward and backward so that her pink flip-flops slapped against the bottoms of her naked feet in a steady rhythm.

Margot sat cross-legged, her small hands on her kneecaps with the palms turned upwards as though she were meditating. She wore black: a black hoodie, black jeans and black high-tops. The hood was pulled over her head.

Margot and Sandra hadn’t had a conversation since their fight that morning over the missing bottle of perfume. Margot had run into her bedroom, slammed the door, and stayed there. Since neither of them was working, they didn’t have anywhere to go anyway, so Sandra watched MTV and waited it out in the living room. At two o’clock, Margot came out of her bedroom and muttered, “Let’s go see Buzz.”

Above Buzz’s backyard, the sky was full of grey clouds. Yellow leaves were falling from the apple tree. Every two minutes or so, another leaf detached itself from a branch and pinwheeled to the ground. The leaves fell on the deadfall crab-apples on the dying lawn.

“Is that a fact?” Margot said. “How the fuck do you know that?”

Sandra narrowed her eyes. “Do you have to be so rude?”

Margot grunted. She picked up a crab-apple and squeezed it. It crumpled in her fist. She picked up another crab-apple and squeezed it. This one remained firm. Margot continued in a quieter voice. “It’s from a story I read when I was a kid. It’s the first line of the story.”

A sidewalk led from the backyard through a gate at the side of the house and out to the front. Sandra stared at the gate as though she was expecting something to come through it into the backyard. “What’s the story about?”           


“It was about Dutch kids,” Margot said. “That’s all I remember.”

A bus rolled past the front of the house with a hydraulic sigh. Farther away, a car alarm went off. A leaf fluttered down and landed on Margot’s knee.

“Why do you think you can remember the first sentence?” Sandra asked.

Margot shrugged. “I guess I read the story a lot when I was a kid. We didn’t have a lot of books. Sometimes it pops into my head.”

“Why did you think about that sentence right now?”

"Don’t know,” Margot said. “Bored, I guess.” She picked up the leaf on her knee with her index finger and thumb and tossed it up in the air. “How do you know what sugar plums are?” The leaf fluttered down and landed on the ground on top of a crab-apple.

“I made sugar plums when I was a kid,” Sandra said.

“Oh, yeah?” Margot said. “I never even seen one of the sons of bitches.” She looked at Sandra full in the face for the first time. “What do they look like?”

“They’re round and covered with sugar.”

“And they’re made of plums?”

“No. They’re made of nuts and dried fruit of different kinds.”

“That sounds gross,” Margot said. “I hate dried fruit.”

"They tasted pretty good,” Sandra said.       

“I can’t believe it,” Margot said. “All those years, and now I find out that’s what they are.” She leaned away from Sandra. “That’s what they think is all the shit in Dutchland or whatever,” she muttered. “They dream about dried fruit.”

A car drove down the street in front of the house, out of sight. Veils of sunlight fell through the gaps in the clouds. A dog barked. 

Sandra brushed her long black bangs from her eyes. “I used to make them with my granna,” she said. “Every Christmas, we used to make them.”

"So is your granna Dutch or something?”

“No,” Sandra said. “She’s dead now.”

Margot leaned her head back against the tree trunk. She stayed that way for many minutes.  After a while Margot groaned. “God, when is Buzz going to get here?”

Sandra didn’t answer. She stared at the kneecaps of her outstretched legs. The roof of Buzz’s house glowed orange. The sun was setting. Sandra shielded her eyes from the light.

Margot shook her head from side to side. “What the fuck,” she said. “What the fuck.”

The clouds spread themselves thin in the sky and covered the darkening sky. The light on the roof faded. A tepid breeze rose up with a hiss of leaves.

Margot dropped the crab-apple from her right hand. “Some stupid book someone bought sometime from Goodwill with bingo money.” She curled her left hand into a fist and punched her left thigh.

In the near distance, a rising growl of traffic signalled the beginning of rush hour. Sandra tilted her head towards the sound. “People going home,” she said quietly. She sniffed.

Margot shivered. She buried her head deeper in her hood. “I can’t believe it.” She shifted out of her lotus position and pulled her knees to her chest. She let her shoulder touch Sandra’s shoulder.