Ethan deserves better

On the weekends when Kate came home after showing a house, she would shed her work items, peeling things off one by one…keys in the dish on the foyer table, purse hung on the hall rack, suit jacket on the newel post, paper jammed briefcase in the closet, shoes with panty hose stuffed in them placed on the bottom step of the staircase, off to the side. Graham’s rules were everything had to be kept neat, nothing lying around. The shoes and jacket were a compromise, if they were on the stairs to go up and you were still downstairs then that was okay, acceptable.

Next Kate would go into the kitchen and head straight for the wine, kept in the lower cabinet to the right of the sink. She’d use an old fashioned glass, not a wine goblet, and fill it to near the top, leaving just enough room for an ice cube. Then she would go into the living room, close the drapes and sit in the dark with her feet up on the couch, still in her remaining work clothes. After about half an hour, her wine finished, she’d be asleep, curled up in a near fetal position and snoring softly.

Nola watched this process, or some parts of it, often. If she had something to talk to her mother about, Kate would invariably tell her to wait, to give her some time to decompress as she called it, like she was coming up to the surface and didn’t want to rush the process lest she get the bends. The stories of the day would wait. Monday morning permissions slips would wait. Help fixing a toy would wait. Even bedtime, hours later, would wait.

Most of the time, but not always, well after 8:00 in the evening Kate would rouse herself off the sofa and come in to the kitchen, ostensibly to start dinner. She’d mumble something about, “why’d you let me sleep so long?” as she automatically opened the fridge or went to the stove. Inevitably she would discover that dinner had already been taken care of, some semblance of sandwiches or take out, the remains of which were evidence that finally made Kate realize the meal was over without her. At this she would say, “Well then, fine,” and with an annoyed huff she would go back to the cabinet where the wine was kept, pour another glass and take it with her upstairs to the spare room. She stayed there till morning.

On occasion, Kate stayed on the couch, never even attempting to fake making dinner. At some point during the night she would wake up and go upstairs, because Nola never found her there in the morning.

Nola's father would come and go throughout this, depending on his schedule at school or what book he was working on. Sometimes he would be locked in his study writing while Kate slept on the couch, sometimes he’d come home and shower, get ready and go back to school for workshops or evening classes, or to do research in the library. He told Nola to make sandwiches for them both if he was working at home, or sometimes he’d tell her to order food and he’d grab a slice of pizza or carton of Chinese food to take back to the college with him. Nola always ate alone on the weekends now.

Graham wasn’t quiet as he went about the house, he would slam things as usual, thump around, pound up and down the stairs. Kate never stirred. Nola always wondered if her mom was pretending, like playing dead.

On the days when Kate was there when Nola got home from school, it was a little different. She would announce brightly, enthusiastically that she felt like a little wine, as if it were a novelty. She would also announce that she wasn’t going to use the good glasses, why bother, it was just her after all. For the rest of the afternoon Kate would sit in the kitchen drinking her wine, only replenishing her glass when she thought no one was looking. Nola noticed the glass was refilled if she left and came back, so she knew her mother must be furtively pouring while she was gone.

If Nola were busy, playing outside or in her room, Kate would look at the calendar and “figure things out” or sort thru the mail, do her nails, putter around, eventually get dinner started. Nola would happen into the kitchen now and then and that’s the kind of stuff she would see her mother doing. She never talked on the phone anymore, unless it was business.

But most of the time, on afternoons as Kate drank her wine in the kitchen, always in the kitchen, most of the time she talked. She would tell Nola all about how things were going for her at work, she’d tell stories about the people in her office, or the people to whom she showed houses or the people who were selling them, and especially she’d tell Nola all about the houses themselves. She liked to talk about architecture, history, even town planning and zoning. Kate loved to talk about her work. She loved to talk about the people she met and the houses she saw.

Eventually, though, it always happened that some story, some person or house, would remind her of Ethan. All stories lead to Ethan. When Nola was little she used to like her mother’s Ethan stories. She liked them because they made her mother happy to tell them. She liked them because her mother would let her stay up late to hear them. She also liked them because her mother only told the nice ones.

But now, especially when Kate was drinking wine for a while, now the stories were not always the happy ones. Now sometimes Kate talked about sad things, about the accident, the hospital and about the funeral. And each time she would tell Nola these stories she acted like it was for the first time, forgetting that just yesterday, or the day before, or many times before that, she had told the same story. Kate forgot things from one day to the next.

Nola was fascinated by all of it at first. She had only heard bits and pieces, only been able to surmise or guess at things that had happened based on the little she’d heard. So when her mother began filling in the gory details Nola ate them up greedily, hungry to understand all facets of the Ethan story, all the mysterious parts she had been left out of. She egged her mother on, let her repeat herself, hoping to gain a better picture of what had happened, how things had been.

But after a few months the repetitive stories made Nola uncomfortable. They made her sad, but it was more than that. Nola couldn’t help feel that Kate was using Ethan somehow; she was using his death for some sort of explanation, an excuse. Because of Ethan things weren’t the way they were supposed to be. Because of Ethan life had gone in a certain mistaken direction. Because of Ethan everything was wrong. Nola felt defensive for her dead brother. It wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t help being dead. Nola liked it better when her mother was happy about the memories or sad about the loss, she didn’t like it when Kate used Ethan to rationalize. Ethan was more than that. He deserved better than that.

the invitation

Nola watched from the swings as the other girls sat on the steps outside the cafeteria. It seemed like every girl in her class sat there, she was practically the only one that didn’t. Well, there was Gracie Cooper, but she was an odd child, not quite right. Kate had said once something about her being “mainstreamed” and that being a mistake. And then there were the Sylvester twins, Lisa and Jenny. They were always together and didn’t seem to care about being with anyone else. Nola tried not to care, too. She tried very hard to pretend she didn’t care. But she did.

So when Melanie Woodman suddenly appeared in front of her, out of nowhere, blocking the strong afternoon sun as she stood before her, Nola was startled. She almost fell off the swing. Melanie didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m having a sleep over next weekend and I’m inviting every girl from class. Here,” she said, shoving an invitation at Nola, who almost dropped it when she awkwardly reached for it. “You don’t have to come,” Melanie said matter of fact, and then turned to walk away. However she stopped a few feet beyond Nola, turned back around, and added in what sounded like a genuine attempt at being nice, “But I guess it’d be cool if you did,” and with that she walked back over to the steps full of chattering girls.

Nola watched, a little wary. She expected to see Melanie say something to the crowd and then hear a twitter of giggles, to see some of them make a face or in some way reveal their true feelings about Nola having even been spoken to let alone receiving an invitation to Melanie’s home, that it was all some sort of joke or trick. But no such reaction followed. They seemed to continue their conversations; their behavior was unchanged. Nola looked at the invitation and started to open it, half expecting it to be empty or have some sort of hoax hidden inside instead of a real invite. Then she realized that if that were the case she would be playing right into their hands, becoming their afternoon entertainment. And if it wasn’t a prank, well, it might look lame if she were so suspicious. She decided to wait until she got home.

The rest of the day went as usual. No one spoke to her; no one paid any attention to her at all. Nola was invisible to her classmates, and why not? She didn’t belong there; she wasn’t like the rest of them. They were almost three years older than her but it might as well have been three hundred years. They probably thought she was either a baby or a freak. She wasn’t interested in the same things they were, didn't get their fads, their inside jokes went over her head.

She didn't belong with kids her own age, either, and they certainly didn’t like her, that was clear. They thought she was stuck up, too smart for her own good. “Genius Freak,” that’s what they called her, being smart was some sort of insult requiring an epithet, shameful and weird.

After school when she got home she went to her room as quickly as possible, rooted around in her backpack and dug out the invite. Carefully she opened the small pink envelope, inside was a regular invitation, complete with glitter and little bits of confetti tucked in. The card looked in order, the right date, time, she knew the address was correct because it was only a few miles away and she passed it on her way to school every day. Everything looked legitimate. The RSVP date was the day after tomorrow. She needed to think about this, make sure she considered the possibilities.

In the end she decided to go.

She would ride her bike there instead of having her mom drive her. That way if anything happened she could leave in a hurry, on her own steam. Nola figured she could hide the bike in a little patch of woods about a block or so before Melanie’s house and walk the rest of the distance, that way no one could do anything to the bike and prevent her from leaving if she needed to. She thought it all through, planned for every contingency. She would be cautious and on guard. Based on her experience with kids her own age she knew you had to be. But maybe these girls were different.

When Nola had first been told she'd be skipped ahead two grade levels, she was both nervous and relieved. All the kids from her old grade had thought she was a huge pain in the ass, so she had no friends, everyone hated her. Nola raised her hand too much, she knew all the answers and read everything quicker than anyone else in the class. Of course, Nola didn’t realize she was different at first. During the early days of school, back in kindergarten and first grade, she thought everyone was just like her. By the time she understood, it was too late. She’d already established her reputation as a know it all. Being a know it all was a sin worse than having red hair, or wearing glasses or even being fat. It was worse than all three combined.

So far, with the exception of one girl, Gwen Van Matre, her new eighth grade classmates pretty much ignored her as long as she left them alone and stayed quiet. There was that incident at Gwen's birthday party in the beginning of the year, but Nola could have misunderstood, it could have been an innocent mistake.

But back in her old grade with the kids that knew her all along, it had been different, there was no misunderstanding. Their cruelty seemed to have no bounds. They would roll their eyes whenever she walked by, mock her if she spoke at all. It became a popular schoolyard pastime to do exaggerated imitations of "Know-It-All-Nola"...to see who could string together the largest made-up words and mange to say them in as pretentious and pompous a tone as possible.

The first few times Nola was made fun of she went home crying to her mother. Kate had told her that the kids were just teasing, to try and laugh it off and not pay any attention. Nola had tried, but that only seemed to egg them on to go to further extremes, to do wilder and more inflated imitations, and worse. It was only the beginning. She was a convenient target for merciless ridicule. Alone, culled from the herd she was weak, vulnerable, a perfect scapegoat. Her backpack would mysteriously disappear; she would trip on unseen feet as she walked down the hall or in the cafeteria, sending her food flying and causing the cafeteria staff to hate her too. Even a couple of the teachers had joined in the derisive laughter a few times, in spite of themselves. Towards the end of the last school year it had gotten physical, violent. Nola came home bruised and scraped from being pushed around, punched. That’s when the school system intervened.

Nola was hopeful now that she was with the eighth graders, hopeful but still cautious, once burned twice shy, like Grandee used to say. Still, these older girls seemed less physically rowdy, they were more aloof and Nola took that for maturity, for seriousness, perhaps even for the chance to be safe. She thought that if she simply remembered to keep it dialed back a notch, didn’t put herself out there, she might at least just slide through, slip by disregarded and unnoticed.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

doors

“You’re so worried about healing this big rift between me and Dad, so worried about how we’ll get along after you’re gone,” Nola said the word 'gone' sarcastically, over dramatizing it for effect, “you just don’t get it.”

“What, what don’t I get, should I not care about you, about how he’ll be to you if I’m dead?”

“No, that’s not it, you should, I guess, but it’s not the only thing…”

“Nola, I know it’s not the only thing, I would like to take care of everything, so many…but I don’t know how much time I’ll have. I have to take care of what I can, do the important stuff first…”

“But you are the important stuff, you are the one…you are the one who might be leaving and we, our…this sucks, the way we are, our relationship sucks as much as mine and Dad’s does, more.”

“How can you say that? Look, I know I’ve made mistakes. I...I’d do a lot of things differently…”

“Tell me that, Damn it, tell me stuff like that! I need to know what you regret, I need to know that you know how badly you fucked up with me, that you wish…that you wish you could have loved me.”

“Nola! I’ve always loved you.”

“Yeah, maybe, but not as much as him, never as much as him and you blame me for that.”

“Nola, that’s not true, it may have seemed like …”

“It’s not my fault.” And with that Nola began to shake, to physically vibrate. She seemed wild eyed, like a caged animal pent up finally set free, yet disoriented, not knowing which way to go.

Kate took a step closer, tried to pacify her, to speak calmly, soothing, the way she would to a wounded child, “What’s not your fault, honey, tell me?”

“I got to live just because he died. You would never have had me if he hadn’t died. How do you think that feels, to know that I’m the replacement kid? You blame me for not working out the way you hoped but it’s not my fault because no one could replace Ethan…no one could replace any one but even if they could no one could replace Ethan because you would never have let them. Even if I’d been perfect you never let anyone in to that…space, that space that was his. You let me look, you let me see what that kind of motherly love looked like, you told me stories of how much you adored him, how everyone loved Ethan. You let me see what being loved like that might look like, but you never gave it to me, never let me touch it or feel it for myself.”

Nola was pacing now, tears streaming down her face, black eyeliner and mascara streaking down her cheeks, her body wracked with sobs, her breath exaggerated and gulping. “Don’t you think, don’t you know that was worse torture than any way Daddy could have treated me? You sold me a bill of goods about motherhood, painted me this glorious picture and then denied me the chance to have any of it.”

“But do you know what’s worse? I don’t even know if it actually exists at all in real life. I mean, did you really love Ethan like that? Or was that all just another delusion, just the way you dreamed it should be, so you convinced yourself that’s the way it was. But the truth is, the truth is you just told me all that stuff to make yourself feel better, to make you feel like a better person, a better mother. That way you could forgive yourself for not loving me…that way it could be my fault for not being like him or Ethan’s fault for ripping out your heart when he died but you never blamed yourself.”

Nola began to scream, her fists held tightly at her sides, her whole body rigid, “But it was your fault, Mom, yours and yours alone and I will never forgive you! Do you hear me, never! So take that to your grave with Ethan. I hope the two of you will be very happy together rotting in the mud!”

Kate stared at Nola like a dazed deer caught in headlights. Her mind swaying, trying to take in what she was hearing, what she was seeing. She tried to think of what to say next, but her thoughts were jumbled, words seemed garbled in her throat like she had tried to swallow marbles and couldn’t get them down, she was silently choking on the impact of all her daughter had said.

Nola stood, finally still, and glared at Kate, glowered at her with an intensity that seemed to give off heat. For one second they stayed locked in each other’s eyes, one enraged, one choking, both staring, frozen. Then Nola shook her head slightly in disgust and spit on the floor in front of Kate’s feet. She turned around and thundered out of the room. When Nola reached the front door she grabbed her bag from the hook off the hall rack so violently that she tore one end of the brackets holding it right out of the wall. As the screw was stripped from the wall it made an awful scraping sound and bits of plaster crumbled. The rack swung down on one end, sending everything hanging on it flying to the floor with a thud. The empty hall rack teetered on the wall for a moment as Nola stared at it. Then she walked out the door, slamming it with all her might, harder than her father had slammed it hundreds of times, harder than all the slammed doors of a lifetime. The frosted glass window smashed, the rack fell off the wall the rest of the way, and books went flying off the shelves in the parlor.

Kate stood in the kitchen doorway taking in the carnage. She just stood there looking for a long time, holding on to the edge of her mother’s Hoosier cabinet for balance. Eventually she felt her throat loosen, her mind slowly stopped reeling. She closed her eyes and the shattering of the door glass replayed in slow motion in her mind. Each falling shard seemed to loosen the grip that held her stuck in that stunned silence, like all the pieces of her she’d been trying to hold together finally just fell apart. There was nothing left but a few jagged fragments clinging to an empty frame. She opened her eyes.

She knew something had to be done. She knew this had to be fixed; it couldn’t be left like this. And for the first time she realized it was up to her…she would have to repair this all by herself. She just didn’t know where to begin.

in the dark

(grist for the mill)

Kate sat in the small, dark, ultrasound room and tried not to cry. She tried to think of anything that would distract her from the mounting panic she felt. She took the fleshy part of her hand, that plump bit at the base, between the index finger and thumb, and dug her fingernails in as hard as she could. Maybe the pain would distract her from thinking, keep her from the rising realization that filled her with terror.

The technician had been so matter of fact. No, it wasn’t a cyst. Definitely wasn’t that. She’d need a biopsy. That word, ominous and unbelievable. This couldn’t be happening.

But then again, why not, why couldn’t it be happening? She’d heard once, couldn’t remember where, but she’d heard something about a person lamenting, “why me, why oh why me?” The answer, coming from whom, perhaps it was supposed to be God -- Kate could not remember that either now...but the answer was clear and cold; “Why not you?”

But Kate had thought there was a different answer for her. Frankly, she'd thought she was exempt from this sort of thing. She was shocked, stunned, even stupefied at the possibility of it being true, that she might actually have breast cancer. She’d filled her quota for tragedy. She lost a child, wasn’t that enough, didn’t that excuse her from any more agony, wasn’t that enough of a price to pay for one lifetime?

She’d known people who seemed to have nothing but bad luck. One horrible thing after another seemed to befall them. Illness, poverty, loss, the worst of the worst. These people were perpetually bitter and morose, understandably so. But Kate always secretly imagined that somehow they were different, a certain type, a genetic species unto themselves. Maybe she even thought that they must be, in a cosmic karmic kind of way, at least partially to blame for their endless misfortunes.

The thought occurred to her now, sitting in the dark ultrasound room waiting for the technician to come back, that maybe their bitterness, forming as a result of the first things that went wrong in their sad lives, developed into a kind of growth, a festering attitude that drew more and more sorrow towards it, feeding off it in some kind of parasitic way. Had she done that, had she unwittingly caused this growth now in her breast? She’d done her fair share of wallowing, drowned herself in seas of bitterness. Was she in actuality just like one of those people? Was this her fault too?

The door opened suddenly and the light was turned on. “I’m sorry, I could have turned the light on before I left,” the chipper technician said, “I always do that, I always leave people in the dark,” she laughed. Kate couldn’t help herself; “I guess there’s a lot of that going on around here.” The technician stared at her, blankly. “Never mind,” Kate said quickly, “Bad joke.”

The technician had confirmed her findings with the radiologist; Kate would need to schedule a biopsy. She was told she could get referrals at the desk as she left. The last thing the ultrasound technician said was, “Good luck.”

Kate could tell that the woman didn’t hold out much hope, she was being nice but she knew something more than Kate did at this moment, probably a lot more than Kate did. No doubt working in a place like this you got to know what looked hopeful and what didn't. Kate was convinced she could see in the woman’s eyes a look of concealed pity.

There were things, pieces of information that she would have to find out in bits and pieces, a slow steady diet of facts and statistics, medical jargon and redirect. A process was beginning now, this minute, that would take a long time. Maybe there was hope, but it didn’t seem to look good, and this woman knew it, Kate could tell.

As Kate stepped out into the long hall and headed towards the cubical where her clothes and purse were, she saw at the other end a man holding a small boy, a toddler. All Kate could make out from that distance was that the boy had blond hair, like Ethan. But as she was walking towards him, as she got closer and closer, more details revealed themselves. With each step she saw a little more…the striped pattern of his little red shirt, the overalls he wore with the strap hanging off one shoulder, his fingers in his mouth, the sweep of his bangs to one side, the toy in his other hand, it was a little train…was it a Thomas train? With every step all the little details that made him someone specific, an individual child, were getting more and more fleshed out until she reached her cubical doorway and took what would be her closest look, the final degree of proximity revealing as much detail as she would ever have of this boy. She stopped and took it in. She could see his eyes now; they were dark. He held her gaze for a minute and then buried his head in his father’s, well, the man’s shoulder, shy, not wanting to interact with this stranger. Kate understood. She remembered how little boys could be at that age.

Back in her appointed cubical she had to force herself to focus and put her clothes on, make sure she gathered all her belongings and try to act normal, try to walk out of the radiology lab with dignity and make it to her car. Dignity seemed all she had left now. She just needed to make it to her car. When she stepped out of the cubical, dressed, she turned to look for the boy and the man holding him. They were gone.

Once inside her car she looked around to make sure she was alone, no one in the cars on either side of her. She thought she would cry right off the bat but she sat in stunned silence. Disbelief seemed to have numbed her momentarily.

She started thinking about that little boy. Was his mother there for a mammogram? Was she okay? Would his life go on, happy, blissfully safe for at least another day?

Maybe it was a good sign, this innocent little child, like Ethan telling her it was okay Mommy, it will all work out in the end. Or maybe it was a bitter reminder of how cruel, how short, how sinister life could be. She couldn’t decide which it was. Not today. Not here, not now.

And then she thought of Nola, and the tears came.

bones to pick

Nola tried to will herself back to sleep but it was no use, she had to pee. She dreaded asking to use the bathroom and tried to put off getting up as long as possible, but it only made her have to go worse. Maybe he was almost done getting ready? But as she lay in bed Nola could still hear her father intermittently walking back and forth from bathroom to bedroom, the old floorboards creaking under the thick rug with each muffled footstep. She knew she’d never make it.

“Daddy, I’m sorry, but can I please use the bathroom? I have to go really bad.”

“You’ll have to wait,” came the curt reply.

Nola sat on the end of her bed, trying to watch for when her father was done with the bathroom without looking like she was being pesky. She didn’t know if he would tell her it was ok at some point, or if he meant that she had to wait until he was completely done getting ready, but there was no way she would ask which way he meant it.

She began to wiggle and tried to take her mind off going. As she waited she counted the flowers on her bedspread. Then she counted the stripes on her rug. Next she counted the polka dots on her curtains. She was running out of things to count and rocking back and forth.

“Go ahead, just hurry it up.”

“Thanks Daddy, I’m sorry.”

Nola pulled down her panties and hiked up her nightgown, barely making it to sit down on the seat before she started to pee. She leaned forward and pushed, trying to hurry it up. When she was finished she didn’t wash her hands; she could do that in the kitchen.

Once downstairs Nola could still hear that same intermittent walking back and forth until finally the master bedroom door closed. The next sound would be her father’s footsteps on the stairs; he was coming.

As her father entered the kitchen Nola said, “Good morning.” There was no reply. Sometimes that meant something, sometimes it didn’t. Nola sat very still at the table, moving only just enough to quietly continue eating her cereal. She tried to be careful and not eat too loudly, not to slurp her juice or scrape the spoon against the cereal bowl. He hated that noise in particular.

On the counter by the stove she watched her mother line up three coffee cups while her father stood waiting. Kate filled each cup halfway so there’d be room for plenty of milk. This was her father’s only breakfast; he never ate in the morning, except for Sundays when he got a bagel downtown. He poured milk into the first two cups and drank one of them standing over the sink. Then he took the second cup and headed out the side door and through the breezeway into the garage. The third cup sat there alone and black on the counter, waiting for his return. Nola could see the steam rise in a misty cloud over the mug. Her father liked his coffee hot, it really had to be boiling so the milk wouldn’t turn it too cold.

Nola knew that her father was meticulously cleaning the windshield of his car with Windex and paper towels, just like he did every single day. Rain or shine he always started out with a clean window to look through on his short drive to work. Nola thought it was funny that he cleaned the windshield even if it was raining or snowing. When she asked him why he did it, since it would just get dirty again, he said that it still made a difference, he said, “dirt adds up.”

When her father came in from the garage he had his usual wad of dirty paper towels in one hand and the empty coffee cup in the other. He didn’t have a garbage pail in the garage; he didn’t want any trash near his car. He never left his cups lying around, either. Nola wasn’t allowed to drink anywhere in the house except the kitchen because he didn’t want any cups or glasses left lying around. Things lying around would get him really mad.

After the garage Graham went into his study to polish his boots. With the thin walls and the open door Nola could hear him almost as clearly as if he were in the room with her. She knew by the sounds what he was doing every step of the way.

When Nola was a smaller child and liked to follow her father around she would watch Graham shine his shoes nearly every morning. She was fascinated by the process, loved the sharp metrical sounds of the brush and antiseptic, oily smell of the polished leather. Later, as she got a little older, she would peek at him from the butler’s pantry instead, hoping he wouldn’t notice her watching. But now she just listened from the kitchen to the familiar sounds.

First, he got out his shoeshine kit from the bottom desk drawer. She could hear the bag unzip, hear the can of polish being opened and then the unmistakable noise of her father spitting onto the surface of the thick paste to thin it out. Then there was a muffled sort of quiet, so he must be spreading the dark polish onto his cowboy boots with a soft brush, working it in all the nooks and crannies, every inch covered, no spot missed. The silence was broken by the rhythm of a stiff bristle brush as it brushed back and forth, evenly stroking across all sides of the well-worn boots. A few more moments of silent buffing with a cloth and he’d be done.

Once her father came back into the kitchen he took the last cup of coffee and added the milk. While he stood drinking it over the sink again, Nola’s mother finally put the milk away.

With his back turned to anyone that might be in the room, Nola’s father stared out the window drinking the last of his morning coffee. The routine was almost over now. Nothing had been slammed, no indication he was mad for any reason. If he didn’t say anything, if he didn’t have any bones to pick with her or her mother, then that meant everything was okay.

That’s what her father always said if he wanted to tell her she had done something wrong, or if she hadn’t done something she was supposed to do. “Listen,” he’d start off, “ I have a bone to pick with you.” Sometimes he would say he had “a few bones to pick”, or even “a lot of bones,” when she’d messed up a bunch of stuff. He’d even have a bone to pick with both Nola and her mom sometimes, “I have a bone to pick with both of you.” That’s what he said if he was willing to set them straight about something.

But sometimes he wasn't willing to talk to them; he wouldn’t talk to them at all, not even to say hello or goodbye. Sometimes it didn’t mean anything but other times it was a warning sign, it meant he was really mad and they would have to guess, to try and figure out what they did wrong.

The way you'd know he was mad was he'd slam things. You weren’t sure if or when it was coming, so it was always kind of a surprise. He’d walk into the room with the same countenance he did every day, take that heavy pottery mug of coffee laden with milk calmly in his hand and when he’d drunk it all down he might suddenly slam it on the worn wooden counter, loud enough to startle but not hard enough to break it. He never broke it; though whenever that happened Nola thought this would be the time, this would be the time he went too far and broke the cup.

Other times he’d drink the coffee and place the cup down gentle as usual, only to slam the side door with all his might as he left to go to the garage, slam it so hard it shook the whole house. Or maybe he’d slam it shut when he came back in. He might kick the metal garbage can after throwing out the dirty paper towels, ostensibly because the lid stuck, though kicking didn’t do anything but dent it; there were dozens of small little divots around the perimeter of the can from Graham’s frustrated boot tips.

Sometimes nothing would happen until Graham left the house and he’d slam the front door so hard the grapevine wreath would go flying off or books would fall from the shelf in the next room. You just never knew. You never knew if everything was ok until he’d finally left for the day and nothing had been slammed. You never knew it was alright unless no bones had needed to be picked.

Nola had a dream once when she was very little that she took a huge pile of bones, scraps from Grandee’s roast chicken, and placed them on a platter in front of her father at the dinner table. She did it to please him, in the dream she thought it would make him happy.

the ninny & the weasel

“Is this signature alright, yes or no?” The man behind the counter at the DMV asked Kate as she looked at the form to verify her own signature.

“Yes, it’s fine,” she said politely.

“M’am, is this signature alright, yes or no?”

Kate thought she hadn’t answered loudly enough, so this time she said very clearly, in a stronger voice, “Yes, it is fine.”

Now the man behind the counter let out an exasperated sigh and spoke very slowly, annunciating every word in an exaggerated manner as if she were mentally challenged, “M’am, is this signature alright,” and through gritted, impatient teeth he finished, “...yes or no?”

Kate now realized he had heard her the first two times, it was her response that was at fault. Was he only allowed to accept a specific ‘yes or no’ answer, or was he just being a prick? Normally Kate would have just given him what he wanted. She would have felt stupid for not having picked up on the requirement and given the proper answer in the first place. But today, today she was not in the mood to give anyone what they wanted, least of all this weasely little ass behind the DMV counter. Nola had kept her up all night and she was bone tired, she was too tired to give anyone what they wanted anymore.

“Yes, it is fine!” Kate said loudly, slowly, matching his exasperation word for word, spitting out the words through her own clenched teeth.

He finally looked up at her. She was staring at him as if he were the most evil man on earth, as if he was the epitome of evil and she had been hunting him her whole life waiting for this very moment to jump over the counter and drive a stake through his inhuman heart.

Without looking away and maintaining a totally blank expression he said, “Twelve dollars please.” This time his tone was flat, not angry, but not pleasant either. Kate placed her cash down on the counter and he slid her driver’s license towards her, just close enough for her to reach. She snatched it up, glared at him one more second, and then turned and walked away as defiantly as she could, triumphant, knowing that people were staring at her, secretly cheering her on for standing up to the weasel behind the DMV counter the way they all wished they had the nerve to do.

It wasn’t until she got all the way out to her car that she realized she didn’t have her purse.

Oh good God, I left it on the counter! Oh shit! What am I going to do? I can’t go back. I won’t. She looked at the car door, luck would have it the car was unlocked. She opened the door and climbed in, relieved she could find some cover, some semblance of privacy to hide in. At least she could have a moment to think.

She wouldn’t go back in, no way. She would call Graham from a payphone and tell him she lost her purse, that she didn’t know where. But he would suggest it was at Motor Vehicle, he would tell her to go there and check first before he came all the way down there. Or did he even know that’s where she went? Had she remembered to tell him where she was going? Maybe she could say she had come to town to go to one of the stores instead. The shoe store, yes, she could say she went there.

This was ridiculous, she should go back to the DMV and get her damn purse, she’d done nothing wrong, nothing to be embarrassed about. But that man had been so mean and she had stood up to him, sort of. She had certainly let him know that she didn’t take kindly to his treatment of her, she had made that clear at least. But now all her courage, all her brave defiance had evaporated at the foolishness and pathetic idiocy of forgetting her purse. How could she have been so stupid? If she had a brain she’d be dangerous.

That’s what her mother always said to her, “if you had a brain you’d be dangerous.” Graham had laughed hysterically the first time her mom had said it in front of him, back when he and Kate were dating. He thought it was very funny, said he’d have to remember that. And he did. Kate had laughed too then, trying not to appear overly sensitive, like she was a good sport and could take a joke. But it had cut her to the quick that her mom would use that familiar phrase in front of her new boyfriend. If only she’d known then that it would pale in comparison to what Graham was capable of saying. Graham and her mom had a lot in common. They both could make her feel inept with one look; one sharp verbal jab could flatten her and cut her to the core.

Kate felt stupid, like she couldn’t even manage to do the simplest stuff right. Her mother would chastise her, point out her mistakes with a laugh, but not because it was funny. In fact, she knew she was the bane of her mother’s existence. Always with her head in the clouds and her feet going the wrong way, Kate forgot things all the time, mere minutes after instructions were given she would have no recollection of what was expected, probably because she wasn’t paying attention in the first place. No doubt because of that she made mistakes, sometimes big ones. She probably would actually forget her own head if it weren’t attached.

Her mother would have a few choice things to say about this episode. She’d say, “what’s wrong with you, how could you forget your purse, it was right there on the counter in front of your own eyes?” And she’d think Kate was utterly ridiculous for not wanting to go back and get it, she’d call her a ninny – yet another of her mother’s favorite ways to castigate her. Kate hated that word, “ninny.” It sounded exactly like what it was, a weak, silly, lame little person with no sense whatsoever. “Why are you being such a ninny, go back and get your own damn purse.”

Kate new from an early age she just didn’t have the courage, the fortitude her mother did. Her mother was the strongest woman she knew, she seemed made of iron. When her father died Kate’s mother had raised her and her three brothers, worked two jobs and kept the house spotless. Kate’s brothers had all gone to college, each one had achieved success and credited their mother for pushing and for making them tow the line. Somehow Kate was different, what seemed like basic tasks of life overwhelmed her. Even as a child she always knew she was her mother’s greatest disappointment. When her mother didn’t speak to her, ignored her, she knew it was because poor Agnes couldn’t bear to be reminded of this colossal failure, Kate’s mere presence would be like rubbing salt into the wound.

There was no escape from Agnes and her critisizm, even from beyond the grave she manged to shake Kate’s confidence. Whenever Kate felt stupid, every time she made a mistake, she thought of what her mother would think, could practically hear her harsh, raspy voice in her head. It was an automatic response. Now she sat in the cold car and wished she had the nerve to go back and get her purse, wished she could be more like normal people. But she wasn’t and never would be. She was weak, her mother was right. Graham was right. Even Nola, the way she looked at Kate sometimes with those knowing blue eyes, even her own infant daughter already knew she was useless.

Kate looked up just in time to see that man, the weasel from the DMV, walking towards her car, her purse in his hand. She got out and walked around the front of her car to meet him. “You forgot this,” he said, barely looking at her. “Yes, I just realized…” but before she could finish the sentence he’d already turned and was walking away, back to his weasely counter, his weasely job.

Even he knows I’m a ninny. It is obvious even to him.

Disclaimer: Weasels are noble creatures, some of my most treasured friends are weasels -- the dreaded DMV Weasel is a species unto itself and no relation to the other, talented and remarkable weasels of the world :)

Sycamore Cave

Nola had studied the local history of her town in her library class, fascinated especially by the old photographs. Some things looked familiar to her, like the downtown storefronts, even with the horses and buggies parked along Main Street instead of cars. But other pictures were unidentifiable; they looked completely foreign as if they weren’t taken in her town at all.

She listened intently to the town historian as she explained that Darlington was one of many suburbs around New York City that grew out of a once predominantly agricultural community. There were still vague remnants of a few old farms, though they were dwindled down to only a handful of measly acres now. Bits and pieces of the woodland areas scattered throughout the currently upscale and quaint neighborhoods were actually once farmer’s fields, overgrown through the course of a mere half century or so with large oaks, hemlocks, maples and sycamores, the forest reclaiming what the plow had abandoned just a few generations ago. It amazed Nola how quickly nature could change things, how fast it erased all human traces if given half the chance.

Nola’s own home was a quaint old farmhouse preserved from another era, once part of one of the largest farms in Darlington, owned by members of the Darlington family themselves. She saw lots of pictures of the house at the library, but only a few of the people who lived there, other than Ramsey Darlington, the town founder, his pictures were plentiful. Her house had once had acres and acres of land around it, all cleared and nearly flat. Today the land surrounding her house was barely a quarter acre. Much of the original parcel had been sold off lot by lot during the housing boom of the fifties and the rest was eventually donated by the Darlington family to nearby Mahwah Mountain College for expansion in the sixties.

Landlocked behind Nola’s home was a 10-acre tract of woods, likely once one of those flat, cleared fields where maybe cows grazed or corn grew. Along the perimeter of the former field was the remarkably intact vestiges of a low, stone wall, no doubt built by that long gone Darlington farmer who once lived in Nola’s house. Today the wall acted as a divider of sorts; along one length of it the woods were divided from the houses of the bordering street, and on the other side it outlined the edge of the rolling college lawns. Across the third side, the farthest stretch of wall from Nola's yard, it created a property line for another old Darlington farmhouse, smaller than Nola's, but of the same era.

Nola liked to think about the farmer that lived in her house, and his wife and children. She pictured them picking up rocks turned up by the plough and placing them upon the ever-growing wall, stone by stone. Nola could imagine that maybe the children might be able to identify which individual stones they’d each placed there, maybe even proudly boasting about which one of them had laid the largest one, heavier than his or her brothers and sisters were able to lift. Nola always imagined there were lots of kids; all those old time farmers had big families. Grandee had told her it was necessary to have lots of children because there was a lot of work to do, and sadly sometimes the children didn’t all live so they needed to have as many as they could to ensure there’d be enough to carry on the farm. Times were different back then, harder for children and adult alike.

It must have been a daunting task to lay a rock wall like that if you thought about it, but Nola guessed they didn’t give it much thought, that farmer and his family with all his many kids. They probably just took it in stride and did what needed to be done. That’s what it seemed like all people from the past did. Whenever her grandmother told her stories from her own childhood it seemed like people in the generations past accepted their lot in life better than people did today. At least that’s what she always said.

Nola loved her house, and she loved her street and the surrounding neighborhood, but perhaps her favorite place lay in those woods behind her home. Safely contained within the confines of that old stone wall at the center of the woodland, was a place called the Sycamore Cave by the local children, as they’d called it since before Nola was born, though it wasn’t a cave by any means. It was actually a half downed tree, what once was an impressive sycamore, it’s trunk 20 feet in diameter, over 100 feet tall. But lightening had struck the giant, probably back when it stood alone in that cleared farmer’s field, and the top half had been severed almost all the way through, but not quite. It snapped and fell in such a way that the upper portion stayed attached to the trunk, and, as if bending down from the waist, the top landed astride of it. The once lush, long limbed canopy was now upside down and created a fifty-foot cone of sorts, like a teepee of tangled limbs.

Through the years vines and brambles quickly grew over the outer branches so that the interior, starved of sunlight, was completely hidden from view and only a carpet of dry leaves blanketed the ground within. Bare, dead limbs on the shaded interior of the “cave” seemed almost like a rickety framework, an unfinished cathedral created by some crazy architect, now abandoned. You could climb to the top, the once middle of the tree, if you were brave enough. Nola hadn’t attempted it since she was little, but then she never made it to the top. She was glad now she hadn’t. She decided not to try anymore, to leave it unclimbed.

Nola often wondered if Ethan had ever seen the tree, but her mother said she couldn’t remember. It was hard to believe that he hadn’t, Grandee said he loved to go for walks in the neighborhood with Granda. They’d be gone for hours and Granda would come back carrying Ethan, half asleep, they’d gone so far in their travels that it had worn him out. Nola always wished she could have known her grandfather. Everyone, even Grandee, said he was a mean man; a hard man is what she’d say. Nola’s own dad would shake his head and say his father was a tough old coot, “hard as nails and twice as sharp.” But everyone agreed he had a soft spot, a special place in his heart for his grandson. Nola knew her grandmother felt that way about her, that she held that kind of special place in Grandee’s heart. But it would have been nice to have a grandfather carry her home after an adventure.

Everywhere Nola went in her neighborhood, her little world, she wondered if Ethan had been there before her. As she got older than he had been when he died, she began to realize that his world had been rather small, he hadn’t had the chance to expand it the way she did. She was the lucky one, her mother would often say, who got to do all the things he didn’t get a chance to. Sometimes when she’d whine about something she couldn’t have or wasn’t allowed to do her mother would give her a sad look and say, “You should feel lucky for all the things you do have, all the things you do get to do, your poor brother didn’t get his chance.” It always made Nola feel bad. Whenever she got to do something that she knew Ethan didn’t get the opportunity to experience she felt like she should try extra hard to enjoy it. That way maybe she could make up for what he missed. It was difficult, though, and she never felt like it was enough, never felt like she could enjoy things enough for the two of them.

When grown-ups mentioned Ethan to her mother or father, which they rarely did, but if they did, they would always say what a blessing Nola must be to them. Her parents smiled and said yes, thank God for Nola, they didn’t know what they would do without her. But Nola didn’t feel like a blessing. She wished she did, she wished she could be a comfort, a gentle reminder that Ethan had been here on earth.

She’d already lived longer than her brother, she’d surpassed him, she was in a new territory beyond his knowing, his touch. Darlington had been Ethan’s home just like it was the home of the farmer’s children who lived in her house, yet those children would hardly recognize their home now, the woods in what was once their level, cleared field would seem as foreign to them as another planet. Would it be that way for Ethan, too? Someday the Sycamore Cave might finally fall down completely and rot into the earth, leaving no trace of the children who once climbed its lofty heights. The rock wall could crumble and the stones laid with care would disappear beneath the leafy mulch of the forest floor. That felt unforgivable to Nola. Time was cruel, unyielding. It felt unsafe.