On the Divinity of Second Chances (6 page)

On the drive home, I look for contented people. No contended people today. No contented people yesterday. Maybe I’m just seeing the world through my own experience. Maybe I wouldn’t recognize contentment in someone even if I was staring right at it.

I pull into my parking place, get out, and walk toward my apartment. The afternoon breezes blow distinctive smoke down to the courtyard. I look up to see Todd, Dave, and Chad pass a fattie on the deck above my door. I watch as they take turns inhaling deeply. They look temporarily content, but I don’t think that’s the answer for me.

As soon as I’m inside my apartment, I go straight to my calendar and count the weeks until I’ll have to move out. Since I can’t afford this place on my own, I used my savings to pay for June’s rent and gave my landlord notice. Five weeks and five days. I flip to July and wonder where I’ll be living then—my parents’ house? That would be a new all-time low. As I look at the Fourth of July, panic strikes me. When was my last period? Let’s see, it was St. Patrick’s Day. Yes, that’s right. I remember it distinctly now because my period always begins on major holidays, giving me cramps and wrecking all special occasions. When it missed Easter, I thought it was weird. That’s one, two, three (flip the page), four, five, six, seven (flip another page), eight, nine weeks ago. Five weeks late? Uh-oh. Let it just be stress. Please, God, let it just be stress.

I get back into my Honda sedan and drive to the drugstore. I pick up a plastic shopping basket and toss in a package of thank-you cards first so I’ll have something to cover up the e.p.t. with. If I am pregnant, I’ll need postshower thank-you cards, and if I’m not, well, a person can always use more thank-you cards. I walk down the girl aisle, pluck an e.p.t. off the shelf without stopping, and bury it under the cards. Why is it that I have never seen a handsome guy in this store, but the moment I have a pregnancy test in my basket, they’re everywhere? I get in line. One of the handsome guys gets in line behind me. I pretend I forgot something and go off to look at toothbrushes while I wait for the coast to clear.

I get in line again. The checker is young; she’s wearing a gold cross around her neck. I wonder if she practices abstinence. Power to her if she does. I look at my left hand—no ring. I take my little cardigan sweater off and hold it in my left hand to hide my ring finger. I thought I was too old and too educated to ever be in this situation. I thought I was mature, confident, and capable enough not to feel self-conscious about this. I’m not, though. I feel totally exposed, totally vulnerable. Everywhere I look, I see judgment. I’m sure it’s simply my own judgment mirrored back to me, but it makes my heart race just the same. The checker remains expressionless and slips my merchandise into a white plastic bag. The bag isn’t completely opaque, and I can see the letters e.p.t. right through it. I’m quite sure everyone else in the whole world has nothing better to do than to try to see through my bag and figure out its contents.

I put my purchases in my car and walk next door to the grocery store for a bottle of water so I can prepare to pee. I see babies everywhere. How is it I never noticed all these babies before? I study the mothers. Do they look happy? Yes . . . a little tired, but pretty happy. All but one wear rings and look economically comfortable. In fact, they look content. They are the content people I’ve been looking for. What is contentment anyway? It has to be more than just economic comfort. The one mother without the ring looks hardened. In her eyes, I can tell she, too, sees judgment everywhere. She even sees it from me, which is ridiculous given my circumstances.

“What a beautiful baby,” I tell her.

She looks down at the baby with a reluctant and heartbroken smile, then up at me for a quick second. “Thanks,” she says and quickly rolls her cart away.

My heart aches as I realize I may be looking at my future.

Forrest on the Forest as a Tree Farm
(May 20)

“Nice to see you! Nice to see you!” Lightning Bob calls to me. Flash runs down and herds me up the stairs as usual. When I reach the top, Lightning Bob pats me on the back and guides me into the tower with a fatherly hand on my shoulder.

I sit at my usual place and study the calendar. It’s been an unusually dry May. No storms. No lightning.

“Going to be a bad year for fires,” he says when he sees me studying the calendar. “Only May and already everything is as dry as bone.” He pauses and looks out toward the south. “Back before fire suppression, there used to be about twenty trees per acre out here. Fire would rip through and thin the weak ones out pretty regularly. Those fires didn’t burn hot, so the strong trees survived just fine. Now there are two hundred trees per acre out here. That’s a lot of fuel, my friend. That’s an uncontrollable inferno waiting to happen. We see firestorms now like we’ve never seen before—fire moving at fifty miles per hour—sometimes faster.” He puts the kettle on and strikes a match as he turns on the propane, then opens a window. “I look out there and feel this love for this land; it’s been my home for so many years. I’m the fourth generation in this tower. I know it’s only a matter of time, though. Each year that it doesn’t burn, the stakes get higher. It’s only a matter of time.”

The look on my face must have revealed my feelings of horror about the fire. The idea of these hills burning turns my stomach.

Lightning Bob studies me carefully. “Tough one, isn’t it? Fire is natural, but fires of the magnitude they become now aren’t. Some burn so hot, they sterilize the soil.”

I show Lightning Bob my cards. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four,” he counts aloud for me. He pauses for a moment and adds, “Someone once said to me, ‘Water cleanses, but only fire purifies.’ I’m not sure I have much need for purification. I feel pure enough already.”

I look out the window and see the sheep coming. I say a prayer that the wolves will stay away from them and that the shepherds will stay away from the wolves.

“Fifteen-two, and a pair is four,” Lightning Bob counts.

In my pocket, I play with a folded-up poem which I brought to share with Lightning Bob. When he gets up to go to the outhouse, I take it out and reread it:

I decide not to share this one and go on my way.

Olive on Blue
(May 20)

Oh, my God, it’s blue. It turned blue. I put the stick down on top of the toilet and walk into the living room. Maybe when I walk back in later, it will have changed back to pink. I water my plants. I turn on the TV. I turn it off. I turn it on again and flip through the channels without pausing long enough on any station to really judge any program as worthwhile or not. I walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, then shut it. I walk back into the bathroom and stare at the stick. It’s still blue. I shake my head and then let it drop like my dad does when he’s disappointed, disgusted, or in a state of disbelief about something stupid I’ve done. I feel all three. I raise my head and look at myself in the mirror. Instead of seeing my own eyes, I see my father’s, so deeply disappointed in me. Oh, oh! Pow! The nausea hits me just like that and I spew a small amount of watery puke in the sink. I stand a little longer, struggling with the dry heaves, then lean back against the bathroom wall and slide down, out of sight of my own reflection, out of view of my father’s judging eyes, down until I find relief by lying on the cold bathroom floor. My eyes fill with tears, and in doing so, they feel like my eyes again. Lord knows, I never saw Dad cry. I start to shiver, so I reach up and pull a bath towel off the rack to cover myself. How am I ever going to get through this alone?

Pearl on the Neighborhood
(May 26)

I open my front door and greet the cool morning with a smile. My hair is pulled back in my favorite red scarf, the one that matches my bright red pedal pushers I wear so that my pants don’t get caught in my bike chain. I step out onto my porch, survey the sky around me, walk down my steps, and take the old Schwinn cruiser from where it was leaned against the porch. I drop my letter to Anna and some dog cookies in the flower basket on my handlebars. I walk my cruiser down the path from my house until I reach the driveway. I adjust my handgun holster so that my piece rides a little more toward my back and doesn’t get in the way when I pedal. I spot Beatrice, that early bird, out in the garden.

“Beatrice! Would you like to ride to town with me?” I call to her.

“No, thank you!” she calls back. “It looks like rain!”

“Chicken!” I call to her as I hop on and begin the three-and-a-half-mile ride down the smooth clay road. I like the hum of my tires on the clay and enjoy seeing the pattern my tires leave in the silt-clay dust as I weave down the road, creating a giant serpent from my house to town.

I pass the Hildebrands’ house. Erika Hildebrand has taken to collecting small livestock lately. I study her two pygmy goats and miniature donkey as I pass their pasture. As I make my way down farther, the Andersons’ dogs run out to greet me—Amigo, a blue heeler, and Kiva, an Australian shepherd. I stop my bicycle and give them both a dog cookie, then begin to pedal again. The dogs try to herd me by running circles around my bicycle. Julie Anderson, mowing the little lawn around her house, looks up and waves. She whistles at her dogs, and they leave their unsuccessful attempt at herding to run back home. At least ten kids play outside the Hulls’ house. Sasha, as usual, is in her garden, where I reckon she spends all her time trying to grow enough food to feed all those kids. From under her wide straw gardening hat, Sasha calls out hello, and I return her greeting. I do love riding past my neighbors. The bicycle takes me at just the right speed, slow enough to take a good look at things, but fast enough to get me there. I can stop and say hello to neighbors with less formality than if I had driven up in a car, or I can just wave and ride on by. I miss this ritual in the winter when the snow covers the road.

A rattler suns itself in the road. I take my gun out of my holster, pull back the hammer, aim, and press the trigger. The recoil makes my bike swerve dramatically, but I don’t crash. I get closer to the snake, now dead, and stop. I walk to the side of the road without getting off my bike, pick up a stick, go back to the snake, and poke it. It doesn’t move, so I pick it up and put it in the flower basket on my handlebars so I can skin it later.

I continue on until I reach the edge of town, then pass a row of houses, the feed store, and the general store, and arrive at last at my destination, the post office. I park my cruiser, walk inside, and unlock my box. I survey its contents: a letter from an old friend who moved to Kansas, a catalog full of stupid gadgets and useless junk I don’t need, a subscription renewal notice for Beatrice from
Prevention
magazine, and a yellow USPS card that lets me know I have a package too large to fit in my box. I present the card to Andrew Mabey, the post-master, such a nice boy.

“Why, hello, Mrs. Huffman, I hear we’re supposed to get more rain today,” he tells me.

“Couldn’t come at a better time,” I reply. My smile thanks him for the good news.

Andrew walks into the back and finds my package. It’s my long-awaited box of Fort Laramie strawberry plants—two hundred of them. “My strawberries,” I tell Andrew.

“Well, now I know where to be at the end of August!” he teases me. Secretly, though, I know he does hope I bring him another strawberry pie like last year.

“I’d better hurry home and get as many of these in the soil as I can before the rain,” I explain. I say good-bye, walk outside to my bike, take two bungee cords from under the dead snake in my basket, and strap the box of strawberry plants to the rack over my back tire. I take the dead snake from my basket and carefully tuck it under the bungee cords to make room in my flower basket for my other mail. Then I pedal with more vigor on my way home, past my friendly neighbors, to beat the rain.

Anna on Being Territorial
(May 27)

I wear a black tank top while I paint today, even though I’ve become self-conscious of my arms. Hot flashes. I woke up last night drenched in sweat. I got out of bed, found some clean, dry sheets and took them outside to the reclining lawn chair, where I spent the rest of the night.

Instead of my favorite jasmine tea, I drink some worthless herbal menopause tea and sit by the window in the breakfast nook, painting a black and white raisin with a bright orange, red, and yellow flame around it. I’m going to call it
Crone with Hot Flash
.

Phil comes into the kitchen and begins to look through the cupboards. He takes all the small appliances out, neatly folds each one’s cord, takes a twisty-tie from the plastic bag and foil drawer, and wraps each folded cord. I burn with irritation.
Get out of my kitchen.
I know, of course, that in truth, it is our kitchen. We have, after all, shared this house for fourteen years. But in those fourteen years, he has regarded this as my domain. It’s the only place in the whole house where I care to spend any time. Now, here he is in my domain, thinking he can do everything better. What an insult.

Phil has moved on to the spice cupboard. He has taken all the spices out and arranged them alphabetically, as if the way they were was chaos. It wasn’t chaos. I had grouped them according to ethnicity, purposely keeping the ones that crossed over in the middle.

Do you know he rearranged my garden tools, too? I had them arranged according to season. Metal rake and spade for spring. Hoe and trowels for summer. Bamboo rake and pitchfork for fall. His compulsive tendencies and boredom not only insult me, but mess up my systems as well. One could argue that the garden tools were his, too. Sure—the garage was his as well . . . but when, when had he ever done anything in the garden? Never. He never used to be around. Now he’s around all the time—and at a time when I’ve never needed solitude more.