No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
Danny placed his hand in O’Hara’s and left it to O’Hara to shake it. What kind of handshake was that? No sense of joy, no enthusiasm for an old friend. It almost made O’Hara step back to re-evaluate the person in front of him. They had double-dated the McCormick twins, and smoked pot huddled in the nearby woods on winter nights so cold the trees made cracking sounds. Didn’t this mean anything to Danny?
I sprinkle shuffle wax on the shiny deck of the bowling machine. I concentrate — my hand on the cool metal puck, testing the friction before the push and then the folding of the pins and the whir of spinning numbers. I’m careful to stay behind the foul line, even when dad’s not giving me his side-eyed look to make sure I’m still there, playing by the rules.
In an instant, she stands outside the door again. Her brother’s room. She’s been here before, fondling the doorknob, wishing to go in. For the first time, though, she has the key. Her breath quickens. Her belly seizes up. It’s been sixteen years since she last entered this room. Her mother goes in there, maybe. Her father too, before he died. Or maybe the room sits empty, has sat empty for all these years. Holding its own ghosts since her family closed it up the week after Evan turned eighteen.
I got drunk in the hotel room and considered leaving several times. I actually decided to leave but by that point I was too drunk to drive. So I spent a few days in the hotel. My mother didn’t know I was coming, I could leave at any moment, and she would be none the wiser. I drank coffee and wrote in the mornings and afternoons, and then drank bourbon and wrote in the evenings and nights. I wrote to find the answer but drank to avoid it, and they fed off one another like a snake eating its own tail...
“We have one more stop before home, Robbie.” This was the time. She was ready. It was such a relief to have the words in her head and to know that the time was right. Like the galleon under the waves, the secret will be revealed. Their table was private and should the child become emotional there were no others close by. “Robbie there’s something I want you to know.” He looked up from his Coke. “That your Da and I want you to know. Both of us.” It was so easy, why hadn’t she done this years before? “A secret we kept from you when you were small. Now that you’re grown, well growing…” The words stopped, dammed up in her vocal cords. Her face flushed. She struggled to breath in and exhaled his name, “Robbie, Robbie…”
They never spoke of Minnesota or the folks they left behind. It must have been excruciating to be forced to leave everything they’d ever known with no hope of return, and a community to which they no longer existed. Out of necessity a new life was constructed, among fellow Mennonites, still apart from the greater world. If Ma placed any blame on Pa for their predicament, we children were none the wiser.