In
my memory my sister’s ninth birthday is always almost over. The pre-made burger
patties have been grilled, the supermarket cake cut, the glut of white frosting
smeared on paper plates. The three aunts up from the city have smoked their
cigarettes, have told the stories of the dead grandparents, of weekend
childhood abandonment for Temple Bazaars, Atlantic City. The dance to Debbie
Gibson’s “Electric Youth” has been invented and performed. The games of TV tag
have been played, the show names—Wonder Years, Who’s the Boss?, Growing
Pains—screamed into the hot afternoon. Our father has unfurled the Slip n’
Slide. We have coursed the lemony strip on our stomachs, the girls in pink
bathing suits, me in too-big lacrosse shorts I think make me look tough.
“Marky, pull your pants up,” our mother shouts. Our father announces the last
game, says, “Pairs, please, ladies and gentlemen.” The grass, high and thick
with summer, sticks to our legs.
And
it would be a lie to say that we were happier then than we are now. I can see
how the aunts sit facing each other, curled away from my father, their baby
brother, who they always forget to call. I can see how our mother fishes the
cooler for the last beer, her hand coming up full and numb, how she drinks it
too fast, pats her newly-permed hair which our father has repeatedly made fun
of. I can see how our father’s shoulders sag as he walks into the house for the
pink carton, our ringmaster, our tired stand-up comedian who we think of as
tireless, who is thinking, How many has
she had? or Does she have the car
keys? or When are all these people
leaving?, not knowing yet that, in a year’s time, he will fall in love with
someone else and be the one leaving.
And I can see how, standing in the yard, my
sister has her arms crossed over the chest of her bathing suit, looks down at
her thick, soccer girl thighs, which she will whittle to spindles at sixteen
for her first boyfriend. In another moment I will throw an egg to her, too
hard. The yoke will spill over her small hands and she will cry, will run into
her room, into the hard, blue agate of her sadness, and I will not know how to
follow her. I still don’t.
In
another moment, a warm wind will blow the paper plates across the lawn, send
them flying into the pachysandra like a flock of startled birds. Our parents
will chase them down with black garbage bags, angrily, not looking at each
other. I know the argument that comes later, the way their accusations—Why didn’t you? Why couldn’t you? Where were
you?—will crack the house open. In the morning crows will stab at the
yard’s slick places, the eggshells highway-cross-white against black beaks.
There will be a rotten smell.
For the moment though, in my memory, my lying,
longing memory, there are only the rich smells of charcoal and wet grass. The
aunts’ laughter spirals up into the darkening trees. The pairs move closer
together. My father places the egg in my cupped hands, says, “careful.” It is
exquisitely cold, a tiny space ship, a miniature planet. My sister looks at me
fiercely, says, “gentle,” and I am floating it toward her. It hangs between us,
in the blue-gold light, round, whole, opaque, blessed, its casing so smooth and
so thin.
Meagan Cass
