The School on Heart's Content Road (24 page)

I would tell Rex, but then what? Offer me the couch? Then I'd be wicked in the way. Maybe he'd hate me. And her—his mother. They'd hate me, like here's Mickey Gammon in the middle of the living room. Who wants a totally useless guy in the middle of the living room?

And besides, how can I explain what happened? Fuckin' A, what
was
it that happened?
I
don't even know. One minute I was in Donnie's house. The next minute I'm here. Like,
poof!
It's not a thing you can talk about, not like the Constitution, the UN, Mini-14's, and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Saturday. Mickey, lighting up a “borrowed” cigarette, speaks.

So I'm watching Doc shoot Big John's new Bushmaster at the man's head, the bad-guy shape on the cop targets we're using now.

This is pretty funny. I've got to sit here on Rex's tailgate and pretend I'm not surprised by Willie asking me if his wife should send flowers or something. For Jesse.

Okay. This means Jesse is dead. Right?

How should I know? I'm just out on the moon, the last person to know, right?

But I live there with them, right? I should know if Erika and Donnie want flowers or “something else.”

I probably got a look on my face, sorta squinty, like I'm twisting my brains over whether it should be daisies or roses or chicken casserole.

I don't look at Rex. 'Cause he's got the mind-reading thing, remember? I do not look in the captain's eyes.

Bonny Loo speaks.

My real and legal name is Bonnie Lucretia Sanborn. Sanborn was Danny's name, his family. But Danny is dead. The accident. No drinking. No overtiredness. Just a really big truck and a fluke. Danny the one driving the really big truck.

I won't say things were great before he died. We were having it hard, making ends meet. Even if it hadn't been for the accident, I would like to have had us all move here to the Settlement, Danny too. He would not have wanted to work here with them. He never liked working with a bunch of people. That's why he drove truck. That's just the way it is for some. They don't do their best in a bunch. He was always on the road. If he were to live here, you wouldn't really call him
living
here, just kinda
stopping by
. It would have worked out. But that never happened.

Everything seems pretty good in my life these days. I can't complain. Six years since the accident. I guess it takes that long to get used to your dear one rotting in the grave. But also, all the circumstances, you know, my
financial
situation then. It sucked. You know, everything is affected by the
financial
. Out in the world, outside the Settlement, everything costs. Like Gordon says, “Everything is a commodity. Justice is a commodity. Information is a commodity. Honor is a commodity. Dignity is a commodity. Health is a commodity. Death is a commodity. Land is a commodity. Freedom is a commodity. Air, water, energy, art, song, info, thoughts, peace of mind, your soul—it's all for sale, and if you can't buy it, you will not have it.”

Anyway, it was terrible for a while, especially after my mum-in-law Dorothy went to the nursing home and the state grabbed the house. I came
this close
to slitting my wrists. Even with Gabriel depending on me. It didn't matter. My thoughts were not normal; they had gotten gray and small and squeezed. I figured Gabriel was better off dead too. I figured everybody was better off dead. Well, it's true. Life isn't a great gift. It is shit. Just various adaptations by various organisms to various environments of various ages of planet Earth. That's the science view. And me, I've always been a scientist. Don't laugh.
Anyway,
a normal brain says, “A new day is coming! See the fresh morning! Get up and go!” The brain of a human person in a hopeless trap wants only to escape to the comfort of nothingness. It sees everything different. Big things look small. Small things look big. And
everything
is ugly.

My mother says maybe I take after my father, who also fell apart. He flipped. Only he started shooting. And the cops didn't try to talk him out of it. I was right there watching when they all shot him. I was there
watching him fall from the top of our cousin's truck, heavy and dead, like a stack of newspapers is dead, like an old sweater is dead, like a book, a lamp, a rag, or a sawdust doll. Where does that aura of vigor go? Weird, huh? One minute you are everything; the next minute you are nothing. Ma says it had an effect on me. Sure it did. But what about the
world,
the real world
here and now?
Trying to get by, you are lost in ice-hot space, the
living
dead.

Until the Settlement people come to save you!

Now when I wake up in my little pale-pink house with my three children nestled around me, or if my new husband is here, I am in his arms and the kids are tucked into their really jazzy carved pine beds, and I think of the day's plans, always so many plans, so many sisters here, and I want to live. My brain is normal. I get the kids in the tub. I sweeten them with kisses. Or a lecture, if they are acting like shits. Then there is the getting-dressed race. And then we head down the path to the shops.

Okay, so everything ain't perfect. The husband situation has a kind of creepy twist. You know, the
P
word, polygamy. Yes, I am one of
the wives
. No, it's nothing like you can imagine. In fact, at the moment I'd rather think about something else. Like cooking!

It's one of my most favorite things. I think of myself as a cooking scientist. Or cooking explorer. I never use receipts or cookbooks. No measuring cups or spoons. Each pot or pan of stuff I rustle up, I wonder why it doesn't explode before I get it to the table. But you know something? Everything I put on those tables, the family says it's the best ever.
The best ever
. And there's seldom a crumb or spoonful left when the tables are cleared. My huge egg-shaped breads they sometimes call “clouds.”

I won't report to you now which of my sisters burn food or make food that just doesn't appeal. Mean talk is mean and would quickly turn to heartache among us.

I admit there are nights when I wake with a low moan, and the faces of my sisters here look huge and distorted and leering, and they steal from me or push me and pull a sleeve hard so that I begin to fall . . . off a cliff or something . . . but only in dreams. In real life they are very nice people. Basically.

Going to visit Marian St. Onge. Secret Agent Jane speaks.

Gordie takes me in his truck to go visit
his
mum. We bring her peas and radishes and piles of chard in a basket. And orange cow butter shaped like a heart. She lives in Wiscasset near the nuclear thing. This is something Gordie does every week, drives to Wiscasset “to check on my mother.”

She is not real friendly. Her house is huge with a white rug and naked angels. When she sees me, she says hello and shows me some of her house so we can look at it like you do in a store, cruisin' the racks. I think she's rich. She has these baby angels with real pee-pees and other statues. Everything is also red . . . like curtains. Or white. Her chairs are white. But it's a pinkish-white when you are me with these special secret agent glasses.

Her TV is in the wall.

Gordie is talking-talking, but his mum is quiet-quiet. Then we go to the kitchen, which is the best kitchen! All the stuff for a kitchen. I bet my dad Damon would love it here. The toaster is more shiny than even normal.

Marian is Gordie's mum's name. She offers me a cookie, which I accept. It is huge. You'll know when you look at a pizza how huge. It is perfect. Big and perfect. With chocolate chips perfectly spaced. She must have paid a bunch of money for cookies like this. Definitely not a cookie made by
hands
.

She puts me at the
breakfast nook,
which is in the wall and has a window to look out and see the
outside
statues. These are also naked boys. And beautiful, with their perfectly curled hair. With pink flowers on bushes. Outdoors is very nice and rich.

She offers me a pretty napkin with cows on it. And milk, but I say no thanks to milk. Even her perfect store kind that doesn't squirt out of cows. I hate milk. Then she goes right into the other room,
another
living room with all-white stuff and a metal God statue of a guy with clothes, and Gordie and her talk very low for a long time.

I eat the cookie real fast, so then all I have for something to do is nothing. I would ask to watch TV, but I guess I won't because it is weird with them. They have stopped talking, and then in a minute she says, “These people are like a disease with you. Like your alcoholism.”

Gordie is quiet.

I use the cow napkin to wipe my secret agent glasses clean. If I stand a certain way I can see Gordie's mum through the archway, standing in the middle of the pretty room holding her head. TV is right behind her. If it were on, I could watch it from here.

Now Gordie's mum begs and begs him to use “common sense.” She says someday he is going to be in a lot of trouble because of people like Lisa Meserve.

Whoa! My mother is Lisa Meserve!!!!!

Then she says more stuff. “I used to think these friendships you had were teenage rebellion. But you are almost forty now, and it's every hippie and biker and indigent widow and farmer and food-stamp queen and riffraff relative of your father's you can get your hands on. You draw them like flies.”

Gordie grabs her and wraps his whole huge arms around her. She is an old lady, old for a mother, a tall old lady, but she is disappeared in Gordie's hugest hug of love. Gordie's mouth says, in a mashed way against her hair, “Mother.” He sounds soft and serious and beggish. I adjust my secret glasses, and everything wiggles and bulges out real to me. If I had my crayons and pen with me for my secret agent notebook, which is in my pocket in a secret way, I would draw a picture of Gordie's mum in her pretty purple swirl vest and white blouse, crying. You can't believe what all the people in the world do until you get a chance to listen to them in a secret way and SEE into their brains and hot hearts.

From a future time, Whitney St. Onge remembers the Parlor Night Salons.