a truck crossing this very street last year because he was too good to wait for stoplights. He used to live in Europe and you should have seen him when he moved back, all arty and continental, although he was probably CIA, and it was a hit to make sure he didn’t go spilling Company secrets in the bar at the Fort Jude Club. What a way to go, in your bloody sock feet with your groceries smeared all over the road. Poor guy, I never thought!
You don’t think, not when you’re sealed in your car, safe from everything, but walking, you’re exposed, like poor Harrison. Walking is like opening your diary, in a way. Our whole past is out there and to get home, I had to walk through most of it. Northshore Elementary is a mini-mart now, with a parking lot where the playground was, I still have the scar where Brad Kalen jumped off the swing and it hit me in the head and I was excited and sad, remembering. We went to dances in the old box factory all through junior high, all dressed up and obsessing about sex because it was so new, thank God I know more about everything now. I walked past the lake where boys drove us to park in high school and the Dairy Queen where they took us after, and oh, oh!
It’s a good thing nobody I knew saw me out in the open like that, trying not to cry. Outsiders wouldn’t see me looking that much different, but all the girls from Northshore would know it in an instant. With outsiders, you can be anything you want – more interesting, younger, new – but in this town we grow up with a history. We aren’t girls any more but we still know how old each other are down to the minute, we know who wet her pants in first grade and which one threw up in her desk. We’ve bookmarked every guy we were in love with, from third-grade crushes to the Coleman twins in eleventh grade – which twin was I in love with, really, was it Buck, or the sweet one that died? – to Bobby Chaplin in senior year . . . Oh!
Thought isn’t all that good for you. You don’t watch where you’re going. I was walking right over my old house before I even knew it. It’s buried like The Mummy’s temple, down underneath that parking lot.
My whole life used to be in this block. Our parents sold out and moved into condos so the company could build the super-Publix. We were all grown and the neighborhood was going downhill anyway, but it was awful. They tore down all our houses! My whole childhood is buried underneath that parking lot, my ruby ring that I lost in Sallie’s sandbox and my kitten Fuzzy, that we buried in my old back yard. I was walking over my parents’ fights that always came out all right, and birthday parties and almost-sex with Bobby in the glider when we were in ninth grade. Everything I cared about is covered with tons of asphalt which is ironic, because old Lorna Archambault’s house is still standing, right there on the other side of the street.
If you draw a straight line between Holt Realty and Far Acres where I was going, it would bisect the big old banyan tree in Lorna’s front yard. I was like an arrow aimed at the heart of Davis McCall, I could have made it home earlier, but the snaky roots hanging off Lorna’s banyan brushed my face like somebody who loved me when I was little, and it stopped me cold.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh!’
Lorna used to chase us out of that tree, coming down off her front porch like a battleship. ‘Rats,’ she said, ‘That tree is full of rats and scorpions.’ She said, ‘You girls get out of there before you get hurt, get out and go home,’ but that wasn’t what she meant. She meant that she didn’t want her precious granddaughter playing with dirty little girls like us. She was so shaking-mad that parts of her face flapped, and I remember thinking,
You’re so old
.
‘Oh,’ I said to that tree even though you’re supposed to be polite to old acquaintances, no matter how much they’ve changed, ‘you’re so
old
!’
And for the first time ever, I was too. My
You don’t think, not when you’re sealed in your car, safe from everything, but walking, you’re exposed, like poor Harrison. Walking is like opening your diary, in a way. Our whole past is out there and to get home, I had to walk through most of it. Northshore Elementary is a mini-mart now, with a parking lot where the playground was, I still have the scar where Brad Kalen jumped off the swing and it hit me in the head and I was excited and sad, remembering. We went to dances in the old box factory all through junior high, all dressed up and obsessing about sex because it was so new, thank God I know more about everything now. I walked past the lake where boys drove us to park in high school and the Dairy Queen where they took us after, and oh, oh!
It’s a good thing nobody I knew saw me out in the open like that, trying not to cry. Outsiders wouldn’t see me looking that much different, but all the girls from Northshore would know it in an instant. With outsiders, you can be anything you want – more interesting, younger, new – but in this town we grow up with a history. We aren’t girls any more but we still know how old each other are down to the minute, we know who wet her pants in first grade and which one threw up in her desk. We’ve bookmarked every guy we were in love with, from third-grade crushes to the Coleman twins in eleventh grade – which twin was I in love with, really, was it Buck, or the sweet one that died? – to Bobby Chaplin in senior year . . . Oh!
Thought isn’t all that good for you. You don’t watch where you’re going. I was walking right over my old house before I even knew it. It’s buried like The Mummy’s temple, down underneath that parking lot.
My whole life used to be in this block. Our parents sold out and moved into condos so the company could build the super-Publix. We were all grown and the neighborhood was going downhill anyway, but it was awful. They tore down all our houses! My whole childhood is buried underneath that parking lot, my ruby ring that I lost in Sallie’s sandbox and my kitten Fuzzy, that we buried in my old back yard. I was walking over my parents’ fights that always came out all right, and birthday parties and almost-sex with Bobby in the glider when we were in ninth grade. Everything I cared about is covered with tons of asphalt which is ironic, because old Lorna Archambault’s house is still standing, right there on the other side of the street.
If you draw a straight line between Holt Realty and Far Acres where I was going, it would bisect the big old banyan tree in Lorna’s front yard. I was like an arrow aimed at the heart of Davis McCall, I could have made it home earlier, but the snaky roots hanging off Lorna’s banyan brushed my face like somebody who loved me when I was little, and it stopped me cold.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh!’
Lorna used to chase us out of that tree, coming down off her front porch like a battleship. ‘Rats,’ she said, ‘That tree is full of rats and scorpions.’ She said, ‘You girls get out of there before you get hurt, get out and go home,’ but that wasn’t what she meant. She meant that she didn’t want her precious granddaughter playing with dirty little girls like us. She was so shaking-mad that parts of her face flapped, and I remember thinking,
You’re so old
.
‘Oh,’ I said to that tree even though you’re supposed to be polite to old acquaintances, no matter how much they’ve changed, ‘you’re so
old
!’
And for the first time ever, I was too. My
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