You are about to read my very first short story ever *crosses fingers.*
Spring Cleaning
"Ava,
dear. Over here."
Shit.
The
first rule of this reality T.V. set is: look busy when Her Lady of the
Immaculate Clacking Clipboard comes a calling, or she’ll find a less-than-desirable
task for you. Testing the dozens of broken bathroom scales I uncovered
yesterday, one-by-one, instead of tossing them, clearly isn’t busy enough for
her.
The
second rule, which I heard the crew joking about is: it’s not a wrap until someone
falls in love or gets their heart broken.
My
school brain thinks this is gossip spread by someone who should find something more
productive to do than testing her weight on broken scales.
Lizard
brain—my brains almost never agree—has her money on the busty sorority girl
working off community service hours for crimes unstated, who has been flirting
with the PA since orientation. Heartbreak is in her future. For sure.
I
sidle around the growing pyramid of ancient Keds and cross trainers—who
keeps worn through shoes, anyway?—to reach Her Lady, wondering what torture
awaits me.
Then
I see him, behind her, half shaded under the admin tent: Thor, or some version
of a Greek God.
Nitwit,
school brain chides. Thor is Norse, which
you’d know if you hadn’t napped through Mythologies of the World last year. Lizard brain’s only input is Thor pretty. I’m with her on this one.
Nodding
from Thor to me as introduction, Her lady says, "Conner just signed on—show
him the ropes,” and then she disappears back into the tent.
I
shove my hand at him like a groupie demanding an autograph. School brain is
disgusted by my eagerness, but his hand takes mine before mine reaches his, so
the eager is mutual. I think. I hope.
“Hey,”
I say. “Welcome.”
Welcome? That’s all you got? Try again.
I
tug his hand to make his head bend toward me, and scan the lot, overrun with 47
years of hoarded something-or-others, pulling his eyes with me. In my best fake
TV announcer voice I say: “This week, on ‘Our Parents Were Hoarders,’ underpaid
spring break cast offs shovel shit into a dumpster. People grow. Cry.
Everyone’s inspired. Stay tuned.”
Framing
his answering smile are gleeful divots. A girl could get lost in one or the
other of those.
"So,
we’re the shit shovelers, I take it." His sunny syllables loosens the
stays of my balance. Holding his hand becomes necessary.
School brain is sure he smiles like that for all
the girls, but my internal hearing has
gone as soft as my center of gravity. I’m not quite listening.
When
we unlock hands, I step back take in the rest of him. The blunt, grunge ends of
his dark blond hair brush a smooth jaw. His eyes are kind and open. He’s taller
than me, but not so tall I strain my neck to see him. Closer inspection reveals
this boy is no Thor.
All
Thor has is that dumb hammer. Conner’s superpower, school chimes in, is navigating the vestibular
labyrinth. Lizard brain simplifies this to messing with physics.
Conner,
my two brains, and my slightly wobbly self spend the rest of morning hauling shit
to the dumpster. Broken toys older than both of us combined. Every copy ever of
Reader’s Digest. Twisted blinds. Mildewed
sofa cushions, sans sofa. The pièce de résistance in this morbid museum of
detritus: thousands of empty bread bags Russian-dolled into seventeen trash
bags and legions of ants calling them home.
When we clear all that away, there are four decades
of flattened boxes stacked floor to ceiling, kinda like the walls of the Grand
Canyon, if the Grand Canyon smelled a bit like the alley behind the post
office.
“It’d
be quicker to burn the joint down,” he says.
“Her
Lady of the Immaculate Clacking Clipboard says lighter fluid isn’t in the
budget. I asked.”
His
laughter is orange poppies.
“Is
that what everyone calls her?”
“Just
me. But she is kind of imperious with the clacking.”
I
walk along the boxes to see around it, but it’s a solid sedimentary wall of
cardboard, chipboard, and dust. For a hoarder, this guy was pretty orderly, but
it still left the question: for what?
“Ava dear,” Conner mocks Her Lady’s chirp, “why on
earth are you frowning?”
I am frowning. I’ve fallen into the dumpster of my
own brains again, which is a frowny place.
“Isn’t it dreary? How a whole life adds up to no more
than a few dumpsters full of crap no one wants, but this widower can’t seem to
part with.”
“It’s
kind of cool though,” he offers, closing the distance between us. Closer is
nicer. “This is only the stuff of someone’s life. We get to help take the life
out of the stuff or something, and give the good parts back to the guy who lives
here.”
School
brain knows an optimist when she hears one. But she’s got a soft spot for rosy
thinkers, and I can’t say I blame her.
We get back to work. He lifts the boxes off the top of a stack, and setting them
on the floor, makes a second stack I can reach. As
I watch, gravity wobbles again. School brain notes, with uncharacteristic
longing, the full curve of his brachioradalis
muscles when he reaches above his head.
Good griddle—Lizard
brain sounds like an old-timey hair dresser when she’s worked up—School, this isn’t an anatomy quiz. Can’t you just admire the boy’s arms. Or put
your smarts to use and fanaticize how a sudden spring storm might send rivels
of rain down them—
Rivulets, school corrects.
—You’re always
killing the moment. Now, imagine licking the crease of the curve, all the way
from wrist to elbow, twisting it round to taste the flex, swallowing those
rivels of rain...
I sure hope rain is in the forecast.
* * *
“Was this job in your spring break plans?” I ask
Conner during a disappointingly clear-skied lunch.
“I went up to Yosemite with buddies. I thought we’d
hike and climb. Adventure stuff.”
“But no adventure?”
“They started drinking the minute we got there. I did
a few short hikes, but I’m not stupid enough to climb alone. Or with drunks.”
“This is kind of an adventure. Think of it as an
olfactory safari of the suburbs.”
“Yeah, not quite the same.”
Through the afternoon, though, Conner conjures a
different sort of adventure. If this one-hundred-dollar-a-day job is my sack
lunch, it’s his buffet. Shortly he knows the names of all the fulltime crew, and the majors and hometowns of the
college kids. He tugs the matted tangle of my life and pulls clean my story
like yarn on a map, moving town-to-town with my migrant farm family, through my
school years, and on to my favorite professors and whether or not I underline
or highlight in my textbooks.
My
brains and I are in agreement about his company.
“So,
is this what you’d planned to do for spring break?” he asks.
“I
work every break. The university is a stickler about getting paid, so money.
Even though we’re filthy and that crate of skunky Louis L’Amour’s will off-gas
from our pores well into finals week, this isn’t my worst spring break job ever,
if you can believe it.”
“No?”
“Last
year I deep-cleaned the dorm cafeteria for a month’s free board. Considering I
mostly lost my appetite for dorm food after that, they got a deal. But that was
still better than the year before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.
I went scrap metal junkin’ with my uncle Luis.”
“I
have no idea what that is.”
“You
go round to businesses and farms and pay to take away their old junk metal. But
you can’t sell the metal until you remove all the plastic and whatnot, so you
burn it off and breathe in the fumes and think you’re going to die. For days.”
“Sounds
super fun.”
“I
might have committed felonies. Luis gave me 200 bucks and told me to keep my
mouth shut.”
“Luis
sounds like a winner.”
“Yeah,
but he can bullshit the bark off a tree. Don’t let him corner you.”
“I’ll
keep that in mind for when I meet him,” he says. Like maybe he means to.
* * *
As
we work deeper into the garage, school wants to learn the lesson here. Lizard’s
policy is: keep only what you can carry. Such was my childhood. I still own
only as much as I can haul on my bike in a few trips. (I don’t tell either
brain that I sometimes fantasize about a wardrobe of shimmery pajamas, a closet
full of knee high leather boots, and palates of coffee table books. It would
just start a fight and we’re all getting along so nicely today.)
When
Her Lady of the Clacking Clipboard reappears, she warns us of the impending camera.
“Perk up and smile pretty” is her command, before conferring with the lighting
guys.
“Too
bad I don’t smile pretty,” I grumble to myself as soon as she’s gone.
But
then Conner’s behind me, and he tugs me into him so I am flat to his chest and
holds me there with a broad hand on my stomach. I’ve been sweating since
morning, but my skin erupts into a parade of goose bumps at the insistence of
his touch.
The
shifty gravity is back. If he lets go I might perk right down into a lump on
the floor.
He’s
not letting go. His words “you do too smile pretty,” brush wisps of my hair
over my ears and neck.
School
barely restrains my urge to rub back against him like a cat might a door jamb.
Lizard
is breathing too shallow and quick for words.
Then
he takes my opposite hand and twists me until I am facing him. His other hand
steadies me at the waist. His curious, earnest face closes in, becoming my
whole view.
My
brains are useless to this vista.
His
thumb teases my jaw line, earlobe to chin. “You’re smiling now.”
I
am not, actually, smiling.
But
by the time I think the thought, I am, actually, smiling. I smile because he
sees me smiling.
Then
I kiss him.
Because
I see myself kissing him.
For
a while, it’s light lips on light lips.
Then
it’s not so light lips and urgent bodies and no space between them.
When
a voice yells, “roll camera,” my arms are around his neck, my hands in his
hair, demanding his face be in my face.
Our
kiss tastes like our work day and of spring to come.
And
it is not enough.
I
get an inkling of it now, this hoarding.
I
want to hoard all the seasons of these kisses, and the kisses still to come. To
gather them at our lips. To lick the pans of the feast clean. To eat the crumbs
from the floor. To collect them all and hoard them in my cells for always.
P.S. Here is how I imagine Ava and Conner.
Original fiction. Copyright © 2014 Cherri Porter. Please do not reprint without permission.
This is nicely written - I enjoyed it all the way through.
ReplyDeleteMark McDowell
Thank you Mark for reading!
DeleteNo need to cross fingers, this was lovely!
ReplyDelete