It drives me crazy how she says “look” all the time, like she’s Barack Obama. Every grown-up I know who voted for him starts all their sentences with, “Look,” to clue you in that they are going to be calm and reasonable even though they think you are a raving loon.
But she quickly gives up on calm and reasonable and orders me, “OK, that’s it. That is it. You are not going anywhere. If I have to sit on you, you are not leaving this house. This is no longer up for discussion.” She blocks the door, crosses her arms.
The thought of not seeing Tyler makes me frantic. She has to be moved. She has to get out of my way. I shove her aside and rush out. The wind is so cold and strong that it punches me in the chest and knocks the breath out of me, like jumping into the quarry did. I run down the porch stairs.
To my amazement, she follows me. I am already at the edge of our yard when she grabs my hair and stops me dead. “What are you doing?!” I scream at her. “Let go of my hair!”
“This is over, Aubrey. This sneaking around. This disrespect. This lying to me. You are staying home tonight! End of story!”
“Is this the way your mother smothered you?”
“Don’t even try. You are so unsmothered it’s not funny.” She lets go of my hair.
“That’s because you’ve never had to smother me! I have never done one single thing to make you worry or doubt me! I still haven’t!”
I try to walk away, but she grabs my arm and yanks me toward her. “Get back in this house!”
I put my hands on her shoulders and physically halt her. “No!”
“Yes!” She clamps onto my wrists and starts dragging me back. “Get inside the house this instant!”
I refuse to be dragged. Light flashes from the window of the house across the street where the neighbor pulls back the blind to see what is going on.
I shove her away. A second later, she has her hands all over me, wrapping around me, pulling me down, drowning me. I wrench away, stand back, and raise my hand up above my head like the Statue of Liberty. I am going to hit her. We both know it. I stop only because, on the porch behind us, Pretzels barks a hideous, strangled bark.
Almost deaf, almost blind, she struggles to see into the darkness. She stands on the side of the porch, away from the stairs, barking, searching, ready to save us. Mom and I both realize that, no matter what, Pretzels is coming to rescue us.
“Pretzels, no!” Mom screams.
Using memory more than muscle, Pretz jumps off the porch. With only old bones to absorb the shock, she hits hard and crumples onto the ground, yelping piteously as she lands. My mom runs back, kneels beside Pretzels.
“Aubrey, come help! We’ve got to get her to the vet!”
Mom hoists her up around the middle. When I see Pretzels struggle to her feet and stand, I run from them.
I would have run even if she hadn’t gotten up.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010
Martin has taken over the driving. I try to recall how long it’s been since I sat in the passenger seat while a man drove. I narrow the time frame down to A Long Time.
We’re passing through a field of what I know to be sorghum because Martin once identified this crop for me. At the edge of the field is a stretch of bare earth that has been molded into humps and hollows, crisscrossed by trails. A kid on a motocross bike bursts over a low hill and gets enough air to shimmy his back wheel before landing.
Martin slows down as we enter a small town. Most of the businesses are boarded up. “We’re almost out of gas,” he says, dropping his speed even more. He always used to do this on trips, practically crawl through small towns, reading out the names of businesses, the wisdom posted outside of churches, the funny team names being boosted on the Dairy Queen marquees. He loved cafés, diners, drugstores with lunch counters.
We pass a couple of sleek new gas stations with a dozen bays out front, but, as I knew he would, Martin heads for a battered, two-pump establishment. I always liked that he preferred the local, the