Love & Darts (9781937316075) by Nath Jones Page B

to give up is to die. Marylyn never died
during those high school summers. Others did. Suicide and car
wrecks.
    But Marylyn wasn’t stupid and
wasn’t a smoker. You might think she would have been. Her mother
was. When Marylyn was little her brother used to load cap gun
charges down in their mother’s cigarettes. The skinny lady would be
sitting with one foot pulled up underneath her on the chair in the
morning tracing a coffee cup with an absentminded finger and eyeing
a sparrow on the sill, all quiet and lonely,
then—
bang!
And the barefoot brother would scurry into the room laughing.
“Shouldn’t smoke, Mommy. It’ll kill you.” Sometimes the mother
would get up and chase him all over, saying, “Let’s hope it does,
kiddo!” but mostly after those infinitesimal explosions she’d put
the cigarette down and forget it. Sometimes the brother cried or he
screamed, “I hate you. I hope you do die, Mommy. You never let us
do anything fun.”
    But it wasn’t ever a matter of her withholding
permission. She didn’t ignore her children, or neglect her
children, or refuse to answer to her children; there just wasn’t
any money. So nothing mattered when the sparrow was holding their
mother’s interest. Her thoughts were simple and repetitive. Such
wings, such ugly wings, were all you needed to fly.
    Marylyn’s mother was ruled by the tiny bird. He was
her prince, but she was little if anything to him. Attention and
the power of her longing stare were all he needed to go on with his
brash, unforgiving tirades. “This and that about the morning dew!
And who but the Murphys, with their splintery old feeder, to forget
my breakfast! Never had a mind to go anywhere else, but the winds
of this place are atrocious! Too much work to leave!” Then
Marylyn’s mother would bow, nodding an apology.
    Flight is the only animate form of perfection. Yet
the ugly little sparrow was always bitching about something. The
children’s mother, those mornings, stared, amazed at such a pompous
spectacle. She usually smiled. A vague hesitant smile. It’s good to
know that humans aren’t the only pompous fools.
    This was the way things were. There was nothing to
be done. He was right. Every morning he would scold her, and then
rush off in a huff, while Mother shook her head, missing him.
Hoping he would come back if she did the dishes.
    Or cleaned up a bit in the living room.
    Marylyn—this is back when she was the little
razor-backed girl—stood in the doorway out of her mother’s view,
watching the sparrow too. But she had different thoughts. Come to
think of it, those mornings must have been Sunday mornings. There
wouldn’t have been time to linger any other day. Mothers who work
will know. Busy and tired. Always, always, busy and tired. And
probably running late. “Ask me again later, dear.”
    Anyway, the little girl grew up that way. Her
yellow-walled room closed in on her, and the mother passed away.
Always buying and wrecking cars in his mind, the brother talked on
about his own big plans and ended up making do with somebody else’s
bad habits. He was too used to hand-me-downs, I guess. No big
surprises. “Isn’t it a shame about the Baxter boy?” “Oh, well, how
could you really expect otherwise—what with a mother like that?”
There were plenty of looks of concurrence, nods of assent, but then
one intrepid white-hair might point out, “But look at his sister.
She’s doing quite well.” “Marylyn?” “Yes. Odd, no doubt. But happy.
Doesn’t it seem?” And a quick round of nods would hurry across the
circle, followed closely by a plate of vanilla sandwich cookies and
more coffee.
    Inside, alone, Marylyn hated
mirrors on account of her teeth. They were mostly straight except
one in the front that overlapped the one next to it, and they were
all different sizes. Just another gift of charity, I suppose. It
seemed as though all the teeth had been taken from other heads and
thrown into her smile.
 
    You’re not