“I’ll make you a bowl and if you don’t like it we’ll throw it out.”
Lately Cecelia’s mother barely ate. Cecelia saw her pick at dry cereal, but no real food. Her mother’s loss of appetite seemed planned. It was too abrupt, like she was making a statement.
A woman on TV laughed. The Home Shopping Network. The woman was brushing a cat. She had a big wad of fur in her hand, and was proud of it.
“What class you got today?” Cecelia’s mother asked.
“Poetry.”
Cecelia’s mother raised an eyebrow. “Did they tell you the secret yet?”
“What secret?”
“Of how to write poetry. There’s a secret to everything, you know. They don’t want you to think so, but there is. There’s a trick.” Cecelia’s mother held still, looking upward. Cecelia thought she was thinking about artists and their esoteric know-how until she clicked her cheek and said, “They’re not making a peep.” The chickens.
“I took the class so I could write good song lyrics,” Cecelia offered. She would’ve dropped the class when she’d dropped music history, because writing song lyrics was no longer in her plans, but she needed nine credits in order to keep her scholarship.
“I don’t care for lyrics,” Cecelia’s mother said. “Or people banging on drums. I like it when you play your guitar.”
“I know you do.”
“Why don’t you play something sugary sweet for me? Play it loud so the birds can hear it.”
“I’ll play for you,” Cecelia said. “I don’t perform for pets.”
Cecelia made herself get up and go to her room. She opened her closet and grasped the guitar by the neck. She would turn her brain off and let her fingers strum as she’d trained them to. Playing a song or two on her guitar was a small chore compared to explaining to her mother why she didn’t want to play, explaining about Reggie, explaining about the band being over and the class she’d dropped and the stunt Nate had pulled at the diner, making a pass at her, and the vigils she’d been going to where she would sit for hours with cold hands and a stiff neck thinking about fairness and fate, and that her piece of shit car, since Cecelia could now hear the rain finally falling, was going to leak and Cecelia would have to take towels out with her the next time she drove somewhere.
REGGIE
An oversized belt buckle showed up, sitting on the piano, and he recognized it immediately. It had been a gift from his uncle when he was seven years old. Reggie had worn the buckle for months and then finally his uncle had come to visit from Phoenix. Reggie’s uncle didn’t have kids. He was laid-back, unlike Reggie’s father with all his rules and his chart that kept track of chores and the little bank he’d given Reggie for the paltry pay he was awarded for the chores. Reggie’s uncle drank beer like he was in a commercial. He had a tan. Reggie’s uncle had cruised into town in a Corvette and parked it prominently in Reggie’s family’s driveway for the neighbors to gawk at. And Reggie gawked at it too, later, when everyone was inside, his uncle telling a long story about getting lost on a hike. Reggie went outside and looked in the open driver-side window of the low black car, and never had he seen or even imagined such a dashboard. The inside of the Corvette was a cockpit, like something out of Star Wars. There were a hundred controls. The driver’s seat was sunk down among the buttons and levers and displays. Reggie reached in and stroked the leather of the seat and then gripped the steering wheel. An air-freshener in the shape of a nude woman dangled from the rearview and Reggie leaned in the car trying to smell it. He didn’t dare open the door. His uncle came out of the house then to get something from the car and Reggie straightened up and took a step back. His uncle approached with that grin and rested his hand on Reggie’s shoulder, but as he went to pull the door open he stiffened. He stepped away from Reggie and pressed his eyes closed and then pointed to the door so Reggie would look. His grin was long gone. On the door were four or five neat scratches. It took a moment before Reggie realized the scratches were at the height of his belt buckle and understood what had happened. Reggie’s uncle was cursing under his breath. It occurred to Reggie to say he was sorry but he couldn’t because he’d never seen his uncle angry before. His uncle thumbed the scratches and shook his head, seeming to forget Reggie was there, and Reggie escaped around the house and sulked in the backyard.
Now Reggie touched the belt buckle but didn’t lift it off the polished wood of the piano. The buckle was a skull with wings, the skull smiling deviously. The next time Reggie had seen his uncle, the next big holiday, his uncle hadn’t had the Corvette and he didn’t seem as tan or carefree. It was easy for Reggie to see that he’d turned out a lot more like his father than his uncle. Reggie liked to work and didn’t care to impress anyone except the people closest to him. When he’d died he’d been driving an old Dodge truck his father had handed down to him.
Reggie turned away from the piano with the intention of leaving the main hall and almost walked into a bureau, broad and hunched-looking, close enough to the piano that when Reggie backed up a step they seemed like a set. He knew this bureau. It didn’t tower like it had when he was a kid, but he recognized it. It was his father’s. And here it was. His parents had new furniture now, but the bureau squatting mutely in Reggie’s space had been his father’s years ago. As a kid, Reggie used to sneak into his parents’ bedroom and creak the bureau drawers open and pore over the contents. There were boxes in the bureau and boxes inside those boxes. Jewelry that probably wasn’t worth much but that Reggie could think of as pirate treasure. Photos of relatives Reggie had never met. Car titles and birth certificates in baroque script. Tie pins and cigar cutters.
Reggie had stolen a buffalo nickel. He had no idea why he hadn’t simply asked for it, but instead he’d filched the old coin and taken it back his room and after that he’d never again picked through the bureau. The nickel had been old when Reggie had taken it and it was older now. Reggie had no idea where his father had gotten the nickel or what meaning it held. His father, if he’d noticed it missing, had never said anything about it. Of course he’d noticed it missing. Reggie, as he’d grown older, had often wanted to confess, to clear his conscience and have a laugh about it, but he never had. Now it was too late. He wondered if, when his parents were finally ready to sift through his possessions, they’d find the nickel in the old fire engine bank.
Next was a program from a chorus recital Reggie had performed in, perched in the piano’s music holder, which to that point had sat empty. Reggie didn’t touch the program or even look closely. He knew it by the yellow-winged birds on the cover. The program marked the first experience Reggie’d had with a girl. His memory was a plaything, he gathered. He’d known his afterlife was a plaything, but apparently his history on earth was too. Kimmy Susteran. She’d never spoken to Reggie before that day on the bus when she took his hand firmly in hers and guided it up under her white polo shirt. Reggie wasn’t going to indulge in this recollection. Someone wanted him to indulge, so he was refusing. He wanted to think about what he wanted to think about. He wanted to think about nothing and wait in peace for whatever he was waiting for.
THE WOLF
The wolf had begun his rounds early in order to see the humans gather outside the clinic building. He wanted to witness their arrival, and so he had crossed over from Golden to the outskirts of Albuquerque with the shadows still strong. This was an excellent way to get shot, but getting shot seemed a far-off fear, too obvious a fear. He padded past the old market and bellied under one of the trucks on the adjacent lot and saw as the first humans found their places under the weak, lofty lights. One at a time or in clutches they entered the quiet and hunkered in it, intensifying it. The wolf didn’t know what he’d wanted to learn, beating the humans to this spot. Soon enough he was waiting again, like last time. The cars appeared in a slow flurry and then everything was still. The wolf could hear confused lizards scuttling around outside the perimeter of the human presence, wondering what was going on. The wolf could hear a noise the moon was making.