I breathe again, the force of her coming at me, the speed with which she is on me, stick,
arm, jab, the gust of her hair, the sucking sound of her stick sweeping,slicing, my legs spiraling beneath and dragging me down with a thud three, four, five times.
Five times, ten times, she takes it from me. Three, four times, I feel the hard kick of the ground knock my chin backward,
my teeth rattling like loose pennies.
Then, I think I finally have it, I have a shot, one shot, but just looking at her in front of me, legs apart, puts a fear
in me I can’t shake.
She could always do that to me, since we were little kids, me standing, wide-eyed, stunned by that gold-sparked perfection.
She could tear you down with a glance, a flicked wrist, a slow-blinking eyelash.
Then the ball is there, and the toe of her stick down like a guillotine and the block comes so fast, my head jerks like it
might pop off.
I am sitting on the ground, my breath like scraping metal, and Dusty is far afield, her face flush, her breath coming fast
too, but in excited fits and starts. She smiles at me, wry, and is saying something about how I’ve done good, or something
like it, amid all the ringing in my head.
She’s above me and her hand is outstretched and I wobble to my feet and that’s when, with her swinging me up, so strong, I
see the change in her face. The gleaming triumph breaks into something soft and desolate, and the breath in sounds almost,
almost like a sob, our hands interlocked.
“Dusty, I—” I start, but she whips around, stick to her side, nearly slicing me, and she’s running off the field, curls swinging.
Later, I wonder if she went back into the locker room and let herself cry, head between her knees. But I think that’s my dream
of Dusty. The way she is, which is lionhearted, magnificent, those few tears she nearly shook fast on the field—that’s the
most I’d get.
T hat night, the reporter on the Channel 2 news with the blond ledge of hair is holding up a Parliament and saying, “Cigarettes
much like these were found in the Ververs’ backyard,” but adds, gravely, “but whether these cigarettes are linked to the alleged
abduction is uncertain.”
Watching, my mom is amped up at the kitchen table. She’d brought a casserole over to the Ververs and she says the police were
there again.
“They keep getting these endless reports of Harold Shaw sightings,” she says. “One of them’s got to come through. They sent
two detectives up to the border. They think he might be in Canada. The wife—Kitty… she said he had an old college friend up
in Ontario somewhere.”
She goes on like this, and I’m listening, but mostly it’s about how Mrs. Verver can’t sleep, can’t eat, lost seven pounds
in five days, and then about how frightening a place the world is for mothers.
I wait until her show comes on, and then I sneak outside and drop into a lawn chair, twist myself into the rubbery slats,
wedge feet and toes beneath.
Oh, these long curfewed evenings and no gallivanting, hopping yard to yard with Evie, pedaling bikes up to Rabbit Park to
swing on the rusty merry-go-round or pump legs on the squeaky swings. No ice cream, no riffling through magazines at the drugstore
and giggling through the feminine products aisle, nose to the tip of the lavender bottles dappled with flowers promising such
cleanness, such powdery, perfumed womanly cleanness.
Instead, I sit and contemplate my foot, the cool dent from Dusty’s fiberglassed saber, its terrorizing J hook.
There is something holy and badgelike about the injury, about the flaring bruise on my ankle, the hardening scabbed streak
up my shin from the cut rendered by my own desperate stickwork.
Savoring my war wounds, I sit, and feel I deserve rich rewards. Spotting my mother’s secret Benson & Hedges pack crammed into
the wet dirt of a gangly potted geranium, I think about pulling one out and lighting up. Evie and I did
arm, jab, the gust of her hair, the sucking sound of her stick sweeping,slicing, my legs spiraling beneath and dragging me down with a thud three, four, five times.
Five times, ten times, she takes it from me. Three, four times, I feel the hard kick of the ground knock my chin backward,
my teeth rattling like loose pennies.
Then, I think I finally have it, I have a shot, one shot, but just looking at her in front of me, legs apart, puts a fear
in me I can’t shake.
She could always do that to me, since we were little kids, me standing, wide-eyed, stunned by that gold-sparked perfection.
She could tear you down with a glance, a flicked wrist, a slow-blinking eyelash.
Then the ball is there, and the toe of her stick down like a guillotine and the block comes so fast, my head jerks like it
might pop off.
I am sitting on the ground, my breath like scraping metal, and Dusty is far afield, her face flush, her breath coming fast
too, but in excited fits and starts. She smiles at me, wry, and is saying something about how I’ve done good, or something
like it, amid all the ringing in my head.
She’s above me and her hand is outstretched and I wobble to my feet and that’s when, with her swinging me up, so strong, I
see the change in her face. The gleaming triumph breaks into something soft and desolate, and the breath in sounds almost,
almost like a sob, our hands interlocked.
“Dusty, I—” I start, but she whips around, stick to her side, nearly slicing me, and she’s running off the field, curls swinging.
Later, I wonder if she went back into the locker room and let herself cry, head between her knees. But I think that’s my dream
of Dusty. The way she is, which is lionhearted, magnificent, those few tears she nearly shook fast on the field—that’s the
most I’d get.
T hat night, the reporter on the Channel 2 news with the blond ledge of hair is holding up a Parliament and saying, “Cigarettes
much like these were found in the Ververs’ backyard,” but adds, gravely, “but whether these cigarettes are linked to the alleged
abduction is uncertain.”
Watching, my mom is amped up at the kitchen table. She’d brought a casserole over to the Ververs and she says the police were
there again.
“They keep getting these endless reports of Harold Shaw sightings,” she says. “One of them’s got to come through. They sent
two detectives up to the border. They think he might be in Canada. The wife—Kitty… she said he had an old college friend up
in Ontario somewhere.”
She goes on like this, and I’m listening, but mostly it’s about how Mrs. Verver can’t sleep, can’t eat, lost seven pounds
in five days, and then about how frightening a place the world is for mothers.
I wait until her show comes on, and then I sneak outside and drop into a lawn chair, twist myself into the rubbery slats,
wedge feet and toes beneath.
Oh, these long curfewed evenings and no gallivanting, hopping yard to yard with Evie, pedaling bikes up to Rabbit Park to
swing on the rusty merry-go-round or pump legs on the squeaky swings. No ice cream, no riffling through magazines at the drugstore
and giggling through the feminine products aisle, nose to the tip of the lavender bottles dappled with flowers promising such
cleanness, such powdery, perfumed womanly cleanness.
Instead, I sit and contemplate my foot, the cool dent from Dusty’s fiberglassed saber, its terrorizing J hook.
There is something holy and badgelike about the injury, about the flaring bruise on my ankle, the hardening scabbed streak
up my shin from the cut rendered by my own desperate stickwork.
Savoring my war wounds, I sit, and feel I deserve rich rewards. Spotting my mother’s secret Benson & Hedges pack crammed into
the wet dirt of a gangly potted geranium, I think about pulling one out and lighting up. Evie and I did
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