Dreamland City. Larina Lavergne

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СКАЧАТЬ them ripping and slicing roughly through an umbilical cord.

      He follows my gaze.

      “No, heck, that warn’t it,” he assures me. “We used them bright shiny ones, from the kitchen. He gestures grandiosely; the magician about to finish his act.

      He reaches out then, and I hand him the cigarette I’m smoking. He takes a drag but doesn’t hand it back immediately. I eye it as wafts of smoke curl around the tip and rise to the ceiling.

      So far, I haven’t said a word. I’m thinking about my mother now. My entire life, my mother has barely tolerated me, and she’s done her best to distance herself from me. I don’t remember my real father, and my earliest childhood memories are of Skelly and his son my best friend Tommy, and then Beau, my stepfather. I can see them so clearly—Skelly barbequing, Tommy and me playing, and Beau with his dusty cowboy hat as he two-steps with my mother. In contrast, I never simply see my mother—I’ve always absorbed her through smell, hearing and touch because seeing her…hurts. I can’t explain it, but when I think about my mother, I feel her, and it’s always a painful feeling.

      “You alright?”

      Skelly eyes me cagily, sensing that I’ve stopped listening to him. He takes another puff on my cigarette and I nod slowly as he continues his monologue.

      “That Michael was no damned good,” he proclaims. “Big baby who ran out the first sign things weren’t all peachy. A real prince. And now Beau—don’t get me started. Yer mama could do a whole lot better, let me tell you.” Skelly will never change his mind, and I’m too tired to defend Beau.

      I listen a few more minutes to him as he bitches about my mother and the mess she’s made of her life, and the blasted men who can’t keep their hands off her. And then I can’t stand it any longer. Mid-sentence, I push past him and I’m at the door, my hand on the knob. He looks stricken, and he sounds suddenly fearful.

      “You leavin’ so soon?”

      Skelly’s lonely, but we’re all lonely.

      I don’t answer and turn away, walking out the door and racing down the steps and across the grassy patch in front of his trailer. I circle around the pool of my birth in all its scummy glory, trying not to think about how lucky I am not to be retarded, brain-dead, or just plain dead. Instead, I think about Professor Marsha Longfellow.

      Simulates the natural environment of the baby.

      Reduces the trauma of the transition for the baby.

      I don’t know why I look back, but I do, and I see Skelly outlined in the doorway. He’s a black figure against the blinding light of the setting Southern sun and I realize suddenly, with a conviction that saddens me, that he’s going to die one day. That we’re all going to die.

      As I’m watching, Skelly lifts his hand. I think he’s waving goodbye at first, but instead, his fingers go to his lips and he takes a drag from the cigarette.

      I forgot to take the cigarette back from him.

      1

      Lily

      It’s been a few weeks since I started school. I forgot to bring my keys today, but that really doesn’t matter since we never really lock the door. It’s not as if there’s anything of real value to steal in our trailer, and if someone needs something and no one’s around, they’ll need a way to get in, don’t they?

      Folks here share everything; we come and go as we please. It was a huge shock after I got that scholarship ride into Duke and realized that people labeled food, locked room doors and had so much…stuff. The doorknob twists open and I walk in slowly. Here, the only time the door might be locked is when my mother’s “busy,” but she’s never really cared if anyone walked into the bedroom while she’s buck-naked doing the nasty with someone. There’s no shame in Dreamland City, and certainly none as far as Maddie Ruth Anderson is concerned.

      I haven’t seen my mother in so long, I wonder if she’s still even living here. But when I sniff the air, I can smell the traces of her scent—a dizzying mix of shampoo, perfume, sweat and anger. The last I heard, she was following Joe Sommers to Asheville for one of his gigs. I don’t know if Beau knows, and I don’t know when my mother will be back.

      It’s a great homecoming; my first weekend back from my fancy private college. Outside, I hear the sound of a passing truck, and then nothing. The silence is comforting at first, but then it becomes overwhelming. I’m hungry, and I open my backpack, taking out a jar of Nutella. I ran into David Morgan at the supermarket when I got that jar. That was three days ago, and already, it’s half gone.

      David’s the pride of Duke. From one of the richest families of Old Boston, he’s a junior and destined for either the NFL or the White House, depending on whom you talk to. To me, though, he just seems like a good guy—six feet four and all muscle and smiles and crinkly blue eyes. We talked for the first time a few weeks ago when he found me curled up in a corner of the Gothic Reading Room in Perkins Library with a stack of books around me. He looked like he was having a bad day, and had probably come into the library to escape his usual clamoring posse of jocks and sorority girls. He asked me what I was reading, and when I showed him the collection of poems by T.S. Eliot, his eyes lit up. He sat down next to me and then he took out his own collection of T.S. Eliot poems. We skipped all our classes that day and talked about how much I liked chocolate, how much he liked poetry, how much we both liked math and applied physics and other stuff. I don’t think he got a lot of what I was telling him about the String Theory class I’m taking, but he asked questions and seemed interested, and I liked him all the more for it.

      Doesn’t matter though, what I think.

      Last week, it was “Greek Recruitment Drive,” where the strongest scent is that of privilege. I was standing by the main quad, trying to avoid going past the long lines of frat and sorority booths, when there was a tap on my shoulder and I saw David.

      “Hey, Lily, what’s up? You interested in rushing this fall?”

      When I just stared at him in bewilderment, he cleared his throat and tried again, “So, we talked so much about chocolate last time: There’s some kind of European chocolate fair that’s going on in Raleigh all weekend. Do you think you might want to go?”

      He looked nervous, which surprised me. “I can’t,” I told him, backing away.

      “Oh.” He didn’t say anything else, so I backed away and left.

      So maybe he was asking me out. But I don’t really know. After all, he’s already dating a girl: I saw him canoodling with a blond at a distance last week, and I overheard a couple of other kids gossiping about them. I didn’t catch her name, but the lucky girl’s a freshman that he met at pre-orientation during the summer. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that I had to say ‘no’ to his European chocolate fair invite. And who knows? Maybe he was just trying to be my friend..

      I spread some Nutella on my bread, layering it on extra thick. I would never really like someone like David who’s just way too perfect, but I can’t get over his eyes—so freaking blue—and how they sliced right into me as he talked about chocolate.

      Taste floods in. It really is so fucking good. I’m wolfing it down as if it’ll disappear if I pause for too long. I layer another slice of bread, thicker than the previous one, and wolf that one down too, just as quick. And then, СКАЧАТЬ