I'm Your Girl. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ then Noël said, “Don’t forget the train”…and here I am forgetting the train again.

      There are some outdoor decorations in the laundry room. Don’t forget them.

      It’s too late. It’s Christmas Eve.

      It’s never too late to celebrate Christmas.

      It is this year.

      I piece together the track around the base of the tree, getting tinsel in my hair and pinesap on my forehead. “You look silly, Daddy,” Stevie would say. Then I place the train on the track, hooking all the cars together and hitting the switch on the locomotive. The batteries are still good.

      Chug-a-chugga, chug-a-chugga.

      But where’s the smoke? Oh, yeah. I have to add cooking oil to the smokestack. Maybe later.

      Tony the cat hated the train, and I keep expecting him to appear out of nowhere to swipe at the caboose. He left soon after…that day. He’s better off anyway.

      You forgot to feed him most of the time.

      I forget to feed myself most of the time.

      Yeah, your diet should consist of more than alcohol and pretzels.

      I wonder if Noël bought me anything before…

      You know she did.

      But my presents would be in that closet, too. I’ll bet she got me some clothes. Yeah. She was always trying to dress me better.

      Anything would have been an improvement.

      But I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ll bet there are ties in that closet. Noël wanted me to look professional on the job—which would be over for a while anyway, at least until after New Year’s, though I’m sure I’d have plenty of papers to grade. I’m on an extended holiday break from teaching. You can’t call it “Christmas break” anymore.

      That isn’t politically correct.

      And you really shouldn’t say “holiday,” because it comes from “holy day.” So I guess you just say, “Have a good whatever.”

      Try putting that phrase on a button and see if you don’t offend anyone.

      The school, Monterey Elementary, called me in again to substitute last week. It’s nice to know they’re thinking of me, but I’m on permanent sabbatical, prematurely retired at the ripe old age of thirty-two. I should have gotten hazard pay to teach social studies to fifth-graders, and they want me to substitute? No way, I said, even though subs are now making eighty bucks a day. I’m okay for funds—for now. The life insurance…

      I don’t want to think about the reason I have so few debts now.

      You will anyway.

      I don’t want to, but…they only gave me $5,000 for Stevie! That’s all he was worth! Five thousand dollars for a priceless little life! I got more money from the settlement on the van! A child’s life has to have more value than a van!

      Stevie was priceless.

      It was as if he were leased to me for a few years, and I could trade him in for…for this…for this.

      Stevie was on loan from God, Jack. We’re all only on loan to this world.

      It’s just not fair.

      I get up and walk down the hallway to Noël’s door. All the times I used to come up from grading or writing, turning this doorknob silently, easing the door open only to have the hinges squeak, but Noël slept through it, even though I bumped a dresser drawer with my knee almost every night.

      Your bruises must have healed by now.

      They have. I even have a few scars.

      It was a sharp dresser. Get it?

      Ha-ha.

      I’d feel for the corner of the bed on my side, slide in beside her, kiss her cheek, maybe spoon with her a while before returning to the cold side of the bed….

      I can’t turn the knob today. I just can’t. Maybe tomorrow.

      You’ve been saying that for the last six months.

      I know. Maybe tomorrow.

      I return to the tree, plugging in the lights. Then I take a picture of…no one with big eyes giggling into the camera.

      Oh, God, this is so hard.

      No one said it was going to be easy.

      I down the rest of my eggnog, toasting the tree and carrying on a conversation with myself while the train chug-a-chugs in circles.

      3

      Diane

      I like living alone, and I even like living in a house that continuously falls apart, all at once sometimes. I’ve met some interesting men that way, and they don’t have to bathe or dry their socks in my bathroom.

      It all started about three months after I moved in, not that my house in northeast Roanoke—which is mostly blue-collar and white—would ever be the first cover home of Better Black Homes and Gardens. At first, it was a series of little things. Nothing major, just minor problems to fuss at like drafts, creaks, funny smells, and peeling paint and siding.

      After all these minor headaches, the small deck at the back of the house simply fell into the yard, taking a huge strip of siding with it, after some heavy rains during my only week off from the library last summer. Why do bad things always seem to happen on your vacation? I called around for estimates, didn’t have the $2,000 (over my dead body!) necessary to rebuild it “to code” (whatever that means), and ended up taking a card off a wall at the entrance of Food Lion for a handyman. I called and left a message, and the next day Robert Maxwell showed up.

      I have only dropped my jaw past my ankles once or twice in my life, and when I saw Robert Maxwell, my jaw was dragging on the ground behind me, grass and little stones and dandelions all up in my teeth. Imagine a six-five black Fabio with good hair, muscles on top of muscles, a smile right out of GQ, and hands the size of tree stumps. I showed him the damage to the deck and the siding.

      “It’ll take me uh couple uh three days,” he had said real slow. “It won’t be no trouble ’tall.”

      Except for his constipated, country accent, I had enjoyed my handyman. I had watched that mountain of a man through the miniblinds in my bedroom. That man could dig him some holes and cut him some wood, and the way his sweat dripped down his massive back to his behind…I had even thought about smoking cigarettes afterward. I had felt like such a ho. When it rained on what was supposed to have been his last day and he hadn’t shown up, I had been depressed all day and prayed all night for a sunny day.

      On his last day, while he was laying and nailing the floorboards, I had brought him some sweet lemonade and sat on the finished section wearing my tightest shorts and an electric pink tank top.

      “You do nice work,” I had said СКАЧАТЬ