Stories

Donald

            Donald hates fishermen and is cheating on his wife.  He hates dogs dressed as people, fast-food workers, television preachers, and taxidermists.  He does not hate his wife.  He only thinks about the things he hates while he makes love to his mistress, Morgan.  At the current moment, he is thinking about a wind-up monkey.  The monkey sits on a shelf above a rabbit-eared television with rotary dials, between an alarm clock and a yellowed copy of Gone With the Wind.  It has two cymbals to clash together if ever wound up.  His grandfather had the same monkey in his cabinet of wind-up toys.  When his grandfather died, Donald broke the monkey into seventeen pieces, but has never gotten the image of it out of his head.  Now, it stares down at him like Saint Peter. 

            He hates the bed that he shares with his wife.  It’s too new, too fluffy.  It’s silent to even the most forceful thrusts.  The rusty springs of Morgan’s bed screech out with every move and touch—but he isn’t thinking about this, only about things he hates.  He breathes in Morgan’s scent and realizes that he hates that his wife doesn’t smell of musty books and old libraries.  Instead, she smells like peaches—something that he loves about her.  He doesn’t feel that these two thoughts are in conflict.  He hates that he isn’t making love to his wife.  He hates that Morgan lives in a trailer park seventeen minutes out of town.  The distance makes it difficult to come up with a regular alibi, which is why Donald normally tells his wife that he is seeing a psychiatrist.  In a way, he is.

            When he is with Morgan, he feels that everything in his life is the way he had imagined it to be back when he used to shoplift from the local Safeway.  He feels safe from the horrors of his job as a photography lab technician in the back of Drug Warehouse.  After seeing all of the dismembered bodies running down the drying belt—evidence of accidents from the Highway Patrol and the local police—it is all that he can do to drive out of town and cheat on his wife again.            

            He hates cheating on his wife.  He wishes that Morgan and his wife were somehow mixed into the same being.  Sometimes, at night, when he can’t go to sleep, this is what he thinks about.  In these fantasies, he discovers a secret well that allows him to pick and choose attributes of both and add them together in any way he chooses.  In this way, he creates the perfect partner.  The secret that Donald keeps from himself is that he already knows his wife is perfect.  She loves him exactly and he loves her exactly back.  Morgan, however, has always been who he wanted.  He grew up with her, watching episodes of Jeopardy! in the living room of her family’s two story brownstone.  Even though she always answered more of the questions than he did, he loved her for it.  When she left for college, the sky held no blue for him.  Rainclouds gathered and broke.  He never turned his television on again.  She never wrote or called. 

            Now, in her arms, he hates her for abandoning him to this town.  He hates wandering its streets alone, searching for a place unspoiled by police photographs.  He hates the time he spent trying to replace her, going to every bar in town, drinking hard and forcing himself to chat with anyone who would come within two feet.  He hates the mistakes he made, the shame he felt when he gave away his virginity.  Shame he would never have felt if he could have given it to her.  He hates who she made him into.

            One of the blankets wraps itself around his feet and he kicks it off the bed where it lay abandoned on the floor.  For some reason, it reminds him of a toy that his mother wouldn’t buy him when he was a kid.  When Santa finally brought it to him at Christmastime, he felt redeemed in throwing a tantrum.  He broke it the next day.  He hates that he’s slowly breaking Morgan, but he feels he has the right.  She’s his to break.  He hates that he feels this way about her. 

            Donald looks into her eyes and doesn’t see the Morgan who left, but the Morgan who returned.  His dark thoughts melt away and he starts to pull away from her, but she’s asking for more, wants more from him.  His eyes cloud with unresolved feelings, but his body keeps moving, keeps building upward toward an unforeseen resolution.  This is the last time, he thinks, this is the day to finally break her.  He hates that he never told her about his wife.

The first words that Donald’s wife ever said to him were “You look like you could use some sunshine, Sunshine.”  His skin looked pale under his long black hair from too many hours in the bar and too many late nights.  He smelled heavily of smoke, so much that it clung to the inside of his nose.  She took his coat anyway, there at the diner, and hung it on the coat rack for him. 

“Why don’t you go sit at one of the tables outside?” she’d said, “I’ll bring your order out when it’s done.”

He hates that he can’t remember what brought him to the diner in the daylight or why he took her advice.  He remembers that she brought out his meal and even sat with him while he ate.  Though he’s trying not to, he sees her kind eyes.  They are the same now as they were then.  He starts to pull away from Morgan again, but she bites down on his shoulder and pulls him back in.  He hates that he keeps going.

“Do you go to church?” she’d asked.  Not expecting that, Donald had hesitated.  He remembers this well, because he had carefully weighed the options of lying and having a chance with this girl or telling the truth and leaving the diner without another word from her.

He went with:  “Do I look like I go to church?”

She appeared to think this over for a bit, watching him trying not to watch her as he finished his bacon.  He hates that he can’t remember what she wore that day, whether it was a uniform the diner made her wear or if she had on her own things.  He remembers her hair being pulled back into the severe bun that doesn’t allow the hair to fall into the food.  She still wears it like that on overcast days, or when she’s been creating something amazing in the kitchen.

“I want you to go with me,” she’d said.  He felt the same way, though he has never understood why.

He met her at the diner the following Sunday with the same fervor that he met Morgan with three years later.  He hates that he just now made this connection.  Morgan’s moans help him to push away these thoughts.  His mind clears and he can see only Morgan in the here and now.  He moves with her and they are there together.  He has no more hate in his mind and so he releases.   She takes it and stares directly at him, not looking away or blinking.  His eyes move around her, this object he’s been waiting for, that he has now, but must break and break away from.  He’s not sure that he can.

            He pulls away from her embrace and sits up in the bed, trying not to look at her.  The blanket sits alone on the floor.  He grabs it up and hands it to Morgan, who wraps it around herself.  He stands up and walks down the hallway to the bathroom, unable to collect his thoughts.  He locks the door behind him.  In the mirror, he finds no answers, only himself.  His hair is short now, his skin is healthy.  He tries to conjure up images of abandonment, but he grasps at wisps of nothing.  He’s better now than he was before he met his wife, he knows it.  He doesn’t want to hurt her, even if he’s doing so now by being here.  She never had to be with him.  She could have quoted Bible verses at him and told him she couldn’t be unequally yoked and all of that, but she never did.  She sat by him in church whenever he went.  She held his hand through it all.  He’s never asked her why she fell in love with him.  He never brought up the reasons why she should not.  Donald knows that there was a time when he thought only of his wife, a time that died when Morgan returned to town. 

            He twists the shower handle to spray nothing but hot water and pulls the curtain against the cool air around.  The shampoos and soaps all smell lightly of flowers.  It’s a scent he’s never smelled on her skin or in her hair.  He’d found Morgan at the public library, on the basement floor, in a circle of reference books.  To him, she looked like a dark goddess.  He couldn’t find a way to speak, so he had just stood over her and watched.

            What he remembers most is counting his heartbeats as he waited for her to look up at him.  What he regrets most is that he can’t remember how many heartbeats there were.  She’d looked up at him, then, and stood carefully up, dusting off her jeans.  She didn’t ask or say anything, but stepped over her books and kissed him, deeply, arms wrapped around him and pulling him close.

            “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she’d said and he had already lost the battle against her.

            He hates how quickly he put his hands into his pockets in order to hide his wedding ring.  In the shower, he unconsciously washes his ringer finger over and over again, not really feeling where the ring itself should be.  He leaves the ring in a gum wrapper in his jeans whenever he’s here.  It’s risky, he thinks, but it’s only because he really wants to tell her.  He says that to himself again slowly:  He really wants to tell her.  He hates that he doesn’t know if it’s to help her or to hurt her.

            Donald turns off the water and wraps himself in one of Morgan’s threadbare towels.  He keeps thinking about the differences between her parents home, up on its hill in the middle of town, and her trailer house, way outside of town.  The towels there were fluffy and large, like the kind he has at home.  He steps out into the hallway, letting the steam out and shivering in the cool air of the trailer.  The wall has three photographs, two of her golden retriever, Salazar, who died when she was ten.  He stopped at the last photograph which was surrounded in a crudely painted wood frame.  One he’d painted himself.  They sat together in swings, she flying higher than him, he looking a bit apprehensive. 

            Morgan lay nude across the bed.  She watches the television intently.  On the fuzzy screen is a questions displayed across a blue panel.

            “Wait,” she says, holding up a slender hand, “If you move, I’ll lose all reception.”

            Donald stands and waits.

            “What is South Africa?” she shouts at the television.

            “What is Kenya?” says a contestant, after ringing in.

            “No, sorry.  The correct response is ‘What is South Africa.’”

            “Okay, you can come in now,” she says. 

Donald has never loved her more than he does at this moment, and yet he says, “I’m married.”  He hates that Morgan isn’t looking directly at him.  He hates that he can see tears in her eyes.  He takes a step forward.

“Don’t,” she says.

He reaches down and grabs his jeans.  He’s not sure why he does this, but as he’s pulling them on, he takes the wadded up gum wrapper and pulls his wedding ring out.  As he puts it on his finger, he hears her breathe in quickly.  He hates that he doesn’t know anything more to do than dress.  He hates that the Jeopardy! questions continue to go unanswered in the background.  He hates that he’s broken her, that she’s sitting there on her bed, naked and crying, not saying anything to him, not moving or screaming or hitting him or anything.  He hates that he can’t touch her to make anything better, because touching only makes things worse.  He hates that he’s leaving her here alone and that when he gets home, he has to tell his wife everything.  Donald doesn’t hate Morgan.  He hates that he doesn’t hate himself.

The Jeremiad

You take your father seriously when he says that the world will end.  He stands atop an overturned milk crate on the street corner across from the one-legged man with the guitar.  He holds his paperbound Bible with its cover bent around to the back.  It is stuffed with loose-leaf notes and drawings copied from the wall-length Clarence Larkin charts that hang in his study.  His left shoe is untied. 

            You hold your hand against the heated metal hood of your father’s old Volvo when he preaches about the searing flames of the Lake of Fire. You want it to scorch away the invisible signs of the mortal sin that you fell to in the night.  When you cannot take the pain any longer, you pull away.  You look at the palm of your hand, now bright red and raw and wish you weren’t so weak.  When the world ends, it will be your fault.

            There is an open-air café nearby, which is why your father chose this place over any other.  The words he preaches need to reach the ears of those who can help stop the Apocalypse by turning their backs to sin.  A man stands up from one of the tables and throws his wadded cloth napkin at the woman that sits with him.  The veins in his head are pronounced and the muscles in his jaw are taut.  He points at her and says something and then stomps his way toward your father.  The forks and food of the other patrons have stopped halfway to their mouths and you can almost make out the colors of their wide eyes. 

            “Could you shut up for one minute?  My wife and I are trying to have a nice lunch over there.” He can see eye-to-eye with your father, even with the milk crate.  Sweat is sticking his button-up shirt to his broad chest.

            Your father looks calmly down at him and says, “If only the almighty God could shut up the jaws of Hell and save you from your sinful nature, but he gave you over to a reprobate mind.  He is unsatisfied with this world and will cleanse it with fire and death.”

            You watch the man’s face grow red with the hate of Satan and his fist clench at his side.  The guitarist across the street has stopped playing.  The sun’s heat beats down from above.

            “I’m just asking you nicely to quiet down a bit while I’m eating.  You make it hard to have a conversation,” says the man.  He chooses each word and pauses between them. 

            “When you are burning in the Lake of Fire, sir, you will find it much more difficult to have a conversation with anyone besides Lucifer and his fallen angels.  I’m afraid though that you won’t have a lot to talk about.”

            You giggle at first, but then you look down at the palm of your burnt hand.  You look up in time to see the man staring down at you.  His eyes are a deep green.  His hands are bigger than your fathers.  They clench and unclench, over and over.   His wife has joined him now and more people are starting to come over. 

            “What is this lunatic saying to you, George?” she asks.  Her husband pushes her away a little and then shifts his weight to his other foot.

            “Go back and sit down,” he says, “I’m taking care of this.”
            “The Hell you are,” she says.  Her skirt is short and there is a stain near the hem.  Her hair is short.  Her eyes are covered with gigantic sunglasses that make her look like Beelzebub. 

            “What are you saying to my husband?” she says.  Her voice screeches when it comes out.

            “The end of the world is nigh, I say to you.  It is brought upon by your inequity and sin, much like your marriage was brought upon by your fornication and blindness,” says your father.  He points his finger down at her like a judge in a high seat.

            She spits into his face.  It runs down into his blue eyes, the blue eyes he shares with you.  You stand up and walk into the crowd that has gathered.  Your father bends down to you and you wipe the spit from his face with your shirt.

            “When in the deepest pit of Hell, you will wish with all of your heart for someone to give so willingly their spit to you,” he says to the woman.  Her hand flies backwards for a second, but her husband catches her wrist before she can slap your father. 

            His hold still firm, he points directly at you and says, “People like you should not be allowed to raise children like this.”

            “’Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,’” says your father.  You look away and then back down at the palm and fingers of your hand.  Your face grows warmer. 

            Instead of staying to listen to the rest of the argument, you begin to pick your way back through the crowd.  The street is empty of cars and you can see the guitarist looking over at you.  You carefully walk to the end of the block and push the big yellow button to cross.  The light changes and the crosswalk signal flashes a picture of a white walking man.

            “Is that your daddy over there, boy?” asks the guitarist.  His wheelchair is old and leather-bound.  You can see only one hand break.  The scarred stump of his leg sticks out from cut away jeans.  You look away from it and back across the street at your father.   He is hard to see among the crowd, but you can hear his harangue still in your head.

            “Yes sir,” you say, “that’s my father.” 

            “He’s doing a pretty good job of taking away my customers,” he says, kicking his guitar case with his good foot.  It makes only a slight jingle.  You look inside and see only a few silver coins.

            “Customers?” you ask.

            “Yeah.  I’m not a beggar or nothing like that.  I sell my music on this street corner, just like your daddy sells his God on that one.”

            You look down at your tennis shoes for a minute and then back at the guitarist.  He’s putting his guitar into the case and latching it in.

            “That’s not right.  My father doesn’t sell anything,” you say.  Back across the street, the man storms off, pulling his wife after him.  The crowd hasn’t dispersed, though.  Most of the people are arguing with your father, or yelling random insults.  Then you see a lady with too much makeup and a very large purse whose mouth isn’t moving.  A young man around your age is walking a black Labrador.  When he stops to allow the dog to sniff a hydrant, he turns his head toward your father’s preaching.  They walk further, and he turns his head back again. 

            “He does, boy, only you don’t need money to buy what he’s selling, just shame,” he says.  He picks up his guitar case and throws it over his lap.  “It’s okay, though, most folk got a lot of that to spare.”

            You look down at your hands again, at each of your fingers, and then back up at the guitarist.  He’s wheeling away from you now, down the block.  You turn the opposite direction, back to the corner and press the button on the stoplight.  A minute later, you’re wading through the crowd, trying not to listen to the swear words most of the people are using.  You take the keys to the Volvo from your pocket and unlock the trunk.  Inside are two piles of comic book-like Chick tracts.  You take them out and carefully remove the rubber bands that hold them together.  You walk through the crowd, handing them to the people.  Most drop them on the ground immediately.  The lady with the makeup takes hers, thanks you, and then places it into her oversized purse.  Her eyes look kind and wet.  Her hands have boney knuckles and shake all the time.  You take the last tract down the block to where the young man with the lab still stands almost past the open air café. 

            “What’s this?” he asks, flipping through the little book and not really seeing it.  He looks up at you.  His eyes match the color of his lab.

            “It’s a tract,” you say.  He blinks once and doesn’t say anything.

            “It’s a comic,” you say, “It tells you how to go to Heaven.” 

            “Are you going to Heaven?” he asks, winding the dog leash around his forearm.  He hasn’t looked away from you yet.  You look down at your hand instead of into his eyes.  You shift your feet for a minute.

            “What’s he talking about over there?” asks the young man, gesturing with his chin.  He’s petting his lab now, scratching it behind the ears.  The lab kicks with his back leg and then finds a dandelion between the cracks of the sidewalk to sniff.  The lab sneezes, blowing the dandelion apart, each bit of white floating up into the sky.

            “The end of the world,” you say. 

            “Oh,” says the young man, “he doesn’t bite, you know.  You can pet him if you want.” 

            You don’t say anything else while you pet the lab.  Your hand is warm in his fur, and you look down at it again and wonder how a hand can do both good and evil.   This lasts only a little while before the young man decides to go.  You wave once and then turn back to where your father still preaches.

            The crowd is a bit smaller now, and the ground is littered with the tracts.  You weave around the remaining people, picking them up.  The people are leaving now, walking to their cars and slamming doors.  The ones that came from the open-air café leave their food forgotten on the tables.  When your father falls, it isn’t at the hand of the crowd, but from his untied shoelace.  You hear the snap of his head on the pavement followed by a sudden stillness.  You hurry to his side, but two people are already there.  It’s an elderly man and a young woman with golden hair.  They help him up.  Your father holds his forehead in his hands and they help him to the Volvo.  The elderly man offers up a part of his shirt for a bandage and the young woman ties it around your fathers head.  Her fingernails are painted black with tiny skull stickers on them.  Her lipstick is black as well, but she smiles as she helps your father. 

            You walk over and pick up your father’s Bible and the milk crate.  The Bible is split down the middle.  You place both halves in the backseat, and the milk crate in the trunk.  Your father thanks the two Samaritans and you hand him his keys.  You are on your way home.  For a little while, you watch your father drive.  For the rest of the trip home, you watch the people in the cars around you.

Transmigration

By Miles Kear

“There’s your ride,” says Tommy Doyle.  He stands above me on the porch, smoking a cigarette.  We’re in the Heights now, and Tommy’s house looks like it belongs.  It’s three stories and massive, hulking over the hillside like the stone lion I’m hunched over.

Tommy is screwing up his face at me.  “You’ve really got to cut this shit out.”

            I knew what he meant.  I came to see Daisy Norris, like always.  She’s still inside with that meathead, I guess.  I walked in, looking around for her and saw them together on Tommy’s loveseat.  After some shots, I broke a coffee table.  It didn’t take long for him to call me a ride and sit me out here.  I spent the time trying not to vomit in his bushes.

            “I know,” I say.  I brace myself against the wall, willing the spins to go away.  “Sorry about the table.”

            “I don’t want to hear it.  You’re buying me a new one.”  The fat finger he points at my face tells me that he means it.  I haven’t crossed Tommy before; I’m definitely not going to now.  Instead, I wander toward the street where the car is waiting.

            It’s a four door job, slightly rusted in places with no window tinting.  Not really from around here, it seems.  It would be more at home in the South Valley, which is where we’ll be heading.  I pull at the back door handle for awhile before I hear some commotion inside and realize that the door is locked.  I let go of the handle and watch as the driver goes over the front seat and pulls the lock up.  No power locks in this one.

            She wants my address as soon as I’m inside, but I am deliberately silent until I slam the door shut.  I guess this one’s all business.  When I tell her, I see her smile above the Saint Christopher.  Maybe tonight isn’t all bad.  It’s mostly quiet then.  Her hands are on ten and two and her eyes go exactly where they should.  I watch the street lights go by like lines on a paper.  They are harsh in the dark.  I can’t look at them for too long before I’m sick, but I breathe in and out in that slow way that stops me from vomiting right away.  The girl is asking me something that I can’t answer while I’m doing this.  I guess she takes my silence as rudeness or disinterest or something, because she stops talking and lets the car be silent.

            There’s a rhythm in the way I’m breathing and the rubber of the tires on the asphalt underneath us.  It’s in perfect harmony with the passing lights and from time to time her turn signal joins in.  I don’t feel like vomiting anymore.  Instead, I’m listening carefully to the natural rhythms of the car and everything.  The girl is singing.  It started maybe a mile back, very softly blending in with the other sounds.  I didn’t hear it at first.  The words are from a hymn that I can’t quite remember.  My church going days are so far gone that it seems like I had been another me.  A better me.  It feels like I’m an intruder here in her car.  I am a peeping tom watching her undress before God.  My drunkenness feels like going to school naked.  It’s embarrassing and wrong being in the same car as her.  It feels like watching porn in church.

            “Are you feeling better yet?” she asks, looking back at me.  Her hands do not move from the wheel.  A passing light shows that they are painted and stuck with little stickers.

            “Not exactly.  I don’t think I’m going to make a mess of your floorboard, though,” I say.  I am not entire sure of that, though, so I don’t laugh.  Just in case.

            “That’s good.  I’d hate to have to hose you down.”  When she looks at me in the rearview, her eyes smile.  They are either grey or blue.

            I look out through the windshield for awhile, watching her maneuver through the traffic of the freeway.  She isn’t a bad driver for her age. 

            “Was it a good party?” she asks. 

            “Do they pay you to ask these kinds of questions?” I ask. 

            “Who?  St. Joseph’s?”  It takes me a minute to piece together what she means before I remember that the Safe Rides program is based out of Church of St. Joseph on Sycamore.  I nearly slap myself.

            “Yeah,” I say.

            “No, it’s all volunteer-based.  Most of us go to church there.  I’m not trying to weed information out of you about why you drink or party or anything like that, if that’s what you are getting at.”

            “Sorry, sorry,” I say, “No, it was a terrible party.  Definitely a poor decision on my part.  I broke a table.”

            She chokes out a laugh, “How’s that again?”

            I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain Daisy to her, so I leave that part out.  Instead, I just tell her about the shots of Vodka and the bust of Henry Kissinger that I put through the glass coffee table to make a point. 

            “What was the point?” she asks.

            “I honestly don’t know,” I say.  I squint, but still I don’t see the point anymore.  I’m not sure anyone did, especially not Henry Kissinger.  It isn’t as though in meeting this girl that I immediately forget about Daisy.  No, without Daisy, I am not me.  It’s more like the things that I do for her seem absolutely ridiculous.  I feel like an idiot. 

            I make sure that we get off the freeway at the right exit and try not to drift to sleep as we pass Spanish billboards and ghetto trailer parks.  Mine is a cheap double-wide behind a condemned McDonald’s.  She pulls close and turns off the car. 

            “You need any help?” she asks.

            I reply in the negative while trying to get the door open.  She’s over the front seat again, leaning over me (the smell of her is a highway wildflower) and pulls up the lock.  I open the door and immediately fall face first into the gravel driveway.  It is then that I somehow choose to vomit.  I feel the wet slide down my chin and face and into my hair. 

            I hear her door open and shut and her little feet are in my eyesight.  They are made of canvas and have little people painted on them in fingernail polish.  I get sick again and have to close my eyes so I won’t go blind.

            “Oh no, Sam.  You’ve got to get up,” she says.  She grabs my arms and pushes them underneath me so that I can push myself up.  I’m on my feet, but I’m leaning on her.  She can’t move yet, she’s so small, so I put more of my weight on my own feet and we struggle to the door. 

            “How do you know my name?”  I ask. 

            “Keys,” she says, but reaches into my pocket anyway and pulls them out. She gets the door open and pushes me inside.  My fingers feel up and down the wall for awhile before they find the switch and flood the room. 

            “Which way to the kitchen?” she asks, but starts us walking the correct direction before I can figure out that it was the correct direction.  My sink is empty, which is good because she’s got my head under the faucet.  I’ve never had my hair washed by anyone else before.  Her fingers untangle and pull out any chunks of vomit or gravel that they can find.  She pushes me into a chair in the living room a minute later.

            “Where are your towels, Sam?” she asks.  I gesture vaguely toward the bathroom on the far end of the trailer.  It’s so quiet after she leaves the room that I begin to wonder if I ever left home tonight.  When she returns it is like a new day has begun.  She shoves the towel into my hands.  I apply it to my face and hair.  Everything calms down.  I feel better and I look out into my living room.

            She’s pacing the walls, looking at the bookcases.  I made them from boards and cinderblocks and stacked them to the ceiling with books.  I’m thankful that they haven’t gone through the floors here.  After a minute, she stops, pulls at a book, frowns at it and pushes it back into place.  She looks at a comic book.  A novel.  She picks up an action figure and examines it for a second before putting it back.  Then she finds a framed picture on the third shelf of the second bookcase. 

            “Is this your girlfriend?” she asks, bringing it over. 

            “You tell me.”

            “What do you mean?” she says.  She’s holding out the picture of Daisy, but I don’t take it.  Whenever I look at it, my mind flips over and it’s having a hard enough time staying focused as it is.

            “You know me from somewhere.  You should know if she’s my girlfriend or not,” I say.  I’m looking at her eyes, but they don’t give a hint of recognition.  Maybe I imagined it?

            “How do you figure that I know you?”

            “You called me by name back there when you helped me out of the car.  You asked if I needed help and you called me Sam.  So, obviously you know me.”  I throw the towel down, irritated, and put my hands behind my head.  My shoulders are starting to hurt.

            Her face is downcast and she turns away from me.  The back of her neck is red now and Daisy falls from her hand to the carpet, facedown.  She whispers something.

            “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t be here.”  She walks toward the front door where the keys still dangle from the lock.  When I stand up, she stops and then looks back over at me.

            “They stopped the Safe Rides program,” she says, “I stayed at the church all night by myself waiting for your call.  I had to make sure that you got home safe, Sam, or else you wouldn’t make it home at all.”

            I walk over and take her by the hand.  She tries to pull away but lets me pull her back inside.  She sits down but rocks back and forth to a rhythm that’s mimicked by the chain hanging from my ceiling fan.  Her eyes aren’t clear.  They do not see what’s around her.  She’s talking to me, but she isn’t at the same time.

            “You party too much, Sam.  Your friends don’t like that you drink so much, but they drink the same as you and they don’t stop you when you drive yourself home.  Mom yells at you when you come home late, but you don’t listen to her.  You just scream back at her and slam your door shut.  You slammed her hand in the door once, too.  She had to wear a cast for weeks and weeks.

            “That’s when I learned to drive, don’t you remember?  She needed to get groceries and go to work, but with her hand like that, she couldn’t do it.  You wouldn’t come out of your room for long periods of time, so it was just me, even though I wasn’t old enough yet.  I got her to where she needed to go until her hand got better and I just kept driving after that.”

            She grows quiet again and stands up.  I’m afraid she’s going to leave again, but she just walks over to the window that looks out to her car.  She fingers her hair and keeps talking.  I don’t interrupt.

            “I would drive for you, too, Sam.  I’d take you to your parties.  Mom wouldn’t wait up for you anymore, so if it got too late, if you were drunk, I would go pick you up.  Sometimes you would thank me and kiss me on the head.  Other times, well, you didn’t know it was me.  I would walk you to your room and when I put you in your bed, you wouldn’t let me leave.  You would … you didn’t know it was me.  But I would always be there to give you a ride home the next time you got too drunk.  Every time.  You and mom fought again, though.  You took the keys from me and you never came home, Sam.”

            “I’m not your Sam,” I say.  She looks back at me from the window.  Her face is red and her eyes wide. 

            “I know.  I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.  I just… I just wanted to be there.  For you,” she stops herself, “For Sam.  But Sam’s dead.  And they stopped the program.  How can I help anyone if they stopped the program?”

            Her legs are bending and she’s sinking to the floor.  I hear a cracking sound as I rush over to her.  I pull her back up on her feet and set her in the chair. 

            “Tell me what to do, Sam,” she says.  “I don’t know what to do.”

            I don’t have a solution for her.  I can’t fix anything for anyone.  That is all I can tell her.  I pick up Daisy’s picture, and pull the broken glass from the frame.  There isn’t anything written on the back of the photograph, but a drop of blood falls onto it from a new cut on my finger.  I take the entire thing into the kitchen and dump it into the sink.  I let my finger bleed over it for awhile.

            “You’re cut, Sam,” she says from behind me.  Her voice is small and concerned.  “Let me help you.”

            I don’t pull away from her touch.  She holds my finger under the tap and the blood flows into the running water where it mixes together in the bottom of the sink.