Fourth Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest Winners (2006)
Fiction
— Second Place
The
Death and Life of Impressions
By Kimberly Younkin
(continued)
She unbuckles Chase from his car seat, pats the lump of the bottle in
her pants pocket, then points them to where Steven plays with his kids.
Again, the playground is barren but for the five of them. Steven stands
at the bottom of the slide yelling, “THERE SHE GOES!” and holding
Kylie’s rump as she attempts a climb to the top in rubber-soled shoes
with no traction.
His volume still puts her off, but she walks toward him instead of away, heart thudding. He sees them and gives Kylie a final nudge to the summit.
“Hello! You must be Amy,” he says loudly, his smile wide and warm.
When she reaches him, he extends a large, thick-fingered hand. She looks directly into his eyes and takes it, over the words in her mind: You have no right. “Hi, Steven. It’s good to meet you.”
He motions to his kids who have skittered over to the monkey bars, offers their names, though she already knows them. Then he looks down at Chase, messy-haired and shy and clinging to her legs.
“And WHO do we have HERE, young man?” Steven crouches to Chase’s level and grins with his mouth and eyes.
She pats her son on the head, signaling her okay to talk to the boisterous man, and, still gripping her, he whispers, “My name is Chase William Loeffler.”
“Well, Chase William Loeffler, it’s very nice to meet you. You know, I think Kylie and Brendan would really like to have a friend their age to play with instead of their old dad.” He winks. “How ‘bout it?”
Chase looks up at her for permission, and she nods. “Go on. I’ll be right here.” As he runs to the wee-sized climbing wall, she wants to reach out and grab him, pull him back. To hold her up.
Instead, she thrusts her hand in her pocket and grasps what’s Steven’s but seems part of her now, and hands it to him. He takes it, wraps his hand around hers and gently squeezes his thanks, and she knows that he knows.
“It’s funny, Amy. I’ve lost my wallet six times — my wife used to say I should just buy a purse — and each time, some nice person mailed it back to me. And now this! I’m surrounded by the kindness of strangers.”
She laughs a small, nervous laugh. “Did they return the money, too?”
He smiles, understanding, and replies, “Nah. We can’t all be perfect.”
“That’s true.” She clears her throat and motions to a nearby bench. “Do you want to sit?”
He accepts the invitation. They walk, and she comments on the weather, glances sideways. In the handful of times she’s seen him, he’s never looked ill; in fact, quite the contrary. And now, with him so close she can touch him, she sees no signs of sickness — only a stalwart man exactly her height with bushy red-blonde hair and arms as thick as trees.
They sit, and his words mirror her thoughts.
“I don’t look sick, do I?” She stutters apologies until he politely touches her arm to stop. “It’s all right. I would have looked, too.”
She turns to face him, when, twenty-four hours earlier, he repulsed her. “Would you have, really?” She thinks of his effusive good spirits; how, before she found the pills, it had annoyed her. Now, she’s humbled. “It doesn’t seem like you’re the type.”
Steven grins and raises an eyebrow. “Oh? What kind of ‘type’ do I seem to be?”
“The good type. You seem good.” She turns and looks out at Chase. “Better than me.”
He throws back his head and laughs heartily, shaking the bench they share. Yesterday, she would have felt weak with embarrassment for him, but not today.
His laugh fades to a chuckle. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I may look like a great guy, but you don’t know me.” He pauses. “Now, my wife, there’s goodness. Best person I ever met.” He looks past where the kids play, over them, his smile withering. “If I had even a bit of it, I’d be lucky.”
She starts to ask about his wife, but he rises and walks to the sandbox, motions for her to follow. He shouts, “WAY TO GO, CHASE!” as he sees her son slide down the miniature firemen’s pole on his own, not knowing this is a first for her son.
He kicks off his shoes and makes wide, dramatic childlike steps back and forth through the sandbox. She joins him, sitting on the wood frame of the sandbox, digging in her toes.
He looks at her, suddenly cocking his head sideways, and stops walking. “You know, you look a lot like my wife right now. Paula always sat right there.” She straightens to attention at his use of the past tense.
Then, he is remembering, no longer directing his words toward her. “I would walk, like this, drawing a picture for her or the kids, and she would sit there and pinch a sand heart with her toes.” His smile returns though his mind far away. “She was an unabashed romantic.”
She stiffens, beginning to understand.
“She’d swear she’d written ‘P loves S’ inside it but her toes were so fat, the letters just looked like holes.”
Then he’s himself again, throwing back his head and laughing as she drops her forehead to her bended knees, realizing that “P. Harrington” from the Tamoxifen bottle was Steven’s wife, and the drug did not save her.
She feels punched in the chest, squeezes her eyelids closed. She wishes she had never seen this playground, could burrow into sand, did not cry each time her eyes burned.
Then Steven sits next to her and pats her gently on the back. She lifts her head, wipes two tears with the pads of her palms. She takes a deep breath and decides to start trying to be good, or at least better.
“I’ve seen you before, Steven. Lots of times. Here. Other places.” She apologizes with her eyes. “I didn’t like you. I didn’t like you because you’re loud, even though there’s no law against it. Isn’t that a stupid reason not to like a person? Especially one you’ve never met? Isn’t it crazy to not like a person because you think they’re too happy?”
As she finishes, he sighs in relief. “God, I’m so glad you said that.”
“What?”
“You looked like you were gonna give me pity. I don’t want that.”
“But I am sorry you lost—”
“Everyone is,” he says, interrupting gently. “I know that. I would be, too, if I were looking at me from your place. But I don’t want to be treated differently because my wife died.”
“Is that why you’re always so up, so cheerful? Because you don’t want other people to know you’re hurting?”
He laughs. “No, that’s just a character flaw! This is who I am. I haven’t changed because of Paula, although being her husband certainly changed me, I think, in a good way.”
They are silent for several minutes. With her feet, she draws concentric circles in the sand. She hopes she can say the same about knowing him, just this one day.
“Do you know what else I don’t want?” She lifts her eyes to his, looking at her intently. “I really don’t want someone who didn’t like me before to like me now, because of it.”
She doesn’t look away, though she knows she should. Then, after a long moment, there is air in her chest again, and she breathes. Calmer, she smiles slowly.
“Not to worry. I’ve only stopped disliking you. I don’t know enough yet to decide whether I want us to be friends.”
A deep, bursting belly-laugh from him as she asks, “Do you think you can stop disliking me? I understand if you can’t.”
“I can try,” he says, chuckling.
“Good.” She pauses. “Do you know enough yet to decide?”
“About us being friends? No, I guess not.”
She stands up and he follows. “Then it looks like we’ll have to wait and see.” She reaches out her hand, and he grasps it, squeezes softly. Then she watches him trot over to Kylie and Brendan — names she finds not so irritating, after all.
Steven gives Chase a high-five, then runs to his car, whooping and laughing and snorting, with each of his giggling children under an arm. They drive away, playful music drifting from the car window as she stands in two imprints of Steven’s feet in the sandbox. Then Chase runs to her, chattering about his new friends, and holds her hand.
