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Four
Vignettes 3. Coats I’m in the mall in a pair of my grandmother’s polyester housepants and a baggy pink sweater, my mother’s red sports coat, a pair of her running shoes, my grandmother’s dry socks, and it’s not an anxiety dream. I’m not naked on the first day of school, not running from room to room before a final exam that I didn’t study for. I’m not lost, I’m shopping for a leather jacket. Jess, do you remember elementary school? Do you remember Mrs. Frost? With her short brown utilitarian haircut and her cool voice? You weren’t there that summer when Deanna and I threw a rock through her window, were you? We were just looking for something to do, that’s all—how many ways can two kids break the law in one day, you know. We threw your neighbors’ mail in the road, smoked two cigarettes... Mrs. Frost—full of practical wisdom—told me to keep the rounded tip of my umbrella pointed to the floor and scolded me for taking my jacket out of the closet during a fire drill. “Just get out with you!” she cooed after every drill. “We can always buy another jacket, but we can’t buy another you!” I had just fallen asleep, I think. The thumping woke me up. My clock said 2:13, my journal lay open on the floor to yesterday’s entry that I’d completed only an hour ago. “Tanya, get up.” Dad’s voice sounded strained, sounded like he was trying to be calm. The hall light was on, my bedroom door was open. “Get up now!” He demanded. That’s when I noticed that air in the hall was hazy and blue. The living room glowed around the fire place. Thick fingers of smoke trailed up the walls across the ceiling toward my room at the end of the hall. The thumping sound was Dad running down the hall with a bucket of water that he’d filled in the bathroom sink. He threw it at the flaming wall, and it sizzled like a drop from a pot of water into a campfire. I remembered kindergarten, “Just get out with you!” So I left my room with my socks. Our old gray tabby, Princess, ran past me up the stairs and darted towards my room as Dad made a dive for her. Downstairs, I found the another cat sitting dumbly under the pine chair in the family room. I pulled him out, heavy as a sack of potatoes, and left the house. The dog followed us obediently through the garage and out into the driveway. After a moment of standing in the driveway in my socks, watching the right side of the house beginning to burn, I remembered my mother. Dad was in the garage looking for a hose. “What the hell are you doing?!” he stopped for a moment to assess me, standing there in my socks and pajamas in the snow, a huge cat dangling from my arms. “Get some shoes!” I dropped the cat and walked back inside. Smoke was filling the upper floor and the family room had grown foggy. I found my mother fully dressed, with her coat, scarf, and gloves, our safety box, Dad’s briefcase, her purse. “Put a jacket on! Where’s Princess?! Where are your shoes?!” I picked her red blazer off the of the back of a chair in the family room slid it over my pajamas. In the foyer, I found a pair of her yellow and green Saucony running shoes. I put them on, and we left our house for the last time. So I’m in the mall in a pair of my grandmother’s polyester housepants and a baggy pink sweater, my mother’s red sports coat, a pair of her running shoes, my grandmother’s dry socks, and it’s not an anxiety dream. I’m not naked on the first day of school, not running from room to room before a final exam that I didn’t study for. I’m just lost, I’m shopping for a leather jacket, to replace the one I had five hours ago. I’ll need some shoes, too, and some jeans. I’ll need everything, I guess. I suppose I can reinvent my style. Good thing my mother took the credit cards, birth certificates, her makeup. Why didn’t I take the journal? Why didn’t I take my poems? My homework? My purse? My own coat? Why didn’t I go back for the cat? What do elementary school teachers know about anything? Jess, I’m sorry about your neighbor’s mail, but I’m glad I threw a rock through Mrs. Frost’s window. |
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