In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [66]
Above my bed hung a poster of some inane early seventies icon—I forget exactly what or who now—but when my father had left for his nighttime work and my mothers incessant footsteps finally fell silent, we’d pull the tacks from the poster’s corners and flip it over: there, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper rode their one remaining Harley, gloriously doomed, flipping off the world in perpetuity.
We’d bide our time, share a cigarette in the closet, then, when we believed that everyone else in the city slept but us, we’d pull ourselves from my bedroom window and run through the alleys as far as we could until we collapsed, breathless and laughing. Sometimes we made our way to Imperial Bowl, where the few customers left were more interested in their beer than their score and no one bothered to question our presence. Other nights we sat with our backs against a Dumpster, content to shiver in the cool air and smoke, free until the birds began their singing and the horizon colored.
We had other friends who found no need to skulk and hide, and their lives were a constant source of amazement and envy to us. One night we sneaked out and made our way across town to the house of Rick, a boy our age with golden hair that hung in a thick shock across his forehead, a boy who walked with his thumbs in his pockets, never deigning to remove the cigarette from his mouth, clinching it between his teeth with a sideways grin, a boy we both hoped to kiss, though I knew Les would have the better chance.
We tossed a handful of pebbles at his window, then scurried behind the rosebushes. He stepped onto the porch of the towering split-level (his parents had money) and waited. “Rick,” we hissed. “Over here.”
“What are you guys doing?” He stood silhouetted by the light escaping from inside. I pulled him down to us.
“Wanna go run around?” He was our age, maybe fourteen, but the smile that spread across his face showed nothing of the lure of truancy.
“Why don’t you guys come in?”
I looked toward the door. “Aren’t your parents home?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So? What do you mean, so?”
“They like to meet my friends.”
Les and I looked at each other. This was beyond our imagination. What if they called our parents? What if they called the cops?
Instead they welcomed us with hot chocolate and little tuna sandwiches on brown bread cut into rectangles, stuck through with blue toothpicks. Rick’s red-haired mother lounged with her drink on the rec room sofa, her sculptured feet drawn up bare beneath a brightly flowered caftan like the ones I’d seen on the Gabor sisters (my grandmother’s Hungarian ideals—such lovely skin! such finely boned faces!).
The father settled into his chair, crossed his legs and smiled. “So—is it Kim? Kim, how’s school going this year?”
I shot a look at Rick, who sat on the sofa next to his mother, leaned toward her as though the few inches separating them were too great a distance to be endured. “Fine,” I answered, then bit into my sandwich. There was something besides mayo and pickles in the tuna—green olives, I decided, worrying the wad of bread across my tongue—pimento, and worst of all, onions. My mother never put onions in tuna. My father hated onions and pepper, odd ingredients of any kind. He tolerated one spice—salt and lots of it. My brother and I had grown up knowing only white: Wonder Bread, mayonnaise instead of mustard, mashed potatoes and cream gravy, white toast dunked in white-sugared oatmeal. I swallowed twice, trying to work the mouthful down my throat without chewing.
Les reached for another sandwich, holding it between her first finger and thumb. She looked like a lady having tea with her matron friends. I watched in admiration as she bit and chewed, bit and chewed, never minding