Claudia Dey - Heartbreaker

Some of the fathers had already started warming up to The Heavy. I was the only girl in the territory who did not have a Gold Lady Gold name necklace (because I was a virgin). I was the only girl in the territory who did not have a Walkman (because I was an untouched virgin). The fathers knew what this meant, and they were taking note of me for their sons, who, at this age, were just starting to get their nicknames. So while we got jewelry that was quick to tarnish or a Walkman that was sure to break, the boys got nicknames of infamy like Fang and T-Bone. The Heavy wanted nothing to do with the fathers. I wanted nothing to do with their sons.

OUTSIDE OUR BUNGALOW, the northwest wind has died down, and it has started to rain. I hear ice slide off the roof. It hits the hard ground and smashes apart, making my body jump. My mother left just over two hours ago. Her eyes flat, her skin the color of nicotine. Her parting words––“I had forgotten all about you”––echo in my head. If my mother has forgotten all about me, what’s to stop her from leaving the territory for good? A space has opened between us. It feels uncrossable. A war, an entire sea. Me on one side. And my mother on the other, disappearing from view. My pulse pounds in my ears. My throat tightens. Don’t cry now. Cry later. Cry in your sleep. I turn on all the lights and climb the stairs. I consider calling Lana, asking her to come over, but she has no idea. The Heavy and I have kept my mother’s illness a secret, even from each other. It’s not like we agreed to this. We’re the same. Do not enter. Private property. About the sudden change that came over my mother three months ago, we haven’t spoken a word.

Her bedroom is directly across the hall from mine. She thought to close her door before she left.

On my wall, I have a black-and-white picture of Muhammad Ali that I tore from a magazine that’s a decade old. Ali is holding up a piece of paper that says, THE SECRET OF MUHAMMAD ALI. When I have my portrait done, this is how I’ll do it. Beside him is my blood schedule for the month. The days I have completed are x-ed out, and above it is a postcard Lana put in our mailbox that just says, SIGH!!! I have Ric Ocasek’s face inside Samuel Beckett’s hair in a frame beside my bed. He is wearing dark sunglasses and under him I have written DREAM MACHINE.

PONY BECKETT OCASEK.

Le Pony Beckett Ocasek.

The Secret of Le Pony Dream Machine Beckett Ocasek Ali.

I GLUE RHINESTONES around my eyes. I put on my mother’s camouflage tracksuit and her gold hoop earrings. I have two books on my bed: my disease book, which from the Latin loosely translates into Brutal Errors of the Human Body, and a romance novel, Chance Encounter, that I stole out of a turquoise mother purse at the Banquet Hall. My album cover collection takes up half a wall. It is in milk crates. I have it organized by emotion. To be free is to have achieved your life. Someone said this once. I’ll count my money later when I’ve got more to add to it.

I am going to the bonfire. Whether The Heavy comes back or not, I am going. I sat at my mother’s door with my knees folded to my chest for the last two months. You can see the imprint in the carpet, where it has worn out and the vinyl floor is shining through. I pushed notes under her door. Notes I don’t know that she ever read, or even saw.

I am not waiting anymore. I have plans.

Wantings.

I press play on my tape recorder, and the Gregorian chants come on. I borrowed them from the Lending Library after I heard them coming from the tormented headphones of Supernatural. I wanted to ask him if I could listen to them, but I had forgotten how to speak. We were lying side by side on the cots at the Banquet Hall having just had our blood taken. I was trying to subtly Whitesnake my body while he lay perfectly still, staring up, black paint on his jeans and smelling like woodstove, which was more than I could handle. His boots hung over the end of his cot. I pretended we were in bed together, that our cots were joined and the bed was a waterbed, and we were in a field where we wouldn’t get shot or mauled. Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. Someone said this once. Here, you have a rest. Here, you have some citrus. This one’s a fainter. Oh, look at her go. Have mercy. The women in their puffed-sleeved pink dresses, talking about me, moving busily around me, gripping my shoulders, getting me to put my head between my knees and make it settle, then lift it up slowly, slower now, Pony Darlene. That’s a girl. God, you look like your mother. Doesn’t she now?

SUPES IS THE SON of Traps, the truck dealer, and his wife, Debra Marie, and he is by far the best-looking boy in the territory. He was also the youngest boy in the history of our people to be given his nickname. Let me give you the lay of the land. It is between the ages of fourteen and nineteen that a territory boy gets his nickname. He will be called by this nickname until he is buried at final resting. It is his nickname, burned into a piece of shellacked plywood, that will be placed under his portrait when the territory mourners line up before it to hammer out their grief.

Supes got his nickname when he turned thirteen. Supes was not like the other boys. Their running shoes worn through and thick with mud, sticks of dynamite between their teeth. Wade Jr., Ivo Jr., Gary Jr., Constantine Jr. Their voices took forever to break. Supes’s voice went from boy to man in a night. He never lit things on fire. He never chased. Never barked. Was never breathless. The boy practically had light coming off his body. Where did he come from? Visible Thinker would think. The boy’s clean tank top under his parka. The shape of his arms. At Drink-Mart, The Silentest Man spoke the only name he could think to give the boy. Matches striking. Glass against glass. The younger men tossed the name between them.

“Supernatural.”

“Supernatural.”

“Supes for short.”

“Yeah, Supes.”

“Supes.”

The men of the territory laughed, and when the boy did not, they stopped laughing.

All of the girls wanted him. They loved their dogs, but they loved Supernatural more. In the graveyard, by the bonfire, Thursday night after Thursday night, they trained their eyes on the incline, the one he might walk over any moment. Sometimes his hood would show. Oh God, oh my God. The girls would elbow each other, throw fits under their outerwear. Quiet one, he is. The girls would flick their eyes toward him and then away, let their hair fall in front of their faces. I can do things to you simultaneously, the girls would communicate with their minds. This is serious. I have skills I can coordinate, combos I can execute. Make me your wife. But by the time the girls cleared their faces of their hair, Supes would be gone.

I wanted his soundtrack.

And possibly, him.

I fold the hem under and pin my mother’s camo track jacket so it shows off my midsection. Better. Baby one night somebody going to strike a match on a tombstone and read your name. Someone said this once. SETTLE YOUR HEAD. This is what I have written on a flag above my bed. Settle your head.

I twist the knob and creak the door open to my mother’s bedroom. I turn on the overhead light. It still works. The curtains are drawn. A knot of black bedcovers, and her pillow curved where her head lay against it. I look through her dresser drawers, her closet. I get down on my knees and run my hands over her carpet. I look under her bed. Lift the black bedcovers.

Nothing.

The room is empty.

THE DAY AFTER my mother crashed our previous truck into a tree on an iceless day was the day our people call Free Day. When I left our bungalow, my mother was in her bed with a white bandage across her forehead, raking her fingers through our dog’s fur. Save for our totaled truck, our yard was empty. I held and kissed her hand three times and cranked her window open. You could hear the reservoir lap the shoreline. It was summer. Summer is a beautiful time here. Don’t you see that, I wanted to say to my mother. See that.