Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

"What are we celebrating?"

"Two things"

"What?"

"Me and you."

We let our wine glasses collide; we swigged; we smiled.

"What's for dinner?" I said.

"I'm broiling steaks."

"Sounds perfect."

She rubbed the side of my face. "Good boy."

I sat down on the burned couch. I thought about the sidewinder that had bitten me and stood back up.

Old lady Rhonda saw me staring at the couch and asked, "Finally tired of it?"

"I guess," I said. "Can I help you cook?" I took a few steps toward the kitchen. I thought about Madeline, her Meat Trees, thought about Skyler, and wondered if they were somewhere right that very second doing the same thing as old lady Rhonda and me.

"Just sit down, baby You can cook for me next time. Right now, I'm taking care of you."

"I make a mean dish called Meat Trees."

She smiled. "I can't wait to try them."

I sat back down, and minutes later, she put a plate in my lap. There wasn't anything else on the plate except the steak, cooked rare, shaped like a big bleeding tongue.

"Look at this," she said and handed me a shiny steak knife. "Picked a set of these up today." She tucked it between the plate and my thigh. She set the fork next to the steak.

"Did we miss `Wheel of Fortune'?" I asked.

"You were asleep. I got every puzzle."

I stared at her, in a weird awe. On one hand, it was only "Wheel of Fortune," so who cares, but it was wonderful to watch someone shine at something.

I held the fork with my good hand, the knife with the warped one.

"I forgot the wine bottles," she said, going back to the kitchen and getting them. Old lady Rhonda sat down next to me. She sliced a bite of steak and put it in her mouth. She scrunched her face in delight. "I know my way around a steak."

I switched hands, deciding that the knife should be in my good one, so I could generate enough force to saw through the bloody meat.

Then I switched back.

Did it again.

She took another bite and said, "What are you waiting for?"

"Nothing," I said, holding the fork in my dead hand. I stabbed the steak with the fork to hold it still. With my other hand, I used the knife to saw at the meat, trying to get through it, but my other arm was too weak, couldn't hold the steak steady in one place. It slid all over the plate. I switched hands again, but my bent arm didn't have the strength to cut through the meat, just scratched shallow trenches in its browned top.

"Oohh," old lady Rhonda said, "this will be fun."

"What?"

"Let me help you."

"I can do it," I said, because I'd been feeding myself since I'd broken my arm. I just hadn't eaten anything that took two hands, usually soup or chili or SpaghettiOs: an entire diet from the dusty shelves of liquor stores. I'd braced the cans between my legs as I spun the opener around the rims.

"You have to let me," she said. "As a favor."

I mauled the meat one last time, hoping I could do it myself, but it was no use. Part of me wanted to throw the fork and knife across the room, but I handed them to old lady Rhonda, who smiled. She cut a little piece of meat and buzzed it in front of my face, flying it in zigzag patterns and making zooming airplane noises. "Open the hangar!" she said.

I ate it up.

"I really wanted kids," she said. "I had seven sisters. There was always something fun going on in that house. Not like me and his place upstairs. So morose. We were barely married. Just walked by each other on our way to the bathroom."

Another bite wiggled through the sky, doing tricks, old lady Rhonda making swooping sounds. This chunk of meat was a little sinewy so I swallowed it without really chewing.

"How long were you two like that?"

"Long time. We hadn't had sex in almost twenty years. When we first got married, I felt irreplaceable. And slowly I went from being important to the most irritating woman in the world."

She cut herself a bite and stuck it in her mouth. I took a huge sip of wine.

"You're not irritating," I said.

This time she didn't make any airplane sounds, sticking the fork up to my face until I stripped it clean.

"Thanks," she said. "Are you going to tell me about your date?"

"I don't think I can."

"That bad?"

There weren't words for what I'd felt that night with Handa. If there were words, I didn't know them. I'd never heard them. No one had ever taught me the words to detail a situation like that. All I could say to old lady Rhonda was, "Humiliating," but I knew that was only a shard of what I felt. Then: "She said she never wants to see me again."

"I'm sorry, baby;" old lady Rhonda said, rubbing my leg. "Why is that?"

I wanted to tell her. I really did. But I wasn't willing to chance that once she heard about the dumpster, the trapdoor, the wine puddles, that she'd leave me, too. "I don't want to talk about it.,

"You can tell me anything."

"Can we talk about something else?"

"Do you want another bite of steak?"

I nodded. She cut me one and flew it toward my mouth. "Please, don't ever tell me something that you don't want to," she said, "but I hope you know, I'll never judge you."

Me, Rhonda, I wanted to believe her, wanted to purge and tell her every contaminated thing I'd done. The top secret. The buried and ugly and hideous. But also the harmless, the bland. I wanted to believe that no matter the caste of syllables that came from my mouth, she'd understand me.

I talked with a mouthful of meat: "I believe you."

"You want to believe me, Crash Man. But I don't think you do yet."

I swallowed.

She cut me one more bite and flew it around in front of my face. "Mayday;" she said, lowering the bite so it almost smashed into my lap. "Mayday. We're losing altitude!" She pulled it up and I took it in. "I'll prove to you that you can say anything to me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Remember when I didn't want to tell you what my husband and I were fighting about? We were fighting about you."

"Why?"

"Because you're the son I never had," she said. She leaned over and hugged me, kept me pressed against her. I could feel her heartbeat knocking against me. I'll never make you understand, but being in her arms felt like I was in the womb, surrounded by its wet protection.

"That night with Handa," I said, "I scared her."

"How?"

I didn't answer.

"No matter what it is, please tell me," she said.

"I don't think I can."

"You can."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

And I told her everything about that night. And she kept me in her arms the whole time.

I'd like to tell you one of my favorite memories of my mom. The day she told me I'd overslept and that I was about to miss the school bus, that I needed to get to the bus stop ASAP because she didn't have time to drive me to school.

I said, "Why?" and she said, "If I'm late again, I'm getting fired."

I didn't want to have anything to do with her losing another job, so I skipped the shower, but brushed my teeth and combed my hair a little. I got dressed as fast as I could and didn't eat anything for breakfast even though I was hungry, but it was serious business if she got fired, and I said to her, "Bye, Mom," and walked to the bus stop with three minutes to spare.

My stomach growled, but maybe I could bum a bite from another kid on the bus.

But three minutes went by and the bus wasn't there, which wasn't unheard of, this was the school bus and sometimes the school bus was late. I hoped I hadn't read the clock wrong on my way out the door. It was obvious that three minutes had gone by. It felt more like six or seven minutes. Still no bus. My stomach growled. I walked to the corner to peek for the bus.