Laura Adamczyk - Hardly Children

The virgin comes back into the great hall and catches me staring at Lincoln’s crotch.

Let’s go, he sighs. He’s done with me. I’m over. And now he knows it too.

On the ride home, he does a good job of not talking to me, even when I turn up the radio so loud it hurts my ears. He lets me out, and I tell him to hang loose. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear anything he says because the Pixies are growling about ceasing to exist, about giving one’s goodbyes. He’s looking straight ahead, shrugging, moving his small, tight lips. I imagine him saying that I’m silly, loose, depraved, but the thought stays with me as long as Frank Black’s voice does after I close the door. I put up my hand and wave.

I mean, you can’t help but wonder. He was the tallest president.

IT DUMPS A FOOTof snow on us, resetting the landscape to something cleaner. The trucker texts me to say that he won’t be able to make it back to town until next week, but that he wants to have dinner when he returns.

I stay inside eating toast and drinking milky tea. I’m reading about the Bay of Pigs, but I keep taking breaks to masturbate. This has been going on all day, and by now I’ve lost count. My head feels like it’s bobbing a few rooms away from the rest of me. The rest of me moves slowly, and like a cat, I follow the sunlight coming through my windows, lying down in each bright, heated square. Once I’m warm, I get back into bed. I worry about how some smells never seem to leave the things that hold them. I’ll have to scrub and scrub. I think about first going to the virgin and giving him my hand. Here’s what’s missing , I want to say.

THE NEXT DAYI run out of jam. Wild grape and elderberry. My grandma makes it from scratch. It’s the only kind I’ll eat now. It’s dark and earthy, the deep purple of a gemstone.

From the porch, I see her inside shuffling to the door. I sometimes fear that they won’t hear the doorbell and I’ll forever be left standing there, waiting to be let in.

Hello, sugar!

I bend down to hug her. She’s as soft and lumpy as a pillow and smells like old wool.

Herb! she calls behind her. Herb, Cassie’s here! She pauses to listen for him, then looks back to me and shakes her head. We sit down in the living room—the couch, chair, and rug are all the same shade of country blue.

Did you have trouble driving with the snow?

No, they’ve plowed all the roads pretty well by now.

Well, you be careful out there. Don’t drive too fast. Her eyes are light blue and clear as glass. I’ve been thinking, she says, if we make it to our seventieth anniversary, you’ll have to have a party for us.

You’ll make it to seventy, Grandma. But I say it with as much certainty as anything. I don’t tell her how now I can’t stop imagining getting hit by a bus or falling down a set of stairs. How I sometimes try to decrease my chance of certain accidents by staying inside all day.

Well, we’ll just have some fun while we can, hm, sweetie? She turns to look behind the couch into the kitchen. That man, she sighs. Let’s go down there and bug him.

The walls leading to the basement are covered with pictures from old Life and MAD magazines my dad put up as a kid. The Beatles and Mia Farrow. Doris Day with a mustache drawn above her lips. We walk down into the cool air, and it’s like stepping into a pool: one moment outside and the next within. The same old smell of damp and dust.

Oh! Oh! Grandpa says when he spots me, doing a little jog over, opening his skinny arms out wide. He hugs me tightly, and it feels the way it always does, bony and a little painful, but mostly good. He gives me a shake and then releases me.

You came to get some jam, did you?

I nod dutifully.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any elderberry, he says. But let’s see if we can’t dig some up.

I follow them through a door and then another one. Shelves are laid out on either side of me, stacked with scrap wood for burning or building, used cans of spray paint. My grandparents disappear into a dark side room, and I stop to dig through a red milk crate of vinyl records. A feeling of cool fear comes over me flipping through the albums, not finding anything I recognize. I have no idea who could have owned anything by the Carpenters.

We’ve found something here, Cassie!

My grandma is just on the other side of the wall, working her way toward the doorway between us. Your father used to love this! she says, but I’m already backing away. She says something about how quickly the weekend goes by, and behind her, Grandpa replies, All the snow will melt soon enough, Fran. But I can’t listen. It is as though their voices are arriving to me from a future that does not include them. I turn to go upstairs. It’s cold down there, and I’ve forgotten why I came.

THE TRUCKER PICKS ME UPin a small maroon car. It reminds me of boys I knew in high school.

Where’s the truck?

He laughs. You think I drive that around town?

Oh, right.

I turn behind me. I think about climbing in the back later, but it doesn’t have the same allure, none of the tight order of the truck cab. There’s something embarrassing about his tiny car, his tininess within it. And he looks different, his hair no longer hidden beneath his cap, something open and bare about his face.

Where to? he asks.

I suggest the hip, dark place with the white plates. It’s a joke, but he takes me seriously. I want to say that he wouldn’t like it there, that the lighting, the music, everything about it is delicate and precise—pretentious—but we go anyway.

At the table, he squints into the menu. So a bunch of little things, not a regular entr ée. He purses his lips. I can tell I’m going to leave completely sated, he says, nodding.

A different model-waitress from last time takes our order and comes back with red wine. We touch glasses ceremoniously, and when I bring mine to my lips, some dribbles down my chin. This always happens. It’s like I’m throwing it at my face and just hoping some makes it in.

I have a drinking problem, I say. He laughs, though I know he doesn’t get the Airplane! reference. I realize now what it is about his face. He’s trimmed his beard. What was once thick as Bluto is now like lace, snow-white pieces of skin visible across his cheeks.

So your dad used to work for Peterbilt?

Yup.

Retired?

He’s dead, actually.

Oh, I’m so sorry.

That’s all right, I say. He doesn’t mind.

He pinches his brow.

I mean, what are you gonna do?

He tilts his head, a tentative smile shaping his lips. He clears his throat.

So what kind of truck did he drive? Local? Long haul?

Long haul, I say, and he nods slowly, as though he just correctly guessed my zodiac. I don’t want to explain that my dad never drove the trucks. He only worked on the engines, taught people how to fix them, but that it kept him away nonetheless. He only wore plaid on the weekends.

You know, this place isn’t horrible , he says, looking up at the Edison bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

No, not horrible, I say, grabbing my glass, not spilling any this time.

AFTER DINNERI convince him to take me to the truck yard. I jump up and down and tug on his arm until he says yes. There is a long line of semis, staggered as neatly as a card trick. I can’t tell which one is his until we’re beside it and I’m climbing up the little ladder. We get in the back, and I start jumping on him. I bury my head into his armpit and try to push him over. I crouch up and fall down on his chest, he taking my weight like he’s wrestling a toddler.