Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

False in our promised rising

MY DREAMS THAT first night were of long hallways and burning doors. By the time morning came, I felt burned myself. I lay there in bed. My eyes closed and the fan, a poor help on my face.

“Those people are here.”

I looked up at Sal. The window behind him putting his edges in light.

“What people?” I yawned.

“Amos’ people.” He tugged at his shirt. It would be a while before my bright, clean clothes looked natural on him. He was more field than town. More old soul pasture than adolescent attitude.

He left as I threw on a tank and cut-offs. When I got downstairs, I found him in the kitchen with Mom, Dad, the sheriff, and a man with mechanic hands holding a woman who was still wearing her maid’s uniform from last night’s shift. She kept shaking her head at Sal, crying that he was not her Amos.

“Yours.” Sal was offering the bowl and spoon to the woman.

“They ain’t mine, honey.” She blew her nose, the gold crosses shaking at her ears.

As Sal set the things back on top of the counter, Dad whispered to Mom, after which she took me and Sal into the living room, where she turned up the television. We sat on the sofa, listening to the San Francisco lovers on Phil Donahue talk about the shock of testing positive.

A few minutes later, Amos’ parents were driving away in their rusted Chevette while Dad and the sheriff returned to us in the living room.

“I was certain he was gonna be theirs.” The sheriff tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. “Well, hell, I’ll continue the investigation. Let ya know what I come up with.”

Dad brushed the sweaty strands of his hair back. “He can stay with us in the meantime.”

“I won’t put you good folks out like that.” The sheriff looked about to spit. Only the rug stopped him. “He can stay in the jail.”

“That boy in that dank basement?” Mom shot up from the sofa. “With drunks and thieves and rapists and murderers? He’ll come outta there all lessoned up in sin.”

“Now, Stella, I’d put ’im in his own cell. I ain’t stupid, ya know.”

“Like hell you ain’t. Your bright idea is to put a boy in a basement. I thought you were dumb. I didn’t know you were son-of-a-bitch dumb.”

“Stella.” Dad winced.

“We all know why Dottie left you,” Mom continued. “Ran off with that well-to-do fella. If you ask me, she should’ve done it years earlier, instead of stayin’ with a small dick like you. She told us all. Called ya pinky pants behind your back.”

She started taunting the sheriff with her pinkies, the sweat shining on her forehead like bad stars. When she began to choke on her laughter, Dad was quick to pat her on the back.

“Calm down, Stella. For Christ’s sake, breathe.”

“Oh God—” She caught her breath. “I’m so sorry I said those things. I … the heat.” She swept the damp strands of her hair back, unable to meet the sheriff’s eyes. “It’s just the heat. I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry.”

“My apologies as well, Sheriff.” Dad aired his collar. “I think it’s safe to say Sal is wanted, and he can stay here until something more permanent can be decided upon. And again, I’m so sorry for what has been spoken here.”

You could feel the sheriff’s anger take over the room. Almost like a whooshing past your face. A sort of entity that felt like it could have peeled the wallpaper off the walls and broken the crystal.

“I best be goin’.” The sheriff straightened as if he were being asked to show how tall he really was. Then he quietly nodded at all of us, very slowly at Mom, before leaving with his hands clenched at his sides, only the pinkies left out like small horns.

“Well, that was very sudden, Stella.” Dad checked his tie once more.

“I’m not used to it bein’ so hot. None of us are. We’re not prepared for a heat like this. I can just imagine the things that’ll be had from here on out. We best get cool, and soon. We’re all in a volcano of trouble. I feel it.”

“Calm down now, Stella.” Dad cleared his throat. “I think I’ll go … I think I’ll take a walk to the cemetery. I’d like to talk this whole situation over with Mother.” He turned to Sal to clarify. “My mother has passed. But she always had a way of clarifying the distinctly strange. I think speaking with her has the great possibility of enlightening me on this matter we have before us.”

“The cemetery is a million miles away.” Mom wrung her hands. “You’ll be gone forever. I was plannin’ on makin’ lentil stew. You have to boil lentils, Autopsy. You know how I feel about boilin’ things, all them bubbles poppin’ up. It’s like rain in a pot. And now we won’t be havin’ lentil stew, ’cause you won’t be here to boil it. You have to stay.”

Dad tugged on the tail of her hair until she smiled.

“I won’t be gone long.” His long arms wrapping around her was like being somewhere in a wheat field.

“You’ll be gone forever. Once you start talkin’ to your mother, I become a widow.” She broke the embrace and bit her fingernail hard enough to chip the polish. She frowned at this and more as she said to him, “If you must go, then go, but before you do, bring me my canna for the day.”

Breathed envied Mom’s cannas, which were tall, tropical flowers done up in colors with familiar names like red, orange, yellow, peach. Yet they weren’t familiar at all. They were the colors of the other side of a journey to another world.

The job of caring for the cannas was left to me, Dad, and Grand because even though the cannas were just a few feet from the house, Mom never risked the rain. She gardened from the back porch, using us as her hands. We were her reach in the outside world. She told us when the cannas were dry and needed more water. We’d get the hose and give them a drink while she followed through the motions with us, feigning to pull the hose across the yard and then to stand still with her hand up and moving side to side like she was spraying something more than air.

She examined their growth through binoculars, looking out for insects or other damage. I remember the year the leaf rollers came, a great pest that rolls the leaves of the cannas in order to pupate inside them. Mom instructed me from the back porch to cut off the infected leaves. She held a pair of scissors and cut with me. Then she handed me flour to sprinkle on the remaining leaves as prevention, keeping some flour for herself, which she sprinkled all over the back porch.

Every day she asked for a canna. I suppose to feel the petals, the leaves, the roots, allowing her to feel somewhat responsible for them.

“What variety today, my love?” Dad pulled her back to him without much difficulty.

“Oh, I’d say Alaska.” She tilted her face to his and softly wiped the sweat from his cheeks. “Alaska will do for today. Perhaps it’ll cool me down.”

“In that case—” Dad kissed her wet forehead. “—I shall get enough Alaska for all of us.”

The Alaska variety has a yellow middle surrounded by white petals. Pee in Alaskan snow, that’s what I said as I took the flower from Dad.

“Not pee.” Sal frowned at me. “It’s your mother in her yellow dress and she’s twirling in the Alaskan snow. In the white rain.”

“I’m off now. You boys be good.” Dad carried his own flower tucked under his arm as he walked out the door.

Mom watched him go as if he were a feather falling off her wing. “Well”—she turned to us—“what say you boys run down to Juniper’s for me. Get some lentils.”

“You don’t have any, Mom? I thought that was what you were makin’ for dinner?”

“Well, my love—” She licked her palm and tried to lay down my cowlick, the same as hers. “—I can’t make ’em if I don’t have ’em, now, can I?”