Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

“You haven’t got any pictures, Mr. Bliss.”

“What do you call those?”

“I mean you don’t have no pictures of family. Of friends.”

“They are my family. They are my friends.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bliss.” He lowered his eyes. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“I’m not sad, for Christ’s sake.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I should kick you out. The disrespect you have for your elders. I’m a man, goddamn it, you respect that.”

He stood there, watching me scratch my chin through my beard. I stopped because he began to look worried I may have fleas.

“You want some ice cream, kid?”

He quietly nodded.

“Help yourself. Lord knows I won’t eat it.” I gestured toward the freezer, directing him to move the frozen dinners out of the way to the carton of chocolate ice cream in the back.

“This carton is all banged up, Mr. Bliss.” He read the expiration date on its side. “This ice cream is from 1984. I’ll throw it away.”

“No.” I flipped the flimsy chair back as I stood.

“But it’ll make you sick. You’ve got to let it go.” He stepped away with the carton.

“You give that to me. Right now, boy. I said give it to me.” I grabbed hold of the carton, trying to yank it from his tight grip.

“Mr. Bliss…” He held on.

“Goddamn you to hell.”

“Mr. Bliss, no—”

I didn’t realize I’d slapped him until long after he left. I stood the lawn chair back up and sat there, holding the ice cream carton to my chest. At first, it was freezing, and burned my skin through my thin shirt in that way all frozen things can. Eventually, the freeze left. The carton was just cold then, until it wasn’t cold at all. It sweated and dripped down onto my lap. I must have sat there for hours like that, holding onto all that melt.

“Mr. Bliss?”

I raised my eyes to the boy. “My God, kid. You came back?”

“I just wanted to give ya somethin’.” He laid what he had down on the table by the door before leaving.

With the carton still pressed against my chest, I left the chair and hurried to the table. There was a photograph of his smiling face, a saguaro in the background, the sky yellowed by the sun rising behind him.

“Damn kid.”

I opened the carton and stared at the melted ice cream. Before I knew it, I was at the sink and pouring it down, some of it splashing on my shirt, little dark drops of chocolate that splattered like blood.

I balanced the carton on top of the pile of trash before going to a wall of photographs. I took down one of the frames and replaced the photograph of the steeple with that of the boy. It felt like maybe I was reaching for one of those hands Sal talked about. That whole second-chance hope sort of thing.

I spent the rest of that night in front of the fan. It was the first time in years I had tried to cool off. I even thought about putting my clothes in the freezer. That was one of Sal’s ideas, to put our clothes in the freezer overnight. By morning, they would be crisp and chilled.

Word on the cooling regime hit the town, and freezers became a second dresser for many. Everyone had their own ideas on how to stay cool. Mom kept her lotions and creams in the refrigerator so they’d be cold when she put them on. Most everyone carried little spritz bottles of ice water they could spray on their face or back of the neck, though the ice melted too fast for it to make any real difference. A couple of people even went so far as to paint their roofs white under the knowledge dark colors draw heat in.

Then there was my great-aunt, Fedelia Spicer, who made a habit out of visiting our house in the afternoons to spend time with her only surviving family. Mom was her niece.

Old Fedelia’s way to cool down was by licking her forearms. There she’d be, the shades of her eyes pulled half closed, her tongue amphibiously long and aggressive.

“Kangaroos, you stupid boy. Kangaroos.” Her amber eyes lit with rage as she shook her forearms at me when I asked why she licked them.

It was Scranton who had made Fedelia so angry. He’d been her husband before running away with a blonde in fishnets. Through their marriage, Scranton was the sound of a motel bedspring squeaking.

I’d seen photographs of Fedelia taken long before Scranton’s infidelity. All that beauty and life. Too bad she didn’t inoculate herself against the disease that was Scranton. Because of him and the anger she held onto, her features reached home to their bones, causing cave and shadow. Her face thinner than her body where the weight collected in the abdomen, hips, and thighs. She ate the comfort she couldn’t find anywhere else. Padding piled upon her as defense for the hard in life. She looked even larger because she wore clothes too big. The woman in bags who wore costume heavy makeup because her face was afraid to go into the world alone, lest she be seen. Lest she have to see herself.

Over the years, her anger piled her hair atop her head in a ratty heap of tangles and frizz. Looking to recapture the color of her youth, she would spray her hair with dye in a can that was supposed to be auburn but left her with an orange that cost all who saw it their respect of carrots. Her roots somehow managed to escape the dye and were such a bright white, they always looked like the start to something holy.

Amongst the orange were tied ribbons, a dozen in all. Each a different color, though faded, and representing a different woman Scranton had shared betrayal of Fedelia with over the long years of their union. She’d tell how the tattered teal ribbon was for the woman who waddled, while the dull fuchsia was for the woman with the feather boas.

She never removed these ribbons, so over time her hair wrapped around them. The way they wove, they could sometimes look like slithering in an undergrowth. It was as if she were the infected Eden, the snake still turning through Eve.

She would reach up to the ribbons, making sure they were still there as if she was afraid they would fall out or leave her like Scranton. On occasion, she’d pull one tighter, just for insurance.

Outside of Scranton, Fedelia’s conversations with Mom that summer centered on the heat and that new disease that would come to define the 1980s.

As Grand came into the living room reading the newspaper, Fedelia jerked it out of his hands to read the front page.

“This new goddamn sickness. AIDS. ” She held the word for a long time. “Unusual fuckin’ name for a disease. You know, I wonder what it’ll do to Ayds? You know, them appetite-suppressin’ chocolates I’ve been eatin’. Goddamn.”

Those appetite-suppressing chocolates that did not work. That did not keep the lonely woman from eating the company of food. Bandages on a plate for all the wounds inside.

She continued to read the newspaper. “I wonder if Scranton will get AIDS. They say it comes with the fuckin’, you know.” She seemed both pleased and distressed by the thought, though it was hard to tell with the heavy black liner she drew across her white brows. “That old rat bastard. If anyone deserves it, he does.”

Grand tried to swipe the paper back from her, but she began to bark and growl at him like a dog. He backed, along the way grabbing up his baseball glove from the table.

“I’m goin’ to practice.” He pecked Mom on the cheek.

He made a last attempt for the paper but this time Fedelia bit him on the left forearm, leaving behind her red lipstick that smeared across his skin like blood.

“Goddamn, Auntie.” He grabbed his arm.

“There’s more where that came from, you piss-ant.” Fedelia rolled and pointed the paper at him, her cruel smile made even more monstrous from the lipstick having been smeared around her mouth, spreading so far from her lips, it reached her cheeks in claw-mark strides.