Second
by Shannon Latimer
Knox College

Honorable Mention story in the 2000 ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest


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 "Can I still have my room, or has it been converted into a studio?" Martha laughed, setting down her suitcases, looking very tired. She smiled and distributed languorous hugs to my mother, me, and our little brother, Luke. It must have been hard for my big sister to come back home when David announced that he was going to divorce her. It seemed her very presence in the house meant admitting that she was wrong, that David was the wrong choice, that that life was wrong, just as my mother had predicted. She picked her suitcases back up, letting out another fatigued laugh, and moved beyond us toward the hall.
 We didn't know the particulars. But by her refusal to speak of the divorce, by not offering up her strength in the situation, it could only have meant that she had no strength in the situation -- that the divorce wasn't her choice. So, she was moving back into her old room. And its childishness, its meringue yellow, must have seemed absurd and distant to her.
 She spent a lot of time the first couple of days in between inane tasks with her thin freckled arms folded, staring flatly in front of her. When mom would smooth her long hair and place it behind her shoulders for her, asking her what was wrong, she'd just say she was very tired. The answer wasn't so evasive. It must have been exhausting disposing of something she had put several years of her life into. Like the worst kind of moving out -- and no one could really help her. I had never been in such a situation, but I could imagine that it might kill you.
 When she was conscious of her demeanor, Martha would make the trip home look like regrouping. Like she had been planning it for a while -- a vacation from work. I joined her on her first evening back while she was sitting on the back porch on the edge of the concrete, legs extended, running her bare feet under the sand like she was trying out the desert again.
 "Hey Kiddo," she said, as I sat down next to her. She smiled and rocked sideways nudging me. I decided not to ask about the divorce. "I miss this dry heat," she said. We talked for a while about how the weather and the land here, in New Mexico, differed from that in Boston, where she had lived with David. The orange late afternoon light cut in harshly on every object in the back yard, blazing off the leaves of the cottonwood trees, blazing off the side of Martha's face as she squinted. Even the light moved differently here, and we both commented on it. It was something we understood more immediately, being two daughters of two artists who so capably mastered this light, like one masters chess -- they understood it. And now Dad understood it somewhere else, with someone else. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he lost it when he left this place. There was a shameful comfort in this thought. The thick black clouds seeped in from the north as they often did in July afternoons -- in what mom called monsoon season. She called to us that dinner was ready.
 "Martha, Martha, hello Martha." Luke giggled, staring enamored at Martha at the dinner table as mom poured wine out of a carafe for everyone, including a small portion for Luke. Martha smiled and looked down at her plate as if embarrassed by the attention he was drawing to her, even though it was just the four of us.
 Luke was difficult to explain to people. My father left thirteen years ago. My mom had dated a few men the first couple of years, but no one for any length of time. None of them seemed special to her or even special at all, as I remembered. I was sure there had been nothing since. But, five years ago she became pregnant with Luke. "Don't call Luke your half brother," she had told me early on. "People give titles based on the wrong things. You love him just the same; he's not a fraction." My mother held few traditional rules in the house, but there were these more deep-seated rules. Luke was calm and well behaved for his age. He was special in the house -- more special than what was given to him, being a four-year-old boy. Mom would let him be with her when she painted. His fingerprints were in sienna oil paint in the corner of the living room, and mom had never washed them off. He seemed almost like a novelty. And I knew I would feel sorry for him when that wore off, when he became a man.
 "Well...." Mom pressed her hands to the table, on both sides of her plate. "Do you want us to despise him, or is he still sacred?"  The question caught Martha by surprise. She must have forgotten the dryness in which mom approached things.
 "I don't know. Ask me later." The question saddened her. None of us knew what to make of the meal as we began to eat. It could be a mourning for the past three years of Martha's life. But with wine in front of us, if Mom and Martha would share a smile even for a moment, with Luke so healthy and my good grades, it could be a celebration -- being glad to all be together again. The storm, reaching us already, saved us the decision. The top layer of our roof was tin, so when it rained it sounded like marbles. It was too awkward to try and talk over it.
 In my own silence, I was thinking about the bathrobe. It was that April when Martha came home to visit, when she announced that she was going to get married. I could remember the image clearly. She emerged that morning in a lush teal bathrobe, shuffling, both hands gripped around a cup of tea. And she sat down to watch "Good Morning America."  It was the most trivial thing but Mom and I had the same unspoken reaction to it. Though it was most likely nothing we'd given much thought to up until that point, a nice thick robe seemed like such a relaxing thing -- a thing of comfort, a complacent thing. It was the opposite of us, like Tuesday mornings in bathrobes were something you could fall into if you weren't careful. It would have meant nothing in a different house at a different time. "Good Morning-ness," Martha said and smiled vacantly. This was a trick around our house. If you couldn't think of anything real to say, just add some nonsensical prefix or suffix. Then it didn't matter; it was cute. That morning, I had realized there was a comradeship among us and, even though at one point she was part of it, Martha had seceded.
 The storm moved out shortly after we had finished dinner. We opened all of the windows and doors and the house filled with the smell of honeysuckle and wet dirt. Mom did the dishes. I instructed Luke on how to do headstands. And Martha went into her room and lay on her stomach and cried.

 
 Kyle's family owned this enormous Golden Retriever named Missy who loved me. "Like a freight train without brakes," his Mom would say as the massive slobbering beast would rush toward me. I would pat my stomach, hold my hands out, and she'd land her paws in them. She broke my thumb once but it didn't stop me from doing it. Missy didn't greet me tonight. It was Sunday -- walk night. I mounted the stairway that led to Kyle's bedroom wondering if he could recognize the weight of my steps -- if he anticipated them or even noticed.
 "Hello, Lauren," he said, drawing out the "o" sound, as he always did as though reserving his own enunciation of me. On any given day this could comfort or annoy me. He sat at his desk, working. I moved beyond him and looked out the window. I could see his parents walking out across the dirt field behind their house. It was wide and dry and sparsely marked with skeleton weeds. Missy was with them, heaving across it like an insane jackrabbit. The light was low and pink by now and the figures looked nicely gilded in it. They always seemed blessed.
 "Whutcha working on?"  I sat down beside where he worked and played with the cuff of his pants.
 "Latin."
 "Ah."
 Kyle was taking summer classes. Not because he had failed, but because he never would.  He was working ahead. He was diligent.
 I wanted to tell Kyle about Martha's arrival, and how the household seemed like a contest to see who was holding in the most pain. It was weighing on me, but I decided not to.
 "I think I'm getting sick again." He arched back in his chair and he did, indeed, look a little peaked -- though he almost always did.
 "Eh, you're probably just sick with love for Gail." I threw the remark at him -- a hard joke, then let out a small laugh, staring at the floor ahead of me. He just rubbed his lips together and stared at nothing. Gail was an ex-girlfriend of his whom he still spent all of his emotions on. And she had long since forgotten him. Gail -- I loathed the name. I didn't know why I ever even said it.
 "How are you doing, Lauren?"
 I liked the way his nose and chin looked from underneath -- two soft triangles. "Oh, fine, fine. And you are...?"
 "Fine."
 "Good."
 I continued playing with the cuff of his right pant leg. Then I moved my hand underneath it, feeling the warm back of his calf. Not looking up, I leaned my forehead on his knee. I felt his uncertain fingertips in my hair.
 "Your parents just headed out, right?"

 
 When I returned home, the house was quiet. There was only a small amount of light let out into the hall from Mom's room. Her door was partway open as usual. She kept it open, she said, so she could hear in case anything detrimental were to happen. She promised she would protect us. It seemed funny; I imagined her thin frame running down the hall, capable of anything to defend her offspring.
  Whenever I thought of  incisive lines I thought about her. She was good at drawing these clear, defining lines; her work was full of them. I thought about this as I flipped through art books or saw pictures in magazines. Gauguin used them; Matisse mastered them. I wondered if my mom would have any affinity with these men. I wondered if Gauguin, frolicking in Tahiti after abandoning his family in Europe, drew the same crisp lines in and around himself as my mother did.  I doubted it. From what I could tell, it seemed like he lived a pretty free life.
 She spent a lot of time standing perfectly still, looking out of windows. It made me so nervous. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and tell her to wake up. It was as though one day I would come home and find her dead, just standing there.

 
 The second morning, Mom decided to paint a portrait of Martha. She set up her easel in the corner of the living room by the porch doors and Martha curled up at the end of the couch where the morning light washed over her, catching the tangles in her hair. She gave a fulfilled smile as Mom began mixing the paint. This was a treat. I watched for a moment, imagining which features mom would construct most carefully. She would definitely give angular attention to Martha's high cheekbones. These cheekbones were all of ours. They gave Martha a classical beauty. She settled into the couch more and her smile dulled faintly. Mom applied the first color -- a flesh tone, heavy on red.
 "I'm going to have to go back soon. For work," she said.
 "You can always come back here and live with us," Mom replied, diverting little attention from her work.
 Martha's tired eyes rounded the room apprehensively until they met with mine by accident. A look of guilt washed over them because I had caught her not wanting to live here. I had caught her fear of ending up here with nowhere else to go.
 "The door is always open."
 I threw my eyes to the floor. I decided I'd take Luke to the zoo for the day.

 
 The trick was to not be caught in moments staring ahead of myself, lost, as Mom and Martha did. Moments of not knowing where to go next. The trick was to leave the bed before Kyle might have liked me to. To pull my shirt over my head with my back to him. And I always made sure to laugh at some point as I pulled on my shoes.

 
 I didn't think that David was so bad when he visited before he and Martha were married. And I don't know how Mom foresaw that it would end badly. I remember Martha sat on the couch with her socked feet in his lap. He played with them until she let out a high-pitched laugh I had never heard before. She sounded like a parakeet. Mom also took notice of the unfamiliar laugh. Her eyes met mine. David had one of those cartoon faces. He had a mouth shaped for a comical smile, ruddy cheeks, and eyes that gleamed and shot back and forth charmingly when he was excited about something. They seemed constantly affixed on his bride-to-be as if, at any moment, there could be something new in her to be fascinated by. I had figured that must have been love.
 For those couple of days, David treated me like the little sister he never had. And I treated him like the only man who, by that point, had ruffled my hair so affectionately. I adored him.
 I remember the entire week best as one moment. The house was buoyant with breathy laughter as the two of them and I laughed then sighed then fell into laughter again. I don't remember what about. My mother stood smiling gently, wine bottle in hand, ready to top everyone off. But there was something watchful in her -- as if waiting for the twist at the end of the plot that would reveal David to be the villain. He rolled over and smothered Martha with a kiss, I let out a squeal of mock disgust, and mom moved silently to the kitchen.

 
 I walked Luke in front of the polar bear grotto and lifted him up to lean against the hot sticky railing for a better view. They had painted the entire artificial environment white and had built a large pool where the bear was actually swimming. I felt sorry for the bear. It was a cruel joke they were playing -- white chipped paint in desert July was a poor substitute for a glacier, I could imagine.
 "Did you know that polar bears could swim?"
 "Yeeeesss." He giggled, and kicked his feet in the air in excitement. His heel caught my knee pretty hard, but I didn't say anything. It was an accident.
 "You didn't know that." I teased him.
 "Yeah, I did!"
 "You're lying. I'm going to feed you to Mr. Bear." And I lifted him up, nuzzling the back of his neck, making a growling noise. Luke had the sweetest laugh. It was addictive. Later, we sat on a bench in the shade as Luke gnawed on a snow cone. He didn't care that the cherry syrup ran down his forearm and onto his overalls. A little blonde-haired girl with a cowlick sat across from us with her mother and stared at Luke intently. When he noticed, he slapped his sticky palm to his eyes letting out something between a giggle and a scream of protest. He let his hand down and then quickly brought it up again. The little girl continued to stare. Suddenly, Luke ran across the walk and shoved his snow cone into the little girl's hand. Running immediately back, he curled up on the bench. Hiding his face in my side, he continued giggling profusely.
 "That was nice of you," I told him.
 "What do you say?" the mother asked her daughter.
 "Thank You," the girl managed in between savoring the snow cone.
  The woman took her daughter's free hand and nodded at me pleasantly. "That boy's going to be a heart-breaker some day."

 

 

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