STEVE PASSEY
Dry October, warmer than it used to be, like every October the last few years. Half the leaves were still on the trees, and half of those leaves still had some green. Mary Ann was in the hallway off of the kitchen leading to the front door with her granddaughter Peyton, who was clutching her swimming gear. A quiet and dreamy child, Peyton liked to swim and draw and never complained about anything.
“Let’s go, Grandmamma,” she said while Mary Ann slipped into her shoes.
Grandmamma was what grandmothers had been called in Mary Ann’s family, going back unbroken to sometime during the Depression. Before that, too many grandmothers died. War and privations and migrations and such — no three generations of women of the same surname might actually be related. Peyton, who took French in school, had briefly delighted in calling Mary Ann Grand-mère but that only lasted through the French class, which Peyton had failed. (Or Needed Improvement as they put it.) She liked school, but not class, like her own mother at the same age.
“Hey Mary Ann,” Jimmy hollered.
He was on the couch in the living room, watching college football. Jimmy always hollered; his hearing was starting to go. “Can you get me a Slurpee on your way back from the Facility? I’m feeling parched.”
He pronounced Facility slowly, with equal emphasis on all four syllables. Fah-sill-eh-tee.
Mary Ann nodded but didn’t answer. She walked out with Peyton into the sun, into the pale blue October morning. Peyton was into her side of the car, buckled up and ready for the pool before Mary Ann could open her door.
Peyton, all blue-eyed, single-braided, and serious, pulled up her knees. “Grandmamma, does Jimmy have any good qualities?”
Mary Ann thought out loud. “A couple.”
“What are they?”
“It’s nice having a second income in the house.”
Peyton waited a little before saying, “And —?”
Mary Ann thought of Jimmy on the couch with a coke propped up on his belly. She was tempted to say “He don’t fart — much.” Instead she said, “Here we are at the pool.”
Peyton unbuckled before the car stopped. “You gonna visit momma at the Facility?” She pronounced it the same way Jimmy did.
“I am. I’ll be back in an hour. Have fun.”
“Grandmamma. You’re sweating.” Peyton ran up the stairs to the pool.
Mary Ann checked the rear-view mirror. Beads of sweat crowded around her hairline, dampness lay up against her bra straps. She closed her eyes and leaned back and held her breath for a second as if that might leave her cool. Eyes closed, she thought of Jimmy’s other good qualities. Last night, Jimmy didn’t say a word when she cast aside the covers and got up out of her own undignified sweat, took a bed sheet from the linen closet and lay on the couch with the ceiling fan on and a window open to the cool October night. When she came out of the shower, she saw that Jimmy had gathered all the sheets and put them in the washer. When her daughter Mary Jean made one more mistake to add to a long list of mistakes and went into Custodial Rehabilitation, Jimmy didn’t blame her. He never said anything. When Peyton came to live with them, Jimmy never said anything either. He’d moved in less than ten months before Mary Jean’s arrest. The courts had a process. They had a system. The children’s services people wanted interviews.
Again and again there was that phrase, Custodial Rehabilitation. A euphemism for a euphemism, like Facility.
Mary Ann told him, “No damn way any flesh and blood of mine is going into a foster home. If you don’t like it, you can leave.” Jimmy nodded. “I like it just fine, Mary Ann. I got your back.”
That was all he said even as she raged against the world and the system and her stupid, stupid daughter and couldn’t fall asleep. When she did sleep, she dreamt of winter and crows and trees so covered in cobwebs they were like statues in shrouds, and then the trees cracked under the weight of the webs and woke her up.
Jimmy’s best good quality was this: he never referred to where Mary Jean was as prison. He always said fah-sill-eh-tee, and now that’s how Peyton said it too.
Mary Ann was still too hot. Under the hooded sweatshirt, she wiggled out of her bra and stuffed it in her bag before putting the car in gear. She drove toward the Facility.
On her way, she always stopped at the convenience store and picked up chocolate bars and magazines for Mary Jean. She had to rush. It took longer than it should to get in to visit Mary Jean, and she only had so much time while Peyton was swimming. It usually meant a half hour visit and the risk of a speeding ticket. Sweating still, she parked and hustled into the store without locking the car doors. She gathered up as many two-for-one chocolate bars as she could carry in two hands. She glanced at the Slurpee machine longingly. Ever since Jimmy brought it up she’d craved one, but she was too short for time now. At the cashier, she set the chocolate bars down, picked up some Hollywood scandal rags and a Women’s Holistic Health and laid them on the counter. She absent-mindedly read the Women’s Holistic Health cover and noted one headline, in acid yellow letters:
The Average Woman gains 10 pounds during menopause
AND IT NEVER COMES OFF!
WILL THIS BE YOU?
“Goddamn!”
The clerk stared back silently. “Nothing,” she said before the clerk could ask. She paid and stuffed the Women’s Holistic Health in the garbage bin on her way out.
She drove on an avenue lined with trees. The gold leaves fell slowly, one at a time, in the wake of her passage. Maybe it’s not me, she thought. Maybe it’s global warming. Phytoestrogens. Things she heard on television, or read in magazines. Things that made everybody sick. She drove five kilometres above the speed limit with the A/C blowing. She thought of her own mother and could see her now, in her hairnet and overalls, smoking a Marlboro. Her mother smoked Marlboros until they killed her. She’d operated a sheet metal press for a company that made anything out of sheet metal. Boxes for utilities mainly, containers for the military. She worked more or less until she died. Mary Ann wondered if her momma ever had the hot flashes, or ever woke up in the middle of the night scared she was dying, or got mad at herself for being so ridiculous. When Mary Ann gave birth and named her daughter Mary Jean, her momma didn’t approve. “Too close to Mary Ann,” she said flatly. “Too close to naming a man for his daddy. I ain’t never known a man named Junior who turned out to be any damn good at all. It ruins ’em for some reason. Don’t know why, it just does. And don’t get me started on why anyone goes around by Something Something the Third. Don’t get me started.” Her momma fired up another Marlie and never spoke of naming daughters again. But Mary Ann always remembered that conversation. She was mad. “Jesus Momma,” she’d said, “Don’t speak about my baby that way.” After some time, she could laugh the memory off. She wished Momma was around. Not for advice or anything, but just to be around.
She got to the Facility and went through the process — the bag from the convenience store got dumped out and sorted, then put back together — and walked on into the central meeting room where Mary Jean sat at a table like she always did the first Saturday of the month.
“Momma.” Mary Jean looked like Peyton, only older. Same blue eyes, same braided hair. “Peyton not coming?”
“She’ll come when she’s ready,” Mary Ann said, same as she did the first Saturday of every month. Mary Jean turned over one of the chocolate bars. She unwrapped the end and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Thanks Momma.” She carefully rewrapped the bar and placed it with the others. When Mary Ann first started coming, she thought she should bring cigarettes. “No Momma,” Mary Jean told her. “Well, maybe a little. But chocolate goes farther.” Mary Ann admired that her daughter quit smoking. Tough place to quit. Mary Jean was five foot seven and weighed one-hundred-and-one pounds when she went in. That was the meth. Even in the Facility she hadn’t gained much back. Mind you, Mary Ann’s own momma was wiry skinny too, with a Marlie always on her lip. It must skip a generation, she thought. God Damn. The half hour passed. She showed photos of Peyton on her phone, and asked questions about Mary Jean’s eating (well) and about meetings (learning good coping skills, gonna stay clean forever.)
“How’s Jimmy?” her daughter asked.
“Same as always. Watching football. Wants his Slurpee,” Mary Ann answered.
When she left the Facility, the leaves were drying on the trees, crumbling into dust in the air. August more than October. She turned off the A/C and rolled down the window and came back to the convenience store. She bought Jimmy’s Slurpee and the last two copies of Women’s Holistic Health. “It’s a great issue,” she told the clerk, who hadn’t asked. “I’m giving them to friends. Maybe I’ll leave one in my doctor’s waiting room.” She threw them in the garbage on the way out. With the sun on her face, the Slurpee felt good against her forehead. The sun and the wind made her feel she was inside a dream. She finished the Slurpee as she pulled up to the house.
Before she set her keys down, Jimmy hollered from the couch, “Did you get me a Slurpee?”
“Umm. Sorry. I forgot.” Her mouth was still cold and sweet.
“No problem,” he shouted, cheerful as always. “Tell you what. It’s almost half time. Y’all wanna go into the bedroom and get yourself ready?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I can feel you rolling your eyes from here, sweet thing. Hey, even if I can’t promise it’ll be any good, I can promise you it won’t drag on. Second half is coming up!’ He laughed after that.
“Maybe next time, Mr. Romance,” she yelled over the TV. “I gotta go back out again.”
“What’s that?” Jimmy hollered back.
“I forgot Peyton at the pool.”
“You forgot?”
“I know. I know,” said Mary Ann. “I must be gettin’ old.”
She sat on the bench in the entryway, too heavy all of a sudden and much too tired.
Jimmy came out. “You want me to go get her?”
“No, I’m all right. I can get your Slurpee, too.”
He knelt down and faced her. “Mary Ann. Did you get any sleep last night?”
She leant and touched her forehead to his. “Somewhere between not much and none at all.”
In that moment she could see Momma, her hand on her hip and a Marlie in the corner of her mouth. Standing there, not saying anything.
She closed her eyes. “You know, Jimmy, I wish you had met my momma. She never forgot anything. Ever. The last thing she said to me before she passed was, “I love you and your sister. You remember that. And remember to feed the cat.”
“I wish I’d met her too. She sounded like some lady.” Jimmy’s voice had softened. “I do remember the cat. I may have missed your momma, but I did show up for the cat.”
Mary Ann took his arm and pulled herself upright.
“That damn cat lived five more years after Momma passed, and it had to have been fourteen when it died. A lazy and spiteful creature if there ever was one.”
Jimmy laughed. “You sure you don’t want me to go get Peyton? It’s no problem.”
“No. I got it, Jimmy.”
Mary Ann walked back out the door into sun coming down through the leaves, casting light and shadow in inscrutable patterns on the road like fish scales.