in simpler times

In simpler times, no woman called mother would ever have given her thirteen-year-old daughter Luanne her whole pack of cigarettes and all the coins and crumpled bills dug from her jeans pocket and said, I won’t be needing these any more, before walking away somewhere forever.

And later, much later, when Luanne’s own boy was seven, she wouldn’t strike the metaphorical match that burned the house of his childhood clean to the ground, walking out on her marriage, dragging the boy with her as she went. And the whole time she stood back, detached from the emotion of losing everything, willfully unaware of the slow ripping sound underscoring it all.

In simpler times, Luanne would not have heard his pleading no no no out of sync with his shaking head, as if he could stop her from saying what she was determined to say in the car outside McDonalds while the food turned rancid in his stomach and caused him to throw up – a smell that would never leave the car – the word divorce ringing in the air. Later, at the park, he wouldn’t have refused to play with her and they wouldn’t have had nowhere to go.

When the boy was nine, she would not have had to pray not to be killed by her boyfriend while her son sat in the next room eating sugared cereal he had made for himself and watching Saturday morning cartoons turned up too loud.

And later, she would not have taken him to yet another city only to watch in dumb wonder as he got expelled from school for smoking pot with that damned older kid and then cried in the car on the way home as she wondered out loud what to do with him.

In a simpler time, Luanne would not find him outside the King George on the concrete steps and herself with no one to shake her fist at, wanting to kick the asses of the mysterious bastards who had sold him the drugs. She would not know about his wasted frame hidden beneath the cumbersome coat, black with dirt, or the hollows of his cheeks and the tense outline of his still-beautiful jaw. She wouldn’t understand his inability to eat, that he had no appetite for anything but junk. She wouldn’t have to hold his uncomprehending body in her arms or lie down clumsily on the steps to cry into the bulky coat shoulder, with him not knowing she had been there except for the sixty bucks in his pocket.

Luanne wouldn’t have to lay the photos out, examining each one, seeing them become fewer and fewer the older he gets until there is nothing left. She wouldn’t still be able to smell the stink off his coat and know without thinking that she would do it again tomorrow if she could find him.

In simpler times, Luanne would have laughed when he jumped impulsively onto the back of the decrepit, slow-moving snow plough to ride home after Winter Carnival, Old Eddy Kirk, not really old at all, turning to smile at him just as she snapped the picture. She’d tread lightly behind, watching as he moved away from her, knowing she could always catch up.