Jodi

THE ANSWERS

When you been gardenin’ your whole life like me, you get this way of feeling right connected with your plants. Them little seedlings you loved and cared for, you want to know how they’re doing real bad, but, even still, you’ve got enough sense to leave ’em be, not go digging them up to check or nothing.

When you was in New York and I was in Atlantic Beach, it was kinda the same way. I knew I weren’t near being the momma you needed right then. But I felt like our hearts were connected with a real long string all the same.

But, Buddy. Well, the good Lord knows what we need even when we don’t, and ain’t no question He gave me Buddy right then to pull me outta the dark I been in. That situation, it was more awkward than a pimply-faced, too-tall girl at the middle school dance. But, somehow, we made it feel right near normal all the same.

We was just sitting at the porch table, all bundled up in our coats, eatin’ dinner, watching the water kiss the shore, the sunset dancing orange and pink in front of us. “Hey, Buddy?”

“Yeah, Jodi.”

“Do you think people can change?”

I ain’t sure who I was asking about changing, anyway. Me, for sure. Momma, maybe. Maybe even Ricky. Damn if I didn’t have this dream that he was gonna come back, turned as them fall leaves, begging to marry me, to make us the family we shoulda been.

“All I know is that a good many of us waste too much damn time wishin’ people would change. We cain’t do nothing but take ’em for how they are. Or not.”

All my life, I’d been hearing people whining and complaining over somebody they wish would change. I cain’t tell you how many nights I had heard my friend Marlene say, “Well, Danny says he’s gonna change. This time he ain’t gonna run around on me.”

And guess what? Every time she let him back in that door it weren’t no time before he was getting some on the side all over again. Wouldn’t nothing be different with me and Ricky. He could say all he wanted that he would treat me better this time, stop drinking and spending our savings on lottery tickets. But there weren’t no good way for me to know if he really would or could. And this time, with the jagged bottle and the crazy eyes, he’d scared me so bad it might not even matter if he changed. All in all, like Buddy said, why would I waste my time trying to figure it out?

Buddy looked down into his spaghetti long and hard like them noodles was gonna do a little dance to spell him an answer. When he looked back up at me his face was dern near as red as the sauce on the plate.

“I wasn’t trying to say you couldn’t change. I just meant that drinking ain’t who you are.” He wiped his mouth and, looking down again, said, “Who you are is amazing.”

Now, ain’t nobody in my entire life ever said I was amazing. And it was just about the best feeling I ever had.

Buddy said, “But I know what it’s like, wishing somebody would be different and then them disappointing you all over again.”

“You do?”

He shrugged. “Sure. I cain’t tell you how many times I took my old girlfriend back. She’d get a better offer, run off, and then two weeks later when it all went south, she’d come crawling back.” Buddy squinted out at the settin’ sun and took another bite. “But then I realized, all that unhappiness I was living with for so long, that’s on me. Can’t nobody make you any happier than you can your own self.” Then, like we’d been talking about it the whole time, he said, “I heard Graham telling somebody the other day that he and Khaki been trying real hard to have another youngen.”

I’m not sure if he saw me roll my eyes. But I surely did. And it hung there between us like that last organ chord in church that I should give my baby to Graham and Khaki ’cause they want one. And I ain’t real sure what I want.

Then I felt kinda bad on account a’ him being so nice to me and giving me such good answers to all my questions. So I said, “It’s real nice a’ you to take all this time to come down here with me. Ricky scared the pants offa me, and I don’t know what I’d do if he found me all alone again.”

Buddy laughed, kinda devious like. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about Ricky no more. Rumor has it that Khaki’s daddy put the fear of the Holy Trinity in him.”

My heart got all mushy and my eyes all weepy just thinkin’ about a man so good he’d protect me like I’s his own daughter. I thought about my crazy momma and your sorry excuse for a daddy, feeling real sad that they were the only real family you got. Then I got to thinking about Graham and Khaki and their cozy, eating-dinner-together families. And that made me feel right good.

After dinner, I flipped through one of them magazines in the basket by the sofa. It was a Town & Country, all fresh and glossy, with a picture of a woman in pearls so big they looked like the whole damn oyster shell. Flipping through them pages, I hadn’t never even heard of half the stuff or the places they was talking about like it was normal. And it mighta been the first time I realized that my life wasn’t just hard. It was small.

Then I saw a picture that damn near made my heart stop. A family. A husband, wife, son, and daughter standing all proud and grinnin’ in front of their farmhouse. They talked on and on about how nice it was to grow your own food and be raised with a place to roam and good, hard thinking time. I thought about the trailer and how your life would be one struggle after another after another. No daddy, a momma who could barely keep the lights on. Maybe even that free lunch card. I could love you all right. But that love wasn’t gonna change you being a latchkey kid. Love wasn’t gonna make it easier when your momma was gone all the time working two jobs and you was heating up your own macaroni and your back ain’t been washed good in a week. Weren’t no way around it: You’d get hard inside just like your momma.

I looked down at that smiling family on the page again, and I thought something I’d never thought in a million years I would. I wished you could be part of a family like that.