200 The Meadow romance of it, just like that day at the river. California in a covered wagon. Me and my brother, who just wanted to tag along for the ride. Just as always. I knew we were too old by then to just sneak off, even if that’s what Sandy wanted. But I felt we had to tell our parents, that I had to tell them. It was so long ago and a continent away. Yet, even now, she remembers every detail. The absolute dark around the house. Insects battering the screened porch. Her mother and stepfather, the spilled entrails of their contempt still filling that place after so many years. The long plastic tube snaking around his face to the canister on the chair and his ridicule staining everything. Her mother meek in the corner. And the thing she always tried to put out of her mind. They expected her to protect Sandy, always. As though they weren’t part of it. My stepfather wouldn’t even look at me. “Why would you go there?” He said this to me between gasps like a swimmer coming up for air. “Those dirty people should take care of themselves. You’ll get killed or raped. And they’re Communists.” Because I can help them and they need help, I said, though I wasn’t really sure how I would help. “Listen to Dolly Do-Gooder, why don’t you help yourself, your fucking marriage? Or that dope-dealing, felon brother of yours?” I remember that Sandy was upstairs through all this, and I hoped he couldn’t hear. I wanted to go and hold him, shut all of it out. I still wonder at what they knew and did not know of their own son. Or of me? They had no idea it was him egging me on. So I didn’t tell them Sandy would tag along with his sister once more. To get away from everything, he’d said. Well, I knew something of that too. She fingers the rim of her glass and toes the layer of dust at her feet into two overlapping circles. It was the last time we were all together, but I didn’t know that then. She is sure she can hear the old man fingering the keys of his horn like he did before starting to play, and the voice is
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQ3NA==