Lone Star

“That’s why I said everybody’s fucking life, Mother.”

Chloe and Moody stood shoulder to shoulder near two graves in the small rural cemetery under the pines as tall and gray as emerald redwoods. Chloe placed all the flowers they had brought in front of a black granite tombstone that read “JAMES PATRICK DEVINE, JR. 1998-2001.”

Moody made her put half of them on Kenny’s stupid grave.

They stood with their heads bent. Moody held on to Chloe’s arm.

“Do you come here with your mother?”

“Sometimes.”

“How often does she come?”

“I don’t know.” The gravesite was beautifully tended, weeded, neatened, full of flowering azaleas, faded lilacs, knockabout roses. “Often, from the looks of it.”

“Your dad?”

“When Mom forces him.”

Moody nodded. “You have to forgive Uncle Kenny,” she said. “It’s not his fault he was born with bad genes and couldn’t walk straight. Not everybody can make a life like your mom and dad, child. Not everybody can push his own wheelchair. Some aren’t so lucky.”

“Yes. Like my brother.”

“Yes. Like him. But he was lucky to be loved. That love is better than hate for my Kenny. No question he did wrong. But it wasn’t all his fault. Sometimes catastrophic things just happen. And your father doesn’t understand that.”

Moody bent her head deeper. Chloe too.

“He understands,” Chloe said. “But that’s not what happened here. A catastrophic thing didn’t just happen.”

They stood.

“What was the poem you used to recite to Jimmy? He knew it by heart. You and he were so cute with it. Do you remember?”

“No.”

“Something about Santa, and vampires. Come on. You do remember. Tell your grandmother. It’s a sin to lie to old people.”

“I don’t remember, Moody.” Chloe ground her teeth. She didn’t tell, though she well remembered.

I wonder if Santa Claus is real

The Easter Bunny

The Tooth Fairy too

I wonder if ghosts really say boo

I wonder if leprechauns collect pots of gold

I wonder if vampires ever grow old.

Little Jimmy, who used to yell YES for the first five and an emphatic NO to the last, had been conceived around the time of Uncle Kenny’s death. Her parents had been trying for little Jimmy all of Chloe’s life. For all she knew, she was supposed to be little Jimmy and they had been trying for nine years before she was born and for eleven after. In some ways her mother was very much a Chinese mother. Two decades of trying for that one highly valued masculine child. Jimmy lived for three very good years. Their little cabin in the woods was full of noise and tricycles and paint on the walls and mess everywhere, and Lang didn’t care, and Jimmy didn’t care. Jimmy came home at six o’clock sharp every night, punctual as Big Ben. Lang called the Fryeburg police station a dozen times a day. Jimmy, you won’t believe what your son just said, Jimmy, you’ll never guess what your son just did.

When it was time for little Jimmy to go to nursery school, he was so excited to be taking the big boy school bus. He would jump with joy off the curb when he would see the blue bus pulling up to take him home. One early afternoon Brian Hansen’s wallet had fallen into the footwell. He noticed it when he was in the parking lot, about to pull up to the waiting kids. He bent down to retrieve it. He was driving so slowly. He thought he could take his eyes off the road for just a second. But Jimmy was little and his bones were greensticks. They were no match for a school bus, even a small one, even a slow one.

Lang was at ShopRite buying fruit snacks and juice boxes. Big Jimmy was in a meeting about police logistics for the upcoming summer festival. Chloe was in ninth grade math, dreaming of a tuna sandwich she was about to eat for lunch.

Had Uncle Kenny not broken Burt’s back, Burt would have been driving the blue bus as he had been driving it for thirteen years. Burt would have never taken his eyes off the road. But Kenny did break Burt’s back. And with Burt out of action, the town had hired an out-of-towner with “very good credentials” to drive over the little ones to and fro.

Afterward, Burt didn’t care how bad his back was. Though big Jimmy said it was one fucking day too late, Burt stuck a syringe of cortisone into his thigh three times a week and got behind the wheel of the bus until the town gently retired him, because every time he went over a pothole, he cried out in such anguish that the little kids shrieked in terror. Fryeburg had to either repair the town’s potholes or golden-shake Burt’s hand. The second option was cheaper.

On Jimmy’s tombstone: “THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY.”

Other repercussions: three years ago, Mason comforted Chloe by taking her hand one summer night and becoming her boyfriend.

Still other repercussions: instead of Barcelona, Chloe was headed to an orphanage in Latvia. Damn Uncle Kenny to all hell.

After it happened, Lang did not come out of her house for five months. Then she bought a sewing machine, learned how to stitch herself bright new clothes and staggered on. She bought a heat-gun and heat-cured paints and took up painting lifesize dolls, the height of a small girl, or perhaps a boy. She made fifty of them, and then sold them on consignment, immersing herself instead in gardening with Chloe. The money from the fifty dolls was still dribbling in. And now Lang was giving some of it to Chloe to go to Latvia to search for another lifesize boy.

14 (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)

The Meaning of Typos (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)

YOU HAD TO GIVE IT TO HER. LANG TRIED. BY HERSELF SHE took Chloe to apply for a passport. Turned out both parents had to be physically present to sign the application. Chloe, of course, knew why her mother would prefer her father not come, but said nothing.

With Jimmy in tow, Lang quickly filled out the application form while Chloe, bored and hungry and anxious because her mother was anxious, tried to distract her father. The scene would’ve been funny if her mother wasn’t so stressed out. Her dad, bless him, was barely paying attention to the words Lang was writing down, but when it came time to sign, he moved Lang’s hand away from the paper so he could sign his name by the X at the bottom, and casually glanced over the document.

“Mother,” he said, “why are you so careless? You’re as bad as the incompetents in the school records department. Look, you’ve misspelled her name.” He turned to the postal clerk. “Dave, get us another application. My wife here doesn’t know her own daughter’s name.”

“Sure thing, chief.”

“Thanks, buddy. Careful this time,” Jimmy told Lang. “Want me to do it?”

“No, your handwriting is terrible. I’ll do it.”

“At least I know how to spell.”

“Who can tell? No one can read it.”

He watched her.

Lang gestured to Chloe, who once again tried to distract her father with idle chatter about the upcoming prom, graduation, her dress, a limo, a chaperone. Lang said her pen was running out of ink; could Jimmy go get her another?

He went, but as soon as he returned, he peered over the top of her rounded shoulder.

“Lang! You did it again. What’s the matter with you? I don’t know what’s wrong with your mother today, Chloe. Dave, sorry, I need one more application.”

Lang sighed and straightened up from the counter. Chloe stepped away. She made eye contact with Dave and shook her head, as if to signal him to wait, but also to scram because all kinds of crap was about to go down inside the peaceful Fryeburg post office on a weekday afternoon.