Back Talk by Danielle Lazarin

Author:Danielle Lazarin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Hide and Seek

The children are outlining each other’s bodies with chalk in the driveway when their uncle’s car pulls in. Magnolia pops up from the asphalt as soon as the car door opens. Pale purple chalk dusts the crown of her brown wavy hair, and green marks the insides of her fingers. Seven years old, she still greets Nick with a full-body throttle, screaming his name as he gathers his things from the backseat: a light long-sleeved shirt to keep the mosquitoes away on the August evening, beer for himself and his sister, the bag of charcoal she asked him to pick up from the store.

“Mag! I’m not done yet!” complains Sunshine, crouched before the misshapen, legless form her sister occupied a moment before.

Magnolia accepts a kiss from Nick pressed onto her cheek.

“Better get over there and finish what you started, huh? Hello, Sunny,” he calls to the older one. “Where’s your mom at?”

Of all the things he has learned to accept about his sister’s life—her abandonment of Manhattan, her determination to raise her kids alone—the strange optimism of the girls’ names is still hard to swallow. Sunshine and Magnolia, like rescued dogs, like hippies. Alison’s the only one who insists on their full names; it’s only Sunny who corrects her mother’s introduction of her by it, for now.

“Did I ask you not to do that in the driveway or what?” Alison’s voice comes from around the side of the house before she does. She gives Sunshine’s earlobe a playful tug. “Can you believe these two?” she asks Nick as she motions toward the backyard.

The girls have switched places now, Sunshine holding the chalk hand of Magnolia’s two-dimensional self, whose head she has decorated with her name in hasty blue lettering.

• • •

Alison watches Nick make room for the beers among the hot dog packs and tubs of coleslaw in the fridge. Usually, after his shifts at the police station, he will pick up a six-pack for what she’s taken to calling their “bullshit in the backyard” sessions, but tonight he’s brought two.

“Let’s go outside,” he says, uncapping their beers.

They sit in the lawn chairs on the stone patio, looking out into the backyards that face Alison’s. There are no fences in this neighborhood, but the houses sit so deep back you’d need a megaphone for a neighbor to hear you. Out front, the girls take turns throwing a rubber ball against the garage door.

“You need to mow your lawn,” Nick says. His fingers work the beer bottle’s label, the tiny bits of paper collecting on his shorts.

He’s always on her about the upkeep on the house, a future problem he wonders if she’s considered, the unspoken worry about how she will pay for what hasn’t yet happened. Alison inherited the house from a great-aunt who gave a big screw-you to the rest of the family by leaving it to the distant niece who’d made all the questionable life choices. No one had imagined Alison would actually move the kids from Manhattan here, but she did.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.