Casey's Home by Minier Jessica

Author:Minier, Jessica [Minier, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-09-30T21:00:00+00:00

Orientation

1981

It had been such a long trip. Ben was bone-weary, worn through as surely as the furry cover he’d put on the cracking vinyl driver’s seat of the Datsun. And it was hot, Florida hot, spreading ink-thick over his body in the black evening, drawing him down until he was slouched and panting like a dog. Ahead, somewhere at the brief end of this road, was his mother. Waiting up, hoping tonight would be the night he arrived, twisting the edge of an afghan in her hands until it stayed that way, creased with sweat. It was odd, he thought, how everyone else found it so easy to tell him what they thought of him now, but his own mother, the only person he had ever trusted with the truth, was too devastated to bring it up. It hung between them, two thousand miles and still it hung there during every phone conversation, in every letter; like a piano in a cartoon, ready to flatten him.

The mood of mild euphoria that had swept over him after Baton Rouge had fled, sometime in the deep South. Perhaps it was the muggy air, rolling through the Datsun and smelling like a jungle, like a thick, dirty jungle; or perhaps it was merely the inevitable return of reality. The little blue-eyed waitress didn’t feel real anymore, more like some strange masturbatory fantasy he’d had in high school.

Somehow, he had expected to feel happier. This was his home, after all. The place where he had lived before everything had fallen apart. He wanted the past to grip him and rub him clean, the way his mother used to hold his grandmother’s tarnished silver candlesticks and polish them with the force of her hand and the rough, abrasive silver cream.

A diner rose out of the darkness, garish with its neon and bright, polished sheets of glass. He thought about the taste of the cool strawberry milkshake Lacey had made him and his mouth began to water. With only a trace of guilt, he prolonged his homecoming by pulling into the parking lot. Why rush headlong into pain, when pleasure was such a short distance away?

Inside, it was dark and smoky, run-down with cracked vinyl seats that looked fine until you tried to sit in one. Though there were few customers, a dense layer of smoke hung near the ceiling, drifting down to dull the red-checked aprons of the waitresses, the yellow neon surrounding the opening to the kitchen. He couldn’t see anyone actually smoking, and wondered if it were simply always there, like smog. Ben ordered his milkshake to go, standing at the dull chrome bar and watching as the waitress poured the thick pink drink into a styrofoam cup. It tasted like heaven, despite its origins, cool and sharp with an acidic bite that spoke of real fruit. Perhaps he could learn to take his pleasure from the small things, he thought, walking out into the steamy air and staring up at a sky filled with stars.

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