Every Other Weekend by Zulema Renee Summerfield

Author:Zulema Renee Summerfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

The rest of the tour lasts about a century. Even Mom is visibly glad when it’s over, though she thanks him profusely and presses a five-dollar bill into his hand. Tiny keeps shouting, “G’bye, Hoss! G’bye!” as Kat closes the van door. And of course old Hoss continues standing there, one hand up like So long! See you next time! He’s probably standing there still, favoring that one leg, waving and waving goodbye.

Happy Trails

THE TRAILER park where Windsor lives in Apple Valley is called Happy Trails, but there’s nothing happy about the place. There aren’t even any trails, just rutted dirt roads. Trailer parks, you never know what you’re gonna get. Gramma B’s was manicured and pristine, each trailer with its own rock garden or collection of ceramic gnomes.

Happy Trails is different, though. There’s not a decorative anything anywhere. It’s the kind of place where men smoke on their porches, alone or in lonely groups, and kids kneel in the dirt lighting matches, watching them burn. A couple of girls walk barefoot in the road, and when they see the van, they giggle like it’s some big secret, the van, this great divide. Mom starts to roll up her window but then stops, leaving it halfway. Other adults would roll the window all the way up, flick the visor down and pretend the sun was in their eyes, find some reason to not have to look at people who have a different kind of house or live a different kind of life. Not Mom. Mom treats everyone the same.

Windsor’s standing on the porch when they pull up, as if waiting for them or waiting for something, anything, who knows. She starts waving high and big, like landing a rescue plane, a wide smile on her face, the tassels on her leather jacket swinging back and forth.

“There’s your mom!” Mom says, waving back, though Windsor’s only two feet away.

“Well, hiya!” Windsor calls. She and Mom always hug like old friends, which is odd when you think about it. “Where’s my baby?” she coos, opening her arms for Charles. He doesn’t even flinch, just goes right into the curve of her and lets himself be hugged, even hugs back.

“Hello, girl,” she says to Kat, who steps forward into her embrace. She says hi to Rick, and they do this side-hug thing that’s reserved but not without affection.

Windsor turns to Nenny and the boys. “Hi, guys, come on in. I’ve got brownies and lemonade. Tiny, you like brownies and lemonade?”

The inside of the trailer is damp and cool like the stifled gut of a cave. It’s clean, but maybe not always, and furnished in a haphazard, piecemeal way: a fraying couch spruced up with some afghans, a few vases with fake roses here and there. The TV is on but muted. Matlock silently rattles his jowls. There are pictures of Kat and Charles everywhere, some the same as they have at home, others Nenny’s never seen before. There’s also photos of Gramma Sadie,

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