My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh

Author:M.O. Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

24.

This was late July of 1991 and although he’d left, my uncle Barry’s scent was still in the house. Our phone had been ringing so often from people looking for him—creditors, his wife, her new man—that I’d come to ignore it. Then, after a particular ring, my mother called me into the kitchen. She held the phone to her shoulder. “It’s Lindy,” she whispered, and the look in her eyes was so hopeful. “Are you two talking again?”

“I’ll pick it up in my room,” I said.

Little need to explain the panic that shot through me.

The year Lindy and I had spent not talking to each other felt insignificant compared to the concentrated silence that followed our interaction after the dance that spring. Who were we now, I wondered, since she’d whispered something seductive in my ear? How much did she really know about me, about my feelings? Was that a night she even remembered? Or was that finally the real Lindy I had spoken to at Melinda’s party, the one who’d sought me out and pulled me close?

I had no idea, and so I agonized over the event in a manner so complete that I’d begun to wonder if it had ever really happened. Had I felt her hot breath on my cheek? Had I held her up from falling? Had I touched the soft scars on her thighs? Had I carried her? Hidden her? Saved her? Understood her? The opposite of this seemed more likely to me now, as if I’d never known Lindy Simpson at all. I wondered, for a moment, if I would even recognize her voice.

I picked up the phone in my room and waited until my mother hung up. Then I stood there with the receiver in my hand, looking at myself in a full-length mirror. I saw a skinny thing in ragged shorts and a T-shirt. I looked nervous and unprepared. I smiled as if Lindy might see me. On the other end of the line, I heard music playing low in the background.

“Hello?” I said.

A long silence passed between us.

“Yeah,” Lindy said. “So, I’m supposed to apologize about my dad.”

Although I recognized her voice immediately, although I likely could have recited nearly everything she’d said to me in life, I had no clear idea of what she was talking about at that moment.

“Apologize?” I asked. “For what?”

I could hear her flipping through radio stations. I imagined her rolling her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “For my dad being pathetic, I guess. For the other night with the Kerns. My mom made me call. I think she’s going to leave him.”

“Shit,” I said. “Your poor mother.”

Lindy laughed when I said this, a surprising sound I hadn’t heard in years. It must have surprised her, too, as she cut it off like a switch.

“What?” I said. “Why did you laugh?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’d just forgotten what a fucking weirdo you are.”

“I’m weird?” I asked her.

I thought this might be a good thing.

After all, this is what I’d been going for.

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