Rockaway by Tara Ison

Author:Tara Ison [Ison, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781593765163
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2013-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET’S GIVE IT UP FOR A GOOD BUDDY OF MINE, WE’RE LUCKY TO HAVE ’EM HERE, YOU ALL KNOW WHO I’M TALKING ’BOUT . . . MARTY ZALE & THE SATELLITES!”

She leans against a rear bleacher, sipping beer, wearing Marty’s jacket draped over her left shoulder, feeling a nervous twinge in her stomach. Maybe the hot dog, maybe it’s just cramps, she thinks. Or the heat, all that noise, the clapping.

Marty and the guys stroll out to loud cheery applause, full of hoots and people waving like family members at a wedding or birthday’s end. The guy with the fuzzy acrylic sheepdog jars her roughly as he pushes to the front; she grips the waxy rim of her paper cup in her teeth so she can clap, and moves back farther from the crowd. The applauding goes on. She clamps down harder on the cup’s rim and claps methodically. Clap clap clap. She knows she’s at the edge of being just drunk enough or not, holding on to the rim of being drunk. Like mermaids and monkeys, she thinks, pictures in her mind. Tiny plastic mermaid arms and monkey tails in bright acid pinks and greens, holding on, hanging on to root beer floats, hooked on the rims of glass mugs in places like this. Gaudy, celebratory, reeking of sugar. Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, Don’t you want a party, Sarah? her parents asked, insisted, It’s your birthday!, so determined to create celebration, give her a regular little girl-ness, although she already feels herself too old for an ice cream parlor birthday. She is eleven.

But Do it for your mother, Sarah, her father says, She needs this right now, do it for her, and so of course she did, of course she does, give her mother her birthday, and it’s a day spent holding her breath among her friends’ ice-cream-drunk giggles and balloon-twist hats, waiting for the awful thing, her mother laughing too loudly too festive too grim, her father clapping his hands too hard with forced gaiety, clap clap clap. She sees her mother pouring vodka into her Tab from a purse-sized plastic bottle meant to hold Jean Naté body splash, she sees her father see it, sees her father’s face tightening darkening, wait it’s coming, yes, her mother’s laughter turning slack and weepy, there it is, her mother’s hands shaking as she carries in the bright-iced cake, everyone singing the inharmonious “Happy Birthday” too loud, ice cream parlor bells and whistles, her mother shaking, stumbling, the cake sliding, dropping to break and smash on the floor.

Gasps, wails, mock-clapping, awkward laughter. She sees her father tipping into the release of anger, grabbing her mother, his grip brutal on her arm, Sarah, come help me, come here!, but which of them even said that at that moment, which of them was pleading Sarah, do something, come help, demanding her to help clean it all up, to make everything all right? She won’t do it, no, is looking down,

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