The Goose Waltzer: A Novel by Samantha Leigh Miller

Author:Samantha Leigh Miller [Miller, Samantha Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sleigh Books
Published: 2024-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Clare

In the summer of 1985, it seemed that every day the newspaper brought stories of bombs exploding and airplanes falling from the sky. In May, the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a residential neighborhood to flush out members of MOVE—an anti-technology group who, among other misdeeds, were allegedly (and perhaps ironically) stockpiling weapons to promote their cause. The ensuing fire destroyed more than sixty homes and killed eleven people, including five children. Testosterone crossed with accessibility. Men with guns can always find a reason, if not reason, and this world provides those in spades. Clare couldn’t be sure if her mother was talking about the members of MOVE or the Philadelphia police. Most likely, though, her mother would not have seen the need to differentiate.

In June, Sikh militants detonated one bomb on Air India Flight 182 over the Atlantic Ocean, killing 329 passengers, and placed a second bomb intended for Air India Flight 301 at the Narita International Airport in Tokyo. The second bomb killed two baggage handlers when it exploded an hour early, due to a daylight savings time miscalculation. Such literary symmetry, Clare’s mother mused while she read the article, that an arbitrary Western construct should play both the cause and the downfall of their plan. Life answers so many of its own questions.

In July, the French government ordered the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship that sailed for Greenpeace and was bound for a protest against nuclear testing in Moruroa. The Rainbow Warrior, only a man would choose such a name for a ship of peace.

And in August, Alice Lyndsay sat at the kitchen table, laughing until tears streamed down the sharp corners of her face over a newspaper article describing the rainy microburst that had caused the crash of Delta Air Flight 191. Brought down by nature’s bomb, her mother said between gasps for air, oh I love it when she kicks a little ass.

That her mother wasn’t sleeping was evident by the pile of books that grew all around and on top of the kitchen table and had, by September, spread like growing mold into the living room and halfway up the staircase. That her mother wasn’t eating meant Clare was forced to forage in top cupboards for half-empty boxes of stale rice and dusty-tasting crackers, or linger until dinnertime at the Hallam house, though Clare often preferred an empty stomach to the crawling sensation created in her chest under the pitiful gaze of her kind-hearted neighbors.

When her mother did remember to bring home food, it was an elaborate affair—pots of boiling oil-tainted water, casserole dishes filled with only milk and flour finding space on top of the refrigerator or in the windowsills, chopped and bloodied meats arranged in strips on the cutting board. Clare’s mother ripped open bags and poured ingredients, wiped baking soda into her hair, and swayed to her Doors LP that replayed deep grooves in the vinyl from the living room cabinet (…waiting for the sun…waiting for you to tell me what went wrong…) long into the night.

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