Sodom Road Exit by Amber Dawn

Author:Amber Dawn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551527178
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

35 Pitiful

Barbara complains, “It’s always a production with her. If I got upset every time she found herself screwed up in the middle of something, I’d have died from worrying by now.”

She’s racing around the house, cordless phone wedged between her shoulder and ear, getting ready for work. Etta blew the light bulbs, and Barbara calls it a production. I could fly around the damn dining room and she’d still find a way of not believing it happened. We nearly collide in the hallway. Both of us keep going without as much as a nod. From the other side of the bathroom door, I still hear her muffled voice. “Hush hush hush … crazy hush hush hush Starla …” Should have peed in an empty mug in my bedroom. I pick up a three-year-old National Geographic from the magazine rack beside the toilet and speed-read an entire article on how the Great Lakes are toxic and shrinking waters. Barbara is by the front door now, probably jamming her feet into her comfortable work shoes.

My urine is dark in the toilet bowl. I press my hands into my distended stomach. What did I eat besides one of Barbara’s almond cookies yesterday? I step onto the scale Barbara keeps hidden under the laundry bin. 101 pounds. I’m smaller.

Ricky lost weight too. According to his journal, lots of weight.

I’m scared of my body. I bet I’m a size four now.

Wait a second, the Bill Blass silk chiffon bustier dress in my closet is a size four. I spring the Bill Blass from the line of hanging dresses and lay it gently on the bed.

That’s what I call a get-up, says Etta. Put it on, we’ll stroll along the pier.

“I was hoping you would notice,” I say.

We walk together for several blocks. It’s unlike walking with the living. She’s more static and cold electricity beside me, but she is walking. One graceful foot in front of the other. We sashay as far as Queen’s Circle before I feel alone again. Etta, I call to her. Why did I choose my Vivienne Westwood shoes? Walking in stilettos over busted-up asphalt is a sore march—left, ouch, right, ouch. At least leg pain is something. Are you still with me, Etta? I ask and ask again as I stomp forward. We’re supposed to be walking together.

When I was a kid, I thought Queen’s Circle was it. Our very own traffic roundabout. May as well have been Columbus Circle in New York City. A scene out of Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?” Jodi Foster should have won an Oscar for that film. For the love of sin, she was fourteen years old. What a babe she grew up to be.

This is not Manhattan, and our Queen’s Circle is dust and scrags of Dutch clover. More grass grows between cracks in the sidewalk than in Circle Park. The trees are thirsty.

Outside the Crystal Mart, a woman wearing a pink terrycloth bathrobe fans herself with a set of scratch-and-win tickets.

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