Stories from the Flannery O'Connor Award by Charles East

Author:Charles East
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8203-4591-8
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2013-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Jet Stream

T. M. McNally

Betsy, 1980

I don’t like to clean the pool, but that’s what I’m doing. Norm says people like to swim in clean water; you can tell it’s clean, he says, when it’s blue. I push the broom along the floor of the pool and watch the dirt stir and whirl like dust devils. Norm is my stepdad.

He’s out here on the lawn reading Time, backwards, saving the important stuff for last. He looks fat out here: his paunch is really big like he’s pregnant, but it’s just full of beer and some of Mom’s old cooking. I cook for him now, Swansons and Stouffers.

I go over to the engines and set the pool on Backwash, when Norm starts to laugh. The magazine rattles and the chair wobbles; he’s really laughing hard. To clean the filter, you have to run the water through backwards, so I turn the handle, flip the switch and listen to the filter whine like the jumbo jets at the airport. The water goes swoosh and starts to flood the river-rock behind the putting green. The putting green has nine holes and little red flags.

“What’s so funny?” I say, because Norm is still laughing.

“Carter,” Norm says. “He’s not going to let us go to the Olympics if Russia keeps screwing around in Afghanistan. Now that’s what I call effective foreign policy.” He says effective like he’s from a farm, but he’s not. “What the hell have you got on?” he says.

He means my shorts: they’re really Ruth’s and have orange and blue polka dots, and I’m wearing my big white tank top—the one Mom wouldn’t let me wear because you can see everything through the armholes. Sometimes I catch Norm taking looks, but this is still my favorite shirt. I like the way it fits so loose. Eric says it’s his favorite, but he only wants me to wear it around him. When I graduate, Eric wants to go to New York or Los Angeles with me and become a studio musician.

“Miss Crocker,” says Norm, “would you be so kind as to bring me a beer?” He calls me Crocker after the company, Betsy Crocker, but the real name’s Betty. My name is Betsy.

“How come the water looks so green?” I say.

“Too many chemicals, that’s all. There’s some in the vegetable bin.”

I leave the water running over the river-rock and go in to get Norm a beer, and he yells, “I hope someone gave you those!”—referring to the shorts. Clyde, my Irish wolfhound, is lying on the floor underneath the kitchen table; his tail sways back and forth to keep him cool. Norm won’t run the air-conditioning anymore except at night to sleep. The house is too big, he says, and we don’t use enough of it anyway. I go to the garage where he keeps the beer because I know there’s only one in the vegetable bin. I open a case and take out eight or nine, the cans on top my arms like sticks.

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