The Sharp Time Part 2

I see what must be a girl's gun next to the black revolvers and pistols. It has a s.h.i.+ny, snub-nosed barrel and a sweet pink handle with ivory mosaic inlay every bit as luscious as peppermint marzipan swirled with cream. There is a closed-circuit black-and-white TV over my head and I look up at myself: a grainy, blurred girl coveting a gun. When I press my palms flat to the cool gla.s.s of the gun case, a disembodied voice asks, "Need any help, young lady?"

Which of course is an exercise in understatement, and then he appears from the darkness, a man in his sixties with a full sleeve of tattoos and a faded red T-s.h.i.+rt that says CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.

"I'm just looking," I say.

He holds a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand. A book is tucked under his arm.

"At the firearms?" He smiles, skeptical and amused and grandfatherly there amid all the junk.

And my mind floods with the image of Catherine Bennett standing at the blackboard with her chalk and her perpetual smirk; Catherine Bennett, the flas.h.i.+ng red exclamation point to my nothingness. I travel back to algebra cla.s.s like Huck Finn without the funeral, and I imagine that nothing has changed, that the school has decided not to fire her, that the cla.s.s sits, placid and resigned, in their straight rows of desks. Catherine Bennett wears a teal blue Hillary pantsuit and the humble expression of one making amends until she looks at Alecia. In my mind's eye, Alecia Hardaway sits alone.

Mrs. Bennett's wolverine smile fixes on the dreamy face of Alecia Hardaway, and I know that no counselor or princ.i.p.al or teacher or paraprofessional is on their way to help. I have studied the ways of Woodrow Wilson High School and know that I am the chosen one; I must keep Alecia Hardaway safe.

Still, when the words come out of my mouth, calm and sane, I am surprised. I am in no way prepared and there it is anyway. I feel my victim's mind-set fading away, replaced by a new idea, the attendant breathlessness of a new idea.

The guns glimmer in the dim light; CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.

"I'm in the market for a handgun. I live alone and I need some protection."

The word protection is suddenly so reminiscent of condoms or birth control pills that I feel myself blush, a hotness in my neck that rises to my hairline and fries my scalp.

He looks at me. "What are you, sixteen, seventeen? Why do you live alone?"

"I'm eighteen, actually." And then I wh.o.r.e out my grief; I sing it out, slicing up the syllables: "Well, my mother died."

He chews tobacco. He says, "No dad around?"

"I don't have a dad," I say.

He gives a sidelong glance as if I am a child of a random hooker in a latex miniskirt, a glance that makes me want to smash the gla.s.s and grab a gun.

"You'll need to go to school," he says, looking troubled. He must be some kind of mystic, someone who, in this dank shop with its smell of bas.e.m.e.nt water, can divine the lives of his customers.

I look down at the case of handguns. A wandering crack in the gla.s.s is sealed off with a strip of yellow wax.

"I'm not going back to school." I shrug. "School is not my thing. I had a big, big problem with algebra." I let loose with a psychotic little chuckle.

He looks at me for a long moment, an O.K. Corral moment, and then he spits tobacco into the Styrofoam cup.

"Gun school, dolly."

Dolly, I think. Well, h.e.l.lo.

"Gun school," he repeats. "You need to learn to fire a gun, or in an emergency you'll end up shooting your fool foot off." He gives a masterful suck to his front teeth: tsk, tsk. "Very common occurrence among rookies."

"Gun school? You mean, like, a shooting range?"

"Something like that, dolly." He gazes out the front window and then gives a little forward jab with his shoulder. "You like working yonder at the used-clothes store?"

The used-clothes store. Henry Charbonneau would fall down dead at the sweatpanted sound of it. He prefers the term spun-sugar vintage couture.

"Oh, I like it a lot," I say. "I love it so far."

"Today was your first day, right? Thought I saw you pop in first thing Monday morning. I knew you were looking for a job. You didn't have the lollygagging shopping look. Dolly, you looked all business."

Perhaps he registers some alarm on my face because he says, "Now, don't worry, dolly. I'm no stalker. We keep pretty good tabs on each other on Thirty-Eighth Street, that's all."

Through the grimy windows I see a monk strolling past. Not the sleek handsome one. This monk is doughy and bearded and troubled-looking, a frown pinched between his eyebrows. The monk squints into the store. I know it looks dark from the outside; I know that he probably can't make out our forms, but he waves anyway. This hopeful waving seems to be the social contract of the Trappist monks of Thirty-Eighth Street.

"I'm Arne, by the way."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Sandinista."

He squints his eyes, as if thinking, Well, G.o.dd.a.m.n if that ain't a doozy of name, right before he surprises me again.

"Listen to this, Sandinista. I think you'll like this quite a lot. It's from this poem called 'The Monk's Insomnia.' " He takes the book from under his arm and half-gla.s.ses from the pocket of his T-s.h.i.+rt, and reads: "The monastery is quiet. Seconal drifts down upon it from the moon.

I can see the lights of the city I came from, can remember how a boy sets out like something thrown from the furnace of a star."

He whistles under his breath; he takes off his gla.s.ses and puts them back in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "G.o.dd.a.m.n. Excuse my French. But, 'the furnace of a star'? I can't get over it." And now a pair of monks walk by with their heads down. Just when it seems they might be oblivious save for their G.o.d-thoughts, they look up and wave into the store.

Arne waves back, then shakes his head. "They were like you once, young, trying to find their place in this wild old world ... now they've found their place, I suppose, but they still have the memory of being thrown from the furnace of the star. I'm not a Catholic myself, so I can't say for sure, but I'll tell you what, dolly, those boys up on the hill making the jelly appear to have some G.o.dd.a.m.n hidden depths."

It doesn't seem polite to point out that the monks didn't write that poem themselves, that the pretty and pointless phrases are a poet's trick. But then I realize he's fallen into the magic of words as I am apt to do, which makes me like him but also makes me wonder why my Honors English teacher, Lisa Kaplansky, hasn't called to check in on me. She called me over winter break to tell me how much she liked my paper on The Awakening. She took time away from her family, from wrapping presents and eating iced cookies, to read my essay and pick up the phone. Well, where are you now, Lisa Kaplansky? Why doesn't the poet call? And then of course I'm not paying attention I'm not paying attention. Catherine Bennett looms in my peripheral vision, standing in the half-light of the ceramic candle, her words. .h.i.tting the Replay b.u.t.ton in my brain: Do you not even know how to pay attention, Sandinista? Have I identified the problem?

Arne lays the book on the gun case. It is a library book, encased in dirty vinyl, a bar code on the spine. "I'm going to make you a deal." As if in some ominous after-school special: a "deal." He scratches the stubbly gray hair on his chin, a professorial gesture, and says, "I don't want you to be scared at night. That's not right. You should be out with your friends, chasing the boys." He raises his hand, a magnanimous gesture. "Or ... whatever."

Well. Arne cares. It's weird, to be sure, but he just met me and he cares. I see this; I see he is not from the school of smiling bleached-teeth bulls.h.i.+t.

"I'm not too big on the gun laws. All right? Look here"-he takes a ring of keys from his belt loop and unlocks the gla.s.s case of handguns-"if you were a drug dealer you could get one just as easy, and so ..." He takes the handgun with the pink and ivory on the handle out of the case and gives it to me. "I know I can trust you."

I hold the gun tentatively with both hands, as if it is a hamster about to ribbon my fingers with sharp little teeth. It's heavier than it looks. "It's pretty."

"So it is." Arne smiles, pleased. He relocks the gla.s.s case. "It's yours."

This is a confusing transaction for so many reasons. I stare down at the gun for a moment while I try to process this last moment: Who hands out guns to teenagers? Am I part of some sting operation of underage criminals trying to procure firearms? Will Geraldo Rivera burst through the door with his microphone and handlebar mustache? It seems best to keep my eyes down and my big mouth shut and study the handle of the gun, the sweet swirled cream and pink.

When I look up, Arne has crossed his arms over his chest. He gives me the quickest glare. "Here's the thing: A person should feel safe. Okay? Sometimes your safety is here," He strikes his hand to his chest. "Sometimes you need a little something external to get you over the hump."

Inadvertently, I look over at the ceramic camel.

"Or the plural form, the humps, as the case may be," he says sternly, before breaking into a gray-toothed grin.

Arne digs around under the counter for a minute before he reappears holding a square box of bullets and a wrinkled plastic grocery bag.

"I can tell you're full of sorrows," he says as mere statement, not overstuffed with empathy or sympathy, no maudlin Moonlight Sonata for Charlton Heston's disciple. "But the sharp time pa.s.ses."

He holds out his hand; I give him the gun. And then he puts it in a plastic bag, along with the box of bullets. He takes his wallet from his back pocket and flips through a half-inch stack of business cards. "Here we go," he says. "The pistol range. Out past Harper Boulevard. You'll need some practice before you become one of Charlie's Angels."

"Thanks," I say. The card has the words Protect Yourself in shadow letters beneath the address and phone number.

"This is a gift. No payment necessary, dolly. Can you a.s.sure me you're not a felon?"

"Not that I know of." I give him a sort of bizarre, flirty smile before I realize that this is someone I don't have to attempt to charm. He appears to be giving me a gift, no strings attached, as he says, "Hold the bag from the bottom so it doesn't bust out all over the street. And don't do anything crazy with this. Okay?"

"Okay," I say.

"For you, I'm taking a chance. For you I'm bypa.s.sing the ninety-day waiting period. Because I like you. Because I want you to feel safe." He comes around the counter and hands me the bag. He puts his arm around me. Usually the old "arm out from an old guy" means he is interested in brus.h.i.+ng your breast, oh so casually: Pay dirt! It's a t.i.t! But this feels different, this feels ... creepy, sure, but also, this feels like friends.h.i.+p. Normally I do not kick it with older gents who smell of hard liquor and peppermint and BO-Arne is a bit of a big, stinky mint julep-but I see that he is trying to improve the quality of my day, with his kind words, with his dreamy cream and pink pistol.

"Well, thanks," I say. I feel like I might cry, so I affect some kind of cowgirlspaghetti Western accent and say, "Mighty kind of you, sir."

"No problemo," he says.

When I turn to leave he says, "Remember, I don't want any problems. If there is a problem I'll say you stole the gun while my back was turned. I'll say girls are crafty like that. I'll say, 'Why, I know exactly where to find that little lady: at the Pale Circus.' "

One quickly learns that, even when depressed, it's difficult not to feel like a bit of a bada.s.s when in possession of a gun. And surprisingly the gun makes me hungry, the gun makes me ravenous! Which is good, I suppose, because the way things have been going with all the espresso and cigarettes even the skinniest of my skinniest jeans have turned into voluminous fat-man pants.

I own a gun. Perhaps I will join the NRA.

I drive through Taco Tico and order the enchilada special just like any other customer, as casual as any old high school gal with a gun and a fresh box of bullets in her glove box. I arrive home to no new messages on my answering machine-how can this be?-but I do have beef and cheese enchiladas and a pink handgun.

The house is boiling.

I forgot to turn the heat down again and when I see Catherine Bennett appear in my peripheral vision, looking at the thermostat with glee and preparing to start up with her standard nutbar "You're not paying attention, Sandinista" routine, something different happens. I don't exactly point my gun at Catherine Bennett; I hold it casually in her direction like a pointer or a pie graph-Here's something that could happen; let's take a moment and look at the percentages-and poof, she disappears.

The house is still hot, though, so I strip down to my bra and underpants and eat dinner at the kitchen table. I put the gun across from me, where my mother used to sit. The barrel points at the empty chair at the end of the table, the phantom winner in a game of spin the bottle.

The gun is nothing, really. It's merely a centerpiece, not unlike a cornucopia of plastic fruit. It's not a pet.i.te dinner companion whom I'm expecting to cough up metallic bons mots. But things have changed. It's not as if I expect that now the school will call me, it's not like my mother will ascend from her cold grave out past the interstate, it's not like some father/boyfriend/Christ figure will appear, rugged and flannel-s.h.i.+rted, offering up manly hugs and solutions. But now I have something beyond gloom and pure bewilderment.

I have a gun. And my mind swirls with unthinkable plans, dumb ones, to be sure. But I can see now that a person doesn't have to remain staggering and surprised, ready to absorb all the hurts of the day.

A person can have a gun, and a person can make plans with a gun. A person can, if willing to shed cowardice and complicity, execute their plans.

Catherine Bennett's smirk bleeds in my mind, but now it doesn't feel so unnerving. It seems like she's more the pathetic character, an active partic.i.p.ant in her own doomed foreshadowing. When I hold my gun in my hand, I feel an odd, calm strength, maybe for the first time in my life. Maybe this is how G.o.d felt in the prologue to the book of Genesis: haloed with antic.i.p.ation, and capable.

After my enchilada feast I fall dead asleep on the couch under a patchwork quilt my mother made out of my old baby sleepers, my little-girl clothes. The raspberry wool of my favorite kindergarten sweater is pulled up around my face, and I think I will dream dreams of glue and safety scissors and recess and graham crackers and a book bag embroidered with a green worm popping out of an apple, but in fact my dreams are dreary and asthmatic: walking through endless narrow corridors, eating a hamburger only to discover, my mouth jammed full, that the meat is a charcoal briquette that crumbles to ash. When I wake at eight o'clock, my childhood bedtime, my gun-happy girl-self, has evanesced and I am back in the hole, I am back to staring at the dark answering machine, thinking: Oh.

Still, I try to hold on to the good feeling of the pink gun. I crank up the stereo, put on my mother's old orange velour bathrobe and then play Charlie's Angels in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I apply lip gloss and Cleopatra eyeliner; I brush my hair and swing it back and forth so that it looks s.h.i.+ny and lionine. I purse my lips and raise my eyebrows, surprised as any girl detective: Nancy Drew discovering the hidden cave, the cache of gold bars in the treasure chest. Oh, my hand looks so, so beautiful holding the gun! Perhaps I will be a gun-holding hand model!

I decide that I will paint my nails the same sweet pink of the mosaic of the gun handle. And the pistol is a freedom, a new freedom, that goes hand in hand with that other new freedom of not being the thing that someone loves most in the universe, being free to come and go as I please. I ramble around the house with the stereo turned up loud, my back splayed next to the bathroom door before I turn around and point the gun at nothing; I hold the gun over my head as I catwalk down the hall; I swing it around low as I walk into the living room.

There is the soft strain of the telephone ringing, trying to break through the Clash's Sandinista! (Oh, yes, they're playing my song; oh yes, I'm singing along ...), so I race to the stereo and turn down the volume. With my gun at my side, I stand by the phone trying to will myself to let the answering machine pick it up. Unbidden, my free hand reaches down. Here is the dreamscape moment; here is the reckoning. I offer up a breathless, heart-banging "h.e.l.lo?"

"Is this Sandinista Jones?"

Fast doom: the caller misp.r.o.nouncing my name, rhyming up the last two syllables with vista. I know it's no one from school.

"Yes," I sigh. "I am Sandinista Jones." I p.r.o.nounce it the same way she did.

"Hi! My name's Amanda Peterson and I'm calling tonight on behalf of Discover credit card. Sandinista, since you're one of our most valued customers I want to let you know that-"

I quietly hang up the phone. I tap the barrel of the gun along the black plastic answering machine. My mother bought it at JCPenney last spring after our old chrome machine broke. The line at the cash register was long; we were b.i.t.c.hy. Later we walked around the mall laughing at the stupid clothes in the windows, at all the lemmings shopping at Abercrombie and Delia's. And then, in a dullardly display of irony, we went to the Gap and bought jeans on sale.

Mom, I think, Mom, falling into the word, allowing myself to feel it everywhere, in my wrists and in my knees, a connective-tissue disease I've been trying to outrun with my very public mourning. My funeral clothes-a vintage black veiled-hat-and-dress combo, short black gloves-became a wardrobe staple, an ensemble I wore to school at least once a week last fall. Some days I would add a whimsical touch with red Chuck Taylors, but usually I played it straight with black slingbacks. At home I've anesthetized myself with TV, with the Internet, with the resulting fatigue of long nights spent with both. And after these past four months of not answering the phone I expect my friends to call? Even after I had, in a fit of holiday grief, sent my friends an email over the winter break explaining that I needed time alone to "process my grief," as the books say, and that I would call them when I was ready to join the living? I suppose I should thank Catherine Bennett for making it clear to me: I did not need to make such a spectacle of my grief. Because I really am alone. I'm not like any other senior at Woodrow Wilson High School.

And wouldn't it have amped up the action in algebra cla.s.s had I pulled the gun from my backpack, creamy pink and cold as iron ore in my hand, and said: Hey, thanks for asking if I am paying attention! As a matter of fact, I am paying attention. And I am paying attention: I see, I've always seen, exactly how Catherine Bennett is, how she preys upon students she perceives as weak or different, and now I have gone and joined Alecia Hardaway's club.

Except for one difference: I have a gun.

And I hate to geek out and be Grammar Girl here, but a gun is the perfect noun for a singular p.r.o.noun: I have a gun. This house is where I live. I live alone, and I own a gun.

It used to be we: we live here, in this house, together.

But I try not to say we too much anymore, we being the word for my mother and me.

Because even though I am a cool girl with a gun, it is hard to believe that I am no longer part of a family. Thinking of my mother being really and truly gone, gone, baby, gone is still so hard. I close my eyes; I cradle my gun to my heart. The difficult part is learning to think differently: This is my house. This is our house. Our house is the one with the ancient Amnesty International sticker on the refrigerator, the house stuffed with crafts from different stages of my mother's artistic journey. My mother carried a green woven bag to the grocery store so as not to fill the landfill with plastic, and I see it now, pinned to the corkboard next to the refrigerator, looking strung out and worn at the handle. I am not my mother: I use the regular plastic grocery bags and then stuff them in the trash, not the recycling bin. I am not such a peace lover, either. Possibly no one has ever liked the feeling of a gun in her hand more than I do. I turn the music back up and I dance; I sway to the music, holding my gun to my heart. It's a portal into all the things they do not expect from a Nice Girl Like Me. Maybe everyone has a secret life, maybe even Alecia Hardaway dissects and rea.s.sembles her world each night, trying and trying to get it right.

I take a deep breath and I look over at the answering machine, hoping that somehow I have missed another call. But the machine is dark. I grab the remote and try to lose myself in a reality show, but I find myself merely fascinated by the spray-on tans of the women, the telltale spots they have missed, pale paisleys on their inner calves-Yes, Mrs. Bennett, I am paying attention-and I keep the sound turned low so I don't miss a phone call.

I had expected the head counselor, known for her halitosis and shockingly high high-rise jeans, to call last night, certainly by today. I hadn't expected the big gun, the princ.i.p.al, Jack Johnson, aka Michael Jackson-nicknamed, I'm sorry to say, not for his dancing prowess-to call. So fine, he's a prince, he's a pal, he's running the G.o.dd.a.m.n school, whatever, but surely the counselor, creepy Ms. Reiber, she of the optimistic posters on her office walls-WE'RE HERE TO HELP YOU, and the cla.s.sic shot of the terrified kitten on the tree limb: HANG IN THERE, BABY!

So, where is she? Ms. Reiber? Why doesn't she call? Didn't Mr. Hale tell anyone what he walked in on? Did Mrs. Bennett go home for the rest of the day? Did the other cla.s.ses she teaches get to have study hall instead of geometry and calculus? Didn't anyone tell anybody? Is Ms. Reiber so lame that she just doesn't want to deal with it? O school counselor, O valiant dispenser of chocolate kisses, of sugarless gum, where art thou? I have seen her specific kindness before. After my mother died, Ms. Reiber called me into her office and counseled me to "pop in from time to time if you ever feel like 'rapping.' " This made me wonder if she also wanted to, perchance, smoke some "dope" or "stick it to the man."

I wanted to tell Ms. Reiber that if I felt like rapping, I would audition for the talent show and kick it old school with some Vanilla Ice. Because it's difficult to place one's trust in a counselor who does not realize that word choice is a critical component in interpersonal relations. Note to my fat-a.s.sed forty-year-old self wearing an earth-toned pantsuit spruced up with a candy-green silk scarf: Do not use the slang of your youth. Do not ever try to be relevant.

Additionally, Ms. Reiber asked about my father. And so, to top off my fresh grief, I was forced into an awkward exchange that was basically me explaining that no, I would not be going to live with my father, because, well, I did not have much of a relations.h.i.+p with my father, but things could always change in the future, etc. Ms. Reiber alternated between her made-for-Lifetime-TV caring look (extensive nodding, a soft-eyed gaze, a pressed smile) and her concerned look (slightly raised brows, wide eyes, mouth a grim line).

I felt proud of my concocted story about my father, pleased with the polite understatement. Because I was conceived at a Holiday Inn in St. Louis, after a Cure concert. My mother explained that there was drinking involved, a broken condom: ye olde story. I have a memory of sitting with her in Perkins in July, the day after my eighteenth birthday. After so many years of hedging, here at last was the story. She smoked and drank her endless cup of coffee, saying, "This was the eighties, Sandinista, when s.e.x with a near stranger seemed feminist and daring, not self-harming and s.l.u.tty. Actually, you know, in truth it's probably all those things."

Square dancers were sitting in the booth directly behind ours-old gals wearing frilly skirts and matching red vests. Their spiraling bouffants angled toward us as they silently ate their Egg Beaters and eavesdropped. I studied the pancake photograph on the laminated menu-the brilliant royal purple of the blueberry topping, the ivory clouds of whipped cream. My mom told me that my father would not be reappearing, as fathers so often do in wholesome family films, walking in the house with their faded jean jackets and stubbled jawlines, their tanned crow's-feet and manly apologies. I knew this was true, but it made me a little sad-I secretly wanted Dennis Quaid to tell me he would foot the bill for college and walk me down the aisle-but I mostly wanted my mother to stop talking so freaking loud. Those square dancers were very interested in her story. And then it happened. My mother put down her lipstick-stained cup and said: "Sandinista, you will be the hero of your own story."

Oh. My. G.o.d. The corniness factor. The cliched optimism. It was beneath her.

Mortified, I kept staring at my menu and did not look up when I said: "Okay, Mom. Got it."

And so here I am-the hero of my own story!-slung out on the couch, heroic in my quest to relax into the numbness of reality TV. When I imagine that I hear the phone ring, I press the Mute b.u.t.ton on the remote and hear only the sounds of the house: the heat kicking on, the hum of the refrigerator and the death-knell clong clonk of the ice maker. I look again at the dark b.u.t.ton of the answering machine and feel a burst of rage, Lisa Kaplansky Lisa Kaplansky Lisa Kaplansky Lisa Kaplansky. She's the one I really want to call: Lisa Kaplansky. She believes in bold prose and will not be afraid to call me up and say: What the h.e.l.l is going on?

I imagine her in the teachers' lounge with her colleagues, lingering over a day-old starburst veggie tray of yellowing broccoli and soft canned olives, pale, woody celery and carrots; the teachers staring at the last of the onion dip dried to crust at the bottom of the tub as if it were tea leaves in which they could decipher the meaning of their washed-up dreams.

Lisa Kaplansky! How I do wonder about Lisa Kaplansky: Lisa Kaplansky of the foxy husband and new baby; Lisa Kaplansky of the sardonic smile and excellent shoes who writes either YES or! on every page of my creative writing journal; Lisa Kaplansky, who, when my mother died, gave me a copy of Wide Sarga.s.so Sea and also, though I first found it to be a rather conventional choice, the collected poems of Robert Frost. But of course I found medicinal comfort in his wintry poetry, which is grief itself-brittle and chilly and white gray, as far as the eye can see.

Lisa Kaplansky, Lisa Kaplansky, Lisa Kaplansky. Lisa Kaplansky, who, one week after my mother died, tried to point me toward the future: "You've missed a lot of deadlines for college applications, but I'll help you with the school options that still exist. Your writing is excellent, so in your application essays you should-how do I say this without sounding cynical?-emphasize your situation. I bet you'll get a full scholars.h.i.+p, even though you haven't fulfilled your math requirement yet. College admissions people talk the talk about students being well rounded, but they know it's bulls.h.i.+t; hardly anyone uses algebra as an adult."

My Lisa Kaplansky. I have Googled her excessively. She contributes to a blog about MFA programs in creative writing. Her profile picture on her Facebook page is of her random-looking baby. She has had several pieces published in online magazines. I thought her work would be a mirror of Lisa Kaplansky: witty and big-hearted, with flashes of compressed genius, but in truth her short stories and poems were just okay. And now it's day two of no call from Lisa Kaplansky and this is quite a hurtful surprise, and I wish I could spread awareness of this problem with a postage stamp featuring a bold question mark next to an un-ringing telephone.