No, I don’t, it retorted. Sounded a little too much like Aunt Josie.

Mama was holding an old guitar in her hands as she sat at the table, a thin wisp of white smoke rising up from her lit cigarette, the concentrated column curving this way and that as it made its way up, dissipating into nearly nothing. A chill spread through me.

I knew that guitar. It was Daddy’s, buried in the way back of their bedroom closet, deep under his clothes and a bunch of old checks and magazines. For Mama to dig that out, she had to go to a pretty major level of effort – for her. My eyes filled with tears, because I knew what was coming next, and my heart rose in my throat, palate burning, my body so overwhelmed I was frozen in place.

“Mike told me about Trevor’s music,” she said quietly. “Said your face looked like you were watching an angel sing to you, like God sent him. And that Trevor has real talent, too.” She took a long drag off her cigarette, the cherry burning a little too bright even after her mouth left it, her hands so practiced, fingers nimble and knowing how to set it down even without having eyes on it. If nothing else, Mama was very good at the few things that made up her life: smoking, sweeping, and loss.

Tapping the top of the guitar, she rested her fingers for a fraction of a second too long on the blond wood. Her hand shook just a bit now.

“Mama, you’re shaking. Have you checked your sugars?” I asked. That wasn’t a real question, and we both knew it. I just wanted to give her an out. My brain was on fire because Mama didn’t do this. She didn’t talk about feelings or Daddy.

“No, Darla Jo.” She sighed, a long, slow sound like something was draining out of her. Something other than air. “My sugars are fine.” Now her voice was shaking, too, and so help me, God, if she started crying I would never stop.

She straightened her spine best she could and her eyes caught mine. “I want you to give this to Trevor. No use having it sit buried under all that stuff. Charlie – ” her voice choked at saying Daddy’s name. I hadn’t heard her use it in years, and it made my throat close up with salty tears, too, my eyes following suit. “Charlie always said that instruments are like people. They need to be a part of the action to be useful.”

We shared a sad smile. I didn’t want her to stop, so I kept my mouth shut. It worked.

“And Darla, he’d have been so proud of you.” Her voice broke and I just let my own tears come, my throat hitching with sobs that I struggled to keep in my nose filling as I wiped my face with my sleeve.

“He would?” Why? I wondered. Why would anyone be proud of someone like me?

“Because you have a way with people, Darla Jo. You’re a kindhearted young woman who has blossomed into someone who is always striving for more, even in hard times.” The words poured out of her as she took another long drag off her smoke. Jesus Christ, I hadn’t heard this much come out of her mouth that wasn’t about sweeping or medical issues or what was wrong with me in – hell, forever.

“And you need to give this to your boyfriend when you go visit him right now.”

Hold on. “Right now?”

“Go. You know you want to. Go with your gut.” She shook her head slowly, rolls of fat around her neck moving and twisting a bit, her eyes shining with tears that nearly spilled over. “I wish I had,” she muttered.

“What do you mean, Mama?” I asked gently, reaching out to touch her hand. She jumped a bit, as if shocked, then relaxed.

Blinking hard, she mulled over my question and I worried I’d pushed too hard. Her face closed off, and I decided if ever there was a time to push, it was now. Eighteen years of nothing wasn’t cutting it.

“Mama? I’m twenty-two and this is the most you’ve ever said about Daddy.” I squeezed her hand. It stayed limp. “Please,” I pleaded.

Closing her eyes, she reached for her cigarette and took a long drag, knowing through muscle memory where it was, never burning herself. “I knew Jeff had too much to drink that night. And I wanted to say something but I was just too damn polite. Too hesitant. Marlene can be a big personality, you know?”

I made a snorting sound of agreement.

“No, I don’t mean like she is now. Before the accident, and her brain got hurt, she was different. Nicer. Friendly and a little crazy, but in a good way. A fun way.” Mama swallowed hard. “So I kept my opinions to myself because if I said anything, she’d have shooed it off as me being a nervous Nelly, and I didn’t want the flak.”

Whoa. I didn’t know what to say or how to react. Mama must have been carrying that guilt around for this whole time, but it’s not like it was her fault. “You couldn’t have known, Mama,” I countered.

“No. I realize that. Took me a long time, and God certainly gave me my own burden to bear,” she said, looking at her missing foot.

“God didn’t do that to punish you,” I insisted.

“He took Charlie, Darla. That’s all the punishment I needed for not following my gut.” A long drag, then she pulled a fresh one out of her cigarette case and lit it off the old cigarette’s cherry. “This foot was just a little something extra the devil threw in.”

Mama didn’t talk about God like this. Not much. Where was this crap coming from? “You really believe that?” I asked softly.

“Not really. I think it’s something I say to myself when I’m trying to throw a pity party and no one comes.” We laughed, the sound a bit tinny and forced, but better than nothing.

She inched the guitar my way. “Go. Take this and give it to him.” Mama stood and I followed suit, our bodies reaching for each other awkwardly, her hug the first I’d had in years. It felt good to be embraced, to have Mama stroking my hair and whispering, “You’re such a good girl, Darla. Now move far away and live your life.”

I pulled away as if stabbed, disbelief coursing through me like poison. “What?” I practically screamed.

“I’ll kick you out if you don’t do it on your own.”

“No, you won’t!”

“All right. No. I won’t,” she admitted, chuckling to herself. “I do think you need to just go and visit Josie for a while and see where your life takes you.” Her eyes shifted to a more protective, withdrawn look, and I could tell she was retreating back under her mask. And that was OK – it must have been so hard to show herself to me after all these years.

I’d take what I could get.

Right now, though, I needed to go take what had been offered. I gave Mama a quick kiss on the cheek, grabbed the guitar by the neck and sprinted out the door, headed toward something so new, so random, I couldn’t even name it.

Trevor

The ride from Darla’s house to the hotel room wasn’t a painful, silent trip, which is what I’d expected from my long-time friend. Shades of grey weren’t exactly his forte, and right now Darla, Joe, and I were about as grey as you can get. Some sort of unexplained phenomenon was developing between the three of us, and now that we were down to just us two, it felt empty. Darker. Forlorn, yet not tense. Just…unfulfilled.

Fortunately, I remembered how to get there, the roads laid out in an orderly manner, so unlike the Boston area, where the road map looked like it had been drawn by a nine-year-old drinking his second double espresso. Yet another point for this place that until two days ago we’d have considered fly-over country, a vast green expanse with faded beige corn fields in between, a checkered patch quilt of nothing. Not now. Now it was far, far more.

Joe was in that half-drunk stupor that made him so much more fun than his normal, tightass state. How a guy who could attract women like light bulbs attract moths could be so insecure had puzzled me for years. Something about Darla made him daring, though – that kiss had come out of nowhere. Coming upon them in that state, his hands groping what had just filled my own shortly before, her mouth so passionately entangled with his I could feel her need – being able to observe that, to share in that without feeling like we were competing for her – that blew my fucking mind.

You can do that? Really? Because no one told me that before. Ever. Not in the UU church’s sexuality class, not in any human psych class in college (not even abnormal psych), and not in any late-nights talks in the dorms, high as a kite and sharing sex stories (or even having sex while talking about sex). Who did this? Who felt like this? How could I make sense of it if no one explained it to me?

I was on my own.

“I miss her already,” Joe mumbled.

Me too. “She’s coming. I’m sure she is.” Faking certainty wasn’t my strong suit, but it was worth the try.

“She’s a pussy.”

“Duh, Captain Obvious.”

“I didn’t say she has a pussy. I said she is a pussy. Like me. Darla’s going to wimp out. It’s too scary.” Way to change course, I thought. My legs tensed, thigh muscles tightening and loosening in a rhythm I’d developed long ago, a way to release anxiety or discomfort without looking like I was doing anything. Mom didn’t approve of what she called my “displays of anger,” and the habit was so embedded I was doing it here, right now, listening to Joe calling her names. I wanted to go back and grab her, steal her away, and he was calling her names. Names I’d normally apply to him.

“We can’t go back and grab her by the hair and drag her off,” I said, a little too close to my actual thoughts. God, that would be hot. Spin the car around, screech the tires, put the pedal down hard and zoom back to her, grab her hard and kiss her fear away, throw her in the backseat and rip out of here. That thought made me hard, throbbing for what we couldn’t have and for what had been so fucking close.

So close.

Joe grinned, the smile sudden and ferocious. “You try that and she’ll have you tied to the hood of her car, being clawed to death by three-legged kittens.” We both chuckled, but the sound died out too quickly, my pants tight and my head swimming with too many thoughts, overwhelmed by the rush of possibility as it died out, releasing spores that just made everything a little too toxic, a little too dangerous.

Pulling in to the parking lot was depressing. The building looked about as fun as a crematorium. Joe used his electronic card to key us in and took me to his room. 231 was probably exactly like 230 and 232, with crappy, threadbare carpeting that had a gold, green and burgundy pattern popular when Johnson was president. Someone tried to add a little “class” to the room with a gold bedspread two shades too bright to match the carpet, and paisley curtains that gave me bedspins when I looked at them too hard. The room smelled like rose water and old pee.

“Nice penthouse suite.” Joe picked up a pen and tossed it at my head as he slammed his body into the bed, stretched out like Jesus on the cross.

“Why weren’t you pissed?” he yawned, as if his question were some offhand thought he was throwing out there for fun. Like we casually talked about sharing a woman all the time, the way we discussed which movie to see on a Friday night, or how much acid we could drop and still be functional for an exam the next day.