Nowhere Else But Here
Of all the things the woman had done to decorate her dirt patch of a front yard there on Dunning Avenue, she was proudest of the glittery store-bought card she’d taped to the plastic burro’s nose. The card read Fifteen and Fabulous. It was meant for a girl, but it was the only one at the Dollar Tree that came close to expressing how she felt about her only child. Inside, the card said simply enough Happy Birthday. Below that she’d signed, Love your mother.
It was only 8am and the rusty old Texaco thermometer hanging by her front door had it at over a hundred. A bead of sweat rolled off the woman’s brow and plopped fat into baby Jesus’s bewildered eye. In his crib she placed a cardboard flap painted in colorful letters that read Happy Birthday, RJ. Beneath the manger, Mary, Joseph, and two wise men, one of whom was missing his chin, looked down lovingly at God’s only son and seemed grateful just to be in the shade.
To the old man next door, the woman looked like a stripper—pink hair, tattooed arms, big jugs, all of it. And she was crazy too. Who the hell puts up a nativity scene in August, in Texas? He’d spent the better part of the morning sidled up to the air conditioner in his front room sipping lukewarm coffee and watching her run around her yard, digging and hammering and stringing up banners and whatnot.
The two had never spoken and that suited him fine. He’d made the mistake of trying to be neighborly to the last folks who lived there and ended up lending them fifty-six dollars to pay the electric. They never did pay him back—just ignored him like the whole thing never happened. This new woman had only been there two, maybe three weeks, and he’d only ever seen her through his window. She’d probably never seen him at all. He didn’t go out much. He’d carried mail for forty years and his feet hurt. Still, it was strange considering the two little ramshackle houses were so close together you could have reached your arm out the window and asked your neighbor to pass the salt.
Oh no, here she comes.
She dashed up onto his porch and knocked.
“Anybody home?” she asked.
She cupped her hands like a visor above her eyes and tried to see inside the man’s house.
He stood still and hoped she’d go away. He grew weed in his spare bedroom, mainly medicinal, but it was Texas, and he didn’t want any trouble, or any visitors.
“It’s your neighbor. Just wondering if you have a pair of pruners I could borrow. I’ll bring ’em right back.”
Of course he had pruners. He grew pot, didn’t he? But what’d she know about it? Maybe she was a cop. Or was he just paranoid?
“No,” he said.
“No, you don’t have any, or no, I can’t borrow them?”
He weighed the options she’d given him and said, “Don’t have any.”
Unfazed, she leapt off the porch and, while still in midair, yelled, “Thanks anyway.”
She went back inside her house, stuck her head under the kitchen faucet, and drank until her belly ached. Then she wedged herself between the refrigerator and its door and might have climbed inside had it not been so full of weenies, potato salad, and glass bottles of Dr. Pepper—her son’s favorites. She dialed RJ’s father to confirm what time he would bring her son up from Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi to San Antonio, two hours, twenty minutes tops. The call went to voicemail. She figured it would. They’d barely spoken over the last two years, and most of the time he wouldn’t bother to pick up. She tried RJ’s phone. Voicemail. Why wouldn’t RJ pick up the phone? Why wouldn’t they return my texts? For all she knew the police were on their way to deliver bad news, not that anyone ever bothered to tell her anything. That wasn’t entirely true. Last year the boy’s father sent her a text telling her that he and his girlfriend were taking her son to Cabo San Lucas for his birthday, and she had to give her parental consent so the boy could get his passport. Of course she was tickled for her son, but she was even happier to be the parent part of “parental consent.” She read that text over and over until the happiness gave way to sadness, then resentment. The government might have considered her RJ’s parent, but damn near nobody else did.
The old man’s air conditioner could do little to keep the searing heat from permeating the clapboard walls. At one, it was 112. That’s what the weather gal on the TV said, and she was right half of the time. His body heat had warmed the old leather recliner to the point that he could no longer sit in it. He lay naked in the tub until the porcelain lost its cool, then he turned on the cold tap and let the warm water run over his feet. He lit a joint, puffed it a few times, then inhaled as deeply as his old lungs would allow.
It seemed like whenever the weather turned hot, or cold for that matter, folks on the news would talk about old people dying. Take precautions, they’d say. What if his time was up? If I died, who would find me and when? He repeated the words this time substituting “when” with “win,” find me and win! Tell them what they’ve won, Johnny! Who’s Johnny? Maybe his new neighbor would find him. She’d smell his rotting corpse, find him in the tub, body bloated, skin gray, broken. Like a big old whale washed up on the beach. She’d see him naked. Oh no. That’d make her jump off the porch for sure. The man slapped his belly. Pitter-patter—wouldn’t matter. Naked me, oh my. He slid down into the tub until water pooled in the inside corners of his scrunched eyes. When he finished his bath, he stood naked, arms up, air-drying himself in front of the oscillating floor fan.
When the sheet cake the woman had baked earlier that morning had cooled all it was going to, she cut it horizontally through the middle to form two layers. RJ had sent her a picture of the store-bought cake he wanted, but she just didn’t have that kind of money. She had just finished placing a layer on the ice cream when a nearby transformer blew. The pop was loud enough that she nearly dropped the cake. It wouldn’t have mattered, that cake was a mess—the ice cream was already melting, one of the layers was falling apart. Why’d she have to make an ice cream cake on the hottest day of the year? She moved the cake to the freezer anyway.
When the old man heard the bang, he figured it was a car backfiring and looked out the window. The roughneck living in the green house across the street was cracking eggs on his asphalt driveway. He hadn’t even bothered to look up until his wife came out and fussed at him to get inside before he got heatstroke. It wasn’t until the old man’s fan coasted to a stop that he knew something was up. He clicked the knob from on to off to on, he flipped his breakers. Nothing worked.
“Goddammit!” he said. “Goddamn CPS Energy.” He dialed the power company ready to raise hell. The busy signal said it all. He went to the kitchen and filled a tall glass full of water and added a pinch of table salt, drank it down. It was a trick he’d learned as a postman to help stay hydrated. He opened his windows wide, front door too, and invited the thick, wet air inside.
Next door the woman sat on her living room floor, lightheaded from blowing up a mix of blue and silver balloons, and dialed her son. Again, it went straight to voicemail, but this time she left a message: “It’s your momma. The only thing missing is you. It’s hot as heck, but we’ll have fun.” Fun? That stuffy little house was a far cry from Cabo. She opened every window that hadn’t been painted shut.
The old man couldn’t prove it was 105 in his kitchen, but he had plenty of experience with Texas weather and that was good enough for him. He was refilling his water glass when the woman’s phone rang. There wasn’t but ten feet between the houses and with the windows open he could hear her perfectly.
“Hi baby, happy birthday. I made that ice cream cake—dang it, that was supposed to be a surprise.” Something wasn’t right and his mother knew it before the boy even said anything.
The old man shouldn’t have listened, but he did. He wet a dish rag and hung it around his neck. Another postman’s trick.
The woman’s windpipe cramped and quivered. Her whole body ached to see her son, but she held it together. She always held it together. She didn’t want to upset the boy, none of it was his fault.
“No, of course, I totally understand. Now let me talk to your daddy.”
The old man sidestepped away from the sink. It had gotten personal, and she needed her privacy. He lay on his bed and ran his hand under the cool side of the pillow. He’d had seventy-eight birthdays, and no one had ever gotten into it over him. No one ever baked him a cake either.
* * *
He woke up a few hours later, sweat-sticky and disoriented. He thumbed around in the ashtray beside his bed until he found a good-sized roach. He lit it and took a hit. Then another.
He forced himself up off the bed and plodded into the kitchen, smoke still in his lungs. The woman was crying. It was one of the saddest cries the man had ever heard. Like that little towheaded girl who used to live next door, she’d sit on the steps and yowl and holler until her mother would let her into the house. The poor thing wasn’t but four or five years old.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he said, or maybe he didn’t. He was too stoned to know if he’d said it out loud. She didn’t stop crying.
If he hadn’t bothered to hang up the dish towel, he might not have seen them at all—his car keys, hanging on the nail, sparkling like a fistful of diamonds in the late afternoon sun. He snatched them and went straight to his car in front of his house. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
The vehicle’s thermometer had to be wrong. There’s no way it was 112. Not at five-thirty in the evening. But none of that mattered. He got lost in the icy hiss from frigid air rushing from the vents. He could’ve driven to the mall and found somewhere to sit, but he would’ve had to go lock up the house before he did that, and he was comfortable right where he was. There was enough gas in the tank to run the engine all night while he slept if he had to.
He’d been in there at least an hour, maybe more, before there was a tap on the passenger window. He cracked it an inch or two, and the woman leaned close. “Me again. Sorry to scare you,” she said. “I’m your neighbor.”
He nodded.
“I’m not a weirdo or anything, but my car’s running on fumes and—”
He held up a single index finger interrupting her and did what he told himself he’d never do again. He pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, opened the window a little wider and said, “Take it. Go get you some gasoline.”
The woman stuck her face into the window opening, inhaling the cool air. “Couldn’t I just sit in there with you for a while?”
She studied him with smudged-mascara eyes. He would have preferred it if she had taken the money. He clicked the door lock. He couldn’t very easily leave her at the curb.
She hopped in. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
“I am,” he said, “but it’s my day off.” It wasn’t the first time he’d used that line. He thought it was funny even if his co-worker down at the post office didn’t. The look on her face alone was almost worth the three-day suspension.
“Well, buddy, you’d be doing me a favor,” she said and adjusted the vent.
It’ll be okay. You’ll be fine. They’ll be other birthdays. He thought of plenty of things to say but didn’t say a word—just closed his eyes like he was going to sleep.
She flipped the visor down and angled the mirror. “I look a sight,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a wadded-up napkin. He didn’t say anything about that either.
While they sat in silence, he stored up a few questions to ask her if they ever did get around to talking. She fidgeted with a paperclip she’d found in the console. She would’ve talked about anything just to get her mind off yet another birthday without her son.
She finally turned to the old man and asked, “Do you like ice cream cake? I made one and it’s just in there melting.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t a minute before she was back. He leaned over and opened the door. Mint with chocolate, the chilled air hitting his face, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Once the woman got to talking it seemed like she wasn’t going to stop. That didn’t bother the old man. He liked listening. When he managed to get a word in, he asked about the Christmas decorations in August. She told him how she’d found Jesus and the rest of them at the side of the road. “It was unbelievable. Jesus ain’t just for Christmas, you know?”
He didn’t.
It hadn’t been dark for more than a few minutes when lights started to go on up and down the street. Neighbors clapped and whistled from their porches. Folks who’d had the same idea as the old man flashed their headlights and beeped their horns. The woman reached over to the steering wheel and honked the horn until the old man told her to quit. Then she told him it’d been a long time since she’d had a real conversation with anyone.
The same was true for him. He pressed the heel of his spoon into the last bit of cake and sopped up all that was left of the soupy ice cream. She still hadn’t touched hers. When she caught him looking, she said she didn’t have much of a sweet tooth and switched bowls with him. He didn’t object.
Tony Payne was raised on a busy street in Los Angeles where he dreamed of adventures beyond the San Fernando Valley. With a BA in Film Production and an entrepreneurial spirit, Payne has lived and worked in such locations as San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai. Now living in London with his wife and daughter, Payne writes about life and love in L.A., the city that continues to fuel his creativity. He holds an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University.