Becoming Real - 1. I. In the Cards

I. In the Cards

She landed hard against the floor. One hand held backwards in desperate shield against the unseen, got caught and snapped beneath the ensuing force of her body. What pain there was, she didn’t feel, for all her focus stayed on Jim. The punch that sent her down, shocked her, but not enough that she’d be off guard again, in case the man came after her while she was on the floor.

Jim took two steps to her, right hand outstretched, eyes dry and contemptuous. Her hands began to scramble under her, her legs kicking, trying to push away from his onslaught. But just as unexpected as the blow had been, he stopped, muttered something about ‘chicks,’ and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Margaret didn’t relax; the muscles in her arms remained tight. Seconds seeped by, the quiet becoming strained and restless as she listened. Finally she heard his pickup truck roar outside and speed away, throwing rocks against the motel door.

She let out a long, relieved breath. It was relieved to her surprise because she knew it would happen, sooner or later. She knew he’d get fed up with her bickering about his wife, and how Meg wanted a future with Jim. She knew he’d haul off and pound her one day, and that as a nail in the coffin of ‘us,’ it might not be a bad thing.

She was sitting on her hands, so she yanked them out, only then noticing the injury to her wrist. ‘I’m not going to cry,’ she thought slowly. A feeling of powerlessness began to overtake her. ‘I am not going to cry.’

Margaret’s wrist throbbed as she examined it. She saw the bulge that would become a bruise, touching the swelling with one finger. She wondered if it were broken. She grabbed it by her other hand, thumb and index finger enwrapping it. She worked the joint. It hurt, but not excruciatingly. She laughed, admitting, “I knew that son-of-a-bitch would do it. I knew it . . . . ” Saying it out loud, she searched for strength and comfort in her own voice.

Margaret was twenty-one years old, had smoked from the age of fifteen, and thought of herself as thirty. Her hair was dark-brown; she called herself ‘a buxom brunette,’ though she didn’t really know what buxom meant. It wasn’t long hair, and she wore it parted to her left and brushed back with a slightly rakish air. She was strong-willed, and hated those who didn’t say what they were thinking. Ever since childhood she had had ideas of what was going to happen to people and what had already happened. When she grew up, she investigated, found out others had the same ‘gift,’ and told anyone who asked that she was psychic. Margaret wasn’t tall, she wasn’t slender, nor graceful, but she had a ‘tell it as it is’ charm about her that most people wanted for themselves.

Now she sat on the floor coddling her quickly numbing wrist, a torrent of emotional uncertainty wanted her attention. She loved Jim. Loved the married son-of-a-bitch. Slowly, for even strong people have their limits, she began to cry.

˚˚˚˚˚

Outside the dorm window grew an apple tree. Tall and over twenty years of age, it promised the second story sweet blossoms in mid-April, and abundant booty come August. But, by the time September came, the tree just looked tired. Many of its branches had been ripped off by the weight of their own blessings and lay on the ground within inches of the rotting fruit. The life of an apple tree is one of toil to produce legacies that slowly, branch by branch, kill it, only to create a feast of worm meat. By September the tree looked very tired indeed.

It grew outside the window of Margaret and May’s room, and these days peered into the happenings of these sisters more and more, since its work for the year was over and it had nothing to do but wait for the inevitable change of seasons.

Between the tree and the interior was the window; bronzed aluminum in frame, and usually cracked open in state all year long. And like two competing lords of a chessboard, the door stood squarely on the opposite side of the room. At their sides waited their vassals, and all who moved between them seemed only their pawns. The other dimensions of the room were subservient to these two. At the door’s sides were the closets; while on the window’s flanks were the two desks, both equal in the rich color and texture of fake wood. The rest of the space was blasé; beige paint layered again and again the gray soul of the concrete block walls, as if anybody could ever be fooled about their dull nature. The longer, flanking walls of the rectangular space were nearly filled with giant tackboards. Below these, arranged head to foot from door to window, were the beds, pushed up against the walls, the back of the turned dressers serving as headboards. May had carved out a ‘living room’ between the beds with a plush rug and cushions of various sorts to sit or recline on. This area was comfortable with the dressers turned towards the doors to serve as headboards. In the living room, visitors could relax and experience that feeling May wanted more than most, and May had the brains to achieve it. She was twenty, and in her third year of a chemistry teaching degree. Her sister Meg was in her last year of her accounting-slash-marketing degree. Margaret hoped to be making ‘the big bucks’ soon. Next spring she’d be free. Whenever the boring mundane work of school loaded her down or became too much, this she whispered under her breath; thoughts of Jim always appearing too. Her side of the room was decorated with hot, shirtless guys smiling slyly from above their tight jeans. They be-muscled greeting cards, posters and a special pop-up calendar, complete with red-letter days.

May’s side, in comparison, had fields of horses in flight; chaise lounges over-spilling kittens and puppies; while her calendar had scenes of Pegasus through the ages of artistic expression. This month featured a perfectly blue sky with a winged horse, down to a daisy clenched in its teeth.

The door swung wide. The wind from the open window pushed the stale air into the hall, and in came May and Helen.

“Gag!” cried Helen. “That so-called dinner is fighting to get its way out again!” She stumbled into the room, her hands slapping the closet walls as she went. Deftly she maneuvered around furniture to appear as if she were falling into the living area. “Quick,” she begged from the carpet. “Get a fork and kill it before – before, gag – they serve it again!” Helen gripped her guts and pushed, as if trying to hold something in. “It’s like Aliens; gag!”

Helen was the same age as May. She was studying to be a math teacher. Even though she was good at the subject, she didn’t like it. Her hair was light brown in color, and very fine. She liked to have it curled to get that wavy feel, but her hair automatically rejected it after a day or two, so she always had an uncertain in-between aspect about her head. Her face was rather oblong, chin a bit pointy, and her nose – slender with three graceful curves to its ridge – seemed beaky. Her eyes were brown and calm. Whenever she was surprised, or insulted, or felt any response needed a physical complement, she would jerk her head a little to the right, eyes wide, lips parted, to express her ubiquitous ‘taken aback’ look. At that time her hair would bounce, the whatever-was-left spring in her curl moving ever so slightly.

May stood in the entry, regarding this energetic girl. “Oh, Helen, I can always count on you to be as fresh and light as an after-dinner mint!" The bitten-off word ‘mint’ still in the air, she came in and closed the door.

Helen leaned back on her elbows, her patented ‘look’ washing over her face. Hair moving, she rebutted, “But you’ve got to admit that on Sunday they always serve the worst food. They just heat up all the old stuff they couldn’t push during the week, and shovel it in our trough.”

May, at her closet door, said sarcastically, “Yeah, I know, but if maybe just once you didn’t bitch about it, a Sunday dinner wouldn’t be quite so bad . . . . ”

From the floor, Helen threw a moderate smirk at May, but quickly lost interest. Rising, she said, “Where’s Josh? I thought he was right behind us.”

“He had to pee. He’ll be right up.”

“Pee; pee; pee; that’s all that boy ever does,” Helen flippantly scolded the air around her. “You’d think he was one of us.”

They eyed one another and smiled. It was a pretty silly notion. There was soft knocking, and Joshua came in. The girls’ smile grew to muted chuckling.

“This,” Josh confirmed, “is why I never want to open a door. I’m always afraid people are on the other side laughing at me.” He shut the portal behind him. “You know”—he spun around, hunching his shoulder—“Quasimodo had the same problem. He’s just going along to get along, but every time he leaves his belfry, people can’t help themselves with the rock-throwing. No wonder he was so self-conscious; couldn’t get a date.”

“Yeah, just like you.” Helen tossed her head.

Joshua was twenty, studying to be an architect. Many points of his appearance seemed to be in the middle. He wasn’t that tall, about five-eleven; he wasn’t that slender, nor was he fat. His chest was well developed at the shoulders, his legs stood full in his jeans, but he was no ‘muscleman’ of the type now looking down on him. His head was the right size for his build, while on others it might have seemed too small, or too big. His face was averagely handsome; chin rounded; lower lip, a straight line; upper lip, well formed. His nose was straight, the middle part keeping basically the same width from brows to where it curved off to two equally shaped nostrils. His hair, a very light brown, appeared dark-blond in sunlight. None of these things stood out, but his eyes broke the mundane. They were large and round, a sparkling blue against the whites of his eyes. People, if pressed, or if they could observe them up close for a while, usually admitted that they had never seen that particular shade of blue in a person’s eyes before, so brilliantly light were they.

His grin was easy to raise, but it always had a slight snickering feel about it. This he now did at Helen. He knew she had been the instigator. “What would I do without friends like you?” He slid into the living area, his movements sure without ever attaining grace. He sat down on the floor, folding legs under him and untying shoelaces. The sneakers came off and got set under May’s bed. “Where’s Margaret tonight?” he asked.

“With Jim, of course,” answered May, joining them in the cozy space she had so lovingly built.

“Is she still seeing him?” he asked. “How many children does he have now—”

Helen interrupted. “You mean by his wife, or altogether?” She shook her head. “You have to be more specific.”

“Let’s just say, the ones he knows about.”

“Okay, guys.” May was trying to restore her sister’s honor. “He has two baby girls.”

“So why didn’t they spend the night here?” Helen asked. “She could have kicked you out, and you stay with me, like the other times.”

May said, “He doesn’t like the dorms.” Her tone suddenly turned into a whisper before voice returned to normal. “I think it makes him feel stupid. And yesterday was Meg’s payday, so they decided to splurge and go out to a motel.”

Josh quipped, “Oh, Le Motel-Six, so très elegant!” The terrible parody of a French accent lingered in the air like garlic on the breath.

May pushed herself up, saying, “So let’s get to the cards!”

From out of her dresser drawer, May pulled a pack of ordinary red-backed playing cards, and with it, the Sunday night ritual of Rummy 500 began. All three made themselves at home on the plushy carpet, and May secretly glowed a little bit to feel her friends were at ease. Pulling out the cards from the box, Josh exclaimed, “Oh, not the nudie cards tonight?”

May said flatly, “Shut up and shuffle.”

“Loosen your girdle-spanks, girls, ‘cause I’m gonna win tonight and there’s no sense you popping buttons, or lace, or rivets – or whatever else is down there now-a-days – when you’re sent headlong into stunning defeat.”

Helen quipped back instantly, “The only way you can stun us, dear boy, would be to take off your socks and show us ‘Da Feet’.”

“Very funny”—his voice sneered—“But not yet. That’s my last defense.”

“Oh-fence?” offered Helen.

“Off-ense . . . ?” returned Josh with cocked head.

“Shuffle!” commanded May.

Outside, the darkened air smacked an apple tree branch against the glass, and pushed it a little into the room through the open window. The apple tree watched, and the window and door stood protectorate over their respective realms. Between them, the game went on. First hand: 85 for Helen; 180 for May; 100 for Joshua. The second hand: 100 for Helen; May with another 165; and Josh with 95; and so the play continued. Minutes resolved themselves into points, and into the black markings on the scorecard, appointing value to effect and time. The goal: a win, meaning the gift of the time it took to achieve it; for a win is no more than the feeling you’ve gained on time. The feeling of being a winner, that was the goal.

“Speaking of boyfriends, how’s that What’s-His-Name of yours?” Josh eyed Helen.

She peeked over the top of her cards. “I didn’t know we were talking about boyfriends, but STEVE is fine.” She held her cards loosely, sorting her twos and threes into a hidden order. She cocked her head at Joshua, and with a voice she thought casual, asked, “How come you didn’t go home this weekend?”

The tone so carefully placed before it left Helen’s mouth, found Josh as annoying. He didn’t like to be grilled, and so he shrugged. “I don’t know.” He tilted his eyes to her, not to stare her down, but to see just how carelessly she was holding her cards. He caught a glimpse of her ferreted twos. “I just wanted to see what was happening in the big-time suburb of Town and Country.” He turned back to his own hand of cards to note where his two was and make a mental post-it not to throw it away. “But, just like I thought, the Preps and Prep-etts merely get in their cars and go to the mall, to wander aimlessly: squawk and gawk; squawk and gawk . . . . ”

“Yes, and bother decent people like Joshie here who just go there to ponder the mysteries of Shakespeare. Or was it Oscar Wilde last time?”

“True, they do have a fine bookstore. Not that you, dear Helen of Annoy, would know what a book is—”

May interjected with an affectedly snooty accent. “Josh only goes to the mall when he must buy – propriety, you know.”

“Buy?! Hell, I just go there to scoff at those poor sheep, throwing their lives away.”

May, playing up on the herd image, added, “Peeing all over the merchandise like the animals they are. Tisk, Tisk.”

“That reminds me—” Josh started.

“That you have to pee again.”

Helen and May howled with laughter.

“Will you let me finish a sentence, please!”

“Go ‘head.” Both girls cast innocent, wide-eyed stares at Joshua in intense-but-fake interest.

“I was just going to say, I still owe your sister gas money from last Tuesday.” He took out his wallet, cautiously putting his cards down in front of him. With two fingers he reached inside, but they withdrew empty. He opened it up wider to take a disbelieving look, but raised his head with a peevish smile.

“Well, I guess I can’t pay her now. See, Helen, see how poor I am.”

“It’s okay, Josh,” May explained. “You can pay anytime, but could you do me a favor and go.”

Josh seemed startled.

“It’s your turn, Ding Dong. Discard a card – you’re holding up the game.”

Joshua set his wallet down, grabbing his round, which he studied a moment, before getting rid of a two.

Helen picked it up from the line of used cards and set it down again in front of her with a pair of mates, and a smile.

“Damn,” said Josh.

˚˚˚˚˚

Meg parked and sat there for a while. Her eyes stared unseeingly out the windshield that was spotty from unlucky late-summer bugs. The yellow light from a distant pole made her fingers on the steering wheel glow unearthly; an unreal gray. Her hand went up to adjust the rearview mirror. She hunched down a little in the seat to get her face in the light. Her cheeks were puffy and red, and minute age lines folded down the outer corners of her eyes. She fumbled with the door, her hand hitting the glass with a thump before it fell over the vinyl cover till she felt and pulled the handle. The car was suddenly in white light from the overhead lamp. Meg’s face looked back at her in disbelief. She brought her hand around and slowly touched her nose, gently. The she used the tip of her index finger to trace the line of it from forehead to upper lip. From there she quietly drew it around the side of her mouth. Head turning, she moved this line back along her jaw to the base of her earlobe. ‘Was this too much to ask?’ she wondered. ‘Just a little affection; a little caring?’ She caught a glimpse of her wrist in the mirror. The affection she longed for suddenly turned to anger.

“That asshole!” She bit the words out.

Grabbing her keys, she rushed at the door. It flew open and banged the car next to hers, hard. She stumbled out, panting between normal breaths. She slammed her car shut, using extra spite on it to smite the distant Jim, and all men in general.

The university had a suburban setting. When the institution left its iron-fenced property in the 1960s, many things, not only people, were fleeing the city. It chose a beautiful country estate to invest in. It was full of deer who lived in the wooded rolling hills, their only rivals being the ever-potent rabbits who roamed and nibbled themselves a livelihood. The first thing the developer did was find the highest hill of all, and chop it flat. What happened next was totally the result of official skinflint policy, and uninspired design motivated only by the design fee. So, now a handful of squat, lifeless buildings sat surrounded by a sea of parking spaces, the environment pushed to the perimeter. Here the deer were still, smart enough to stay away from people, but the rabbits were bolder. When the night came, they emerged – headfirst, sniffing the air – from beneath the Quadrangle trees, to congregate and sit in the cool grass.

Margaret trudged through the grass on her way to the dormitory. Immersed in her own thoughts, she gazed over the lawn and noticed the munching bunnies, but could allow little room for contemplation, which was just as well, for as long as she didn’t get too close, the rabbits didn’t think about her either.

“Fucking rabbits . . . ” she mumbled under her breath.

As she walked, the vision of the scene yet to come filled her mind. May would say: ‘What happened! Why are you back so soon?’ She thought about how Meg would be at a loss for words; how May would make a fuss over her obviously injured wrist. The prospect of an inquisition worried her.

Through a series of mindless motions – unlock the security door; climb the stairs; walk down the hall – she finally arrived at her room. With one quick shake of her head, she woke herself up and opened the door.

Three pairs of eyes regarded her from the floor.

“Oh. Hi,” said May. “You came back?”

“Yeah . . . . ” Margaret was dreading further badgering. “I got kind of tired, so I decided it’d be better if I slept here, and then I’ve a lot of homework to do tomorrow anyway—”

Meg saw nobody was looking at her anymore. All eyes had returned to the game.

“Thanks, Hel,” said Josh. “That’s just the ten I was hoping for – all evening!”

“Shit!” said Helen, before glancing Meg’s way and adding softly, “You want us to leave?”

“No – no,” she insisted half-heartedly. “Don’t let me bother you.” Plopping down on her bed, she was actually glad to have their energy around her. She remembered something. “You should have seen the campus tonight; rabbits fucking everywhere.”

Helen and Josh exchanged puzzled scowls.

Josh started, “Fucking rabbits, everywhere . . . ?”

Helen added, “No. Everywhere, fucking rabbits . . . !”

Josh concluded, “Like I said. Rabbits. Fucking. Everywhere.”

May shook her head. “You two deserve each other – lame.”

Meg had pulled her pillow under her chest. She propped herself on an elbow, carefully hiding her bad wrist. She watched them play the game. Moments later, her emotions changed.

Didn’t they see how she looked; couldn’t they tell the sorrow written on her face? In fact, how dare they not make a fuss that she’d be back so soon!

“Do you want to join in?” Helen was shuffling for the next round. “The more the merrier,” she chanted.

Again the carefully placed inflection Helen put in her voice found the hearer as abrasive. “No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” The tone of her reply, Meg thought, projected the same message as her words, but the slightest twinge of hurt was in it too. Not enough she thought for anybody to hear, but her sister did.

May examined Margaret for the first time and noticed she’d been crying; the puffiness beneath her eyes; the lines casting themselves deeper into her face.

Meg glared at May. “What?”

May shrugged and reluctantly returned to her cards. There was a time and a place for everything.

Joshua sang out, “Well, you don’t have to fret, girls. This is gonna be the last hand.”

May sarcastically peered him in the eye. “We’re not gonna ‘fret,’ unless you start taking those socks off.”

And so the final hand started with May in the lead, Josh second, and Helen coming up from behind. During the game, Meg started studying, realigning the pillow under her chest.

May won the game. She was the champion of the evening, and all the time they had taken to play belonged to her, but her thoughts went to Meg lying quietly on her bed. She didn’t want her to sulk, but didn’t know if she wanted Helen and Joshua around, so she hit on a compromise.

Josh was over by the window, feeling the breeze rush through, looking at the apple tree, and beneath it, at the cars parked there. He considered the apple trees growing in a line, how they kill themselves piece by piece for a higher purpose. He felt something was charging in the air; what he couldn’t say, but he knew he’d take memory of this moment far into the future.

“Hey, Josh,” May said. “You ever been Taroted before?”

“I beg your pardon; been what-o-ed before?”

“Taroted – you know, have your future read on the Tarot cards. Come on, it might be fun.”

Margaret glanced up. “If he wants, I don’t mind.”

May blinked at Josh in an encouraging way.

“Yeah, okay,” Josh said to May “why not,” but he was apprehensive about the whole thing, not because he thought it was humbug, but because he secretly half-believed in such things. He walked away from the window, taking the tree’s attention with him as he went to sit again in the center of the room. Meg roused herself to a sitting position, then rose and got her Tarot cards. Coming back she sat on the floor, pulling them out of their box with reverence. She handed them to Joshua. By this time, May had sat down next to her sister, and Helen next to Josh.

Meg instructed him. “Now, Josh, just let your mind go blank. Don’t think of anything in particular, and when you feel ready – centered – shuffle the deck.”

Josh sat for a moment and his face flashed a nervous pink flush of blood, but soon he relaxed and emptied his mind. Turning the cards over, he divided them and gave the stacks a fluttering flick till the two halves had become one pile again. He divided, and repeated, then held Meg’s eyes as she took the deck.

Margaret turned one card over and laid it flat. Another followed, carefully positioned to cover the bottom third of the original. The she put three more around the first pair in a circle, completing the arrangement by slowing placing a line of four additional cards to the right of the central grouping. She set the rest of the deck down to her left.

Joshua inspected the array in front of him. Upside-down he could read one saying ‘L’AMOUREUX,’ or the lovers; another showing a hiding man was entitled ‘L’ERMITE,’ or the hermit.

“Well, get a load of that,” May said, truly amazed. “That’s a love reading if I ever saw one.”

“I must say, it’s pretty promising,” Meg admitted. She carefully explained the principal card, how the first one probably represented himself; the others, the forces around him. But after her preliminary interpretations, she leaned back, appearing slightly puzzled.

“May, could you get my book?” She pointed to her dresser. “It’s in the top drawer.”

When Meg had retrieved it from her sister’s hand, she opened it, and started to research earnestly.

“This ain’t as good as it first seems.” Meg’s tone was deflating. “Just a minute.”

Joshua shifted his seat trying to conceal his interest; he believed that all things unexplainable had substance discernible by others who simply knew where to look, and at what they were looking.

At last Meg turned up her eyes and said to Josh, “The cards mean that now you’re not doing very well. I mean, not as well as your potential, and the reason is because you’re hiding something and when you finally admit it, and let yourself be free; Then”—her motions swept over the cards—“you’ll be a thousand times better than now – reborn – but if you don’t, you’ll never be any happier than you are at this stage in your life.”

Josh flushed. He could feel the heat rushing up through the neck of his shirt and escaping in sheets over the top of his head. He knew what it was; the only thing it could be. He split nervous glances between the three young women; they stared frankly at him, evidently expecting a confession. The moment dragged on into two, then more. The silence was unbroken except by his pounding heart, which for the deafening drumming of it in his ears, he thought they all could hear. He felt himself flashing rainbow shades, and at last he got out a feeble: “I see.”

“Well,” Margaret said, gathering up the cards, “if you believe in it, you should think it over; if not, try to forget it. These things are not set. They only speak to a narrow strip of time and are meant to guide people to change for the better, not to lock them into hopelessness. Josh, if I were you,” she advised, “I’d try to figure out what is holding me back, and then get rid of it.” She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, well. It’s your life, but it’s all written right here”—her fingers fell through the air, landing in the middle of the radiant sun—“here in the cards.”

˚˚˚˚˚

The next day Joshua came up to see Margaret. He knew that she was alone, that Helen and May had gone to the ubiquitous mall. He knew, because after inquiring if Meg was in, he casually refused their invitation to join them.

He knocked on the door, and she opened.

He pulled his excuse out of his jeans pocket. “Here’s that gas money I owe you from Tuesday. Sorry it took so long.” He held the three dollars in front of him.

She peered at it slowly, and said, “Why don’t you come in a minute.” And so he did. Still holding the money he sat on May’s bed. Across the living room area, Margaret sat on her own.

In the daylight filtering through the fading apple leaves, Joshua suddenly saw Margaret’s sorry state. Her nose was swollen; her eye, bruised; and a support band was stretched over her wrist.

“Did Jim do that?”

Margaret quavered between being offended at the intrusion, and relief that someone cared.

“It’s over with him.”

Josh inhaled involuntarily. He felt sad for her, because he had heard that before. His eyes flickered guiltily up to the beefcake smiling from Meg’s wall behind her. He glanced away, at the floor, but then suddenly raised his head and gazed his full with pursed lips.

Margaret now focused on the odd kid before her. He was haggard. Bags had formed under his eyes overnight. He seemed exhausted and like he had given up. This odd boy was so different from the run-of-the-mill guys in her life. For one thing, Josh never tried to hurt; any slight he gave was accidental. She had that ‘old feeling’ about him again. Something within her, maybe a long malnourished motherly instinct, wanted to reach out to him, but wiser wisdom knows all things happen in their own time. She couldn’t force him; no one could.

She said, “You’re not so hot yourself, I have to say.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. I couldn’t sleep, and you know what, I think it cleared out my thinking. You know what I mean?”

Meg really wanted to get up and sit by his side. She resisted and shook her head. “No.”

“I’m so damn tired and frustrated, that I just can’t help but think straight. In a weird way, it’s helped me relax.” He folded the bills in his fingers over and over. “And I was thinking about you too; you and Jim. Then I realized we’re in the same boat, you and I. You think you can’t do any better than him, and wind up holding on to something that’s going to hurt you, and I’m looking at being alone the rest of my life, and think – I can’t do any anything about it . . . ” He held her eye. “But we can.”

Meg was hurt. Then a sea change happened; she focused on what he had just said about himself. The ‘old feeling’ came back. ‘Poor Josh,’ was her only thought, but then a little thrill for him appeared as well. ‘It’s about time!’ Her words, however, continued to tread lightly.

She asked, “It’s not, that, is it . . . ?”

Josh swallowed hard. “That, what?”

Margaret chuckled; her confidence regained. “That thing, that we’ve kept avoiding. That thing that kept making me ask you to go out with me and my Gay friends!”

Joshua flushed, his heart rate went from 0 to 60 in a flash. Heat shot from his chest to bathe his collar and the rose-tinted head above it. This was not going to be easy; he wondered if it would ever be. “Yeah,” Josh said through a long vibrato sigh. “That thing – that thing I’m not ready to say, out loud, at least not now.” In another moment he relaxed again, curiosity took over. “So – how long have you known?”

Margaret considered it. “I guess since pretty soon after meeting you . . . . How long have you known?”

“Seventh grade.”

A force of sorrow overwhelmed Meg. She felt sick to her stomach calculating Josh’s lost time. From age twelve to twenty – that’s eight circuits of the sun. She wondered at the sadness her own life would possess if it had a cavity of eight entire years missing from it. What kind of person might she be if that much time had been stunted and unlived?

He eerily stated her thoughts. “Time’s wasting, Margaret. You can stand on your own two feet. If I can – you can.”

Meg was hurt. Who did he think he was, telling her how to live her life? Her eyes became cold, as if she weren’t listening.

“Margaret, to my mind you’re like the apple tree there, maybe women in general are, for you will break yourself before allowing yourself to be free of an overbearing guy. My mom is like that. She’s suffered for years with a verbally abusive man, and so have I with my father. Every day of my life I’ve heard what a failure I am, that I’ll never amount to anything in life. But, I’ve decided to not listen anymore: not to his voice; not to the copy of it I run in my own head. There’s just so much”—Josh continued, not caring if anyone heard; he had to say it for himself—“a person can deny without destroying himself as a person. Yesterday you did me a favor. You gave me some advice, and I know I’m going to follow it. But, now I have some advice for you: you don’t need Jim to be happy. Dump the loser.”

Behind Meg’s cold eyes a thaw was taking place. She stared at Josh knowing he was right. Those same words May had told her sister many times before hadn’t meant anything to her because she hadn’t seen herself as the most important person in her life. But now, suddenly for the first time, she had hope. Behind Josh’s eyes she couldn’t have known that the same change was happening; happening because of her.

Josh stood and went to the door. He put the money on Meg’s dresser.

Margaret had to know something. “And, this all happened, because of the cards?”

Josh paused, eyeing the woodgrain of the door a moment. Like the object of playing cards, to struggle and to win control of a person’s life for themselves, means to gain control over all the time it took to arrive at that point. For Josh, with the window and the door as respective lords of the chessboard of this room, he had won, thanks to Margaret. He owed her a lot, and the time it took him to achieve this was all his to do with as he wished, and for him, he wished to bury it and forget how it dominated his meager concept of himself. Victory meant a chance to leave the field of play, free to do as he needed. He was nobody’s pawn anymore. He turned as a feeble smile – the first of the day – crept helplessly across his chapped lips. He told her, “No, not all, Meg; not all.” And he thought for a moment Margaret’s eyes were asking him to come back, to stay a while longer with her, to comfort her, but he knew he had other places to go.

~

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