Torsade Literary Space Celebrated (part fifteen)
Novella
Celebrated
(part fifteen)
“You wrote a nice piece about my mother.”
That had been her comment going up, just before the tricky edge past an RV coming down, that had silenced them.
“I’ll have to look at that, back at the house. I forget what I said. By the way, inside joke, I was going to ask.”
Parking, though. Tom taking his pictures.
She said now, “It won’t, if things I say about my mother are…negative, sometimes, make you sorry to hear them? Wish you hadn’t…”
“No, please. I’m not asking you to tell me what’s not my business.”
“Oh, well. Stacey and Sabrina. Those were names I gave my dolls, because… This was the 1950s. Because, to my little ear, pretty, lucky girls had names like that. Now you think it’s sad. And it’s funny, really. There’s more.”
She remembered Madeline in magenta, bell sleeves, paillettes ringing the hems. It wasn’t what her mother could wear, as opposed to what a schoolgirl of 1959 could wear…
Twelve.
In the summer, because they’d decided on it, June the twenty-first (solstice), Petra would turn thirteen. She wasn’t able to have birthday parties…she knew of no one to invite. Madeline had decided now she was this age, they would shop together instead of Petra’s opening wrapping-papered boxes, and the outing would be the treat.
“Suppose I’m maybe really fourteen.”
While they baked, Madeline stirring, Petra handing ingredients, she tried this.
“Oh, no.”
“Then I would change to a different school.”
“In good time! So, kiddo…you can’t wait for high school.”
She could see her mother pleased to think so. What was high school? Was it the growing up, or…could Madeline dream of a late-bloomer, who’d join Future Secretaries, the debate team, the French club? Light into academic diligence and graduate with honors?
“Why,” she asked, “is my name Petra?”
“You were called Petra. The family who were caring for you called you that.”
Caution. Not for secrets or feelings, only that her mother did research, professionally, and a competent researcher does not project. “But…I think I see where we’re going. You know, when you do start high school, you can call yourself whatever you like.”
“But, think about that! You’re a kid who sits at the cafeteria table by yourself and the other girls throw food at you. You’re going to enroll in high school, and tell everyone you’re Ameliana now, or Emeraude. No, really, don’t start.”
Tom’s face had showed an impulse to sympathize.
“I don’t know why. Why some kids get bullied. What I ever did to be one of them. I don’t even know what it means to ‘make friends easily’. Maybe you know.”
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He hauled the wheel. “Sorry. Did you see that lightning? I almost missed the turnoff. Now I don’t know if the fossils are worth it…how much time do you figure we have?”
A paper cup skittered in a gust, a couple in shorts and sunglasses, walking hand-balanced over a network of exposed roots, moved up the trail. There was only this stand of pine, the restrooms, and the trailhead. Four people climbed into an SUV, swung off; a man shifted feet on the sidewalk, looking at his phone.
“Let’s chance it.”
“Hey! Sorry… Did you folks go up the trail? Is it very far?” Asking this, Tom held out a hand, catching raindrops.
The man chuckled. “Waiting for my wife. Um, no, we just stopped here, for the privy services. Can’t tell you.”
“Is that your car? You’re from Kentucky?” Petra said it, feeling that since Tom had spoken, his companion should not sidle past, mute.
“Well, you know, this year we thought we’d just take off driving, see what we found along the way.”
“Actually, same thing. Only Petra’s a native.”
“Petra Motley.”
“Tom Wilmot.”
“Here’s Jill. I’m Phil.”
“Williams.” Jill said, smiling, happy to re-air an old laugh-getter.
And then, with a “Have fun!”, and a “You look out for yourselves, now,” they stuck to their plans, the Williamses taking off. Petra and Tom squinted into the wind; chancing it, at a thunderclap, as far as a dip below the tree roots.
“You really want to? I wonder if it’s safe enough.”
“No… I mean I don’t care. If we stop at a restaurant, whatever town we come to, and we spot the Williamses…”
“What? You think they’ll say, it’s those people, damn it?”
She laughed. But a second ago, there hadn’t been a what, particularly. Now a realization. “They won’t know about us. If we share a table. We’re not a couple. What are we doing together?”
They buckled in, and Tom said, “Your mother thought you could just change your name, put on an act, in a way…?”
This was a definite dodge. She was happy, it was easy to like Tom…she trusted him, felt no fear riding through the middle of nowhere with him. But his being here was becoming unignorably odd.
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Celebrated
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Celebrated (part sixteen)
(2019, Stephanie Foster)