Dreaming of Brooklyn

Carrie left yesterday, right after the yelling.

Last night, I dreamed about her arriving in Brooklyn, dragging her suitcase like it was a reluctant Great Dane, frazzled and wrinkled and tired and--scared?

No, not scared. Carrie doesn’t get scared.

I could hear the hitch of her key as it jiggled in the lock and the crack of the door when it opened. Vapors from someone’s tamale down the hall curled in my nose with intentions of staying awhile, and I got my first glimpse of freedom.

I saw her new apartment as a giant blank canvas, white empty walls she could sprawl her life across. I saw her, ethereal in the neon Brooklyn moonlight, take a paintbrush in one hand and draw a tentative line, alone but firm in the middle of everything--a good start.

***

The next morning comes hot and sticky, draining all the poetry out of what I remember.

Mom and Dad sit reading the paper as if posing for a photographer, as if he has instructed them to act naturally and this is the best they can give him.

“Hey,” I murmur on my way to the kitchen.

Mom glances at the clock, so I do too and see that it’s slightly past noon.

Does it matter? I wonder, staring at the open refrigerator, and decide that no, it doesn’t.

All that matters is--use to be--Carrie, and she’s gone, packed up her guitar and typewriter to blaze a trail as the first ever white female Southern gothic poet-slash-playwright-slash-folksinger to hang her shingle in Brooklyn. And make a success of it.

“Anybody can simply go to Brooklyn,” she tells me a week ago, before the first rumblings start but only just. Inspecting a pair of panties, she throws them aside and fits Leaves of Grass into the space instead. “It takes an artist to survive. More: to thrive.”

I nod, as if nobody in the history of forever has said the same thing, and watch the live end of her cigarette bob dangerously close to the eschewed pile of nylon. “You should be fine, then.”

“Yes.” Simple acknowledgment of the facts, no fear or gratitude or hidden self-sabotage. She really will be fine.

Mom and Dad don’t believe that. Carrie is--use to be--the bright one, the rational one, the one with the most potential, the one destined for boring, everyday greatness.

Not me. I just have a pretty face.

They don’t know she writes poems in all capitals to signify her anger (at what? She hasn’t figured it out yet) or morbid plays starring a ghost and its lover. They don’t know she strums Bob Dylan tunes on an unplugged Stratocaster to signify her oppression (not many people realize, but oppression runs rampant through the family bloodline).

I do--I know.

They don’t know she drinks and smokes and swears (although I have been tried on all three charges) and will fit into the Brooklyn grit like a keg at a frat party.

I do--I know. She’ll be fine.

A can sits half open on the top shelf; I dig it out and take a swallow for her. It’s diet Coke, not booze, but, bitter and flat and jumping in my stomach, it’ll do.

Wading back through the silence, I notice Mom and Dad haven’t breathed, seemingly, from their positions. All this celebrating is wearing me out, so I go back to my room to steal a nap.

***

I saw her again, this time perched on a stool outside her new building, exposed to a glaring day.

The heat showed itself in little metal winks on her guitar’s pickups, tiny smudges on her typewriter’s keys, clear pearls of sweat on her fingers as she banged out a blues progression in time to her new verse. Clackity-clackity-DOO wah-clackity-clackity-DOO wah-

A man wearing headphones walked by, bobbing to the wrong rhythm. As he passed her open case, his hand slipped out of his pocket and spilled a few quarters just deliberately enough to show his generosity. She stopped, mid-sentence and mid-turnaround, to squat and count her earnings.

Viewing her from behind, I wished she had packed slightly differently, because Walt Whitman wasn’t doing a damn thing to cover her ass.

***

Knuckles, sprinkled on glass, wake me an unknown amount of time later.

“Roy?” I say sleepily to the window.

A head appears; I recognize the curls. And besides, who else is it ever? “Hey.”

Stumbling slightly, I go to the window, expose a foot of mosquito screen, and lean on the sash in the way that he’s told me brings out my eyes. “What’s up?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Yeah?” Only dimly do I notice night draped around him like a velvet veil. “So, do you want to come in?”

“Um.” He glances around with an uncertainty that makes me wonder. I like the fact that I have no idea what he’s thinking most of the time. “Actually, I was wondering if you maybe want to go down to the Dairy Queen, or something.”

“At…” Holy shit, my alarm clock has been running sprints again. “--midnight? Doesn’t it close at like nine?”

“Nine-thirty, on Fridays.” A ring of keys orbits his index finger. “But I know this guy.”

I smile, really smile, for the first time in a couple days. “Let me change before we go.”

“Does your offer still stand?”

Through the dark, hope shines through the thick layer of manufactured lust on his face, and I lift the screen.

He scrambles through and hit’s the floor just as I peel off my pajama top. “Wow. Nice view.”

“Oh!” I giggle and throw my shirt at him, thinking of a genetically connected bare ass sparkling in the Brooklyn noon.

A cool finger traces the dimple on my knee. “You’re so pretty, Dahlia.”

Something inside of me blooms a little every time he says that. For lack of words (“Right back at ya, kid”?), I lean down and touch his lips with mine; they taste like cherry Chapstick.

We’ve never done anything serious, and my modest underwear covers more than my swimsuits can aspire to, but sex crackles in the air between us tonight.

Unsure, I shimmy into a pair of jeans and the first shirt I grab from the closet and listen--it’s not gone, just…muted. Packed away. “Okay.”

He ushers me, then himself, through the window I leave open. “Are your parents…?”

I shrug and take his hand. “They’re usually asleep by like ten. Usually.”

Fingers flow through and around mine in an extra-tight grip. “Do they--would they--care?”

“They would definitely--” I stop and reassess. “Well. Actually. Since yesterday they probably thing I’m the sensible one.” Damn. That’s no good.

As he laughs appreciatively, we stroll across the grass thickets to the sidewalk outlining the one main road in town, and I take a breath of air that doesn’t reek of soured expectations. It’s refreshing.

“So Carrie really hauled ass to Brooklyn, huh?” Only he is allowed to break such a silence.

“Yup.” Our feet move in unison. I try to break the pattern, succeeding in jostling our shoulders, but after a few seconds we naturally fall back into sync. I decide I like it. “Did you hear the yelling?”

“No, but Josh did.”

“It was bad.”

“That’s what he told me.”

We walk along without words for a bit.

“Was it really just--spur of the moment, kind of thing?”

“Mom and Dad though so.” I see their faces, so angry and astonished as to seem like chiseled masks, and a tiny tremor skates up my spine. “She always talked about it, though, talked about going up there to break into print after graduation.” And to fund the self-publishing of her first book of poetry, she plans on hustling her musical talent. Can’t say the girl isn’t prepared. “I guess they thought it was a phase.”

“She’ll make it, I bet.”

I appreciate his optimism so much that I won’t let him in on the odds against that. “Yeah. She’ll be fine.”

“Look,” he says abruptly, fishing into a pocket and tugging me to a halt. “I know this is probably a weird time and I was going to do something hokey at the Dairy Queen like put it in your milkshake or whatever but then what if you swallowed it and I can’t wait because what if you decide to run off to Brooklyn too so Dahlia will you accept this promise ring from me?”

The thin gold band is almost lost in his palm. I can make out two shining white pinheads, which might very well be artificial pearls. Quarters flashing in the sun--the image streaks across my consciousness and is gone. Roy is still babbling.

“--and you’ll only have to wear this one for a year, maybe even nine months because Josh got me a job at the Dairy Queen as the third shift scoop boy so I can save up for a real engagement ring by the time we finish school--”

The smells of tamales and aftershave and hot concrete and cool grass swirl around and around, around and around…

“--Dahlia?” Tears? Do I hear tears in his voice? “Dahlia, could you say something? Please?”

Snatches of Brooklyn dreams fade away until all that is left is him, standing nervously in front of me, offering a future.

I take the ring, slide it on, and pull him closer than we’ve ever been.

***

The last time, she noticed me.

We sat in a waiting room, in mismatched spindly chairs shoved between artificial plants in pots and bookcases groaning ostentatiously under literature. It intimidated her, that claustrophobically large, bookish space; I had the feeling it was suppose to.

She was dressed in the best gathered change could buy while still paying the rent, and in her lap rested a clump of typewritten pages. I watched her fingers drum, and drop the occasional spot of blood, on the top words.

Her name was called. She stood and looked utterly unsurprised when I caught her eye. With her manuscript, she made a small beckoning gesture. I returned it by waving my hand so the ring winked.

No regret, except perhaps of not seeing each other for awhile, passed between us as we nodded and I watched her walk through an inner door.

***

In the morning, I wake up to Roy’s ring glittering dully and a total sense of peace.

I do--I know. She’ll be fine.