A Death of Her Own

      Budding branches of the spring rosebushes swayed against the woman’s dark hair. Gently, so as not to awaken her.

      Sparrows, mourning doves, and wrens, beginning their dawn search of the park, silently detoured around the stranger lying so still.

      Light breezes ruffled the collar of the woman’s blouse which was tucked neatly into her skirt, which was in turn pulled down to cover her knees. One arm lay across her chest, the other at her side, pale fingers mixing with dry clumps of earth.

      So in this way she rested. Open eyes reflecting both the blue of the cloudless sky and the glow of the rising desert sun.

      She didn’t know how to explain it. Pictures flashed through her head, getting all mixed up with the words she was trying to put together, and then, the man kept saying, take your time, take your time.

      “I was, uh, riding through the park (those heavy limbs of the old eucalyptus trees were hanging low above me). On my bike (birthday present to me from me. Forty-six years. Can’t be). I do this most days. Early. Earlier in the summer. It’s so hot even then. But not too bad right now……I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

      “Take your time,” he said again.

      “The park. I was almost through the park. And I saw the woman. Lying there. In with the roses. And the dirt. I got closer. And you know, I wanted to tell her this was not a good place to pass out. In a public park. Next to the police station. But, maybe it was.”

      “Was what?”

      “I know I’m rambling. I do that sometimes when I’m trying to explain. I saw how very neat the woman was. Clean. Even with all that dirt. Neat. But so still. I wanted her to move. Just brush the hair out of her eyes. Blink, Anything. I waited and watched. There was nothing.”

      “Then you came here?” the officer asked.

      “Then I came here,” she repeated.

      “Not a great way to start the day.”

      Jessie Smith nodded and waited some more.

      Like a scene in slow motion, everything changed. Images flowing into images. Only now, Jessie was outside, and the two people who began this day, the watcher and the watched, became many.

      There were the professionals, police and medical, and there were the plainly curious, whispering, questioning, some turned on. And at the center of all this attention was the one person who didn’t care. Her all-alone body was surrounded by people doing what was expected - taking photographs, putting up the familiar yellow tapes, measuring.

      Still, she rested. Even when the park sprinklers suddenly came to life. The water sprayed lightly across her body, wetting the white shirt, laying a shiny film over her bare legs and arms, falling drop by drop from dark lashes. Her damp hair no longer moved with the breeze. The dirt on her fingers oozed into mud. Her open eyes still mirrored the sky.

      A hoarse voice, wrapped in a navy windbreaker, yelled, “God bless it, guys, we’ve got a body here. Turn off the damn sprinklers. Now!”

      And Jessie, sitting across the crowded street on the bench by the Dairy Queen, breathed - at last, a benediction. Of sorts.

      Workers were already heading into the DQ, open year round here in the desert. Where she had grown up, in northern Iowa, the store opened in May, if there wasn’t a late spring snow storm, and closed the middle of September, unless there was an early fall storm.

      Jessie looked up and saw the world moving on. People were filling up at the gas station; getting coffee at Circle K. They were driving past, slowing down, pointing, is that a body? It is a body. Looks like a woman. Think she’s dead? Oh, yeah, she’s dead. And Jessie wanted to yell, yes, folks she is. And what are you doing here? I’m supposed to be here. I’m not like you. I’m the finder. I’m the witness. The responsible citizen. I have to be here. Go away. And she was almost overcome by the fierce protective feelings she had for this unknown woman.

      And it was only eight in the morning.

      She kept watch until they placed the woman in the ambulance. No flashing red lights or sirens for the lady of the roses. Jessie stood up, arms and legs stiff and unresponsive, as she walked to her bike.

      And even though there was no one close enough to hear, she said, “I’m leaving and so are you. I wonder. I wonder who’s missing you, asking for you? Who dressed you with such care? How did you die? Who was so desperate, leaving you in such a public place for the most private of moments? Why when I look at you, do I see me?”

      Done now with watching and tired of waiting and finding no answers to the questions, she pedaled off, angling through the remaining cars and turned onto Main Street.

      The paramedics had determined she was dead.

      The cordoned area filled with people; officers searching the park, two plainclothes investigators doing a visual assessment; photographers taking pictures. Through all this, she was not moved, until the medical examiner arrived from the county seat forty miles away. When he finished his exam, the woman’s body was turned, her clothes and the ground beneath her checked. And finally, she - the body, the item of evidence, the key to the case - was lifted into a bag, which was zipped, sealed and signed off by the examiner.

      By midmorning, the park seemed normal, although the birds stayed high up in the trees and a small section of the rose garden lay trampled in the dirt.

      Main Street.

      Says what it is. Or was, because this Main Street had a habit of moving around in trying to keep up with the town’s crawling progress through the years.

      Old timers remembered Main Street as the dirt road with cowhands coaxing herds through choking brown clouds. They said that the only thing that grew in the town was the cemetery. Younger timers recalled bouncing along a pitted gravel Main Street, past the gas station, the bar, and the coffee shop and stopping for real homemade apple pie. New timers saw Main Street as a five lane paved road, leading to big box stores, outlet malls, and drive-throughs catering to almost every taste obsession.

      This was a town that started south of the railroad tracks, gained a little confidence, and went uptown to the other side, then kept on going into the empty reaches stretching north.

      Future planners had predicted the town would go west to the setting sun, but people in this part of the country lived where they wanted to, and they wanted to live close to the nearby big city and ten minutes away from the interstate that would take them there in increasing speeds.

      In the beginning, so the word went, there were the Indians, and the Mexicans, who understood how to live with the desert, in thick-walled adobe dwellings, and knew the dangers: if it grows, it sticks; if it crawls, it bites. Then came the miners, the farmers, and soon the Easterners, which to the natives included everyone outside the state boundaries to the north and east.

      They flocked to the desert for health, for sun, for warmth, and for status; bringing with them necessities such as grass, mulberry trees, and lovely cold weather plants that folded and died their first day in the unyielding desert soil. Here, only the tough survived - plants and people - and the tough were thorny, they bristled, they were often a little rough around the edges and seldom smelled like lilacs.

      Pioneers.

      And that’s what we were back then, Jessie realized, as she rode through new streets, past bigger two-story houses with western exposures, higher gates and fewer trees.

      She and Winfield Smith and their baby boy had traveled from the East looking for a promised land of walk-around room, schools where kids weren’t mugged for their milk money, story hours at the library, family pizza places, and clean air.

      And here, they found a small, colorless desert town, sitting right in the middle of way too much space. It came with daily dust storms that blotted out the horizon, heat hovering over one hundred for months, no book stores, and one movie theater featuring a continuous martial arts film festival; but, there were incredible sunsets, a story hour at the library every Wednesday, a good school, and friends.

      She almost rode into the curb when the memory of her first day flashed onto her memory screen. Picture: supermarket, checkout, smiling clerk. “Hon,” the smiling clerk said, “This lettuce doesn’t look too good. I’ll hold things up while you go back and get a better one. Okay?”

      Jessie had just arrived from New York City, where store lettuce was served up in plastic-covered Styrofoam trays. This was a fresh head of lettuce that looked great to her. What did she know? She’d been away from Iowa and homegrown vegetables for a lot of years. Then, immediately it came to her - Jess, this is some sort of test for newcomers. Cautiously she had placed her new choice on the counter as the people waiting in line leaned in to see what she had selected. The clerk looked at the lettuce, then at her, and said, “There, that’s better.” Jessie sighed; there was a god and she had passed her test.

      Months later, in a letter to her best friend in Manhattan, she described an insight into her new life:

      “When it rains here, which is really rare, people stand outside, letting the rain rinse through them, filling all their empty corners, rounding their body edges, like water through a dry sponge. But the rain never lasts long enough for the thirst. And the worst times are when you hear huge rolls of thunder, see the lightning, and can actually smell the rain, which never touches the ground. The air is so hot, the water simply shrivels up on the way down to the waiting earth. The fake storm is over and gone in minutes.”

      Her friend wrote back, “Sounds a lot like sex.”

      She missed her.

      Home. And there was a note.

      “Hope your ride was good. Beautiful day. Please don’t overdo. See you tonight. Love bunches, W.”

      From Win. Her eyes stopped at the ‘don’t overdo’. The doctors in the city had cautiously explained, “We don’t know the cause and there’s no cure as yet, but these things change constantly, you understand. The condition is chronic and it is progressive. So, for now, Jess, take your medicine, get plenty of rest, and, if possible, avoid stress when you can.” Since then, her world had changed full circle.

      She had been numb and uninformed, had gone on the internet, found information, but not enough. She had told Win and their son, JJ. Both asked so many questions, too many - what does this mean, what can we do, what do you need, do you hurt, and more.

      When she had called a cousin, there had been a short silence, then in a hushed voice, usually reserved for museums, church and funerals, the older woman had asked, “Did the doctors tell you this was terminal?”

      “No!”

      “Really? All the people I’ve known with this are -- gone.”

      On and on.

      Jessie did manage to tell her not to buy a special black dress just yet; she might be around for awhile. There was relief with just a shadow of disappointment in her, “Of course you will, dear.”

      And, Jessie said to herself, “I guess it’s only important that I think so.”

      Belledora Jayne, stopped in a line of cars going nowhere, tapped out a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel and longed for a cigarette. Just one. Just two puffs. Five weeks, four days, twenty minutes. But who’s counting?

      She checked her watch. Seven thirty.

      And today, she was actually on time for work; no earth-shattering catastrophes with the kids; her long brown hair looked combed; shoes matched; slacks only slightly wrinkled; gas in the car; glasses and keys where they should be, but rarely were.

      “I knew I should have gone back to bed. Day that starts out good can only go bad.” She came from a family that believed if today was bad, tomorrow would most likely be worse.

      Across the street, she saw Jessie on a bench, lanky legs tucked underneath as she bent forward as though studying the ground in front of her. Her head lifted, their eyes met, Jessie nodded and gestured toward the park.

      Dora turned slowly and right away the single object in her line of sight was a woman. Lying in the dirt. No one touched her, or held her. People passed around her body, talking. moving things, busy. She could have been invisible, this woman.

      Cars moved, and so did she. Now not thinking about cigarettes, kids, and car keys. No, it was all about that woman. A woman all alone in a world of strangers.

      Dora worked in the business office of the largest daily newspaper in the county. There was only one other paper. Her desk, buried in the middle of stacks of old newspapers and boxes of contracts, was a mess, a reflection she felt of her life. Surrounded by clutter on all sides, she told herself that at least her mind was organized. Some days more than others.

      Forty years old. Divorced the last four of those. Two kids, one of each. And yes, there was more to the resume, but at this moment, that seemed to cover it.

      “There was a lot going on in the park. What have you guys heard?” she asked an editor over coffee.

“Yeah, they found a body. Early. Next to the police station. Convenient. Was a woman. Clothes on. No violence apparent. No ID, they say. Did have a silver band on her wedding finger. So, maybe married. Maybe not. Looks like someone drove up and dumped her there. You see her?”

      “Mostly the traffic part,” Dora said. “That’s all.” As she walked away, the scene played itself over again, repeat and repeat. The woman. All alone. Why? Jessie might know.

      In a world of born-again redheads, she was the real thing.

      Unruly hair with an attitude, matched to porcelain-like skin, highlighted with a handful of hated freckles, that was Cady Shivers. The same Cady who would bite her lower lip - something she did without thinking - when she was thinking.

Which was now as she pushed through the heavy door leading to the cool darkness of the Virginia Café. Waitress, mom, and student, and soon-to-be wife. ”We’ll see,” she would answer to the last.

      “Anybody go past the park?” she asked Kim.

      Blank stare.

      “They found a body there this morning. A woman.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “Did you see it?”

      She nodded. “Walking down from Main. She was just lying there in the rose bushes, alone. She was dead, you know? I think I kind of spaced out, ‘cause all I remember, and this is dumb, is the soles of her shoes weren’t scuffed up, like they were brand new. I mean, never worn.”

      This all came out in a breathy voice of a twenty-two-year-old who was young and old at the same time and who looked at the world through eyes that never seemed to expect much.

     

      Virginia Café.

      In the days of gravel streets, it was known as Virginia’s Café. Through the years, the letter ‘s’ and the apostrophe had faded from the sign and from memory, as had the identity of the original Virginia.

      Gib, the current owner, liked to say, “Well, lucky we didn’t lose the ‘i’ and the ‘a’ too. Wouldn’t have any customers at all.”

      A compactly built, fiftyish man with a proud head of curly salt and pepper hair, he had experienced the world on many levels, his face a creased roadmap to been-there and done-that.

      The Café had once been the center of the downtown wheel; the building dating back to a time when it had been the place where families came to eat their Sunday meal after church; where children had their birthday parties year after year; and dates huddled in dark corners after proms. This was where marriages had been made and broken; hearts pledged eternally again and yet again; business deals had been sealed with a handshake; and tourists who asked locals where to go had been given directions that didn’t lead to the town dump.

      But, as Gib said, “That was then, folks, and this is now. And, you better live in the time you’re in.”

      Now, the downtown heartbeat had slowed as the town moved north and east. Bits and pieces of the downtown had disappeared. A snip here. A snip there. Like a giant unseen pair of scissors cutting away corners of a photograph.

      Café business, though good, was mostly made up of familiar faces, along with people passing through on an hour stopover, waiting for the next bus to the next town, and looking for relief from the quick-fix food too familiar on the road.

      The building was divided into two parts, both long and narrow, with high ceilings of painted and repainted patterned tin. Lazily circling overhead fans added a swishing background beat to the clatter of voices, dishes, and traffic. Booths were high-backed solid wood, polished with care and wear. Small shaded lamps and white vases of silken violets were on each table, symbols of a different age.

      Two o’clock.

      This was the slow and low time.

      At a back table, four waitresses took a break.

      “The man is killing me and I’m way too old for this,” Zillah told the others with a tired sigh. She had been the mainstay at the café for over fifteen years, knew everyone, and most of the town’s ill-kept secrets.

      “So how is Doyle killing you?” Kim asked. “I mean you two have been together, how many years? You have three children. Grandchildren, even.”

      “It’s his graveyard shift. He gets home at five-thirty in the morning and I have to be to work at seven. And that dear man, he wants to relax. You know what I’m saying? Ten minutes later, he’s asleep and I’m staring at the ceiling while my nerves climb the walls.”

      “Ten minutes! What takes him so long?” Brenda practically hooted. “He must take off his socks!”

      Nancy laughed and put in, “Reminds me of a joke. Know the difference between a boyfriend and a husband? Forty-five minutes.”

      “Come on, Zillah,” said Cady, “how can you complain? After all these years, you still have a sweet man who wants to be with you.”

      “I know, child, and you’re right. But sometimes I find myself longing for a candlelight dinner that I haven’t cooked, some Frank Sinatra, and time.”

      “You’re talking romance and who can argue with that,” said Nancy. “Being romantic with your man is wonderful, but why, sooner or later, do I always end up washing his dirty socks?”

      At the same time, in the other side of the restaurant, Gib sat with four of his downtown pals.

      “I do so love the sound of women laughing like that, but I’m curious as to what man’s behavior is setting them off.”

      “Women together do tend to get loud,” Roy said.

      “True,” Gib returned, “where men in a group do not tend to get real smart. Anyway, I’d bet all that has to do with love and sex somehow. They do like comparing their men.”

      Fred, a pharmacist and youngest of the five, asked, “Why do women make such a big deal of everything, especially sex? You just do it, you both feel better, and you get on with your life.”

      “Yeah,” Carl said, “and it all gets so damn complicated. Foreplay, what is that all about? Sounds like what they’d call a pitcher warming up in the bullpen.”

      “And don’t forget rule number forty-three, you cannot fall asleep,” said Gib. “You’re supposed to talk after. Right? It’s one in the morning. You’ve had a couple beers and she says let’s talk. Boys, might as well take off your shoes and run barefoot through a minefield blindfolded.”

      The laughter that came was good.

      “They’re having a real time over there,” Cady said with a smile. “Why is it when men get together they talk men stuff? And a bunch of women always end up talking about men?”

      Zillah said, “Hon, they talk about us; don’t think they don’t And they talk about sex, same as us. We are a source of great unknown concern.”

      “Oh, yes,” Nancy laughed back. “We may treat sex more serious, but they can’t. For them, sex is all about performance and, you know, ‘how’d I do, baby’, and ‘whose is bigger’, and even worse, it’s about getting involved. A mystery or a trap either way.”

      “So it’s easier to mostly fuck like bunny rabbits and hop away,” Carmen finished.

      Gib locked the outside gate and stood on the street corner, listening to the night sounds. Eight o’clock. Darkness broken only by street lights, a flash of neon from the bar down the block, and lights flickering on and off from the Lorelei Hotel near the tracks.

      He could remember a wide-awake downtown at night. People leaving the movie theater, having a late dinner or an early drink or last minute shopping. Mostly on Fridays and Saturdays.

      The theater had closed years before. The boarded-up windows of the deserted grocery store were plastered with old carnival flyers, and the neighborhood where people had once really known and watched out for each other, where sons had often followed fathers in the family trade, and the bus station had been a place of community pride with its then modern design, that neighborhood was gone.

      But, the life of any neighborhood is short, he thought. Depends a whole lot on what the outsiders bring in and how fast progress has its way.

      The last bus of the night lumbered past as he got into his truck for the drive home. Gib shrugged, his time would come, too.

Body Found in City Park

Identity Not Known

      The body of an unidentified woman was found this morning in Hansen Park, according to police department spokesman, Lieutenant Kent Powell.

      “There were no witnesses as to what happened there. The victim was reported at 7:25 a.m. by a citizen biking through the park. There was no immediate apparent cause of death.”

      When asked if the death was possibly a homicide, the Lieutenant said, “We found no signs of violence on the scene. The preliminary walk-through leans toward this being a natural death. But, as you know, we cover the scene; it’s the medical examiner who takes care of the victim and that will be his call.

      “However,” he added, “the woman did not place herself in the park, someone else did. And this person we need to find, along with the identity of the victim.”

      The county medical examiner’s report will be available in several days, he said.

      Lieutenant Powell requested that anyone with knowledge of the victim’s identity, contact the police department or county sheriff’s office.

      A single red rose in a glass vase was on the kitchen table. No card and no greeting, but neither necessary.

      In the beginning.

      The beginning was New York City. It was Win. Winfield. His folks had figured a last name of Smith called for something special in a first name and with his dad being a Civil War buff, Winfield it was. Win said this was the only thing saving him from mocking looks when he checked into motels,

      In the beginning.

      The note had said:

            ‘I see your face in every face I meet

            This is the first day of love………..’

      Those were Win‘s words, part of a poem he had written to Jessie on her first birthday in New York, and presented to her along with a dozen red roses, in a small, dark bar on First Avenue with strangers looking on. That poem and the roses had decided her life. Everything seemed simple then..

      In the beginning.

      Twenty-seven years ago, she had been trying to balance small pink icing roses on a tilting cake. She was sick, alone, and probably a little crazy, dusting, ironing, and cooking. Finally, at three in the morning, she had fallen asleep on the floor with a rolled up towel under her head; a friend from out of town was sleeping in her bed.

      The next afternoon, it was a Saturday, she found herself sitting in the cramped bathroom of a large Madison Avenue church, chain smoking cigarettes and wondering just how crazy she really was. She’d thought about running away, but had already done that from her Midwestern hometown, and where would she go?

      An hour later, carrying that one red rose, she, tearfully and literally, tripped down an aisle to an altar and married a hung over man wearing a funereal gray pinstriped suit.     

      Today was their anniversary.

      As she sat with coffee to send off her daily e-mail to their son, JJ, memories, both large and trivial, crowded each other, wanting to be heard.

      There was the first office Christmas party where Win, new to marriage and forgetful of first names, kept introducing her to everyone as his wife -- Mrs. Smith.

      Back then, he drank, only on weekends, but religiously and regularly. Back then, she had believed this was temporary and somehow charming.

      She would wake during the night to hear his drunken, yet overly polite, voice challenging some long-distance operator to locate his best friend from fifth grade, or his first prom date. She lived somewhere in Colorado, he said, and how much information do you need? Or find his old Army buddy, John C., whose last name he was almost sure was Walker, and he lived in Texas.

      The first year had been unbelievable, and not in a happy-ever-after way. They both cringed when remembering. Two almost strangers, stubborn, and used to their own way, camped out in a studio apartment with two canvas chairs and a broken-down loveseat sofa bed they’d rescued from the street. Easy enough now to joke that if anyone in the entire world would have taken either of them in, the marriage would have been over before it began. But there were no offers from family or friends and the world kept on turning, secure in the knowledge that at least these two were off the street.

      Then along came JJ; sort of expected, but totally unexpected in his impact on their lives.

      She had been so very pregnant; she had joked her stomach came to the corner sixty seconds before the rest of her. She was huge -- couldn’t sit for long, couldn’t waddle far, would get high centered in the bed until Win came to help.

      One morning, on her daily walk, a man came out of the dry cleaners next door, stopped, slowly looked her up and down, and then said, “My place or yours?” And they both exploded with laughter. That was a good day.

      And, yes, Jessie had actually claimed, and been reminded of ever after, that a baby would not change their lives in any major way; this baby would learn to fit in.

      “Oh, Jess,” Win would say, “that certainly happened. Let’s follow the facts. Start with a smart, talented Manhattan magazine writer, used to interviewing celebrities and flying to Washington to cover politicos; that’s you, babe, in case you’ve forgotten. Along comes child. And within four years, said writer is working part time for a weekly newspaper in a small town in the middle of the desert. Nope. No changes there.”

      But, of course, that child was JJ and he had changed her life every which way, every day.

      From that time on, Jessie’s identity was Win’s wife, JJ’s mom, Jessie Smith, and there were momentary flashes when she wondered where the girl from Iowa, who went to New York City to be a writer had disappeared,

      When she had been pregnant, all she seemed to see on the streets and in the stores were other pregnant women, and now that she had this other thing inside, would it be the same? She would be in a restaurant and recognize others with a similar condition and they would pass on some secret signal. Or, was it that since everyone’s on their way to dying, more or less, sooner or later, that no one stands out in the crowd? As someone said to her, we’re all going to reach the finish line. But she wished that there was some etiquette to this.

      But, back to her son.

      The third night in the hospital.

      She was too tired and the baby looked so beat up. The nurses had nicknamed him The Buster in the nursery. She never asked why. Birth isn’t easy for any concerned though it’s usually the mother’s story one hears. Holding this baby against her knees that late hour, his eyes locked onto hers, searching. And, without warning, there it was, complete and undeniable, a love she had never known and could never have suspected. She would be there for him, always. With this pledge came a ferocious spirit, as the mother became an alpha female, intruders beware.

      Jessie had never shared that night. She knew there were a few things in life that cannot be told; they are meant for one, or two.

      No one had sat her down and in detail explained how all-consuming this being a mother thing was. She had had romantic images of sitting under a summer tree reading while the ‘babe’ slept or played contentedly at her feet on the blanket. The only book she had had time for - and they had bought his and hers copies- was one on baby care. She and Win would sit up during the deep and alone hours of the night and without thinking ask the other, “What does your book say?”, until one endless night she cried, “Where’s the owner’s manual when you need one?”

      As she said to Dora, who had two kids of her own and most of the same confusion, moms are responsible for their children’s happiness, with their being able to get along with others, with their stability. “We’re supposed to love them unconditionally and then know exactly when to back off.”

      “It’s too much for me,” Dora claimed, “and I’m plunging into the teen years, the black hole from which there is no return for mothers. We need sabbaticals. How about six months on a beach, no kids allowed, or a stool in front of a slot machine with a constantly full cup of quarters? Why is it, Jess, that we’re supposed to know how everyone in the family thinks or feels, but can’t even figure out our own mind?”

      “Too easy, Dee. At least for me. I lost mine somewhere along the way.”

      As the years came on faster, Jessie’s memories took on a life of their own.

      There was the dreaded day when she and Win drove JJ four hundred miles for his first year at college. It was harder than his first day at kindergarten when she had sat in the school parking lot, crouched down in the driver’s seat, compulsively eating chocolate chip cookies and hoping for a glimpse of her five-year-old on the playground.

      This, however, was the big time. This was college, and in her mind, the whole campus was a playground -- just lying in wait for her boy.

      After moving bedding, clothes, television, computer with all attachments, CD’s, DVD’s, posters, rug, towels, boxes of garbage bags, ironing board (which he later used as a makeshift sled), and food, into his one-half of a dorm room, the Smith family had stood awkwardly by their car.

      Win had held out his hand and said, “Good luck, son.” And JJ answered with a stiff handshake and, “Thank you, sir.”

      ‘Sir?’ ‘Son?’

      How very civilized! She had been indignant. This was her little boy, the very heart of her, and they were abandoning him to this wilderness with no one to protect him.

      Jessie lifted her mothering arms to hug him, only to watch her son take two steps back, smile, and say, “I love you, mom. You two drive carefully. Give me a call when you get home, okay?”

      And with that, the little boy was gone. With that, the separation that life inflicts began. With that, her heart quietly closed in on itself to cover the emptiness.

      This past year, her east coast best friend’s son had left for college and Jessie wrote her, “How are you surviving this? I found that sitting on the curb across from JJ’s dorm, drinking scotch, helped.” The e-mail back said, “God, how I wish you lived closer. I really need all the laughs I can get.”

      Time grows short.

      Time takes its toll of most love.

      And yet amazingly even now, when at some party, Jessie searched out and found Win, his brown eyes would be looking for her, and there was this inner voice saying, ‘You get to go home with him.’

      Months earlier, when the two were finally alone and she had repeated again the doctor’s words, open ended in the prognosis, Win had, without comment, taken her hand in his and she had followed, had lay beside him on the soft, warm quilt. He had folded himself around her and the clicks had been almost audible as their familiar bodies came together. Missing part to missing part. Puzzle complete.

      “Oh, yes, I’m letting you walk out in that.”

      “Mom, what’s the big deal?”

      “The deal is called school. And unless they’re planning on propping you in some display case like a Barbie doll, I think not.”

      “It’s just a skirt.”

      “In your dreams. It’s too small to pass as a washcloth. How can you possibly sit down, or God forbid, bend over? Change. Now.”

      “Whatever.”

      There it was, the current word of words for thirteen-year-olds, the dismissal of dismissals. She followed her daughter’s stomping retreat down the hall, and tried to picture what she had been like at that age.

      “What do you know? Again mom was right. What goes around does come around.” And as Dora glanced in the mirror before leaving for work, she was expecting to see her mother’s face looking back at her. “This is so unreal,” she muttered, “I’m way too young to be this old.”

      Later, settled into the curbside bench in front of her office, Dora smashed up her lunch bag and took a second draw on her cigarette. Since yesterday, and with

concentrated effort, she had come to the decision that she could handle two cigarettes a day, away from home, of course, and only three puffs on each. She was extremely pleased with the planning that had gone into this solution.

      “Hey, lady, you want this camera case and bunny. Fifty cents.”

      The grizzled man in front of her was outfitted for a northern winter, complete with overcoat, cap and ear muffs. His soiled canvas bag brimmed with trash can finds, including the case and a mistreated stuffed pink bunny.

      “I don’t think so,” she said.

      “Why not? You don’t got fifty cents?”

      “I’m eating out of a brown paper bag. On the street.”

      “What a slum,” the man hissed. “What a poor little town with nothing but poor little people. This could be the best town in the state. Look around you. But nobody’s got fifty lousy cents. What a load!” And with a shake of his head, he hobbled on his way.

      “Eat something.”

      “Mom, I’m around food all day at the Café. Believe me when I say the thrill is gone.”

      “Do it for your old gray-haired mother,” she said with her familiar chuckle.

      Cady sat down at the family’s kitchen table. “I don’t see any gray; you are the youngest grandmother in town.”

      “Then talk with me. You’re always in such a rush - to work, to class, to being a mom yourself. What’s going on in that red head of yours?”

      Her daughter frowned and bit her lip. “I want something. And that’s the problem because I just don’t know what that something is exactly.”

      “You’re only twenty-two, Cady. I still don’t for sure know what I want to do when I grow up.”

      “Mom, I have a daughter. My time to do is getting limited.”

      “Baby, my whole life I’ve been someone’s daughter, wife, or mother. And please understand, I’m not complaining; wouldn’t give any of that back. But, just once in awhile, I wish I’d taken time to get to know me better. What I’m talking around is save some time for you. It’s too much to try and take on the whole big world. Lead your life when you can; don’t let it lead you. All the other will come soon enough.”

      “I’m trying, mom, I am. But there’s my own little girl. Her father wants me to marry him and move away to some place I’ve never even been. And I love him. I do.”

With a deep sigh, and not expecting an answer, she asked, “Why is it I always seem to be walking through water?”

      “So this much I can tell you after a cursory look,” the medical examiner said, “I’d say her death was natural. Possibly heart. I’ll know for certain after the autopsy and after the toxicology report comes back. She died several hours before being found in the park. Difficult to narrow down as she was moved more than once and was outside for a time.

      “Her clothes were put on her by somebody else. After she died. They’re clean. No laundry marks, or labels of any kind.

      “No tattoos No wounds or needle marks., Only scar’s from an old appendectomy.

      “I’d guess she was in her early fifties. Hands show wear; nails were short but neat. Only substance under the nails was dirt, which I assume is from the park. And, of course, we’ll test that.

      “She appears peaceful, but the facial muscles usually relax in death so that’s no clue. Somebody took special care of her. She wasn’t thrown out of a car; she was arranged.

      “The thing is, Jack. She looks like a woman who’d be really embarrassed with all this attention. I know, not much to go on yet. Talk to you when we learn more.”

      Dora, in a booth by the front window when Jessie walked in, met her with “What’s with the woman in the park? No one at the paper seems to know much, but you, sweetie, you were there.”

      “I found her.”

      “You what?”

      “I was doing my bike thing, through the park, and it was early. And there she was. And I found her,” Jessie said again. “Beginning, middle, no end. That’s about all I know.”

      “Found who?” Cady joined in.

      “Jess found that woman in the park yesterday. You heard?”

      “Saw her. Just a little bit. Who is she?”

      “One person knows, that’s for sure. The person who put her there. She was dead before.”

      “There were all those people milling around and yet she seemed so awfully alone,” Cady said.

      “She didn’t have any ID. Just a ring on her wedding finger,” Dora added. “Wait. Oh, God. Oh, no. A married woman abandoned. How could this happen?” Then quickly she said, “Sorry, sorry, that is so wrong. This is not about me. Which doesn’t make it any easier to handle.”

      “Dora, my freaky friend, at least you’re still breathing, still walking and talking, and still bitching,” Jessie said across the table.

      “Yes, and I’m very talented at one of those. That’s what I’ve been told; more than once, if you can believe it. What can I say, it’s a gift.”

      Cady asked both abruptly, “Why is it that women are always saying they’re sorry? My mom does, you just did, and me, too. It comes tumbling out without my even thinking about it. ‘I’m sorry about the meat loaf. I’m sorry the car broke down. I’m sorry it’s raining.’ I’m sorry it’s raining? Come on, like that’s my fault - it’s raining.”

      “I did that yesterday,” Jessie said. “With the police. I kept repeating, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’. Stupid. I’d just found a dead woman lying in the park and I’m apologizing to the cops for bothering them. What is that?”

      “That, ladies, is our DNA. We are each and everyone of us conceived with a ‘sorry’ chip. We are responsible for the woes of the world,” Dora said flatly. “And since we are the ‘sorry’ creatures, we want to get it into the conversation before anyone else does. It’s inherited, handed down from generation to generation, and it’s bullshit.

      “And now that I’m on a roll, talking about words, maybe someone can enlighten me about what exactly ‘whatever’ means,” she went on seemingly without a breath. “This has to come with a dramatic sigh and a hands-off movement of the shoulders. What have I missed? Annie did ‘whatever’ this morning and I felt like I’d been not so politely excused from her thirteen-year-old life.”

      And Jessie said, “Oh, yes, it’s just that. A verbal slap. One word, and it stops conversation, ends all disagreements. No age limit. Or gender. Right, Cady?”

      “Hey, whatever,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.

      Gib reread the letter and let loose a bemused, “Ha!“.

      “And what’s got you so tickled?” Zillah asked behind him.

      “A Downtown Alliance, that’s what. Someone’s trying to start some sort of business group to shape things up around here.”

      “Alliance of what, for heaven’s sake?”

      “Okay, let’s see exactly what we’ve got downtown,” Gib said. “Add it up. The Café, the newspaper office, Matt’s No-Name Bar, thrift shop next door. We have a mini mart, main business being six-packs and pint bottles. And, of course, there is the Lorelei,” he continued. Then, thinking of the hotel’s location next to the railroad tracks and its by-the-hour special rates, Gib added with his crooked smile, “Well, maybe we’ll pass on the hotel.”

      “Hon, you ever think you and me are getting a little too far along for these games politicians play? We’ve lived a lot of life for the years we’ve collected. I never try to hide the wear, you know, like a lot of women. Got three gray hairs right after I had our second baby. Always thought that was a sign I should have one more. So we did. This is me, Gib. Who I am. For me and mine, it’s good.”

Gib looked down at the slight woman with patient affection as she went on, “They do say it’s not the years that get you, it’s the mileage.”

      And he returned, “I don’t know who ‘they’ are. All I know is I’ve been down a whole lot of roads. The ones I do recall were tough. But, you see, Zillah, I’m not gonna get old. I’ll die before that. I just don’t want to go in the first load.”

      “I think I must be invisible,” Nancy said tiredly. “Can you guys see me? I mean, honestly.”

      “Oh, yeah, you’re here. You’re not getting away that easily. Why?”

      “These people,” she said, gesturing toward the customers, “even some of the regulars. I go up to the table to take an order and they keep talking and they’re talking things I don’t really want to know about. Sometimes it can be funny, but I can’t laugh, because that would mean I was alive and listening. Just usually clear my throat and look away. Other times, it’s so personal, not even their mothers should hear. Especially their mothers.”

      “They may not let on they know you’re a person with hearing, but trust me, if they don’t get that menu or their order isn’t just right, they’ll see you at the top of their lungs, loud and clear, ”Zillah said.

      Cady laid the menus on the table and stood, pad in hand:

      “….so he asked me where I wanted to go on vacation. I said, Las Vegas. When I woke up next morning, there was a one-way bus ticket and he was gone.”

      “More coffee?” Zillah asked the table of three:

      “….I told him my head was knocking against the headboard, and that I was going for an orgasm, not a concussion.”

      “How about dessert?” Nancy said, reading the day’s specials:

      “….all those nice young men sitting in the back of the bus drinking cans of Mountain Dew. I’m sure that can’t be good for them.”

      “Ladies, we are out of the roast turkey, but the roast beef’s very good.”

      “….I’m on my way to visit my daughter, Denise, and her family in San Diego. I usually go there this time of year. Then I go to my son in Oklahoma and later on to my other son in Iowa.”

      “Always on the bus?”

      “Yes, it’s what I can afford, you know.”

      “You must really enjoy traveling around to do that.”

      “No. Not really. I wish I could have a little place somewhere, but the children say I’m too old to live by myself.”

      Refilling water glasses, Nancy heard:

      “….so I told him everyone says I spoil the two of you and I guess that’s true and it’s okay with me. Then he said, ’Well, you’re spoiled, too’. And I said, ’How?’ And he said, and I’m not kidding, ’Well, I’ve let you go your own way most the time.’ Let? What’s with that?”

And from the next table: “I always knew when he was lying; his lips were moving.”

“…..the sex is okay, but he seems sort of small. Know what I mean?”

“Work with it, Angie. I’ve found that a guy with a big penis is like the prettiest girl at the prom. They feel they don’t have to do anything, just show up.”

Zillah shook her head, removed her glasses hanging on the silver chain around her neck, rubbed the worn ridges on her nose, and moved away.

“….Mom, he honestly believes he’s working on our relationship. It’s the one-upsmanship that’s destroying us. I’ve just discovered our views are so different.”

“Connie, who cares what side of the bed you sleep on? Who cares what you have for dinner? If you’re not going to recall something in three months, it just doesn’t matter. When something really, really matters, then you stand your ground.”

“Well, I don’t want to be a ’yes’ person. Mom, you’ve been married for thirty-five years and you’re happy with who you are. I’m still finding that out and so far, the

only person I can have a successful relationship with is me.”

“Why is it always about a man?” Cady said to herself as she passed by.

“Gib, what are these?” Zillah asked, holding up a box of napkins.     

“What do you mean? Those are holiday napkins.”

“Right. Let’s see, we have about twenty St. Patrick’s napkins from two years ago. Christmas ones dated four years ago. Happy New Year from three different years. And, best of all, you collector of all things useless, wedding reception napkins for Don and Suzanne. They got divorced year before last.”

“Zee, you never know.”

“I’m filing these, friend, along with most the other junk you have crammed in these cupboards. Are you like this at home?”

“Me? No way.”

But that was because of his wife. Thirty years, with this one special woman. First the kids, then the grandkids. Where had those months and days gone?

He always kind of wondered what the gang at the Café said about him. They knew he was married, but not much else. He was ever there with the sharp remarks about men and women, words mostly geared to direct talk away from him and on down the line.

      Two lives, kept separate from each other, a decision he had made long ago. Home for him was safe. Many of the other places in his past had been iffy. So far, this separation had worked, and this is how he had survived.

      Late night was best. Home. Everyone where they should be. He would lean over, kiss his wife on the forehead, and slide close, curved against her rounded, warm backside, and let the darkness overtake him.

      It was that brief time just before the sun completely disappeared, when Jessie was going home,. It was also that very time when she felt like dying. This only happened when she was outside and only when she was alone.

      She had read once that most deaths in hospitals occur at five - morning and evening - and she guessed that was when the body would sink down into its lowest ebb. Like the ocean. Moving silently out, leaving smooth, untouched sand and a few shells and seaweed behind. A life beached.

      She decided it must be the desert light. Something from this fragile time between day and night seeping into a waiting brain. These feelings, for her, had increased with age and illness, and now, here, surrounded by the harsh, unrelenting desert, Jessie imagined how painters would covet such an evening. Colors. Peach into an unbelievably deep pink. The soft intensity transformed her familiar world into perfect blackened, cut-out silhouettes. Birds seemingly caught in flight. Leaves trapped mid-flutter. Tall palms stopped as they bent into the last of the light.

      Jessie was driving west. She always seemed to be driving west. And again, she imagined what it would be like to continue on until the front wheels of her old car sank with a final sigh into cold, salty California surf.

      She had been running a low grade fever for the past two days, and as she turned into the driveway, she felt the massive fatigue taking over the inside corners of her body. In unprotected moments, she could feel a slipping away, a slight separation between herself and the rest of the world; a split widening slowly, imperceptible to others. Or so she hoped. For now, it was anniversary time. And Win would in in their bright kitchen preparing a special meal, his one night for cooking.

      He would say something like, ‘Just sit down, love of my life, and watch me be brilliant’.

      So she would, but with great care, for along with the easy banter, he would be watching for weakness, for pain, for the slipping away.

      And this was the problem, inescapable in fact - in some way, she could foresee her death in his eyes. It wasn’t really there, of course. She was projecting her fears through him. Her death might not happen for years. Or could happen next month. And she realized in more sane moments this was true of everyone, a part of the human package. Nonetheless, there it was. Her life, the fading away, looking back at her, marking time.

      A clash of pans and delicious smells met Jessie as she opened the back door.

      “I poured you a glass of wine, love of my life. Now sit, relax, and watch me be brilliant.”

      She did.

      But it was he who watched her.

      “If you look at that screen long enough, will something special happen?”

      Gilbert’s voice was low and close as his arms slipped around Cady’s shoulders and she rested her chin on them, her almost favorite place to be. She so loved his hands and forearms, not just for their strength, but also their appearance of being able to do things - lift, touch, create, hold.

      “It’s after midnight. The world’s sleeping,. But not my girl.”

      “I have a paper due in two days. And so far I’ve come up with my name and e-mail address.”

      “Why e-mail?”

      “All our work has to be e-mailed to the school. And that brings up my second problem; I don’t do attachments.”

      “So other than that you’re doing great? Think you just might be taking on too much?”

      And, oh yes, here it comes, she thought through her tiredness. I’m a mother. I work. I go to school. And I will real soon be a wife.

Gilbert gave her a smothering hug, lightly licked the rim of her left ear, an action which still initiated a butterfly trembling deep down, and said, “Come to bed,

baby.”

      “Soon.”

      She was pretty. She was funny. And she was smart. She had dated some. She was seventeen.

      Then came Gilbert. And all those other whispers, promises, and moving hands that had so unmoved her, were forgotten.

      By the lake, up north, in that warm spring, she had finally understood what all the whispers and the promises and the talk had been about. Her first time. And she could not get enough of Gilbert. She loved him, wanted him, coveted him, discovered jealousy, and to her complete dismay, demanded ownership.

      Until finally, after a few flushed weeks, Gilbert had said, “Cady, we have to talk.”

      “Sure, what do you want to talk about?”

      “Cady, I’m saying we just need to talk. You remember talking?”

      And they did talk, or at least he did, and not until a couple of years passed did Cady bring up the memory of his words, and understand that Gilbert’s direction and hers might not be the same after all.

      After the baby, Elena, when the two became three, the changes began, subtle at first. They moved in with Cady’s folks. Gilbert worked, her mother worked, as did her father. Cady worked and went to community college. They tried to save money.

      Now, this man wanted to marry her, and leave the desert town they both had known from birth, to work with two high school friends over on the coast.

      Want.

      That was such a mystery word. How easy the use of the word seemed to most people. He wants. She wants. Gilbert wants. Cady wants. What?

      At this midnight moment, all Cady knew was she wanted a subject for her paper, she wanted to be able to send attachments, she wanted room and time to decide, she wanted Gilbert, she wanted…….

      The computer clicked off, the night’s only sound silenced. And she went to bed.

      “Jessie?”

      The lieutenant’s voice on the phone had the same level tone as that day in the park.

      “It’s been over a month. There’s been nothing more in the paper and I wanted to know if you’ve found out who she is? Was. The woman in the park.”

      “Wish I could say yes. Her fingerprints haven’t given us anything. No missing person report matching her description. We’re looking. Something like this could take weeks, even months.”

      “How did she die? I mean if you can tell me.”

      “As far as we know, natural causes.”

      “I just can’t understand….”

      “….why she was there,” he finished.

      “To be honest, Jessie, without an ID, it gets really hard to even start an investigation.”

      “Without an ID, it’s almost like she never existed at all,” Jessie said.

      “Why don’t you ever go out, mom?” her daughter asked. “You know - with a man. Dad goes out all the time. Course they’re mostly high school drop-outs. But for your age, you’re all right looking. A little dull. Actually, a whole lot dull, but still ok.”

      “Wow! Really, wow!” Dora exhaled. “That’s just incredibly underwhelming, Annie. But I’m busy, lots to do.”

      Eric, passing through the kitchen, cracked, “Yeah, mom, like you have a life.”

      “I can’t believe him, he’s just so…..whatever,” Annie commented, dismissing him from their conversation. “I’m only saying, there must be someone around who’d like you.”

      “Actually, I had a guy come up to me the other day. He wanted me to buy a toy bunny and a camera case for fifty cents. Suppose that was some new pick-up line?”

      “Oh, I get it. You’re scared. You always get all defensive when you’re nervous. You did that with dad.”

      “He was a good teacher.” And Dora wanted to grab back the words before they breathed air, but as usual, she was too late.

      “You sorry you divorced him? Or,” Annie asked, hesitation in her voice, “do you wish you’d never married him?”

      “No regrets. I don’t have regrets, Annie. Such a huge waste of time.” And Dora hoped she sounded positive and honest, neither being the case. “What I do have is impatience with the way everything today is about no blame. This was not my fault, they say, or this wasn’t my responsibility.” She looked directly at her daughter’s face. “There is blame. There surely is responsibility. But I don’t want to get into who done who wrong. Not with you.

      “I’m me, for good or bad. The same for your dad. He loves you, and Eric, in his own special way.”

      “I love dad, too, mom, but I don’t always like him. Is that awful? He and Eric are so alike. Not just the guy stuff. There’s no generation gap between them. It’s that dad found one age in his life, he really, really liked, and so he never left.”

      The room was empty of sound as Dora, amazed and not for the first time at this display of youthful wisdom, finally said, “So, stranger, what have you done with my daughter?”

      “Mommmm!”

      And the child was back, taking a little one syllable word and stretching it around the block.

      “By the way, mother, you probably didn’t think I’d notice, but you are smoking again.”

      “Just two a day. And just for now.” Even to her, this sounded defensive.

      “Why’d you ever start? It’s so lame. Did you think it was glam or something?” Without waiting for a comeback and feeling triumphantly superior as only a teen girl can, Annie left.

      And Dora marveled at how tall she was; she would be tall like her father. Taller than most the boys her age. And Annie tended to knock over things a lot as she tried to grow into the awkwardness of her body. This girl was serious. Maybe it was the divorce and what had happened before. Dora had thought they’d hidden all that from Annie and Eric, until the day she caught a look between them and realized that kids know the truth.

      Even about smoking.

      So, why had she started smoking way back then ? “Ah, that’s right,” she explained to the table. “I thought it would help me smoke marijuana better. And we know that worked out well.”

      “How’s my day? Let me tell you about my day, Jess. This morning my teen daughter, now apparently going on thirty, asked me why I wasn’t dating? And advised me most seriously that probably there is some nearly dead, nearsighted, brain-addled man out there who might like me. And even though I am dull, I’m still sort of all right.”

      “And you said?”

      “Told her I have a life, thank you. Which my son then neatly contradicted.”

      “A valid point has been raised here, I think. Why exactly aren’t you going out? Putting aside the brain-addled, nearsighted man for now.”

      “So with who? Or is it whom?”

      “How should I know, whom. Being much married and out of practice. What about Dennis?” Jessie suggested.

      “Dennis? Our Dennis? No, no, no. He’s bad. Of course, he is a lot of fun.

      “You’re actually saying go out with him? Like a date? For God’s sake, Jess, he’s lived with at least five different women. Not all at once. I think not all at once. He told me, ‘Dee, there’s a lot of bad things out there and I’ve done most of them’. Not boasting, you know, just stating fact. And, anyway, where would that lead?”

      “Why does it have to lead anywhere? You are way too goal-oriented. Go. Have a good time. Recall good times?”

      “Jessie, he’s been my friend, and yours, for like fifteen years. I love him dearly. But here’s the big one, I also know him. Well. And sometimes, a little ignorance in a new relationship can be a very welcome thing. Or not.”

      “Oh, agreed. Honesty can be a highly over-rated trait in men-women stuff. God, I sound like I know what I’m talking about. We know that’s not true,” she laughed.

      “Ted always told me, ‘No one knows you as well as I do.’ But see, he knew things about me, like extra pepperoni on the pizza, going to bed in the middle of the day just to listen to the rain, watching old black and white movies. Jess, he knew things. He didn’t know me. Does Win know you, really, truly?”

      “Win knows me as well as he wants to, I’d say.”

      “And that’s good? I can’t tell. That’s a weird way of saying nothing.”

      “Probably pretty average for most people. You get too close and life has a habit of getting sticky. Gooey, even.”

      “Messy, that I’m familiar with. However, this is beginning to sound more like a recipe for fudge, than life,” Dora said.

      “So, back where we started, Dennis is out.”

      Dora nodded, drank her tea, and, with a lopsided grin, said, “Did you ever think about where his dick has been?”

“Oh, God, yuck, no, never!”

“Don’t ‘yuck’ me. There have been a lot of years of his testing the waters all over the southwest and points east, hear tell. You know the stories; you know you do. Dennis himself even jokes he was born with a boner, ready to go, right out of the womb.

“There’s also his not so secret obsession with young and middle-aged druggies - and it follows that you have to ask yourself, in how many neighborhoods have these ladies been the resident welcome wagons.”

Recovered, Jessie said, “Is that all? I hope.”

“No way. There was Bev, his best friend’s wife. This was way back when. You know what he told me? Said, ‘Hey, she was going to cheat with someone. I figured better me than some stranger’.”

“Just a guess here, Dee, that this leaves you saying, ‘Dennis, darlin’, let’s continue being best friends forever’.”

But Dora ignored her, she was just getting going. “Women get all excited hearing about some man’s prowess and although we’re not exactly yearning for a virgin dick, shouldn’t women think about this kind of thing. Even with so-called safe sex and all?”

“Friend of mine, I take it you’ve been giving this a great deal of thought, which is scary in itself. Welcome wagons and virgin dicks? Damn, if I don’t sense a movie of the week here.”

And, Dora asked, “What? Am I strange? Well, okay, okay -- there is that.”

      ‘Good times.’

      ‘Recall good times?’

      Her own words seemed to echo through the rooms of the gallery where she worked. Small and set on the outer edge of the downtown, the gallery’s three rooms were filled with paintings, drawings, and some sculpture by southwestern women artists. However, no southwest themes, were allowed; no paintings of horses, cracked Indian pottery, ears of corn, strings of peppers or woven baskets.

      This afternoon, the gallery was empty of visitors.

      ‘Good times.’

      “My God,” Jessie said aloud, resting her elbows on the desk, “this death crap’s exhausting.”

      Her grandfather, the first great love of her young life, had always secretively confided things to her, like, “Little girl, (she was twenty-two at the time), it takes a long time to die.” She was beginning to understand. Then, there was, “Your grandmother didn’t die; one day she just forgot to live.”

      Or, maybe it was she forgot how to live.

      For months, even though wrapped in some protective emotional cocoon, Jessie had feared seeing her life or death looking back in other people’s expressions, or hearing it in the words they didn’t say. She would see this perceived separation she felt widen; see the sadness that comes with realization, then anger, and finally weary repetition, the ‘Let’s get this over with so we can get on with our living. Please, die already.’ Abrupt, but this was what she had imagined.

      Until the conclusion, she was not to talk about ‘it’ - because ‘it’ was morbid and depressing. Because they all knew she’d be back to normal in no time and because they didn’t want her feeling sorry for herself. Because ‘it’ was a waste of time; although whose time was never clearly defined.

      After considering all this abstractly, Jessie had hoped to beat her mother’s record; her mother who had died of cancer at fifty-three. Those images were still crystal clear.

      For a month, her mom had lay in that hospital bed, nurses coming in every couple of hours to turn her from side to side. Some days, she thought Jessie was her mother and wanted to know when dinner would be ready. Other days, Jessie was the older sister who had tormented her -- that thin, pinched, yellowing woman who looked as if she had been constructed of leftovers from Jessie’s tall, leggy, green-eyed dimpled mom.

      And then there was Win. Win, who when Jessie had a bad night, was next to her holding his breath, waiting. Who insisted on spending more and still more time with her, even though this could go on for years and could even result in a normal life span. He said he was possibly going to take early retirement.

      Why, she’d asked?

      So they could be together more, just the two of them, he’d answered.

      Because of me, she’d said.

      No, no, he’d protested. It was just that in this world you never knew what was ahead and you should get what you can when you can.

      This thing could go on for years, she’d said. It’s not like she was going to drop dead at his feet tomorrow or the next day.

      He had winced, ever so slightly at this, and she knew it wasn’t because of that image of her groping around on the floor in death throes, but rather that he had already found the perfect mental picture of himself as the gentle care-giver, self-sacrificing and loving, and finally, as the stoic survivor.

      ‘Good times.’

      ‘Remember the good times.’

      She closed the gallery and walked the half block to the car, and in that short distance, Jessie did recall good times. Days and nights with Win, JJ, with Dora and other friends in New York and the desert, days and nights filled with laughter, good talk, goofiness, emotion, adventure, learning, and passion. And when she was in her car, it quite calmly occurred to her that she could not, or better yet, would not, go on wasting each day as if she were going to die.

      Jessie came up behind her husband, stretched her arms around him and put her face in the small of his back, feeling his muscles react to her touch, smelling him, catching the distinct rhythm of his heart.

      ‘Good times.’

      Way back somewhere in the Dark Ages, when their bodies had finally and completely accepted each other, he had said one night in the covering darkness, “Let’s take this slow, love of my life. I don’t want this over. Ever.” And neither did she.

      “So, Mr. Smith,” she now murmured into his back. “What are you doing for the next twenty years? Wanna play with me?”

      Saturday. And early closing at the Café.

      “That a bar up the street?” the short, squat man asked Gib.

      “That’s what they say.”

      “What’s it called? Didn’t see a name.”

      “No Name.”

      “Hasn’t got a name? That’s weird, don’t you think?”

      “No. No Name.”

      “Why doesn’t it have a name? Course if it’s the only one downtown, doesn’t matter. You’re going to meet someone, you just have to say, the bar. Right?”

      “Right. The No Name Bar.”

      The man drifted off leaving Gib happy; he’d always wanted to be part of a bad comedy routine, especially when the other person didn’t have a clue.

      Nancy said, “Miserable little man. Bad manners and no tip.” And then to Cady, “Word of advice. Never work for a short man.”

      “What? Nancy? Wait, I don’t get it.”

                                                                                                                                                2

      Hot had settled in for a long summer stay; hot meaning one hundred ten degrees plus. The other temperatures - the seasonal, the warm ones - lay buried in the desert dust, to be resurrected come October.

      On an early Wednesday morning in June, the day already shimmering beneath waves of heat, Winfield Jameson Smith died.

      Jessie was wearing the butterfly pin.

      He had said in a small hoarse voice that only she could hear, “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” and turned to her, arching his definitive eyebrows over the beautiful brown eyes, eyes that silently begged her to please take care of whatever this happened to be.

      That had been Monday.

      Two days later, balancing on the chair beside his hospital bed in Intensive Care and holding his hand, Jessie heard, then she saw, a single breath go in - and never come out.

      She continued to sit.

      Movement around her slowed. And stopped.

      For seconds.

      For minutes.

      She looked at his face, such a lovely face. But, not the face she saw on the pillow beside her at two in the morning. A nice face. Emptied.

      To scream, that was what she most wanted. To strike out. To hold on. To not let go. To hear his voice. Once.

      Numbness had built a wall, surrounding the two of them. And into this private space she pleaded, “Win, Win, please open your eyes. I’m right here. I’m not connected to them. I’m with you only. Only with you. With you in this inch of time left to us.”

      And there it was.

      Us.

      That little word unlocked the door and pain entered, and pain took up residence. The one who had belonged to her, the one who had made up the us, during all the days, months, and the years, was gone.

      There was no us.

      There never would be again.

      The world was new.

      “Dora, have you seen Jessie?”

      “Talked with her. Going over tonight.”

      “How is she? This is just awful,” Cady choked.

      “Mind if I get in on this?” Gib asked gently as he slid into the booth. “What can we do? Anything at all?”

      “Guys, I didn’t know what to say to her on the phone. And I sure as hell don’t know what I’m going to say later. Her voice, Gib, sounded so empty. So incredibly quiet. I couldn’t hear our Jessie in that voice, not at all.”

      The three aimlessly looked around in different directions, finding no resolution.

      “My gram used to say people have trouble looking each other in the eyes when they’re talking death,” Gib said. “Seems true enough, especially at funerals and such.”

      Then reaching his hand across the table, he pressed Dora’s. “Darlin’, I don’t think you need to say much. Just hold her close. Let her feel your love. And then listen. She’s the one needs to talk. Then probably needs some alone time. I don’t think Jessie has even a notion yet about the enormity of what’s happened. But she will. She will. And that’s when the real deep hurt’ll come in and take over for its time.”

     

      Lights were low, day slipping into dark, when Dora knocked on the screen door. The sound reverberated like a gunshot.

      The house interior seemed as dark as the night outside had become, with a single standing lamp shining in the living room.

      There was an uneasy absence of sound, matched only by the intense quiet of Jessie Smith’s voice.

      Jessie was angular, tall, and slim with long legs and big feet, her description, no one else’s. But tucked as she was into the corner of the couch, drawn into herself physically, she had somehow shrunk in size. Her naturally blonde hair had faded to a dulled brown and the soft, wide gray eyes, usually taking in the whole world with humorous curiosity, had narrowed, as though trapped in an inch of time.

      Jessie.

      “I walked barefoot through the house, barefoot on carpet, and my footsteps echoed.”

      Looking up, she said factually, “You know, the quiet in a home of two people is much different than the quiet when you are alone.

      “Before, back when, I would almost imagine it - me, dying. That woman in the park. You saw a woman alone. I saw me. I could hear the words. The conversation around my bed. Feel the strain of my last breath. More than once, I’d wake during the night; not enough air.

      “I was prepared to lose me, Dee. Not him. It never, not once, occurred to me that I

would lose him.”

      Then, “Why do we sit by the bed of someone we love, someone who’s dying, and try, in minutes or hours, to relive years?”

      Dora had no answer, but understood none was expected. Instead she asked, “How?”

      How.

      Jessie was not ready for how.

      “Do you know I hurt all over? Even my teeth hurt. Why is that? So much pain. So many whys. My mom used to say to me when I was young and hurt myself, ‘You can’t go around pain, girl. Can’t go over or under it. You have to grit your teeth and go right through pain’. Maybe that’s why my teeth hurt.

      “Of course, mom also said my hands were too big. Danish farmer hands, she called them. And she’d sit beside me and pinch my fingertips to make them taper and be more ladylike. Didn’t work, I guess.” She held up her hands in front of her face and stared at them as if seeing them for the first time, her movements stilted, her expression blank.

      During this recital of words and disjointed thoughts, Dora realized that, no, she didn’t have to say anything. Her body being there was enough. Jessie needed her to be there, so that when the flood was finally through, for this night, someone would actually have been listening. Not the four walls. Not invisible beings. But Dora, listening. Dora, who knew her. And maybe, just maybe, Jessie wouldn’t be crazy.

      “JJ was at the hospital, got on the elevator to Intensive Care, where Win was dying. I didn’t know he was dying. Did I tell you that? And isn’t that hard to believe? I find that hard to believe. Win’s cousin told me later, ‘We all knew he was going to die’. Why didn’t I? I was with him everyday. But I did not know. I washed and ironed his shirts. Changed the sheets every few days, even though I was sleeping on the sofa most nights. Bought his favorite food. Up until the very second he stopped breathing, I was making plans for when he would come home. How can that be?

      “Where was I? Oh. JJ was on the elevator. A minister got on, turned to him, and said, ‘Whatever’s happening in your life, son, it’s all part of God’s plan’.

      “JJ said, ‘So if a patient jumps out a third floor window and kills himself, that’s a part of God’s plan, too? You have a nice day’.

      “God’s plan? What is that all about.? The nurse, her name was Kelly, hugged me and said, ‘God needed him more’. I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”

      “Why did he go into the hospital?” Dora sounded unreal even to herself.

      Finally. “He wasn’t feeling well.”

Dora poured the hot soup into the cup and placed it in front of Jessie at the kitchen counter. She switched on another lamp and the shadows slid into each other and vanished.

      “The warm feels good. I thought he’d be home the next day. But two days later, they moved him to ICU. Then transported him up to the city. I sat in the parking lot and watched the helicopter until I couldn’t see it any more. They make a lot of noise.

      “I followed everywhere he went and each time he had changed. There didn’t seem to be anything under the sheet. There was his head, his arms and hands, but his body sort of disappeared. A little bit at a time. Each day, less and less.

      “And some days he knew me. Others? He talked to the window behind me. And then he started asking about a butterfly. ‘Where is the butterfly?’ he would say. ‘Has the butterfly come yet?’

      “I had no idea what he was talking about so I would say, no, the butterfly’s not here yet. And sometimes, I would cry. He’d say, ‘Don’t cry. It’s all right. The butterfly will come. You’ll see.’ And he’d fade back into his away world.

      “But he was right, Dee, all along. The butterfly did come. From the Boston Museum of Art. A beautiful gold and enamel pin, Win ordered by mail for my birthday.

      “I was so relieved. I wore it to the hospital that very day. I held his hand and told him, ‘Look, Win, your butterfly is here’.

      “And, he died,” she finished. Bewildered.

     

Help Sought in Identifying Woman

      Do you know this woman?

      The body of a still unidentified woman was found in Hansen Park this past spring.

      After more than three months of trying to confirm her identity, authorities are hoping someone will recognize her from the artist’s sketch shown here in the Journal.

      A spokesperson for the police department said the investigation of dental records, fingerprints, and the victim’s clothing has produced no results.

      Lieutenant Alan Jensen said the woman was middle-aged, probably in her early fifties; five feet, six inches tall; one hundred fifty-five pounds; with brown hair and eyes. She had no visible scars, no distinguishing marks, and was wearing a plain silver band on her left ring finger.

      To report information, contact the city police department or county sheriff’s office.

      “No funeral services are planned.”

      That was the final line of Winfield Smith’s obituary that appeared in the local paper, an obituary which also informed readers that he had been born in Nebraska, graduated from a Midwestern college where he was active in baseball and debate, that he had served in the Army, had a master’s degree from a New York university, had a loving wife and son, enjoyed music and biking, and loved his cat. He, it went on, had been preceded in death by his parents and an infant sister. In lieu of flowers, it was suggested that contributions be made to the county’s no-kill animal shelter.

      “What is this, Jessie? No services. That can’t be right. You simply must do something. For Win’s friends. And JJ, for God’s sake,” the voice droned on.

      And there it was, again.

      For God’s sake.

      The question then occurred to Jessie, why do people always call up the Almighty when confronting death? Or for that matter, when confronting orgasms?

      “God needed him more.”

      “Part of God’s plan.”

      “God never gives us more than we can bear.”

      “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, my God!”

      “Yes, yes, Sweet Jesus!”

      Win had once dryly explained the orgasm part saying this dated back to a special secret pact between God and Adam. God promised Adam that he could one day come back to the Garden, but only if he praised His name very time he did it with Eve.

      This was the man’s side of things, he said. He couldn’t explain women. But who could.

      “Do you think we should have something special for your dad? Everyone’s asking. I don’t have any answers to anything. So please, do me a favor and tell me what to do.”

      “Mom, for now just sit down. Over here.” JJ said this to the figure pacing the room.

      “If I do, I might not be able to get up again,” she sighed. “I seem to have trouble figuring reasons to get out of that chair, put clothes on, or eat. Yesterday, I found myself out in the driveway, washing the house - I don’t even remember getting out of bed.”

      “Okay, that’s it. This is the deal. We’ll have some kind of memorial service. But no speeches or Bible stuff or anything like that.”

      Jessie sat. The decision had been made.

      “Did I tell you that five minutes after your dad died, the doctor asked what mortuary I was working with. Five minutes. I said, ’Thanks for the grieving time’. I did. I was rude. I’m not usually rude.

      “I don’t understand why everyone is in such a hurry to say good-bye.” She gazed tenderly at her son and asked with aching sadness, “Tell me, JJ. How can the world out there go on so carelessly?”

      The memorial was arranged for a Saturday afternoon, with friends doing most of the planning.

      They told Jessie not to worry and she accepted that. She looked at clothes crowded in her closet and decided that if you’re celebrating someone’s life, even though he’s dead, black may not be your first choice. This was also July in the desert.

      What would Win like?

      He would probably grin and say that even after all these years, he liked her best without clothes.

With that, she collapsed back in bed, face down deep into her pillow.

      She and JJ had gone to the mortuary together, an innocuous building, that on the inside was designed solely to support grief. Thick carpets muffled footsteps; gentle music seemingly repeating the same chord, was backed up by the sound of ocean waves breaking on some electronic shore. Colors were muted, as were voices, telephones, and the buzzer triggered when they came though the heavy, double wooden doors.

      As she later told Dora, the entire experience induced in her a dreamlike trance, all slow motion with blurry edges.

      After forty-five minutes of respectful talk, there was a finished newspaper obituary, a cremation order, and a bill for two thousand dollars. As they readied to leave, Jessie was presented with an illustrated calendar of local meetings for the bereaved and an American flag tightly folded into a triangular brown frame.

      In the car, JJ driving, she watched his jaw clench and unclench, a familiar habit from childhood when emotion came too close to the surface and there was need of a physical reaction.

      Jessie saw Win in that profile, in the heavy arched eyebrows, the scowl of concentration, in the eyes that constantly studied. There was also sameness in the penchant for always having a backup plan - problems, obstacles, thought out in advance, along with all possible solutions.

      Win would say that if he and Jessie were lemmings, he would be the one behind the big desk at the top of the cliff. He would have hundreds of note cards, listing the pros and cons of jumping off the cliff with the others. But, you, Jessie he would say, would be halfway down the cliff before turning to the lemming falling next to you, to ask, ‘And we’re doing this for what reason….?’

      This was said with intimate knowing. Win was the planner, Jess, the activist. Together they were a team.

      Between JJ and herself, there had, over the years, evolved an unspoken language of sorts, one they themselves wouldn’t even try to explain. If they could. Their other similarities were keen, gray eyes that held more than a touch of cynicism, and, a weird, off-the-wall humor.

      Weird.

      Another memory rushed in. When Win first told her father he cared for his daughter, her dad said, without a smile, “She’s a little weird, you know.“

      In the days following the memorial, she found herself often straying into the past.

      An old boyfriend called. Together, they remembered college days, first jobs, mutual friends, and never touched on their long relationship and how close they’d been to marrying.

      She went through boxes of photographs, picking each one up, determining what the day or the event had been like, who was there, and what was said.

      In a singular burst of energy, she packed up Win’s clothes, some for JJ, some, like the raggedy, red plaid flannel shirt, to be tossed, and the rest donated. She then slammed the closet door and said not now. Later.

      She stayed up at night, watching anything on tv, and slept during daylight hours. She realized that she had never lived alone and wondered at the barrage of strange noises not noticed before.

      She began having dreams, dreams of riding in empty elevators moving sideways through empty buildings in an empty city.

      One afternoon, she sat down with a bowl of cereal on a tray and when she next moved, saw that three hours had gone by and the cereal was untouched.

      She had always had the capacity for staring into space for long periods of time, detached from all thinking and feeling. For her it had been restorative, like meditation. Not now. These days she feared if she looked too closely at herself, she would see a face she didn’t recognize, and could only conclude that someone had eased into the room during one of these lapses, and replaced her with another.

Her constant companions, now that JJ had left, were her cat, a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch, and a tin of fudge-striped cookies.

Her mind, her emotions, continually found refuge in the past.

She centered on a time when her parents would take her to a cafeteria after church and let her order whatever she wanted. It was always the same, however - red jello with bananas, mashed potatoes and gravy, halibut with a huge helping of tartar sauce, and cherry pie.

      And that’s what her past became as the days slipped by, a comfort zone where she could pick and choose, over and over again, only the memories that she held dear, the ones without pain, the ones that tasted best.

      The past.

      She yearned to get lost there.

     

      “I’m here to wake you up.”

      “I am awake. Aren’t I?”

      “No, you are standing, hon, but you’re not dressed. Those are pajamas right? And maybe a little ripe?” Dora questioned.

      “Jessie, you are hurting beyond hurt, so listen to me. I want you to scream, throw things, cry, beat the shit out of everything - except me. And, I’ll be here through it all. But when you’re done, I want you back. You are my best friend in the whole world and I need you in my life. JJ needs you strong. Your other friends need you. I know this will take time; grief does that. Takes time, goes on and on. Know that we’re all here for you.”

      Then she stopped, as she noticed the bottle of Scotch on the table.

      “Have you been drinking?”

      “Why? Is this an intervention or something?”

      “Yes, this is a something. Now answer my question.”

      “I was. For awhile. But I found that Scotch doesn’t really mix very well with fudge-

striped cookies. So, I had to make a choice.”

      “The cookies?”

      “Of course.”

      “Good call. Always go for the chocolate, a personal motto of mine. In fact, my idea of a balanced diet is holding the same number of M&M’s in each hand. Okay, okay, not so funny. Jess, I’m calling for pizza while you take a shower and change into clothes that won’t stand on their own.”

      “You’re awfully bossy. Did I tell you I’m single?”

      “No, never mentioned it.”

      “At the doctor’s office. I went to the window to check in; the girl said in a loud voice, ‘Oh, that’s right, you’re the widow’. I had to fill out new forms, and my choices were married, single or divorced. I’m single, Dee. Twenty-six years married. Win’s only been gone five weeks. And I’m single. Our insurance has been changed, just me. The surviving spouse, that’s what they call me. The checking account? One name. Mine.”

      She inhaled a deep breath, more like a sob. “I’m so scared. He’s already fading, Dee, piece by piece. The space where he was, the space next to me, is closing behind him, and I can’t stop it. I feel like someone’s following me with a giant eraser.”

      She shuffled away and over her shoulder said, childlike, “Extra cheese.”

                                                                        3

      “Win passed away in June,” she said.

      The woman moved back a step as if trying to get out of the way, and gasped, “You mean he died?”

      Jessie looked back, incredulous. How do you answer such a question? She was tempted to say, no, actually he didn’t, and was he surprised at the cremation.

      But, of course, she simply said, “Yes, he did.”

      “And, my poor dear, how are you doing?”

      Jessie then answered with one of the stock replies she had collected over the past weeks, “Fine. I’m fine.”

      People, Jessie had been made to understand early on, want to hear everything, but don’t want to know anything.

      She had picked this up from friends and family; they were uncomfortable with her sounds and words of grief, and mostly wanted to hear that same word - fine - so they could then withdraw into their own safe worlds, satisfied they’d done what was expected.

      Even JJ.

      When her son had left, he had really left. He had carried away his own intense feelings, needing distance between himself and the loss of his father. This Jessie knew because she herself longed desperately for distance as well.

      Children can be such a comfort at a time like this, people constantly reminded her. However, Jessie wanted to add, children, regardless of their age, need comforting, too.

      One night on the phone, she had tried to share with him some of her fears - insurance, bills, being alone for the first time - and he had given her a typical JJ response, “Mom, you can’t worry about the chickens getting loose, when you have ninjas in the house.”

      Ninjas and chickens.

      Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

      Six weeks.

      Forty-two days.

      Over one thousand hours.

      Her life was measured by a ticking clock.

      That morning, Jessie had woken up and, like all the many mornings before Win died, started to think what she had to do. Then it hit her; it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter. She could stay in bed all day. She could eat pizza for breakfast and corn flakes for dinner. No lunches to pack; clothes to care for, except her own; no planning meals around Win’s ulcer.

      Phone calls and e-mails had been received, all wonderfully anonymous and antiseptic. Flowers had arrived and dutifully died in a short time. Cards, there were so many cards, and the amazement was how many disguises the word sympathy could take. Casseroles. Pies and cakes. Tamales - Win’s favorite. Visitors always talking in hushed voices, and why, she would start to say, you can’t wake him up.

      Plans, papers, more papers, more forms, and money, always money.

      That one small lost breath had taken over twenty-five years with it, along with the memories. She asked herself, if there’s no one to share memories with, do they still exist? One night she was talking with her aunt, and said, “I remember when Win and I….”, and was startled to comprehend that no one cared.

      And now, the day had come.

      No calls.

      No visitors.

      No casseroles.

      No questions.

      Everyone had returned to life, happy to escape this brief meeting with death. The world that had slowed was back in full motion. Lives had been picked up; conversations that had halted had been continued; meals cooked and eaten; jobs resumed; cars were filled and fixed; bills paid or tucked out of sight. People were sleeping, reaching for each other in the darkness, laughing in the early daylight.

      And she had cried every day.

      Not that she checked her watch and said, “Time to cry.” The tears just came unannounced - in stores, in the car when a certain song played on the radio, in bed when she realized it was only her breathing she heard.

      Often, Jessie wondered what Win would have done, if indeed, she had died first, the way she was supposed to in her vision,. In fact, one woman had said, “It’s too bad you didn’t go first, Jessie. Men handle these things so much better.”

      For months she had looked at Win as the Widower. As had he. He had already found the perfect mental picture of himself as the gentle caretaker, as the self-sacrificing lover, and finally, as the strong, yet saddened, widower. He could have probably even heard the whispers of quiet support, felt the hands pressed to his shoulders in woeful affirmation, that, after all, Win, life must go on.

      They had joked about death, when death was not hovering. He would come to her funeral in a flashy red convertible, courtesy of insurance money. She would store his ashes in an urn in the back of the closet for thirty years. He would marry the first woman who showed up at his front door with edible food, or better yet, tamales; a woman who also knew when and how to change the air conditioner filters, how to record sports events, and how to remain quietly in the background until needed.

      How would he have reacted to this mess?

      Statistics stated that widowers remarried in two years; widows not so much. Maybe, we, the widows, she concluded, have done marriage. Maybe there is no one that interesting, vital or bright, who is walking, talking, available. Men her age went for younger women. Understandable. They could be quietly in the background for a longer period of time.

      So, do women really do alone better? She thought somehow deep inside, women knew about alone. Even with children. Even with lovers.

      Her dad had told her of a friend of his, a recent widower, “Jess, he’s just falling apart. Doesn’t even cook his meals, has them delivered from some hospital program. He won’t go out of the house or have breakfast with us the way he used to. I don’t understand. I would, if it was a woman, but a man doesn’t do this.”

      Who knew?

      Maybe, after all, Win would not have answered the door to the woman with the tamales. Maybe, like her, he’d say, ‘Screw it’, to the gods in charge, and also like her, crawl back into bed. Only he’d choose a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a six-pack of Sam Adams.

      Facts, fancies, fictions. She couldn’t decide.

      “It’s great you went to a movie all by yourself yesterday. And I understand people seeing you and saying how glad they were that you’re getting out. And, I’m really happy to be here with you, feeding our faces. But, Jessie I ----------need ------- help. Now!” And Dora stopped, and then announced, “There’s a man.”

      Jessie could not stop herself.

      “What man?”

      “A man -- oh, please. This is trouble.” And then, “No, God, no! Don’t turn around. Don’t look. Oh, God. Shit.”

      Dora’s face, usually animated, suddenly collapsed, scrunched in agony, like a child whose pink cotton candy had fallen into a mud puddle.

      Jessie asked, hushed, “Dee, what’s happening?” And was going to continue, but found herself looking up at blue eyes of such a blue they reminded her of her Danish grandfather, and these did not look away.

      “Dora?” The man behind those eyes was speaking.

      No answer. So he turned to Jessie.

      “Hi, I’m Joel Dunn. I work with her,” and pointed to Dora.

      “Jessie Smith. Best friend and spokesperson. I think she just choked on something. Okay now, Dee?”

“Better, thank you,” she acknowledged to the man with the dark hair and hesitant smile. The man who was just tall enough.

      “Will you be going back to your office? I could use some more files. When it’s convenient with you.”

      “Back in twenty minutes. Fine. Is that fine?”

      “Good. Glad it’s fine,” and he smiled again, a really nice smile. At least Jessie thought so.

      And he went away.

      “Joel Dunn. Dunn. Hmmmm,” Jessie said. “Dora Dunn. Dora Dunn what? It’s cute. Catchy. I like it.”

      “So thrilled you’re being entertained by all this, I’m going to be sick.”

      “Maturity is a wondrous thing to behold.”

      “…..he asked me out. There.”

      “And, of course, you said you had to stay home, wash your hair, and finish a term paper?”

      “Shit”

      “Yes, you mentioned that.”

      “Who’s the cute guy?” Cady asked,

      “Dora has a boyfriend,” Jessie came back in a singsong voice.

      “A boyfriend, that’s neat. But why does she look sick?”

      “Oh, well, you remember how it is, when you’re young and in love?”

      “Please,” Dora begged.

      “Hey, I’m practically an old lady,” Cady answered, “but I sort of remember something like that. I’ve been with Gilbert for awhile, but there was a time. We know each other so well now that if …when…we get married, I guess there won’t be any surprises.”

      “Cady, Cady,” Jessie said, “given what I’ve been through lately, I probably shouldn’t say this, but maybe there should always be some surprises.”

      Dora, color and speech returned, said emotionally, “No, no, I’m with Cady. Surprises, highly overrated. Picture this. You’re sitting with thirty people you don’t know at your husband’s annual office cookout, your mouth full of potato salad, and casually listening to an exchange between a certain young woman and your husband, only to understand in that very moment that your husband has been having an affair. With the same certain young woman. Surprise! Oh, and yes, being the only one there who didn’t know, except for the woman’s husband sitting across from you.” She paused for breath. “You see. It’s not always true that the wife is the last to know. That poor kid never had a clue.”

      Jessie, familiar as she was with most of Dora’s Ted stories, said softly, “I’d say that’s a conversation stopper, Dee.”

      Cady added, “Like I said, no surprises. No way.”

      “I’m off, “Zillah. Take care of things will you?”

      “Where to, Gib?”

      “First organizational meeting of the hallowed Downtown Alliance. A moment of silence, please. Even our beloved mayor will show, they say.”

      “Oh, good, the old boy network’s alive and well.”

      “Yup, with hands out and pockets deep.”

      “Good to see you, kid,” Gib said to Jessie in passing,.

      “And many thanks to you for all you’ve done.” She kissed him on the cheek.

      “You’re family, sweetheart. That’s what we do.”

     

      “Dee, say yes.”

      “Yes.”

      “Look at me. If your Mr. Dunn is crazy enough to ask you out again, say, yes. Just figure it for a night you don’t have to cook, or harangue kids to eat healthy. It’s only dinner, Dee. A meal. And then life goes on. Or so everyone tells me.”

      “Where are you off to?” Dee asked, deliberately skipping over the advice.

      “Home,” Jessie said. “I’m going home.”

      She did not go home.

      She had found that walking into the empty, too-big-for-one house was almost impossible and often she sat in the driveway for up to an hour, preferring that to what was missing inside.

      Instead, as so many times before, she drove.

      Slowly at first.

      Through the older, narrow streets of the town, shaded corridors framed by overhanging trees. She welcomed the sensation of being suspended between two worlds, daylight fading through the front windshield, darkness creeping up in the rearview mirror.

      Profuse clusters of red and white oleander bushes and untrimmed palms offered brief glimpses of secluded houses, built solidly, many years before, when buildings had walls two feet thick, keeping heat in during the winter and out in the long summer. Adobe bricks, shuttered windows, and common sense kept the desert waiting.

On through the new gated housing projects - landscaped, treeless, colorless. Two-story houses with their east-west exposures boldly challenging the desert; houses nudging each other so closely that like dominoes, if one fell, so would they all.

      Past the art museum that used to be a bakery, the historical museum once a church, the senior center, formerly city hall, and a towered stone house, that somewhere in the town’s past had been the sole mortuary.

      Then, through the park, silent and sleeping. No body among the rose bushes. And Jessie wondered if elsewhere someone was driving without thought, driving to escape the loss of the woman.

      Faster now.

      The day was shutting down and she steered the car to the interstate. Her sadness was pulsating and she turned up the radio volume.

Night was on her; night that carried so many possibilities. But for her, there were none.

      Faster.

Only at night did she feel the desert. After sundown, she could hear its sounds, smell the strangeness in the air. She could live among the stars, reach up to the vast canopy, pick a handful, and believe in a different world.

Now her world was all about speed and noise. With miles, she might just outdistance the aloneness. No stars, instead taillights and headlights, flashing down the highway, the desert invisible on either side.

      And then, there was the city, stretching horizon to horizon, signs blazing their invitations to begin the games only night could bring.

      She took the off ramp, left-turned to the overpass, waited for the light, another left, and back down, deep into the morass of moving cars and trucks. And home.

      “We’re considering calling our project, ‘Olde Towne’,” the mayor pronounced with expansive gestures, checking faces around the conference table for responses.

      Gib held in a loud guffaw, and said, “The description’s on target, Lon, but the spelling sucks.” There was a flurry of coughing, clearing of throats, and paper rustling all around him. His friend, Matt, of the No Name Bar, just shook his head, but was ready to follow Gib wherever he should go.

      “Gib, Gib, I’ve really missed your special attempts at humor, but let’s get on with this.” And the pre-packaged meeting of the newly formed Downtown Alliance continued.

      The mayor was a local boy made good, especially in his eyes. Other members of the old boy network were beginning to consider him a buffoon, not the one to lead their community in the mighty march to profitable progress.

      He had inherited a small funeral home in the south part of the town from his father. Early on, it was known in the neighborhood as the only place to take your grief. For a modest amount, your loved one would get, in return, respect, personal care, and a proper burial, one to make the family proud, in the old ways.

      In the strictly business hands of the son, that lone funeral home had become three, in different parts of the valley, and those modest costs had faded into history with the addition of all the latest funeral fads.

      The family had also long been a player in area politics, and when a mayoral candidate was needed with a recognizable name, a talent for shaking the right hands, doing deals, and following orders, Lon was the boy the powers picked. However, this mayor came with built-in liabilities - a liking for the ladies at the Lorelei and a blustering habit of tripping over his own feet.

      As the talk went on, the picture of the new Olde Towne emerged. There would be designer street lights, benches, more parking, wider sidewalks, boutiques and antique stores, a coffee house, bank, restaurants, reconstruction of the closed movie house, with talk of a dinner theater, and sliding under the door, as almost an afterthought, a set of new inspection codes for existing businesses, those few thriving downtown.

      “I’d say we’re pretty much screwed,” Matt claimed as they left the meeting, moving his bulk carefully in the crowd, adjusting his dark-rimmed glasses, and glaring.

      “I could use a beer,” was all Gib said.

      “And I know just the place,” Matt said.

      Gib often said that entering a good bar was near a religious experience.

      The No Name did not come close.

      Encased in a tired brick shell, the bar was not vintage like the Café; it had just been around a long time and survived by staying out of everyone’s way.

      The building had long ago been fixed up with a bar on the first floor and an office and storage space on the second.

      The No Name was the place underage boys came in order to test their fake ID’s. Eyes averted, they all tried to order their beers over the background chuckles of drinkers who vaguely remembered when. This was the establishment where families had come, passing the bar onto each new generation as a rite of passage; the bar where lone bus travelers would gaze into their drinks, seeing only the miles yet to ride.

      The muted glow from plug-in beer signs lit up tarnished Christmas decorations left from years past. The wooden tables and chairs, rocking crookedly on a floor littered with sawdust and peanut shells, were covered with nicks, names carved in haste, and colorless stains.

      The juke box, going constantly with Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, and Billie Holiday, was playing to a darkened room filled with half-conscious customers, mostly regulars this night.

      “Are these guys breathing?” Gib asked jokingly.

      “I check every couple of hours and shake ‘em to make sure,” Matt said, as he passed behind the heavy wood bar that stretched nearly the length of the room. It had long been a source of conversation about which came first, the bar or the building, and the general opinion was that the building had been constructed around the bar.

      “Hey, Brian,” Matt said to the working bartender. “Why don’t you take off, I’ll finish this out.”

      “How’d it go?”

      “Not good, not good. They want cute names; cocktails, probably with those fucking umbrellas; live music; and dress codes to come, I’d imagine. I can already feel the building beginning to die. There are no more secrets. She knows.”

      “For God’s sake, Matt, we’re talking a building here. You know, bricks, wood, metal. Not a girlfriend find’s out you’re cheating on her. There’s no bleeding, breaking heart down in that basement, believe me. When it goes, it goes. Sad, but not the world. Maybe now’s the time to talk about that bar in the new mall. We’d have a blast. Like old times. Start new. Customers in and gone, not camped out over one warm beer. Good pay, great tips. Come on, let’s do it, Matt.”

      “Gonna have to pass, son. Thanks though. I’m way too old and tired to begin again. This place and I, we go back a lot of years. We’ll go out together, the way good pals should.”

      “Slow up,” Brian said. “There’s a chance we got this wrong. The city might not tear things down; they might decide to put some money into fixing up downtown; maybe ease up a little. I mean even though we’ve got some of the words, we might be reading ‘em the wrong way. Just like the story that guy told last week. This kid runs into his dad and says, ‘Dad, Billy and Kate are in the barn, He’s got his pants down and she’s got her skirt up. I think they’re getting ready to piss on the hay.’ And his dad says, ‘Son, you’ve got the right facts, but the wrong conclusion’.”

      “Sorry, bud, but I don’t think so.”

      “Hope you’re wrong, Matt, hope you’re wrong.”

      “So, Gib, it comes to that end,” Matt said as he pulled himself up on the corner stool, “you do me the honor of being here to join me for that last drink on the last day?”

      “Pleased to, Matt.” And he raised his bottle. “Good-byes are easier when shared with old friends.”

“Jesus, you two are depressing.”

      “Not us, Brian, it’s the times. Well, I’m off. Night all.”

      As he slow-walked the well-known street, Gib felt his old town, worn but real, and the Olde Towne, that for now existed only on paper.

      What he saw, lined up in the shadows, were buildings long past their prime, unable to keep pace with inspection codes and the all-important bottom line.

      He tried to remember the passing cities of his youth. Cities then were always his, until he left. After that, there was difficulty bringing up names of streets, faces in bars, and where the days had gone. They all misted over into a faint memory that, yes, he had been there once, for awhile.

      Now the powers that be were looking for a phoenix to arise from this place. Most likely with a hotel with weekly rates and legal room service; specialty shops, not stores; a bar with a name and clean floors; and a café where meat loaf would never make it onto the menu.

      A week later, the message light on Jessie’s phone blinked, angrily. The message went:

      “I’m going out to dinner.

      “I’m going to eat, a meal.

      “I’m going, it’s on your shoulders.

      “Oh, this is Dora.”

      “I’m going out. There’s sloppy joes, salad, and your grandmother for dinner.”

      “Who with? Jessie?” Annie questioned.

      “No. With a man-type person.”

      “Eric, Eric! Guess what? Mom’s got a boyfriend.”

      “’Bout time.”

      It was too early.

      Cady sat on the concrete bench in the town park, next to the garden where there were no longer roses. Workers had cut back the plants and the results were brown and dry and dead.

      Like the woman.

      When she closed her eyes, Cady could see the still form lying there, face to the sun, fingers in the dirt.

      Why couldn’t the police find out who she was? There’d been a sketch in the paper and flyers were posted around neighborhoods. How, she questioned, could someone slip off the surface of life so easily and be forgotten?

      Cady, in her young years, had never encountered death close-up, and the image of this woman, left so alone and vulnerable, lingered in her mind, although slightly out of focus, like a nearly lost memory.

      She pulled her books close to her chest. Now in the middle of the first semester of her second year, Cady had seven months to her associate’s degree.

      This morning, before daylight edged through, Gilbert had gone and she was left with choices, always the choices. When you’re little, she thought, everyone’s making choices for you - what to eat, what to wear, where to go, when to be home.

      And you, she reminded herself, you chafed at those choices, at those restrictions, none of them yours. Until suddenly, one fine day, you woke up and those around you who had made those decisions, said okay, honey, it’s time. You’re a big girl now and you’re on your own, What do you want to wear, eat, read, watch? How will you live your life? Who will you love? Or will you? Just how important are you to you?

      Gilbert would be happy to answer those questions for her. I’m the man, he would say, and I’ll take care of you,. You’re mine. And what is that all about? You are mine. She would never think of saying to Gilbert, you are mine. It blazed of ownership. Maybe that was the problem, her problem - the acceptance of belonging.

      So now another choice. Finish her degree or leave after the holidays to be with her daughter’s father and she had only weeks to decide.

      Lady of the Roses, Cady said to the lifeless garden, what choices did you make and what, if any, regrets did you feel when you looked at the past left behind?

      Questions, always more questions. One of her professors had said to the class that it’s the question that’s important. But, God, how she would welcome some answers.

      And, that idea of ownership that had seemed so right to her when she was seventeen, rankled now.

      “You’re early, girl.”

      “Classes this afternoon,” Cady said. “What’s up?”

      “We’re slow, slow right now. So I’ll get your soda, though I can’t figure how you can drink that stuff first thing in the morning,” Zillah grimaced.

      “Thanks, mommy. You’re my sweetie,” Cady said.

      The four waitresses settled in at a table off the main room, time out before the breakfast rush.

      “Nancy, you look a whole lot tired.”

      “Our son’s home for ten days and it’s all about who’s number one.”

      “Explain,” Cady asked.

      “The story is my husband and son love each other to pieces, but there’s this tug-of-war to see who comes out on top with Nancy and mom.

      “Jack’s the man until Danny walks in the door. Danny, my twenty-year-old going on twelve,” she laughed, and the other two who had grown kids joined in.

      “He never picks up anything, expects his favorite food, and plays those wild games with the sound over the top. And meanwhile, Jack’s walking around sighing a lot. ‘Can’t he clean up after he eats? Tell him.’ ‘The sound’s driving me crazy, tell him.’ ‘He got in at two this morning. I get up at six. Tell him.’ Then they sit back, waiting to see who I talk to, who I pick up after, who I tell. As I said, ladies, who’s on first?”

      “Sure, children change things,” Carmen said. “After the first baby came, my husband started looking at me like I was his mother. He even called me ‘mom’ once. I put a stop to that real quick. Then before I lost the weight from the first, we had two more.”

      “Gilbert left this morning,” Cady put in abruptly.

      “How are you with that?” Zillah asked.

      They all knew, but, “Don’t know,” Cady said. “Miss him already. Maybe it’s the idea of him. I don’t want to lose him; I don’t. But, I have these things, like maybe being a teacher someday. He’s been good with my going to school,” she said earnestly, “until it started crossing his plans. We’re so close otherwise. And don’t laugh, please, but I think he may be my soul-mate,” she ended.

      The others smiled their seniority and Nancy said, “Cady, I hate to break it to you, but my soul-mate at eighteen, I nearly strangled three years later. People grow. People change. At least they should, if living’s done right.”

      And from Carmen, “My cousin met her soul-mate as a pen pal; I mean, really from the pen. He’d been in prison ten years for manslaughter or something. They got married when he was released. That was not happy ever after.”

      “The guy I was talking about,” Nancy continued, “was my first husband. Oh, yeah, there is an ex out there raising hell somewhere in the world. His name was Rick. Old Rick. Always with the red baseball cap and the can of chew in his back pocket. Drove a pickup with a rifle rack over the seat. And, oh my, was he good looking and did he like sex. Knew nothing about making love, however. I was young, home was real bad, and he was my way out.”

      “Nancy, you loved him, right? You married him,” Cady protested.

      “Yes, at that time, in that place, I called it love. But, Cady, there are a lot of reasons to get married; love isn’t necessarily one of them.”

      “But it’s still the best,” the young girl insisted. “Life is so confusing when you grow up,” she said.

      “Confusing, like when a kid’s home for vacation,” Carmen said.

      “Confusing, when you let yourself care for someone else,” said Nancy, “So, full circle.”

      The bell over the door clanged and they cleared the table.

      Carmen grinned and left the others with, “My dear old gray-haired auntie was fond of saying that if it has tires or testicles, you’re bound to have trouble.”

      “What a way to start the morning,” Zillah said to a tray of dirty dishes.

      “Is Gib here?” Dora asked Cady.

      “In the storeroom.”

      “Thought you’d like to see what’s coming in the evening paper,” she said, handing Gib some pages. “Looks like the big guns are really on the move this time, Gib. They mean business, like business that brings in bucks. No matter who loses.”

      “Not a surprise, Dora. But thanks for the early look.”

      And there it was. The printed word.

EDITORIAL

DOWNTOWN PAST ITS PRIME?

Like the aging family car, the city’s downtown district may hold fond memories for many of us, but it has lost most of the vitality, spunk, and sparkle.

And, unfortunately, this is a situation that can not be cured with a tune-up and new paint job.

Downtown used to be where families did all their shopping for holidays and everyday; where they came for dinner after church on Sundays, and to movies on weekends; where friends and neighbors met and talked, and learned much of the city news. Churches were here, and small businesses, where one could buy anything from plumbing supplies to fresh tortillas, or, get boys their first haircut.

Today, our downtown has a different face - storefronts are locked, shuttered, and empty, streets can be dangerous, peopled as they are by transients often looking for a free ride. Buildings are run down, even abandoned, or let out to those financially in need. Most of the structures would not meet current fire, sanitary, or electronic building codes.

How did this happen?

And what do we as a community do?

The deterioration of downtown began as our population moved north and east. It began when large malls were built that enabled us to shop a few miles from home seven days a week. Businesses relocated, as did schools, banks, churches, and theaters, all for our families’ convenience.

Now we are left with a downtown past its prime.

However, the Mayor, City Council, Chamber of Commerce, and the newly formed Downtown Alliance, are hard at work on a solution. Instead of a district filled with vacancies and condemned buildings, they are envisioning a renewal of life that will conform with the city’s exciting master plan. Downtown will again hold the heartbeat of the city, with a new city hall, restaurants, specialty shops, and entertainment venues that will accommodate visitors and attract residents and businesses to the area.

Yes, some sacrifices will need to be made. A few existing businesses will be upgraded and buildings, not up to code, may need to be demolished to assure that the blight, the decaying core, will not move on into the many healthy surrounding neighborhoods.

This revitalization plan for our downtown district, being recommended by the city fathers, addresses not only our future needs, but those of our children as well, and should be enthusiastically supported by us all.

      “I can hear the hangman now,” Gib said, dispiritedly.

      “How was the condemned woman’s last meal?” Jessie said into the phone.

      “When did you get to be such a comedian?” Dora questioned right back.

      “No, really, was it the total disaster you thought?”

      “Actually, it was all right. And I was - pleasant.”

      “Wow, post the nuptials now. Where did you go, what did you talk about, what did you eat, did he kiss you goodnight? God, I sound like my mother. Anyway, details, please.”

      “You sound like mine. I told mom it was business. Mine, not hers. I’m going to bad daughter hell, I know it. So, Italian, cannelloni, wine, cheesecake, work , movies, childhood traumas, tv, kids- mine, books, newspaper business, no sports. He seems nice in a funky, off-beat sort of way. I do remember laughing. But not with my mouth full, you’ll be proud to hear. And, I didn’t spill, not even once.

      “No kiss, which is good, because I think I’ve forgotten how. And no, kissing’s not like riding a bike. I mean, what side do you lean, left or right, so you don’t bump noses; mouth open or closed; tongue on first date; all that stuff. That’s it, except he’s about ten years younger than I am. What have you been doing, huh?”

      “My best friend, Dora, the cradle robber! Congratulations! I am happy for you. Me? Well, I’m finding out about my life as the Widow Smith. On the internet. Taking little baby steps, you know?”

      “I see, we’re both tiptoeing on delicate ground. And you discovered?”

      “They, whoever they are, sincerely want me to feel secure in the knowledge that I am not alone.”

      “Meaning?”

      “Over 175,000 women become widows every year.”

      “Feel better?”

      “Ever so much. Thank you for asking.”

      Later, as Jessie sat at the computer desk, she touched the photos placed there - she and Win on a ferry surrounded by an early morning fog and looking like new arrivals at Ellis Island; JJ at his college graduation, made possible by a last minute, “gentleman’s D”, in algebra; her dad, silver-haired and solemn; Maia, the cat of all cats; and off to the side, the picture of Jessie’s namesake, a delicate figure from another age, framed in scrolled silver.

      Jessica Caroline Cecilia Hansen.

      Her name was beautifully scripted, in deep blue on the back of the photo by an unknown hand; the picture, taken in an unknown year by a now unknown photographer, somewhere in St. Paul, Minnesota.

      This photograph had been one of many, all black and white, discovered by Jessie’s mother, when she was pregnant; all of them stored in a flattened shoe box in the attic of a house in a small Iowa town.

      Her mother’s favorite picture showed a white gingerbread house set down on an endless and treeless prairie, with a barn in the background. In front, gathered the family - the men, stiff and starched in black suits and white shirts; their hair, mustaches and beards neatly trimmed; their eyes, fierce. The women were equally stiff and starched in their voluminous skirts and practical sun bonnets; their faces and eyes blank. There was a dog, and one baby, dressed in a long, white gown.

      As a youngster, Jessie had asked where all the other children were; she was told they were probably playing in the orchard, on the prairie, where there were no trees. Years later, she cynically wondered if that imagined orchard of her childhood was on the same imaginary farm where all unwanted family pets were sent to spend out their days, running through grassy meadows, under sunny skies, with loving children.

      But, back to her Jessie - Jessie Hansen in the silver frame - staring calmly into a long ago camera with her eyes an unreadable gray; her lips full and slightly smiling; her dark hair rolled and pinned up; and her lace-trimmed, pinstripe shirtfront dress, crisp and proper.

      Her image was clean, clear, emotionless, and offered no clues to the human’s workings inside - the sound of her voice, how she moved, who she loved, what she saw, what she wished she could see.

      Yet, behind those somehow knowing eyes, so like Jessie’s, down to the faint shadows beneath, she was recording those on the other side of the camera as carefully as they would her.

      An e-mail had come earlier in the week, leading Jessie back to the computer.

      From a childhood friend of Win’s:

      “Since I first talked with you, Jess, after Win was gone, I daily think of parts of my life that included him. When a friend goes to Jupiter and the great beyond, a big piece falls off everyone who knew him. I recall a few events which I will never forget unless I forget my own name…..”

      And the stories followed, enhanced by distance; some with the simplicity of early school years, while the others from high school and college, were alive with male bravado and clever humor.

      Re-remembering personal history, such a strange thing; allowing people to be somehow smarter, worldly-wise, more courageous, prettier, wittier, capable of meeting and overcoming any obstacle, and maybe, in the end, necessary for survival; she considered all this, as she forwarded part of Win’s past to their son.

      Jessie typed in “Widowhood”.

      Over 600,000 entries popped up with that magic word highlighted.

      There were the basic ABC’s of widowhood; there were merry widows and black widows, stories of female serial killers. A handy guide to life after death, not yours, was available. There was even a national association just for widows and Jessie cringed at the thought of the dues that had been paid. There were sites offering prayers, coaching, etiquette, inner peace, serenity and support; tips on survival, with dire warnings about the widow’s health and sanity; and chat rooms where you could share your grief online with Crying in California, Bereft in Boise, and others.

      And when all this was fully absorbed, you could move on to widow dating services with advice on approaching somebody new to love, and where to find the best widowers.

      “This is a very emotional time. You may become depressed.”

      Jessie leaned close to the screen, adjusting her bifocals; she was right, that’s what it said. Asinine. Stupid. Brainless. And funny.

      And with that, she laughed out loud. As the laugh echoed through

the empty house, she clapped her hand over her mouth. No. No one was there to hear. No one to shake their head at her indiscretion.

      Relax, she told herself, although this was clearly wrong. Laughter had no place in her life. Not now. Maybe never again. But, oh, God, it felt good, like a long locked door swinging open and fresh air rolling in.

      She sank back, her shoulders and neck, before so rigid, had let go. Her mind didn’t seem jumbled; she could see around her - light, furniture, even dust motes falling noiselessly though the air. Her hands rested in her lap, unclenched. And her face, her lips, had softened; the skin no longer taut and pale.

      Two days later, she sat in the chair again, ready to find what other wisdoms electronics held for her and the other 174,999 widows of the world.

      “Surround yourself with plenty of green plants and fresh flowers. They will help you think of life, not your loss.”

      The florist had asked Jessie what she had in mind: floral bouquets, like roses; wild flowers or carnations; a nice display of succulents in a large ceramic tile bowl; plants - flowering or not flowering, easy care, shady or sunny, indoor or outdoor?

      Jess, who that very morning, had firmly scraped the dust off her four life-like, but not living, silk plants, smiled back and said two plants, green she thought, and a bunch of wildflowers. And directions would be good.

      She moved the well-worn silk plants to a corner shelf. She was beyond artificial; these days she would be into life.

      The flowers, a colorful mix of pinks and purples, amid lacey, green things, were placed carefully into the water in a glass vase on the dining room table. She had trimmed the stems and poured in the contents of the small packet of food.

      The two plants went into the front window, slightly shaded, as directed.

      Jessie was pleased; her cat, Maia, was pleased, curled comfortably between the plants.

      Twelve days after the greenery arrived, Jessie was startled to discover the flowers, faded and crumbled, lying in a mound on the tablecloth; the glass vase dry and crusted with white crystals.

      And somehow, during such a short time, the sun had actually moved, pouring directly into the window and over the plants, now

burned, and bent over, having succumbed to the elements.

Maia, however, who loved the hot sun, remained comfortable.

      “Dress in bright, cheerful colors.”

      When she was growing up, an awkward girl with long, honey blonde hair and fair skin, she had been gifted on birthdays and holidays with assorted sweaters, blouses, skirts, and t-shirts in every delicate pastel possible.

      One Christmas, her folks gave her an expensive cardigan in what her mother described as peach. Jessie put it on and disappeared into the bland.

      Now as she checked her closet, she nearly got lost again, this time in a sea of

black, navy, burgundy, brown and purple. Cheerful seemed to be missing.

      The first time she ventured out to meet Dora for lunch, she was wearing yellow and lime. The woman at the store had told her the colors brought out her gray eyes.

      All Dora had to say was, “I don’t think so, Jess. Really, really, no. You look like a walking margarita.”

      Zillah said, “Interesting.”

      And so, black was back.

      “Don’t stay in bed.”

      She felt very accomplished now that she had learned to make the bed while she was still in it.

      The bed had become an island, surrounded by piles of books, seldom read; magazines and catalogs, thumbed through, then marked and torn apart. There was a cookie tin, fewer crumbs than with the cellophane packages. Next were stacks of empty, red plastic cups, fewer dishes to wash, but bad for the environment. She felt some guilt, but was almost sure that if she looked she would find the dishwasher full. Her portable CD player sat on the pile of unopened mail. Remotes for the tv, VCR and DVD players were in the drawer of the nightstand along with sleeping pills and packages of peanut butter crackers. On the bed itself were pillows, all shapes and sizes, a homemade patchwork quilt, and a fleecy blanket picturing running wolves.

      Bed was her home, her den, her cave, her safety zone, even though she felt more brain cells dying with each day.

      And now, she was being advised to leave it.

      She set the alarm for nine, made the bed, carefully crawled out, ate cereal, looked out the window - it was sunny - and went back to bed. She had been up for seventeen minutes.

      “Make a list of things to do each day. Keep busy.”

      Thinking this might help with the bed problem, Jessie made a list for a Tuesday. It read: make bed, get up, shower, dress, eat breakfast, pay bills, make dinner, eat dinner, go to bed.

      Within a couple of weeks, she got the hang of lists and managed to include phone calls to make, simple shopping, turning on the dishwasher, a lunch with friends, dental appointment, and impossible to include before, the idea of going back to work.

“Share your grief.”

      The invitations came from the mortuary, from the nearby hospice, from the

hospital, and from her church. “Come join us and share your memories, fears, your mourning, with others who are doing the same. The way each of us handles grief is different. Grieving is a normal process. The passage through the grief period, however long, is determined by the individual’s own time frame, and is necessary so that those left behind can eventually face moving on.”

      The message was signed by “A Bereavement Specialist”, which led Jessie to question - when does one decide to become a bereavement specialist; do you have to be bereaved before you help others bereave; and what classes do you take to walk through someone else’s grief?

      Grief groups.

      Jessie went to a meeting at her church on a Wednesday night. Chairs were in a circle and the grief-stricken stood holding hands while the bereavement specialist led them in the Lord’s Prayer. Jessie had known a boy in college who could say the Prayer backwards.

      A man at the meeting, in tears, talked while rocking in his chair, for twenty minutes, while the others in the circle nodded in recognition, sobbed, drank coffee and ate oatmeal cookies.

      When it was her turn to speak, all she could say was, “I can’t.”

      “The dead continue as faithful companions. They do not really leave us.”

      A night. No different from the others, yet in some way, not the same. This night, Jessie heard the creaking of the wooden chair at the foot of her bed, as someone sat down, followed by Win’s gently teasing voice, “Jessie, Jessie, are you going to marry me? Marry me.”

      She did not, she could not, move until morning light.

      Three nights later. Two a.m. The back door slammed, and his voice once again, louder, buoyant, “Jess, I’m home!” And then, nothing.

      “My, oh my, see who’s dining with us poor folk,” Zillah said softly, looking through the archway into the other side of the restaurant.

      “Well, if it isn’t his Honor, the mayor of this decaying, but it’s about to change, city,” Gib said.

      “Isn’t there an election coming up?”

      “Bingo. Best go pay our respects. He and the councilman are probably making the rounds to let us know how their great downtown plan will make life feel good again.

      “Slumming, Lon?”

      “Good to see you, too, Gib. You know Tom? We’re doing a walk-around. Sit down. I’ll buy you a coffee,” he chuckled.

      “I hear there’s a new set of building codes coming my way. We playing a little hardball?” Gib asked.

      “May look that way, but you know as well as I do, if we actually enforced the existing codes, this place wouldn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. Most of these buildings are in the same condition.

      “I grew up across the tracks and I’ve seen all too well what happens when things start to fall apart.”

      Gib listened to the familiar words, words being repeated in countless other communities, when the past comes up against the dollar sign.

      “With our plan, we can make the downtown into the heart of the city again. And there’ll be jobs aplenty. This is growth, Gib. This is growth. You can’t stop it. No one can.”

      “Oh, it’s growth all right. I’ll give you that.”

      “And,” put in the councilman, “with some changes here, you can watch it all happen.”

      “Don’t know about that, Tom. My inclination’s to sit on my front porch with a cold one and watch the cement trucks and bulldozers roll on by.”

      “Think on it, Gib,” the mayor said, settling back, “after all, the Café is part of our history. My grandpa used to bring us kids here for our birthdays. What was it we had? Ha, Mississippi Mud Cake. Made us spell it before we could eat, the old geezer.”

      “Still on the menu.”

      “That’s what I mean. Tradition. Stick with us, Gib. Make the improvements and go along for the ride. After all, you’ve got your people to think of as well.”

      As the politicians ambled out, shaking any hand in their way, Nancy said, “With never a backward glance, there goes our future.”

      And from Zillah, frowning behind the counter, “You know the other day at the store, I was behind this gentleman in the checkout line. In his cart, he had a fifth of whiskey, red wine in a box, two six-packs, and a big box of bran cereal. I told my husband, I could see our future in that combination. I didn’t much care for that future either.”

      “Any chance of changing minds, Gib? Letters, petitions, threats, blackmail?”

      “Don’t think so, sweetheart. I have a gut feeling these city fathers would pat everyone on the head, say they understood their concerns, and then turn around and put together a counter plan. They’d call us community cranks, or worse, and say we’re dinosaurs from the Stone Age and against progress. Not so far wrong, in my case, I admit.”

      At the same time, up the block, Matt was working his way through a thick packet of building codes. Electronic. Support. Refrigeration. Plumbing.

      Giving up in frustration, he instead watched his customers. So many of them had become regulars over the years. Through all the banter, bad jokes, and spilled beers, they had also become friends. Sharing good days and bad, new jobs and new retirements, and their families. They had yelled at games together, combined their pitiful wisdom on women, toasted holidays, birthdays, beginnings and endings, first and last marriages, and divorces, too, including one of his own.

      The No Name remained theirs, unchanged, whether for an hour, an evening, or a decade. When this all ended, as he knew it one day would, he could almost see what would take place.     

      As things began to slide, the regulars would slip away, one by one. After the Name closed, those same regulars would pass each other in some shiny new mall. They might actually nod to each other, might even say to their companions, I know that guy, can’t remember from where though, cocooned as they would be in a maze of hallways, storefronts, corridors, and escalators, and assaulted with impersonal, harsh signs and impersonal, harsh noises.

      The only true sounds, vaguely heard in their memory, would be the clink of ice in glasses, a favorite song played on an old jukebox, and a door closing quietly behind them.

      During the following weeks, the public was treated to a barrage of city problems and proposed solutions. The talk, in newspaper articles and editorials and in civic meetings, was of buckled sidewalks, flooded and cracked streets, outdated water lines with no pressure, dying landscape, and, crime, which could initially be addressed with the addition of modern lighting and safer parking areas.

      In the many closed study sessions, however, with the mayor, council and chamber members, and a few key representatives from the Alliance, in attendance, the talk was all on cash flow, tax base, development impact fees and property taxes, anything to do with profit.

      Over lunch, Matt claimed, “I got my marching orders, Gib. Time to go.”

      “Too many improvements?”

      “Man, you have no idea. Half the things I can’t even pronounce, let alone know what they are. Would have to tear down and start over. I’ll let someone else do that.”

      “So when do you think?”

      “After the holidays. Hell, can’t leave now, I already have my Christmas decorations up,” he paused, “course I always have my Christmas decorations up.

      “You remember when we came here, Gib? Look in any direction and you’d see the mountains. Could watch that sun rise and set. Now it’s all walls. Then, in five minutes on dirt roads, we could be in country. At night, you would hear the toads calling in the wet fields and swear they were babies crying. Rarely heard a siren and when you did everybody’d stop and watch for the fire truck or ambulance to see where they were headed. Loved the train whistles, especially at night when the cars rolled through the town. Now, they’re lost in all the racket.”

      “Zillah says once the train whistles disappear, so do the small towns.”

      “I will say they’re right about some of the things that need to be done though. Streets and all. They’re crap.”

      “Yeah, Matt. One of these days a miracle might happen and the council members, God willing, may be forced to put money out on those streets instead of in their pockets.”

      “I’ve got salt, pepper, ketchup, and salsa. What more do I need?” Dora complained.

      “Gosh, I really don’t what to say, idiot,” Jessie said. “Except our phone conversations are getting stranger than our in-person ones. Just a thought, but if you’re having Mr. Dunn over for dinner, salsa sandwiches might not be the way to go.”

      “He is coming for a meal. A meal. Remember what you told me - it is just a meal. Besides, my mom is making her meatball lasagna and I’ll do the salad and dessert. I was trying to choose - those great chocolate cupcakes with the white stuff in the center, or jello and whipped cream.”

      “Perfect. A real home-cooked meal. My favorite, especially when it’s cooked at someone else’s home,” Jessie said. “I love your mom, Dee, mostly because she named you Belledora.”

      “Easy for you, Jessie Smith. But, let me tell you, it was tough out there when I started school, at least until first grade when I became the playground bully and could fight back.”

      “And how is Mr. Dunn? Are you two dating, as they say?”

      “Dating? Everybody asks are we dating? I’m practically heading into my golden years, whatever that means. For God’s sake, I have two kids. I also have a job and I fucking have a mind and use it, most days. I am not dating, not going steady,

not keeping company. I wish people would just get over it. I mean, when do we stop dating? At what age? When do we stop being boyfriend and girlfriend?”

      “My apology. When you’re right, you’re right. Dating? At our age? If you can believe this, people have started telling me that I’m young enough,. Young enough for what, I’ll ask. Why, young enough to find a nice man, is their answer. Dee, I had a nice man. Win knew me. He knew my history, my kinks, my dumb jokes, my temper, and he loved me anyway. Another man, one who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t know and care about my son, someone who doesn’t know how to love me, touch me - how can this happen? I don’t know if you can ever get beyond that certain love, the one where you were young together.”

      “Ah, I was young with Ted. I was starry-eyed and believing and trusting, all the fairytale things. Now, it seems, I only trust myself, and even that doesn’t work some times. Jess, I like Mr. Dunn, I do. He can be my friend. I can handle a friend, a man who is my friend. But, no more marriage. No more papers, no proposals, no promises. No, thank you.

      “However,” she said, “a weekend at a Motel 6 might be doable.”

      “Really?” And Jessie drew out the word.

      “I can actually hear your eyebrows raise in disbelief as we speak. You mock me; old Dora, all talk and no action. Okay, you know me way too well.”

      “Dee, you’re a big girl, almost an adult, some might say. I just like that there’s someone in your life. And, for a friend, male or female, there’s always room. I’m just

not sure that room’s at Motel 6. Now, I need to ask you a serious something. And you don’t have to say anything and we’ll let it drop.”

      “Like we have a lot of secrets. Go.”

      “That day when you talked about the affair, did you tell Ted you knew? And, what happened with the woman? What in the world did you do?”

      Dora sat still, memory of depression showing through her shoulders, and then started on what sounded like a new conversation. “She wanted so much for me to know exactly what had been going on, even then, when it was over, that she followed me into the kitchen. I was in there trying to crawl into a hole. She walked right up to me and, honest to God, said, ‘You’re a lucky woman, Mrs. Jayne. Your husband is really hung.’”

      Jessie listened, stunned.

      “You know how you think of a situation after it happens and come up with the words you could have said, but never did, never came up with at the time. Not me. Not then.

      “I looked at her, at her sad, smirking face, and said, ‘So which story did he tell you, I’d like to know. My wife’s sick, I can’t leave her alone with the kids. My wife’s crazy, I can’t leave the kids alone with her. Or, I’ll lose everything if I leave now?’ And her eyes widened in recognition. Then, I said, ‘I’m so sorry, Stacy,’ - that was her name - ‘really I am. You’re not his first and you won’t be his last.’

      “She just stood there with no cute comeback, and I went into the bathroom, cried, and threw up. Of course, I had to finally come out. She was gone. And I wasn’t the same me. Flushed that Dora away with everything else.

      “Funny thing though, Jess. At the time I thought I was so shocked and betrayed and surprised. But I wasn’t - surprised. Somewhere deep inside, a part of me already knew. Those words, they came from a woman who had been waiting.”

      What Dora didn’t say was that after years of Ted and his friends, she finally fell apart, and it was in public, at the Café.

      She had clung to Gib for support. “What do I do now?” she groaned.

      He knew. Everyone knew. The whole world knew.

      “Well, I’ve always thought when you keep getting the rug jerked out from under you, it’s high time to throw out the rug. Take it from there, I guess.”

      “Jerk is a good word --- I love you,” she said.

      “I know, kid.” And he patted her shoulder

      “Sorry,” Annie said as she brushed against Dora when they were working in the kitchen.

      “No, sweetie. Don‘t say ‘sorry‘. Say ‘excuse me‘. Say ‘I‘ll try to remember next time‘. Say anything. Keep your ‘sorry‘ for times that totally call for sorry and nothing else will do.”

      “Wow, mom, where did that come from?”

      “Probably your great grandmother. ‘Sorry’ seems to be a habit handed down from mother to daughter. So save ‘sorry’ for special occasions, like you do white gloves.”

      “White gloves?” Annie frowned.

      “Oh, God, I am so old.”

      “Whatever. No more, ‘I’m sorry’.”

      “You’re sorry all right.” Eric laughed from the other room.

      “Boys,” his sister sighed.

      “Yes, they are,” Dora said.

      “Are you nervous? You look nervous. Sort of spacey.”

      “I just don’t understand when dinner became such a big deal.”

      The front door closed. And Joel Dunn was gone.

      There was an instant flashback to the night when Ted had stood at the same exact spot and Dora had asked fearfully, “What are you doing?”

      “This is a doorway, I’m walking through it. It’s called leaving.” He did, and even after all this time, Dora had to admit that he had a real flair for the theatrical.

      “I like him,” Annie said, behind her. “And mom, he likes you. What are you going to do about him? When he’s around, you’re all different, kind of soft, friendly, even. So?”

Dora crossed the room and sank into her rocking chair -- old, scarred by time and traumas, nicked by bumps, stained by babies; all things she and the chair had in common. This was her safe place -- where she had rocked through two pregnancies, where she had sat up nights with crying, teething babies, and some nights, crying herself, where she had tried to hide from the outside after Ted.

      “I don’t know; it’s not so simple,” she answered. “I like him, too. He almost makes me curious about life again. Almost.”

      Annie pulled up the footstool and sat in silence studying her, until, “Mom, tell me about kissing.” Her eyes were alert.

      “Kissing? You mean kissing, right?” Dora asked.

      “Right. I know all the other stuff.”

      “I told you --”

      “And you were very good, mom. But I knew all that long before. There’s always some smart mouth on the playground who wants to show off.”

      “Playground?”

      “First grade,” her daughter said matter-of-factly.

      “Wonderful. Then why did you let me go on and on about all that stuff?”

      Her daughter gave her a look, beyond her years, “Because it seemed so important to you.”

      “Thank you.”

      “Sure. You have no idea how many people can’t wait to tell you who does what and what goes where.” She stopped as if to select just the exact words. “No one ever tells you about kissing.”

      And with that, Dora knew her daughter wasn’t asking about kissing. Annie was searching. As was her mother.

Not for the first time, Dora realized how totally she had lost her way.

      “I never saw two people more in love,” Jessie had once said.

      “True. But we were both in love with the same person. Him,” she had answered.

      “Ted loved you, Dee.”

      “Ted loved everyone. Or tried to.”

      How sad. Nothing there to explain the kissing.

      Then, without permission or request, memories pushed in -- the pressure of a hand on hers; a light, sweeping touch on her shoulders as he moved past; lips, both soft and seeking, and her shaking response; the voice that had said, ‘I love you’, and meant it, at the time.

With this, Dora found her way and talked to her daughter.

      The last of the one hundred degree days of the year had come and gone, as had the turbulent afternoon dust storms -- blinding storms that caused chain-reaction crashes along stretches of farmland bordering the interstate.

      Days were getting shorter and people reappeared on the streets, enthusiastic that by now the weather had cooled to ninety degrees.

      Campaign signs crowded each other for room in empty lots and discarded political flyers littered streets and alley-ways.

      Halloween candy was on store shelves and Christmas decorations were already unboxed in storerooms.

The downtown makeover was underway. Aging narrow sidewalks were widened and evened out. Abandoned buildings were inspected and scheduled for clean-up or tear-down. New street lights were purchased and large empty redwood planters were perfectly placed on each corner so as to impede drivers’ views, while experts tried to discover what growing things they could fill them with that would be able to survive heat, drought, trash, and traffic.

      Even the Lorelei Hotel, that relic from the Thirties when it provided a stylish stopover for railway passengers traveling to the coast, was shut down temporarily for repairs.

      “My God, this is truly the end,” Matt said, when told the news. “The Lorelei closed? Where are the girls going? It’s not likely they get paid vacations. This is important. I need to know!”

      “Easy does it, old timer,” Gib laughed. “They tell me that place is practically an historical landmark. Opened when the trains still stopped here; then was a rooming house for awhile. Ever been there?”

      A sigh. “Never.”

      “You’ve never been inside? I’m that much disappointed in you, Matt, you being a man of the world and all. Well, let me picture it for you. There is a winding staircase, right out of those old movies; just begs for a gorgeous woman stepping down and Clark Gable waiting at the bottom. There’s real wood floors that they’ve kept up; I don’t know how given the clientele. I think all they’ve added are fire escapes, a couple iron balconies, and few years, back, did some stucco work on the outside. Someone told me yesterday they’re thinking of adding a bar off the lobby.”

      “Just what we need, another bar,” said Matt. “Course I may be a slight bitter. I’d imagine they’ll have to raise their hourly rates. Just a casual observation, you understand.”

      Life at the Café and other establishments went on, energized by the visitors from the north country -- Minnesota, Idaho, Nebraska, and even Canada -- who always drifted in early in the fall and slipped out just before Easter and the resumption of desert heat.

Another body was found on the tracks after the late night train rolled through, sounding a series of long and lonely whistles as a warning. Becoming a regular occurrence, the police stated the unidentified man had either passed out or been sitting on the tracks for whatever reason, and filed it as one more train-pedestrian fatality. His story was briefly covered by the paper in two paragraphs, below the fold on page three, mixed in with a school bake sale and a weed fire on the west side of town.

      Dora was seeing Mr. Dunn, not dating, just seeing, which she made clear to anyone foolish enough to show an interest.

      And Jessie was now working at the gallery three afternoons a week. A woman from the Arts Council had approached her with the possibility of forming a city-sponsored art museum and would she be willing to help. She said maybe.

      As best she could, Jessie kept tears hidden inside. Her time of allowable mourning was fast coming to a close and she was preparing for the first time someone would say, ‘He’s gone. Move on’.

      There were too many days when she felt only habit kept her alive.

      “How’s your cough? Why would you even be here?” Nancy asked Carmen.

      “Better. Codeine,” the hoarse voice said. “Never had it before, but I truly think codeine and I could have a great thing going. We could even get married; there’d be no adultery there.”

      “You are feeling?”

      “Actually, my head is all fuzzy inside.”

      “And with that, you are going home. Now. We’ll get you a cab and cover for you. Git. That’s an order.”

      “Another unidentified body,” Cady said to Dora. “I saw it in the paper last week. How can these people be unknown? First, our lady in the park. Now him.”

      “So, she’s ‘our lady’ now, is she?” Dora said. “It’s hard to understand, all this unknown business. With all the numbers that define our existence in the world these days, the photos and fingerprints, the information on the internet, you’d hope something would pop up. I still think of her, too. Strange, isn’t it? The paper ran that sketch of her again last month. I wonder what happens to these unknowns. Then again, probably I don’t really want to know.”

      “Scary is what it is, Dora. You’re born being this person; you have an identity. Yet somewhere along the way, you can just disappear into a crowd. Bothers me. Bothers me a lot. The only thing you can truly call your own, is you.”

      Dora was looking out the window.

      “Cady, when I say ‘hit the floor’, go!”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “Jessie’s crossing the street and in full attack mode, if I’m not mistaken. There’s a cloud of steam swirling around her.”

      “You are so funny; crazy even.”

      “Why do people insist on saying that about me? Why? Why not cute, wise, adorable, and --- hey, Jessie.”

      “Do you know what that woman said? You won’t believe me. I wanted so much to knock her sideways. Hi, Cady.”

      “And you’re going to tell us when? Before or after you sit?”

      Jessie fell into the booth. “She said, and I quote, ‘I’m rather sad’. Rather? Sad? My God, she lost someone she supposedly cared about and now she’s ‘rather sad’. I mean, Dora, when you were expecting, did you say, ‘I’m rather pregnant’? Hell, no.”

      “Back then, I was too busy dry heaving to say much of anything, except that he could have the next baby.”

      “I’ll think that’s laughable, tomorrow. This woman should ache all over, in every part of her body, in parts she didn’t know she had. And then be numb, at the same time. ‘Rather sad’, my ass!”

      “I take it this was the memorial service; the one I kindly suggested you might want to skip?” Dora asked.

      But Jessie went on, “Looked me right in the eye and said those words. To me, who’s been a walking wreck for months. And I know she had some mental image of herself, all wan and wistful and hands fluttering in the air. ‘I am rather sad’. I hate her.”

      “Of course, you do.”

      “Cady, Carmen’s taking off, so will you stay extra? I can give you a lift home.”

      “I’m here, Nancy.”

      “Are you better now?” Dora said to Jessie.

      “I was having a major meltdown, wasn’t I? Why am I so emotional? I shouldn’t have any emotions left.”

      She stared at Dora for a long, a too long, moment. “I think it’s that people are beginning to forget. They can’t do that,” she said, a sharp challenge in her voice. “Dee, I need to hear his name. I need to be able to say his name without people backing off. I need him. Still.”

      “Maybe friends feel they’re protecting you by not talking about Win,” and she purposely spoke his name.

      “Someone I’ve known forever told me she hadn’t come by the house because that way she could pretend Win was alive. I didn’t know what to say to her - and it’s the same with JJ. It’s like if he doesn’t come home, if he puts a thousand miles between him and home, then his dad can be alive. But, Dee, I know. I know he’s not alive and I can’t play pretend.”

      “I’m eating out way too much,” Jessie said the following week. “I haven’t learned how to cook for one, either. I don’t eat at all or I eat standing at the sink or the kitchen looks like Thanksgiving morning. So talk to me, how’s the rest of the world been getting along without me. It is getting along, right? I haven’t been paying attention. How’s the family?”

      “Well, my mom, who sees ahead, but rarely side to side, asked me again why my brother has to be gay. She’s sure it must be that he hasn’t found the right woman yet. I told her life is confusing out there and we left it at that, like always. And then, Annie asked me to explain kissing,” Dora said.

      “Oh, kissing, I remember kissing. I loved kissing. Dee, she’s very young to ask that, and, we know that’s not exactly what she wanted to know. Kissing?”

      “Nope. Annie said she knew all the other stuff and that’s what she called it, Jess, so easily it hurt me. I don’t even know all the other stuff. Am I going to have to consult my daughter to see if ‘stuff’ is still done the same way? Not that the situation is likely to come up.”

      Jessie bent in close, “I don’t think so, Dee. It’s not the same. In fact, I’m almost sure there’s whole lot of new ‘stuff’. Just looking at what comes in my e-mail and what’s on television and in the movies - trust me, ‘stuff’ today is different. What did you tell her?”

      “With all that’s gone on these past few years, you may have noticed I tend to be a little suspicious about true love and even kissing. Too many bad things get done in the name of love,” Dora said. “But then, sitting with her, the strangest sensation came over me, forgotten things. My first crush. The time a boy gave me a real romantic valentine in front of the whole sixth grade. “To My Sweetheart”, the card said, and it was covered with lace and a red ribbon. I was so embarrassed, but absolutely thrilled, too. And, back when Ted used to simply touch me in passing, and I would shiver. Before we went wrong.”

      “Bobby Turner kissed me on the playground in second grade. He was shorter and had to stand on a cement block. I’ve never, ever forgotten. His lips were so soft and gentle,” Jessie said. “He brought me a ring the next day. Really, he did. That night, his mother called mine and he’d sort of borrowed the ring from her jewel box and she would be pleased to have it back, she said.”

      “What happened to Bobby?”

      “We both grew up.”

      “Let me pay,” said Jessie, emptying her purse on the table. “You are my best friend and a cheap shrink, all in one.” She grinned, a first in a long time.

      “Never say never to a free meal. I must also say you are looking uncommonly good. I could almost swear there’s a tiny Jessie twinkle firing up. What’s going on?”

      “Who understands these things? All I know is that over the past few days I’ve realized I’m really tired of acting like a victim. I lost someone who meant the entire world to me. Nothing will change that. I couldn’t die for Win any more that he could have for me, if things had worked out differently. We each have to do it on our own. And now, I’ve even started imagining the possibility that life could have something else for me. Some small adventure. Anyway, Dee, I am trying hard to believe.”

      “Welcome home, best friend. You’ve been missed. So much.”

      October had brought back the heat, and storms, with little dust, but high winds, lightning, and gully-washing rains.

      On one sultry Sunday night, high-reaching clouds were building in the south, with internal flashes of light outlining their edges against the surrounding blackness. As the storm moved closer to the town, thunder tumbled through the upper air as lightning grew like an instant tree, sending branches streaking to all corners of the sky.

      Buildings appeared and faded in a blink as the heavenly strobe lights went off again and again. Newspapers, candy wrappers, cans, and empty trash containers were pushed and pulled by gusts of wind into alleys and vacant lots.

Bars were closed and cleaned and locked down. The last bus was out on the interstate laboring to escape the approaching storm.

      As lightning lit up the night shadows of their bedroom, Gib bent over and tucked the sheet around his wife’s shoulders. She hiccoughed as she often did when sleeping soundly.

      The lightning tore through the darkened house and Jessie was sitting in her favorite overstuffed chair, holding her nervous cat, and feeling the tremors rippling through its body with each thunder clap. The neighborhood was absolutely black, not even a shadow to let you know there was a world out there.

      God was bowling.

      God was having a good game.

      That had been her dad’s story, one of many.

      To hear him tell it, thunder was bowling, freckles were angel’s kisses, and slivers had to be talked out of tiny fingers. He said where he came from, somewhere in Minnesota, his grandma would sit him down, dry his tears, and say this won’t hurt a bit; we’ll just kind of talk that devil sliver out. And with that, she would tell him a story, ask his opinion to make sure he was listening, and all the while, using a sharp, clean needle, would pry that sliver loose. Afterward, his finger painted red-orange from medicine, he would get cookies, cake, pie - whatever had come out of the oven that morning.

Matt was driving. It was late and he was watching neon lights dance on rain-slicked streets and sidewalks when he heard the fire sirens. A bad night, but not for him; he was going home.

      Annie had crawled into bed with Dora and gone immediately back to sleep, depending on her to keep the badness away. Dora’s mom had warned her children

during storms such as this that they must stay in bed because, ‘You’ll see, ghosts will walk tonight’, and some part of Dora still listened for the sound of chains clanking down the hallway.

      Cady, deep asleep, reached for Gilbert, and felt the empty space next to her.

      The old man, carrying a raggedy bedroll, backpack, and a brown paper bag, could not believe his luck. A back door to the building was unlocked. He stepped inside, paused, and heard only the storm roaring overhead. Sitting on the floor of an upstairs room, he undid the bedroll, and pulled his constant companion out of the bag, quickly taking a swallow from the bright green bottle of cheap wine.

      A dangerous night for some, he figured, but not him, not this time; he was safe from the wind and rain. And soon, the combined spell of sleep and wine moved through his body, leaving him almost weightless. He sank down, and then down.

      He did not hear the steps on the stairs or the muted movements on the third floor. He did not smell the fumes as vapors, heavier than air, made their way down a highway of cracks from floor to floor; did not notice the spit and pop of flames. What almost woke him was the sound of whispering, seductive and consistent. Then, the man found himself gulping for air, only there was none. Darkness was already edging into his head when he finally saw the fiery fingers, roiling across the floor like waves of water. As he listened, the fire breathed his name.

      “Gib? Matt. Get downtown. The Lorelei’s burning. They’re fighting the fire now and with this wind those sparks are going every which way.”

      Water from the rain poured down and water from the fire hoses sprayed up until the whole nighttime scene seemed to float in space. The brilliant orange and golden flames flared crazily along the roof of the building and reached out of jagged, broken windows. Flames would fade only to burst out of control a few feet away.

      The police placed their lines to hold back the small crowd and protect them from falling debris as shooting stars of fire arched into the streets and onto the roofs of adjacent buildings.

      Finally, the rain lessened, but the winds raged on.

      “Bobby! Know you’re knee deep, but do you have any idea how this happened?” the reporter yelled.

      The fire chief turned, “Have to wait for awhile. You know it’s damn hard to determine the cause in the best of circumstances. My guess, and this is way off the record, no accident.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Let’s move out of the boys’ way. Most times, when a fire starts on the top floor, especially in the back of the building, it’s a set job. For the insurance.”

      “Why the top?” the reporter asked, trying to focus on his small notebook through the wet and heat. “Could have been lightning.”

      “Nah, I’d say it was gasoline, probably mixed with some form of fuel oil. This started on the third floor, alley-side. That reads professional to me. No way any one passing by on the street would see anything ‘til it was too late. And the fire took the roof off fast. That’s the way to get the most money.”

      The reporter looked back puzzled.

      “See for yourself. You leave the whole place open to the weather. And we’re pouring hundreds of gallons of water up there. Going to flood right down to the basement. But, like I said, we won’t know anything until this afternoon or even tomorrow, when the investigators can go through what’s left.”     

      “No casualties, right? The hotel was shut down for repairs.”

      “Shouldn’t be, but can’t tell for sure at this stage.”

      “Later then.”

      A low lying black pall hung over the downtown even as a vague suggestion of dawn lit a peach and purple sky.

      Gib had opened the Café with Matt’s help, serving coffee and cold drinks to those who had gathered during the past few hours. The fire was under control and a few

firefighters had stayed, looking for hot spots and possible damage to nearby structures.

      By seven, the word had spread and the staff arrived to start their day.

      “They say arson.”

      “Insurance money, probably.”

      “Sure it wasn’t the storm? Or some transient passing through?”

      “Could have lit up the whole block.”

      “They stopped the train from coming in for a couple hours.”

      The speculation went on throughout the morning.

      By noon, some information came. Investigators had found the remains of a body, but, they said, no identification would be possible.

By that evening, the newspaper not only had the fire covered in words and photos and interviews on the front page, but also featured their view of the event on the editorial page:

EDITORIAL

A MATTER OF TIME

      Given the deteriorating condition of this city’s downtown area, this was bound to happen. And in the pre-dawn hours Monday, while most of us slept safe from the fierce storm, it did.

      Fire and death.

      The Lorelei Hotel, a downtown establishment with a long, local history, was demolished by flames. And while investigations continue, the cause of this conflagration has been determined to be arson; the fire set purposely by parties not known at this time.

      The building may not be considered a great loss to this community, structures can be rebuilt; but what else was lost, was a human life. An unidentified man, probably homeless, was killed while he slept on the second floor, his presence presumably not a factor to the arsonist.

      When downtowns begin to decay, as this one so obviously has, buildings are left abandoned and open to any shelter-seeking transients, who, in their carelessness or drunkenness, cause events like this disastrous fire. We are certainly not stating this to be the case here, as often owners of such unused or substandard buildings find arson their avenue to real profits by collecting insurance.

      The burning of the Lorelei and the death that regrettably occurred, speak to us more loudly and clearly than a hundred well-intentioned editorials, council meetings, or citizen rallies, that the time for action is now. We need to address our downtown blight. The revitalization plan put forward by the city government must be realized, and soon.

      “That’s the last nail in the coffin I’d say,” Zillah said on reading the paper. “You see, we’re going to be replaced by some restaurant with no prices on the menu, no specials of the day - and no fun to be had.”

      “No mac and cheese or chicken tortilla soup or apple crumb cake, I bet,” Cady chimed in. “They’ll serve little bites of food piled three stories high with carrot curls and twigs sticking out all over the plate.”

      “And instead of waitresses like us, there’ll be servers. Robert will be your server today. La-de-da-dumb,” Zillah continued.

      “Whoa, whoa,” Gib said. “Where’d you get all this? We’re still here, aren’t we? We’ll spruce the old place up enough to get by those damn regulations, at least for a spell. Don’t buy into those plans of the big boys, Zillah. Their sight’s clouded by greed, and that’s a poor bet at best.“

      “So I shouldn’t take up needlepoint just yet is what you’re saying?”

      “Keep your work boots handy, girl,” he said back. “And let’s settle in and watch all the going’s on.”

      Running generally unnoticed by readers in the front page fire coverage was a brief sidebar, “What Happens To…”

      During a press interview with police and fire department representatives, the reporter had asked, “You have an unknown victim of the fire. What happens to him?”

      According to the police investigator, identifying the man would be nearly impossible given the effects of the fire on the body. However, he said, all missing person reports in the county would be followed up.

      “And if that doesn’t pan out?” the reporter persisted.

      “Well, then he will be buried at the Desert Sands Cemetery in a section set aside for John and Jane Does and indigents.”

      “You’re talking about potter’s field. Are there markers? What if someone shows six months from now wanting information?”

      “Each gravesite has a marker with a number. The groundskeeper has the records.”

      “Is this what happened to the woman found in Hansen Park last spring?”

      “We’re still working on that case. But yes, that’s where she’ll go it all else falls through.”

      Jessie, folding the paper, said to Dora, “Potter’s field. That’s from the Bible, I think. And it’s the ass-end of the cemetery. Nothing grows out there, nothing but hard rock. So, she’ll be buried, and no one will know, and that’ll be all the good-bye she gets from this world.”

      “No one to know, or care,” Dora replied.

      “I don’t understand any of this,” Cady said to them, and left the Café for class.

      “I worry about Cady,” Jessie said. “I feel kind of mommy about her. She’s gone from being a kid to being a mother, maybe a wife, and a college student, and I can’t remember seeing her really laugh.”

      “She is super serious,” Dora agreed. “She seems to be worried about disappearing as a woman before she ever gives herself a chance to become one.”

      “Are we getting old?”

      “I would say if we have to ask the question, we probably are.”

      “Damn,” the two said in unison.

      “What do you think of the mayor’s chances today, Gib? You know these guys,” Dora asked over coffee Election Day morning.

      “Lon can come on like all kinds of a fool some days, but never count him out. His family’s hip deep in this county and they know where the bones are buried. Probably buried a few themselves. This will be close.”

      “Any difference who wins? I mean really?”

      “Dora, they all come out of the same cookie cutter, so I’d have to say the agenda will stay the same whoever’s name ends up on the mayor’s door.”

      “Almost makes me want to stay home,” she said.

      The next evening’s Journal heralded the re-election of Lon Mooney, and the beaming mayor promised, in print, to keep the town - “no, the city”, he corrected himself - on track toward prosperity with vitality. The city would become a beacon in the southwest desert, attracting still more construction, more important businesses, and an impressive population growth. And, he stated, this would not become just a bedroom community. People, he said, would live here because this was the place to be.

      “Explain to me,” said Cady, “when exactly does a town become a city.”

      “It’s the day when you finally can’t see the mountains for the walls,” Zillah said.

      “For sure it was arson?”

      “A real professional job, the investigators said. That poor bastard who found shelter, wrong night and wrong place. I can only imagine how relieved he must have felt, being safe and dry, with nobody to hassle him.”

      “Any idea who did this?”

      “Oh, pretty much everybody knows. I mean, just ask who profits. And the jerk isn’t being too quiet about everything. But that’s the way of it, Zillah, right? Everybody knows. Nothing gets done. You can’t look for logic when money’s concerned, any more than with sex or religion.

      “The property’s been cleaned out, in less than a week, and the “For Sale” signs are up. Life moves on. A bit of history goes up in smoke and there’s one more marker in the graveyard.”

      “Oh my, what a sorry mess.”

      The days were shorter and cooler.

      Local stores were beginning to display sweaters, long-sleeved shirts, and even lightweight blankets, stowing away shorts, halter tops, and fans for at least the next few months.

      The Downtown Association was advertising the First Annual Arts, Crafts, and Food Fest for the Thanksgiving weekend. And the churches, all forty-seven of them, were scheduling their holiday bazaars and bake sales.

      The town’s newest Christmas decorations, giant neon candy canes and wreaths, were stacked up at Parks and Recreation, waiting to be installed on light posts the Monday after the holiday weekend.

      “Yes, I’m doing Thanksgiving this year. As usual. And expecting you and my grandkids,” Dora’s mother told her.

      “Sorry, just me, mom. Annie and Eric are going with their father to his folks for three days.”

      “Nice. And their father’s name is Ted.”

      “How could I forget?”

      “Belledora, you have to let go. Please. What happened, happened, ugly as it was. You can’t change that. But Ted is in their lives, as he should be. And unless you’re planning on doing away with him, you have to accept and let go. Forgive. Forget.”

      “Hmmm, doing away with him,” Dora repeated. “There’s a thought. Not entirely new I have to admit. But I suppose that might set a bad example for the kids.”

      She heard an exasperated sigh come through the receiver, loud and clear.

      “Changing the subject,” something her mother often did when her words were being ignored, ”what about Jessie and JJ?”

      “JJ’s still not ready to come home and Jessie’s driving up to be with her dad.”

      “And how is he doing?”

      “He says growing old, uh, stinks. Well, maybe not those exact words. He goes to the doctor with a list of things wrong and says fix them. The doctor tells him he’s eighty-six, and her dad says, what’s that got to do with anything. So, to answer you, he’s feisty, like his daughter. The brain’s good, the body not so much.”

      Another sigh. “I know the feeling.

      “Anyway, you bring the pies and cranberry sauce, homemade, this time, Dee. That doesn’t mean you open the can yourself. And, dear, try to be more positive. You do have a life. It’s time you started living it. I love you.”

      As she hung up the phone, Dora said, “I am positive, mom. Positive I can’t forget. And positive I won’t forgive.”

      “Headache?”

      “Migraine.”

      “Is there anything I can do?” Cady offered. “Something you can take?”

      “Sweetie,” Nancy said, “I’ve been married twice. This migraine is nothing. Probably the beginning of a holiday headache. Should clear out come January.”

      “Gilbert’s coming home tonight. He’ll be here ‘til Sunday.“

      As Cady moved to a table, Zillah said, “Not sounding too excited, is she? My dear Lord, I’m so glad I’m not that age and having to figure out my life. Talk about headache. Time’ll come when those two will have to either jump in like the rest of us or move off. But that point’s different with every couple. You can’t ever be sure. That’s pure bunk There’s never a money-back guarantee where caring’s involved.”

      “They do make a pretty couple though,” Nancy said. “Sort of dear, in fact.”

      “There are moments, Nan. Moments so right. But, you have to decide, sooner better than later, if they add up to a life.”

      “Ouch, my head hurts,” Nancy said as she looked at the mirror over the counter and tried to tuck in her out-of-control hair. “Look at me. I’m like a menopausal Raggedy Ann.”

      Her father’s face had changed, though not in the essentials; the silver moustache was neatly trimmed, the smile strong, and his eyes clear and curious. The lines of his face, however, had during the past year taken a downward slant, the direction age seemed to favor.

      His home now was a studio apartment in an assisted care complex. He lived independently, willful as always, declining the use of walker or wheelchair, accepting a cane with forbearance.

      “Once I’m in a wheelchair, I’ll never get out,” he stubbornly said.

      They ate the traditional holiday meal in the large, sunny dining room. He complained as always about the food’s lack of seasonings and she told him she had forgotten the hot sauce he’d requested and didn’t remind him of his ulcer.

      Talking was their favorite thing to do; only with her dad could Jessie relive the childhood that would evaporate with his passing. He would lean back comfortably in the recliner, feet up, and begin, ‘Remember the day’ - and she would.

      Those were the best times.

      Sometime later, he asked, “Doesn’t your answering machine work anymore?”

      “Sure, dad. I’ve got it set on five rings so I have time to answer if I want to.”

      “Ah, well,” he said, “You see, that’s the difference. At my age, you can’t depend on being around for five rings.”

      “Your whole life you have plans, Jessie. Even when you’re young - it’s always the next birthday, next school year, next ballgame. You grow up and then it’s all about jobs, marriage, children, and planning for their lives.

      “Then wham, you wake up one morning and you’re old. You have no plans. Each day runs into the next. Weekends don’t mean anything special. Saturday is just another day, only with more sports on television. Your body parts don’t work so well, and, you start sleeping a lot.”

      “I worry about you being alone. You’re young, little girl. Don’t sit waiting to see what life brings you,. Get out there and meet it half way.”

      “I’ve had a full life. For the most part, a good one. I’m ready to see what’s on the other side,” he said, with a faint smile.

      Gilbert had been with Cady for almost two days, days filled with family from six states roaming through the house, days filled with food, food everywhere. Turkeys, hams, roasts, tamales, enchiladas, empanadas, beans, yams and pies. The kitchen overflowed with foil pans, steaming pots, and dishes waiting their turn for the dishwasher which was going nonstop.

      All the noise masked the silence between them. Until Saturday.

      Gilbert wanted an answer. He wanted Cady and their daughter. He wanted marriage. And she couldn’t say what she knew he wanted to hear.

      As Cady told her mother, “I need to find out what’s up here,” touching her head, “not worry what people see or don’t see here,” as slowly she passed her hand over her face.

Gilbert, for his part, understood in his own way, that Cady was restless and not happy, even though she had never put this into words. There was nothing he could point to, or pin down. She was always there for him, always, with love, but some unreachable part of her was looking over his shoulder.

      Sunday night, Gilbert held her and brushed the flaming hair away from her face. “I do wish you were happy. You’re forever staring at something and I sure as hell don’t know what. There’s the three of us, and we’re right here.”

      Cady shook her head and hugged him to her, “I don’t know either. Whatever I’m looking for, it’s always just out of reach. I do love you so.”

He left then, tired, and without an answer. And, during the long drive back to the coast, he became aware that without meaning to, they were sliding away from each other and away from the love they shared, which was maybe the one true thing they would ever know.

      Jessie’s voice, as Dora opened her front door, was young.

      “I love Fests. I am a Fest woman and I want to buy something pretty.

      “Dora? Hello?” she snapped her fingers. “It’s Saturday afternoon and we’re going downtown Festing.”

      Dora motioned her in, closed the door, and without a hello back, dragged into the living room and sat in the rocker.

      Jessie found something she hadn’t before in her friend’s clouded eyes, something she couldn’t begin to name.

      “Talk to me. What is this?”

      Dora held the brown velvet pillow tightly like a life preserver and then stammered out, “I am forty; forty years old, Jess, and I spent quite a few of those years trying to be what I thought the men in my life wanted me to be, beginning with my dad. Like most women, I guess. I was married for some of those years. And last night for the very first time, I found out what it’s like to make love with someone.”

      “Oh, God, Dee, you had sex!”

      “No, Jess. That’s it. All those years, I had sex. Sometimes it was even nice and was okay and I thought that’s what love was supposed to be. Love. Sex. Sex. Love. I didn’t know. How could I know? Who explained these things to us when we were young? I was raised by a shy woman who at night undressed for bed in the bathroom with the lights out. So, sex and love never seemed to make it into our mother-daughter conversations.”

      “But, now we are talking about Mr. Dunn, right?”

      “Yes - Joel.” And for Jessie, this was the first time Dora had spoken, ‘Joel’, at least to her. “He was here for dinner last night. And things, happened.”

      “I can tell.”

      Dora sat up straighter and said, “It was - he made sure that I was emotionally with him, all the way, and not just, there.”

      “That’s good, isn’t that good?”

      Dora nodded, “Good. And sad. Because this never happened to me before. And, Jess, I cried. Me. I was all cried out years ago with Ted. But I cried, and he held me.”

      “And then?”

      “Then we started over, from the beginning. Only much, much slower. And my body, my skin, they didn’t belong just to me anymore. He said, ‘I like things slow. I like the touch of your skin on mine, the feel, and smell.’ His face was so very close to me, and, ‘I want this to last, Dee, as long as possible. We don’t want it to be over - and climax means over’.”

      At this, Jessie shuddered because her past came tumbling back - Win’s words, his feel, his touch and smell - and she silently screamed, again, over her loss.

“How to you feel?” she managed to ask.

      “All inside out. Like a switch was turned on and there are parts of me I didn’t know I had, parts that I’m feeling for the first time, and my body’s all worn out, but yelling, ‘Finally‘!”

      “And now?”

      “And now?” Dora echoed. “I sort of thought this was enough. It’s not about a happy ever after ending, Jess. I gave up reading those books years ago when I discovered if you didn’t expect anything, you’d never be disappointed. This just took me by complete surprise, and we know how I feel about surprises. Then of course, being me, I have to wonder, what else in my life have I simply accepted or taken for granted as the real thing.”

      “He cares about you.”

      “It would seem that way.”

      “Can’t you believe someone would want to be with you, be there for you?”

      “Believe? That’s strange. The other day you said you were trying to believe. I find that so hard. I do believe in my kids, my mom, you. But, I mostly believe that when the morning comes, I’m the one who’ll be here for me. And I don’t think much of the word, love, in case that’s where you’re headed. We lean on love way too much. It’s like a universal credit card. And lastly, Jessie, because I can already see him leaving.”

      Jessie said cautiously, “I don’t want to overstate the obvious, Dee, but sooner or later, everyone leaves. Nothing lasts forever, neither the bad, nor the good.”

      “I…” Dee started.

      “No, let me finish. Maybe the time’s here for you to walk back into a life.”

      “Boy, you and my mom.”

      “I can’t know about Mr. Dunn; if he’s the chance you take. But I do know I don’t want you, years from now, to be looking back, hoping for one more glimpse of someone who was there for you, for however long. And that’s it.”

      “End of speech?” Dora said.

      “All done.”

      The two sat.

      “Okay now,” Jessie said, “can we go buy me something pretty, please?”

      Dora stretched out her tiredness, got up, and said, “Pretty? I’m thinking grilled sausages and peppers and cold beer.”

      “Oh, yes, very pretty. That will work. Absolutely.”

Woman’s ID Still Unknown

      The identity of the “Lady of the Roses”, as she has come to be known, still remains unknown after several months. The woman’s body was found last spring in the rose garden in Hansen Park.

      According to a police spokesperson, investigations and medical tests, including fingerprints, have yielded no results. Her photograph has been distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the southwest.

      An artist’s sketch of the woman published twice in the Journal has brought no response from the public.

      Unless new information is received, plans are for the woman to be buried locally within the next few weeks.

December’s early light crawled across the wrinkled sheets, pausing on a slender strand of hair on the pillow next to her face. Jessie twirled the fine hair around her finger.

Gray.

No.

Silver.

Nice thought, but no.

White.

Oh, please.

She closed her eyes and pictured the yellow-white hair of her childhood, the gold blonde of her teens, which evolved into shiny honey blonde; and later, light brown. That was her past. Here, curling her finger, was her future.

After breakfast, Jessie went into The Room, previously known as the guest bedroom, where now all Win’s things had been placed - on hangers, in piles, boxes, large envelopes, suitcases, file folders and plastic bags. There were stacks of CD’s, DVD’s, crates of books, his computer, and assorted electronics.

A relative, a man she really wished she was not related to, suggested she tell family and friends they were welcome to come to the house, by appointment, to browse through the leftovers of Win’s life, and buy what they wanted, either for practical or sentimental reasons. He’d done this when his mother died and had made a nice financial gain - his words - from the event.

Death never came when all was the way it was supposed to be - when the house was cleaned, laundry done, bills paid, papers filed for easy access, letters and e-mails answered, teeth cleaned, hair trimmed, refrigerator stocked, garbage dumped, gas tank full, home repairs completed, and money available.

So there was The Room, to hold some of the mess left behind when this life ended.

Win’s clothes were gone, that had been Jessie’s single accomplishment, and now she was faced with crowded file cabinets, papers, letters, and cards, piles of photographs, notebooks dating back to grad school, books with sections highlighted in yellow and comments in the margins written in Win’s half-cursive, half-printed, painfully familiar hand.

And then there was the unfamiliar, those small, nagging, unsolvable mysteries tucked away in books, drawers, in boxes at the back of the closet, in discarded wallets, in pockets of seldom worn jackets. A two-inch, enameled statue of St. Francis of Assisi and tapes of Gregorian chants. A single silver dollar dated 1878 sealed in a plain white envelope. A pair of gold and black cufflinks with pentagrams engraved on them. An address book with no recognizable, to her, names or numbers. A snapshot of a woman; another of two small children. A worn postcard from Italy with one word, ‘Unbelievable’, and signed, ‘K. Pieces of a life, saved, secreted away, valued.

Because of this, Jessie decided to clean up her life; no junk, no mysteries, no revelations for her son to confront when she was gone.

Photos were either tossed or collected and labeled. A journal was re-read and surrendered to the trash and then reclaimed, as were early letters from Win. Articles she had written for magazines and newspapers in her New York days were saved.

She organized insurance papers and banking information into a small, fireproof safe; gathered family birth, death, and marriage certificates there also. Her living will was updated, forms for power of attorney signed and notarized. She had her son’s name added to the house, car, and bank accounts, and even typed a list of her personal belongings and what should go to whom.

And when finally, she told JJ all this, sure he would be relieved, he came back impatiently, “What is this, Mom? You planning on checking out, too?”

She explained her whys, and he laughed.

“Mom, you are so anal. Look around. Life is messy. And so is dying. Death sure won’t be sitting in a flower garden waiting ‘til it’s convenient for you. No matter what you do, organize, plan for, things will never, ever be neat and pretty.”

This time it was Jessie’s turn to react. “I am so not anal!”

“Mom,” he said, “I love you a bunch and things will either happen or they won’t. I want you to live, but not with one foot out the back door. All the rest will take care of itself. And I’m not twelve anymore, with a bedroom you have to use a shovel to walk through. I’m getting good at cleaning up messes. So, enough of this, stop already. Talk to me about what we’re doing for Christmas. This is our first. Ours. Yours and mine.”

Jessie, smiling into the receiver, loving this kid so incredibly, said, “I’m thinking New York.”

Dora’s mother asked if they were going to New York.

“They are, and JJ’s really up for it; he hasn’t been back since he was twelve, Jessie said.”

“And how is she? Many memories there for her, Dora.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to the park Saturday or are the kids getting too old?”

“We can’t break family tradition, mom. Christmas tree lighting, carols, Santa, candy. I’m good. As for Annie and Eric, they may yell, ‘Not again’, but they’re always the first out of the car.”

A slight pause was followed by her mother saying, “Is your friend going, too?”

Dora, inhaling the laughter, said, “Yes, I suppose he’ll be there.”

“I think it’s wonderful, dear, that you finally have a friend to do things with. You two are getting along well?” Mother code - words said, meaning implied.

And Dora answered, without sound - mom, you have no idea the things we do together. We are talking major sexuality here. I have had the most intense orgasms, beyond anything in my entire life. But, oh, my God! Whatever two naked, consenting adults can think of to do together, we do. There are parts of my lower extremities that tighten every time my friend looks at me, and my mouth gets all dry, while the rest of me doesn’t -----

“We’re fine, mom.”

Christmas in the desert meant luminaries bordering nighttime sidewalks, trees with lights shaped like red and green chili peppers, tamales on Christmas Eve, and houses blazing holiday displays that included neon saguaros and Santa’s sleigh pulled by roadrunners.

And, as everywhere, Christmas was alive and doing well in the stores. Even the local liquor drive-through was in the mood, advertising knives, gun cases, holsters, cross bows, fishing supplies, and guns - black powder to paint ball - for the sportsman on anyone’s list.

And, as Christmases always seem to do, the day came and it went.

Saturday was full of wonder, excitement, and far too much activity. Sunday brought exhaustion and far too much food, and by Monday, Christmas was on sale forty percent off, and newspaper advertisements informed couples they could bring in the New Year at the local Holiday Inn for only seventy-five dollars, which covered dinner, two glasses of California champagne, noise makers, dancing, and coffee.

Gilbert had given Cady a ring on Christmas Eve, telling her to wear it, or not. She told him she would wear it, but was going to finish school. He left a day early.

Dora’s holiday was uneventful and calm, until the Tuesday after Christmas, when Ted called to let her know he was getting married, that the about-to-be bride was twenty-two, and was about-to-be a mother in five months.

The Virginia Café, closed Saturday and Sunday, opened Monday at seven. “There’s nothing sadder than Christmas decorations the morning after. All the fuss, the glitz, and then what”? Zillah questioned.

Matt sent out black-edged invitations to the No Name’s “End of Life As We Know It” party.

In New York, Jessie and JJ sat on a small patio off Fifth Avenue. The waterfall at one end was more steam than water due to the cold. The trees, mostly black skeletons, stood like sentinels over the empty, wrought iron tables and benches.

“So, this is where it happened.” JJ said.

“Right here. He said what day next month do you want to get married. Six weeks later, we did.”

“How did you know, mom?”

“Well, I didn’t. But it seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

“And on that lack of wisdom rests a lifetime. Scary.”

“Pretty much,” she acknowledged.

“What’s the plan today? Are we going to sit here, reminisce and freeze? I thought maybe you’d want to go dance naked in Times Square or something. You know, for old times.”

Not missing a beat, Jessie said, “Don’t think so. Been there, done that.”

“Right, mom. You’re such a world-class swinger,” her son said, cracking up. Then he looked at his mother, saw her enigmatic smile, and stopped.

“He’s a perv!”

“He’s your father.”

“That cheerleader is only nine years older than me. That can’t be legal. Mom?”

“I……..”

“Not only that, but I’m taller than she is.”

“Your brother seems…..”

“Eric’s a jerk. He thinks when he gets older, she’ll set him up with some of her friends. Honestly, mom, why do boys only think with their dicks?”

“Annie! I’m too old for this and you’re much too young to come to that conclusion,” Dora said, thinking to herself she’d been almost twenty before that had occurred to her and then felt guilt because she’d actually had a glimmer of motherly pride.

“Our family’s just getting bigger,” she tried.

Annie quieted and said, “No. That’s not what happens. You know it and so do I. Dad’ll have his new family. We won’t see him as much, and when we do, things will be all different. I don’t understand how you let this happen, mom.” With that, she left the room.

“Don’t put anything in an e-mail you don’t want the world to read,” her son, the computer whiz, had warned her from the beginning.

But she needed to talk and needed to think at the same time, and for some reason, telephones tended to fog her mind; the mouth worked, but brain waves seemed slow to follow:

“It was more than good to see you in New York,” she typed to her friend. “But there was much I wanted to say, though not in front of JJ. So, I’m going to ramble and hope something makes sense. You have been my dear friend for at least 475 years, and, by now, you know me. Here goes.

“My worst fear in all this is happening - I am simply taking up space. I’m being sucked through other peoples’ lives and it’s not enough. At least for me.

“I remember when I was growing up in Iowa how hot and sticky the summers were. My Danish grandmother used to cover the furniture in her living room with light cotton throws, so it wouldn’t be touched by the outside in any way. No dirt, no sweat, no imprints of bare legs and arms. Then, the heavy drapes would be closed against the light, against life. A floor fan turned slowly, moving the same air round and around.

“That room is me now.

“You have someone for so long, you take him for granted. He is a part of your every day, every idea, your every breath. Without thinking. He is always there.

“Then, in one instant, he’s gone, and suddenly somehow, he becomes an it. You can talk to it, hold it, but it no longer hears you and can’t hold you back or say your name in that certain way. Or, in any way.

“So, how can you explain that moment to people standing outside watching?

“You can’t.

“One of the myths about mourning is that there is an end point; that if you just wait long enough, the hurt stops hurting. It does not.

“For months, I had considered myself a death work-in-progress. My emotional bags were packed. I thought I was ready for what came next, even though I pretty much believe there’s nothing. I saw my death in other people’s eyes.

“I was prepared for my end. And what happened? Win died. He died.

“And, after this time, I no longer see me in other’s eyes,. No one asks how I’m feeling, and this is good. But, I’ve come to the bizarre notion that we’re each allowed one death close to us; one that everyone will share in, cry over, mourn. After that, other deaths, including your own, should merge together in some mysterious way, and discreetly fade away unnoticed. I disagree. Each life should be worth a death of its very own.

“Too much alone time, you’re saying, and maybe you are right,.

“Someone, just the other day, asked me why I was still wearing my wedding ring. Wasn’t I interested in a future relationship?

“This is the thing. I seem to be starting all over and how strange is that, at my age. Just when my life should be shutting down, like the signals on this computer, the possibilities light up again.

“I’m afraid of this new life.

“Win’s love always gave me the necessary balance to walk to the edge.

“Now, I’m off-balance, and there is no one to catch me.

“Thanks for listening. Love you. J.”

“You know what’s going in here? A fucking Belgian waffle place,” Matt said as he slammed drinks on the counter. “That’ll sure bring the masses downtown. They’ll be lined up around the corner. I say it is time for me to leave.”

Gib said glumly, “They are talking up a storm - new bank, coffee house, arts and crafts store - art and waffles, a winning combination for this town born out of cotton fields. This city, I should say. Has Lon stopped by for a farewell performance?”

“He doesn’t have the balls.”

“Well, Matt, you throw a good party, a fitting send-off for the lady. When’s the last day?”

“Next Friday. Be here?”

“Hell, yes, you owe me that drink, I believe?”

Matt’s so-long party turned out to be the social event for the month of January,.

All the regulars showed up, most of them bringing food and friends. There was live music and dancing which spilled out onto the sidewalk, and a crowd of celebrants sitting on railings and curbs.

Inside a police car, which was driving past for the third time, one of the officers said, “Should we do anything?”

“No way, my whole family’s there. Even my mom. Just smile and wave.”

In February, the East Coast slid through a series of ice storms; the Midwest slogged through snow drifts; and the West Coast dug out of mud slides; while in the Southwest, the skies stayed blue, sun was expected and didn’t disappoint, and breezes were mild.

There is no fall and winter as such in the desert. In the northern places, where there is winter, one can sense the structure of the earth below as the land above dies. The desert does this too, in its way, for there is no natural camouflage provided to soften the landscape where life is always stripped to the bone.

“Is that bank coming in or not?” Nancy asked Gib. “First, the sign’s up, then, down.”

“Not,” he said, “and the famous waffle joint is also a no show. Isn’t this fun?”

“Why?”

“The local boys want the businesses, but they won’t do the deals. At least that’s what I hear. Have you told the girls yet?“

“When the time’s right. I will.”

“Make it soon, Nan.”

      “Saw Jan. She’s still nursing. Sort of reminds me of a cow past milking time.”

      “Oh, that’s mean,” Cady said.

      “No, no, Cady. I remember the feeling. Some days, thought I’d fall over I was so full and top heavy,” Carmen said.

      “Quiet day,” Zillah said, as she pulled an extra chair over by the table.

Nancy took a breath, and said, “Next week’s my last. I’m quitting.”

      Three pair of eyes looked into her.

      “Boy, did I blurt that out. Sorry. Anyway. It’s true. I’m going out to the restaurant at the new mall.”

      “But why?” Cady said.

      “Facts of life, girl. Things are slowing down here. We all know it and I really need the hours. Simple as that. Money.”

      “Well, Nan, you can’t just take off. We’ll for sure need a girl’s night out,” Carmen said, ever practical. “And no tears, Cady.”

      “I’m ready,” Zillah said.

      “Me, too. And I will not cry.”

      “Anybody taking bets on that?” Nancy asked.

      “You’re not wearing the ring?”

      “It doesn’t feel right, Zillah. And won’t until I say yes to the whole thing. I love him, you know.”

      “And the sex is still good?”

      Cady reddened, “Oh, well, yeah.”

      “Mama here says that’s only the frosting on the cake, Cady. Don’t forget the cake. You still have to get up and bake it. Every day.”

      “Spoil sport.”

      Later, Cady said to Carmen, “Kim’s coming in at three, when I leave for class. Do you know why she’s hanging out with Scott so much? He’s sweet and he’s crazy about her, but she’s not in love with him, that I can even see. Doesn’t seem fair. Like I should talk,” she added.

      “Education time; lesson 220. Understand. Scott is Kim’s penis in a bottle. With a big sign saying, ’Break in case of urgency’.”

      “Well, that is just gross!”

      “That is life, little one.”

      Nancy said, “What’s gross?”

      “I just explained to Cady about the penis in a bottle.”

      “That is gross.”

      “I know.”

      “So, she’s leaving?” Zillah said.

      “Yep, it happens,” Gib said. “Families don’t seem to stay put much these days.”

      “Come over. I’m fixing my specialty tonight. Home delivered pizza.”

      “And my mom says I can come out and play,” Dora said. “She’s with the kids.”

      They sat, comfortably, that night in Jessie’s living room and talked.

      Dora looked around as she ate and said, “If my house could be this neat, just one time……” She choked. It was like the afternoon with the potato salad. She coughed, got up, and walked through the house, seeing everything, seeing nothing. She came back. Jessie hadn’t moved.

      Her voice was hard sounding, even to her. “You’re leaving. You are leaving.”

      And Jessie nodded. “Not leaving exactly, Dee, more like taking a sabbatical.”

      “A sabbatical from what? Life? The house?”

      “Leasing it for a year to a married couple, new to the college. Most of my personal stuff will be in storage. For when I come back.”

      “You didn’t even give yourself a year, Jess. You were supposed to take a year before doing anything dumb. This is dumb!”

      Jessie crossed the room, knelt in front of Dora, and took her hand,.

      “It’s that I know my life here too well. And, I’m scared because I’m finding it too easy to fall back into the familiar, and hide. I’ve never been much good at hiding. I don’t want to live on the surface. What is that? And, maybe, maybe, there is a life for me. Just a little life will do, Dee. I don’t need all that much, you know. But, it has to be mine.”

      “When?”

      “Saturday.”

      Dora was shaking as she stood over her friend and went to the door. “I can’t do this now, Jessie. I can’t do this. You may not be good at hiding, but I seem to be very good at losing people. I can’t do this.”

      She received an e-mail the following morning.

      “I’m traveling light, taking Maia and her litter box, a camera, my laptop, cell, and favorite pillow, and I know, Dora, I’ll have the caring thoughts of my best friend. I’m off to see the world, or at least, a small corner of it. Time for people I haven’t talked with in awhile and time for places I’ve never been, but imagined.

      “You have my numbers. We won’t lose each other. I promise you. It’s way too late for that. And, I will come back here.

      “As to the timing; I remind you that next week will mark a year since I found our Lady of the Roses in the park.

      “I’m beginning to see things I didn’t before. A part of me may have died, but another part, of which I was ignorant, is coming to life.

      “You’ll be traveling with me. Every mile. Love, J.”

      It was dusk, the lost time of day, when Jessie left.

      There was no hurry. No one was waiting for her with lights on and dinner ready and arms open.

      She again drove through the town, past the old houses and older trees, past the new construction masking the horizon, past the Café and the newspaper office, past Dora’s home, and lastly, through the park. The rose garden was coming to life, the year cycle complete. The dirt had been turned; there were already splotches of green, and tiny buds awaiting nature’s silent signal to flower.

      On the interstate, she stayed in the slow lane, savoring the fading sights of the desert. And then, ahead, lights of the city sparked into being.

      She passed the off-ramp of all her other nightly drives, her turn-around to home, and, headed west.

      “Well, they really gutted the old girl, didn’t they?” Matt said, as the two men sat uneasily on one of the newly constructed, gilt-trimmed iron benches, next to an empty redwood planter, across from the No Name.     

      “Just left the walls standing to mark the spot. You okay?” Gib asked.

      “Hey, what can you do? Fight City Hall?” Then he added, “What are you going to do? Decided yet?”

      “Sort of, yeah. Going to stick around for another year. Watch the finagling,” Gib said as they got up. “I sure as hell don’t want to miss it, if they give the party and no one comes.”

      Unknown.

      No tears of goodbye. No flowers or prayers or thanks to the gods. No talk of life beyond, rewards, or reunions with loved ones gone before.

      No one to mourn the mysterious Lady of the Roses.

      There were birds though - sparrows, doves and wrens - soaring above, and there was a light breeze through the trees, and the sun was glowing in a blue, cloudless sky, over two city workers too weary to care as they shoveled the hard desert dirt.

      There was a marker. GK393.