|
|
tunisha shoe paypal mbt ema sandals cheap
Daddy, what are you going to do?” As if she couldn’t see. And all at once both the words drive and back were unavailable to me, anyway. All I could have articulated in that moment was us, the most useless word in the English language when it stands by itself. I felt the anger rising in my throat like hot water. Or blood. Yes, more like that. Because the anger was, of course, red. 157 “Get us out mbt sale Cheap mbt shoes of here. Push over.” Thinking: Don’t you get mad at her. Don’t you start shouting no matter what. Oh for mbt Christ’s sake, please don’t. “Daddy, you, can’t-” “Yes. I can do this. <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/christian-louboutin-pumps-c-1.html"><strong>christian louboutin pumps</strong></a> Push over.” The habit of obedience dies hard – especially hard, maybe, between fathers and daughters. And of course she was sick. She pushed over and I got behind the wheel, sitting down in my clumsy stupid backwards fashion and using my hand to lift in my rotten right leg. My whole right side was buzzing, as if undergoing a low-level electric shock. I closed my eyes tightly and thought: I CAN do this, goddammit, and mbt shoes clearance sale I don’t need any stuffed rag bitch to see me through, either. When I looked at the world again, some of that redness – and some of the anger, thank God – had drained out of it. I dropped the transmission into reverse and began to back up slowly. I couldn’t lean out as Ilse had done, because I had no right hand to steer with. I used the rear-view instead. In my head, ghostly, I heard: Meep-meep-meep. 158 “Please don’t drive us off the road,” Ilse said. “We can’t walk. I’m too sick and you’re too crippled-up.” “I won’t, Monica,” I said, but at that moment she leaned out the window to vomit again and I don’t think she heard me. xiii Slowly, slowly, I backed away from the place where Ilse had stopped, telling myself Easy does it and Slow and steady wins the race. My hip snarled as we mbt shoes sale thumped back over the strangler fig roots burrowing under the road. On a couple of occasions I heard seagrape branches scree along the side of the car. The Hertz people weren’t going to be happy, but they were the least of my worries that afternoon. Little by little the light brightened as the foliage cleared out overhead. That was good. My vision was also clearing, that mad itch subsiding. Those things were even better. “I see the big place with the wall around it,” Ilse said, looking back over her shoulder. 159 “Do you feel any better?” “Maybe a little, but my stomach’s still sudsing <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/specials.html"><strong>cheap christian louboutins</strong></a> like a Maytag.” She mbt chapa made a gagging noise. “Oh God, I should never have said that.” She leaned out, threw up again, then collapsed back onto the seat, laughing and groaning. Her bangs were sticking to her forehead in clumps. “I just shellacked the side of your car. Please tell me you have a hose.” “Don’t worry about that. Just sit still and take long, slow breaths.” She saluted feebly and closed her eyes. The old woman in the big straw hat was nowhere in evidence, but the two halves of the iron gate were now standing mbt walking shoes wide open, as if she was expecting company. Or knew we’d need a place to turn around. I didn’t waste time considering that, just backed the Chevy into the archway. For a moment I saw a courtyard paved with cool blue tiles, a tennis court, and an enormous set of double doors with iron rings set into them. Then I turned for home. We were there five minutes later. My vision was as clear as it had been when I woke up that morning, if not clearer. Except for the low itch up and down my right side, I felt fine. 160 cheap mbt I also felt a strong desire to draw. I didn’t know what, but I would know, when I was sitting in Little Pink with one of my pads propped on my easel. I was sure of that. “Let me clean off the side of your car,” Ilse said. “You’re going to lie down. You look beat half to death.” She offered a wan smile. mbt kisumu “That’s just the better half. Remember how Mom used to say that?” I nodded. “Go on, now. I’ll do the rinsing.” I pointed to where the hose was coiled on the north side of Big Pink. “It’s all hooked up and ready to go.” “Are you sure you’re all right?” “Good to go. I think you ate more of the tuna salad than I did.” She managed another smile. “I always was partial to my own cooking. You were great to get us back here, Daddy. I’d kiss you, but my breath…” I kissed her. On the forehead. The skin was cool and damp. “Put your feet up, Miss Cookie – orders from headquarters.” She went. I turned on the faucet and hosed off the side of the Malibu, taking more time than the job 161 really needed, wanting to make sure she was down for the count. And she was. When I peeked in through the half-open door of the second bedroom, I saw her lying on her side, sleeping just as she had as a kid: one hand tucked under her cheek and one knee drawn up almost to her chest. We think we change, but we mbt uk don’t really – that’s what Wireman says. Maybe s铆, maybe no – that’s what Freemantle says. There was something pulling me – maybe something that had been in me since the accident, but surely something that had come back from Duma Key Road with me. I let it pull. I’m not sure I could have stood against it in any case, but I didn’t even try; I was curious. My daughter’s purse was on the coffee table in the living room. I opened it, took out her wallet, and flipped through the pictures inside. Doing this made me feel a little like a cad, but only a little. It’s not as if you’re stealing anything, I 162 told myself, but of course there are many ways of stealing, aren’t there? Here was the photo of Carson <a href="http://www.christian-louboutin-2012.com/products_new.html"><strong>christian louboutin discount</strong></a> Jones she’d shown me at the a discount mbt trainers irport, but I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him by himself. I wanted him with her. mbt stockists I wanted a picture of them as a couple. And I found one. It looked as if it had been taken at a roadside stand; there were baskets of cucumbers and corn behind them. They were smiling and young and beautiful. T mbt shoes clearance sale heir arms were around each other, and one of Carson Jones’s palms appeared to be resting on the swell of my daughter’s blue jeans- clad ass. Oh you crazy Christian. My right arm was still itching, a low, steady skin-crawl like prickly heat. I scratched at it, scratched through it, and got my ribs instead for the ten thousandth time. This picture was also in a protective see- through envelope. I slid it out, glanced over my shoulder – nervous as a burglar on his first job – at the partially open door of the room where Ilse was sleeping, then turned the picture over. I love you, Punkin! “Smiley” 163 Could I trust a suitor who called my daughter Punkin and signed himself Smiley? I didn’t think so. It might not be fair, but no – I didn’t think so. Nevertheless, I had found what I was looking for. Not one, but both. I turned the picture over again, closed my eyes, and pretended mbt sneakers I was touching their Kodachrome images with my right hand. Although pretending wasn’t what it felt like; I suppose I don’t have to tell you that by now. After some passage of time – I don’t know exactly how long – I returned the picture to its plastic sleeve and submerged her wallet beneath the tissues and cosmetics to approximately the same depth at which I had found it. Then I put her purse back on the coffee table and went into my bedroom to get Reba the Anger-Management Doll. I limped upstairs to Little Pink with her clamped between my stump and my side. I think I remember saying “I’m going to make you into Monica Seles” when I set Reba down in front of the window, but it could as easily have been Monica Goldstein; when it comes to memory, we all stack the deck. The gospel according to Wireman. 164 I’m clearer than I want to be about most of what happened on Duma, but that particular a mbt stockists fternoon seems very vague to me. I know that I fell into a frenzy of drawing, and that the maddening itch in my nonexistent right arm disappeared completely while I was working; I do not know but am almost sure that the <a href="http://www.guinness69.de/gal/displayimage.php?pos=-1343"><strong>Shoes » Discount Puma Shoes Sale</strong></a> reddish mbt shoes clearance sale haze which always hung over my vision in those days, growing thicker when I was tired, disappeared for awhile. I don’t know how long I was in that state. I think quite awhile. Long enough so I was both exhausted and famished when I was finished. I went back downstairs and gobbled lunchmeat by the fridge’s frosty glow. I didn’t want to make an actual sandwich, because I didn’t want Ilse to know I’d felt well enough to eat. Let her go on thinking our problems had been caused by bad mayonnaise. That way we wouldn’t have to spend time hunting for other explanations. None of the other explanations I could think of were rational. After eating half a package of sliced salami and swilling a pint or so of sweet tea, I went into my bedroom, lay down, and fell into a sodden sleep. 165 Sunsets. Sometimes it seems to me that my clearest memories of Duma Key are of orange evening skies that bleed at mbt sneakers the bottom and fade away at the top, green to black. Wh
|
Linear Mode
