Mrs. Martin Part III

The designated night was my parents’ bowling night. My grandma put us all to bed and settled down to watch the evening news. I waited an appropriate length of time then slipped down off my bunk. I stuck my flip-flops in the waistband of my Hulk pjs and crept out of my room along the walls where the floor didn’t creak. The plan was to meet under the “Big Spruce” at the corner of my property. The back screendoor had to be opened just so or it would squeal on your sneak attempt. I propped it the sliver needed for my body and snaked through the opening slow, my hand closing the other door behind me. Then I heard my name called. Fearing my mother’s intuition, I turned around to find only a silhouette leaning out the next door window. Melissa. The kisser. Miss Loose Lips.

Forgive this made up exchange. I can only imagine what my love spurned fourth grade mouth would have said to her. I’ve watched home movies of myself at this age. I was a little melodramatic.

“What?” I probably gasped like she was bothering me, like I wasn’t standing outside in my pajamas in October.

“What are you doing?” she’d ask, probably holding a brush she’d been pulling through her dark hair, wearing one of her silk nightgowns.

“Taking out the garbage!” I’d say.

“What garbage?” she’d accuse.

“I mean, the garbage I put out front. I have to…take it…back inside.”

“Why?”

“Cuz!”

”Are you sneaking out?”

“Noooo…”

“Ok, I’m sneaking out, too.”

Then Melissa would grab her pink coat and jump out her window like she did so many nights to come knock on mine. She was an only child and her mother had just gotten remarried. That was something we had in common. That they were loud in their lovemaking was something we did not. Her mother told her he had “passion” and “Mommy needs that”. My mom was often scandalized by things Melissa’s mom told her. My mom told me a lot of things that my friends’ parents said. And the more Melissa felt pushed out, the more she outsourced. Melissa had taken to watching Saturday morning cartoons at my house, doing her homework outside, talking to me at my window past bedtime. Their sex was too big for her.

So I couldn’t tell her not to come. She followed me across my yard, under the skirt of the Big Spruce where Em was waiting dressed in day clothes. The snubbing of Melissa somehow melted away in the fervor of “the plan”. We talked possibilities. Police, dogs, our parents. If spotted, we’d agreed on scattering. Rendezvousing back at the tree fort. If caught, we’d cop to nothing. Then began the slow-mo of suspense, subterfuge, and sneakiness. Peeking for cars. Zigzagging from yard to yard. Hide, run and hide. Up next to Melissa behind a van, smelling the clean of her hair. Sprint low to the next cover. Between bushes with Em’s hand steady on my thigh. Two more houses, headlights. All three of us diving into the drainage ditch as a car purred past. One more house, a motion light, and there. Breathless, huddled in Mrs. Martin’s jungle grass, the stalks bending like parted hair around us, visitors in our own crop circle.

Inevitably, in the moment right before dare completion there is obligatory urging from the darers. “Go!” “Come on!” Do it!” At this point, the daree either chickens out or moves grudgingly toward their target with a “Gosh, ok!” “I’m gonna!” “Gimme a second!” I chose the latter, got up, and edged toward the house. The yard was a treasure of empty Coors, blown bits of paper, the torn squares of condom wrappers, a threshed kite, a lost cap, and a thousand chittering insects. The yard had seemed monster before but suddenly shrunk, the house coming too fast, like my rapid breaths were sucking it close. Soon I was up to her window, hands clutching her outside sill.

Mrs. Martin sat in her slumped way, the TV strobing her outline in the window. She sat in a wheelchair most of the day. Except for when the home nurse came, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. Her nephew dropped by and moved her into bed every night at midnight when he would get off second shift. No one knew anything about Mrs. Martin besides that. Her nephew was very closed mouth and the nurse pooh-poohed any neighbors who asked her offhand what was wrong with her. So the neighbors rumored obsessively. Maybe an abusive father or a tragic accident or even paralyzed by a broken heart. It’s sad really how easily people become wraiths, Boo Radleys. No one that I knew had seen her face. Who I knew was awfully limited though. And now I was at her window, this was my killer plan: Tap on the glass like a fish bowl.