Trowbridge Road: List 1

When the door creaked open and Jenny stepped onto the cracked sidewalk with her black high-heeled boots, her bare legs, and her feathered red hair down past her shoulders, it seemed like the maple trees and the tall Victorian houses leaned in, not because they were leering at her like so many of the fathers did, but because something about Jenny changed everything that came close to her.

Obediently, Jenny knelt on the porch in front of her gangly boy.

I could see the Crowley boys at their house, riding their Huffy bikes over dirt piles, popping wheelies, and jeering at each other.

She put her cello and bow down and then scuttled back to the safety of our bed.

I brought her to the threshold and left her clutching the carved wooden banister, halfway into the kitchen, halfway out.

Then I let go of her hand and bounded into the pantry on my own.

I stirred the soup with the wooden spoon and pretended that I was the mommy cooking good wholesome meals for her baby girl, and I wanted to feed her and feed her so her tummy would be full and she could grow.

One afternoon, soon after Ziggy moved in, Nana Jean brought an old calico quilt and a wicker basket onto the lawn.

Ziggy held a slice of ham out to Matthew, who sat on his haunches and snatched it with his pink hands.

“I happen to know a great deal about fairies. For instance, most fairies have diaphanous wings. Also, they’re generally much skinnier than either of you. Plus, they have large vocabularies and don’t like loud noises. Or vehicles with wheels.”

She gave Buzz and John-John a smoldering look that could have burned a hole through rock.

Then, when it was clear she was going to need better leverage, she hoisted herself up and led him back to the porch steps, where she sat behind him.

Long after Ziggy and Nana Jean went in for dinner, long after the fathers came home and all the other kids disappeared into the mouths of their houses, long after the neighborhood started to darken and the sleepy golden evening lights turned on behind the windows, I crept from the copper beech tree and trudged the one, two, three houses down and across the street to number twenty-eight.

He was tall and willowy like a dancer.

After school, he always had something for me from the pizza place: a slice of
 pepperoni, a wedge of baklava, half an Italian sub.

I careened down the stairs, whooping like a crazy bird to meet my favorite man alive, two steps at a time, vaulting over the carved banister, leaving the scent of Mother’s skin behind me like a fading dream.

I stepped on both his boots with my bare feet, and he waltzed me around the kitchen like a marionette.

What if there was disgustingness under the glove? What if it somehow seeped through the microscopic fissures of the latex, or under the fingernail, where it might fester, nibbling at the cuticles and eventually destroying the entire finger, gnawing at the hand until it looked like hamburger?

What if there was disgustingness under the glove? What if it somehow seeped through the microscopic fissures of the latex, or under the fingernail, where it might fester, nibbling at the cuticles and eventually destroying the entire finger, gnawing at the hand until it looked like hamburger?

Outside, I leaned against the porch rail and breathed the wonderful outdoor air filled with the green smell of leaves and grass and sun and cars and people, a feast of fresh air cascading into my screaming, delirious lungs.

“I wasn’t staring at you,” I said, suddenly breathless because of how hard my heart was beating.
Ziggy narrowed his eyes at my lie.
“Well,” I amended, “I mean, I guess I was staring at you. But not in the way you think..."

“I think she’s beautiful too,” he admitted. “She has always been an exquisite matriarch.”

Just now, you used the words exquisite matriarch. That’s beautiful. You have a good vocabulary.

You are like me. A nomad. Born to wander to the ninth dimension and then back to earth.

"An inspiration spell. Inspiration means to breathe, and before we wander we have to weave our inspiration together so we don't get separated. I will blow my air at you and you will inhale, and then you will blow your air at me and I will inhale, and this way our breath will be woven together and we will be ready to travel.”

She says she can’t hold it like she used to. She wears special old lady diapers called Depends. This is what you call apropos, which is a Greek word meaning appropriate.

Now here is a non sequitur, which means I am changing the subject.

He is an albino ferret. He’s also my vestigial twin.

No one even knows about the ninth dimension but Jenny and you. And Matthew of course, because he’s a ferret and all ferrets are clairvoyant.

The paranormal term for this talent is telekinesis.

The paranormal term for this talent is telekinesis.

I always liked that, because his hands, although they were hard and calloused, looked a lot like Daddy’s.

“Probably flouncing around like a fairy,” said Buzz, standing up on his pedals to get a better look at the house.

Ziggy’s face was red. “Did you hear them?” he asked, his voice wavering. “Did you hear what they said about me?”

Ziggy waved his hands with a flourish, weaving invisible patterns into the air.