White Oleander

Starr hovered by her dresser, uncertain now whether she should stop listening to me and get rid of me quick, or let me go on mining the possibilities of her doubts. She busied herself looking for another butt in the ashtray, found one that wasn't so long, straightened it out between her fingers, and lit it with her powder-blue Bic lighter.

 

"Especially when there's nothing going on. I like you, I like him, I like the kids, I would never do anything to screw it up. Don't you know that?" The more I said it, the less true it was. The angel on her bureau looked down, ashamed, afraid to see me. The rain drummed on the roof.

 

"Swear you're not interested in him?" she said finally, squinting against the vile smoke. She grabbed the Bible off the bedside table, a white leather Bible with red ribbons and a gilded edge.

 

"Swear on the Bible?"

 

I put my hand on it. It could have been the phone book for all I cared now. "I swear to God," I said.

 

SHE NEVER CALLED Children's Services, but she watched my every move, every gesture. I wasn't used to being watched, it made me feel important. I sensed a layer of myself had been peeled off that day in her bedroom, and what was under it glowed.

 

One night she was late getting dinner, and as we were finishing, Uncle Ray glanced at the clock. "You're going to be tardy if you don't get a move on."

 

Starr leaned back in her seat and reached for the coffeepot behind her on the counter, poured herself a cup. "I guess they can get on without me for one night, don't you think, baby?"

 

The following week, she skipped two more meetings, and the third week, she actually missed church. Instead, they made love all morning, and when they finally did get up, she took us all out to the IHOP, where we ate chocolate pancakes and waffles with whipped cream in a big corner booth. Everyone was laughing and having a good time, but all I could see was Ray's arm around her shoulder on the back of the leatherette booth. I felt strange, and moved the waffle around on my plate. I wasn't hungry anymore.

 

THE RAINS PASSED, and now in the nights the new-washed sky showed all its stars. The boys and I stood out in the darkest part of the clay-muddy yard, listening to the runoff on the Tujunga out in the dark beyond the trees. Heavy pancakes of mud congealed around my boots as I craned my head back in the vapor-breath cold and tried to pick out the dippers and the crosses. Davey's books didn't show so many stars. I couldn't separate them.

 

I thought I saw a streak of light. I wasn't sure if I even saw it. I gazed upward, trying not to blink, waited.

 

"There!" Davey pointed.

 

In a different quadrant of the sky, another star broke loose. It was eerie, the one thing you didn't plan on, stellar movement. I tried to keep my eyes open without blinking. When you blinked, you missed them. I held them open for the light to develop on them like a photograph.

 

The little boys shivered despite the jackets over their pajamas and muddy boots, chattering and giggling in the cold and the excitement of being up so late as they gazed at the stars that started pinging like pinballs, mouths opened in case one should fall in. It was completely dark except for the line of Christmas lights that twinkled along the edge of the trailer porch.

 

The screen door opened and slammed. I didn't have to look to know it was him. The flare of a match, the warm stinky pot smell. "Ought to take down those Christmas lights," he said. He came out on the yard where we were, the ember glow, and then the sharpness of his body, the smell of new wood.

 

"It's the Quadrantid shower," Davey said. "We'll be getting forty an hour pretty soon. It's the shortest-lived meteorite display, but the densest except for the Perseids."

 

I could hear the mud sucking at his boots as he shifted his weight. I was glad it was dark, that he couldn't see the flush of pleasure on my face as he drew closer, looking up at the sky, as if he cared about the Quadrantids, as if that's why he'd come out.

 

"There!" Owen said. "Did you see it, Uncle Ray? Did you?"

 

"Yeah, I saw it buddy. I saw it."

 

He was standing right next to me. If I shifted just an inch to my left, I could brush him with my sleeve. I felt the radiant heat of him across the narrow gap between us in the darkness. We had never stood so close.

 

"You and Starr having a beef?" he asked me softly.

 

I exhaled vapor, imagined I was smoking, like Dietrich in The Blue Angel. "What did she say?"

 

"Nothing. She's just been acting funny lately."

 

Shooting stars hurled themselves into the empty places, burned up. Just for the pleasure of it. Just like this. I could have swallowed the night whole.

 

Ray toked too hard, coughed, spat. "Must be hard on her, getting older, pretty girls coming up in the same house."