Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

chair, arms folded across my chest.
“How many chances will I ever get to eat at Diane’s?”
“But?” I whimpered.
“Come on buddy, do me this favor.”
“She won’t forget me! Not on my birthday!”
My father sighed. He pulled a chair around the table and sat next to me. “James, I don’t know how to say…”
The telephone rang. I bolted from my seat and raced across the kitchen. “Hello!” I cried into the mouthpiece.
“Wrong number,” I said.
My father watched me. “I don’t think your mother is going to call.” His eyes held me, his tone was slow and deliberate: “Don’t bet on seeing her back east again.”
“Why not?” I questioned.
He took a deep breath. “A hunch,” he whispered.
“A Hunch! What do you mean a hunch?” I demanded.
“Relax James,” He held up an open hand. “Don’t get excited.”
“I’m not excited!”
“The morning she left, she didn’t say a word - not a single word - from the time we woke until she boarded her flight.”
“So?” I asked.
“Don’t you find that weird?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“I sat with her a few minutes at the gate before I got up and walked away. I’d call her bluff, she’d have say something; right?”
I nodded.
“She didn’t say a word, not a word. I found a nook and watched her. She stared straight ahead. When it was time, she boarded without looking back.”
“Wupty do, ” I cried.
He walked out of the kitchen and returned holding a postcard. “This came in the mail this morning.” He handed it to me. It was a typical view of San Francisco - a cable car climbed towards the picture taker. Alcatraz loomed in the bay.
“Read the back,” he said.
In my mother’s handwriting it read: “I’ll be longer than expected.”
“She forgot my birthday,” I whispered.
“Yeah that to. There’s more,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked; confused.
“Doesn’t anything look suspicious to you?”
“Besides forgetting my birthday?” I obsessed.
“Look at the postmark,” he instructed.
“Santa Monica? “The trail is in Pleasanton, isn't it?”
“It is,” he answered.
“Why would she send a postcard of San Francisco from Santa Monica? What is she doing in Santa Monica?” I questioned.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t think she’ll be coming back.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“I can tell you what I’ve done. I’ve canceled our credit cards. I’m not paying for your mother’s trysts.” A week later he showed me another postcard. This one of the famous Hollywood sign, also postmarked Santa Monica. On the back she scribbled “Rot in hell, prick!” To which my father said: “Your mother is such a fair weather Catholic.”
I begrudgingly agreed to go next door with my father for the remainder of that bitter birthday. The temperature matched my disposition as we scampered through the cold.
Diane and my father babbled endlessly. I peered at Shannie over my coffee cup. She stared at Diane and my father, her lanky hair tumbling over her face and slouched shoulders. Her skin, sporting its mid-winter pallor, reminded me of non-dairy creamer. I got up and dumped the rest of my coffee in the sink. Shannie was riveted to our parent’s conversation, her head shifting back and forth between them. Silently, I left the kitchen.
In the darkened living room, I peered out of the bay window down Cemetery Street. Streetlights illuminated the street. Each successive light lower than the previous until they appeared to rest on the street. I was admiring the sentinels of the night when Shannie slithered into the room.
I waited for her to speak. Her eyes scratched and clawed at my back. I refused to turn around. I refused to break my silence. I was convinced that if I did, I would never see my mother again. I wasn’t going to let my mother down without a fight. In the kitchen our parent’s laughed.
She moved behind me, her steps in sync with the Grandfather clock. Her breath tickled the nape of my neck. She drew a breath as to speak – she sighed and stepped away. I continued my vigil, mesmerized by the occasional vehicle traversing Cemetery Street. “She’s not coming back,” Shannie finally said from a corner of the room.
Fuck you Shannie, I didn’t say. On Cemetery Street, a shadow kicked a telephone pole, knocking out the street light.
“If you ask me, she’s doing you guys a favor.”
“I didn’t ask you,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I didn’t ask you,” I repeated louder.
“That’s what I thought you said,” she replied. The shadow, now closer, kicked a second pole, killing its light.
“Up yours Shannie,” I mumbled as I turned around, startled to find her looming behind me, leering through dangling hair.
“Look on the bright side,” she said: “If death comes in threes, you only have one more.”
I turned my gaze out of the window. “She isn’t dead Shannie!”
“May as well be,” Shannie sneered. She returned to the kitchen. Unable to reply, I did what I do best - I watched. My palms were in a cold sweat as I watched the shadow approach the telephone pole between my house and the Ortolan’s. The shadow kicked the pole - blackening the world at the end of Cemetery Street. The shadow was Count, on his way home from his own tryst with Marcy Lucas.

As the weeks turned to months and more bumper stickers spent their allotted time on Saphix, my mother was not heard from. “Maybe she’ll call over Easter.”
“Why do you put yourself through such grief?” Shannie asked.
“What grief?” I peered out the GTI’s window, watching the world race by.
“Don’t be a twit. When she doesn’t call over Easter, you’ll wonder if she will over Memorial day, then July 4th and Columbus day, need I go on?”
“You forgot Labor day,” I mumbled.
“You’re hopeless,” Shannie retorted.
“What if you lost a parent?” I questioned her profile.
“I did, ass wipe!” Shannie punched my left arm. “You’re an asshole!”
“I forgot; I’m sorry,” I resisted rubbing my arm.
“Don’t you think I miss my father?” Shannie whispered - interrupting the hum of the road. “I do,” she answered. “You know what? It’s really hard! Do you know why? I don’t know what my father was like. Your mother was a bitch, everyone knows that! If I knew he was a prick, maybe it would be easier. But I romanticize the bastard! To me, he’s Prince Charming and King Arthur all wrapped up in one. He’s your Grandfather and Clark Gable. He’s flawless - except that he’s dead! He’s fucking dead!” Shannie paused - her eyes focused on the road. “If he was alive, I might hate the prick, but he’s not, so I love him - and I miss him. You know your mother,” Shannie repeated. “You know she’s a bitch! I envy you Just James! I wish I could hate my father! I wouldn’t miss him so much. But I didn’t know him, I’m cursed to have Prince Fucking Charming as a father!”
“I’m sorry Bug,” I whispered.
“I resent you taking for granted that I don’t miss him. You presumptuous shit! God I wish I could hate you!”

I still fret, no less than I fretted the following Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthday - my seventeenth. When my mother didn’t call, didn’t write - not even a simple postcard; I fretted even more - filling the following Easter, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor day with knotted stomachs and dashed hopes. When the phone call that I knew would arrive, didn’t - I sulked. She may as well be dead, I thought. Maybe she is dead, I worried. If she was dead, she wouldn’t have forgotten me!
Shannie and I were watching the World Series when my fretting was hastened by the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake.
“Earthquake,” I said as Candlestick Park shook.
“Hella Cool,” Shannie yelled bouncing on the couch.
“You wouldn’t say that if you were there,” I scolded.
“I don’t need to be, you already rock my world Just James,” Shannie said, her eyes glued to the television.
When I wondered aloud about my mother’s fate Shannie asked, “Why do you think she’s in San Francisco?”
“I don’t know, but what if she got hurt? What if she’s dead?”
“I’d thank God for small favors,” Shannie quipped, her attention held captive by the televised drama.
Shannie broke our silence. “God, how I miss him.”
“Who?” I asked
“Count. I don’t know what made me think of this,” she said.
“Think of what?” I asked.
“I’d better not say. He’d kill me if I told you.”
“He’ll never know,” I said.
“Ah. Never-mind,” she said.
“Okay,” I said watching San Francisco burn.
“The night before he left…” Shannie began. CNN was no match for Shannie. “… I got a late night phone call. It was Count; he was in tears. He’d been arrested.”
I turned my head towards Shannie. "What?"
“You heard me. He was in some backwoods town along the Maryland border. The cops picked him up after receiving reports of a prowler - a naked prowler.”
“Count?” I laughed. “A naked prowler?”
“He was scared shitless. He begged me – I like it when someone begs me– to bail him out. ‘Bear’s gonna kill me, my last night before boot camp - I can’t get arrested.’”
“I woke up Diane. She talked with Count – talked to the cop, gets Count back on the phone and tells him she has it handled. I begged Diane to tag along.”
“’I won’t want you to miss this for all the sand in the Sahara,’ Diane told me.”
“What the hell happened,” I asked.
“Apparently, Count is a legend with the lady’s – in his own mind. You know he was diddling Marcy Lucas?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, he had a brainstorm.”
“He asks Marcy if her and Janice would give him something to help him remember home. You know how jealous Marcy is – it pissed her off. So she asks Janice to help. They tell him, “Well send you off with a bang. You enough of a man for both of us?”
“On the special night, they blindfold Count and drive him to the boonies. Janice tells him they’re taking him to her favorite spot. She said they drove for almost an hour. The entire time Count told them he would make them coo. On a country road, Janice noticed a clump of trees between two cornfields. No houses around. They led Count from the car.”
Shannie’s attention was averted by the TV. A car hung precariously over the bay bridge - a span from the upper deck sheared away from the structure and fell upon the lower deck.
“Get on with it,” I prompted.
“Patience is a virtue so shut up and listen! They led him to a clearing under the trees. They strip him and tie him to a tree. They toyed with him a bit, Marcy slipped a condom onto Don Juan, got him buku aroused and stole his clothes, leaving him balls to the wind.”
“No way,” I said.
“Way. They took his wallet, ID, everything – except the rubber.”
“They left him there?” I hooted.
“Hung him out to dry,” Shannie cried. “When they got home, they called the police.”
“Holy shit!” I howled.
“My kind of girls,” Shannie bantered.
“What did they tell the cops?” I begged.
“A naked man jumped in front of their car.”
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
“Could you describe him? Did he have any distinguishing features?” a cop questioned Marcy.”
“Big oaf with a buzz cut, with a condom dangling off his puny pecker,’ Marcy said.”
“Poor Count,” Shannie cried. “Lost, no clue where and a