« In Which We Lean Up Against Something Unexpected »

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Meredith

by DAVID GHERGSON

I am walking with Meredith.  

Meredith says, “I’m hungry.” She starts walking ten steps behind me, lagging, half-stepping, pretending to watch dogs and their ancient owners, strolling like she’s in a museum, looking at old things.

“Hurry up,” I say, but she won’t. We stop for awhile. Meredith puffs and buckles. I lean against a fence.  

“I need to eat something,” she says.

“For god’s sakes, wait until we get back,” I say.

“No,” she says. “I’m hypoglycemic.”

“I don’t know what that means in this context," I say.

“It means my blood sugar drops, and I need to eat.  There’s a little place down this street.”

I follow.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Ten minutes later, we are outside Carson’s General Store. Hollow, a shack, but streamlined and filling to the gravel pit it inhabits. The lights are on inside and there is a lunch counter. The place is empty.  

“What time is it?” I ask Meredith, thinking it’s six or seven, as the sun is almost down and dusk threatens.

“It’s four-thirty,” she says. “Let’s go in, they’re open.” Four-thirty. It is that time of year when things seem to happen later than they normally might.

“I don’t want to,” I say. “I don’t want to go in at all. Let’s go back to where we came from.” But she walks in and I am right behind her, yapping at her heels.  Inside, there is a long white counter, with a soda machine behind. I wait for what seems a sufficient amount of time. There is no one there.

“There’s no one here,” I say.

“Wait,” Meredith says.  She starts humming a song that was on TV a few days ago.

“What song is that?” I ask.

“I don’t know the name,” she says.  She mimes filing her fingernails with her thumbs.  I press my thigh against the edge of the counter to make an impression.

“Stop humming,” I say.  “It’s driving me out of my mind.”

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

Minutes pass. I ask myself if they feel like hours, but they are only minutes, ticking away. Always sixty seconds, never a surprise.  

“Can I help you? Would you like something?” Our heads swing. A boy, about fifteen, with spiked hair.

I ask Meredith what she wants, perhaps more loudly than I should. She deliberates. She hasn’t been looking at the menu, only playing with a napkin dispenser on one of the plastic tables, and strumming that same song. She doesn’t know the name of it. I try real hard to remember it. I can’t, and hate her for singing it.

After thirty seconds, she says, “I’ll have a tuna salad sandwich.”

“OK,” the boy says.  “Uh, what do you want on that?”

“Tomato and lettuce,” she says.

“Cheese?” he asks.

“No thanks,” she says.  

“Rye or white?”

“Rye.”

“And do you want anything to drink?” the boy says.

“A lemonade,” she says. “Do you have it?”
 He nods and goes behind a counter in the back of the store to start making the sandwich. Meredith turns to me and says, “This place is weird.” After she’s stopped talking, I listen. But there’s no sound.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

She puts her coat down on the seat, and sits down dramatically. She taps the chair opposite so I know where to sit down. I resist, at first, but the tablecloth is paper, and there are crayons to write on it.

“Come on,” she says. “Write me something.” I don’t want to write anything, but I do want to see what happens. Her brown hair bobs. I can’t make out the hairstyle, and I’m looking right at it. I hope I’m not getting cataracts.

The boy calls from the little kitchen. “Sorry, did you want anything?”

“No thanks,” I say. He retreats, and Meredith leans over to me.

Meredith whispers, “It’s so bizarre. He was probably back there watching football and jerking off. I’m sort of sorry we disturbed him.” As soon as she says it, I want to disagree. I want to defend this boy, who asked for none of this. But I am nodding. I agree completely.

“How much longer until we get back?” Meredith says.  “I have to make a call.”  I don’t say anything.  I am still waiting. Then, the door behind us swings open, and a big, pretty blond girl walks in. She doesn’t look at us, even though we face the door. She walks past, and starts talking to the boy behind the counter.

“She’s his sister.” I know immediately that Meredith is right. The soft, pointed features match, and even mix. The sister moves behind the counter, knows she is being watched. She tosses ice into a glass, one at a time. And she fills it to the top with lemonade.

“Good,” Meredith says, “I’m thirsty.” But the girl leaves it on the counter, to be brought with the sandwich. Meredith sighs, and puts her head against the table, rolls it back and forth, flips her hand on the side and smiles at me. I don’t want to strike her. Nothing could be further from my mind. I want to know if anyone would miss her. I feel that anything could happen.  

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

The sandwich comes, and Meredith eats the pickle first, then starts eating the sandwich quickly, as if her eating it was only one of many influences on its disappearance, and it was better to take as much as was reasonably possible while it was still available.

I occupy myself with crayons. I don’t feel ready to write words just yet. I draw a picture of a television set.  And then I draw a picture of a chair. I am about to draw a picture of a phone.  

A father and his younger son come in. The father, young and tall, looks not much different from the boy.  Meredith is too busy taking care of the sandwich, and I check to make sure the sister is gone. The boy comes up to the father and son.

“Can I help you?” the boy says.  He looks at me, and I look away.  We decided who the moment belongs to, and he’s won.  

“Yes,” the father says.  “Go on, Harold.”  The son pauses, looks around. Through the good grace of the fifteen-year old behind the counter, I am allowed to keep watching. I tremor. The sound of food being consumed across from me only heightens it.

The son. Harold. He says, “I’d like a mint chocolate chip cone.” He stares up at his father. “That OK?  You want something?” His father doesn’t want anything.  I try to picture my father.  My father worked in Boston.  He came home at night. He was tired when he arrived. He often took my brother and I out for ice cream.  He never had any, except what was left in our cups. He told us to eat it while we still could. And he was right.  He was right. I can’t eat it anymore.  I don’t know if Harold’s father is anything like mine, or if I am anything like him now. And even if he is, I don’t know if the answer lies there, or anywhere else.

I draw a picture of an ice cream cone. I don’t know the flavor.

After Harold is almost half-done with his ice cream cone, licking away in the corner as his father stands and reads the paper, Meredith finishes her plate.

“OK,” she says. “All set to go.”

I get up, but it’s not right. Brothers, sons, sisters and fathers, but not aunts and great-aunts and grandparents and half-everythings. It’s not right. Surely this store could hold the entire world; I wrap my legs behind those of the chair.

“I’m not ready to leave," I say.

“We have to go. Come on. Come with me.” I relent.

“Here’s seven dollars and a bubblegum wrapper I have been saving,” I tell Meredith. “Can you pay?”

“Uhhh,” she says in frustration as she rises. I could give a shit.  

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

I am sensing the ice cream cone. I am searching behind the counter. I am looking over the menu. The air is still. It doesn’t move. There’s no breeze at all. There’s one window. But no breeze. And it’s dark out. I forget about what it looks like outside, and try to find out what happens inside.

“God, let’s get out of here,” Meredith says. But it’s her who wanted to come in the first place. She walks to the door, and waits out on the porch for me. Before I get up, I draw a picture of a woman on the paper tablecloth. I don’t know what her name is. I fill her body parts with the navy blue crayon. The color of the crayon is more black than blue, black getting blacker, setting.

Meredith leans her head in the door, and says, “For fuck's sake, come on.”

Two weeks later, she is gone.

David Ghergson is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Missouri. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Paintings by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut.

by Roxann Poppe Leibenhaut

"Sundown" - Boards of Canada (mp3)

"Nothing Is Real" - Boards of Canada (mp3)

The new album from Boards of Canada is entitled All Tomorrow's Harvest and it will be released on June 10th from Warp.