three wishes

Little Rat calls Squirrel to ask for advice about blonde girls since (sadly, obviously) his own brunette sister doesn't know the first thing about real girls. You know what I mean, just like real girls with blonde hair. Girls who are pretty he says as we drive to the library. I overlook this slight in light of his serious desperation and the amount of time he spends fighting his new nemesis: acne. He shakes his head. I almost cry.

Summer vacation is practically here. Yearbooks arrived last week and Little Rat carries his around everywhere, flipping between the grainy picture of her small, sweet face -- smack dab in the middle of a row of B's-- and the front cover where she wrote (purple pen, mildly bubbly cursive):

You are a pretty cool guy.

Computer class was fun!!!

Maybe we will have some classes together next year.

Have a great summer!!!

Squirrel gives him sound advice. She is a good best friend to me and this means loving Little Rat as much as I do. Oh, just be yourself she says and then listen to him describe her blonde hair, and how he can't dislodge her from his brain, no matter how time he spends watching cartoons or mowing the lawn. Since the year is about to end, Squirrel and Little Rat decide that he should start by asking her if she's coming back to CHS next year for tenth grade? Does she have any plans for the summer?

Summer. Little Rat knows that it is do or die now. That vacation will be long and lonely with only a 2x2 picture and a generic inscription to keep him company. When he hangs up he is resolute. I ask him what he's going to do and he recites the lines that Squirrel suggested; words, she assures him, sure to work on even the hardest-hearted blonde. He looks out the window for a minute, quiet. I just wish I could give her the moon so she'd know he says. He turns on the radio.

*

After he died, she put her skillets and quilts in storage and moved to Jerusalem -- about as far away from where she began and where she'd been in between. We all loved her more, if that's possible, for this display of grit; this proof of true pioneer stock in today's day and age. From around the world, we watched happily as she found friends and carved out a life of her own after so many years of smiling through truly hard, sad times. The State Department issued a warning: AMERICANS GO HOME. We worried a little, but pointed out to each other that you can get hit by a bus, crossing your own street. When it's your time to go, it's your time to go, whether you're standing on the banks of the Sugar Creek or the Jordan River. She called early on a Sunday morning, not with flight arrival information but with the request that we send her a party dress. Oh, I wish you could see this place in the spring, sweetheart. The desert comes alive.

*

We are dancing barefoot on the wide wood planks of the porch to Gillian Welch who, as he points out, (craning his neck back to look in my eyes) is strangely, strikingly beautiful with her buck teeth and knob knees.

Oh me oh my oh.

Look at Miss Ohio.

She's a-runnin around

with her ragtop down.

She says I wanna do right

but not right now.

There is the smell of the sea lingering in the air, mingled with pipe smoke and a little leftover rain. People are drinking whiskey, laughing softly, dancing. Someone throws a glass off the roof next door. It shatters in the street below but no one even looks. When I breathe in his shoulder, it is cotton and spice and sweat on his collarbone that fills my nose.

With your arm around her shoulder

a regimental soldier,

Momma starts pushing that wedding gown.

You say I wanna do right

but not right now.

His lips are the tiniest bit cold by my ear when he whispers. I'm sorry about today. I wish I could always love you as much as I love you right now. There are things to say but it doesn't seem the time. I look over his shoulder into the black sky where planes fly in circles over the water, tracing and re-tracing their holding patterns, waiting to find the firm promise of the Earth below.

Yeah I know all about it,

so you don't have to shout it

I'm gonna straighten it out somehow

Yeah I wanna do right

but not right now.