Love & Darts

verse, which was written on a tiny piece of paper and remained wedged down in the corner of the picture frame. It read: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick; a wish come true is a staff of life. To despise a word of advice is to ask for trouble; mind what you are told, and you will be rewarded. A wise man’s teaching is a fountain of life for one who would escape the snares of death.”

  Mrs. B. laughed at Jeanie’s hypocrisy. She had never taken anyone’s advice. Not even her grandmother’s even if she did listen and learn. She always found a way to prove everyone wrong, or foolish, and most likely had not even thought of the verse since the day her grandmother was buried. But there were the words. Jeanie knew they mattered once. Mrs. B. said, half aloud, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick; like you, my poor child.”

  She let her eyes pass over Jeanie’s high school graduation picture. She glanced at a shot of Jeanie and her father in front of Jeanie’s sophomore college dorm that overlooked a lake. Mrs. B. looked for a minute at a picture of all her grown children in front of the Christmas tree. There was another picture just like it from the following year, only Jeanie wasn’t there. Mrs. B. reached up and straightened the frame.

  She remembered how Jeanie had disappeared two weeks before Christmas. How when she had called her children to breakfast that morning, Jeanie hadn’t come down. How they had knocked on her door for over an hour, first annoyed, then anxious, then worried and afraid. Mr. B. and one of their sons had pried the door open with a crowbar, and Mrs. B. half expected to find her daughter dead. It was more of a shock to see the bed neatly made in an empty room. She remembered long searches with the police. She remembered agonizing prayer-filled nights with a God she did not know well enough. She remembered Mr. B. taking them all to the movies to take their minds off things. She remembered finding her youngest son crying in the backyard, and how their oldest daughter did nothing but bake cookies one night. Mrs. B. laughed remembering all the cookies that were made. Every possible kind, six dozen of each. Everyone dealing with the unknown—the excruciating weight of time—in their own way.

  Then on Christmas morning, with the bright sun reflecting joy off the snow, there was a phone call. A happy voice filled all the eager receivers in the house with assurance. “Sorry I haven’t called. We’ve been driving forever, and it seems like every gas station’s phone is out of order. How stupid is that? Who’s we? Oh.” She laughed and covered the mouthpiece to scream something at someone nearby. Then back into the phone, “I’m in love. Dad, don’t even say it. I know what you’ll say, and I say you’re wrong. You can fall in love in two weeks, and besides I’ve known him for almost two months. But the first time we talked was two weeks ago at the bakery. He bought me a jelly doughnut, and I swear it’s forever.

  “Don’t you think it’s perfect that I didn’t get in touch with you ‘til today? No. Well, I think it’s perfect. It’s like a Christmas present for all of us. So Merry Christmas!” She would have hung up, but someone asked, and she replied, “Oh. Yeah. I’m not really sure. In Arizona somewhere. I’ll let you know when I have a real place. Maybe you all can come and visit or something. I can smell the turkey from here, Ma!” But there was no turkey that year. No one had thought of it. They just ate cookies and watched It’s a Wonderful Life. And they took the picture in front of the tree anyway that year, missing Jeanie.

  Mrs. B. took a few more steps toward the living room. She stopped in front of a silly and playful picture of Jeanie and her love. Mrs. B. had never looked at it without smiling, but now she wrinkled her eyebrows and sighed. They must have been camping in the desert. There was a tent and a Coleman stove and a lawn chair. Behind them cacti and sagebrush dotted the landscape all the way to the horizon. There were low mountains on the left side of the picture. It was a joke. Just a snapshot taken by a friend. They had all been drinking. Jeanie was pushing against her love’s chest and he, though laughing, had started to fall over. The picture was at least two years old. They had probably wrestled on the ground long after the photographer had forgotten the shot. And Jeanie might only have mailed it for the great smiles on both of their sunlit faces, but in the hall that day, with this boy in her husband’s favorite chair, Mrs. B. saw the picture again for the first time. It was devastating to see it so clearly. Her daughter, her mocking, playful, spritely, sarcastic, frivolous, immature, temperamental, evasive, heedless, reckless, unforgiving, so young daughter pushed him away.

  Mrs. B. considered turning to the doorway and saying, “Was that verse from Grandma’s funeral from Proverbs 13?” But. She didn’t ask knowing there’d be no answer.

  What must that boy think?

  There was a picture that Jeanie had taken of herself. She used a tripod and her father’s best camera which had a timer. There was a dark purple thunderhead sky behind her and a rainbow arched itself back over the spruce trees. Jeanie was dressed from head to toe in yellow and stood—arms thrown up—where the rainbow would have touched the ground. A loud statement and strong opinion shouting, “I am a veritable pot of gold, priceless and unattainable.” It was a summation. Jeanie with a personality that is impossible to find. Jeanie with a transient confidence that appears comfortable between the harshest, most contrasting conditions, where blazing sun meets the million prisms of an ineffable rain. Jeanie who is only a twist of light. Jeanie, a promise easily broken in a dry Arizona summer.

  No one could blame him for his love.

  Mrs. B. drew herself up slowly and walked back into the living room. He had gotten up from the chair and was standing in front of the open door near where she had left him. It hadn’t been that long. The mat under his feet said, “Welcome Home,” and he stared at it.

  Neither of them wanted to have to say anything for fear of tears.

  But. He was a grown man, not a child, so he said, “Sorry about this, Mrs. B. I thought, well, hell, who knows what I was thinking.” He glanced up at her. Her face changed quickly to encourage him with a smile and bright eyes, but he saw her pity first.

  She wanted to pull him into some hug that would be enough. But there he was with all the import and fragility of his manhood. Damn. She restrained herself, giving whatever support she could by leaving him alone.

  He looked down at the shoebox he was holding. There were several small treasures in it. Nothing fancy: a few smooth stones, a picture or two, a blue wax figure of an elephant, a foreign coin, and some other memories no one could possibly share. He laid the box down in the chair he’d gotten up from exhausted from holding such a treasure chest. His hands eased into his pockets and fell asleep at the wrist. He cleared his throat and looked at the clock. He knew that the motion of those hands should mean something, but he didn’t see the time. He thought hard. Both of them wished she would just get over it and come out of her room. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. They both thought she must have fallen asleep by now. They knew her best.

  He laughed a little at his own failure and shook his head. With aspiring, raised eyebrows he said, “Well. No sense beating a dead horse, right?” He left before she could see his tears. Why don’t you ever listen? His car sped away.

  Mrs. B. shut the door. Her hand lingered on the doorknob. She looked down at her wedding ring. She moved over to the chair and picked up the box of trinkets. She sat down heavily and picked through them carefully. She lifted out a framed picture of the couple that was wedged in the bottom of the box and made the cardboard sides bow out.

  Sighing, she leaned her head back against the chair and held it at arm's length to look at it. They were happy. It was their engagement photo. The one they had taken for the newspaper. The frame was separating at one of the corners. Just a cheap frame from the drug store. Nothing special. Mrs. B. pinched it back together. In a minute she stood up and went to a drawer in the kitchen. She pulled out a hammer and a small nail. She wiped her fingerprints off the glass over the picture with her apron. She walked back to the hallway and found a spot just over the light switch for the picture to hang. She held the tiny frame between her knees and pou
nded the tiny nail into the wall carefully. She hung the picture and backed away from it. She smiled her own smile as a salute to the two in the picture and turned out the hallway light.

  SPARROWS

  I wish you had known Marylyn. She tried crying alone on dry nights in the attic. But no one came to ask her why there was all the sobbing and moaning so there was little point in indulging such drama. She forced herself to be sullen for a while, but she kept forgetting and smiling anyway, regardless of having charity teeth.

  She wasn’t much of a girl. She was the kind of person who was afraid of standing on her own two feet. Not because she didn’t trust her feet, but because she knew the world was quicksand. That timidity was her presence. Her hair was a nasty old brown color like shoes that have never been polished and have walked miles and miles in the loose limestone dust alongside the road. Long and straight, like any girl’s hair should be, but stringy and hers had a habit of getting tangly. Brushing takes time and patience. No one who’s starving knows time and patience.

  One of the boys at school used to laugh at the way her shoulders jutted straight out from her neck. He