Read Online Love & Darts (9781937316075) by Nath Jones - Free Book Online

into
that world. Colors tossing easily and free-falling with shaken,
circular gravity into the middle of the world. There is a drunken
moment when she believes in the place inside. She wants it.
    She takes her eye away. She hits the toy on
the floor. Looking in again but her hand covers the aperture and
with no light she sees little. She hits it repeatedly on the floor.
And again on the rocking horse.
    She turns it, looks in backwards, and sees
nothing. The world has disappeared. But turning it again the
furious rage dissipates; she is satisfied. And she has learned how
to hold it up once more towards the light for soothing patterns and
a falling sound. Again she is amazed. Enraptured.
    But still curious.
    She carries the kaleidoscope over to her toy
box. Standing up she puts the handle of the toy box lid at such an
angle so as to be able to pry the thing apart. She works
diligently. Pushing from one side and then on the other. To be
inside. To live in that world.
    Finally!
    A half-smile. She got it.
    Then.
    Beads hemorrhage for an instant.
    Little one-sided plastic nothing mirrors lie
motionless.
    The cardboard is bland inside the pretty
paper.
    And I cannot get to her fast enough.

 
ANGELS ON HORSEBACK

    Kitchens breathe easily in big families. There is
a blur of aunts and uncles leaning on counters. Teenage cousins
avoid obligation in the basement surfacing only to refill a bowl of
tortilla chips. Little nephews play with string cheese on the
floor. At the end of the kitchen there is an island where neighbors
are sitting on bar stools drinking mai tais, white wine, and
sangria. They get up to take turns throwing a doll’s head (a
beloved dog toy) into the living room. Charlie, the golden
retriever, bounds back to the slow-swirling group and looks around
among different friendly faces before choosing one and offering up
his drool-covered prize.
    A twenty-six-year-old woman, the new wife of
one of the older grandchildren, stands awkwardly apart from the
group. The loudest neighbor demands that she come toss the doll’s
head. She declines but so as not to seem too standoffish she
instead makes a large gesture of maturely closing the basement
stairs door in an effort to improve her political position in the
familial hierarchy. Who does that surly nineteen-year-old think he
is to let a door stand open in the middle of the way as he rushes
and rumbles down the steps?
    But. Who is she to care? So she leans over
and picks up the lone tortilla chip he dropped from his refilled
bowl lest it get crushed and require whatever reprimand might come
out with the vacuum.
    Mrs. Hamel from church is carrying serving
dishes out to the screened-in porch. She seems never quite pleased
with the platters’ spacial relations. The buffet under the kitchen
window goes through different permutations. Deviled eggs, potato
salad, coleslaw, orange Jell-O and carrot salad, teriyaki chicken
wings, and mint-frosted chocolate chip brownies dance, leapfrog,
slide around, and push back in her old, gnarled, manicured hands
until she’s satisfied.
    No one is listening. But Mrs. Swindan
answers what must have been a question posed by that new wife of
one of the older grandchildren, “Angels on horseback are just baked
oysters wrapped in bacon,” then raises her voice to shout toward
the porch, “Mrs. Hamel. How do you make your Christmas fruit
salad?”
    Mrs. Hamel hears the question but doesn’t
bother raising her voice much. She’s folding napkins
corner-to-corner and making a pinwheel pile. “The oranges are from
Central America. None of this grocery store nonsense. Mine come
directly from the grove to my back door. Lord knows what
infestations I’m ushering in on the fruit, but I don’t care. I’m an
old lady, I like good oranges, and I hate pesticides.”
    When the twenty-six-year-old comes through
the doorway carrying the fruit salad, Mrs. Hamel points to one of
two empty places of honor, and the prized dish gets turned ninety
degrees