likes something she’ll call it kitty. If I could rig up some mirrors at home like that, she’d stay busy for hours but I’m not real sure how it’s all done, which I guess is why you only see them at a fair or someplace special. I bought a little compact at Woolworth’s that was on the sale table, and that mirror was so bad and wavy, I just knew Larrette would love it. She threw it to the floor and it cracked and sparkled all over the condo kitchen. “Seven years, puppy,” I said to her but I’m not worried. I figure I’ve had my seven already.
Larrette is my daughter by Larry Cross of Shallotte, North Carolina, and he is—cross I mean. So we never see him at all, mainly because he lives in California doing odd jobs. “The sea is in my blood,” he used to say just because he grew up in Shallotte, which is nothing but a spit from the ocean. And I told him that, yeah, if stretching out in the sun with little to no clothes on, sipping a Bud, and ridingthe waves is what it takes to have the sea in your blood, well then, yeah boy, I’ve got it in mine, too. “Only that kind of blood calls for money,” I told him. “The average American cannot sunbathe straight from May to September.” I meant due to finances, of course, but I couldn’t even if I was Jackie O. because I’m fair-skinned; a strawberry blonde almost always is and my dermatologist tells me that skin cancer is bad in this area. That’s probably one reason right there why I instinctively took up with Larry Cross. He had the tan that I had never had; he could have passed for Spanish if he could have kept his mouth shut which he couldn’t. Open his mouth and Shallotte was written all over him.
I tell people that Larry Cross does odd jobs in California, when the truth is that I have no earthly idea what he does and I didn’t when I was staying there with him in Fuquay-Varina. I think he must’ve dealt in drugs or something underhanded from the looks of the people who would appear at my door at all hours of the night and day when decent people are either at work or at home watching TV.
I never married Larry Cross because I wasn’t about to saddle myself with trash. I say that now, but I guess there were some times when I thought we would get married; I guess I was thinking that when I was carrying Larrette and he was so proud of himself for getting me that way. And just as soon as Larrette had popped out Larry went and bought himself a surfboard with no surf whatsoever therein Fuquay-Varina (my instincts told me it wouldn’t work). There were bills to pay which I had always paid and he was over there drinking a beer and listening to the Beach Boys singing, “Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”
“What’re you going to do come low tide?” I asked him. What we had wasn’t a home, so one day I just up and left, me and Larrette. We moved to Raleigh and stayed with Eleanore until I got my job here. Then before I knew it, I was going to the state fair and living in a condo with a wreath on every wall and a big hooked rug that I bought at the outlet mall over near the airport. That place has got everything you might want and then some. Everything.
If that oil lamp catches fire, it’s all over. Everything I own will bust right into flames and I’ll have to start all over putting my life into perspective. And I like that word—perspective—it can make something sound a lot more important than it is. Not that I don’t value my life, because I do, but sometimes I wish that I could spread it all out on a piece of paper and take some Wite-out to it. Larry Cross would be the first to go. I tell people (if they happen to ask) that he does odd jobs in California. I don’t tell them that I think he’s a drug pusher because that would stick and get turned right back around and follow me like gum on a shoe wherever I may go in this life. They’d say, “That’s Maureen Dummer, who works as a teller and used to live with a pusher
Larrette is my daughter by Larry Cross of Shallotte, North Carolina, and he is—cross I mean. So we never see him at all, mainly because he lives in California doing odd jobs. “The sea is in my blood,” he used to say just because he grew up in Shallotte, which is nothing but a spit from the ocean. And I told him that, yeah, if stretching out in the sun with little to no clothes on, sipping a Bud, and ridingthe waves is what it takes to have the sea in your blood, well then, yeah boy, I’ve got it in mine, too. “Only that kind of blood calls for money,” I told him. “The average American cannot sunbathe straight from May to September.” I meant due to finances, of course, but I couldn’t even if I was Jackie O. because I’m fair-skinned; a strawberry blonde almost always is and my dermatologist tells me that skin cancer is bad in this area. That’s probably one reason right there why I instinctively took up with Larry Cross. He had the tan that I had never had; he could have passed for Spanish if he could have kept his mouth shut which he couldn’t. Open his mouth and Shallotte was written all over him.
I tell people that Larry Cross does odd jobs in California, when the truth is that I have no earthly idea what he does and I didn’t when I was staying there with him in Fuquay-Varina. I think he must’ve dealt in drugs or something underhanded from the looks of the people who would appear at my door at all hours of the night and day when decent people are either at work or at home watching TV.
I never married Larry Cross because I wasn’t about to saddle myself with trash. I say that now, but I guess there were some times when I thought we would get married; I guess I was thinking that when I was carrying Larrette and he was so proud of himself for getting me that way. And just as soon as Larrette had popped out Larry went and bought himself a surfboard with no surf whatsoever therein Fuquay-Varina (my instincts told me it wouldn’t work). There were bills to pay which I had always paid and he was over there drinking a beer and listening to the Beach Boys singing, “Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”
“What’re you going to do come low tide?” I asked him. What we had wasn’t a home, so one day I just up and left, me and Larrette. We moved to Raleigh and stayed with Eleanore until I got my job here. Then before I knew it, I was going to the state fair and living in a condo with a wreath on every wall and a big hooked rug that I bought at the outlet mall over near the airport. That place has got everything you might want and then some. Everything.
If that oil lamp catches fire, it’s all over. Everything I own will bust right into flames and I’ll have to start all over putting my life into perspective. And I like that word—perspective—it can make something sound a lot more important than it is. Not that I don’t value my life, because I do, but sometimes I wish that I could spread it all out on a piece of paper and take some Wite-out to it. Larry Cross would be the first to go. I tell people (if they happen to ask) that he does odd jobs in California. I don’t tell them that I think he’s a drug pusher because that would stick and get turned right back around and follow me like gum on a shoe wherever I may go in this life. They’d say, “That’s Maureen Dummer, who works as a teller and used to live with a pusher
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