Read Online The Sunday List of Dreams by Kris Radish - Free Book Online
Authors: Kris Radish
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your back in December when the worst storm of the year pulls against the gutters, strands you inside for 38 hours, and the girls, all three of them, are trapped someplace else. That ache just to have someone want you. The paralyzing fear that you may have once been beautiful and never knew it. Maybe also, maybe someone you know wanted you, wanted to run his fingers along the inside of your thigh until you jumped on top of him and rode him like a pony. What if you missed that because you were afraid you might miss it? What if you forgot to look up and see if he was watching you because you were always too damn busy? Wondering if you stay alone and when you turn 45 who will help you with your canes, who will adjust the hearing aids? Who will drive you to the liquor store for the Syrah? Who will buy you the occasional, and deeply loved, Saturday night rum-laced cigar?
Connie Nixon knows about being afraid. She knows what it’s like to spend months imagining life without him, wondering if the girls will be permanently damaged by the blight of yet another divorce, another broken family, the seemingly common surrender to the statistics of failed marriage. Will they read the local paper that shows up like an insurance bill so regularly and quietly one afternoon after volleyball practice, choir rehearsal, and hanging out at the library and say, “Holy shit, you guys, look! Mom and Dad’s divorce is in the paper!”
Will the car make it another year? Will anyone come home for Christmas? Will I really be able to pull off my expedition into the list of dreams I have been nurturing all of these years? If I screw up, will everyone still love me? Will I ever
not
be afraid?
The trenches of her own world have turned Connie Nixon into a soldier who has no more space for the Purple Hearts she has won—even as she prepares for another battle. Even as she closes her eyes and imagines rolling into the clouds without the cover of an airplane. Even as she wonders what she will say, where she will stay, what will happen next, she also knows that in two months, a week, or even a few hours later she will look back on these moments of hesitation and self-doubt with the mature knowledge that somehow everything will be just fine. Somehow there are still lessons to learn and pages to read and places to see. Life, Connie knows, from seeing it slip through her hands hundreds of times, never ends or begins at one particular time. It is a succession of chances and change and challenges that ripple through your life in waves that, thank God, sometimes give you another opportunity, another moment to catch your shallow breath, another view of a terrific beach, another unexpected experience that can change the direction of the very air that courses through your lungs.
And without warning it happens to her. Just like that. A crashing wave that sneaks up when Connie is passing a cloud that she has decided looks like a turkey riding a pig. The man with the computer pushes himself out of the chair, stands, looks towards the back of the airplane, takes a very fast glance at Connie, and then gathers up his computer and leaves. Connie figures he needs to spread out and she is about to do the same thing when a woman drops into the seat beside her as if she has fallen out of the overhead bin across the aisle.
“Thank God,” the woman says, flopping back in the seat and then looking at Connie as if she knows her. “Did you hear the frigging coughing? There’s a guy up there who must have escaped from a TB ward.”
The woman’s blonde hair is about an inch long except in the front where it dips into her eyes. Maybe about Sabrina’s age—27-ish, maybe a bit older. Light makeup, silver jewelry everywhere, blue cowboy boots, a red tank top with a white cardigan sweater and a pair of jeans that are faded in just the right places. She reeks of self-confidence and Connie imagines this woman’s life. New Yorker. Party girl. Artsy. Doesn’t take shit. Gets free
Connie Nixon knows about being afraid. She knows what it’s like to spend months imagining life without him, wondering if the girls will be permanently damaged by the blight of yet another divorce, another broken family, the seemingly common surrender to the statistics of failed marriage. Will they read the local paper that shows up like an insurance bill so regularly and quietly one afternoon after volleyball practice, choir rehearsal, and hanging out at the library and say, “Holy shit, you guys, look! Mom and Dad’s divorce is in the paper!”
Will the car make it another year? Will anyone come home for Christmas? Will I really be able to pull off my expedition into the list of dreams I have been nurturing all of these years? If I screw up, will everyone still love me? Will I ever
not
be afraid?
The trenches of her own world have turned Connie Nixon into a soldier who has no more space for the Purple Hearts she has won—even as she prepares for another battle. Even as she closes her eyes and imagines rolling into the clouds without the cover of an airplane. Even as she wonders what she will say, where she will stay, what will happen next, she also knows that in two months, a week, or even a few hours later she will look back on these moments of hesitation and self-doubt with the mature knowledge that somehow everything will be just fine. Somehow there are still lessons to learn and pages to read and places to see. Life, Connie knows, from seeing it slip through her hands hundreds of times, never ends or begins at one particular time. It is a succession of chances and change and challenges that ripple through your life in waves that, thank God, sometimes give you another opportunity, another moment to catch your shallow breath, another view of a terrific beach, another unexpected experience that can change the direction of the very air that courses through your lungs.
And without warning it happens to her. Just like that. A crashing wave that sneaks up when Connie is passing a cloud that she has decided looks like a turkey riding a pig. The man with the computer pushes himself out of the chair, stands, looks towards the back of the airplane, takes a very fast glance at Connie, and then gathers up his computer and leaves. Connie figures he needs to spread out and she is about to do the same thing when a woman drops into the seat beside her as if she has fallen out of the overhead bin across the aisle.
“Thank God,” the woman says, flopping back in the seat and then looking at Connie as if she knows her. “Did you hear the frigging coughing? There’s a guy up there who must have escaped from a TB ward.”
The woman’s blonde hair is about an inch long except in the front where it dips into her eyes. Maybe about Sabrina’s age—27-ish, maybe a bit older. Light makeup, silver jewelry everywhere, blue cowboy boots, a red tank top with a white cardigan sweater and a pair of jeans that are faded in just the right places. She reeks of self-confidence and Connie imagines this woman’s life. New Yorker. Party girl. Artsy. Doesn’t take shit. Gets free
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