The Myth of Summer Two

It would be easy to say it was hard. Of course it was hard. The point was in the living through it. Or so they said.

Amelia made it to college, Jenz didn't see the point in going. Jen stayed and did hair with her cousin Lori and made enough to have her own apartment in town. Amelia went up to Northern State and studied Philosophy, Modern Feminist Theory, and Psychology, but not necessarily in that order. Specifically, she was trying to figure out Why Everyone Is So Fucked Up but essentially just had to cut out of Spring semester, second year, and Go Home when the news came in about the accident.

Emma was thirteen at the time, that awful painful age where females go from girls to whatever and realize they are the trash of the world, if they haven't already been treated as such, will soon learn they are, somehow. Mama was most definitely drunk and only going the six or so miles from Bessie's Place back home where Gammy was already full of hate phlegm bile and life lessons painfully excruciating as a splinter under your fingernail. There to stay.

It wasn't Mama's fault. The semi bulled through one of the four or so stoplights in town and people gandered that the brakes had gone out, the man held no ill will. Mama, of course, didn't live. But Emma did. Of course. Of course Emma lived. All thirteen blessed flowering years of this soft gentle soul, to relive every minute, every second, to wonder why Jesus didn't take This Lamb of God, but chose Mama, who wished she would die every day anyway.

But you go on and you make tea and you make dinner and you praise another day and you wheel the chair forward and you make your way around and you just live on. It's just what you do.

Will had come along from Nebraska when his parents moved, and he and Amelia had met in the Library of the University, or at some party. Amelia remembered the Library, Will insisted it was at Joe's party. Either way, they met, and all their friends agreed It Should Be So and so they went on dates and did what those who are interested in one another feel like they should do.

Amelia had been back and taking care of Emma for about nine months when Will said he would be there, "Hon. I'll be there." Which Amelia shrugged of but accepted the same as she accepted pies when she was 20 at her mother's funeral, Emma still in traction in the hospital. Will took three and a half months to just be there, but when he got there and Amelia was looking out the picture window of the Old House and holding one of Gammy's old salt shakers, he came up to her and kissed her neck and put his arms around her waist, looking at the amber, brown, red leaves fallen on the ground. Amelia rested her head on his broad, strong shoulders when he came around to her side and exhaled long. It's going to be ok. Or something.

"Hey," Will said and shouldered Amelia toward him. "You know what?"

Amelia sincerely did not want to know any more What at this point.

"Yeah. What."

He turned her body like you do with blindfolded children playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey toward the trees and leaves outside, and slung his arm around her neck like a yoke on cattle. "You n me? We're a team."

Amelia smiled a wizened smile.

He had no idea she knew that Will and Jen had 'been a team' for at least a year. That vanilla body spray was impenetrable, intractable. Jen loved that sick, sweet smell. Amelia had neither the desire nor the inclination to tell her how disgustingly, maskingly sweet that smell was. It might as well have been gasoline. Then you could set it on fire.

"BITCHES!" Jenz came from up the street to the left which was unusual, Will almost always made the first entrance. Jenz, of course, did the whole shower, do hair, pretend busy thing, as if a shower would wash off the fact that she had been fucking her best friend's husband for three years.

Emma waves and the smiles a wider smile than the red sea at the parting of Moses.

Jen hugs her and playfully pretends a kick at the wheels. Glances aside toward Amelia.

"You dry off?"

"You see me wet?"

"Guess not. Got tea? Nah, nevermind. I brought beeeers! Want one?" Jen pulls a six pack from her giant cloth purse. Could be a diaper purse. Should be a diaper purse. But Jenz just flitted from one branch to another, never long enough to get caught, never long enough to feel. Just enough to rest for a bit on the branch.

"Let's shotgun it. Huh?"

Amelia exhaled and giggled. Of course. What else is there to do. Went into the kitchen and slowly pulled the long butcher knife from the drawer. She pulled the steel sharpener and slowly ran the blade along to cut the blade sharper. I could cut you, but I won't. You could have hurt me, but you don't. I could humiliate you both, by I won't. One. Sharp. Blade. Run slowly along the steel.

Emma was ready with hers and shaking it like an ecstatic baby.

"Oh Jesus," said Amelia. Here. Maybe take a key instead.

"No! Knife." If anyone could handle the mechanics of a butcher's knife, it was Emma. She shook the can like a maniac and carefully punctured the bottom end with a twist. "Gooooo," she smiled and drank the boozy barley fuzz.

Jenz and Amelia looked at each other. "Oh I see. You've got yours."

"Yep, getchurz own!" said Jenz. Two seconds later was the shake, the eye contact, the Double Dog Dare of the shotgunning of the beer. Shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake you booty, shake you booty, and the quick as lightning no eye contact or second guessing needed pass from one hand to another of the newly sharpened knife, both keenly aware of What Would Happen If, to carefully puncture the aluminum just so like all women know how to do. And take the shooting fizzing liquid into your mouth, as if any liquor would make it in. Jen and Amelia looked at each other with the same Dare, the Same Love You Forever Until look until Amelia spit out some beer onto her lap.

"Ohhhhhhhhh! You fired!"

"Yep," said Emma. "Fired."

It had only been three months.