The roses

She rounded the corner to Louise’s house. The roses around the corner house were stunning. She stopped the car, even though she was already late picking up Louise.

She rolled down the window in hopes of smelling the array of roses stretching from one side of the large yard to another. Red, yellow, pink, a melony orange, white: the colors spread like a rainbow across her view.

She took a deep breath and suddenly felt calmer and . . .

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I never

“I never said that!” I said in shocked denial.

My four kids exchanged looks. The youngest, Sammy, always the spokesperson, answered, “Mom, we all heard you say it. You said it.”

“You guys are making this up. You’re just trying to pull a fast one on me.”

“Mom,” Sammy said, “you did say it. And you meant it.”

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What are you doing?

Janelle wasn’t doing anything wrong. Well, OK, so she’d ditched school, but she was just sitting on a bench beside the river. Not bothering anyone. And this fat cop with sweat dripping down his face comes up and says, “What are you doing?”

Janelle wasn’t scared of cops, although she’d tangled with them a few times. She answered grudginly, “Nothin’.”

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It’s perfect

“It’s perfect,” he said, and made a ceremony of carrying it to the refrigerator to mount it in a place of honor.

He smiled at 4 year-old Ethan, who had followed him into the kitchen to watch the ceremony of putting the latest art work on the frig. It was solid black scribble Ethan declared “doggie.”

He took down the solid black scribble from yesterday, the one Ethan named “tree,” and carried it to the art box where he saved all of Ethan’s drawings. Ethan followed him to the box, crutches thumping gently on the hard wood floor.

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Backup

A direct order from his Captain to stay away from the landing on Canal Street was the last thing Tom heard before leaving the precinct tonight. But he was putting on black clothes and a black hooded sweatshirt, preparing to head for the landing anyway. He looked over his backup weapons. Tonight, he’d carry an untraceable one under his arm. He secured a second untraceable one at his ankle and put a knife on his other ankle.

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The last time

“I’m trying to think,” he said. He leaned back in the battered wooden rocking chair that occupied his front porch, settling in to tell me a story. “When was the last time I saw that noisy dad-gum cougar up in the hills?”

He fiddled with his pipe and struck a big kitchen match. “Must have been ’bout five years ago, at least. I was up on Old Baldy hunting deer and I heard him yowling and growling. Caught a glimpse of him up in those rocks where he had his den. Gray haired as I am, that old cat. Looked like my granddaddy.”

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Get up off of that thing

There were signs all along the elevated wooden walkway through the swamp: “Beware of alligators” in red letters every few yards. Yet I rounded a turn in the walkway and saw a mom posing her chlld for a photo on the back of an alligator below the walkway.

“Get up off of that thing,” I screamed. I ran to grab the child, bumping the mom out of my way as I ran. I got the kid, but she broke her arm when she fell. And that’s how I ended up in court defending myself against assault charges.

The judge. . .

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Cookie Dough

Somehow cookie dough had become a test of her motherhood. She looked at the chocolate chip cookie dough, rife with uncooked eggs, and then at her 4 year old twins. Kelly, the bolder of the two, asked, “Can we have a bite?” and both sets of innocent brown eyes turned up to her, waiting.

She had to decide now, no deliberating. She hated decisions like that. Was she the kind of mom who let her kids eat raw eggs? Or was she the kind of mom who made them wait until the cookies came out of the oven, safely cooked to a germ-free perfection?

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Chicago

Living in the hills surrounded by nothing but trees was perfect for her. She needed to be alone with herself. She needed time away from the world. Once a month she drove down the mountain and bought supplies and gasoline for her generator.

The generator was her tie to the world she wanted to process and understand, and eventually return to with enthusiasm. Each night she fired up the generator for a couple hours of electric light. But more importantly, she  needed to run the stereo. She needed to play one or another of her Chicago albums. Chicago was . . .

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Nice Neighborhood

“Ah,” she said, “this is a nice neighborhood.”

The realtor certainly didn’t want to disagree with that opinion, but she wondered what it meant. After all, they’d just turned the corner into the little neighborhood and she hadn’t even showed the house yet. “Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Well,” the potential buyer said, “I see people out walking and people in their yards. I like that. It means that people are active and that people take care of their homes.”

The realtor stored that away. A bit of knowledge about what would sell the house after she’d showed it. . . .

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