The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Jasmine gives her her old sideways grin, the one Brenda remembers from study hall on Friday afternoons. It looks strange below her wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes. ‘You sure?’

Brenda doesn’t reply, but she pushes the accelerator a little deeper with her foot. Now the digital speedometer reads 80.

IV.

‘YOU FIRST,’ PAULINE SAYS.

All at once she feels shy, afraid to hear her words coming out of Phil’s mouth, sure they will sound booming yet false, like dry thunder. But she has forgotten the difference between his public voice – declamatory and a little corny, like the voice of a movie attorney in a summing-up-to-the-jury scene – and the one he uses when he’s with just a friend or two (and hasn’t had anything to drink). It is a softer, kinder voice, and she is pleased to hear her poem coming out of his mouth. No, more than pleased. She is grateful. He makes it sound far better than it is.

‘Shadow-print the road

with black lipstick kisses.

Decaying snow in farmhouse fields

like cast-off bridal dresses.

The rising mist turns to gold dust.

The clouds boil apart in ragged tresses.

It bursts through!

For five seconds it could be summer

and I seventeen with flowers

folded in the apron of my dress.’

He puts the sheet down. She looks at him, smiling a little, but anxious. He nods his head. ‘It’s fine, dear,’ he says. ‘Fine enough. Now you.’

She opens his steno pad, finds what appears to be the last poem, and pages through four or five scribbled drafts. She knows how he works and goes on until she comes to a version not in mostly illegible cursive but in small neat printing. She shows it to him. Phil nods, then turns to look at the turnpike. All of this is very nice, but they will have to go soon. They don’t want to be late.

He sees a bright red van coming. It’s going fast.

She begins.

V.

BRENDA SEES A HORN OF PLENTY SPILLING ROTTEN FRUIT.

Yes, she thinks, that’s just about right. Thanksgiving for fools.

Freddy will go for a soldier and fight in foreign lands, the way Jasmine’s brother Tommy did. Jazzy’s boys, Eddie and Truth, will do the same. They’ll own muscle cars when and if they come home, always supposing gas is still available twenty years from now. And the girls? They’ll go with boys. They’ll give up their virginity while game shows play on TV. They’ll believe the boys who tell them they’ll pull out in time. They’ll have babies and fry meat in skillets and put on weight, same as she and Jaz did. They’ll smoke a little dope and eat a lot of ice cream – the cheap stuff from Walmart. Maybe not Rose Ellen, though. Something is wrong with Rose. She’ll still have drool on her sharp little chin when she’s in the eighth grade, same as now. The seven kids will beget seventeen, and the seventeen will beget seventy, and the seventy will beget two hundred. She can see a ragged fool’s parade marching into the future, some wearing jeans that show the ass of their underwear, some wearing heavy-metal tee-shirts, some wearing gravy-spotted waitress uniforms, some wearing stretch pants from Kmart that have little MADE IN PARAGUAY tags sewn into the seams of the roomy seats. She can see the mountain of Fisher-Price toys they will own and which will later be sold at yard sales (which was where they were bought in the first place). They will buy the products they see on TV and go in debt to the credit card companies, as she did … and will again, because the Pick-3 was a fluke and she knows it. Worse than a fluke, really: a tease. Life is a rusty hubcab lying in a ditch at the side of the road, and life goes on. She will never again feel like she’s sitting in the cockpit of a jet fighter. This is as good as it gets. There are no boats for nobody, and no camera is filming her life. This is reality, not a reality show.

Shrek is over and all the kids are asleep, even Eddie. Rose Ellen’s head is once more on Eddie’s shoulder. She’s snoring like an old woman. She has red marks on her arms, because sometimes she can’t stop scratching herself.

Jasmine screws the cap on the bottle of Allen’s and drops it back into the baby seat in the footwell. In a low voice she says, ‘When I was five, I believed in unicorns.’

‘So did I,’ Brenda says. ‘I wonder how fast this fucker goes.’

Jasmine looks at the road ahead. They flash past a blue sign that says REST AREA 1 MI. She sees no traffic northbound; both lanes are entirely theirs. ‘Let’s find out,’ Jaz says.

The numbers on the speedometer dial rise from 80 to 85. Then 87. There’s still some room left between the accelerator pedal and the floor. All the kids are sleeping.