Someone hollers “Hot
body, lost in space,
what the hell are you
gonna do there,
sister-girl?!!” in
the general direc
tion of a family of
three or four or five.
The screaming lady
pauses afterwards,
staring a bit over
the heads of the
family up toward
the sky, then she’s
off as quickly as she
appeared and is
soon out of sight.
The family starts
a bit at the loud
query seemingly
addressed to them,
or to the twilight-
soaked sky that’s
just above their
precious heads.
And one can, if
one were to bear
witness, that each
individual seems
to have taken her
words in such a way
as if they had been
personally addressed
to herself or himself.
The slightest of them
all, who might be a
little girl of five or six
stops the quickest in
her tracks and be
gan to look more
and more alarmed,
even after the yell
ing lady was long
gone; she was com
ing undone, had a
stark look of alarm
covering her entire
visage that inevitably
transitioned into a
transparent pout,
which soon had a
quivering lip that
predicted a stream
of crocodile tears
that came only
moments after
that. It turns
out the little
girl with the
heart of gold was
overwhelmed with
worry and grief and
was trying desperately
to devise a plan to res
cue whomever it was
(and she had some
ideas about who the
unfortunate soul was)
to rescue them. The
father of the crew –
I shall call him that –
aligns in rapturous
thought with those
(thoughts) of his
teenaged twin
boys for all
three of them
last all focus di
rectly after the
first two words
of the diatribe
that had been
screamed at or
over the general
direction of their
identical haircuts,
“hot body,” which
has them each em
bark upon separate
and quite personal
trips (oh, they’re
not going any
where physically,
the entire family
stands stock still
for what seems
like an eternity
after the loud
words are so
hurled) – which
is to say that a
certain electrical
zing begins to per
meate their mid-
sections (by which
I mean that area
above the knees
that falls below
the imaginary
horizontal line
one might draw
in one’s mind
at each’s navel;
so, below the bel
ly button, as it were).
As for good old (and
do not even think of
calling her that out
loud) Mom? Well,
who can truly tell
what she might
be thinking. It
might be as
cliché as
something
about lunch,
which had
more than
likely been
ordered a
few minutes
previous to the
family’s stroll to
to a pizzeria to
which the family
gave patronage,
might even have
been the establish
ment’s best weekend
customers (not that
there weren’t the
occasional week
days, as well)
and was there
fore turning a
rather perfect
shade of baked
light brown as
the order of
pies sat in the
rather uniquely
sloped oven that
the parlor’s owner
had had shipped
special some de
cade and a half
previous all the
way from Sicily.
But what if it is
true, as well, that
Mom has taken the
earlier screamed words
more a bit more to heart?
What if she is heard to utter,
with a voice that at first sounds
a might shaken, a bit weak, but
crescendo up toward the decibel
level of the words upon which this
story began, that rises into a scream
that forever alters the history of the
family that had been so casually
strolling the familiar blocks of
sidewalk just minutes ago?
She starts with a snapped
“Damn right!” expressed
in an unsure vibrato,
but then comes,
“What. In. The.
Hell. Am. I.
Doing. Here.”
deliberate, her
confidence rising
as she admits in
verbal assault at
the universe,
“Lost as I am,
lost as I have
been for SO
MANY YEARS!!”
And then she
turns a quick
one-eighty,
walks her
self ‘home,’
(Dad and the
boys, with pizza
on the brain, give
her a brief look that
might be a combination
of disgust and surprise,
and then begin to amble
their way without her to the
pizzeria) without even really
considering the items, pulls
a few things from drawers
and cabinets and closets and
tosses them into bag that is
not quite large enough to be
called a suitcase, walks the
bag out to the beige-colored
sedan that is parked in the
carport, hops in the car after
tossing the bag in the back
seat, keys the ignition,
and reverses the car
out of the driveway,
kicking up a bit of
gravel along the
way, backs
into the
highway
in front
of the
house
in which
she’s some
how existed
for nearly
twenty years,
(aptly called
Main Street),
and speeds
off into the
distance,
never to be
seen or heard
from again by
what will become
a more out-of-sorts,
disturbed and depressed
family of now only two
or three or four.
