here were days when lily hendricks would look from the picture window of her mobile home for an hour or more, watching the clouds making round, hopeful shapes in the air. What was hopeful for Lily was anything ongoing: clouds moving west to east, birds keeping busy, progress being made. But mostly the western Michigan sky was overcast and life didn't care squat. Mostly life tried to pen you up within its chain link fence. Lily had a little dog named Joyce that would bring her the box of Kleenex whenever Lily cried and the tears spilled onto her lap. The dog, half cocker, half beagle, would yip and wag her tail. Joyce was always upbeat. Lily had also tried teaching Joyce to fetch the bottle of Old Crow, but Joyce could only manage a pint bottle, and Lily liked to buy her bourbon by the gallon.
Lily was sixty-three. She had had five children and she had given all five up for adoption. But that was long ago. In those days, whenever she was with a new man and she asked herself should she or shouldn't she, the wildness always won. Maybe two of the children had had the same father, but Lily wouldn't put money on it. She hadn't played the field; she'd played the county. But that was history. Now she had Burt on Saturdays and Herbert on Wednesdays and weeks would go by when neither of them could get it up. They were older men who liked their quiet, and they did what they were told.
In the past year Lily had thought more about her five children than in the previous twenty-five. This was not a result of awakened conscience: they had tracked her down. Robbie had been first. He was forty-five and taught high school in Monroe, outside of Detroit. Lily felt proud that one of her children was a schoolteacher. He had phoned, and she was a little cool until she realized that he didn't want money and he wasn't going to complain. Robbie's father was one of three possible men. All dead now. Maybe it had been that time she had done it in the hayfield, or maybe that time in the back seat of a Plymouth. She had asked Robbie: "What color's your hair?" | |
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