Apathy is a selfish killer.
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Theresa Schmits
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Theresa Schmits
Mr. Cat
They said it was he who broke into the Shell station. My mother didn’t believe it because of
something she heard his low-class wife say. My mother said his wife did it.
“Live fast, die young.” My brother did die young, but not before I was grown, before I spent
multitudes of Saturdays of my youth at the Shell gas station. Zach worked for the City during the week,
but on weekends he was free to pursue his real love: cars, and more money at the gas station. He and
my mom used to get together with my sister and me in tow and go to the gas station where he would
work on cars in the shop and mom would talk to him. I don’t know what they talked about.
There was no feeling in the world of being nowhere more than at that gas station. What was there
that was acceptable, desired–loved, even–was repugnant to me. Alyssa, my sister, was only slightly less
depressed about her time spent there because she knew there would come a day when Zach would talk
to her that way, friendly and confidentially and like a real sister. But that day hadn’t come yet. I did not
believe that day would ever come for me and I did not care. I doubted that what my mother and brother
were talking about was something I would be interested in or even approve of. To me, it was just
another Saturday stolen away from playing Barbie dolls at home or going to the candy store or reading in
the fork of the maple tree. I was miserable.
At first, Alyssa and I would beg for candy and soda at the vending machines. Having had our fill of
that, we then looked about for something to do. There was nothing. No other children were forced to
come to the gas station. The normal children were at home playing or going to birthday parties or
having barbecues with their normal families. Not us, though. We were the family of autos on cement
blocks in the front yard, of trouble with the law, of dirty dishes in the kitchen. You know the type.
It was springtime and hot and humid in the Mississippi River bottoms. At least we were high land
people–we lived across the Mississippi River on the Illinois bluffs overlooking the crops in the Missouri
bottomland. There weren’t so many mosquitoes there and our water didn’t taste of rust as the water did
in the gas station bathroom. Once your eyes traveled past the deep green of corn and soybeans growing
in the bottoms, you could see hills in the distance, purple and blue, always suggesting something better,
some better place to be. Those hills bumped the geography until they came to the Ozark Mountains and
the hillbillies and the country music areas. Then the land stretched to the West, where I wanted to go
someday.
As morning turned surely into afternoon and seeing that Zachary was not going to be done working
on that Chevy until much, much later than the 11:00 we were promised, Alyssa and I wandered to the
bank of a canal that cut by the gas station and ducked quickly under the road via a culvert. Maybe the
canal started as a little creek or stream somewhere far up in the hills, maybe as far away as the Ozarks.
Perhaps where it started, the water sparkled in the sunlight and gurgled in shady places under trees
which hung over the sweet, little stream. But eventually it grew swift, anxiously moving toward the
Mississippi River to become part of something bigger, perhaps something better, certainly something
more powerful. It moved silently through the Missouri bottomland zigzagging a line of trees on both
sides of it in a narrow band of forest to where it abruptly became farmland again.
There were few lands richer than the Missouri bottoms where the Mississippi River floods deposited
the topsoil of Iowa, upper Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Farmers planted crops in it in without
worry, knowing they would yield. Not a bit was wasted. There was no place for woods in soil this
profitable. One line of trees was all the farmers left. Then sunlit land.
“Stay away from that creek,” called my mother.
“Why?” I asked.
Her look told me I should not ask, but I could not help myself. In the heat, I could not get cool and
all I could think of was how it would feel to have the air blowing in my open window in the back seat of
our old station wagon on our way home. That – or my toes dipping in the water. I couldn’t abide the
filth or the super sweet scent of the gas station bathroom anymore to get another rusty drink. The scent
came from a box affixed to the wall of the bathroom, high up where no one could reach it. It made the
human dirty smell in the bathroom perfectly nauseating.
“Why?” I asked again, knowing that I was too far away for her to reach me if she found me
impertinent.
She looked at me, annoyed, but explained, “The water moves fast here and I don’t want you to fall
in and drown. Besides there might be snakes.”
“Oh,” I said. I was satisfied with the explanation.
Still, as the afternoon wore on, Alyssa and I couldn’t stop ourselves from at least looking at the
canal. We edged closer through the tall weeds to the side and slightly behind the gas station. The weeds
were dry and crackled as we walked through them. I longed for the shady trees along the bank further
behind the gas station, but there the bank of the canal was too steep to negotiate without sliding down
into the water. Still, we pressed on until we were at the top of the bank looking down into the dark, fast
water. I took a few steps down the hill to just where the shade from the trees sheltered my eyes and I
peered deep into the water searching for snakes.
What I found, though, was not snakes, but a submerged, junk car. Around the top where it stuck
rusty out of the water a blue film of oil melted into rainbow and the water eddied at the disruption in its
flow and slowly, astonishingly, became stagnant. I would have expected mosquitoes in the stagnant
area, but the oil on top of the water prevented any life, even the lowly life of a mosquito. There were no
snakes there. And for that, I was saddened.
Alyssa came down the bank with me and together we looked at the submerged car.
“I wonder why they put it there,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“It makes it ugly.”
“It is ruined,” I pronounced.
“Do you think there’s any more?”
I hated to think that there was, but somehow I knew it, “Let’s see.”
We walked along the bank of the canal, steep and steeper still, and I was afraid I would fall into that
polluted water. My sister held my hand from higher up on the bank so I wouldn’t slip. I saw other
things. Tires piled so high several were completely out of the water; soda bottles and beer bottles, their
labels faded and peeling; thin balloons, grey and long with tiny tips; used, yellow oil cans; and black bags
of garbage. On top of the water, always the rainbow film of oil. Alyssa came close and we sat in the
dirty weeds looking at it. We could have thrown our trash in that water from our morning treats and no
one would even know. No one would even care.
Eventually, we climbed back up the bank to where it felt cleaner. Zach was still working on the car
and Mother was still talking to him, low, as if she didn’t want Alyssa and me to hear what she was
saying. We did not tell our mother or our brother about what we saw, even though we longed to.
Telling of the contaminated water would be telling of our own disobedience, so it had to be our secret. I
checked Alyssa’s clothes to make sure she had no trace of the guilty bank. I brushed the bank’s grass
and dirt off her jean shorts with my hand and she did the same for me.
We walked up to the side of the highway where the passing cars dragged with them a gush of air
that blew our thin, blonde hair each time they went by. We sat down with our legs dangling over the
side of the culvert. Mom looked out of the shop, her hand shielding her eyes and I could see she wanted
to tell us not to do it, but I guess she changed her mind because she disappeared inside again.
“Moni, it’s cleaner here.” Alyssa pointed out.
Truly, the water ran fast again and could have, perhaps, fooled someone who first saw it, but I
knew the dark truth of the defilement. We looked down and watched the water rushing away from the
hills and sweetness and good and the flatland and filth and misery, running to the river beyond and locks
and dams and barges and Memphis and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. I wished I could go with
the water, my clothing keeping me afloat and staring straight up at the blue sky.
The whine of a car in the distance changed from high to low as it approached and passed in a stage
whisper of tires on pavement. I leaned against Alyssa, inhaled, and sighed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hold my hands,” I said to my little girls on a cool, October day. We had already been to the candy
counter inside the convenience store. They brought out their stash for our trip to the St. Louis airport
and flight back to San Francisco with smiles on their faces. Maria and Evelyn were wandering around
the gravel parking lot, exploring with delight. I would buy them something healthier to eat later. We had
stopped at a sparkling clean gas station/convenience store on the Missouri side of the river where the gas
prices were lower than in my monopolized hometown. While inside the store, various candies and
snacks tempted us and I gave in to them without reservation.
I was glad to be going home. I had only two more months of teaching classes at the university
before embarking on my next dig on the outskirts of Paris. I would take the children with me, of
course, as I always had. I had been looking forward to it and was caught off guard when I learned that
my father had died.
It had been a long, difficult week. The tiny funeral moved from the funeral home to the cemetery
slowly and with my father’s burial, the last of my family was gone. Zach and Mother died one year
apart from each other. Zach, appropriately enough, died in a fiery auto accident and Mom followed him
shortly thereafter from a lightning quick cancer. Alyssa, my soul, my friend, my sister, died just after I
left for college at the University of Southern Mississippi.
She did not die, however, before she became Zach’s friend, the one thing that kept her from
rebelling as I did and leaving that place and the Saturdays at the gas station.
She had developed into a strikingly pretty teenager. She was slightly taller than I and curvier. She
and I shaved our legs together sitting at the edge of the bathtub while we talked and I admired how her
legs could hold a tan longer than mine ever could. Her legs were long and strong and smooth and men
passing us on our walk to school would whistle at them.
Her hair turned a darker blonde–ash blonde–and smooth and straight and shiny and hung down her
back to her waist. Her gray eyes were dark and twinkled when she laughed and her cheeks dimpled
innocently. Although we frequently shared our clothes, they always looked different on her than they
did on me. Better, more sophisticated.
I was thinner and stronger. My hair curled in blonde tubes and hung over my green eyes, which I
pushed back with my hand while reading or pinned when I played baseball or went running. Alyssa
would ride her bicycle beside me when I ran and would cheer me on at my games.
We both got jobs at the local pizza place and while we worked, we talked of all the places we would
go and things we would see. I saved for college. She saved for an apartment in Paris where she was to
take the fashion world by storm and become famous and worldly and wonderful. Customers knew our
dreams as well as we did and would ask us about our progress when they came in. Those customers
gave Alyssa and me extra tips and we gave them free soda refills.
I stopped going to the gas station on Saturdays. Once I was sixteen and Alyssa fifteen, I could
drive and I would drop Mom off to be with Zach. I would then travel into the Missouri hills up on the
bluffs below Hannibal where I would stop and eat sandwiches and apples at the rest stop that overlooked
the blue Mississippi, sparkling in the sun from this distance where the muddiness of it was cloaked in
blue sky reflection. I would think about leaving when high school was over and which college I would
attend and then I would stretch out on a picnic table and read and read. Late in the day, I would pick up
my mother and go home or to work and no one missed me at that gas station, at all.
Most of the time, Alyssa would come with me, bringing her drawing pad and a stash of peanut
butter cups. But one day my mother was busy and couldn’t go and Zach asked us while leaning in the
passenger window of the car to stay on a Saturday. He asked us, but he looked at Alyssa.
“Please, it’ll give me someone to talk to,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Alyssa answered.
“Come on. Then I can tease ya.,” and he reached out and poked Alyssa’s side just as he played
with Mom and Alyssa giggled and squirmed away, a blush growing on her cheeks, obviously pleased
with his attention.
“You’re just an old grease monkey,” she smiled and flicked his dark brown hair.
Zach instantly dived into the car and they wrestled while I looked on with a bored expression and
kept my foot on the brake because the car wasn’t in park. He won the match by giving her nipples a
twist and she called uncle. I saw how her nipples became erect and pointed afterwards and I wished
she had worn a different shirt so it wasn’t so easily seen. Her breasts were full and a lovely size C while
mine were a small and conservative B.
“Come on. Lys, let’s go,” I said futilely. I knew she wouldn’t go even as I said it. And she didn't.
Zach kept his fingers around her wrist and playfully pretended to drag her out of the car. Alyssa
paused just long enough to grab her black jacket from the back seat and kiss her fingers and slap them
affectionately on my arm before she let him pull her from the vessel.
I drove to my favorite rest stop south of Hannibal, but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried reading, but I
was in the middle of Paradise Lost and I hated Milton. I wished hard for Alyssa.
“God, I wish Alyssa were here,” I said aloud.
It was no use and I got into the car and drove back into Hannibal and up on the bluffs to Lovers’
Leap. I got out and walked around the iron railing the city had put up to prevent lawsuits and to the
edge of the limestone outcropping. I could see the barges just as at the rest stop, but here I could hear
the trains, their engines groaning in a low key, crawling up the land beside the river.
I thought about the story of the teenagers who defied their parents who told them they couldn’t be
together and, holding hands, leapt from the edge to their deaths below. I thought about Alyssa and I
wondered what she was doing. And in my stomach, an uneasiness grew.
I fought the urge to pick her up early. I tried reading, I tried writing, I tried dreaming about college,
but eventually, I just sat in the sun with my knees up to my chest, my arms encircling them and I
rocked and bit the inside of my lip watching barge after barge on the river below.
When the sun began slipping low behind me, I knew it was close to the time to pick up Lys, and I
knew things had changed forever. It was a knowledge that came from nowhere or maybe somewhere,
maybe a whisper from an angel or a direct hit from God, but I knew I would be needed and not
welcome and I needed to save myself, even if I could save no one else.
Alyssa was waiting for me in the semi-darkness at the gas station. The yellow Shell sign was lit
already and moths, mosquitoes, and other bugs swarmed around it. Zach had left already. Lys stood at
the edge of the road, a bag slung over her back and a pair of Zach’s shoes tied to it.
She got in quietly when I stopped and didn’t say much when I asked her about her day. She
seemed outside herself.
“Ready to go to work?” I inquired.
“No, not really,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Well what did you do to make you so tired?”
“Nothing, Moni.”
She was quiet for a moment, then as if trying to convince me of her happiness, she brightened and
said, “Zach taught me how to smoke. Hold on.”
She slid the overhead light on and leaned over the seat to search the bag in the back.
“What are you doing?” I asked. As she rummaged through the bag, I turned and snatched a look
behind at what she was doing. I could see Zach’s dirty clothing in the bag and a pack of Kool
cigarettes. Alyssa tried inexpertly to tap the pack to draw out a cigarette. As I was turning my attention
to the road again, I could see Alyssa’s shorts and the back of her shirt were dirty. Dust and bits of
broken, dried weeds stuck to the twill. When I brushed her seat, she turned, sat down quickly and said,
irritated, “Stop that!”
She forced a grin as she pushed the cigarette lighter in and then tried to light the cigarette without
inhaling. She inhaled anyway and then coughed for several minutes. I had never seen her act like this.
Tears streamed from her eyes from the smoke.
“Alyssa, what is wrong with you?”
“Oh, shut up, Moni! You don’t understand anything!” she exploded in a fit of coughing.
“Why are you acting like this? What happened?”
She sat back in her seat and slid down until she could barely be seen over the dashboard.
“Nothing.” Her fingers held the cigarette outside the car and I could see the ashes fly off in the
darkness and the orange glow grow.
“Why do you have Zach’s clothes?”
“He wants me to wash them.”
“Wash them? Why?”
“He just does.”
“Lys, he’s got a wife if he needs someone to wash his clothes. You are not his wife.”
I thought for a moment, “You’re not his slave, either. You don’t have to go there anymore. You’re
not Mom.”
“I know.”
She was quiet for a minute and flicked the cigarette into the darkness, “It’s okay. I liked it. It was
fun.”
“I don’t believe it.”
And nothing more was said.
For the next several months, Alyssa slept with me in my bedroom. She said it was because I was
going away to college so soon, but I thought it was because when Zach would come over, he would go
into her room and he didn’t dare come into mine. It was okay with me. We talked, brought home
pizzas from work, and played our music, so much younger than that of Zach or our parents. We
dreamed again, we talked and laughed and were ourselves.
Our Saturdays returned to normal with an occasional exception. When Mom couldn’t make it to the
gas station on Saturdays, Zach would ask Alyssa. On those occasions, it was as if all the life and light
went out of her face and she was a prisoner walking to her own execution. No matter how much I
pleaded with her, she always submitted to Zach’s request. I couldn’t make her not go. During that
time, Mom would give her special attention. If she had gone to the gas station with Zach, Mom would
take her to the mall and buy her something special–something she had wanted or mentioned. Sometimes
she would buy her those little t-shirts that Zach said she looked so good in and that I always felt
uncomfortable with because they showed her breasts so clearly.
I never even tried to talk to Mom about it. I knew she wouldn’t listen or would say I was jealous. I
just stayed out of the way and waited until Alyssa became herself again after a gas station visit. It
usually took a couple days. And I no longer asked her what she had done or tried to brush the dirt and
grass off her jeans or t-shirt. I think Alyssa was more grateful to me for that than anything else.
Then came the day when I arrived home from school and the police were there searching the trunk
of Zach’s car. They were looking for a pair of his shoes because the Shell station had been robbed and
the thief had left a shoe print on the window sill. He was the prime suspect because the robbery had
occurred on a Saturday when it was only he who was working. I stood still in the front yard,
embarrassed beyond words because the neighbors were out watching the spectacle. I wondered angrily
why Zach found it necessary to come to our house while the police were looking for him. Why couldn’
t he ever go home to his own place and trashy wife and trashy life? Zach was handcuffed and in the
back of one of the police cars. Alyssa was inside the house.
One of the police officers was taking Zach’s shotgun out of the trunk with a cloth between his hand
and the gun. Other items belonging to Zach were being touched and moved, some things being put into
bags, other things being tossed aside. Even though the items were Zach’s, I felt violated. Tears stung
my eyes and I couldn’t tell who to be the angriest at. All I knew is that I felt an anger bigger than any
emotion I had ever known.
Mom told me to go inside and I did. I ran into Alyssa’s room to learn if she had seen what was
going on. I called for her and then turned to go into my room. But as I was leaving, I saw Zach’s bag
in Alyssa’s closet. Zach’s muddy shoes were tied to it. I pushed the closet door closed as I left the
room and found Alyssa in my room, crying. I ran to her and put my arms around her and we sobbed
together. I couldn’t tell her I knew. I knew everything. I knew.
* * * * * * * * * *
There wasn’t enough evidence to convict Zach. But the Shell gas station fired Zach and the
Saturdays at that gas station ended. I guess it didn’t matter much because Zach found another auto
shop to work at and just as before, he invited Alyssa to spend some Saturdays with him. Mom never
went to the new auto shop, at all.
My senior year of high school went by in a flash with work and school and the last of my softball
games. Alyssa was with me all throughout, even though her grades were suffering. When we had a
chance, we studied together, but I could tell she was losing her grasp on some of the concepts and it
didn’t get any better when she began partying hard with new, older friends.
I tried to talk her out of it and although she was always her sweet self with me, she never would
back away from the edgier crowd who admired her ability to hold large quantities of alcohol. I went to
a couple of the parties, but being smaller and thinner, I suppose, I always made myself sick on the
alcohol and swore it off almost altogether.
I tried to talk to Alyssa about her new friends and convince her that she should not be around them.
“Look, Lys. Ask yourself which of these people are you going to be able to ask to visit you in
Paris. Which ones will even know where Paris is?”
“Monica, there’s nothing wrong with them. Just because they aren’t like you doesn’t mean they’re
not nice.”
“That’s true, but do any of them know anything about you, about your dreams, about what you can
do–I mean, aside from drinking?”
“Yeah, they know all about me. They know where I live, where I come from. You know, we have
fun together.”
I studied her pretty face for a moment, “Are you still going to Paris?”
Alyssa looked down at her hands for a minute, then she gave a short laugh and said, “Of course, I
am.” She looked at the upper part of the wall as if trying to convince some spirit lounging up there of
the veracity of her statement, “You know I’d never give that up.”
That might have been the nicest lie Alyssa ever told me. Convincing myself that she was going to
Paris, that she still did have dreams, allowed me to concentrate on the last few months of high school
and share with her all my acceptance letters. The hours we spent pouring over maps and considering
climate and degree programs and the advantages of one school over another was candy for my starving
soul. It was Alyssa’s gift to me.
She was there the day I left in my loaded-down car, driving to the college of my dreams, and
beginning my new life. She swore to me that she was easing up on the partying, that Zach wouldn’t be
able to convince her to spend all her Saturdays at the shop, and that she was going to straighten out her
grades. She swore to me that she would see me in Paris.
After I got to college, I learned that Zach was in the group of friends she had been partying with,
and the lies became conscious in my mind. Still, I hoped and I prayed in the chapel on campus that she
would leave at the end of her senior year. But she never made it to graduation.
In the middle of a semester of all the things I ever wanted to know, Mom called with the news.
Alyssa had been to a party down in the Missouri bottoms and on the way home, she and her new
boyfriend had argued. They had just reached the bridge going over the Mississippi when she, in anger,
told him to stop the car so she could get out and walk. He did and the last he saw of her was when she
stopped to light a cigarette on her walk over the bridge, the match flaring briefly on her face. Later the
river was dragged and her body was found.
******************************
It had been twenty years since I left. I had my education, my years overseas, my career, my
freedom, and my little family. I did not have a husband. After seven years and two babies, he decided
family life did not make him happy and he returned to his native France and simply disappeared.
My two little girls were all the family I had left. I had spent the week going through things at my
parents’ house, attending to the funeral, and assessing where I came from. I took my children to the
places I knew as a child in my hometown. We had pizza at the pizza parlor where I had worked, we
played on the swingset at my elementary school, and we spent hours staring at the river just below the
lock and dam. Seeing all these places brought back floods of memories and sometimes I wept thinking
of how alone I was with Maria and Evelyn my responsibility. Mostly, I wept thinking of Alyssa. After
her funeral, I had not been back to my hometown, preferring to leave it behind like one would leave a
diseased prisoner-of-war camp. I did not see my mother buried or Zach.
On this trip, though, I found their graves at the cemetery, not buried far from each other, not buried
far from Alyssa. There were a few faded plastic flowers on Mom’s grave and I felt like a very bad
daughter about that, but I was helpless to do anything about it. Zach’s grave looked as though it had not
been touched in years and I walked quickly over it and ushered my children down the row to Alyssa’s
grave.
Even in death, Alyssa was beautiful. Her grave area was well-kept and neat and Maria, Evelyn, and
I brought flowers. For Alyssa, my sister, I brought two dozen, deep red roses. The girls and I, careful
of thorns, arranged the roses in a green, metal vase, especially made for the gravesite with a sharp,
pointed end which one pressed deeply into the earth. The white of her headstone contrasted in exquisite
pain with the dark green of the leaves of the roses and the blackened redness of the blossoms. I wanted
to take this image of her grave with me.
When Maria and Evelyn wandered away in search of pinecones in the heavily-treed cemetery, I sat
down in front of Alyssa’s headstone, “I’m going to Paris, Sis.” I ran my hand over the coldness of the
headstone and noticed how the dampness of the earth seeped into the seat of my jeans. My nose was
cold.
“Come with me,” I said, warmly. “Climb right in, it’s safe here.” I opened the collar of my shirt
and motioned to my heart. “We’ll take the girls and fly over the ocean and see everything we ever
wanted. The girls can be like we were–friends, forever. Best friends of all. Come with me.” I cried in
earnest, then, and I could imagine Alyssa putting her arms around me and she would not be cold and
dead, she would be warm and alive and laughing and ready, so ready to go.
My voice broke as I said, “Don’t stay here with them.” I saw Zach and Mom’s graves in the
distance, “Don’t stay.”
Then calmness came and as I watched Maria and Evelyn picking up pinecones and playing, my tears
dried and I felt that maybe this time, she would come, she would be in my heart with me.
I crossed the Mississippi again, only when I left, being that the only good road with a direct route to
St. Louis ran north and south on the west side of the river. I had not spent any time in Missouri with
my children because the bottoms reminded me of the all the bad things about my childhood and that is
where Alyssa spent her final hours. I held a grudge against it.
Besides, since I had gone, two major floods had swept through the bottoms. Each time the levee
had broken and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage was done. Each time, the bottom people
had rebuilt and all the old buildings were gone. I barely recognized it. Another bridge had been built and
the highway was now four lanes. The bridge from which Alyssa died, now directed traffic into Quincy
and the new bridge, a weirdly fantastic-looking, modern, suspension bridge carried traffic away.
I stopped, filled the tank of the rental car, and stocked up on snacks. It had been a long week for
Maria and Evelyn, as well, and I was happy to buy whatever would please them.
My little girls reminded me of Alyssa–and me, I suppose. Maria was pale and blonde, with stubborn
curls that she liked playing with when she was bored or was ignoring someone. A little rebel, she
reminded me of myself. Evelyn was sweet with gray eyes and ash blonde hair, that wasn’t ever as
blonde as Alyssa’s when she was a child, but the exact shade of Alyssa’s when she was a teenager.
The difference was that she was competitive and impatient and would always find a way to make things
just as she wanted them. Only, she did so so sweetly, it was impossible for most people to discern was
she was doing.
“Hold my hands,” I said again, gaining compliance this time. We walked to where I had parked the
car at the edge of the parking lot after pumping gas. I was about to get in when I noticed a glint of
sunshine on water. Where the land drew down at the edge of the gravel, weeds grew, long but trim. A
field mower probably cut the grass here. And beyond that, a canal cut by the gas station and ducked
quickly under the road via a culvert.
“Wait a minute, girls.” I stood in the weeds at the front of the car and peered down the
embankment into the water. The water ran deep and swift in its race to the Mississippi. I turned around
and stared at the gas station. Painted white, gleaming in the afternoon sun, the convenience store looked
immaculate. On a neat, low, tastefully-designed sign at the side of the road, a yellow Shell sign modestly
displayed its identity. Oh my God, it couldn’t be.
But it was. I had not recognized it. The Shell station was still right there, right where it had been
over twenty years ago. Just floods and time and insurance money had changed it and cleaned it so
completely, I had not realized it was the same place. I had even used the restroom inside the store–it
was well-stocked and clean, although a bit too cool, and the smell was absolutely neutral. No sickening
sweet air fresheners, no rust in the sink.
I quickly thought about the young man inside the store, wondering if he was anything like Zach, but
even he was so different than what I knew as a child, it was hard to believe. The young man was clean-
cut and wore a button-down shirt and handed me my change with clean hands and nails. He said,
“Thank you, ma’am.” There wasn’t a place to work on cars there, even if one had wanted. The gas
stations no longer catered to motorists in distress, they catered to busy people who needed something to
drink and a snack on their way somewhere far, far away. Funny, they catered to people like me.
Maria and Evelyn were at my side. I took their hands.
“I used to come here as a child.”
“With Alyssa?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes,” I smiled, “with Alyssa. And we would spend hours here by this canal while Zach, my
brother, worked on cars. It was very ugly and hot and we were very bored.”
Maria and Evelyn looked at me and then at the sweet, serious stream as if wondering how anyone
could be bored here.
“It was very polluted,” I said as if in explanation.
As we walked beside the stream, I told them about our Saturdays at the gas station and I silently
thought about what we would see next. Maybe it would be good for the girls to see pollution, to see its
devastating effects. But we walked all the way to the farmer’s field, and I never saw a junk car or old
tires or used condoms.
Walking back in the other direction, I considered why the trash was not there. Did the EPA finally
come out and make them clean it up? Or were the floods so powerful that it cleaned the land and the
canal like a dishwasher cleans dishes?
“Watch out for snakes,” I found myself reluctantly saying.
We traversed the remaining area before the highway and then we walked up on the highway above
the culvert and sat down with our legs dangling over the sides. I held tightly to my children so they
wouldn’t fall. Down below in the water, I saw a movement.
“Yikes!” I screamed. We all jumped up and peered down into the water, Maria and Evelyn giggling
over my shriek.
We stared down into the water and my eyes followed every movement I saw. A stick rushed by,
bits of grass, leaves, and then there it was. At first, I thought it was a snake, but the movement was too
slow, the mouth that came to the surface, too big, too elongated. Then I saw his whiskers. A catfish,
at least three feet long, picking among the bottom, rising to the surface, living in that water. Water
plants grew at the bottom and I could see him in his huge way taking mouthfuls of this or that, spitting
some things out, other things to his satisfaction.
We watched in awe of this creature until he saw us watching him. I could see him looking up at us
through the water, probably seeing the three of us as a blur against the blueness of the sky. He wasn’t
scared, but he wasn’t stupid, either. He made his way deeper and then disappeared in the water under
the culvert.
Maria and Evelyn were in fits over that catfish. They called him Mr. Cat. They had never seen a
catfish before and to them the canal by the gas station was a magical, natural, pure place. Eventually, I
convinced them to leave, pleading that our flight would not wait for us. But I continued to think about
Mr. Cat and I thought that maybe the girls were right. Maybe that place was magical and natural and
pure.
I drove to St. Louis with Alyssa in my heart, my children in the backseat and I knew I never had to
go back to that place. And once our plane was aloft, I looked down on the Mississippi and all its
tributaries and I felt good, as if somehow everything was right again. True, I was alone, but not
completely. I had my girls and my work and my travels and always I would have the picture of Mr. Cat
thriving in cleanliness in the Mississippi River bottoms. As I closed my eyes, I had a sweet feeling in my
heart that would be with me forever.
Mr. Cat
They said it was he who broke into the Shell station. My mother didn’t believe it because of
something she heard his low-class wife say. My mother said his wife did it.
“Live fast, die young.” My brother did die young, but not before I was grown, before I spent
multitudes of Saturdays of my youth at the Shell gas station. Zach worked for the City during the week,
but on weekends he was free to pursue his real love: cars, and more money at the gas station. He and
my mom used to get together with my sister and me in tow and go to the gas station where he would
work on cars in the shop and mom would talk to him. I don’t know what they talked about.
There was no feeling in the world of being nowhere more than at that gas station. What was there
that was acceptable, desired–loved, even–was repugnant to me. Alyssa, my sister, was only slightly less
depressed about her time spent there because she knew there would come a day when Zach would talk
to her that way, friendly and confidentially and like a real sister. But that day hadn’t come yet. I did not
believe that day would ever come for me and I did not care. I doubted that what my mother and brother
were talking about was something I would be interested in or even approve of. To me, it was just
another Saturday stolen away from playing Barbie dolls at home or going to the candy store or reading in
the fork of the maple tree. I was miserable.
At first, Alyssa and I would beg for candy and soda at the vending machines. Having had our fill of
that, we then looked about for something to do. There was nothing. No other children were forced to
come to the gas station. The normal children were at home playing or going to birthday parties or
having barbecues with their normal families. Not us, though. We were the family of autos on cement
blocks in the front yard, of trouble with the law, of dirty dishes in the kitchen. You know the type.
It was springtime and hot and humid in the Mississippi River bottoms. At least we were high land
people–we lived across the Mississippi River on the Illinois bluffs overlooking the crops in the Missouri
bottomland. There weren’t so many mosquitoes there and our water didn’t taste of rust as the water did
in the gas station bathroom. Once your eyes traveled past the deep green of corn and soybeans growing
in the bottoms, you could see hills in the distance, purple and blue, always suggesting something better,
some better place to be. Those hills bumped the geography until they came to the Ozark Mountains and
the hillbillies and the country music areas. Then the land stretched to the West, where I wanted to go
someday.
As morning turned surely into afternoon and seeing that Zachary was not going to be done working
on that Chevy until much, much later than the 11:00 we were promised, Alyssa and I wandered to the
bank of a canal that cut by the gas station and ducked quickly under the road via a culvert. Maybe the
canal started as a little creek or stream somewhere far up in the hills, maybe as far away as the Ozarks.
Perhaps where it started, the water sparkled in the sunlight and gurgled in shady places under trees
which hung over the sweet, little stream. But eventually it grew swift, anxiously moving toward the
Mississippi River to become part of something bigger, perhaps something better, certainly something
more powerful. It moved silently through the Missouri bottomland zigzagging a line of trees on both
sides of it in a narrow band of forest to where it abruptly became farmland again.
There were few lands richer than the Missouri bottoms where the Mississippi River floods deposited
the topsoil of Iowa, upper Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Farmers planted crops in it in without
worry, knowing they would yield. Not a bit was wasted. There was no place for woods in soil this
profitable. One line of trees was all the farmers left. Then sunlit land.
“Stay away from that creek,” called my mother.
“Why?” I asked.
Her look told me I should not ask, but I could not help myself. In the heat, I could not get cool and
all I could think of was how it would feel to have the air blowing in my open window in the back seat of
our old station wagon on our way home. That – or my toes dipping in the water. I couldn’t abide the
filth or the super sweet scent of the gas station bathroom anymore to get another rusty drink. The scent
came from a box affixed to the wall of the bathroom, high up where no one could reach it. It made the
human dirty smell in the bathroom perfectly nauseating.
“Why?” I asked again, knowing that I was too far away for her to reach me if she found me
impertinent.
She looked at me, annoyed, but explained, “The water moves fast here and I don’t want you to fall
in and drown. Besides there might be snakes.”
“Oh,” I said. I was satisfied with the explanation.
Still, as the afternoon wore on, Alyssa and I couldn’t stop ourselves from at least looking at the
canal. We edged closer through the tall weeds to the side and slightly behind the gas station. The weeds
were dry and crackled as we walked through them. I longed for the shady trees along the bank further
behind the gas station, but there the bank of the canal was too steep to negotiate without sliding down
into the water. Still, we pressed on until we were at the top of the bank looking down into the dark, fast
water. I took a few steps down the hill to just where the shade from the trees sheltered my eyes and I
peered deep into the water searching for snakes.
What I found, though, was not snakes, but a submerged, junk car. Around the top where it stuck
rusty out of the water a blue film of oil melted into rainbow and the water eddied at the disruption in its
flow and slowly, astonishingly, became stagnant. I would have expected mosquitoes in the stagnant
area, but the oil on top of the water prevented any life, even the lowly life of a mosquito. There were no
snakes there. And for that, I was saddened.
Alyssa came down the bank with me and together we looked at the submerged car.
“I wonder why they put it there,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“It makes it ugly.”
“It is ruined,” I pronounced.
“Do you think there’s any more?”
I hated to think that there was, but somehow I knew it, “Let’s see.”
We walked along the bank of the canal, steep and steeper still, and I was afraid I would fall into that
polluted water. My sister held my hand from higher up on the bank so I wouldn’t slip. I saw other
things. Tires piled so high several were completely out of the water; soda bottles and beer bottles, their
labels faded and peeling; thin balloons, grey and long with tiny tips; used, yellow oil cans; and black bags
of garbage. On top of the water, always the rainbow film of oil. Alyssa came close and we sat in the
dirty weeds looking at it. We could have thrown our trash in that water from our morning treats and no
one would even know. No one would even care.
Eventually, we climbed back up the bank to where it felt cleaner. Zach was still working on the car
and Mother was still talking to him, low, as if she didn’t want Alyssa and me to hear what she was
saying. We did not tell our mother or our brother about what we saw, even though we longed to.
Telling of the contaminated water would be telling of our own disobedience, so it had to be our secret. I
checked Alyssa’s clothes to make sure she had no trace of the guilty bank. I brushed the bank’s grass
and dirt off her jean shorts with my hand and she did the same for me.
We walked up to the side of the highway where the passing cars dragged with them a gush of air
that blew our thin, blonde hair each time they went by. We sat down with our legs dangling over the
side of the culvert. Mom looked out of the shop, her hand shielding her eyes and I could see she wanted
to tell us not to do it, but I guess she changed her mind because she disappeared inside again.
“Moni, it’s cleaner here.” Alyssa pointed out.
Truly, the water ran fast again and could have, perhaps, fooled someone who first saw it, but I
knew the dark truth of the defilement. We looked down and watched the water rushing away from the
hills and sweetness and good and the flatland and filth and misery, running to the river beyond and locks
and dams and barges and Memphis and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. I wished I could go with
the water, my clothing keeping me afloat and staring straight up at the blue sky.
The whine of a car in the distance changed from high to low as it approached and passed in a stage
whisper of tires on pavement. I leaned against Alyssa, inhaled, and sighed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hold my hands,” I said to my little girls on a cool, October day. We had already been to the candy
counter inside the convenience store. They brought out their stash for our trip to the St. Louis airport
and flight back to San Francisco with smiles on their faces. Maria and Evelyn were wandering around
the gravel parking lot, exploring with delight. I would buy them something healthier to eat later. We had
stopped at a sparkling clean gas station/convenience store on the Missouri side of the river where the gas
prices were lower than in my monopolized hometown. While inside the store, various candies and
snacks tempted us and I gave in to them without reservation.
I was glad to be going home. I had only two more months of teaching classes at the university
before embarking on my next dig on the outskirts of Paris. I would take the children with me, of
course, as I always had. I had been looking forward to it and was caught off guard when I learned that
my father had died.
It had been a long, difficult week. The tiny funeral moved from the funeral home to the cemetery
slowly and with my father’s burial, the last of my family was gone. Zach and Mother died one year
apart from each other. Zach, appropriately enough, died in a fiery auto accident and Mom followed him
shortly thereafter from a lightning quick cancer. Alyssa, my soul, my friend, my sister, died just after I
left for college at the University of Southern Mississippi.
She did not die, however, before she became Zach’s friend, the one thing that kept her from
rebelling as I did and leaving that place and the Saturdays at the gas station.
She had developed into a strikingly pretty teenager. She was slightly taller than I and curvier. She
and I shaved our legs together sitting at the edge of the bathtub while we talked and I admired how her
legs could hold a tan longer than mine ever could. Her legs were long and strong and smooth and men
passing us on our walk to school would whistle at them.
Her hair turned a darker blonde–ash blonde–and smooth and straight and shiny and hung down her
back to her waist. Her gray eyes were dark and twinkled when she laughed and her cheeks dimpled
innocently. Although we frequently shared our clothes, they always looked different on her than they
did on me. Better, more sophisticated.
I was thinner and stronger. My hair curled in blonde tubes and hung over my green eyes, which I
pushed back with my hand while reading or pinned when I played baseball or went running. Alyssa
would ride her bicycle beside me when I ran and would cheer me on at my games.
We both got jobs at the local pizza place and while we worked, we talked of all the places we would
go and things we would see. I saved for college. She saved for an apartment in Paris where she was to
take the fashion world by storm and become famous and worldly and wonderful. Customers knew our
dreams as well as we did and would ask us about our progress when they came in. Those customers
gave Alyssa and me extra tips and we gave them free soda refills.
I stopped going to the gas station on Saturdays. Once I was sixteen and Alyssa fifteen, I could
drive and I would drop Mom off to be with Zach. I would then travel into the Missouri hills up on the
bluffs below Hannibal where I would stop and eat sandwiches and apples at the rest stop that overlooked
the blue Mississippi, sparkling in the sun from this distance where the muddiness of it was cloaked in
blue sky reflection. I would think about leaving when high school was over and which college I would
attend and then I would stretch out on a picnic table and read and read. Late in the day, I would pick up
my mother and go home or to work and no one missed me at that gas station, at all.
Most of the time, Alyssa would come with me, bringing her drawing pad and a stash of peanut
butter cups. But one day my mother was busy and couldn’t go and Zach asked us while leaning in the
passenger window of the car to stay on a Saturday. He asked us, but he looked at Alyssa.
“Please, it’ll give me someone to talk to,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Alyssa answered.
“Come on. Then I can tease ya.,” and he reached out and poked Alyssa’s side just as he played
with Mom and Alyssa giggled and squirmed away, a blush growing on her cheeks, obviously pleased
with his attention.
“You’re just an old grease monkey,” she smiled and flicked his dark brown hair.
Zach instantly dived into the car and they wrestled while I looked on with a bored expression and
kept my foot on the brake because the car wasn’t in park. He won the match by giving her nipples a
twist and she called uncle. I saw how her nipples became erect and pointed afterwards and I wished
she had worn a different shirt so it wasn’t so easily seen. Her breasts were full and a lovely size C while
mine were a small and conservative B.
“Come on. Lys, let’s go,” I said futilely. I knew she wouldn’t go even as I said it. And she didn't.
Zach kept his fingers around her wrist and playfully pretended to drag her out of the car. Alyssa
paused just long enough to grab her black jacket from the back seat and kiss her fingers and slap them
affectionately on my arm before she let him pull her from the vessel.
I drove to my favorite rest stop south of Hannibal, but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried reading, but I
was in the middle of Paradise Lost and I hated Milton. I wished hard for Alyssa.
“God, I wish Alyssa were here,” I said aloud.
It was no use and I got into the car and drove back into Hannibal and up on the bluffs to Lovers’
Leap. I got out and walked around the iron railing the city had put up to prevent lawsuits and to the
edge of the limestone outcropping. I could see the barges just as at the rest stop, but here I could hear
the trains, their engines groaning in a low key, crawling up the land beside the river.
I thought about the story of the teenagers who defied their parents who told them they couldn’t be
together and, holding hands, leapt from the edge to their deaths below. I thought about Alyssa and I
wondered what she was doing. And in my stomach, an uneasiness grew.
I fought the urge to pick her up early. I tried reading, I tried writing, I tried dreaming about college,
but eventually, I just sat in the sun with my knees up to my chest, my arms encircling them and I
rocked and bit the inside of my lip watching barge after barge on the river below.
When the sun began slipping low behind me, I knew it was close to the time to pick up Lys, and I
knew things had changed forever. It was a knowledge that came from nowhere or maybe somewhere,
maybe a whisper from an angel or a direct hit from God, but I knew I would be needed and not
welcome and I needed to save myself, even if I could save no one else.
Alyssa was waiting for me in the semi-darkness at the gas station. The yellow Shell sign was lit
already and moths, mosquitoes, and other bugs swarmed around it. Zach had left already. Lys stood at
the edge of the road, a bag slung over her back and a pair of Zach’s shoes tied to it.
She got in quietly when I stopped and didn’t say much when I asked her about her day. She
seemed outside herself.
“Ready to go to work?” I inquired.
“No, not really,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Well what did you do to make you so tired?”
“Nothing, Moni.”
She was quiet for a moment, then as if trying to convince me of her happiness, she brightened and
said, “Zach taught me how to smoke. Hold on.”
She slid the overhead light on and leaned over the seat to search the bag in the back.
“What are you doing?” I asked. As she rummaged through the bag, I turned and snatched a look
behind at what she was doing. I could see Zach’s dirty clothing in the bag and a pack of Kool
cigarettes. Alyssa tried inexpertly to tap the pack to draw out a cigarette. As I was turning my attention
to the road again, I could see Alyssa’s shorts and the back of her shirt were dirty. Dust and bits of
broken, dried weeds stuck to the twill. When I brushed her seat, she turned, sat down quickly and said,
irritated, “Stop that!”
She forced a grin as she pushed the cigarette lighter in and then tried to light the cigarette without
inhaling. She inhaled anyway and then coughed for several minutes. I had never seen her act like this.
Tears streamed from her eyes from the smoke.
“Alyssa, what is wrong with you?”
“Oh, shut up, Moni! You don’t understand anything!” she exploded in a fit of coughing.
“Why are you acting like this? What happened?”
She sat back in her seat and slid down until she could barely be seen over the dashboard.
“Nothing.” Her fingers held the cigarette outside the car and I could see the ashes fly off in the
darkness and the orange glow grow.
“Why do you have Zach’s clothes?”
“He wants me to wash them.”
“Wash them? Why?”
“He just does.”
“Lys, he’s got a wife if he needs someone to wash his clothes. You are not his wife.”
I thought for a moment, “You’re not his slave, either. You don’t have to go there anymore. You’re
not Mom.”
“I know.”
She was quiet for a minute and flicked the cigarette into the darkness, “It’s okay. I liked it. It was
fun.”
“I don’t believe it.”
And nothing more was said.
For the next several months, Alyssa slept with me in my bedroom. She said it was because I was
going away to college so soon, but I thought it was because when Zach would come over, he would go
into her room and he didn’t dare come into mine. It was okay with me. We talked, brought home
pizzas from work, and played our music, so much younger than that of Zach or our parents. We
dreamed again, we talked and laughed and were ourselves.
Our Saturdays returned to normal with an occasional exception. When Mom couldn’t make it to the
gas station on Saturdays, Zach would ask Alyssa. On those occasions, it was as if all the life and light
went out of her face and she was a prisoner walking to her own execution. No matter how much I
pleaded with her, she always submitted to Zach’s request. I couldn’t make her not go. During that
time, Mom would give her special attention. If she had gone to the gas station with Zach, Mom would
take her to the mall and buy her something special–something she had wanted or mentioned. Sometimes
she would buy her those little t-shirts that Zach said she looked so good in and that I always felt
uncomfortable with because they showed her breasts so clearly.
I never even tried to talk to Mom about it. I knew she wouldn’t listen or would say I was jealous. I
just stayed out of the way and waited until Alyssa became herself again after a gas station visit. It
usually took a couple days. And I no longer asked her what she had done or tried to brush the dirt and
grass off her jeans or t-shirt. I think Alyssa was more grateful to me for that than anything else.
Then came the day when I arrived home from school and the police were there searching the trunk
of Zach’s car. They were looking for a pair of his shoes because the Shell station had been robbed and
the thief had left a shoe print on the window sill. He was the prime suspect because the robbery had
occurred on a Saturday when it was only he who was working. I stood still in the front yard,
embarrassed beyond words because the neighbors were out watching the spectacle. I wondered angrily
why Zach found it necessary to come to our house while the police were looking for him. Why couldn’
t he ever go home to his own place and trashy wife and trashy life? Zach was handcuffed and in the
back of one of the police cars. Alyssa was inside the house.
One of the police officers was taking Zach’s shotgun out of the trunk with a cloth between his hand
and the gun. Other items belonging to Zach were being touched and moved, some things being put into
bags, other things being tossed aside. Even though the items were Zach’s, I felt violated. Tears stung
my eyes and I couldn’t tell who to be the angriest at. All I knew is that I felt an anger bigger than any
emotion I had ever known.
Mom told me to go inside and I did. I ran into Alyssa’s room to learn if she had seen what was
going on. I called for her and then turned to go into my room. But as I was leaving, I saw Zach’s bag
in Alyssa’s closet. Zach’s muddy shoes were tied to it. I pushed the closet door closed as I left the
room and found Alyssa in my room, crying. I ran to her and put my arms around her and we sobbed
together. I couldn’t tell her I knew. I knew everything. I knew.
* * * * * * * * * *
There wasn’t enough evidence to convict Zach. But the Shell gas station fired Zach and the
Saturdays at that gas station ended. I guess it didn’t matter much because Zach found another auto
shop to work at and just as before, he invited Alyssa to spend some Saturdays with him. Mom never
went to the new auto shop, at all.
My senior year of high school went by in a flash with work and school and the last of my softball
games. Alyssa was with me all throughout, even though her grades were suffering. When we had a
chance, we studied together, but I could tell she was losing her grasp on some of the concepts and it
didn’t get any better when she began partying hard with new, older friends.
I tried to talk her out of it and although she was always her sweet self with me, she never would
back away from the edgier crowd who admired her ability to hold large quantities of alcohol. I went to
a couple of the parties, but being smaller and thinner, I suppose, I always made myself sick on the
alcohol and swore it off almost altogether.
I tried to talk to Alyssa about her new friends and convince her that she should not be around them.
“Look, Lys. Ask yourself which of these people are you going to be able to ask to visit you in
Paris. Which ones will even know where Paris is?”
“Monica, there’s nothing wrong with them. Just because they aren’t like you doesn’t mean they’re
not nice.”
“That’s true, but do any of them know anything about you, about your dreams, about what you can
do–I mean, aside from drinking?”
“Yeah, they know all about me. They know where I live, where I come from. You know, we have
fun together.”
I studied her pretty face for a moment, “Are you still going to Paris?”
Alyssa looked down at her hands for a minute, then she gave a short laugh and said, “Of course, I
am.” She looked at the upper part of the wall as if trying to convince some spirit lounging up there of
the veracity of her statement, “You know I’d never give that up.”
That might have been the nicest lie Alyssa ever told me. Convincing myself that she was going to
Paris, that she still did have dreams, allowed me to concentrate on the last few months of high school
and share with her all my acceptance letters. The hours we spent pouring over maps and considering
climate and degree programs and the advantages of one school over another was candy for my starving
soul. It was Alyssa’s gift to me.
She was there the day I left in my loaded-down car, driving to the college of my dreams, and
beginning my new life. She swore to me that she was easing up on the partying, that Zach wouldn’t be
able to convince her to spend all her Saturdays at the shop, and that she was going to straighten out her
grades. She swore to me that she would see me in Paris.
After I got to college, I learned that Zach was in the group of friends she had been partying with,
and the lies became conscious in my mind. Still, I hoped and I prayed in the chapel on campus that she
would leave at the end of her senior year. But she never made it to graduation.
In the middle of a semester of all the things I ever wanted to know, Mom called with the news.
Alyssa had been to a party down in the Missouri bottoms and on the way home, she and her new
boyfriend had argued. They had just reached the bridge going over the Mississippi when she, in anger,
told him to stop the car so she could get out and walk. He did and the last he saw of her was when she
stopped to light a cigarette on her walk over the bridge, the match flaring briefly on her face. Later the
river was dragged and her body was found.
******************************
It had been twenty years since I left. I had my education, my years overseas, my career, my
freedom, and my little family. I did not have a husband. After seven years and two babies, he decided
family life did not make him happy and he returned to his native France and simply disappeared.
My two little girls were all the family I had left. I had spent the week going through things at my
parents’ house, attending to the funeral, and assessing where I came from. I took my children to the
places I knew as a child in my hometown. We had pizza at the pizza parlor where I had worked, we
played on the swingset at my elementary school, and we spent hours staring at the river just below the
lock and dam. Seeing all these places brought back floods of memories and sometimes I wept thinking
of how alone I was with Maria and Evelyn my responsibility. Mostly, I wept thinking of Alyssa. After
her funeral, I had not been back to my hometown, preferring to leave it behind like one would leave a
diseased prisoner-of-war camp. I did not see my mother buried or Zach.
On this trip, though, I found their graves at the cemetery, not buried far from each other, not buried
far from Alyssa. There were a few faded plastic flowers on Mom’s grave and I felt like a very bad
daughter about that, but I was helpless to do anything about it. Zach’s grave looked as though it had not
been touched in years and I walked quickly over it and ushered my children down the row to Alyssa’s
grave.
Even in death, Alyssa was beautiful. Her grave area was well-kept and neat and Maria, Evelyn, and
I brought flowers. For Alyssa, my sister, I brought two dozen, deep red roses. The girls and I, careful
of thorns, arranged the roses in a green, metal vase, especially made for the gravesite with a sharp,
pointed end which one pressed deeply into the earth. The white of her headstone contrasted in exquisite
pain with the dark green of the leaves of the roses and the blackened redness of the blossoms. I wanted
to take this image of her grave with me.
When Maria and Evelyn wandered away in search of pinecones in the heavily-treed cemetery, I sat
down in front of Alyssa’s headstone, “I’m going to Paris, Sis.” I ran my hand over the coldness of the
headstone and noticed how the dampness of the earth seeped into the seat of my jeans. My nose was
cold.
“Come with me,” I said, warmly. “Climb right in, it’s safe here.” I opened the collar of my shirt
and motioned to my heart. “We’ll take the girls and fly over the ocean and see everything we ever
wanted. The girls can be like we were–friends, forever. Best friends of all. Come with me.” I cried in
earnest, then, and I could imagine Alyssa putting her arms around me and she would not be cold and
dead, she would be warm and alive and laughing and ready, so ready to go.
My voice broke as I said, “Don’t stay here with them.” I saw Zach and Mom’s graves in the
distance, “Don’t stay.”
Then calmness came and as I watched Maria and Evelyn picking up pinecones and playing, my tears
dried and I felt that maybe this time, she would come, she would be in my heart with me.
I crossed the Mississippi again, only when I left, being that the only good road with a direct route to
St. Louis ran north and south on the west side of the river. I had not spent any time in Missouri with
my children because the bottoms reminded me of the all the bad things about my childhood and that is
where Alyssa spent her final hours. I held a grudge against it.
Besides, since I had gone, two major floods had swept through the bottoms. Each time the levee
had broken and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage was done. Each time, the bottom people
had rebuilt and all the old buildings were gone. I barely recognized it. Another bridge had been built and
the highway was now four lanes. The bridge from which Alyssa died, now directed traffic into Quincy
and the new bridge, a weirdly fantastic-looking, modern, suspension bridge carried traffic away.
I stopped, filled the tank of the rental car, and stocked up on snacks. It had been a long week for
Maria and Evelyn, as well, and I was happy to buy whatever would please them.
My little girls reminded me of Alyssa–and me, I suppose. Maria was pale and blonde, with stubborn
curls that she liked playing with when she was bored or was ignoring someone. A little rebel, she
reminded me of myself. Evelyn was sweet with gray eyes and ash blonde hair, that wasn’t ever as
blonde as Alyssa’s when she was a child, but the exact shade of Alyssa’s when she was a teenager.
The difference was that she was competitive and impatient and would always find a way to make things
just as she wanted them. Only, she did so so sweetly, it was impossible for most people to discern was
she was doing.
“Hold my hands,” I said again, gaining compliance this time. We walked to where I had parked the
car at the edge of the parking lot after pumping gas. I was about to get in when I noticed a glint of
sunshine on water. Where the land drew down at the edge of the gravel, weeds grew, long but trim. A
field mower probably cut the grass here. And beyond that, a canal cut by the gas station and ducked
quickly under the road via a culvert.
“Wait a minute, girls.” I stood in the weeds at the front of the car and peered down the
embankment into the water. The water ran deep and swift in its race to the Mississippi. I turned around
and stared at the gas station. Painted white, gleaming in the afternoon sun, the convenience store looked
immaculate. On a neat, low, tastefully-designed sign at the side of the road, a yellow Shell sign modestly
displayed its identity. Oh my God, it couldn’t be.
But it was. I had not recognized it. The Shell station was still right there, right where it had been
over twenty years ago. Just floods and time and insurance money had changed it and cleaned it so
completely, I had not realized it was the same place. I had even used the restroom inside the store–it
was well-stocked and clean, although a bit too cool, and the smell was absolutely neutral. No sickening
sweet air fresheners, no rust in the sink.
I quickly thought about the young man inside the store, wondering if he was anything like Zach, but
even he was so different than what I knew as a child, it was hard to believe. The young man was clean-
cut and wore a button-down shirt and handed me my change with clean hands and nails. He said,
“Thank you, ma’am.” There wasn’t a place to work on cars there, even if one had wanted. The gas
stations no longer catered to motorists in distress, they catered to busy people who needed something to
drink and a snack on their way somewhere far, far away. Funny, they catered to people like me.
Maria and Evelyn were at my side. I took their hands.
“I used to come here as a child.”
“With Alyssa?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes,” I smiled, “with Alyssa. And we would spend hours here by this canal while Zach, my
brother, worked on cars. It was very ugly and hot and we were very bored.”
Maria and Evelyn looked at me and then at the sweet, serious stream as if wondering how anyone
could be bored here.
“It was very polluted,” I said as if in explanation.
As we walked beside the stream, I told them about our Saturdays at the gas station and I silently
thought about what we would see next. Maybe it would be good for the girls to see pollution, to see its
devastating effects. But we walked all the way to the farmer’s field, and I never saw a junk car or old
tires or used condoms.
Walking back in the other direction, I considered why the trash was not there. Did the EPA finally
come out and make them clean it up? Or were the floods so powerful that it cleaned the land and the
canal like a dishwasher cleans dishes?
“Watch out for snakes,” I found myself reluctantly saying.
We traversed the remaining area before the highway and then we walked up on the highway above
the culvert and sat down with our legs dangling over the sides. I held tightly to my children so they
wouldn’t fall. Down below in the water, I saw a movement.
“Yikes!” I screamed. We all jumped up and peered down into the water, Maria and Evelyn giggling
over my shriek.
We stared down into the water and my eyes followed every movement I saw. A stick rushed by,
bits of grass, leaves, and then there it was. At first, I thought it was a snake, but the movement was too
slow, the mouth that came to the surface, too big, too elongated. Then I saw his whiskers. A catfish,
at least three feet long, picking among the bottom, rising to the surface, living in that water. Water
plants grew at the bottom and I could see him in his huge way taking mouthfuls of this or that, spitting
some things out, other things to his satisfaction.
We watched in awe of this creature until he saw us watching him. I could see him looking up at us
through the water, probably seeing the three of us as a blur against the blueness of the sky. He wasn’t
scared, but he wasn’t stupid, either. He made his way deeper and then disappeared in the water under
the culvert.
Maria and Evelyn were in fits over that catfish. They called him Mr. Cat. They had never seen a
catfish before and to them the canal by the gas station was a magical, natural, pure place. Eventually, I
convinced them to leave, pleading that our flight would not wait for us. But I continued to think about
Mr. Cat and I thought that maybe the girls were right. Maybe that place was magical and natural and
pure.
I drove to St. Louis with Alyssa in my heart, my children in the backseat and I knew I never had to
go back to that place. And once our plane was aloft, I looked down on the Mississippi and all its
tributaries and I felt good, as if somehow everything was right again. True, I was alone, but not
completely. I had my girls and my work and my travels and always I would have the picture of Mr. Cat
thriving in cleanliness in the Mississippi River bottoms. As I closed my eyes, I had a sweet feeling in my
heart that would be with me forever.
Theresa Schmits
Chemical Nightmare
Chemical nightmares
whisper to me
coming or going
Beautiful woman at the
bottom of the sea
gives birth while crabs
eat the flesh
off her fingers.
I want to kill myself, I
say in my sleep.
And he asks me why.
Can you imagine?
HE asks me why!
My children, my failure,
my valuelessness. I am
no longer afraid
Peace is in nothingness
and I want to go there.
Death requires no futile
quest for freedom.
They said a shotgun
would chip my teeth and
blow their fragments on
the walls
and I could not have
an open casket.
I like it like that. It is
final.
I am out of reach of
“salvation”, beyond your
control.
At the bottom of the sea,
I can breathe.
The chemicals make acid;
acid eats my brain
It bleeds, it swells, it
makes me forget where I
put my keys
Laughing, hold onto
sanity.
I am still here, but
chemical nightmares
whisper sweet seduction
to me.
Chemical Nightmare
Chemical nightmares
whisper to me
coming or going
Beautiful woman at the
bottom of the sea
gives birth while crabs
eat the flesh
off her fingers.
I want to kill myself, I
say in my sleep.
And he asks me why.
Can you imagine?
HE asks me why!
My children, my failure,
my valuelessness. I am
no longer afraid
Peace is in nothingness
and I want to go there.
Death requires no futile
quest for freedom.
They said a shotgun
would chip my teeth and
blow their fragments on
the walls
and I could not have
an open casket.
I like it like that. It is
final.
I am out of reach of
“salvation”, beyond your
control.
At the bottom of the sea,
I can breathe.
The chemicals make acid;
acid eats my brain
It bleeds, it swells, it
makes me forget where I
put my keys
Laughing, hold onto
sanity.
I am still here, but
chemical nightmares
whisper sweet seduction
to me.