Blaze of Glory

CHAPTER 17

There was a time when Sissy had wanted to be a school teacher. Her mother, her father, even her grandmother had told her that she'd be great with kids. So it was her lot growing up she'd been just a little more responsible than everyone else. When the other girls went to dances, she'd stayed home reading. When classmates called her for the rare sleepover-invite, she'd always declined, remembering how her mother ascribed association with the other girls as a 'slippery slope to dangerous waters,' as if the girls were crocodiles and she were the wayward lamb limping naively along the shore.

Her life had already been mapped out for her. Four years at Converse College, the all girls' institution in Spartanburg, South Carolina and her mother's Alma Matter. After that it was on to graduate school at Vassar, then on to a fellowship at Biltmore Academy for Girls located west of Ashville in the Smokey Mountains. All Sissy Buchanan had to do was show up, be polite, smile nicely and her future was secured. Sure she'd never been on a date with a boy, and sure she'd never gone to the movie theater, but that was a small price to pay for such a perfect future.

At least that was the pill she'd been forced to swallow for eighteen years.

Live for tomorrow.

Don't do anything you'd regret.

Set the example.

Be responsible.

Everything she'd ever done had been in preparation for the life that had been planned for her. And she hated her mother for it. Sissy had spent the best years of her life coddled in the promises of a bright future only to discover that the world had no future. There was no Converse College. Vassar was an abattoir of post-graduates baking in the noonday sun. Nowhere were children preparing for private school hurriedly gulping orange juice and toast before they hopped in their daddy's Mercedes. Instead they were… she breathed deeply as she tried to block the image…. instead they were all dead.

Where did that leave her? She blushed at the thought. Instead of dwelling on what she'd never have, she voiced the other thing that had been haunting her.

"It feels weird."

"Everything feels weird, honey," Gert said. She'd just put a clean sweater around the old woman's shoulders. No sooner had she returned to her place on the couch, than Grandma Riggs had lit up a rock, the sound of the smoking like a piece of gravel in a vacuum cleaner.

"No, what I mean is, we used to trust Mr. Adamski and now he’s…he’s-"

"Dead," Grandma Riggs finished.

"The walking dead," Gert added. "Like a zombie."

"It must be scary to know you’re gonna die like that."

"I don’t know, maybe it's comforting."

What an odd thing to say. Sissy turned and looked at Gert to see if she was kidding, but the woman was as straight-faced as could be. "What do you mean?"

"That's what we want, isn't it? To know? Death isn't so bad, I guess. What makes it so scary is that we don't know when it's going to happen. We don't like surprises."

"And now he knows."

"And he isn't scared."

"I still feel bad for him."

"Are you scared girl?" Grandma Riggs stared blindly at her through blackened opaque frames, the result unnerving.

"Isn’t everyone?" she murmured.

"I haven’t been afraid of death for years."

"But the drugs…" Gert began before she decided she'd said too much.

Grandma Riggs held up her pipe and beamed. "This shit? This is for the pain, and the fun."

Sissy blushed and looked away.

Gert smiled, crossed her arms and stared at the wall. "If I knew I was gonna die," she said, "I think I’d be selfish. Maybe get a box of chocolates, some music, maybe MacHenry and me…"

"Poor girl," Grandma Riggs whispered.

Gert's mouth opened as if to ask what the old woman meant, but Sissy spoke first.

"I don’t know what I’d do. I mean, I know I may die, but I don’t want to."

"Then don’t," Gert snapped.

"If only it were that easy. All the Maggies out there, I just don’t think we'll make it."

"There's always a chance? Don't lose hope."

"It’s true," Grandma Riggs smirked, stroking her pipe. "Jesus designs the playing field and makes all the rules, but we’re the ones who play the game. He doesn’t. We make our own future."

MacHenry ambled into the room. He tilted his head towards the bedroom. "Uh…Gert? Wanna come take a look at this?"

Gert's face reddened.

Sissy's did as well and she giggled nervously.

"Please tell me you don’t have any chocolates," Gert said.

"Uh…No. Was I supposed to have some?"

Gert got to her feet and leaned into him. She kissed him deeply, a hand gripping his collar. "No, silly. I hate chocolates." She flashed a grin at Sissy and Grandma Riggs over his shoulder.

"Then why did you ask?"

Gert laughed. "You can be so dense sometimes, Travis MacHenry."

"I-" He looked from one woman to the other trying to figure out what was going on. After half a minute he smiled weakly and grabbed her hand. "Come on then. Let me show you this."

She hesitated a moment, and in her best Arnold Swartzenegger quipped, "I’ll be back," then allowed herself to be dragged down the hall.

Sissy followed the pair with her eyes. She was happy for Gert, but a little jealous too. She'd never feel what Gert was feeling, neither emotionally nor physically. Sissy had lost her chance when Bennie had been killed. Not that she'd have done anything, but she'd noticed the way he'd looked at her. At first it had made her nervous, but then she'd found herself wondering.

"You still have time, you know."

"What?"

"I said you still have time." Grandma Riggs reached out and placed her hand on Sissy's lap, gave her knee a squeeze and let go.

Sissy sighed. "It doesn’t matter."

"Oh. It matters all right." The old woman cackled. "The stories I could tell you. The stories I shouldn't tell you. My god in heaven, the things I've done in the name of love would make a Bishop blush."

"But they're just stories."

"So that's it."

Sissy remained silent.

"You're afraid you'll never become a woman."

"Something like that." The words came no louder than a breath.

"I told you that you still have time, and you do. So stop worrying about things you have no control over."

Sissy tried to fathom what the women meant by you still have time. Surely she wasn't supposed to take that to mean that she could learn the secrets of womanhood by one of the men left in the apartment. The thought made her queasy. She shuddered. How horrible that would be, to-she refused to finish the thought. Instead she picked up the magazine that Gert had been thumbing through and concentrated on what the Prettiest Women in Hollywood were wearing.