The O. Henry Prize Stories 2011

Judy Doenges
Melinda

When I first met James, he was a meth chef. This year he doesn’t need to cook because he has another guy to do it. The chef has runners-guys who take the city bus from drugstore to drugstore to get antihistamine for our special ingredient, one legal box at a time. Now James is our punisher, our savior, our iron-and-brass man. He gives us our worktable and our tools: pens, tape, change of address cards, Mountain Dew, cell phones, shards, and pipe.

When he’s not cleaning and cleaning, RJ Dumpster dives and rifles through cans and recycling bins for credit-card bills and bank statements, sometimes just feathers of paper, and then he dumps the pile on our worktable. Ripped to the winds, no problem, James says today, his hand heavy on Little Fry’s neck. She bows her head and starts sifting. There’s nothing a tweaker can’t do if she sets her mind to it, James says. Right, Fritzie? he asks me.

It’s blue-snow December outside and it stinks of cigarettes inside. Little Fry needs a shower. I need to get busy, James says to me. He tries to put his hand on my neck, but I shrug him off.

When I first met James, I was Melinda Renée von Muehldorfer and I lived at 145 South Poplar. My grandma told me once that von means my ancestors were German royalty. James says, You’re out of your castle now, babe. After I graduated, ruined my parents’ credit rating, sold everything except my ice skates, and moved in with James at the farm, I was Fritzie, no last name, just a girl good at asking for things.

Little Fry tapes strip to strip until she finds a number or a name or both. Today she looks like a cartoon of someone concentrating, the tip of her tongue working around her lips, her hands shaking. She’s not very good with numbers and names, so she turns her creations over to me.

Look at this, Fritzie, Little Fry says. Here’s one like yours.

She hands me a taped library overdue notice, all of the ragged corners perfectly matched, even the split letters lined up and repaired. Richard von Behren, it says, 653 Oak. Four streets away from my old house. I picture Richard von Behren with one of those regal profiles, a sharp face like a statue’s. He’s clearly in a hurry, so impatient with his pile of mail and bills that he doesn’t save and shred.

Break time. Little Fry always lights up first because she’s the hungriest. She passes to me as we slump on the couch. James walks in to retrieve me and air comes punching into the room. He carries his own weather, RJ said one time when he was gakked.

In bed is where reputation gets iffy. It’s only as good as who’s on top of you, a girl named Share, who is no longer with us, used to say. I wonder what that means vis-à-vis James.

Oh, but James goes down, unlike most guys. When you’re made of iron and brass, I think, sliding up on the pillow, you’re not afraid of anything.

Sex is as selfish as drugs, I think, my nerves undulating inside my arms and legs like earthworms, and I like to be selfish, at least that’s what my parents used to say, screaming outside my bedroom door. James doesn’t have to work hard or long. He just breathes on me, just shivers me, until I answer back and then James disappears in a suck of air. I don’t open my eyes until he’s in and over me. Then I come again while he watches. The sun sets over his shoulder, a red blazing that seems to start the cornstalks on fire, while the last of the light slides off the side of the barn. James always leaves me gasping. From the bed, I grab his ankles. He puts on his jeans anyway.

I get dressed and go out to the living room. RJ has turned on the light over the barn door, so we know he’s out there with the chef. Little Fry is back at the table, guzzling Mountain Dew. She solves the puzzle of the paper strips. The house shakes with James’s absence, every atom chiding us.

Merilee, she of the cheery name, is James’s wife. She lives elsewhere. Sometime in the morning she comes in her TrailBlazer with Riley, the boy she has with James. Merilee lets Riley lay on the horn until James comes out, pulling cash from his back pocket. She does all right-the bitch, James always says after she leaves. Then he laughs. Today Merilee and James talk at the car window, while Riley pulls at the ends of James’s long hair.

Fritzie, keep going, RJ says. I’m sweeping in front of his mop: double-team double-clean, RJ calls it. He’d lick the floor if he could. Little Fry continues her Good Work at the table, selfless and tireless, like a nun. James sometimes calls her Holy One, she does her one thing so pure.

Oh, Merilee, I think, how have you kept your narrow waist, your big boobs, and your auburn hair to the ripe age of thirty-five? Oh, Merilee, how do you hold on to a husband/boyfriend/father/sugar daddy/fucker like James? Merilee, how? Neither James nor Merilee use anymore. Because of Riley, Merilee says, which James claims too. But I know it’s really because James is CEO. You can’t run a business and do its work at the same time.

Riley cries in the window of the TrailBlazer as it turns around in the yard slush. James comes into the living room, tracking. Get it, get it, RJ yells, pushing me and my broom along.

RJ, James says, you and Fritzie go to town. He gives us a card and the keys to the old Ninety-Eight.

I’m not done here! RJ yells.

James puts his hand on RJ’s neck and he calms down. I’ll keep an eye on it, James says. Get going.

RJ holds the steering wheel as if it’s made of eggs. If you let me drive, I say, we’ll get there lickety-split. Cops, RJ says.

They’ll think something is really wrong with you, you go like this, I say.

RJ ignores me and starts on the list of his DUIs, DWIs, driving while fucked up, short stints in the pokey, and I mention that these incidents always center on a wayward girl. Correct, RJ says. Women are the bane of my existence. Were.

RJ and I have this same conversation every time we go to town. Everything is always the same, right down to the number and kind of transgressions. I just go with it. RJ has been with James for a few years, so his stories and his thoughts run in the same tight circle. The cornfields finally give out and then we’re chugging through the outskirts of the city so slowly that I have plenty of time to read NO SOLICITING on at least five doors.

I make RJ go to the Hy-Vee on our side of the city proper so I won’t see anyone I know. We do a foilie in the car for courage and strength, RJ says, as if there’s going to be heavy lifting. He’s right about the possibilities, though. One day, when he was gakked and ergo superhuman, RJ sawed down a whole tree and cut it into perfect logs even though our fireplace is broken. But here, well. The city is full of people we’ve never seen and expectations that have passed us by, and we’re never sure how we’re presenting ourselves. To us, we’re just fine.

Inside the store, RJ grabs a cart; I stand on the back and he pushes me. We have a list. We like lists and tasks, but we’re never very hungry. Uck, RJ says too loudly, looking around at all the food. I know, I say, but whisper, man. What’s first?

When Little Fry eats, it’s always bananas and milk because she heard somewhere that it’s the perfect combination of food. I point out that there’s no protein there, but my opinions on diet don’t carry much weight anymore. So RJ and I load up on bananas and the kiwi James likes, then fruit leather for RJ. We tour meat for James’s chicken parts, then zoom to dairy for Little Fry’s milk and RJ’s string cheese, then over to cereal for Cheerios. I’ve eaten them since I was a baby; my parents have a picture of me sitting in my high chair, those little oaty lifesavers on the tray. Now I like them in a red bowl, one by one, while I work. The last thing for the cart is cigarettes, different brands to please everyone. On the way up to check out we swing by the drug section, and even though I didn’t plan it, I grab some cold medicine and head back to the bathroom. A surprise for James. I put the foil sheets of pills in my pocket and bury the box under paper towels in the trash. RJ rolls us up to the registers. The checker slides our stuff over the reader, but she also takes some time to look us over. She’s seen photos on billboards of guys like RJ, all skinny and snuffly and with that new kind of acne, teeth sprung. I can feel her thinking about calling the manager, but for what? We haven’t done a thing but ride the cart. RJ hasn’t noticed any of this; he’s just holding out the shaking card. I sign in the swiper window-Jacqueline Zingle-and then, thank God, we’re out in the parking lot loading bags. We progress at grandma speed back to James’s.

When we get there, the football players’ Jeep is in the yard. The team is going to a bowl game, and everyone in the city is in a fever. Part of the proceeds from the sale of RJ’s string cheese goes to a fund for the new stadium.

Four huge men stand around the living room, slushing up RJ’s clean floor. Hey, he shouts, and drops the bag he’s carrying.

Let’s keep it moving, James says, hustling RJ and me into the kitchen. I go back out, though, just to get a gander at all that healthy flesh. The players are ruddy, thick. Veins pop out on their hands. They fill out their team jackets, and their feet are as big as oars in their matching shoes. One of them looks in my direction, but he stops at my hair and frowns. Little Fry couldn’t keep her hands still one night, so I gave her a pair of scissors and closed my eyes. Now my hair is like little blonde eruptions all over my head.

There’s a new guy this time, the biggest one of the group, wearing a hemp necklace and a small gold cross. You take checks? he asks James.

RJ, James, me, even Little Fry crack up. What? the guy asks, looking around.

Don’t be a dipshit, the one black player says. He’s the only gentleman of color, as RJ always calls him, who ever comes around, and he tries hard not to look at anything.

The player who looks like an oversize cowboy, down to the Resistol covering his crew cut, pulls out the cash.

They turn to leave, but Player #4, a mammoth redheaded sad sack, looks at me again, this time giving me a morose stare. I gasp. It’s Jorge, my conversation partner from junior year Spanish. I can’t remember his real name. Buenas noches, Marita, he says, before heading toward the door.

Shit, James says, looking first at me and then at the wide back of Jorge.

Marita, Little Fry says after they go. Marita! Marita! she calls, picking up the pipe. RJ, Little Fry, and I retire to the sofa. James goes into his room and slams his door.

When I first moved in, James said, No way do you go upstairs. Of course I go.

There are four freezing bedrooms and an old bathroom with the sink torn out and a shower that drips. The bedrooms are all the same size, one in each corner, but in each one the windows look out on something different: barnyard, road, clump of trees, pasture. You can go from room to room, as I have, and get a 360-degree view of where you are. It’s the opposite of how all of us downstairs live, in our closed fist of work, and that’s why James doesn’t want us up here.

I figured I’d find old stuff up here like newspapers from World War II or tickets to a county fair or receipts for horses and cows, but the place looks as if RJ’s been at it. Not a nail or a shoelace, but I did find a honey-colored curl of hair in a closet once. If I were a different kind of girl, I would have kept it.

I’m up here during a day sometime after the football players’ visit, after break time. Dormitorio, I say to each bedroom; ventana to each window; árboles, I say out one window, then camino out another one, pasto where the cows would be. Translate “barnyard,” Marita, por favor.

Around dawn, James jumped out of bed, crouching and feeling for cigarettes. Fritzie, he barked, how long have you been here? Quick!

I closed my eyes. Six months, I said. No, eight.

Wrong, babe! James said. Ten months, two weeks. You’ve got to work on memorization, James said, and he sounded just like my Spanish teacher, Señorita O’Connor. You’ve got to keep as much in your head as you can, James said. You don’t want to end up like RJ, like a CD you can’t turn off. Or Little Fry, like all you can do is play with paper.

I didn’t say that we were working to his specifications, working for James his very self. I also didn’t say that when you don’t sleep, like Little Fry, RJ, and I don’t, you live in one long hour and that hour takes place during that last minute you’re in a class, when you’re waiting for the big IBM clock on the wall to make its final click. So why not run on like RJ does? Why not cut and paste like Little Fry?

I’m moving you into a supervisory position, James said, shocking me. I can’t afford to hemorrhage any personnel, he says. So you’re in charge of Little Fry and RJ. Make sure they don’t fly away.

Fly away like past chefs and runners, like girls he diddled, like everyone who passes through a business like this.

You’re here for the duration, James said at dawn.

When I go downstairs, everything’s the same. Little Fry: table, soda, tape. RJ: trying to do some speedy old-school break dancing on the living room floor. My work is done.

You’re not going to break anything but your head, I say. I’m going for a walk. Where’s James?

Out, RJ says. Who’s he doing? I wonder before I can stop myself. RJ’s upright now, doing a silly big skip, slide, and sway, like some guy in a boy band.

Little Fry looks up from the table. Take a hat, she says.

Outside the sun is high. It’s colder than a tweaker’s lungs, as RJ always says, but I’ve got my old red down jacket with matching mittens and hat. When I get to the end of the driveway, I stick out my thumb and start walking in the direction of the city, even though no one is coming yet on this dinky road. I haven’t mailed the change of address card yet. It’s in my pocket: Richard von Behren, 653 Oak. I haven’t planned what I’m going to do or say.

Pretty soon, an old car pulls up. It’s an Impala, lumpy with Bondo, and there’s a guy I almost know behind the wheel. Cody, he says when I get in, and I know he’s a local. There were probably thirty Codys in my high school.

I’m Merilee, I say. Are you going all the way in?

Sure are, he says. What side do you want?

North, I say, Stratford Acres, by the river.

He gives a low whistle. Then there’s a long silence. Horses crowd together in the pastures. I see a farmer close by the road, checking a fence post.

Cody clears his throat. I think I seen you before, he says.

Where? I ask quickly. I look to make sure the Impala has door handles that work from the inside.

You’re at James’s place, yeah? I’m a friend of Tommy’s, Cody says.

Tommy’s the best chef in three counties, even James says so. People compete for product, not territory, so there’re no fights, no shootouts on rural routes. Just admiration and awe. Ah, Tommy, James always says when he hears the name. He kisses the air. Ah, Tommy.

I should have guessed anyway. Cody’s got one knuckle rapping the steering wheel and his nondriving foot is pumping up and down. You can see the sinews in his cheeks.

That would be me, I say with a little laugh. I can’t remember the last time I was alone, or with a stranger, someone I had to say new things to.

Who’re you going to visit? Cody asks. We stop at a four-way and he sits there too long.

Just a guy, I say. He owes me some money.

Cody snorts. Don’t I know it, he says. Then he launches in, telling me all about life at Tommy’s place, which he should definitely not do to anyone outside. For miles, he talks about their new satellite dish, his bust last year and how Tommy bailed him, how much product Tommy’s putting out, then, inevitably, there’s the story of some girl who he has the hots for, this one being Tommy’s old lady. Blabbady, blab, blab, blab, goes Cody, as only a meth head can. We get to the city. What will be, will be, Cody the philosopher finally says about life and love at Tommy’s.

That’s fatalistic, I say, pulling out the word from someplace. You can’t do a thing about a life like that, man. Stop here.

Cody pulls into the parking lot at the playground I used to go to when I was a kid. It’s too cold for anyone to be on the swings, and the slide would catch even the tiniest piece of skin. I turn and smile at Cody.

Duck down, he says, pulling the pipe out of the glove box. We laugh.

I race the five blocks to Oak on foot, keeping my head down. I practically do the two-step. I rub my fingers together inside my mittens. On Oak, all of the houses are bigger than my old one. They’re huge blocks of brick-brown, red, cream, with the sun hitting their front windows so the glass glows like porcelain. Richard von Behren at 653 Oak is at the end of the block. The house is two-story, red and brown in alternating groups of bricks, and there are two tall windows in the front, both of them with fake little wrought-iron balconies.

From the skinny window next to the front door I can see back into one of those kitchens that flows into a dining room. Richard von Behren is getting a plate down from a high shelf. When he answers the door and sees it’s me, he scrunches his eyebrows together and purses his lips.

Sorry, he says, but we’re not buying anything. I could have put my son through college on what I’ve paid for candy and magazine subscriptions. A dog snorts and sticks its black muzzle between the man’s leg and the doorjamb.

I’m lost, I say, for lack of something else. My car broke down, I add.

What? Richard von Behren asks. Where’s your car? He sticks his head out and looks up and down the block.

It’s up on the big street, I say, pointing with my mitten. My hand is shaking. I’m sorry to discover that I’m hopping up and down on the front mat.

Jesus, it’s cold, Richard von B. says. Get in here, and we’ll figure this out.

I walk in and the dog immediately puts its big paws on my shoulders. Batman, down, Richard von B. says.

My boots drip water onto the Oriental rug in the hallway. To my right is the flowing dining room and kitchen, everything gleaming; to my left is the living room with deep red walls, bookcases and pictures, and a huge piano. Oriental rugs all the places my parents have carpeting. Richard von Behren is skinny and has the same thick blond hair and pink cheeks as my dad. A blonde woman comes down the stairs with an empty laundry basket. Her hand squeaks along the banister.

Dick, Richard von B. says to me, holding out his hand. And that’s my wife, Sherry. Hi, Sherry says, making the same face her husband did.

This young lady is lost, Mr. von B. says. Oh, no, Mrs. von B. says.

Share, I say. I’m Sharon. My car broke down a few blocks back. I wave my hand behind my head. I’m stamping my feet, but quietly.

And you came all the way down here? Sherry von Behren asks.

Where are you trying to go? Dick asks, interrupting her.

I thought I went to school with somebody who lives on this street, but I was wrong, I say. I was coming home from band practice, I say, and my car broke down.

It’s Saturday, Sherry von B. says. She makes that face again.

Sherry, where’s the map? Dick asks, heading for the kitchen. Where did you say you were going? he calls back to me.

My car broke down, I say again. But I’m lost too. And I need to tell my brother where to meet me. Somewhere up by my car, maybe.

Here, Sherry says, following Dick into the kitchen. You’re no good at finding anything.

So, wait, you’re not from around here? Richard calls from the kitchen. I can hear him going through a cupboard and Sherry whispering.

No, I say. I moved here two weeks ago. On a shelf in the living room next to a set of old books are coins in a frame. I take three steps to my left, lift the frame off the shelf, and slide it down inside my jacket. Then I’m back in the hall on the rug, waiting. Batman wags his tail.

What am I thinking? Dick says. He’s coming out of the kitchen with a phone in his hand. We need this more than a map. Here, call your brother.

I dial RJ’s cell. My car broke down, I say when he answers. What? he asks. Meet me at-, I say. Where should I meet him? I ask Sherry, who is now back in the hall with her arms crossed. What’s on the big street? I ask.

Go to Carl’s, Dick says. It’s a restaurant two blocks west of Oak on Grover. Grover’s the big street, he says laughing.

Meet me at Carl’s, Brad, I say into the phone. It’s on Grover. Who is this? RJ asks. What the fuck?

I hang up and say thanks about twenty times. The dog sticks his nose in my crotch. Dick stretches out a leg and pushes the dog back, all the time saying good luck with band, he played trumpet in high school and college, forcing me to say I play glockenspiel, which is the only instrument I can think of at the spur of the moment.

You know, I say, von in a name means your family were princes or something in Germany. Way back. I’ve got it too.

You told her our last name? Sherry asks, her voice high.

Dick just frowns. He’s not sure, I think. Royalty, he says. He laughs. Tell it to my accountant.

It’s hard to start school in the middle of the term, isn’t it, Sherry von B. says. She holds herself tight.

Really hard. Unless you get pretty good grades and have extracurricular activities that keep you busy and confident, I say. This last was what the guidance counselor suggested to my parents.

Good for you, Dick von B. says.

I had a horse, I say quickly. But the truth is that my parents decided not to buy me one once everything caught up with me, and once my total lack of concern for the welfare of others required a second mortgage. Have a horse, I tell the von Bs. His name is Star. He looks like Black Beauty. Dick’s face is starting to freeze, but I can’t stop myself. I say, When Brad picks me up we’re going out to the stable to see Star. I have some carrots in my trunk. Does your son like sports? I ask.

Well, Richard says.

I was in soccer when I was little, I say. It’s suddenly way too noisy under my hat so I take it off, which is not good because the von Bs can see my scalp and all its tufts. There’s a big bell clanging inside my head. Goalie, the hardest position, I say. We won city for our age group one year. I fought off a lot of balls that season. Then there was gymnastics, five years.

Whose life am I telling? This one belongs to another kid-the kind of kid I never talked to.

Senior play I was Eliza Doolittle, I say, the bell inside me ringing. They put a notice in the paper. Math was my favorite subject, which is not usual for girls. It’s like I’m sure you’ve said to your kid, find something you’re passionate about. All the teachers at school said goals were important. Achieve has an I in it, I say.

I stop talking. My brain is clanging like a church bell. All of this was before, I say. Before I moved here from Illinois two weeks ago. We stand there looking, even the pictures on the walls. That does it for Richard and Sherry von Behren, their son, and my old neighborhood.

Know where you are now? Sherry asks me. She herds me toward the door. Dick manages to get a hand on my shoulder, so I look back. Take care, he says, but he glances away at the end like I hurt his eyes.

I practically knock myself out saying thanks some more, and then I’m out of the house and the door is closed and I’m trying to catch my breath. I bend down and pretend to tie my boots for a minute, and then I check the mailbox. I take what’s there and walk quickly down the street. When I’m a few houses away, I take a sharp left and crunch through a snowy yard until I’m on the next street. Back on Grover I take the first guy that stops, an old farmer in a pickup. He’s silent the whole way to James’s, as if I’m just some stock he has to transport.

RJ loves the coins. This one’s from 1903 Germany, he says. That’s their kaiser on it. He strokes the glass. Man, you know you have a lot of money when it just sits out on display, he says. I’ll take that, James says, pulling the frame from RJ’s hand. RJ goes back to chasing Riley around the house.

Riley and Merilee are here, picking up money and giving Riley a chance to see his dad not framed in a car window. Little Fry finds a bank statement in the last delivery of mail Richard von Behren will receive for a while, so James gets me on the phone immediately to 24-Hour Customer Service.

This is Sherry von Behren of 653 Oak, I say. How are you?

Wonderful! the helpful person says. What can I do for you?

I’d like to get your credit card but I lost the offer, I say. I give the checking account number.

Password? the helpful person asks.

Batman, I say, and then I’m in.

A while later, Riley wants to go outside. The sun is low again, this time striped with clouds. James makes us all go with Riley, even Little Fry. RJ, Little Fry, and I have a foilie in the pantry before we venture forth. Home, again. The chef stands by the barn with a cigarette, carefully flicking his ash into a tin can.

There’s a big cow pond behind the barn that’s frozen solid. RJ takes off and slides on his stomach like he’s stealing a base. Riley cracks up.

I took Richard von Behren’s change of address card down to the box myself and put up the flag. The mail truck comes late here, we’re so far out. Dick and Sherry are going to visit their own mailbox over and over-nothing there. Every day will be like pressing on a bruise to test the pain. Those two will figure it out quick, but by the time they do, Little Fry, RJ, me, and James will have their finances in a snarl and then James will sell everything about Richard von Behren to someone else. People get passed around that way. They get lost.

Everyone’s standing at the side of the cow pond watching RJ go crazy on the ice. All of that’s going to hurt later. Riley is pulling on Merilee’s hand. I go inside. My skates are in James’s room.

Everyone is slipping and sliding on the pond when I come back out, so no one notices when I sit on a stump and put on my skates. The leather is like soft hands holding my feet. I took lessons until I was fourteen, and when I get on the ice everything comes back. I do an arabesque and a single Axel.

Wow, Fritzie, Merilee says. That’s amazing. Do it again! Riley says. A girl of many talents, James says, but he looks mad.

Everyone gets in a crowd trying to do my moves, but they can’t. This pond is all mine, I want to say. James starts sliding after me. Right away everyone follows, yelling and laughing. I take off, floating from side to side until my wheezy lungs smooth out. Marita, come back! Little Fry calls.

I skate faster and faster toward the snowbank at the other end of this glassy ground, so fast I can’t feel the surface or hear a voice, so strong I could part the clouds over the sun. The wind is wicked.