Their husbands are dead. They’ve continued their little shingle retirements playing pinochle and canasta and driving their old Buicks, rusty, bulbous, and passé as our tired resort town
with its bumper cars and motor courts and no reason to pull off the highway. I catch on fast, a clever partner when they need a fourth and always happy to empty ashtrays, to refill
plates of jam-stuffed cookies served on sets of ’40s Heisey. My presence is unquestioned, though my preteen boygirl body—my lazy belly and unmanly breasts—strains my clothes, strains
Dad’s tolerance, Grandma’s indulgence, other boys’ ready inclusion. These ladies deal me in, let me have real coffee and the scoop. I know about the mayor’s first wife and why Tommy
doesn’t look like his sister. I know Mr. Sims used to sell homemade booze. I know about Bobby, whose mom owns the Curly-N-Cute, how he got arrested in Portland for something
I couldn’t quite hear and was sent to Salem for shock treatments. The ladies tut and coo, pass me more cookies and admire my meld, tell me I’m smart, say I’m a wonderful boy.
First appeared in Haunted Waters Press/ Splash and is also forthcoming in Jesus Comes to Me as Judy Garland (Airlie Press, September 2021)