Old Bucket
The young one next to her was without a clue when it came to personal space. Perhaps a dance class was a little too ambitious for her. Even one as “therapeutic” as this one, for survivors of cancer treatment. Ha, thought Fiona, survivors were they? Well. She knew a little bit about survival.
She took a pointed step back and cursed Dr. Pink, who had cajoled a deal out of her. “Go three times,” he’d said. “Then you can complain all you want at our next appointment.” The thought was irresistible. There was no one left to complain to anymore. Harold gone, and Jimmy. Alexander sent to an old folks home somewhere in Northern California. Packed off across the country by his son and daughter-in-law with little more than his guitar and an out-of-tune piano in the common room.
Fiona ran her hand through her receding frizz of hair. Always fine, it had once been her crowning glory; straight as a ruler, golden brown and flowing like honey down her back. Queen bee, she was. She could dance then, too. Danced for her supper, some nights. Before the band started making a little money. Then jumped back into the van and took off before anyone got any ideas. That was survival. That was glory. These days she’d be lucky to warrant a diet cola. Her breasts lay across her belly like two nearly empty sacks of flour. A scone’s worth in each, more or less. Slightly less in the right one, in fact, thanks to the surgeon, but who was counting.
The music had stopped. People were milling a bit in that awkward way of near strangers who just a moment before had been sharing a common endeavor. Not sure whether to simply leave or hang around for a while. As if they were all twenty-somethings, waiting to see who was off to the bar. Of course, some of them were twenty-somethings. Some were teens. Those were the ones that Fiona didn’t want to contemplate.
“It was a good class today,” said the Crowder. “Shelly’s my favorite teacher!”
“Sure,” said Fiona. Shelly. Sure. Weren’t they all interchangeable?
“Well, see you next time?” The girl was still there.
“Sure, sure,” said Fiona.
“I like your tattoos. Are those bees?”
Fiona rubbed her hand over her forearm, pulling her sagging skin taught, and wished she’d worn a long sleeved shirt rather than her usual black tank top.
“Yes,” she said.
“Cool. Liver cancer, by the way.”
“What?”
“I had liver cancer,” said the girl. “Have. Well, in remission. It’s funny, isn’t it? Live-r cancer? I mean, you can’t live with cancer, right? But it’s in my liver? Get it? Was! I’m Annabelle, by the way.”
Annabelle had stuck out her hand, so Fiona shook it once, up and down, and let go.
“Fiona,” she said. “Breast,” she added when Annabelle’s raised eyebrows failed to relax.
The girl was a skinny, pretty little twit in leggings and a pink t-shirt, with dark hair just beginning to grow in and that perfect, pale skin that used to make consumption seem sexy.
Fiona looked around for her jacket and located it on the floor in front of the chair she’d set it on, the black leather fringe askew, her wallet fallen out of the pocket and about to be run over by a white-haired woman in a wheel chair. She started to walk stiffly over to contain the damage.
“Well, see you next time,” said Annabelle again. When Fiona turned back the girl smiled and waved her hand once before flitting out the door.
In the parking lot outside the old brick hospital building in which she’d just finished lurching around Fiona moved through the blips and tweets of cars being unlocked, dangling the keys to her van as she went. Real keys. No buttons, just jagged upper teeth waiting to close with their matching lowers. Never mind that these particular teeth could use some braces. It was nothing that a little jiggling couldn’t handle. Harold had used bright yellow house paint on that van, leaving a clean white belt around the middle. His lawyer father had nearly had kittens when he saw, asking Harold how he could’ve done such a thing to a brand new vehicle, but Fiona had laughed. It was perfect. Holding them all together. That’s when they had come up with their name: The Buzz.
Harold’s paint had long ago peeled and bubbled and rusted its way into a geriatric skin. Her daughter was after her to sell the damn van before it stranded her on a lonely road in a snow storm some January night. Never mind that it was almost May and unseasonably balmy. And anyway, she would never. Harold had left it to her, along with the remains of his father’s fortune. Long after they weren’t even a couple anymore, let alone a band. They had always been friends. That van was their history. Something her hoity-toity daughter would never understand.
Van door open, the comforting smell of old dust, oil, cigarette smoke, sweat and metal greeted her and she breathed it in. Heaved herself into the split fabric seat, more duct tape than fabric now, and she was home. This van had literally been her home for the better part of the seventies and eighties. Every inch held a memory. The thing should be in a museum, really. Except very few people remembered who she’d been. She and Harold and Jimmy and Alex. Nowadays their albums were relegated to dusty thrift store shelves and the obscure reaches of iTunes. Time was, though. Time was.
Fitting the key into the ignition, Fiona turned it, pressing lightly on the gas pedal, and then harder. Nothing. Damn! She turned the key again, jiggling it slightly and then more forcefully and then letting go and hitting her hands against the steering wheel. Damn, damn, damn! Was nothing going to go all right this evening?
“Everything okay?” came a voice right next to her door. Fiona’s heart lurched in her chest and she gripped the wheel before turning toward the sound. There was Annabelle, looking concerned. Shit! Why wouldn’t this clumsy girl leave her alone? Did she have a great big loser magnet strapped to her back? She didn’t want to be friends with the twit. She’d had all the friends she was going to have in this life. She’d outlived them, fine. She might outlive this girl, too, and her remissed liver cancer – that was one of the nastier ones, wasn’t it?
“Van’s being a bugger. Nothing that hasn’t happened before,” she said, managing somehow to sound calm. In fact it had happened many, many times. On the side of a Mississippi highway at four in the morning, for instance, after a gig at bar in Biloxi where Alex had ended up with a gash above his eye from a bottle hurled on stage and Jimmy had thrown his drumsticks into the audience and started to throw his cymbals but Harold had stepped in and got them off the stage. Or that time on the Pacific Coast Highway, no shoulder to speak of and cars coming fast around the bend, swerving out of the way at the last minute. Harold had got them out of that one, too.
This was nothing. She was safe in a parking lot for chrissake. But Harold wasn’t here. He wouldn’t ever save her again.
And she was a fat old cow. And cancer had stolen half a breast and turned her hair to shit. God but she wanted to be home, on her own couch, the comfortable and familiar silence of her apartment surrounding her. She reached over into the glove compartment and grabbed a pack of cigarettes. Shook one out and reached for her lighter on the dashboard.
“What are you doing?” Annabelle said, her voice high and squeaky.
“What do you mean?” The action was so much a part of her that for a moment Fiona honestly couldn’t figure out what was bothering the girl. “Oh, this? Well. Cancer has taken about as much as it’s going to. Not taking my smokes, too.”
“Huh. Okay. Could, um…”
Annabelle chewed her lip.
Fiona waited, tamping the cigarette on the steering wheel with greater patience than she felt.
Eventually Annabelle managed to find some words. “Maybe, I mean, maybe I should go,” she said. “I mean, if you don’t need help? I have jumper cables, but, I guess. I can’t really be around smoke.”
The girl was actually wringing her hands.
“I see.”
“So.”
She turned, about to leave. Fiona sighed.
“You have jumper cables, you say?”
“Yes…”
Fiona put the cigarette down. She did want to get home.
“I would appreciate your help,” she said, and added a twitch of the lips that could be taken for a smile.
“Sure! Of course! Just let me grab my car and pull around.”
Annabelle disappeared across the parking lot and one more car beeped out its pleasure at its mistress’ approach.
A moment later, though, it was a different car that pulled in next to Fiona. Squinting, she made out a Mercedes hood ornament. Adrenaline swamped her. But surely it wasn’t possible…? The Merc pulled level with Fiona’s door and a moment later the engine stopped in mid purr. The driver’s door opened with a whisper and high-heeled black boots slid out, a flash of red on the underside. A dark-haired woman with a sleek ponytail stood next to Fiona’s door in a blink. Fiona stared through her windshield, hoping to see Annabelle barreling across the parking lot, but the only other car left hadn’t yet moved. She closed her eyes.
“Mother, are you really ignoring me, or have you finally lost it?”
Fiona’s eyes popped open. Damn and damn again.
“Mother? Shall I yell? Have you lost your hearing?”
“No, Jenny,” said Fiona, finally. “I can hear just fine.”
Fiona grabbed her cigarettes and lit up, remembered Annabelle, and then decided that Annabelle could fuck herself. She needed this.
“Still smoking. Well, color me surprised,” said Jen.
“It’s a good color on you,” Fiona said.
“Very funny.”
“Though I am wondering why I am so lucky as to be able to see it in person. Has Soho shut down?”
“You’re full of jokes tonight, aren’t you?”
“How did you find me, anyway? Was Frank being chatty? That’ll teach me to be friendly with the neighbors.”
“When the Mountain won’t come to Mohammed,” said Jen.
“Am I to surmise that I am the Mountain in this scenario? Not very flattering.”
Jen’s lips flat-lined.
“Mother. Cancer.”
“Yes? I’ve heard of it.”
“Well I had to hear about it from Teddy.”
She should have known. Alexander’s son had blabbed. She shouldn’t have told Alex anything. Probably thought he was ‘helping.’ The old bastard.
“How is Teddy?” Fiona said. “I didn’t know you two were in touch.”
She glanced across the parking lot for Annabelle but her little car still hadn’t moved.
“Cut the shit,” said Jen. “You had cancer and you didn’t tell me. What the hell, Ma?”
“Nice mouth, for a lady in a Mercedes.”
“Mother!”
Fiona felt somewhat ashamed of herself. For a moment.
Then, “You never call, you never write,” she said.
Jen continued to stare at her.
“I didn’t want to worry you?” she tried.
“Well, fuck you,” said Jen. “Teddy was asking me how you were, his father was worried that he hadn’t heard from you in a couple of weeks – don’t think it’s lost on me that you do seem to be capable of keeping in touch if you want to – and I had to ask him what he was talking about. Just imagine how I felt to find out that my own mother had cancer. Cancer! And didn’t bother to tell me.”
“I see. So this is about you. As usual. You drove all the way up here after – how long has it been, exactly? – to tell me that your feelings were hurt. Last time I checked my phone still worked. I managed to pay the bill this month.”
Jen looked at her beautifully booted feet and toed at a pebble. When she looked back up her eyes were shiny.
“I was worried, Mom,” she said. “I was terrified, if you want to know.”
“Um, excuse me?” Annabelle’s voice was barely above a whisper. She stood behind Jen, making herself as small as humanly possible. Jen opened her mouth, presumably to tell Annabelle to get lost, assuming she was some kind of groupie, but the girl found her voice.
“Oh my god,” she said.
Fiona felt a flush of adrenaline overtake her. It was one thing to spar with her daughter. It was another to do it in front of someone else.
“Annabelle,” she said, a little too loudly. “This is my daughter, Jenny. Jenny, this is Annabelle. She’s in my therapeutic dance class. Liver cancer.”
“It’s Jen, actually,” said Jen, turning toward the girl and extending her hand. “Annabelle, how do you do?”
“Um, very well, thanks? I’m in remission.” Annabelle looked at Jen’s hand. “You’re Jen Maxwell. The artist? I mean, duh. Of course you know that. I read about you in the Times. I want to study art history. When I can go back to school? Oh my god.” She paused to take a breath. “Fiona – I mean, your Mom? She needed a jump?” Annabelle held up a set of jumper cables so that they swung out and hit the van. “Sorry!”
Fiona stabbed out her cigarette and waved away the last bit of smoke. With her eyes on Jen, she said, “No worries. The dents have dents on this bucket. It survived the punk revolution, after all. Thank you, Annabelle. I would like that jump, if you’re still offering.”
“Sure, of course…” said Annabelle.
“Mother, I can help you,” said Jen.
“I’m sure you can,” Fiona said. “But Annabelle’s offer came in first. Let me just pop the hood.” Fiona rummaged under her dash for the release lever.
“My car is still…over there?” said Annabelle, the cables just missing Jen as they swung with Annabelle’s gesture. “I wasn’t sure. If you still…”
“Well, pull it around, please, Love.”
“No, don’t bother. Annabelle, was it?” said Jen.
“Is your memory going, then, dear?” Fiona said to her daughter.
“Annabelle,” said Jen. “I can help my mother from here. Thank you very much for your care and concern.”
“Annabelle, I will be ready for you when you pull around,” said Fiona.
“I’m sure Annabelle has somewhere more important to be,” said Jen.
“Annabelle can make up her own mind,” said Fiona.
“Oh my god,” said Annabelle, more loudly than Fiona had thought she was capable of being.
Jen opened her mouth, then shut it again. Fiona patted her steering wheel.
“You guys,” Annabelle said, turning watery eyes first to Fiona and then to Jen. “What? I mean…” She dragged her sleeve across her face. “How can you be so mean?”
“I’m sorry to have dragged you into the Fiona and Jen Show, Annabelle.” Fiona smiled in what she hoped was a sincere way.
“I don’t understand. How could you not tell your own daughter that you have cancer?” The wonder and bewilderment in Annabelle’s eyes made Fiona want to congratulate the girl’s parents. Her innocence made Fiona’s stomach clench. She’d stolen that from Jen, she knew. Failed to protect her time and again.
Suddenly Fiona couldn’t bear to drag Annabelle into their contagion.
“You probably do have something more important to do, so please don’t let me stop you. Jen and I will be fine.”
Annabelle continued to stare, tears lipping over her eyelids ready to spill. Fiona’s mouth engaged before she could stop it. “It’s ‘had,’” she said. “I’m cancer-free, actually. As of yesterday. Well, I got the news yesterday.”
“Oh my god! Congratulations! That’s amazing!” Annabelle swung out her arms as if to hug Fiona, waving the cables toward Jen, who ducked. Fiona bowed slightly, maintaining distance.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Yes, Mom. It is. Amazing. I’m really glad.” Jen’s hand twitched toward Fiona and then fell.
“So, Annabelle,” said Fiona, “I should really let you go. Jen and I should – I hope you have a wonderful evening.” She turned in the direction of her daughter, keeping her eyes on the ground. “Jen, if I could get a jump?”
“I’ll call roadside assistance now,” said Jen, pulling out her phone, which lit up at her touch like a genie.
Fiona groaned.
“Jen, darling, that will take hours,” she said.
“No, don’t worry, I have special access. They have to come in fifteen minutes or I get a discount.”
Jen walked a little way away to play with her phone until it spurted out the information she wanted.
“I’ll go then?” said Annabelle.
“Yes.” Fiona sighed. “Off you go.”
Annabelle nodded. “I love your work,” she called to Jen, who raised her hand in acknowledgment. Annabelle turned to Fiona. “That one at The New Museum, where you can walk in and it’s, like, pieces of all these different hotel rooms? With all the mirrors smashed? It’s really cool. You must be so proud.”
“That’s called Childhood,” said Jen, who had rejoined them. “Mom, I don’t think you’ve seen it? It might remind you of one of your tours.”
“Oh my god, I really loved it!” said Annabelle when Fiona failed to reply.
“Thank you.” Was that a smirk on Jen’s face?
“Yes, thank you,” said Fiona, sliding out of the van. “Thanks for your offer. I’ll see you. Next time.” She smiled at Annabelle, who nodded.
“Okay. Next time. Bye, Jen – Ms. Maxwell.”
Hefting the hood, Fiona cursed. It was possible that it wasn’t just the battery that was going wrong. Oil had flung itself all over the engine. The last time that had happened she had had to replace some major gewgaw that had cost her more than the whole van was worth. Well, maybe a jump would get her home, at least, so she could deal with it later.
“Looks like Dad’s trying to get us to spend some time together,” said Jen, standing next to Fiona and contemplating the filthy engine. “Maybe you’re right to keep it.”
Fiona snorted.
“Harold has better things to do up there than get the likes of us together. He gave up on that long before he kicked the bucket.”
The edge of her mouth quirked as Fiona pictured exactly what Harold would say. How his bushy eyebrows would pull down and his beard would jut forward with his chin. And “Fi!” he would say. “Talk to the girl!” Something he had always found so easy to do.
“The tow truck will be here soon, anyway,” said Jen. “Did you think her tiny little car was going to be able to start up this jalopy? You’d be lucky not to have to call a tow truck for her.”
Fiona sank down on her front bumper and put her head in her hands. The van shifted as Jen sat down next to her.
“You’ll get your fancy clothes dirty.”
“I miss him, too, you know,” said Jen.
“Sure, sure.”
“She’s a nice girl. Liver cancer. That’s a nasty one, isn’t it?”
“Yes. How much longer?” Fiona said.
“Can’t stand spending a few minutes alone with me?” Jen got off the bumper and started fiddling with her phone.
“I only asked.”
“That was a joke,” said Jen.
“Ah.”
“They swarm to you, you know. They always have.”
“Who?”
“Sweet, vulnerable girls. They don’t see through your shit. They see a few tattoos, some punked out clothes, and they think you’re strong.”
“She seemed more excited about you.”
“He’s five minutes away,” Jen held up her phone for Fiona to see. On it was a map with a little blue dot that was moving toward them.
“That’s handy,” said Fiona. She felt the words she should be saying ball up somewhere around her sternum.
“I could get you one.”
“No thanks.”
“Right.”
Jen clicked off the phone and dropped it into her purse. She stood with crossed arms and toed the asphalt. Fiona saw a ten-year-old version of her daughter, suddenly, in the same pose. Outside a motel somewhere in Arizona after one of their fights. Jenny wanting to come with them to the gig and Fiona unwilling to let her. Telling herself she was protecting her daughter, not admitting to herself that a kid backstage would cramp her style. “You never wanted me,” Jenny had hurled at her. And some part of Fiona had acknowledged that that was true. She hadn’t wanted a child. Hadn’t imagined the possibility. But then there was Jenny. And Fiona hadn’t known what to do with her love for the girl. How to fit it into her idea of her life. Was helpless against it. Jen had finally demanded that she go live with Harold’s parents and Fiona had been unable to stop her. She felt that same sick helplessness welling up now.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a reflex. I don’t know – I … Yes, please. Buy me a phone. I would appreciate that.”
“Only if you use it call me once in a while, though.” Jen looked at her over her shoulder but the shadows made her expression unreadable.
“Oh, well, if there are strings…”
“Fuck you, Mother!”
“I was kidding, Jenny. Jen. I can make jokes, too.” Fiona reached her hand toward Jen.
“I know,” said Jen. She looked at Fiona’s hand and started to laugh. “You’re going to need a phone to call all the cabs you’re going to be taking. Because this old bucket may have finally kicked itself to death.” She kicked at the bumper to emphasize her point. “And I am not going to buy you a car.”
“You’ll have to immortalize her, then. I’m not letting her go otherwise.” Fiona dropped her hand and stood up.
Somewhere up there, Harold nodded his approval. Jen stopped laughing.
“You can have the whole bloody thing – make one of your installations, take it apart and paint on its bits, whatever you like. Have it towed to your studio right now,” Fiona went on before she could stop herself.
“You’re serious?” Jen’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs.
“I’d say ‘as a heart attack,’ but I suppose cancer will do.”
“But you’re cancer free.”
Fiona’s mouth twisted up. She saw it clearly. It was a good idea. A great one.
“Mother?” said Jen. “Aren’t you?”
“Make sure your father and I are in there somewhere. And the rest of the band. We still sell the occasional album, you know. We’re not completely forgotten. You’re not the only one with some fame. Get your agent to –”
“Yes, I will. It will be – I can’t believe you’d let me do this. I mean, you’ve never really…”
“It’s got to be preserved.” Fiona rested her hand on the edge of the hood, then sat back down on the bumper. “And who better to do it?”
“Mother,” said Jen, “I’m – I don’t know what to say. Honored, I guess. I just – I can’t believe it.” She narrowed her eyes.
“What? It’s a gesture. Long overdue, I suppose. Don’t go getting yourself in a tizzy about it. I used to make them all the time.” Fiona busied herself straightening out the fringe on her sleeve.
“I remember,” said Jen with a lift of her eyebrows and a crinkle of her lips. “Usually with my stuff.”
Fiona nodded at the ground. She could feel Jen’s eyes tingling at her hairline.
“Are you really cancer free?” came her voice, smaller and quieter now.
Fiona looked up. “I thought you said he was five minutes away.”
Jen sat next to her and put her hand on Fiona’s thigh. Fiona looked at it, a pale starfish stretching to patch over the artful rips in her black leggings. It was feather light, but warm. She sighed and looked down at her own hand, veins bulgy, skin liver-spotted, and laid it across Jen’s.
“It’s a bit of history. Our history. It should be preserved.”
“It will be. Our history.”
Fiona smiled at the ground. That was that sorted, then. What she would do for transportation now was a problem for another day. It was a good run, she thought, wasn’t it, Harold?
“You didn’t answer my question,” Jen said into the sudden silence.
A yellow tow truck turned the corner then and pulled into the parking lot. Fiona squeezed Jen’s hand and stood. “We’re going to need a tow,” she yelled to the man getting out of the cab.
• • •
Jody Strimling-Muchow is an actor, a playwright, and a knitting enthusiast in addition to writing fiction. Her work has appeared in various online magazines and blogs, including1000 Words and Slice of Life Magazine. She lives and writes in the Hudson Valley, New York.