What If - a story by Rachel Belinda Kidder

Gina is beautiful. The way she stirs the batter. Such strong arms, molding slowly the thick, sweet concoction. I can smell it from here though I’m trying not to show my lusting anticipation. I’m pretending to read this newspaper, the headline of which I can’t even comprehend because out of the corner of my eye I am watching her. Gina.

Her wrinkled flannel shirt, tucked lazily into her baggy jeans, must feel soft against her skin. It looks incredibly comfortable. The kind of shirt I’d like to slip into after a hot bath. But it definitely isn’t clean. Little drops of batter have decorated the collar. She must have splattered, using that huge wooden spoon. I’d be surprised if she didn’t. Batter stirring is a difficult task. Not everyone can do it properly. I would think her arms would be getting tired by now but there’s no sign of a break in her seductive circular motion. Only someone filled with love could be so determined and gentle.

I like the way she wears her shirt, rolled up to the elbows, showing off her freckled forearms. Her black hair forms one long braid down her back. She always wears it back, either in a braid, or a ponytail, or in a bun. I suppose to keep it off her face because she’s always doing something and can’t afford to let her hair get in the way. I often have wondered why she doesn’t just cut it off, if it’s such a bother. But I’m really glad she doesn’t because it is so beautiful - thick and silky, almost like Grandma’s mink stole that she let me wear once.

At night before bed she lets her hair down and sometimes asks me if I will brush it. I usually yawn and say “I suppose so. For a couple of minutes,” trying not to let on how important those couple of minutes are to me.

Sometimes I think What If, like we used to play when Gina would tuck me into bed when I was little, a tamer version of my mother’s game. My mother would say, ’What If Jack and Jackie hadn’t gone to Texas that day,’ or ’What If your father hadn’t taken the job in the refinery,’ or ’What If I’d had a boy.’ Gina and I would say, ’What If the world were a rainbow,’ or ’What If we could see with our toes,’ or ’What If I were a Pulitzer prize-winning writer.’

What if I were to say to her at one of those times, when we’re close and I’m brushing her satin hair, that I love her and I want to be with her. I would ask her in my sweetest, most sincere voice if she would take me with her to San Diego, or Seattle, or San Francisco or wherever she’d be going to next. Gina is always going somewhere. But I don’t ask and I don’t say. I think she would probably laugh or tell me that I’m silly and then we would be over. I wouldn’t be able to brush her hair anymore.

And there races her smile right through the middle of my daydream. Her teeth are white and straight. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone fortunate enough to have both white and straight teeth. I had braces for two years, from ages twelve to fourteen, (the most horrendous two years of my life), but no matter how long and hard I brush, or even if I were to wear those metal contraptions for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be able to get mine to be nearly that white or straight. I try to smile without opening my mouth but sometimes I forget and I know it’s not at all attractive. How could anyone like looking at my crooked yellow teeth?

My mother yelled to me ten minutes ago to start setting the table. I’ve been avoiding it because in order to do it Gina will have to be out of my sight for at least five minutes. But if I don’t start putting out the place mats soon my mother will continue to roar. And Gina might start suspecting. My mother’s not an extraordinarily observant woman unless you set something right in front of her face. But, Gina ... she could out sleuth Agatha Christie any day, and this isn’t something I want her to know about. If I do decide to tell her it has to be my choice as to how she finds out. After all, it will be a pivotal point in our relationship and it can’t be handled carelessly.

So I sigh, as Gina moves farther out of my vision. I’m not unbearably sad because I know that during dinner I’ll be able to sit across from her and watch her eat. That I have down to a science. I can chew and observe at the same time and no one’s the wiser. I’ve even got the mmm-hmms in place, it’s all a matter of rhythm, so that they think I’m actually listening to their conversation. The last sight I have of Gina are her hands as she spoons the batter into a pan. I can’t help wetting my lips with my tongue. That is going to be a delicious cake.

Dinner is delectable. No surprise. If there’s one thing my mother can do it’s cook, a talent I haven’t managed to pick up yet, and considering I spend as little time with my mother as possible, I doubt I ever will. My mother is shrieking, in what is meant to be a laugh, over one of Gina’s many stories of her travels. My mother thinks Gina is gold. This is the one and only area in which we agree. And I have managed to miss Gina’s tale because I’ve been concentrating, without the appearance of concentrating, on the way Gina’s lips move when she speaks.

Mine is a complex life - to do without appearing to do. So far I’ve been able to accomplish it without getting caught. And it’s going on six years now. Maybe I should be a private detective, hiding in dark alleyways, picking up clues in a person’s expression or mannerism, wearing long overcoats and wide brimmed hats.

My mother snorts, nearly falling off her chair backwards, and I cringe, wondering why my mother can’t act like a mother when I want her to. The only time she acts like what a mother is supposed to act like is when she’s telling me to do something. I don’t think anyone notices my discomfort, or if they do no one says anything and no eyes roll in my direction.

“Tell her ... tell her ...” my mother reels, her eyes shut tight, as she snorts again, unable to continue her sentence, “Tell her about the trip up here ... what you told me ... in the car... and the guy ... in the truck,” shrieking and snorting. Gina smiles, wide, knowingly, and nods. Boy, she has a lot of teeth. And her voice, like velvet, envelops me, not like my mother’s, whose voice cuts sharply through me like after I’ve eaten nachos with too much hot sauce.

Gina came to us nearly a decade ago, to help out when my father was sick, and she stayed with us after he died. Lindsay and Jewel were both away at school and too busy with textbooks to bother with a younger sister or a father who was dying. Gina’s been with us, on and off, ever since. I was only five then, and much to my shame, didn’t want Gina to be here, and I more or less said so. My father was sick in bed most of the time and it didn’t seem fair. Lindsay and Jewel had so much more time with him than I did. Of course, they’re a lot older than me. I realize that now. With me he mostly coughed, spit, and slept. And my mother’s time was taken up with him. I remember her making him tons of soup. I thought if she were to write a book on all the different ways she knew to make soup we’d be rich. When he slept so did she.

But Gina taught me how to color. Most kids don’t do it right. They take the crayon, pressing and scribbling, as hard as they can into the paper. No subtlety. No variety. The only requirement is that the color doesn’t spill over the heavy dark lines. But Gina colors like she bakes. She carefully chooses the shade, perhaps a violet cow or a winter green rose. She’s not afraid to be bold. And the only place she presses hard is on the heavy dark lines, outlining precisely. Then on the rest of the picture she lightly rubs, using the side of the crayon, so that the texture is like soft cardboard and the picture doesn’t jump out at you but smiles and sits quietly instead.

The rain has started. Only lightly. I can barely hear it and probably wouldn’t even know it began except my mother just came in, carrying the seat cushions that decorate our rattan chairs setting on the porch. Her hair frizzes a little when it’s wet.

“Cassandra? Cassandra?!” she yelps. “The rain’s really starting to come down now. And, boy, that wind’s getting strong. I almost got blown over out there. I think we’ve got a storm on our hands. Help me bring in the chairs.” I knew what she was going to say even before I heard the words.

Gina is at Kelly’s, her friend who lives a couple of streets over and lives in a tiny apartment on the roof of a building. It’s five flights up. You get tired walking up all those stairs but it’s worth it. The whole rooftop is her porch. You can see across the lake all the way to the Fairfield’s. Gina took me there a couple of years ago when she was here for Christmas. We made chocolate chip cookies and put M&Ms in them. Kelly had a blue and white cockatiel named Omar. I don’t know if she still has Omar or not. I’ll have to remember to ask Gina. Omar and I talked a lot that night. He was a very vocal bird. And when we were playing What If, Kelly asked me, ‘What If I could fly.’ I thought and thought but I couldn’t think of the answer that would truly express my wishes. So I was stumped.

I wish Gina were here now because she knows how I feel about the rain and she would go out and get the chairs herself. She would even make up some excuse to my mother, that she needed me to do something for her, something believable, to keep me inside the house. Gina doesn’t believe in lying as a practice, only when it’s absolutely necessary.

I stand up slowly, which I know is a mistake because as I do my mother shouts, “Well, come on, Cassandra. Move!” I hate the name Cassandra. It sounds phony, like it doesn’t belong to me. And I’m sure anyone who hears it will say to themselves, ‘Who’s she trying to impress?’

Our porch is one of those old weathered ones you might see in a Hitchcock movie, that was probably sturdy and attractive when it was new, but now the wood boards in the floor and roof are rotting and those that aren’t are missing. My feet are bare. I don’t like wearing shoes. I feel like they constrict my movement. So around the house I almost never do, though in winter I wear socks. They not only keep my feet warm but protect them from the mold and slime that sometimes seeps in through our living room floor when it gets really cold. I know I should put on my shoes, and probably a hat, because our deteriorating porch, even though it has a roof, is not capable of keeping me dry. My mother’s slippers are next to the couch so I try to put them on and run to the front door at the same time, twisting my toes and feet around in all sorts of directions until they fit properly.

Once I make it outside, I try to move as quickly as I can before my mother has a chance to call my name again. I pick up one of the chairs, and wrestle with it. Rattan should be light, but this one, maybe because of its awkward shape is heavier than normal. I try to balance it on my legs, lifting one knee in the air, and my arms, outstretched, are grasping both its sides. But I can’t walk this way. So lifting my knee, the one that’s supporting the bulk of the chair, higher in the air, to give me leverage, I use whatever momentum I can muster to swing the chair up over my head.

As I’m doing this I see a blade of lightning streak through the sky. I’m suspended there, on our porch, wondering what tree it sliced into this time. I count “one-Mississippi ... two-Mississippi ...” As I get to three, thunder rocks the air and I jump, spinning around. I try to see where the chair lands but I can’t because one of my feet came out of its slipper and though I try to get my foot to stay flat and solid, my ankle turns and my foot flip flops. Even rotating my arms backwards and forwards or grasping at the railing can’t keep me from falling. And I know this as I tumble down the stairs.

Dr. Wallace put my arm in a sling and gave me a pair of crutches. They don’t seem to fit quite right though. They’re a little tall for my body so when I use them my upper arms are lifted up in the air, higher than my shoulders. It’s difficult to walk that way. So I don’t. If I have to go anywhere, like to the bathroom, I put part of my weight on the heel of my fractured foot and the rest on furniture that I pass.

The pain isn’t so bad now. The first night the doctor gave me some Demerol. It helped a lot. I could relax and eventually sleep. When it happened I heard the bone crack. I thought it was my leg because that’s what collapsed under me, but it was actually my arm. And I fractured my foot. The doctor explained that that was like chipping a bowl, but it would grow back. I remember feeling stabbing pain, from all over my body, it seemed, shoot simultaneously into my skull. I thought my head would explode.

I’m not sure when Gina got back. It wasn’t long after, I think, because my mother told her to go get Dr. Wallace and he came about twenty minutes or so after my mother had situated me on the couch. Dr. Wallace isn’t our regular doctor but he lives down by the lake, not far from Kelly, and he’s the doctor that people in the town go get in an emergency when, for one reason or another, they can’t make it to the hospital. The hospital is approximately five miles from where we live and we don’t have a car. While the doctor told me long stories about his childhood and wrapped up my arm, my mother was in the kitchen making me chicken noodle soup. Then I took the Demerol, ate the soup, and slept.

Today is Sunday. Yesterday morning it stopped raining, finally. The only thing I like about the rain is the day after. The day-after-it-rains air is always crisp and clear with a few bubbly white clouds in an electric blue sky that goes on endlessly. I can only see its expansion as far as the window in my bedroom will allow, though. I haven’t made it outside yet and will probably be bedridden or house-ridden for at least another week. But my mother says if the weather is still good in a couple of days maybe she can put one of the chairs on the porch for me to sit on, with a step stool, of course, so I can keep my leg elevated. Gina has been good to me, with me almost every minute. But she will be leaving us on Tuesday, heading off on another one of her adventures. I don’t want to think about it because I know I will be very sad. It usually takes me at least a day to recover from her departures when I’m in the best of health.

My mother left a little while ago to do some grocery shopping. She goes once every other Sunday and is usually gone for an hour and a half. Gina offered to go with her to help but she said she wanted Gina to stay with me to keep me company. As soon as she was out the door Gina got the White Zinfandel from the cupboard and the cards from the closet. This is another one of our secret traditions. Wine and gin rummy. Gina wins at gin, and I pretend to get drunk. (I usually don’t drink more than half a glass because I really don’t like the taste of alcohol.)

We’re on our fourth hand. Gina’s got 105 and I’ve got 30. She says to me, “What If you were a rose?” The first thing that comes to mind, what I want to say to her but censor myself again, is that I would plant myself on her doorstep, wind myself around her doorway, just so I could be near her. Instead I say to her that I would make myself grow so tall and pretty and smell so sweet that every person in town would stop to look at me.

I lay the Queen of Spades on top of the discard pile. Darn. That’s my favorite card. I can’t use it but sometimes I just like holding it. I think Gina knows this because almost as fast as I lay it down she sweeps it up.

“I love you, Gina,” I say. She appears to be diligently studying her cards although there’s a smug Cheshire cat grin on her face that I know so well. Then she lays the Queen of Spades back down on top of the discard pile. “Gin,” she says.