Living the Dream

                                   (Continued from West, This is It, and The Story of Everything.)

Jennifer closed the fence behind her and slipped into the alley, which was empty except for her neighbor’s trash can. She clapped her smokes against her grease-stained palm, then opened the pack and lit one.

The trash can was overflowing, oily pizza boxes staging their escape. She looked up at the house with its worn yellow paint and under-performing AC unit. Underwhelming as all get out. A rat torpedoed out from under the can.

“Shit!”

She jolted back against the fence as the rat took off.

She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hide her smoking habit by skulking in alleys with rats. Brooklyn was almost three, and she was starting to develop what Jennifer’s brother called “spidey sense.”

“You can’t say shit around her, Jen!” he’d said. “Like, she knows which words are bad. She won’t repeat any nice stuff I teach her!”

“What, all those SAT vocabulary words?” she’d jabbed.

But her brother was right--Brooklyn absorbed everything. Jennifer didn’t need anyone else judging her, especially her daughter.

Her back pocket vibrated. Shelly.

Can you work 4 me tomorrow? Btw Dena’s fuel pump came in.

Jennifer visualized the tally she kept in her head.

Did she owe Shelly a favor? Shelly helped her study for their last test. But then Jennifer had bought Shelly a sub sandwich when she didn’t have cash two weeks ago. But Shelly had lent her a fake ID on Friday…

Jennifer hated her mind’s tendency towards transactions. But she couldn’t stop it. When the tally was complete, Jennifer texted her friend back:

Yeah, I got you.

She ground her cigarette out with the heel of her work boot and went back inside.

“I’ve got to fill in for somebody tomorrow. Can you keep Brooklyn?”

A timer beeped, and Jennifer’s mom bent to pull a casserole from the oven.

“What else would I be doing?”

“Mommy!” Brooklyn shrieked from the living room floor.

“You should go play with her now, at least. You’re gone all the damn time.”

“Mom, seriously? I’m in school literally every day, and I’m lucky Chuck can pay me for the extra time at the shop. I am trying as hard as I can to get out of your house and give Brooklyn a good life.”

“By being a mechanic,” her mom muttered, pouring an envelope of lemonade mix into a plastic pitcher.

“I am not having this fight again, Mom! Jesus.”

“Jesus!” Brooklyn said, swinging a My Little Pony around by its tail.

“Don’t throw that!” Jennifer said, at the same time as her mother spat, “Don’t say that!”

The pink pony flew over Brooklyn’s head in an impressive arc, then collided with a lamp, which rocked a few times before settling flat on its base, its shade askew.

“Brooklyn!” Jennifer scolded, scooping the child up on her hip. Brooklyn, knowing she was in trouble, began to wail.

“I just think you’re better than your current choices, that’s all,” Jennifer’s mother said, raising her voice. “You could have stayed in college. Gotten a real degree. A real job.”

“Do you see this dirt under my fingernails? It doesn’t get much more real than that.”

Jennifer swung Brooklyn around to her other hip and bounded through the front door.

Brooklyn cried louder.

“Will you just be quiet!?”

She set the toddler down on the dried-up grass of her mother’s front yard.

“I’m--hungry!” Brooklyn gulped between wails.

Jennifer threw her head back. She understood why all those people in movies screamed at the sky. Her brain reeled.

Better than her current choices! My current choices, she thought, are just what comes after my past choices! Sometimes you don’t exactly get a choice.

Jennifer had graduated from high school before getting pregnant. She would always give herself credit for that. She’d spent a semester at University of Texas at Austin, living in a dorm and everything. She took pottery and psychology and played intramural flag football. And she hadn’t been irresponsible. Which, she knew, maybe wasn’t the same thing as being responsible.

The rest of the scenario was so predictable it was embarrassing. She started puking over Christmas break. She did the shop-of-shame for a pregnancy test. Her boyfriend got spooked and peaced out. She moved back in with her mom. She dropped out. She craved Doritos and watermelon and maybe still smoked on the sly, even though she knew it was bad for the baby. She went into labor and cried because Brooklyn would never know her father. Her mom pushed her sweaty, pink hair back from her forehead and said, “This baby is going to have more love than it even knows what to do with.”

And she did love Brooklyn. Of course she did. But Brooklyn wasn’t going to make her drop out of the rest of her life.

Her phone rang.

“What?” Jennifer snapped.

“Oh, wow. Is this a bad time? Sorry. It’s Dena?”

Jennifer let go of a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Dena! Sorry. No, it’s cool. Hey, the RV part came in.”

“Hell, yes. That’s awesome. When can you install it? Chris wants to make it to Santa Fe by day after tomorrow. If that’s possible, I mean.”

Santa fucking Fe. Dena had no idea how good she had it.

                                                                                                      ***

The Chinook whined for a second when Chris cranked the ignition, then heaved to life. Dena and Jennifer sprung into a spontaneous victory dance, swinging each other around like some sort of western do-si-do.

“You fixed it! It works!” Dena laughed.

“No big,” Jennifer said. “I better get an A in this course, is all I’m saying.”

Chuck, Jennifer’s instructor, just grinned and shook his head, pacing back into the garage.

Inside the RV, Chris was posing for an on-the-road-again Instagram selfie.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Dena said.

“Shoot,” said Jennifer.

“I don’t mean to be all weird and serious, but like--how did you find this place? How did you know you wanted to be a mechanic? You and Shelly and everybody--you guys are kind of living the dream.”

Jennifer looked at Dena--Dena, who was everything she had set out to become. Educated and untethered and adored.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said, fumbling in her pocket for her cigarettes. “I think it’s only a dream until it’s yours.”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Cool

It was that point in winter when the snow drifts started blocking the view at intersections. In the car on the way home from school, Rocko’s mom cranked the heater up full blast and rolled the windows down. She craned her neck to check for cars, then turned onto their street.

Rocko jammed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“No.”

Rocko was already out of the car before his mom cut the ignition. He had shit to do, and it didn’t involve shoveling snow or checking on Mrs. Gotwalls next door or having an afternoon snack while he caught his mom up on high school happenings.

Down in the basement, he colored the white rubber toe of his Converse sneaker with a black Sharpie while he waited for the dial up to connect.

On AIM, sn0wbunny86’s away message, purple comic sans with little asterisk accents, told Rocko she was just waiting for someone to sign on:

and if this is what it takes / just to lie with my mistakes / and live with what i did to you /
all the heIl i put you through / i always catch the clock / it's 11:11/ and now you want to talk

He wasn’t going to play into what she wanted just yet. Rocko finished coloring in his shoe.

There it was.

sn0wbunny86: hey

He waited a few seconds. He wouldn’t want her to think him overeager.

sn0wbunny86: whats up?

Okay, now.

orockorocko: nm
sn0wbunny86: school sucked today
orockorocko: completely
sn0wbunny86: i’m so tired!!
orockorocko: yeah
sn0wbunny86: are you tired
orockorocko: i slept in english
sn0wbunny86: lol!! you always get away with stuff

Rocko waved the uncapped Sharpie under his nose and sniffed three times, almost as a joke. He capped the Sharpie and tried to spin it over his thumb like the debate kids. It torpedoed onto the floor behind the desk chair. Next he fiddled with the bent cigarette he’d bummed from some goth kid at school. Rocko didn’t even have a lighter. He’d have to work on that.

orockorocko: not as much as you do lol

Sn0wbunny86 had two classes with Rocko. She lived three blocks away in the same subdivision, Tregaron Oaks III, which sprung up after the identical houses in Tregaron Oaks II had devolved mostly to rentals. Sn0wbunny86’s real name was Heather.

When people asked whether they were together, Rocko shrugged it off. “Whatever,” he’d say. “We’re just friends.”

Heather wasn’t exactly beautiful. She looked like all the other girls in Nebraska. Freckly nose, stringy brown hair, no makeup. Skinny legs and a little bit of a pudge, which she hid under her knockoff North Face.

Nothing physical had happened between them yet. Heather’s parents had a strange no-boys-in-the-house policy, and Rocko’s parents weren’t much better, frantically worrying that his “bad attitude” would send him down the slippery slope of marijuana like his cousin Josh. His parents liked him busy, preferably at church.

But parental paranoia didn’t prevent Heather from stirring up enough tension as sn0wbunny86 to prompt hours of analysis. Heather rehashed everything with her best friend Kristen. When Rocko said she “wasn’t not good looking” what did that mean? Why couldn’t she get him to reveal his feelings on AIM? She even logged in with Kristen’s screen name trying to prompt Rocko to say he liked her, but he didn’t budge.

And yet, they IM’d until 3 AM most nights, continuing their are-we/aren’t-we dance, unless Rocko’s mom saw the light squinting from the basement door and shut the whole operation down, because it’s a school night and what were you even thinking?

sn0wbunny86: i only get away with stuff with you ;)
orockorocko: yeah…lol
sn0wbunny86: soooooooo what are u doing tonight?

Rocko took a deep breath. The pixels in the computer screen were starting to look a little 3D, like a magic eye he’d stared at for too long.

orockorocko: i’m gonna come see you

At the bottom of the IM window, the “sn0wbunny86 is typing…” message flickered on and off like a twitchy light bulb.

A good three minutes. Then her response appeared.

sn0wbunny86: where

All that for one word? Rocko hoped she was anxious, too.

orockorocko: the park. across from the miller’s house
sn0wbunny86: u sure? ummm what time?
orockorocko: 1 AM. i g2g, mom needs the phone
sn0wbunny86: wait hang on
orockorocko: just be there

He signed off. Tilting the desk chair back onto two legs, Rocko reached for the Sharpie on the floor.

His mom opened the basement door.

“You’re going to ruin that chair or crack your head open. Your choice!” his mom called.

“Okay, Mom.”

After dinner, Rocko made a big show of dragging his eight million pound book bag up the stairs to “work on homework.” At ten thirty, wearing pajama pants, he made another show of going to the kitchen for milk and being “really wiped out.” At twelve fifty, Rocko sneaked out the sliding glass door and into the yard.

It was snowing, and the street lamps glowed hazy overhead.

Heather stood on the corner by the Miller’s. She’d brought her family’s dog, Lucky. Good excuse if she got caught.

Rocko reached into the pocket of his hoodie and ran his fingers over his stash. Matches. Cigarette. Spearmint gum, just in case. Sharpie, for some reason.

“I’ve never snuck out before,” Heather tittered.

“I know,” Rocko said.

“Have you?”

“I don’t remember,” Rocko said.

He hadn’t. He hadn’t done anything. He’d never done anything. He’d always been supervised and chauffeured around—jailed. He knew all his friends were probably lying about how far they’d gotten with girls, about the one time their brother bought them beer, but surely something was supposed to happen eventually.

He struck a match and lit the cigarette like he’d seen people do at school, shielding the flame from the falling snow.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Heather said.

“I mean, sometimes,” Rocko said, trying not to choke.

“Cool,” Heather said. “Can I try it?”

Rocko passed her the cigarette. She held it formally, as if she were clenching a peace sign. She took a drag, letting the smoke drift back out into the freezing air, then passed it back.

“Sorry if I got chapstick on the end,” Heather said. “You know…it’s almost like we’ve kissed now.”

Rocko looked for lip prints on the cigarette paper. He didn’t see anything.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”




Photograph By: Yanbo Tang
Written By: Dot Dannenberg