Spring
Annie knew she knew the man who walked up to her while she was sitting on her porch but she asked him what his name was anyhow. He was tall and thin with big ears, a big nose and a lined face. She almost told him that his jeans fit well. She remembered how Jerry’s jeans had fit, before his back went out and he got COPD, and how Hot John’s jeans had fit, in ninth grade.
I’m Sammy Korda, the man said. The owner of the park. Same as I was last week.
A mosquito bit the back of her neck and she slapped it. Whack. Marylove sat next to her with her feet flat on the floor and her knees six inches apart. Marylove’s face was round, covered in pimples and, when she smiled, beatific. She was on the good meds today. She had not hit or kicked Annie since – Annie tried to remember – Wednesday.
Where Mike, Marylove shouted.
Mike is over there, Sammy said. He pointed to the other end of the park. Annie wasn’t sure if they called this kind of land a park because you parked trailers on it, or because the trailers came here to play. Her trailer was quite big. She couldn’t imagine hooking it up behind a truck.
He’s digging a ditch, Sammy said. Do you want to see him?
I don’t remember things so good anymore, Annie told the man. She tried to think of something she couldn’t remember, but the man spoke first.
I am sorry to hear that, he said. Do you know when it started?
Things popped into Annie’s mind when they popped, but remembering something you wanted to remember was like picking up a grain of salt in the winter wearing gloves, when your hands were numb. Your fingers didn’t do what you wanted them to do, the salt was slippery, it dissolved once you pinched it, and you couldn’t feel it through the gloves, anyway.
Some time ago, Annie said.
Is Mike your boyfriend, the man asked Marylove. He smiled with his lips but his eyes were covered by shades. Marylove beamed and said, Hee, hee. The man stood and cleared his throat. In one hand, he held a clipboard face-out, braced against his hip. Did he have a divot on the side where his stomach met his hip, like Jerry did, Annie wondered? When Jerry was alive, she could look at that all day. Next to, you know, the dick. The paper on the clipboard must be sweaty by now, she thought. When he spoke, she jumped a tiny bit.
Do you know who has title to this home, the man asked.
Pull this down, Annie told Marylove. She reached over and pulled the Loony Tunes tee shirt over a fold in Marylove’s belly. The flesh was white, soft and lumpy.
Sammy, Annie thought. Is that his name? I’m not sure, she said to the man. After I bought the home from you, Marylove’s mother had me sign a bunch of paperwork. I don’t know if I signed it over then.
Is she your daughter, the man asked. Her mother, I mean. He pointed at Marylove.
Daughter-in-law, Annie said.
We’re doing an inventory, the man said. Trying to get our arms around who owns what.
Where Mike, Marylove shouted.
Over there, the man said and pointed. Digging a ditch.
I used to work with people who had dementia, Annie told the man. It’s not the same when it’s you.
She remembered the people at Samaritan. One man would ask her at eleven o’clock, noon, one, two and three and every ten minutes in between if he had eaten. A woman asked her her name each time they met. Another smeared the walls with shit. The man in front of her took off his ballcap and passed his hand over his head. The top of his skull had barely peach fuzz on it, but the sides were covered in thicker fuzz. She wondered what it would feel like to do that with her own hand. It would probably be warm, hard and fuzzy.
You seem fine, the man said. I would not have guessed it.
It’s different if it’s you who loses your memory, she said.
It’s like it’s from the inside out, the man said.
Yes.
It’s a beautiful day, he said. The first good day of the year.
Mud season, she said.
And mosquitoes.
The man’s feet squelched a bit as he shifted. She thought he looked like Hot John grown old.
Does she live with you, he asked. He pointed to Marylove.
Most of the time, Annie said. She loves her aunt.
Marylove looked at Annie and then at the man, and beamed.
Do you have the paperwork, the man asked. We do need to figure this out.
I have it in there, she said. She pointed toward the door to the home. She had not bothered to pick anything up off the floor for a year or two. She had cleared paths for her and Marylove to navigate from the kitchen area to the bedroom to the bathroom to the laundry nook. Next to the paths, stuff towered hip-deep. Yesterday, she had found five large boxes of face-masks on a pile near the washer. The day before, three cans of crushed tomatoes in the bathroom sink. A pile of Loony Tunes sweatshirts next to the bed grew and contracted as Marylove took from it and added to it. Finding a piece of paper in there, she thought, would be like feeling inside your head for a grain of salt.
Where’s her mother, the man asked.
Where she, Marylove said.
She said she’d come later today, Annie said.
Maybe she’d have the paperwork, the man said.
Whenever Annie tried to ask Marybeth about the papers, she thought, it slipped her mind before the words got out. Then, she started to think about other things. Marybeth seemed OK with that.
The man squinted at her as he spoke and held his hand over his eyes like a visor. It was, truly, a beautiful day.
I didn’t think this would happen to me at this age, Annie said.
What’s that – twenty-two, the man said.
Hah-hah, no, Annie said. Sixty-seven.
I am sixty-one, the man said. It sucks.
Where Mike, Marylove said.
You’ll need to figure something out, the man said. I mean, something’s gotta give, some time. He looked at Annie and then at Marylove.
I know, Annie said.
Annie looked at the pole barn across the road and at a small plane flying overhead. The roof on the pole barn was metal, red and new, but the siding was rotted. A few clouds scudded. A breeze made her turn her collar up.
Mike calls your home Chicken Ranch, the man said.
Annie heard the syllables first. Then, she understood chicken and ranch. Then, she thought it was strange that he had put the two together.
Sorry, she said. What?
Because it’s just women who live here, the man said. You, Marylove. Your daughter-in-law.
My daughter-in-law doesn’t live here, Annie said. She wasn’t sure what the man was at.
What happens in Ogdensburg, the man said – stays in Ogdensburg.
What is your name again, she asked.
Sammy Korda, the man said. Same as it’s always been.
Summer
Not ten feet from the porch, a large man with a buzz cut and one ear bigger than the other sat in an excavator digging a hole. In the pit, another man stood, directing the bucket and scraping dirt from the sides of the hole. The man in the pit was tall and thin, with large ears and a lined face.
Mike, Marylove shouted. She beamed at the man in the excavator.
Hi, Marylove, the man in the excavator said.
We’re digging you a swimming pool, the man in the pit said. For the chicken ranch.
The man lifted a spade full of chocolate-colored water and let it swoosh back into the pit. When Annie craned to see over the lip of the hole, she saw that he was wearing shorts and high muck boots. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she laughed when he said swimming pool, chicken and ranch.
Mike, Marylove shouted again. I love you!
Something bit Annie on the arm, so she slapped it. A horsefly buzzed in front of her face, past her ear, and out past the threshold of the porch. She watched it soar across the road and settle on the ridge of the pole-barn roof. Then, it lifted one wing and dug its beak under the wing to preen. When it was done with that, it stood on its hind legs and flapped its wings wide for everyone to see, as if it were on a dollar bill. She lifted the buttons on her shirt and pulled them back and forth to make some wind for the sweat that was running down her front. She picked up a napkin, reached over and wiped a bead of sweat off of Marylove’s face. Marylove flinched, then beamed. Mike, in the excavator, took his ballcap off and wiped his face.
You’re not really digging us a swimming pool, she told the man in the ditch. He was out of the ditch now, standing in front of her.
Nope, he said.
What’s your name?
Sammy Korda, he said. Same as last time you asked.
Mike, Marylove said.
Mike replaced the ballcap and waved to Marylove. He was large, bearded and smiling. Annie remembered him now. He was the guy who worked in the park. Marylove liked him because he looked like a bear and he fixed things.
Your sill-plate, Sammy said. He beckoned to Annie and pointed at the bottom of the porch. She bent over the rail and looked at what he was looking at. The two-by-six board that ran between the porch joists was rotting out. The man pinched a section off, rubbed it between his fingers and let the dust scatter. The planks above the rotted sill-plate sagged.
You need to take care of that, he said. It supports the whole deck.
I never saw that, she said.
Shit, he said, and pulled his foot away from something she didn’t see. The grass twitched in the and then stopped. That’s the kind of thing you can only see out of the corner of your eye, she thought. Snakes.
You have woodchucks, too, the man said.
How do you know that, she asked.
The man pointed toward a large hole next to a pile of dirt beside the skirting to her home. They can burrow under your foundation, he said. They are insidious.
I have heard that they have whole villages underground, Annie said. She thought of a woodchuck city. After the woodchuck passed through a narrow entry, she thought, the passage would broaden. There would be a nursery, a dining-hall, living quarters. Maybe even an opera house and a church. A bank, a supermarket, bars, restaurants, hospitals, and what her mother called a house of ill repute. When we see a woodchuck hole, she thought, we see a dirt tunnel. They see tile-lined, vaulted ceilings. The man stood up, squared with her and cleared his throat.
The title to your home, the man said. We really do need to clear that up.
Sorry – what, she said. She looked across the road, but the horsefly was no longer perched on top of the pole barn. Maybe it had flown south, or north, or wherever horseflies migrate to in the summer. Books had titles, she thought. Not trailers.
Who owns the home, the man asked. You, or your daughter in law?
Through the gloves, she tried to remember. The absence of a void. Trying to move a limb that was no longer there.
I asked her, Annie said. The man in the excavator lifted a bucket full of dirt and swung the arm over to dump it. Before the dirt fell, chocolate water. The excavator is like an arm, she thought. There is a shoulder, an elbow and a wrist. Learning to use it must be like learning to use your arm for the first time. Forgetting how to use it must be like, well, forgetting.
And, the man said. What did she say?
She said she would look, Annie said. She said she did not have the papers with her then.
When was that?
Oh, I don’t remember.
Can you follow up with her, the man said. It’s important.
It is a terrible day, she said. I hate this weather. She pinched the front of her shirt and fanned the sweat underneath.
Yes, it is, the man said.
What did you say your name was, she asked the man.
Sammy Korda, he said. Same as it was this morning.
Fall
Annie did not remember how she had left the home and seated herself on the porch. It felt like she had been born there. She remembered her husband, Jerry. His hands were hard – he had built log-homes for guys who lived in new Jersey – and his eyes were blue. He was usually gone by early morning, but sometimes they would lie in bed until after it got light. Once, she remembered, a beam of light had shone through the keyhole to their bedroom and projected the scene across the way – the pole barn, the neighbor’s house, a ride-on-top lawn tractor – upside down onto the wall at the top of their bed. She had nudged Jerry to show it to him, but he had grunted and rolled over. After five minutes, the angle of the beam shifted and the projection disappeared.
In ninth grade, she remembered, there had been a boy named Hot John. He had hair that flipped over his eyes and his jeans fit well. Neither she nor any of her friends worked up the courage to speak with him. At the end of the year, his family moved.
Where did they move to, she asked herself.
Oregon, she told herself. Only they pronounced it aw-ri-gun.
Next to her, now, a large woman with short hair and a round, red-spotted face sat, wearing jeans and a Loony Tunes sweatshirt. She sat with her feet flat on the ground and her knees four to six inches apart.
Where Mike, the woman asked a man standing at the foot of the porch, outside the railing. The man had a wrinkled face and big ears. He was wearing a slick-looking tee shirt and tan, jean-like pants with a patch for a tape measure on the pocket.
How old is she, the man asked Annie.
Marylove, Annie thought. Of course I wasn’t born here. She was wearing slacks, crocs, a tee shirt and a light sweatshirt. They were not dirty, so she must have put them on this morning. The air was dry and cool. The sky looked bluer than she could remember.
She is thirty, she told the man.
It must be like having a four-year-old, the man said.
Oh, yeah, Annie said. Except when she hits and bites.
She is big, the man said.
Yup.
The man looked toward the pole barn and shifted the clipboard in his hand.
What’s your name, she asked him.
Sammy Korda, the man said. At least – that’s what it’s been since I was born.
I knew that, Annie said.
Where Mike, Marylove said.
The man looked at something underneath Annie’s feet. He wrinkled his nose then wrinkled his brow.
You need to take care of this sill-plate, he said. He pinched off some rotten wood and ground it between his thumb and forefinger. It will collapse if you don’t.
I will do that, Annie said.
Marylove began to pull her sweatshirt and her tee shirt over her head. Stop that, Annie told her. Marylove pulled her shirts back down, over her shoulders to her waist.
The home, the man said. I am sorry to keep bothering you, but we really do need to make sense of this. Do you own it, or does your sister in law?
You are not bothering me, Annie said.
Could you ask her, he said. Please?
Of course.
I always like coming by chicken ranch, the man said.
What is your name, again, Annie asked him.
Sammy, the man said. Sammy Korda.
Winter
The cold made Annie remember things better. Not well, but better. It was strange, she thought. The gloves you wear when it gets really cold should make it harder, not easier, to grab the salt, but things work the way they work. Once, Jerry had fallen through the ice on the creek next to the park. He had run the quarter-mile back to the home and she had had to take off his clothes for him. When they got in bed, she held his feet, and then his hands, next to her stomach to warm them up.
Through the open door, inside the home, Marylove shouted Aaaa. Annie heard a dish break, then a cup, then another dish. She remembered that she had put her hand on Marylove’s shoulder and Marylove had kicked her in the shins. Then, she had hit her on the shoulders, breasts and stomach. When she grabbed Marylove’s hand, Marylove had taken her hand, placed the index finger in her mouth, and bit. To get her to release her finger, Annie had stomped on Marylove’s instep.
Sometimes the meds don’t work, she thought. She took some snow from the porch railing and put it around her index finger. It was barely three o’clock and already getting dark. She could barely see the pole barn. Her finger stung and then froze. After five minutes, it began to get numb.
A man walked by on snowshoes and poles. He waved and said, Hi.
Hi, she said.
I’m Sammy, he said. He took off a glove, put a finger against one nostril, and blew the snot out of the other onto the snow. He took off the other glove and repeated the process on the other side.
Oh, she said.
Fucken cold, he said.
Yes, it is, she said.
I have spoken with your daughter in law, he said.
Oh, she said.
She remembered the first time Marylove had come to her home. It was soon after Jerry had died and Marylove was just five years old. She had not wanted to get out of the car when her mother had dropped her off. Then, Annie had made her ice cream. Marylove had licked the dasher and eaten the whole bowl except one scoop that Annie saved for herself. They had slept in the same bed that night and Annie had made her waffles for breakfast. Marylove did not look Annie in the eye – she did not look anyone in the eye – but she followed Annie around and, whenever Annie sat, she would sit next to her. When her mother showed up to take her home, Marylove hid and grabbed the door jamb.
I’m really sorry, the man said.
A drop of snot that he had missed when he blew his nose hung like a Christmas tree ornament.
You should find someplace to put her, the man said. Like I said, something’s gotta give.
Oh, yes, Annie said.
Fucken cold, the man said.
Annie thought of the glove, the grain of salt, and Jerry’s feet. In the now-dark, she could barely see the man. She did not know why he had used the F-word, and she did not like it. Very cold, she said. I do not remember it having been colder.
Spring
I was not always named Sammy, the man standing in front of her said. For a short period of time, I was just a baby. Then, my parents named me.
Oh, Annie said.
I was just, you know, baby during that window, the man said. Unanchored. It might have been an hour, it might have been for a day. I don’t know how long it was. I never asked the responsible parties the details, and they are dead now.
You call my home ranch dressing, Annie told the man.
Not anymore, he said.
Annie looked to her right. A woman sat there usually. A big baby, with a fat face and a Loony Tunes sweatshirt. The chair was empty now. When she reached her hand to the space the woman had occupied, it passed through it like nothing at all.
The man was eating an apple. When he got to the core, he threw it toward the road, as if it were a baseball. A robin joined the arc of the core and flew toward the pole barn. The robin landed on the ridge of the pole barn roof and was joined by another robin, and then another and another. Feathers covered every inch of the metal. The chirping drowned out most voices.
I must not have been, you know, circumcised at the time, the man said. I imagine that I was just a baby, nameless, in the shape that I was born.
Annie felt clumping on the porch next to her. The sound of the birds cut out and she heard clumping, too. Men were walking in and out of the home carrying boxes. Two guys stood sideways to carry a chest of drawers, with the drawers removed, through the doorway. Another two carried half a metal bedframe. It was the men’s boots that were making the clumping sound. Hard, scuffed boots with hard toes and heels.
Careful, she said. That part of the porch sags.
Do you know the place where your daughter in law will take you, the man asked.
I do not believe I do, Annie said.
She felt a pair of hands under one armpit and then another under the other. When she looked down, she saw two pairs of boots.
Sammy, she said. I have met you before. Your name is Sammy.
Yes it is, the man said. That’s very good, that you remembered it.
A porch-board tripped her up. The hands underneath her armpits held her. She saw that the man on her right had a beard and a buzz cut. He had a kind, goofy face and one ear was bigger than the other.
It’s a good name, she said. You should hold on to it.
The sun was brighter and higher than she remembered it having been, and mosquitoes buzzed around her head like an atom cloud. As the men lifted her over the steps, the mosquito cloud detached itself from her head and buzzed across the street. It briefly blocked out the sun, and then engulfed the pole barn. That was the last thing she saw as they drove away.
