Trapped Read Free

fine.
    And she was. From that day on Kelly got better. Little by
    little, day by day, every test showed she was going into remis-
    sion. Eventually, on that marvelous ninth birthday, that won-
    derful wonderful birthday, all the blood work, all the scans
    showed her cancer-free. I thanked God, I thanked the doctors
    and the nurses, but mostly I thanked Kelly, because she’s the
    one who never gave up, who never let the disease take over.
    Anyhow, so that’s my state of mind. We live in the house
    in Valley Stream I inherited from my mom, the one she
    bought after she and my dad divorced. A divorce I always
    figured was partly my fault. All the stress I caused for them
    when I was Kelly’s age. Guilt, guilt, guilt. The mortgage
    happened when Mom needed money for a hospice. I told
    her—promised her—I wouldn’t put a mortgage on the house,
    that was her gift to me and Kelly, but what can you do?
    My dad, a New York state trooper, he used to have a saying
    when he was about to deal with something important: I’m
    loaded for bear. Well, I thought I was loaded for bear, or at
    least loaded for Kelly. But when she finally did come home
    what did her mother do?
    Mom burst into tears.
    Because Kelly is smiling that impish smile, the one she
    first learned moments after being born. That smile I hadn’t
    20
    Chris Jordan
    seen for a while, not directed at me. A smile that breaks my
    heart because I miss it so.
    “Mom? Why are you crying? Did something happen?”
    I’m shaking my head. Can’t get the words out so I point
    to my lips, and then to her.
    “You want to talk,” Kelly says. “Sure, yeah. You saw me
    on the bike. It was really dumb, me not wearing a helmet. I
    know that and I’m sorry. Seth was wearing his helmet, did
    you notice? He gave me a hard time, said it was so retarded,
    not wearing protection for your brainpan. Isn’t it weird he’d
    say ‘brainpan’? But that’s Seth. And the tattoo, Mom?”
    Kelly swings around, lifts her little midi-blouse.
    “It’s a fake. Body art. Got it at this place in Long Beach,
    on the boardwalk.”
    I wipe my eyes, blow my nose, very nearly speechless.
    “Oh, Kelly.”
    My daughter plunks herself on the stool next to me. With
    her amazing eyes and her amazing smile, she looks five going
    on twenty. “You’ve got to get over this worry thing, Mom.
    I’m okay. Really. The helmet? Won’t happen again.”
    “People get killed on motorcycles,” I respond, my voice
    husky.
    “Yeah, they do. They get killed by lightning, too. And by
    worrying themselves to death.”
    “Who’s Seth?”
    Kelly looks at her fingernails. “You’re going to ground me,
    right?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Then I better go to my room,” she says, and flounces
    away, as if it’s fun to be grounded. As if being grounded was
    her idea.
    She stops on the stairway, looking back at me in the kitchen.
    Trapped
    21
    “Don’t worry, okay?” she says. “There’s just totally no
    reason to worry about me.”
    But there is. Big-time. And, as it turns out, for a much
    bigger reason than I ever imagined.
    3. Man Of Steel
    The thing about a turkey buzzard is that it looks really ugly
    perched on a branch or hopping around next to roadkill. Looks
    less like a bird, more like feathered hyena with hunched shoul-
    ders and a hooked nose. But let the ungainly critter soar and
    it becomes unspeakably beautiful, rising on big and glorious
    wings. What an amazing transformation, from a hideous bag
    of cackling bones to an elegant dark angel, circling in the
    noonday sun.
    Ricky Lang envies the buzzard. He’s sprawled on the
    trunk lid of his BMW 760i, the twelve-cylinder sedan, staring
    up into the blinding blue sky. What he wants, what he really
    and truly wants at this very moment is to be that buzzard.
    Riding the updraft without effort, just the slightest wind-
    ripple of white feathers marking the edge of his great black
    wings. White feathers like daubs of ceremonial paint. Not as
    valuable or