Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle Read Free Book Online

same way Hank did was something she would now never know. What she did know is that they spent hours talking about it, and Drew encouraged Hank’s idea to step foot on every battlefield he could. Hank decided to make it part of his birthday, even kept a little scrapbook of it all with postcards and notes: Shiloh at fifty, Gettysburg just last month when he turned sixty-five, lots of little battles Rose had never heard of there in between. She went with him to Gettysburg, an experience she had not been able to shake in the days since, a host of sighs and shadows. She felt that in cemeteries sometimes. A still moment when the wind became language —giving in, giving up, giving —and there were prayers and murmurs, grief and desire all run together in a whooshing sound like the ocean, like ultrasound, the baby’s heart submerged there in the womb, floating peacefully, little dinghy bumping thedock. She was Drew’s dock, and there was, had always been, an invisible line tethering mother to child —a single cry in the dark night and her breasts tightened with a surge, the phantom sensation of milk about to flow even years after when there was nothing there to give.
    She had waited these long weeks to hear Drew’s voice. She thought it would come in a dream. In a word. Now she realized the child’s mother was in the kitchen doorway watching her, and Rose had no idea how long she had been standing there. Monkey bread. She had begun the process without even paying attention, biscuits taken from the roll and dipped in milk, rolled in sugar and cinnamon, tossed in a Bundt pan with butter in between. Hank had promised the child monkey bread and she did what all children do, pictured a loaf shaped like a monkey, long dangling arms or wings and little caps like the ones from The Wizard of Oz she liked to mimic. He explained to her that it got its name because that’s how you eat it, like little monkeys, using your hands to pick and pull. “We’ll act like monkeys,” he promised her and scratched under his arms before catching her up in a big strong hug, something he seemed to have no trouble doing.
    “Drew always wanted me to make that,” she said. “He wanted me to ask you about it.”
    “Really.”
    “He said one of his favorite memories is when you acted like a monkey. And of course the way you let him act like a dog, lickinghis plate and scratching his ear with his foot.” She paused but Rose did not look up. She stared at the biscuits in her hand, damp lumps of dough and sugar. “He said sometimes he gave you commands. Things like shake, roll over, play dead.” They both froze, the word lingering heavy in the air around them. “Drew said y’all laughed all the time. He said he wanted to give me that kind of life.”
    What kind of life? she wanted to ask, starved for the words she was hearing, but instead she said, “I haven’t made this silly bread in years.” She said, “It’s terrible for you, too. Pure sugar and starch.”
    “I found Molly a day care place,” she said. “I’m sorry if she’s been in the way.” Then the child was there, handing her mother a stack of the drawings she had produced through the course of the long day. She held up one where you couldn’t tell Rose’s mouth from her breast but the intention of her focus was clear all the same.
    “Stop it, now,” Drew’s wife said. “Your grandma doesn’t like that.”
    “Here’s her nursers.”
    “Stop it, Molly.”
    “Titties.”
    “Please. We need to go.”
    “No. I want the monkey food.”
    “We’ll come back.”
    “No,” the child screamed. “He said she’d cook it just for me and now she is. And,” she pulled out another piece of paper and waved it in the air, “here’s her big fanny.”
    “That’s it.” Drew’s wife was crying then as she bent and wrestled the squirming child into her arms. “I’ve had it.”
    “It’s okay,” Rose said, watching them, her own chest tight with longing. Drew’s wife was