28/03/2022
Fiction Southeast - "Tupelo"
“When I was your age,” my mother tells my daughter, “they made us learn and sing the German national anthem in 4H.” I would think she’s joking—farm kids were singing the Deutschlandlied in central Illinois in 1961?—but she knows all the words.
“Hurry up!” my daughter yells at the bathroom door
“When I was your age,” my mother tells my daughter, “they made us learn and sing the German national anthem in 4H.” I would think she’s joking—farm kids were singing the Deutschlandlied in central Illinois in 1961?—but she knows all the words.
“Hurry up!” my daughter yells at the bathroom door behind which her brother is taking a shower. “I have to piss!”
Her grandmother stops singing to say, “Skeeter, language.” It’s a nickname for my child I’ve never heard before.
My son opens the door wearing only a towel. “I hate that you’re my sister.”
“Ditto,” his twin agrees, pushing past into the steamy hotel room lavatory.
“Take it easy, Jim Rockford,” my mother tells him.
He stares blankly at her.
“What’s with the nicknames, Mom?” I ask.
“Making up for your lapses in parenting.”
*
“They think more,” my son worries to me when we’re alone in the elevator. “Women,” he clarifies. He’s fourteen. His hair is still wet from the shower. “Who’s Jim Rockford?”
In the gift shop we buy granola bars and little bottles of orange juice, a book of crossword puzzles for him, and an issue of Vogue for his sister. I have no idea if my mother would prefer sudoku or the New Yorker. I pick up both.
“Skeeter told me to get tampons,” he says, then snorts. “Skeeter.” He studies the rack of sewing kits and packages that hold two aspirin tablets. “What do tampons look like?”
*
“Oh, I like that, Skeeter,” my mother tells my daughter when I open the door. “‘A gown of pitch and a greatcoat of fire.’”
“Don’t threaten grandma,” I scold mildly.
“We were talking about folktales,” my mother explains. “And before that, we were reliving the moment when you drove into the ditch. Before that, I was telling her how I ended up in Alabama after a happy childhood in Illinois.”
*
“Sorry about grandpa,” my son tells my mother while we eat our granola bars and drink our juice. “And sorry we missed his funeral because of the snow.”
“Thanks, Jim Rockford, but don’t worry too much. Funerals are dull. Your grandfather was an asshole.”
“Language, Mary Tyler Moore,” my daughter says, and grins when her grandmother laughs.
*
Our view is of an empty, snow-covered parking lot across the street from the Hampton Inn in which someone is spinning donuts in a jacked-up F-150. A huge Confederate battle flag flies from a pole in the pickup’s bed.
“I’m abashed,” my son says.
“You’re not using that word correctly,” my daughter tells the window, then adds, “We’re going to die here.”
“Oh, maybe,” my mother says from the room’s one bed. She sounds bored.
“So, what’s living in Tuscaloosa like?” my son asks, trying to make conversation.
“My hope was that when your father grew up, he would leave and never come back. He did and he didn’t. Hope accomplished.”
“So, do you like your job?” is his follow-up.
*
My daughter spots a distant Starbucks from the window. We leave my mother in the room and go to fetch lattes.
“Why didn’t grandma want us to go into her house to p*e when we picked her up?” my son wonders in the parking lot.
“Mary Tyler Moore is a freak is why.” I can tell my daughter’s proud of the nickname.
The snow is deep and even. Dusk is falling slowly upon the strip mall.
“So, how old were you when your parents got divorced?”
“So many questions, Jim Rockford,” his sister says.
Without thinking, I answer, “About your age,” and he flinches.
“My age?”
“Tighten up, Jimmy,” his sister tells him.
The door at Starbucks is locked and the employees wave us away when we rattle it, but the drive-through is open.
“Well sh*t,” my daughter says, and I tell her, “Language, Skeeter.”
My son is staring at the line of SUVs. “Come on,” he says, and we follow him and join the queue on foot. Right after we do, the huge pickup we’d watched from the hotel pulls up behind us, rumbling and farting black exhaust. My boy turns and grins, gives the confused guy behind the wheel two thumbs-up, yells, “I’m Jim Goddamn Rockford!” The guy laughs and waves, and my daughter says, “We really are going to die.”
At the window, the barista taps a hand-lettered sign that reads NO WALK UP’S.
“I refuse to believe that’s corporate policy,” my daughter tells her. “I mean, come on, the apostrophe for one thing.”
My son yells, “I’m a car! Beep beep! Vroom vroom!” He kicks the snow. Behind us the guy in the pickup revs his engine.
“Four venti lattes, please,” my daughter says. “Because he’s a car.”
The barista shakes her head and tells me how much I owe.
On the way back to the hotel Skeeter stops and makes a snowball. Jim Rockford quickly makes his own. Hers hits him in the chest. He laughs and yells, “Asshole!” then hits her in the back with his snowball as she runs away. “You’re the asshole!” she yells over her shoulder.
*
“What’s the thing called they toss the ball into?” my son asks my daughter. “And do they get ten points or twenty when it goes through?”
They’re watching the Pistons and the Pacers on ESPN.
“Are all the guys in yellow shirts on the same team?” she asks him. “Or can they switch sides with the guys in blue shirts?”
My mother is outraged. “How do you not know the rules of basketball?”
“It’s a joke,” I explain.
“Oh, thank god.”
*
In the empty lobby, a woman wearing what appears to be a wig is breathlessly telling lies on Fox News. The remote is sitting beside the flatscreen and there’s no one to complain when I turn off the TV.
I call my wife, safe in Atlanta, and give her an update.
“I know all that, I’ve been getting texts from the kids all day, but they’re saying weird things about Mary Tyler Moore and the Rockford Files. And who’s Skeeter?”
“Nicknames my mom and the kids made up,” I tell her—then realize my mother didn’t give me one. “You feel left out?”
“I wish I were embarrassed to say no,” she says. “It feels almost dirty to be alone. How’s your mom?”
“She told Skeeter my dad was an asshole.”
“True,” she says, “albeit a little harsh, since he’s dead.” I hear what sounds like the noise of a bag of chips being opened. “When will the car be fixed?”
“Tomorrow, hopefully.” I listen to her eat. “Jim Rockford’s worried we’re going to get divorced.”
“Jim Rockford our son or Jim Rockford the TV character?” she asks.
“Not the guy who drove a Firebird and lived in a trailer on the beach.”
“That was a good show. Tell Jim Rockford not to worry.”
*
When I come back to the room, a West Coast NBA game illuminates Mary Tyler Moore, Skeeter, and Jim Rockford. They’re asleep and huddled together under the comforter, in the last king available in Tupelo.
“When I was your age,” my mother tells my daughter, “they made us learn and sing the German national anthem in 4H.” I would think she’s joking—farm kids were singing the Deutschlandlied in central Illinois in 1961?—but she knows all the words. “Hurry up!” my daughter yells at the b...
An Online Literary Journal Dedicated to Short Fiction Fiction Southeast is an online literary journal dedicated to flash fiction.
