0 0 0 12B - The Michigan Daily - Literary Magazine - Thursday, March 11, 1999 In Three Minutes By Joe Fletcher The Michigan Daily - Literary Maga2 I want a clean table downtown, where the windows steam with breath and hot milk. And outside the sunlight spilling between build- ings and the man on crutches. And his dog. I want to make sense of the spray paint in the alley behind the restaurant, pause for a cigarette among the milk crates. Above me blossoms spilling out of win- dows, bright beards hanging. I want time: to read, to play the viola, to drive with the windows down, autumn blowing in across my face. There is a lake that will never be re-visited, soft mushrooms bursting in the shade of a cedar forest. And Julio, Julio Cortazar, I will not shake your hand, I will not look into your eyes, which lived, which loved. You were thinking of old friends who sat watching clouds in Sweden, far off. You wondered what they might be saying, if anything. Perhaps you dreamt of a field near Buenos Aires in which a bean harvester rusted among the weeds. Julio, I might never know. I can say that in Ann Arbor it is autumn. Little yellow leaves blow beneath my chair. I have read the poems you wrote and am thinking of you here. READ THE DALY FROM YOUR HOME COMPUTER OR ANYWHERE ELSE YOU MIGHT BE. www.michigandaily.com CLEAN Continued from Page 41 You've been coming here every Sunday for a year. Don't tell me you got lost again." "Not lost, I just got turned around over by the hospital, all those damn one-way streets - what's the matter?" she interrupts herself, as. she's untan- gling her purse from herright arm and noticing me for the first time. "Nothing, what?" I say, deliberately adjusting my face from a shell-shocked to an amused expression. "You just seem funny," she says a bit too directly. "I'm fine," I answer. " I'm just tired. Adam stopped by last night for a little while." "Oh that's good," she says, and this strikes me as a funny way to respond. "I always liked Adam. What's he doing these days?" "Not much really, just working, going to school." Her eyes sort of brighten at the sound of those two words. Before I let her ask anything else, I'm filling her hands with her own Tupperware and a bag of coffee that I get free from the cafe every week. "Did you eat all of that spaghetti?" she asks, looking at the permanent orange grease stain on the plastic. "Yeah," I lie, gathering up my clothes into a basket. "You didn't eat it," she says, and even the words seem to shrug and sigh. "I did," I insist, trying to decide if I'm irritated with her or sorry. "Janine and I had it for dinner twice;' I say, trying to picture my vegetarian roommate swal- lowing a big hunk of tomato-drenched Italian sausage. "See, I told you you guys would eat it," she says, now convinced and more satisfied with the empty bowl in her hands. I shimmy through the door with my laundry basket, retrieve a stray pairof panties from the pitifully balding front lawn and make it all the way to the curb before I feel the look on my mother's face. She's standing in the street, with an enormous smile and a deep red flush creeping into her cheeks -just like my sister when she gets really excited over something. I've never seen it happen to my mother though, and for a second I wonder if she's having a heart attack or going crazy. "What are you smiling at? Where's the car?" I ask, sounding more than a little bit nervous. "Here," she says, motioning to a rusty little Temnpo and jingling a set of keys for verification. "What? Whose car is that?" I ask, thoroughly bewildered. "Yours," she says, and actually gig- gles. "Mine?" "Yours." The car goes blurry as my eyes flood with tears, disappearing and reappear- ing like a mirage as I blink. "Mine? Mom, how?" My mother has a terrible habit of liv- ing beyond her means. She's spent the majority of our lives trying to compen- sate my brother, my sister and I for years of government cheese and using dish soap for shampoo - most of which we didn't notice at all anyway except for her crying as she lathered up our hair. I think about all the things she's bought since she married David and worry that she'll end up in bank- ruptcy again. "Why did you do this, Mom? You can't afford to do this." But now she looks indignant. "Would I have done it if I couldn't afford to?" She asks, and I have to catch myself from mouthing the words as she says them. "Besides, I never spent the money from the Escort we sold when you were sick. It really didn't cost much more than that. You've been doing so well ... Listen, don't take this away from me. It's something I wanted to do." I smear the water from my eyes with the back of my hand to get a better look. It's a sorry little tin can of a car, really. But it's mine - mine to come and go with a sense of independence I can barely remember. Mine. And all I had to do to was keep from getting "sick." I'm crying and petting the hood of the car like it was the nose of some moon-eyed pony. Mom's crying and petting me. She holds my face with both hands, handling me like she's arranging a bouquet or presenting a love-labored strawberry pie to the table. I've spent so much time being grate- ful or sorry lately that I can hardly artic- ulate either anymore. Like the Christmas presents. I mean, on the one hand you can't get upset with someone for giving you Christmas presents. But on the other hand, it was really more than I could take - coming home in April from jail, rehab and the whole bit to a bed full of boxes, wrapped in red and green and Santa-faced paper. Carrying that paper out with the spring- time trash, all I could think of was my mother wrapping socks and underwear (more thermal stuff than any other year) while I was nodding-out on the bath- room floor of the Star Motel. I can't wear it and I can't get rid of it. I don't know what's worse - the sweatshirt with the junkie-burnhole from falling asleep with a lit cigarette, or the K-mart long underwear bought because my mother figured I had or soon would sell my winter coat. Everything I own is broken, stolen, sold, or missing a piece. Or, it's a deliberate replacement and I swear to god sometimes that's worse. "You just have to promise me two things," Mom says, smoothing my hair away from my face and off my neck. "Promise me," she says, now staring at the sidewalk, "promise that you'll wear your seatbelt. And promise ..." My eyes beg her not to say it. "Well, just one thing I guess. Just promise me that one. And don't smoke in it. There, that's two." 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