To Love Somebody

To Love Somebody

by Octavia Kuransky

“So, you didn’t see that?”

“No, didn’t see anything.” And June, in the passenger seat of the car, interrupted in her day’s make-up ritual, throws her hands in the air forgetting that she still holds an uncapped tube of lipstick in #107 Orange. The colored stick tip drags across the rough, felt cover overhead of the car.

“Guess you don’t see that either?”

“See what?”

“The big orange smear you just drew on my overhead.”

“It’s not bad. No one will notice.” June runs a corrective fingernail around the edge of her lips.

“I have asked you not to eat, drink or put on make-up in my car. You always make a mess. Now look what you’ve done.”   

“Look the little smear will come off.”

“Okay, when ya gonna take care of that?”

“Me? It’s your car.”

“It’s your lipstick.” Like a finger snapping, Jane’s memory flicks to a time before arguments, before possessive pronouns such as yours or mine, a time the sisters used to sway in the wind together.

Only a year apart in age, Jane could remember the two leaving funny notes for one another under rocks in the yard, leaving little crayon drawings on the bureau mirror that the one had left the other a note under a rock in the yard, leaving tiny colored pencil maps on the refrigerator door that the other had left a note on the bureau mirror reporting on a note left under a rock in the yard. Each night, still full of much to say, they whispered on between two cans connected by a rubber band even though they slept in bunk beds separated by a mere three feet. That the girls had different fathers didn’t matter until – when? Jane dates the beginning of the end at the mother’s inexplicable exit one morning punctuated by the two of them waiting for a breakfast that never appeared resulting in a hungry morning at school. June got to finish her term in childhood while Jane became housekeeper and babysitter until the father moved a woman in. It was then that Jane’s presence began a thinning in the household. Once, coming home from school to empty rooms, she discovered her father’s business card with six words scribbled on the back and left next to a bowl of cereal. June auditioning! Hopefully back soon! Love!

The audition referred to a perceived show of some early potential in June as an actor. A dream of success in movies was fed and watered by the new mom’s near hysterical efforts in the development of June’s potential including the funneling of any dollar not allotted to absolute necessities routed to singing lessons, dancing lessons, clothes and expenses towards realizing aspirations for June. Jane made do with a prom frock of repurposed petticoat from the new mom’s wedding outfit and glasses that grew simultaneously progressively expensive but less effective in clarifying the world.

 Regrettably missing from June’s training was the curbing of compulsions and, when she became of age, dating replaced acting as her calling. In time – as nature will take its course in unsupervised hetero contact – her belly began an unexpected expansion while her career goals deflated. Now using the passenger side pull down mirror in the car, June straightened a purple scarf splattered with huge yellow flowers around her neck, artfully arranged to highlight the orange lipstick. (There was always a guy of interest in her one of her endless classes and workshops. After seven fruitless years poured into family efforts on behalf of June’s career, the ongoing goal of these classes was no longer clear except perhaps as scouting grounds for June’s next boyfriend.)

“What difference does it make? It’s only a car.”

Jane’s stomp on the brakes threw a nose reddening burn of rubber into the air and both sisters into the windshield. Jane’s glasses scuttle across the dashboard. “It matters!” Jane yelled into the windshield. “It matters to me!” Oblivious to the blare of horns in protest behind her, she leans over to scream into her sister’s face. “Remember me!” Jane grabs a fistful of her sister’s coiled hair. “I know what you really did with Dad’s money.” she says and pokes June’s now flat stomach.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me!”  

“You’re hurting me! I wanted us to maybe take a trip together. That’s why I got the car. I didn’t need a new car.”

June’s exhalation smells of the newly applied lipstick. “ You’re just mad because I’m talented.”

“You’re not talented.”

“What?”

Jane runs her hands around the circular edge of the steering wheel. It was her first new car. She had read in a book about some sisters taking a trip together, eating hamburgers at truck stops and making promises to one another. True it was a child’s book she had read to June when they were children, but why couldn’t this be? Why couldn’t it be that in this small space, breathing the same air, why couldn’t it be that –   Somehow they had fallen out of sync while an un-named but potent centrifugal force had commenced, commenced and continued to spin faster and faster flinging the sisters into chaos, busting loose the nuts and bolts formerly bonding them, flinging wood and metal splinters from the destruction, pricking and drawing blood. Some found their mark leaving tiny, pointed daggers. When together, they were two walking cacti.  Jane scratched at the orange stain on the overhead.

“You’re not talented. You’re just pretty.”

“You’re just jealous because you’re neither.” Jane’s slap across June’s face snatched both back to opposite sides of the car. A police cruiser was beside them, blue and white lights flashing.

“Move it girlie and I do mean now.” The policeman’s voice blared from his radio.

“Get out of my car.” Jane says.

“Here? Get out here? I’ll be late to class trying to make it from here.” Jane says, a hand to her reddened cheek. A small band of young hoods stand wooden along the sidewalk’s edge on guard for opportunities. “Plus look at that!” June points at the young thugs. “And this traffic! I’ll be mowed down like a dog!” Cars were pull from behind them, obscenities screamed at them as they passed.

“What? I don’t see anything.” Jane’s eyes stretched wide like a doll’s.

The cruiser pulls ahead of them and the officer, out of his vehicle, strides towards them. He slams a fist on the hood and makes a circular motion in the air indicating he wants Jane to lower the window.

“What’s the problem?” He has thick black eyebrows and no lips.

“My sister is trying to kill me.” June leans over to shout at him pointing at her reddened cheek.

“What?” He scans June’s face.

“My sister is trying to kill me! She was trying to force me out of the car so I would get mowed down! Maybe mugged by those hoods over there!” The officer glances over at the little cadre watching the action.

“You!” He snatches Jane’s door open and grabs her by the shoulder. “Out!”

“Wait a minute!” Jane yells back. “Just wait! My glasses!” The cop shoves Jane against the car.

“Yeah, she was trying to get me killed!” Jane yells over the squawking traffic,  “Her boyfriend tried to kiss me and she’s jealous.”

“That so?” the cop says running his hands over Jane’s body. “Any weapons?”

“Look we had an argument. See that orange stripe on the ‒ “ but before Jane could finish the sentence the officer is picked off by a speeding Buick and propelled some dozens of feet into the air, no time to even grunt in pain.

A spray of blood dissipates into a freakish rainbow and paints the car windshield with grotesque abstract art.

“Get in! Get in!” June screams at Jane. Back in the car, she squeals around the first right turn possible, engages the windshield wipers eliminating some of the blood and makes her way to a neighborhood auto wash to remove what remained. The wash attendant notices the red patches. “Whoa! Who’d you kill?” But laughs as he starts the brush action of the machinery. “We’ll see if blood is thicker than water!”

Tiny blood droplets have dried on Jane’s glasses and she holds her glasses outside the driver’s side window to clean them, showers of soap and water drench her, her face, her hair.

“Hey, what the hell!” June says. “I’m getting soaked over here. What are you doing? Throw those ugly things away! You can’t see out of them anyway.” And Jane does toss the glasses into slapping strips of cloth. Now baptized and smelling of car soap disinfectant, she navigates her way back to the scene of the accident. Teeming with police cars, she opts into an alley running perpendicular to the hit and run. The alley is lined on either side with old, red brick.

“Wow. That cop believed me! How about that acting job?”

“This building looks like the back of our old high school.”

“That’s cause it is.”

“Is it still open?”

“No, it’s been closed since forever. What’s wrong with you?”

“What? Since when?”

"Years.”

“I went to prom here.”

“Yeah.”

“Remember when ‒ “

“No I don’t remember. Are you going to get me to class?”

Jane leaned out of the driver’s window trying to find the top of the building but the car roof limits her view.  

 “Okay. You can get out now.”

“What?”

“Out. Get out.”

“Freakin’ freak.” June elbows the door open in the narrow alleyway. Jane can hear the scrape of the metal door of her new car on the brick building. Only inches to spare, it takes June some minutes to manipulate her way out of the car. “I’m out okay? By the way, that boyfriend? He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him. No matter what he says.” She slams the door, then snatches it back open producing a blow of the car door produced a crunching sound from the old brick wall. June leans in to grin at Jane. “That won’t wipe off.” A final slam of the door alerts the little band of opportunists still soldiered up for action and all turn as one towards the car.

A chorus of shouts rises as Jane jets back into the stream of traffic but a near collision with a Volvo appropriates her attention. She is stopped a couple of blocks away and questioned by the police, a square of June’s purple scarf still stuck in the passenger door. The orange smear still lit up the overhead, its unique lipstick perfume still in the air.

“No.” Jane said answering his inquiry. “No. Nothing. I didn’t see anything. There was a lot of traffic. It’s sad isn’t it?” She looks into the setting sun. Then “Is the officer all right? Did he have a family?”