32
2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
“I know. I quit, too. All the money we’re saving on health insurance, we’re gonna put it toward a couples spa day if – when – we make it to the New Year.” “I told him I never smoked as far as Blue Cross knows, but he didn’t listen,” said Wanda, like Blake was a kid with a big imagination. “She won’t be so wrapped up in these technicalities once she’s in a mineral soak with cucumber slices on both her eyeballs,” said Blake, rubbing Wanda’s thigh. I looked away. “So,” he said. “Can you believe it? A white Christmas.” I always forgot he was from Arizona, hadn’t seen snow til he moved to Pennsylvania two decades ago.
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
“It’s actually supposed to be record warm tomorrow,” said Wanda. “It’ll probably melt as soon as it stops. Might hit low fifties in the afternoon. This way the ice will melt before Meredith and me have to get on the roads for dress shopping.” “How about that,” said Blake. “You know what I say – ” Wanda and Blake spoke the words in unison, beaming: “Everything happens for a reason.” This had been their anthem ever since they met a year and a half before, when a holiday bonus sent Wanda back to the plastic surgeon who had done her original reconstruction. She’d been burned almost to death as an eight-year-old when her seersucker Oshkosh party dress caught B LA KE LIKED TO D R O P T H E OL D “EVERY THI NG on fire at a church bonfire. It had HA P P E N S FO R A R E AS O N, ” A ND EX PL A I N HOW eventually made IN A WAY, H E R ACCI D E N T HA D BROU GHT her one of those women – a pitied TH E M TOG E T H E R , AL L T H E S E Y EA RS L ATE R. wife – for the two decades she spent with my father, who made her keep covered up, wouldn’t let her jog in tank tops, til he finally left her when I was in high school. The same day she went in for her procedure, she met Blake in the parking lot of the medical office park: he was getting a consult for laser hair removal on his back. Whenever Wanda’s accident came up, Blake liked to drop the old “everything happens for a reason,” and explain how in a way, her accident had brought them together, all these years later. As for why Wanda had to endure third degree burns to have the privilege of Blake’s love, when all he had to do to earn my mother’s was have a hairy back and a plumbing contractor’s salary to burn, well, I’m sure Blake would have a reason ready if I ever asked.
Across Time, 2014 (mixed media with collage elements on deep wood panel, 18x18x3) by Patricia Steele Raible
I turned in early. Around nine Blake had winked at Wanda and said, “If we don’t go to bed soon, Santa won’t come.” I tried to forget that as I crawled beneath the polyester lilac comforter of my childhood bedroom, scrolling through my phone. My old college roommate Rhoda, who I’d moved back