She Has Green Eyes

To Cry Over Spilled Milk

So, now that that's done, how have you thought of my first incident? The first incident of my expectations for the woman with green eyes to come? And the outcome? Well, that was the very first time for such a strange thing as that to happen to me, and it probably served as a warning for what was inevitable to come. Ah, I apologize if I seem a bit jittery. Thinking back this far is foggy . . . Jesus, it's stressful to revisit.

That girl. The girl with green eyes. There were many days that the thought of her had come and gone. It did most days, actually.  But most of the time the thoughts were brief, distant, like the impossible inevitability of my own death. Though occasionally, just like the idea of my end, the thought was overwhelming and torturous. Most of these times took place on freezing, lifeless Winter days. December twenty-sixth of 1977 was one of them.

I was twelve. My brother Jacob had gotten a new car for Christmas the day before, all to himself. That Christmas was his day. This wasn't his first car, but it was far superior to his first car that he bought himself a couple of years before for $2,000 or so. Dad made him buy his very first car on his own. Something something responsibility, something something dignity. Mom thought the complete opposite of dad, though; she believed that a person's first car should have been gifted to you by your parents as an opportunity to take pride in your parents. Anyway, Jacob  absolutely admired the new car. He considered it his most grand Christmas gift of his entire life. I won't spare you the suspenseful buildup to the irony of that last detail; this was the tragic day that Jacob met his end.

He decided to give his precious Christmas gift some use for the day, and thus he decided to go to the grocery store downtown for a couple of gallons of milk that mom said we needed. Mom said we were low (Jacob slugged the last of the remaining milk, and she originally planned to make the trip, but that was when Jacob made the offer. He was, (ha-ha-ha) dying to go for a ride in his new car. Mom understood and said sure, Jacob, but she went along for the ride in her own car, as well. She said to tail along and see how the thing rode; it was dad who got the car and brought it home for Jacob, so mom never actually saw the thing in action. But, still, I don't feel as though that were the reason. At least not the full reason. She was worried, is all. Of course, she was right to be. But did it help? I hope you have the deductive ability to answer that question on your own. She had a good sort of way of hiding her concern, but not well at it enough to fool me. The kid. That may sound ironic, but trust me, it makes perfect sense. Some kids can see through their own parents better than anyone else, sometimes even better than the parents themselves can.

Mom turned her head to me and asked, "Whose do you think is better, Donnie?" She called me Monkey less, since then. My sisters and Jacob, on the other hand? No, they kept at it.

"Gee, mom," I said, not sure of any answer to the question, but frankly I couldn't have cared less. "I don't have an idea. They're both awesome." I truthfully, as harsh as it sounds, did not much care about Jacob's new car, let alone whose, out of his and our mother's, were better. I thought I did a decent enough job at pretending to care at least a bit, though. And so Jacob started his car and I watched as he did so; the thing actually functioned fairly smoothly. He made his way out of the driveway and onto the road, and so mom and I, in her own car, followed. The store was close by, only a few miles or so, and the trip only lasted a few minutes. But, the in-town section was often busy, especially during Friday mornings, and so we were stuck at a red light. Stuck there for longer than what it normally took to get there from the house to the store. Jacob, sitting behind the wheel of his own car, was beside us, looking over and waving his big hand at mom. She waved her hand back. I sit there, just as I did on the day at the stairwell of our house. With a certain expectation. Although I wasn't new anymore to this sort of trance, it had happened before, so it wasn't as hard to pull me out of such a trance. Though it took Jacob a few times. He shouted to me, his window rolled down and mine as well, shouting Monkey! Monkey! I heard it at first, but not quite noticing it, see? As if it were echoing from thousands of miles away. Until it broke through.