Page 38 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. III #12

As I lay in bed I said her name into the dark- ness. Maria Cassidy. I thought her name was very exotic. I pictured her on a yacht some- where, lying out on deck in her white bikini, clear blue waters shimmering, that lucky sun gazing down on her all day. Making her smile.
in Ford was soon busy. He revved and spun around and skidded and reversed and did an- other handbrake spin around. Eventually, Ma- ria Cassidy or one of the other mothers came out on to the road and told Kevin Ford to take his loud car somewhere else. This made Kevin mad. You could see him grimacing behind his steering wheel, his grip on it tightening, and he revved his engine until it reached the point of no return and he sped away, the Honda’s exhaust coughing out a black cloud of smoke which spread a suffocating stench through the air. After watching Maria Cassidy in her back garden the entire show was a real let down.
After a while I tried to think of my mother’s smile. It wasn’t as vivid as Maria Cassidy’s and the pain that came was different to the pain I felt when I thought of Maria Cassidy. As more summer nights passed, thoughts of my mother and the pain that came with those thoughts began to fade. At first I thought this was a good thing. Then her smile began to fade and I wasn’t so sure.
Luckily, the sun continued to shine. Every day was hotter than the one before. “I am going to melt if this weather continues,” said Mrs. Redi- han who lived next door to my father and me, and she tugged at the cardigan she was wear- ing. “Let her melt,” Heff said. “The world can continue without the removal of that cardigan.”
When Maria Cassidy took some time off from sunbathing Heff and I watched Kevin Ford’s driving tricks. He drove a Honda and it had a souped-up engine, go-fast stripes and spoil- ers. We sat down on the curb and watched his performance. Little Stephen Cassidy and his sister Ciara sat down beside us and watched too. They were always together, running up and down our road, chasing Mrs. Redihan’s dog, sometimes crossing the road one after the other, and making for the muck hole at the top of the grassy bank. Ciara was always first across the road, and Stephen always followed her. “He looks just like his mother. He’s going to have a great time when he’s older,” Heff said about Stephen.
Other mothers along our road made the most of the rising temperatures. One or two of them put on bathing suits. Some paraded about in bikinis. Heff said he’d run away from home if his mother pulled a stunt like that. Either that or he was going to find a gun and shoot him- self. Between throwing himself out of bedroom windows and now all this gun talk he was be- coming very fatalistic. I didn’t think his mother was that bad.
Behind the steering wheel of his Honda, Kev-
There were so many different shapes. Heff and I responded to most of them. They all looked wonderful in that everything-is-new way, and with each passing day Heff and I happily noted the appearance of a new bikini along our road.
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