Part One: Victoria and Main

Half-Moon Scar

Introduction

An Interview with the Author

Excerpts:

Excerpt One: "Victoria and Main"

Excerpt Two: "Victoria and Main"

Excerpt Three: "Berwyn Street"

Excerpt Four: "Marquette and 2nd"

Half-Moon Scar Excerpt Two "Victoria and Main"

By Allison Green
From Half-Moon Scar

I dropped a paper bag on the table. "I know what you like," I said. Gavin sat at the table in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, looking at the newspaper. Out of the paper bag I brought chocolate chips, butter, eggs, brown sugar, and walnuts.

"You liked the chocolate chip cookies my mother made. Remember? She’d put them out on paper towels to cool and we couldn’t wait and we’d sneak them?" I got in close to his face. "They’d be all drippy and warm. Remember?"

Gavin turned a page of the newspaper.

I’d copied down my mother’s recipe, and now I pulled it out of my pocket and smoothed it on the counter. There was a green glass mixing bowl in the cupboard and next to it was a bag of white flour. The night was thick and humid, moths hitting the window screen, and the sounds of traffic on Main came through the window.

I tore the corner of the chocolate chip bag and let the chips fall out onto the table. I picked up a few and tossed them in my mouth. "Remember how my mom cooked? Everything in measuring cups, all in a row, before she’d begin mixing. That’s how she taught us."

Gavin ran a finger down a column in the newspaper.

I said, "I thought it was the height of rebellion when I was thirteen to measure as I went along instead of at the beginning." I tore a corner of the walnut bag. Walnuts and walnut skins and salt fell out onto the table. I poked through the pile for a big walnut and ate it. I pulled the tab on the butter box and slid out two sticks.

I said, "how did you learn to cook? Did Irene ever teach you?"

Gavin’s lips moved as he read down the column.

The mixer was in the cupboard under the silverware drawer, an old mixer, and the beaters ground, resistant, through the hard butter. I threw in the vanilla and the eggs early to give the beaters some liquid to work with. I said, "Remember how we’d go by every few minutes and take fingerfuls of dough? Until Mom slapped our hands."

The beaters moved through the butter and sugar, the vanilla and eggs, whipping them into a yellow froth. I took off the beaters, held one out to Gavin.

Gavin turned a page of the newspaper.

I found a sifter with a red wooden handle. I said, "Remember that one time we were playing in the basement and Mom was making cookies?" I measured the flour into the sifter, the baking soda, the baking powder. The powdery flour fell into the mixing bowl with the whipped butter and eggs. "I remember I was so full of dough I couldn’t eat any of the cookies, but you kept saying you had to go to the bathroom. Every time you went through the kitchen you ate more cookies. I think you ate half the batch that day." I folded the flour into the butter mixture with a wooden spoon. The dough turned thick. "Mom was so mad." I turned to the table for the chocolate chips. Gavin was holding half a stick of butter in his fist.

His eyes looked right at me and he moved his fist up to his mouth. His mouth opened around the stick and the butter went in. His mouth closed on the butter and his cheeks bulged in and out and his teeth inside his mouth moved up and down and his Adam’s apple moved up and down and his eyes squinted as he swallowed and his nostrils flared as he looked at me. The paper wrapper was in his fist.

"What are you doing?" My fingernails in my palms were not sharp enough. My fists went to my stomach, pressing in.

Gavin turned on his chair and his shoulders heaved and the butter came back up. Butter and nothing else on the linoleum floor. My fists were in my stomach and my breathing was pressing my stomach out and pulling my stomach in. Gavin’s shoulder blades pulled together under the sweatshirt. He made coughing noises. I turned back to the bowl of cookie dough. Sweet with vanilla and brown sugar. The sweetness filled my head. I picked up the bowl, scooped the chocolate chips and the walnuts and the other stick of butter off the table into the bowl and I ran out the back door and dropped the whole thing into the garbage can and I stood under the apple tree with my fists in my stomach and breathed and breathed.

I found the picnic table, lowered myself to the bench. I let my fingers feel the red paint, the green paint underneath. I drifted my hands along the underside of the bench. I let the splinters find their way into my palms. The lights from over on Main, from the bank on the corner with its new asphalt parking lot with new white lines – the lights showed me the splinters in my hands.

After a while, the traffic on Main was just one car every so often and a few times a hot-rod teenager car. After a while, a car came up the gravel drive, and Gina got out. She had on a white button-down shirt and black jeans. She looked very nice in them. She stepped through the dandelions in her black boots, lifting each foot high because the dandelions were damp. She came toward me and I held up my palms. I held up my palms to show her.