Stephen King Fossil Exercise

“So you think I come by this naturally?” Germaine asked. “Nooo, it’s by a gentle touch and a steady hand. I’m not just some fuckwit, you know.”

“Did I ever say you were?” Don said.

“Not in so many words. And yet, in small, precise ways. The pitying look you gave me when I was about write to Grandma. Or the way you’d hold your palm on my right shoulder. It was always just a little too firm.”

Germaine’s hands were in her lap, gently cradling the baby bird that Don had spotted earlier that day. A blue jay without its noisy caw.

“Just let me do something cool with you,” Don said. “Like we used to, you know, when we were younger.” He hesitated at the banality of the next phrase but forced it out anyway: “For, for old-time’s sake.”

“And just what did we do so well?” Her pupils turned into tiny pinpricks, before blood was evacuated from a still-warm finger. “We never did anything, Don!”

“Except fuck.”

“That’s true.” Germain tapped the injured bird’s head at this.

“But I’m guessing it’s too late for that.”

“That, and my menses has arrived, and I don’t want to risk the chance of another Germaine-Don at this point in time.”

Thank God for that, thought Don. Although, at the same time, his heart yearned for another child. By all rights not Germaine’s but someone who could come home to him at the end of a boring school day, someone to play baseball with. Why the fuck he was thinking of more children while he was imprisoned in a basement with his deranged ex was anyone’s guess. Probably their easy banter - that’s what they did.

“Well, we’ll have to see about that,” Germaine said. “For now, let’s just be friends and then find figure out what to do. You hungry?”

Blank stare.

“Really, Don. It’s been five hours since I’ve found you here at the house. Your bookshelf is fuller than your refrigerator. You must be interested in some kind of nourishment. When is the last time you had a home-cooked meal?”

It was true! In the five years since she had been confined to the mental hospital - way out in India, where such things still exist - Don had made ramen. Ramen for breakfast, ramen for lunch, and ramen as a supper apertif. What about Little Red? She, for one, had described it as her dad’s running joke: He don’t cook. Dad microwaves.

Being an English major, Don always was appalled at Little Red’s coarse use of language. She got it from her grandmother, the only one in the whole family to step in when the little thing was for sale practically at his house. If he could’ve put up a Craigslist ad for her, he would’ve.

But since then he’d matured. Don wanted kids now, and someone to call his

own. Someone to teach diction to even though he knew that Red and her grandma’s were perfectly good, just backward.

Reading his mind, Germaine interjected. “You want a kid so you can control it, Don. You neglect yourself physically, but you put all of your energy into others. You’re creating a golden camel in our daughter.”

“You mean a golden calf?”

“No, a camel. They can be starved. They’re hardier…. and haughtier.”

Don looked at the poor little bird. Was that what his deranged ex was planning to make for supper? Was Germaine telelpathic now, he wondered? She had always had gifts, like choosing what to wear from a lineup of perfectly good outfits just so she could match her best friend Felice on Fridays. Oooh how that pissed Felice off! And the way her obsession with home and hearth, the real heart of Germaine, wound up killing their relationship. She never measured up to her own perfectionism, just a hussy with a gift of gab, was Germaine’s own tagline, if there ever were one.

“So, what’ll it be?” Germaine asked again. An unsteady but still coy smile tugged at her lips.