Maria (cont.)

continued

     And with a key half-turned everything's crushed together, and I screamed once when I bird flew in. I ran for the door, but I ran into Maria. And as you know these days she really shows.

She said:

     "What's all the commotion? Put the chairs up; we're closing, and I want to go home. I'll try another nicorette and break down in a sweat and cry on the kitchen floor. But it could change everything. It could change anything at all...

     "Now, Joe, you've got me thinking... It seems you know that we're all sinking, and you're waiting to throw a line. But kiddo, I don't need a hand. Please just get out while you can before this world gets you for good. Because I've never met a kid like you who dreams and then follows through. I know because in my fragile hands I let it all slip through. It was the summer of '99, and I was barely ten years high when I walked two miles to buy figure skates at "Go Figure." And the moment I tried them on I felt like mom did in the 80's. Her dreams, they really took off. She's damn pretty in the pictures on our wall in front of which I'd sit and think to myself that I could change everything.

     "Last summer I turned eighteen, and I had held tight to that dream until June 12th when I got home and that dream shook free. Dad's car was parked in front and I hadn't seen him since he since he jumped our family train. And down Yeatman Ave I saw the ambulance pull up. Clenched tight in her hand was a note wrapped in rubber band. It was to me. It said "Happy Birthday." It's not my birthday. Mom was face down on the floor as my dad swung open the door, and they stormed in and rolled her out. An overdose. And that changed everything...

     "The day the plus sign came, I went and knelt down in the rain and crid "Holy Ghost, give mom the strength she needs to come back home." But it was weeks since I heard a thing, and as I went through mother's things I found a box that I opened up and wept. Because there in white and grey were mother's rusty figure skate with a note that said "Happy Birthday." The day that mom came home, she asked if I had got her note. I said "Yes" and she looked ashamed to the closet door. And to her I said, "I will change everything." "