Blurter by Patricia Dutt

They drove all day without any music, leaving the Finger Lakes in Sam’s old Honda just ahead of a snowstorm that would close the schools and the airport’s two gates. Sam sat beside Matt reading poetry and listening to podcasts. Somewhere in the blue hills of Virginia, she pulled out her earbuds and said, “In most conversations there’s a pause. That’s the time to breathe deeply and count to three, and in that three seconds you have options. You choose what you want to say to someone. You are not powerless.”

“Makes sense to me,” Matt said, keeping his eyes on the highway. He had been driving since six a.m. Final destination: Charleston, South Carolina.  

“And what you say?” Sam said. “Hopefully it’s kind and true. Helpful and timely. This is always easier said than done, especially with a blurter like me.”

Matt smirked and said, “You blurter.” 

“I’m not on the same wavelength with a lot of people. Especially with my family. I want to follow my instincts, but sometimes I’m wrong. Right? But I will try to do the impossible.” She clasped her hands prayer-like, closed her eyes and plugged back into her meditation podcast.

They were going to Sam’s nephew’s wedding. Sam’s family, however, regarded her as one of the damned: an agnostic hippie, a single mom with three kids who could barely scrape enough money together to buy a safe car. Sam did not always feel welcomed by her family, but her sister had invited her, and Sam had not seen her brothers or sister in years.  

⁂

The next day, after dressing in their wedding clothes, Sam and Matt checked out of their Airbnb and got right back in the Honda. They bought some oranges and drove to Old Charleston and walked around, admiring the antebellum city. They were still two hours early when they found the wedding venue, and it took another good chunk of time to find an open gate. It was the staff’s entrance.

Sam wore a dark blue dress, secondhand, but it fit well, same with her shoes—not new—but comfortable enough for long distance walking and that was a pleasure. Moving simulated her, and whatever ideas connected found a home in her poems. So she always slipped a small orange notebook in her backpack. As she walked the mind chatter dissipated, at times completely disappearing, leaving the bandwidth to digest new ideas. That birdsong from the river, and that soft crunch of stone on the bottom of her shoes—how could that not help but put you in a good frame of mind? It was that rhythm that she tried to replicate in her poems. And walking was what shoes were made for. It reminded her of a line from a poem: “Better good shoes than a good friend for long distances.” Sam had both. 

Matt had a good sense of humor and could laugh off most irritations but during the 15th hour of being crammed inside the Honda, he finally snapped at her. Fifteen hours, she thought as they strolled along the pea gravel paths, he wins an award. The Honda was dark, and she’d read the map wrong. Once they settled into their Airbnb, they talked about it, and Sam apologized and stressed that she was not a mind reader. “I don’t want there to be any resentment between us,” she said. “Resentment never has any place in a relationship. We nip it in the bud, Matt.”

The Asbury River flowed beside them, sending out whiffs of the ocean and hints of the variety of life swimming in its waters. It was humbling to be so close to the river, and the ocean. Sam hadn’t expected such a robust haven of nature in the middle of a city.  

“I’ll take 75 degrees any day,” Sam said, swinging Matt’s hand in hers. “By April, you get tired of the cold and snow. I love the snow when it first comes, but then it comes and comes and comes!” Then Sam spotted a couple sitting on foldup chairs, a woman in a long sleek green dress with a drink in her hand, and beside her, a man in a gray suit similar to Matt’s, sans the jokey tie. She recognized her sister by the way she held herself, slightly hunched, head tilted up, listening to instructions from the wedding organizer. Then she did a double take: the beautiful auburn hair and lack of wrinkles made her look decades younger, and at first Sam thought the woman was one of Barb’s five daughters. 

“Hello, Barb,” Sam said. Barb and her husband turned around, and setting their drinks on a nearby table, they rose and hugged Sam. They had not recognized me either, Sam thought. It was her gray hair. Matt had recently trimmed it, not too short, and with just enough wave so that it did justice to her face. She’d dyed her hair once after losing a teaching job because she’d been desperate to work again. 

“How long has it been?” Sam said, smiling. “Eight years? Nine?”

The hug was warm and genuine, and Sam felt that whatever differences had separated them in the past had vanished. No need to rehash the he-said she-said confusion and innuendos of texts and emails. Cowards communicate like that, she thought, also implicating herself. You had to be in the present and be attentive. The past was the past, forgive, and move on was the motto you needed to negotiate the world of tricky adult emotions. Every time she thought she’d made it in that world, she’d dropped like a rock into a bottomless abyss. But Sam felt prepared. And here she was on the rare vacation with Matt and the promise of delicious food, dancing, and good music. She was determined to be her ideal self and convince her family that she was a good person.    

“You drove all this distance to be here,” Barb said. “To be with us. How wonderful!”

“I wanted to see you. And I wanted to see Keith get married. Weddings are always so much fun. It’s been years since Matt and I have been to one.”

The two sisters smiled. Matt was introduced and everyone chatted about the slow elegant river, the perfect shade from the trees, the white columned plantation-style building and its large stone patio, protected by a transparent roof from the weather’s unpredictable belches. The patio was set with two dozen large round tables, its tablecloths brilliant and white. A fairytale setting and that was the purpose. One should start out on such a footing, so Sam mentioned to Barb.   

“So quiet and natural, and right in the middle of Old Charleston,” Sam said. Her committed position was to compliment and refrain from old habits and battles of opinions. Charles Town was built by slaves, and discrimination existed even now, but for today, Sam set aside the plantation-style reminders.   

“Old Charleston is a prime venue for movies,” Barb said. “Did you know Outer Banks was filmed here?”

“No,” Sam said. Outer banks made her think of lowering sea levels, the coast building out into the Atlantic Ocean, then sea level rising, repeatedly. She’d been a double major in college—English and Geology—and tried to keep current on science’s new ideas and discoveries. To her, it was obvious humans impacted climate. She and Matt grew vegetables. They walked or cycled when they could, but she wasn’t sure her family would view those activities as virtuous, or just plain silly.

“Do you mean The Outer Limits?” Sam said. “That sci-fi series?”

“No, it’s a TV show. The producers didn’t like the fact that South Carolina has a right to run their own state. All this stuff about gender. Homosexuality. We’re Christians here.”

Sam nodded. They had grown up in a Christian household outside of Buffalo. The Ten Commandments were embedded forever in her mind, not such a bad thing, she thought although she no longer considered herself Christian. It astounded her that she thought so differently from her siblings. 

“We have plenty of movie companies wanting to do business here. Who cares about the Outer Banks?”

Sam nodded again. She looked at Matt. He shrugged and smiled congenially. This was the first time he’d met any of her family.

“Patrick couldn’t make it,” Barb said. “His wife is too ill to travel.”

“That’s a shame,” Sam said. She was hoping to see everyone, especially her older brother. Of the three, she got along best with Patrick. “What about Harry?” 

“He’s coming, but you know Harry—he makes his decisions at the last moment.” 

The self-declared family patriarch, and life-of-the-party, although his jokes could sting. He chastised Sam for not attending a family wedding 10 years ago when Sam had no disposable income, and her job was hourly. Her job was still hourly. She wrote grants and taught at the community college. Being the sole caregiver of three teenagers was a position, Harry inferred, that she put herself in by choosing the wrong partner.  

Sam wondered what Harry’s marriage was like. She found his wife on Facebook: broad smile, pedigreed dress and hair. A fund-raiser extraordinaire. Celeste clearly had no interest in Sam. Sam was unimportant, but she felt confident that she and Harry could connect on equitable terms, and come to an understanding of who the other was. 

⁂

The ceremony was held beneath century-old live oaks. You could see the river, empty of civilization, flowing smoothly and sending a perfect breeze their way. Immediately following the I dos and a kiss, Ginger, the canine trial-kid, ran a blue streak right into the groom’s waiting arms, almost knocking him over. Everyone laughed. A bridesmaid—they were all beautiful, all of Barb’s girls were—grabbed the dog’s leash and cooed to Ginger, who couldn’t stop wagging her tail and snorting.

“When dogs snort,” Sam whispered to Matt. “That’s their way of laughing.”

“You read too much,” he said, smiling at her.

“Matt, I read a lot,” she said, squeezing his hand. 

No sooner did the crowd disperse than waitstaff in starched black and white ensembles dribbled out of the columned house, balancing over their shoulders trays of pork-stuffed breads, skewered shrimp, and grilled root vegetables. Breakfast and lunch had been the oranges so the hors d’oeuvres sent Sam right to heaven.   

“Harry!” Sam exclaimed. She saw her brother and hugged him, and he hugged her back, but reluctantly, a perfunctory hug. She knew not to take it personally.

“These are so good,” she said, plucking another skewered shrimp off a tray. “I can’t remember the last time I had food that was so delicious!” Then she introduced Harry to Matt.

“Boyfriend, but that sounds adolescent. Partner sounds clinical or like something from a Western. Howdy Partner!” she grinned.

Harry looked at her blankly.

“I prefer RI. Romantic interest.”

Harry and Matt shook hands.  

“I missed the ceremony,” Harry said, “because of my business.” He addressed Matt, not looking once at Sam. “If I’m not there, nothing gets done. It’s the work ethic today. Who wants to work when the government pays you not to?” Tall and thin, he was dressed in a suit that projected power and individualism: his clothes were slightly mismatched, the current trend for men’s wear. He was in the energy business. Sam admired her brother in many ways: his intelligence and originality, his desire to engage yet need to separate himself from everyone else and chill. They were alike in that way, and had been very close right up until he graduated from college and moved south.

Harry looked over her in a manner that seemed to dismiss her, then addressed Matt again, “Traveling by air is a bitch.” 

“We drove,” Matt said. “The airline tickets were astronomical.”

“Driving was a last resort for a number of reasons,” Sam said. “I wish the country had a functional train system.”

They all paused, then Harry, looking down at Sam, said: “You still carry a backpack? Why don’t you use a purse?”

Everyone seemed to look around for confirmation of backpacks. None. Backpacks were sloppy, and belonged to the naïve and irresponsible, and if you wanted to join the world of adults, Sam read from Harry’s comment, best to shed this accoutrement. A woman adopted the purse, dyed her hair and wore expensive jewelry. That was the way forward.  

“I needed something larger that could hold a few books in case I have a free minute,” Sam said, smiling. “You know? To read. Poems mostly. I always feel unprepared without a book. Because of years of waiting for kids. Oh my god and they’re finally on their own! But you know me, Harry.” She laughed. “I was never a purse person. Do you know how awkward it is to carry a purse on a bike?” 

He gave her a stupefied look.

“Do you want to hear one?” she said.

“One what?”

“A poem.”

He shook his head no. 

“I’m always writing poems.” Sam had just gotten a book of poems published. Most of the poems were about their renegade childhood in the country: going trick-or-treating unchaperoned when they were all under the age of six. The four of them getting kicked out of the public swimming pool because of excessive cannonballing. The parties with beer and campfires back in the woods. When the time was right, she wanted to read aloud The Professor, inspired by the five-year-old with heavy glasses always on the verge of slipping off of his nose, the full-faced kid who used hundred-dollar words. Harry had been an aspiring writer, and so why wouldn’t he appreciate a poem about him? He’d won the 8th grade essay contest and had been the editor of St. John’s newspaper in high school. In college, he switched majors and studied business and economics. Based on Celeste’s Facebook page, they still lived in their mansion in River Oaks. They had four kids, and the three eldest attended private schools.

“Show me some photos of your kids!” Sam said. “I haven’t seen them in years. And I’ve never even met the two youngest!” 

Harry demurred, asserting he had no good photos, then he turned on his heels claiming he was light-headed, and needed something to eat. They watched Harry meld into the crowd, working it like a politician: patting shoulders, smiling, laughing with a new found goodwill.  

Sam looked at Matt. “What did I say?” 

“I don’t know.”

Was it possible, she wondered, that he still resented her for the argument she’d had with Celeste? That was ten years ago. Sam asserted that without the right to her body, a woman was a second-class citizen. Wasn’t that obvious? “Celeste,” she’d said at one point, “you have daughters.” That did it. Celeste had been given the ultimate insult: And what would you do if one of your young daughters got pregnant? What if one was raped? There were other issues they disagreed about, yet you would have thought two college-educated women, only a few years apart in age, that there would be a common, non-controversial interest. They were stalled at what Sam referred to as the government-owned womb. Sam had not been invited back to their River Oaks mansion.   

Matt suggested that they get a drink.

“This is ginger and rum,” Matt said, holding out a glass to her. “Even has a name. It’s called a Dark and Stormy.”

“Imagine, a drink with a formal name!” Sam said, winking at Matt. “Giving the drink personhood. Oh, but it is so delicious!” They walked, drinks in hand, to the river. “Just to clear my mind,” Sam said.

⁂

They had another drink and found their place cards and sat down at one of the round tables. Harry was already charming everyone with his total recall of phone numbers and addresses from 35 years ago. 

“How do you remember so much?” someone asked. Seated at the table were Barb’s three sisters-in-law and spouses. That they all appreciated this feat of his, and this put a huge smile on Harry’s face.  

“By the time I was seven,” he said, “I knew the capital of every state. Every president and when he served. Vice presidents. Some administrations.” Then he launched into his signature story, that of their famously mentally-ill Aunt Miriam, who lived on a dairy and vegetable farm near the Pocono Mountains. Everyone leaned over their dinner plates, enrapt. His audience nodded and hooted along with Harry about crazy Aunt Miriam who went religiously to the beauty parlor every two weeks to get her hair dyed red, and then molded into a beehive, and that was where she heard a customer mention Jell-O and all of its magnificent flavors. After that the only food allowed in the house was Jell-O. Because compliance was less complicated than debate, Jell-O occupied the refrigerator, the freezer, kitchen cupboards, even the stove because they no longer needed a stove. Everyone in the household ate Jell-O. Aunt Miriam preferred the orange Jell-O. There weren’t many medications or therapists back in the 80s. 

“Uncle Roland decided that he’d had enough. Their two kids, who amazingly survived childhood, were away at college. He knew this was his only opportunity. Early one cold morning, just after he milked the cows, and for the last time,” Harry’s voice became quiet,  melodramatic, “Roland removed the chain from the tractor. He dragged it through the newly-fallen snow. In his other hand, he carried an axe. Once at the cow pond he began chopping a hole in the ice.” Harry held up the mythical axe in his two hands, and down it came, over his right shoulder, onto the thick ice. Again and again. “Imagine his knees on that hard ice, the axe coming down. Raising it again. No one noticed his absence until the cows started bellowing that night. You can imagine their pain,” he said, looking and each and every one of them.

Everyone pulled back and sat solemnly in their chairs, recreating the scenario he’d meticulously described. Ice shards jumping in the frigid air and scintillating in the light of the rising sun. Uncle Roland’s breath coming out in puffs as he labored. The rough wood handle of the axe. The promise of death in that dark hole. Wrapping the chain around himself, its cold metal on the back of his neck. The warm body suddenly plunging into the icy water, sharp intake of the last breath, and no last minute, I made a mistake. No last-minute reprieve because the chain had already pulled him to the pond’s bottom. 

“That’s a decision you can’t come back from,” Harry said solemnly. And he looked at each of them, again, everyone staring at him, waiting for more, like a professor giving knowledge to his disciples. 

“That was in January. 1989.”

“Actually, it was March,” Sam said. “And it wasn’t 1989, it was 1987. I remember that date.” She looked eagerly at her brother, her eyes wobbling, mouth slightly open, wanting his blessing but also thinking: I have a mind for numbers too. Being poor doesn’t preclude having smarts.

“I recall the date because I had just gotten pregnant with Dell. After having tried for soooo long. A miscarriage, then a stillborn. Boy, what if that happened today? Who knows, right? I could be a criminal.” She paused, thinking about what she had said. “Sorry, you all don’t need to hear about my personal infertility history. This drink is doing it! It’s so damn good!” She laughed and took a long sip of the Dark and Stormy and smiled with love at the thought of Dell, and her other children. Intending to extemporize on wonder of children, something Harry could share in—he’d become a father in the last decade—Sam stopped. 

Harry stared at her, as if willing her to disintegrate right in front of everyone.  

No one said a word. 

The DJ started playing good-feeling pop music, and the younger crowd was getting up to dance. No one yet from their table. 

“I actually do remember the month and the year,” Sam said. “Because that was when I got pregnant with Dell. It was momentous.”

The entire table was silent. Their earlier, cohesive sense of joviality shifted 180 degrees.  

“Apologies everyone! I did not mean to dominate the conversation.” Sam sighed heavily. “God! The food, and the drink!” She shook her head. “I haven’t had such good food in years! Literally years. And the conversation, well, it’s been wonderful. So many things I’ve forgotten, Harry. Thanks for the memories!” she crooned, raising her head.

A few people left the table.

“Oh, I’ve had too much to drink,” she said again, looking down at the white tablecloth, then giving Matt a goofy smile. “But it’s a wedding. You can get a little drunk. At weddings you can let loose. Oops. I blurted. Blurt, blurt, blurt. Well, it’s all Dell’s fault. She just had to be born then. Right? That’s something you can’t stop.” Then she looked at Harry.

“How many times are you going to repeat that?” Harry said. “There are some people,” Harry said, his voice menacing as he addressed the table, “who think the world is going to fall apart tomorrow.” He spread out his arms, a gesture meant to be magnanimous. “The new dirty word is fossil fuels. So these people want to change everything. They want to change everything that works and makes life livable for billions, literally billions of people.” His voice became louder. A couple at a nearby table turned around. They couldn’t keep their eyes off of Harry. “But they don’t really know how things work.” He leaned forward, closer to her. “They don’t think through the practical matters because they have no technical skills. They have no facts. Like how did you drive a thousand miles to be here? This was all solar power, right?” It was a decades old argument between the two of them: energy, government. You name it. He claimed to be one of the few people in the country who actually had to work for his money, and on top of that, he was required to support beggars, drug addicts and the single moms on welfare. 

He raised his voice above the music. “What if you’re wrong!” He pointed his finger at Sam, and stood up. “What if your scientists have exaggerated this so-called climate change! There’s no real proof! It’s all models. Garbage in, garbage out. You could all be deadly wrong!” 

Sam was stunned. She heard only the words’ cadences. It brought her back in time to her parents’ fighting, always fighting about what or why she never knew, only that she needed to escape. She would hide in the bed she shared with Barb, and throw the blankets over her head, trying to mute the screaming which would go on until both parents were spent. It was only at this minute that she understood that they had no other means to dissipate their energy. It was that simple. What a waste. She felt terribly sorry for anyone who was consumed by an anger that they did not understand. 

The table was eerily quiet. Always backing off, she thought: the story of my life. Still she was confounded by her brother’s run-away drama, then the three seconds kicked in; three seconds to decide, now as an adult, a response that could possible alienate her forever from Harry.   

“Interesting,” she finally said. “You’ve given me something to think about, Harry, and that in itself is a gift. A true and rare gift.” She looked with a kind of melancholy at her brother, and his expression of disbelief and incredulity, as if what she said was outlandish, or maybe somehow threatening, as if he’d failed to grasp a fundamental concept. 

Sam turned to Matt, and said, “Let’s dance!” 

They pushed out their chairs and rose from the table and found a space on the floor and did wildly exotic, silly moves, shaking and massaging the muscles that had been squeezed into a Honda yesterday for too many hours. The others from the table joined in, and the dance floor exploded with movement, nearly everyone, even the very young got up with their parents and danced. The DJ played a set of oldies: ELO, The Four Seasons, Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. Sam sang along when she knew the words. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan and The Who’s: Who are you? Songs of her youth, and she sang along quietly, listening to the words. 

***

Patricia Dutt’s short stories and flash fictions have been published in The Louisville Review, Deep Overstock, America Writers Review and other literary magazines. She is the author of the non-fiction book about an Iranian immigrant, The Good Moms, Their Children, and Friendship. Her home is in central New York where she taught high school science and worked as a landscape estimator. She volunteers for a mental health organization, and writes a blog along with her son, Ben, called mentalchill.org.