Free Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood

home that he could take some of those pretty red maples he saw growing on the side of the road near Spot Pond and plant them in our backyard. Convinced that the police weren’t far behind, ready to arrest him for theft or vandalism or whatever crime pulling trees up by the roots and putting them in the back of your Studebaker constituted, he’d pulled into our driveway so fast he’d left tread marks on the pavement.
    “No.” I shook my head. I glanced at the girls in the backseat, who were eavesdropping on us now, and said, “We’ll talk later.”
    “Because, Billie,” she whispered, glancing in the rearview mirror at the girls. “I swear, if he does anything that stupid again, I’m going to come down there myself and talk some sense into him.” If Gussy had any idea about what really happened between Frankie and me, the words he used, the things he called me, she would be horrified.
    Gussy liked to consider herself my protector, even though the opposite was almost always true. I was three years younger, but when a neighbor boy down the road took Gussy’s brand-new bicycle from her on the way to school and wouldn’t give it back, I was the one who wrestled him to the ground, bloodied his nose, and sent him crying home to his mother. When a different boy broke Gussy’s heart in the eighth grade, I was the one who left a nice, fresh cow patty from our pasture in his book bag. Now that we were grown, I simply protected her from the truth.
    “No need for that, Gussy. Frankie’s been a good boy.”
    And that was the truth, for the most part. Frankie drank too much. He could get angry, even cruel. But while he certainly raised his voice, he would never dare raise a hand to me, or to the children. His drinking usually manifested in foolish, impulsive behavior: stealing trees, setting off firecrackers in the front yard, juggling my best china in the kitchen. On the occasions when his jolly drunkenness turned into rage, I knew how to navigate the dangerous waters of his anger. First I made sure the girls were far, far away from him. Second, I knew what would make things worse and how to avoid them. I also knew that patience, above all else, was the antidote, because his storms were like tornadoes. They brewed, they touched down, and then they were gone. If you could just hunker down and find a safe place to hide, within no time at all it would pass and the air would be calm again. I’d witnessed the same storm pattern with his sisters’ husbands as well, though most of their wives hadn’t figured out that it’s best to stay in the eye of the storm. When his sisters visited, I watched them get berated and shoved around, and later, when they had gone back home, I worried for them and thanked my lucky stars that Frankie was, in comparison, so very tame.
    “Mind if I smoke?” I asked. The scent of cigarettes, particularly my own, had been intolerable during the last few months. But now that this pregnancy, like every pregnancy, had ended, I found myself hungry for them again.
    “Put your window down then,” she said, rolling her eyes.
    Gussy always complained when she rode with Frankie and me in the car, both of us puffing like dragons, the windows rolled up to keep out the cold, the children complaining of upset stomachs in the backseat. Gussy had never even taken a puff of a cigarette, not one puff. I lit my cigarette and rolled down the window. I took a deep drag and allowed the smoke to fill all those empty places inside of me. I imagined myself filled with vapors, the ghosts of all those babies that had once resided inside me.
    The air outside was cooler than it had been at home. As we drove through Quimby and then away from town and into the woods toward the lake, I felt like everything was suddenly cleaner, brighter, greener. There is something about going home, like water always wanting to rise to its own level again. This was my level. Here was my water.
    The kids opened the car doors before we even pulled