Free Dead Floating Lovers by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

hoping to hit I-75 and turn toward home.
    “Utica,” Dolly said. “Last place. I just want to let Phyllis Dually know—if she even still lives there—that I’ve got no hard feelings against her.”
    “Oh, Dolly.” I let my complaint stop right there.
    The tiny blue house in Utica sat on what must have once been a street of nice little suburban houses. But those good days were long gone. This house sat back from a dirt road under overgrown bushes and a stand of dead maples. Any one of the trees could take out the peaked roof at the next storm. I thought the place must be deserted, but when we pulled up the weedy drive, Dolly spotted a woman sitting on the top step of the slanting porch, smoking a cigarette and watching us with a lot of squint-eyed suspicion.
    “That’s her!” Dolly hopped out of the car.
    The woman, in her fifties, watched as we approached, cigarette hanging from a corner of her mouth. She didn’t wave, welcome, or say a word. We walked to where she sat, her knees splayed out under a faded house dress. Nothing in her worn face moved, but she wasn’t expecting anything good out of us.
    “Know who I am?” Dolly asked, from the bottom of the steps, in what for her was a merry voice.
    The woman squinted one eye through her own smoke and looked Dolly up and down. She shook her head slowly.
    “I’m Dolly. Remember?”
    She looked Dolly over again then shook her head.
    “Sure you do. Dolly Flynn. I lived here with you when I was about six—I think.”
    “One of the foster kids.” The voice was flat. “Didn’t you used to send me Christmas cards?”
    Dolly nodded, happier again. “That’s right. You had to turn me back to social services because there was trouble. Your husband … well … I’ll just say there was trouble.”
    “Must’ve been Mike.” The woman offered nothing more. She let out a long, heavy sigh, accompanied by wisps of smoke.
    “No, I think his name was Herbie.”
    “Yeah. Herbie. He was a son of a bitch, too. He do something to you?”
    Dolly shook her head. “Remember, I bit him on the ear, and he made you call the social worker?”
    The woman looked Dolly over hard this time. “Don’t remember you. Lots of kids had to be taken back. Herbie was big trouble for me. But so was Mike, after him. And then came Daniel—he was a bastard, let me tell you. Lots of kids come through here. The girls went fast. Even some of the boys. With Daniel it was boys as well as girls. I divorced them all.”
    “You cried when they took me away.” Dolly crossed her arms protectively over her chest. She looked like somebody shrinking in place. I could see the little girl being dragged off, crying.
    I put a hand on Dolly’s tensed arm and for once she didn’t shrug me off. “Let’s go, Dolly,” I said, and pulled just a little.
    “You sure you don’t remember me, Phyllis?”
    Phyllis took a long, slow drag on her cigarette, shifted her legs around under that skirt, and shrugged.
    “So many of you. I needed that damned money. Those assholes I married was forever messing it up for me. Glad I ain’t got no man in this house anymore. But then I can’t get kids either. Too bad. Things would be fine now. Might even meet somebody who was different from those others. I thought each one of them was a good man. I guess some women have trouble their whole life long finding Mr. Right.”
    “Dolly,” I pulled a little harder. She stood frozen, staring up at Phyllis.
    Her empty-eyed face turned to me. Her mouth dropped open a little. I felt sorry for her. She’d just had the last member of her imagined little family shot out from under her.
    Dolly turned without saying a word and walked back toward the car. I let out a lot of pent-up air, trying to think of something cutting to say to the ignorant woman on the porch. But what was there to say that would hurt her? What was there left to say or do to her that hadn’t already been said or done?
    We got back in the Jeep and headed