Free I Can Hear the Mourning Dove by James Bennett

memorial in Washington, D.C.” Why am I jabbering like this?
    DeeDee is feeding the fish in a large aquarium near her window; she is still wearing only her underwear. The aquarium has a filter and fluorescent lights. She feeds the fish from a vial that looks like a salt shaker. “I’m sorry about your uncle,” she says. “The house sounds real special. It sounds like it had lots of character.”
    I feel confident that she won’t take her underwear off; she won’t do that. No one could be that unself-conscious. “Our house was at Allerton Park,” I tell her.
    â€œYour house was in a park?”
    â€œNot exactly in a park. Our house was on the Allerton estate. Allerton Park is about fifteen hundred acres, but the estate is almost five thousand acres. Most of the estate is farms; our house was right beside a dairy farm.”
    â€œFifteen hundred acres is really big. What kind of a park was it?”
    â€œIt’s not a park like a city park. There’s a huge Georgian mansion and European formal gardens. There are hiking paths through the woods. There are so many statues, I wish I could show them to you. Some of the statues are bronze and concrete, but some are alabaster.”
    DeeDee is putting on a pair of designer jeans and a pale blue sweater. She looks at herself briefly in the full-length, crystal-clear mirror mounted on her closet door. I like telling her about our stone house. I like it that I can share with her. I would like to believe that we will become friends, but it may be dangerous to think that way.
    â€œOur house is expensive,” she says, “but it doesn’t have any character. It’s just the same as all the other houses in the neighborhood. Sometimes I even think the way we live doesn’t have any character.”
    â€œPlease, I don’t think I understand.”
    â€œMy parents are into materialism.” She sits on the corner of the bed and starts running the brush through her thick hair. “When I hear you talk about your father, I feel jealous. You were close to him, and he stood for something. People like that make the world a better place.”
    I can’t imagine myself as the object of anyone’s envy, especially hers. I shrug my shoulders and don’t say anything.
    DeeDee goes on, “My parents are concerned about keeping their social calendar straight at the country club and having the LiquiGreen man come over once a week to treat the lawn with all the right chemicals.”
    â€œI don’t want to argue, DeeDee, but isn’t that the way most people want to live?”
    She sighs. “I guess so. My brother is going to be just like my parents. He can’t wait to be a yuppie.”
    â€œDon’t be too hard on your family, though, please. People do things. They do things to survive.”
    She looks at me with a puzzled expression.
    â€œPlease don’t think I’m criticizing you. It’s just something I’ve learned from being in the looney bin. A lot of people are hanging on for dear life; hanging by their fingernails. People do what they have to do to survive.”
    She is frowning but she says, “I’ll have to think about it.”
    Who am I to tell her a better way of thinking? Who am I to be the giver of advice? I can feel my pulse beginning to race; it was probably a mistake to bring up the mental illness.
    â€œCome on,” she says to me. “Let’s go downstairs.”
    I leave to go home at five o’clock, when DeeDee is getting ready to go to work at the mall. I walk very fast along the sidewalk and keep a close watch on my feet. It will be safe to walk past the IGA now, it’s past five o’clock and the Surly People will be gone.
    It is three days later when DeeDee is waiting by my locker after school. I put some books away.
    â€œLet’s go talk to Miss Braverman,” she says. She still thinks I should do a project. I’d like to,