Call Me Pigeon

         One of my earliest memories was of my mother cradling road kill. My mother burying road kill. Our neighbors commenting on how lush our backyard was. Most of my early memories are of the smell of dead animals; every time I pass a flattened skunk, I think of my mother.
         She was beautiful in that slightly glazed over way, where she really has to be standing still for you to notice, or you’ll just mark her off as plain or ordinary looking. And she never stood still, so that’s how most people viewed her. She was at her most beautiful when she was crying. Most girls, they cry, and all their beauty washes away with their makeup, composure, their complexion. My mother was just the opposite. Her eyes would get all bright, and her cheeks would get pink, and every time she cried, she had this soft smile that she never smiled any time else. It always made me think of Peter Pan, and how Wendy’s mom had a kiss in the corner of her mouth that was reserved for Peter which nobody else could ever have, not her husband or her children. My mom’s kiss was for the road kill.
         I still remember the first time it happened, though I was small enough that my feet stuck straight out from the seat. My arms were curled tight around the edges of a pizza box- I’m sure you remember something like that, when you were little and your mother or father would make you hold the pizza, with the rough cardboard edges and the heat seeping into your legs and stomach, the weight of it shifting with every switchback, you remember that, too, because every kid held the pizza, in the back seat with your eyes pointed past the window.
         And I remember it, I remember leaning my head back and watching the headlights from the other cars flash over the window, reflected so that they looked like spaceships or aliens or meteors or bombs raining down from above, then winking out as soon as they hit the seat. My mother was driving, humming along with a Beatles song- Hey, Jude, I think- occasionally breaking out with a few words of the refrain, and rain pelted the roof in soft, wet footfalls. And I, I was somewhere else, because I was always somewhere else when I was small- that was the trade-off. I never got my mother’s smile, and she never got my full attention. But, oh, I loved her, and this part, this I loved most.
         As I’d said, it was raining. Mother loved to drive in the rain, and I’ve never found out why, but, anyways, it was raining and the roads were slick, and we hit the off ramp and I could feel the wheels slide just a bit beneath me. Then we were on the country road that led home. It was curvy and dark, overhung with trees with foliage so thick that I saw the stars only in patches, looking as if the little lights were strung between the leaves in a cobweb. I imagined that they had fallen from the sky and gotten caught, the same as the morning dew. Hey, Jude ended, and was followed by, of all things, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I didn't know this song, but I was aware of the way my mother’s shoulders fell, the way her head tilted back and how she let out a soft sigh like the last puff when a train rolls to a stop. We were alone on the curving road, and so my rockets, my aliens were gone, and I set the pizza box in the seat next to me, quietly unbuckled my belt, and crawled over the console into the passenger seat next to my mother. She kept her eyes on the road, but those eyes crinkled a bit with warmth, and her long, slender hand found my small, chubby one.
         The rain stopped. The windows rolled down, and the fresh smell of wet grass and dripping trees whispered through the car. We whipped along the road, headlights bouncing over pavement, until they caught on something soft, something furry, some bundle lying in the middle of the road, and my mother's hand dissappeared from mine as she pumped the brakes and guided the car into the ditch. We were turned so that the headlights still rested on that damp, quivering ball of matted hair. My mother told me to stay put, and she left the car on, the song still playing. For a moment she dissappeared in the dark, then she was glowing in the twin columns of light, moving towards the bundle. I saw her drop to her knees beside it, bend over it. For several minutes she stayed that way, several minutes during which my breath fogged the glass of the front windshield. Then she finally turned, smiled at me as if she could see me through the light, and beckoned.
Together, we would carry the cat to the car. Together, we would take it home, to the backyard, and that night, with the backyard floodlights pooling around us, my mother would dig a deep, deep hole next to the willow, and, together, we would bury that wet, dark bundle with the bent whiskers. And my mother cried, and she gave that cat her smile.
It was the first time. It wasn't the last. Our backyard was always spotted with overturned dirt. I didn't play back there. You don't play above the dead. Years passed.
I grew.
I was a quiet, shy child. I became a gawky, shy adolescent. I was the boy you never knew existed. I had the same homeroom teacher for three years, but she never knew my name. When tests were taken, I was often skipped over, like an empty desk, as forgotten as if I was invisible. I could fade into the walls as easily as a chameleon, sit at tables where others were not welcome, listen in on conversations that should've been private. The only person who ever acknowledged my presence was my mother. Until I made my first friend, at the tender age of sixteen.
His name was Halcyon Michael Dane, and he was tall, with dark eyes and scraggly, unwashed hair. He was cool. I hadn't known I was lonely before him. And I wasn't after.
I met him when his car broke down on my street. I have no idea where he was going- there's nothing near where I lived, no kids our age, and certainly no attractions. Just old people and their old houses. But that's where he was when his Integra spluttered, coughed, died. He tromped through my front yard, up my steps, with his hands in his pockets and a raggedy red knit cap on his head. He didn't see me, sitting in the rocking chair at the end of the porch. So, he knocked, and I watched. He knocked again, and I bit into my apple. He slapped the door with his open palm, rang the doorbell, kicked the base, and I finished my apple, stood up, and shook his hand. Introduced myself. And he gave me that up-down look of someone not sure if they've ever seen you before.
"I'm Dane. My car's dead. Got cables?"
He was curt, and unapologetic. He also made you like him anyways.