In the Box Marked Sunday Mary Jo Melone
Danny wouldn’t drop that fantasy of his. He jabbered at Maggie over breakfast, at the laundromat, when they were buying tires for the car that now needed a jolt of whatever made the air conditioner work. It was heartily blowing warm air that only fanned her annoyance. “Would you want to get married on a beach in Jamaica?” he said. “Why, when there are beaches here?” “That mean you want to get married?” “Please,” she said. “Why not the mountains of North Carolina?” he said. “Ticks, Danny, that’s why not.” “San Francisco, then.” “I’m not getting married in a raincoat.” He was wearing sunglasses with mirrored lenses, so when his attention shifted from the road and he turned to face her, she saw only herself, slightly distorted. “Do I make you the least bit happy?” “Of course you do,” she said, “and please get your eyes back where they belong so we don’t die before we reach my mom’s house.” “Your mom could use some cheering up, being a new widow and all,” he said. “That’s a reason to get married, to cheer my mother up?” “At least the timing would be good.” Maggie wasn’t mean enough to tell him to shut up, so she answered in a way that bought both time and relief and left room for clarification later. “Let’s just say I’m leaning in the direction of yes.” Danny slapped the steering wheel as though he was highfiving it. “We can at least tell her that,” he said. “We go every Sunday now, Danny. Maybe next time, we’ll tell her.”
so, she would see a bit of the water. Maggie would never be caught dead living in a mobile home park, but she envied her mother this slice of a view. Her own view, from the apartment she shared with Danny, was the flat tarred roof of a tiny strip of stores, an eye doctor, a tanning salon, and a lawyer who specialized in DUIs. Catherine Murray came to the door waving a black-handled hammer that she swung triumphantly in the direction of the wall above the TV. Maggie stopped. The Sunday before, the wall was a wall. Not now. In the center was her parents’ wedding picture. Circling it were a dozen more, all of her father, all by himself, in what seemed like an infinite number of celebratory poses: holding a freshly-caught fish, a bowling ball, a winning poker hand. In another, the skeleton of a roller coaster was behind him as he bent down, in the direction of what Maggie knew to be her legs, as she ran away from him. He was smiling, trying to coax her, meaning well, to ride it with him. She was eleven. She hadn’t been on a roller coaster since. “What happened?” Maggie said. “Nothing happened. I just did a little rearranging.” Danny had settled himself in her father’s corduroy lounger. “I like it. Why don’t you like it?” “So when you rearranged things, where did everything else go?” The photographs of her that had been on the wall—in middle school, in high school, on a cruise she and Danny had taken— were piled on an end table. “I’ll put them in the hutch.” The hutch was stacked with never used China and a collection of souvenir spoons from every place they had ever visited. The hutch was standing room only. Danny ran his palms along the worn arms of the recliner. “I remember that one,” he said, pointing to the wall.” The one where he’s holding the fish. Bigger than what I brought in. Your dad was something, a good something. It must run in the family. I’ve got a good something, too.” Danny was gooey about families. His had been miserable, so he thought every other one was enviable. When Maggie said she believed she didn’t particularly matter to her parents, Danny insisted that couldn’t be true, not at all. Her parents did love her. That, she knew, but they never
The road was rising slowly, and when they reached the top, Maggie saw again what never bored her—the still-surfaced blue Intracoastal that curved narrowly between the Florida mainland and the beach. Enormous houses on stilts rose from behind the mangroves that lined the water, and now and then between, rows of mobile homes appeared, white as piano keys lined up on narrow black-topped streets. In a few minutes, after they pulled into Sunrise Isles, if Maggie stuck her head out the kitchen window of her mother’s mobile home and cocked her head just
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