So—I’m sitting up in my car garage halfway through my third Schiltz and fourth game of Solitaire when Rainey pull-up. I eye his old hot box Chevy from my garage, cards stuck to my finger sweat, knees pinned together in a wishbone. I hear him creak up the emergency break, lose the keys from the ignition, the engine, clunking and tinkering into quiet calm. And then like Rainey do, he just sit there. Lanky arm hooked out the front window in an ‘L’. 

Rainey would spend the night in that truck, knowing him. Let Georgia’s late summer humidity soak him right through to the bone. He’d wake up the next morning and do it all again, just to prove a point. I could let him, but I know the one thing Rainey count on more than his pride is me. So after a minute or so I put my cards on the table, and go on over to see about him.

“You come here just to take up space in my new driveway?” I say, caving my back to see him through the downed window, my beer cool and wet against my thigh.

Rainey pull his lips across the bottom half of his face, smiling, the teeth that ain’t blot out in gold shining white against the car’s dark interior. I remember Rainey’s first gold tooth. How proud he was that he could afford not only the extraction of what was there first, but the replacement with what he thought was something better. Didn’t put us back anything either. But let Rainey tell it, I was the one bad with money.

“How you been, Tree?” He say.

“Just fine. Who told you where I was, hm? Lyle? Pulley?”

Rainey chuckles, “I’m doing alright too, thank you. You look good.”

“How would you know, you ain’t looked up at me one time yet.”

“I don’t got to look at you to know you look good, Tree. You looking good is what they call a priori.”

He laughs again, makes me think of sandpaper smoothing out limestone. Rainey got one of them laughs that make other people wanna know what’s funny. And he know if he can get you laughing, or at least wondering about the laughing, he can get you doing a whole lot of other things.

“Why are you here, Rainey?” I say, wishing I was less drunk. I pinch the rippled skin at my elbows calling to memory what Aya, my goddaughter, says about my chakras. Every Saturday morning Aya’ll come for tea and yoga: hair big and curly, in her cute little sports bra and leggings, telling me Auntie, you can’t let anything invade your homeostasis. The peace within your bones. Now downward dog.

Rainey’s ring taps against the truck door’s aluminum bringing me back to the moment. He slides his long arm inside the car and digs through the dash for cigarettes. I look past him, stay my eyes on the live oak that was already full grown when I bought the place.

“Pulley told me Tree done gone off and bought herself a big ol’ house in the suburbs. I said, naw. Not Tree. She not like that to go searching after material things. She’s a feeling person. Would give a stranger the clothes off her back.” He pull out a crumpled pack of Newport’s and gives me his eyes for the first time, “You got a light?”

I tap my front and back pockets, then scurry into the garage after my matches. When I get back, Rainey’s already blowing out smoke, shaking a match free of its fire.

“Found one,” he say, then he starts that laughing again. “Like I was saying though Tree. I wouldn’t’ve took you to be the one to do this. I gotta give it to you,” he ashes, “the place is nice. I just ain’t think of no two church-columned type of place for you. Them sprinklers automatic or you get somebody to turn ‘em on for you?”

Rainey finish off his cigarette and fingers the pack for another. Curses when he finds he’s all out.

Across the street, my neighbor’s door opens. Charlotte whisks down the bricked steps, dressed like Laura Ingalls though I know her clothes cost more than anything I’ve got in my closet. She’s got the boy twin hanging off her hip, and Ryan, her fifteen year old son with purple hair and braces, holds the girl. She’s clapping, and snapping, saying how they just can not be late again. I catch her frazzled eyes and smile, nod. She waves, but I can tell by the way her arm lingers there, she’s wondering about the truck. What it’s doing here and if I’m okay.

“You know that woman Tree?” Rainey ask.

And I tell him no, even though I do.

What I know or don’t know ain’t none of Rainey’s business. What would it be to him, hearing her boy sometimes wears the prettiest dresses, or that those chubby orange haired twins are already in therapy. They got to be almost two now, but I remember when she couldn’t get pregnant, when I was brand new to the neighborhood and she came flying into my garage scaring hell out of me, sobbing and shaking from her third miscarriage. “You must think I’m crazy coming to you like this,” she said, “I just don’t have anybody else to talk to. And the babies. They just keep leaving.” I gave her something to drink and let her sit in with me for a while, tuning up a cry when she needed and talking in between. Her husband was set to leave her given the circumstances. They had Ryan but…he’d wanted some of his own.

I think shortly after that, Charlotte ended up doing in vitro. It was a long time before we talked again, then one day we bumped buggies checking out at the grocery store. She’d told me about it then. How the two embryos had taken to her, and that she was about four months now, and nervous as hell. Things had gotten better between her and her man too, and I’d assumed he’d decided to stick it out. To stay by her, and see how things would go.

“You a trip, Tree,” Rainey laughs. I can see the sweat beads forming around his temples, leaving wet lines like rain against a window right around his thick cheekbones. And I know he won’t be able to stand that truck’s humid insides for much longer.

I watch Charlotte deliver the baby into his carseat, then notice Rainey again. “Hm?”

“You heard me. You leave home where everybody know you out to this white ass neighborhood in this big ol’ house. Why you feel the need to move all the way out here? What you trying to prove?”

Charlotte’s car door shuts.

“So what are you saying? I ain’t allowed to live where I want?”

“You can live in a crater on Jupiter if that’s what you want. Wouldn’t make no better sense than this.”

A crater on Jupiter. My God.

Slowly, Charlotte pulls out of the driveway, watching out for me the way we’ve learned to do for each other. I smile at her, fuller this time so she’ll know I’m really alright. Honking, waving, the car gets small with the distance. When I look back at Rainey, he’s wiggling a finger in the empty pack of cigarettes. He huffs and curses. Throws the pack to the passenger seat then rubs the settled greys shining like silver fish swimming at the back of his neck. In the light of the setting sun, I can see the time along his eyes crinkle and soften, and I start remembering when those crinkles weren’t there at all. When my elbows were straighter and cheek bones tighter and we had a swear jar on top of the fridge, the top layer of a cake freezing with time on the inside.

We’d skipped out on the honeymoon to try and save money. And Rainey had the mouth of a sailor back then, so the swear jar would start the week empty and by Friday the quarters and dimes and nickels could add up anywhere between five to ten dollars. We figured we’d save up for some real furniture to someday fit in our new house in the suburbs. Catalog furniture. Nothing like the odds-and-ends side tables and loveseats we’d collected from great-aunts who had it to spare, who were excited just to help us young people get started. Sometimes I’d swipe a few coins from the jar prematurely. Drive to the corner store for something special for Rainey. Cherry cloves or a stainless steel money clip; something he could use and feel good about. Once I came home with a pair of ‘R’ engraved cufflinks that sent Rainey through the roof! I can still remember his lips pinching tight around his top teeth, holding captive a big grin, his hands, gripping around my waist, the warmth from his mouth against my jawline then my ear, saying: Good grief Tree! Ain’t enough swear words in the world to fix you taking every day. How we supposed to buy a house at this rate, huh? Start a family…

I lay my hand on the truck’s window seal, “Why don’t you come on inside?”

“Why? You miss me?”

“I just thought you might like to get out this heat. See the house.”

Rainey sucks his teeth, “Naw. I just came by for a quick visit. To lay my own two eyes on the truth.”

And I guess because I don’t know how not to…I say, “Well, you ain’t got to come in then. Just have a drink with me out in the garage.”

So Rainey pulls on the door handle mumbling how he could use a Schiltz. I scoot out his way, watch Rainey’s two very polished loafers slide onto the smooth pavement and can’t help but to laugh.

“Where you get them church shoes?” I say. And Rainey just smiles. I tell him they’re nice. The type of shoes I always imagined for him.

Then Rainey’s inside, hovering over my table and my beer cans and my cards. A plume of his cologne comes against my face and I’m back in our old apartment, in the dips of our old couch, nose nuzzled against Rainey’s neck while we watch something boring, something neither of us care much for. It was never about the things for us back then, the stuff. Hell, I could’ve lived in a crater on Jupiter, as long as it was with him. I wipe sweat from behind my neck, lift my hair hoping for a breeze.

“Got this big house and you still want to hang out in the garage. Country girl.”

I grab a Schlitz for him out the little fridgedaire I keep against the wall near the entryway.

Rainey picks up one of my first cans and shakes to see what’s left of it. Puts it back down when he feels it’s empty. Spreads my cards across the table like a Chinese fan, says, “What you was in here playing? Solitaire?”

“That’s right.” I get his can open and pass it off.

“Cheers.” Rainey say.

“To what?”

He smiles, “To the new place.”

We tap cans.

Rainey takes a drink, keeps it in his cheeks a split second before swallowing. He’s looking down at the cards again, swiping them open so he can see every suit. “You still playing Solitaire with hand cards.”

“Aya bought me a tablet but I like the cards better.”

“Aya. Hmph. How old is Aya now?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Gah-lee!”

“I know, huh? I remember changing her diapers, now she’s teaching me something new every other day,” I laugh. “She bought me a sage stick.”

A drop of beer trickles from his mouth, “A what?”

“A sti-well, a bundle of sage. She says I’m supposed to light it…wave it around the house. It’s supposed to clear out the bad energy or something like that.”

It gets quiet.

“I don’t like Solitaire,” Rainey finally say, sitting down. “Pick something we can both play.”

I unfold another chair from the corner and scoot it up to the table, “Gin Rummy?”

“Naw.”

“Go fish?”

“No go.”

“B-S?”

“Nope.”

“Well hell. You think of something.”

Rainey pours the beer into his mouth, so I do the same. His fingers start dancing across the jumbled deck of cards. So mine do too. Then Rainey’s lining up about seven or eight of them, about the width of the vinyl fold-up table we play on, and without talking it over, I start making little triangles on top of the bottom cards. And Rainey makes some too. Then it’s another flat layer on top. And I look at our hands, his with a ring, mine without. Dancing. Bopping. Weaving. Careful. We just keep moving. Stacking. Silent. Drinking. Till the last cards are up. And before I know it, we’ve built a house.

“What you wanna fill the rooms with?” Rainey say.

Thinking, smiling, I poke a finger into the smallest triangle right in the center, “Books. This is my reading room.”

“You want a whole room just for reading?”

I don’t tell him I’ve already got a whole room just for reading.

“What about you?” I ask him.

Through the geometry of the cards I watch Rainey think of something. Shifting in his seat. Checking over each corner of the house.

“You see this whole floor right here?” he say.

“Yes,” I say.

“This my studio.”

“Studio? You don’t play nan instrument, last time I checked.”

“Well if I had a studio I could pick one up.”

“Fair enough. Which instrument?”

“Trumpet.”

“We’d hear it all over the house.”

“Wouldn’t hear it way up here,” he say. “What this room look like to you?”

“The top room?”

“Yeah.”

“It looks like a sunroom to me.”

“Naw,” he say, “that ain’t a sunroom, that’s the baby’s room.”

All I can do is look at him.

“Aw hell. Tree I’m sorry.”

I put up a hand.

“That was a dumb thing for me to say.”

I want to take the house apart.

“Really Tree, I wasn’t thinking.”

Snatch each card down from top to bottom. Or maybe just one from the foundation…you know that’s all it takes for a house to fall apart…for a marriage or anything really to fall apart…just one small piece missing…even if you build years and years and years on top of it, without that one little piece you better know it’s bound to fall. Rainey reaches for his cigarettes again.

“Sheila and the kids doing alright?” I say.

“We don’t got to go into that—”

“How your grandkids then?”

“I didn’t come here to get into that, Tree.”

I want to knock the house over. Watch it cave in on itself, splatter and bleed across the table.

Rainey thumbs his gold band. Sips his beer in puny increments. When he’s done, his mouth parts and the gold teeth shine like new pennies in a sewer. I wonder if he takes his golds out at night like he used to. Tongues the open black spaces where just plain old teeth used to be, missing them.

“I should probably head out, “ he stands, “I just came to see how you’re living. To see you’re alright.”

“You get a good enough look?”

Rainey fix his mouth like he’s ready to laugh. Part of me wishes he would. Just a small tuff of air escapes his nostrils, fans his long greying nose hairs then disappears into the thick. I know he’s thinking of something to say that might cover it all. That could fill up all the empty that has ever spread between us. That exhale echoes through the house til it’s stained the walls, browned the tiles, brandished the doorknobs, and I know—sage or no sage—I’ll live here with it forever in some way.

“Take care Tree,” Rainey says. And only after he’s back in the Chevy, mirrors adjusted, engine roaring, pulling off, can I slip an Eight of Clubs from the bottom row of cards, watch each layer of the house relent into the next, falling smooth, domino delicate and peaceful, almost, as if, that’s how it was always supposed to be.

Back inside, I turn on the TV. Scroll a few channels. Turn it right back off. Aya’ll be here early tomorrow morning so I wash a couple of dishes. Swiffer half the kitchen. When a car door closes, I run to the window, look past the oak, at Charlotte and her first born son lit bright by the safety lights hung from the front porch. He’s holding the girl twin as she holds the boy, babies both comatose, drool and pendulum limbs sweeping against their backs. And I’m grateful to see the new babies smoothing into the curve of my neighbor’s body.

I see them inside, then walk through my big ol’ house in the suburbs, turning down lights, locking doors, touching doorposts. My home, where every sound is heard twice, and I try hard not to mind.

I think it might rain.

My first spring here it rained so much I didn’t think the big oak outside would make it. But every time I checked it out, it seemed another bud had formed at the end of the branches, small at first…but now it’s tree-branch fingers stretch far past the phone lines, my roof, chimney, and up to something only it knows is there.