Gone for Milk.

Gone for milk. Back soon.

***

Michael toppled into the classroom in a crash of sunshine, his books and pencils skittering across the floor like fallen sunbeams. Behold, the heavens seemed to command. And Winnie beheld. Sandy hair, freckled nose, and an easy gap-toothed smile in a face already laughing off the tumble. It would be even more accurate to say that Michael fell right at her feet, appearing suddenly in her world and taking up the whole of her field of vision. He looked up at her from the cool, tiled floor as his belongings skidded to a stop in a halo around her brown ankles. For you, the universe declared to them both, as if it weren’t already painfully obvious.

***

Popped ‘round Mother’s for lunch. You know how she is.

***

Everyone knew about the Beverlies. Came from big tobacco money back in Virginia. Mrs. Beverly was a Gooch by birth and could trace her line back eighteen generations to English baronets. Hers was as pure and blue as blood came.

Such tricky business, this integration, isn't it? That was the kind of thing Mrs. Beverly, née Gooch, said, testing the limits of her husband's new California dream.

Winnie had heard her say this at the Parent Council meeting. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but Council meetings were held after school in the teacher’s lounge, right next to her locker.

Today, the door to the lounge was propped open in hopes of enticing a breeze from the courtyard. And, having received detention, Winnie was collecting her things well after the final bell. (Winnie had never been good at doing what she was told. It's not that she was particularly rebellious. Often, she never really heard instructions to begin with. That afternoon, she'd read clear through the lunch, the bell and third period history before she realized.)

Isn't it just awful about the Turner girl? Mrs. Beverly murmured with cloying sympathy. I'm so glad my Michael's never been one for such foolishness.

Poor Shayla Turner, who lived just up the street from Winnie in a neighbourhood that would give Mrs. Beverly palpitations, had gotten in a family way. The whole class had found out when Mr. Turner had marched right on into school to find the Lawton boy, delivering a swift crack of chestnut knuckle to eggshell nose.

***

Just gassing up the car. Home in a jiff.

***

The gravity that tugged Michael and Winnie together was easy to ignore at first — and there were many reasons to ignore it. Michael, with his boy-next door looks, decent pitching arm, and his own car was effortlessly popular in the way that handsome new boys always are. A crowd of admirers blossomed around him and he was rarely alone.

Winnie kept to herself. Her best friend was her sister Alma, and Alma (though only a sophomore) kept tabs on Winnie, drawing her older sister into her own social circle if Winnie threatened to disappear into the clouds entirely. Her tether to the earthly realm. If Winnie saw Michael in the hall, she would hug her books to her chest and lift her chin, that small pointed vee becoming the prow of a ship to carry her safely past the whirlpool boy. If Alma was around, Winnie would tuck her arm into the crook of her sister’s elbow and try not to see as Michael flashed a furtive, gappy half-smile, his hand wandering up to scratch the back of his ear. Winnie strongly suspected that scratch wanted to be a wave.

It continued this way for the rest of senior year. They passed each other like faraway comets, always shooting by but never pulled into orbit. Winnie would arrive at the water fountain as the high arc of water died on Michael’s lips and he straightened up, holding her eyes for a moment before being tackled away by some jock and leaving Winnie to inwardly thrill as her lips shared the same negative space as his. She would pick up a book from the library only to find Michael Beverly scrawled in neat, upright lettering on the borrowing card, which seemed to Winnie to be nestled smugly in its back cover pouch. On graduation day, she found herself sitting across the aisle from him. Gravity, after all, can only be denied for so long. Pulling two objects toward each other is what gravity does.

***

Out on the open road, ridin' this whole thing out. I miss you.

***

For the newly graduated, summer is a contradiction. The end of an era. The beginning of the rest of your life. The humid, languid interstitial space between childhood and adulthood. Winnie spent most of these days on the curb of Uncle Emmett's malt shop, the latest novel propped up on her knees as she spooned vanilla ice cream, ginger ale and chocolate sauce into her mouth.

One day, late in summer, a shadow appeared over her and she looked up at the dark, silhouetted shape. A freckled hand shot out, thrusting a book at her.

I think you’ll like it, Michael said without preamble, as though these weren't the first words they'd ever spoken.

Winnie scowled. As oblivious as she was to instruction, Winnie hated being told what she thought. That, at least, was entirely her own domain.

How would you know what I like? she demanded.

Michael frowned, considering. Well, the way I see it, you've read all the science fiction in the school library. This here's Delaney. Out last month. He kicked at the curb. But I dunno. Maybe you've read it already?

He began to pull the book back.

Winnie, the greedy thing, who had in fact not read it, snatched it up with a chagrined thank you. And then they got to talking. Eventually, when what they had to say ran longer than Uncle Emmet's willingness to have them block his stoop, they got to walking. And when the tutting of the church ladies and the violence in the eyes of the men in suits began to make them uneasy, they got to driving. They got to driving and then they got into trouble.

***

On a beach in Hawaii, soaking in the rays and dreaming of you.

***

For a while it was beautiful. Gravity holding their whole world together in a rush of whispered words, a curl pushed behind an ear, a smudge whisked from a cheekbone. There was nothing extraordinary or especially unusual about Michael and Winnie. Nothing that made them want to set the world on fire. It was simply that they belonged to one another.

So, on the day that Winnie tells Michael that in nine months they would be three, eyes wide with trepidation crinkle into slow, wet smiles. It's only as they're driving home, when the red siren menaces in the dusk, that they are afraid.

Perhaps it's because it was Tuesday in a small California town. Perhaps it's because these officers didn’t much like the sight of Winnie in the front passenger seat. Or perhaps it was always going to happen like this one way or another. When Winnie tells them, We ain't done nothing wrong, the bigger officer leans through her window real slow, his hot, sour breath washing over her face as he tells her to get out of the car.

We'll both get out, Michael says peaceably. And you can ask us anything you like, fellas.

The other officer laughs and rubs his chin, as though Michael had said something funny. Then a sharp blow knocks Winnie to the ground. Her face stings and her eyes swim, her vision in and out of focus. Somewhere in her awareness: a heavy thump and a cry from the other side of the car. And again. And again.

Stick to your own kind. Next time we won’t be so generous.

Even California dreams can turn into nightmares.

***

It takes time, of course. But they heal.

And after many tearful, furious protestations from Mrs. Beverly, they find a tiny house to rent in Winnie’s neighbourhood. Nobody bothers them when they sit on their steps. The Black folks don't much like seeing them together but they don't much mind looking at love either. This little life is idyllic but feels fragile, as if both Winnie and Michael sense that they are living in the eye of the storm.

One morning when Winnie wakes up, her belly big and her ankles swollen, she finds the house empty. On the table is a small, lined sheet of paper torn from Winnie’s black notebook. On it, scratched in Michael's upright hand: Gone for milk. Back soon. Winnie smiles, seeing that he's left her the last of what they had. She tips the milk into a pan with some honey and cinnamon, and she lights the stove. It isn’t until an hour later that she wonders where he's got to.

By the time the sun has risen high overhead and sunk low again, Winnie has begun to regard the note as a kind of omen. She gathers up her coat, courage and most comfortable shoes, and walks across town to the Beverly house. She knocks twice and Mr. Beverly opens the door, his brow furrowed but his eyes kind.

Yes, dear? Michael’s not here.

Mrs. Beverly appears then, lips pursed, haughty as an eagle. Come to his senses has he?

Winnie flinches, hands clutching her belly, as Mrs. Beverly slams the door. On her way home, Winnie searches every face on the street.

Days pass and Winnie paces the kitchen, gnawing her fingernails to ragged half-moons, eyes fixed on the table. By now the note is more of a talisman. If only she is careful not to touch it, Michael will surely walk through the door. But when she can't bear it any longer, she finds her way to the police station, forcing herself to say, missing person report, to the sneering on-duty officer (she doesn't recognize him). He spits instructions and thrusts a clipboard into her trembling hands.

Good luck, he sniggers as she returns the clipboard. And maybe then, Winnie knows.

Back home, she kicks off her shoes and sits at the table. Gingerly, she scoops the note up and tapes it carefully back into the front of her notebook.

***

It's when the baby kicks or when life manages one of those perfect moments of stillness in warm sunlight that Winnie misses Michael the most. When that happens, she opens the notebook, flips to a new page, and writes down what she imagines he could be doing, the various sundries and fleeting errands that might soon return him to her. She writers in straight, tidy letters.

Just gassin' up the car. Home in a jiff.

Lying low ‘till I can come home.

Found the sweetest pram. I'll talk to Dad.

Later, on the harder days, when the baby has her up all night, when she hates him for being gone, she tears wildly at the page.

Married with three kids, two towns over.

Drunk in an alleyway.

Chasing our dreams without you.

The tears fall on the page in a watery penance. She'll cross them all out before the day is out.

***

One day, when the baby has just begun to laugh, a crisp, white envelope is pushed through the mail slot. Inside is a note, the handwriting tidy — both familiar and strange. This is the last of his trust fund. I know he would want you to have it. - Mr. B. There on the amount line of the enclosed cheque: twenty thousand dollars.

Tears prick Winnie's eyes. Deep in her chest, she feels her world shift. Hope, nestled against her, gurgles a happy sound. Winnie squeezes her daughter tight and kisses her head, the pull of her daughter’s scent and tiny voice exquisitely undeniable. A new centre of gravity. Winnie lifts the black notebook from her apron pocket and, coming to the last page with a deep, shuddering sigh, writes her final entry.

Somewhere, right here, all around.