Breathless -Lurlene McDaniel

Darla

Darla

I sit alone in the dark theater after midnight. My favorite place to sit and think. A few of the films in the Cineplex are still running; I hear sounds through the walls, the car chases, the final screams of a horror movie. But in this theater it smells like stale popcorn, and the screen is dark and silent. I remember my first date with Travis. We came to the movies. We held hands. That’s all. My hand in his. No “accidental” brushing against me. No groping my leg or my boobs in the dark. Just his hand holding mine. Respect. I think that was the night I began to fall in love with him.

My friends couldn’t believe he war Mr. Nice Guy. They’d expected him to be conceited and out for himself. I admit I expected him to be that way too when he first asked me out. But I was wrong. After Travis and I had been dating for a couple of months, Dad came out of his den long enough to look him over. Travis was polite, Dad suspicious. Later, at the dinner table, I decides to ask Dad what he thought of Travis. Dad said, “Guys are just out for what they can get off you.”

“Travis hasn’t asked me for anything.”

“Like you’re an expert? I was a teenage guy. I know what he wants. Just wait. He’ll pounce.”

“Ken, give her a break,” Mom, the quiet one, broke in.

“Shut your mouth,” Dad told her.

Mom looked down, pulled the napkin in her lap.

I was sickened by him, as usual, because he didn’t need to yell at her. He broke her spirit long ago. I don’t know why she stays.

He turned on me. “You’ll end up like your sister.”

I pushed away from the table. “Celia’s plan was to get out of here,” I told him.

“Some plan!” he fired back. “Now she’s got a kid and a good-for-nothing freeloader living with her.”

“I guess you know all about freeloading.”

He jumped up and I was sure he’d take a swing at me, but I bolted up the stairs and locked myself in my room—Celia’s old room—and I cried. I miss my sister. What happened to her won’t happen to me. I’m smarter than that. And Travis isn’t Fred.

The side door opens and the manager sticks his head inside the dimly lit theater. “That you, Darla?”

Mr. Cain. “I’m just sweeping up the place.” After the concession stand closes, we’re expected to clean the ten smaller theaters.

“You look like you’re just loafing in the dark.”

“Taking a breather.”

“Could you hurry it up? Your shift ended almost an hour ago. I’m not paying overtime.”

I stand. “Yes… Sure. Someone stuck gum on the back of this seat.”

He swears. “No respect for property anymore. What’s the matter with you kids?”

He bangs out the door and I start scraping the gum off the chair. I used to look at movie screens and imagine myself on them. Darla Gibson, movie star. See me, Daddy? Do you see what I’ve become? A star! I pull off a wad of sticky gum and drop it into a plastic bag I use for cleanup duty. It all seems so silly now, this wanting to rub my father’s nose in my success. Travis has cancer and is losing his leg. No star power can fix that.

He’ll get a replacement leg. He’d showed me pictures. It’s made of titanium with a jointed knee and ankle and a beige shell-covering like that color in a box of crayons. And the leg has a naked mechanical foot that can wear any shoe—“matchy shoes,” Travis says sarcastically. “How nice.”

The pamphlet reads, “A technological marvel. Looks real to the eye.” It doesn’t look real. And it isn’t flesh and blood. It isn’t human. He’s told me that he hates it.

Tears sting my eyes. I wish I’d yelled at Mr. Cain and told him that all kids aren’t disrespectful and mindless of other’s property. Some kids are great. They’re nice, kind, thoughtful, talented, gifted, wonderful. And through no fault of their own, they still get cancer.