Ending Things - Bonnie Smetts

“Roy’s daddy,” that’s all she said when she finished. Roy’s daddy. And I’m starring at her. “Roy’s daddy, what’s he got to do with this?” My head must have been sitting sideways, I felt so confused.

“Roy’s daddy was your daddy, Rawling,” Shirley says slowly, and those words came at me like a semitruck comes rumbling toward me on the interstate. “Roy’s your half brother, Rawling.”

Shirley never knew half of how I knew Roy and she doesn’t know what’s she telling me now. “Roy’s my brother? No, no, no, Shirley. No, you can’t know this, Roy didn’t even have a daddy.,” I say.

“We all have a daddy, Rawling. Your friend Roy’s your half brother,” she says.

And the diner got like I was seeing it through a pinhole. One dot in front of me, and Shirley looks like she all pulled up with her gray uniform and her apron, all pulled up like she’s gonna tip over.

I push open the kitchen doors and run outside the kitchen. It’s dark, and I run to the edge of the parking, past Mr. Curtain’s car. And I throw up, and I’m heaving, and I can’t throw up enough. My guts, I want my guts to come out, and so I keep heaving but there’s nothing left inside of me, except me. And Roy. And I heave again. I can’t breathe, I can’t seem to get enough air inside. I’m spinning holding onto the gravel and I’m crawling around and howling.

“Rawling, honey. Rawling, you gonna be OK, hon,” Shirley says. She’s circling behind me in the dark. “I’m sorry, Rawling. You pushed me.”

“Shirley, I loved Roy,” I’m waling. She just stares at me, the light making a halo around her. “Shirley, I mean, I mean, he and me were lovers, he took me to his trailer and taught me how to make love when I was barely done being a kid.”

And now Shirley’s backing up I see she’s getting smaller, going into the light turned on outside the diner’s backdoor. “Oh, Rawling,” she whispers. She doesn’t say anything else. She just stays right there and watches me roll in the dirt like somebody’s given me poison.