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Chicago Blues
by Julie Reece Deaver


I have just kidnapped my eleven-year-old sister, although she doesn't know it yet. She sits beside me, reading the newspaper, as I barrel down the Eisenhower Expressway and head into Chicago. I have a pretty good idea how she'll react when she finds out she isn't going home. I know she'll be less than thrilled.

'You're driving too fast, Lissa!' she says. 'I bet you're doing at least eighty.'

'I'm not doing eighty.'

'You daydream too much. It makes you a bad driver.'

'Marnie, will you just relax and read your newspaper, please?'

'Where'd you get this car? I wouldn't be caught dead driving a '73 Gremlin.'

'One of my professors lent it to me.'

'Yikes....'

'Will you cut out the little monster act, please?'

I glance at her briefly; she scowls and looks away. Marnie looks like a rejected cover girl from Vogue: She wears purple eyeshadow and pink circles on her face and uneven red lipstick.

'There's some Kleenex in the glove compartment if you want to take your makeup off,' I tell her.

'I'm not taking any orders from you,' she says. 'Big shot.'

'How come you're so mad at me?'

'You know why.'

Marnie is furious because this morning I dragged her out of the drugstore and embarrassed her in front of her ultra-cool friends.

'Kiki and Barb'll never want to do anything with me again,' Marnie says. 'Not after today.'

'You shouldn't be hanging around with those kids.'

'You just don't like them because Kiki has her nose pierced.'

'I don't like them because they talked you into cutting school.'

'So I skip a few days of sixth grade. Big deal.'

'It is a big deal. You never used to do stuff like that.'

We're quiet for a minute. I'm looking for the right exit. I have difficulty with directions, but Marnie's a human compass. She always knows right where she is. Right where she's going. She's smart in most things, really, and deep down I have a feeling she could skip the entire year of sixth grade and not be hurt by it at all.

'You missed the exit a quarter mile back,' she says casually.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Because I'm not talking to you.'

'Marnie, come on....'

'No one asked you to come home from art school and check up on us. Mom and I were doing just fine until you butted in.'

'Marnie, Mom is not doing fine. She had a ten-alarm hangover this morning.'

'She can't help it. Frank dumped her and she has a broken heart.'

'She should be worrying more about her liver.'

'Yeah. Real funny.'

Our mother used to be a semi-well-known cabaret singer. Now she's becoming a very well-known alcoholic, at least in the town we live in....

'Why didn't you call and tell me she was drinking again?'

'Like you'd care.'

'Dammit, I care. You know I care.'

'You think you can forget about me for two months and then make everything all right by inviting me to Chicago for the weekend.'

'Marn, I didn't forget about you. I've been busy settling in at school.'

'Busy. Yeah.'

'I'm the youngest one there. It's not easy sometimes.'

'What do you do there all day? Just sit around and draw?'

'No, I'm studying lots of things ... anatomy and art history and ... Marnie, it's great. The school pairs us with mentor-artists. You know, artists who are already successful in the fields we want to go into.'

'How come you can't just stay home and study art at the community college?'

'Because this is the best school. Kids from all over the country want to go to this school.'

'Oh.'

'Marnie, look ... I would have come right home if I'd known anything was wrong.'

'Mom got fired from the Blue Note. Did she tell you?'

(Copyright by Julie Reece Deaver)


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