Another Short Story By Elaine Carlson

I was sitting in my backyard under our big oak tree and the sprinkler was on next to me. I almost wished the quiet would last and I could be alone. But my cousin was supposed to be coming by and I looked forward to seeing her.

We were close when we were little. She and I are almost the same age --- she was born three and a half months before I was. Whenever her family and my family got together our mothers would put us together to play. Then the adults would sit and talk.

Her name is Rosalie and mine is Lili. Once we were out when a man saw us. He asked if there was another sister named Pansy or Daisy. We told him no but didn't go on to tell him we were cousins. She thought it was hilarious he thought we were sisters.

Much later I told her that he might have wondered if one of us had a sister. No, she would always say that the man thought we were sisters. I didn't bring up the subject again because I got tired of her thinking that man was so funny.

I saw her get up out of her car and walk up to beside the garage.

"That was great what you found out about Grandmother," she said as she lifted up the latch that let her open the gate to let her into my back yard.

I picked up the magazine and the newspaper I had put onto the chair next to me. She sat down.

"I heard about that a long time ago," she said. "But I forgot."

"In her first column she told about going to a feed store to buy a flat of day-old chickens. My father was fascinated by them. I guess he was four and that was before your mother was born."

"She came along when he was seven."

"She told how he helped her put them into the chicken coop our grandfather had assembled and set up in their back yard."

"Its so good you were able to go to Lompoc," she said. "I haven't been there for a long time. Like when we were kids."

Well, if she wants to drop the talk about Grandmother's time as a columnist for the Lompoc Newspaper that is all right with me.

"Was it nice there?" she said. "I imagine it is has grown quite a bit."

"Yeah. Now its population is either forty-four or forty-five thousand," I said. "For California its population density is in the 87th percentile."

She laughed. I was really surprised how hard she laughed but I began to laugh with her.

"Yeah it used to be small," I said, "When my father was born less than a thousand people lived there. Imagine by being born you increase the population of a place by more than a tenth of one percent."

We just looked at each other. I didn't know what she was thinking but I was wondering if I even wanted to be a friend of hers again. Or if it would be possible to reignite a relationship after all these years.

I could see the car that she drove up in and it wasn't a beater. And it wasn't a van or a pickup truck either. Was it a Porsche? And her clothes were all spiffy and her hair made up just so. Why was she even willing to sit in one of my lawn chairs?

"It's been a long time since we have been together," I say. "I think the last time I saw you were pregnant."

"And that time it was with Laura," she said. "And now she is 32."

She didn't go on to tell me that she went on to have four more. I heard that fact from my mother and that she had a tubal ligation after the fifth one. Personal information is quite porous in our family. Now I had another question I really wanted to ask her.

"Hey that guy you went with before Bob. Whatever happened to him?"

"Oh, you mean Tony. We broke up about two months before I met Robert," she said. "Nothing really bad. Actually we had a lot of really good times together but I guess we never were in love."

Then I really wanted to hear about those really good times. Or at least one. I think she sensed what I was thinking because she started to talk.

"Once we wanted to do something but we were out of money.

"I said maybe we could rob a bank. I just said it as a joke, but he nodded his head."
"And wouldn't you know but we started to make elaborate plans to do just that. You know the bank that is on the corner just across from the park."

Well, I didn't know. We didn't live in the same town, and I only went there once (and not to that park).

"For almost a month we made careful and meticulous plans to rob that bank.

"I would be the one to go in and he would be waiting in the car outside.

"I would wear head scarf so I would look like a woman from one of those Muslim countries."

"We kept watching the bank and knew when they changed shifts and when it was busy and quiet and almost everything there is to know about it."

She stopped – maybe to get her breath. I was intrigued but didn't speak.

"For a time, we thought about going to another city and study a bank there but decided to not to change.

"But then ….

I wait.

"We finally decided not to do a bank robbery," she said. "We thought there was too big of a chance that things wouldn't go right."

I then knew that I just wanted this visit with her. I was sure there was too big of a chance that a friendship wouldn't go right.

But she did take me in her car (and yes it was a Porsche) to a restaurant. We had a good time together, and I was happy she came to see me. She even paid the bill so who am I to complain?