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Fiction

Weary Carrie

5 December 2024
Categories: Fiction

after Jane O’Connor  

I hate being weary. 

My favorite thing to do is hide in bed. That’s a weary way of saying I’m exhausted. 

I like to drink two pots of coffee in the morning. That’s a weary way of saying I haven’t slept through the night in a long time. 

I can’t wait until all three of the kids are in school because then I might be less weary.  

Nobody in my family is weary at all. Not even my husband.  

There’s a lot they don’t understand… 

Comforting at least one nightmare each night does disrupt my sleep. 

Being a stay-at-home mom is a job with no days off or vacations. 

A mom is supposed to keep everything together all the time: the house, the kids, the schedules, the meals. 

“What’s a weary woman to do?” I ask my morning dose of Prozac. Its full name is fluoxetine, and it’s a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.  

Then I create a plan that is crucial. That’s a weary word for I’m at the end of my tether. 

Maybe I can teach my family how to be helpful. I create a to-do list. It tasks my husband with laundry, the four-year-old with making his own bed, the three-year-old with picking up toys, and the one-year-old with not throwing food across the room. I stick the list to the fridge and return to bed. 

Soon there’s a knock on my door. My family saw the to-do list. My husband wants to begin helping right away. 

The trouble is my husband doesn’t know how to do laundry. That’s okay. I drag my ass out of bed and show him how to separate lights from darks and how to change the settings on the washer. I explain that my bras need to go in a lingerie bag and that they should never go in the dryer. I demonstrate how to spot-treat the kids’ clothes. 

I show the four-year-old how to smooth his sheets, pull the blanket to the top of the bed, and how to place his pillow on top. He screams when I move his stuffies to the floor. 

I help my three-year-old pick up Matchbox cars and drop them in the toy box, but for every one he puts in, he takes two back out. 

The one-year-old throws cheese puffs across the room, but at least those aren’t as hard to pick up as the pureed peas she flung yesterday.  

My husband is trying to be sympathetic. That’s a fancy word for knowing your wife is losing her mind. 

When I return to bed, my husband says, “Why don’t I cook dinner tonight?” 

And I know he really does want to be helpful. 

“The kids and I will make pasta with red sauce,” he says. 

My husband is not a chef. He’s not even a decent cook, but I’m too weary to argue.  

When he calls me to dinner, I try to dry the tears that won’t stop falling. When I step into the kitchen, the kids look up from the crayons and paper strewn across the kitchen floor. There are streaks of colored wax on the tile that I’ll have to clean later. My husband doesn’t notice the mess. I almost cry but stop because my husband looks so proud of how he’s managed the kids and dinner.  

Everyone eats their basic noodles. No one argues like they do when I serve vegetables. I poke at the mushy pasta and say, “Great!” when my husband asks how it is. “I’m just not hungry, is all.” The one-year-old lobs a noodle at her brother. It lands in the middle of the table. I stop myself from saying anything. I try to let my husband be helpful. 

“For dessert, let’s have cookies,” my husband says. That’s a weary way of saying he’s weary already. I don’t have the heart to tell him he still has hours of being helpful today. 

“I’ll get them,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m helping when I’m the one who’s weary. 

I grab the box from the pantry, but the package feels too light. I pull out the plastic trough. Only one. Not enough for all of us. I look on another shelf. I stall. One will create a squall. I don’t pause—I eat it in one bite. I wipe my lips. I still feel weary. I want to go back to bed. 

After the kids cry because there are no cookies, and my husband and I try to comfort them with grapes, I feel even wearier.  

My husband tells me to take a bath, that he will handle bedtime.  

I tell my family, “Thank you for helping tonight.” 

“I love you,” my husband says. 

“I love you,” the four-year-old says. 

“I love you,” the three-year-old says. 

The one-year-old hugs me. 

I try to speak but can’t without crying. I smile at them all as I head to the bathroom, still weary, but grateful, even as I know tomorrow’s mess will make me wearier than ever. 

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Onions

4 December 2024
Categories: Fiction

The day the geese migrate South is the day my mom dies. I find her in the onion patch, hands thrown at her sides and hair tangled in the earthworms. The hose is wrapped around her and dripping muddy tears off the curve of her calves. The honking laughter echoes in the sweaty dawn and it’s too hot to cry.  

I kneel next to Mom’s body and trace the sunspots kissing her tissue paper cheeks. I follow the crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes and the wrinkles that map the topography of her face. They resemble the way the soil cracked when the summer-long drought struck a few years back. I brush a piece of stiff hair and place it behind her ear.  

“Dad!” I holler. There must be something in my voice because he runs to the garden immediately. He unlocks the gate and his boots stutter to a stop, exhaling a sharp breath. I keep my eyes pinned resolutely on Mom, and he places a calloused hand on my shoulder.

“Lou,” he whispers. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find her.” He tries to stifle a sob, but it leaks out dusty and raw.  

“Isn’t there like…someone we should call?” A few seconds pass and I sneak a glance at Dad. He looks so lost, and I quickly look away when his eyes meet mine.  

“Yeah, sorry. You’re right.” He doesn’t make any effort to move, just stares at Mom staring at the sky. I stand near the garden gate, an apostle of indecision and uncertainty. Yet slowly, Dad follows.  

We move at a crawling pace, and Dad has to stop frequently in order to turn away and wipe his eyes. As if he thinks he can still protect me from the fact that Mom’s dead. It doesn’t matter that I can still see his shaking shoulders and collar wrung with snot. As we’re finally approaching the house, I turn around, too. I notice that from here, Mom is indistinguishable from the pile of sweet potatoes or the mound of compost jittery with life. She would have preferred to decompose, nitrogen and potassium rooting into the fertile soil. She could’ve been a tree, a carrot, a leek. Now she’s just dead.  

I let Dad stay outside and I grab his phone from the couch. I dial 911 and put it on speaker. I tell the operator my name, address, and that my mom has passed away. I also say that it was expected and that she wanted to stay on the property instead of going to a hospital. The operator asks if there is an adult around he can talk to. This seems to jolt Dad out of his stupor, and he takes the phone from me.  

The operator asks him a few clarifying questions, and Dad nods before saying, “Yes, sorry, yes.” 

“And you’re sure that she’s dead?”  

“Yes, can someone please get her now?”
“Sir, I am just following procedure.” 

The operator continues to probe, asking if we’ve checked for any signs of a pulse or administered CPR. With each question, Dad’s face becomes paler, and I can see the tension building up inside him.  

“No!” He finally explodes., “She’s dead, okay? She has a Do Not Resuscitate Order and we just need someone to help us. Please.” His voice breaks and he covers his face with a palm.  

The operator thanks Dad for his patience and says that an ambulance is coming right away. Dad mutters something under his breath and stalks inside the house without another word. I don’t think he even sees me.  

A sound fizzes in my throat, and I gargle back a laugh. This isn’t funny, I remind myself. My mom’s dead. I won’t ever hear her husky laugh or feel her warmth next to mine. No more sticky fingers from the blackberries that hang over the fence or loud Jeopardy nights with her face frozen in blue light. She never got one answer right, even though her guess was always the loudest. I hope that she got to see the geese.  

I wait on the step for the ambulance. A few trucks go by, but it’s mostly still. The dirt chalks up silhouettes on the horizon and everything looks a little staticky. I can feel my shoulders burning. I know Mom would tell me to put on sunscreen, but it seems futile now. When I picture her in that onion patch, there’s a part of me that believes she died happy. Mom really did love that place, even if Dad and I found it ridiculous sometimes. She used onions for everything, selling caramelized ones in little jars at the farmer’s market for five dollars a pop. They were in her eggs, salads, omelets, and hamburgers. I always spit them out, leaving a soggy pile in the corner of my plate next to the radishes.  

Mom knew I hated them, but I do remember that when I was little, she took me out to the patch one morning. She was holding my chubby fingers and pointed at the thick stems lying sideways on the ground.  

The tops should flop over like rabbit ears and be as soft as a squishy marshmallow. She let me tug one of the bulbs, and it gave way with a gentle pop. There’s still a picture of me holding it triumphantly pinned on the fridge.

Mom was also the only person who could cut onions. She claimed that refrigerating them beforehand helped with the tears, but Dad and I still cried when walking into the kitchen. She would just laugh and keep slicing, her breath smelling like basil, mint, and something sweet. I never figured out what it was.  

~

The ambulance’s tires send rocks skittering across our driveway as it pulls up to the house. Dad scurries from inside and the screen door bangs shut behind him. He leads the paramedics to the garden, and they lift the stretcher through the rows of carrots and wildflowers. I follow a few steps behind, taking in their low whispers and pointed directions to step here and lower down slowly. Dad shows them Mom’s DNR bracelet, and they kneel to look at it.  

A river roars in my ears as the paramedics pick up my mom. They lay her flat on the stretcher, seat belting her in like she’s going on one of those spinny rides at the fair. Careful, I want to say as they step dangerously close to an onion top. Watch the hose. I know I should be over there telling Mom how much I love her and how much I miss her. A good daughter would hold her dad’s hand and be okay with crying, knowing that there’s comfort in each other. I shouldn’t be hiding in the background, an understudy in my own grief. And I do want to be there, but I don’t know how to support him. Work, I tell my feet. Move! I stay rooted to the spot.  

Dad’s fingers twitch towards the stretcher, but the paramedics cover her with a white sheet before he can reach her. They start to move Mom out of the garden and this time, Dad verbalizes what I’d been thinking.  

“Careful,” he gestures, “watch her legs. Look out for the gate.” I step out of the way as they roll her by. What am I supposed to do? Walk with them? Say my many thanks? Offer them some tea? Certainly not just stand here like some sort of fool.  

 I look at Mom instead, willing myself to reach for any emotion, anything at all that will show appreciation for how good a parent she is and how much I love her, even if I could never say those words. Even if she always gave so much more to me than I ever gave back to her. But when I look at this woman, my mother, all I see is a white sheet, a body written in past tense, a person gone. And when she’s lifted into the ambulance, this image, too, is wiped away. All that’s left are memories already collecting dust. 

I must have been staring for longer than I thought because when I turn back around the paramedics are talking to my dad. He’s visibly shaking, a dam about to burst. I can see the cracks, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. There’s more deliberating, and finally, Dad is walking towards me.  

“Lou, I have to go to the funeral home. There are some…things I need to sort out. You can stay or come with me, whatever you feel most comfortable doing.”  

“I’ll stay here.” For the first time in this entire conversation, Dad’s red-rimmed eyes meet my dry ones, and I feel a little bit monstrous.  

“I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself. I can ask someone to come over or-” 

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”  

“Ok. It’ll probably be a few hours. I made us omelets; they’re in the microwave.” He nods again before wrapping his arms around me. “Love you.” I’m stiff and I barely touch my fingers to his back before he pulls away. He and the ambulance drive off and I can’t hold back my sigh of relief.  

I wander inside and sprawl on the sofa, burying my head deep in the pillows. I try to get my eyes to close and my breaths to even out, but hunger pulls me from my paling consciousness. Isn’t grief supposed to make a person lose their appetite? I sigh and grab one of the warm omelets from the microwave. I sit at the circular table in the middle of the kitchen and stare at Mom’s empty seat.  

There are so many traces of her. The half-drunk cup of tea and jam-smeared plate are only a reach away and there’s a knife with her fingerprint on it. The kettle is on the burner and her phone is still plugged in. Those are the cabinets she painted butter yellow even though the guy at the paint store thought we’d lost our minds. And the baby grand piano she played ragtime on only during special occasions or when she had too many glasses of wine. I thought she looked especially beautiful when she played those black and white keys. She created magic then; I was sure of it.  

I take a bite of the omelet and let the taste curdle on my tongue. I move it around in my mouth and when I swallow, it drops resolutely into my stomach. I inspect my plate and realize that there are no onions. There’s nothing to spit out, nothing to crunch or pretend to like. Just egg and cheese. How I always wanted my mom to make it. Usually, this would be the best day ever, but it’s not how I imagined. In fact, I think I hate it.  

Dad probably wasn’t even thinking when he made them, but the missing ingredient seems to highlight the missing parent, and my heart peels thinking of everything that was. I try to eat a few more bites, but I gag the second the omelet touches my tongue. I search the fridge looking for a glass bowl full of chopped onions, but there’s only eggs, milk, cheese, and some condiments. I debate about texting Dad and asking him to pick up a few things from the store, but then he’d just get worried and come back home early. There are probably some meals left in the freezer anyway.  

The omelet looks at me reproachfully, and I know I won’t be able to finish it. What I need to do is go to the garden. Dad wouldn’t want me to, but everything needs to be watered, and some vegetables are ready to be picked. The onions are done, my brain sings, but I toss that thought into an overflowing garbage bin. My eyes flick to the photo on the fridge, me with that enormous onion, showcasing both of Mom’s babies. Those onions belonged to her, never to me.  

I leave the plate where it is and walk outside. The garden is still, and the sun is hot on my shoulders. The impression of Mom’s body is a figure carved of damp soil and worms the color of a smoky sunset. That’s where her head rested and where her ankles sank deep into the earth. Shoulders in the shape of crescent moons and a shadow of a person who doesn’t look as tall as I remember. Would I have recognized the outline if I hadn’t been the one to find her? Or maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.  

The hose is still dripping on a patch of weeds, and I twist the nozzle to the shower setting. My routine is familiar, and my brain tells me to try and find peace in the monotony. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I tell the carrots. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I say to the sweet potatoes. This is calming, I’m feeling better, I whisper to the corn. My words disappear in the breeze as I return to where I started. The onions look chalky in the cracked soil, and their fallen tops indicate that they’re ready for harvest. My thumb twitches to the trigger and I can’t remember the exact mantra I’d been reciting. No one is home, but my cheeks burn with embarrassment, and I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Everything would be so much easier if I could cry. All I need is for a lump to form in my throat and unshed tears to blur my vision like they do for everyone else. This leaky hose has more empathy than I ever will.  

I toss it in the bucket and start to leave when a flash of something silver catches my eye. It lays slightly outside of Mom’s outline, caught on the trunk of the fig tree; just a thread of otherness that contradicts the landscape. I kneel and pick up the strand of gray hair.  

It’s Mom’s, still wavy from the shower and damp from being in the shade. I lift it to my nose and inhale, not sure what I’m searching for. Perhaps an answer for my onion problem, some last words of advice, a trace of her lemongrass shampoo. It smells like dirt and well water.  

Maybe this is the sign she wanted me to have. Telling me to move on, to water the onions, to forget. I throw the hair in the compost on my way out.  

Inside I turn on the TV and clean. The lemon-scented spray sterilizes mom’s belongings and burns the inside of my nose. In the bathroom, I turn off the shower fan and open the medicine cabinet. Her pill bottles line the shelves and make a clattering sound when I dust around them. Some lady on the news is talking about the heat wave hitting the Midwest and the upcoming presidential elections. I spray the countertop and listen to a story about a house explosion that killed two. I guess it was obvious Mom was going to die. Not only in the doctor’s office ten months ago when she was diagnosed, but in the swollen legs, the hacking cough, and the heart that sounded like a kid skipping rope. Getting tangled up, falling, starting again. It was obvious in the five flushes of the toilet at night from the water pills and the whistling wheeze of her breath. But mainly in the quiet sobs when she was cutting onions, knife unsteady, fingers in butterfly bandages.  

I vacuum the living room, drowning out the feel-good story of the day. Pinned above the desk is a small calendar. There’s not much on it and whatever vacations we had planned were erased a long time ago. Tomorrow, however, there is a little box filled with Mom’s blocky handwriting. We’re supposed to go to the farmer’s market. I completely forgot that it was opening this weekend. A flame of nerves shoots up my spine because nothing is ready. Usually, all of the onions would be caramelized, carrots pulled, and tables already in the truck. I should be putting stickers on the jars and washing the crates for the veggies.  

I’ve watched Mom caramelize them before, but there are a thousand ways it could go wrong. I bite my lip and look at the time. Dad will probably be gone for a few more hours, but he must have a plan. We’ve never missed the farmer’s market. I turn off the TV and run upstairs into my bedroom. It’s stifling and the heat is a vise around my neck. I open my window and flop onto my bed. It’s better here, with my bookcase organized alphabetically and sheets tucked tight into the bed frame. There are no pictures, just a clean space that could belong to anyone. I sink into the mattress, prolonging this feeling of anonymity, of forgetting. That’s what she wanted, right?  

My subconscious blurs and the tension in my shoulders fades. Outside, I think I hear a skein of geese passing overhead, but the honking quickly disappears into silence. It might be the neighbor’s dog. I’m not sure.  

~

A draft of wind pulls me awake, and I find that someone tossed a blanket over me when I was asleep. Twilight is beginning to seep over the horizon and my stomach cramps when remembering that we still have the farmer’s market tomorrow. I jump out of bed and race down the stairs, stopping when I see what awaits me. Boxes and plastic bags are piled everywhere, on the couch, the piano seat, and dangerously close to the sink. Some are in Dad’s cursive, but most are written with a messy scrawl and a faded marker. Onions for Market, says one plastic tote. Inside is a pile of paint-stained jeans. I clench my teeth together and try to rationalize.  

I spot Dad at the table in the kitchen folding sweaters. He’s not crying, but he stares right through the wool and there are purple moons under his eyes. I nudge a box with my foot, and he finally notices me.  

“Oh…hey Lou. How are you?”
“What are you doing?” 

The question hangs in the air, and I can unwrap his wariness like a lollipop. Dad swallows and puts the sweater on the leaning tower beside him.  

“I was just going through her things. Is there anything you want to keep?” I shake my head, and he sighs. “I thought it might be easier this way. You know?” I stay silent because no, I don’t understand why he thinks it will be easier. Mom doesn’t just have things. Her soul lives in this house and how is he supposed to donate that? She is in the walls, in the fingerprints wearing down the piano keys, in the kettle she uses every morning. Mom is in the garden, in the earthworms and compost pile. She is in the onion patch, top flattened to the ground, soft as a marshmallow. The bathroom will always smell like lemongrass, and I know she’s there too. She is down at the river in a rainbow donut and teaching me how to swim on a sweaty, bug-filled day in July. Mom lives in the dimple on my chin, in my hips, in my frizzy hair, and somewhere in my heart. She won’t ever be gone.  

“What about the farmer’s market? It’s tomorrow and we haven’t got anything ready.” Dad still can’t meet my eyes and words strangle the tip of my tongue. Coward, I want to say, get over yourself.  

“We’re going to have to take a few weeks off. At least until the funeral happens.” He pauses and stares at me. This time, it’s me who looks at the floor. “It’s okay to take a break, Lou.” 

My fists clench and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t know what to do or how to think and I can’t breathe. I strike the pile of sweaters, and they scatter across the table and chairs. Hurt flashes across my dad’s face and when he says my name, his voice cracks. I run back to the garden, the door slamming shut on Dad’s apologies. His words replay over and over again, and I want to punch them out of me.  

It takes a few seconds to find the latch and, in that time, electric yellow wildflowers sprout in the corner of my vision. I run into the garden and wander blindly over loose rocks and dirt. My entire body is shaking, and I don’t know who to hate. Why did Dad have to get rid of Mom’s stuff so quickly? He’s the one who’s been crying all day, and I don’t know how to take care of emotional people. If he really wanted to move on, then he shouldn’t have canceled the farmer’s market. And why couldn’t he just put onions in the omelet? 

I think a part of me blames Mom too, because everyone knew she was dying and no one ever talked about what to do after. I heard them talking through the vent about the funeral and legal stuff, but never about who would take care of the garden or when to resume our regular activities. She never wanted to die, and I guess that was obvious. Now, no one is going to pick the onions and lord knows we don’t need any more dead things around here.  

When I reach the onion patch, Mom is barely there, just a splash of shadow under the stars. I sink, falling into her embrace. I spread my fingers to fit her handprint and tilt my neck so that I’m looking at the same sky she was.  

I stretch my limbs to their fullest, bending my legs, crossing my hands, and briefly closing my eyes. Still I’m a little shorter than she was, and a stretch of dark soil goes uncovered. I try to reposition my thighs so that my toes reach the bottom, but then the bend of her knee is more pronounced. And I can’t remember the length of Mom’s hair. Was it in the walkway or closer to the fig tree? I do everything to wriggle into her form, but I can’t fill it, can’t replace it.  

Wind rustles the stalks of corn and a chill seeps into my bones. I feel like I’m being washed out into the ocean, still stuck in that rainbow donut. I am the leaky hose in the garden and the 911 operator who can’t understand a concept like death. I am trying to resuscitate my former self, one who never needed to change. While Dad is moving furiously forward, I am lying in Mom’s fading form and forcing a dog to be a goose. I feel as though I am fading away, too. 

I turn around and curl tighter into Mom’s embrace. I wrap my arms around her neck and burrow my head into her shoulder. Heat lies stagnant between us and for a moment, I can smell the hint of something sweet on her breath and the lemongrass shampoo. I don’t want to water the onions. I don’t want to cut them or caramelize them or wait until they are as soft as a marshmallow. I don’t even want to be in the garden at all. I just miss my mom.  

And more than that, I wish she’d told me what to do and how I should feel. I wish she’d looked me dead in the eye and told me to pick the onions. To put them in the refrigerator and cut them even if I cry.  

 

 

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Stories About My Father

2 December 2024
Categories: Fiction

On June 12, 1954, somewhere in McAllen, Texas, my father is born, with a full head of red hair that he will later lose due to a DHT sensitivity. His mother’s name is Olivia Quintana, and his father, who will take off for Veracruz, is named Juan Saucedo. They have a dog, an Afghan hound, who will witness most of my father’s childhood, including his independence at the ripe age of fourteen—but will miss by a few years the birth of his first daughter, Selina, when he is twenty-one.    

But that is not what I am interested in. 

My story begins when my parents meet. My mother and father meet when she is young, only nineteen. He is thirty-three. My mother is an adventurous sort; liberal, feminist, and she wants to see the Rio Grande. She is backpacking with a friend through the American southwest. They spend a few nights in Houston, and make a planned detour to McAllen, when the friend suddenly leaves for China. A family emergency—a grandmother has died in Nanchang. My mother accompanies her friend to the airport and offers words of support. 

Within the hour, my mother has traveled back to downtown McAllen, finding herself sitting alone in front of a hotel on one Vasconcelos Street. The hotel offers cable TV and all the amenities, but my mother is immersed in her lonely planet guide, interested only in the hostels. 

Enter my father. He is still handsome in his thirties. He is fair-skinned, Hispanic, with a European nose. He passes her twice, three times, on his bicycle, and finally gets up the courage to stop and talk to her. 

“Are you here on vacation?” He says, talking to her yellow backpack. 

“Yes,” she says.  

He gets off his bicycle and sits down next to her. Who is she traveling with? Where is she from? The questions pour like water. She explains that she is Canadian, traveling through Texas on her summer break from university, and that her friend left less than a few hours ago. She points out the hostel listed in her guide and asks him if he knows where it is.  

My father, with his local’s knowledge, explains that the hostel has been run as a halfway house for more than a few years, and it isn’t necessarily the kind of place where she wants to stay. 

They talk some more, and he offers to walk her to another hostel that he knows of–one that’s decent and where backpackers stay. They serve breakfast in the mornings—a simple one of eggs and cornflakes—and he knows the manager who is Indian, like my mother.  

“Sorry,” my father says, blushing. “I don’t mean to assume—” 

“It’s quite alright,” says my mother in her most posh voice. “I am Indian.”  

 

I am all feathers, lightweight as a stone, fleeting, momentous at the same time. I am a nighthawk as I walk into the same hostel where, twenty-one years ago, my mother decided to stay at the Avenues Hostel and change her life. 

A friend had told her that sometimes at hostels, the management will let you work there and live rent-free. My mother took advantage of this situation, pushed it and pulled it into shape. She asked the manager if she could work there forty hours a week in exchange for free rent, and he said,  

“I think that will work out.” 

I’m not sure how much their shared ethnicity played into the decision. Maybe the manager simply saw something in my mother’s face, the flushed excitement of youth and being on one’s own for the first time, the falling leaves of adolescence leaving behind trees of adulthood.  

In any case, it worked, and my mother became the receptionist at the Avenues Hostel. She intended to stay in McAllen for fifteen days. She stayed for five months and three days.  

I take pictures of everything I see. The maps tacked to the walls offering tours to this and that location. The visitor’s guides piled up at the front desk. The words “danke schoen” written in dry erase on the whiteboard outside the office, left by some grateful German. This was her life, at least for a short while. 

 

I’m seeing a man named Johannes.  

Johannes is a tattooist, and I meet him when I go to get a tattoo done of my father’s signature. It is the signature taken from his passport, which he gets when he is nearly fifty and decides to visit Norway. He knows nobody in Norway. He has simply always wanted to go to a Scandinavian country.  

“A signature, huh?” Johannes greets me and lets me in. We exchange kisses on the cheek, which is customary for Johannes. “Whose signature is this?” 

“My father’s,” I say. 

“You are his creation,” says Johannes. 

“His and my mother’s,” I say.  

“Of course,” says Johannes. I take a seat and he wipes down the inside of my forearm, where I am getting the tattoo done. We talk about the shooting that was recently in the news. Neither of us has any insights or solutions, but Johannes begins to rant about gun control laws and how the system should be doing more to stop shooters. 

I know that I’m young, so it’s not expected that I have much to say. I agree with what he’s saying but am at a loss with how to deal with an issue so much bigger than my immediate concerns.  

“How old are you?” Johannes asks me. 

“Twenty-one,” I say. Johannes chuckles. 

“Oh, you are just a baby girl,” he says. Still he asks me if he can take me out.   

 

The day after my mother gets the job at the Avenues Hostel, my father shows up at the hostel to see her. He asks for her at the front desk, saying he is here to see Anika, and my mother has luckily given him her real name. The manager goes up to knock on #17, where my mother is staying. My mother comes down.  

I have seen photographs of my mother at this stage in her life, and she is beautiful. Her hair is luscious and full, a wild curly mane, her lips a perfect bow shape.  

My father has gathered from the manager that my mother is now working there. He asks her if she is working that day, and she says yes, starting at four in the afternoon.  

It is still early, only nine in the morning.  

“Do you want to see McAllen?” My father asks hopefully. With me, of course, is the unspoken stipulation.  

My mother consents and returns upstairs to dress. She considers her sari, which she has packed. My mother stayed close to her roots. She forgoes the sari for a t-shirt and jeans, and slips on a pair of sandals, bad for walking, but good for showing off small feet. She smiles to herself. 

It’s the beginning.  

 

Johannes and I go dancing. We meet outside his house—he lives above his studio—and I am coming straight from work downtown. Together we pile into a taxi and take it to UTA, the dance club with many rooms for all different genres of music—metal, electronic, goth, house, even R&B. We talk and joke in the taxi about getting too drunk, which both of us know I will not do.  

I have told Johannes that I already had my party days, starting when I was sixteen. I told him I was wild, that I went out and drank too much, and that I slept with strangers. I was so wild that I contracted herpes at age seventeen. I learned my lesson, I told him. I cautioned him, rather. The possibility of us sleeping together is still floating up in the air like a luminous cloud, and I give him full disclosure. 

He faces the window of the taxi. “It’s not like you have AIDS,” he says, and we change the topic. 

At the club, we get beers and dance to the Cure. Johannes spots an old girlfriend and pulls her over to say hello.  

It’s nice to see Johannes in a different context. I imagine him bent over his tattoos, working with one customer or another. I like seeing his world, knowing that I am on the periphery of it, standing on the edge, looking in.  

After we leave the club, we talk about what we want to eat. It’s a nightlife tradition to get drunk at the club and go out for food, or go in for food, afterwards. We’ve picked up a girl and her boyfriend, an old friend of Johannes’, and they come with us back to Johannes’ house. At his house, we play reggae music and make macaroni and cheese. The song is something about the liberation of man, liberation of woman. A single tear rolls down my cheek because when I’m drunk, I experience things in hyperrealism, and I almost can’t stand the beauty of the whole thing.  

“Why you crying?” Johannes comes over and wipes my tear. He sits down next to me on the bed in the living room and starts to braid my hair.  

“Just happy,” I say, and Johannes asks me if I want to sleep with him in his bed that night, or if I want to sleep with the girl. 

“I’ll sleep with her,” I say. 

“Are you sure?” He asks me. 

“Yes,” I say.  

 

The summer flies by for my mother. Afternoons and long nights working the graveyard shift are spent at the Avenues Hostel, checking in guests. She spends her days with my father, and they see all of McAllen. Downtown. The thrift shops. The cultural centers. The forests. She tells him everything, especially about the manager at the Avenues Hostel, who pinches her ass and gropes her chest whenever there’s no one around.   

“The manager harasses me,” she tells my father. My father, looking concerned, tells her that she should leave. 

“And where will I stay?” She asks. 

“With me,” he says simply, and she doesn’t hesitate.   

One morning at seven, when the manager comes back to the Avenues Hostel to take over his shift, my mother hands him the keys and tells him that she’s leaving. My father is waiting outside with his father’s truck, and she loads her yellow backpack and jumps in the passenger seat.  

My father lives in an apartment by himself. He works as a delivery boy for Domino’s Pizza at night. The apartment is in a tiny building with a winding staircase, and, as luck would have it, my father is also in #17. 

My mother takes this as a good sign.  

The apartment is small, with a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living space. He offers my mother the couch and she sets up her backpack, unrolling her towel which doubles as a blanket. 

“You don’t have to use that,” says my father, taking some blankets out for her. She smiles.  

And at first, it is all love. The process of falling in love is slow, and natural. Things start to come together not like puzzle pieces—no, much less contrived and arbitrary. Like two hands that fit together have started to play a melody on the piano, each with its own tune, but complementary. My mother, with no job, spends her days taking photographs and visiting art venues, watching free dance performances and taking a batik class. She goes to museums, frequents artistic neighborhoods. Mostly, though, she builds a life—whether she intends to or not—with my father. They go grocery shopping with lists, buying food that can be cooked simply on the hot plate that my father has. They shop for a birthday present for his niece. He helps her find a bookstore called Monte Ararat that she has long been looking for, which stocks feminist literature. 

And like this, they fall in love.  

 

It is my third visit to McAllen. My skin feels like it is translucent, at times, melting. I still have yet to see Monte Ararat. I’m more than a tourist. I’m a hunter of intimacy, of the tokens of a previous love.  

What makes me so curious about my parents’ love life is that I thirst to prove that it’s real, that my parents are really my parents. I know that my mother is really my mother, but my father and I are holding on by a tenuous spider’s silk. He was never there. How am I to know that he is my father? Even after the paternity test on my second visit, which confirmed the truth spilling from my mother’s archive of old letters, I was afraid that a subtle wind would sweep my father away. This is how you lose someone you only barely found.   

My father still lives in the same apartment that he did when my parents lived together. Twenty-one long years. Nineteen, when I found him, and he still subsists. His building even survived a small fire, and he still keeps an Afghan hound, a stubborn desire to cling to the past.    

My mother had a rough childhood. She was born in Mumbai and immigrated with her parents to Vancouver when she was two. She sought a restraining order against her father at the age of fourteen because he beat her. She was sent to live with an aunt who saw her only as competition for her daughter, my mother’s cousin. She was raised strictly and received a scholarship to a prestigious university. Somehow, my mother contrived the idea to visit the US-Mexico border and see how the Global South lives.  

I am not the only one to see the parallels between my parents’ lives. I am sure that it was part of their connection, which broke only because my mother chose to break it.  

 

“Can I ask you something?” says Johannes.  

We are lying in my bed. We have been kissing, and our legs are tangled together.  

“Anything,” I say, thinking he is going to ask me something about my parents because I am preoccupied with the thought of them. This is just months before I am to leave for my third visit to McAllen.  

“What are we?” He asks, and I am brought back to my own reality, the one where I am seeing someone named Johannes and he wants my time and attention.  

“What are we?” I repeat. 

“I want to make you my girlfriend,” he says, and I pause, and I say,  

“You should have gotten me cupcakes.” 

“No,” he says, offended. 

“I’m joking,” I say. “I want to be your girlfriend.”  

And because he is my boyfriend, Johannes and I get close, and it feels right. This should happen, I tell myself. He’s your boyfriend.  

“I want to take you to McAllen,” I whisper to Johannes, because it is the most romantic thing that I can think of to say.  

 

When I meet my father, it is not as I expected.  

It is not difficult tracking him down, although not as simple as someone of a younger generation might assume. In my parents’ time, there was no email, no Facebook, no internet. They wrote letters to each other. At eighteen, when I started to care, I found some old letters that belonged to my mother in one of her drawers, carelessly filed with her taxes. They are addressed to a man living in McAllen, Texas, and one of them lists an address and a phone number. I call, hang up. Repeat. It takes a few weeks for me to get the courage to stay on the line.  

I don’t know why my mother never told my father that I was born. When I confronted her about it, she said simply that she wanted to be a single mother, that she had always wanted a baby and no father, and that was the way it was to be. And hadn’t she raised me well? And with this point I could not argue.  

But I wanted to know. And it was this wanting to know, this desire to have knowledge of this non-part of my life, the time before I existed that brought me into existence, that propelled me into the future where I tracked down my father.  

One day, I caught my father on the phone. I knew it was him when I heard his voice. I asked for him, and he said,  

“Speaking.”  

My heart was hammering so hard it was if I had just volunteered for public speaking.  

And he said,  

“With whom am I speaking?” And I introduced myself and said that I was his daughter, that Anika was my mother and that I wanted to meet him. There was silence on the other end of the line.  

 

When I leave the Avenues Hostel, I turn back towards my father’s house. I have been staying in McAllen for several days. I plan to stay for only a few days more. My father and I have agreed on sporadic and brief visitation once a year, building up to longer stays and more intimate conversations. It’s become our rite, since I was nineteen.  

My father is now living with a girl named Melina, who takes care of him. He has anxiety. He takes Clonazepam drops for the anxiety, and they make him dizzy, and sometimes he wakes up at night with muscle spasms. He is thinking of switching to Quetiapine.  

I have met my father’s entire family. His mother, who is still alive and living out the last years of her life. His daughter, Selina, who works as a bank teller in Plano and is married to a pastor. His brother, who has a massive family replete with three daughters and several fish. Everyone assumes that I am dating my father as he takes me on the rounds to meet his family. 

“She’s so young,” says his brother, looking askance at my father, who explains that I’m his second daughter, who was raised in Vancouver.   

My father practices yoga in the mornings, in complete seriousness and utterly without pretentiousness. He rolls up his mat and goes to the park in his gym shorts and leggings, balancing on one knee and one leg. He asks me seriously if I can teach him more about it, as I am half-Indian, and yoga is an Indian practice. I tell him about the breathing routines that he can do, and he is gratified.  

My father tells me that when my mother left, he had no idea that she was pregnant. She said that her papers had expired, and she needed to return to Canada. She promised to return after saving up some more money and visiting her parents. She never returned, although she wrote letters. She never mentioned that I had been born. My father, heartbroken, moved on after a few months, dating women sporadically. 

My father talks to me as if I am his friend, telling me about his failed romances, his inability to find somebody who wants to spend the rest of their life with him. My father tells me that he is happy that I am here, that I wanted to find him.  

When my mother leaves McAllen, she buys a bus ticket out of the city to Minneapolis, where she will fly to Vancouver. She tells my father exactly what day and what time she will be leaving. She shows him the ticket. On the day that she is leaving, an hour before she leaves, he goes to his brother’s house because he does not want to see her leave. As soon as the door slams shut, she knows that she will never see him again.  

And for eighteen years, a few passionate letters and some late-night long-distance phone calls are the only remnants of that summer she spent in McAllen. She returns, drops out of school, has me. Works in a restaurant. Lives on her own, paying for her own things. A real woman. She slowly forgets about him, even though the separation is as painful as that of the fetus from the womb. 

When I turn eighteen, I am not the only one who finds a small piece of happiness, although mine lies in the past. Hers is a new future. She looks forward to getting married for the first time, to a Canadian. And here I am, reaching for a man that she left behind.   

 

My father drives me to the pharmacy.  

It’s an unusual father-daughter bonding ritual. We leave early in the morning, making sure to bring our papers. My father packs a sandwich, practical as ever. He tells me he’s going to get some beers while I step into the pharmacy. We cross the border into Reynosa at about six AM, when the sky is still lavender, and echoing with bird cries. 

I can see why my mother fell in love with the southwest. There is a magic in the air that caresses my cheek. I imagine it’s a loving partner kissing my face through the open truck window. The wind whips my hair, and my father plays corridos on the truck’s CD player.  

We’re a little too early, so we have to wait for the pharmacy to open. We sit in my father’s truck and play cards. We smoke cigarettes. My father tells me about his childhood–the English classes, doing mushrooms in the park. I laugh. I make a mental note to write down these stories someday, so I can tell them to my children. I stop myself and wonder if I will ever have children.  

When the pharmacy finally opens, it’s two pills, and I take the first one, and it causes an early-term abortion. There are no classes, no fuss. No signatures required, no doctor’s note. I save the second one for a few hours later, and we leave the pharmacy.  

As I am passing through Reynosa in my father’s truck, I see the prostitutes carrying candles on their way to the shrine. They are going to the shrine of Lady Death, who is their patron saint, the one who promises to release them at the end of a very long life. 

I see them crossing themselves in front of the shrine, and one of the girls has a tattoo of Lady Death on her back. She lives close to death every day. They all do.  

I thank God that I am not bringing another life into this world.  

 

On my last night in McAllen, my father and I take a different turn when we’re walking the dog. We start crossing a bridge. It’s a small one, and it crosses over the freeway.   

My father turns to me and tells me that he knew from the moment he saw me that I was his daughter. I have his eyes, after all, and we both gush like a little spring when we cry.  

I say of course I have his eyes. Shit-brown and wide; who could deny it?  

And we stop and stare over the traffic and I think of Johannes, who remains unaware that I have taken mifepristone. Maybe I needn’t tell him; maybe I could be like my mother, who kept her reproductive choice to herself for nineteen years until it burst forth.  

“What are you thinking about?” My father asks me. 

How could I tell him? That I felt as deep as a cenote, bottomed out like a freshly dug grave. That I longed to bury my actions deep inside me for later excavation, like my mother did.   

“Just the moon,” I say, and we turn our faces to it. 

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Visit in November

2 December 2024
Categories: Fiction

They had already booked a non-refundable flight, so they decided to come visit us anyway. They told us a week after the fire, and a month later they arrived. Usually, my in-laws take over our spare bedroom, but after losing our house and initially staying with friends, we had only managed to find a one-bedroom duplex to rent near downtown Santa Rosa. We put them up at the local Hyatt, which was conveniently located, a brisk walk or short drive from our rental. 

Our side of the duplex shared a wall heater with the apartment next door. Or better, their unit was in the same spot as ours, and no wall separated them, just a shaft. Many nights, we could hear the couple’s son making hooting noises like an owl while the TV was playing some sitcom or late-night show. He hooted for hours at a time. 

The old house next door stood on a lot ravaged by weeds. We had a view of the overgrown, messy front yard from our living–room and bedroom windows. It would have been hard for anyone to reach the front door without first cutting a path through bushes and weeds that had turned into bushes. The backyard had become largely invisible. Whatever it might have held, plants had swallowed whole. The house and yard would have had an off kilter, picturesque charm if not for the windows. Aluminum foil covered every single one of them from the inside, every single one. At first, I had believed the home to be abandoned, but then I noticed that the mail person was still filling the mailbox with junk. A neighbor told me that someone was still living inside. But who? And how? The neighbor didn’t know.  

Everything we owned had burned in the wildfire — Shirin’s paintings, my books. For many years my wife had worked as a project manager in the car industry but had finally returned to her first love. Our garage had been her studio, and she wasn’t able to work in the apartment. All my syllabi and course readers had burned, because I hadn’t stored them in the cloud. Some I found in old email attachments. Many nights I sat in front of this new computer looking for shiny morsels of the files on from the old one. This new machine made me self-conscious; it wanted my attention. I couldn’t think into it. 

Ask my father-in-law about his life, and he’ll tell you he likes dogs. The truth is he doesn’t. He never allowed his own dogs inside the house, and he didn’t take care of any of them. The first one the family kept on the balcony, as though in an outdoor cage. Farid is disgusted by the hair of our dogs that inevitably makes it to the soles of his socked feet, but he never thinks of packing house shoes. After we picked them up at the hotel and drove to our apartment for dinner, you could see his hesitation at the door. He’s never worn shoes inside the house, but the moment Vanya and Hikari came to greet the visitors, the temptation to not slip off his sneakers tucked at his face. He didn’t reach out to pet the dogs, and, stiffened when Vanya sniffed his pant legs for in search of some history. 

Farid is eighty-five, Judy seventy-seven. He retired thirty years ago, and she hasn’t worked in twenty. Shirin worries she might not have much more time with her parents, and she makes an efforttries to fly to Phoenix at least twice a year and stay for a week. Before this visit, she said, “I want more stories. Stories about Dad’s life in Iran before he came to the States.”  Farid got a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Arizona and married Judy, who was a history major. “I want more stories about their life together in Iran, and what it was like to leave the country again just before the revolution. I want to know what it was like to apply for jobs at American universities while the hostage crisis unfolded. Dad has never shared much of his life.” 

Farid won’t buy a smartphone; he won’t use computers. He can’t use the entertainment console in his new car. He critiques Shirin’s paintings by size and subject matter. He’s never understood what I am doing for a living, even though he worked in academia just like me. He’s never even tried to read a single line of what I’ve written. And Farid isn’t much of a talker. The whole family, —  Farid, Judy, Shirin, and her brother Bijan — , only talks about very safe things. Action movies they watched, food they ate, cars they owned. The room gets very quiet when feelings are mentioned, the room gets very quiet. If you press too hard, Farid will explode, and that is usually the end of the evening. Everyone scatters, and he’ll mutter to himself before going to bed. Judy will touch certain subjects Farid shies away from, but she won’t go into details. 

Before her parents arrived in Santa Rosa, Shirin had made a list of things she wanted to ask about; , but over the course of that first dinner in our small kitchen, the conversation veered from the fire, which started out as a safe subject, to Shirin’s loss of her paintings, and then to her senior year in high school and Farid’s refusal to let her apply to New York art schools. “I would have loved to go, and I still don’t understand why you didn’t let me apply,” she said. “You said you didn’t know the schools, and that I shouldn’t live in a big city. You wouldn’t budge.” 

He stared at her. Farid’s hearing is bad and has been for some time. It’s impossible for him to follow a conversation in its entirety. Only Judy’s voice breaks through to him, but even that isn’t a safe bet anymore. “You didn’t apply?” he asked, and it became clear that he hadn’t heard the question.what was said. 

Shirin repeated what she’d said herself, and Farid’s face turned from blank to something that made me afraid. It was a subtle shift, a slight hardening. “I don’t remember that.”  

“I think I could have had a much better start if you had supported me. But you only let me apply to state schools. You didn’t even try to find out about the schools I wanted to attend.” 

“A young woman cannot live in the city by herself. I would do everything the same all over again,” he said with a grand gesture of his arm that indicated that he wouldn’t talk about this subject anymore. He was finished; , it was done. 

It had only been an hour or two since her parents arrived, and everyone was very quiet. “The meatballs are very good,” her dad said in my direction, because I had done the cooking. “You’re a good cook, just like me. You need to give me the recipe.” 

I explained that the meatballs were from Costco. Everything we bought after the fire was from Costco. The few pieces of furniture, the mattress, our clothes, the spaghetti, the sauce, even the salad. Judging from his face, he hadn’t heard me. I said it again, much louder. He shook his head in his quick, this-is-my-final-answer way, which maybe meant, No big deal; or, What a fraud; or, That’s probably why I liked them so much. Maybe he wanted his compliment back. 

There’s a halting quality to the way he talks, as though he’s shopping in a supermarket he’s never set foot in before. He knows all the items, but they are in different places, and it takes him some time to find what he needs. I’ve never known him to speak any differently, but the pauses between sentence fragments have become longer. That night, whenever he couldn’t find whatever words he was looking for, he froze, his eyes bulging a bit. That was new. 

When he talks to his cousins on the phone, he becomes an entirely different man. His face is all smiles, his speech is fast and theatrical; he’s putting on a show. In Farsi, he’s gregarious. I’ve seen him with his sisters in Los Angeles, talking rapid fire, dancing after dinner to old records. With his Iranian family, he’s Farid, the prodigal son, the only son. “Family is the most important thing in life,” he’s said on more than one occasion, but the last few years he’s stopped talking to three of his four sisters. Arguments over property back in Iran, over custody of their mother, over the funeral of their mother just last January. 

Shirin has a cousin with whom she shares a birthday:, a woman we once roomed with in LA for an extended summer. They were close, as close as cousins who grew up on opposite sides of the continent can be. But she hasn’t talked to her in two years, because her cousin’s mom, Farid’s oldest sister, wrote Shirin a long letter insulting Judy and Judy’s side of the family . Tto get back at her brother. The siblings’ fight also poisoned the cousins’ relationship.  

“You don’t have a television?” Farid asked after dinner, while Shirin and Judy were sipping a last glass of wine. At home, he watches an action movie every night. The quality doesn’t matter, but it needs to be fast and loud. 

“No,” I said. “We haven’t bought one yet.” 

“I’m tired,” he said and got up. Judy stood up as well, even though she hadn’t finished her wine, and even though she had just started to ask Shirin about renting a studio space. Before he got into the backseat of our car, Farid took a look at the house next door, the aluminum inside the windows reflecting the streetlights. He said, “Is there also a nicer area in this city?” 

A short time later we said goodnight in front of the Hyatt. Back in the car, Shirin just looked straight ahead and , refused to say anything. We took the dogs for a short walk, and her answers to my banal attempts at conversation were answered with just a word or two. 

 

I broke off contact with my own parents some ten years ago, a fact Shirin has never been quite able to swallow. I come from a long line of family feuds. My mother hasn’t spoken to her sister in forty years, and my grandmother didn’t speak to her sister for the last twenty years of her life.  

When Shirin and I met, we were both in relationships with other people. Six weeks after meeting me, she told her parents that she would get married, but not to her boyfriend of four years. They never blinked and started to plan the wedding right away. I was grateful. , I appreciated the healthy blandness of family relations. Farid was still on good terms with his LA sisters, and , everyone seemed to get along well enough. Judy’s mom in Wisconsin quickly became my favorite relative. We had visited them all, and they had welcomed me into the family.  

Shirin suspects me of hating all parents, all family, but that’s not true. I distrust most families, but not having parents that I can accept and embrace as parents, is a forever wound. When I see adult children of my colleagues enjoy their visits home for a weekend or during the summer, my throat swells shut. Of course, time has made it easier to cope. Yet I cope better with not having parents I can call parents mostly because I don’t make friends with people who have kids. 

Am I taking satisfaction in the recent fights within Farid’s family, or in his inability to listen to what his daughter is saying? No, but I do feel less crazy — , a word my mother used in one of her strange letters to me, which on the surface are an attempts at starting a conversation, but are really only her wanting to lash out at me. Whenever I tried to explain how destructive my family was, Shirin would give me this look that said, I still love you, but I think you might be fucked up. Crazy.  

But something else was bothering me, something that was harder to put into words because I didn’t want Shirin to know, at least not yet. Watching Farid made me afraid. Watching him, I wondered if I was looking at my own future. I’m an immigrant, just like him. I’m eight years older than Shirin as , he is eight years older than Judy. My hearing is nearly as bad as his. I’ve been wearing hearing aids to be able to continue teaching. After almost thirty years in the States and not speaking my native tongue except for two or three visits to my home country, I wake up in the mornings with songs from my childhood in my head. I still remember the lyrics. Sometimes, at odd moments in the classroom or in a committee meeting, I forget the English term and only my old language makes itself available. These are brief moments, for sure, but they occur more often now. I’m nearly sixty — what will I sound like at eighty-five? 

Farid hadn’t planned on spending the rest of his life in America; I, on the other hand, never wanted to go back. He embraced the culture of the United States, but never entirely the language. I make my money talking about American literature. But still, people will never let you forget that you weren’t born here. They’ll ask about the accent, about how you like it here — as though you’re some tourist — and eighteen-year-old freshmen will feel more American than you, even though you’ve been living in this country since before their parents even met. My entire past, what I had saved from it, just burned, and this makes me feel lonely. Thirty years of my past I won’t be able to document or explain ever again. 

 

After the walk, Shirin smoked weed out on the stoop, and I had another cocktail. Our oldest dog Amir had died earlier in the year. In his last weeks, both Shirin and I had acquired a license to buy medical marihjuana; we wanted to buy CBD oil to make him comfortable. “Making him comfortable” became our way of speaking about his death. Shirin had smoked weed in college but stopped when we moved from Massachusetts to the Midwest. I’m still not sure why. Her roommate in Amherst had provided her with pot, and in Michigan she didn’t know anyone who smoked, but that can’t be the whole story. In any case, she didn’t start smoking again until after our move to California and after Amir had died. I joined her occasionally, but after our house burned down, I couldn’t handle putting a glowing stick in my mouth anymore. Edibles made me trip so hard, I grew afraid. In the end, I stuck to alcohol. 

Shirin and her brother both smoke to feel something other than dread and anger. With pot, they appear like average, somewhat talkative people. In order to feel themselves and feel themselves to be free of their everyday worries, they smoke as soon as they get home. It helps them navigate family life, their own expectations, the demands of their spouses, their spouses’ demands to open up. Weed is feeling, or it’s the wall behind which feelings feel safe. They never smoke in front of their parents. 

There’s a story Shirin has told me about herself. When she was seven years old and in second grade, she started to believe that she could eat with her ears. At dinner, she stuffed peas and mashed potatoes and pieces of chicken into her ears, and when her parents told her to stop, she snuck granola and old bread into her room and continued. Four times hHer ears had to be pumped four times. Only in fourth grade did she stop pouring chocolate milk down her ear canals. 

The story doesn’t explain a thing, but I thought of it while I watched her smoke, my own brain losing track of the fire, my in-laws visit, Shirin’s quietude. I loved her intensely; I didn’t know who she might be though, my wife of twenty years. 

 

* 

 

In the morning, we tried a fresh start. Together with Farid and Judy, we had breakfast at our favorite diner. Farid is worried about his cholesterol, and when the toast arrived, and he had forgotten to order it dry, he took his napkin and wiped off the bread. Then he took Judy’s napkin and wiped some more. “Look at all the potatoes they gave me.” He pointed with his knife. “So many potatoes.” 

Shirin asked if they bought an electric car. “No,” he shook his head. “First, most of our electricity comes from coal-powered plants. And the minerals they use in the batteries — they are mined in poor countries. They want to suck them off the ocean floor now. Second, the Germans used batteries in their submarines. In WWII.” He pauses. “No, maybe WWI. The submarines were very small;, there was only space for one man, and they reached the American coast. They had battery packs all over the submarines.” 

Around noon we visited our neighborhood. FEMA had been cleaning up the lots for the past three weeks, and where our house had once stood, there was only dark soil. The debris was gone, the foundation was gone, any signs of the violence with which the fire had consumed our neighborhood were gone. We had only lived in that house for two years, and my in-laws had never seen it, never  nor slept in it. They couldn’t see the apple tree, our neighbor’s weeping willow, the rose bushes or the Calla lilies. I still saw them all, but for my in-laws, this lot was just like all the other ones around it. Empty. Even so, it was an impressive sight, to stand in an urban neighborhood and not see any houses. It wasn’t the same feeling you get when visiting a new development before work on the houses has started. This was different. Charred trees still remained on some properties, and the streets and sidewalks were visibly old. The edges of the neighborhood now appeared jagged; just down the road, one side of an otherwise intact house had been scorched. And even after six weeks, the smell from the ashes still stung our noses. 

Shirin’s parents had wanted to see the lot, but now that they were there, it was less impressive than what they had imagined. They didn’t want to take a walk around the neighborhood;, they stood near where our driveway had been and just looked at the emptiness before seeking shelter in the car. 

Afterwards, Farid and Judy suggested buying us something, but Shirin and I kept drawing blanks. Friends had given us cookware, silverware, plates, and bowls. The apartment was small, and we didn’t want any furniture beyond what we had already bought. We had new computers, new dog beds, new toiletries, new clothes. But Farid and Judy insisted, and in the end, we drove to Costco and settled on a crock pot. They seemed very happy with the purchase, and we unpacked it in the kitchen of our apartment and stored it on the top shelf of a cabinet Shirin couldn’t reach. Then we ordered pizza, and while we were waiting for the delivery, Farid found and opened Shirin’s small box of edibles and pre-rolls. “You smoke?” he asked me. I had poured two glasses of whiskey and handed him one. 

“Shirin does.” 

“Is that right?” He took a sip of whiskey, grinned, picked up a pre-roll and sniffed. “Do you get high?” He turned toward his daughter, laughing at his own, drawn-out words. But you could also see that he was intrigued. “Last year, one of my cousins’ kids got married. We went down to Tucson for it. After the first dance, my cousin pulls me away and we leave the ballroom and stand on the terrace. No one’s outside, it’s too hot, but he lights up.” He paused a moment, a sly grin spreading. “So I took a few drags, but I didn’t feel anything.” 

“You didn’t inhale,” Shirin said. “Or the weed was bad.” 

“No-o,” Farid protested. “My cousin has good weed. He smokes every day. But it doesn’t have any effect on me.” He seemed satisfied by the lack of a more interesting experience. He had withstood it. 

The doorbell rang, and I went and paid the driver. Instead of eating in the kitchen, we carried plates and napkins into the living-room, which also doubled as our office. We had crammed two desks in there, plus a futon and a small coffee table. Judy and Shirin sat on the futon, while Farid and I took a desk chair each. Vanya came and stared longingly at everyone’s plate, and Farid taunted him, leaning toward the dog and eating the slice as though filming a commercial, saying, “Hmmm, it’s very good, so delicious.”  

Shirin asked Judy about the countries they crossed in the early 1970s, on their way from Bremerhaven, Germany to Ahwaz, Iran. 

“Oh, so many,” Judy said between bites.  

“What is that?” Farid asked.  

“She asked what countries we drove through on our way to Iran, after visiting Mom in Iowa.” She turned to Shirin. “You were so small.” 

“Huh,” Farid said. “I still can’t believe we did that.” 

“What do you mean? What part of it?” Shirin asked. 

“We got off the plane, and your mom stayed in the hotel, and I took a cab to the docks. I’d never been to Germany before, didn’t know the port at all and didn’t speak the language, but I found the right place, and got the car. It was brand-new, a Mustang II, six cylinders. Such craftsmanship.” 

“Where did you stay?”  

He shrugs, and Shirin turns again to Judy. “I don’t remember,” her mom said. “But there wasn’t much space in the car, and we squeezed you in the back, among the bags, so you wouldn’t be jostled too much.” 

“Do you remember any meals? Where did you eat?” 

Farid didn’t seem to have heard the question, and Shirin repeated it. 

“My ears. I should have them looked at.” He grinned. “I haven’t been to the doctor in ten years. Only to the dentist. It’s so expensive. I’ve spent twenty thousand dollars on my teeth in the last ten, fifteen years.” 

I removed my right hearing aid and showed it to him. “The old ones burned,” I said very loudly. 

“You’re wearing these?” Farid asked. He seemed interested, and I explained how I had gotten them, that you only needed a visit with an audiologist. I tried to make it sound as accessible and harmless as I could, and the truth is, it’s an easy process. What I didn’t say was that the hearing tests are humiliating to me, that they stress me and make me sweat. I’m supposed to hear and distinguish sounds and words and I can’t. While I’m in the soundproof booth, I sweat as though I were running at a fast clip on a hot day. I don’t like to admit to weakness and needing help. Still, I’m more scared of losing the world I am inhabiting than of being humiliated in front of an audiologist. Losing my hearing feels like an all too obvious reminder of my mortality, but the technology is improving rapidly. I remember my grandmother sitting lost and suffering from depression in my parents’ living room, her hearing aids emitting shrill noises when she turned them up high.  

I suggested I clean one of them and let him try, but suddenly his interest had evaporated. He handed back the tiny device and said, “I don’t need them.” 

Shirin asked, “Dad, when did you know it was time to leave Iran?” 

But her father was still in thought. Or he hadn’t heard the question. Shirin repeated herself. “Oh,” he said. “We came back and didn’t have jobs. We had to move in with Judy’s mom.” 

“I found work first,” Judy said. “As a librarian. But in the winter the car died every other day. A Chevy Vega, I remember that. In orange;, two doors. It was such a good-looking car.” 

Farid waved dismissively. “It was a ’75 model, but boy, it had rust all over. A cousin of your mom sold it to us.” 

“Did you consider staying in Iran?” 

His face remained blank, then he picked up his empty plate and carried it into the kitchen. When he returned, he opened Shirin’s box of pre-rolls again. He inspected the fine print on the plastic tubes, asked about the dosage. 

“We can try one,” she offered. 

“If you have time,” he said. “I don’t want to impose.” 

“Dad, of course I have time.” 

“Okay.” He agreed with a short nod, as though he hadn’t suggested it. 

While I cleaned up the living-room, Farid and Shirin went out the back door, to where the garage was located. The landlord stored garden tools and junk inside;, it was unusable, but the back stoop was relatively private even during the day. From the window above the sink, I watched Farid take the blunt from his daughter. He coughed violently after the first hit, but then continued to inhale, four or five times in rapid succession. 

After they came back inside, Farid poured himself a glass of water. It was four in the afternoon, and the sun outside was pushing clouds around without getting rid of them. Patches of clear sky appeared and disappeared again. “I didn’t know Shirin smoked.” Farid was still wearing his jacket. “I haven’t taken a nap yet.” He sat down on the futon in the living-room. “I think I feel something.” He turned to me and said, “In Munich, at the airport, I had an amazing sandwich.” 

Shirin asked, “What made it so great? What was on it?” 

“Lunch meat.” 

“What kind?” 

“Turkey.” He closed his eyes and paused for a second. “I’ll never forget that.” 

He sat next to me on the way to the hotel. “The sky is so white and blue.” He leaned forward, peered through the windshield at the sky above. He laughed, mesmerized by the colors. I’d never seen Farid drunk or stoned, but this time I had to help him get out of the car and to his hotel room. I guided him through the lobby, Judy leading the way toward the right hallway. Farid wanted to stop at the hotel bar to get some water from the dispenser, the one with lemon and cucumber slices, but Judy convinced him that they had water in their room. Luckily, they were staying on the first floor, and it wasn’t far. I had to steady my father-in-law, wait for him catch his breath, then take off his jacket once he had sunk onto the bed. For the first time I felt useful to him. Not like an accessory he doesn’t know and care about, but like a benign stranger lending him a hand. It was a pleasant feeling. “Oh boy,” he sighed. “I should have eaten more pizza. I didn’t eat enough pizza. The drink and then the weed.” He shook his head and sank back against the pillows.  

That evening, we didn’t meet up with my in-laws again. Judy called to say that they were staying in. Shirin and I took the dogs on a walk through a nearly deserted downtown, and then sat out front, me holding a cocktail, she a blunt. We laughed quietly at how happy Farid had seemed, at how he had lost control for once.  

We didn’t know it at the time, but inside the house next door, behind the windows covered in aluminum, the man who had once lived there together with his wife and two children, was building a guillotine for himself. Instead of a blade, he was using a giant screwdriver. He rigged the apparatus so that he would be able to use it without help. Nobody had seen him in a year and a half, but once he had been a well-liked neighbor. People had liked the family. He had been a good father, a good and helpful neighbor, people remembered. They couldn’t say what had happened. 

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Dead Weight

2 December 2024
Categories: Fiction

I woke to Sarah sitting on top of me and running her fingers down my face. I screamed and knocked her to the floor, grabbed my phone from beneath the pillow, and held it out like a weapon. She was a blur of arms and legs scuttling themselves back into a standing position, from where she grinned at me.

“Something is deeply, deeply wrong with you,” I told her.

“Welcome home, Ruthie.”

I unfolded my glasses and put them on so I could see her for real. She was thin and small like always. It was dark in the room; the sun hadn’t risen yet.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I’m going back to sleep. And I’m locking the door this time.”

“I learned how to pick locks last summer,” she said. I decided to take my chances.

—

“You have an insane daughter,” I told Mom as I entered the kitchen with my blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Dad sat at the table, going through his calendar. The sun came in through the window and the oven clock read 8:30. Mom and Dad were neatly dressed. I was in an early-morning blear, my hair half-tied, half-frizzed around my face.

“I have two insane daughters,” said Mom. She handed me a cup of coffee.

“She was on top of me. In my sleep. Smiling like a maniac.”

“She’s just excited to see you,” said Mom. “She’ll hate you again soon enough.”

“You call that excited?”

“Sarah’s got an odd way to love. It’s just her nature.”

Mom took my head in her hands and turned it from side to side. The way she was going at it, I thought she might knock on my skull to see if my brain were still in there. “You doing okay?” she asked.

I pulled away. “I’m fine. It was an accident.”

“You’re not getting enough exercise,” she said. “I read somewhere that exercise lowers the likelihood of suicide.”

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” I said.

“Alright,” she said, holding up her hands. “We’re just glad you’re home and safe.”

“We were very worried about you,” said Dad, looking our way.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not allowed to do that again,” said Mom, like an order.

“What she means to say,” said Dad, “is that we understand that you were in a lot of pain. If you ever feel the urge to…” he waved his hands, “you can come to us.”

“Great,” I said. “Thank you for that generous offer.”

“Anytime.” On his way out, he kissed my forehead.

The two of them left for work. I lazed around the house, indulging in my freedom. A semester off of school as recommended by the counselor Queen’s College assigned to me after my trip to the hospital. The counselor was sweet but young, and though she was good at hiding it, I could tell she was anxious, like I was an exam she was worried she was going to fail. “Can you identify any sources of stress?” she asked. I was embarrassed by her questions. I didn’t know what to tell her; everything I said came out defensive, and, at one point, I denied that the incident ever happened. It was a misunderstanding, I had said. They saw me on the ground but I was just tired; they thought I was turning blue but it was just the tint of the overhead light; the doctor had been wrong when he said I nearly died. The fuss was for nothing. I was sorry I had caused it.

I didn’t tell the counselor, but the worst part was waking up in the hospital and realizing it was me on the bed. It didn’t feel right, the nurses directing their attention my way. I got out of bed and sat in the visitor’s chair, looking around the room as if it was someone else being treated. That was natural, easy, and when Mom arrived, frazzled from the flight and concern, she found me unwilling to treat myself like a patient. In the hospital I would always be a visitor: that had long been my role and I had reserved it.

But I listened to the counselor’s suggestion. I had to give in to something. Mom and Dad wouldn’t forget and back off, and I was tired of everything, tired of making my own decisions. I packed my apartment and flew back to Texas.

After a couple hours of sitting around, I dressed and walked to the swath of trees behind the synagogue. It had always been my favorite spot; in the summer, wild sunflowers sprung up with long thick stems. I picked my way over the tree roots, tracing how they poked out of the ground, the floor covered thinly with leaves and sticks and pinecones. The air held a faint smell of weed. I looked out and behind a tree was Sarah, smoking a joint. She was in her school uniform: white polo, knee-length skirt. As I approached, she spotted me and waved.

“You’re supposed to be in school,” I said.

“I didn’t want to go today,” said Sarah.

“You know you’re not supposed to be alone,” I said. “Ever.”

Sarah ignored me. I wanted to shake her. My mind drifted for a moment to consequences and funerals, images that once manifested into research as a way to soothe myself. Instead the mortality rates would give me panic attacks and I stopped googling them; now I no longer knew the exact number. It slipped easily from my brain the same way everything else did. I couldn’t hold on to most information, like the names of the doctors and the dosage of the medicines. But I knew that the number was bad, and I didn’t want to look it up again. I sat beside her on the ground, took the joint, and inhaled. The smoke burnt my throat and I coughed. Sarah smoked and didn’t cough, and I felt silly coughing more than a sixteen-year-old.

“Does Mom know you smoke?”

“It’s medicinal,” she said. “Helps with my seizures.”

“This shit is not medicinal,” I said. Sarah handed me her water bottle and I drank.

“You can’t handle your weed?”

“You’re going to rot your brain. Smoking and skipping school? Do you even want a future?” She wasn’t listening to me at all. “The school’s going to call Mom, you know.”

“They think I had a seizure last night,” she said, her face lit up with deception. “I texted Margaret, told her it was a long one. I miss so often anyway, they don’t bother counting my absences.”

Margaret was Sarah’s shadow at school. She’s probably seen more seizures than I have. Our Jewish school was small, but the teachers didn’t feel equipped to watch Sarah on their own. Still, they were remarkably accommodating. They created a whole curriculum for her, one that was flexible enough to account for her condition.

We went quiet, staring out into the forest at the grayish trunks and quick squirrels in the brush. I smoked until the moments stopped connecting and my brain was quiet. I was waiting for life to do this on its own but each day it failed me. Each day it churned out seconds that kept looking back.

We remained there for a long time; eventually, the empty calm dissipated. The world resumed and memories turned out memories. The singing of the afternoon prayer from inside the synagogue, cars driving by, bugs landing on our legs. I watched a mosquito situate itself on the back of my hand and sink its proboscis down into my skin. Its underbelly swelled red with my blood. Everyone feeds on something. Sarah dug into the ground with her nails, ripping up sprigs of grass, clearing the earth just to clear it and see it cleared. She looked up from her burrowing and said, “Mom wouldn’t tell me the details but you have to. I’m your sister and I deserve to know.”

I laughed, because it was all so suddenly ridiculous, and I said, “You want to know what I did? I got drunk and I took some Klonopin, like an idiot, and my breathing stopped.”

Sarah grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it in my face. It hit my eyes, my mouth, my nose; I was blinded and blinking furiously. I spat and reached for her but she was quick; she walked away and then turned. “You are an idiot!” she yelled. My instinct was to run after her—I had been trained to do so— but I fought it, my eyes red and irritated, until I had to relent. I chased her but she had disappeared; I called her name but no one answered. I knew she wouldn’t let up and anger replaced anxiety. She was reckless, irritating, wild. I could not twist her arm; if I tried, she would cut it off. I walked home without her.

In the empty house, I took a long bath in her bathroom and drained all of her shower products. I found a bag of weed and rolling papers under her bed and hid it behind my bookshelf. It was childish. I was twenty but she made me feel fourteen. I wrote Mom a text, She skips school by herself and smokes weed, but felt bad and deleted the smoking weed part before I sent it. It was half revenge, half responsibility. Sarah couldn’t be alone. She could have her privacy when she needed it, but only if Mom was around and able to check on her every so often. If she was alone and no one knew where she was and she had a seizure and didn’t get the emergency medication in time—too dangerous. Her seizures didn’t stop without it. That’s what Dravet Syndrome did: Sarah’s body couldn’t make some kind of protein and the punishment was an entirely fucked up life. Only after Sarah turned twelve and begged and begged did my parents let her move out of their room into her own. Her bat mitzvah present, they called it, like it was a normal thing to give.

Mom called me immediately. “I’m coming home right now,” she said. “Keep your eye on her.”

“She’s not here.”

“You let her out of your sight? What were you thinking? Call her and find her.”

“I’m not speaking to her at the moment,” I said.

“Do you want her to die?” asked Mom, and I flinched. Mom took in a breath and then she muttered, “I’ll call her,” and hung up.

—

Mom gave Sarah quite a talk. Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table and I stood in the doorway so I could see her face as Mom lectured, “You never go out alone,” and “How could you be so irresponsible?” It was blown up like a balloon and twisted from anger to shame to obedience. I slipped out and walked fifteen minutes to a drugstore and bought her new bottles of her shampoo and conditioner. I came into the house through the back door and left them on her bed.

I laid on top of my blanket and watched the ceiling fan spin. My room still reflected a teenage version of myself. The walls were teal and featured taped-up pictures of high-school-me and my high-school-friends, grinning in the backyard of our Jewish day school and posing in dresses at the mall. On the bookshelf were old kids’ novels with torn covers. The Westing Game, Lemony Snicket’s entire body of work, my annotated copy of Jane Eyre from ninth grade. That one I had read during the two weeks Sarah had been intubated in the hospital after a seizure in the pool caused her to aspirate. Forty-five minutes long, the doctor had said, maybe more; she was unconscious, it was hard to tell what her brain was doing without the EEG. Once they attached  all the wires to her skull, my parents watched the screen spit out waves of brain activity as if it were a movie. I barely looked at it, buried in Brontë’s story. I didn’t want to know. I wrote the worst essay of my life on that book despite my two-week devotion to it. Every time I thought about the narrative my head hurt; all I saw was electroencephalography. I couldn’t remember if I loved or hated the novel, and I haven’t reread it since. It took Sarah years just to recover from that singular event. She was nine at the time, but the doctor said her maturity was at a five-year-old level, and my parents spent thousands of dollars in tutoring and therapy to get her to a normal high school. And every seizure—monthly, at the best times, every three days at the worst, now about once a week—set her back. I never understood why she fought so hard just to keep falling behind. She couldn’t read well, behaved erratically, and she could never be alone; thinking of her future made me so angry I wanted to vomit and then die.

“Ruthie?” It was my father’s voice from the kitchen. I hadn’t heard him come home. I rose slowly, like I was exhausted or injured, an old woman with a failing body. It was a fun game to play, to reject my youth, to allow my mind to infect my physicality. My parents and Sarah were eating dinner: grilled corn and baked chicken and rice. I grabbed a head of corn and ate it standing.

“Sarah wants to stay home tomorrow but your father and I have work,” said Mom. “She asked if you could watch her.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“What else are you doing?” asked Sarah. “Planning another attempt?”

“Watch your mouth,” said Mom.

“Chutzpah,” said Dad.

“Great job parenting, guys,” I said to them. I wished I was back at school. I chose New York so I could be far away, because I was stupid and thought that distance meant freedom; that there was a life of my own if I would just go out and find it. The life: sitting through chemistry classes in cramped lecture halls, walking back to the overpriced studio apartment my parents paid for because they wanted me to have something of my own for once, taking tequila shots at the shitty dive bar that didn’t card because my fake ID had been cut in half the one time I tried to go to Cubbyhole, befriending drunk girls as we staggered home, me thinking, Something happen to me already. I wanted to be in danger. I always got back safely. I littered my night table with dead vapes and smoked blunts, always thinking, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah couldn’t do this, Sarah was stuck at home, Sarah was sick. I was sick with worry and sick with the frustration of that worry. Sometimes I painted, but mostly, I bought canvases and left them blank. I hated everything I made. I didn’t care about sunsets or fields; I could think only of painting my sister convulsing on the floor, which made me feel so awful I thought I should be tortured. What else could I do? That’s how I grew up: watching. All of us waiting for emergencies at all times, always on, and Sarah paid no attention. She was selfish. I was angry. We circled each other in perverse orbits. I looked over at her. Her head was bowed slightly and she was quiet. Mom and Dad stood around unsure how to fix it despite all the years they had had to figure it out. They were too busy keeping their eyes on my sister, watching for the moment when her brain would try to kill her.

“Please?” said Sarah.

“Why can’t you go to school?”

“She’s been having a hard time,” said Dad. “We’re showing her that if she needs a break, she can ask us rather than sneak around behind our back.”

“Fine,” I said. “But you’re paying me for babysitting.”

“Twenty bucks,” said Mom. She patted the seat beside her. “Won’t you sit and eat with us?”

I sat, though I didn’t want to, and looked around. Mom was only forty-five, but her wrinkles were deep, and her roots revealed that all her hair now grew in gray. Dad’s kippah sat on a large bald spot. Sarah always looked pale and tired; even her loud emotions could not hide her body’s weary composure. We had grown around the weight of her. The byproduct of sickness was guilt and this house was stuffed with it. Dad felt endlessly guilty that I always had to come second, Mom felt endlessly guilty that her womb had produced such a torturous existence, and I felt endlessly guilty that I was angry—furious, really. Whether Sarah felt guilty, I didn’t know. She had been a burden for so long, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had staked her identity within that role. Perhaps she reveled in it.

Mom placed our dishes in the sink and then, as I was standing, slipped an arm through my arm. “Take a walk with me,” she said. “I miss talking to you.”

She was ordering me around again, and I told her so. “You’re too good to walk with your mother?” Dad said, squeezing my cheek. Another stupid thing to fight; I put on my shoes.

It wasn’t late but it was getting dark. The weather was cool and I held my arms to my chest, careful not to touch my mother. “Do you still paint?” Mom asked.

“Not much. I got tired of it.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I was never any good at it.”

“No, but you loved it. And we all need something to keep us busy.”

“I was too tired all the time.”

“I’ve been thinking of taking up gardening.”

“Nothing felt good. Even the things I loved didn’t feel good.”

“It’s a nice day,” she said. “Isn’t it a nice day?”

“Mom,” I said, “if I get down on the floor and start seizing, would you listen to what I’m saying?”

My mother was silent.

“Mom.”

“Do you want to be sick?”

“No. Of course not.”

“There’s so much Sarah can’t do.”

“I know.”

“She’s disabled. You want that?”

“No.”

“I love you,” said Mom. “When I heard you were in the hospital, it felt like you were trying to hurt me.”

“I was having a hard time.”

“We’re all having hard times. But you need to learn how to ask for help. You scared me so bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I never thought to be worried about you. You were hardly sick as a child. Sarah caught everything and you never had a runny nose.” She paused to study my face. “Even in the hospital, you seemed so healthy to me. I kept telling the nurse how you were glowing. The light couldn’t wash you out. The nurse said you were a very pretty girl, and I corrected him. I said, ‘a very pretty woman.’ I always felt like you were older than you are. Like a roommate. You didn’t need us.”

“I do,” I said. I couldn’t keep my voice even.

“That’s what makes this so hard: I’m all used up. I’m more of a nurse than a mother. I really wish I could be better but I’m all used up.”

Mom turned away from me and I could tell she was wiping her eyes. I kept quiet. I’d seen her cry before. The time I woke up at 2 a.m. to her shouting for the medicine, disoriented with sleep. When she spent a week in the hospital and came home to a daughter who told her she hated her only two days later. In the grocery store aisle, when I was fifteen and sullen and said that Sarah was ruining my life. It made me want to hold her.

“You’re an amazing person, Ruthie,” she said. We were turning back to our street. “I’m so lucky to have you as a daughter.”

“What if I was a serial killer? Would you still feel lucky?”

She laughed. “You’re so gentle. You could never hurt someone like that.” She caught the look on my face and added, “You are. You don’t see it, but I do. You handle everyone with so much care.”

She didn’t know me at all, is what I thought. When we got back to the house, I returned to my room and smoked Sarah’s weed out the window, thinking about how I had drunk-stumbled around, reaching into my bag. What had I been looking for? My phone maybe, or a cigarette; the bar was about to close for the night and I was loitering on the sidewalk, ready to go home. Whatever it was, I didn’t find it. I had seen the pill bottle, and without thinking, not even a little, dry-swallowed five of the small yellow pills.

—

The next day, we both slept in late. I drove Sarah to get Chinese food and then to the mall, where she tried on an endless amount of clothes. I was irritated watching her sort through rack after rack, but she kept promising me, “Just one more store,” and I acquiesced, hovering behind her with the emergency pouch of medicine clipped to my wallet. I was relieved when she got bored and decided to go home, but soon after our parents returned from work, she made me walk thirty minutes with her to the lake. It wasn’t a nice lake as lakes go. It was small, swamped with algae, and infested with water snakes. But when we got there, Sarah lifted her arms and jumped into the air. “Look,” she said, “do you see the water?” It was glimmering. She took off her shoes and waded in. I sat on the grassy bed.

“No swimming!” I called after her.

“Ankles only,” she promised. The sun beat down; it was low in the sky now, a fierce yellow. Sarah moved her hands through the weeds. She dipped her fingers into the shallow puddles near the shore. I could tell she wanted to swim and that it hurt her to hold back; she’d lift her skirt and go just a bit deeper and just a bit deeper. But anytime she got too far, I called, and she turned around immediately, no protests. I laid back. The weather was nice and I wanted to close my eyes but I was afraid Sarah would take advantage of my blindness. After a while of splashing around, she came running my way, her hands clenched around something.

“Check it out,” she said.

“If that’s a snake or a bug, I’ll kill you,” I said, standing.

She opened her hands. It was a black and green speckled frog with a reddish stripe down its back. “It let me pick it right up,” she said. Her gaze was held to it, captivated.

“Let it go,” I said, but she abruptly sat down on the grass. There was a vacancy to her face, and her open eyes took on an uncanny look. Not captivated—locked. Seizing. Her body loosened and she sunk over. The frog hopped away; it moved so slowly; I was stuck watching it; it disappeared into the grass.

I swore under my breath and grabbed for the medicine. I moved between getting the zipper open and spraying the midazolam into her nose without being sure that those two moments happened beside each other. I called 9-1-1 and my mother. 7:46 p.m. I lifted Sarah’s head and watched her closely. Her leg started twitching: a good sign, it meant the seizure had shifted and would be less severe. Usually once her body began to move, the seizure was ending. If she was totally still with her eyes locked to one side, it was riskier; the seizures were longer, and sometimes she had to go to the hospital. I waited, shaking out my hands. I strained my ears for sirens.

By the time the Austin Fire Department arrived, the seizure had stopped (7:52 p.m.) and she was asleep on the grass. The paramedics buzzed around her anyway, checking her oxygen levels, and, though I wanted desperately for them to leave, nothing I said could have shooed them away; they were following procedure. Mom appeared, her hair covered with a baseball cap, sweaty from the evening run she had rerouted to meet us. She took over. The ambulance came and I asked the paramedics if they could load Sarah onto the stretcher and drop her off at our house. She was heavy, dead weight, and she had pissed herself. They said no. We waited as they made calls to their supervisors to confirm it was okay to leave her and not go to the hospital, and then Dad arrived; he had rushed back from his study group at the Jewish community center, and the two of them lifted her into his backseat. She cried and fought them without opening her eyes. She didn’t want to move, drugged by the midazolam and worn out by the misfired electricity in her brain. The sound of her protests made me nauseated, and I was glad I did not have to go near her piss-wet clothes. I walked home as slowly as I could and by the time I got back, they had cleaned her, put her to bed, and showered and gone to bed themselves: the whole ordeal was exhausting, I knew that; I’d been through it, too.

Mom and Dad kept a mattress beside their beds ; Sarah slept with them after every seizure. When I was certain they were all asleep, I gathered my bedding and entered the room, settling on the recliner in the corner. I shut my eyes but I did not sleep; instead I closely listened to the sounds of three people breathing, so I could distinguish among them. This heavy-throated one is Mom’s, these gentle snores Dad’s, the breathing of a deep, deep sleep Sarah’s. I thought, I love you, I just want to hear you and hear you. Whenever any of their breathings changed course, whether it was to roll over or to mutter the nonsense of a dream, I felt something inside of me breaking at the disturbance. I wanted to do something to keep them in their respite but I knew any interference would only wake them. I could sing a lullaby, but what use was a surprise lullaby in the night? I could stroke their hair but I was afraid they’d stir at my touch. I sat on the recliner and listened to the rustle of blankets and the hum of the fan. The night was turning over and the sun would be back again and I was helpless in the face of it all: the rotation, the waking, the twitching of legs on grass.

Mom woke a few times, leaning over to check on Sarah’s breathing, but she didn’t see me: she barely looked around at all. I dozed but I didn’t sleep much. When five a.m. came, I gathered my blanket and pillow once again and left the room tiptoeing. I arranged my bed as though I had slept there all night and walked, compulsively, to the lake and back.

—

“I would suggest not talking to Sarah today,” said Mom to me, first thing. “She’s in a horrible mood.” She sighed and massaged her temples.

“The seizure is hard on her,” I said.

“I know, but I’ve got a horrible headache, and I can’t handle her tantrums. She woke up at six and decided she wanted meatballs. Never mind that I’m half-dead with exhaustion or that we had no meat in the fridge. It took her forty-five minutes to agree to eat some yogurt and go back to bed.” Mom opened the junk drawer and rummaged around. “Here,” she said, handing something to me. It was a twenty-dollar bill. I felt sick at the sight of it. I put it in my pocket.

Sarah came in not long later. Her hair was all stuck up around her head and I wanted to brush it out, make her look clean. “Let me fix your ponytail,” I said, and it was more of a plea than I expected.

“Don’t fucking look at me,” she said, her face so scathing I became immediately pissed off.

I turned to Mom. “Tell her she’s not allowed to say that word.” But Mom just shrugged like, what am I supposed to do about it? Sarah could get away with murder if she had a seizure the day before.

She smiled at me mockingly. It was a sign of weakness to invoke Mom’s authority, and over such a stupid thing; Sarah and I cussed to each other all the time. I rolled my eyes. Sarah reached out and yanked my hair so hard that my head was jerked back. “You bitch,” I said and pushed her away. She crashed into the counter and then was on top of me, knocking me down, digging her nails into my skin. I was pressed against the floor, my hands pinned to my chest, but she wasn’t heavy. I could fight back. I wanted to. I only turned my face away, waiting for someone to pull her off.

“Sarah!” Mom shouted. “I’m taking away your phone if you don’t stop this minute!” That managed to snap Sarah out of it. She released me, gave Mom a dirty look, and slammed the door as she went in to her room.

I got off the floor and smoothed out my hair. My scalp hurt and my forearms had red half-moon marks from her nails. “I told you not to talk to her,” Mom said.

I didn’t answer. I stomped out just like her and slammed my own door.

I secluded myself the rest of the day. Mom brought me food, and occasionally I heard Sarah tantrumming. I pitied my parents but I did nothing to help. Sarah napped toward the end of the day, and when she woke, she sounded calmer. Still, I didn’t brave the world outside my bedroom. I let the day pass in a blur of cooking shows and 2006 reality TV.

I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, when I heard a fumbling sound at the door. I got out of bed, unlocked it, and swung it open. Sarah was standing hunched over with a defunct credit card. “Told you I could pick locks,” she said.

“You didn’t pick anything,” I answered.

“Can I come in?”

“Only if you promise not to attack me again.”

“Promise.”

I got back into bed and she situated herself in the corner, taking up half my space. The window shades were open and there was enough moonlight to see her clearly.

“Well?” I asked.

“I’m sorry I was so awful today,” she said. “I always regret it but I can’t control myself.”

“It’s fine. Not your fault.” I looked at my forearms. The marks were still there but they didn’t hurt.

“I hate feeling like a baby,” she said. “I hate having to be supervised all the time.”

“I know,” I said.

“But I get it,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die. Mom and Dad watch you well.”

“Alright.” She looked scared. It was an unnerving thing to see; I had to turn away.

She rearranged herself once, twice.

“Why’d you do it, Ruthie?” She asked it like she had been waiting ages to ask it, and I heard it like I had known it was coming. But I didn’t know what to say. “Promise me you won’t do it again.”

“I’m trying,” I said. “It’s hard.”

“It’s not hard,” said Sarah. “All you have to do is not kill yourself.”

I looked over at her. “You suck the life from everyone around you, you know? I’m not blaming you. I think that’s just what happens when you’re sick.”

She was quiet for a while, chewing her lip. Trying to find something to hurt me, maybe. She didn’t seem upset, only tired. Worn and weary.

“Give me your hands,” I told her.

She held them out hesitantly, and when I took them, they were tensed. “Now close your eyes,” I instructed. I closed my own. “Dear Hashem, holiest of holies, for whom any shit is possible.” I peeked and saw Sarah smiling. “Please give Sarah’s epilepsy disorder over to me.”

We sat for a while not moving and Sarah was holding her breath. She was the first to pull her hands away. “It didn’t work,” she said, regretfully, like there had been a chance.

“Sarah,” I asked, “is it a decent life?”

“It doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t. I want it.”

“I really would take it,” I told her.

“Well. What can you do.”

I reached over and felt her pulse. When I was younger, and Mom and Dad went on vacation, I would sleep beside her in their room. I didn’t trust my ears to make sure she was breathing so I’d reach out to her neck and find the thump, thump, thump. She hated it; she’d stir; she’d swat my arm away. Now, she remained still. Her legs were crossed and she uncrossed them and laid beside me. I pulled the blanket over us, thinking of the frog, hopping away.

 

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Remembered

5 December 2023
Categories: Fiction, S.C. Creative Sociology Writing Competition

You don’t like writing essays. Especially not essays to present to the class. James and his friends in the back always talk, and your voice is quiet, so you have to speak louder and louder until you feel dangerously close to shouting, and then Mr. Hong finally snaps at the boys to show respect. Your knees knock and your hands clutch your paper and you try to talk fast but not too fast ‘cause you gotta present for at least three minutes, and all the while you just want it over with.

But this time might not be too bad. You’re looking at the assignment sheet that has a cute ‘lil globe with a face in the top right corner. Mr. Hong likes cute stuff. Always puts it on his papers. You’re in sixth grade now, but the cute stuff makes you feel like you’re ten years old again. Kinda nice, sometimes.

“You can write about any unit that we’ve gone over,” Mr. Hong says. “From the first American settlers to the Vietnam War. Remember to use your notes and past assignments. You’ll have a week to work on the paper, with help from me or Miss Nat in the Media Center. Next Friday we’ll present, then we’ll be done for the year.”

Great Grandpap had been a Tuskegee Airman. He’d died before you ever got a chance to meet him, but Mamma loves talking about him. “A real hero,” she says. “Proved what us Black folk could do in the air, and he did it with style. You oughta be proud of him, baby, ‘cause I know he’d be proud of you.”

The assignment stays in your head all day, through math and lunch and the bus ride home. You could get stories from Mamma. Photos and medals up in the attic. Get a book from the Media Center just to hit the cited source requirement. For once, you’re actually excited about an essay presentation.

Mamma shares your enthusiasm, warm mahogany eyes brightening as you explain the assignment. “Wait here,” she says before disappearing upstairs. She comes back after a few minutes, a giant box in her arms. “This is everything Grandad saved from his time in service,” she says, plunking it on the table in front of you. “You allowed to bring in relics?”

Maybe? You’ll ask Mr. Hong tomorrow. But it’s cool to sift through the box, memories and family ties wafting together and making you sneeze a bit. There’s a medal for Distinguished Service. Some rough and aged letters–you can hardly read the messy writing. Guess you and Great Grandpap both have bad penmanship. A military cap. A necklace with the cross. And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

You end up staring at a picture of Great Grandpap by his plane. He’s young. Probably the same age as your sister right now. His face is a patchwork of shadows cast by the wing. His smile gleams. You can feel his pride radiating across eighty years and four hundred miles, warm and sharp and earned.

You go to sleep that night thinking about planes, papers, telling off stupid James, and a man you never got to meet.

The Media Center always makes you jittery. The air is thick with quiet, to the point where you sometimes have to breathe in real hard just to make sure you can get any air at all. Miss Nat sits your class down in the writing area, Mr. Hong by her side. “You can look for any book you think might help you,” she says, lanyard and keys jingling. “You can use the computers to search up your topic as well. Just be mindful of others working here. If you need help Mr. Hong and I will be walking around.”

You choose to walk the shelves first, scanning the World War II section to see if anything jumps out at you. There’s odd gaps between books. Large, sometimes spanning an entire shelf.

Maybe other history classes have the same assignment.

The Media Center catalog could probably narrow down your options. You wait for a monitor to free up, then finally sit down on that hard red stool and type in Tuskegee Airmen. The ancient system whirs and clicks, a loading bar filling up.

Nothing.

Okay. Maybe go broader with the search. World War II Tuskegee Airmen.

Still nothing.

Try another key word? African American pilots.

The computer fan spins, the loading bar stiltedly fills, and when the new page loads, you feel like smashing your face in the keyboard. Nothing.

“Something I can help you with, hon?” Miss Nat materializes over your left shoulder, snapping you out of your frustration.

You ask if there are any books about the Tuskegee Airmen, or if there’s any mention of them.

Miss Nat isn’t old, but there are a lot of wrinkles on her face. The wrinkles on her forehead appear as her brows furrow, and the smile lines around her mouth go slack. “I’m sorry, hon, but I’m afraid we don’t. They were taken out earlier this week.”

Oh. Well, it kinda makes sense. You can’t be the only student that chose that topic. You ask Miss Nat when the books might be returned.

“Why don’t you choose a different topic to write about?” she suggests, bowling over your question. “The Great Expansion is always interesting, or if you want to stay in the World War II era, we have a lot of books about D-Day.”

No. You don’t want to change topics. But you thank Miss Nat anyway and wander the shelves, pretending to take out random books to look at whenever Mr. Hong walks by. When you’re called to line up to go back to class, you see you’re not the only one without a book. At least half the class is empty-handed.

Talia shrugs when you ask her about it. “Wanted to write about the Trail of Tears,” she says. “Only book I could find with it was for third-graders. Bare bones information. Sucks, you couldn’t find anything at all.”

On the bus ride home, you press your forehead to the window, let it rattle and bang against the glass like your thoughts against your skull. Maybe you could ask Mamma or Dad to take you to the public library over the weekend. Or maybe you could do an Internet search. Mr. Hong never said you had to get your cited source from the school library.

Mamma frowns as you tell her what happened. “Nothing?” she asks. “You couldn’t get anything about Grandad’s service?”

All through the evening, through Dad coming home from the firehouse, through dinner, through Facetime with your sister, Mamma has a tightness to her mouth. Kind of tightness she has when the neighbor takes their trash out too early, or when you leave a mess in your room. Before you go to bed she tells you that you won’t be taking the bus, that she’ll be dropping you to school and walking in with you. “I wanna figure out what’s up with that library,” she says.

True to her word, Mamma takes you to school on Friday. She walks you into the front office, kisses your forehead, and sends you off to your first period with a quick but felt love you baby. You notice she’s wearing her nice brown heels, the ones with the brass buckles. She calls them her power pumps. Only ever wears them to church or important events where she needs “that little extra oomph.”

All through the day, your mind is fixated on the principal’s office. What’s Mamma doing? What’s she saying? Sure, not finding the book you needed from the Media Center was rough, but why does she care so much? You can find a workaround.

Mr. Hong takes your class to the Media Center again. Why, you don’t know. Anyone who got a book yesterday is set, and those who didn’t probably won’t be able to find one. But all concerns fly away when you catch sight of Mamma by the Media Center desk, chatting with Miss Nat like they’d been lifelong friends.

Mr. Hong gives an abbreviated version of Miss Nat’s welcome speech, then shoos your class off to the shelves. You trot over to Mamma when she waves at you. “How’re you doing, baby?”

You’re good. Just confused. You ask Mamma what she’s doing here, and she answers “I was just talkin’ with Miss Nat about your book problem. You mind telling her exactly what happened yesterday?”

Uh, sure. You recount yesterday’s frustrations. How the shelves had been emptier than normal, how the computer turned up zero search results, how bored you’d been just wandering around, trying to look busy.

Miss Nat and Mamma both look like bobbleheads by the end, nodding and humming with each sentence. You end by saying thank you to Miss Nat for the suggestions of other topics, but you really want to write about the Tuskegee Airmen because Great Grandpap had been one, and did she know when the Media Center would have those books back?

Miss Nat and Mamma exchange a look, and Miss Nat says, “Hon, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to have those books for a while.”

“Tell you what,” Mamma says. “You go and work on some other projects, and tomorrow we’ll figure out how to get you your book.”

Sounds reasonable. Definitely better than doing next to nothing for an hour. You give Mamma a hug, thank Miss Nat again, and go claim a table to work on a reflection for English.

Out of the corner of your eye you watch the desk. Mamma and Miss Nat talk in hushed voices, then Mr. Hong joins them. There’s something about the three of them whispering together that gives you pause. Why would they care so much about some missing books? It’s a library. They’ll be returned. Could just be adults being adults. Sometimes it’s a mystery why they do what they do.

Mamma picks you up after school. Her fingers clutch the steering wheel, and there’s a twitch to her jaw. You’ve never seen Mamma like this, like a kinda quiet anger. She doesn’t even talk back to the folks on the radio.

You ask if you can go to the public library tomorrow to get a book for your report. Mamma swallows. Merges lanes. “I don’t think they’ll have what you’re looking for, baby.”

Why not?

Mamma doesn’t answer, and you know better than to think she didn’t hear you. She stops at a red light. The truck in front of you has a MAGA sticker.

“Baby, listen to me.” You look over at Mamma. Mamma, who’s strong and fierce and looking like she’s one blink away from a tear splashing down her cheek. It’s uncomfortable seeing her like that. Moms aren’t supposed to look like that. “There are some people out there that…that would rather pretend some parts of history never happened. They’d rather pretend that things have been a certain way since the dawn of time, but by doing that, they ignore people and events that are so important to right now.”

The light turns green. The MAGA truck speeds off, crossing the intersection. Mamma turns right, toward home. She keeps talking. “No one can change the past, but these people want to change the future by erasing the past. And one of the ways they do that is by getting rid of evidence of the past.”

Like books?

“Exactly, baby, like books.”

You think of the boxes in the attic, of the military cap and the messy letters and the cross necklace and the picture of the man who pushed his way into a space not designed for him and made it his own. How could anyone look at his grin and say no thank you?

“If you remember anything of what I’m telling you,” Mamma says, indicating and turning into your neighborhood, “make it this. Remember that just because someone wants to ignore you, ignore what you’ve done and what you’re doing, it does not mean you are any less important. You are smart, baby, so smart, and you’re hard-working, and you’re kind, and you’re here. Don’t you forget that, and don’t let anyone else forget that either. You are here.”

As soon as Mamma parks in the driveway, you dart out of the car, dash to the driver’s side, and pull her into a tight hug. She sounds like she needs it. You kinda need it, too.

Mr. Hong ends up waiving the cited source requirement for a lot of students. On presentation day, you skip to the front of the class, and though you’re supposed to be reading from your paper, your essay is pretty much memorized. You talk fast, only remembering to control your speed once in a while–there is a time requirement to hit. Your voice pitches up and down, you bounce on the balls of your feet, and when you pass around the photograph of your ancestor by his beloved plane, the awed murmurs of your classmates sends honey-sweet pride rippling through you. Yeah, that’s your Great Grandpap they’re looking at. Even James is quiet, listening to you ramble on.

Great Grandpap didn’t let anyone forget he was there. He made noise, annoyed a lot of people, but in the end, he made his mark. He is remembered. You’ll make sure of that.

You end up getting an A on your paper. Mr. Hong gives you a sticker of a smiling star.

It’s cute. You wonder if Great Grandpap would think it’s cute, too.

 
◆
 
Exegesis
 

According to a study conducted by Pen America last year, a total of 1,648 books were banned in the U.S. Of those 1,648 books, twenty-one percent of them contained the subject matter of race and racism. Taking it a step further, ten percent of all banned books had themes of civil rights and activism. When broken down like this, it is chilling to see exactly what is being taken off of library, bookstore, and school shelves.

Of course, talking about banned books and the act of book banning is always treacherous territory. Why is the book being banned? Who was the book intended for? What was the author’s intent behind publishing the book in the first place? Most of the sentiment behind banning books has to do with wanting to protect children from unsavory material, or themes they may not be ready to comprehend yet. But what do we do when the line between protecting children and silencing people becomes blurred?

When looking at the titles and content of some banned books, it becomes clear that this movement has spiraled out of control. For instance, the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi was banned in Clay County, Florida. The book was written as a way to talk about race with children in a safe, positive, and controlled manner. Also banned in Clay County was The Prince and the Dressmaker, a graphic novel by Jen Wang. This book was intended to have entertainment value rather than educational value, and featured characters of the LGBTQ+ community, including a main character who is genderqueer.

Perhaps those who can best voice the frustration of book bans are the children themselves. In February of last year, the New York Times took comments from teenagers who were fed up with seeing books disappearing from shelves. Teada, from Gray New Gloucester High School, said “Simply banning books because they’re too much of a “sensitive topic” will only harm young readers. Books are supposed to enhance our understanding of topics, history, etc. The books that are on the list of being banned are all books that help readers understand certain topics to a significant extent.” Many other children spoke to a similar sentiment, pushing for the return of the banned books.

In my story, I used the second-person perspective. Even though I used a very specific topic–the Tuskegee Airmen–the act of book banning can target anyone. Racial history, religious history, LGBTQ+ history, mental health, and disabilities have all been targets of book bans. In doing this, we erase ideas, events and perspectives that would help us grow as people. It’s natural to want to protect children from what is deemed as negative, but when taken to an extreme like this, book banning does more harm than good. In trying to protect children, we take away their access to diverse literature, in turn limiting their knowledge, social skills and ability for complex thinking. Book bans don’t help anyone–they stunt us, as individuals and in society.

Billy

5 December 2023
Categories: Fiction

1.

          You’re walking down a canyon road at dusk with the fireflies and a boy named Billy. He says between Marlboro Man puffs that he had a date last Saturday with one of the popular girls. Her name is Liz.

          He wants you to ask questions. That’s obvious. Instead you fish through your macrame purse, pretending you have your own smokes, but only find broken stubs.

          He hands you one of his smelly unfiltereds, and you startle at the white moons of his fingernails. Surprised by his clean hands, even with the callouses on the meaty tips of his thumbs.

          He reminds you of the horses at your uncle’s stables in Burbank, silky hair, black pinpoint eyes searching the open sky.

          He lights you up, and you think he’s going to kiss you. You don’t want him to and he doesn’t. You both keep walking, thumbs out like the Manson kids even though you live with your parents in a pink ranch down in the valley.

          You got stranded here after everyone you partied with last night including your asshole boyfriend, Duane, ditched you. You woke up in a thicket of rainbow eucalyptus trees and Billy standing over you. You don’t have a phone because it’s 1972. You’re officially breaking up with Duane as soon as you see him.

          “We could do something more potent,” Billy says. “Make you feel better. But not here. Too many highway patrol.”

          “I’m not that desperate.” You squeeze your eyes. “Sorry. I’m just really, really mad right now. I have to go home.”

          “Okay. Want my jacket?”

          A blue Corvair pulls off at the side of the road and a woman pops her ratted up, beehive hair out the window. “Jump in, sweetie. But not your boyfriend there,” she says, shaking her finger. “No hippies in my car.”

          Billy tilts his wild mane and grins. “Guess I look as dangerous as Charlie. Go ahead. I won’t hold it against you.”

          For some reason this makes you sad. He’s a freak, but maybe not as much as you thought. Maybe without the sparse forest of mustache he’s trying to grow, he’d be kind of cute. You watch him in the side mirror as the woman takes off. Chevrons of sunlight around him, not yet swallowed by the twilight. His hair gleams as he waves you goodbye.

2.

          Liz is telling everyone Billy disappeared. She doesn’t get what happened to him. She thought he liked her. Wanted to do her.

          Somebody says he joined the Army. Others think he went with the hippies up north. Joined a cult.

          In class Duane writes I Love U on your palm with a red Bic pen. You never broke up with him, but he tells you that you’ve been cold and way too bra-burner lately. Says you need to cut the bitchy attitude. Says he heard you were with that weirdo Billy the night he went missing. You yank your hand away, and in the bathroom wash off the red ink.

          You borrow your dad’s car and go out in search of Billy.

          You drive to the spot where the Corvair picked you up.

          You go to the brushy area by the eucalyptus trees where you partied with Duane.

          You do this every day for a week. And each time before dusk, you see streaks of sunlight arrowing behind you on the road before going home to watch Maude with your parents.

3.

          Two years pass and you’re pregnant with Duane’s baby. Your mom and dad make you get married, and the ceremony is on Billy’s mountain. No reason other than Duane likes it.

          Even when you say your vows, Billy is on your mind. During your wedding bash in the woods, dancing among the woodsmoke, drinking champagne, you whirl and think you see something in the crowd. Those strange chevrons of light beaming through the leaves of the trees, down a steep path where nobody ever goes.

          You’re not high or drunk and while Stairway to Heaven plays, you escape Duane. You follow the trail down the canyon in your antique lace wedding gown and Thom McAn high-heeled sandals.

          You find the spot where you passed out years ago. Where Duane spray painted a heart with both of your initials on a rock. Now it’s a blurry stain from that night.

          You hike deeper into the darkness. Your gown caked in sandy brown dirt, the lace ripped, sounds from your wedding party fading into the backroads of your mind, and you’re 16 again.

          Back in this place again, only this time with Billy. This time you let him kiss you. Because that’s how life should work. How things should play out when you let yourself feel what you feel. Because Romeo and Juliet didn’t kill themselves. They lived to change the world.

          And in a universe where mountains save sunlight for special people, you stand with him on a precipice of a cliff thousands of feet above L.A., and he curls his calloused hand around yours and takes you to the sky.

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Bobby Goes to the Garden

4 December 2023
Categories: Fiction

 
content warning: some explicit sexual scenes
 
Since childhood, Bobby Goldfarb had been cursed with the affliction of being very good at math. In the fifth grade, when he and the other gifted students started long-dividing, he began to wish he had been left behind in the normal math class, where the boys and girls were still being introduced to basic fractions. But because he wore glasses, and because he did not need to be called into the nurse’s office twice a day to take Adderall like some of his peers, he was given a VIP seat at the front of Mrs. Helting’s math class for advanced students. He sat next to Molly Fischer, who he had been in love with since the end of fourth grade, and who he had missed terribly all summer long. His love for her began at the age of nine, then went away at the age of twelve, then came back for ages fifteen through eighteen, and then after that it went away for a very long time, until she became so busy and wealthy that she needed an accountant and he became, for the first time, a little bit glad to be so good at math.

She looked very different than she had in the fifth grade, different even than how she looked senior year. Now thirty-two, her teeth finally seemed the right size for her head. She still wore her hair in two low pigtails, and Bobby looked at her from behind his desk, transfixed, traveling through time and space all the way back to Mrs. Helting’s class to that one day right after a bountiful Christmas break, when Molly had let him borrow her GameBoy as long as he didn’t save over her file. He had played beneath his desk for a few minutes before Mrs. Helting caught him and confiscated it, leaving Molly in tears, her big teeth biting down hard on her bottom lip until she left little red marks the shape of bunting.

But she was here now, and she carried in her arms a thick manila folder.

“Bobby?” she said. “You’re Robert Goldfarb?” Her mouth hung open in an astonished smile, and she dropped her folder onto the client chair. “When I saw your name on the website I thought: no fucking way. But wow.”

“Yeah,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck. She sat in the chair next to the one where she had put her folder and he was in love with her again, sure to last from the age of thirty-two and onward. “Had I known it was going to be you I would have set aside more time.” He did not actually have the authority to make his appointments any longer or shorter than allotted, but the thing about being an accountant was that no one who wasn’t an accountant really knew much about how it worked. He didn’t like lying to Molly, but he had done it in the past. Little lies, about having beaten video games or seen the Jersey Devil. “Uh.” He pointed with his pen at her bulging folder.

“Oh. Right.” She coughed and pulled the folder onto her lap, and Bobby regretted acting as though he wanted to get straight to business. He really wanted to ask: have you gotten married? Do you wish I’d kissed you on any or all of the following nights: the Eighth Grade graduation dance, the opening night of Bye Bye Birdie when you were wearing a pink poodle skirt, the closing night cast party of Bye Bye Birdie when you were still wearing all of your stage makeup, at the Anti-Prom party because I rolled a pretty good joint, or maybe even the evening before you left for college and we all went swimming? He asked none of these things, and instead opened her manila folder and leafed through the papers. Invoices with receipts stapled to them, inventory lists, and other things that had nothing to do with taxes but had somehow found their way into the folder regardless.

“This is,” Bobby said. “This is a menu for Emiliano’s Pizza.” He handed it back to her from across the desk. She laughed and hid her face behind the menu. “I take it that’s not the small business you started?”

“No,” she said, tucking the menu into her purse. “I own a store.”

“What kind?”

“Is that important for doing my taxes?”

Bobby blinked at her, confused as to why she might be hesitant to tell him. Maybe, whatever it was, the whole business was a front and she was really selling drugs or something. He decided that he would probably still help her even if that were the case. He took a closer look at one of the documents. The letterhead was written in a sort of bubble font, the red ink faded to the color of a tablecloth square. Molly’s Garden.

“You sell flowers?” he asked, looking up from the document. He imagined her surrounded by them, holding in her arms a huge bouquet. Wearing nothing but that. The petals fall away one by one and it’s just her, her limbs like stems.

“That’s what a lot of people think,” she said. “I get some customers who come in looking for gardening stuff, and, well.”

Bobby flipped the page.

“What do you–” There was a copy of a handwritten list of sales. It was Molly’s writing, still the sloppy but legible cursive-hybrid of their youth.

          9/5/2021 Leather mask – $20.80

          9/5/2021 Plaster penis cast kit $52.00

          9/8/2021 Dissolving lube beads, blue $15.60

          9/12/2021 DVD, Goo Girls II: Slimin’ Around, $26

Bobby shut the folder, feeling his ears get hot. He looked at Molly, who was holding her head between her spread fingers as if she had a migraine.

“I knew this was a mistake. I’ll just do it myself,” she mumbled.

“No! No, it’s okay,” Bobby said, opening the folder again. “Just unexpected.” She wouldn’t come out from behind her hands. “Not that you own a sex store. I’m just surprised that the going rate for DIY penis casting is so steep.”

She snorted.

“It’s actually a steal. Most places make you drop your pants and do it on site,” she said.

“Fascinating.”

“So. Yes. That’s where life has taken me. Bespoke fucking paraphernalia.”

“What did you major in again?”

“Fucking. And English.”

***

He made K-cups in the office kitchen as she tried to organize her receipts. She had come unprepared, having taken every document in her desk and put it into this single folder, thinking that it would be perfectly acceptable to leave this part to a professional. But now that she knew her accountant was Bobby Goldfarb, she felt as though she ought to pull her weight and try to help him.

Poor Bobby Goldfarb, whose limbs never seemed the right length for his body. Whose hairline was prematurely retreating. Who she had liked, even like-liked, but had seemed to envision him in their future as boring and balding, and this premonition had kept her from admitting how she felt. It was true that his forehead had grown somewhat, highlighting the sharpness of his widow’s peak, and that he had what Molly assumed was the most boring job in the world. But it was also true that his voice still had the same raspy sweetness it had when they were younger, and his eyes were still gray-blue. And now he wore suits and had a desk.

She had the documents spread out on the floor of his office in ascending order of month. It was essentially a timeline of her success, starting with that first slow, destitute September last and ending with the most recent August. By June she had been bringing in more than enough money to pay her rent, her bills, her cable, her internet, her lazy takeout habit, her haircuts, her manicures, her cocktails, her shopping trips. And some left over. Enough to pay an accountant to figure it all out for her. She was a shrewd businesswoman in enough ways to make herself rich, but not very good at the kind of math it took to do taxes. Too long of an algebraic calculation. Months and months and months of numbers. Bobby was smart. Bobby’s ears had turned red when he realized what she did for a living. She thought about the plaster penis cast. Maybe she could give him a discount.

Bobby brought back two steaming cups of terrible coffee and sat on the floor across from Molly. He put the coffee between them, and she saw how the Styrofoam cups sat tenuously on the carpet. She took hers in hand, careful not to spill it on her papers.

He looked over the display she’d laid out. She watched as his eyes halted on one of her monthly supply lists.

“Yarn, thread, zippers, yards of fabric,” he said. “You make the stuff yourself?”

“Some of it. Masks and costumes.”

“Wow.”

She’d made many costumes in high school, for drama club. The easiest had been the poodle skirt, which was nothing but a big circle with a waistband.

“Do I spend too much on materials?”

“Not at all. It’s good, actually. We can write all of that off.” He dragged a hand across the paper, spreading receipts like playing cards. “Looks like you got yourself lunch that day. We can write that off, too.”

“Creative,” she said. She tried a sip of her coffee and it tasted like plastic, but she drank it, because Bobby was cute and he was willing to do a lot of math for her. “That’s not illegal?”

“I’ve never had a client get audited,” he said. “And IRS agents are infamous prudes. They’ll leave you alone just to avoid asking you about what you do for a living.”

“Really?”

“Maybe not. I dated one, once.”

“And she was a prude?”

“With me. Just not with my boss.”

She frowned. Poor Bobby Goldfarb.

***

They had been down on the floor for about two hours, although the amount of time it actually took Bobby to work was closer to thirty minutes. The rest of the time they had spent chatting but ultimately avoiding the topic of their mutual attraction, something that had flared wildly at the end of high school. Looking back, Bobby realized just how obscene the whole ordeal had been. Talking behind open lockers, pelting one another with kickballs to the point of leaving round, red marks. Dancing together in front of the balsawood stern of an ocean liner in the senior production of Anything Goes. Seeing her underwear in chemistry class when he bent down to pick up a textbook that had fallen at her feet, and how she didn’t do anything to hide it. One night he’d driven her home. They sat talking in his car for a long time. They were both going away soon, to different schools, but equally undeclared.

“You should do something with math,” she’d told him. “You’re so good at it, and no one else is. No one likes it, so you should go make a lot of money.”

“What about you?” he’d asked her.

“I just want to go away,” she had said, looking out the passenger’s side window. “I want to figure out who I would be in another place.”

***

The coffee, though unforgivable as far as coffees go, woke them up. It motivated them, but not to finish Molly’s taxes.

“You should come see the shop,” she said. “See what you’re dealing with. Or is that against your code?”

“‘Code,’” he said. “I think the council of elders will make an exception for me. They’re very sex-positive.”

And so they went. Arm-in-arm, like they were dance partners again, and at any moment the piano would strike and the lights would dim and Molly would sing in her mousy alto-soprano voice.

The shop was small and had a sandwich-board sign outside, unearthly delights inside written on it in chalk. Bobby looked up at the awning, above which the same logo as the letterhead shone in pink neon. Her name blinked M O L L Y. Molly! Molly! Molly!

“Shit,” she said, hurrying to unlock the door. “I didn’t turn the sign off. Fuck.”

She got the door open and ushered Bobby inside while reaching for the big light switch that turned off the neon. The shop was quiet without the buzzing of the neon. She locked the door behind them.

He wasn’t sure exactly what he had imagined the inside of a sex boutique to look like, but Molly’s Garden subverted all of his vague guesses. There were woven rugs all over the floor, toys displayed on shiny little pillows, outfits and masks and whips hanging from wooden spokes in the walls. How could he do her taxes when it seemed like the sort of place that relied on the barter system? On the pink walls there were framed erotic portraits, mostly Japanese woodblock prints of lovers in various poses.

“Wow,” he said.

“Good wow?” she asked. She stood by one of the display counters, nervously repositioning a fluorescent dildo. The price tag hung from a string tied around the shaft. Forty-five dollars. “Or bad wow?”

He looked at her hand on the gleaming rubber. In her fingers the absurdly massive toy looked more like a sculpture.

“Good.”

“I wanted it to feel like being inside a body.”

Bobby looked up at the vaulted ceiling, vaginal in its narrowness. Maybe she modeled it after her own. He imagined it sleek, angular, painted by a team of professionals.

“Look around if you want,” Molly said. “I have to go upstairs.”

“You live above this place?” he asked, looking up as if he could see through the ceiling
into her apartment.

“Yeah. Two-for-one deal. Does that change things? Taxwise?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah.”

She grinned and gripped the banister.

“Check out the movies,” she said.

He always did what she told him. When they were little, she always picked the game. In middle and high school, she picked the movie or the destination. The places they would drive just to be away from their houses, spending no money and eating no food, just moving throughout the little world of the county in one-another’s second hand cars. She would say: Bobby, let’s play Detective, but you have to be the killer. And she would say: Bobby, drive me to the lake. And he would be the killer, and he would go to the lake. And now, because she wanted him to, he was looking at movies.

They were located in one of those fabled back-rooms, separated from the rest of the store by a curtain he assumed she had made herself from the contents of the discount fabric bin of JoAnne. The walls of this room were less refined, painted a discreet gray and plastered with images of pulp novel covers. Bobby found himself surrounded by a splendid array of painted boobs barely contained by ripped blouses.

Most of the titles seemed pretty standard. Cheerleaders, repairmen, delivery boys, delivery girls, monster men and pretty, helpless damsels. He liked all that stuff, of course, but what really caught his eye was a box set of DVDs, three-wide, with no discernable title. Just black labels with an embossed x printed on the spine of each case. He assumed at first that the subtle packaging connoted something like torture porn or good old-fashioned snuff, which meant he probably shouldn’t slip the box out from the tightly-packed shelf and inquire further. But Molly had told him to check out the movies, and had not warned him against any specific one. There was no price tag on it. It looked new, but not all the way. It had definitely been opened before, judging by the wear on the plastic snaps that kept the DVDs enclosed. He popped one of the cases open and was surprised to find that the disc was labeled only with a black marker. It said G-1.

Suddenly he felt as if he was holding something no one was supposed to touch. But if that was the case, why then, would Molly have left it in a place where anyone could find it? He pressed the plastic in the center of the case, and the DVD came loose from the package. Holding it with one finger through the middle, his thumb delicately touching the sharp edge of the disc, he took a look around the room. Having been compelled to open the movie, to touch it, he now realized that there was usually another step involved.

Next to the shelves there was a little TV stand and a little TV. It looked old beneath the shiny silver DVD player Molly had put there. Its screen was bulbous and seemed to radiate an ancient electricity. The same static of the televisions of their youth. There was a piece of paper taped to the corner: Previews only. Home is where the hard-on is. In front of the TV there was a small pillow, softened and indented from months of customers sitting on it during porno trial-runs.

He sat on the pillow, still holding the disc in his hand. He looked at the staircase, waiting for Molly to emerge from her apartment, waiting for her to rush over to him in a panic and snatch the disc out of his hand. He waited for a few minutes, listening for her footsteps, hearing nothing but the subtle buzz of the old television drawing power.

He rose onto his knees and reached for the DVD player, pressing the Open button with a trembling, outstretched finger. The tray slid out slowly, its plastic gears groaning until it clicked into place. Holding the disc between the frame of his spread hands, he gently settled it into the tray, and it fell perfectly into the round groove. The tray retracted more quickly than it had appeared, as if in a hurry to eat the disc.

There was no menu, and it occurred then to Bobby that maybe pornos never had menus. He wouldn’t know, as he had never before rented one. He was thankful that, in this age, everything he could possibly want to jerk off to was available online. But he admired the old-fashionedness of Molly’s arrangement. Holding the DVD case in one’s hand, taking it home, slipping one’s finger through the center hole. If it was a rental, wondering how many eyes had seen the movie before, if their orgasms were good, if they had watched it alone or with friends.
The title card appeared, a plain and shivering white font against a black background, as if it was the opening of a very old film. Bobby imagined a steam train chugging toward him. The name of the film was “Everybody Comes to Georgette’s.”

It starred a bunch of man-names he didn’t recognize and one woman-name that he did. Molly Fischer appeared in the same font as the title card, but smaller. And introducing: Molly Fischer. Her first film, apparently.

He was immediately hard, of course, just in the expectation of what he might see. He heard footsteps creaking above him and thought about her perfect feet. He was thrilled by the possibility that this, him seeing her in the porno, had been her intention. That the culmination of all of their scattered years of love should happen here, now, watching as the masked group of men undressed her, how she didn’t seem to mind, but minded just enough. Squirming a little, but smiling. Opening her mouth for their fingers. The camera zoomed in on the spit that dripped from the corners of her lips as they pressed onto her tongue, teasing out the saliva that she was now unable to swallow.

Molly, or Georgette, gaped as they tied her wrists to the bedposts. The kind of open-mouthed anticipation, her brow curling in happy disbelief. Bobby heard footsteps behind him. One of the men kissed her on the mouth.

“They paid me in cash for that,” Molly said, as if narrating a museum tour. “Completely under-the-table.”

“Good,” Bobby said. He reached out and pressed the pause button and the movie froze, the frame twitching, a still but shivering image of Molly with her head tilted back, hair knotting beneath her on the rumpled bed sheets.

Bobby turned around. Molly was holding something close to her chest, a small grayish box he then realized was a camcorder. She walked past him, setting the thing down on top of the television. She turned it on and it emitted a timid squeak. She groped at the wall, her fingers hooking into the eye hole of a mask on display, one he could tell she had sewn herself. She pulled it from its hook and turned to face him. She seemed to descend upon him all at once, like a sudden downpour. Her knees on either side of him, her hands behind his head, tying the mask on. The leather smelled real, and the slightly frayed edges obstructed his vision some. But he could still see her, pulling her shirt off, could still see the little glowing light on the camcorder and the frozen image of her ecstatic face on the television.

He saw her multiplied in pleasure. He tried not to look directly at the camera. He was in her and she was in him and he was being watched. He had imagined it countless times, being with her, but was shocked to learn that sex with Molly was just like regular sex, but with Molly. Her body was no more spectacular than anyone else’s, and their skin made the same horrible, wet, smacking sound as every other instance of coitus in the entire history of man. But it was good, and it was weird, and his mask fell off halfway through. She had surrounded his face with her hands as if there needed to be some barrier between them, still.

After, the camera recorded the statue of them, her body curled around his as he sat on the now-dirty pillow, his arms around her naked back. The pulse of the room. He felt that they had joined the library of films, that he had become part of the pornographic canon.

***

She left him lying there on the scratchy floor of the movie room and grabbed a sheer pink robe with fuzzy trim from off of one of the clothing racks. She made her way to the front of the store, barefoot, walking carefully as if there was someone she might wake. She grabbed a paper bag from beneath the register and began to tour the shop, stopping at every display, picking up some items and inspecting them. Those she thought Bobby might appreciate she dropped into the bag for him to take home. She wasn’t sure how else to thank him, other than paying him what she owed for his accounting services. She chose to also pay him in a curated collection of her finest products. She picked out a small novelty hourglass that, once the sand began to drain, revealed a drawing of a helpless, naked young woman trapped inside of the glass. Molly also chose a silk blindfold and padded handcuffs, as well as a glass butt plug of which she was particularly fond. She also threw in some coupons.

She loved poor Bobby Goldfarb. Now that he’d fucked her maybe he wasn’t so poor after all, and maybe it had been an act of pity, at least in part. But she saw no reason as to why pity couldn’t be an erotic emotion. He had looked so grateful underneath that mask, so uplifted by her generosity.

Her final gift was the proof. She popped the small cassette out of the aging camcorder and put it in the paper bag.

“You don’t want to keep it?” he asked. She pushed some of his hair back from his expanding forehead.

“It won’t sell,” she said. “No one wants to watch people have sex from that angle. Or when it’s just nice and not nasty and they’re not acting.”

“So why’d you film it?”

“I wanted you to know it was something I wanted to do, for sure” she said. “Also, I like to fuck on camera, Bobby. Even if no one will ever see it.”

But that night, she replayed it in her head. Their soft bellies pressed against one another, the hair on his chest chafing her skin. With Bobby it seemed like all of the usual ugliness of sex was forgivable. The smells, the sounds, how not everything they did felt like heaven. Together they were permitted to be two human bodies wound together in their imperfectness. Flaw to flaw like a hideous puzzle.

She remembered math class. That was the first time she loved him, because he was so smart but didn’t seem to like it. Any praise he got made him tuck his chin to his chest and look as though he might disappear or disintegrate. He would always splay his fingers over the grades on his tests, as if ashamed of having done everything right. How did it feel now? To have done her and her taxes? To have finally closed the circle of the two of them after all these years, in a musty little back room in a building she rented at a modest price, together, raw, and quiet?

***

When he brought her finalized paperwork, he came over with flowers. Roses that had not yet bloomed in full, swollen red buds with fledgling petals pursed like lips. She put them in some water, in a vase in the shape of a headless, naked man. She set the vase on the high window of the shop and displayed the accompanying card like a place setting. From Bobby. He smiled up at his own writing, certain now that anyone who came into Molly’s Garden would see his name, and the flowers, and know that the shop’s proprietor had a very thoughtful suitor.

In the movie room they watched Everybody Comes to Georgette’s: Part Two, a thrilling sequel that managed, in Bobby’s opinion, to outdo its predecessor by introducing some sapphic elements to the plot. To celebrate her maximum refund, they opened a bottle of prosecco and drank it out of pink plastic novelty flutes, the kind of thing used at Bachelorette parties that Molly sold in bulk.

She leaned her head on his shoulder and watched the fuzzy screen, looking thoughtfully at her own splayed body.

“Maybe you should be in a real one. Starring Robert Goldfarb, CPA. A man of many talents,” she said. “Together we’ll take the industry by storm.”

“A sort of lewd Fred and Ginger,” Bobby said. “Do everything backwards and in heels.”

“Or Johnny and June, maybe.”

In the film, an impish blonde woman knelt between Molly’s shaking knees. As if out of respect for the act, the men stood aside, watching in study, leaving it up to an expert. Bobby swallowed thickly, wanting very badly to fuck. She had promised to take him upstairs tonight, into the apartment. He couldn’t get the image out of his head that her living space would look very much like her childhood bedroom had, down to the boy band posters and the malfunctioning drinky-bird toy her grandfather had given her. He imagined that her bed was still a twin and that in order to go into the kitchen they would have to tiptoe around and then clean their messes so well it would look as though no one had ever been there. That or he would be walking into a leather-filled dungeon of sin.

In reality her apartment was as shockingly regular as their lovemaking. Lived-in, but not messy. Trendy, but not quite up to the minimalist standards of their peers. She pushed him onto her normal couch under the normal ceiling light on the normal evening. The street outside made its same nightly noises. They had the satisfactory orgasms of people who could one day get married or at least live happily in the same house. They went to bed not drunk but not sober, and in the morning the room was too hot and the sheets smelled like stale sweat. He didn’t want to go to work; she was snoring in the bright morning light that seared between the curtains and nothing had ever been quite so spectacular as this.

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The Fifth Wife

1 December 2022
Categories: Fiction

Since 9/11, my dad refused to get on a plane; so he, my sister Vanessa, and I were forced to endure the twenty-hour marathon train ride from New York to Orlando to bury our grandmother.  According to our mother who he had divorced three step-mothers ago, back when we were toddlers, Dad had announced the end to his flying in an uncharacteristically decisive manner. After the second tower collapsed and took with it three of his boyhood friends–men who just moments before sat at seemingly safe desks with views overlooking the glorious city, Dad had said: “I’m done.”  And that was it. No drama, no discussion, no white knuckling it with a glass of wine and a Xanax like every other fearful flyer after the attacks.  From now on, he would drive or in extreme circumstances, take the train.

That said, my dad hated the train. So he lubricated the experience with a seemingly endless succession of gin and tonics and constant chit-chat with strangers, specifically, with strange women. And on this particular trip to Florida, Dad was in-between wives, so my sister Vanessa and I were on high alert. We had settled for the night in the dining car. None of us could sleep on public transportation so we made the best of it: eating pre-packaged stale brownies, drinking cold drinks in plastic cups, and playing Spades while the train sped through the sleeping cities of the South. Vanessa dealt the cards, and I watched with concern as my dad clocked a new arrival to the dining car, his eyes moving so subtly you could almost think you imagined it.  

A tall red-haired woman in leopard leggings and dangly silver statement earrings approached, swaying gracefully to keep balance as the train moved.  It was nearly one a.m. and she smiled apologetically at the bartender who was half-asleep on his stool and ordered a gin and tonic. “Good choice,” Dad called out a touch too loudly, holding up his clear plastic cup to toast to her from across the car. Though my dad had graduated from Exeter two decades earlier, he still dressed like a dissipated teenager on fall break from boarding school: faded, patched Nantucket Reds topped by an antique speckled navy and white LL Bean wool sweater, scuffed penny loafers with actual copper coins in them, socks with tiny embroidered golden retrievers romping across them.

The woman turned slowly to look over her shoulder, her tight half-smile relaxing when she saw the voice belonged to a handsome if rumpled man with two teenage daughters. And my dad was good-looking. He always politely disagreed when people remarked upon how much he looked like a younger Harrison Ford, but he actually loved it. Dad looked like a guy who would know how to repair an engine, tie a slip knot, caulk a tub.  A lethal combination of accessible ruggedness and an open boyishness which, unfortunately, read as honesty.  

The woman awkwardly raised her cup to him and chose a booth one away from ours, sitting facing him. My sister Vanessa shifted her position, placing her Doc Martens up on the bench, and sliding her body over so she blocked Dad’s line-of-sight to the woman. Dad countered by moving in closer to me so he could make eye contact with the woman.

“Long trip,” he said, raising his cup again. Three drinks into the journey, he had found his sweet spot of charming and garrulous, a few hours away from sloppy and maudlin.    

“Endless,” the redhead said, smiling at us. With some relief, I noticed she wasn’t really his type. Her hair was a garish shade of box-dye burgundy, and although her body was lush and curvy, her tight black V-neck top revealed enough cleavage to verge on vulgar. 

My dad liked, for lack of a better word, classy women. He wasn’t one to run off with an actress or a stripper. Our stepmothers were never educationally or socially inappropriate, with the possible exception of wife number three, Rachel Gersten who was, unfortunately for everyone involved, a close friend of our mother’s. Our mother was Lynn Stein, wife number one. Vanessa and I referred to my father’s wives by their full maiden names. It helped avoid confusion because there were two Lynns, a Rachel, and, most recently, a Hillary.

Dad’s type fell into two categories: one composed of women like our mother and her (former) friend:, beautiful, highly educated Jews from New York City who he married, quite possibly, to shock and piss off Dad’s WASP-y Boston Social Register family. Group two was made up of blandly blond former field hockey players, country club Junior Leaguers who had attended prep schools like Madeira or Miss Porter’s, women who probably felt as familiar and comfy as his old LL Bean sweater. The woman on the train was neither. That still did not mean we were safe. 

“Where are y’all headed,” the woman asked, pointedly addressing me, avoiding eye contact with my Dad.

“Orlando,” I said just politely enough to answer while simultaneously discouraging further conversation and looked back down at my cards. 

“Getting some family time in the sun,” my dad added, smiling his trademark smile, reaching over to tousle my hair and give my shoulder a performative little squeeze, as if I was five years old. This was bad.  My dad, like many other good WASPs, did not innately understand or practice physical affection. My earliest memories of his hugs are of insubstantial lightning-fast embraces ending with a formal, fraternal pat on the shoulder, his delicious smell of Polo cologne, cigarettes, and alcohol wafting away as quickly as it appeared. Vanessa rolled her eyes at me and kicked me under the booth with one of her hard black boots. 

“That’s so nice,” the redhead said leaning in. Her breasts were so large they were practically resting on the Formica table. The plastic straw from the drink dangled from her cupid’s bow lips. She had to be in her mid-thirties, but her face had a plump, youthful earnestness that fought against the sexiness of the rest of her.  Even though she was not his usual type, we had good reason to be nervous about any new woman that piqued his interest.  In a recent fight with our dad over the fact that he had neglected to pay his small portion of my senior year NYU tuition bill and Vanessa’s sophomore year bill at Brown because he was “a little behind” in his four alimony payments, I suggested he just date and not get married so goddamn much. He had said: “Phoebe, I love being married. I have been married for twenty-two years. Just not to the same woman.” 

Vanessa, who studied critical theory at Brown and had an amazing resting bitch face, wasn’t having it.  Gripping the back of the booth with fingernails painted the dark iridescent green of venomous snake, Vanessa twisted her whole body to face the woman. “We are actually going to our grandmother’s funeral,” she said, over-emphasizing each word. It was the verbal equivalent of trying to throw a pot of cold water on a rutting dog.   

My dad ignored Vanessa and leaned even closer to me so he could see the woman. “We are, yes,” he said apologetically. Dad found the discussion of death socially awkward, therefore we were still in the dark on the details of the funeral, who was attending, and most of all, how he felt. “We are getting off in Orlando to pick up a family member and driving to Palm Beach, where the event will take place,” my dad explained, smiling sadly.  “Or rather “I will drive because neither of these two do.”  

Our lack of driving frustrated and puzzled my Dad who had shared all his fond adolescent memories of joyously tooling his way through the changing New England leaves in his ancient Peugeot convertible with, according to him, a different girlfriend at his side every season. We did not drive because we were city kids. Since our parents got divorced when Vanessa and I were one and three years old, respectively, my sister and I had been raised by our mother in New York City, while our Dad, most recently, had lived with his recently departed (divorced, not dead) wife Hillary Dean, in what was possibly the preppiest town on the planet: Darien, Connecticut.  Dad and Hillary Dean had also belonged to a nearby beach club, a place where my sister and I were ninety-nine percent sure they did not allow Jews – a fact that sent our mom into rages and prompted Vanessa to start wearing a vulgar and enormous gold chai necklace with a conversely tiny black bikini whenever we visited them.  Hillary Dean had cringed like a vampire confronted with a cross at the sight of that necklace. We would not miss Hillary Dean. 

***

“I’m so, so sorry for your loss,” the red headed woman said. “Are you okay?” She looked genuinely sad, like she cared.  Maybe she was one of those genuine empaths: people whose eyes get watery at other people’s misfortunes. That didn’t run in our DNA, but I believed it existed. 

“He is good, we are so, so good,” said Vanessa, telegraphing keep away as she had towards every new woman in Dad’s life since we were toddlers.  We had always had different approaches: Vanessa played it jealous, possessive, petulant, while I always got overly attached, tried to bond, yearned to find something to like in each stepmother.  

When my dad married number three, Rachel Gersten, Vanessa was twelve and I was fourteen, and I thought Rachel Gersten would be different. She was familiar, obviously, having been friends with our Mom. And the whole endeavor was so high stakes; it was incredibly risky for both of them to choose each other. Their mutual friends sided with my mom, and my Dad’s family was already lukewarm on New York Jews, so I felt sure in my teenage bones that this had to be it, true love. Rachel Gersten was fun and kind;: like a crazy big sister she took us shopping at Bergdorf’s, splurging on glittery three-hundred-dollar sneakers (shoes that my father definitely could not afford on his part-time lawyer salary, supplemented by his ever-dwindling trust fund), snuck us white wine spritzers at holiday parties, and, since she was an editor at Vanity Fair, she was a huge help editing my angst-ridden teenage attempts at fiction.  “How about the main character does the opposite of what you expect or what you want?” She would often say kindly. 

One night a year into the marriage, thirteen-year-old Vanessa saw Rachel and I sitting in front of the computer, heads together, working on a story, giggling. When we were finished, Vanessa came into the room and gently brushed my bangs away. “Don’t get too attached,” Vanessa said sadly, “He won’t let you keep her,” as if Rachel was a puppy or a kitten destined to be exiled to a farm.  Of course, Vanessa was right, and by the time we had our learner’s permits, Dad had done the opposite of what I wanted, but what I deep down had expected: strayed again and moved on. 

“I’m Khaki, and this is Phoebe and Vanessa,” my dad said, reaching over the booth past a cringing Vanessa, deploying his studied good manners to firmly shake the red head’s hand.  Dad still did self-consciously chivalrous things like that: standing when a woman came to the table and pulling out her chair; walking on the street side of the sidewalk to shield a woman from car spray; sprinting to open doors for ladies laden with packages.  I never understood how charming it was until I turned eighteen, and he started doing it for me.  

“Khaki?  The woman said, “That’s an interesting name.”  I noticed she had straightened up and was twisting her long red hair around her index finger. 

“It’s a nickname,” said Vanessa, purposely keeping her back to the woman. “Obviously.” 

My Dad’s real name was Kent Thomas Carswell but at some point, one of his four towheaded younger siblings for some reason started calling him “Khaki” and it stuck.  It became permanent in the manner of many ostentatiously ridiculous traditions in my father’s family that ranged from the mildly eccentric – the tradition of naming the family dog Moses and the cat Catserole, no matter their gender; to the serious – all the siblings clinging to ownership of a gray-shingled family compound on Cape Cod, a crumbling monstrosity with severe foundation issues, mildew, and upkeep costs so high that all the siblings seem to view ongoing ownership of the house to be  a moral duty, similar to a tithe.

“My younger siblings couldn’t say Kent,” Dad said apologetically. 

“I’m Lisa,” the red-haired woman said.  Lisa then explained she was meeting friends for a “girls’ trip” to Orlando, specifically to Disney.  

Can you think of anything worse? texted Vanessa, typing furiously under the table. 

Do you think they will post pictures with the characters? I texted back 

Maybe it’s a specific sexual fetish? Vanessa answered. 

But Dad was clearly charmed. He put down his cards and leaned forward deploying the laser focused interest that indicates he is intrigued by a new woman. “Disney, do you have children then?” Dad asked casually.  I knew he preferred that she did not. 

“My friend just recovered from breast cancer and she loves Disney,” Lisa explained, shrugging apologetically. I liked the way she said cancer, flatly, with no drama.  Our mother always called it “the big C” in a dramatic stage whisper, as if saying it could infect you. 

“That’s sweet,” Vanessa said, rolling her eyes at me. 

“Chips?” Lisa offered holding an open family– sized bag of potato chips over the back of the seat. 

“No,” said Vanessa recoiling against her seat as if Lisa had just held a cocked pistol against her forehead. 

“She’s allergic to garlic; she has to be really careful,” I explained. Vanessa was anaphylactic shock allergic to garlic: an insidious and dangerous allergy and because garlic is in virtually everything, Vanessa lived with a level of food paranoia which had slowly evolved into a full-blown eating disorder.   

“That’s super challenging,” Lisa said  

“It was tricky when she was little,” Dad said. “But she’s got it down to a science now.”  This was not strictly true. Our dad had no idea how much Vanessa’s life was dictated by the allergy, how she had been to the hospital twice since she started Brown, both accidental exposures.  How each time it happened, the doctors had said her sensitivity potentially increased and exposure became more dangerous.  I thought about it all the time: the garlic lurking in everything from chips to four-star restaurants, a waiting stalker with invisible hands that could close her throat and steal my sister’s last breath. I knew it had gotten to the point that Vanessa, who was by nature a dance-on-the table-in-her-bra kind of girl, had stopped drinking at parties because one of her trips to the ER was caused by a drunken hookup with a guy who had recently eaten a double-stuffed garlic pizza.   

“Let’s go get my food,” said Vanessa abruptly as she grabbed my hand to pull me from the booth. I followed behind as she stomped noisily through the dimly lit train. 

When we got to our seats, Vanessa rummaged through her backpack to retrieve the insulated lunch bag containing her usual: a prepared tuna sandwich bought from her favorite deli, a place where they all knew her and greeted her by name.  

“Do you think they will bang in the bathroom?” she asked. 

“Bang? Who says bang?” I said. “He is just being him.” 

“He is pathetic. His fucking mother just died,” Vanessa said.   

To be fair, Dad was semi-estranged from our grandmother.  The last straw was the Christmas I was eleven when my grandmother, who was both emotionally remote and aristocratically alcoholic, called a neighbor on her Palm Beach cul-de-sac a dirty Jew after four dry martinis, in the course of casual conversation.

“Mom! What the hell?”  my father had exclaimed leaping from his chair to shield us with his body like a medieval knight. 

“Oh, please,” my grandmother countered. “They know I don’t mean them,” my grandmother said, gesturing at Vanessa and me with her drink, the charm bracelets on her wrist jingling like bells. 

Vanessa says that in the fantasy version of that visit, Dad and Lynn Hamilton (wife number two, WASP number one) packed us up and left my grandmother’s house in righteous outrage. In reality, we stayed and dined on baked stuffed lobsters and creamed chipped beef while my semi-sober uncles showed home movies of idyllic-looking weekends from their childhood at the Cape house unsullied by dark-haired Semitic relatives. 

But I also know after that weekend, Dad pulled away from his mother.  Since Dad didn’t do confrontation (to the point that he told Hillary Dean he was leaving her by text), he just gradually stopped seeing Nana; we spent the Christmas breaks of our teens trying out the different Club Meds of the Caribbean, which was great the years he was married, less good when he was on the prowl. 

***

When we got back to the dining car, we saw Dad had switched seats and was now sitting across from Lisa.  Lisa looked up and smiled at us, perhaps embarrassed, and slid over on the plastic bench to make room for us. 

“Lisa here is a nurse,” Dad said. Vanessa smiled and started typing, holding her phone only partially under the table. Of course she is, Vanessa texted me. 

“Not only that, Lisa works in the pediatric ICU,” Dad added proudly, as if he was somehow responsible. 

Better and better, Vanessa texted again.  

“That must be hard,” I said 

But it’s rewarding, Vanessa texted. 

“It’s damn hard,” Lisa said in a way that suggested she somehow knew Vanessa was making fun of her.  

“Phoebe is a poet and Vanessa,” My dad paused, “What is it you are studying again?” 

“Critical theory,” Vanessa said. 

“Sounds hard,” said Lisa in her sweet southern drawl.  It was impossible to detect if she was being sarcastic.  

***

I couldn’t tell if Lisa was fully buying my Dad’s charm offensive.  At forty-six, he seemed a little old for her.  Not that age was an issue for him. The previous year, shortly after Dad Irish-exited from his marriage with Hillary Dean, he came to my poetry reading at a coffee house in Spanish Harlem in a converted garage.  It was so far outside his comfort zone he might as well have been on Mars. He showed up absurdly and wrongly overdressed in a Brooks Brothers gold button blazer, wide leg tan khakis and a plaid purple button down, his yellow silk pocket scarf adorned with tiny whales. Clean-shaven and fresh–faced in a sea of ironic facial hair and neck tattoos, he looked somehow simultaneously older and younger than all my friends.  

“Is he going to get mugged on the way out?” my friend Isiah had fretted, shaking his blond dreadlocked head with worry. 

But Dad, as usual, was unphased, chatting and charming his way through the crowd of twenty-something writers, artists, playwrights, flitting around like a parrot trapped in a cluster of crows. 

“Your dad is a total DILF,” Isiah said as he watched my dad work the crowd. “Man has moves.” 

“I just threw up in my mouth, “I said. 

That night I was so nervous, I was not sure if he paid attention to my reading.  I saw him standing next to a girl I knew casually, but who I respected. Lara, a grad student in the MFA program, was alluring in an understated geeky way that drew admirers of both sexes, including me. 

After I read, sweaty from leftover nerves and shaking with adrenaline high, I wove my way through the crowd to find Dad.  I noticed Lara was standing close to him. A novice in the study of my father wouldn’t have caught it, but I saw her lean towards him, their shoulders slightly touching as if she could not resist the slight subtle pull into his orbit. 

You were excellent Phebs,” he said, clapping me heartily on the shoulder. I knew it was a big deal for him to come and was grateful, because his typical literary consumption was a yearly John Grisham novel. 

“Drink!” Screamed Isiah and I was swallowed by the crowd, losing sight of my Dad and Lara.  Half an hour later, I looked over and my heart squeezed with the painful promise of a future poem as I watched Dad slip out the door with Lara, his square capable hands sitting just a little too low on Lara’s lower back as he slid into a cab next to her. 

***

While Vanessa ate her sandwich and I dug into Lisa’s chips, we learned why Lisa was on the train instead of taking the short flight from Richmond to Orlando.  She explained she had been called into the ER the night a small commuter jet went down.  The pilot had nearly landed the plane. “He did a good job as these things go. There were actually survivors. But their injuries.” She paused, uncomfortable. “It’s not logical, but I don’t fly anymore.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” my Dad said, raising his plastic cup and clinking it to Lisa’s.  

I noticed Vanessa had gone strangely still and quiet. “I feel weird.” she said suddenly, her elegant angular face white and drawn. “Allergy-weird, maybe,” she said.  Her hand slowly slid up her chest towards her throat as she began rubbing the area right over her sharp collarbones. 

“How?” Dad asked, his tone hovering between fear and anger. 

Lisa ignored him. “Do you have an EpiPen?” she asked Vanessa in a calm professional tone. 

Vanessa was wheezing a little. “In my bag,” Vanessa whispered. 

My fear tasted metallic like ozone, gasoline, iron. I hadn’t actually seen my sister have an episode since we were in middle school. She collapsed on the floor of our summer camp cafeteria clutching her throat while her face turned red and her lips turned white. That time, a quick-witted seventeen-year-old waterskiing counselor jabbed an EpiPen into Vanessa’s thigh and stopped the reaction cold.  It was over so fast I could almost pretend it hadn’t happened. 

“Go get the pen,” Lisa said to me. “Run.”  

I propelled myself through the sliding door, banging my hip bones on the side of seats as I ricocheted through the listing car. I grabbed Vanessa’s backpack and ran back to the dining car where my sister was lying on the gray molded bench, her legs dangling limply on the floor, her head cradled in Dad’s lap.  He stroked her hair, murmuring nonsense. Vanessa’s breaths trickled out like slow, scrabbling, insufficient things. 

Lisa grabbed the EpiPen and without hesitation, pulled down Vanessa’s joggers and jammed it into her thigh in a fluid, practiced arc. 

I heard myself start screaming – my panicked heart insisting the EpiPen would not be enough; this poison was in her and it could cause another reaction as she digested it, the garlic a fragrant bloom, sending out noxious toxic tendrils through Vanessa’s bloodstream. 

“I need you to calm down,” Lisa said, allowing no room to disobey her. “You are not helping your sister.” Lisa turned from me to the bartender, who had roused himself from dozing and was looking on with concern, “Call the conductor” she said. “Tell him we need to stop as soon as possible. We need an ambulance.”    

Even in the moment, I could see how Lisa must be good at her job, how she was someone strong enough to hold the hands of dying children, to watch them take their last labored breaths. Leaning in close, Lisa watched Vanessa’s face intently while simultaneously grabbing her wrist to check her pulse. Vanessa’s closed eyes fluttered, but I could not hear her breathing at all. 

“She is always so careful,” Dad murmured.  “How could this happen?” he asked Lisa, blinking like a dazed little boy, “How?” 

“It can happen,” Lisa said. “Cross contamination, maybe a new allergy.” Lisa put her ear over Vanessa’s pale lips, listening. “Get her on the floor,” she commanded.  She and my father slid Vanessa to the floor and Lisa knelt at her side, tilted her chin up, and leaned in bringing her plump lips to meet Vanessa’s like a kiss, blowing oxygen into my sister’s shuttered lungs. 

After a minute, Lisa stopped. “I think she’s moving air, but I don’t like how she’s looking,” Lisa said, not moving her gaze from Vanessa. My Dad stood over them, and I hated him in that moment for being so helpless, for not ever being able to fix anything that mattered. 

“When is this goddamn train going to stop?” Lisa pointed at the bartender.  “Go find out what’s going on.” 

But that moment, as if in answer to Lisa, the train slowed, and the conductor came on and announced the train was making an unscheduled stop for an emergency.  He apologized for the inconvenience. “Good. Thank God,” Lisa said mostly to herself. I could see Vanessa taking quick shallow breaths on her own. 

“Is she ok, will she be ok?” My Dad asked Lisa.    

“They’ll keep her on meds at the hospital and observe her to make sure she’s stable, that she doesn’t get worse.” Lisa said. I saw my dad had shockingly started silently crying, large rogue tears dripped down his cheeks without authorization. “Hey,” she said gently, placing her hand on his forearm like a caress, or maybe a rebuke. “Pull it together.” 

When the train stopped at a small station an hour outside of Charleston, Lisa insisted on getting off with us to make sure Vanessa got safely into the ambulance. “I’ll get the next train,” she said, although I suspected it would end up being a huge inconvenience for her and she would definitely be late meeting her friends at Disney. 

When the ambulance pulled up with lights flashing, almost immediately, the EMT’s realized Lisa was in charge of the situation. They ignored my father and me, and addressed their questions to Lisa who, in turn, efficiently listed an alphabet’s-worth of coded medical acronyms, SOB, AAS, low BP. All of it basically said my sister was still in very bad shape.  As the EMTs loaded my sister in on a stretcher, Lisa said to Dad and me, “I’d like to know how she’s doing, please let me know.”  

“Of course, of course,” My dad said remembering his beautiful manners.  He stepped forward as if to embrace her but at the last minute gripped her hand instead, pumping it up and down over and over, “Thanks, just thank you so much” he sniffed, his voice cracking. He climbed in next to Vanessa for the ride to the hospital, and when he looked out at us from the back of the ambulance his gaze was rheumy and wet, his blue eyes faded like an old man’s.  

Lisa stayed with me while I ordered a cab to the hospital and I called my mom. As we waited on the chilly empty platform, our breath crystalized into smoky clouds. The sun broke over the horizon, glowing a cheerful bright orange oblivious to my terror, to my gratitude. 

When my cab finally arrived, I tried to reach out to shake Lisa’s hand and instead, she reached out with her strong arms to gather me in close. It was a real embrace, her warm breasts pressed against me as I collapsed into her; she smelled like roses, sweat, and safety. 

I forced myself to pull away. “Let me get your number so we can update you on how she’s doing. What’s your last name?” I asked as I typed in her information into my contacts. 

“Barnet,” she said. 

“Lisa Barnet,” I repeated.

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Key Speaking Overtime from the Lock of the Body

30 November 2022
Categories: Fiction

If any such thing is there like they say, and they say that god is everywhere, then god is here, in this night sky and in my brain, in places where this isn’t happening, and here where it is, and in all times between and before and beyond. I am trying to feel god because I am pregnant and because I’m afraid and there’s no one to tell. Like my dad says, like they tell us at church, if you end up pregnant that means you asked for it, and if you’ve asked for it, then there’s only one life worth saving, and it isn’t mine. There’s no one to tell, or there is, but there’s no way of knowing who’s safe. Sometimes I think maybe it’s Betsy or Ms. Jimenez, remember my mom grumbling about how “it happened to” Betsy or how Ms. Jimenez is “a godforsaken lesbian.” I imagine standing on Betsy’s stoop or in Ms. Jimenez’s yard, imagine the screen door propped open, imagine the concerned face of Betsy or the tender face of Ms. Jimenez, imagine what they’d say if I told them, something like “it’s all going to be okay, Trina.” 

Sometimes,  imagining this, I can feel right up to how it used to be, a feeling that lasts a few seconds, and it’s like the shore when drowning, like movies from childhood, the ones where adventurous women charge into the world, and the world rewards their smarts with lives of happiness and love. Ms. Jimenez would probably remind me that I’m still a child, especially since she’s my teacher, but I can’t think of myself like that without thinking about what’s inside me.  

I try not to think of it. I’m pretty sure that at eight weeks it has legs and a heartbeat, as these were some of the reasons the government used before things changed. To me it’s like those houses at Halloween Horror Nights, where you think you’ve gotten to the end but it keeps going, or how ticks sometimes stay under the skin even after you’ve tweezed them, or like the galls that mess up their hosts so badly that the original plant stays hidden.  

I try not to think of it, the way it comes back, his voice warning, don’t even think of telling…  

This is a true story, a hidden truth. I am telling it the best I can.  

In class, I’m afraid to put my hand up. I’m not big enough to notice, but now I sense that everyone has x-ray vision, even Ms. Jimenez, who looked right at me as she read, “begin, and cease, and then again begin,” and I couldn’t breathe for what I took those words to mean.   

Those words are everywhere, invisible, in my house and in my yard and in a house and a yard near mine. Everyone says “it happened to” Betsy, too. It must be true, because a few months later she showed up back at home with an ankle bracelet and has been there ever since. There are things I know about her without knowing, by the way she looks at me like we’re soldiers. Before things changed, there used to be a postcard in her bedroom window that said Smash the Patriarchy. I thought she was old, but she must have been fourteen or fifteen, the same age I am now. 

Maybe I can sense who’s safe to tell, but I’m not sure what safe means beyond that. In my imaginings, we step inside past the screen door and into the light of Betsy’s porch or Ms. Jimenez’s kitchen. We sit down. They tell me about the plans put in place for “these kinds of situations.” A terrible fear spreads through me as I picture what those plans are describing:  

 

* 

 

It was The Back Before. Greg and I sat at the metal table during second period lunch. That was the day he came out to me, saying that he’d known for a long time, that he felt like he’d been waiting on his voice to speak itself. I took his hand under the table, gave it a squeeze to mean no matter what, to mean always, and then I looked at him and said, “no matter what,” said, “always,” and we laughed all the way up to the ceiling.  

He spoke that day and then his voice kept speaking and it was beautiful. It was in the way he carried himself, in the way he answered in class. It was like he honored whatever knowledge he’d stored in himself, and it was obvious that he was free, and, once free, people started to notice.  

They say at church, “does not forsake.” They say, “shadow of.” It wasn’t long after that Greg left Florida altogether, after the so-called proud boys waited for him on his usual walk home and broke three of his ribs. Days passed without him, and I could feel something had happened by the way my stomach went empty, and when I texted him, he wouldn’t tell me any of it. I would learn it later, after he had already left.  

He returned to school an unfree shadow of himself. We didn’t laugh. In this way the year went on. Sometimes, in his company, it used to occur to me that all we have is all we are, and how what we are can be as near or as distant as the planet we stand on or some far-off universe. I loved him, was all, simpler than anything else.  

 

* 

 

They say the only job I have now is love. And they say no one will love me for what has happened. That is how they put it, as if the baby had fallen from the sky and I were fallen from heaven.  

A thick fear settles on me as I picture the options someone like Betsy might describe. Dad says, the church says, the scripture says, “as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones,” and Greg said his voice spoke itself, and Ms. Jimenez said “cease, and again begin,” and Mama used to say, “I hope one day you have one just like you.”  

 

* 

 

In school, they asked us to write our best and brightest dreams. For the good of the country, the prompt reminded me. I thought:  

 

 

 

I wrote, “For my country, I’d like to be a good neighbor, a good wife, and a good mother.”  

 

* 

 

Tonight the sky is a shadow of the lemon sky day. My heart whistles through my body like wind through a playground. Outside the window is the road and Betsy’s house and then nothing. She stands outside, smoking and frowning through the rain, and says as I stop in the street, “The world is just trash and anger anymore.” I don’t know if I believe that, the way I can’t seem to believe that the baby inside me is a baby at all, the way I can’t picture keeping it or giving it up. So heavy in front of her, I can’t say anything.  

 

* 

 

The screen door stands open. The light spills out. Ms. Jimenez waits, knowing what I’ve come there for, knowing without knowing what I carry, her face patient and soft, and we have time. I open my mouth. I say sometimes falling stars are the most beautiful. She says, “as on a darkling plain.” I nod and close my eyes and wake up on a table, and the choice is over, and the room is a shore. The shore is a voice that can speak anything, can say, for example, god, pregnant, pregnant, life, Betsy, Ms. Jimenez, lesbian, teacher, eight weeks, legs, heartbeat, government, baby, baby, postcard, Smash the Patriarchy, Greg, came out to me, the so-called proud, broke his body, baby, keeping it, giving it away.  

Has it already happened? Is it happening? It keeps happening, the way time seems to go backward and forward.  

The voice says my best and brightest dreams are a warm safe home down a tree-lined street with a mother and father who love me the way I love Greg, which is to say no matter what, which is to say always. In my best and brightest dreams, my time is filled with dreams, and I lay under the stars and imagine far-away places, make plans to explore them, laugh and cry and sing aloud to the songs I love. In my best and brightest, no one touches me without my permission. I go to the ocean and stand at the shore. I find out who I am. The voice says choice, and its shore goes on forever. 

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Rabbit Run

30 November 2022
Categories: Fiction

I was by myself the first time I rode. Dad had promised to take me, but a Saturday meeting popped up. Kids were on the track riding, and cars and station wagons were scattered across the parking lot. Fathers and sons worked on bikes. Others sat in lawn chairs next to open tailgates and drank Cokes.  

Jerry, the guy who ran the track, had an easy smile. 

I rode up to him and asked, “Can I ride the track?” 

He wasn’t much taller than me and looked like he’d served in the Navy, crewcut and Popeye forearms. He stared at me for a moment and then down at the bike. “I suppose,” he said and sat on a stool next to a blue custom van. It had a crescent moon-shaped window on the back corner. The side doors were open and a clotheslines stretched across the top. A pair of jeans, t-shirt, and socks were hanging to dry. Inside, white shag carpet lined the floors and walls, and he even had a bed across the back of the cargo area. It looked like a Hot Wheels car. “Practice sessions are five bucks,” he said. 

“I don’t have any money.” 

“First time here?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

“Alright. You can owe me.” 

“Thanks,” I said. 

“It can be dangerous.” He paused and then pointed toward the track with his chin. 

I gave a nod and pedaled up to the starting gate. I imagined myself at the beginning of a heat. Normally there’s a bar at the gate, and all the racers press their front wheels against it and wait for the starter to begin the race by dropping it. I only had my imagination. I aimed my bike down the track, banked through the first big berm, and rode the whoopty-doos until they bucked me off the bike. Wiping out wasn’t a big deal, and neither was my torn jeans and bloody knee, but Jerry walked over to the track’s edge and waved me over. 

“You alright?” 

“Yeah. No biggie,” I said. 

He looked at my knee and winced a little bit. “Come over to the van. I got some Bactine.” 

If he’d said methylate, I would’ve begged off, but I went over. Jerry was an adult with Bactine and that reminded me of someone I could trust. He cleared his laundry and had me sit down and roll up my pants leg. He opened the passenger door and brought out a small Igloo cooler, opened it, and handed me a can of Coke. I didn’t think twice. The day was hot, my knee hurt, and I was in the shade. He scooped a handful of ice from the cooler and rubbed it on the wound. His hands felt sure and steady, though calloused. The wound wasn’t much; a few scrapes went deep, but mostly it was road rash. He wiped it off with a rag and then sprayed the Bactine on it. It stung for a moment and then cooled. 

“You live nearby?” he asked. 

“A couple miles down the road,” I said. 

“Think you’re okay?” 

I nodded, downed the Coke, and stood up. I belched long and proud and walked over to my bike. 

“You’re good,” he said.  

  “Thanks,” I said. I got on my bike and rode around the course one more time before heading home. 

Over the next two months, I went to the track every chance I had. I mowed yards, babysat, and saved my money. Racers had to have helmets, though Jerry let us practice without them. He said it’s okay to break the rules sometimes. 

 

*  

 

Mornings, I ride my bike to school and Mom sleeps in. She works nights now. The apartment isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. I have to bring the bike inside each night or it’ll get stolen, even if it’s locked up. I’ve seen cut chains lying on the ground like dead snakes. One day bikes are there, and the next day they’re gone.  

A couple of blocks away from the apartment complex in a regular neighborhood, I ride on the sidewalk and see a big pink slug squirming. I almost run over it but swerve just in time. I circle back around and stop next to it. It’s a baby squirrel that’s fallen out if its nest.  

I wonder if I should pick it up and then look into the branches of the tree above. I listen for squirrel chatter, a grieving parent, but there’s nothing more than the usual birdsong. If I had a shoebox, I reason, I could scoop it up and take it to Mrs. Dobson who teaches science. She’d know what to do. I look around at the homes and hope for someone to come out and get their newspaper, to make their way to their car, or to head off to work, but there’s no one.  

I pick it up and its fleshy muscles writhe in my hand. I almost flinch and drop it but then get a grip and slide the baby into my jacket pocket. Its body presses against my stomach as I pedal. I should speed up to be on time, but that little body slows me down as it wiggles. I start to hum a song and it quiets. 

Mrs. Dobson’s car, a green Toyota with a gray fender, is in the parking lot. As soon as I pull up the last bell rings. I lock my bike and go to first period. Science isn’t until third, so I wonder if I—or it—can wait. The vice-principle waves me through the front door and closes it. I go to first period. 

Just before class change, I realize the little guy hasn’t moved in a bit. Maybe it’s sleeping. The pocket is warm and dark, and maybe being next to my body helped calm it down. My hand wants to investigate, but I think better of it, imagining a giant’s fingers plucking me from the cocoon of my bed. Still, the urge to know burns. I decide it’s better to be late to second and go to the science classroom. Like Jerry said, sometimes it’s okay to break the rules. Fourth graders are walking in when I get there, and Mrs. Dobson is at the front of the classroom near the overhead projector.  

“You’re an hour early, Jodie.” 

“I found something,” I say. 

She puts her transparencies aside and raises her eyebrows. “Show me.” 

Kids always bring her things: rocks, leaves, fossils, seashells. I lift the right corner of my jacket up to her. “Look in the pocket.” 

She holds my look for a moment, but then she leans over and peers into the dark pocket. “What is that? A hamster?” 

I twist myself out of the jacket and bunch it up under the pocket and offer it to her. “I think it’s a baby squirrel.” 

She removes it from the jacket and cradles it. “Its eyes aren’t even open.” Mrs. Dobson takes it over to the counter by the window, where the fish aquarium and the egg incubator sit. “I think it’s still alive.” 

“Yeah,” I say, a bit annoyed. “It was when I found it. It was in first period. I felt it move,” I say.  

One of the fourth graders drifts over, a boy with shoulder length blonde hair. “What is it?” he asks. 

The bell rings and Mrs. Dobson shoos me off to class. “Go,” she says. 

In the next class I get a tardy and have to sit in “the box,” which is a chair at the back of the room that has a square of red tape on the floor around it. People look back and snicker at me, but I don’t care. I reach into my jacket pocket where the baby squirrel had been and feel around. No liquid or slimy stuff, and no fur; just an empty pocket. I wonder what is going on in the science classroom, if Mrs. Dobson is showing it to second period, if that nosey fourth-grader is holding it. Something tightens in my chest, and I want to be there. I found it. It’s mine. 

It didn’t make it. I could tell by the look on her face when I walked into third period. Parents and teachers get this look on their faces when they know they have to tell you something bad. Sometimes they try to soften you up. Like when dad drove me by the BMX track the first time. Kids were racing and flying through the air on their diamond-framed bikes. He knew I’d love it. We sat in the car watching, and then he gets this look on his face. “Listen, Jodie,” he said. “We need to talk. Your mom and I…” All of a sudden I was in an Afternoon Special, and this was the divorce talk. 

Mrs. Dobson straightened herself and walked over to me. “Jodie—” 

“I figured,” I say.  

“It’s okay to be upset, Jodie,” she says. 

I decide no one at school will see me cry over a rodent. It wasn’t a pet; I hadn’t named it, even if I had been humming the theme to Rocky on the ride to school with the little guy in my pocket. My mind turns back to the BMX track. I think about Bell motorcycle helmets with visors and goggles. I think of anything else. 

“Jodie,” she says. 

“I know,” I say. 

She looks at me like she’s trying to see through something. I feel her sense of responsibility tugging at her. Adults always think they have to do something. 

“I’m all right, really.” 

“Come see me after school,” she says. 

After last bell I walk to her classroom, but she must’ve forgotten because the lights are out and the door is locked. I wait ten minutes and then head to the bike rack. My sneakers echo in the empty hallways. I exit through the front doors, and I see the blond-haired kid from second period science. He’s sitting on the steps. The busses are gone, walkers are halfway home, and riders have been picked up by parents.  

I know that feeling of being the last kid picked up. How your butt feels on the concrete steps, how time stops, and how every car you hear gets a knee-jerk glance. I walk past him and don’t say a word. Sometimes it’s best not to say anything. 

“Sorry about your squirrel,” he says. “The janitor came and took it.” 

“No biggie,” I say and walk to the bike rack. I undo my padlock, wrap the chain around the seat post. I can feel his eyes on me, but I get on the bike and ride off without a glance back. Thoughts about the track and how it feels to ride fast and jump through the air float through my head. I pedal through these dreams and in less than half a block from the school the chain jumps the sprocket. I get off the bike and flip it over. I kneel next to it and wonder if someone messed with it in the rack. I put the chain on the back sprocket and start to turn the crank when I hear a familiar noise. 

Ford Mustangs, the old ones, have a distinct sound. Dad drives one with a 289 V8 engine. It’s blue. And that’s when I see it. It’s his car. His blue Mustang. He’s behind the wheel, but he’s not looking at me. His Ray-Bans are pointed at the school. Has he come to pick me up? He hasn’t done that since the divorce. Did something happen to Mom?  

His car pulls into the circle drive in front of the school. The blonde-haired kid gets up from the steps and opens the passenger door and sits in the seat I used to ride in. It’s only a moment, but I see him turn and look at the boy, and then he hits the gas and the tires squeal. A small cloud of smoke and exhaust forms, and they disappear behind it. 

I turn the crank, get the chain back on the sprocket, and ride.      

I’m a latchkey kid because of the key around my neck. Mom isn’t waiting for me at home; no one is since dad left us. So I decide to ride back to my old neighborhood to see the old house. It’s still there, but it’s not the same. I go to a friend’s house. His yard is empty and the garage is closed. I ride to another friend’s house and only find a barking dog. 

I ride to “the trails,” bike paths in an empty field at the edge of the old neighborhood. Sometimes my friends hang out there, but not today. Still I pump the pedals hard, build speed, and launch off a small dirt mound. After I land, I skid and push out the rear wheel and pull a 180. No one sees it. The sky is overcast and a breeze bends the tall grass in the field. I pedal along the brown dirt path and follow it into a tree break next to a deep, dry, creek bed. The path dips into the gully—branches and trash are strewn along the banks—and I speed down, across, and then up the other side. I almost fall at the edge, but right myself, and then I look back down at what I rode through.  

I hear a faraway air horn. Semis don’t come through this neighborhood, so I figure it’s from the interstate. In my mind’s eye I remember how close I am to the track. It hits me suddenly. It’s not a practice day, but I wonder if I could ride anyway. Break another rule. 

Rather than find my way back to the roads, I bushwhack cross-country and work my way towards the access road to the interstate. Cars fly by as fast as those on the highway, but I make it to the track. A rusty chain blocks the entrance, so I lift the bike and step over it. No one is around. 

I get on the bike and roll up to the top of the starting gate and pedal hard down the hill without imagining a race day. The fans are not in the bleachers, Jerry’s voice isn’t on the PA, and fathers and sons are not making last minute adjustments to sprocket sizes or air pressure in the tires. Only the colored pennants flap in the breeze. 

I pedal through the first berm. It’s tall and swings me around into the flat with woopty-doos. I pull my front wheel up over each bump, keeping my back wheel on the ground and my feet pumping. I take the hairpin at the end of the flat too fast and lose my line. I recover and pedal harder and go over two table-top jumps, round another hairpin, and then pedal through the straightway finish. I’m winded and the back of my throat is raw. I sit astride the bike and catch my breath. I take in the track while I rest my foot on the pedal, and it feels sure. 

I hear the crunch of gravel under car tires, and I turn to see Jerry’s blue van. It stops at the chain across the entrance. He opens the door and stands on the running board and waves.  

I wave back and realize he’s waving me over. So I ride to his van.  

One hand rests on the top of the door and the other in on the roof. “Can’t be out here when the chain is across the driveway.” 

“Sorry,” I say.  

“I know you kids like to ride—” 

“I’ll go,” I say. 

“I drove the earthmover that cut this track out of a grassy field. Built it out of nothing,” he says. He taps his hand against the roof of the van, on beat, and looks at me, gauging what he can do, what he can get away with. I’ve seen those gears turn in my father’s eyes. “You’re a rabbit,” he says, “I’ve seen you ride.” 

“Thanks,” I say. 

“It’s not a compliment. Rabbits don’t win.” He winks. “They run scared.” 

The colored pennants ripple in a gust of wind and the temperature drops a few degrees. The clouds that had made the day overcast have darkened and an approaching afternoon storm rumbles with distant thunder. We both turn to the sound and look to the sky. 

“Looks like rain. Need a ride?” He points to the van with his head. “Plenty of room for you and the bike.” 

My legs are tired, and the apartment is farther away than our old house. I look towards the track. He made berms and he made jumps. He made a place where people come together. But… “I’m not sure my mom—” 

“She wouldn’t have to know.” He shrugs. 

 I nod. “Still, it’s just down the road. I’ll be fine.” Our eyes hold each other for a moment, like he still has something to say.  

“Don’t you owe me something? We don’t have to get anyone else involved.” 

“Someone else?” 

“The police. You were trespassing. You could call it practice, but you’d still owe me.” 

The nose of Jerry’s van sits between the iron posts that hold the chain I’d crossed. Beyond the posts, the fence spans for a mile in both directions. There is no easy way out. He looks at me like one of my teachers when they know I know the answer. I feel small and helpless. The wind kicks up, lightning flashes, and a moment later thunder follows. I only see one choice. “A ride would be good,” I say. 

His face brightens, and he slaps the roof of the van. “Alright then. That’s what I’m talking about. Let me back her out a bit.” He pops into his seat and puts the van in reverse. A gap opens between the chain and the van, and I hoist the bike over. Jerry puts the van in park and walks around to the back of the van. This is it. 

I hop onto my bike and my knees pump so hard gravel spits from the back tire. I turn the wrong way onto the one-way access road, and I ride the narrow shoulder as oncoming rush hour traffic speeds by. Jerry yells something at me, but I can’t hear it. I don’t look back but know he’s watching me. A crack of lightning lights up the sky and the rain comes. It pours big drops that feel like soft marbles pelting on my face and arms. I pedal harder and push through the wind, the water, and the tears. 

Watch this fucking rabbit run.

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No Pennies

1 December 2021
Categories: Fiction

I would have liked to drop a penny and make a wish, but they don’t have pennies here anymore.

Every seventh or eighth wave, salt sprays my trainers and ankles. The wind pinwheels – eyes closed, I careen down a hill on a bicycle, my hair whips sideways across my face – and then the wind is behind me, pushing me like a bully.

Rock cuts into my left ass cheek but I don’t move. I fear I’ll slip. I fear if I start slipping, I won’t try to catch myself.

Flinging coins into the ocean for wishes is stupid, anyway. No one does that.
 
 

The night it happened, he brought home fresh pasta: tag-illia-tell. Tag-lee-at-ell? Eyebrow cocked and – when I said it right – he said, darling, you’re so cute when you try, but leave this intellectual stuff to your man, okay? I know you can’t speak-ay Italiano-ay like me.

We ate different shapes to spice things up and wrote food critic reviews into the air – penne was robust, spaghetti lackadaisical, bowties erudite. Buttered pasta was the only thing besides toast that I could keep down. He added parmesan and chilli flakes to his. That night, he asked if I could stand basil.

I contemplated.

It’s fresh, he said. He walked to the sofa, dangled the bunch upside down a foot above my head and gave a hypnotic wave.

Yes, go on. I’m feeling adventurous.

Garlic?

Saliva pooled under my tongue. I put my hand to my mouth.

Joking. I’m sorry. His arms wrapped double around my head. My nose pressed into the divot at the base of his throat – mellow aftershave, sweat, sun – and the basil at my temple, secure in his fist, sweet and earthy.
 
 

Without discussing it, we knew it was the Thursday, the one in September – a spring heatwave and he was waiting on a new phone. His old one was fried at the weekend by our toddler niece dunking it into in an ice bucket.

On that Thursday, we came home at the same time with each other’s favourite dinners. Sorry, I thought it was my turn? we said, and he was kissing me. He squashed the shopping into the wall and hoisted me onto the counter. His knee banged into the cabinet, his hands went under my shirt, and he carried me to bed.

We weren’t trying, exactly – we just weren’t being careful. When I took my last pill, I held up the empty packet and said, So? What do you think? He told me not to bother. We’d been together for five years. Our families were teasing us. We cut back on drinking, just in case. We were renting, but the landlord liked us. We were both underpaid at steady jobs, and we had some dreams beyond those jobs.

He crawled up the mattress, his hands on either side of my head, and he lowered himself on top of me. The film of sweat between our bodies, the heat of him, the way I gripped the back of his neck and said yes to a question he hadn’t asked.

A kookaburra cackled through the open window.
 
 

The sun pools like an egg yolk and a cargo ship will overtake it. It’s too hazy to see the island but I squint for the lighthouse. It’s a boring sunset, the sky gradient gold to blue.

When I first moved here, we went to the beach daily – even in winter when the wind made my ears hurt. For my first Fourth of July here, we had a barbecue with his family at the playground across the street from the beach. It was unnaturally cold, even for winter, and we were the only people. The kids were happy until it started to rain at mealtime. We ate sausages and hamburgers on soggy buns in our cars, spilled potato salad on the seats, windshield wipers in a frenzy, honking to each other across the car park. A kid on my lap, the smear of ketchup on the dashboard we didn’t discover until September, the wet kiss on my cheek and being called auntie – but the rain wouldn’t break. We went to his parents’ house where we kept drinking until I sang all sixteen verses of “Yankee Doodle” and had the kids stomping on the chorus so hard that his great aunt’s china rattled in the cupboards and the dog howled.

It wasn’t fireworks, but it was close.

The egg-yolk sun is a sliver. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I need to blink but I won’t.

Green flash. That’s my third. This one is lucky, I tell myself.

Lucky for what? I ask myself.

I don’t understand the people who live here and never go to the beach.
 
 

Two nights before it happened – macaroni night – he led me outside. He made me cover my eyes, and he guided me over hot paving stones. I heard the car boot open. Surprise!

A tangle of wooden slats, wheels, and boxes – his colleague sold it to us criminally cheap. The stroller was a little beat up, but the crib was solid wood. There was a congratulations card with a baby zebra on the front. Her five-year-old had written his name in red crayon.

He carried everything in, leaning the crib pieces against the wall by our dining table and bringing boxes to me. I pulled out onesies and tiny pants. They were all freshly laundered and folded.

What are we going to name her? I asked.

Carbonara?

Ha. I pressed a shirt against my cheek.

Wait, her? He dropped the playpen – kelly green with jungle animals, wadded into a roll and secured with a My Little Pony belt.

Him or her. I don’t know. It feels like a girl, maybe? I shrugged.

Don’t do that to me. He stomped over and ruffled my hair. You know I don’t like it when you know something I don’t.

Our life must be difficult for you, I said.

You have no idea. We rubbed noses. His facial hair tickled my chin – he needed to shave. He’d been so busy at work trying to get a raise before the baby.
 
 

A dog barks. I can barely hear it with the wind. The sand looks further away than it seemed when I clambered out to the end of the groyne.

Picking my way back, I stumble and land on my knee – that’ll be a bruise, maybe a gash; I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ve been tired since it happened. I’m slow.

The waves are high, the kind that you have to duck or they’ll knock you over. I want them.
 
 

The night it happened, we ate our tagliatelle and high-fived because I officially and successfully stomached fresh basil.

You’re doing great, he said. He brought over the list on the fridge:

Foods That Don’t Cause Puking

Toast (white)

Butter

Ritz/Jatz

Cookie dough ice cream

Chocolate ice cream

Ginger beer

Sparkling water and apple juice

Sparkling water

Carrot sticks (raw)

Pasta

Butter

Basil (!)

I’m so proud of you. He kissed my forehead. Your first greens.

Shut up.

An hour later, we added chocolate brownies to the list and this was more important. He pulled me to my feet and we danced to a jingle for heartburn medication.
 
 

There are two kids with boogie boards and a few couples further up the beach. I kick off my trainers and strip down. I’m wearing dark blue knickers – still, just in case – and a white bra.

I sprint into the water, chest hurting, and remember to take a breath right before I dive. Salt burns the scrape on my knee and, for a perfect eight seconds, everything is silent except that rushing noise I’ve learned to love. It used to scare me, but not much scares me now.
 
 

The night it happened, I fell asleep on the sofa. My back hurt and he put a pillow on his lap and had me lay down. His fingers worked on me while I snoozed and he scrolled on his phone.

He woke me up to go to bed. I felt dizzy and he said I got up too fast. I skipped brushing my teeth. I said I felt funny. He brushed my hair and told me I needed rest.

I dozed, but fitfully; an hour later, I was in the bathroom and saw blood.
 
 

No sound, no lights, nothing to catch my attention – but there he is. I somehow knew he was here. He points and shouts.

A wave crashes into the side of my head and sends me tumbling. My shoulder hits sand. I didn’t have time to breathe. I come up sputtering on salt water, and I can feel the heaving start in my stomach. I hold it back and gulp air. I plug my nose and bob under another wave and he’s splashing in after me wearing denim shorts and a t-shirt.

He reaches me and we duck together. We surface and he holds onto my arms. I don’t think he’s dashed after me in his clothes because he worried he’d have to save me – I think he’s given up on what people think, too. He’s smiling. I love the way the water sticks his eyelashes together.
 
 

When I close my eyes – beneath the water, at the doctor’s, in bright sunlight – a short video plays for me: the way he picks up his tiniest niece. She reaches. He bends and his hands are perfectly placed for her to shuffle two steps in. His fingers curl around her body and she waves her arms.

He lightly throws her – enough to make her hair fan out from her face, enough to make the banksia and the patio and our laughing faces whirl, but not enough to scare her – and he hugs her close. She pokes the buttons on his shirt, puts her finger in her mouth, and turns to watch the older children chase the dog.

My favourite part is the way that he waits for her to walk into his hands before lifting her. Her other uncles swoop her up straightaway. They’re not wrong, but he does it better.
 
 

The night it happened, the first towels he found were our beach towels. He half-carried me to the car and drove with the windows down. The streetlights whirled past me: bye-bye baby, bye-bye baby.

They rushed me in; they did a scan. There was no heartbeat. They kept checking and I heard a high-pitched ringing that I thought was from a machine, but no one else could hear it. He squeezed my hand until my fingers went purple. They brought me back to the waiting room where I did my very best waiting doubled over on a plastic chair. A drunk with a cut on the eyebrow was seen. Indignity seeped through my clothes.

He shouted at the receptionist, who said she’d have him removed by security if he did that again, but a minute later they showed us to a room which I paced while he sat on the edge of the bed. The nurse would be back to check very soon. We are sorry; we are understaffed. There is nothing we can do.

I don’t know what it’s called when there’s a baby growing inside one second and – in a rush of blood and a few clots and more stabbing pain – then it isn’t. Like time or a gallstone, is it called passing? I was crying, and then I wasn’t. He tapped at the bathroom door and told me to say something, anything. Darling, you’re scaring me.

I sat with my back against the door.

The nurse is on her way. Can I come in? Please.

The door wedged open a crack and stopped.

I’m fine, I said. Wait for the nurse.

I couldn’t let him see it. It was killing me and I couldn’t let it kill him too.
 
 

He asks me what I was doing. Watching, I say. Thinking. Looking.

Those are good things, he says. I’m glad you’re out of the house.

We take big breaths and duck under a wave. He keeps hold of my hand.

I was thinking, I say when we surface, about throwing coins into the ocean. I was thinking about how it’s the world’s biggest wishing well.

Does that mean that capsizing pirate ships are lucky?

Maybe, I say.
 
 

The morning after it happened, the hospital released me and told me to follow up with my doctor, but I should come back if I had a fever. They were doing tests and they’d call if they found anything unusual. It was a freak accident; I was far enough along. It was unlucky.

The nurse gave me pamphlets and squeezed my shoulder. It’s not your fault, she said. She told me that we could try again whenever we felt ready.

We weren’t trying, exactly, I said, and then I wondered why I had said anything at all.

The nurse squeezed my shoulder again and that was that.

We squinted at the sun in the parking lot. He’d gone home to get me clean clothes. He’d already called work – both his and mine – and I slept most of the day.

He woke me at three to make me drink some water and have a snack.

I don’t know how I can face anyone, I said. I mean, ever. How do we talk about this? We told people.

I don’t know, he said. We’ll find a way. Maybe we can tell our mums and they can tell people for us.

Yes, I said. Moms are good for that sort of thing.

We don’t have to do anything now. He passed me another biscuit. We can hurt. That’s ok. Now eat.
 
 

He pulls out a wet handful of change from his pocket.

No, forget it. I don’t want to. I fold my arms.

Why not? He says.

It’s stupid. It’s an ocean, not a well. And it’s not even a penny.

So?

It breaks all the rules.

Says who? He takes my wrist, turns my palm over, plops down two twenty-cents and a five-cent. He wraps his arm around my shoulders. A wave knocks into our knees and I stagger. He holds me close.

Go on, he says.

I take a twenty-cent coin and turn it over.

I guess platypus can swim, I say.

He grins.

I fling it as hard as I can, which isn’t far with my lousy arm, but the dusk light makes it look impressive. We don’t see it land.

That’s my girl. What did you wish for?

I can’t tell you, I say. But I didn’t wish for anything – at least, not in the way that I wished for special toys or an adventure when I was a child. I’d like to believe that whoever is out there granting wishes doesn’t need them to be specified like that. Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. Or maybe I don’t believe in wishes. I can’t decide.

You do one, I say.

He takes the other twenty-cent and pauses. We sway in the water.
 
 

I made him cut out the labels in my clothing while I was in the shower on the third day after it happened. My wardrobe was a mix of hand-me-down maternity and next-next-sizes up. It was all too much. We weren’t growing anymore.

Two weeks after it happened, I still looked pregnant. In the driveway, I caught a glimpse of myself in the car window. It made me stop. This happened every time I saw my reflection. I turned sideways, hitched my work bag out of the way, and pressed my shirt against my ballooning stomach. If anything, I looked more pregnant, which didn’t make any sense and kept me awake at night. I kept having dreams that the hospital called and said it was a mistake, my baby was just fine, and your due date is Mother’s Day. How exciting. Your families must be so happy.

He was already home. He was barefoot and he greeted me with a chocolate cupcake and flowers.

I asked why.

He said it was Valentine’s Day. Remember?

The days had dragged and smudged. It could be next Christmas.

I’d been back to work for three days. I called in advance to the woman who was the work mum. She’d been in accounts for at least a decade and called everybody darling. She accompanied me to a meeting with my male manager. I said let’s not kid anyone; I’m not here because I’m ready. I’m here because I need distraction and you guys aren’t going to keep paying me forever. I’m not myself, but I’ll try my best. Work mum squeezed my hand.

I ate the cupcake on the spot and he said I was a good girl. He sent me to a bubble bath. He made us quiche and we drank wine.

We turned off our phones.

We ate by candlelight.

We talked about travelling.
 
 

Dusk settles and he hasn’t thrown it. He’s taking too long. I want – more than anything – for him to say something profound, something I can hold onto.

Aren’t you supposed to throw it over your shoulder? He finally asks.

Maybe at the Trevi Fountain, I say. Why?

He looks into my eyes and drops the coin. We look down where it glints between our feet once and vanishes and another wave tumbles into us.

We hold hands and trudge through the sand. I put my clothes back on and he does his best to squeeze out corners of clothing while it’s on his body. I get into his car with him. He starts to back out, stops, looks at me, and asks me how I got here. His hair sticks up at all angles.

You’re right, I say. I pull my keys from my pocket. I’ll see you at home.
 
 

We were two days short.

Two days more, we would have been stillborn. Instead, we were a late miscarriage.

Two days more would have been a funeral. There would be pieces of paper, a life and death noted, a name registered.

Instead, we became a false start.

We were a match that sparks but doesn’t catch.
 
 

The salt and sand rake at our skin when we strip. He wraps a towel around himself to put our clothes on the line. I stand at the door in my wet hair and nothing else. He hangs up his shorts and I say it’d be funny if his phone had been in his pocket all along. He gives me a look and says no, it’s in the glovebox of the car, thanks very much.

We shower and for the first time since it happened, I let him touch my belly. He holds me from behind and says thank you.

Driftwood

1 December 2021
Categories: Fiction

It’s just past dawn on a Tuesday morning in early spring. Dim light filters through heavy clouds above hills to the east. The tide is high in the bay, a light breeze rippling its surface. A pair of harbor seals slip into the water near the inlet, beyond which languid waves lash the sand. Closer to the highway bridge on the tallest of a trio of volcanic rock stacks, the figure of a woman comes clear as the darkness fades. She sits with knees to chest, hair covering her face, one arm looped around the trunk of a stunted Sitka spruce. If not for the fleece jacket with a waterproof shell, she might be taken for some mythical creature risen out of the sea; one who’d sprout a tail were she to dive back under the surface.

But she is human, cold and tired. She has been on the rock for nearly seven hours. She pulls the jacket tighter but can’t stop shivering. Her face feels numb. She no longer knows whether to laugh or cry. She does both and then stops herself to conserve her strength. The seals pass below without glancing up at her.

The woman’s name is Andrea Schaffner. Friends and family call her Andi. She is thirty-five years old, straight, unmarried, and childless. For the past year and a half she has carried on an affair with a married co-worker—her direct supervisor—at a Portland nonprofit whose mission is to aid struggling rural communities with economic development, especially those suffering from the loss of logging and fishing industries. Her lover, James, is Program Director, and she is Program Manager. Though his salary is ten thousand dollars a year higher than hers, they work as a team—as equals, she believes—meeting with mayors and city councils and chambers of commerce to design recovery plans and training programs and otherwise help locals attract business, build up tourism, establish sustainable forestry and fishery practices. They travel to beach and mountain towns all over the Pacific Northwest, always booking two motel rooms but using only one.

From the rock she can see the motel they checked into last night just a few hundred yards across the bay, a squat, three-story building with rusty balconies that leave stains whenever rain drips from them onto the stucco below. Their room is on the second floor near a stairwell, but from this angle she can’t be sure which one it is. The lights are off in all of them. She can picture it as she left it; James in bed, naked and snoring, her overnight bag unzipped but not unpacked, her cell charging on the desk. Of all the stupid mistakes she’s made over the past day—or over the past two years, the past thirty-five—not carrying her phone is the one for which she’ll never forgive herself. That, and leaving her sandals behind a driftwood log on the beach so she could feel the sand between her toes.

The breeze eases, shifts direction. She catches the smell of wood smoke and thinks that maybe people are beginning to wake, early risers heading to work, though she knows there is little work in Lincoln City or anywhere else on the coast. Ninety percent of the houses here are vacation rentals, and the people who clean them can’t afford to live nearby; instead they drive over the Coast Range from Salem, Albany, the shabby outlying suburbs of Portland. Over the regular beat of waves beyond Salishan Spit, she hears wings flapping against water. Geese or gulls, perhaps pelicans.

And then comes the sound of an engine, a loud one, not at all like the hybrid in James’s Prius. For the first time in more than an hour, she sees headlights in the distance heading north around the bay. She stands with difficulty, leaning against the little spruce’s trunk, keeping most of her weight on one foot, and gives a big wave. Please see me, she thinks, and immediately recognizes the irony, given how often over the past year and a half she has feared exposure, prayed to stay hidden. She can see the truck now, an eighteen-wheeler hauling an unmarked container. Blankets, she thinks. An entire truck full of thick down comforters. She flings her arms wildly, hops up and down on one foot, nearly loses her balance. The headlights’ beams pass a few yards to the west of her stack, and then the truck rounds the curve onto the bridge. It passes the end of the bay without braking, changes gear, and heads uphill into town. Andi sits and shivers.
 

***

 
She can’t believe what she’s gotten herself into, but then again, the facts of her life continually astonish her. How can she be a person who regularly sleeps with someone else’s spouse, the father of two pre-teen girls? Even while in bed with James, his hands gripping her backside, or her legs straddling his hips, she can’t quite square her actions with the image she carries of herself as someone who does good in the world, who puts others’ needs ahead of her own. Last night she said as much to James, not for the first time, and again he agreed: it was crazy, they were completely out of their minds, they couldn’t keep on this way indefinitely. But, of course, the craziness was exactly what turned them both on, and in minutes they went from holding their heads in their hands to holding each other around the waist, pelvis to pelvis.

For James, sex was enough to quell any doubts, at least until their next trip together two weeks away. But after he grunted, kissed her, and fell promptly asleep, Andi lay listening to his breath and the waves and the rattling heater, once more telling herself this couldn’t really be her life, even if she had no other to replace it. An hour passed, and when she knew she wouldn’t drift off, she dressed and slipped outside, where a rare break in the clouds revealed a bright moon, the tide far out, the inner bay floor uncovered all the way to the opposite bank. She’d never seen the stacks exposed to their base. On her way toward them, she spotted bubbles in the sand, and with a reflex that surprised her, she dropped to her knees and dug with both hands until she came up with a clam. A small one with brownish stripes and a purple tip, not like the big razor clams she and James had recently eaten in Vancouver during a weekend conference they hardly attended. Still, pocketing it gave her a feeling of accomplishment, and she dug up more as she crossed the silty flats thick with weeds, the sand sucking at her feet with every step.

Her jacket pockets were heavy with shells by the time she reached the stacks. In the morning, she’d build a fire on the beach and steam them for breakfast, surprise James with them just as he was waking up. It would be their farewell meal, she decided, enjoying the drama of such a thought and the way it immediately choked her up. They’d eat and make love one last time, and then it would be over. She’d never steamed clams before, not even on a stove, and didn’t know how to do it on open flames. But it was time to learn new things; time to become the person she thought she should be rather than the one who stumbled into careers and love affairs as if she had no control over where her feet carried her. She could always look up directions on her phone when she got back to the room.

Before returning, however, she’d climb the stack and sit for a few minutes looking at the stars, which were far more distinct here than in Portland, even with the moon still high above the horizon. It was the right place to feel lonely and sorry for herself and hopeful about the future, except on the way up she sliced the ball of her foot on a barnacle. It bled, not profusely but steadily, and she lay on her back with her foot in the air waiting for it to clot. When it finally did, the tide had come back in. The water was already up to her knees by the time she limped down the rock, and it was freezing. The bank was several hundred yards away, and by the time she reached it, she’d be mostly submerged. How long did it take for hypothermia to set in? Her foot throbbed. She’d probably need stitches. A weak swimmer at the best of times, she didn’t know if she could kick hard enough to keep invisible currents from yanking her out to sea.

Back atop the rock, she waited for James to wake and realize she was gone and to come looking for her, though only part of her believed he would. He always slept hard after emptying himself into her and rolling to his back, rarely shifting his position all night. Often, he didn’t hear the alarm in the morning and stirred only when she tickled his feet. And he usually woke cranky, yawning and rubbing eyes, already distracted by thoughts of work or the drive home, uninterested in her affection. What was she doing with this forty-seven-year-old boy, selfish and inconsiderate, with graying chest hair and the beginning of a paunch? What did it matter that his smell made her salivate?

If he didn’t come looking for her, she assured herself, it was definitely over between them. But if he did, that was another matter. She imagined him swimming through the frigid water to save her, then cooking the clams while she warmed in a bath he’d drawn. He might tell her how precious she was to him, that she meant more to him than anyone else in the world—including his daughters—and if she wanted, he would leave his wife for her. And then she would say, as she had before, that of course he should stay with his family, at least until the girls were in high school and didn’t care what he did; she was a big enough person to recognize what priorities mattered most, and who said she wanted a full-time relationship anyway?

Yes, if he saved her, it would be okay to put off any decisions about parting until some other time.
 

***

 
Now as mist thickens into drizzle, she no longer cares who rescues her. She no longer cares how embarrassing it will be to have someone discover her here. But a dog? Yes, somehow, despite the cold and discomfort, she’s still capable of being insulted. She who has only ever had cats, including a calico who currently punishes her for her frequent trips by pissing in a corner of her office closet. Yet it’s a lanky black mutt that spots her, flapping a long pink tongue. It yaps at her from the beach, runs into the shallows and back out, shaking freezing water from its fur.

And then she feels more shame than relief when a man follows, materializing out of the gloom. His legs are thin but his top half is surprisingly broad and oddly shaped with a huge hump on his back. It takes her a moment to realize it must be a backpack beneath a poncho, but before she does, she thinks of an old crone from storybooks, the kind who might help her but only for a price. Her first instinct is to hide. She huddles against the bent trunk of the wind-battered spruce, and hopes she looks like a bundle of roots silhouetted against the brightening clouds. But the dog keeps barking, splashing now into the bay, swimming a few yards in her direction, and then turning and swimming back. Before the man reaches the water’s edge, he raises his head and pulls back the hood. She can’t see features, only the outline of a gaunt face topped with wispy hair blown back by the breeze. But the voice comes to her clearly, throaty and loud.

“The accommodations are cheap,” it says, “but not much in the way of comfort.”

“The heater’s broken,” she calls back. The shivering makes her voice tremble, but otherwise she tries to sound stoic. “And no one answers at the front desk.”

“Next time you might want to book somewhere with amenities. Like a roof.”

“Good idea,” she says, and wonders how long he plans to go on this way. The dog has calmed now, sitting beside his leg, glancing up at him and then back toward her. “Maybe walls, too.”

“Do you see any driftwood up there?” he asks, and now she begins to question whether he was joking after all. Does he believe she chose to stay here all night?

“Driftwood?”

“Small pieces. Size of your foot’s ideal.”

“I can look.”

“Best time to find them. Right when the water drops.”

“Do you happen to know when it’s due to go all the way out again?”

“Low point’s around eleven,” he says, “but it’ll still be about four feet then. Won’t be dry again until tonight.”

“Maybe you could call somebody then? Police, I guess?”

“They’ll take longer than the tide. I can get hold of a boat. Just take a few minutes.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.

“Meantime, look around for small bits,” he calls. “Size of your foot down to size of your hand. Nothing too fresh. Old and beat-to-hell is good.”

Without another word, he turns and starts back the way he came toward the old wooden pier sticking partway into the water before petering out in a staggered grid of rotten pillars, and beyond it the dunes covered in grass and salal. She almost calls him back. Even more important than being taken off this rock is not being left alone on it again; she’d rather have him there talking to her for the rest of the day than spend another moment with nothing but her thoughts and the sound of her chattering teeth. But without seeming to hasten, he’s moving quickly away. The dog barks at her once more and then races after him. Past them, she can see the waves clearly now, white crests forming out of the fog and then spewing up spray to become part of it again. On the spit, the harbor seals, dozens of them, huddle together lump against lump against lump. The droplets coming through the spruce are larger now, loud against her hood. The sound scares her, makes her feel even more isolated, and before the man and dog reach the pier, she calls out to them, “Please hurry!”

If they hear, they give no sign.
 

***

 
Then she’s on her own again. A few lights have come on in the motel on the first floor and on the third, but not on the second. One of the dark rooms is the one she booked, that the agency is paying for, but in which she hasn’t set foot. How different the job would be if she were to sleep on her own every night, get up and meet with local officials, and not feel a secret tingling between her legs. Would she care at all about the mild successes they had, bringing small investments to towns that would never thrive again but only limp forward as the world continued to leave them behind?

The truth is, she’s never cared much about the plight of out-of-work loggers or fishermen—like the old man with the dog, maybe—except in a distant, abstract way like caring about people with prostate cancer. Unlike James, who came from a dying rural community in the Midwest, studied political philosophy as an undergraduate and earned a master’s in policy and planning, Andi didn’t arrive here as a result of passion. She grew up in an affluent Boston suburb, majored in European history, and then worked for a series of nonprofits, some arts-related, others social service, sometimes doing publicity, sometimes program management. As long as the organization’s mission was generally to make a positive impact on the world, she felt reasonably satisfied at the end of the day, though the work was largely tedious, and she never felt particularly tied to any position. She followed a boyfriend to Chicago, and then another to Seattle. She’d come to Portland to pursue an online flirtation that never bloomed into a relationship. She took the job because it was the first one that offered her health benefits.

On the phone with her parents, who don’t understand why she has to live so far away, she talks about the importance of helping workers whose livelihoods have dried up. They built the country, she says, made it what it is, and shouldn’t be abandoned just because those who control the wealth have moved it elsewhere. But with James she never talks about the people they serve, except in practical terms: whether they’ll sign on to agreements to manage their forests and fisheries in a manner that won’t deplete them for good; whether they’ll provide useful data she and James can report on upcoming grant applications; whether their stories are compelling enough to appear on press releases and promotional pamphlets.

The people themselves are irritants, distractions from the pleasure they derive only when they are alone. She has come to think of their daytime meetings as punishment they must suffer in order to reward themselves when they are finally free in the evening. Whether these communities recover or collapse is all the same to her, so long as she has a reason to keep driving to mountains and beaches and tearing off her clothes in darkened motel rooms. If she ends things with James, the job will lose all meaning for her. She might as well take a corporate position that will further exploit and undermine these communities and double—or triple—her salary.

More lights are coming on in the motel, some on the second floor. She’s now quite sure that the fourth one from the beach side is James’s, that he has woken and found her gone, and that he has checked the bathroom and perhaps called her cell phone only to discover it on the laminate desk. And then what? Does he call her room, the one she’s never entered? Or the front desk to ask if the clerk has seen her or if she’s left a message? Does he check to make sure the car is still in the parking lot? Maybe he guesses she’s gone out for coffee and that she’ll surprise him with pastries, believing he deserves it. At what point will he begin to worry? She wants to imagine the moment when he thinks she has really decided to leave him; when he’ll suffer an exquisite pain and longing for what they’ve shared, and even more, the moment when she returns and he’s so relieved he knows he’ll never take their time together for granted.

Any second, she thinks, he might step onto the balcony and see her, and then the brief hold loss has on him will loosen. So she ducks behind the spruce and hopes to prolong his worry for as long as possible and, thus, to seal herself in his heart for good. Because of course the real reason she has considered ending the affair isn’t because she has come to believe what they are doing is crazy—she knows it is, has known all along—but because she anticipates that James will eventually come to his senses and decide he can live without her.
 

***

 
And that’s when she hears the boat engine, a soft stuttering above the rain. The fog has grown denser, and she can’t see anything yet, can’t tell what direction it’s coming from. But she remembers she is supposed to look for driftwood and does so while she waits. There’s nothing on top of the stack, though of course the tide hasn’t been this high, so she lowers herself carefully over the side and begins to climb down. She watches out for barnacles now, but her foot slips on a weedy spot and she has to grab hard with her numb fingertips to keep from sliding. The clams in her pockets bounce against her hips. The engine grows louder, but still no sign of a boat. A couple of feet above the waterline she does find a silvered stick as thick around as her wrist and a little longer than her forearm. She hugs it to herself, crouches, and thinks the boat isn’t coming for her after all. Just then the dog yelps directly below her, followed by the gravelly voice: “Check-out time.”

“Kind of early, isn’t it?”

“You get what you pay for.”

The dog barks continuously as she descends the rest of the way, and only when she’s right above it can she make out the aluminum boat with a small outboard motor, the lanky figure with a hump beneath his poncho, his hood up again so she can’t see his face. He makes no move to help her down, just stays seated with a hand on the tiller. The look of him calls up another image from a childhood storybook of Charon and the river Styx, which in turn makes her think of the band Styx, her older sister’s favorite when they were growing up. Every night through her bedroom wall she’d listen to ballads that went on far too long, growing increasingly frenetic but also oddly seductive: Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me!

She lowers herself as far as she can and drops the last few inches into the hull. The boat wobbles. Her cut foot hits cold metal, a shriek of pain rises up her leg, and she clamps her teeth to keep from crying out. She falls onto the seat, and the dog barks in her face, licks her hands. The boat eases backward away from the stack before turning and heading slowly toward shore. Over the dog’s head she finally catches a glimpse of the man’s face—not quite as skeletal as Charon, but gaunt and weathered, eyes set deeply beneath wild eyebrows. It’s the kind of face she’s used to seeing at open community meetings off in the corner, skeptical and unmoved by her work on his behalf. She passes him the stick of driftwood. He holds it up with his free hand, still steering through the fog with the other. The light is diffuse all around them, but he shifts position as if he can get a better view by angling closer to the sun. He squints and turns the stick end over end. Then he tosses it over the side of the boat. “Needs a couple more decades,” he says, sounding not disappointed so much as confirmed in his low expectations.

She wants to show her appreciation, feels he should be compensated for his effort, but her wallet is on the desk along with her phone. All she has in her pockets are the key to James’s room and the clams, so she pulls out the latter and holds them out in both hands. There are nine of them in total, hardly enough for an appetizer. The dog sniffs them and looks to its owner. “Not sure what the exchange rate is,” she says, “but I think this is more than I paid for the ride out.”

This time he doesn’t take up the banter. Instead, he peers intently at her hands, the creases on his forehead unfolding as his brows lower. “You didn’t eat any, did you?”

“I usually wait until after dawn for breakfast.”

“Don’t you know about the ban?”

“Ban?”

“All of Oregon. Southwest Washington, too. No clams. Blue-green algae.”

She doesn’t understand what he’s saying but answers anyway, “I hadn’t heard.”

“It’s dangerous,” he says. “Causes brain damage. Permanent.”

The thought that she might have poisoned James rather than indulged him horrifies her but also makes her laugh. An idiot’s version of a suicide pact: Juliet too stupid to know she shouldn’t eat clams or serve them to her forbidden lover. Now it’s her turn to toss them over the side. Nine little splashes she can’t hear over the sputtering engine, each shell visible for the first few inches beneath the water and then gone.

Sooner than she expects, the boat skids into the soft sand on the north shore of the bay right in front of her motel, but now she’s reluctant to get out. She wants to say something to explain herself but doesn’t know what. The light in the room she believes is James’s is still on, but the curtain is also still drawn. “I’m actually staying there,” she says, gesturing at the rust-stained stucco. “But those accommodations aren’t much better.”

“Crappy bed?”

“More the company. Complicated.” And then, as if to justify being here at all—or else to justify her very existence—she tells him about her job, what she’s trying to do to make the place vibrant again for people like him, not just wealthy Californians with second homes.

“People like me?”

“You know, whose livelihoods—” She pauses, shrugs, juts her chin toward the inlet, then in the direction of the single hillside visible through the fog, barely recovering from a decade-old clearcut. “Fishermen, loggers, whose industries—”

“I’m a sculptor,” he says, and shifts the backpack from beneath the poncho so he can open the zipper. He pulls out a piece of driftwood the size of his hand, pronged and gnarled, worm-eaten. “This is what I’m after. Got to get out just when the tide starts back to beat the competition.”

“Sculptures? Out of these?”

He hands her a card. It has the name of a gallery on it, and beneath, an image she has to look at carefully before she understands what she’s seeing. A chunk of driftwood on a metal stand, a face carved into one end—a woman’s face, sultry and blissful, surrounded by waves of silvered hair. It’s so hideous and absurd she instantly wants to own it.

“When I moved here in ’73,” he says, “it was all hippies this end of town. Great place to raise the kids. Music every night. You could live on nothing.”

She pockets the card and thanks him, says she’s sorry to have taken him away from his hunt. The dog yaps when she gets out of the boat, jumps after her, and tears up the beach before she can grab its collar.

“Don’t worry about her. She knows where to go. I better get this back before the owner notices it’s missing.” He doesn’t look at her as he backs the boat away. “You find any good pieces, bring them by the gallery.”

She listens to the boat’s motor even after she can no longer see it. The dog’s also out of view, and the beach is once again empty and still. She searches for her sandals behind all the nearby logs but can’t find them. After a few minutes she gives up and limps to the motel.
 

***

 
She was wrong about James’s room. It’s the fifth from the end, and its lights are still off when she finally makes her way back inside. James is still asleep on the sagging mattress, rolled onto his side now with his back to the spot where she should have been. The alarms on the clock and his phone are sounding—the former set to a jazz radio station, the latter electronic birdsong—but he snores through both. Seven and a half hours and he hasn’t known she was gone, hasn’t suspected anything might be wrong. She strips out of her jacket and wet jeans, out of sweater, tee-shirt, and underwear, and slides under the blanket, shivering. If only she can get warm, she’ll fall asleep, too, despite the music and chattering birds, but the cold is so deep in her she thinks it will take hours to dissipate. In the meantime, she studies the moles on James’s back, most light brown, a few pink, one alarmingly dark and misshapen.

Is there something about this stretch of pale skin that makes it matter so much to her? Are its qualities particularly suited to excite or comfort her? Or is it just what happened to fall into her path? She’s sure she would tire of this back if she had to see it every day, or if its owner’s beard trimmings clogged her sink, his dirty clothes filled her laundry basket. It’s strange to think that she is actually content with her tentative existence – her small rented apartment, her disgruntled cat, her borrowed lover – and that she’d do anything to hang onto these things. Her foot aches, but she will hide the cut from James, pretend she has been with him all night, that nothing has shaken her faith in him or their ridiculous affair. The best thing to do is to hold perfectly still and listen to the waves crashing in her mind since she can’t hear them over the sound of alarms and snoring. And she is beginning to warm after all, her eyes are beginning to close. She will stay right where she is all morning, or all week, or for as long as the tides move in and out of the bay.

But then James’s snore chokes off into a loud snort, and he stirs. That cranky groan, the beleaguered yawn and shake of his head. He pushes onto an elbow and looks at the clock before turning to her. “You let us sleep in,” he says, and shuts off both alarms. “We’ve got to be downtown in twenty minutes.” He slides out of bed, and she watches his lovely hairless buttocks move across the room and disappear behind the bathroom door. There won’t be time for both of them to shower. She wants to join him under the hot stream but knows he doesn’t like to see her naked if they won’t have time for sex; it distracts him too much, gets in the way of practical thoughts. So she stays where she is until the shower turns off. She should wash her cut foot to keep it from getting infected, but there’s no time for that either. She gets out of bed, dresses in her work outfit—slacks, blouse, flats—fixes her hair in the mirror over the desk, packs her bag, and is ready to go by the time he comes out wrapped in a towel, still scowling.

“If neither of us can wake up, we’ll have to jack the volume.”

“Next time,” she says, and opens the curtain so she can look out at the rock where she spent the night, twice pulling down her pants to pee off the side. To her surprise, though, their balcony doesn’t face the bay; only the parking lot with the blue bubble of James’s Prius a short drop below.

“I’ll change it back to the buzzer instead of birds.”

He says it without hesitation or doubt, without any question that there will be a next time. In two weeks, they’ll drive to the high desert and will lie together on another motel bed beneath a greasy headboard. And then she’ll watch him pull on his boxer shorts as she does now, watch him button his shirt over the broad chest and soft belly, watch him stuff the ends into his chinos and cinch the belt. Until then, she needs nothing else. Or almost nothing. “You should go to the dermatologist,” she says. “There’s a dark mole on your back. It looks angry.”

“I know,” he says. “Beth told me.”

“Oh. Good. I’m glad she’s paying attention.”

“I’ve got an appointment next week.”

“On our way home,” she says, surprised at the catch in her voice, “there’s a gallery I want to check out.”

“I’ve got to take the girls to jujitsu at four.”

“It won’t take long.”

His expression is tight, pinched, full of aggravation, but also certain of her devotion. “Can we just do our job and worry about other things later?”

“I’ll lead the meeting today,” she says, trying to match his confidence, and then waits until he has passed through the door to shuffle behind him, favoring her wounded foot. Beyond the parking lot, fog obscures everything.

Vivisection

19 November 2020
Categories: Fiction

I found the creature in the middle of my lawn on the day that Ellie came home. I had no idea what type of animal it was, only that it was made of fur and bones and full of dark red blood that stained the pile of leaves it had huddled under to die. A stroke of my rake stretched that blood into seven black lines against my lawn as I gouged into it and pulled out innards and organs, freshly exposed to the slow decay of wintertime.

I crouched beside the thing, compelled and repulsed. Its fur was dark and matted, almost indistinguishable from the red of its insides in the setting sun. It was about the size of a dog with bony, angled haunches and a long tail, but its snout was more pronounced, its lips torn or decayed away to reveal a line of greying teeth. The chill had frozen its expression somewhere between a snarl and a grin, its ears bent back flush against its head. It had died fighting.

I realized in my curiosity I’d moved my face mere inches from the creature, and only then did it occur to me the cold had taken the scent of rot completely from the air.

When animals died on our property growing up, my parents made sure Ellie and I never saw them. They would dispose of the carcasses before they had a chance to form any memory more than a smudge of red or a sour stench in our minds. Grown, I could stare for as long as I wanted. But Ellie would be here any minute, so I straightened and piled a mound of blackening leaves atop the beast. By the time she arrived, it was nowhere in sight.
 
 

Ellie told me it was an accident — in fact, she insisted. I had no reason to doubt my sister; she had never lied to me in the past, and I couldn’t see why she would start now. If she said that it was an accident, that’s exactly what it was.

She arrived in a bright yellow taxi, bundled up in layers from her head to her feet like she was vacationing in the Arctic. It wasn’t until she peeled back layer upon layer that I could see how thin she had gotten since I’d last seen her; I could see the beginnings of her ribcage in lines below her neck when she removed her scarf. Her slightness made her look younger, like the ten years since high school had never happened.

I had been so nervous to see her before she arrived, worried there would be a palpable strain between us. But she didn’t look scary or different or unrecognizable. She just looked tired.

“I like to think I’ve given it a more feminine touch,” I told her as we made her bed together. She had spent less time here than me; she’d long since moved away by the time our father started getting sick, and I thought she wouldn’t realize the bed we were making had once been his. But as we unpacked, I could tell she was seeing it the way he’d had it: masculine and sparse, an empty room with nothing more than a bed stand, a lamp, and a place to sleep. “It looks good,” she said.

My father had rented the home when he and my mother first separated, when they finally realized the way they chafed against each other was leaving marks on us, too. It was clear things were over when he stopped renting the place and bought it outright. Still my parents remained legally married until the day he died. When he passed, I paid back the debts he had against the property from my own savings and put my inheritance towards it; Ellie took hers and moved out to the coast.

For a few days, it was nothing but boxes and dust and realizing how many items we both owned and throwing out the doubles. And then it was adjusting to space, to the constant weight of company. We agreed it would be temporary, but I knew with Ellie that word had no meaning.

At first it was an adjustment. But then, like every life that had preceded it, it was completely normal.
 
 

I don’t think it was Ellie’s presence that disturbed my sleep, but I found myself waking in the middle of the night more and more after she arrived. Sometimes I would read the news on my phone until I dozed off again; other times I would get up and page through a project for work until the sun rose. Once I walked into the den at 3 a.m. only to find Ellie bundled up sleeping soundly on the couch. Maybe the presence of someone new was too much energy for the house, enough to rattle through the floorboards and stir me from my sleep.

On the fourth night in a row that I woke at midnight, I found myself peering out of the window. Insomniac’s boredom piqued my curiosity, I told myself, or maybe I’d been subconsciously wondering about it for days.

Even through the dark, I could see it. It was a dark smudge in the middle of my lawn; a tiny blip that would have gone unnoticed by anyone who wasn’t searching. In a few moments I had bundled up in a robe and a scarf and galoshes, had grabbed my rake, and was standing before it.

I raked until I was pulling dead grass out of my lawn, ignoring the stinging cold to dig up dirt in a tiny circle around it to bury it deeper and deeper under debris. I kept burying it until I could no longer see it through the brush and grass I had covered it with. But I could sense that it was still there, still dark, and now despite the chill in the air I was sure I could smell it.

I only paused when I heard a rustling behind me and felt a chill of panic bloom in my chest. I turned to see my sister watching me through the window.

She unlatched the window and lifted it quickly, like she had been caught breaking the rules. She continued to stare at me through the open window, her mouth slightly ajar. I must have looked deranged, bundled up in anything but winter clothes, rake in my hand, eyes gleaming under the moonlight.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she finally offered in a half-shout that was swallowed in the air between us.

“Yeah,” I called back, dropping the rake onto the ground. “Neither could I.”
 
 

The truck had only clipped her in the accident, which the nurse at the hospital informed us was nothing short of an “act of God.” Ellie had been somewhere in Arizona, and although she never told us how she had gotten there, my mother and I knew that she must have hitchhiked.

Ellie had been hitchhiking for as long as I can remember. As a child she’d lie to classmates’ parents, informing them that our mother gave her permission to get a ride to their home or to the school. She must have ended half a dozen of my parents’ friendships after they’d called nearly the entire neighborhood, frazzled and accusatory, demanding where their daughter was. By fourteen she had learned how to travel all over the city, getting neighbors or strangers to drive her to the arcade, to bring her to dates, to drop her off at the movies where she would sneak in through the exit and watch five minutes of every film until she got bored and found someone to drive her somewhere else. The thrill of being in someone else’s car or in someone else’s control must have been more important to her than the destination ever was.

The town was small and familiar enough that my parents’ worry never escalated much higher than giving her a stern talking to and taking no action to prevent it from happening again. After one such lecture my father discovered a postcard from a small fishing town nearly 100 miles away that was addressed to him from his daughter, who at the time was curled up with a book on the couch merely a few feet away from him. His face flickered from anger to exhaustion before he finally crumpled the postcard and threw it in the trash.

Older now, I realized why my parents did not do much about Ellie’s travels: For them to have a leg to stand on in an argument, they would have to acknowledge that they were so vacant in their daughter’s life that she could disappear for days at a time without them noticing.
 
 

Mom came to visit Ellie in the hospital for one day. Our mother had long since moved to the capitol, a place where she could finally be lost in the anonymity of a larger population. I offered for her to stay the night, but she insisted against it.

I walked her out to her car when Ellie dozed off. She waited until she was in her car seat, buckled in, engine on, to tell me. “Just so you know,” she said as though it was the most innocuous thing on earth. “They were on the fence about admitting her.” She paused and laboriously took a cigarette from her purse, taking what felt like ages to fumble around for a lighter before continuing. “You know — to a psych ward.”

I knew my mother was waiting for me to ask her to elaborate. I remained silent while she cupped her hand around the cigarette and clicked her dying lighter several times before it caught. “In case she was trying to off herself,” she said. “You know, they brought the truck driver in, too, since he clipped a telephone pole, and he told one of the nurses, he told her he thought he could see Eleanor turn and look right at him and step in front of the truck while he was driving down the highway.”

She blew out a long drag of smoke into air so cold and still I could smell the menthol. She looked tired, ready no doubt to be at home in her bed, and on some level, I felt the same.

“Well, she says it was an accident,” I told her. “So, I’m sure it was an accident.”

“Right,” my mother said. “Okay.”

She looked at me another moment, but I couldn’t figure out what she wanted to hear, so I didn’t say anything. Then she rolled up her car window and pulled away from the curb.
 
 

Between the time that Ellie and I returned to bed and by the morning, the earth had frozen over. Snow mixed with rain mixed with snow again had turned the house and the yard into a glassy mop of white, punctuated with patches of dark, frozen mud. I peered out of my window at the hole beside my rake, but all I could make out was a small dark spot in the middle of the ice.

Ellie began to work odd jobs around town, at the library or the supermarket or else shoveling neighbors’ driveways and walking dogs. It felt strange sometimes to come home and find her gone, like coming home only to find that the sofa or the dining room table had disappeared. After a few weeks, we had worked our way into an impeccable routine. I kept the kitchen stocked and the house running and paid for, and she cleaned even things that didn’t need to be cleaned, cooked two meals a day, organized all of the books in my room alphabetically, and all the clothes in our closets by color. Somewhere along the line, I was sleeping through the night again, in sync with, or perhaps in spite of, her presence.

When I was growing up, I must have blamed my father moving into this home for my parents’ split, at least to some degree. I saw his departure as a way of giving up, of checking out. As Ellie and I continued to co-exist quietly, occasionally watching a movie together or going out for dinner but mostly sequestering ourselves to our own sides of the house, I began to understand how living with someone did not necessarily mean having an intimacy with them. My love for Ellie had never faded over the years, but maybe the stagnation wasn’t normal; maybe most people grew in love, whereas Ellie and I, my father and my mother, we just co-existed in it, and maybe that hadn’t been enough for them. But it seemed to be enough for us.
 
 

The temperature continued to drop off, losing a degree or two every day until I could see my breath every time I went outside. Ellie never left unless she was bundled up, a mess of different colors and fabrics as she insulated herself with layers.

“Do you miss it — the heat?” I asked one night as she opened the fridge and pulled out a stew she had made the night before, enough for both of us. Ellie kept working as though she hadn’t heard me, but I knew she had.

“Sometimes,” she said finally. “But sometimes I think it was too nice.”

People always thought that I was much older than Ellie, the way her eyes wandered around and fixated on anything except the present conversation like a child would, like she hadn’t heard. But I knew she was only waiting until she decided exactly what to say.

“You know, you’re in heaven by any standard,” she said. “It’s 70 degrees and breezy every day. And at first, you’re happy, because it’s warm and it’s new and it’s beautiful. But then, you know, life happens and things get hard. And then you start to feel bad again.” She caught my eye for a second and looked away.

“But now you’re feeling bad in heaven, this land of gorgeous people and blue skies and all the weed you could smoke without dying.” She divided the stew into two plates and brought me one. “And you think, ‘If I can’t be happy here, can I be happy anywhere?’”

I blinked at her as she pulled a chair up across from me. “At least here when you’re fighting for it, you can blame the shitty weather,” she explained.

I nodded. “I’d like to see it one day,” I said. “I always thought I would move away from here, I guess. I certainly didn’t see myself moving into Dad’s house.”

“The funny thing is,” she said around a mouthful of food. “He would have loved California. I think if he ever saw it himself, he would have left way earlier.”

I pulled a half-chewed bay leaf from my mouth and pushed it to the side of my plate. “He didn’t leave us,” I said.

Ellie shrugged.

“He was still here,” I said. “He wasn’t far. We still saw him.”

“I mean, for dance recitals and soccer games. And one weekend a month,” Ellie said. “Because he had to.”

“That plus whenever we wanted to see him,” I pointed out.

“Right,” Ellie said. “When we wanted to see him. But he only ever wanted to see us when mom asked him to.”

It was hard for me to consider her living the same circumstances as I did and remembering them so differently, like she’d read a different translation of the same text.

“Trust me,” she said. “If he were really honest about what he wanted, he would have moved somewhere else in a heartbeat. And that would be the end of it.”

“He was happy here. And I’m happy here,” I told her. “If you’re not, you don’t have to be here.”

Ellie blinked, and it wasn’t until the silence hit my ears that I realized how loud I had spoken. Maybe I had even screamed. But I couldn’t hear it anymore, and Ellie stood up from the table. She looked at me almost expressionless for a moment, like I was a painting she was trying to interpret. Then she grabbed just her overcoat from the rack and walked out of the house.

I sat there at the table for as long as I could. Then I stood, cleared our places, and put our dishes in the sink. I grabbed one of Ellie’s coats from the rack and walked outside, shoving my hands in the pockets for warmth. I couldn’t spot her in either direction down the street. She couldn’t have gotten far. If I ran out to the street and looked where the streetlights lit up the walk, I could spot her in a few minutes.

But I didn’t. I grabbed a shovel and walked into the yard and started to dig through the snow where I was sure it would be, slumbering exactly where I’d buried it.
 
 

When Ellie didn’t return by the end of the night, I knew it could be days before I saw her again. While I waited, I worked against the cold. I shoveled our walkway, salted anywhere we might step, and made sure that I had reburied the creature well enough that no one but me would spot it.

By the time a week had passed, I had made up my mind that she wasn’t returning. I kept all of her things, washed and dried her sheets, put all of her clothes away, just in case. I nearly considered calling my mother to see if she had heard from her, but I knew she’d be the last person Ellie would go to.

Sleep became elusive once again. Maybe my rhythm had gotten so used to twoness that it could no longer know oneness. I found myself pacing around my kitchen most mornings by the time the sun rose.
 
 

She had been gone two weeks before I let myself call her. It went to voicemail and a tinny, younger version of Ellie told me, “You can leave a message, but just text me.”

There was something about hearing her voice, young, far away, and captured in a forever recording that made me think of a truck, a massive 18-wheeler hurtling toward me at a million miles an hour down a highway and how exactly I could muster the strength of nerves and tendons and muscles to take a step out in front of it.

And there was something in her voice that made me need to find the creature. No matter how much snow I covered it with, I knew where it was. It was lurking there on my property, clumps of flesh turning green as they clung to browning bones, a meal that no animal wanted badly enough to forage under a mass of snow for. I yearned for summer, wishing for quickly devouring hawks and vultures and ants and maggots. But decay was out of season, so the creature remained.

It cracked as it met with my shovel, point first like a blade. I severed its head first. And then I turned the shovel sideways, raised it above my head, and came down hard enough to crush its skull into a thousand pieces. Now shattered, I crouched beside it and began to work.
 
 

A month after Ellie left, I got a phone call from a complete stranger.

“Your sister said I could reach you here,” a young woman told me. It was four in the evening, but the sun was nearly gone. The woman sounded calm, almost amused. “We’re on the way to the hospital. You should meet us there.”

This time it didn’t involve a truck or any roads at all. They had spotted her at the lake. They had spotted her on the lake. The woman and her husband were out looking for their lost dog, the only people willing to be out in the exceptional cold. Except for Ellie.

“I thought it was weird that she was standing there,” the woman said. “But you know. We get weirdos around here.”

Weirdos, I thought. They had waved to Ellie and kept walking. They didn’t have time to wonder what she was doing. It was so cold and the dog was so lost and they just kept going. Then the husband realized she wasn’t standing on the bank but on the frozen surface of the water.

“I thought maybe she was a ghost,” the woman said as I buckled myself into my car and put it in gear. “But my husband had to look back and see. And then it cracked right in front of us, and she fell into the water.”

As I listened to her, it occurred to me that here I was, driving with one hand holding the phone to my ear, nerves unwired, black ice everywhere, and if anyone was going to die today it may just be me. After all, Ellie didn’t seem to have much luck in that arena.

I tucked my phone into the crook of my neck as this woman, this stranger, described how she saved my sister’s life. Or how her husband did. He reached into the steps of the lake and nearly fell in himself. I pictured the wife with her arms around his waist, stabilizing the husband and my sister as he pulled. Ellie’s frozen skin must have been so cold it hurt him just to touch it, although his hands were probably aching and numb from the frigid water anyway.

“I can’t imagine falling in like that,” the woman told me, her voice registering somewhere in the back of my head. “She must have been so frightened.”

“She shouldn’t have been standing on the ice,” I said, my first entrance into the conversation in minutes. “She grew up here. She knows it doesn’t get thick enough to walk on.”

“It was a mistake,” this stranger told me of my sister whom I had known my entire life and she had met for the first time today. “It was an accident.”

I met them at the hospital. They stabilized her temperature, re-pinked her blueing lips, and administered fluids. By the time I had arrived, she was curled up in the hospital bed with an IV plugged into her arm, flicking through channels on the TV and looking completely at home. I watched her through her window, unable to go in. The couple never found the dog.
 
 

I left the hospital before Ellie was discharged. I didn’t want her to feel that she had to come back. But she did.

She must have come in the middle of the night because one morning I got out of bed and found her eating cereal at the counter. She looked up at me and smiled like it was just a pleasant happenstance we were both here, her cheeks cheerful and chipmunked full of a bright pink children’s cereal.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked her.

She nodded and chowed down another spoonful. “Hypothermia made me hate the cold a little less.” Then she winked at me, a gesture so out of place that for a moment I thought I was dreaming. “Hey, I want to show you something.”

I followed her out to the back yard, both of us in our night clothes. There was any number of things she could have been showing me, but I knew precisely what it was going to be. I didn’t know how she had found the creature under all of the snow where I was letting it rest. Maybe she had seen me out there one night, or maybe it was inevitable from the beginning that she’d find it, just like I had.

But she walked right past where I knew that it was.

“Check it out,” she said, standing beneath one of the trees that lined the yard. “It’s like they didn’t get the memo that it’s still winter.”

I heard them before I saw them. A family of tiny cheeping newborn birds, tiny balls of reddish-brown fluff, celebrating a spring that had yet to come. “They have no clue they’re going to freeze to death,” she said, dark laughter coloring her tone. She turned to me with a confused expression, wondering why I wasn’t as entertained by the most inconsequential nest of birds I had ever known.

“You can’t stay if you’re going to keep doing it,” I told her. Her head jerked back to me in a pivot so sharp it must have hurt.

“Keep doing what?”

Anger burned in my belly. “You know what,” I said. “I can’t stop you from doing it. Or trying to do it. But you can’t stay here if you’re going to.”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” she said.

Silence hung between us, heavier than the clotted snow we stood on.

“Do you want to go?” I asked her. I didn’t want her to go, nor did I want her to stay. I just couldn’t stand not knowing.

“I don’t think so,” Ellie said, taking a few steps toward me and planting her feet right atop where I had buried the creature. Beneath her, flesh and blood and then rot and bugs and then nothing but bone. Bone that I had broken apart with my shovel and then hunched over, lining out row by row, skull, vertebrate, limbs. Bones I had labored over for what felt like hours until the creature was no more a creature but simply a series of white chalky lines that radiated like an echo within the undercurrent of the earth. Bones that I had rewritten and rescripted and then reburied with dirt and snow and sweat.

She turned away to look at the home we shared, the one I — and my father — had built. Then I could see her as an eight-year-old, long brown hair curling at the nape of her neck just like it did today.

I could see an image of her at eight-years old that I’ve kept and seen every year since. Ellie rounding her way into my father’s room when we were children, before he left, and our mother was away. She wanted him to read to us, or take us to the park. I couldn’t remember the day. I could just remember Ellie’s face when she stepped into the room.

I still don’t know what kept me from walking in behind her. All I could see then and all I could see now was Ellie’s face drop from a smile into confusion and then pain. Fear twisted across her features like a sickness, something that has been there ever since just below the surface. I couldn’t know what it was then, but it was enough to keep me from following into the room. It was enough to keep me from seeing what she saw.

“I don’t think so,” Ellie said again.

The paramedics came and drove our father to the hospital. Our mother told us that he was sick and that he needed to go away for a few weeks to get better. When he came home he wore bandages on his wrists and then long sleeves for the rest of his life. It wasn’t for years that I understood it, but Ellie understood it immediately because she’d seen it. It wasn’t me who found him there, lying half dead on reddening bedsheets. It was her.

“But sometimes, I feel like I need to.”

She took my hand and squeezed it, her fingers hard and freezing. Then she turned and walked back into the house. I knew she would be leaving soon. She’d be back to hitchhiking, to jumping from city to city, to falling in and out of contact. And I knew I would hear from her in a year or I wouldn’t, or she’d reach out from a hospital bed or from the bottom of a river or she wouldn’t.

The air was still as she walked away from me, quiet enough that I could hear her feet crunch the snow as she left a pattern of footprints behind her. As I watched her disappear into my home, I realized the thing was still there, quiet, secret, undiscovered. She had never seen it, and I guess that made it mine.

Shepherds Take Warning

30 April 2020
Categories: Fiction

The hum of Rudy Bartles’s crop duster made us look up over the geek tent into the barren blue of the northern sky.  I-R-E-N-E in paraffin vapor, trailing behind the plane like a breath of hope.  But something wrong with the “R.”  Rudy didn’t swing out far enough on the top curve, drew the leg too low, so it came out looking like I-L-E-N-E.

More humming and then to the east over the elephant cars, H-E-S-S.  We figured next would be “I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U” or “M-A-R-R-Y-M-E” but when the plane turned south over the parking lot it spelled “M-I-S-S-I-N-G.”  Then it buzzed off, leaving us, to the annoyance of the barkers, gossiping in the dust instead of buying tickets to see the trapeze act.  To be fair, the trapeze lady was fully 42 and more than usually plain, so we didn’t feel too bad loitering there in the trodden pasture between the big tent and the fun house, talking about Ilene Hess, she’s the school secretary over in Pawnee Falls.  No, that’s Irene Hess.  Ilene is the organist at that Pentecostal church over by Billtown.  Aren’t there a bunch of Hesses live over by McReddy?  Well look over there, there’s Pete Hess standing by the tigers, let’s ask him.

But Pete Hess in his pressed denim overall was already in his cups and couldn’t bring to mind which of his female relatives might be missing, the Hesses being well-stocked in both Irenes and Ilenes.  “Could be Fred’s wife, she goes out catfishing and forgets to leave him a note sometimes,” he hiccupped.  But then someone saw Fred’s wife Ilene going into the big tent in a skirt so starched that it stood out in a triangle on both sides of her scrawny legs, so it wasn’t her.

In the absence of ready answers, the barker, a wrinkled outsider, finally succeeded in getting our attention and we started to buy our tickets to see the trapeze act, but then a tornado came up and tore the place to pieces so there was nothing to do but for those of us left alive to go home.

That night, as on every Saturday, I got a letter from Leavenworth.  They were always the same, but I opened them anyway.  “One week,” this one said.  The first one, four years,  eleven months, and three weeks ago, had said “Five years.”

 

Next day being church, those of us in that denomination took a good look at such Hesses as made an appearance. But it was hard to tell, the Hesses being so numerous and more or less all exactly alike, which is that none of them has a chin to speak of, and they all have round, hunted eyes with long lashes.  Seeing them together is like watching a flock of wild turkey picking its way across a dirt road.

Anyway, I don’t belong to that denomination but my friend Sadie Bartles does, and she asked me over to Sunday dinner.  I brought my iron and after dinner we did the linens while her husband Bruce watched the game.  She said that she couldn’t tell.

“I thought,” she said, “Irene Hess, Harvey’s wife, wasn’t there but turned out she was just behind Mary Bartles’s hat.  Ilene Hess too, the one that does the paper route, but she was just leaning over in the pew to smack a kid.”

“Any of them look wrought up?” I asked, flipping a napkin and spraying starch.

“Like they just lost kin?  No.  But you can’t tell with the Hesses.  They always look wrought up.”

“You think Rudy Bartles knows?”

“Myeh well, Don Bartles buttonholed him after the service. But he didn’t know anything.”  She folded the tablecloth in half and ironed the crease.  Then folded it again and ironed that crease.  “He got the order off his fax, checked the money was wired, went out and did the job.”

“No name or anything.”

“Nope, just the wire and what to write.”

“Did he at least say whether it’s Irene or Ilene?”

“He fudged it on purpose.  His fax machine is screwy with the ‘Rs’ and ‘Ls.’  Wants to get it fixed but no one services dot matrix anymore.”

There was a holler from the living room and we both nudged our iron settings higher, but it was just a touchdown.

“Frank send you a letter yesterday?” she said.

“Yep,” I said.

 

The Monday paper, second column on the third page, right under the tornado listings, said, “Missing Woman Baffles Officials.”  Sheriff Bartles was quoted as stating that the Sheriff’s department had received a missing persons report but, when he tried to pull the paperwork, a tornado had destroyed the filing room so he was not able to provide any detail.

Sadie and I and our friend Milly Bartles made a list and started counting. I only knew four or five but Milly Bartles knew 26 and what’s more, she could check, because Milly’s job as the Itinerant School Nurse took her all over the county so she could check off Irene Hesses and Ilene Hesses as she went.

Sadie said she thought there was an Ilene Hess, or maybe it was Irene, who used to work at the  Gas-N-Go who she didn’t see there anymore but we couldn’t tell anything from that because no one ever lasted more than six weeks at the Gas-N-Go.

Also on Monday I got two letters from Leavenworth.  One said, “Six days.”  The other one said, “Five days.”  This made sense because they don’t carry mail on Sunday.  So whatever Frank wrote from Leavenworth would wait on Sunday for the Monday mail.  This hadn’t happened before because Frank usually only wrote weekly, but I guess he was getting pretty excited about getting out of Leavenworth.

 

Tuesday, while I packed up the house, I tried to remember any Irene or Ilene I’d gone to school with.  There were two in my class and one in the class that graduated before mine.  In the class after mine there were none but in the next class there were four.  Or maybe there were two Irenes and two Ilenes, or three Irenes and one Ilene, or three Ilenes and one Irene, or maybe there were all four Ilenes or all four Irenes.  Maybe I could have thought of some other permutations, but I found our wedding album and decided to iron it.

I took it out to the barn where I keep the outdoor iron for grubby tasks.  I laid the wedding album on the incinerator grate and ironed the photos in their plastic covers until they dripped through.  Any place where Frank’s face didn’t get totally burned up, I pulled it back up out of the ashes and ironed it until it was gone.  The smell was like atrazine dusting low out of Rudy’s plane mixed with the smell of a car when someone forgets to take off the parking brake.

Sadie Bartles came by in the afternoon after her stint at the Pawnee Falls Public Library.

“Remember Irene Hess the cheerleader?  She was a junior when we were freshmen?”

“The one that got knocked up?”

“No that was Ilene.  This was Irene. She went to K-State for a semester.”

“Oh the one that burned an iron mark in all her skirts in Home Ec.”

“No that was the other Irene. She was a freshman when we were juniors.”

“Oh wait, I remember,” I said.  I did not remember, but I said it so that Sadie would get to the point.

“Well she’s the one who works at the hardware store over in Remington now? Ellie Bartles says she hasn’t been there since Thursday.”

“You want this iron?” I asked.  It was a spare.  It was one of those safety ones that turns off if you forget it, which is why it was a spare.  I handed it to her to inspect.  “Maybe give it to little Gladys,” I said.  “She’s old enough to start learning.”

Sadie started crying.  “I could lend you some money,” she said, “You could move to Lawrence.”

“That’ll be the first place he looks,” I said.

“OK, then London.”

“I don’t have a passport.  And anyway you and I and Milly don’t have that much money combined.  Here’s a box for you.”

I handed her the box I’d packed for her on which I’d written “SADIE” in black magic marker.  That really got her going until I said, “Bruce is going to be home soon,” and she skittered off to get her ironing started.

 

Wednesday was tornadoes so I just ironed in the basement most of the evening.

 

Thursday was Kiwanis. Or maybe it was Jaycees, or the AA meeting, I can’t remember. They had all moved to the Remington Community Center because everyplace else was blown down. Anyway, I baked cupcakes and put some boxes in the back of my car.  When I got to the Remington Community Center, Artie Bartles was saying that some of the Hesses over by the town of McReddy used to live in a corncrib they were so poor, and he was pretty sure the wife’s name was Ilene because she used to sell chicken and duck eggs at a table by Highway 16.  He said he hadn’t seen the egg stand all week.  But then Mel Bartles said, “Oh that was because she’d moved over to the intersection where Highway 92 breaks off toward Leavenworth.”

At the word “Leavenworth,” everyone looked at me sideways but I just kept on walking to the cupcake table, put my cupcakes next to Milly Bartles’s cupcakes.

“I got those cassette tapes for you,” I said, “in my trunk.  And I brought Elly my bundt pan.”

Milly started to cry.  “We could hide you,” she said.

“Where?”

We set up our ironing boards at the back of the room so the meeting could get started.  Don and Elly Bartles got into a shouting match over the budget as usual, and he was just yelling “PUT DOWN THAT IRON, WOMAN—” when a tornado came so we all got under the cupcake tables and, after it was gone, those of us left alive went back home.

 

Friday morning I was up in the attic before sunrise.  From the attic windows I had a good view of the fields burning across the county, lines of red leaping up into their smoke clouds along the horizon, grids of red intersecting and stopping each other at the edges of the sections.  The men riding herd along the edges to keep the burns in the fields.  In the attic I found the wedding dress.  I thought about taking it down to the barn for a good iron, but then I remembered my vows so I took it out of its plastic and hung it up on a rafter.  I shook out its frills and watched it swinging there.

It looked just like the time we found Ilene Hess, one of the Hesses that live up by Highway 4, swinging in her wedding dress from the bars of the jungle gym down at the school.  Principal Bartles cut her down.  Joe Bartles wrote it up in the paper as a suicide, based on the statements of Pastor Bartles and Sheriff Bartles that she’d always been troubled, but we all knew that her iron had shorted out and she didn’t have a spare.

Outside the sun began to rise against the smoke of the field burns, casting a ghoulish light on the white of the dress, so I took it downstairs and hung it up next to the pantry where I could get at it quick.  Frank’s letter that day said, “32 hours.”

 

Saturday was a revival and everyone from every denomination went because there wasn’t anything else to do.  Same pasture as the circus was the week before.  There was a tent with lemonade and meringues on the east side of the pasture, and another tent on the west side for the revival, and on the north side there was a horse tank filled up for the baptisms.  It was clear that the evangelist had brought support because there were a lot of wrinkly clothes in the crowd.  A tornado rolled by, clipping the north edge of the section, but it only took out a couple hats and hymnals so the revival went on as planned.

The evangelist said the Godless believed in climate change when the real cause of the tornadoes is our Sin.  He said that Sin was all the women working outside of the home and wearing jeans.  He said that we had been infected by Godlessness and the only way to stop the tornadoes was to get baptized.  So we stepped up to the horse tank because it was worth a try.

As we stood in line to get washed in the blood, a hum came over the top of the lemonade tent, and we looked into the brassy blue.  I-L-E-N-E.  Or maybe I-R-E-N-E.  Then over the horse tank, H-E-S-S.

Then over the revival tent, F-O-U-N-D.

Wayland Bartles kicked a dirt clod, then kicked it again, and went on kicking it right to the edge of the pasture.  Didn’t even get back in line.  The rest of us got baptized anyway, just in case, but the thrill was gone.

Shaking hands to go home, Milly sniffled. Sadie’s mouth bobbled up and down at the corners.  Even some of the men looked sorry.

“I’m baptized now,” I said, reassuring them, “I’m clean.”

“Amen,” they said.

 

When I got home I put on the wedding dress, which was loose from all the years. I sat down between my two best irons and turned them all the way up to “cotton.” One for Frank and the other for the tornado.

Carriages

20 November 2019
Categories: Fiction

 
 
 

You walk Ajax the Dog three times a day, minimum. Often five times, up and down the cobblestones — you chose this neighborhood because it was historically registered, after all. The uneven stones make it impossible to push a baby carriage but you don’t have to worry about that. All you need to do is walk a dog. Across the antique brick crosswalks three, four, five times a day. Your personal world record is nine. Ajax the Dog still hates you for that day, gives you that eyebrow look whenever you jingle the leash after dinnertime, like, Let’s go easy, boss, and looks around the room, maybe to see what you’ve been drinking and how much of it.

World Record Day was a Thursday, the night your favorite prime time show ended forever and the last time you forgot to re-up your twice-a-day meds. You needed walking more than the dog. Damned animal refused even a single backyard outing on Friday, just whizzed right there in the kennel like every book and TV show and trainer assured you dogs never do. Pissed in his own bed, like, That’ll teach you.

So now you walk him three times a day, never less. Sometimes five, never more. You let him guide you. He’s part bulldog and part something else that gives him the energy and temperament of the sun. And you’ve moved the TV to the room above the garage that scares you because it’s full of spiders. You try not to spend nights up there. You succeed here and there. You miss Derek. Your mail has been delivered by Naomi for three weeks while he’s on vacation. You ask Naomi where Derek is but all she’ll tell you is “away” though one time she lets you know that he’s somewhere “stingrays are an ever-present danger.” You imagine New Zealand. You imagine South Africa, Indonesia, East Timor. You imagine Derek shooting laser beams out his eyes underwater and flying home on wings he grew from his shoulders to come back and deliver your mail. You imagine New Jersey and then think “stupid” but turn on the TV and see a clip about a guy from Trenton whose father paid for him to get feathers implanted in his biceps, triceps, and all the other -ceps you’ve never had time to learn about. He died after jumping off Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “Investigators are operating on the assumption that it was a suicide, but the County Coroner tells Fast News Nine that, ‘You never know what’s in a person’s head.’”

You spend the whole night awake, trying to dream harder and softer at the same time.

***

For a while the Beast walks Ajax the Dog but never as much as you. You adopted Ajax the Dog on the same day your friends got their baby, which tangled the emotions even more. And the Beast was the one who wanted a dog in the first place but for the most part it’s been you who picks up his shit piles, mounds, snakes, kernels, bowling pins. The Beast doesn’t even know how many shapes Ajax the Dog’s shit takes, the names you have for the shits. The Beast never calls Ajax the Dog by his full name. It’s always “Ajax” or “the dog.” One time “A.J.” but you said, “No. That name is reserved, asshole.” The Beast didn’t raise an eyebrow, much less a hand, so you know you were right. You deserved that baby. Maybe the Beast didn’t but you did. Your friends — Slam and Slap — didn’t even want one but they got one. You got a dog but they already had three of those. They didn’t even get a bill from the hospital but you did. Here’s your prize, you imagine the doctor saying, handing over the baby and then, Here’s another prize, when the outtake secretary handed over a bill that read Nothing due. For you, no one said anything but you saw the looks, like, Sorry for you, I guess, but also sorry for us for having to bear your tragedy with you for two seconds when we could be giving prizes out down the hall.You didn’t even get a note of condolence from the one kind nurse. Just the bill. Overdue. The irony of that word.

Being all about fairness is your Achilles heel. It’s the wrong world to be all about fairness. It was you, after all, who came up with the idea that whoever plates the food for dinner, the other person gets to choose first. You never eat the larger sliver of an oddly segmented orange. When it’s your turn to pump gas you don’t complain, even if you’re on the passenger side. Even if you’re sitting in back, because you already gave up the front seat for the Beast’s visiting whoever, not even a real mother, who refers to the Beast as “Sweetbeast,” as if that’s ever been true. Even if you’re asleep in the back seat when the car pulls to a stop under the rusted pump awning. You always wake right up when the Sweetbeast says “Sammy!” and stumble out of the car and pump the gas, half asleep, full mad.

These are not your rules alone. Rules don’t exist for a single person. Only an insane person makes rules for a community of one. Rules are made so that communities can thrive. What better community than a marriage? What better rule than fairness? You think about this when you walk the dog. The Beast never walks the dog, but does other things you don’t do. Like…? You think about this when you plate the food evenly and the Beast makes a show of weighing the plates, one in each hand, before choosing the heavier one. Is that supposed to be some kindness? You lost the baby but not the baby weight yet. Maybe it’s supposed to be a kindness but it doesn’t feel like one, especially when the Beast says, “I don’t even know how you managed to gain baby weight. I’m the one who should have gained the weight.”

The Beast got a job that involves driving eighty miles away twice a week. The Beast thinks this is just beyond the threshold (79 miles?) of sanity and no sane person would drive that far in the morning and back that night so the Beast lives in a hotel down in Lucedale twice a week. You’ve been to Lucedale. There’s nothing there. No supermarket, no mall, just a misspelled Kwik Shawp. No gas station, just a year-round fireworks stand. No hotel, just an Extended Stay America. Who wants to extend a stay there? And according to the plastic alphabet sign on the rusted pole looming over the highway, the shortest stay that qualifies as extended is one week. Does the Beast rent long-term? The Beast won’t say. The Beast does your taxes and says that’s all the accounting for that’s required.

You find a receipt in the Beast’s jeans pocket. It says, “Big Bosses Storage Fortress.” It says, “$64 monthly.” The handwriting under the printed section of the receipt reads, “5 X 10, approx studio apartment.” You say, “I didn’t know you were an artist” and the Beast doesn’t get the joke and you let it stew and say, “Nothing, nevermind, forget I said anything.”

Your jaw still hurts where your college girlfriend (your first one) kicked you while you were tickling her, thinking that was sexy. You still wonder if there’s a chipped bone in there. Lately it’s begun hurting on the other side too. You wonder if that means it’s cancer. Didn’t you hear that Bob Marley died of cancer after stubbing his toe playing soccer? Pathetic. At least Peter Tosh got assassinated. But who remembers him? Keith Richards is still alive, making more money than ever for playing the same old tunes. Sadness all around. Maybe you’re just grinding your teeth. Or maybe that stupid girl broke your jaw all the way around and it’s taken all these years for the fracture to travel behind your skull. Maybe your head will just fall clean off one of these days. Maybe everything is only held together by skin. Skin slowly growing brittle in the increased, throbbing sun. You spend days in thoughts like these, walking the dog, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, Googling Lucedale, zip codes, hotels, calling 1-800 numbers and putting on varying foreign accents and asking for Room number 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, forgetting where you left off, falling asleep to the sound of ringing on the end of the line when the man, woman, or whatever at the front desk figures out your gig, probably in cahoots with the Beast, and just hangs up the phone without speaking.

When the Alley Cats you took in over the Beast’s objections piss on the bath mat, the Beast tells you for the fortieth time what a bunch of bad ideas you harbor. Ajax the Dog eats your glasses case and you go crazy and the Beast says, “The glasses weren’t even in there, right?” and you can’t even get the breath to claim that’s not the point. The Alley Cats hate Ajax the Dog and the Beast hates conflict but when you’ve got the house alone you let Ajax the Dog in the bathroom when the Alley Cats are pissing on the bath mat and watch the fur, claws, and shit fly. You fight with yourself over not cleaning the place up before the Beast comes home but you always leave the house shining brighter than ever.

You’re not a cat person. You hope no one thinks you are. You’ve never had a dog before Ajax the Dog but you always felt like a dog person. Before you had one, that is. The Beast isn’t an anything person and that’s part of why you got along so well to begin with but then you started to feel like not being an anything person might mean not really being a person at all. Or at least not a person person. You’re willing to accept that you’re not a person person but you’re not sure you want to be with someone who’s not a person person. Why would someone like that want to be with you, who are, after all, supposedly, another person?

How did you meet the Beast? Where was your first date? When did you first kiss? You remember all of this, but it doesn’t mean anything anymore. When did you first fight? When did you stop listening? What was the thing the Beast said that first made you roll your eyes? Walk out of the room? Slam the door? Wake up angry? How did it get to be like this? You don’t remember any of this and this is all that matters anymore.

At 11:17 AM, while you’re rewashing the hall mirror, the Clerk of the Court Calls. That’s what it says on caller ID. You say hello and the clerk starts his end of the conversation with a rising, “Heyyyyyyyyy” as though he just caught you in a compromising position. You say, “Who is this?” and he responds with, “Who is this?” You identify yourself. He says, “Oops, sorry,” laughs, and hangs up. Probably not the actual clerk. Probably a secretary. Does the Beast know any secretaries? Mailboys? Legal interns? You wonder if the Beast is in trouble with the law. You should really get a job. This is one of many reasons it’s bad to be home all day by yourself.

Your neighbor to the east has twice as much engine as car. He leaves for work at 5:15 AM, six days a week. Your neighbor to the west has a dog who whimpers when the sun comes up. You always sleep through the whimpering, never through the growling, the hollered threats from the facing window. Across the alley behind your bedroom window lives a couple with an infant. You heard that new families make the best neighbors and you find this to be true until your neighbor to the west tells you she hasn’t enjoyed a meal since her dog died six months ago. You never noticed how high her voice is. The whimpering and the deep hollered threats continue, echoing oddly from the alley. Sometimes they seem to be coming from directly above your bed. Sometimes from under it. In it.

You bought two floor lamps at IKEA. Faux rice paper shades, long cylinders, from about Tall Man height down to ankle level, with step-on power switches and nondescript black bases. You bought one but realized upon plugging it in that your living room needed another for balance. It was two weeks before you got back to IKEA. The box was the same. The price. The picture. The assembly. But the second lamp is two inches taller than the first one. Taller enough that you can tell the difference unless they’re at least fifteen feet apart. You performed tests. Fourteen feet isn’t far enough. Fourteen feet is the diagonal span of your living room. You did the fifteen foot test in the driveway. Couldn’t tell the difference. But your driveway doesn’t need light. The neighbor across the street, to the south, has had his security light pointed in your direction ever since Ajax the Dog busted out the screen and ended up turning his purple hyacinth vines into very temporary chew toys.

You read an article in the New Yorker titled “A Case for Apathy” that profiles a number of couples that are so involved in the political revolution in Washington that their personal lives have dissolved as a direct result. You wish you had followed politics.

You walk Ajax the Dog thrice daily. Maximum. No more five walk days. You’ve got a routine and Ajax the Dog lives by it and likes it. Or doesn’t. You don’t care, try not to notice.

The Beast now spends every other weekend in Lucedale. Sometimes more than that. Maybe not even in Lucedale. You don’t even ask for room numbers anymore. Sometimes you daydream about the moment you realize the Beast is never coming home, but you don’t know what that would feel like. If it would feel any different than now. How could you know the Beast is really never coming back?

You don’t daydream for Ajax the Dog to disappear. You’re not that cold. You’re colder, by not even daydreaming about it. You know it’s coming, know the only power you have is to decide to fail to keep the dog safe. You feel your hand loosening its grip on the leash when Ajax the Dog tenses up upon spotting a squirrel on the opposite sidewalk. You ease down to two walks a day, then one. Then once every other day. You have it in your power to make Ajax the Dog rebel, tear up the sofa, the curtains, you. But Ajax the Dog just looks at you like, You’re in charge. So you up the walks to five, six, nine. You walk once around the block, return home, take off the leash, wait for Ajax the Dog to lie down, jingle the leash, start the process over. Twelve times. Nineteen. Thirty. Your calves throb and you’ve got blisters on your left wrist where you wrap the leash end. You jingle the leash and Ajax the Dog stands up dutifully on wobbling legs. You see yourself in that dumb face, hate what you’ve become, and keep on being it.

 
 
 
 
 
 

The Seed and the Swirl

17 April 2019
Categories: Fiction

They’d later say Everett Hurley’s wife died during a snowstorm, but really it was sand: ten months of wind, smothered town, blistered earth. Ceaseless silt, water brown. Parakeets at RJ’s Exotics dropping like fruit. Elsewhere, hippies tripped in parks lush as God’s mouth. A hundred miles north, floods. But here, ossified cottonwoods, flash-fried corn, crabapple spuds. People ate cattle hung up in fences, sneaking at night to clip that mean wire, to quarter and skin—why, years later, snow? Maybe sand was their fault: all that new industrialized fertilizer, land sacked by ag giants, overworked fields, soybeans, cheap corn.

March, 1972, a community meeting. On the docket: experimental windscreens, food stamp crash, bottling plant crisis. They catcalled the mayor until he brought up this Palmquist— applause—who’d seeded clouds down in Templeton, brought days of good rain. The Templeton Shuckers won the AA final (probably, someone hollered, ’cause their minds were off rain!).

Their mayor (someone else) coughed up the funds! Our cattle (another) are dying! Palmquist, rumor spread, took rabbits as payment from poor Masonville, a massive hunt. For a pet he kept a skunk on a leash. They voted and left, drove sand-smothered roads. Headlamps flashed trash, whitetails tangled in fences. They gasped at lone farmhouses glowing through haze: people were alive out here, clinging to night like stars burning out.

***

Hurley would later seek miracles: resurrectionists, clairvoyants, specter-revealing UV. But back then, Mary months dead, he had the plow. His boss telephoned late at night, apologized, said, Mayor needs us—now. (Why, the mayor’s men asked, clear the plaza? Why not let Palmquist see how bad it is? Town without clean plaza, replied the mayor, ain’t a town worth saving.) Hurley, on the phone, said he liked plowing past midnight, that’s when Mary would wake and whisper, he liked coffee from his thermos, smell of diesel, heater chugging, doo-wop on the radio, thin cabin glass beating back dark—Yes, yes, said his boss, can you pick up the keys?

She’d been struck walking home from dinner with a friend. The driver, a grocery mart owner from Templeton, had been drinking at Donnelly’s, now held at the state pen in Albertville. First thing, Hurley went and grabbed Frank Donnelly, pinned the old man against bar, accused him of over-serving again. Several drinkers dragged him outside. (Don’t do nothing stupid, Mister Hurley, that boy of yours needs you.) At Mary’s memorial an odd little man, blue teeth, papier mâché face, approached rubbing hands, asked, What have you seen? Hurley, shaken, said, What? What have you seen? repeated the man, rubbing hands. Where are you going? The chapel was full of chittering strangers. Music groaned from hidden speakers. The man, very loud, said, There are places, you go and come back—different, changed, fucked! Hurley stumbled backwards, into a curtain partitioning the room. Behind it, he saw, knelt his son, scooping soil from a potted ficus, mewling. When he looked back, the man was gone.

Friends offered to smash up the grocer’s impounded truck. Hurley refused, drove through a sandstorm to Templeton. At the grocery mart, shaking, unsure what to do—topple a pyramid of Pet Milk?—he merely pocketed a candy bar without paying, wept driving home, veered across sand-obliterated lanes. Now he wakes before dawn, browses his son’s homework, walks him to school through ankle-deep drifts. The boy laughs as wind lashes his handkerchiefed face. What, Hurley wonders, is wrong with him? (Mary, after the bottling plant closed, didn’t like being left alone with him. Doctor Chauvin recommended an expensive specialist in Muster.) The boy hums and scribbles at the kitchen table as if unaffected, giggles wildly over the local call-in conspiracy show—that’s Misses Baluth, from school, he shrieks, she thinks she had dinner with an alien! What about Mom? Hurley asks and the boy twitches, spaces out, says, I love you, Dad.

***

Sand, unlike snow, spills unpredictably off blade, requires multiple runs up and down Main, then Walnut, Larch, Warsaw, past midnight. Sand pings cabin glass. His boy, at home, hopefully sleeps. Sparks shower when blade grazes pavement. Hurley, wearing sweat-soaked gloves— electricity churned by storm, people afraid to touch doorknobs—plows to a dead-zone past downtown, the chain-linked-off bottling plant, a terra cotta compound employing, just last year, nearly a quarter of town. Glowing ivory-white, like the old asylum in Guernsey where they sent Mary’s mother. A mountain of sand—Hurley’s work—rises on either side of the fence.

Mary once showed him inside the shipping office where she worked as secretary, hallways wild with art deco accoutrements (where, he wondered, did she learn those terms?), green-tiled floors, copper railings tangled with flora and finches, mouldings like snowdrifts—all this for soda pop? he’d asked. The architect, she said, was communist, the good kind, labor a pleasant dream dreamt together. Hurley chuckled. Passersby, wearing white jumpsuits, did seem happy, copper sconces glowing goldenly, color-caked hallways, thermal baths where workers soaked post-shift. Those workers would, a decade later, take the plant’s closing hard: a manager climbed onto roof, threatened to leap; Mary burst into tears when Hurley uncapped root beer. The mayor, rumors swirled, now recruited a Canadian toy-maker, electronic gizmos, fence erected to keep out chemical-fried hippies from Templeton.

Charging down Larch, sand shoved through chain-link, he pictures Mary inside: rubbing whorled railings, ogling light fixtures, dipping in thermal bath. Lured by red smoke down echoing halls. Perhaps, he dreams, she isn’t dead, is merely inside amongst renegade Templeton peaceniks. (There was that woman, at Mary’s mother’s asylum in Guernsey, found dead in her bed, processed and blessed, buried or cremated only to appear months later on hospital’s doorstep, twigs in her hair. Blips in the world, rents in dimensions—the local call-in show affirmed such things all the time.)

At one a.m., folks stumble from Donnelly’s ahead of the plow, eyes iridescent in headlamps. Hurley, heart racing, gestures them to safety but the people, drunk or blinded by sand, are already gone. Then, working north-south, headlamps catch a sign at edge of the plaza:

SNAP’S CAT & DOG CLINIC

& OTHER CRITTERS TOO

Hurley’s gut churns. Snap Boehner was Mary’s cousin, closest friend. She’d crossed the plaza that night to meet him for dinner at the Vado Hotel. Her ruts, she called them, a term Doctor Chauvin dismissed, days in bed then insisting, come nightfall, on meandering sandstorms. Only dinners with Snap seemed to bring joy. After the bottling plant closed she hid in the bedroom, made Hurley sleep with the boy. (When Hurley once suggested they scavenge cattle from fences, Mary screamed and slammed the door.) That afternoon she’d shouted for water, more water, until Hurley, affecting kindness, said, Time for dinner with Snap. Joy swelled her face like a gas. He led her to the bathroom, her nightgown dark with sweat, hands trembling. Leaned against sink, made sure she washed. Their son knocked, peered in—what’s he doing here? Mary hissed. Hurley said, You’re being a shit. She departed that night wearing threadbare tweed coat. (All that money on a new radio, Snap would ask, and you couldn’t buy her a better coat?) Hurley found the boy, asked if he was up for some call-in. Your mother… he began but didn’t finish. During proceeding months he’d remember things differently, tell others she was in high spirits that night, visiting family. When Elena White said she’d seen Mary downing wine at the Vado, he asked, But wasn’t she celebrating something?

Cranking blade, revving engine, he pictures Palmquist, that eagerly anticipated cloud- seeder, leading skunk on leash, kiting dynamite into mud-colored sky. Eating steak, bloodied neck, drinking blood amidst thick smoke. Stabbing needles into women, chasing women into cornfield— Hurley snaps to, sees he’s heaped sand upon sand against Snap’s clinic door. On the radio plays strange, menacing doo-wop recorded in some cavern, two hiccup-voiced men murmuring threats: “I may not walk amongst your people / but I’ve been inside your house…” He parks. Moans. Clenches teeth. He’s going to scream. The rhythm continues nine, ten minutes, slows to sludge, rumbling guitars, ricocheting drums. He doesn’t scream, tries to breathe. Transfixed, he watches sand swirl, wipes his eyes, sips cold coffee. The station usually plays doo-wop at this hour. A second song: same band, churning shuffle, but cut by airplane sounds, sirens, chanting. Streetlamps unplugged, the world looks obliterated. A local disc jockey, Hurley figures, is at that moment losing his job, or mind, or both.

***

The next morning, April 2, 1972, Templeton Statesman’s front page, brief article, long headline:

“Psychedelic Psycho-Punk Band Pranks Town’s April Fools in Late-Night Fairgrounds Freakout!”

(Typical, some say, cocky county seat using exclamation points in headlines, welcoming wild bands from out west—what happens when no longer humbled by drought.) The band was called the Total Voids, from northern Arizona, near the Yavapai reservation. (Likely Indians themselves, readers at Donnelly’s sneered; there’d been a spat with a local tribe over water rights, river access, installation of dam. The town swapped water for land. Months later, drought. River soon tainted by industrial runoff, town and tribe in same boat, yet locals insisted they’d been swindled.) The Voids, like many, moved west: parks and fog, salty breeze, people camping and dancing, making peace and masturbating in the dark. Their small, loyal following trailed them up and down the coast, east into desert, unfazed by shows at old skating rinks and gyms, theaters plagued by rats. Their sound matched the venues, jukebox rock decaying with reverb, scuzzy rhythms shuffling into oblivion for fifteen, twenty minutes.

The fairgrounds hall, read the Statesmen, was nearly empty, hundred people max. Compare to the previous weekend’s revival: nearly a thousand, bleachers packed, everyone dancing, even poor farmers bused in from the country. The Voids’ fans behaved like paranoiacs, congregating beneath bleachers, skittering, whispering. The band looked grungy, lead guitarist Leonard Casto’s Fender howling outer-space notes, his back to the hall, sunglasses on, face blanketed by black hair and beard. Warplanes and fascist parades boomed beneath music. A red spotlight struck disco ball, flecking the place with blood. No one, wrote the reporter, manned the concessions. No security, no staff. As if the band had broken in. People ran around blindly, full-speed. Indeed, wrote the reporter, I feared for my safety. Left after two songs that lasted an hour. I waited outside in the wind, watched the band exit a side door, peel away in a van, instruments inside still screeching feedback. When the sound finally stopped, out staggered fans who disappeared into storm, mostly on foot. Lord knows how long it took to reach home, wherever home is, or if they reached it at all.

***

He imagined, hearing that music, a machine belching steam, a tractor-sized factory stuffed full with men. (A live broadcast from the fairgrounds, he’d later learn, replayed several times the following days by the Templeton Socialists Club.) He closed his eyes. Shuddering plow. Scuzzy, echoing surf-rock. Bloody purée sprayed from a chute, snow-blown flesh, combined meat. He pictured those strange illustrations in his son’s language arts journal: vortex-eyed men stabbing shovels into maned creatures, women or horses.

It was gripped with such thoughts that he witnessed the truck glide down Larch, meters past plow’s headlamps, a rattling old pickup, red, PALMQUIST stenciled along its bed, impervious to storm. Hurley’s stomach spasmed. The truck disappeared. That unsettling refrain returned: “I may not walk amongst your people / but I’ve been inside your house.” He touched his chest, tried to breathe. (Palmquist, it turned out, conducted predawn preliminary inquiries: barometric pressure, dew point, etc.) When the broadcast ended Hurley climbed from the plow, shovel in hand, crossed the plaza to Snap’s. I’m not going that path, he said, stooping to work, chopping with shovel, gasping, heaving sand. He shoveled and heaved, scraped the sidewalk clean. Wind died to a breeze. He slumped against the mound he’d created, lungs raw with dust.

***

The seeding was scheduled for two in the afternoon—optimal time, according to Palmquist, who emerged from the Vado to a resident-packed plaza. He wore, true to rumor, silk scarf rather than tie, purple suit, purple derby tipped back, pockmarked face, tobacco-browned mustache. The crowd erupted. People hung from gazebo. Applause turned to gasps at his black-and-gray mammal. High school pep band banged out the fight song. In his cordoned-off quadrant Palmquist inspected a kite, yanked creature’s leash. It squealed, claimed those near the barricade, before collapsing into dirt. Badger? Skunk? No one agreed. Black and white, bushy but muscular, peculiar tail—anteater? (The following morning’s hazy newspaper photo hardly helped.) Deputies lined cordoned-off Larch. Crowd strained as Palmquist, behind barricade, attached device to kite. Cubic and glinting. Questions were shouted. Then it was time. As if by supernatural force or maybe just engine, the kite—vinyl, tied to rubber cording—levitated out of the cloud-seeder’s hands. Soft applause. Arms aloft. Twice he blew kisses. Murmurs. (Several Templetonites, people later claimed, hid amongst crowd, snickering this ritual was different than theirs. Then again, their mayor shelled $3,000 for something called “Divinity Deluxe.” Here, $1,500 only afforded “Heaven’s Key.”) Palmquist worked cord like the stays of a boat. The kite vanished, another eruption, creature rolling in dirt. Police pinched their noses, complained of a smell. Jack Vado emerged, bellowed Half-priced drinks all night! Applause, men tossing caps. Then a scream: a woman claimed to smell rain. People scanned sky, mouths agape. Shouted questions: how long? how high? good as Templeton? Palmquist torqued when the cord bucked, boots inching off ground—crowed gasped—before touching back down. In years to come they’d argue whether they ever heard his voice.

***

Twelve hours earlier, three a.m., Hurley spotted the quartet stumble down Larch, young maniacs in shitty clothes, eyes black in headlamps, two women, two men, thin-boned, practically starving, baggy denim, wig-like hair, sandals, no socks—during a sandstorm! He flicked off the headlamps, leaned out, shouted, Are you crazy? Along the Templeton River, he’d heard, youngsters like these squatted in cabins. One of the women, up close, looked like Mary at that age, a handmade crown of freesias savaged by wind. Are you on something? Hurley asked. (Town’s newest concern, people elsewhere on something while here they struggled for food.)

The young men and women giggled. The girl shouted, over engine: A secret show—inside the old factory, some sort of funhouse! (How, he’d later lament, didn’t he realize they came from that concert on the radio?) He told them his wife used to work there. The flower girl shouted, They’ve promised a miracle. Who? Hurley yelled. Then he shouted a rainmaker was coming, Mister Palmquist. The girl nodded, shouted that in Templeton he washed away death.

He showed them the mountain of sand he’d been building, high enough now one could grip top of fence. The compound, in predawn light, looked like an Arctic prison, bas-relief cola- spray fanned over entrance. Were there a concert, he’d have seen vans or trucks, people. Plus, the factory had no electricity. (He’d summoned the nerve, a month or so back, to break in, to sift Mary’s ashes in the bottling sector where, she showed him, cola ate through the floor’s polished concrete. But inside, flashlight scouring dusty metal-works, pigeon droppings, he couldn’t bear to discard them.) He shouted which loading-dock door he’d busted open, how to navigate those hallways and rooms, such a fantastical place for such mundane work. Folks today, he shouted, withered by drought, spoke of cola as if it were fairy-tale potion, his boy begging to uncap the bottle in back of the fridge, stored there by Mary when factory closed. He pictured zigzagging ziggurat floors, defunct copper fountains (used to spew cola! Mary had said). There couldn’t be a concert, not this town, not nowadays—the youngsters, climbing over fence, had been duped.

***

Some later swore Palmquist eyed the crowd with spite, hissing in foreign accent, looking like corpse propped by up kite. After a while, people funneled into Donnelly’s. Children restless. Parents hissing. An hour passed. Suddenly, Palmquist torqued. A speck in the sky. People rejoiced, scanning for rain. But fifteen minutes later, kite on ground, Palmquist packed up.
Catcalls rang out. His skunk, or whatever it was, sprang to its feet, trotted towards the Vado.

Drinkers emerged to jeer. Others stayed silent, hands behind backs, certain a difference had been made—the seed of a miracle, planted by Palmquist, his apparatus begging rain from the sky.

***

Hurley, back home, found his son in the kitchen, breadknife in hand. I thought you were a killer, the boy whispered. Or maybe it was I thought you were killed. Hurley eased free the knife. Sit, he said, flipping on Philco: initial rebroadcast of the fairgrounds concert. (Years later, his mid- fifties, he’d wire an embarrassing sum of money to a man in New Mexico who mailed a cassette—recordings of the Voids’ performances were hoarded, he learned, by people across the country, communicating like secret terrorist cell via hand-printed newsletters.) Light leaked through sheets tacked to catch sand. Music droned. Listen, said Hurley, but the boy squealed Turn it off, turn it off! Then he was shrieking, head between knees, rocking on floor. Jesus, said Hurley, what’s happened, what’s inside you? As though the boy had returned from Mars with some illness. He sank onto floor and, voice shaking, said to have faith. There are things out there, son, he whispered, stroking boy’s head, unexplainable things that will make life soon bearable. Please, he begged, it’s only radio, just listen, stop crying. Have faith.

***

The following week, or the week after that, some week during those tempestuous days (town now withered, all but gone), people went out, braving wind, swearing they heard something. Flashing light. Distant thunder. Trees clacked like ancient shorebirds. Soon, here and there, mud splatted earth. Hardly rain but better than sand. The next night, globs pummeled roofs. She’ll run clear before long, people whispered, livestock will drink, crops burst like bombs. Hurley, like everyone else, rushed to the door. Threw it open. Marveled at mud, drank down cool air, imagined those scents—lilac, mowed grass, chaff—of things as they’d been.

When We Are There; Here On This Lowly Ground

17 April 2019
Categories: Fiction

There was nothing too bothersome about the compact, mint-colored beach cottage when the woman first moved in except the landlord, an older man who brought his college-aged grandson with him every Thursday or Friday to mow and weed the yard.

At first, she found it almost comforting. Seeing two mildly familiar faces out the window once in a while helped her feel more settled, less alone. She’d felt alone since the minute she arrived in this neighborhood tucked on the shore of Narragansett Bay, right where the ocean contracted down into a river. She had squinted once at a map of the bay and thought the upper part where she lived looked vaguely like a pelvic bone.

Now, three months into her lease, summer pulsated with long, humid days and relentless weeds that grew back in a blink. She took the kayak out every morning at sunrise and paddled up to the cove, near the sacrum of the bay, and then down to the state park and back home again, about an hour or two depending on the current, usually to find the two men in the yard at week’s end. They would wave at her while she dragged the kayak up onto the lawn.

“Great morning for a paddle,” the landlord would say from under a Red Sox cap. Sweaty, she’d release her grip on the boat and wave or nod or say something generic about the water or the weather (“Choppy out there today” or “Another warm one,” although they were actually having some of the hottest days on record that year, the heat so intense some days that there were warnings on the news for people to stay indoors until sundown). She’d then disappear into the house to shower all the salt off her skin. But she could usually hear them just outside the window, discussing mundane things like the dead pine tree that needed to be cut down or the British literature classes the grandson would take in the fall, and she would worry her leathered skin would be visible to them through the slats in the window blind, that they’d catch a glimpse of her naked 52-year- old body and recoil. Once, she’d been lean and taut and bronzed. Now, she just was what she was.

Not that she wanted the alternative, either—for them to see her and not recoil. She didn’t want to be seen at all, but rather to be the one watching from inside, observing that they were somewhere near, but also not near. In the beginning, their presence in the yard had been fine. A solace on some of her darker days, even. Now, though, their willingness to return consistently and tend the yard’s overgrowth began to annoy her. Seeing their silhouettes through the wavering, wheat-like barrier of beach grass between her yard and the beach now made her almost want to go straight back into the water for another hour or two, even though her sunblock had long since worn off and her eyes stung from all the salt in them. She always took a moment of pause as she watched them work, considering how much more sun exposure she could bear if it meant not having to make herself known. Instead, she pulled the kayak into the yard, made routine pleasantries, and hastily ducked inside the cottage like always.

***

There was an old top-loader washing machine in the basement that leaked half of the time, and a dryer that blew hot air but never seemed to fully dry anything, so she preferred to take her clothes to the laundromat down the road. Everything that came out of her laundry at home was damp and smelled like soil.

There was a liquor store next door to the laundromat, and while her clothes tumbled around in water she hoped wasn’t tinged with bits of waste from other peoples’ bodies, she took to wandering the wine aisle. She read the labels and chose her bottle based on where the grapes had been grown, or how well the description of flavor had been written. She wanted to be reminded of something fond when she drank wine, whether a place she had visited in her old life or the way a good sentence warmed her like a hug. She saw the irony, though, because she usually drank to make forgetting easier.

It was a muggy, overcast Wednesday that week when she put the laundry basket into her car and drove it down to do the wash. She started the cycle and left, even though the attendant girl glared at her through frizzy brown bangs as she walked out the door.

She went down two storefronts, past the cheap haircut place, and into the liquor store. It was just before lunchtime on a workday.

“Hey,” the cashier said. He was young, twenties probably, skinny and pockmarked in his pink cheeks in a way that made him look even younger, his face downturned as his thumb flicked the screen of his cell phone. She kept walking.

The wines were categorized by region and country. Today she went to Bordeaux and picked up, read, put back many bottles until she found a Cabernet Franc that looked right. The blue-black liquid was meant to have notes of vanilla, raspberries, and smoke. She thought for a long moment about those flavors, warm and sweet but also peppery, how they would feel in her mouth, and decided this was her pick for the day. She tucked two bottles under her arm and went to the register to pay.

“Need any scratch tickets or mini bottles?” the kid at the register asked her as he put the wine into a paper bag. He slid a thin rectangle of cardboard between their glass bodies to keep them from shattering.

“Sure, why not? Two of those five dollar scratch tickets would be good.”

He tore them off, slipped them in the bag, and read her the total. She paid by credit card, as she did for everything now. Every purchase was a conscious practice in not panicking. She tried to do the yoga breathing she’d learned in all those classes she used to take, but even flushing her system with oxygen didn’t stop her from thinking of the day she’d hit her credit limit and have to call her ex-husband for more money. You’re out again? he would ask, usually with a disappointed sigh. Where’s the money I just wired you? Technically, legally, he didn’t have to send her a dime. But he did because, as their mutual friend had tipsily told the woman once, he harbored deep guilt about how he’d derailed her life all those years ago. He’ll probably send you money until he dies simply out of atonement or some bullshit like that. But the woman hadn’t felt comforted hearing that. Instead, it made her teeth itch. It was like overhearing the neighbors having sex, and then smiling at them as if it had never happened. She couldn’t un-know that he felt guilty. He had never once told her how he felt, but he seemed fine telling their friends.

The woman stopped at her car to drop off the wine before going back in to check on her laundry. The washing machine was still tumbling her clothes and towels, but it looked like it might be almost finished. The attendant with the bangs came over a moment after the woman sat on a white plastic chair to stare at the muted television and wait it out.

“Ma’am,” the girl said firmly. “You can’t leave when you’re doing a cycle.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize,” the woman lied.

“It’s on the signs,” the girl said, pointing to various posters which all declared: YOU MUST REMAIN WITH YOUR ITEMS.

“I must have missed those. Sorry. My eyes aren’t that great anymore.”

“I’ve seen you here before, ok?” the girl said. “I know you leave every time you put your wash in. No more. I have to put my foot down, ok? We have these policies for you and your stuff’s safety.”

The woman wanted to laugh but didn’t because she wasn’t in the business of being rude and undermining another woman who was just doing her job. It was silly, though, to think that her clothing needed to be kept safe. From what? Thievery? If someone wanted her small collection of worn cotton t-shirts and shorts, her decades-old towels with frayed edges, the tattered fabric of her former life, they could have it all.

“Sorry,” the woman said again. “You’re right. I’ll stick around next time. Thanks for letting me know.”

The girl seemed satisfied and went back to her post. When the wash cycle ended a short while later, the woman dropped her soaking laundry into the basket and took it all home to dry out on the clothesline instead.

***

Thunder crept in that night, just after dark. She opened the bottle of wine and poured it into a small glass. There were no wine glasses here, but then again, she wasn’t fancy anymore.

She went to the three-season room at the front of the house to watch the storm over the water and scratch her lottery tickets. Lightning flashed in the distance across the bay where the houses were much larger, palatial even. Once, she’d lived in a house like that—a McMansion, her sister from Maine had half-joked in what appeared, at the time, to be envy. You two need five thousand freaking square feet of living space? Really? You need to build a McMansion? For what?

But the woman only needed what she had now. It was enough. She’d put a desk and chair in one of the small rooms, her full-sized bed in the other. A confined bathroom between the rooms, rust on the heat vent and orange-pink mold on the floor of the shower stall that required scrubbing every few days. She could stretch her arms and touch the interior wall of the shower and the mirror at the same time.

The front of the house was an open space meant for a couch, which she still hadn’t bought, and opposite that was the kitchen: a stovetop with no oven, a mini refrigerator, no dishwasher. Then, running the length of the front of the cottage was the three-season room where she ate her meals on a scratched wooden table she’d found at a yard sale, and read and slept on a padded glider the landlord had left for her.

Thunder vibrated the walls. She scratched with a penny at the first ticket, brushing away the silvery particles as they accumulated into little hills. The card was a bust. No winnings. She held up the second one, contemplated it, then put it down. Had a sip of wine. Contemplated again. She’d save this one like she’d save the second bottle to give herself something to do in a day or two.

The downpour started a few minutes later between a swift, quivering flash of lightning and another clap of thunder. Rain spattered the roof as the wine softened her joints and her thoughts, nicely loosening up everything that was usually pulled so tight. Once, in her past life, her husband had almost been struck by lightning while on the golf course. Instead, the bolt chose a fat willow tree only fifty or so feet away, cracking it with blinding, surprising ease. I felt the shock in the air, he told her that night as he buttoned his pajama shirt. I almost died today.

Sometimes she imagined he had died out on the eighth hole, burned up from inside, crisp at all his soft edges like grilled bread. The windfall from his electrocution would’ve changed her life. The life insurance money, selling the house, losing him in a way that let her grieve instead of resent. Maybe she would’ve met someone else before her urge to be alone consumed her as it had. A nice divorcée or widower, someone who cooked for a change. Instead, he’d lived, she thought to herself as she poured the remainder of the wine into her glass and leaned back in the glider.

The rain curtained her view of the bay. Despite the hiss of the wind and the beating rain and intermittent thunder, she heard a distinct sloshing. She went to the door and opened it, briefly pushed by a gust. She squinted into her front yard, a short stretch of grass that gave way to beach grass and rocks and then dropped a couple of feet onto the sand. But where the rocks should’ve been, she saw the ocean splashing. It’s because of high tide and the weather and the moon probably, too, she told herself as she shut the door, hoping the water would stay out there.

The woman went back to the glider and her wine. The splashing outside continued, the sound of the bay intruding on her lawn. The landlord had told her that when he purchased the house, he had two options: tear the cottage down and build a new structure farther back on the property or leave the existing one where it had always stood. There was no option of rebuilding in the same spot, just feet from the shoreline because the ocean levels had risen and crept closer to the property since the house had been built nearly seven decades earlier. It was no longer safe to be that close to the edge of the bay.

The woman felt full of nervous energy and finally pulled on her rain boots and went outside to investigate. She trudged across the yard and stopped when her feet were submerged, much closer to the house than she expected.

“Ah. Shit,” she said as rain pelted her arms, legs, and face. The ground was spongy and sucked at the soles of her boots as she pulled away and backed toward the door. She pulled the bulkhead open and peered down into the dark cellar. Lightning gave her a split second to see the water pooling along the basement floor. “Shit,” she said again.

Back inside, she toweled off while she called the landlord on her cell. It rang and rang and then his voicemail picked up. She left a brief message. “Hi. Sorry to bother you. Call me when you get this, please. I don’t think the sump pump is working.”

She went back to her wine and noticed a coal of anger burning in her chest. It was irresponsible of the landlord to not double check the pump before a storm, yet he could tend the lawn every week? He could cut back the innocuous weeds and grass, yet let the house fill with water from the bottom up? She’d float away, but at least the lawn would look nice.

She hadn’t worried about floods at the McMansion. There, they were nestled in a development between two small mountains. Sometimes trees fell outside the development when the wind gusted above thirty miles per hour, blocking roads and tearing power lines from their sockets, but there was no risk of the ocean devouring the houses. And, inside the development, there were hardly any trees to worry about. Plus, their power lines had all been buried underground. There was nothing exposed that could be wrenched out or destroyed by a falling limb, and hardly any limbs that could fall in the first place.

It’s great, her husband had said when they first went to see their lot. They were both forty-six and had decided to build. They had the money and were bored. Their divorce was still a few years away and the idea of separating didn’t yet feel urgent. So much sky. Nothing blocking the view, he’d said as he swept his arm out in front of him as if clearing away an invisible mess of vines and branches.
The view? she’d asked. Of…the sky?

You know. The trees. They get in the way sometimes. He’d said it so flippantly, with a swift wave of his hand, as if she were a fool for not understanding how problematic trees could be. Now all she could think was how relieved she was that they’d never been able to have children after they tried for years. Relief that she hadn’t brought children onto a dying planet and given them a father who found trees inconvenient. She’d felt stupid when he’d said this, his words a direct reflection of what she’d been willing to live with for so long. She couldn’t fault herself too much now, though. She knew there was an almost infinite amount of ignorance a person could overlook in the name of love, in the hope of simply having their dreams fulfilled.

Her cell phone rang inside on the kitchen counter.

“How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?” the landlord asked, an apparent joke since he lived only a few minutes away.

“Stormy. There’s water in the cellar. And the front yard is pretty flooded.”

The landlord said hmmm and then, “Well, the pump should take care of the basement at least.”

“It’s not running,” the woman said. “I don’t hear it, anyway. Have you checked it recently?”

“Not running? Is your power out?”

She’d been sitting in the dark since the storm started and only realized as he asked this and she reached over to flick on the lamp that yes, her power had gone out at some point and she hadn’t even noticed.

“How long ago did you lose it?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I think the last time I turned anything on was a few hours ago when I warmed up some food.”

“Are you ok there by yourself?”

She paused. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might not be ok.

“If not, you can always stay with us for the night,” he said so plainly that the woman thought he must’ve forgotten who he was speaking with, confusing her for a sister or niece or granddaughter. He was seventy-six, and while still very active, clearly his mind was fading.

When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Did we get disconnected?”

“No, I’m here. I couldn’t impose on you like that. It’s kind of you to offer, though. I’m sure I’ll be fine here by myself.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. We have a guest room, anyhow. Lorna and Tyler would love your company.”

Lorna, the wife she’d never met but heard about in passing. Tyler, the grandson who waved from the yard, his navy blue university hat pulled low as he helped his grandfather. Their quaint little family. The woman had imagined a family of her own once, many years earlier when she still had a viable womb and a partner. They’d both imagined it, she and her husband, but he had been the driving force behind trying to make it real.

We’re getting older and our time is running out, he said when they both neared forty. Their birthdays were a month apart. If we’re doing this, we need to make a real attempt at it now or we’ll always wonder. She didn’t disagree. In fact, at the time, his desire for a baby had felt romantic. So, she’d quit her job in publishing to reduce stress, a tactic their doctor said would make the in-vitro more likely to work. The woman stopped waking to an alarm clock, instead letting her body rest as much as it needed and find its natural circadian rhythms. She went to yoga and drank grassy green juice every morning and turmeric tea every evening. Her acupuncturist gave her bitter Chinese herbs to drink, which she had to swallow while pinching her nose. She took her basal body temperature every morning upon waking before getting out of bed and marked it in a little notebook. She tracked her cycle with the precision of a scientist tracking an incoming asteroid. She scheduled weekly massages, cut gluten and dairy and refined sugar from her diet, went to reiki appointments to clear her chakras.

In the end, her effort failed. The ultrasounds always showed static where a heartbeat should’ve been, a vacant cavern inside her abdomen.

“I’ll be fine here,” she said again into the phone, realizing with a smack of grief that she didn’t want to be around a family tonight if for no other reason than she felt too fragile from the wine, too aware of her mortality all of a sudden. “I’ll call you if things get worse.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll call up the electric company, though. Is there a tree down? Do the neighbors have power?”

The woman peered out the window.

“The whole street is dark. Have you ever seen the tide come up into the yard before? It’s splashing near the lounge chair right now.”

“Really? That’s odd. And to think some people say climate change isn’t real.”

The water rose in baby waves, tiny ocean efforts, and splashed the grass.

“So, is that a no?” she asked.

“I’ve never seen it higher than the rocks myself. That house has seen bigger hurricanes than this little storm, though. Listen, I’ll come by first thing tomorrow morning, but you call me back if it gets worse over there.”

She thanked him and hung up. She could handle some weather and the bay trouncing her front yard, the groundwater filling up her rental from below. No problem. She’d faced worse.

The woman opened the second bottle of wine because the rain had intensified and now that she realized she couldn’t turn on the lights if she wanted to, she had to somehow soften the urge to light the whole place up. The second bottle tasted better than the first, sweeter and more like raspberry and mesquite, a dry warmth washing against the soft insides of her cheeks. With the flashlight built into her cellphone, she illuminated the second lottery ticket and scratched it clean to reveal it was a $5 winner.

“Ha,” she said as she held it up and scanned it again. There was at least some luck to be had tonight.

She saw the battery on her phone was low, only twelve percent charged, and turned it off to preserve what would likely be only one phone call’s worth of juice. If she needed to be rescued, she wanted to at least be able to ask for help. She set the phone down and wandered through the house for a while, rearranging her desk and straightening the hand towel in the bathroom. She was bored of her own company, tipsy, annoyed, restless.

Before, when she hadn’t stopped working yet, she almost never felt boredom. Her mind ran like a wind turbine, whirring constantly, always generating. And even after she left her job to try for the baby, she kept so busy with relaxation that she never had a spare second to feel so blank. She should be writing now that she had all the free time the world could offer, maybe finish her last book and try to get it published through one of her old work connections, but instead she floated in the kayak and rocked in the glider and let perfectly good days slip away, drops from a leaky faucet, gone gone gone.

She knew she was being wasteful, yet a friend, an old colleague, had strongly suggested the woman have grace with herself while she got back on her feet. Cut yourself some slack. You don’t have to figure it all out right away, the old friend had said. But, oddly enough, the friend hadn’t called the woman back in months. As with all the others, the woman assumed that the friend had grown tired of her gloom. She suspected this because another friend, a perpetually upbeat woman from Zumba, had practically told her so. Don’t let your circumstances define you, was what she said in the locker room as they toweled their damp skin and pulled their day clothes back on. You’re going to meet a great man and find a super job and everything will be good again before you know it. Try not to be so down about it all so much. It’s a little… depressing to be around. No offense.

The woman rocked in the glider and kept her eyes on the front lawn. The tide was predictable enough, but she wondered what she’d do if it decided not to recede this time. Climb onto the roof or up into the nearby trees? Sometimes local libraries opened as shelters during power outages. “Warming” and “cooling” centers, they called it, depending on the season. People huddled in Fiction or Reference while they waited for the conveniences of modern life to be restored to their homes. Would they call it a “drying” station if the whole neighborhood went under water, as the horseshoe crabs and slick green clumps of seaweed floated past mailboxes and garbage bins? Could the woman even get to the library if her car was waterlogged and she was perched up in the treetops like some featherless, prehistoric creature?

Whenever anxiety and what-ifs started to make it difficult to breathe, she would tell herself this was all a learning experience. Eventually, her old friends would find themselves downtrodden and lost, too. Maybe they’d recall their old friend, the one whose divorce ground her down to almost nothing, and they’d call with an apology for their absence and a plea for help. The woman sometimes practiced what she’d say. Have you tried manifesting a better life? Maybe you should try yoga or meditation. Tell the universe what you want. Honestly, it’s all about your mindset. Have grace. You’re allowed to cry. But not too much, just in case it confuses or upsets the people around you.

No, she’d never say that. She would use her ex-husband’s guilt money to fly to the friend, bringing tea and comfort foods like soft cheese and dark chocolate bars and her hard-earned experience. She would position herself across the sofa from the friend, fix a peaceful look on her face and say what none of the other women around would be brave enough to say, even though they had to know it to be true.

Sometimes, honey, if you’re down for the count, all you can do is stare up at the stars and reckon with them for a while until your legs work and you can stand again.

***

The woman opened her eyes to the landlord’s face, broad and smiling, his finger tapping the window. Her mouth was dry and sour, her eyes crusty.

“It’s soupy out here,” he said as he gestured over his shoulder. “But the tide went out. Are you all right? You look a little pasty.”

“I’m fine. Excuse me,” she said, hurrying into the house and closing herself in the bathroom. She rubbed cold water on her face and over her hair to smooth the frizz around her forehead and temples. She brushed her teeth twice, the acrid taste in her mouth lingering under the mint. The hangover was worse than she expected. She felt carved out of wood.

“Did you sleep in that awful chair?” the landlord asked as she joined him outside by the bulkhead. He was looking down into the wet basement where the sump pump was now running.

“I did. Power’s back on,” she said. “I didn’t know when it went out and I didn’t realize it came back on. How funny.”

He gave her a pitying kind of expression that told her she needed a life.

“Funny,” he said. “A tree around the corner took down a wire, but they were working on it this morning. This should be dried out by later on. I’ll come back and check on it to make sure.”

“I can keep an eye on it,” she said. “I’ll let you know if it’s not dry by tonight.”

He shrugged. “Speaking of, you should come by and have some pot roast with us. Lorna’d love to cook you a meal. She likes to do that for our tenants.”

“Oh, tonight?” she asked, taken by surprise. “I’m not sure I can make it tonight. I have plans.”

“Maybe next week, then.”

“I’ll have to take a look at my schedule,” she said. Her empty, empty schedule.

“That’s ok. It’s not for everyone.”

“What, your wife’s pot roast?”

He laughed. “No. Dinner with acquaintances. Socializing. That sort of thing. Your choice, but the offer stands. Let me know how the basement’s looking, though.”

After he left, she walked around the outside of the house to check the drainpipes for clogs and to feel with the toes of her boots where the ground was the most saturated. Water had pooled at the house’s corners, softening and muddying the lawn. She went down the bulkhead stairs into the basement and watched the pump chug and suck the water out of the room. The fieldstone walls were damp, the air humid. Maybe, one day, the cottage would be overtaken by the rising ocean or swallowed by an enormous hurricane, but for now, it was just a little wet.

Back in the yard, she tipped her kayak to empty the standing water from inside the hull. It pooled around her rain boots. Then she dragged the boat down onto the beach where she launched it into low tide and walked it out until water lapped around her thighs. She climbed in and righted herself before it tipped, and then started to paddle out into the gentle waves.

Tree City

11 November 2018
Categories: Fiction

The sound brought us all off our porches and out into the street–some in rumpled work uniforms, some in pajamas, some in less. Mrs. Dawkins toddled out in a wide floral housedress, rickety chicken legs stuck into slippers, clearly past her limit for the night even though it was only 9:30.

“I saw sparks,” she said. “Coming off the power lines. Sounded like somebody dropped a bomb.”

Not really, I thought, but maybe her hearing was amplified. Maybe vodka could do that.  I’d have to test it.

“Somebody needs to call the power company before the whole neighborhood burns up!” Ms. Dawkins said.

I got to see my neighbor George’s smooth chest and shoulders–even better than I had imagined–sculpted by the streetlight, and the ratty gray USMC sweatpants he’d pulled on at the last minute, which was all great until I noticed a woman’s head peeking out of his front door. She swished her long dark hair out of her eyes just like a horse swatting a fly with its tail, but I knew other people would consider her sexy. Looked like George did.

“What the hell?” she said. “George?”

“Sounded like a car running into a pole,” I said.

“No, that wasn’t it,” Liam said. “It was more like a tear, you know, like something ripped apart.”

He lived cattycorner to me, and had been called Will until last summer when he began his dissertation on tree frogs and decided Liam sounded more intelligent because it might mean he was British. I still haven’t figured out what the Brits could know about tree frogs that a boy from South Carolina could not, but hey, he was good to me, took my recycling to the curb sometimes, so what the hell, now he’s Liam.

“Like something was unearthed,” Liam said.

The pin oak stretched across three houses. They were small bungalows. The one that got the brunt of it was a duplex, but still—three. Erin, who’s as pregnant as you can be without popping, swollen in every way, said she was sitting next to the window in her half of the duplex watching some TV reality show when a long spindly arm of top branches smashed through the window and grazed her shoulder. She had to do Lamaze breathing to keep from going into labor. The tree was still pointing its leafy fingers toward the TV in the living room. I could see it now from the street, the wall opened like a diorama.

The neighbors gathered round it like it had crashed through the stratosphere from another planet, marveling at how lucky we were to still be alive, which I had doubts about. Almost everyone was accounted for, except Lou. He was usually home, but now his house was dark. Most days he only left for work and, sometimes, not even then.

“Did somebody call him?” Erin asked.

“It’s not my job to disturb people,” Liam said. “Sylvie, you do it.”

“He’s fine,” I said. Why did he think it was my job?

“Please.” Liam was tilting his head slightly now, like a child or a dog, the universal gesture for begging.

“You people are useless,” I said, dialing Lou on my phone.

It rang five times, then his message came on. This is Lou. You know what to do. Lou was a grown man who had been in the Peace Corps, so I figured he could survive a tree falling on his house. He was some type of organizer now, but I wasn’t sure who he was trying to organize. He was the kind of guy who sunbathed naked in the backyard in full view of Mrs. Dawkins’ kitchen window. The guy was fearless. He didn’t look bad naked, either.

We walked closer to the tree and around it, into Lou’s back yard, to look at how the roots reached up and out. The tree had left a hole in the canopy. Moonlight shone in the space. The branches poked through Lou’s back door like long, arthritic fingers. Everyone else started to walk away and gather in the middle of the street. I decided to take the tree on. I climbed up onto the higher tilt of the giant trunk. It was maybe five feet around. From here the ragged roots looked a mile away. I wanted to touch the roots that had been attached to the dirt and had started it all.

“Get down, Sylvie,” George said. “The power lines are tangled in the branches.”

I had made it halfway up the trunk, guided by the moonlight and the soft glow of the streetlights in the rest of the neighborhood. I looked down toward George. Just above him black lines wove through the thousands of tiny leaves, which had only recently sprouted and were still a pale shade of green. I guess I should have thought about the power because it had flickered off in my own house for a minute or so before my microwave started blinking zeroes at me. I had climbed up pretty high, almost to where the roots were upended.  

“Jump,” George said.

I wasn’t scared; I just did what he said and landed so hard I fell back on my ass.

“You ok?” he said.

“Sure, I think so,” I said, dusting myself off.

If I had been alone, I would have cried, at least from the shock of the impact, but I wasn’t going to break down with the whole block watching.

“That’s gonna be a nasty bruise,” the girlfriend said.

I could tell from her pale skin that she bruised easy and probably burned bright red every summer.

A woman I didn’t know well—at least she never came out at night–came down the street carrying a flashlight. She didn’t need it with the moon and all the streetlights surrounding our street, but maybe she taught elementary school. They’re always prepared. She probably had a whole toolbox marked EMERGENCY KIT ready to grab when she heard the wood crack.

“Anybody seen Lou?” she said, panning the street with the flashlight. Her brow pulled together in a fan. How did she have the right to be worried? I didn’t even know her.

“Hey, Casey, nobody’s seen him yet. Sylvie called and got no answer,” George said.

How the hell did George know her? She was at least four houses down and across the street from him. She looked at me like this must be Sylvie because I know everybody else. Ok, I admit, sometimes I hole up in my room and read for a few days until I have to go to work again. After days and days of talking to people and their dogs at the pet store, cleaning up the messes, and all the bright packaging screaming at me, well, I need a break.

“I’m Sylvie, “ I said.

“We’ve met, remember? At Lou’s birthday party?”

I did not remember, not even a tiny bit.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “Casey.” She nodded.

I had lived on Elmwood for three years and either she was lying, or I was losing my mind, which could be the case, given all that’s happened.

“That is a fine specimen of a Quercus palustris,” Casey said.

“Then why did it just crash to the ground?” I said. “There wasn’t even a breeze.”

Casey stared at me. I guess she had never been challenged on tree information before. For all I knew, she was a damn tree scientist. We were just a mile away from the university.

“Everybody knows these trees have a lifespan of a hundred years. The Methodist Ladies’ Auxillary Club planted them about that long ago. They’re just done. Finito. They’re going to come down one by one.” She smiled, clearly satisfied at my ignorance. Definitely an elementary school teacher. I looked up and down the street. There was a Quercus palustris in front of every house, including mine. Our street was like a giant tree house. I was too big to climb them now, maybe if I ever worked out I could, but as a kid, I lived in a pin oak in the backyard.

“Well, show’s over,” Liam said. “Some of us have work to do. The power company will come in the morning. ”

“Come on, George, we’re missing the movie,” Horse Tail said.

“See ya,” he said.

I pretended he was talking directly to me, but the elementary teacher waved to him like it was her he wanted.

The street emptied out. I sat on my porch steps and watched everyone say goodbye, then disappear behind dark doors.

An owl sometimes came and sat on the wire that linked my house to the others. It must be a good spot to hunt from. I sat on the stone steps of my walk and waited for him, but he never came. The wind finally started to blow, but it was a soft breeze and did not explain anything. The lights went out in George’s house. I thought of knocking on Liam’s door, but his back window was the only one lit up, which meant he was probably up writing about tree frogs.

I sat there for an hour or so. There was so much to do inside, all the cleaning my mom used to do every Saturday, and so much I didn’t want to think about.  She died last year, and technically, according to the grief books, I should be over it, but I’m not. You can’t tell people that. They think grief is a temporary thing. If you tell them why you are still sad six, eight months out, they will suggest therapy, or offer to buy you a drink, or worst of all, they’ll just tell you to cheer up. Then they go call their moms.

I had always been a climber, according to my mom. At eighteen months, I climbed out of my crib and toddled across the hall to my parents’ room. She woke to me patting her cheek. I don’t remember that. It was her story. I do remember climbing the pink crepe myrtle in the front yard until Mom told me I was too big and would break it. I built a fort in the oak tree in the back. It really was a hazard, more than a quaint house, a lawsuit waiting to happen, my mom said. Nobody ever got hurt there though. It was protected by birds.

 

Outside was easier when no one was in it. I decided to check on the tree to keep it company. Up close the tree looked as big around as a baby pool. The limbs that had snapped were daggers. The roots–who ever knew how tangled those had grown in our yards, reaching across the street to each other up under our houses? The tree’s roots had rotted. It had been held up by a few weak threads, like a loose tooth. The trunk was ground to sawdust inside. On its side, the trunk came up to my shoulders. This time I was careful to step around the electrical wires. I climbed onto the trunk and sat up. From this height, with the glow of streetlights in the rest of the neighborhood surrounding this dark spot, I could see the lighted windows of my neighbors’ houses.  It was different on this side of the street. For a while, I watched George and the girlfriend watch a movie. It’s not as boring as it sounds if you look like those two. They pulled the curtains before anything got too interesting. Liam was writing at his computer at first. Then he lit something and started smoking it. That was no mystery.

A couple I didn’t know walked by with their brindle-striped pit bull. The dog trotted my way.

“Come on, Prunie,” the woman said, “get away from there.”

Prunie did as she was told. Good dog. I had a special spot in my heart for pit bulls. It wasn’t fair how everyone was afraid to touch them.

I had thought about getting a dog, but then I would have a hard time leaving it to go to work. I couldn’t stand to see anything lonely. A few cars went by, slowing at the sight of the downed tree, the smashed houses.

“Move it along. Nothing to see here!” I shouted at them.

I don’t think they could see me from the street, but they could hear me. They drove off with confused looks, as if the tree was the one who had scolded them. I lay down on the tree, staring up at the branches of its brothers and sisters.

“Psst!” the pin oak next to the fallen tree said. Even with the moonlight, it was hard to make out one leaf from another.

“Sylvie,” it said.

I sat up.

“It’s me, Lou. Come on up.”

Lou was hanging upside down by the knees like some kind of trapeze artist. As if I was going to take his hands. He could never pull me up like that.

“You’re crazy,” I said. “How’d you get up there?”

“Climbed.” He righted himself and climbed to sit on the limb.

“I figured that much, but when?”

“Right before the big one fell. Maybe I had something to do with it?”

“That tree was a goner. All the roots were rotten. It was held up by mush. You didn’t do anything. I’m not sure that one is any better.”

“It’s fine. Come up. I’ve got a little perch up here. You can see everything for a couple of blocks.”

“Ok, how?”

“From my back deck, you can get on my roof. From there, you can reach a low branch and scoot over until you get to here.” Here was a wide bowl where the big branches came together.

“Everybody’s worried about you,” I said.

“But you’re the only one who called. Let them wonder. I’ll have to come down when the tree service gets here.”  

The deck was still standing strong. I climbed up, as directed. Lou coached me a little to the right, a few inches to left, then up. The moonlight was enough to guide me. I was able to make my way, though not exactly gracefully, to Lou’s little nest in the tree.

“Welcome,” he said.

“Do you sleep up here?”

“Sure, sometimes. I like to be up here where I can watch the owl.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“All the time. Hasn’t everybody?”

“Oh, I thought it was just me.”

“Up here, you can see everything he does. I think he’s used to me.”  

From the nest, the ground looked far away. To either side, I could look out and follow jagged rooflines and tree limbs to the main road. Some restless smokers sat out on porches, the scent of their cigarettes made it all the way to our perch.

“I want to stay here,” I said.

“Sure, until the tree people come,” Lou said. “I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

“No, I mean forever. Up here, I’d have the place all to myself. And you could visit me.”

“You’d get sick of it after a while.”

Lou didn’t know that I would never get sick of it, that I really did plan to stay. If not in his tree, then in one on our street. Who would notice?  

“Do you think George loves that girl?” I said.

“Why do you care?”

“I just do.”

“George is an asshole,” Lou said.

He leaned in and kissed me. I held onto a branch for balance. This wasn’t a bad idea, but I hadn’t thought of it much, not like I’d thought of George.

“You won’t fall,” he said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t been up this high in twenty years, maybe since I was ten. I was shaky.

“I might. You can’t know that for sure.”

“What can you know, Sylvie?”

I let go of the branch and scooted deeper into his nest.

We drifted off waiting for the owl. He never showed. I guess he was hunting on some other street. I felt safe in the sturdy boughs, but what if Casey was right and all these trees came crashing down at once?

I woke to the morning birds–not just their song, but the swish and ruffle of a mockingbird lighting on a branch above the nest. Lou was gone. I heard someone that sounded like him down below, talking to someone about firewood. The morning dog walkers were already making their rounds. Quietly as I could, I climbed out on a big branch that crossed the branch of a big maple that led to the adjoining backyard and beyond. I couldn’t help but scare off the mockingbird, but it wouldn’t tell anyone where I was.

I made it up and down through a couple of back yards into a tree at the intersection of Elmwood and Green Street. I figured no one would find me there. I needed food and a bathroom, my knees and arms were scraped like a kid’s, but I could wait a little longer. I didn’t want to go home, even if the neighbors worried. I wanted to know how long it would take them to find me. Would they come up to me, or would I have to come down?

Even from here, in the top of another huge pin oak, I could hear the chainsaws starting up. I plugged my ears with my fingers and tried to sing to myself, but I didn’t know all the words to anything except “Happy Birthday.”

Around noon, I slipped down and squatted in someone’s yard to pee. That’s one of those human problems that proves trees are better than us–less needy. No one was home, so I tried the doors. The back door was unlocked and it opened into the kitchen. I grabbed a loaf of bread and stuffed an apple into my jacket pocket. I made it back out and into the pin oak before a single person came by. I guess the world was at work and the dogs were inside. Maybe they just couldn’t stand the sound of the chainsaw either.

By the time the sun turned orange, I already felt the night coming fast, anxious to cover everything. Nobody had missed me or had happened on me by chance. I had my answer. The wind blew steady now, but the trees held their ground. I climbed down and walked right down the middle of the street back to my house, invisible. A few stray neighbors, the ones who worked the late shift and slept in and missed everything, were gathered around the fallen tree seeing the spectacle for the first time. They trudged through the sawdust, marking their paths. They took some of the cut limbs for next winter’s fires. I looked up and saw Lou in the perch of a tree next to the fallen one, scanning the tree line for owls.

Who? Who? He called.

Me, I called back.

 

Who Sharpens the Pencils

11 November 2018
Categories: Fiction

There were two distinct reasons why Ms. Morton knew that, overnight, all the pencils in the mug on her desk had been sharpened. First, the pencils stood in the mug blades-up, the exact opposite of how she stored them. Second, she’d never been in the habit of regularly sharpening her pencils. Ms. Morton, a seventh grade algebra teacher, was the kind of person who’d wait until she’d dulled every last pencil she owned before sharpening the lot of them. Early that cold autumn morning, a Monday in October, she figured that at least half her supply, before the sharpening had occurred, had been, for her, too dull to write with.

She suspected that her colleague, Mr. Colfax, was the one behind all this. On Saturday, she’d told him over dinner, at a restaurant not far from the school where they worked, that she enjoyed few things better than solving a quadratic equation with a freshly sharpened pencil. Sometimes she even preferred a freshly sharpened pencil to a bouquet of yellow roses, her favorite flower. Saturday night had been her first date with Mr. Colfax, and now she could plainly see that, unlike her ex-husband, Richard, and the few men in rural Tompkins, Oregon with whom she’d gone out in the two years since the divorce, Mr. Colfax had actually listened to her. He’d put the pencils blades-up, she thought, so that she might not miss what he’d done.

During that morning’s first two periods, Ms. Morton felt a wondrous sense of lightness, as if she were a bright orange buoy rocking gently back and forth in the warm, shimmery waters of Mr. Colfax’s bay. It was an unprecedented feeling—the kind she wished would never, ever leave her.

At break she found him in his classroom on the far side of campus where the sciences were housed and thanked him for his thoughtfulness. But Mr. Colfax had nary a clue what she was talking about.

“You sharpened my pencils,” said Ms. Morton.

Mr. Colfax, who was wearing a rubber apron and washing beakers in the sink, spoke without looking up. “I’d like to take the credit, but it wasn’t me. Maybe,” he suggested, “it was a student.”

The bell rang, and Ms. Morton, her buoy having come untethered, drifted into the traffic of the hall.

***

No one who knew Ms. Morton well would describe her as easily distracted. Richard, in fact, during their first year of marriage—back when they were living in Lincoln City and Ms. Morton was pursuing her teaching credential—would often praise his wife’s ability to concentrate. Her ability to sit at the kitchen table before bed, after a long shift spent serving cocktails at the casino where Richard worked security, and complete the required reading for her morning classes.

And yet Ms. Morton knew at the start of third period that she’d never get through another lesson on integers if she didn’t first ask her students whether any of them had sharpened her pencils. When she did, nineteen blank faces stared back at her. She asked her fourth period students the same question and got the same response.

In the teachers’ lounge during lunch, Ms. Morton was joined by Ms. Hobart, a gym teacher and fellow divorcée.

“This might sound bizarre,” Ms. Hobart began, “but were all the pencils on your desk sharpened this morning?”

Ms. Morton’s eyes flicked up from the pool of ranch dressing into which she’d just dipped a greasy drumstick. “Yes, why?”

“Mine were, too,” said Ms. Hobart. “And so were Mrs. Sherman’s.”

Ms. Morton’s grip loosened, and the drumstick, like a meaty pendulum, swung down from her fingers. “How do you know?” she said.

“How do I know what?”

“That your pencils were sharpened.”

Ms. Hobart bit into a meatloaf sandwich, and in the midst of chewing, said, “All we’ve ever had are dull pencils.” She brushed some dirt off the pant leg of her tracksuit, then took another bite. “I wonder what could be going on.”

***

At the end of the twentieth century, Tompkins was a coastal town of about three thousand residents in the heart of what was once considered Moltnuk land. Ms. Wallace, a social studies teacher, was the only one on faculty of indigenous heritage. She was also the only one who didn’t keep any pencils in her classroom. She had little use for them, and quite frankly, found no good reason for their existence. The pencil, in her estimation, was an inferior writing instrument; its hexagonal shaft always felt strange in her hand; the scratchy sound lead makes when it travels across paper annoyed her. Ms. Wallace wrote only in ballpoint pen and preferred her students, on their exams and assignments, do the same.

That day, Ms. Wallace ate her lunch—a Thermos full of split pea soup and a peanut butter and jelly on rye—alone at her desk. Halfway through her meal, she received a call from Ms. Hendricks, the principal’s secretary. A bouquet of purple roses with her name on them had just arrived at the front office.

“They’re from your daughter in Tillamook,” said Ms. Hendricks, when Ms. Wallace came to pick them up.

“I wasn’t expecting flowers,” said Ms. Wallace. She inspected the accompanying card, which had been tucked into the prongs of a long plastic stem, and added, “It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death,” as if it were news to her.

“Yes,” said Ms. Hendricks. “I mean—I’m sorry. I’m not usually one to snoop.” Her nervous, slender hands busied themselves with rearranging the folders on her desk. “How long has it been, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“How long has what been, dear?”

“Since your mom’s passing.”

Ms. Wallace buried her nose in one of the roses and, eyes closed, inhaled. “They say before the Fall of Man the rose had no thorns.”

Ms. Hendricks cocked her head and furrowed her brows as though slightly alarmed by the change of subject. “Is that so?”

“Imagine,” said Ms. Wallace, dreamily. “A thornless rose.” She looked off for a moment, then studied the secretary’s face. “You’re new to the area, aren’t you, Ms. Hamilton? Phoenix, someone said?”

“It’s Hendricks, actually,” said the secretary, though Ms. Wallace made no attempt at an apology. “And I’m originally from Tucson.”

“And what brought you so far north to our little hamlet?”

Ms. Hendricks’ eyes gleamed and passed over the roses before settling elsewhere. “Love, at first. But now that’s over and done with, and I suppose I’m staying for the weather.”

“Ah,” said Ms. Wallace. The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch; outside the window, in the rain-soaked quad, the students began dispersing, tramping back to their classrooms. “And has anyone explained the woods to you?”

“I didn’t know they required explanation.”

Ms. Wallace nodded knowingly. “Just be cautious, young lady. It may look like the Garden of Eden, but snakes are the least of your troubles out there.”

Ms. Wallace left with her bouquet then, and Ms. Hendricks, who’d never been very superstitious, much less outdoorsy, and who, like others she knew, suspected that Ms. Wallace was going a bit senile, paid the old woman’s warning no mind.

***

Ms. Morton had found Ms. Hobart’s news peculiar and decided not to mention anything about the pencils to her fifth and sixth period classes.

As was customary, she’d used the same pencil all day. To take notes, to take attendance. To doodle. The blade consequently had lost a good measure of its sharpness. It was shorter now, and rounded, like a shiny black doll’s button. Before Ms. Morton went home, she put this pencil back in the mug, eraser-up, as a test, to see what if anything would happen.

The following morning, she found the pencil as she’d left it, seemingly untouched. But when she pulled it out of the mug, the blade was no longer dull but as sharp as the others.

The results of her test made Ms. Morton feel a little bothered. A little troubled. She appreciated having her pencils sharpened, and knew now that her pencils weren’t the only ones being attended to. But the question of the sharpener’s identity kept her from taking as much pleasure in the favor as she would’ve liked.

She had to assure herself that it wasn’t Richard.

Her suspicion stemmed from her ex-husband’s fondness, when he was still loving and sober and hadn’t yet committed a state crime, for occasionally playing tricks on her. To make her think she was going insane. Case in point: the week he kept surreptitiously transferring her toothbrush from the medicine cabinet to the silverware drawer, while insisting all along that perhaps she’d become a sleepwalker and was moving her things around in the night. Ms. Morton didn’t like feeling stupid, or duped, and was infuriated with Richard once she figured him out. The pencils could’ve been his handiwork; but for Richard to have been the culprit, she rationalized—for him to have visited Coos County within the last forty-eight hours—he would’ve had to somehow break out of the correctional facility clear up in Pendleton, where he was now doing time for assault.

Common sense told Ms. Morton this was highly improbable. Basically impossible. There was no need to alert the authorities; Richard wasn’t that resourceful. But if it wasn’t him, or Mr. Colfax, then who?

She asked her first and second period students if they knew anything about the pencils. But like the boys and girls in her third and fourth periods the day before, no one spoke up.

She was tempted at break to go and speak with Principal Fairbanks to make him aware of what was happening. Then she remembered he was in Seattle for a conference that week and wouldn’t return until the following Tuesday.

Mr. Colfax peeked his head into her room just before the start of third period and asked if anyone had come forward.

“Not yet,” was Ms. Morton’s reply. “Unless you have something to confess.”

But again, Mr. Colfax told her no, that it wasn’t him.

Later the two of them ate lunch together in the teachers’ lounge and learned that, overnight, the mystery of the pencils had thickened. The classrooms of both English teachers had been visited. As with Ms. Morton’s test pencil, the ones Ms. Hobart and Mrs. Sherman had used the day before had been sharpened again.

Ms. Morton asked Mr. Colfax a third time, over the phone that evening, while flipping idly through a clothing catalog, if he was the one sharpening her pencils. If he was sharpening the other teachers’ pencils to throw her off the scent.

“How come you think it’s me,” he asked, “and not someone else?”

Ms. Morton detected a playfulness in his tone and responded in kind. “Because of what I said on our date.”

“What was that? You’ll have to remind me.”

“The remark I made about freshly sharpened pencils.”

“I don’t remember that remark.” His tone had become serious.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m not. I really don’t remember.”

“You really don’t remember what I said only a few days ago?”

Mr. Colfax chuckled. “Guess not.”

Along the tracks that bifurcated Ms. Morton’s neighborhood, a train clattered. She stared at the cover of her catalog and saw nothing but colors, bleary and formless. Blues, greens. Grays. It was as though a veil of fog had all of a sudden descended upon her buoy, just dense enough to obscure her view of land.

“I thought you were listening to me, Chuck,” she said. She thought it had meant something when he linked his fingers with hers as they strolled along the beach. When he serenaded her with that sweet impromptu song about her freckled face. When he knelt to dust the sand off her bare feet before driving her home.

A woman’s laughter pierced the quiet on the other end of the line.

“Someone there with you?”

“Television,” coughed Mr. Colfax, almost cutting her off. “Got a deaf guy next door.”

“Awfully loud.”

“Tell me about it.” He coughed again, more sharply this time, and added, “I’m sorry, Roni, for not paying more attention. Really.”

“It’s okay,” said Ms. Morton. “You’re fine.” At least Mr. Colfax had apologized and was sincere about it. After Richard had lost his job and started drinking, remorse, genuine or otherwise, had been hard to come by.

Mr. Colfax changed the subject by asking Ms. Morton if she might like to catch a movie in Coos Bay that weekend. “Something funny, light” was his preference. “And you left your scarf in my car the other night,” he said. “Remind me to return it to you.”

She said all right to it all, because it did sound all right, and went into the kitchen to fix herself a warm glass of sherry.

A few minutes of small talk later, they bid one another goodnight.

***

Word spread across campus and the number affected grew. By Friday morning it seemed that, between faculty and staff, there wasn’t a dull pencil to be found anywhere.

“I think we can all agree it’s a harmless gesture,” said the school counselor in the teachers’ lounge that afternoon at lunch. “And maybe I’m alone in this, but I’m actually kind of enjoying the nightly pencil sharpening.”

The art teacher nodded. “It saves my students time not having to sharpen the colored pencils.”

“Having my pencils sharpened for me,” said the school nurse, “has been good for my arthritis.”

Ms. Hamlin, the home economics teacher, agreed that it was harmless. “But if it’s a student,” she added, “or more than one student, how are they getting into our classrooms? Only teachers and custodians have keys.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Humphrey, one of the English teachers affected on Tuesday. “We lock our doors at the end of the day. At night, the janitors unlock our doors, then lock back up after they clean. We open our classrooms ourselves in the morning. And I don’t know about any of you,” he added, wagging a limp mozzarella stick at no one, “but right now my door is locked. I don’t leave my classroom open when I’m not there. So when would any student get in?”

“I asked my kids yesterday,” said Ms. Hamlin, “if any of them were responsible.” She took a sip of her Coke. “They looked at me like I was speaking Mandarin Chinese.”

“Tomorrow’s Halloween,” noted Ms. Hobart. “Could be an evil spirit.”

“More like a greedy janitor,” asserted Mr. Humphrey. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Those boys want a wage increase. I’m sure of it.”

The art teacher and a few others concurred that, while there was no immediate cause for concern, it might be wise to speak to the custodians. “But not until Mr. Fairbanks returns from his conference,” said Ms. Hendricks.

Mr. Humphrey grumbled. “To hell with Fairbanks. We don’t need his blessing.”

“I’m with Millie,” said the art teacher. “Best not to do anything rash while he’s away.”

Mr. Humphrey balked at their deference to authority.

Ms. Morton, who’d been listening quietly from a corner table, disagreed with Mr. Humphrey’s theory. “I don’t think it has anything to do with money,” she said, and caught the eye of Mr. Colfax, who’d informed her on Thursday that his pencils had been sharpened Wednesday night. Although Mr. Colfax denied that he was the sharpener, Ms. Morton still held out a smidgen of hope that he was bluffing. Mr. Colfax was a clever man, too clever to be a teacher, really, the kind of man, she thought, capable of carrying out an elaborate scheme. He’d mentioned during their date that in college he’d taken acting lessons. He knew how to pretend, how to play a part. “Sometimes,” said Ms. Morton, “people do things just to be nice. To flirt, even.”

“Naturally,” said Mr. Colfax, maintaining eye contact with her. “But other times,” he added, darkly, addressing the group, “people do things to threaten those around them.”

“Here, here,” said Mr. Humphrey. “I like to know who’s touching my things, as a matter of principle.” With that, he stood up, dumped his food scraps into the trash, and vowed, more to himself than to his colleagues, to crack the case.

***

Around eight o’clock that evening, after having dinner with his wife at home, Mr. Humphrey returned to the school in the midst of a downpour and tracked down the lead custodian, an older man by the name of Polk. He and a tattooed fellow in his early twenties were busy cleaning Ms. Morton’s room.

“First I heard of it,” said Polk, when Mr. Humphrey asked him if he or his crewmembers knew anything about the pencils. “Maybe Georgie knows something.” He turned to the tattooed man, who was busy scrubbing a blackboard clean on the opposite side of the room. “You hearing all this, son?”

Georgie paused his scrubbing and made a funny face at them. Eyes crossed, tongue lolling. Then he got back to work.

“He’s screwing with you,” said Polk, interpreting. “But I can tell you, we don’t touch the teachers’ desks.”

“What about your other men?” asked Mr. Humphrey. “There are more of you, aren’t there?”

“Just Andy.” Polk glanced in the direction of Ms. Wallace’s classroom across the hall, where a man in overalls was mopping the linoleum. “Cousins, he and Georgie. I don’t know what Andy knows. He doesn’t talk very much. But I assure you, we leave those desks alone. You have my word on that.”

Polk excused himself then to the restroom. While he was away, Mr. Humphrey went into the hall and watched Andy go about his business. He’d put the mop down and was vacuuming now. When he came to Ms. Wallace’s desk, he pulled out the chair so he could clean underneath. Then he returned the chair to its place.

It was apparent to Mr. Humphrey that the janitors carried out their duties well, but he couldn’t help but wonder, even so, if there wasn’t something a tad fishy about them. Polk’s abrupt retreat to the john. The way the cousins kept their heads down, as if they were hiding something. It was all a bit weird.

But perhaps he was barking up the wrong tree. Sniffing out a story where there was none. He’d been guilty of that in the past. Like the time he suspected his wife of cheating on him with the man at the hardware store, on account of the number of calls she’d made to Tom as itemized on that month’s phone bill, when in reality she’d been working with him on a design for Mr. Humphrey’s surprise fiftieth birthday present: a custom-built shed for the backyard.

He decided to give the janitors the benefit of the doubt. Then something occurred to him.

“Mr. Polk,” said Mr. Humphrey when the custodian returned. “Do you and your men happen to empty the wall-mounted pencil sharpeners?”

Polk rubbed the side of his nose with his thumb and, after a moment, shook his head. “I know I don’t. These boys might take it upon themselves, but we aren’t contractually obligated, as they say, to fulfill that task, no, sir.”

“Answer me this,” said Mr. Humphrey. “Have you seen more pencil shavings than usual in the trash cans lately? Over the last week, say?”

Polk grabbed a wet rag out of his cart and stamped back into the room as if Mr. Humphrey, with his questions, had loaded his pockets with bricks. In a slightly raised voice he said, “Don’t know for sure,” and the rag dropped with a splat onto Ms. Morton’s back counter. “Thing is, I don’t look much at what’s in the trash. I just take it out.”

Mr. Humphrey considered this and nodded. “Right.”

Polk flashed a silver-toothed smirk and went on at the same volume. “Three of us work hard around here, Mr. Humphrey. We don’t cut corners, no, sir.” In wiping down the counter, his circular strokes seemed needlessly vigorous, as if only to prove his point.

Mr. Humphrey, afraid he’d worn out his welcome with the janitor and perhaps also offended him, said, “Of course not.”

“We like to move fast and get home early,” said Polk.

“Understood.”

“So if there’s nothing else you need to know.”

“No,” said Mr. Humphrey. “I’ve troubled you enough. That’ll be all.”

“Fine, then.”

“Just let me inspect the sharpener in here, if that’s all right.”

Polk shot a puff of air through his nostrils and said, “Do what you got to do,” before tossing the rag back onto his cart.

Mr. Humphrey made his way to the front of the classroom where Georgie was still working and found the sharpener there empty of shavings. Clean as a whistle, in fact, as if fresh off the assembly line.

Interesting, thought Mr. Humphrey. Most interesting.

With Polk’s permission, he shadowed the crew from classroom to classroom until their job was done, almost two hours later. He inspected every sharpener he could find and discovered not a shred of wood in any of them.

***

On Sunday morning, Ms. Morton went for a jog in the woods behind her house. Like Ms. Hendricks, she’d been warned by Ms. Wallace to avoid the woods, even in broad daylight. But Ms. Wallace’s superstitions didn’t scare her. Ms. Morton had grown up tromping about the mossy outskirts of Astoria, and the woods in Tompkins were too beautiful, too inviting, to keep away from.

Amongst the pines she heard nothing but her own footfalls and the calls of sparrows and buntings. It felt good to be outside, surrounded by life. To take in some rare November sun.

To her chagrin, Mr. Colfax had stood her up Halloween night. He’d promised to pick her up at six-thirty to make the seven o’clock showing, and she’d waited, like a dog for its master, by the door. Fifteen minutes passed, and she called his house, but no answer. After another ten minutes, she called again but to no avail. Then the doorbell rang, but it was only the first group of trick-or-treaters, and Ms. Morton figured that perhaps she’d misremembered things and Mr. Colfax was waiting for her outside the theater. But when she got there, he was nowhere to be found. She asked the guy at the ticket counter, who made a rather convincing Dracula, if he’d seen a tall, fortyish blonde man with graying sideburns. The guy said maybe, he wasn’t sure, in a bad Romanian accent. Undaunted, Ms. Morton bought her ticket and went inside, but the only other person there was an old woman in a puffy coat. She knew then what had happened, but decided to stay and watch the movie since she’d come all that way.

Afterward, she drove by Mr. Colfax’s condo. The place was dark and his garage had no windows, so there was no telling whether his car was inside. She rang his doorbell because she knew he didn’t go to bed that early, but there was no answer, even after a second ring, a third. She tried the door—at that point, why not?—but found it locked.

That night she’d gone to bed feeling less like a buoy and more like a waterlogged castaway, washed up on a vast, desolate sandbar. When she awoke, she thought a jog might help her determine how to proceed with Mr. Colfax. It had worked for her, anyway, on the day she decided to leave Richard.

Before he could play another juvenile trick on her.

Before he could take another drink. Another swipe.

A jog would give her thoughts space to roam, detangle, and align, so that a plan might emerge. So that a solution might be found. But like her breath in the cold, clarity would materialize before her and then just as quickly disappear.

Half an hour into her jog, the sky began to cloud over. She stopped at a meadow where on several occasions she’d been lucky enough to espy a grazing deer. Where a student of hers had once found a spearhead and, after digging deeply enough, a shard of pottery.

It hadn’t been long since she’d last visited this place, and yet the landscape had visibly changed.

A rosebush, mature in stature, stood atop a far knoll. It was the only plant in the meadow taller than a dandelion and the only plant of its kind in the woods; and so its presence there, for Ms. Morton, was rather shocking. When she climbed the knoll, she found that the bush was taller than she was and about as wide as the sedan in her driveway.

Goodness, she thought. Nothing except bamboo could have grown so much in so short a time.

Someone had planted the bush. Otherwise it didn’t make sense.

And whoever had planted it, coincidentally, seemed to have done so just for her. The bush’s blooms were bright yellow, like the new traffic signs she’d seen along the highway, and as massive as heads of cauliflower. Their plumpness seemed to defy gravity, to defy Nature itself.

But the blooms were less surprising than the stems that supported them. Unlike any rosebush Ms. Morton had ever seen, the stems sported no thorns. Not a single one.

She considered taking one of the flowers home with her to put in water, but decided they were all too magnificent to pluck. She’d have to settle for the satisfaction that came from seeing the blooms up close before the deer could munch them out of existence.

***

Ms. Morton returned home just as it was beginning to drizzle.

She hung her jacket on the hall tree and, in the kitchen, found the number “01” on her answering machine.

Mr. Colfax’s voice crackled through the speaker, and her heartbeat quickened.

He sounded tired, a little congested. Coming down with something, perhaps. His hope for her to have picked up when he rang made Ms. Morton regret the jog.

Mr. Colfax apologized for the movies, how rude of him it was not to call. His mother had raised him better than that.

“But I need to be honest with you, Roni,” he said, and then came the news no woman in Ms. Morton’s position would ever hope to hear.

He explained himself as tenderly as he could. How he’d dated other teachers in the past. How when those relationships ended, things at school became complicated. He said he never should have strayed from the promise he’d made to himself not to go down that old path again. He didn’t like causing anyone pain. “I hope we can remain friends” was how he’d wrapped up.

Just before his message ended, Ms. Morton heard that same woman’s laughter from before in the background. Only it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the television.

Ms. Morton thought again of Mr. Colfax’s hand in hers, of his song and his gentlemanly gesture after walking the beach. She wondered now what it had all been for; whether he’d dusted off her feet simply to keep sand out of his car; whether she was only a stopgap while the laughing woman made up her mind about him. It all left Ms. Morton feeling as if she’d been used.

But she wouldn’t fret. Not for long. Whoever this other woman was, it didn’t matter. And it’s not like she’d submitted herself to him. No—the only piece of her still in his possession was an orange wool scarf, which after wearing she’d deemed too itchy for her comfort.

She’d allow herself time to wallow, but not to excess. Mr. Colfax didn’t deserve a long, drawn-out wallowing. He hadn’t listened to her or shown much consideration for her feelings. He most certainly hadn’t sharpened her pencils or planted that rosebush. She could rule him out entirely. For him there’d be a short lament and then she’d be fine. She was old and wise enough now to know that she deserved a lot better. Much, much better.

She let out her ponytail and went into the den and got under a throw blanket on the sofa. Then she rolled over and cried warm, salty tears into the cushions until her throat felt coarse and dry.

***

The rain let up Monday morning. As was becoming normal, every dull pencil belonging to either faculty or staff was found sharpened.

That afternoon in the teachers’ lounge, Mr. Humphrey shared the prior week’s discovery with those around him. “Long and short of it is, the janitors are innocent. They said they didn’t know a thing about our pencils, and I believe them.”

Ms. Wallace shuddered. “Oh, dear.”

“Intriguing,” said Ms. Hendricks.

The art teacher raised a fat-knuckled index finger. “I remember hearing from my cousin once that pencil shavings are a good moth repellent.”

“Mr. Adams wears a lot of cashmere sweaters,” offered Ms. Wallace.

“Wore, you mean,” said Mrs. Sherman, the gym teacher.

“Wore?”

Mrs. Sherman cleared her throat. “Mr. Adams died three years ago, Helen.”

“Oh,” said Ms. Wallace, and some of those present beheld her with pity.

A moment passed and the art teacher added, “Pencil shavings can also be used for mulch.”

“Maybe our perpetrator is a gardener,” guessed Ms. Hendricks.

“Whatever he is,” said Mrs. Sherman, “he’s using his own sharpener. Either that or he’s using our sharpeners and then emptying them all.”

“But not just emptying, right, Dan?” said Ms. Hendricks, before crunching into a cracker. She’d woken up that morning with an upset stomach and had brought saltines to assuage it. “You said there wasn’t any residual dust in the sharpeners either.”

“Correct,” said Mr. Humphrey. “This person is wiping them clean.”

“Doesn’t want to get caught,” said the counselor.

“But why such secrecy and evasiveness?” said Ms. Hendricks. “Why would someone sharpen all these pencils and then take the shavings and not want some recognition? At least after a while?”

“That’s the mystery,” said Mr. Humphrey. “There’s no telling, at least not yet, what this person’s motivation is. We only know it’s probably not money.”

“What’s your take on it, Ms. Hamlin?” said the counselor. “You look deep in thought.”

Ms. Hamlin set her rib sandwich on the table and napkined barbeque sauce off her lips. “I think there’s more to this than sharpened pencils,” she said. “In fact, I don’t think it’s really about the pencils at all. It’s not about what the perpetrator leaves behind, valuable as a sharpened pencil is. It’s about what he takes with him. Or she with her. And I don’t buy for a second that the perpetrator is using the shavings to repel insects or grow daisies. Tom’s Hardware sells bug spray. They sell fertilizer. These things aren’t expensive, and they aren’t in short supply. And the effort involved in sharpening pencils far outweighs the market value of shavings, whatever that is. You’d have to be crazy to risk being charged with breaking and entering for something that’s basically worthless. And I’m not ruling that out, either—whoever’s doing this could be a real nut. But that’s beside the point. The point is, our pencil shavings mean something to someone that goes beyond fame and fortune. This person isn’t trying to be helpful, and they aren’t trying to be a pest, either. It’s not about us. It’s about the shavings. Otherwise, why collect the dust?”

***

Mr. Colfax had been in the room that afternoon with Humphrey and the rest, before leaving school for a doctor’s appointment on account of an excruciatingly sore throat.

He knew Ms. Hamlin was on to something, but what exactly, he wasn’t sure. The dust seemed a crucial detail; it was one thing to steal pencil shavings, quite another to wipe the sharpeners clean. It suggested more than just a covering of one’s tracks; the sharpening seemed to be less about evading capture and more about fulfilling a particular need. But what need could that be? If not fame or fortune, or to feed one’s garden, then what?

Mr. Colfax had no leads himself. Ms. Morton had suspected it was him, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. He had nothing to gain from pencil shavings, and he’d never been one to surprise women—or men, for that matter—with random acts of kindness. That just wasn’t his style. And it wasn’t his style, either, to intentionally try to irk people, the way Ms. Morton’s ex-husband had done. Mr. Colfax believed in treating people with respect; and when he failed to do so, as in the case of Ms. Morton, he always apologized.

If he had to guess—and that was all anyone could do at the moment, no matter how sure they said they were—he’d say it was the janitors, since they were the only ones at the school at night, which was the only logical time for the sharpening to take place. The janitors were the only ones, too, who had keys to all the classrooms on campus. Only Principal Fairbanks had such privileged access, and he hadn’t been in Tompkins all week. Mr. Colfax figured the janitors must be screwing with Humphrey—who, in Colfax’s experience, wasn’t a very good judge of character or a very astute observer of things.

Still, if it was the janitors and it wasn’t money they wanted, why were they sharpening the pencils? Out of the goodness of their own hearts? To stave off boredom on the job? To Mr. Colfax, it didn’t quite add up.

***

Tompkins was atypical of southern Oregon towns in that it had its fair share of transplants. For every native there were at least two for whom Tompkins represented perhaps, at one time or still to this day, an escape from urban anxieties, or a second chance at life, or a place to hide out for a while, until conditions improved. What Tompkins offered everyone, personal history notwithstanding and whether they liked it or not, was year-round rain and fog, giant coniferous trees, and a short drive or bicycle ride to the Pacific.

Charles Schuyler Colfax was Tompkins-born and bred and one of the few from his high school graduating class to have settled in town. Most of the people with whom Mr. Colfax had grown up had gone off to college and had never come back. And understandably so—unless you worked at one of the schools, or the logging facility north of town, or were independently wealthy, there wasn’t much incentive to. Never mind the fact that Tompkins had only one grocery store, one pizzeria, and one bar. That if you needed a new pair of pants, you’d have to drive to Coos Bay to buy them. But none of this disagreed with Mr. Colfax. Tompkins, he’d heard it once said, was a town just big enough for something resembling modern life to take place; and for him, that was about as good as towns got.

Very few people in Coos County at large, natives and transplants alike, knew or even cared about the Moltnuk. The tribe had all but died out; its last vestiges survived in Ms. Wallace, her daughter, and other mixed-bloods throughout the state. Ms. Wallace’s husband, also part Moltnuk but now deceased, had published some years ago a book on tribe mythology; it was sold now for a nominal fee at the front counter of Bandon Antiques.

Ms. Wallace was the only other Tompkins native besides Mr. Colfax on faculty at the middle school, and she happened to have had young Charles, early in her career, as a social studies student.

Back then, Mr. Colfax lived at the north end of Gresham Avenue, which he would come to learn from Ms. Wallace, in his eighth grade year, was far less haunted than the south. Her tradition every October was to ask all the boys and girls in class for their addresses, then rate how haunted their houses were on a scale from one to five. Ms. Wallace scored Mr. Colfax’s house a one, whereas Will Breckinridge’s Victorian several doors down earned a four. Those houses close to the train tracks and east of the cemetery with numbers that, when summed, amounted to seven or greater, were all fives. “No exceptions,” she said.

“But why?” said Tyler King, the class pariah, who lived in one of these houses. “You haven’t told us why our homes are haunted.”

Ms. Wallace simply grinned. “Ask the ghosts who inhabit them, Mr. King.”

“I live downtown by the post office,” said one girl rather meekly. “What about my house?”

“Behind the post office or on the same street as the post office?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!” said Ms. Wallace, throwing her hands up in the air. “Second Street is only one of the most haunted in town, especially near the bridge and especially when the moon is full.” Some years ago a man had been walking the bridge at night, she added, and claimed to have been pushed by an invisible force into the Coquille River below. “And the woods are the most haunted of all.”

“You’re just trying to scare us, Ms. Wallace,” said John Quayle, one of the smartest boys in school.

“Yeah,” chimed in Tyler, who sat beside him. “My dad says all this Moltnuk stuff is a bunch of baloney.”

Mr. Colfax had been zoning out prior to having his house scored and was now zoning out again, as was his tendency in Ms. Wallace’s class and all his classes besides science; anything school-related that wasn’t hands-on, that didn’t involve experimentation, Mr. Colfax found boring. But this next part of the conversation was one he had yet in adulthood to forget.

“Does your father know why they say the woods are haunted, Mr. King?” said Ms. Wallace.

“Beats me.”

“Does anyone know why the woods are haunted?”

“I bet you’re going to tell us,” said John. Others laughed.

Ms. Wallace cast a stern eye at her class, then assumed her known storytelling position: the small of her back pressed against the blackboard, her arms folded over her sternum. “There once was a spear maker who lived with his wife on the edge of the village. He was a well-liked member of his tribe, and his spears were admired for their durability. One day, while he was out in the woods, the spear maker met a rosebush and immediately noticed that it had no thorns. He mocked the bush, and said he could protect himself better than it ever could, and ripped off a whole branch of roses to wear around his neck just to prove he was right. The rosebush did nothing. But the spear maker didn’t realize what he’d done. He didn’t know what the bush was capable of.” She broke from the blackboard and crouched in between Tyler’s desk and John’s, where she concluded her tale in a hushed tone, as if speaking only to them. “That night the bush sang to the spear maker’s wife in a dream and lured her out of bed. In the morning, a villager found the woman lying beside the rosebush, choked to death by its branches.”

The two boys exchanged looks of mild distress. Mr. Colfax heard Tyler gulp.

Then Irene Garner, who lived in a somewhat haunted house (“two and a half” was Ms. Wallace’s assessment), and who was known as Snow Flame for her extremely pale skin and vividly red hair, said: “There aren’t any rosebushes in the forest, you guys. My big brother takes me out there all the time, and I’ve never seen one. And I’d know because roses are my absolute favorite.”

Ms. Wallace grinned again, slyly this time. She stood and selected a stick of purple chalk from the blackboard tray, and held it up for everyone to see. “Sometimes it’s much harder to know what does exist than what doesn’t,” she said, and cupped her hands around the chalk, then opened them back up to reveal, to seventeen astonished faces, nothing but bare palms.

***

Principal Fairbanks was an avid golfer and decided after returning home on Monday from his conference to play a twilight round by himself at the pitch-and-putt in town.

Once he got settled in his office Tuesday morning, Ms. Hendricks brought the pencil predicament to his attention. Like Ms. Morton, Fairbanks only sharpened his pencils when he absolutely had to; so upon inspecting the pencils in his desk drawer, he could tell they’d all been sharpened.

“Let’s schedule a meeting,” he concluded. “Mandatory. Gymnasium. Four o’clock.”

Ms. Hendricks distributed a memo and, at the scheduled time, faculty and staff assembled on the bleachers.

Fairbanks stood at center court in a silk blazer and with his arms akimbo and spoke in a sonorant, sure voice that, if amplified through a formidable enough speaker, could have stirred the banners hanging from the rafters. “I am here to tell you there is no need to panic,” he said. “Our students have pulled similar pranks in the past, and the best course of action, as history has proven, is simply to ignore them. This tomfoolery will come to an end if we pay it no attention. Therefore, I implore you not to discuss the pencils with your students.”

Fairbanks began to pace, and the school nurse snickered at the squishing of his sneakers on the hardwood, as if their soles were wrapped in seaweed. “As you all very well know,” the principal went on, “we’ve already lost ten-percent of our enrollment to the new charter school in North Bend. The last thing we want is to scare our students, and thus give parents yet another reason to educate their children elsewhere. I repeat: we absolutely cannot afford to lose any more students. So, let us keep the pencils problem to ourselves from this point forward. Let us be vigilant. Keep an eye out for any suspicious persons and report these persons immediately, either to me or to Ms. Hendricks.”

After he wished them all a good evening, and left, some in attendance expressed their frustration with Fairbanks’ nonchalance.

“I want answers,” said Ms. Hamlin.

“Leave it to old Fairbanks,” quipped Mr. Humphrey.

But even the dissenters knew the principal was right about protecting their enrollment and, thus, their funding. And so far the sharpened pencils had harmed no one, so everyone resolved to follow orders.

***

Before school the next morning, Ms. Morton sat at her desk, drumming one of her pencils on a stack of ungraded quizzes.

Mr. Colfax had been out sick since Monday afternoon.

It was a relief not seeing him.

Still, if she touched the tip of the pencil to the vein in her wrist and pressed down hard enough, she was sure the blade would break skin. She was sure it would draw blood.

Would there be love for her in this life? In the next, if there was one?

The existence of the thornless roses quieted her.

At the start of first period, Fairbanks came over the intercom and admitted to the students that he’d been the one responsible for the pencil sharpening. He’d asked Curtis, his disabled war vet nephew who lived with him, to go to the school late every night over the past week to sharpen faculty and staff pencils as a means of implementing a brand-new, campus-wide random acts of kindness initiative. Now that Fairbanks was back in town, he’d take over his nephew’s duties indefinitely. “I encourage each and every one of you,” he said, “to do nice things for your peers.”

After the announcement, some students jokingly applauded, much to the glee of those sitting near them. Others just shrugged. Faculty and staff, more satisfied than not with the principal’s lie, said nothing.

***

Wednesday morning marked the tenth consecutive day of the nightly sharpening. Thursday morning marked the eleventh.

That night, Principal Fairbanks watched a documentary on spy technology with Curtis and came away from the viewing with an idea.

In the morning, he called Mr. Wheeler, an old friend of his and a retired teacher who’d stayed in the area, and who used to supervise the audio-visual club when there was still money for extracurriculars.

“How can I help you, Levi?” said Mr. Wheeler.

Fairbanks explained the pencils problem and asked him a favor.

“You know I don’t own that kind of equipment,” said Mr. Wheeler. “We’re talking several hundred dollars here. Maybe more.”

“This is important,” said Fairbanks. “If you buy what we need, I’ll reimburse you in full.”

***

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Wheeler climbed into his truck and drove two hours to Eugene, where he knew a guy who sold night vision cameras. The guy, whose name was Spiro, gave Mr. Wheeler a sizable discount, so Mr. Wheeler took him out for an old fashioned at a nearby bar before gassing up and heading back home.

At the school, he placed the cameras in discreet locations so as to canvas his old classroom, which was used now by Ms. Hamlin, and for which he still had a key.

On each workstation he left a pair of dull pencils. It was almost too easy. But the night vision cameras picked up nothing. When Mr. Wheeler returned the next day to review the tapes, the pencils had all been sharpened, but nearly twenty-four hours of video showed no activity whatsoever.

Dumbfounded, Mr. Wheeler called Fairbanks, who cut short a game of chess with Curtis to come down to the school to see him.

“I can’t explain it, Levi,” said Mr. Wheeler, as he ejected one videotape from the VCR to play another. He fast-forwarded through the second tape to show how the green image remained static, unchanging. “These are top-of-the-line, military-grade cameras. They would’ve caught a gnat buzzing by.”

Fairbanks put his fingertips together, five-to-five, and bowed his head in thought. On the chessboard, as in this situation, his remaining moves were limited.

“Let’s give it one more night,” he said, and cut Mr. Wheeler a check on the spot to cover the cost of the cameras. “If nothing happens, we’ll try another approach.”

Sunday night was a failure, too, as uneventful as the one before, and so on Monday morning, Ms. Hendricks, per the principal’s request, put out another memo to faculty and staff.

***

Mr. Humphrey was the first and only person to volunteer to spend the night. He showed up at the school around nine o’clock, brewed an extra-strong pot of coffee in the teachers’ lounge, stuck a never-sharpened pencil in his breast pocket, and, flashlight in hand, began patrolling the halls.

The custodial crew was almost through making their rounds. Polk noticed Mr. Humphrey and waved.

“Carry on, good sir,” Mr. Humphrey called out, and asked if Polk or one of the cousins might turn on the lights in all the classrooms before they finished up.

During his shift, Mr. Humphrey drank enough coffee to keep some men awake all night and into the morning. But the caffeine was only potent enough to fortify him until three, when he passed out on a cafeteria table.

A couple of hours later, one of the lunch ladies who always came early to prep the day’s meal found him there with the flashlight still shining in his hand. When she roused Mr. Humphrey, he leapt in fear at the sight of her.

“It’s only me, Dan,” she said, taking a step backward.

He withdrew the pencil from his pocket and his face puckered like that of a child who’s just learned the impermanence of something he thought would last forever. “How? How?” was all he could say.

The lunch lady patted Mr. Humphrey softly on the shoulder and brought him into her kitchen. There she fixed him a fried egg and toast, neither of which he had the stomach to eat.

Fairbanks arrived around seven to find Mr. Humphrey standing by the window in his office. The principal had never before seen a man look so weary, so defeated; as fragile as one of the leaves still clinging to the sycamore outside. The whites of Mr. Humphrey’s eyes were cracked with red. His hands twitched and twitched.

Mr. Humphrey gave Fairbanks the sharpened pencil, and Fairbanks, knowing what this meant, saw him out.

***

Mr. Humphrey went home that day to rest at the urging of Ms. Hendricks, who’d subbed for him before, and who, as a one-time insomniac, sympathized with the sleep-deprived.

By now the nightly sharpening had been going on for more than two weeks.

Over the next day or so, the story of Mr. Humphrey circulated amongst faculty and staff. Reaction to the news varied.

Ms. Hamlin decided that enough was enough and in one fell swoop threw all her pencils into the trash. Then she placed an order with Ms. Hendricks for a package of mechanical pencils in addition to plenty of sticks of lead.

Ms. Hobart, who was fascinated by Mr. Humphrey’s experience, and the sharpening, in general, felt inspired to test the perpetrator’s skillfulness. On Wednesday after school let out, she hid a never-sharpened pencil under a bag of shuttlecocks in the gymnasium’s storage closet. Next she locked a pencil inside the trophy case in the administration building. Then she got down on her hands and knees in the girls’ shower stalls and duct-taped a pencil to the inside wall of a drain.

The following morning, she discovered all three pencils, sharpened, right where she’d left them.

For Ms. Wallace, these sharpened pencils in particular confirmed the veracity of a theory too spooky or too outlandish, depending on how one looked at it, to share with anybody.

At lunch, she called the district office and accepted the early retirement package the State had been imploring her to take for months. The week of Thanksgiving, she’d pack up her two-bedroom house and pet cat Rockefeller and move to Tillamook to be closer to her daughter.

When Principal Fairbanks caught wind of Ms. Wallace’s decision, he called her into his office and addressed her as a father would his misinformed child. “Helen,” he said, “you can’t leave before the end of the semester.”

“I’m afraid I must, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“But the students,” he countered. “Final exams.”

“Let someone else proctor them.”

“I’d rather you proctor them.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

Fairbanks stared at Ms. Wallace unblinkingly, and she stared right back. He hadn’t felt such puzzlement since the first time he saw her perform her disappearing chalk trick. Eventually she told him her secret (“timing and wide sleeves”); now she was hiding something else.

Dedicated educators like her didn’t just up and quit. “After nine years of friendship,” said Fairbanks, getting up from his chair to sit beside her, “I think I deserve an explanation.”

“You do.”

“So tell me.”

Ms. Wallace folded her hands in her lap and shook her head. “You’ll think I’m a senile old woman.”

“Maybe not.”

“And if you do?”

“It won’t matter. You’re already halfway out the door.”

They smiled at each other warmly and Ms. Wallace acquiesced.

Fairbanks listened to her theory and was at first amused. He thought she was only kidding him and, at one point, almost laughed. But by the time she was through, it seemed to Fairbanks that Ms. Wallace was serious, and dreadfully so. Ms. Wallace had always been endearingly one apple short of a bushel; the pencils predicament, he was sure, had robbed her of a few more.

He thanked her for her service and told her to keep in touch.

Between Ms. Wallace’s departure and Ms. Hobart’s doings, Fairbanks felt at a supreme loss. He called Mr. Wheeler, who racked his brain until it became clear to him that, at this stage, nothing, not even the impossible, could be ruled out.

There was one more test to conduct.

***

On Saturday morning, Mr. Wheeler showed up at the Fairbanks residence unannounced just as the principal, still in his robe and slippers, was about to have breakfast.

“What’s up, Joe?” said Fairbanks. But Mr. Wheeler, breathing hard, said nothing as he burst into the living room like a fugitive seeking asylum.

Hastily he began turning down the blinds. In his hand was a videotape.

“What are you doing?” said Fairbanks.

“Lock the door, Levi.”

“Is everything all right?”

“And kill the lights.”

“But there aren’t any on.”

Mr. Wheeler was red in the face. He coughed through his panting.

“What’d you do? Run here?” Fairbanks said.

“Yes.”

“You need to slow down, Joe. What’s the matter?”

But Mr. Wheeler had no answer. Coughing, he adjusted an askew metal slat so that it fell in with the others and so the outside world was completely shut out. “Is Curtis home?” he said.

“He’s asleep.”

“Where?”

“Where?”

“Where in the house.”

“Upstairs.”

“Where upstairs?”

“In his room. Where else?”

“Can he hear us?”

“How do I know what he can and can’t hear?”

Mr. Wheeler caught his breath a bit and took note of Fairbanks’ mounting frustration. “Let’s just keep our voices low,” he said. He knelt beside the entertainment system in the corner. “Now lock the door, Levi. Come on.”

“Is someone after you?”

“No. Just lock the door. Please.”

“I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Well, you’re about to understand why. The door.”

Confused, yet compliant, Fairbanks did as he was told, and Mr. Wheeler fed the tape into the VCR. He punched on the television and Fairbanks frowned. “What is this?” he said.

“It’s all right, Levi,” said Mr. Wheeler. In a softened tone, he explained the events of Friday afternoon, his return to his old room after Ms. Hamlin had left. How he’d taken two heavy cookbooks and had set them facedown, side-by-side, on a workstation. How in the space between them he’d stuck a dull pencil standing blade-up. How he’d placed a night vision camera beside the workstation and had zoomed in the lens so that the pencil blade occupied the entire frame.

Now, in Fairbanks’ living room, the green image of the blade filled the screen. Up close, the blunt tip looked like the nose of a ballistic missile prime for launch.

Mr. Wheeler gestured to the armchair and gave a nod of reassurance. “Go on.”

Tentatively, Fairbanks sat down, and Mr. Wheeler pushed play. “Keep your eyes on the screen now. Don’t look away.”

About ten seconds later, when the image hadn’t changed, Fairbanks said, “Nothing’s happening.”

“Patience,” said Mr. Wheeler. He coughed and went behind the chair and stood there, facing away from the television. “You’ll see.”

A minute went by. Then another.

“Nothing’s happening, Joe. Am I supposed to be seeing some—”

“Just wait,” said Mr. Wheeler. “And keep your voice down. Watch.”

Fairbanks, trying hard to concentrate, gripped his knees and craned his neck. “I’ve seen Italian art films more intriguing than this,” he mumbled.

Then the sharpening, or what could only be called sharpening, occurred, and Fairbanks went quiet, as if someone had unplugged his brain. All the muscles in his face slackened so that he no longer squinted his eyes and his jaw hung loose. His lower lip protruded slightly; his tongue, unlike his other muscles, wiggled across his bottom row of teeth. Involuntarily, he rose and lurched toward the television as though hypnotized, like a mummy come alive, with one trembling hand stretched out before him.

When he was inches from the screen, the tape ended and the image went black.

Mr. Wheeler crossed the carpet to the window, where he removed his glasses and rubbed them clean on his sweater. He put them back on and opened the blinds. Outside, a big page of newspaper scuttled in the street. A rabbit stood frozen in place on its haunches on the neighbor’s lawn, as though waiting for a signal.

Fairbanks, coming out of his trance, lowered his arm. He looked back at the chair, which he hadn’t known he’d left. “How many times have you watched that?” he said. “Tell me.”

Mr. Wheeler moved from the window. “Twice at school. Twice more at home.” He eased into the armchair where Fairbanks had been sitting. “Had to make sure it wasn’t the VCR.”

Fairbanks shifted his jaw to one side. For a moment, he was mute, still.

Then he tightened the belt of his robe and went to eject the tape. “I’m glad you shut the blinds, Joe,” he said.

“Material like this requires extra precaution.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“I’m sorry to have alarmed you, but I think you see now why I came in the way I did.”

“I do.”

“This is unprecedented,” Mr. Wheeler said, to further justify his behavior.

Fairbanks turned the tape over in his hands as if inspecting it for a secret code—an encryption only legible if the tape were held at the right angle, under a certain kind of light.

“So,” Mr. Wheeler said. “What are we going to do?”

Fairbanks looked up from the tape at a dark spot on the ceiling. Unrepaired water damage; something that’d been bothering him for months. In the chess game of the fall semester, the sharpener was a king too elusive to capture, a king impervious to checkmate.

But how would anyone know the king was in play, thought Fairbanks, if he didn’t appear on the board? If all evidence of him was—

At impact, Mr. Wheeler shivered in his seat, and the rabbit in the neighbor’s yard darted out of sight. The shattering of plastic on the tile and subsequent stomping of feet had come without warning and had woken Curtis, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. His one-armed body hit the carpeted floor of his room. “Calling in back-up!” he yelled.

“Stand down, private,” Fairbanks replied brightly, gathering the mess at his feet. “Television came on too loud.”

Curtis said, “Ten-four,” and Fairbanks took the tape—shell, guts, and all—to the fireplace, where he withdrew a box of matches from his robe.

***

Five minutes later, Fairbanks poured two steaming hot mugs of coffee in the kitchen and brought one out to Mr. Wheeler, who’d been watching the flames for what had felt like an hour.

“A cup of joe for Joe,” cracked the principal in an effort to lighten the mood. Mr. Wheeler accepted the mug with a half-smile—a prayer written on his face for coffee and a soft joke, however forced, to soothe their nerves.

The room stunk of chemicals, so Fairbanks opened a window.

Mr. Wheeler, in acknowledgement, said, “A little fresh air will do us good.”

Fairbanks sat down beside him on the couch and rested his own mug on his belly. A moment later, the shower blasted on upstairs. “You should go before my nephew sees you,” said Fairbanks. A log tumbled over in the fireplace, spitting embers onto the hearth. “He doesn’t know about the pencils.”

Mr. Wheeler sipped his coffee perfunctorily. “You could say the same for us.”

Fairbanks, staring straight ahead, groaned in agreement. “Guess so.”

The loose page of newspaper was caught now between the curb and the back right tire of Fairbanks’ truck. High cirrus clouds muddled the sun like a gauzy shade covering a low-wattage bulb.

“In fact,” said Fairbanks, “given what I just saw, I don’t know how much I know about anything anymore.”

“My feelings exactly,” said Mr. Wheeler.

“So much so that my coffee tastes a bit funny.”

“Mine does too.”

Fairbanks set his mug on the table. “I probably shouldn’t have destroyed that tape.”

“I disagree entirely.”

“You do?”

“It was for the best. There was no part of me that felt like stopping you.”

“I couldn’t have had that in my house,” Fairbanks asserted. “As superstitious as that might seem.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted it in my house either.”

“We would’ve had to keep it somewhere. Like in a safety deposit box.”

“If you hadn’t destroyed it, I probably would’ve buried it in the woods someplace.”

“Speaking of which,” said Fairbanks, reminded of Ms. Wallace and her reason for leaving. Was he the only one who thought she was crazy? Could he still hold that opinion of her after all this? “Helen didn’t come see you, by chance, before she left?”

“She quit, she said.”

“So you know.”

“Moving away.”

“You know why.”

Mr. Wheeler nodded solemnly.

“That old tale of wounded pride,” said Fairbanks.

“A tale of revenge is what that legend is.”

“Indeed.”

“You heard about her dream.”

“What dream?”

“So she didn’t tell you.”

“No.”

Mr. Wheeler’s gaze drifted to the floor, and he nodded again. “She was in her classroom,” he said, recalling Ms. Wallace’s words, “on a school day, only there wasn’t anybody else around. No students, no teachers. She went out into the hall, and from the other side of the library she heard a man calling out in agony. She went past the library to the quad, which had become a garden of rosebushes—rosebushes with huge blooms, bigger than she’d ever seen—and then she saw him wandering around in tears. Ms. Wallace couldn’t make out the name he was calling, but she knew, the way you know things in dreams, that the man was the spear maker, and he was searching for his beloved. And as the dream went on, the bushes got taller and they populated so that the whole quad was filled with them. Eventually the spear maker disappeared from view and the roses, Levi—no thorns.”

Hearing this, Fairbanks took a deep breath.

“What do you make of it?” said Mr. Wheeler.

The principal rubbed his hands together, but the motion failed to produce a spark—a rational explanation for what he’d heard, for what he’d seen. “That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“We’re dealing with the supernatural here. There’s no doubting that.”

“I’ve never believed in supernatural things.”

“What about now?”

Fairbanks glanced again at the dark spot overhead and sighed.

“Proof of something,” said Mr. Wheeler, “doesn’t care what you believe. Proof is—”

“You think she’s right, then.”

The upstairs shower shut off and Mr. Wheeler rose.

“Joe.”

“Yeah.”

“You think she’s right?”

The old photographer ran a hand over his stubbly cheek. Fairbanks asked his question more pointedly and took his mug from him, as if the courtesy necessitated an answer.

“That our world crosses with another?” said Mr. Wheeler. “That the ghost of the spear maker is haunting the school? That he’s put some kind of benevolent hex, as oxymoronic as that is, on everybody’s pencils to make his presence known? It’s a stretch, Levi. But the evidence. I can’t say the evidence doesn’t support it.”

“I think we need to be very careful, Joe,” said Fairbanks.

“Agreed.”

“Very cautious.”

“Yes.”

“You have to promise me.”

“I know.”

“None of this gets out.”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

“I mean it, Joe. Your family, your friends. Former students, if you’ve stayed in contact.”

“No one’ll hear of this, Levi. You have my word.”

“We take this to our graves.”

“Okay.”

“You swear?”

Mr. Wheeler, a touch exasperated, reminded him. “I gave you my word.” He headed for the door. “What more do you want?”

***

A week passed. Then a month. Fairbanks kept an eye on the quad, but no rosebushes ever sprang up.

By the end of November, everyone had learned to accept the nightly pencil sharpening, or at least tolerate it.

Some folks continued to enjoy having their pencils sharpened and hoped the sharpening, however it was happening, would never stop. They remained in the dark at Fairbanks’ discretion, and thanks to Mr. Wheeler’s silence, as to the real sharpener’s identity. The students, whose pencils had never been sharpened overnight, didn’t ask any questions, and enrollment stayed approximately the same.

Mr. Humphrey, who’d been stockpiling vacation time for years, took a few more days off. Before leaving for school one morning, Ms. Hamlin, whose yard backed up to the golf course, saw Mr. Humphrey, Fairbanks, and Polk, of all people, tee off on the first hole. They were all drinking warm beverages and, from the looks of it, having fun.

Then one morning in early December, Ms. Hobart noticed that the pencils she shared with Mrs. Sherman hadn’t been sharpened overnight. As the semester drew to a close, other teachers began noticing the same.

By finals week, it appeared the sharpening was over.

Ms. Hamlin happily switched back to traditional pencils, and the wall-mounted sharpeners got more use than they had since the spring.

This development, though, was not enough to convince Ms. Wallace to come out of retirement. She and Rockefeller sent their regards from Tillamook.

***

It wasn’t until the week after Christmas that Mr. Colfax began to feel like himself. November and December had been truly miserable; the unusually nasty bug he’d caught evolved into a case of pneumonia that laid him up the rest of the semester.

Mr. Colfax didn’t handle sickness well. He enjoyed his work too much; taking it easy was a task rather than a pardon. In his debilitated state, he followed doctor’s orders and stayed in bed, but always there was the desire, amidst hours spent reading Popular Mechanics and watching television, to once again possess the energy required to teach. He missed his students and his colleagues. Luckily, loneliness never became too much of an issue; his mother brought him hot soup and good cheer on a daily basis, and Fairbanks dropped by once a week to check on him. Fairbanks had charged Mr. Wheeler with filling in for Mr. Colfax while he was out, and Ms. Hendricks, after Mr. Wheeler left town for the holidays, had proctored final exams in his stead.

The woman whose laughter Ms. Morton had heard over the phone in October—Mr. Humphrey’s wife—broke up with Mr. Colfax shortly after he fell ill. She told him one dreary afternoon after fixing him some tea that she loved her husband dearly, despite his faults, and was tired of lying to him, and Mr. Colfax assured her it was fine; he was no stranger to the pangs of guilt, and had prepared himself early on for what he’d expected to be only a brief affair. The silver lining was that Mr. Colfax didn’t love her, had never loved her, and so the split came as no major blow. There’d be other women, inevitably, for better or for worse, sure as the fog hung thick over the sea.

The Wednesday before New Year’s Eve, Mr. Colfax went for a long walk. It was late afternoon and it had just stormed, thunder and lightning. Now the sun was out, and everything around him—the houses, the telephone wires, the cars parked on the street—wore fat beads of silvery, almost viscous rainwater.

His neighborhood was quieter than normal, as it always was this time of year. Everyone was at home with their families sipping near-expired eggnog and watching the children play with their Christmas gifts. Either that or they were out of town visiting relatives. Mr. Colfax knew from Ms. Hendricks, with whom he’d spoken during finals week, that Ms. Morton had plans to spend the holidays in Astoria and then return to Tompkins after the new year. And so he’d brought with him on his walk the scarf he hadn’t yet had the chance to return to her. He’d been feeling bad as late about the way things had ended between them, and wanted to make sure Ms. Morton got back what was rightly hers. He’d deposit the scarf in her mailbox—a tacit transfer of belongings—and they could both move on.

But when he arrived at her house about half an hour later, he saw that Ms. Morton was, in fact, home. Or at least he thought she was, at first, based on the fact that all the lights both upstairs and down were on, and he could hear, through an open window, the murmur of a television set. But the longer he stood there on the curb debating whether to abandon his plan and go to the door—hadn’t he done enough already?—the more he suspected that something was wrong. That she shouldn’t be here. Not today. Not now.

And this house, this old house east of the cemetery. Its proximity to the train tracks, the sum total of its house numbers.

Mr. Colfax felt the specter of the past sidle up to him, and the scarf fell from his grip.

In the distance, the pounding of drums. A slow, steady pounding, like a funeral march. The big, hollow sound pulled him from where he stood and down the shadowy side of Ms. Morton’s house, past her vegetable garden, and into the woods beyond.

On the highest branches of the pines, birds sang. Swallows, buntings. They raised their voices to the winter sky, a wash of salmon pink swirled with gray.

In adulthood, Mr. Colfax had dismissed Ms. Wallace’s legend. Until the drums led him to what he’d known to be a clearing, to a place where, as a boy, he’d witnessed deer grazing.

***

Earlier, in the garden that had once been a meadow, Ms. Morton lay down on her back.

She’d returned to this place a few times since discovering the rosebush in the fall. To visit the blooms; to witness other bushes cropping up. When she visited, she never saw anyone else, no one coming or going, not even deer, and the place became a secret for her, one she’d kept to herself. How she’d arrived in the garden today, she wasn’t sure. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep to a black-and-white movie at home in the warmth of her queen-sized bed.

Now yellow petals drifted through the air, as if feathers in a pillow fight, from the rows upon rows of rosebushes beating their blooms, like leafy mallets, upon the ground. The petals were so gargantuan and so numerous, they all but blotted out the sky. They landed on her and covered her body like the softest blanket she’d ever known.

There was a flash overhead and the beating of the blooms intensified. Ms. Morton smelled the imminence of rain. The wind whipped. It swept her hair over her face, lifted her dress up off her thighs. She felt that buoyancy again. That lightness. That feeling she’d wished to feel always and that had gone missing for a while but now was back for good.

Just when she thought her life was over, here was this place, this haven—it was so clear to her now as the wind blew clumps of soil onto her tongue, a mixture of dirt and wood shavings—where she’d never hurt again. The roses would never tell her she was stupid. They’d never hide things from her or make her feel worthless. They’d listen to her every word and remember exactly what she said. And the man responsible for all this, the one who’d caused such a grand commotion, practically a scandal, was kinder than Richard, cleverer than Mr. Colfax. His existence gave meaning to her own. And for him she was ready.

When the more forceful beating of the blooms sent a jolt down her spine, she knew he was coming. She knew he was close.

She could hear him crying out for her.

Her fingers dug into the cool moist earth, and on the parts of her body not covered by petals, she felt raindrops land. Any moment he’d take her; and she’d wait forever if she had to, for this man who truly loved her and who knew exactly how to say so.

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