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FROM HERE TO THERE by Gloria Yuen

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 6, 2018 by thwackApril 17, 2019

 

Illustration of pocket knife, apple, and small paper note by Gloria Yuen

­FROM HERE TO THERE
by Gloria Yuen

Barrier on, the device declares.

“When you initiate the force field,” the Head Agent instructs, “you lock yourself in an impenetrable membrane. It will keep danger out. But it will also keep you in.”

Barrier off, the device declares.

I engage Search: Force field, noun. Popular Articles. The invention of the force field (neochrome). The invention of the force field (electromagnetic). History of force field usage in Post-Contemporary warfare. [New in TECH] ‘Defense Fields’ for Civilian Homes in Final Stages of Development.

The Head Agent claps her hands. I exit Search. “Field practice with the neochrome next week. Dismissed.”

We salute in unison.

“What happens if you walk through a force field?” M-2 asks at my left. I turn to examine him. Raised eyebrows, slightly open mouth. Inquisitive. He is one of the preliminary cadets to join the M garrison and is much older than I. He was modeled after a lab specialist who died in one of the first base attacks.

“Did you not use Search?” I ask.

M-2 blinks. “I will use Search. Engage Search. Search. Searching. ‘What happens if you walk through a force field?’”

“All right, M-2, you’re coming with me,” says a female voice. I turn to examine the woman and she smiles at me—friendly—as she pats M-2 on the shoulder. Her name tag reads TS-43, Tech Specialist. Underneath it is ‘Afua’ in large letters. It is an alias. Some of the scientists still keep them. I do not understand why. A second designation is inconsequential.

TS-43 takes M-2. The rest of us march back to the East Wing to power down for the night.

◊

“Turn to your partners. Say hello,” the Head Agent instructs. Her voice intones humor. Every M Agent and U Agent turns to face their partner.

“Nice to meet you,” Agent U-16 says. A friendly smile. She extends a hand. I shake it.

“Likewise, Agent,” I reply.

“How formal,” she laughs. I tilt my head to express confusion.

Her eyebrows raise. Shock (negative)? Surprise (neutral)? They are difficult to differentiate. She is still smiling. She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

The Head Agent claps for our attention. “Each pair must use their force field device to move through the simulations. Remember what I said—you trap something out, you trap yourself in. Treat this seriously! If either one of you is compromised, both have failed. Understood?”

“Yes, Agent,” we chorus.

“Let’s ace this thing, huh?” Agent U-16 whispers. I tilt my head to express confusion.

She touches her hair. “Oh, sorry, I forgot. It means–”

“Let’s ace this thing,” I repeat. It feels strange in my mouth. “A colloquial phrase meaning, ‘Let us succeed.’”

She is surprised (positive). “Yeah. Yeah?”

“Yes.” I test the mechanism to return her smile. I think it works because she slaps me on the back. Her eyes are wide. Pleased.

Together, we ace the thing.

◊

“Let’s head to lunch,” Agent U-16 says, wiping the sweat on her neck. She smiles, as usual.

“Sounds good,” I say, smiling back. It’s a new term she has taught me. Within the past two months, it has become one of the top 10 most commonly used phrases in my Colloquial Dictionary.

I do not—or don’t—need food to function. Sitting with our partners while they eat is what the Social Specialists call ‘bonding time.’ It’s supposed to improve our teamwork. Bonding time equates to more communication, which calibrates my recognition software.

I understand my partner with 70.34% accuracy when we converse. She is distinctly difficult to read.

The lunch on her tray is the same as yesterday’s. Chicken breast. Peas and carrots. A pear. I calculate nutritional value.

“Are you looking forward to the mission?” I ask. Small talk, the specialists told us. Prompt the conversation.

She looks up from inspecting her food. “What? Looking forward?”

“Yes. Are you eager to embark on–”

“I heard you,” she says, frowning. Concerned (negative)? Displeased? She is trying to read my face. “No, not really.”

I frown as well. “Why not?”

“Because,” she frowns, deeper. But does not continue. “…It’s nothing. Don’t ask me things I can’t answer.”

I nod. “Understood.”

“No, wait, that’s not…” She pushes her tray away. She pushes back her hair. “You know, I don’t like telling you what to do. Well, I don’t know if you know, but… it’s okay for you to ask questions, is what I mean. You don’t have to stop talking when I tell you to.”

“Understood,” I say. “I do not have questions at the moment. Correction, I don’t. I don’t have questions at the moment.”

Her facial features relax. “All right then.”

I notice a produce sticker stuck on the pear in her tray. It is not to be consumed. She has not noticed. I reach over and peel it off.

When I return from the trash chute, she is looking at me. Intention unclear.

I try what the specialists taught us: “I apologize. I have overstepped a social boundary.”

“What? No, you haven’t.” She blinks, before shaking her head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just thinking too much.”

“About what?”

“…The mission.” She smiles. It’s a little different than usual. I catalogue it. “To be honest, I’m a little anxious. But I’m always anxious, so it’s nothing new.”

“Nothing new. Don’t worry, Agent,” I say. I reach for her hand, a motion I learned from the Contemporary films. “We are here to protect you.”

“We? What do you mean we?” Emotion recognition failure, my software notifies, before attempting to calibrate again. I dismiss the error.

“We. The M garrison,” I say.

“The M garrison.” Her face is still and smooth.

“That is correct.”

“Oh,” she says. “I see.”

“Yes,” I say. I dismiss the error again.

She finishes her lunch. I note the contents of the meal in her dietary records. When she leaves the cafeteria, I follow behind, sending an email to the physician to coordinate a routine check-up

◊

We are walking—strolling, the Agent tells me—along a pathway in the central garden. The dome ceiling is high, its peak close to 9.51 meters tall. My measurements seem to interest her.

She raises her arms as she walks the line between concrete and gravel. Her face is warmer than usual, pleased. Her steps are fast, slow, fast. “Do you ever think about your parents?”

She is not interested in my measurements. I note my mistake.

“I don’t have parents.”

“You could. The woman you were modeled after, or the engineers who made you. Those could be parents.”

“Those could be parents,” I repeat. “You use it as an analogy.”

Her eyes wander over the scenery. “Sure. But it’s a literal thing, too. Not all parents are biological.”

“Yes. The verb, to parent, can also mean, to act as a mother or father. Understood.”

“Close enough.” She returns to the middle of the concrete path and drops her arms. “So who were you modeled after?”

“A Tech Specialist. Her civilian name was Mara.”

“Her civilian name? You should know your history better than I do. There was no distinction between civilian and soldier back then. That started during the war.”

“I suppose you are correct.”

She stops in front of some yellow-rimmed leaves. Image Search yields Sansevieria trifasciata, a plant native to West Africa. This one has grown flower stalks, though they have not yet bloomed.

I point at the buds. “That is rare,” I tell her, according to the internet.

“Yeah, it is.” She pauses. “I only know this because my dad had a real green thumb.”

“Green thumb. Someone who has an exceptional aptitude for gardening.”

“Yeah. Well, before he passed he was sick all the time and he couldn’t go outside much, but that was because he had to give up gardening after we moved to the city, so he was devastated, and he started collecting all these house plants…” Her shoulders shifted up and she inhaled. “Our snake plant was a flowering one, too. He didn’t care for it though, since it didn’t take much effort to grow. He loved a challenge.”

I attempt to sort the information.

“Sorry,” she says, turning around. She waves her hands in placation. “I asked about your parents, but I babbled on about mine instead.”

“Not a problem.” I sift my database for the appropriate phrase. “It is a pleasure to hear about your father.”

She snorts. “You can stop using that on me. I’d rather you be socially inept than spout that automated bullshit.” She claps a hand over her mouth.

As her ears turn pink, I step forward. “Are you all right, Agent? Your body temperature is higher than normal.”

“I’m fine.” She rubs her forehead. “God, I’m sorry. Forget I said that. I’m a mess.”

“I will not mention it. Why are you a mess? Is it because of the mission?”

“The mission? Oh,” she laughs. “Uh. Yeah. Sure.

The afternoon alarm rings. She doesn’t seem to notice it.

“That’s our cue,” I say. She’d taught me that last week.

She hears me. “Huh? Oh, right.” Eyebrows slightly angled, corners of her mouth turned down. Worried. Pupils restless. Distracted. “Good job remembering that,” she says. “Sometimes I think you remember things a little too well.”

I tilt my head. “Confirmation—does that have a negative connotation?”

“No,” she sighs. She walks ahead, leading the way. She no longer gestures or asks for me to follow her anymore—she knows I will.

She scans her ID at the entrance leading to the North Wing training facilities. There is a sign taped on the door: BROKEN LIGHTS. I scan the back of my hand. The door closes behind us.

Her voice is quiet, but it echoes in the dark tunnel. “I didn’t mean ‘too well’ as a negative. Remembering, I think, is never a bad thing. More of us should remember that.”

The tunnel gets darker. I activate my night vision. She is walking, slowly, but steadily, her hand on the wall. In front of me, she glows. Almost like a—

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I thought I heard you say something.”

“I’m not sure.” I check my activity log and find nothing unusual. I run a quick system diagnostic. Nothing. I make a note to visit the tech ward.

“It was probably my imagination. Be careful where you step.”

“Understood.”

 

◊

I wake up on my back, facing a gray ceiling.

As I recalibrate my location, I review my activity log and conduct a surface security scan. I learn I am in the tech ward. I had experienced an unidentifiable malfunction during training. In my secondary camera, there is a recording of two tech specialists, transporting me on a wheelchair.

I run diagnostics. No errors.

“Good morning.”

I turn. My partner is sitting in one of the plastic chairs. She waves. I wave back.

“You froze during the drill. Do you remember what happened?”

“I remember. Are you all right, Agent?”

“I’m fine. It was just a drill after all.” She stands, dusting off her clean pants. “I’ll get going then. The TS in charge went out for lunch. He said you’re good to go.”

I pull up the weekly calendar. “You have field training at this time. Why are you here?”

She smiles. “The mission is tomorrow. What would I need training for?”

My joints are slightly under-greased. It is difficult to move. I manage to get off the examination table, while my partner watches me. She has assisted me in the past. Today, she does not.

“Training is important. Training prepares you for the fight.”

“The war prepared me to fight.” Her voice is shaking. “I don’t need someone to tell me not to die. You think out there, you’ll have someone blowing whistles for you? You think everyone has time to prepare?”

“I apologize. I have overstepped a social boundary.”

She pulls at her hair, fingers twisting into her ponytail. She is angry and I don’t know how to fix it.

“I apologi—”

She grabs my shoulders and shakes. “It’s not your fault!” Her voice is hoarse, as if she has not used it in a long time. “It’s not your goddamn fault.”

“Understood.”

She cries. It is my first time seeing real tears. In the middle, her arms wrap around me in what is called a hug, and when she is done she finds me a tissue to wipe the wetness off my breastplate.

◊

Barrier on, the device declares.

Through the force field, we watch the explosion light up the horizon. Skyscrapers around our building crumble. The sound rumbles through my core. The heat comes after.

I fold my arms over the roof railing. My partner is doing the same a few feet away.

“I’m going to miss coffee,” she says.

I flex my gloved hands. They are burning. I run a quick diagnostic, but nothing is detected.

“Is that your favorite drink?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, you haven’t had coffee before, huh?”

“I have not.”

“If you get the chance one day, I recommend it.”

“I will remember.”

She laughs. Her approaching footsteps are in iambic pentameter: drag… tap, drag… tap. Search suggestion: William Shakespeare’s most famous works. I dismiss the screen.

“You shouldn’t move,” I say. A boom again, from somewhere in the city. “Excess movement will strain your injury.”

She looks down at her thigh. The fabric covering it is red and wet. “This?” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t feel it anyway.”

Her wound is too deep for her not to feel it. But somehow, I know she is telling the truth.

A call rings in from Agent U-50 on the core dispatch team. I accept and request affirmation. “Agent M-8. ‘Down the river.’”

“’Up the bend,’” he answers.

“Affirmative.” They have not been compromised. Through the joint video feed, I see what he sees. In his hands is a black suitcase. Perhaps its contents could end the war. “We have the Grail. On our way.” The call ends.

My partner is pulling at the ripped slash in her uniform pants. The fire and smoke outside the neochrome makes the blood on her leather gloves look like it’s shining.

“They have the Grail, Agent,” I say.

“Finally.” The building beneath our feet shakes. She looks out over the city. “Hey. Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sounds good.”

Her breathing is uneven. “My civilian name, from before—it’s Gwen.”

“Gwen,” I repeat. “You are not supposed to tell me this, Agent. Protocol has been breached.”

“Our conversation in the garden.” She grips the railing. “Do you remember it?”

“I do.”

“My parents gave me that name, but they’re dead. There is no one else to remember them, but me. And there is no one to remember me. Do you understand?”

The core team crashes through the rooftop entrance. Agent U-50 runs straight for the aircraft on standby with the Grail.

“Agent–”

“Call me Gwen,” she says.

Two others come through the door, one injured. The last hesitates. He looks in our direction. He waves his arms.

“Understood,” I say. “Gwen. You should get into the aircraft.”

She does not move. “Look at that. They want you to pull the switch. They’re going to leave you behind.”

“You must go, Agent. The craft can only carry five people.” I approach the force field device and set the timer to 30 seconds. I place a finger on the power switch.

“No,” she says. She limps over to kneel beside me and removes her helmet. Her face is wet. Her eyes are losing focus.

Someone pulls the last core Agent inside the craft and slams the door shut, just as Gwen pushes my hand into the switch.

Barrier off in 30, the device declares. The aircraft begins to rise up to the peak of the force field.

29…

“Agent–”

“It’s Gwen.”

27…

“Gwen. I will call them–”

25…

“I won’t get on.”

23…

“You will die.”

She smiles. She pulls off my helmet.

21…

“No,” she says. “I will live.”

19…

The aircraft sways in the sky, hovering just under the force field, the peak close to 22.4 meters tall.

17…

She leans in. “Do you want to live?”

15…

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

13…

“You can start with a name.”

11…

“What name?”

9…

“Any name,” she says. “Mara.”

“Mara,” I repeat.

7…

“Mara. Nice to meet you.”

She holds out her hand.

5…

I shake it.

“Gwen. Nice to meet you.”

3…

2…

Gwen smiles.

1…

“All right, then. Let’s ace this thing.”

◊

It is approximately four hours into the truck ride when my system begins to overheat. We are too close together—the Agents are sitting with their weapons and bags between their knees. Occasionally, a shaft of light comes through the curtain from the gap in the partition, and we all turn our faces towards it.

I bend forward. My system can’t cool because there is no air. I can’t ascertain the temperature. I am an old model. It is too hot for my sensors to detect much detail.

“We almost there, you think?”

“We should arrive after sunset.”

My partner nods. He did not pay attention to the Captain’s announcement. “Right,” he says. “I guess we’ll know when the sun sets.”

A few of the Agents look in our direction.

My partner leans in again. “Hey.” Although it is dark, his eyes glitter, black. “Did you pick a name for yourself? Everyone here uses names.” When I don’t reply, he scratches at his neck. “You know what a name is, right?”

“I am aware of what a name is.”

His mouth twitches. “Well, okay. Sorry.”

The truck soon stops. We hear orders being shouted outside. Crunching footsteps and slamming doors. The luggage being pulled off the ridged roof of the car.

The back door swings open. The U Agents blink at the sudden light. A few M Agents wake their sleeping partners.

“Single file,” the Sergeant orders.

We secure our belongings and form a line. The U Agents stand behind their M partners. In my rear camera, I can see my partner looking around, curious, his hands swinging at his sides.

Hedges of burnt foliage line the road. The gravel beneath our feet is dusted with ash. We march until we reach a towering gate.

“Welcome to the A.H. United Forces,” a guard says. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a 1990s American cartoon character on the front. He has no visible firearms. “The main entrance is straight that way. Watch your step, we’ve been fixing the sidewalk.”

“What the hell,” my partner says as we pass through, “it’s not even dark yet.”

It isn’t. The sky is gray and pink, ridged with clouds, and though the sun is dim, it is up. Only the footsteps of the platoon and the guard’s voice can be heard. Everything else is still.

◊

“This used to be a hospital wing,” the Sergeant says, turning on the ceiling lights. They flicker on, one by one.

The room has three rows of bunk beds. There is a large bookshelf. There is also a stripped bathroom area in the corner, where dried taps jut from the tiles. I engage Search. It was likely used by surgeons during the war.

“One through sixty in line, settle in,” the Sergeant says. “You’ll be staying here indefinitely. The rest of you, follow me.”

The Sergeant leads us down a hallway of rooms. “The rest of you have been partnered with an Agent, so you will be staying with them here. Peacemaking operations will begin soon. You must refine your social skills.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Find your assigned quarters. Dismissed.”

We salute in unison.

I find my designation on the third door from the end of the hall. I knock.

“Come in,” my partner says.

I go in. “Hello, Agent.” The room is narrow. I catalogue a bunk bed, two drawers, a closet, and a desk. There is a window facing the training fields. Further away is the perimeter wall, and then tops of the trees in the forest on the other side.

My partner is lying down on the bottom bunk. He does not look up from his book. “You can put your stuff on top.”

The sun is setting. I stand at the window to observe. The sky turns many different colors, before turning into a dark blue.

It is my first time seeing real stars. I catalogue 20 constellations, 2 military satellites, the glow of Mercury.

“I know you don’t get why it’s creepy to stand there for an hour, but I’m telling you now that it is.”

I turn to face my partner. He is reading a different book now. I notice the light is on. I recalibrate my sensors.

“I apologize. Is it not socially acceptable?”

He puts his book over his face. “Honestly, I don’t care. But you probably shouldn’t do that in public.”

“Understood.”

I climb the bunk and sit. From up here, only the grass is visible through the window.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“Why did you do it?”

I incline my head in the direction of my partner’s voice. “Do what?”

“Kill that Agent.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

His face appears over the edge of the bunk. He stares up at me. “You haven’t heard the gossip? There was a droid that went crazy and killed its partner.” He smiles. Intention unclear. “My uncle was a Lieutenant at your base. He was there, at her funeral.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

He whistles. “They weren’t playing around when they wiped your hard drive.” I sense him adjusting his position on the bed. Cotton fabric is pulled over cotton fabric. “I don’t care whether you killed her or not,” he yawns. “Now I know what they do to traitors.”

He sleeps. I engage Search, keywords: droid, crazy, kill, partner. There are no results.

◊

When I power on, my partner is halfway though the door, tossing a peach into the air with one hand. He catches it and takes a bite.

“Thought you were dead,” he says.

I climb down to the floor. “Are you returning from the cafeteria?”

With the peach in his mouth, he sits on his bed and bends down to change into his. “Mrrgh.” I assume it is an affirmative.

“Agent, we are supposed to eat together. Bonding time is crucial for the improvement of our teamwork.”

“You were charging or whatever. What was I supposed to do?”

“You are supposed to ask me to wake up.”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course, silly me.”

The afternoon alarm rings. He throws the peach. I catch it.

“Don’t get your wires all twisted. I’m usually too busy shoving food into my mouth for any bonding to happen anyway.”

“Agent–”

The door slams behind him.

Conventionally rude behavior, I note. I move to the window. It is evening, still light. Slightly windy. As I observe the landscape, I review my activity log and draft a plan for readjusting my methods of communication with Agent U-197.

As I complete bullet point five, my hand senses something wet. I look down. The peach is leaking juice between my fingers. The skin and flesh had been bitten through completely to the pit.

“The skin of a peach is edible,” I say.

“Sure,” she says, “but at what cost?”

“The skin is not toxic. You will not be harmed.”

She takes the peach out of my hand and stabs a hole into it with her pocketknife.

“Eating it would cost me my enjoyment, not my life.” With the knife in one hand and peach in the other, I watch her open the window. Outside, the moon is bright. 

“Tonight is a Blue Moon.” 

She laughs, short. “You know everything, don’t you?”

As she skins the peach the breeze blows her hair sideways and onto her shoulder, where it stays for the rest of the night.


Gloria Yuen with an eye painted on one of her hands that covers her eye Gloria Yuen is a part-time wandering spirit who recently graduated with honors in English and a minor in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, probably with the help of witchcraft. In addition to creative writing, she dabbles in illustration, sentimentality, and most things creepy. Reach her on Instagram @zygoim.
Illustration by Gloria Yuen

 

 

 

 

 

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Published on June 6, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 22. (Click for permalink.)

CHESHIRE CAT by Sarah Bradley

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 6, 2018 by thwackJune 12, 2020

King and queen chess pieces on a chess board

CHESHIRE CAT
by Sarah Bradley

The winter when Lucy was nine and her brother Nick was twelve, he taught her to play chess. They bent over the crosshatched board on the living room floor in front of the fireplace, blonde heads nearly touching, all through Christmas break and into the new year. Wool socks and hot cocoa and Bing Crosby late into the night, the Douglas fir in the corner shimmering with tinsel.

They played dozens of games and Lucy never won. Not once. She couldn’t keep track of the rules or remember all the functions the pieces were meant to serve. It was like trying to parse out a confusing ensemble of actors in a stage play.

Bishops move diagonally, rooks horizontally or vertically. Pawns are strongest together. Knights can jump over other pieces. Don’t forget to castle. Promote your pawns. Don’t be careless with your pieces. Keep your queen close to the center of the board. Protect your king.

Lucy always forgot that last part, too distracted with strategizing about bishops and rooks and pawns to guard the stately white piece sitting exposed on her side of the board. Nick would laugh and scold her as he snatched her vulnerable king, calling checkmate again and again.

You gotta protect your king, Luce. That’s the whole game.

◊

Cal gets handsy in the elevator up to Lucy’s seventh floor apartment. He slips his arm in under her open coat, threading it around her waist and grabbing at the curve of her hip. It’s faintly possessive in a way that makes Lucy feel warm and lightheaded.

They have been dating for a month and Cal has never been anything but a devout gentleman. Courteous and deferential. You pick the movie. Whatever restaurant you like. I should get you home, it’s a weeknight.

Most of the men Lucy dates are not like this. They send texts telling her to meet them at overcrowded, standing room-only bars, where they shout questions at her over the din and slosh their drinks around in their glasses. She is hardly ever asked to dinner. When she is, these other men treat the paid tab like an IOU—a promissory note to be cashed in later, when they are drunk and hoping to grope her on the dirty street outside her apartment building.

Lucy has never been to a bar with Cal. They go to tiny restaurants tucked away down side streets, where he rushes to open the door and pull out her chair. He only drinks a little, mostly wine, and never more than her. He puts his napkin on his lap while he eats, drinks an espresso for dessert, and pays the check without a hungry, expectant look in his eyes.

When he walks her back to her apartment at the end of their nights together, he kisses her like he’s going off to war: slowly and carefully, but not without feeling. As if he wants to make it last. He is like an endangered species rarely encountered in the wild, one that should be studied from a safe distance behind a pair of binoculars. His chivalry makes her exhilarated and wary at the same time.

It also makes her ravenous. Lucy leaves all of the other men she dates standing frustrated on the front steps of her building, half-pleading and half-demanding to be brought inside. But not Cal. She has tried for weeks to convince him to cross the threshold of the building’s lobby with her. There are things she wants from him: to touch the flat, brown mole on the right side of his neck above his collarbone, and to kiss him until she can taste the bitterness of that habitual cup of post-dinner coffee on her tongue. She wants her hair mussed in his hands, their dress shoes kicked off at the door, his dark-rimmed glasses on her nightstand. She wants him to stop being such a gentleman.

Tonight, she might get exactly that. The house wine at the Italian restaurant where they had dinner was surprisingly high quality, bright and spicy with licorice. Lucy ordered three of the generous glasses and Cal followed her lead. She didn’t have to talk him into coming into the lobby at all; he trailed close behind her, flushed and laughing, like an overeager schoolboy.

The elevator jostles and lurches from one floor to the next. Cal’s hand travels from her hip to a spot thrillingly low on her back. She smiles.

“You’re coming in?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming in.”

They step off the elevator and walk a crooked line down the hallway of doors, floating through the blissful state of tipsiness that has left them more than buzzed, not quite drunk. Sober enough to appreciate the high of their mild insobriety. Lucy hangs lightly onto Cal’s arm for balance.

“Did I tell you that I like this dress?” Cal says, and Lucy wonders if the dress has helped embolden him, picking up where the effects of the wine left off. It’s a ripe shade of indigo, with a deep neckline and lace sleeves. She loves this dress; it’s been too long since she’s worn it.

“Not yet,” she says.

“I like this dress.”

He stops walking and holds her firmly in place, kissing her outside apartment 713, where a retired woman with three dachshunds lives. They bark every morning at 6:10, like canine roosters crowing at the dawn. Lucy can hear them now scrabbling on the other side of the door, their toenails scratching at the wood.

She unbuttons Cal’s coat and loosens his tie. He kisses her again, sloppier this time, freed from his self-imposed restraint. One of his hands, still cold from outside, settles gently on the left side of her neck, his fingertips beneath her ear. The dogs whimper woefully; a voice inside the apartment makes a feeble attempt at shushing them. Multiple televisions up and down the hallway are turned up too loudly. The seventh floor smells like a Friday night: Chinese takeout and hairspray and package store beer.

“What number are you?”

“Seven-seventeen,” she says. “To the left.”

Cal takes her by the hand and pulls her away from her neighbor’s door. They round the corner leading to Lucy’s apartment and nearly trip over a man dozing on the balding carpet in front of her door. He wears an oversized tweed coat and mismatched canvas high-tops. His hair, ashy blond and curled around the earlobes, signals familiarity to Lucy. She knows this hair. She knows this man who has propped himself up outside her apartment, awaiting her inevitable return.

◊

The winter when Lucy was fifteen and Nick was eighteen, he came home from his first semester of college and slept for three days straight. From Sunday to Tuesday, he barely ate and didn’t shower. Her parents told her he had the flu, but Lucy heard them arguing in their bedroom on Tuesday night, hissing at each other behind the closed door.

I told you Pennsylvania was too far. We can’t keep an eye on him there.

He’s eighteen, Louise. We shouldn’t have to keep an eye on him.

He almost flunked out. He’s hanging by a thread already.

 It’s his choice. We can’t make him stop.

There has to be something we can do. We’re his parents.

He doesn’t need his parents. He needs to grow up.

The next morning, Lucy snuck into Nick’s bedroom. His suitcases were still unpacked from school, standing upright outside the closet door. She sat down on the bed next to him. Heat radiated from his skin. He opened his eyes.

Are you okay? She asked.

I’m fine, he said. I have the flu.

No, you don’t, she said.

Nick smiled, his dry lips splitting open into miniature cracks. Do me a favor?

What?

Bring me some water.

Lucy filled up a glass in the kitchen and carried it back upstairs. She lay down on the bed next to Nick, on top of the flannel comforter. She wished he had come home for Thanksgiving. She hadn’t seen him in almost four months.

Luce, he said, staring at the ceiling. Did you miss me?

Yes, she said. I missed you.

◊

“Excuse me,” Cal says, stooping down to rouse the man from sleep. Lucy puts her hand on his arm.

“It’s okay, Cal,” she says. “Nick? Nick.”

Nick startles awake at her voice and jumps to his feet. He sways a little, steadies himself on the door.

“Hey, Luce.” His voice is raw but his smile is broad and gleaming: a Cheshire Cat grin of misdirection, deceptive and winsome in equal parts.

“What are you doing here?”

He reeks sourly of cigarettes and stale breath and dried sweat, like the alcove under the subway stairs where homeless men sleep at night. Lucy keeps singles in her purse to hand out to them when she leaves work. She knows most of them by name now. Benny with the long twisted braid, Roger with the prickly red beard, George with the eyeglasses missing one lens. They could all be somebody’s brother.

“I’m back in town. I wanted to see you.”

Nick is filthy, the fine lines of his hands and face etched in grime, his hair oily and flat against his head. Despite his appearance, he manages to make it sound like he’s simply been on vacation, crossing the country on an extended holiday.

“Where have you been?”

Nick shrugs in his usual unaffected way. Around. Who cares? Beside her, Cal clears his throat. Nick shifts his attention away from Lucy, looking at Cal with polite bemusement.

“Hello. Who are you?”

“This is Cal,” Lucy says, before Cal can answer. “Cal, this is my brother, Nick.”

Cal blinks in confusion, then thrusts his hand forward to shake Nick’s. Lucy thinks of the elevator and that same hand on the small of her back, wandering respectfully down toward the top of her right buttock. She swallows the growing lump in her throat.

“I didn’t know Lucy had a brother,” Cal says.

“I didn’t know Lucy had a Cal,” Nick says. He is jovial, wanting to play the part of quick-witted older brother. He is unaware of what he has interrupted, oblivious to the smudged lipstick around Lucy’s mouth or Cal’s disheveled coat and tie.

“Where have you been?” Lucy repeats.

“I got a ride out to Ohio, stayed with some friends. I’ve been making my way back to the city for a few weeks.”

“Ohio? Who do you know in Ohio?”

Nick smiles again, but it’s tightly wound. Strained. She doesn’t normally ask so many questions.

“I’m sober, Luce. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not.” Lucy lifts her chin and levels her shoulders. “I’m asking who you know in Ohio.”

“Rugby guys,” he says without hesitation, matching her confidence. “From Penn State.”

Lucy stares at him. She knows he is lying—about the rugby guys, about the state of his sobriety—but she can’t determine how far to push him. The wine is still making her brain cloudy and muddled. If she digs down into the wrong hole too quickly or too deeply, Nick will never tell her anything again.

Her doubt gives him time to collect himself. He watches her coolly, waiting for her to decide. But she has lost the upper hand—the element of surprise. Bishops move diagonally, rooks horizontally or vertically. Or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter: whatever questions she asks now, he will be ready to answer.

“I didn’t know where you were,” she says finally, quietly. “It’s been almost three months.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

Nick scratches at his neck, tugging the collar of his coat away from his skin. The tweed is faded and thinned down to the lining. It has the dated and ill-fitting look of a shelter donation. There can’t be much padding inside. She wonders if he has been warm enough at night. March in the city is always remarkably cold, obstinately refusing to give way to spring.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“I am,” Lucy says. “But I’ve been asking around. No one knew where you were. I started checking the shelters, different ones all the time.”

“Is that where you go on your lunch break every day?” Cal asks suddenly, inserting himself into Lucy’s eyeline.

Lucy forgot Cal was standing next to her. It was only moments ago that she could think of literally nothing but him: his mouth moving against hers, his crisp dress shirt wrinkling in her fingers, his combed black hair falling out of place. Now Nick has been at her door for five minutes, and she has already forgotten about Cal.

It isn’t intentional, this slight—it never is. It’s a reflex, an involuntary reaction, like yanking a hand away from a hot stove. Still, her guilt forms a small, fiery coal deep in her belly. She never sees it coming. She never learns.

You gotta protect your king, Luce.

◊

The winter that Lucy was nineteen and Nick was twenty-two, she was supposed to go home for Christmas with her college boyfriend, a political science major from Tampa, Florida. Kevin Thompson. He had a crew cut and played on the lacrosse team and could talk about Marxism in a way that didn’t make her brain sear with boredom. They began dating freshman year. It was the first time Lucy had ever been in love, and it was easy, uncomplicated, satisfying. They had planned to drive down to Disney World after the holiday and ride Space Mountain until they were sick.

The week before the semester ended, her parents called to tell her that Nick had admitted himself to Capstone Rehabilitation Center. There were family therapy sessions scheduled twice a week for the next eight weeks. Nick, they said, had asked if she could be there.

I have to go home, she told Kevin. For my brother.

You don’t have to, he said. We made plans.

Nick needs me.

Nick always needs you. That doesn’t mean you have to go.

Yes it does, she said.

After finals she gave Kevin his Christmas present—a collector’s edition of Machiavelli’s The Prince—and flew home to Albany, New York. She spent her break shuttling back and forth from her parents’ house to the rehab center, sitting in an overly warm room for family therapy, wondering who this man was that claimed to be her brother.

Nick was antagonistic and argumentative. Non-compliant—that was the term the therapist used. He looked fatigued, underfed, damaged: nails chewed down to stubs, scratches up and down his forearms, one foot constantly bouncing on the floor. He claimed the other patients attacked him at night. He missed morning meeting every day, oversleeping through two alarms. His caseworker said he was losing weight, two or three pounds at a time.

Lucy asked Nick, over and over, when no one else was listening: Are you okay? Are you okay? He answered, over and over, so everyone could hear: I’m fine. I’m fine.

After each session, she crawled into bed and sobbed. She always missed Nick when he went away, drifting into binges and benders, fading into oblivion. For days or weeks or months, she would check the street outside, check her phone, check her email. Waiting for him to turn up somewhere, in some form. Wearing strange clothes, needing a shower, unbothered by his own absence. Hey, Luce. I’m back.

But this time was different. Lucy missed Nick in a way that felt long-lasting. Permanent. This time, she missed someone who might not be coming back: a boy hunched over a chess board, his head almost touching hers.

Some time after Christmas, Kevin broke up with her over the phone. He was at Disney World with his parents and sister, calling from the hotel bathroom after they had all gone to sleep. Keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake them.

You should be here. I rode Space Mountain without you. Do you even care about us?

◊

In the dim hallway outside her door, Lucy wants to kiss Cal again, but knows the version of her night that ends with him undressed, sleeping soundly in her bed, has slipped away from her. The elevator ride feels like hours ago.

“I don’t check the shelters every day,” she says to him. “But most days, yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry.” She means it, but she doesn’t elaborate. He will believe her or he won’t. It doesn’t matter what more she says.

“Lucy’s a good sister,” Nick offers, too loudly, as if this explains everything. “But she worries too much.”

“I think I worry the right amount,” Lucy says. She wants to know where he has been sleeping at night. What he has been doing during the day. What he has been drinking, and how much, and when. But he won’t answer these questions, not in any way that really tells her anything, so she doesn’t ask them. Her head hurts now, and the warmth is beginning to drain from her face.

No one speaks, the three of them forming a silent, irregular triangle in the middle of the hallway. Lucy can hear the dachshunds still whining around the corner in 713, the competing voices of television news broadcasters and home shopping presenters coming from other apartments.

She turns to Cal. “I was going to tell you. That I had a brother.”

“Okay,” he says. He has a strange look on his face, not angry or distant or even disappointed. Wistful, maybe. Wondering.

The hot coal in her stomach swells. She looks away from him, down at the dingy carpet and the well-worn spot outside her door where she has stood locking and unlocking her apartment day after day, juggling mail and shopping bags and umbrellas and disposable coffee cups.

She can’t count the number of times she has come home to find her brother waiting for her in this spot, but it still surprises her every time it happens. He is gifted at going missing and then turning up unannounced, behaving as if no time has passed. Like he was there all along but simply made himself invisible. Disappearing and reappearing. Smiling. Telling lies.

“Luce,” Nick says. “I need a place to stay. Just for a little while.”

“Yeah.” Lucy’s chest aches from holding her breath. She exhales. “Of course.”

Cal touches Lucy’s shoulder delicately. “I should go,” he says. The feeling of his hand—limp and polite, devoid of any desire—makes her queasy.

“No, don’t.”

He smiles kindly. “You need some privacy. I can call you tomorrow.” He bends down to kiss her cheek and Lucy blinks away an unwelcome surge of tears.

“Sure,” she says.

Cal gives Lucy’s elbow a gentle squeeze, angling in close to her body. His tie dangles crookedly around his neck, his opened collar revealing the small, inviting mole that she still has not had the chance to touch.

“I’ll call. Tomorrow.” His mouth hovers around her ear for a moment longer than it should. He holds her elbow purposefully between his fingers. He waits for Lucy to nod in understanding, and then he lets go.

◊

The winter that Lucy was 23 and Nick was 26, she had just moved into her apartment in the city. She was dressing to go out when someone knocked on her door. Nick stood in the hallway, a threadbare beanie on his head, his pants and shoes covered in dirty snow.

Hey, Luce.

It took her some time to accept that it was him. Six months earlier, he slipped away from a family barbecue in Albany without a word. Her parents and aunts and cousins all asking Lucy where Nick went. Why would he leave? Where would he be going? Did he say anything to you? As if Lucy was his keeper. As if she could have made him stay.

What are you doing here? She asked.

I wanted to see you, he said, grinning—yellow teeth emerging from an overgrown beard.

How did you find me? I tried to call you.

I lost my phone. Mom gave me your address. Can I come in?

Six months. No calls or texts or messages. It had been blissful; it had been frightening. Lucy could have tried harder to get him her new address. She still wasn’t sure why she didn’t. Not that it mattered—he found her anyway. He always did.

I was about to go out, she said.

Oh. Nick looked at her blankly, not seeing her heels, her red lipstick, her indigo dress with the lace sleeves. He was shivering, his clothes soaked through to the inner layer of his undershirt. Please, Luce? Just for tonight.

Nick—

I missed you, he said. Didn’t you miss me?

Lucy let him in. She ran some hot water in the bathtub, microwaved a can of soup, took out the extra pair of clothes she kept for him—wherever she was living—in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She texted her date for the night and canceled.

Family emergency. I’m sorry. Maybe another time?

◊

Lucy listens to Cal walk the narrow hallway back to the elevators. Nick is talking to her about being hungry and recovering from bronchitis and losing his wallet on a Greyhound bus, but she doesn’t really hear him. She is letting herself believe—for one long, indulgent moment—that Cal will call tomorrow like he said he would. That he is still a gentleman.

Nick stands anxiously in front of her, pointing to the apartment door. “Are you going to open it up?”

She rifles through her pocketbook for her keys. Nick picks at a dirty fingernail, scraping away something black from the cuticle before biting off a hangnail with his teeth.

“He was nice.”

“What?” Lucy asks.

“That guy. Cal? He was nice.”

Lucy slides her key into the lock. “Yes. He was.”

She pushes open the door to the darkened apartment. Down the hall, the elevator begins its clanging descent to the first floor. Lucy turns to invite Nick inside, half-expecting him to be gone.


Sarah Bradley author photoSarah Bradley is a freelance writer and creative writing teacher from Connecticut. Her nonfiction essays on life as a homeschooling mother of three boys have been featured at The Washington Post, Real Simple, The Writer, Romper, Today’s Parent, and Mom.me, among others. Her fiction has appeared in The Lost Country, The Forge Literary Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and Haunted Waters Press. She is currently writing her first novel. You can find Sarah documenting her attempts at finding a mother/writer balance on Instagram.

 

 

Image credit: Shirly Niv Marton on Unsplash

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Published on June 6, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 22. (Click for permalink.)

THE ZOO by Matt Whelihan

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 6, 2018 by thwackJune 12, 2020

Man squatting in front of icy window

THE ZOO
by Matt Whelihan

A week after the classes ended, the community service started.

Seven of us stood in a small lot outside of a small zoo. It was the kind of place single dads with child support payments take their kids because it’s close and cheap.

It was only October, but the blades of grass that had managed to make it through the gravel of the parking lot were encased in frost. We all stood with our hands stuffed in our pockets, continually shifting, hoping to generate some warmth.

I never did learn their names, but there was the Girl in Black, Gray Beard, Yoga Pants, Grandma, Dude, and the Mess. I resented them all just like I had to come to resent everyone involved in the process.

I wasn’t an asshole; I just shouldn’t have been there. They were the type of people to take fuck-ups and turn them into badges of honor, a good anecdote, a reason to toast and raise a middle finger to the world. That wasn’t me. I had no underlying issue, no history of self-destruction. They were a sad collection, and I didn’t need the degrading reinforcement that they did.

Carl was in charge. He pulled up in a pickup with the zoo’s logo on the door. He was wearing a baseball cap with “8 Point” written across the top and a picture of a buck below. His face was fighting to decide if it wanted a beard or just mutton chops. Either way, he looked like an idiot. He gave us his good-old-boy speech about being through the ringer once or twice himself, about how he wasn’t there to judge us, just there to make sure we did our work.

He led us slowly through the zoo. We passed some haggard looking otters on a cement island covered in chipping paint, three wolves that slunk just enough to prove they were alive, a sleeping capybara, and two small monkeys in a wire cube.

We stopped by a muddy square of earth next to a small corral with two donkeys inside. The patch was dotted with the stubby remains of thick, wooden posts. It was hard to tell what had once been there—whatever had rested on top of the posts was long gone—but Carl told us to dig up what remained. He handed out some shovels, and then he left us to it.

The rest of them paired off, but I worked alone, jabbing the tip of my shovel into the hard earth around one of the stumps.

I needed a story for the day, something to tell my parents when I got to their house that night. Maybe hiking, maybe watching football with Scott. Something simple and believable, like the other lies I had already told them.

I could hear Dude talking to the Girl in Black. They were the youngest ones in the group. She looked like she could have been in high school with her black sweat pants, cheap black fleece, and faux-fur lined boots. He just looked like a douchebag with a headband, the kind of guy who fails out of college his fist semester because he discovered alcohol enemas and Adderall.

“So we’re slamming some beers and watching a movie,” he told her, “and we call to order pizzas. They tell us they don’t have a delivery guy for the night, and I’m like, whatever. I’ll grab the pies, you know?”

“Pizza is the best drunk food,” the Girl in Black said.

“I know. I know. So my buddy tells me to take his car, which is this little silver piece of shit. I get in, and I think I’m in reverse, but I’m in drive, and I totally hit one of those cement things at the front of the spots. I hear this huge scrape, but I’m not worried, cause the car’s already a piece of shit.”

The Girl in Black laughed.

“So I finally get out of the parking lot, but his steering is all off, and I think one of the tires was low too. It felt like the wind was pushing the car around or something. And then I realized I was about to miss my exit, so I cut over real fast across those ridges on the highway. Problem was I didn’t realize there was this dip next to the ridges, and the car just totally went up on its side. It was absolutely nuts. The passenger side landed on the ground, so I’m just like hanging from the seat belt. I finally get it undone, and then the cops were there. And then, you know, all of that went down.”

The Girl in Black laughed again.

“That’s crazy,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t get all fucked up.”

“Couple scratches, nothing major.”

I stabbed the shovel harder. I wanted to break the head off of it, to tear the post from the dirt with my bare hands. These people were disasters.

◊

For our half hour lunch break, I drove to a Wawa and ate a sandwich in my car. When I got back, I found the group waiting by the bison enclosure. The Mess, the Girl in Black, and Gray Beard were smoking cigarettes. Behind them, three matted bison sniffed at the dirt.

The Mess was staring at me. She was a scrawny, middle-aged woman with bulging eyes and frizzy, red hair. She was wearing a pink, puffy coat that was stained in several places. Even her gaze seemed filthy. I felt myself fighting off a chill.

“You didn’t lose your license?” she asked.

“What?”

“You’re driving. The court didn’t take your license?”

“No.”

“Jesus fucking Christ almighty,” she said. “The god damned lawyer tells me there’s no way to avoid losing it, but this guy manages it.”

She looked back at the bison.

“I knew that motherfucker was screwing me,” she said. “I just didn’t know how fucking hard until now. Fucker’s leaving me bowlegged. Can’t keep the license no matter what, he says. Bullshit.”

“I lost mine,” the Girl in Black said.

“Me too,” Gray Beard added before dropping his cigarette to the ground.

The Mess turned back to me. Up close I could see some ruptured blood vessels in one of her eyes. I wondered how far someone had to sink before their face became the witch mask hers had become.

“So what makes you so special? Your dad a cop or something?” she said.

“I have no idea,” I answered.

I was grinding my teeth, unsure how much longer I could hold back. I wanted to share all the terrible insults accumulating in my mind.

“Ah, don’t worry,” she said before stopping to let out a violent burst of coughing. “I’m just bustin your balls. This whole thing’s been nothing but one person after another taking a shit on me.”

 

When I went to my parents’ house for dinner, I went with the hiking story. They didn’t notice the blisters on my hands from the shovel, and when they asked what was new, I told them about work.

We shared a bottle of wine over dinner, and I realized that in two more weeks, the lies could stop.

◊

The following Sunday, Carl was wearing the same clothes as the week before. He was grinning the way adults do when they want to convince kids they’re cool.

He led us all to a sodden, rutted patch of dirt and weeds. We had to clean it out and smooth the ground. The goal was to expand the petting zoo into the patch and give the kids more space for the Halloween festivities the following weekend.

After Carl pulled some tools from the back of his pickup, he drove off.

The Girl in Black lifted a rake and mumbled, “That guy looks like he’s been fucking something in the petting zoo.”

Dude and Yoga Pants both laughed.

“I’ve been saying that,” the Mess said. “Somebody should be giving that son of a bitch a piss test. Find out what he’s on. Driving around here like he’s in charge. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s sticking it to a sheep or two.”

No one responded. I wanted to point this out to her.

There was a faint smell of wet hay and manure. We pulled weeds, hacked at stubborn roots, and dropped large stones into a bucket. I could hear Gray Beard and Yoga Pants talking about their kids.

“He’s seven now,” Gray Beard said. “Pretty much does nothing but video games.”

I wondered if his wife had considered divorce. I wondered if his son could sense the aura of failure that surrounded his dad.

“Mine’s in that ‘why this?’ ‘why that?’ phase,” Yoga Pants said. “It’s like, give mommy a minute to herself please.”

She was wearing too much eye liner for manual labor, and her manicured nails and designer ski jacket screamed suburban housewife.

They were dismal parents, the type that never realize they’ve crossed the line into adulthood and need to adopt new responsibilities, new axioms.

I dropped three rocks into the bucket and then the Mess started.

“God damned janitor’s job,” she said to the dirt. “I’m gonna need to get hammered after this. Am I right?”

“Hell yes,” the Girl in Black responded. “This is nasty. This place smells like shit.”

The Mess put down the rake she had been using.

“Someone tell me if you see his truck coming,” she said. “I need to get a taste real quick.”

She removed a small plastic bottle of rot-gut liquor from her coat. She took two big gulps and let some dribble down her chin. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and turned to Grandma, a woman whose face seemed incapable of expression.

“How about you?” the Mess asked. “Need a little pick-me-up?”

“I don’t drink,” Grandma replied, her eyes focused on the weed she was hacking at with a hoe.

“Come on honey,” the Mess said. “We all know that’s a lie. We’re all here for the same reason, and drinkin played a big god damned role in that.”

“I don’t drink now,” Grandma said. “And I won’t drink ever again. It’s not worth it. We give it everything and it gives us back nothing, leaves us with less than what we started with.”

“Gone all AA on us, huh?” the Mess said. “It’s given me plenty of good times. Probably never would’ve gotten laid without it. But, alright, that’s fine. How bout you?”

She held the bottle out to the Girl in Black.

“Nah, I’m good,” she said.

“Oh, come on!” the Mess said. “Last week you didn’t have no problem. Don’t let the wet blanket over here sway you. I know you. I know after this you’ll go out with your girlfriends and get all nice and liquored up, dance your asses off, smoke some weed. So why not just kick things off now?”

The Girl in Black bent down to grab a half-desiccated leaf, and the Mess moved on to me.

“What about you, Mister Special Case?” she said. “Even if you get caught you probably won’t get in trouble.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Enjoy standing up there on your pedestal, huh?” she said.

My body felt like a series of clamps had been applied, everything begging to explode. This was a woman who didn’t even understand basic hygiene, a woman whose life was a guide to all the ways humans can destroy themselves.

“Probably got mommy and daddy footin the bills too,” she added.

I spun to face her. “You’re—”

She turned to Yoga Pants without even noticing me.

“What’s that, honey?” the Mess said. “You thirsty?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Yoga Pants responded. “Out here drinking, like you’re begging to get more hours. Some people just don’t learn.”

“Some people, huh,” the Mess said. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what that means. You calling me stupid? You calling me trash?”

Yoga Pants didn’t respond. She just scraped at some twigs with a rake. The Mess stared at her back.

“You’re the one letting them tell you what to do, sweetheart,” she said. “Just bowing down, asking for forgiveness. Well fuck that. I do what I want. Wanna know what I did wrong? Had a little fun, like I do every weekend. That’s what I did wrong. And now I gotta go to these classes where they preach self-control and they bring up friends and family and society? That’s bullshit cause I ain’t got nobody to hurt. There’s just me, and I’m just having a good time with my life. These little trips to the zoo, they’re nothing but interruptions. They ain’t gonna change shit. No fucking way.”

Everyone continued to work in the dirt. The Mess stared at Yoga Pants. I was still rattled, still ready to finish my sentence and the rest that I had lined up behind it. But before I could, Dude grabbed the bottle from the Mess and took a drink.

“This was a good call,” he said. “Today sucks.”

◊

It was snowing on my last day at the zoo. My parents had invited me to lunch, but I told them I had a date. I told them her name was Sadie, that she was a nurse.

Carl’s truck pulled up in front of us, some Kenny Chesney song playing in the cab.

“Shit,” he said. “You people really drew the short straw.”

He climbed down from the truck and clapped his gloved hands together, explaining that we needed to shovel paths before all the kids showed up at eleven for the Halloween events.

Carl placed me, the Girl in Black, and the Mess by the zoo entrance. I wanted to object, to tell him that I’d be forced to violence if I had to spend any more time near that horrid, skeletal woman. But I kept my mouth shut.

The Girl in Black was wearing sweatpants again, and the cuffs were already soaked from the snow. She wasn’t wearing a hat and her hair was covered in clumps of half-melted flakes, her ears already bright red.

The Mess could barely push her shovel forward, and her body swayed slowly. Something was off, but I didn’t care. It was keeping her quiet, and that was all that mattered.

Carl watched us for a few minutes before giving a thumbs-up and hopping into his truck.

“Thank, Jesus,” the Mess mumbled. “I need to sit down.

There was a bench nearby, but she slumped to the ground.

“Slacking off already?” the Girl in Black asked.

“Sweetheart, if you knew how badly my head was pounding, you’d find me a bed in a dark room. I can’t handle this shit today. I’ve got the granddaddy of all motherfucking hangovers. Last night…whoa, last night.

“Besides, Junior here looks like a strong guy. I’m sure you two’ll have no trouble getting this done without some old lady getting in the way.”

I gripped the handle of my shovel tightly. I wanted to throw it at her.

But it was my last day. I’d never have to see that zoo again, the pathetic state of it, its overall sense of lack. I’d never have to see the Mess again. I’d be gone soon, back to my life, a life so distant from hers. I just needed to shovel, to let the hours work themselves out.

After twenty minutes, the Mess moved to the bench. Once her ass hit the wooden slats, her body jerked forward and she vomited onto the snow. She started to moan, a small bit of puke still dangling from her mouth.

“Gross,” the Girl in Black said quietly.

The Mess giggled in response.

◊

When the zoo opened, I watched the kids charge in dressed as superheroes and pirates, princesses and vampires. Their costumes brought bright bursts of color to the muted zoo, and the cold didn’t seem to bother them.

The Mess stared at their tiny forms, her mouth half open, and I watched the kids avoid her as they went in search of animals and candy.

“You three,” Carl called. “I need you over with the bison. Some little brats threw a bunch of candy and trash at them. Whole area’s a mess now. Just hop over the fence and pick everything up.”

“You want us to climb in there with those things?” the Mess said. “No way. I ain’t no bull fighter.”

I pictured her impaled on a horn, the annoying noises she’d let out.

“They won’t do shit,” Carl said. “They’re big and dumb and slow. Just get the trash out. My boss is throwing a fit.”

The bison area was a bog thanks to the already melting snow. The three animals were near its center, snorting with drooped heads, uninterested in the world.

The fence was made from wooden posts and chicken wire and came up to my stomach. The Girl in Black and I had no trouble climbing over it, but the Mess got stuck with one leg on either side of the top post before falling into the paddock.

“Fuck this place and that pig fucker,” she said. One arm of her coat was covered in mud, and she had a difficult time getting back on her feet. It seemed appropriate.

The Girl in Black walked toward the bison. I started to pick up an empty juice box and some fun-size candy wrappers by the fence. The Mess stood staring at the animals, her face more disgusted than usual.

“Un, uh,” she said. “Community service don’t mean facing down no beasts. One of those things falls on me, I’m dead.”

I wondered if I could make that happen.

I felt soggy and weighed down. The gloves I had on had already been soaked through, and my fingers were numbing, becoming harder to flex as I scooped up trash.

“Danny?”

I turned towards the fence and found my Aunt Bridget looking back at me. Next to her were my cousins Anna and Gabe. Anna was dressed as a doctor. Gabe, as Iron Man.

“Hi,” I said, an unwelcome awareness forcing me to stand up straight.

They were confused and did an inadequate job of hiding it. I made a fist around the trash in my hand.

“What’re you doing?” my aunt asked.

The Mess started to cough and spit up on the mud. My cousins eyed her with the kind of disgust reserved for medical oddities.

“Ah, shit,” she said.

She let out a small laugh and grabbed onto the fence for support.

“I’m doing some volunteer work,” I said. “My job sends around this email with places that need help.”

I turned my gaze to my little cousins.

“I thought the zoo sounded fun.”

I tried to smile.

“Bad day for it,” my aunt responded.

She was talking to me, but she kept her eyes on the Mess.

Anna grabbed her mom’s sleeve.

“I wanna see the otters,” she said.

“I want candy,” Gabe added.

“Okay, okay,” my aunt said. “Well, stay warm!”

“Thanks,” I said.

I watched them walking away. My aunt turned and looked back at me, the confusion still there. I knew she’d call my mom before she even left the zoo.

An unpleasant tingling made the rounds of my body, like my nerve endings were flickering and burning out. I tried to think of the story I’d tell, of the next set of lies. Volunteer work as a date? The Girl in Black as Sadie? Maybe it wasn’t all lost.

“Volunteer work, huh?” the Mess said.

She started to laugh.

“What? Are you too good for us?” she said. “Are you ashamed of being a criminal? Of being buddied up with your old pal here? Nothing fancy about you now.”

I whipped my body around.

“Shut the fuck up!” I said as I stepped towards her.

The Girl in Black turned to look at me, and a trio of children and two accompanying adults gave me their appalled attention as they hurried past. Even one of the bison tilted its head in my direction.

The Mess was silent for a second, and then she started to laugh again.

“Face it, Fancy Pants,” she said. “You’re in here with us now.”

I wanted to grab her, to hurt her somehow, to let her know I was nothing like her, that I was nothing like the people in the courtrooms, and the classrooms, and the counseling sessions. I didn’t care if Carl saw. I didn’t care if it meant serving more hours. I just needed to show her.

But then another group of kids walked by. They were shouting and swinging bags of candy. Their parents walked with cheery expressions despite the weather. All of them glanced at the bison paddock where we stood cold and wet and muddy. We held their interest for a moment, and then they moved on, making a clear distinction between what was on one side of the fence and what was on the other.

I turned away from the Mess slowly, my body burning in a new way. I grabbed another candy wrapper from the ground, and she started to laugh again.


Matt Whelihan author photoMatt Whelihan is an assistant professor of English at Wilmington University. His work has appeared in publications such as Slice, Midwestern Gothic, and River River, and he has stories forthcoming in New Plains Review and Drunk Monkeys. In 2017, he received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers contest. He lives in the Philadelphia area.

 

 

 

Image credit:  John T on Unsplash

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Published on June 6, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 22. (Click for permalink.)

RETREAT by T.C. Jones

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 6, 2018 by thwackJune 12, 2020

Black and white man staring at camera with woman on shoulder

RETREAT
by T.C. Jones

The church retreat is the last bit of bullshit before we get confirmed. We are at a bunch of crappy cabins on the dumpy shores of Lake Erie. They call it a holy camp, gave it a fancy name too: Camp Gold Field. They got the field part right, but I don’t know where they got the gold. Everything here is barren and gray. Last night there was a thunderstorm, but today the sky is defeated and a blanket of grey snow clouds have replaced the horizon. The seasons are theatrical in these parts—especially during April.

We are in our cabin and Pastor Rich tells us to sit. We squat on the floor in a semi-circle, boys and girls together. He hands out sheets of paper with questions of faith, predestination, and Calvinism. “Write down your answers then we will discuss them as a group,” he says.

Pastor Rich stands in the corner spinning a basketball on his finger. He’s pretending he’s not listening. Some of us on the retreat play hoops for the Freshman Team at school, so he brings out the basketball every so often to try to connect with us. He once told us he played college ball, and we sort of believe him because he is 6’11. But he also looks like a dork and kind of talks with a girly soft voice so we sort of don’t. Just because you are tall doesn’t make you good at basketball. Sometimes I wonder what Pastor Rich would have become if he had not become a pastor.

Maybe it’s because we’re cooped up in this cabin. Maybe it’s the turbulent change of the seasons. Or maybe it’s just because Pastor Rich tells us that everything around us is supposed to be transforming and we are fighting it. But a mean streak has gripped us, taken hold, and it’s been creeping into our blood since the thunderstorms rolled through last night, leaving the icy landscape behind today.

To my right, Terri whispers in Carson’s ear. His eyes light up, as does his smile. She turns to my best friend Keith, whispers to him, and then moves in toward me. Her breath tickles my ear and gives me goosebumps.

“We’re gonna mess with SteveBo,” she says.

“How?” I ask.

“I’m gonna give him a boner.” For Terri, this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. She’s been giving guys boners since the day we hit puberty. She gave me one once while we made out on the school bus on the way to a field trip at the zoo, and she gave Keith one during the same trip on the ride home.

Terri’s the type of girl who gets bored quickly, the type of pretty girl who can have anything she wants, so she’s moved from me to Keith and on to a series of older guys. Last year she went to the Senior Prom as an eighth grader, and I’d heard that all the upper classmen asked her for a dance. She probably gave them boners too.

Now she is dating Carson, and rumor has it that not only has she given him a boner, but a blowjob, too. I heard it happened on the team bus back from a basketball game last season. Cheerleaders are supposed to sit at the front of the bus, but I guess she snuck to the back once the cabin lights turned off. Carson is only a freshman like us, but he plays on the varsity team. Everyone says he is going to be a star, and ever since Terri grew breasts she’s been a star too. She wouldn’t waste time with a freshman unless he had potential.

“SteveBo, can you help me with this worksheet?” Terri slides next to him, brushing her leg against his.

We watch him squirm.

“I think we’re supposed to work on this alone. We’ll discuss it together when we finish.”

“But I need your help now.” She shows him a cute little pout. Her tiny hand moves toward his leg, her slim fingers sidling nearer and nearer, then comes to rest on his thigh. She leans close to his pimply face and whispers something in his ear. It sends a shiver though all of us.

Like a well-tended garden, a bulge slowly begins to grow from his pants. Nervous giggles sprout from around the circle, then Carson turns to SteveBo and says, “These are really hard questions, don’t ya think, Pinocchio?” He flashes a smirk like a little kid who just found a pack of matches.

“I’m sure you got some long answers,” Carson continues. We snicker.

SteveBo’s face is red now. I’m worried it might pop if it gets any redder. There’s no stuffing our demons back in. We’re like snowballs rushing downhill and gaining such incredible momentum that we can’t be stopped. We watch SteveBo twist in his seat like a dying fish—the cords in his neck standing out like ropes and the dark vein in his temple pulsing like a fuse. We revel in his agony so completely that Pastor Rich steps in and tells us to cut it out.

◊

Later, Pastor Rich tells us that we’re going for a walk. He says he has something important to show us. All year during conformation classes, Pastor Rich had been yapping about how believing in God is the ultimate transformation. He makes a big deal of it, but, fact is, I don’t feel too much different. For years I thought I had faith. I believed God was watching down on me and controlling my destiny. I believed I mattered. But lately that has changed.

Pastor Rich leads us up a hill. To our right cliffs slope steeply downward toward the brownish waters of Lake Erie. SteveBo is ahead of the rest of us, walking stride in stride with Pastor Rich. They talk enthusiastically, probably about the nature of God, or Original Sin, or the Second Coming of Christ. I can’t understand how people can talk about that stuff all day without getting bored. I get this feeling Pastor Rich was a lot like SteveBo back in the day. Maybe that’s the reason why SteveBo wants to be a pastor, too.

As we walk the path narrows and snakes closer to the cliffs. Beside a large boulder is the wet remains of a fire pit. From the state of the decomposing logs, it had probably burned months ago, maybe even a year. Beside the pit are crumpled beer cans and a used condom. Its neon green color stands out in the mud.

“Someone has been fucking up here,” Keith laughs. I laugh too, but there is something about the crusting condom that makes me feel uncomfortable. I look ahead at Terri walking next to Carson—a strange thought crosses my mind: I wonder if you are supposed to wear a condom when you get a blowjob?

The path crests into a clearing. Old mossy stones protrude from the wet ground and it takes a moment to realize we are in an old cemetery. Weeds sprout high between the headstones. Stillness hangs over the clearing; even the birds have stopped chirping.

“Look around this cemetery,” Pastor Rich says. “All these souls are resting with God. I want you to find a headstone that marks the soul of a child.”

We wander around slowly. Most of us don’t really feel like looking at these stupid graves. Thinking about all these dead people sort of makes me feel sick to my stomach. From across the cemetery SteveBo waves frantically. He is standing next to a small headstone near the path. “Over here, Pastor Rich! I found a grave!”

Pastor Rich walks over and kneels next to the headstone. He runs his fingers across the name and dates. He bows his head and says a little prayer. Then he calls us over to join him.

“Fortuitous,” he says. “This boy was only fifteen. The same age as Brian Caulder when he died.”

Brian Caulder was in the confirmation class last year. He croaked last summer in a car wreck. From what I heard, he was in the car with his sister when it happened. She didn’t look as she pulled out of their driveway and bam! Next thing you know he’s dead. I read in the paper that he died instantly. Now that’s a crazy thought; one second you’re alive and the next second you’re dead. Milliseconds really.

“I want you all to listen as I read you something,” Pastor Rich says. He pulls a folded paper from his faded black overcoat. “This is the Affirmation of Faith written by the late Brian Caulder, just a month before he died.”

He reads about Brian’s love for God, his love of life. It said how thankful he was that God had granted him wonderful parents and a great sister. It talked about the grace of God, and how He had a plan for all of us. It ended with this bit about forgiving those who’ve committed sins against you. There was such joy in Brian’s affirmation, and I can’t help but be upset that God had taken that away. I can’t get myself to believe that the plan of God involved killing him in a car wreck.

I look around our group. The girls are wiping tears, and us boys sniffling and staring at the ground, pretending we aren’t crying too.

“How does this make you feel?” Pastor Rich asks. “It is important to talk about death and faith and the places where the two meet.”

For a long time nobody says anything. Finally, SteveBo speaks: “Brian’s words were transforming.”

The group nods. I nod too, but part of me wonders if this is really transformation or maybe it’s just sadness. Perhaps sadness and transformation is the same thing.

“The good thing is that we don’t have to be sad,” Pastor Rich says. His voice takes on a tone like when he is behind the pulpit. He tells us that Brian is celebrating eternal glory with God in Heaven. Heaven, he says, is like the best day you’ve ever had on earth then increasing it by infinity. That sounds great and all, but I can’t help but wonder that even if your best day was increased by infinity it would probably get boring after a while.

Then Pastor Rich tells us that at church next week we will walk through the pews with little baskets and ask for an offering to pay for a new youth center in the church’s basement. He wants to name it after Brian—a place for the kids to hang out and have fun. It sort of strikes me as unfair that we’ll be served big screen TVs, video games, and pool tables as his family is stuck here in Hell on earth.

Everyone’s still sniffling with wet eyes—everyone except for Terri. Her face is dry and eyes clear. For a moment a little smirk crosses her face. It is like she knows something we don’t.

On the walk back down from the cemetery, the wind picks up from off the lake and whips through our bodies with its bone chilling fingers. It’s almost as if death is reaching out and grabbing for our souls. I can’t stop thinking about Brian. I keep thinking about what he did the day he died. Did he wake up like it was just another day? Did he kiss his mom before he left? Did God leave him a message telling him this was his last day and to make the most of it? I hope it was like that. I hope it meant something.

I imagine his body buried under the earth, decomposing and meaningless. I didn’t really even know him other than passing him in the halls at school and sometimes he’d show up at the playground and we’d play pick-up basketball on the same team. I’d seen him at church too, but the funny thing is, after the accident his family stopped coming. I guess it’s hard to believe in something after part of you dies.

SteveBo is walking alone well in front of the pack. My conscious is gnawing at me like a fat rat so I let it be my guide and I speed up my pace. As I approach, I realize that I don’t know what I am planning to say. SteveBo is looking forward, but I can sense him tightening up in my presence. He probably thinks I’m coming to make fun of him. In the silence that lingers between us I think I can hear the lake lashing against the cliffs.

“We were just joking around earlier,” I say. “You know, like how we joke around with everyone.” Saying that makes me feel better, like I sucked the venom out of everything, and making up for what we’d done by doing a good deed—God’s deed.

“This place sucks,” SteveBo says. He picks at a pimple on his forehead.

“I’m with you, SteveBo,” I say. “It really sucks.” I pause for a moment then begin to speak, this time my voice is lower, almost a whisper. “If they start making fun of you again, I’ll tell them to cut it out.”

 

Back at the cabin, Pastor Rich has us sit in a circle again. This time he hands out blank pieces of notebook paper. We groan knowing that we will be asked to write.

“We’ve thought about death today,” Pastor Rich says. “We’ve also thought about eternal life. Now I want you to think about your own soul. On those blank pieces of paper I want you to write your own obituaries. If you died tomorrow, what would people write about you? Would your soul be allowed to spend eternal bliss in Heaven?”

I try to write, but nothing of substance comes from it. I’m still thinking about Brian, so I start writing about him instead. I’m hoping he is in Heaven so I ask God to be good to him up there. I ask God to tell him that I enjoyed the times we played basketball together and end it by asking Him to comfort Brian’s family. I lift my head and see that the only other person still writing is SteveBo. Everyone else is goofing off, and Carson has that predatory look in his eyes like he’s about ready to mess with someone. I immediately drop my pencil so the person he chooses won’t be me.

“Let me see what you wrote,” Terri whispers. She tugs at my paper.

“No,” I say and pull it away.

“I’ll show you what I wrote,” she says. The same smirk I saw up at the cemetery returns to her face.

“Okay,” I say. She slides her obituary toward me. I pick it up and see a single sentence: Terri died and went to Hell. I look at her and she winks. “Now let me see yours,” she says.

“No.” I crumple my paper into a little ball and stuff it in my back pocket. Everyone around me starts laughing, and at first, I think they’re laughing at me. Then I realize it’s directed at SteveBo—Carson is up to something. He’s crawled behind SteveBo and is trying to get a look at what he wrote. “What do you got there, SteveBo? Writing a story about Pinocchio? Don’t forget the part where his nose gets stiff and grows.”

Explosions of laughter ensue. Keith cackles so hard that he rolls on the ground, tears streaming from his eyes.

In a way, I think the reason we make fun of SteveBo is to make sure he’s like us: a real boy. Real boys don’t pray all the time. We spear him with our words to make sure there are real guts inside, and maybe, if we twist and probe deep enough, we’ll be able to find some sin and coax it out.

I watch Keith and the other kids, and I see the way they watch Carson with awe. There is a huge smile on Carson’s face, and I can feel him molding us as if we were clay in his hands. I look at SteveBo and blurt out: “My favorite movie is Toy Story. The best character is Woody!”

Our laughter becomes unmatched—a hideous sitcom laugh track. We laugh so hard it shakes our chests and we can’t breathe. SteveBo puts his head down and closes his eyes. Maybe he’s praying that we suffocate. Part of me wishes we all will. SteveBo opens his eyes and stares at his paper, face redder than a stop sign.

“I’m disappointed in all of you.” Pastor Rich steps in, but it’s too late to take control. There is no passion in his eyes, no rapture. Our power trumps his.

“I’m saddened, and God is saddened,” he continues. “That you would berate one of your brothers on his walk with Jesus.”

“We were just talking about our favorite movies.” Carson grins. Beside him Keith is still laughing in fits of hysteria.

“Yeah,” I say. “Since when can’t we talk about movies?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Pastor Rich tries to sound stern, but his flat Midwestern way of talking is beginning to break. “My heart is mourning because we’ve traveled so far on our walk with Jesus and we are still so sinful. I’m going to ask you all to go to your bunks. Pray. Ask God if you are ready to be part of the church. I’m going outside to start the fire for dinner, and when I return you better all be praying.” He stands with his arms crossed and watches us march off toward our bunks, girls in one room, boys adjacent. “Pray,” he repeats.

◊

I suppose I should feel guilty about being sent to our bunks, but strangely I don’t. Something happened on that walk through the cemetery and writing those phony obituaries. All the talk about death that makes me feel alive. I’ve thought about dead Brian all day and have made the decision that I will refuse to go to my grave without knowing anything more than church, faith, and invisible shit.

SteveBo is the only person in the room praying and we let him. He has already sacrificed this life for the one in the next realm. I refuse to sacrifice myself too; I’ll take in what sin has to offer and I will meet the world on its terms.

Carson pulls out a bottle of stolen liquor from his backpack. He takes a gulp then asks if any of us want a sip. I am the first to say yes. Then Keith and some of the others say they will have some too. Carson stands on a chair and pours the liquor right into our mouths. For a moment he reminds me of Pastor Rich; the way he stands above the church congregation at the altar. There is a harsh burning sensation, like the liquid is scrubbing my guts and cleaning me out.

SteveBo sits in the corner, eyes closed, hands linked piously in front of him, head bowed slightly forward, talking to God and telling Him of our sins. But even God can’t do anything to stop us. For the moment, His wrath is postponed.


T.C. Jones author photoT.C. Jones is the managing editor at Gulf Stream Magazine and a contributing editor at Burrow Press. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Green Mountains Review, Pacifica Literary Review, The Atticus Review, The Monarch Review, Straylight Magazine, Dos Passos Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and others. He is based in Philadelphia.

 

 

 

Image credit:  Abdi Lopez on Unsplash 

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Published on June 6, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 22. (Click for permalink.)

HEAVY LIFTING by Jennifer Turnquist

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 6, 2018 by thwackJune 12, 2020

Black and white hand holding a crumpled dollar bill

HEAVY LIFTING
by Jennifer Turnquist

A guy comes into the drugstore and goes to the snack aisle. Early twenties, longish hair, patchy beard like he never learned to shave properly. He glances at me so I look away quick, busy myself with straightening the packs of Life Savers on the counter. I’m not watching him because he’s attractive or anything. He isn’t. He’s skinny and stoop-shouldered. I’m watching him because of how his eyes dart around and because he keeps fidgeting with a buckle on his canvas backpack.

Our only other customer is a middle-aged lady who came in right after the guy. She’s chewing gum and looking at a magazine. When I check the snack aisle again it’s empty, but I can still see the guy in the surveillance mirror, which is long and runs across the back of the store under the ceiling. In the mirror, I watch him take a box off the shelf—aspirin or antacids maybe—and put it back. He looks over his shoulder, glances at the mirror, fiddles with the buckle again. What’s he doing? If he’s a shoplifter, he’s pretty terrible at it.

Mr. Parr comes back from the bank and stops to see if I need change for the register. I tell him I’m all set. He points at the display behind the counter where we keep the pipe cleaners and filter tips and such. You’ve got some empty spots there, Donna. Let’s get those filled in. I’ll take care of it, Mr. Parr, I say, my eyes still on the mirror.

Now if that were David, he would have waltzed in here, taken what he wanted, and waltzed right out again. Not that he never got caught, but when he did he’d be all friendly and innocent and oh man, did I really walk out with that? My mom always said David could talk his way out of anything. It wasn’t an act either. David was really a nice guy, but also he was restless. People who used to know our dad usually let him go, but they’d talk to him first, tell him it was time to get serious and grow up. Not everyone in town let him off so easy though. He ended up at the police station a few times, but no one ever threw the book at him. Maybe they should have. The Army doesn’t take criminals. What’s worse? Having a brother who did time or not having a brother anymore at all?

This stringy-haired guy is probably one of the unlucky ones who got his head screwed up in ‘Nam. Whether the Army straightened David out or he ended up a vacant-eyed unfortunate like those you see wandering around we don’t know. Personally, I consider him dead. How often do you hear about a guy who’s MIA showing up alive? Once in a blue moon, that’s how often. Sometimes somebody’s remains are identified, but then they’re only definitely dead instead of probably dead. This is all my own private opinion not to be shared with my mother. She’s convinced he’s in a camp in the jungle over there. She writes to the government every month begging them to keep searching. I urge you, she writes. I entreat you. One time I heard my uncle telling her it was time to stop writing, to move on. Sometimes living is hard work, Ellen, he told her. It’s heavy lifting. Other people talk to her too, but it doesn’t do any good. I get so fed up with her, sitting at home acting like her own life is over. I even told her once that if David was alive he would have talked his way out of that camp by now. Isn’t that what she always said? She just looked at me and said in that slow way she talks now, he doesn’t speak the language.

Mr. Parr heads toward the back with the bank pouch. On the way he gives our stoop-shouldered friend the once-over, like he does with anybody who’s grooming is less than excellent, and goes into the office. The bell over the door jingles and Jerry from the lube joint comes in for a pack of Camels. Jerry likes to talk. Today he’s got a story about a guy who brought in a Firebird and Jerry and Raoul found a pair of pantyhose in the glove box. Jerry waggles his eyebrows at me, so I say, so, maybe his wife keeps a spare pair. It’s not hard to get a run in a pair of pantyhose. Jerry shakes his head. Nope, these were all bunched up. Definitely some hanky-panky going on in that Firebird. Like what, I say, and regret it when Jerry grins at me and says, like, you know.

Jerry’s got to be close to thirty and shouldn’t be grinning at me like that. If David was here he would tell Jerry to get lost, maybe even pop him one, like he did the boy who ditched me at the Sweetheart Dance freshman year. But David isn’t here, and Jerry’s visits are about the only thing that keep me from dying of boredom at work. So I ask if there was any other evidence, like a barrette on the floor. Jerry laughs and says, who wears barrettes with pantyhose? I’m about to say my mom does, but I know what Jerry’s mind will do with that. He’ll have my mom steaming up those car windows, even though she’s barely left the house since we got the telegram. So I say, what were you doing going through the guy’s glove box when all he wanted was an oil change? Jerry laughs again and knocks twice on the counter, like he always does by way of saying so long.

Jerry walks away and I nearly jump out of my skin because the guy is right there behind him. He’s fingering the buckle on his backpack and I wonder if he’s about to stick us up. I glance at the woman in the magazine aisle. She blows a big pink bubble and lets it pop, probably getting flecks of spit all over a magazine she has no intention of buying. She’ll be no help if he pulls a gun. I ring up his deodorant and pack of crackers. He pays with a five and puts the change in his pocket and stands there jingling the coins. And that makes me think maybe he doesn’t have a gun but that he wants something else. Then he starts fiddling with that buckle again. I’m telling you, I’m starting to sweat now. I manage to ask if I can do anything else for him. He licks his lips and leans forward. I have something, he says. And then he says it again: I—I have something.

I shouldn’t, but I look into his face. I think, what is it? What does he have? His eyes are worried and angry and sad all at once. Lost-looking, and I wonder, was he over there? Did he know David? Maybe he has a message I can pass on to my mom, a yes or no that will let her get on with her life. He’s going to tell me how he and David were together, bullets raining, and David died a brave death. Or there’s a camp, and he—

The magazine lady comes over and stands next to him. Come on, Phil, she says. Time to get you back. Wait, I say, what’s going on? He lives in that group home on Fulton, she tells me. I ask if she works there and she shrugs and says it’s a living.

I watch through the big glass window as they walk down the block and out of sight. I’m still staring out the window, thinking about David, thinking about how it would feel to finally know, when Mr. Parr comes out of the back.

I hear him plunk a box on the counter, probably full of after-shave or enemas. Wake up, girlie, he says. I swear, you get moony-eyed over every Army-surplus hippie who comes in here. I stare out the window, dreaming, a little longer before I tell myself it’s time to get back to work.


Jennifer Turnquist author photoJennifer Turnquist has a BA in psychology that she never put to any professional use. After several years working in a neurophysiology laboratory, homeschooling her children, and attempting various entrepreneurial enterprises, she discovered that she really likes to write. Ten years later, she’s still at it. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family.

 

 

 

Image credit:  lucas Favre on Unsplash

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Published on June 6, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 22. (Click for permalink.)

THE NURSES by Verónica Jordán-Sardi

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2018 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Four nurses in vintage linen hospital attire huddled in a circle

THE NURSES
by Verónica Jordán-Sardi

They were the only friends I had. All of them had palms that changed colors when they stroked my hair, picked up an iron pot or peeled yucca. I remember one of them with more love than the rest—her palms turned purple when she showed me her lifelines. She was never able to show me her life, though. She would turn her hands up and the bright point of an amethyst’s reflection would lacquer her palms. At one point, I think there were five.

They would sometimes disappear. I found Father chasing after one on the black and white checkered marble living floors. She had her arms up over her face and ears like chicken feathers and Father laughed excitedly. I might have heard her laughing, too, but she was only a couple of years older than me back then. She had once carried me with her left arm and pushed my little brother in his shady lace umbrella stroller with her right and somehow also tugged on Cookie. Back then we would run into more stray dogs than Cookies on our way to the grocery store—she was a moppy mutt, but she was of the lucky kind, the kind that got pushed and pulled around and only choked a little and always fed at night. One of them must have been hungrier than the dogs because she sold my mother’s favorite pup to the man at the grocery store. I remember asking where Cookie was going and she told me she was getting a haircut. This was before she told me urine was the best moisturizer. I was getting old enough to wonder. I was getting old enough when she sliced the wet part of my little brother’s diaper with her nails and urine leaked out onto her cuspate hands. She splashed her face then splashed my own. She splashed my little brother’s vitamins on her face at least a couple of times a day.

The day I got sick, the one with the purple palms was the only one home. I don’t know where everyone else was, but it’s as if they knew I was coming and needed help. I had grown a belly for the white mane, the mangy toes, the infectious secrets inside me.

The Doctor says that in the morning, if I look up closely, if I tilt my head and look up closely at the sky, I can see that we pretend like something tangible is there, but no, it has never been true. The Doctor doesn’t know everything but he knows about the Nurses.

 

◊

 

Balustrade, balustrade, balustrade, haught, haught, haught, I spin down the chandeliers and ching-ching the pugs are dead. What a scene. The sink in the downstairs bathroom is full of bloody chicken feathers like pillows because my bladder does not shut. Yesterday I was happier throwing doll heads into the empty pool. I kept thinking tachycardia was a gift every time I reached for one of their cigarette butts. Today I grow tired of waiting and wish my body would rot. Immediately upon wishing, I slip off the same marble stair eighty-eight times. I repent by spinning in circles for as long as I think it takes to tumble down magnetism and blow round the wooden wheels of my bicycle. I sit on rat shit while they peel potatoes and chug rum over boiling iron skillets. I’m sorry and claw skin off my wrists until my bones show and one of the Nurses comes for me. I run away from her. I run up and down the chimney and dismantle the roof then return to the bathroom where one by one I spoon out the wall’s mosaics. I stack the magenta and green pebbles on top of my toes and make out an orange star ahead, across the walls, on the other side of myself. I hear one of them still running behind me, dragging her collard cat nails inside wood, so I jump through the hole I made in the wall towards the orange gleam.

 

◊

 

I sit in the room I carved inside the walls of my house. I never knew my organs could feel like parasites on my shoulders. The room is pitch-purple with dim orange fog emanating from that star I cannot touch faraway. I sit and count the toes on my feet when I see her. I feel the skin of a dead animal under me. One of the room’s walls is cut in half by a tunnel as thick as two apples side by side. A little girl walks through it. She is my mother as a little girl, tired and alone, I scream “Hello!” to see if she can hear me. She keeps walking to the miniature furniture at one end of the tunnel. She sits on a red rocking chair next to a record stand with a white wedding cake. I have not eaten for two days. I’m so hungry I reach for the cake, my vision fogged down by the fumes of my saliva. I cannot touch my baby mother or rocking chair or cake. Now I hear the Nurses’ bones crunching through the exposed bathroom wall towards me.

I have not eaten for two days because of the pain. Because I think I suffer from the sawdust and dust-lag of time. Every pit of my body releases a pound of dirt, nostrils, ears, mouth, urethra, and asshole, except the blood that gushes from in between and down my legs. One of the Nurses plugs the blood with a dirty cleaning rag hanging over her shoulder. She and the other four Nurses stand around me inside the purple-pitch room with my little mother. All five nurses wear white dresses and white caps; hold hay brooms with their right hands and yellow dusters with their left. My mother’s mouth looks like a creamy vagina crease. There is no more cake on the record table. I’m still hungry.

 

◊

 

I sleep in my mother’s childhood bed and bedroom. I collect the petals of the bougainvillea that fall in through midnight’s cut on the ceiling. These flowers bloom and give birth before falling on the bed, their placentas scatter underneath me and drown my mother’s sheets with crimson trails that unearth the floor. My mother’s stench emanates from the floor; her regurgitated cells are pushed away on wheelbarrows. I wish to peel the dead skin off her bedroom walls, the smell of mildew, potatoes and cream.

I sleep in my mother’s old nightgown. I sleep all sanctimonious and clean with blondness rustling my skin. I wait for the Nurses to take me away in wheelbarrows, for their spiky hooves to puncture my skin and form freckles underneath where my arms hang. Trabecula, trabecula, trabecula, caught, caught, caught my mother’s sheets are dusty and kind. Night’s fumes sift through them and fly over my belly, wrap under my chin and enter my mouth. The Nurses think they’re helping me.

The Nurses come inside to slap the wet mattress. One untethers the sheets and dunks them in a cast iron pot of boiling water. Another wrestles a broomstick down and across with her triceps, sweeping the hay of head hairs unmeshed on my mother’s floor. I crawl off my mother’s bed holding onto one of their palms, but they leave me at the sound of the pugs eating a dead songbird by the empty pool outside.

I walk over to eat shattered window glass. I’m hungry. The shards get lost in the roof of my mouth; they tap and sink into my tongue. I spit out bloody crystal bubbles onto my mother’s nightstand and see a trail of ants cutting the wood in half, patterning solemnly, one by one with whiplashed saline shoulders. I follow them outside my mother’s room, down the marble winding stairwell and across the dining hall into the kitchen. I march with the ants underneath the kitchen stove. They feast on yucca and potatoes browned in feces. Two red palms pull and press down on my ears like curved tongs. The Nurse with the red palms twists and turns the vertebrae linking my head to my spinal cord; she opens a bottle of Pepsi cola and fills my hand with crunchy ice cubes. The cubes burn my hands but the Nurse piles the ice cubes even higher every time I shake them off. I carry a tower of snow on the skinny hand my mother made me—when one diamond falls the others reorganize. I run back underneath the stove. The Nurses are grilling dead trout with the ardor of lemons. Sour oil and hot water ignite and fall onto my ankles.

 

◊

 

Underneath the stove with the ants I find a baby doll with loose glass eyelids. Her name is Aura and I pretend she’s small enough for me to hold. I pretend I can run my fingers over the end hairs of her arms. I sniff the space between her legs, stick my nose into plastic covered in pillowed cotton and do not smell yeast or rancid metal. She’s young. Cream, fish, cheese, powdered milk, and yolk sing a sad ballad of dead kings. Aura belongs to the smuggling ants crimping pieces with four limbs and two antennae like snake tongues. They have their own dinner table. Aura is the center of their castle, a mountain of oily grime and dead human skin. I feel at home here until the Nurses shrink and come after me. They throw poisonous missiles and cook ant brains with carbon monoxide. One Nurse takes a bird’s nest out of her dress pocket, another takes an Easter basket out of her hair, they both pick off the dead ants, collect them in mason jars to season the fish.

 

◊

 

I find a room as small as a closet full of hay brooms and feather dusters. Underneath leftover bleach and rags drenched in vinegar, I find steps only big enough for my small feet to climb. Up one by one, one by one, until I face an unlocked door as small as the space from one thigh to another. The room behind the door has walls moistened with chunky butter—it helps me slide right in with somersaults, ricochet, ricochet, ricochet, womb, womb, womb, ting-ting a dinner party. No one turns their heads when I plop into the ballroom attic. I look back to where I come from; I look back to how I got here and see the passage was a slide dressed in greasy-horse-liver flesh. My body is still clean; I wear a light pink dress and tutu, glass slippers and white socks with ankle ruffles. I bow to the men in tuxedos and women in tight black silk gowns holding champagne glasses. One of the men talks to me; he’s holding a pug like a skull. My chest grows cherries, red bulbs popping into blossom, I pick one off to taste and the man slaps my hand away. The slap smells like loneliness and salty water, it appears in fingerprints on my hand. The man looks at his pug, pinches the tip of its ear, and says “suffer” (says ‘tis nobler). The pug gyrates its head and snaps into his own fur with his jaw. Dog bites spread like wildfires stampeding through the man’s chest. The pug hops on my shoulder like a parrot, I hear the tuxedo man’s heart, I hear live heart flesh beating, pumping human blood inside the pug’s stomach.


Headshot of Verónica Jordán-SardiOriginally from Cali, Colombia, Verónica Jordán-Sardi immigrated to the United States with her immediate family as a young teen fleeing sociopolitical unrest. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and French from the University of Florida, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. Her work can be found in Columbia Journal, Litro Mag, and Comparative Literature Commons. Verónica currently lives in New York where she teaches writing and reading in English as a second language at the City University of New York.

 

 

Image credit: Otis Historical Archives on Flickr

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Published on March 22, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 21. (Click for permalink.)

FIFTY-FIFTY by Avery Bufkin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2018 by thwackApril 18, 2019

hospital IV pole in grey lighting

FIFTY-FIFTY
by Avery Bufkin

Her doctor said he’d sign us up, you know, for the trial. That either she’d get the real drug or the fake one, and we wouldn’t know which, of course. But fifty-fifty, you got to think that’s a pretty good shot and all. I said that to her in the car afterwards. “Pretty good shot,” I said. “I think we’ve got it.”

Frankie nodded, more to herself than to me, I thought. Sort of nodded to herself like she needed that affirmation. I nodded, too, more for her than for me. Fifty-fifty, I thought. That’s a pretty good shot. I mean, those doctors might even be giving all them patients the real drug, not the fake one, that is. I mean, was it even legal to give a fake drug when a real one could work?

I said that to her, too. I said, “You know, it’s hard to imagine they’d even give someone that fake stuff when the real stuff’s right there.”

She nodded again. I thought maybe I should stop talking. Maybe this wasn’t helping. I turned my attention back to the road and drummed my thumbs against the wheel as I drove.

“I mean, fifty-fifty,” I said. “That’s a darn good shot, I’d say.”

“You already did, Jack. I mean, really, just for right now, could you?”

“Yeah, yeah of course,” I said, and I put the radio on and just kept my eyes on the road.

Yeah, I thought, fifty-fifty. That ain’t bad chances. I’d had worse chances than that before. Like when I was nine. About sixty-forty then, I’d say. Was out hunting with my dad in the marshes behind our house, shotgun slung over my back, when I slipped in a bit of mud. Fell face forward is what I did. Fell face forward and didn’t catch myself ‘til my arms were a few inches deep in the water, and right about two yards in front of me, staring right back at me, was one of those moccasins, all stretched out and sunning itself on a rock there between the reeds. Was too scared to move. Could hear my dad calling for me somewhere to my left, but I knew I didn’t have much time when he started to open his jaws at me, showing me the white of his mouth. May have been more like eighty-twenty odds, now I’m thinking of it, but in one motion I swung my shotgun forward and blew the damn snake’s head off.

“You know,” I said. “I almost died hunting with my dad once.”

“Water moccasin, right?”

I nodded. I suppose I told that one a lot. I got a lot of nods for that one, a lot of glass raises, a few “oh Lords” and “by Gods.” For sure, though, it was a good one.

“I think Dr. Riley was hinting at us though, don’t you?” I said.

“Hinting at us?”

“I think I saw him wink.”

Frankie turned to look out the window. “I don’t remember that.”

I shrugged. “No, I think he did. You think he was trying to tell us something?”

“He doesn’t know who gets the real stuff either, Jack.”

“Well, he says he doesn’t, but he might—”

“Jack really, would you?”

“Sorry, hon, sorry. I don’t mean to.”

“I know you’re worried,” she said, and she reached over and touched my knee. “Just not so much, okay?”

I nodded and patted her hand. She rubbed her hand on my knee, then started going a bit up the inside of my thigh. I patted her hand on my thigh.

“Don’t worry, Jack,” she said. “Our chances are good, aren’t they?”

“Real good,” I said, but suddenly I thought our chances weren’t so good. I smiled at her anyways and I patted her hand again, and she told me to pull off onto the side of the road.

“Pull off?” I said. “Just right here?”

“Just right there is fine. Right there.”

I slowed the car and drifted us off onto the gravel that separated the road from some guy’s farm. Frankie moved her hand further up my thigh, and I started to squirm. We didn’t normally do things like this. Like pulling off the road.

“What’s up, Frankie?” I said, looking over at her, and she looked back at me the same as usual. But she had her hand pretty far up my thigh now, which was not the same as usual, and I wondered if she’d started to think our chances weren’t so good anymore either. “You didn’t take something, did you?” I said.

“Like what?”

I shook my head, and I pulled the keys from the ignition.

◊

I glanced at her over the top of my morning paper. She was breathing heavy and gripping the arms of her chair. Staring a bit too intently, I thought, at the floor by my feet. I looked down at the floor by my feet, folding the paper over to see.

“What’s that, hon?” I said.

Frankie glanced up at me. “What’s that, Jack?”

“I said, ‘what’s that?’ What ya’ looking at there, hon?”

“Oh, nothing. Just was thinking, I guess, is all.”

“But you’re feeling okay?”

“Well, I was thinking just now that I think I got it.”

“Well, I thought so, too, didn’t I? I’m sure I did, but what is it you’re thinking you got?”

“The real stuff,” Frankie said, tapping her arm now, tapping the soft spot on her inner elbow where the drug went in. “The real stuff,” she said again. “I can feel it, you know? Can feel it in me.”

“Does it work that fast?”

“I don’t know. I think it can.”

“’Cause it’s only been a few days. I just wonder—?”

“I just really feel it though, Jack.”

“That’s amazing, hon.” I put the paper down on the couch cushion beside me, leaned back with my arm over the back of the couch, and I smiled at her. She smiled back at me but still clutched the arms of her chair. I wished she would let go of the chair. It’d make me feel better. Like she wasn’t in pain or something.

I got up and I knelt down on the floor in front of her. “Hold me,” I said.

“Oh, it’s fine,” she said, and she let go of the chair then and waved me away. “Don’t worry about me. You’ve got too much to worry about with work. Can’t have you worrying that much, alright?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Good thinking, hon.”

Gina started to cry. But I was still kneeling and thinking about fifty-fifty. Frankie nodded towards the baby’s room.

“You going or should I?”

“Just don’t want to leave you.”

“What did I just say, Jack? I said, ‘don’t worry,’ didn’t I?”

I stood up and went to go check on Gina, picked her up out of her crib, and took her back to her mom. I knelt down again, right in front of Frankie’s chair, bouncing Gina in my arms, and I kissed our girl’s forehead. She was still crying.

“Someone wanted to see you,” I said.

“Jack, not now.”

“Just take her.”

Gina started screaming  even as I bounced her.

“No, really. Not now, okay?”

I stopped bouncing her and held her against my chest. I pressed my lips into the thin wisps of her hair and tried to get her to stop wailing.

“Come on now, Gina,” I said. “What about mommy? Want to see mommy?”

“Please, Jack. I don’t want her right now.”

I looked up. “Oh, okay. Yeah. For sure.” I stood back up and put her on my shoulder. “Yeah, let me just go see if she needs to be changed then, okay?”

Frankie nodded, rubbing her arm now. “But I can feel it, Jack, really. We got the real stuff.”

◊

Frankie started to get worse, but the doctor said that wasn’t unusual, even for those on the real stuff. He made her fill out a sheet, and I watched her mark off her pain on a scale from one to ten for every part of her body. Nausea, she said. Even my arms feel nauseous. But the doctor said that wasn’t unusual either. Even on the real stuff, others were getting worse, so we weren’t alone. On the real stuff, people’s arms felt nauseous. Isn’t that comforting? That’s what he said.

“Isn’t that comforting?” Dr. Riley said.

Frankie shifted in her seat. “Uh, what’s that?” she said. “Which part?”

“Part of what?”

“What’s comforting?” she said.

“Oh, that, you know, you’re not alone. A lot of the other patients are presenting with these symptoms, in fact.”

Frankie nodded. “Oh, that is good,” she said.

“Yes, I thought so. Real good,” Dr. Riley said. “So I wouldn’t worry too much. No good to worry.”

Dr. Riley started to shuffle some papers on his desk then, and I leaned forward onto his desk.

“But, you know, I was thinking though,” I said. “Is there anything you could give her? Prescribe to her, I mean?”

Dr. Riley turned his head on its side.

“She’s been feeling awful sick, you know, and I know you said lots of others are feeling the same way and all, and that’s great, really, but anything you could prescribe? That’d definitely be appreciated is all.”

Dr. Riley nodded with his head still on its side.

“And I mean, like you said, lots of other people, and so probably you get asked this too much, but—” I leaned forward more, like Frankie couldn’t hear me if I did. “She’s been getting pissy sometimes. Not wanting to hold our daughter and all.”

“That’s normal,” the doctor said.

“Well, hey look,” Frankie said, leaning forward onto the desk now, too, so that we were really crowding each other out. “It’s not like that. You can’t put it like that, Jack. It’s just—are you thinking I’ll be able to get back to work soon?”

“Hard to say,” Dr. Riley said, and he rolled back from the desk in his chair to give us some space there. “It’s different for everyone.”

“It’s just, with the treatment and all, we kinda need the money again,” she said.

“Fran, you can’t tell him a thing like that. You’re up for it when you’re up for it. That’s what he’s saying.”

“He hasn’t said anything yet, Jack. You’ve gotta let him talk.”

“He just said—didn’t you just say?—Fran, he just said.”

“I know what he said.”

“Well, it’s hard to say,” the doctor said.

“What is?” Frankie asked.

“When you might be up for going back to work.”

“It’s just too hard to say, hon.”

“I got it, Jack.” Frankie looked at me, and she touched my arm, squeezed my arm for a second, and leaned back off the desk.

“And what about Gina, Fran?” I said.

“Don’t you remember us talking? We talked about it, Jack. Hannah ‘cross the street will take her three days a week, she said. She’s already lookin’ after the Bennett kid.”

I nodded.

Frankie turned from me.

“Very normal concerns,” Dr. Riley said.

“Well, that’s good,” I said.

Frankie nodded.

“Very normal,” Dr. Riley said again. “And remember, you call my office anytime and someone will answer. Might be me, but it might not be me. Very qualified people around here, though.”

“That’s good,” I said again.

Frankie stared at the pictures on Dr. Riley’s desk.

“Are those your kids?” she asked.

He picked up one of the frames and looked at it. “Yes,” he said. “They are.”

“Beautiful children,” she said.

◊

I could hear her coughing behind the bathroom door. I knocked. “Fran, you okay?” I said, and I tried the door, but she’d locked it.

“I’m fine, Jack. No worries.”

“Could you open the door for me, hon?”

“Really, I’m fine. Just give me a moment, would you?”

“Yeah sure,” I said, and I leaned against the wall by the door. I stared at the row of photos that hung on the wall across from me. Black and whites of our wedding, of our parents, of Gina. So many faces on the wall, I thought. So many lives on the wall.

I tried the door again. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I can’t move, Jack.”

“What do you mean, Fran? What do you mean, you can’t move?” I turned and started to shake the knob.

“I just feel so sick. I don’t want to move. I can’t feel my body. I want to die.”

“Fran,” I said. “Frankie.”

She didn’t say anything. I just heard her coughing, but coughing like she were choking really.

“Frances!”

I tried to break open the door, but I have to admit, I’m not the strongest man ever. Not even close, really. Tried slamming my shoulder into the door as they do in the movies, but the door just rattled a bit and Frankie just gave a little shriek is all.

It sounded like she was vomiting.

“Fran?”

“I think that’s blood, Jack.”

“Blood, hon?”

I slammed my shoulder into the door again, tried putting my foot into it, but that didn’t work any better. Put my shoulder into it again.

“Please, Frankie,” I said. “Please just try and open the door.”

I could hear her palms slapping the floor. Then I heard the lock turn, and I opened it, and she was sitting up against the side of the tub. There was blood on her chin, dribbling from the corner of her mouth. There was blood in the toilet too, spattered against the sides.

“I’m sweating,” she said. “I feel wet.”

“You want me to put you in the bath?” I said.

“I don’t think I can move.”

I put the water on and stopped up the drain.

“Come on,” I said, lifting her from under the arms. She sort of got herself to her feet. Or at least, I got her to sit up on the side of the tub and slide over its edge, and she slipped into the few inches of water with her clothes still on. I watched her clothes turn dark.

“Fuck this,” I said.

Fran looked at me. “Don’t say that, Jack.”

“No, I’m saying it. I’m saying, ‘Fuck it’ alright? Alright, Fran? I said—no—I’m saying. Listen to me, alright? Fuck this goddamn fucking—”

“Would you stop that?”

“Frankie,” I said.

She looked down at the water.

“Jack,” she said.

“Frances, don’t—”

“Jack, Jack—”

“What?” I said.

“Jack, you look at me!”

I breathed. I stared at the toilet because I couldn’t look at her, but there was blood in the toilet and I couldn’t look at that either. I slammed the seat closed, and Frankie covered her ears.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She put her arms back down in the water.

“You good?” I said.

“I’m fine. Water feels nice. Thanks.”

I couldn’t help it. I had to ask. “Are you still sure you got the real stuff?”

“What does it matter?” she said, and she closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the tile. “What would it matter?”

I guess it didn’t, but at the same time, it did. I wanted to know who to be mad with. God or those damn doctors. Those damn trials. But maybe that didn’t even matter. I shook my head and grabbed her hand, shook it in the water.

Gina’d been crying since I tried putting my foot in the door, and Frankie nodded towards her room.

“Would you, Jack?”

“What? Are you kidding me? She’ll stop on her own. I’m right here.”

“No, it’s okay, Jack. Go on, then.”

I got up to go, but I looked at her, and I couldn’t let myself leave her like that. There was still blood on her chin, and I bent over. I dipped my thumb in the water and went to wipe the blood from her mouth, but I think maybe she thought she might throw up again because as my hand got close her face, she pushed it away.

“No, please,” she said.

“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll go get Gina.”

Frankie nodded.

“Frances?” I said.

“What is it, Jack?”

“You want me to call Dr. Riley?”

“He’s got too much going on, Jack. He hasn’t got time for—”

“Hasn’t got the time? It’s his damn trial, isn’t it?”

“What’s he gonna say? Is he gonna say something?”

I shook my head. She was probably right, I thought. What was he going to say?

“I’m just angry is all,” I said.

“Don’t be angry, Jack.”

I nodded, and I went and I sat with Gina, holding her in my lap. I watched the sky out over the back lawn, and I held her ‘til she stopped crying. Held her right up against me so I could feel her nose against my collarbone. The sky went dark, and the trees turned to black against it. Street lamps flickered on. The neighbor let the dog out to pee. I rocked our baby and held up her little hands with just a finger. So tiny. And I thought I’d call Dr. Riley. So what if he said something? I needed to hear someone say something, anything. Just something to tell me this was normal.

I sat down with Gina against me, listening to the dial tone. A nurse picked up and transferred me to his cell. I thought I’d ask him how normal blood in the toilet was. I did.

“Dr. Riley speaking.”

I said, “Dr. Riley, how normal is blood in the toilet?”

“Oh, not too uncommon,” he said. “Already had a few calls earlier in the week about this.”

“Oh, that’s good,” I said.

“I’m actually on my way out of the office as we speak.”

“Could you tell us?” I asked him, sorry to cut him off. “You think you could tell us now if we had the real drugs?”

“I’m sorry, real sorry, but I really don’t know myself. You remember when we started this and I said some things about scientific integrity? What that means is that I can’t even know, but if I did know, for sure I’d tell you, but unfortunately, it’s not possible. Just not possible, I have to say.”

“But this is normal? People who get the drug, the real one, they have these symptoms?”

He didn’t answer.

“Because she feels it. She can feel the drug. We feel it, I mean. We both do. We’ve got the real stuff, almost certain of that. Just want to make sure there hasn’t been some other kind of complication is all.”

“That’s good,” Dr. Riley said. “Hope is the best medicine, you know?”

“That’s what I always say. Well, I mean, I think it at least, or at least, I’ll start saying it is what I mean. You know, I think my dad used to say that.”

“That’s good,” the doctor said. “I think you’re doing good. It really sounds like everything’s going well.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “You know, I almost died hunting with my dad? I swear, ninety-ten odds I had, and I beat it.”

“That’s good. You’ve got something on your side it seems.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Something on our side. Could use that, right?”

“Is that all, Mr. Rayner?”

Gina started to cry again, and I bounced her on my leg.

“I suppose so,” I said. “You did say this is normal, right? Probably nothing, right?”

“Many people are having the same problem,” he said. “It’s very common.”

“That’s good to hear, real good. I’ll go tell her now, I suppose.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Dr. Riley said. “Have a good night,” he said, and I heard the line click.

I put the phone down feeling better, and Gina had stopped crying, so that was good. I set her back down in her crib and went back to the bathroom. Frankie was still in the tub, drawing shapes with her finger in the surface of the water.

“Doctor says this is completely normal,” I said.

Frankie nodded.

“Says a lot of people had been complaining about these same symptoms earlier in the week.”

“Really?”

“For sure. He says it’s very common. I think those were his exact words in fact.”

“Very common for who? For those with the fake drug?”

“No, hon,” I said, and I knelt down on the bathroom rug and leaned over the edge of the tub. “No, he said he thought you got the real one. You’re doing better than most of the other patients he’s talked to. Says you’re doing real well actually if this is the worst you’ve got to deal with. Says this is nothing. Says toughen up is what he says.”

“Toughen up? I thought I was dying. Thought I couldn’t move.”

“Not toughen up. Not sure he said ‘toughen up’ exactly. But he said not to worry.”

“Alright, Jack.”

“Alright, hon.”

I patted her hand and sat with her there on the bathroom floor while she closed her eyes and drew some more shapes in the water.


Headshot of Avery BufkinAvery Bufkin is an emerging writer from Atlanta, currently residing in Athens, GA. They’re an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, studying economics and English.

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Published on March 22, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 21. (Click for permalink.)

GUTSHOT by Thomas Barnes

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2018 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Close-up of a rusty air rifle

GUTSHOT
by Thomas Barnes

The lucky streak ran out when the air rifle went off.

I felt the little ragged hole in my shirt. It didn’t feel like anything at all. Too small to be significant. Johnny let the air rifle swing to his side, the ends of his teeth glittering. Kali fell off the stump she was sitting on. They were all waiting for me to do something. I heard blood in my ears. Maybe they’d thought I’d keel over and die, I’m thinking.

So I did. I pressed my beer to my belly and squeezed. Beer frothed up in a fountain as I writhed in the dirt.

Even Johnny smiled a little.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Kali said, righting the stump.

I threw the crushed can into the black river. The wind grabbed the can and carried it far past the jutting, broken pylons.

I still felt like I could beat up a thunderstorm. Me, Kali, and Johnny were celebrating under the highway. Doug was there too, but that goes without saying—he’d follow Johnny into hell, further. We were living it up because my great aunt died. She left me a pile of money. I was sure it was a typo in the will. See, my name was only one letter away from Rocko, her toy poodle.

The can landed in the black water without a sound or a ripple. Johnny cocked the rifle. There was a sharp metal sound as the bullet struck the can where it floated.

“You know I didn’t mean to,” Johnny said, holding out the rifle. “If it’ll make you feel better, you can put one in me.”

I looked down the business end of the barrel. Then I pushed it toward the dirt. When I lifted up my shirt, there was a small red hole under my last rib.

“You ought to go to the hospital,” Kali said.

“He’s fine,” Johnny said. Kali and Johnny were back together, which meant they were always arguing.

“Yeah, fine. See?” Doug said, tossing me another can. He acted like he was always licking the third rail, but it was the medicine he stole from his night-shift at the hospice.

“Shut up, Doug,” Johnny said.

I missed the beer and it rolled behind a twisted old oak tree. An oil truck snorkeled over the bridge, moving toward the squat white tanks on the opposite bank, the dead trees bound to leaning telephone poles.

When I leaned for the beer, a spike of pain arced across my side. Kali was already there. Her touch was icy, electric. I felt a cold hook curl around the base of my spine.

“I can’t feel it anywhere,” Kali said. “I think he needs to see a doctor.”

I felt the wound myself, and my hand came away with a tiny ruby of blood. I felt acid in my throat.

“I can’t afford it,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“I could sneak you into the hospice,” Doug said. “That is, if you don’t think you’re gonna make it. It’s garbage for the living. But pretty swanky if you’re not.”

“What about your aunt? I thought you were loaded now,” Kali asked.

I looked away.

“I’m not set for life. I think it’ll cover dog surgery. Not people surgery though,” I said.

Mostly I didn’t want to leave. Under the overpass, I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. We were talking about everything, all the old jokes and stories. I wanted this afternoon to last forever. We hadn’t had an afternoon like this since high school. Over us and everything, the light was gold and red and pink and purple. There was a massive cloud in the sky, hanging like a city over the towers of the real city below. A ship, toy-sized, swayed near the river mouth, and I wondered who was on it, where they were going.

But my side twanged. I wasn’t sure if the ache was growing because I was thinking on it, or if there was actually something wrong inside me. It seemed insane, like a bad dream’s backward logic, that something could pierce me, change me, that the outside world could get in. I looked at the red film of blood between my fingers. It didn’t, couldn’t, seem real.

“Just give me another, I don’t know, two ccs of PBR and a fistful of purples,” I said, trying to sound clinical.

Doug snapped to action. Drugs were something he could latch onto.

“This is the last of them,” Doug said, upending the amber bottle. “It’s not much.”

A truck shattered across the bridge, rattling the overpass’s steel plates and startling a phalanx of pigeons. Johnny took aim. I gasped as pain wracked my gut. I sat down hard. I felt like I’d eaten something rotten.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Kali said. “You’re white as a ghost.”

A pigeon pirouetted and began to fall toward the river.

◊

“Fuck,” I breathed as Kali’s old car sprang over a pothole.

I pressed against my stomach, but couldn’t staunch the ache blossoming somewhere deep inside me. I tried not to think about it.

On the overpass, the city stabbed upward like something clawed out of the ground. Kali gripped the wheel tight, threading the car though gaps between eighteen-wheelers. We rushed past low houses and graffitied billboards. The blare of car horns was constant. Each crack in the road tied another knot in my stomach.

Doug was playing with the dials, but there was only static.

“This is boring,” he said, as traffic tightened. Ahead was a sea of red lights. “Tell me something, Johnny.”

Johnny collected stories how some people collected little pieces of glass from the beach.

“This guy I knew was worried that every day the sun was getting closer,” Johnny said.

“Did you meet him at Walpole State?” Doug asked.

Johnny nodded. Kali shook her head, but I could see her grinning in the rearview. Johnny liked to say he spent time on the inside, that he had his second degree from the state penitentiary. But he’d done less than a day for vandalizing his old boss’s car.

“Every day he took a measurement of the sky. If you listened to him, the sun was inching closer a few miles a day. He tried to warn people, but nobody listened. He stared at it every day, daring it to come closer. And each day it did. He ended up holding up the Sunglass Hut, trying to clean them out so he could face down the sun.”

“It needs a real ending. It’s not a story if you don’t learn something,” Kali said, finding space between space and advancing through traffic.

She was always so in the world. She moved through it like water, making it seem easy.

“I wasn’t finished,” Johnny said quietly. “Now that he’s in prison, the state fixed his eyes, but they got the connections wrong. So everything he sees is its opposite.”

Doug laughed and bounced in his seat until Kali told him to quit it or we’d rock off the highway. My heart was jackhammering in my throat. I took a deep breath and it came out in a rattle.

“The point is that sometimes you don’t even know what to worry about, and what you were worried about wasn’t what you should have been worrying about all along,” Johnny said.

“A simpler way to say that is sometimes things work themselves out,” Kali said.

“Yeah, like a hedgehog,” Doug said.

“What the fuck, Doug?” Kali said.

“Like when you get stung by a hedgehog. The needle will work all the way through you and come out, no problem. You just gotta leave it alone,” Doug said. “I saw it on the Discovery channel.”

A silence fell over the car, broken only by muted car horns. The road stretched and curved over the river, toward the fist of glass buildings that was the downtown. It was broken in a few places by old stone clock towers. The sun was going down, lighting the windows of the city a brilliant orange. The taillights of the cars on the overpass ran together like a watercolor. All the colors made the world seem aflame. I wiped a tear from my eyes. I had a feeling like I was landing in a plane after a long journey, landing in a place I knew but couldn’t remember.

Kali’s eyes filled the mirror. “Does it still hurt?”

“No,” I said, but it did. It hadn’t hurt until I started thinking about it again.

◊

Deflated people draped themselves over the wooden chairs and tables of the waiting room. A man, thin as paper, muttered as he paced the edges of the room. In the corner, a TV showed clips of disasters between pharmaceutical commercials, a double feature.

I watched the lines and letters dance across the white page in front of me. Doug’s purples had kicked in, and then some. The letters lifted off the page, hovered, and cascaded off in a waterfall. I tried to gather them up, but they darted away from me, and my side screamed.

I pinned down one of the lines and wrote my name. Then I crossed it out and wrote my great aunt’s dog’s name instead. A loud noise shot through the low quiet of the waiting room. It was Johnny versus a vending machine, round one, fight. A coke rolled out. K.O.

The ghostly outline of a cop stirred behind a gouged and scratched acrylic glass window, then was still.

Johnny cracked the can and sat down. When he put his feet up, Kali pushed them off her lap, continued reading a sheaf of pamphlets: Coping With Cancer, Treating Tuberculosis, Seeing Past Seasonal Affective Disorder. I didn’t know where Doug was. Probably hunting up some more purples.

A man limped into the waiting room. He was missing an arm. Slender little rivulets of blood fell from his shirt and filled up his shoes. Footprints on the white tile led up to the counter. He was handed a clipboard with a pen attached to it. He furrowed a brow at the forms.

I started to shake with laughter, but then Kali was putting me on my feet and moving me toward a swinging door. A nurse there was calling for my great aunt’s dog.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Is he—” the nurse asked.

“He’ll be alright,” Kali said, steering me past the nurse.

“I’m only supposed to let family in, and even then, only one at a time,” the nurse said in a nasal drone.

“I’m family,” Kali said.

We clicked down the hall. There were closed doors and open ones. Beige machines trailing cords and tubes stood guard, alongside empty plastic chairs. There were stretchers by the wall runners, under bright antiseptic lights. Some had people on them, crumpled up like paper, others had blankets drawn over.

In the room, the nurse felt around the wound and the ache sounded from fathoms below. Her face kept changing. There was a sharp pain in my arm. Kali told me to relax, that it was going to be alright. Machines and tubes and articulated lights orbited around me. I felt processed, like I was moving through conveyors on a factory floor. I felt I was in a bad dream. I desperately needed to wake up and find myself at home in bed, my parents, still together, talking in low voices over the burble of the coffeemaker downstairs.

I cried out, and everything was still. It was night. Kali was there, and she moved over the bed. I tried to get up, but couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.

“It’s alright,” Kali said. “You started thrashing when they made you drink a solution to see inside your chest. So they sedated you. I don’t think it agreed with whatever Doug fed you.”

Kali leaned over me, touched the side of my face, then loosened the leather belts securing me to the bed. It seemed not quite heaven, but something close to it. I felt groggy, like part of me was still asleep. My body seemed to belong to someone else, a kind of inverted phantom limb feeling.

“The doctor wanted to keep you overnight for observation. She said there was a chance the bullet could fall into a vein and stop your heart. But if you’re still here in the morning, you’ll probably be OK,” Kali said. “They showed me the scan they took while you were under. You could see the path of the thing, bouncing off your rib, cutting through you, lodging in your liver. They didn’t know what to do with you. They’re used to treating real bullets.”

I shivered. The joke didn’t seem that funny anymore, hearing about the parts of you that you don’t ever think about. I had a splitting headache. I peeled back the sheets and there was a small gauze pad taped to my side. I felt exposed, somehow, open to the world and all its points and barbs.

“So it’s in there still?”

Kali nodded.

“A part of you,” she said.

I felt like furniture, like the bullet had made me a part of the world of objects and things, pulling me down from where we hovered above it all.

“At least you’ll have a story of your own now,” Kali said.

That’s when the door banged off the wall. It was Johnny, wild-eyed and trailing laces.

“We have to go, now,” Johnny said. “Doug got caught in the medicine cabinet and made a break for it. They’re coming for us.”

I started to rise, but felt suddenly tired, more tired than I’d been in my entire life. I fell back to the hospital bed.

“We need to move,” Johnny said. His mouth was a thin, cruel slash.

“Give me a second,” I said. The bed felt soft, safe. I wanted to sink into it, become it.

Johnny strode to the bed and punched a button. The bed began to elevate, slowly.

“I should have shot you in the head, maybe it would have knocked some sense into you.”

I looked at Kali but she looked at the floor.

“You meant to shoot me?” I said.

“You were going on and on about your great aunt. No offense, but she’s not our great aunt. And she’s not so great. Look, I gave you something to remember me by.”

I was thinking about afternoons and clouds and rivers, shattered days, wasted lives.

“I’ll kill you,” I said.

But I got tangled up in the cords and blankets and the paper gown. The pins and needles I was standing on collapsed underneath me.

“There’s no time for this,” Johnny said, dancing away. “We have to move.”

◊

The freight elevator, a loading dock, through a maze of cardboard boxes and blue barrels, to the back alley, exhaust breathing from grates in the road, cold in my paper gown. Kali swung her old car up to the curb and we piled in, lit out. Under overpasses and elevated railways, we found Doug wandering Chinatown, staring at all the lights, pulling him in as he screamed, don’t take me, leaving the lights behind as we hugged the service road by the port, no sidewalks here, just rusted fences and warehouses and trucks blasting by, the cranes square against the dark gray of dawn.

We caught our breath at a construction site near the water.

The arc sodiums cast a lunar glow. Doug was a silhouette atop the dark crane arm. I was curled in the bucket of a backhoe. Around us were piles of dirt, the holes they were dug from. The construction equipment was still, as if we had interrupted the work when we came upon it all, the machinery flexing its chrome and pistons. There were complicated blocky mounds of bricks like ziggurats. In the far corner of the lot there was the last remaining wall of a building. The wall stood quiet and still, like it’d been there for a thousand years.

I wanted to remain until the workers returned and reanimated the machines, buried me under it all. I wanted to be a part of it. I didn’t want to think or feel or hurt anymore.

Johnny kicked a rock into a hole. It fell for a long time before bouncing around the foundation. I didn’t feel like pushing him into it anymore. I just felt punctured, like someone had let all the air out of me.

“You gonna be alright?” Kali said.

“I’ll land on my feet,” I said.

“Like a hedgehog,” Doug whispered.

“Shut up, Doug,” I said.

“You’ll be alright. Look at how things have worked out for you so far. You did nothing for twenty-five years and a pile of money landed on your lap,” Johnny said.

“It’s not that much. I talked it up a little. But if I only eat gas station food it’ll last me a few months,” I said. “When I waste away and die I’ll haunt you for putting a hole in me.”

“All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be much of a change from when you were living,” Johnny said.

I got to my feet, but it was hard to seem imposing, half-naked in my paper gown. Kali looked at Johnny, who looked back at her.

Kali’s clear voice cut through the crisp early morning air.

“He’s right, Rocky. All you do is mope around town, talking about how it all used to be. Dredging up memories. It’s like you can’t see yourself in the future. Do you think nothing’s changed? We’re not kids anymore.”

“Sometimes you remind me of my residents,” Doug said. “Stuck in the past.”

“Shut up, Doug,” I said.

“Hey, that was a compliment. I like them.”

A gull landed on the dark arm of an excavator. I looked at it and it looked at me. Its eyes were cruel, its beak flecked with red. I took a few steps toward the water and found a large pit between me and the rusted fence. I looked into the pit and it was dark.

“We’ve got plans. Or at least the foundation of them. My cousin works at a prison down in Texas,” Kali said. “He said he could get Johnny a job. There’s a night school down there, too.”

The gull turned and beat the air with heavy wings, lumbering aloft and away. In the pit, there was standing water and a swollen, dead thing. There were discarded clothes without any color anymore.

“What about us?” I said. “What about Doug?”

Doug’s silhouette stirred against the lightening sky.

“I told you. I’m going to night school to get my RN in the fall,” Doug said. “Nothing lasts forever, Rocky. It’s like that hedgehog. It’ll work itself out.”

The horizon was going gray. Across the water, the smoke stacks were obscured by gauzy white clouds and a formation of birds vectored overhead. I wanted to hold it all in, hold everything in place. But it kept escaping me. It kept slipping through my fingers. The sun was just over the horizon, and it kept coming up.


Headshot of Thomas BarnesThomas Barnes lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he works as a copywriter. His writing recently appeared in the Southwest Review. You can find him on Twitter @thmsbrns.

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: Pixabay

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Published on March 22, 2018 in Fiction, Issue 21. (Click for permalink.)

FRANCES by Maria Brandt

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2018 by thwackJune 19, 2020

Face of a girl with eyes closed

FRANCES
by Maria Brandt

Frances had skipped two periods before she realized what was going on. “I’m lucky,” she bragged to Sarah over milkshakes at the corner store. “I haven’t had my period in eight weeks, no tampons for me, I beat the system.” Sarah’s mouth dropped, and that’s when Frances became aware of the extent of her self-deceit. Now, she sits cross-legged on the floor in Jack’s bedroom shuffling a deck of cards while Jack moves laundry from the washer to the dryer in the basement, his parents in the city at a hospital benefit.

She remembers decorating the basement in her own home two years earlier for her sixteenth birthday party. Her mother had been in one of her moods, so her father had picked up Sarah and taken the two of them to CVS to buy twenty-seven feet of multi-colored streamers and a bag of medium-sized balloons. “I think we should make a giant stethoscope,” Frances said to Sarah while climbing an old step-ladder, “like the one my grandmother has.” “Why not a heart?” Sarah replied. She remembers thinking Sarah lacked ambition.

Still in Jack’s bedroom, Frances puts down the cards and lies on her back on the floor. Spreading her fingers so her palms press into the wood, she can hear Jack banging around the basement and wonders whether or not he uses fabric softener. She knows fabric softener contains toxic chemicals like ethanol and camphor that deteriorate a person’s neuropathways, and others that cause pancreatic cancer or fatal edema, and she berates herself for knowing this but not putting two and two together about her missing periods.

She thinks again about that night two years earlier, about trying to make that stethoscope, wrapping her fingers around the streamers, twisting them into lines and curves, then asking Sarah for her opinion. “It looks like a glazed doughnut,” Sarah said. Later, at the party, Jack gave Frances a present wrapped in old newspaper. She had invited him because he offered unusual anecdotes about medical breakthroughs in Mr. Elwise’s Biology class. “Did Elwise ever get back to you about that monkey neurogenesis study?” she asked when he handed her the present, the overhead lights making his nose look slightly larger than it was. “Nah, he’s useless,” Jack replied. After ripping open the newspaper and finding a used copy of Gray’s Anatomy like the one her grandmother had on the bookshelf in her living room, Frances felt her stomach flutter. That night, right before the ambulance came, she kissed Jack for the first time while Sarah cheered them on from the corner.

“Hey,” Jack says, laundry basket in his arms, Frances lying on his bedroom floor. “What are you thinking about?”

“Do you use fabric softener?”

“Of course not, fabric softener contains neurotoxins,” Jack replies. He watches while Frances sits cross-legged again and while she picks up the deck of cards. “You wanna play Strip Poker?” he asks.

“No, idiot.”

“Then what?” He sits next to her on the floor, his hand resting casually on her bare knee.

“I thought maybe we could tell fortunes,” Frances says. “Sarah taught me last week.”

“Sure, and then we can drive to the beach.”

Frances pushes his hand off her knee, but she misses him when he crosses the room to open a window. She finds the four Queens and turns them face-up on the floor. “Okay,” she says, “now you have to ask a question.”

“How bad will traffic be on the bridge?”

“It has to be a yes/no question.”

“Will traffic be bad on the bridge?”

She’s impressed that he doesn’t miss a beat, that he can rephrase his question so expertly. She wants to tell him this but instead asks him to concentrate and to choose a card from the deck, so he chooses the Three of Diamonds, and she places his card above the matching Queen of Diamonds. “Diamonds mean maybe,” she explains. “Traffic might be bad, might not.”

“That’s playing it kind of safe, don’t you think?”

“My turn,” Frances says. She squeezes her eyes tight until small tears begin to form, then chooses a card. It’s the Nine of Diamonds.

The night of her party, two years earlier, her father collapsed while making homemade popcorn over the stove. Frances heard the crash, then her mother’s screams. She rushed upstairs and saw her father lying stiff on the floor. She flung herself across his torso and felt her mother pulling her shoulders, trying to get her off him, but she knew blood wasn’t moving through his body, which meant no oxygen was getting to his heart, which meant his heart’s cells were dying rapidly and she didn’t know what kind of monkey tests had been done to shed light on the regeneration of a left ventricle.

She places the Nine of Diamonds above Jack’s Three of Diamonds and remembers thinking months after the funeral that her father would never have a conversation with Jack, would never know that Jack’s nose in fact was lovely, would never know that two days after the party, when she was sick with grief, Jack had quizzed her on the cellular make-up of bone marrow, would never know that she didn’t mind when Jack found out she used to think Gray’s Anatomy had been named after the television drama and not the other way around, would never know that Jack had figured out the streamers at her party were supposed to look like a stethoscope and not like a glazed doughnut or unambitious heart.

“No fair,” Jack says. “You need to ask your question out loud, that’s what I did.” His hand rests on her knee again.

“Okay.”

“Well? What did you ask?”

“Give me a minute,” Frances says and breathes more heavily than she would like. “Will you and I have a baby?”

Jack squeezes her knee and sort of lies on top of her. “I hope so, Frannie girl,” he whispers while shifting his weight, “I hope so.”

“No,” Frances says, “I meant will we have a baby now.”

“Now?”

“Like, now.”

“But—”

“Well, in seven months,” she says with finality.

Years ago, Frances’s parents took her and Sarah to the beach. They drove over the bridge, then parked the old station wagon in Field Three and carried chairs and a cooler up wooden stairs and over dunes to a spot near the lifeguard. Her parents spread a blanket over the sand and Frances watched while her mother touched the back of her father’s neck and whispered something in his ear. “What’s up?” Frances asked, but her mother took out a magazine and leaned into her chair. Later, Frances watched while her mother offered her father a sandwich. “Can I have one?” she asked, but her mother closed the cooler and looked to the waves. In the silence following her proclamation in Jack’s bedroom, Frances wonders if her mother wished that day that Frances would get sucked into those waves, or discreetly swallow enough neurotoxin to reduce her brain-energy metabolism, or do anything to disappear so her mother could make popcorn alone with her father every night before climbing into their great big bed.

“A baby in seven months,” Jack repeats. “Teeth are forming right now, an inner ear, even sex organs.” He pauses, then moves his hand to her belly. “May I?”

“You’re being awfully formal,” Frances says, but she lets his fingers make small circles on the skin under her t-shirt.

“What now?” Jack asks.

“What do you mean?”

His fingers linger on her belly and he slides closer so her head can rest against his shoulder. “My grandmother left me her ring,” he says. “Frannie girl, that ring is yours.”

Earlier that week, when Frances was doing her own laundry, her mother and grandmother were making grilled-cheese sandwiches upstairs in the kitchen. “I miss him,” she heard her mother say. “You need to take care of Frances,” her grandmother replied. “You always think of her, never of me,” her mother said. Frances opened a new box of fabric softener and thought about putting a sheet in with her mother’s underwear. Instead, she closed the box and hid it behind some old pipes.

“That ring is yours,” Jack repeats. She holds his hand and looks into his eyes, which remind her of her father’s eyes, brown like dirt overturned to dig a hole deep enough for a coffin. She remembers that shortly after she watched that coffin go into the ground, her grandmother pushed her stethoscope across the kitchen table. “It’s yours now,” she said to Frances, “I was alone, but I used this every day in my practice, it kept me company.” Frances remembers thinking her grandmother wasn’t alone, not really, because she had Frances’s mother, just like Frances’s mother wasn’t alone because she had Frances.

“Your eyes are like dirt,” she says to Jack, then regrets it, but he smiles.

“Freshly-turned dirt,” he says, “earthworms expanding and contracting their bodies to burrow and make things grow.”

Frances wonders how she got so lucky, how she found someone who understands her so well. “Yes,” she says.

“Yes to earthworms?”

“Yes to the ring.”

Later that afternoon Sarah braids her hair. “You really said yes?” Sarah asks while placing her hands firmly on Frances’ scalp. “What about college? What about med school? Why didn’t you use the cards, do more fortunes, don’t you think that would have been wise?”

“Sarah.”

“I’m serious. Diamonds mean maybe, Hearts mean yes, Spades mean no, Clubs mean probably, you just match your cards, they make the decision for you, it’s easy, you can’t go wrong.”

“I said yes.”

“Did you mean it?”

Frances looks down at her hands. “I don’t know,” she says. A year after her father died, she overhead her mother talking on the phone with her grandmother. “It’s hard for me, it’s hard for all women,” she heard her mother say. “Not you, you became a doctor, you beat the system, but—” Her mother stopped talking, and Frances wondered what system she might have meant, or what she might have realized that shut her up. Later that night, Frances decided to beat the system herself. She took off Jack’s jeans for the first time, let him take off her underwear, told him she loved him and that she wanted to experience penetrative sexual intercourse.

“I think I meant yes,” Frances continues while Sarah still braids her hair, “but I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Sarah asks.

“What if I’m like my grandma?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I become a doctor and stop loving Jack, or care so much about being a doctor that I don’t pay attention to it? Or if I’m like my mom and love my husband but don’t ever really love it?”

Sarah’s eyes get all misty. “That’s a baby, Frannie,” she says, “not an it.”

“It’s a fetus, maybe even an embryo, but not a baby, and I can get an abortion.” Sarah pulls hard on Frances’s newly-braided hair and Frances welcomes the pain.

The next day, she sits at her grandmother’s kitchen table and looks out the window while her grandmother boils water. She watches a squirrel circle up a black locust and thinks about the locust’s trunk, wide and sturdy, almost threatening with its weight. By the time her grandmother brews two cups of chamomile, Frances is kneeling outside on the patio studying a pile of dirt. “Frannie,” her grandmother says, “what’s wrong?”

“It’s these earthworms,” Frances says through tears, the black locust looming over her head. “I think they’re copulating.”

“Frannie.”

“No, look, they’re lined up with their backs against each other, facing different directions, that means they’re copulating,” Frances continues. “Did you know earthworms are hermaphrodites? Did you know they have both male and female sex organs?”

“I know, Frannie.”

“And they make this thing called a slime tube, kind of like mucous, and they each ejaculate into the slime tube, sending sperm into the other earthworm’s sperm receptacle?”

“Frannie, what’s wrong?” Frannie leans back into her heels and starts making small noises. Her grandmother puts down the tea cups and kneels beside her, holding Frances’s damp face and rubbing her cool fingers into the back of Frances’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Why did you have mom?”

“Is she at you again?”

“No, I want to know why you had her, you didn’t want her, you know you didn’t want her, that she would get in your way, but you had her anyway, why?”

Her grandmother pulls back and brushes some of Frances’s hair from her face. “Frannie, I did want your mother, I love your mother, what’s this all about?”

“Do you remember when I was younger and used to work with you?” Frances says. “You used to let me take your patients’ blood pressure, you taught me how to find their pulses and how to hold the stethoscope over their arteries, the same stethoscope you gave me after Dad died?”

“I remember.”

“I’d listen until I could hear the first pulse beat and then listen until I couldn’t hear anything at all, that’s how I read their systolic and their diastolic pressures, how I read the way their blood moved through their bodies, everything was so precise, everything was so clear.”

“I know.”

“That’s when I realized, even though I didn’t have the words,” Frances says, then looks again at the black locust, and at the maple just beyond, its branches fanning out from its trunk.

“Realized what?”

“That I wanted to be a doctor, like you.” Her grandmother rises and carries a steaming cup of chamomile to where Frances still sits huddled on the patio. “Why can’t we be like earthworms?” Frances says. “Why can’t we share slime tubes so everyone has eggs and everyone’s eggs get fertilized?”

That night, Frances and Sarah make popcorn over the stove. Sarah rambles on about the Ten of Clubs she drew after asking if some boy in their U.S. History class last year would break her heart, about how thin the card was, its paper face already bent with time, while Frances thinks about her father and his heart, cracked open like paper, like a broken kernel of corn. “It’s not fair,” Frances whispers.

“No kidding it’s not fair, why can’t boys step up? I don’t mean Jack, he’s one in a million, I mean normal boys, boys who don’t know how many bones are in their feet.”

While Frances melts butter for the popcorn, she wonders if her mother only had room to love her father, and if her grandmother only had room to love her work, and if traits like the capacity to love a child have a genetic component. She puts the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and goes into the bathroom to throw up.

In the morning, she notices the veins in her breasts and that she has gained two pounds. She takes out a deck of cards and pulls a Six of Spades which means abortion is no longer an option, which means she needs a new idea. Her grandmother’s car isn’t in the driveway when she arrives, so she sneaks around back. In the yard, she touches the black locust as if listening for that first pulse, that first marker of systolic pressure, but she keeps her eyes focused on the maple and its outstretched branches.

Getting to the first branch is easy. From there, she holds onto the trunk with one hand and feels for the next branch with the other, then pulls her body up again, then again, then again, until she’s sixteen-and-a-half feet from the ground, three times her body height. She makes sure soft grass is below before pressing her back into the trunk. Eyes closed, she pretends she’s an earthworm sending sperm into her mate’s receptacle, sending her uterus into her mate’s receptacle, sending her embryo, her fetus, her baby into her mate’s receptacle. She imagines the dirt and the slime and the release. Then, positioning her body so she doesn’t land on her neck or head, she jumps.

When Jack finds her, ten minutes after she texts him, she’s lying on her side in the grass, unable to move. “The cards didn’t work so I needed to figure out another way to beat the system,” she says, “and I might have killed our baby.” Jack moves to cradle her in his arms. “No,” she says, “lie next to me, but behind me, and face the other direction.”

“Like earthworms?” he asks. “When they copulate?”

Her back pressed against his back, she takes his hand and pulls it around to her slightly swelled belly while the locust, tall and forbidding, reaches for the sky.


Maria Brandt author photoMaria Brandt has published plays, fiction, and nonfiction in several literary magazines, including InDigest, Rock & Sling, Arts & Letters, Prime Number Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, VIDA, and upstreet. Most recently, her collection New York Plays was produced by Out of Pocket Productions and published by Heartland Plays, and her novella All the Words won the Grassic Short Novel Prize. Maria teaches Creative Writing at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY and is a founding member of Straw Mat Writers. She lives just outside Highland Park with her son William.

 

 

Image credit:  Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash

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Published on March 22, 2018 in Art, Fiction, Issue 21. (Click for permalink.)

SPYING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE: A Novelist Grows Roots in the Glamorous, Twisted World of V. C. Andrews by Emma Sloley

Cleaver Magazine Posted on January 3, 2018 by thwackJune 6, 2020

book cover of Garden of Shadows by V. C. Andrews, dark green background with woman's face surrounded by roses on white trellisSPYING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE:
A Novelist Grows Roots in the Glamorous, Twisted World of V. C. Andrews
by Emma Sloley

My sisters and I knew they were trash. That was part of the appeal. Virginia Andrews’ best-selling Dollanganger series (described by Wikipedia as “Gothic,” although I think that might be a tad generous) was so deliciously lurid in its themes and so over-the-top in its execution that it was like overdosing on the dessert buffet at the ersatz German smorgasbord restaurant my family used to go to in the 1980s. It made you feel bad afterwards, but damn, it was fun at the time.

For the uninitiated, if it’s even possible there exist humans unaware of Flowers in the Attic, the series concerns a family called Dollanganger (in hindsight, perhaps a sly play on doppelganger?) who, for reasons I can’t and don’t even care to remember, end up living with the mother’s parents in a big old Gothic mansion in Virginia, where the mother agrees to lock her four children away in an attic for an unspecified stretch of time. (Spoiler alert: it turns out to be years.) This is all a scheme of the extremely evil grandmother, who for vague, never satisfactorily explained reasons hates her grandchildren and wants to make sure her husband, their grandfather, never knows of their existence. Totally normal. Oh, and the grandmother is also into whipping people—including her own grown-ass daughter—as punishment for transgressions. The casual sadism that so shocked me as a teen feels now like a foreshadowing of the Fifty Shades phenomenon that would similarly shame-captivate readers three decades later.

book cover of Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews, dark blue background with red mansion and woman's face in mansion's windowThe prose is not only purple—fragrances evoke “a musty, perfumed garden on a moonlit night somewhere in the Orient;” paper flowers are described as “limpid dark pools of iridescence,” and everyone’s hair is “flaxen”—but peppered with odd, almost archaic language. “Good-golly day!” and “golly-lolly!” characters exclaim. The children’s father (conveniently removed from the picture early on), addresses his wife thusly after a day at work: “Do you love me? —For I most certainly love you; did you miss me? —Are you glad I’m home? —Did you think about me when I was gone? Every night? Did you toss and turn and wish I were beside you, holding you close? For if you didn’t, Corrine, I might want to die.” In this world, even the good guys are creeps.

Andrews is so unapologetic in her glorious, adjectival, don’t-give-a-fuckness, and takes such glee in the baroque suffering of her characters, that her writing transcends trash and becomes a luminous thing of wonder. As luminous as the platinum, flaxen hair of the angelic, doomed Dollanganger children.

The covers, at least in the Australian editions, featured a sinister black flap with a keyhole cutout through which peeped the titular flowers (an extended metaphor for the four imprisoned children), whose pale, Aryan beauty is described by the author with a rapturous enthusiasm that in hindsight was kind of disturbing. The message was clear before you even cracked the spine: this was not a book for brunettes. This was a book for the ethereal blondes of the world, whose very beauty was a curse that could only ever lead to their downfall.

We were a reading family. On weekends, the big rambling Edwardian house in which we lived would fall silent as the women of the household—my mother, my three sisters and I—retreated to their favorite corners to turn pages and sip huge mugs of tea. (Dad was the only one who didn’t read. Then, as now, he would always be off somewhere, wiry and taciturn and completely untouched by the need to live vicariously through fiction, whistling while chopping things down or building them up, like a kind of gentle Australian Marlborough Man.)

Author Photo of V. C. Andrews holding book Flowers in the Attic

V. C. Andrews

My parents were, especially for the era, permissive and open-minded, both teachers and staunch believers in free speech and childhoods unrestrained by parental sanctions. My dad, the famous non-reader, had even done a stint as a librarian. The idea of censorship was anathema to them. We were allowed to read anything we could get our hands on: Lolita, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Slaughterhouse Five. There was no fear that such stories—each subversive for its time—were a bad influence, because how could great literature ever be a bad influence? Yet I remember their unease about the Virginia Andrews books. When Flowers in the Attic fever was at its height, they must have come across the books at their own schools and perhaps been alarmed at the corrupting grip they had on burgeoning female minds. (Or, it only now occurs to me, perhaps they were more alarmed at the idea that their daughters, whom they had painstakingly reared to be erudite and intellectually curious, would suddenly develop such bad taste.) I don’t recall them outright banning the reading of the five-book series at home, but my sisters and I got the message nevertheless. These stories were dangerous, unwholesome. There was something about them that made adults deeply uncomfortable, and so, of course, that just increased their dirty allure.

Beyond the obviously titillating details—neglectful mothers, wicked grandmothers, emotionally abusive men and incest galore—lay the real appeal of these thick volumes. They offered a vision of the world that was racier and more glamorous than anything in my happy but boring sphere of existence. As a shy teenager living a hopelessly sheltered suburban life in Melbourne, I was ravenous to live vicariously through narratives that flouted society’s stuffy rules and boundaries. The more over-the-top the telling, the better. Just as little children want to believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny, I wanted to believe in a world where mothers allowed their inconvenient children to be locked in attics, blue-rinsed grandparents were into kinky BDSM and brothers and sisters found solace in each other’s arms. (It helped that I didn’t have a real-life brother when it came to not being grossed out by this plot point.) I didn’t want to live in such a world, of course, but to peek in at it through the keyhole.

book cover of If There Be Thorns by V. C. Andrews, black background with green vines, child's face in curl of vineI was so smitten that I would finish the last book and go right back to the beginning of the tattered series and start again. (The titles are so glorious I feel compelled to list them here in full: Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows.) We re-readers are used to being scorned and misunderstood. Our obsessions recall the bromide about how insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. But of course that’s not why I, or any of us, reread: I not only expected the same result, I demanded it. I longed to feel that delicious shiver again, that rush of adrenaline at being plunged into V.C. Andrews’ glamorous, twisted world. Even her characters understood the comfort of being transported to another world through the pages of a book. Cathy, the series’ heroine, and her brother Chris get through their ordeal in the attic by reading the dusty volumes they find hidden in trunks. No sexy trash for them, though. They devoured Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill, Charlotte Bronte.

Something about her decision to name-check those classics makes me suspect that Andrews had her own complicated relationship to literature. Perhaps she subscribed to the idea that part of a balanced reading diet is consuming both high-brow and low-brow books, especially if the latter have something to teach you about storytelling. And if you overlook the flowery prose and prurient subject matter of the series, it’s obvious she had a sophisticated understanding of plotting, suspense, and foreshadowing, all skills I’ve endeavored—and often failed—to master in my own life as a writer.

It’s easy to dismiss the series as irredeemable tripe, to understand why parents might consider it unsuitable reading for impressionable minds. But I stand steadfast in my affection for them. There was a kind of dark magic to those books. Every time in my life that I’ve mentioned them, I’ve noticed the eyes of female friends light up as they are transported back to their own relationship with those subversive, hallowed pages. It’s a kind of secret sisterhood, a cult of guilty pleasure. Maybe it reminds us of a more innocent time, when there was still the possibility of being corrupted.


Emma Sloley Author PhotoEmma Sloley is a travel journalist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Catapult, The Tishman Review, Lunch Ticket, Travel + Leisure and New York magazine, among many others. She is a MacDowell fellow and has just completed her debut novel, Disaster’s Children. Born in Australia, Emma now divides her time between the US, Mexico, and various airport lounges. You can find her on Twitter @Emma_Sloley

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Published on January 3, 2018 in Craft Essays, Fiction. (Click for permalink.)

SUFFER THE CHILDREN by Mary Ann McGuigan

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Person holding a walking stick against the sidewalk

SUFFER THE CHILDREN
by Mary Ann McGuigan

Moira’s son is snuggling against his grandfather on the couch. That’s all. Just resting on the old man’s shoulder, his forehead against his frayed collar. Michael looks tired, sweaty. There’s color high in his cheeks, as if he’s just come in from play. The sliding glass door is slightly open, and she can hear her father singing to him, something low, soft, painfully familiar. His knee moves up and down in steady cadence with the song. Eyes closed, they seem lost in each other’s comfort. She tries to swallow, but it tastes like acid, so she spits into the grass.

She turns and walks back to the front of the house, nails pressed into her palms, and lets herself into Bridget’s kitchen. She keeps her voice down, her tone nearly reasonable. “I thought I told you I didn’t want him near the boys.”

Her sister turns off the faucet and dries her hands on a towel. “What’s the problem? Michael’s crazy about him.” Their father is blind, has been for years, but Moira wonders if Bridget picked the towel to please him, because it’s covered with shamrocks. She’s been inclined to come to his defense lately, reminiscing about how he used to make them laugh, tell scary stories, play make-believe. He’d be the grumpy store proprietor, claiming to be out of every item they asked him for.

Moira drops her shoulder bag onto a kitchen chair with a sudden thud. “That’s nonsense. He’s something different, that’s all. The stories, the odd expressions. Where’s Sean?”

“I’m telling you he hangs on his every word.”

“Yeah, because he’s a walking encyclopedia of baseball trivia.” She spots Michael’s schoolbooks on the counter and crosses the room to gather them up. “Where is Sean?”

“Upstairs with Cathy. Doing homework.”

When her father moved in with her a few months ago, she tried taking walks with him, telling him about her scholarships, her first teaching job. She wanted to connect. That was the plan. He answered in nods and grunts, offered nothing in return but tired stories about drinking with his brothers and getting thrown out of taverns for brawling. In the yard one afternoon, when the boys were washing the dog, she put her arm around him, an impulsive gesture that made her chest tighten. She’d just finished telling him about how hard it was to adjust when she was away at Boston College, until she found cover with a small circle of friends, fellow misfits. She thought he’d understand. He’d talked many times about how alone he felt when he arrived in New York as a boy, his mother still in Derry. His uncle rarely spoke to him. He showed him the cot he’d sleep on and went off to work. But her father only laughed at her confessions, in a way that made her feel exposed. “You were one of those hippie types, I bet.” He was almost growling. “Peace and love and all the rest of the easy answers.”

“Is it really so bad if Michael likes him?” Bridget is blocking Moira’s way, standing close to her. She tucks a strand of her sister’s hair behind her ear, the way she did when they were girls, when she was left in charge while their mother worked. “Isn’t that what you wanted to begin with?”

Moira steps away from her. The tension in her jaw spreads down her neck, tightening her muscles, because what she wanted can’t be spoken, can’t be acknowledged without admitting what a fool she was to think she’d get it. After the blow-up with Sean, she told her father to leave. As she helped him pack, she thought he’d try to explain, persuade her to let him stay. But he didn’t. He was as sullen as a teenager.

“How often is he here?” Moira says, but her throat is constricted, the words too soft, and Bridget can’t hear her. She has to say it again.

“Peter drops him off on Tuesdays and Fridays.” Her sister glances at the wall clock, a bit too nonchalantly, and returns to the vegetables on the counter. “He’ll be here any minute to collect him.”

Moira slides open the zipper on the backpack, finds the harsh sound satisfying. “You knew I wouldn’t want this.”

“He doesn’t bother with Sean,” Bridget insists, as if that’s the only problem. “He keeps his distance.”

“I don’t want him near either one of them. He went after Sean with no warning.”

Bridget gives her a look, lips pursed in a smirk. She doesn’t believe her, and Moira wonders if their father has offered some other version of what happened. “Michael has a right to a grandfather,” she says, fussing with utensils in a drawer.

Moira glances at the vegetables lined up neatly on the cutting board and wants to knock them to the floor. Order. That’s what matters to Bridget, the control she couldn’t have when they were children. “He’s managed without him all his life. We don’t need him now.”

Bridget finds the knife she wants, comes down hard on a carrot. “Maybe you’ve managed. But I see Michael every day here after school. I can see what he needs, especially now, with everything the boys are going through.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Moira’s sure Bridget doesn’t want to say the words. She takes longer than needed to select the next carrot. “The way things are since Ken left. That’s all I mean. It’s a rough time.” She turns to look at her. “You’ve said so yourself.”

“Yes, it’s a rough time. And it’ll only get rougher if Sean winds up needing stitches again.” Moira feels warm in her jacket, wants to take it off, but she has to get out of here, get her boys away from him, away from a place where they have to pretend her father can be anything but monstrous. “Michael doesn’t need him in his life.”

Bridget puts the knife down. “How do you know that?”

The question makes Moira want to laugh. “He has nothing to offer anyone.”

“Really? Or just nothing to offer you?”

She searches Bridget’s face, looking for traces of spite, of some secret satisfaction that Moira’s foolish father-daughter reconciliation had to be aborted. The resentment can surface unexpectedly. The burdens of a household with one parent fell largely on Bridget. Dishes had to be washed, floors swept, stale bread made to last another meal. She had no time to pine for a father’s attention. “Michael is my son,” Moira tells her. “I’ll decide what he needs. I’ll make some other arrangements for the boys while I’m at work.”

“Be reasonable.” Bridget wipes her hands on her apron, lowers her voice, starting over. “You don’t have to do that. He’s harmless.” She puts a hand on Moira’s forearm. “I’m sure what happened to Sean was an accident.”

Moira finds the gesture insulting, as if she has no right to distrust their father, no right to feel cheated. She jerks her arm away and pulls Michael’s backpack onto her shoulder, calls him into the kitchen. But the boy doesn’t come.

“Michael,” she calls again.

His answer reaches them after a beat or two, a stubborn whine. “Mom, can’t we just stay a little longer?”

“We’re leaving now, Michael,” she says more firmly.

He finally appears in the doorway, and Moira is reminded again of how much he looks like her brother Conor, but it’s a surface resemblance, with none of the wounds beneath. At ten, Conor was already a shadow child, accustomed to danger. “Can’t Uncle Peter drive me home later, when he comes to pick up Grandpa?”

She hates what she hears in his voice, the ignorance of the danger he’s in. “I thought you wanted to shop for your baseball glove tonight?”

“Can’t we do that tomorrow? It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“It does matter,” she says, reaching her hand out for him to come along.

But he stays put. “Why?”

She wants him to stop whining, stop wanting what isn’t his. “I’m not discussing this, Michael.” She dangles his backpack in front of him, careful not to look into his eyes, afraid of what he might suspect.

◊

The old man’s side does not touch hers, but he holds her elbow as if he’s leading her down the street. His cane taps the sidewalk in front of them, carving an uneven pendulum, a metronome gone awry. Moira’s high-heeled steps are firm, precise; her father shuffles cautiously, as if fearing he’s near danger. The late morning traffic is steady, purposeful, reminding her that she hasn’t much time. If she doesn’t get back to the parking garage soon, she’ll never reach Bridgeport in time for her meeting.

The street is crowded, and they capture more than an occasional glance, this oddly matched pair. She imagines how they must look: a woman tall, withdrawn, unwilling to acknowledge the passersby; an old man even taller, white-haired, with a creased face, deadened eyes. The sun makes mirrors of the storefronts, and here and there, without warning, she catches a glimpse of the way they look together, too close, huddled like conspirators. She tries to separate herself from him, at least a bit, but he squeezes her elbow each time, without affection, just control.

“The doctor wants me back at the end of next week.” Her father says this as if she’s interested. She’s not. She’s here only because there was no one else to take him for his checkup. Bridget pleaded with her, so she agreed. But she made it clear he’d have to take the bus back to Peter’s house.

“Fine,” she tells him. “Bridget will figure something out.” And whatever the solution, it won’t include her, because she’s sorry she ever agreed to this. But it will be over soon, she tells herself. All of it. The bus stop isn’t far. And she’s found someone to watch the boys after school. She’s sure Bridget is still letting him visit because Michael slips and says Grandpa this, or Grandpa that, then clams up as if he’s been told to keep it secret.

A silence follows that she suspects he wants her to fill, perhaps with an offer to take him to the next doctor’s appointment or with questions about his blood pressure medicine. She gives him nothing.

“Can’t you take me?” he says finally, his tone laced with annoyance that he has to ask. She knows he’s oblivious to how she feels about him. He’s preoccupied with his ailments and his memories, nearly all of which he has invented. He’s hinted that he knows Moira is having trouble getting Ken to agree to the terms for custody, and she’s sure he gets his information from her sister Kate, whose heart is so big and so wounded she’s capable of forgiving anything.

“No. I’ll be in Atlanta.” He’s walking so slowly. She’ll have barely enough time to get to the meeting.

“Atlanta, is it?” She’s sure he wants her to hear the insult in this, because his notions of what a woman should be doing do not include work with responsibility and rank. She’s no different in his mind from all the other liberated types who don’t know how to be mothers or wives anymore. She doesn’t answer him. “Weren’t you in Houston last week?”

“Why?” she says. She doesn’t want his questions. She wants him to be quiet until she can be rid of him.

“I don’t know. The boy seems like he’s driftin’ is all.”

“Who? Michael?” She stops without warning, and her father, startled, goes slightly off balance.

“For Chrissake, watch what you’re doin’.” He makes a big deal of adjusting his cane. “Michael’s got troubles for sure,” he says. “But it’s Sean I’m talkin’ about.”

“Sean is not drifting. Sean is fine.” Her voice is even, revealing none of the worry that dogs her. “And how would you know anyway?”

“Michael. He talks to me.”

If he’d slapped her it would have been less painful. Michael has been sullen lately, not talking as much, which is so unlike him. She imagines him with her father, telling him about his day in school, about the tough batters he faced in his last game, all the things he always saves for her, rewards that don’t belong to her father. He hasn’t earned them.

“I don’t want you talking to him. Do you understand me?” She sees the hint of a grin on his face. He knows he’s getting to her.

“No, I don’t understand you,” he says. “They miss their father.” That edge is in his voice, the one that slips in when he’s determined to be right about something.

“I don’t want to hear this.” She begins walking again, takes his arm this time.

“Fine. I’ll mind my business. But if you know what’s good for ya, you’ll stay closer to home.” There’s that tone again. When Moira was a kid, her mother would challenge it, answer him as if his beliefs were plucked from old wives’ tales. Moira was always afraid to contradict him, and she’s afraid because she knows there’s truth in what he’s saying about Sean and Michael. She sees the hypocrisy of his offering advice on parenting, but she can’t help wondering what she may be doing wrong. She tries to shake it off, but she finds herself slipping back into the maze of doubt and reproach that confuses any attempt to understand why her marriage ended.

The air seems much warmer now, and she wishes she hadn’t worn a linen suit. She wants to focus on the key points in the proposal she’ll present today, but it’s no use. The smell of him disgusts her. She takes shallow breaths to escape it—his cigarette breath, his Old Spice, the stale aroma of drink—but she can’t. She feels small, trapped, the way she did that night in the tiny bedroom they’d rehearse in.

Bridget always wanted to put on shows for their mom, pull her out of her moods. So she made them learn old songs from Judy Garland movies, the kind their mother liked. A thin, faded blanket hung across the corner of the room, tucked into the tops of the windows on each side, creating a triangle of secret space backstage. Drenched in Kate’s perfume, Bridget was dancing in their mother’s high-heeled shoes before the curtain—a long, slim umbrella, her cane. Moira directed the lamplight with the shade, keeping Bridget within its circle. Conor stood in the doorway, laughing, inattentive at his post as lookout. He didn’t see their father coming.

His entrance was sudden, insulting. Bridget and Moira scurried to another corner of the room, but Conor was in his path. The anger was grotesque: blind eyes wide open, impotently searching, lips spread in a frightening semblance of a smile, the shimmering tip of his tongue protruding between his teeth. Moira didn’t wonder where the anger came from. She knew their very presence was the cause. He reached down for Conor, picked him up by the back of his shirt and smashed his face. He bled but didn’t cry out; only a pathetic whimper came, a useless defense. The room filled with the smell of his urine.

Her father let go of him, still cursing, shouting incoherent threats. His arms sliced space before him as he staggered toward the stage, his huge bulk entering the abandoned spotlight. The curtain brushed his shoulder and he tore it down, kicked aside their props and toys until the magical space was once again the dismal corner of their bedroom. Only then did Conor cry out at what he saw. It was a foolish thing to do, because his anger was only half-spent, and he turned toward the sound of his son’s cries.

Her father says her name, and Moira halts, jerks her arm from his, afraid he might guess what she’s thinking, remember she’s the enemy. He wants to know why she’s stopped walking. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I got distracted.” She takes his arm again, more firmly this time. The cars weave frantically up the avenue, stopping regularly in impatient obedience at the light. On cue, they lurch forward noisily. Moira and her father reach the corner, where they will part. She lets go of his arm.

“Can I cross now?” he asks. And perhaps she doesn’t see the truck turning when she tells him yes, because it’s over in an instant: the old man stepping off the curb, the shocking sound of the metal against his body, the rusting gray pick-up truck screeching to a stop, the people circling. He lies like some discarded scarecrow, limbs spread in unnatural directions, his cane many yards away.

Before Moira can make sense of what’s happened, a crowd has gathered and she’s another silent onlooker. The driver’s big round belly shakes as he runs toward her father from the cab of his truck. A dirty, flimsy T-shirt can’t reach to meet his pants. His pale face is splotched red, and when he comes closer, she can see that he’s trembling. “Oh, my God; oh, my God,” he says, his voice a thin, pained whine. He speaks to everyone and no one. The man can’t stand still; he steps away then hurries back to his victim’s side, unable to look very long at the old man’s body. Her father’s face is placid, shows no pain, and she thinks of how he looked when he’d fall asleep in his chair, dulled by drink.

People are taking out phones, dialing for help. Their voices mix, and their concern confuses her, seems misplaced. They look so worried, their hands loose at their sides, jackets and pocketbooks left swinging near to the ground, as if nothing else matters now, nothing more than this old man in the street. An officer has appeared. He’s wearing short sleeves, and he reminds Moira of a patrol boy because he’s so slim, too blond for a grownup. He’s on one knee, gently wiping away the blood that trickles from the side of her father’s brow. He presses his finger against his neck, just underneath the jaw. The driver hurries over to kneel beside them, looking desperate for some sign of hope in the officer’s face. The cop glances at the driver, nods. “It’s a strong pulse,” he says, then barks orders for an ambulance into his phone.

The crowd seems to exhale, exchanging glances of relief.

The driver touches the calloused fingers of her father’s hand where it lies twisted, far from his side. He strokes his palm once diffidently, the way a child makes contact with a large animal.

“Does anyone know this man’s name?” the officer asks the crowd. No one answers him, and the spectators grow restless, heads turning this way and that, as if anxious. The air feels charged with suspicion, and the policeman shakes his head, slaps his notebook against his thigh, losing patience.

A heavyset woman in a black scarf knotted at the nape of her neck shifts her grocery bag from one hip to the other. “Weren’t you standing with him on the sidewalk?” she asks Moira.

She looks at the woman, feeling barely awake, not sure what’s expected of her.

“His name,” says the officer. “Do you know his name?”

They clearly want her to speak, to explain. But how can she explain any of this? How can they possibly understand? “Donnegan. Pete Donnegan,” she blurts out, hoping that will be enough. What more can she say about him anyway?

“You know him then?” says the officer, stepping toward her.

She can’t answer, because in truth she doesn’t. She’s never understood anything about him.

“Does he have family here? Friends?”

Moira doesn’t know what to say. Words like these have meaning to people. But the meanings don’t fit here. She feels no attachment to the man lying in the street. But the officer wants information, facts. She has to give him what he wants. “Family . . . yes . . . family. I’m . . . I’m his daughter.”

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” says the driver, in tears now. “I’m so sorry.”

She turns to the driver, sad for him. He seems like such a good man, a man in pain from the harm he’s done. And the irony of it, the injustice, the idea that her father has managed to hurt yet another innocent person makes her feel even more ashamed that she ever belonged to him. “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry,” she says.

The people who hear her exchange glances, whisper to each other, as if trying to convince themselves that she doesn’t mean what she’s saying, even when she says it again.

“Don’t be sorry about him.” Someone gasps this time, and the driver tells her he doesn’t understand. Moira tries to imagine what he sees when he looks at this old man. She turns toward her father, lying there broken, tries to see him as a victim this time, as someone who deserved better than what life gave him, but she feels no sympathy, no sorrow, only the dread of how Michael will look at her when she tells him, how his voice will sound when he asks her how this could have happened.


Headshot of Mary Ann McGuiganMary Ann McGuigan’s short stories have appeared in North American Review, The Sun, Prime Number, Grist, Into the Void, and other journals, and they’ve been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. Her short story collection, Pieces, is now available from Bottom Dog Press. Her novels, one a finalist for the National Book Award, are ranked as best books for teens by the Junior Library Guild, the New York Public Library, and the Paterson Prize. You can find her at www.maryannmcguigan.com and on Facebook.

 

 

Image credit: simpleinsomnia on Flickr

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

THE COLLECTED DRAFTS OF JESSICA’S CHRISTMAS CARD TO HER EX-HUSBAND by Grace Coberly

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Red Christmas tree ornament hanging by yarn in front of a purple background

THE COLLECTED DRAFTS OF JESSICA’S CHRISTMAS CARD TO HER EX-HUSBAND
by Grace Coberly

Dear Alec,

I suppose I should tell you that I didn’t buy the apartment. Randi the realtor called (remember her, with the forehead?) and said the owners were still undecided, but I had visited by myself the week before, and it didn’t feel right anymore. I guess it was too big for just me and Pammy. Too many rooms, too many spiderwebby corners. They ended up selling it to that Polish couple, I think. For now, I’m living with my dad, who says


Dear Alec,

Pammy misses you. She only eats the big chunks when I put her bowl out, not that good digestive stuff the vet recommended. I’m worried about her. God, am I already becoming a crazy cat lady?


Dear Alec,

Remember our first Christmas tree? We were so excited we bought it in mid-November, and all the needles had fallen off by the time we unpacked the ornaments.


Dear Alec,

I was just thinking about our first Christmas tree.


Dear Alec,

I was thinking


Dear Alec,

I almost bought the apartment. I really did. I visited six times in five days, and I dragged Randi with me every time (remember her, with the forehead?). I was going to use your closet for storage and keep both sinks upstairs. I could always use another sink. And I keep dreaming about the plumbing there. I’m staying in my old room at my dad’s house, and the cold water faucet in the bathroom still doesn’t work, so the water is always steaming hot. I have to brush my teeth in the bathtub. I feel like an animal.


Dear Alec,

Great news! Layla from the Tribune invited me back for an interview. I feel like this could be good for me, you know? I’ve been cashiering at Macy’s, but all the perfume is really starting to get to my head. I need a real job.


Dear Alec,

I was going through boxes the other day, and I found some of your old Christmas ornaments. (The tiny convertible, the bird from your mom, the blue Santa, Captain Kirk, and part of your snowglobe collection.) I also took the glass giraffe we found at that antique shop in Beulah, but I think it was in one of the boxes I threw out when I moved


Dear Alec,

How would you feel about paying child support for Pammy? She’s not our daughter, but she eats like a teenager, and she has some sort of infection on her foot.


Dear Alec,

I ran into your brother last Thursday in the home improvement section of Target. He told me you’re thinking of moving to Minneapolis. Why the fresh start? Running away from something?


Dear Alec,

Go ahead and move. Maybe in Minneapolis you’ll meet a woman who isn’t so “high-strung” and “self-absorbed.” Maybe she won’t forget to buy paper towels, and she won’t put pepper in your mashed potatoes, and she won’t cry on the night of your wedding because she had to do the father-daughter dance with a family friend. You’d love someone like that, wouldn’t you?


Dear Alec,

I wish to God I had bought that stupid apartment. It was perfect, and I let it go because of you. Because you wanted a front porch and I wanted a big bay window and you like laminate and I like hardwood and nothing was ever good enough for you. Because you were selfish and you couldn’t love me enough to hang around. So fucking selfish. I should’ve bought it. Fuck the Polish couple. Fuck Randi and her forehead. Fuck my dad. Fuck you


Dear Alec,

Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou


Dear Alec,

My dad says I deserved it.


Dear Alec,

I suppose I should tell you that I didn’t buy the apartment. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, but after all that happened, I just couldn’t see myself living there. I guess it was too empty without you. I’m going back for an interview at the Tribune next week, though, so things are good with me.

I heard you’re thinking about moving to Minneapolis. That’s so exciting! Make sure you find a great realtor like Randi (remember her, with the forehead?) who knows everything there is to know about laminate flooring. I’m sure that’ll be a dealbreaker for you.

I know it’s been a crazy year, but I’m doing okay, and I hope you are, too. This is good for both of us. We should grab lunch sometime soon to catch up. Anyway, I have some of your Christmas ornaments that I want to return before I forget about them.

Dad and Pammy say hello. And please do stop by—you’re welcome here anytime. Have a wonderful Christmas.

Love always,

Jessica


Headshot of Grace CoberlyGrace Coberly grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Her work has appeared in COUNTERCLOCK, Border Crossing, and Iceview Magazine. An alum of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the Adroit Mentorship Program, she was also the first-place winner of the LSSU High School Short Story Prize and a fiction finalist in the Young Authors Writing Competition at Columbia College, both in 2017. She is a freshman at Haverford College.

Image credit: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

PEETY (WASHINGTON, DC, 1959) by David Satten-López

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Close-up of person playing piano

PEETY (WASHINGTON, DC, 1959)
by David Satten-López

It’s moonlit and muggy out as Peety Alfaro walks to work. Under the yellow streetlights, he pauses to wipe the condensation off his glasses. Once done, he affixes his large and thick lenses back onto his face and takes a deep breath. Exhaling, he tugs rapidly at his white tee to cool off. Then he nods hard and continues walking, shoulders back and head up.

A homeless man, slouched on a nearby park bench to his left, calls out to him in Spanish. Peety keeps steady and walks on by. In the bushes on either side of him, he can hear the scattering of rats. One scurries across the illuminated sidewalk in front of him. Peety maintains. As he makes his way down the numbers, he whistles “Take the A Train.”

From his puckered lips come the notes of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. For Peety, this is his tune too, but, more importantly, it is the tune of the Voice of America Jazz Hour. Before he left Perú, Peety would wake up at odd hours, clutching his radio, to listen to the Voice of America Jazz Hour with Willis Conover. The jazz waves and slow-spoken English filled the small one-bedroom home that he and his mother lived in. The low lights of dying embers in the corner and the fresh smell of dirt floors mixed with the smell of potato soup.

The radio building is long, with tall, column-shaped windows. It is here that Peety works as a janitor, and it is nights like these, Saturday nights, which are his favorite shifts. For it is on Saturday nights that Peety feels like he is finally a part of the music he so loves. For it is on Saturday nights that the jazz hour is recorded and Willis Conover is in the building.

Peety’s excitement is especially for tonight though, for this is a rare Saturday, in which Duke Ellington is here. No doubt, Ellington is already here—two extra guards and his black limousine are already outside the building.

Peety enters the grey and granite building, displaying his ID card, looking for more traces of Ellington. As he walks across the tiled floor, his boots squeak. He shows his ID once more and goes toward the locker room to put on his work clothes—blue jeans and a dark blue button-down. He affixes his nametag to his work shirt in the stuffy room and then heads to the storage closet for cleaning supplies and his radio.

From the far west side of the building, he can hear the low vibrations of “Take the A Train.” The show is just beginning. He flicks on his Sanyo transistor radio and dials it in. The accumulated vibrations bring an onrush of memories: simmering potato stew, dirt floors, kicked up dust, Peety’s mother by a crackling fire, and the sensation of radio waves close to his chest; then, the onrush slips into his first days in America.

He had been sitting upright on a mattress on the floor as he flicked on his radio to only fuzz. He watched his four other roommates, lying asleep on their mattresses, trying not to wake them. Peety stayed up all night listening to the fuzz, subtly shifting the dial. It wasn’t until four more nights of failed attempts that Peety learned: “by order of the Smith-Mundt Act of nineteen forty-eight, information produced by the Voice of America for audiences outside the United States shall not be disseminated within the United States.”

It is only now, close to the original transmitter, on Saturday nights, with his short wave radio, that Peety can catch the show.

◊

Suited up and equipped, Peety hits the second floor. He begins by cleaning the bathrooms, then moves on to the staff break room, works on the offices and, lastly, cleans the recording studios. He always leaves the studio with the upright piano for last. This studio is small, with worn, carpet-like walls. Inside is a mixer, two standing microphones, and the piano.

Peety looks both ways down the hall and then opens the door to this studio. In a hurry, he brings his custodian cart into the room and eases the door to a soft close. He keeps the lights off and finds the piano bench in the dark. He sits down and lays his fingers lightly on the keys as he’s done countless times before. From a small column-shaped window in the door, the fluorescent hallway light seeps in. He breathes in, reverent, knowing the scarcity of this space. Peety breathes out and begins to play “All Blues” by Miles Davis.

His fingers play a soft tremolo that slowly builds into the image of his mother. It’s her large hands that he accentuates first—their cracked and dry palms, varicose veins, and the brown dirt under her nails. Next are her tan and muddied, calf-high work boots, then her long skirt that ends just at the boots and her long-sleeved white blouse. Finally, with grace notes, he outlines the small black derby hat she wore to work. The slow sonorous melody begins as the dust slowly churns, kicked up from the dirt floors around her. As Peety moves his hand to arpeggiate the chord, his mother begins rummaging swiftly, like a ghost, around a small bedroom. The bedroom has two twin-size beds in it covered in thin white sheets. The notes sound off in a flurry, and his mother begins to pile belongings into a small blue suitcase on the bed: clothes, a blanket, a bowl, and a radio. Incoming, a large smash of a chord from his left hand and a few right hand notes sound off until another ringing chord lands. Peety twists his face into a tight smile and rushes into the piano solo. The flurry of improvised notes seems before him and just out of reach, crashing along, causing a tender wreckage. Pulling his head back, the melody begins again. Calmer and out of breath, Peety brings the song back to its soft beginning.

◊

Peety checks the time on his wristwatch and leaves the piano in a hurry, grabbing his cart. He takes the elevator to the third floor and begins the routine again: bathrooms, break room, offices, and studios. As he walks by the hallways on the third floor, heading toward the next office to clean, he turns the radio volume down, and then off. Through the old walls of the studio, he can hear the show leaking into the hallway. He stalls, brimming with nerves and pride, crouched over, sweeping the floor. He recognizes the familiar voice of Conover—clear, deep, slow, and warm. Peety patiently follows the voice to a studio door. His broom scratches the tile just outside the door. Closer now, he can even hear the laughter of another voice—Duke Ellington—on the other side. The jazz tune begins winding down, hitting home one last time before it finally runs to the end of the vinyl grooves. The voices quiet down, and Conover speaks into the microphone, closing out the show. Ellington says, “Good night,” and the show ends with the theme song, “Take the A Train,” once more.

Peety looks at the door, then at his watch, before finally returning his focus to his job. He turns around, heading to the next office.

◊

Once Peety is done cleaning, he returns to that upright piano. Same as before, the soft tremolo of “All Blues” begins again—this time a little more forcefully. The image of his mother comes out from the piano. This time the lines on her face are deeper, her skirt is frayed, and her sleeves are rolled up. The melody kicks in, and the smell of the dirt and dust return to him in another rush. He plays double notes this time before moving into an arpeggio, and his mother coughs twice into a handkerchief before packing his bag. Now comes the chord, softer this time, and Peety begins improvising the solo. This time it’s slow and muted—it’s the wind chimes out in front of his old house, or the distant bell of the schoolhouse getting out, or the light from an open window illuminating the shifting dust. The melody kicks back in one last time, and Peety keeps it steady.

Chk, chk, the doorknob rattles. Then the door swings open. “Hey you, what are you doing in here? You guys should’ve been done in here a while ago.” A man is outlined in the doorway, leaving his front in shadow. The man wears glasses, a khaki button-down, and a badge.

Peety doesn’t speak. His mouth opens, but only the sound of parting lips comes.

The guard squints briefly. “Peety! Man, Goddammit. I’ve told you already. You hear?”

Peety’s eyes are wide, his fingers heavy on the white keys, his foot still pressing the pedal.

The guard exhales heavily. “Oh, forget it, I’m closing up. You best get a move on, and I’m serious this time, okay, don’t let me catch you in here again.” He turns around, leaving the light off, his shoes smacking down the hall. The door shuts loudly behind him.

Peety gets up, pushing the bench behind him in a squeak. He flicks on the light, grabs his cart, and opens the door onto the hallway, heading back to the storage closet and locker rooms.

◊

Outside, it’s raining lightly. A ways away, under the yellow streetlights, under an umbrella, walking away from him, Peety sees two men. One is a white man in a crisp suit, loafers, and slicked back hair, opening the door to a black limousine. Stepping into the limousine is a black man in a light-colored suit, derby shoes, and a wide-brimmed hat. The white man follows him in, laughing a faint but familiar laugh. He closes the door behind him, and the two men become lost behind the tinted glass. The limousine rolls away from the curb, fading out of sight. Peety heads in the same direction, on his way home.


Headshot of David Satten-LópezDavid Satten-López is a student of New Historicism and Gorgias; he likes cooking and taking walks on the beach. He hates Enlightenment humanism; he loves cats. His favorite writers are Baldwin, Cervantes, Carver, and Cisneros; Césaire, Wynter, Hartman, and Moten; M. NourbeSe Philip, Springsteen, Brandy, and Badu. A formative moment for his writing was listening to Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s “Triptych.” Follow him on Twitter @pocospeed.

Image credit: Jamille Queiroz on Unsplash

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

TOWARDS AVALON by Nikoletta Gjoni

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Underwater image of someone's torsoTOWARDS AVALON
by Nikoletta Gjoni

-1986-

4.

Dritan wondered whether he made the right decision in telling them to go ahead, so sure that he would catch up. Had he been sure, though? He began to feel the numbness set in his hands, in his wrists, in his shoulders and back, though it wasn’t long before he felt his muscles begin to burn and cramp, giving him no choice but to stop kicking. His ears filled with the sounds of the others splashing onwards, though now the splashing came from all around him as the tides and waves pulled them apart.

They had begun the journey quietly, stealthily, and close together. But by the end of the first hour, their bodies felt ragged and heavy, and so they let their legs fall down where they may, just as long as they continued to propel them forward. Somewhere beyond the hidden horizon, beyond where their broken bodies existed, laid the invisible border between Albanian and Greek waters. All they had to do was keep pushing with the hope that kismet would string them along to safety. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop; the thought echoed in each head. Somewhere beyond the tide and choppy waves was water they could lie on their backs in and gently drift to safety. Somewhere off the coast of Corfu they would be reborn.

At first Dritan could see his friends’ heads bobbing up and down in the water, but he soon lost sight of them. He heard splashing though he wondered after some time if it was still them that he was hearing, or if it was the waves mimicking the sound of camaraderie, mocking him.

He blamed himself for letting them get so far ahead. That’s alright, he thought. I’ll catch up in no time. He looked around and suddenly realized how small he felt—how small he was—in the vast blackness between sea and night sky. No one knew he was there; no one but the three far ahead of him, spread to all sides of the compass. And they must think he was still close behind, not one having the energy to stop and look back to find him missing.

He closed his eyes. Only for a minute. He couldn’t feel his arms anymore. He licked his lips. Salt. So much salt. His tongue tingled and went numb, rejecting the tired taste of it. He thought about how much food his mother could make with all the salt the sea had to offer. He thought about how, in small doses, it turned dull food into something satiable, but in large doses—as large as the sea was wide—it dried your body from the inside-out and you would eventually begin to wither; to break apart and deconstruct in the water. He licked his lips again and realized for the first time how hungry he was.

The pain dulled and came back in waves, sharper than the previous jolts. In waves—ha! As if the Ionian itself was jabbing his sides to test his strength. He gave way to the pain, letting it move from his ribs, to his abdomen, to his chest. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed and stayed still a moment, it would pass. He just needed a quick rest.

As he often did at times that produced moments of either extreme pleasure or extreme pain, Dritan thought of his late brother Jusuf. As Dritan’s chin and nose dipped beneath the surface, he thought of their childhood games at the beach, of pretend drownings and rescues with Jusuf’s arms clamped around Dritan’s body flailing underwater. Their father had taught them early to love the water instead of fear it.

With his head sinking farther into the water and his mind lazily sliding backwards, Dritan remembered his favorite story, the one of his birth, a story his mother shared frequently when he was a child.

“You’re the best swimmer because you came from the water,” she’d say. Dritan had heard the story so many times he half-believed he remembered the experience itself, in utero. Of how his mother had chased after Jusuf and of how she’d danced her way across the hot beach pebbles to get to the shore, her feet bursting with the subtle lingering sizzles of the afternoon sun.

She was massively pregnant with Dritan and claimed he knew whenever they were in the water because he’d kick every time a wave wrapped itself longingly around her legs. Her contractions began while she was wading into the fizzing sea; she’d later tell him it was as if the sea sensed and longed for him as much as he himself sensed and longed for the sea.

So even at his most critical moment, when fear would perhaps have been the most appropriate and undeniable emotion, Dritan forced his legs to move beneath him until the tops of his nostrils stung with the urgent inhalation of bitingly cold air. His eyelashes dripped cold saltwater as if it was flowing from inside of him, as if he was born from it. Remembering that he indeed had been, he kicked harder with whatever energy he could drag out from deep inside, beneath the aching in his chest.

 

3.

They undressed in the dark—quietly, shyly at first, and then methodically. The sea that beckoned them in the daylight sat wide before them now in the midnight light, as black as the universe. Each of the four friends avoided staring at it for too long, for fear of quickly throwing their clothes back on and making the long, lonely trip back home.

Dritan shivered as his sweater came off and then his undershirt.

“Goddamn, it’s cold,” muttered Erdi.

“Not if you think about how hot these rocks are in the summer,” said Luisa.

“Almost as hot as the iron when your finger is practically touching it,” added Dhurata. “I burned my finger that way once as a kid.”

“Or how hot your skin feels when you’re sunburned and you start to peel,” said Dritan with a smirk.

One by one, they threw in tokens of memories to build a small fire until Luisa finally pulled out the jar of grease she had been slowly collecting and saving from the mechanic’s shop where her uncle worked. Never done deliberately, her uncle would dole out random facts his niece would later apply to some relevant life event. It was from him that Luisa had learned how grease helped the skin maintain its elasticity, preventing it from shriveling after too much time in the saltwater.

“Someone help me with my shoulders,” she whispered. They lathered their bodies until they glistened. In the distance, they looked like a delicate dance of ghosts—arms reaching high, hands gliding over each other until four shadows came together to make one indistinguishable shape against the clear autumn night, and then broke apart again.

“Your turn, Dritan.” Luisa handed him the jar. “We saved the most for you since you don’t have an inner tube.” They had each taken apart their bikes and sliced open the tires to pull out the inner tubes to use as flotation devices. Dritan was the only one who’d decided at the last minute not to break the bike apart so that his mother could instead use it for errands and chores. At his core, though, he knew it’d had nothing to do with his mother. He couldn’t pull apart the bike that had belonged to his father. He grabbed the jar from Luisa and started blackening his arms and shoulders with grease.

“That’s okay. This will do just fine.” He flashed his teeth, which were barely noticeable in the dead of night. “I’m a faster swimmer than all of you anyway. All I have to do is keep moving.”

After each body had been greased, three of the four friends pulled out their inner tubes and pulled them over their heads. Luisa took out a ball of yarn from her bag and started weaving it around her shoulders, looping it over and around the inner tube until she had created a tight web of knots to keep the tube in place around her body. She chewed at the yarn until she felt a tear, yanked it loose, and threw the ball over to Erdi.

They each took their turn with the yarn, circling it around their bodies like an orbiting planet losing its course and spinning into oblivion, until suddenly, as fast as it had appeared from Luisa’s bag, it vanished. After much silent, synchronized movement, they stilled. Their eyes moved away from each other towards the gaping uncertainty that stretched before them.

As if on cue, their hands searched each other’s out and, once found, clasped them tightly. Wading into the water, their breath moved up from their bellies to their chests, lodging in their throats. The only sound they could make were hisses as they slowly exhaled and let the cold water swallow their youthful, unscarred bodies. And out into the Ionian they went, fading like flickering candle flames.

 

2.

 When Dritan showed up, they were still waiting for Agim. Agim was the last member of the group they waited on, but since they had all arrived early, they waited. In the distance a dog howled and howled until it finally forfeited to hunger and collapsed—a pile of tired old bones. They stood around quietly in the building’s shadow. The only sounds to echo were a throat being cleared or a quick kick of a stone pat pat patting down the road. If they caught each other’s eyes, they flashed a quick smile, and although each pair glowed mischievously in the darkness, anticipating the greatest adventure any of them would be sure to go on, the smiles would stop short just before reaching their eyes. Dritan grew uneasy after thirty minutes had passed and Agim had still not shown up. The sun would be rising before long and the first bus heading south would soon arrive.

“Where is that bastard? We can’t wait around forever,” said Luisa.

“What do we do?” Dhurata asked with an exasperated sigh.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Erdi. He was a brusque man who tried to control his language and mannerisms in front of the women in his life. This moment, however, slipped by without acknowledgment from his friends.

“No, wait.” Dritan felt on edge and was ready to move, but he couldn’t imagine leaving a member of their group behind. “Just ten more minutes. Something could be holding him up.”

“Do you know what would happen if the wrong person caught us just standing here right now?” Dhurata hissed.

“Just ten more minutes. If he’s not here by then, we can leave.”

“We’ve planned this for too long to have him ruin everything and land our heads on Enver’s dinner plate,” Erdi said through gritted teeth. Each enunciated syllable felt like a precise measurement. In the quiet of private homes, behind drawn curtains, vulgar jokes were often whispered by adults about how the great dictator, Enver Hoxha, fed off his citizens’ flesh, blood, and spirits.

It wasn’t the image Dritan would see of Enver in newspapers or on posters. Xhaxhi Enver, or Uncle Enver, as the propagandists often referred to him, was illustrated as a serene and happy family man, always eager to be around his people—his subjects. As Dritan grew older, he learned, as many others did while at home and after dark, that Enver Hoxha was a wolf in sheep’s clothes and the entirety of Albania was a flock of sheep that had gone astray.

Dritan thought of his mother’s muted anger at the loss of her husband all those years ago. She was the first person he’d heard utter those words, Enver eats the flesh of his people, and it was the first time everything outside his home suddenly felt like a lie.

“We’ll be fine,” Dritan managed to say. The brisk winds picked up and made the group huddle closer together. Deep inside the circle, they unburdened their minds and relieved themselves of any thoughts that might anchor them down once out in the water. The fear of being stopped; the fear of freezing; the fear of drowning; the fear of being intercepted and returned. They all agreed that death by sea would be a far more desirable way to go. Dritan noticed that the one fear no one had the strength to vocalize was the fear that Agim had betrayed them.

 

1.

He walked through the front door to the smell of fasule cooking, a rich cannellini bean soup topped with a drizzle of olive oil. It was a favorite dish of Dritan’s. He instinctively made his way towards the kitchen at the first smell of the soup, but his mind suddenly went on high alert: did his mother suspect his plans? Did she have any idea that he would be leaving?

“Bir i mamit, is that you?”

“I’m home,” Dritan responded.

“Are you ready to eat? Or we can wait.”

“No, I’m hungry. Let’s eat now.”

The everyday normalcy in her tone set his mind at ease, though his heart thumped against his chest when he sat down at the table and found it set for a feast. Two bowls filled to the brim with fasule, two small porcelain bowls with olives, an onion sliced in half, and thick slices of his mother’s bread sat in the middle of the table. Outside, the clouds rolled in from the mountains, threatening rain. This was, in Dritan’s opinion, the perfect autumn meal.

He chewed slowly while his mind reeled with the realization that this would be the last meal he would share with his mother at this table. He watched her—studied her mannerisms and the way she hummed under her breath between bites. She seemed happy. Or at the very least, content. Dritan’s chest tightened at the thought of her sadness expanding outwards from her insides until it filled every room in the house.

“You’re quiet today,” she said, blowing on her spoon to cool off the steaming broth. “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, nothing.” He took bites of his mother’s bread and filled his mouth with a memory already caught in the past. “Nothing worth worrying about.”

◊

Dritan heard her bedroom door close not long after he had already gone to bed and heard her open and close drawers, followed by the door to her heavy wooden armoire squeaking open and then closed—with a dull thud, as it did every night. The armoire had been a wedding gift to his parents, handed down from his father’s grandparents. He knew it was meant for Jusuf when he married, but now it would be his. If only he’d stay.

If only he’d survive.

Soon there was silence on both sides of the wall. He felt a different kind of uncertainty than the night he’d doused his spirit in blood and avenged Jusuf’s death. It was the night that slipped into his consciousness each day; the night that paved the road to his self-exile. That night he’d been drunk with fear and doubt; tonight he was high on excitement and anticipation. The damning naiveté of youth was never before so present, nor so disregarded.

He debated leaving a note for his mother, but quickly decided against it. She had asked him earlier that evening if he was going out that night to meet friends and he had said no, offering instead, to stay in with her. She had seemed pleased, if not a little confused as to his sudden desire to spend an uneventful evening at home with her.

The night felt long and Dritan managed to find sleep before waking up for the last time in his bed. The house was shrouded in silence and the creaking of the mattress felt amplified to his ears as he shifted and got up to get dressed. He rubbed his eyes and ran his hands over his head, hard, to shake out the last bit of sleep from his mind and each individual strand of hair.

He looked at his bed before walking out—he had always been a messy sleeper, tossing and turning until his sheets and blankets had knotted up and were hanging over the sides, like tendrils escaped from a dream world. He walked over to his bed and pulled the sheets back; he shook them out and threw them over his bed, tucking the corners in tightly, followed by the blanket. He smoothed out any remaining lumps and wrinkles and finally made his way to the door. Taking a quick look back, Dritan thought how it looked like he had never slept there that night. And then he walked out.

The house felt larger at night when the darkness made the hallway seem endless and doorways disappeared into blind mystery. He stopped at his mother’s door for a brief moment and pressed his ear against it. There was, of course, nothing. She was fast asleep on the other side and, though his body felt ablaze from his toes to the crown of his head, he slowly turned the knob and pushed the door open a sliver. She had left the curtains open, which he thought unusual, and some moonlight managed to stream in crookedly.

Dritan saw her dark shape in bed, peacefully unaware, and suddenly he felt glad. His lips curved up into a quick smile before pulling the door back gently into place. He shuffled his feet, feeling his way down the hall and through the living room. The eyes of his relatives in the photographs hanging on the walls followed him until he reached the front door and walked out, closing the door behind him without so much as turning his head. Had he done so, he would’ve seen the note his mother had written and stuck on the door.

Bir i mamit—my dear son—be careful.


Headshot of Nikoletta GjoniNikoletta Gjoni emigrated from Albania in 1990 at the age of three and was raised in the suburbs of Washington D.C. She studied English Literature at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). As an undergraduate, she was one of 33 students selected to undertake university-funded research in Albania, where she focused on the censorship of news and literature under the Communist regime of the 1950s-1980s. After graduating, Gjoni worked in broadcast news for several years before leaving to focus on her writing and to pursue work in the nonprofit sector. She has recently completed a debut collection of linked short stories about people living in Communist Albania, spanning the 1970s through to the present day. Towards Avalon is her first published story and has been nominated for a PEN/Robert J. Dau prize.

 

Image credit: Nonsap Visuals on Unsplash

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

THE SONG OF SAINT GEORGE by Kate Spitzmiller

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Saint George Killing the Dragon by Bernat Martorell (1430-1430)

THE SONG OF SAINT GEORGE
by Kate Spitzmiller

“But Martin was born in Lancashire,” I said to the man seated across from me the afternoon of the arrest.

The man, whose black hair was slicked neatly back, offered me a cigarette.

I declined. “Martin’s not German, much less a German spy.”

The man placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it with the flick of a silver lighter. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled, the smoke blue-grey in the dimly-lit room.

“Mrs. Ridley,” he said. “We have ample evidence of your husband’s activities in support of the Third Reich.”

“That’s ludicrous!”

“Madam, I assure you, everything is in order.”

“Martin teaches Medieval Literature at Oxford. He spends his time grading papers, not spying.”

The man tapped his cigarette over the black ashtray at the center of the table. Ash dropped soundlessly.

“Has Martin ever been to Germany?”

I blinked. “Of course. Before the war. For research.”

“And he speaks German?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Then how does he conduct his research?”

“He reads. He can read all the variants of Medieval German. But that’s not the same thing as being able to speak modern German. It doesn’t make him a spy. It makes him a scholar.”

The man exhaled smoke. It drifted lazily up toward the ceiling, captured by the pale light of the single bare bulb that illuminated the room.

“Sir, if I could speak with your superior, we could clear this matter up quite quickly.”

He ignored me. “How long have you been married?”

“Three years in March.”

“How long did you know each other before you were married?”

“Six months.”

“That’s not long.”

I blushed.

The man leaned forward. “I’m not here to make you feel uncomfortable, Mrs. Ridley. Quite the opposite. It is often difficult for the spouses to accept reality.”

“Reality?”

“The reality that they have been living their lives as normal, and all the while the person buttering their toast on the other side of the kitchen table is working for Hitler.”

“Martin doesn’t work for Hitler.”

“A common response.” The man tapped his ash again.

“Perhaps your superior—”

“I am the superior in this case, Mrs. Ridley.”

“Well, then, perhaps I could have your name.”

“You may call me Mr. Brown.”

“Mr. Brown, there has been some horrible mistake—”

“When was the last time your husband visited Germany?”

“I told you, before the war.”

“When?”

“1938, I think.”

“What month?”

“During the school holidays,” I said. “July or August.”

“And you didn’t travel with him?”

“No. It was a research trip. He planned to be in libraries the entire time. I would have been bored.”

“Did he say you would be bored, or did you decide you would be bored?”

“I don’t recall. And I resent the implication—”

“What was he working on?”

“He specializes in lyric poetry. There was a poem about Saint George he was hoping to re-translate.”

“Das Georgslied.”

“Excuse me?”

“Das Georgslied. Or the Song of Saint George. Written in Old High German. 1000 A.D.”

“Yes, that sounds right.”

“Saint George. Patron saint of England.”

“Yes.”

Mr. Brown crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. The filter collapsed like an accordion. “Do you know what a book cipher is, Mrs. Ridley?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

Mr. Brown’s thin lips twitched upward in what I imagined passed for a smile in his world.  “A book cipher,” he said, “is a way of sending coded messages using a preexisting text as the code-book.” The lips twitched again. “And your husband’s German handler seems to have a sense of humor. Or at least a sense of irony.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Song of Saint George. Meant as a poke in the eye to Churchill, I’d imagine.”

“It’s just a poem.”

“Not in your husband’s hands.” Mr. Brown opened the blue folder beside him. “Twelve coded messages. All sent from the postbox outside the Knight’s Inn pub in Oxford. All in your husband’s handwriting.”

He passed me a sheet of paper. The writing was unmistakably Martin’s—the curl at the end of the f, the little tail on the t. But the writing was incomprehensible. Letters, but also numbers.

“Nonsense, right?” Mr. Brown said.

I nodded, still staring at the mess of letters and numbers. Martin’s mess of letters and numbers.

“It’s nonsense,” Mr. Brown said, “until you use the Song of Saint George to decipher the code. Then it tells you how many bombers flew east from RAF Abingdon on each evening last week, and how many came back.”

My chest tightened.

“How close do you live to Abingdon?”

“We live just down the road. On Boar’s Hill. Martin…”

“Martin, what?”

“Martin…walks the dog to Abingdon every evening. He says he likes to watch the planes…”

Mr. Brown picked up the sheet of paper and slid it back into the folder. “He does like to watch the planes, Mrs. Ridley. Quite a lot.”

 


Headshot of Kate SpitzmillerKate Spitzmiller writes historical fiction from a woman’s perspective. She is a flash fiction award-winner, with two pieces published in the anthology Approaching Footsteps. Her flash piece “Brigida” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Companion of the Ash, is set for release in 2018 by Spider Road Press. She lives in Massachusetts where she tutors junior-level hockey players as her day job. You can visit her blog at www.katespitzmiller.com.

 

 

Image: Saint George Killing the Dragon, detail. Bernat Martorell, 1430-1430, Art Institute of Chicago

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

THIS VIOLENT AND CHERISHED EARTH by Cheryl Pappas

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackApril 18, 2019

Oranges stacked on top of each other against a black backgroundTHIS VIOLENT AND CHERISHED EARTH
by Cheryl Pappas

We must begin with a burgeoning sky. The storm that had flown out to sea flew back again into our small village in between the white and black mountains that looked over the land’s end. Our village that lay low was continually crushed by the sea’s thrashings, and that in turn gave us a dull, abused humor. We didn’t dare say “Enough, already!” for we were humble, and in the small wooden church we would say our prayers and give thanks for the rain, even though it came at the price of the wind bringing salt upon our homes and dead men upon our shores. Not one of us would say, “If only the storm would bring dead fish that we could eat instead of dead men and dead wood upon our shores, that would be something!” We would rather look plaintively out the window of the church thinking on the wisdom of Father Joe’s phrasings, or out our soft and moldy kitchen windowsill, and say to our husband or wife or sister or brother, “Looks like God is testing us again. Let’s pray that we will triumph, though Lord knows what we deserve.” And the other of us would respond with a thin and raspy, “That is the truth, right there.” That is how things were then.

Father Joe taught us much about this kind of humility. Our story would be nothing without a little explaining about Father Joe, who came to us circa 1917, during the period of the great frost. We had had no religion before, merely what they call community. We were good people. But when Father Joe came upon our shores, when we were dying every day from the lack of food, he filled our minds with stories we had never dared dream of. We had no need of dreaming before he came. We listened for hours and hours about some man in some Eastern clime who had been sacrificed, and who was the son of a great God. Father Joe told us of the travails he had taken to arrive at our little village, the miles of seas he had had to cross, and he always told us that what he did to get to us was nothing compared to our daily sacrifices. We took him in, set him up in a house, and built him a church for him to tell us these things. Though he stood up high near the altar, he seemed to hold us up on a pedestal and worship us as if we were some rare species. He told us many times the story of how he had heard about us when he was in battle. An anthropologist fighting alongside him had told him of this rare godless village in the north that he had visited once (we remember this anthropologist with his curious questions), and he wished to see our land once more before he died. Later that day that man was killed, which Father Joe took for a sign (Father Joe often spoke of signs and fate—words that didn’t exist in our language until he came upon our shore). When seeing his friend killed, Father Joe ran as fast as he could to a petrol station, found a way to safe territory, and quit the idea altogether of being a soldier. His mission became to find us and teach us the ways of God. Two long years it took him to arrive here, but this delay he took as a divine challenge.

We digress. So on this day of big, brashy thunder and frightful lightning, the sea brought hundreds not tens of men, and ships, so many ships broken to pieces! The salt was beyond all order! The front of Old Father Joe’s house that faced the sea (sitting atop the promontory as his example of his enduring faith in God) was as white as God’s beard.

After the skies had gone grey and the bruised clouds swept themselves off toward the horizon, we came out of our salty shacks, clutching our long sweaters with arms crossed. We were making our way down to the shore to begin gathering the bodies. We had done this so many times before, so our faces were not quick to show surprise, but when the first row of us reached the sandy beach, some of us stopped.

More of us came up from behind, and more, and more, so that after a little while a good number of us were just trying to get a look at the shore. Our shining blue eyes were all turned toward the horizon, toward the source of our latest burden. A last light flickered over the line at the end of the earth. Not one of us said a word.

We had to do our jobs, didn’t we? That was why we were put on this earth. So first one, then two, three, ten, then all forty of us started the mournful labor of piling the bodies up to where the waves couldn’t take them back. As we worked, we sang our prayers in bare whispers to the lost travelers:

Oh, sunken ones, your journey is come.
Let us unburden you,
and lift you from your bride.
The salt is in your bones, your eyes the weeds do hide,
But we see you, sailor,
we bless you and for our own fates abide.   

We prayed this way until sunset, when finally all of the bodies had been brought up high on the shore. We took the water-seeped wood, as we were used to do, and carried it to Branches’ Farm, where all wet wood went to dry. Then we carried back to shore piles and piles of dried wood. This went on right through supper—for no one ever ate until this task was done. There on the sand our men lay the wood from old shipwrecks and piled the bodies to make the pyre. As the flames reached higher, our women closed their scarves around their bodies and made their way back to their homes to start the very late supper. Father Joe took this time to look out over us while enjoying his dinner of salt bread and water. We would sometimes look up to see his candle in the window momentarily lighting up his shadowy face and take comfort.

While we men supervised the fire, we chatted about the storm, now that the danger was over. As we said, we were a people not to be surprised too readily, so when Old Smithson and Johnson came up from the long reach of the shore carrying a heavy trunk between them, several of us ran to help them carry it to a spot high up on the shore without asking questions. The men put the trunk down and we all gathered round it, some bending down and some just standing cross-armed and slightly bewildered. Finally Old Father Joe, who had by this time joined us at the pyre, looked at Smithson and said, “Go get your hammer, Smithson. We might as well figure out what God has in store for us now.”

Smithson, who was truly getting old then, walked but did not run to his shop and brought back his hammer. Under the star-ridden sky, we watched as Father Joe pounded and pounded the gold lock of the weathered trunk. Our women looked up from their sinks and stoves at the banging that sounded like a broken church bell out of rhythm. They all wiped their hands on their towels, turned down the flames on the stove, and headed back to the shore.

All forty of us had gathered there now, with hopeful yet anxious eyes, waiting for the moment when the sturdy lock would break. Within a few minutes, the wood splintered and this is when Father Joe halted and addressed us as if we were in church.

“Good people of this cherished land, of which there is much bounty, please let us not forget ourselves and hold too much promise in this bestowal from God. Let us honor the sailors who rest here tonight, their souls on their journey home. Let us remain, above all, who we are, humble creatures of the Lord of Light.”

With three tries Father Joe broke the seal. At first it was too dark for any of us to see. Old Johnson brought over a torch lit by the burning embers of the pyre.

As we all took in the familiar stench of flesh and salt coming from the pyre, Father Joe slowly lowered the flame down into the shadows of the trunk’s interior. There were mounds and mounds of round objects that glowed orange in the light. Were they made of gold, you may wonder? Were they strange jewels from afar? No, they were, as it was ascertained by Father Joe who lifted one up and shone the light on it, oranges. Simple and delicious oranges that were far from rotten. Now, in any other community, this would be a disappointment. But for us humble folk, it was both an enchantment and a deep problem. For we had never set our eyes on an orange. The treasure might as well have been gold. And under Father Joe’s guidance, we wondered, who would dare eat them? Wasn’t it folly to do so? Father Joe would have to decide this one for us.

“Good people! We have been blessed as well as cursed! Those of you who do not know what this is, it is an orange, a fruit that is sweet and fibrous. I think before it is decided what to do with them, we need to count them first and foremost, to see the level of our treasure. But do not fail to see the sorrow in this gift! I hesitate to let this fine fruit enter into our lives, for we may be tempted further by this joy and only want more of what we cannot have. Be warned!”

Father Joe asked Old Roman and Old Johnson to bring the trunk to the church, where the oranges could properly be counted. We all followed, while dinners still simmered on stoves, and watched Father Joe lay a thick black cloth on the table in the center of the altar. The oranges were taken out one by one, preciously, and counted.

There were forty oranges.

In our hearts, we were hoping that Father Joe would be kind and just, and give each one of us one orange and so be left with none for himself. This would have been the right thing to do. He was the one, you remember, whose house faced the calamitous sea, as a sign of his faith. Well, would his faith extend to sacrificing the taste of a sweet orange?

“People of this God-loving village, I am afraid we do have trouble. We are forty-one and there are only forty oranges. Because I do love this village, however, I am more than willing to forego my pleasure of eating an orange for the higher pleasure of seeing you enjoy them. But heed my earlier warning! Let not this fruit spoil your spirit. For as these oranges will soon mold and turn to dust, so will your spirit if you let pleasure ruin your spiritual appetite.”

We flocked to the oranges like scavengers, shamelessly smiling now, for what we had hoped had come true. Much bustling was made, scarves thrown over shoulders, elbows high up in the air, each grabbing an orange for himself or herself, whether old or young. Our mothers were kind to hand an orange to their child, because in that flurrying and scrambling, one would think that selfishness had gone amok.

While this frenzy was proceeding, Father Joe said, just under his breath, “My Father who art in Heaven” and every one of us stopped what we were doing. We were sensitive to the sound of the Father.

“I know there are some of you who are far better than this. May I only remind you of the rotting fruit of your souls. Good night.” And with that Father Joe walked solemnly down the aisle of the church, his shoes pounding the wooden floor, and the large, heavy door shut behind him like a stone.

We all stood there, quiet, until one of us (it was Old Johnson) walked over and put his orange back. And then another, and another, and another of us, until all of the oranges were piled ceremoniously upon the altar. Suddenly Old Rachel, who was always a little panicky, remembered the grub on the stove and shouted, “The grub!” and with that all of our women rushed back to the grub on their stoves, fearful of a fire burning up what little we had. The men and children trailed behind, our heads bowed.

The next day at service, the oranges remained on the altar while the Father spoke of humility and suffering and the salt of the sea and the sailors on their journey home, through our blessed guidance. In this dark church made of wood, those oranges burned as bright as the candles, and not one us didn’t sneak a look. Father Joe used the oranges well in his sermon, speaking of them as temptations of the pure spirit. And he did not neglect to tell us how proud he was of us, when he entered the church at dawn, to see the glorious pile of oranges there where they belonged.

For the next few days, the fervor with which old Father Joe spoke increased, for he was bounding with praise at our sacrifice, and was convinced that we had reached the pinnacle of our spirits, and pleased God beyond belief. It was a triumphant time for this village, he said, so much so that perhaps God would bless us with more storms so that we might come to realize the true beauty of our sacrificing souls.

This proved too much. Granted, some of us were indeed pleased with ourselves and felt that we would surely be raised to Heaven when the day came. But the promise of those oranges held a power over us. The more Father Joe spoke of our people’s strength and virtue and holiness, the brighter those oranges shone. Soon everything fell away in our people’s vision, all the greys and browns and blacks inside the church looked paltry when compared to the joyous color of the bountiful fruit.

The desire in our people rose to such a level that one night, it was spread about in whispers among the townspeople that Old Johnson and Smithson, the ones who had found the trunk, were to sneak into the church after midnight and take the oranges and hide them in Smithson’s cellar so that we could all finally enjoy them before they went rotten. In the morning when Father Joe would discover them gone, we would simply say that we had put the oranges back in the trunk and sent the bestowed gift out to sea, from whence it came.

But the night did not go according to plan. Johnson and Smithson had smoothly retrieved the trunk and placed all of the oranges in it but when they stepped outside of the church, they were astonished to see every last one of us—save for Father Joe, of course—there in front of the church to receive our own orange. It was a risk, we knew, but we were willing to lose our souls for the sweet taste that Father Joe had described. Johnson and Smithson were very upset and told all of us to go behind the church, out of view from Father Joe’s house, so that they could hand out the oranges in shadow.

Meanwhile, old Father Joe, the story goes, must have been thinking as he lay there in bed that if he took one orange, just one, then no one would know. As some of us tell it, he put on his warm wool robe and his slippers so no one would hear him walking (this was false though, the road was a pebbly one). He went out his back porch and headed for the church. By the light of the moon, he must have seen our shadows and heard the strange sucking sounds.

At this, he ran behind the church and saw all of us, so many of us, sitting on the grass, the light of the moon behind us, sucking away at the oranges, their tough skins tossed aside on the ground.

Oh, and were we ever enjoying those oranges! In between the sucking sounds were lots of quiet exclamations and the children, the children! They were dancing about, putting a slice in their mouths and smiling! Old Christina was the first one who saw the tall shadowy figure of Old Joe approach. “Hush!” she whispered. But it was too late. Father Joe stood before our huddled figures in the night of both light and dark and crossed his arms. He didn’t say a word for a few minutes. He was waiting for his power to be felt. “I would like to know . . .” he growled, barely able to contain himself. “I would like to know who is responsible for his soul here behind this church. How dare . . .” Father Joe started to say but his words were quickly interrupted by Johnson and Smithson, who had in one movement picked up his screaming, shrieking body, and pushed him into the trunk. Before it was closed we all—men, women, and children—picked up the scattered orange peels and threw them in with the Father. Smithson and Johnson sat on the trunk while Christina fetched some rope from her shed. The two men bundled up the trunk and carried it aloft all the way to the river that flowed ever to the sea, with all of us following behind and around and ahead. The journey was so long that we had to take turns carrying the burden, but it was no matter, for we smiled like we had never smiled before, the taste in our mouths was sweet, and a light moved us forward, the moon glinting in our deep blue eyes. We sang to our glory, and to our old Father Joe, who gave us this Heaven. Oh, sunken one, your journey is come.


Headshot of Cheryl PappasCheryl Pappas is a writer from Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, SmokeLong Quarterly, Tin House, Essay Daily, and Mulberry Fork Review. She is currently writing an essay about Jules Romains’s novel The Death of a Nobody and is at work on a short story collection. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Bennington Writing Seminars. You can find her at cherylpappas.net and @fabulistpappas.

 

 

 

Image credit: Wikipedia

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

MISE EN PLACE by Jennifer Fliss

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 15, 2017 by thwackJune 22, 2020

Onion with green stem on cork tableMISE EN PLACE
by Jennifer Fliss

A teaspoon of salt. It is flaky and the flakes overrun the tiny spoon and the recipe calls for kosher but the only thing in my cupboard is the fancy kind from France bought at the organic grocery store. Already I’m doing it wrong.

On my counter, in various-sized bowls:
• 1/4 cup flour
• Carrots (2)—julienned
• Onion—small, diced
• Sweet potatoes (2)—large dice
• 1 cup chickpeas
• 1 tbs paprika
• a few strands of saffron, sitting delicately in a white ramekin. The strands are small and fine like microorganisms; they are potent despite their size. If I look through a microscope, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are actually alive.

A prepared chef is a good chef, my mother used to say, her words filling her mouth, thick and spicy-sweet, like the apricots in the tagines she made on Sundays. She’s been dead for three months and I hate cooking. But for my father’s seventieth, I’m giving it a try. He misses my mother. She cooked a lot. I don’t.

A few hours later, he is first to arrive. I seat him in the lounge chair that used to be his—leather, the color of the yolk on an over-boiled egg. When they upgraded to the beach condo, my mother said they had no use for it and replaced it with the stabby discomfort of wicker. I think he still mourns.

I don’t have turmeric. The food will not have the golden hue that says: this flavor will be so deep it will evoke Marrakesh or Fez, or even the urban every-city-ness of Casablanca, where my mother and father met. Instead, I’m sure it will say: welcome to Fridays, can I take your order? So, nostalgic in its own way, but not what I’m going for.

Len and Paula, and the single brother, Joseph, finally arrive. They come together, disgorging from a country-sized vehicle. It’s Len’s and he said they needed it for all their children, but they never had kids.

“Oh my God,” Paula, my sister-in-law, says. “We were just watching SVU in the car.”

“Oh my God,” I repeat, unsure of what God has to do with it.

“I could watch that show for hours,” Paula says. “In fact,” here she giggles like a confessing teenager. “We sat around the corner for the past twenty minutes cuz we just had to finish the episode.”

“How can we help?” Joseph asks, coming in behind Paula.

“Cut this onion,” I say. And it isn’t two chops later that he is crying. Makes two of us.

I had already set the table, and I have no need for any more chopped onion.

“What is this?” Len asks.

“Assigned seating,” I say. There’s grumbling, and I see Paula move her name card.

I put out the food. Cured meats in crenelated folds; cheese: brie, goat, manchego; crudité; eggplant and tomato salad; store-bought bourekas; the stew; and some homemade burnt khobz.

“What, no couscous?” Joseph says smiling.

“Well, petite soeur, trying to be Mom?” Len asks and instantly puts his napkin to his mouth as if trying to catch his words. Too late. There is silence. Loud sips of water. Folding and refolding of napkins. I’m thinking about a response and instead find myself thinking of a joke my mother used to tell, something involving an elephant and a jar of jelly beans—I can’t recall the details and now I’m craving licorice jelly beans.

A film is forming over the stew. The carrots on the veggie tray are sweating. Paula fidgets. My father, who has moved the non-condo worthy chair over to the table, despite its size, heaves a loaded breath through his nose. It causes the flame on the candles to flicker. This house could burn down, I think.

“Dig in,” I finally say. They do. Paula whispers that the stew is bland. Len says it’s just like mom made. I go back to the kitchen. Bring out the pepper grinder and salt. I only eat the prosciutto and bresaola, shoving piece after piece of thin saltiness onto my tongue. I scrape charred flakes from the khobz onto the white lace tablecloth—a wedding gift to my parents, now a worn hand-me-down of mine—another beach-condo casualty. I look over to see my father tracing the lace design with his fingers.

No one gives a toast and I forgot to make dessert. No one sings happy birthday, though everyone mutters it to my father as they leave.

Later, we load the egg-yolk chair into my pick-up. I drive my father home. Install the chair in front of the TV.

“Happy Birthday,” I say as I kiss him on the cheek—a brush of my lips on his leathery cheekbone, almost his eye.

“I hope there are leftovers,” my father says—a kindness. I hold up the containers filled with food. He nods and picks up the remote, reaches for the lever to recline the seat.

In the kitchen, I hear the TV go on—the news. The endless, hopeless news. As he settles in, I make him some tea and put the leftovers in his fridge, enough for the week, maybe more.


Jennifer Fliss author photoJennifer Fliss is a Seattle-based fiction and essay writer. Her work has appeared in PANK, The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com

 

 

 

Image credit: Tobias Macha on Unsplash

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Published on December 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 20. (Click for permalink.)

LOST by B. A. Varghese

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 15, 2017 by thwackApril 19, 2019

Pair of worn-in leather boots on a hardwood floor, with the title of the piece on the bottom left

LOST
by B. A. Varghese

Just let me finish my story. Listen. I was at this party at a house on Vanderveer Street off of Hillside Ave. in Queens. I was having a great time with my friends, then near the end of the party, I had to leave because I wanted to help my mom. She had called me, you know, she’s older and needed my help, I don’t know, can’t remember, something about her house, maybe the garbage disposal or something, so anyway, I said I’d be there after the party. Well, after a while, I thought I had hung around long enough, mingled enough, so I went to the front of the house to look for my shoes, and I couldn’t find them.

Hey, you know me, I’m Malayalee. My family comes from the state of Kerala, which is along the coast of southwest India, a place some call God’s Own Country, a place where life somehow slows down to a pace far less frantic than found elsewhere in India. Back there, back where people have time to actually live how they were created to live, and age seems to wait for their bodies to catch up in a slow progression of time, back where culture and habits passed down for generations are still practiced as wisdom, there is a custom that when you enter any home, you take your shoes off to show respect, and that expression of favorable regard for your host also extends to his family and to all the people that you have come to visit that live there like aunts or uncles or like their appachans or ammachies, you know, the grandparents. I’m guessing this is the case with not just all Indians, but usually with most Asian people, this custom where you take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home, a custom still practiced even if the family is a continent away from their native land. I mean, it makes sense, you don’t want to dirty the host’s house up with all the places you stepped, you know, bringing all the things of the world that the host is trying to keep out with his house.

Again, it’s a sign of respect, so you take your shoes off, but if you really want to get a Malayalee or an Indian or any Asian mad, just keep your shoes on inside their home. For example, when your hosts open the front door and they greet you and you see all those shoes in the front entry from all the other guests, go ahead and walk right in without even acknowledging that you even notice those shoes, or better yet, look down at the shoes for a while, then walk right in, so that they know you know to take your shoes off but you refuse to, then walk all over the house, and when you’re in the middle of a great conversation, just hoist up your leg and step on that coffee table or that ottoman and lean your elbow on that hoisted knee with your drink in your hand chuckling after you tell your hearty joke, now that, that will definitely be a way not just to get your host furious at you, but to get the whole Malayalee population this side of the Atlantic mad too, because he’s going to call all of them.

I can see him with red in his eyes, and he can’t wait till you leave so he can curse you and your family, and not the kind of cursing with profanity, no, that’s vulgar and too easy. It’s the kind of cursing that takes creativity where the host wishes you grow horns on your head or that your children grow fat and lazy. He’ll probably tell his wife how disrespectful you were by walking around in your filthy shoes and tell her how you were probably raised by animals or white people. Now, I know you might think that seems a bit racist, but it’s not. It’s just a comparison of two extremes. Well, maybe. It could be the residual effect of British imperialistic occupation of India for a number of generations. I mean, the British wore their shoes everywhere. Everywhere. But I digress. Either way, the host would feel that this would be the last time he’d invite your kind. The I-don’t-take-my-shoes-off-because-I-wasn’t-raised-with-manners kind.

I didn’t want any of that, so I took my shoes off when I entered the house, and I remember setting them aside near the tiled front foyer closer to the bookshelf that sat down the hall. I didn’t just throw them anywhere, because I knew that with a custom like this, you may end up not knowing where you originally placed your shoes because they all look similar, especially men’s shoes, I couldn’t say about women shoes, I think they look different. Or you may lose sight of your shoes because someone else was looking through the pile at the front door and may have shuffled some shoes around, causing your shoes not to be at the same location. In the worst case scenario, someone may have taken your shoes by mistake, which would mean that their shoes are still here, and they’re walking around in your shoes, going home, wondering why their feet hurt or why the shoes are too loose or too tight, not smart enough to know that they picked up the wrong shoes. I know things like this can happen, and I placed my shoes slightly away from everyone else’s shoes, but not far enough to suggest that I’m special or I think I’m above everyone else, like, “Look at that guy’s shoes, who does he think he is placing his shoes so far away from everyone else and so close to our carpet?”

I know I left my shoes closer to the bookshelf, by that mahogany or what looked like mahogany bookshelf in the hall, and I know what my shoes look like, leather brown loafers, no laces, I’m too lazy for laces, sleek, clean, no prints or stitching along the sides, just plain deep brown, soft shoes, but I couldn’t find them, so I looked around, you know, in case a shuffling of shoes occurred by someone prior to me wanting to leave. Sometimes, a shuffling of shoes occurs when people come in, those people who arrived late, like it was fashionable to be late to a party, but this was an Indian party, you come really late to these kinds, and the host will think you were brought up in the poorer towns in Kerala, like your family doesn’t have education and were workers sweating in a paddy field, because Indian parties, weddings, funerals, or any functions already start late since we run on Indian time, like if something is scheduled to start at 5:00 p.m., every Indian knows that it’s going to start around 6:00 p.m., so everyone comes at 6:00 p.m. Indian Standard Time, and if you decide to come fashionably later than that, then you’re really late, and the host will wonder why you came at all.

I know what my shoes look like, and I know I left them near the bookshelf, but they weren’t there, and there wasn’t too much shuffling of shoes, I could see that each pair was together, so a major shuffling hadn’t occurred yet. It would seem I may have misplaced them, maybe I didn’t leave them near the bookshelf, the fake mahogany one, maybe I left them by the other one on the opposite side, the black one with the wood sculptures of cranes and elephants, but I don’t remember noticing those sculptures when I placed my shoes nearby, because I would have noticed them, I mean the whole bookshelf was covered with these wooden sculptures, and that would have stuck in my mind, that image and realization that this crap was in every Indian house.

I decided to look around because now I’m doubting my memory. I didn’t see them by both bookshelves, maybe I didn’t leave them by any bookshelf. I looked deeper into the large spread of shoes in the front. Maybe the host, well, Jose Uncle, actually, he’s not my real uncle, it’s another Indian custom we practice where you elevate an older acquaintance to a position in your family, you do this out of respect. The same thing with older women, they’re aunties. Maybe, it was Jose Uncle, spelled J-O-S-E, but not pronounced Jose like he was Mexican or in a way that would imply Spanish descent, but literally pronounced the way it was spelled: Jose Uncle. Well, he did sport a very thick mustache and was chubby, and his hair sat combed in a way that formed the shape of a sombrero. Probably, he saw that I moved my shoes away from everyone else, and he moved them back into the pile. It’s known to happen. Now I’m wondering if he did that and didn’t say anything, another custom of my people, not to say anything but to teach silent lessons to those younger than them.

Either way, if my shoes were moved to the pile, then they must be here. I went over the whole pile and still couldn’t find them. I decided to start from the top and move slowly down the pile to the front door, once in a while touching and picking up shoes that came somewhat close to the look of my shoes. During this whole time, I had a number of people come up to me asking what I was doing like it wasn’t obvious, like they couldn’t put two and two together to know that I was looking for my shoes, so I told them that I was looking for my shoes, and some, the more thoughtful ones, even asked what my shoes looked like, and I told them that they were dark brown, soft, no laces, but after their questions, they all seemed to continue back into the party, they went back to talking to others and not one of them looked back or helped. Not one. It was as if they just wanted to confirm that my actions of looking for my shoes actually matched to what was going through my head, the thoughts of where are my shoes, and that was enough for them. Like if I said I was looking for the dip, they would have pointed toward the kitchen and went on their merry way.

Now I became worried. Or at least it felt like worry. I scoured the front entry for my shoes, and I couldn’t find them anywhere, and no one, I mean no one, was offering any help. Everyone was busy with the party, and I felt nervous. Or was it something else creeping inside, and I just failed to figure out this feeling? Maybe I felt anxious because I was thinking that my mother was expecting me to be at her home soon, and I was not there and like most Indian mothers, well, all mothers, they worry, and I didn’t want her thinking that I was lying in a ditch somewhere, because that’s what they worry about, that we end up lying in ditches, but they don’t understand that if all the mothers worry about that, then we’re all probably in the same ditch, we’re all okay, and we can help each other out of the ditch.

Then my wife finally showed up and saw me looking around the front, thank God she was here, I had totally forgotten that she was here because I was so wrapped up in looking for my shoes. I should have known to stop after a while and ask her, because she would know exactly where they were even though I’m the one who placed them somewhere. She would know. Women are like that.

I was relieved she was here, and I told her that my mom had called and I was supposed to go there after the party and I just couldn’t find my shoes, and I looked at my wife the whole time I was talking, and at the end of my explanation, she rolled her eyes.

She rolled her eyes.

Like I was some kind of a moron or paddy field worker who couldn’t find his shoes. She asked if I looked through the pile in the front, and I could not believe she asked me that, and I told her, what the heck do you think I was doing and that I was here looking for my shoes, who knows, for the last half hour. This time she rolled her eyes and shook her head, and I couldn’t believe it. It was as if she was looking upward and shaking her head toward the sky, and all of Heaven was looking down shaking their heads, wondering how God could have slipped up and allowed such a perfect Malayalee woman to marry such a complete idiot. An idiot who couldn’t even keep track of his shoes. I asked her if she was going to help or not and she said not to worry and that we would find it. Her words comforted me, and I started looking around again, and I started picking up each pair of shoes. This time, I looked at them top and bottom, like I was going to recognize my shoes from the sole, and after a few minutes I looked over to see if my wife found them or not, and she wasn’t there in the front. She was by the kitchen talking to someone with some food, probably a samosa, in her hand, and I bet you she was looking at first but then became distracted with conversation like most women do and totally forgot or gave up on the idea of looking for my shoes.

I stood there shocked that not only did no one help, but my wife didn’t seem to want to help either. Now, I know that I made a thorough search for my shoes and couldn’t find them. I came to the conclusion that someone must have taken my shoes by accident and left theirs. I thought maybe I can take their shoes and get going, but there’s absolutely no way of knowing what shoes they left behind except that the shoes must have looked exactly like mine, but I didn’t remember seeing anything that looked exactly like my shoes. After all that, I thought my shoes were gone and there was no way I’m getting them back, so I went toward the front closet and looked around and found some old shoes which I knew must have belong to Jose Uncle. I grabbed them, which in retrospect I shouldn’t have done, but I was angry, and I walked through crowds of conversations and laughter, and finally found Jose Uncle, and asked if I could borrow his shoes, and he said no and that he needed them. He told me that he only had a few shoes and how the ones I was holding was his favorite pair. Now I noticed that he wasn’t too happy that I was walking around holding his shoes, and that is another thing you must never do at any host’s home, you don’t go rummaging through their things, it doesn’t matter if you’re Indian or whatever, it’s just bad manners, and I knew that somehow my mother was going to hear of this, and then she would rather have me be lying in a ditch somewhere than disrespect the host in such a way.

I don’t know what went through my mind to go through another person’s items, and I told Jose Uncle that I was sorry for looking through his front closet, and that I would even buy this old pair of shoes from him. He said okay, thirty-five dollars. Thirty-five dollars? For these shoes? I asked how about ten dollars and he said no, thirty-five dollars. I told him that I could buy two pairs of shoes for that much at Payless. He said that I should feel free to buy shoes from there and if I buy from him, I would PayMore. I don’t know if it’s a custom or anything, but it seems that almost all Indian uncles dispense corny jokes, almost as if in order to be privileged enough to be called an uncle, one must read the ancient manuscript of lame jokes passed from one uncle to another over generations like some secret society of Uncles of the Freemasons, the Indian Order.

Now, it was at that very moment that Thomas Uncle stepped in and placed his hand on my shoulder. His eyes were wide, and he was happy to see me, stating that he hadn’t seen me for years.

He told me how fat I had gotten.

It’s one of those things growing up Indian that when you’re greeted by an older person, they need to either comment on how skinny you’ve gotten or how fat you’ve gotten, yet that perfect middle form and weight, that fine line is almost near invisible and is impossible to attain, so attempting to fix yourself in either direction will result in again falling short the next time you meet. I smiled, talked to Thomas Uncle for a little, then turned to Jose Uncle and thanked him for his hospitality. Yet another customary thing or habit we did out of respect as a younger person, not to show our true feelings, because we were young and had not earned the right to speak one’s mind, a right that comes with age. I walked back to the front of the house and threw his shoes as hard as I could back into the closet. For a moment, I thought of taking someone else’s shoes, but I felt I couldn’t make someone else suffer and have them think that someone took their shoes by accident when I did it on purpose, no, I couldn’t make them go through what I was going through. This was it, I decided to walk to my mother’s house without my shoes. This is probably why some people keep their shoes on inside the house.

My mother raised me with good manners, and I know that when leaving a party or gathering that you should go and say bye to your friends and any new people you had met, but just imagine how strange it would be go to a party and just leave the house without telling anyone and eventually people at the party would wonder if I was still there or if I left without saying a word, yet if I decided to do such a thing it would be another infraction my mother would hear of, so I walked over saying goodbye to everyone and telling them how great of a time I had, and I said bye to Jose Uncle and auntie and then to my wife, and they all smiled and said bye and said that it was great that I was able to make it to the party. While I was walking to the front, I couldn’t help but feel that no one cared because no one asked me if I had found my shoes. They all knew I was looking for them, but no one brought the subject up. At the front foyer, I looked down on the pile of shoes, then back at the party, at all the people talking, all my friends and some family, uncles, aunties, everyone, and I opened the door and went outside.

It was cold, and the wind was blowing, but I didn’t have a jacket on, and I couldn’t remember if I had brought a jacket to the party, yet another thing like the shoes to worry about, but it didn’t matter now. I could feel how cold the cement sidewalk was under my feet, and it was unlike the carpet and its warmth by the fireplace in that house; that house filled with the aroma of chapatti and chicken curry, a smell that hung in the air and that had embraced me like a loving mother when I had entered; that house filled with friends and loved ones whose warmth was first felt through shoulders of soft wool sweaters and cotton shirts and smooth silk saris; that house filled with painstakingly created treats like chewy fried banana chips and the lentil fritters sitting in warm China bowls on the oblong plastic-covered dining room table. Out in the cold, the chills crept through my feet all the way up my spine, spreading all over my back, then penetrating as if I were being swallowed up into the darkness. Leaves whirled in the wind around me with moans and whistles. A small bird sat on a blade of grass, looking up at me. A few feet away, I looked back at that house and could see that the party was still going on, I could hear the muffled music playing, and the windows lit bright like white square eyes against the darkening slate sky. It looked warm and loving, yet I noticed that no one looked out the windows to watch me leave or to see if I was okay, which should have been the job of the host, Jose Uncle, to see me to the door and watch me leave the house, another custom, but not this time, no one watched from the house. No one cared to follow good customs, the ones revolving around love.

At that moment, while my eyes were locked on that house, a feeling crept back up inside along with the cold. It was something I couldn’t shake, a raw visceral emotion deep down. It was at that moment that all of it felt like a dream, all the memories that I had just experienced stripped into the darkness, and I stood there like a statue with tears, observing the poverty of it all. The small bird sat still, and I stayed there in my socks, shivering without a jacket, crying into the darkness, looking toward that house, yearning for its warmth, and I recognized the feeling, and I realized that it was how I had felt, how I had been feeling for the past year.


Headshot of B. A. VargheseB. A. Varghese graduated from Polytechnic University (New York) with a degree in electrical engineering and is currently working in the information technology field. Inspired to explore his literary side, he has earned a BA in English from the University of South Florida. His works have appeared in Apalachee Review, Prick of the Spindle, and other literary journals. (www.bavarghese.com)

 

 

Image credit: Peter Hershey on Unsplash

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Published on September 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 19. (Click for permalink.)

INHERENT RISK by Danielle Holmes

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 15, 2017 by thwackApril 19, 2019

Security camera fastened to the ceiling surrounded by blue and purple lighting, with the title of the piece in the center of the image

INHERENT RISK
by Danielle Holmes

My mother told me nothing is safe. I grew up fenced in playpens, leashed like a dog, harnessed in strollers. I was buckled and belted, handheld and sandwiched, life-vested, sunblocked, helmeted, braced, and warned. My vaccines were up to date, my laces double-knotted. She told me never go out alone. My friends weren’t friends but “buddies.” Each time I built up the courage to timidly test the limits of her invisible fence, things went wrong. I thought, maybe she was right. Or, this was a bad idea.

All of her warnings coalesced in the dark recesses of the parking garage. Cement columns and cars threw shadows that sheltered rapists, murderers, gangsters, and thieves. When I got a high school job at the mall, she gifted me pepper spray in my Christmas stocking. Never park on the same level twice, she told me. Have your mace in one hand, your key clenched in the other. Call a security guard to walk you to your car if you can, but only if the security guard is not a rapist or a Republican. She scowled at the high heels I was required to wear, said, they’ll only slow you down. Have you heard about the men hiding beneath cars that cut your Achilles while you’re unlocking the door?

At twenty-four, I started going on hikes alone. I’d been thinking about it since I first fell in love with the outdoors as a teen, and it had taken me some eight-plus years to gather the pluck. My mother tried to talk me out of it, recited statistics about mountain lion maulings, trotted out facts involving landslides, forest fires, snake bites, and hypothermia. Did you know that bears are drawn to menstruating women? she asked, then bought me a knife the size of my forearm with a compartment for waterproof matches, flint, and a space blanket. She sent emails about foraging for edible plants, gifted books about a hiker having to cut his own arm off or eat his frozen brother. She put a jingle bell on my trekking pole to scare the animals away, a rape whistle around my neck to scare the men away. I’d gone years without incident until the day I rounded a corner of trail close to the tree line and nearly tripped over a deer carcass, entrails still steaming, tufts of fur and sinew leading into the brush. I thought, maybe she was right. This was a bad idea.

I started staying closer to home; things felt safer out of the wilderness. A door-to-door vacuum salesman asked to use my bathroom one afternoon, and while my mother’s voice screamed it isn’t safe!, it also chimed in don’t be rude! and during the cranium cage fight of her maxims, the salesman flushed and walked into the kitchen, where he studied my refrigerator pictures, then said, “So, you live here all by yourself?”

The security system I purchased was top-of-the-line, monitored doors and windows, allowed me to check in on things from my phone when I wasn’t at home. It made me feel much safer, until I awoke one night, horrified at the realization that the man who installed it knew my codes, how to disarm things—he most certainly was watching the goings on of my house from his phone!

There wasn’t much yard space for the Dobermans, but I left them with a tug-of-war toy in the back to encourage exercise and keep their killer instincts sharp. I would have liked to walk them to the park in the evenings, but everyone knows that parks are full of drug dealers and delinquent teens that are housing extremely dangerous hormone levels and a deadly lack of frontal lobe development. Instead, my dogs and I ran neat circles around the perimeter of my back yard. We wore down a path.

One slow Sunday morning, I sat near my front window with a mug of coffee (reasonably cooled to a safe drinking temperature), dogs at my feet, updating my firewall and watching a few neighborhood children ride their bikes around the sidewalks and into my driveway. My mother had recently sent an email, the subject line all caps: URGENT. It explained that gang members had been using “lost” or “injured” children asking for help in order to lure women into their clutches. Outside, one of the kids was sitting beside his overturned bike, fists tight balls in his eye sockets. The little bastards. I snapped shut my curtains and put in an order for electric fencing.

It was about this time I discovered one can have groceries delivered, circumventing the germ-ridden, vagrant-filled cavities of the supermarket. Did you know you can catch foot-and-mouth disease from shopping cart handles? I always answered the door with a taser in my waistband, the Dobermans snarling behind my legs. Last time the delivery man’s finger brushed mine as he handed over the package. The website directory of registered sex offenders is surprisingly easy to navigate.

I ordered a twelve-disc self-defense DVD collection starring a former Navy SEAL for only three small payments of $24.99, kept a baseball bat leaning against the wall behind the front door, got a concealed permit, and purchased a handgun. I planted thorned hedges behind the electric fence and dug stakes beneath the windows. I sharpened my canine teeth with a nail file and fashioned a chastity belt out of scrap metal. When the Dobermans were off duty they would come to me in the hunting blind spread out in the living room, place their questioning snouts in my lap. We’re ready, I’d assure them, to live without fear.


Headshot of Danielle HolmesDanielle Holmes holds an MFA from Bennington College. Her previous works have appeared in daCunha, Pilgrimage, and P.U.L.P. In 2015 she was a finalist in the Dana Awards and in 2014 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Colorado.

 

 

 

Image Credit: Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash

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Published on September 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 19. (Click for permalink.)

RETURN TO THE VAMC by Sarah Broderick

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 15, 2017 by thwackApril 19, 2019

Close-up of a white and black rooster in stark lighting, with the title of the piece at the top

RETURN TO THE VAMC
by Sarah Broderick

What is this fat hen squawking about? Michael tries to open his right eye so he can see the nurse better, but it is sealed shut. His left is barely a slit. Through the haze of milky sleep scumming over his pupil, he makes out a whitish blob topped with frizzy orange lint.

“Fat? You’re already in enough trouble, mister.” This nurse he has never met before heard him. She walks to the wall beside the door. He fights the urge to think in case another insult slips out. What if he has hurt her feelings before having a chance to prove the opposite, and she thinks him an ogre? His head feels like it weighs thirty pounds, fifty, as he rotates it to better set his good eye on her. He senses the unmade hospital bed beside him, the television plopped onto a cart in front, and the wheelchair in which his large body rests. This room, this ward, is unfamiliar, but he tries to stay calm. The nurse rips off a length of brown paper towel from a leaden dispenser, triggering an artery centered in his brain to pulsate and deliver short punches to the surface of his face and into the boggy fluid of his stomach. His gut quivers as he tenses the muscles above his left eye to raise his brow and lower his cheek, which is like trying to prop up a fallen roof with a toothpick.

The nurse rests the rectangle of paper atop the burnished metal counter before her and opens and thuds shut each door hung off a length of cabinets. Glass vials containing pills of pastel shades, tapes, and various sharp metal instruments clink into a wicker basket hung heavily at the crook of her fleshy elbow. Her body blocks most of his view. Reaching into the basket, she pinches the bulbous glass nipple on one of the vials and extracts he knows not what to settle it atop the paper on the counter, then lifts several more items to rest before pivoting sharply on her heel. “I’m closing the curtain,” she says.

Resting along the counter, he sees what she had been setting out—an indiscriminate length of adhesive bandage, cotton swabs, tongue depressors, blunt forceps, and a small, harmless pile of aspirin resting like an attempt at a pyramid. Michael wonders if these will be administered to him in sequential order and rolls his neck so the weight of his head falls to the cool steel of his chair back, permitting gravity to do some of the work of lifting his brow for him.

The window curtain’s rings scuttle along their track. Before the curtain closes, he notices that this ward has a different view than his usual where he checks in once a week to sit in a circle with others and talk, paint graphic scenes, or write words that someone might call a poem. Instead of a lawn of dry, flat crabgrass before acre upon acre of cornstalks, the hospital’s entrance expands before him, its thin paved lane snaking down to a simple wrought iron arch flanked by a fence made of crossed, white beams of timber in a gesture closer to an estate or a horse stable than a veteran’s hospital, and beyond that, the blue-green field of timothy and alfalfa grass that rolls like the sea—Michael knows that place, too. It is the military cemetery. The tombstones are hidden, but all you have to do is take the lane leading through the field and beyond the tree line to reach them. One of the World War II vets usually serves as sentry, and none of them mind how much of your day is spent there sitting, drinking, and talking to yourself as long as you take your garbage with you and consider leaving an honorable token.

“Do you have any questions about what you are doing here?” she says.

To shield him from the sunset angling over that distant tree line, the golden blush cast upon the trees’ limbs and the fence, was kind. “No. Thank you. I can see better,” he says, raising his hand to his closed right eye, which burns and throbs. His fingertips catch the fibrous gauze wrapped like chicken wire around his head, but his eye does not seem to be set where he remembers. He lowers his fingertips. There it is. The numb edges of his body are slowly rising back to him and into soreness.

“Michael, you drove through the hospital this morning. Do you remember that?”

He clacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth in nervous agitation. Flecks of charred grit catch in the grooves of that lump of flesh and nestle within his teeth—the remnants of last night’s hamburger dinner—and his mouth is burnt and raw, clung in the syrupy after-decay of alleyway bourbon, as if used as a receptacle for cigarette butts and bottles. He gags. Sweat marshes along his hairline and swamps around his crotch. Must have been one hell of a bender.

Now, she stands before him, checking a gooey-looking dressing the color of mustard crust on his right forearm. Her eyes are splayed apart, too wide for her Tinkerbell nose. She’s a bloated, orange catfish. “Here,” she says, reaching for a water cup at the end of the counter. The straw hanging limply from the side parts his lips.

His mouth feels better, his insides, too, as the cool water slides over his body’s inner heat. He must be coming back to himself and regaining his faculties. He had kept his harsh thoughts to himself this time. “I shouldn’t have done that. That was bad.” He nods his head in order to stir the lie toward belief, but this motion is a mistake. Bells and whistles strobe behind his eyelids. “Bad. Ow.” He touches his temple.

“I bet it hurts,” she says, rising up to maintain her distance.

“It’s okay. I probably deserve it.”

“Well, you said you wanted to kill President Carter along with yourself. You can’t say that, Michael. That’s the sort of talk that gets you in trouble, and that’s why you’re going to stay here. No leaving anymore. We will be starting what is called an observation.”

He focuses on his left wrist handcuffed to the wheelchair’s arm. He lifts it up and down, clinking the metal.

“You got that?” With one hand, she rummages around at his lower back, adjusting a flimsy, synthetic pillow wadded there.

“Got it clearly. Yes, ma’am,” he says, his voice croaking. Her spongy body is close, and it smells, unlike him, good. The scent of dusty puff powder along with a hint of garden roses she sprinkles along the ridges of her skin to collect the moisture gets the pain moving over and through him all tangled up. She pulls away. He wishes to reach for her, to embed himself deep in her spongy folds and for her to say that everything is okay, there there there, at the same time that he is repulsed.

Her pen scribbles along a clipboard extracted from the foot of his bed, but she seems more intent on stating what she thinks of him in a passive, coded way that professionalism will allow. “All of us here who like you so much told them you didn’t mean it. That you’re a good boy for the most part who has been through too much. You have a right to feel a little angry, Michael. You do. But you have to be cautious. Not only could you have hurt yourself, you could have hurt someone else.”

She already knows who he is. His reputation precedes him. A freak stands out. That repulsed feeling slips further inward as if there is anywhere left to descend. He could almost puke. “Did I?”

“Thankfully, no,” she says, slicing the sheets of paper away from the teeth of the metal clip. She tucks the free sheets back at the foot of his bed but settles the hard board and its metal into her basket, which he supposes could be used as a weapon now that he thinks about it—a stiff beating over the head or a metal pin jabbed into his aorta. “You went through the greenhouse, and you know nobody’s ever in there.”

Good. Maybe he had been thinking of others. Again, he clanks his handcuffed wrist on the metal, wanting her to feel sorry for him. “I was already pretty fucked up, huh?” His arm, the chunks of tissue gone as if munched by an enormous rat, its leathery skin, reminds him that this is true. He tightens his throat and tries to swallow down the paste forming in his mouth. “I was.”

“You gave yourself a good gash today and banged up a few other parts, but you didn’t hurt yourself any more than you were, right.” Tortured kneecaps and ankles crackling, she turns toward the television. As she bends toward the controls, the tight, over-bleached fabric of her dress reveals her full form to him. Her ass is huge, lumpy, and full of cratery cellulite dips like the moon. She is a big-boned, fat fuck nurse with hair the flat orange color procured most often from a box at a pharmacy. Fucking cooz. She doesn’t give a shit about him.

He whispers “cooz” through his teeth, bubbles of spit riding on the end sounding like any other desperate bodily function.

She thunks the VHF knob through the stations, through a hell of a lot of fuzz and laughter. “What about this?” she says, turning back to him and plastering on a closed-mouth smile. The CBS seeing-eye logo behind her head dissipates to reveal a long, red velvet curtain swishing off stage. “A bit of lightheartedness might do the trick, don’t you think?” She nods vacantly.

The green guy, Kermit, claps his boneless felt hands together for tonight’s guest, the comedian Rich Little. Michael looks down at a dried splatter of spaghetti sauce, blood, or excrement streaked on the square of linoleum beside his foot. He hates this show, but he knows it. When one has nothing else, one has TV. “Leave it there. Yes, please.”

A stubby, square heel clacks in front of him, heading toward the door.

“Am I going to jail?” He checks to see how she looks at him—sorrowfully, hostilely, with a hard-edged smile that says he is receiving his just deserts.

Her frizzy head shakes at him as she throws back the door. “You’ll be eating supper in here. Billy set aside some leftovers. Lasagna with meat sauce, a buttered roll, and a side salad. He really outdid himself.” Were those the exact words typed on the hospital’s menu calendar? Saturday: the stated, Sunday: meat loaf, tater tots, green beans, and milk, Monday: chili, rice, canned peaches, and iced tea, Tuesday: the ever-multiplying weeds of guilt and tenderloin of orphan washed down with your own tears. “Goodnight, Michael.”

He returns to the television. He imagines catching his hideous reflection even though he doesn’t see anything beyond the puppets’ song and dance. He wasn’t so sure what he meant about the President, but he had wanted to kill himself. He still does.

His door clicks shut. Her heels waddle somewhat quickly down the hall. He wonders if she has locked the door, if there’s a steel bolt bracing against the lock or an armed guard with ankles crossed, seated in a metal folding chair with his holster unbuttoned, gun at the ready, to keep the maniac at bay. They see what they want. He lifts his hands to fold them in his lap, but the handcuff grips his wrist. Pulling the right arm across his chest to sit with a question in his spine, he stretches his fingers to his left hand and turns the wish over in his thoughts.

Bright, vivid colors swirl across the screen. The Muppets are participating in a dance like a grand cotillion. The lady partners wear ruffled evening dresses and bend their elbows into submission. The supposed males, which are differentiated by bolder colored fur, heavier eyebrows, and bigger noses sport tuxes and tails and grasp the ladies’ hands, leading them across the floor. Then, the guy with the flaming head of hair and the crazy caterpillar eyebrows strolls in to the ball. What’s his name again? His voice is like gravel. “Orrkrray.” Yeah, he likes this guy with the jumbled gestures and drumsticks and look of a Cro-Magnon. Michael digs his socked foot against the sticky flooring and pulls wheeling himself closer. He wants to be close enough to smell them, all those monsters with arms up their asses and flapping heads without voice boxes. This new guy taps a swirling couple on the shoulder. “Excruse me,” he says. The lady partner turns. “What’s the qruickest way ourt orf—” And she knocks him under the chin. “Heaaare!” he screams as he is catapulted clean out of the shot. “Through the ceiling,” the Muppet lady says followed by raucous laughter, hers and others not on camera. His knees crunch into the television cart, but it doesn’t budge.

Michael knows bolts hold the cart fast to the television, and bolts fasten the cart to the wall, just as bars block him from breaking the window and throwing himself out. At this close distance, he catches an even more distorted version of himself in the reflection of the glass. “Blarrrrrgh,” he says, watching as he slides halfway out of his seat, curving his spine into the wheelchair’s back and hunching his shoulders. Elbows splayed out on the armrests, his gut hangs, and his shoulders and neck droop, his face hovering above his protruding stomach. Chin resting on the stiff platform of his sternum, eyes looking from beneath heavy brows, he breathes in rasps. The posture is of a man ninety years old, a twisted cripple, but the parts of the face not wrapped in tape and gauze have few wrinkles and shine grease as if still melting in fire. Look at that pathetic creature, a topnotch monster, he thinks. He stretches his chapped lips into a crooked, toothy grin that unsettles even him. Look now, you fucks. Look at the Animal.

Several minutes pass, as he forces his eye to stay open. Saliva pools in his bottom lip, and a steady stream of air from the vent above blowing onto his eyeball acts as a fabric to wick away the moisture. The moist orb becomes sand, a clump of cat litter. His hands shake, clenching the wheelchair rests. But he ignores the twitches disturbing his upper lid and the water rimming the lower. He will hold this posture and never be himself ever again. He will be what they want him to be. He will see only what they see. Yet he has to blink. He has to. He does. The water loosened runs down his cheeks, and the rage slinks away from his limbs and up through his stomach curling into a cool wad at the back of his throat. The strength of his mind more than his brute size was what got him in trouble when he heard the boom of mislaid bombs and spread his big, strong body to cover his buddies and the pretty little dancing girls sitting on their laps. He had imagined himself a hero. Delivered to his brain at Superman speed, he saw a solemn casket draped in red, white, and blue atop rain-kissed tarmac, and his parents, against a backdrop of mournful bugle notes, bowing their heads to receive a precious medal. Where would he be by now if he would have forgotten about his timber arms and stupid blockhead, and dove under the table. He shakes his finger at his reflection. “Slipping on your own sad sack of shit now, buddy,” he says. He wipes the spittle from his face and sits up, taps the television off. “No regrets.”


Headshot of Sarah BroderickSarah Broderick grew up in the Ohio River Valley and now resides in Northern California. Holding an MA in humanities and social thought from New York University and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, she works as a writer, editor, and teacher, and served as Diaspora Editor for Lavil: Life, Love, and Death in Port-au-Prince, which was published in 2017 by Verso/Voice of Witness. Her fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in Moon City Review, Atticus Review, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She can be found online at perfectsentences.org, Twitter @sebroderick, and The Forge Literary Magazine.

 

Image credit: JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

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Published on September 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 19. (Click for permalink.)

AN EVENING PRAYER by Austen Farrell

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 15, 2017 by thwackApril 19, 2019

A dead fallen tree

AN EVENING PRAYER
by Austen Farrell

Before Del opened his eyes, he knew the kid was gone. That panic feeling. That guilt. That screen door slamming in the wind. It had broken into Del’s dream, and as soon as he realized what it was, he gripped the arms of the threadbare recliner and launched himself upward. His feet hit the carpet, and he was down the hall with his head spinning and vision blurry. By the light in the house, it was hard to tell whether it was morning or evening.

He had been dreaming of work, standing in the office and stacking bricks in a supply cabinet. The bricks banging into place were the sound of the screen door. When the noise stopped lining up with the motion, he knew he was dreaming. The sudden-waking adrenaline left him trembling.

The kid was not in either bedroom, not in the bathroom, not under the desk covered in unopened mail. Not back in the living room, as had happened once. Del had sprung up just like this and dashed off only to find the kid sitting in the middle of the floor, looking at him with curiosity. Del continued to check all of the low indoor places, delaying the likely conclusion while girding himself for it.

At last Del let himself go to the kitchen, across the yellow linoleum that must have been cheerful once. And there the kid was, out through the window, in the tree. Sitting on a low limb with his t-shirted back to the house, looking out across the many fenced-off yards. He didn’t climb, didn’t wiggle around on the branch. He kept his hands fixed on either side. This kind of thing drew mistrustful eyes on the playground, but now it eased Del’s panic. The kid was creative and strange and prone to long, silent bouts of thought. He could be unnaturally still.

Del braced himself for a moment over the sink like a runner catching his breath. Late day sunlight shone on the scuffed basin. The dishtowel on the hook there needed to be washed. He took one deep breath and went out, careful not to let the door creak or the latch click.

The tree stood at the other end of the ranch duplex. By all written and verbal accounts, it was a shared yard. But the neighbor, Mr. Gorham, was easily triggered when others crossed lines that only he could see. He had berated Del for imperceptible infractions for the entire eight months they’d been living there. Aside from telling Del to get better control of his kid, Mr. Gorham’s chief activities seemed to be working late and fussing with his combover. He would be home soon.

The branches were almost bare but for flickering yellow leaves at the ends, clinging in twos and threes against a shifting dark mass above. The sun sat in a sliver of clear sky between the earth and the clouds, its rays bouncing off of the gray ceiling to give the world an ominous golden glow.

At the base of the tree, Del angled his head up to look at the boy’s back, watched him breathing for a moment.

“I know you’re there,” the kid said. His sneakers hung clean and still above Del’s head.

Congested from sleep, Del croaked, “Sam.”

The kid tensed, showing the slightest contraction in his shoulders, and without looking back or down he slowly reached at a higher branch and prepared to climb.

Del cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. Come down.”

Sam, now sufficiently out of reach, turned to face him. “You were asleep.”

Del opened his mouth but offered no defense.

“You got home and fell asleep.” And he started to maneuver away again, tucking one leg and then unfolding it on the other side of the branch with the clunky grace of a small body.

“I’m sorry. Just come down.” Del raised his hand, open to hold. “Look, I’m ready,” he said. “It wasn’t that long. Right? How long was it?”

“Long.” Sam floated up another tier.

“Well, I’m ready now. It’s okay. I guess I was more tired than I thought. After work I just—I’m just so tired. But I’ve rested, and I’m ready.” Del looked around as if searching for a way to entice the kid back to earth. “We can just hang out now. There’s nothing else we have to do tonight. Come on, we’ll get whatever you want for dinner.”

Sam glanced over his shoulder. “Anything?”

“Sure.”

The kid climbed again, settling on a branch that looked just thick enough for a squirrel. The whole treetop at that level swayed with the wind. “You don’t want to go anywhere.”

Del couldn’t argue. “I’ll make something.” He had to shout through the wind and the distance now, and it exposed the frustration in his voice.

“You always make the same things.”

“Does that matter?” Del checked himself. “Together we can figure out something new. But I can’t do it without you, so come down, or I’ll starve. You might be able to get by for a couple days on what’s left of these leaves, but I won’t make it that long.”

Sam drifted to a thicker tier of the tree. He turned away again, then fell backward and swung upside down by his knees. “I am hungry.”

Del forced a smile as he squinted to try to read Sam’s expression. In one instant of focus, he caught the kid grimacing.

“What’s the matter?”

“You look like a skeleton,” Sam said.

Del instantly looked away and rubbed his eyes hard. They were ringed in blue-black, set deep in a pallid face, the product of strained sleep, little daylight, and less exercise. Sam hadn’t let on that he’d noticed until now.

“I’m sorry,” Del said. “I don’t know what to do about that. But come on, let’s get inside.”

The kid’s swinging momentum ceased and he hung still and silent, arms folded, an inscrutable little genie.

The sun sat equidistant between the earth and the clouds. You could flip the world upside down just then and they’d be in opposite positions. Del would be at the top of the tree, and he wouldn’t come down, either.

The wind would not stop.

“Mr. Gorham’s going to be home soon,” Del said casually.

“He’s too old to climb a tree,” said Sam.

“He’s going to yell,” said Del.

“Only at you,” said Sam.

Del shoved his frustration down, like punching dirty laundry into a full hamper. “It’s a pretty nice house in there, you know. Certainly more comfortable than a tree. Warm enough for your short sleeves, too. If you want, we can drag some branches in there, a few twigs and string. Weave a little nest. I mean, that’s no problem with me. Only I wouldn’t have bought that couch if I’d known you prefer this kind of thing.”

Sam righted himself and stood on a firm branch, stretching tall and grasping a higher one, then wavering between them. Extended that way from fingertips to toes, he said, “You’re only funny when you want me to come back in the house.”

“No, I’m serious. Let’s gather some twigs. You pick your favorites while you’re up there. I’ll start weaving inside.”

“Go ahead,” Sam said, “I can watch that from here.” He pointed at the window, then let his feet slip off of their branch and he dangled there by one hand, twisting gently.

Del stepped back in defeat. He hadn’t won an argument with Sam in months, since the day of that first five a.m. alarm. Not since driving in the dark and trying to explain forced overtime. Coming home too ragged to convey how the managers of the smallest chunk of a conglomerate leaned on the staff to log more unit numbers, nakedly admitting that longer spreadsheets might save their own jobs while offering no such hope for the data entry crew. By the end of the first week, Del had a hard time holding sentences together. In the mornings, they were too groggy to talk. In the evenings, Del returned too tired to find any fun in the day and helplessly concerned with squaring away the things that needed to be done before getting to bed. They lost the whole summer that way. Del would come to at his desk and hate himself for forgetting to think about Sam. And then even that didn’t bother Del anymore. It got easier to put Sam away. When that happened, he started these stubborn disappearances. His tantrums even got quieter. Rather than responding by seeking attention, he seemed content to drift himself away.

“You’re ignoring me now,” Sam said, climbing again.

“No! I was just thinking. Waiting for you.”

“You forgot why you were out here,” Sam said, stretching for a dangerously thin limb. He stayed close to the core of the tree, but up there, with his weight, it all swayed with each gust. “Just go in!” He had to shout now. “I’m not coming down.”

Del reached up for a branch. “No. Come on now. I’m cold. We’ll cook. Put on whatever music you want. We won’t even do the dishes tonight.”

“You don’t like my music now.”

“I do. I just don’t—I just don’t react like I used to. And I think you’re too old for it now.”

Sam looked away. Treetop still shaking. He extended one arm and one leg out into the air.

“Aren’t you cold?” Del said this not because the kid shivered, but because he looked so very insubstantial.

“I was cold inside, too.”

“We’ll turn the heat up!” Del said. “I’ll make it so warm you can put shorts on.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“Whatever. Whatever it takes to get you to come down.”

Sam was performing an impossible feat of balance.

“Call some friends!” Del yelled. “Maybe get Gus over for videogames.”

“No one will come over. They’re all busy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“They’re all always busy.”

“It’s almost the weekend,” Del responded, grasping. “We can make some plans. Friday night! Friday night have everybody over.”

“I know they’re too busy. And you won’t do any of what you say.”

Sam let go. For an instant he billowed outward, like a sheet on the line. Then he came to rest, three feet above the nearest branch. When he righted himself, standing on the air, the look he gave Del showed not concern but admonition.

With wide eyes, Del said, “Don’t go. Don’t go.” He grabbed the trunk with both hands, hung his head and rattled off, “I will turn it up. I will call your friends. I will make plans for the weekend. I will get milkshakes, tacos, and fries. We’ll go to the store for whatever you want, call whoever you want. We will stay up late making up funny stories and playing videogames, sleep in the living room, go get breakfast together in the morning. We will make fun of people on TV. We will learn to play a new song…” With his face to the ground, Del continued to mutter promises until his voice became a whisper.

When next Sam spoke his voice was closer. “Can we do that tomorrow, too?”

Del didn’t look up. “Yes.”

“No,” Sam said flatly. “You don’t have time.”

“I know,” Del admitted. “But I am working on a way to find more time, to get back to normal. I am working on a way to get there.”

Sam was close enough to not have to raise his voice. “How long will it take?”

“Long.”

“What will it be like when we get there?”

“I don’t know,” Del said. He turned and leaned his back against the tree, facing their little house. By the time they ate and got cleaned up—he couldn’t really let himself abandon the dishes—they wouldn’t have time for any of it, even to think of how to make time for it later. And tomorrow he would regret using extra heat, and he would certainly regret staying up late. He stared into the kitchen window.

The branch immediately above Del shook. A finger tapped him on top of the head. He raised his eyes to see Sam’s hand extended downward. Del reached up and took it. And there they stayed under the swirling clouds, past sunset.


Headshot of Austen FarrellAusten Farrell is a writer and editor working in higher ed., where he does some varying combination of feature, copy, and ghostwriting. He is an advisory committee member of Write Rhode Island and an associate editor for Bryant Literary Review. He has an MA in classics, with a focus on ritual sacrifice in Greek comedy. His fiction has also appeared in A-Minor Magazine. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two hilarious animals.

 

 

Image credit: Pixabay

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Published on September 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 19. (Click for permalink.)

THE BIRD by Cary J. Snider

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 15, 2017 by thwackJune 23, 2020

Small bird against white background with title "The Bird"

THE BIRD
by Cary J. Snider

When Tommy asked his father where his mother went, his father said she “had a bird.” He didn’t know what that meant, but maybe it was because she squeaked like one, he thought. Or maybe she used to have one and she lost it.

His father paced around the kitchen preparing for dinner. He pulled out the pasta strainer and put it on the counter, but there was hardly enough room, only the corner. He peered over at Tommy. He grabbed the plates smeared with dried ketchup, pressed them together, and rolled them into the dishwasher. He glanced again at Tommy, who looked like he had a question. In fact, Tommy was trying to reach an itch in the middle of his back and was squinting his face in desperation.

“What?” said his father.

“What?” said Tommy.

“Didn’t you say you were hungry?”

“Yeah.” Just then his itch vanished and was replaced by a plate of baby carrots and a pile of white cream. “What’s that?”

“Please, just try it.”

“Why?”

His father returned to his labor and Tommy studied the cream. He touched it with his finger and put it to his tongue. Next he looked at the carrots. Some were wide and some were skinny and all were short. He grabbed a skinny one and tried it with the cream.

“Not bad, right?”

“What’s for dinner?”

“Spaghetti with your Daddy’s famous meat sauce.” The counter was nearly set to begin, with all miscellany cleared, leaving a metal bowl, the strainer, the chopping block, and a butcher’s knife. His father reached into the fridge for the meat. As he turned, he bumped the chopping block, which slid the knife to the edge. The knife fell. As he scrambled to catch it, it sliced through the side of his forefinger.

“Fuck!”

“What?” said Tommy.

“Go outside!”

Tommy opened the sliding glass doors and went onto the back porch. It looked to him like his father was doing some kind of dance, a stomping kind. Tommy took this moment to practice some of the tap dancing he’d learned, swinging his right foot so the heel clicked against the ground, but it didn’t make the sound. He tried again, but it didn’t make the sound again and it hurt a little bit. He looked down and saw his bare feet and remembered you needed the shoes. He hated the shoes because the woman that put them on was the teacher. If he knew how to tie the laces he wouldn’t need her help. And she was mean. But he liked swinging his foot and making the clicking sound.

His father was gone, so he went inside to look for him.

“Dad?”

The doorbell rang. Tommy had never answered the door by himself. The doorbell rang again.

“Dad?” He looked through the blurry glass paneling that surrounded the old heavy door. He twisted the knob and, leaning his whole weight back, slowly opened it.

“Tommy!” It was Melissa, the babysitter.

“Where’s Dad?” Tommy asked.

Melissa looked surprised. “Where’s Dad?”

“I don’t know, ” Tommy said. Melissa picked him up and his face went into her yellow hair. Yellow hair smelled different from brown hair, he thought. He floated into the house.

“Daniel?” She took her phone out of her pocket and stared at it. “He should be here.” Tommy’s father quickly descended the stairs, holding in his opposite hand his finger wrapped with gauze.

“Dad.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I cut myself.”

“Oh no,” she said.

“I’m not much in the kitchen,” he said.

“Let me help,” she said.

“Let me down,” Tommy said, and he wiggled onto the floor.

“Go outside and play with your chalk,” his father said. “We need to make dinner.”

Tommy slid open the glass doors and descended the back porch to his driveway, where the bright chalk sat in a clear box. He tried his name. The m’s were hard and took a very long time. It was all the bumps, he thought. Two, not one. One was different. The y went fast and easy, but he made it backwards.

He looked toward the kitchen. It seemed to him that they were whispering secrets. So he looked all the way around. Then he saw it. The bird feeder. On the other side of the driveway, opposite the house, was the yard.  Across the half acre square of cut grass, three birds perched. Seeds and half-seeds dusted the grass below. Tommy shrunk and flattened onto his belly, never losing sight of them. He began to crawl. He remembered the game at school called Statues. When the person isn’t looking you can go, but when they look you have to stop and be still like a statue. That’s why it’s called that. If you don’t freeze, you’re out. The birds weren’t looking. He crawled slowly in the grass. Melissa and his father pressed against the glass. The birds looked and Tommy went still. The birds pecked and Tommy crawled, inching closer and closer. Her jeans soaked up his father’s blood. Now Tommy was under the bird and peered up. He grabbed the bird and someone sang out a high note. His full hand. A feather poked through the fingers. It looked at him. Then he let go. He hadn’t thought of what to do next.


Cary J. Snider author photoCary J. Snider is an emerging writer who lives in Boston, where he teaches English and coaches wrestling at the Roxbury Latin School. A Philadelphia native, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied philosophy, English, and education. “The Bird” is his first published work.

 

 

 

Image credit: Paulo Brandao on Unsplash

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Published on September 15, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 19. (Click for permalink.)

COLLATERAL DAMAGE by Julia Gourary

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 7, 2017 by thwackApril 22, 2019

 

Single bullet hole through a blue and red tinted glass window, with the title of the piece in the bottom right corner

COLLATERAL DAMAGE
by Julia Gourary

Part I: Eddie

For eighteen years Eddie’s bullet was like some forgotten organ—the spleen, maybe. His cousin Denny had his spleen removed a few years ago, and the same thing: it was all right until it wasn’t, until one doctor felt a distended lump beneath cool fingers and then a flurry of signatures and warnings about lungs that may or may not collapse. Eddie is thankful that his bullet stayed under the skin, innocuous and clandestine, like a roll of undeveloped film. He never even told his ex-girlfriend; he just said he had a shoulder injury. She was still careful with it, though, as if it were something sacred, and he found himself doing the same. Over the years, the bullet’s importance swelled until it was no longer a foreign object lodged in him, but a tangible memory of its own.

And now that Eddie’s in jail it seems like the bullet is the only thing he has left, especially since Sam hasn’t called or written or visited since the trial. So, because he is afraid, he blinds his body to all the signs the doctors told him about. The pain, the tenderness—they tint his world with a dim red light, the source just out of sight. Besides, the pain isn’t so bad, not nearly as bad as the sore hope that Sam will visit. Today is Eddie’s birthday, and if she doesn’t visit today, he knows she never will. He wants nothing more than a lopsided chocolate cake and Sam’s voice to fill his hollowed-out ears.

He was only learning to speak in sentences when it happened, but he knew how to forgive. He knows now that Sam doesn’t, will carry what happened with her like her own bullet. Once, he asked her about it, and she said her memories were silent, like flipping through a set of photographs: the patterned linoleum squares under her knees, the dark metal of the gun, an impossible amount of blood, her hand against the car window. Now, eighteen years later, he made a mistake too, but she can’t accept that he isn’t the boy she built and painted gold.

◊

Part II: Sam

This morning I take E’s kitten to the vet because her heart is beating too fast, like tiny cannonballs pelting my fingers. Besides, if she died, E would never forgive me and probably stop loaning me Bob Dylan CDs. The day I moved in, she brought over a green-bean casserole, which I thought was something people only did in movies, and introduced herself as E. Just the letter E. I couldn’t believe it at first because I can’t picture living my life with a letter as a name. It just isn’t right—a person deserves a full name. So, because of the casserole and the Bob Dylan and the nightly eleven p.m. check-ins (just to make sure I get home from work safe, because she saw a story on TV once about a waitress who was abducted by two dinner customers), I have to keep the kitten alive.

The vet doesn’t know me, but now he knows that I am slightly crazy, because the kitten is fine. It is my heart that is beating too fast. I haven’t done a project today, and it’s catching up with me. I go home and set the kitten up in the kitchen with a plate of milk and open the box that came this morning. I just couldn’t look at it because I knew if I were to put together the shelves inside it I would have to use Eddie’s screwdriver, and I can’t look at Eddie’s screwdriver right now. I’ve already organized the plates (large to small, plain to fancy) and my closet (red through violet, although I don’t have any violet clothes) and changed the locks on my door because E read an article online about how you should change your locks once a week. So the shelves are the only project I can do, and now, because of them, my mind pushes forward the fact that it’s Eddie’s birthday and leaves no room for anything else.

Inside my drawer of random crap I find a cheap birthday card with a hamster on it because Eddie doesn’t deserve balloons or a cake or a sister. Doesn’t he know I’m supposed to be the screw-up? I call Stella to ask if she’s going to visit Eddie, but she’s ten feet off the ground and staring at the ceiling fan. (“It’s like watching TV,” she says.) I put together the shelves, but they collapse when I’m done because I have left out the screws.

I turn on the TV, but it has a green tint, which makes everything look foreign. Green Oprah, green zebras eating a carcass, green, tight-faced newscasters. I look for something to eat and find only half a box of dusty soda crackers. Then I decide that the painfully white refrigerator looks too bare, so I print out a photo of three blond children and tape it up. For some reason, my brain has worked out while I wasn’t paying attention that E will be home by one, which leaves two hours until visiting hours are over. Maybe I should just drop off the card and leave. Besides, if I visited, I would be late for the dinner shift at the restaurant. And I still have things to do. I could call the mustached man older than my father who wrote his phone number on a napkin and slipped it in with the tip last night. Unfortunately, I have a rule that I don’t go out with customers who tip less than fifteen percent.

I hear E unlocking her triple-locked door and realize that I don’t know where the kitten is. I run through the apartment, squeaking the toy mouse E gave me. E knocks on the door.

“Hey, Sam, are you there?”

“Just a minute!” I yell to drown out the low hum of panic rolling across the apartment and through the crack under the door. Did I read somewhere that cats like to sleep in high places? Or was it low places? I can’t remember. I’m opening and shutting all the kitchen cupboards, slams mingling into a frantic music. Nested in the cupboard under the sink is the kitten, looking dead. I place one finger on her soft, white belly. No, her tiny heart is still beating. As I hand her over to E, I am relieved to no longer be responsible for a living thing. But once E and the kitten are gone, I’ll be alone with Eddie, and I don’t think I’m strong enough to forget for two more hours that it’s my little brother’s birthday.

◊

Part III: Eddie

On Eddie’s bed is a letter. It’s been there for three hours, but instead of tearing it open like he thought he would, he buries himself in Steinbeck. It’s far easier to worry about Lennie and George than that letter, and whatever unknowable things lie inside it. When he finally picks it up, he sees that the address is written in languid script, which is wrong. Sam writes in short, urgent strokes. The letter is not from Sam, but Stella.

Stella has always been halfway out of Eddie’s life, one foot out the door. She’s always been the baby, only a few years younger but seemingly a lifetime apart from him and Sam. The last time he saw her she had dyed her hair from blond to raven black, which infuriated Sam. He has only something like a rough pencil sketch of her life: a rotating series of boyfriends that move in and out like actors on a stage, a rotating series of desk jobs she hates, and the drugs, which are why she can’t keep a job or a boyfriend.

She seems lost; her sentences zigzag across the page. She’s going out of her mind, she says. Her supplier overdosed, she went over to see why he wasn’t answering her calls, and he was lying there, eyes flung open like he had seen God. And she somehow got this idea from her friend that, because Eddie is in jail, he can “help her out.” She’s visiting next week.

He tears up the page until each piece contains nothing more than a single letter. He’ll write her back later, tell her not to come, but now he needs a minute to respond to the absence of a different letter, which feels like staring into the sun. He returns to Steinbeck.

At the bell, he walks to the laundry room through a thick haze, almost missing the door. A man about his age is already inside, throwing pairs of khaki pants into the machine. Eddie recognizes him from the courtyard, where he was doing jump shots at the basketball hoop this morning. He doesn’t give an indication that he wants to talk, and Eddie doesn’t want to pollute the crisp silence with words. They load pants into the rows of washing machines, then the dryers. Eddie finds himself staring at the machines, hypnotized by their collective rhythm until it becomes a vulgarity, like fifty ticking clocks in a room. Their swishes echo in his ears, synchronized with his breath. He sees himself from above, a red light radiating from his shoulder like in those aspirin commercials—

Then Eddie is on the floor, the man kneeling beside him.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he says. If the officers find out, they’ll send him to the doctor, and he’ll lose his bullet.

“Are you dying?” the man asks.

Eddie sits up on the floor, his back against the nearest machine. He pulls up his sleeve to the top of his shoulder. “God, I hope not.”

One side of the man’s mouth quirks up for a second until he notices Eddie’s shoulder, swollen purple like a ripe plum.

“That’s a bullet wound,” he says, then lifts up his shirt to reveal a small crater a few inches from his belly button.

“You too?”

“Yeah. I don’t blame the guy, though. I did break in. I didn’t realize so many people keep guns in their houses.” He shrugs the wound away like a cut or a bruise, as though he didn’t once have a piece of metal embedded in his stomach.

“Mine was an accident,” Eddie says, then, “eighteen years ago.”

“Oh,” he says, “then what’re you in for?”

“I stole a car. Well, it was my girlfriend’s—ex-girlfriend’s—idea, and we were going to return it.” It sounds so moronic now, in front of this stranger. He feels an inexplicable urge to defend himself to this man, to show him he may not be the golden Eddie, but he’s not this Eddie either. “I’m really not the joyrider type.”

The man nods. “I wasn’t the larceny type, either.” He stares at Eddie’s shoulder again. “You know, you should really get that thing checked out. It looks pretty bad.”

“I know. I just—it’s a part of me now, you know?” Eddie wishes he could pour out the jumbled contents of his mind like Sam’s old coin collection.

The man’s eyes are blank. “Not really. I wanted that thing out of me as soon as possible. I kind of wish they had let me keep it, though.”

“The bullet?” Eddie’s throat constricts.

“Yeah. Doctor told me it was evidence.” Eddie doesn’t reply, just grinds his feet into the gray linoleum and pushes himself up, letting the machines once again overtake the silence.

◊

Part IV: Sam

“One forty-three p.m. Sam departing for jail. Estimated time of return is?”

“I don’t know. Visiting hours are over at three,” I say. I’ve already started out the door twice, but never made it past the stairs.

“Estimated time of return unknown; no later than three thirty,” she says into her tape recorder. Lately E has been chronicling all of our comings and goings. (“Police can use these things,” she says.)

I’m outside the jail, which is red brick and not as scary-looking as I thought, but is sadder-looking. I should’ve visited earlier. I am a terrible sister, worse than that girl in the news who tried to sell her brother. The thought of Eddie alone in there hurts me so much that I almost turn right back around again. The basketball hoop outside doesn’t even have a net, which for some reason bothers me very much, and I know that the sky here is the same as the one above my building, but it doesn’t seem like it.

The visitor waiting area is full of different people with the same expression. When Eddie comes out I have to pinch myself because he’s not my Eddie, he’s another Eddie, blurry and out of focus, faded and drained of color like an old photograph. I grab his hand because my throat is too tight to speak.

“Sam.” Is he happy to see me? I can’t tell. I search his eyes.

“Happy birthday,” I say, and hand him the hamster card, which now seems ridiculously inappropriate.

“Stella wrote me,” he says, but what he means is: You didn’t. “She thinks I can get her drugs or something.” He smiles, which I take as an invitation to hug him, but when I do he cries out, clutching his shoulder. That is when I notice that it is purple and swollen and all wrong.

“Oh, my God, Eddie.” I search his eyes again, which look afraid, which look the same way they looked eighteen years ago.

I can see him gearing up to tell a lie, but he can’t lie to me, not his sister, not the one who caused this.

“It’s nothing.” I want to scream, and shake him, and make him whole again, make him my Eddie again without that hunk of metal inside him.

“You need to have it taken out. Now.”

He tells me he passed out this morning, but that the pain isn’t so bad, not now that I’m here, and that he can’t get his bullet taken out. His bullet, he says. I need the bullet out as much as he needs it in, but since it is in his body the bullet is more his than mine. And I can see that he won’t change his mind.

“You’re being selfish,” I say.

“No, you are. You just want me to get it taken out so you can forget it ever happened.”

Oh, God, my baby brother is going to kill himself. Who is this man in front of me, who steals cars and thinks he is invincible? He is going to die eighteen years after I almost killed him. I dump out the contents of my bag and line them up: hand sanitizer, three safety pins, two buttons, a bottle of aspirin, my little black notebook, cinnamon Altoids, a pen I stole from the Marriott. By the time I look up, Eddie is gone.

◊

Part V: Eddie (Four months later)

Eddie finishes tying his shoes, the same dirt-caked ones from the day he arrived at the jail. He fingers the envelope in his pocket, feels for the hard metal inside. When the doctor first showed him the bullet, he could hardly believe how small it was, barely bigger than a quarter. He wants to show it to Sam, wants her to see how small it is, how small it was this whole time. In the distance he sees flashing car headlights. He steps out into an alien world, no longer tinted red, but bright white, so bright it blinds him.


Headshot of Julia GouraryJulia Gourary is a student and writer from New York City, currently a freshman at Yale University. Her poetry and prose have been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She was named a 2017 National YoungArts Finalist in Short Story and a finalist for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Prose. This is her first published piece.

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Published on June 7, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 18. (Click for permalink.)

THE SURFER by Claire Rudy Foster

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 7, 2017 by thwackApril 22, 2019

Child holding a soccer ball in a black and white sports outfit, with the title of the piece on the bottom right

THE SURFER
by Claire Rudy Foster

The last time I saw my ex-wife, we were sitting next to each other on a faded picnic blanket in a field of daisies and late-spring grass so bright that I could feel my corneas crisping. She looked great, as always. She was wearing a pair of black cutoff shorts that she’d made herself, cuffed high enough to show the mermaid tattoo looping down onto her upper thigh. She was hot, the hot mom. A hot mess.

Attraction isn’t a tragedy; she wasn’t a tragic figure to me, at that moment. Her shirt showed both bra straps and more tattoos, decorating her upper arms and all I could think was, I used to fuck this woman and everyone who sees us together assumes I probably still am, even though I was over a decade older, and that made my body feel full of blood and I was proud of how hot she was, taking credit for it kind of. It must have been apparent that I had something going on that would attract this super hot woman to me. Sex was everywhere that spring, bees and little white flowers each with a golden nipple in its center.

“Hang on,” she said, glancing at her phone. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. I looked over at another mother, one my age, with a long lumpy ass and black yoga pants. That was my dating pool now. At the rehab I owned, women like that were the majority of my clients. Lumpy, sad, and drunk. I watched as one of the woman’s two sons took off his shoe and threw it at her. “I’m gonna punch you in the face!” he screamed.

“What a little shit,” Boo said.

“I’m so glad our kid isn’t an asshole,” I said.

“Must be a recessive gene, huh?”

A hundred feet away, Jim ran across the soccer field, tailing the ball. He was nine. Lanky, like me. He had Boo’s sweetness, her weird compassion that made her too tender with strangers, and my body. My build and my eyes. Maybe my brain would grow between his ears someday: in time.

“Is that coffee?”

Brown slush in a mason jar. She swirled its contents, and her bangles clinked softly on her wrist. I knew they were real gold; I’d bought them for her. “I made it at home. I freeze the coffee and milk in an ice cube tray. It doesn’t get diluted.”

If things between us had been one degree different, I would have asked for a taste. But no. I looked at the jar and the soft, blurry quality of her face. I knew that look: there was a correlation.

“Why do you care if it gets watered down?”

She just rolled her eyes. She was my second wife, a rebound that turned serious. We stuck around each other, mostly because of Jim but also because our marriage covered some hard years. We were horrible to each other a lot of the time, but I think we both had the feeling that we grew up together. That special bond. I’m sure wardens feel the same way about their inmates.

Five years after the divorce, I liked how we were easy with one another. It helped that I was working on Wife Number Three, a less hot version of Boo who had a great personality and liked kids. Specifically, my kid. I hoped to get it right this time, and finally get into a marriage that didn’t have claw marks all over it.

“He’s not much of a player,” she said. “Look at him. He’s not even paying attention.”

The ball sailed past Jim. “He’s nine. This isn’t the World Cup.”

“You signed him up for this. If he has a meltdown in the car on the way home—you know how sensitive he is.”

No, you’re sensitive, I thought. “The point is to give him a chance to socialize. It’s fine.”

A few days before, Jim presented each of us with an elaborately drawn letter. Mine had big curly script and was decorated with crude likenesses of Jim’s favorite Pokemon characters. “I Wish you were Still Together,” the note said. I folded it twice and put it in my pocket. He must’ve been looking at the wedding pictures I kept packed away in the study.

“He’ll end up like the other little bastards,” Boo said. “Picking up their habits. Our baby. What if he ends up normal?”

“No danger of that.”

She drank deeply from the jar. A drop of coffee lingered on the corner of her mouth. When the small, pink bud of her tongue edged out to lick it away, I felt my skin tighten around me. She was still the focal point of my entire world. I fantasized about her, even when I was with other women. Of course we’d gotten married for the wrong reasons—but I couldn’t tell anyone that. I didn’t love Boo the way I loved my first wife, but unlike the first one I found myself unable to stop loving her. Boo wasn’t normal and in her presence I wasn’t, either. Our connection was the thing that, at last, made me feel like someone special.

“What’s in the coffee, Boo?”

No answer.

“Can I try?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “Mine.” She tilted her head back and I watched her throat contort as she swallowed the rest of it. Beyond her, Jim ran across the field, one of a dozen brightly colored jerseys. The whistle blast that hit my ears like a slap. Boo set the empty jar down and grinned at me. She’d looked at me like that the first time I met her, all those years ago, when neither of us had any idea what we were in for.

◊

At the time, I was bartending at O’Brien’s while I finished up my last few credits in my psychology program. The money was good, and I was bored but paying my rent. I talked to a lot of drunks. But behold, one night there was Boo. I knew she was different, right away.

She wore flowers in her hair. She came in with a few friends, propped herself up in the corner booth. As my shift went on, her companions departed one by one and left her alone. I went over with a pint glass of club soda and a damp rag. The petals of her daisy crown caught the red lights of the bar’s neon.

“You all right over here?” I asked, swiping at the napkin dispenser. She eyed me, shrugged.

“Bars are boring places. Look around you.” I gestured with the rag. “You’re young, you’ll figure it out.”

“I’m not a baby,” she said. She took the club soda. “I’m not even supposed to be here, it was someone else’s idea.”

Behind me, someone kicked the jukebox. The recording of Lou Reed had a glitch in it and kept skipping around. In the back, a basket of frozen potatoes hit the hot oil. She was in the wrong place, for sure. The daisies. Her round face reminded me of Bridget Bardot. She had a sweet, lopsided smile. I took her hand when she offered me a crumpled dollar bill.

“I’ll come back,” she said.

“Don’t,” I replied, and closed her fingers over the money. When I touched her, I felt the ground shift under me, as though the moon had leaned down to look at us through the window. She was something else.

◊

The next time I saw her was two years later, at the rehab. My receptionist buzzed her into my office. No flower crown this time, though she still had a freshness to her. She wore a dark blue skirt suit and tiny, leaf-shaped diamond studs. She set her sleek travel case down next to her chair.

“You look expensive,” I said.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“I’m not slinging drinks anymore,” I said. “I remember you.”

“I wish I could say the same. I thought I knew every rehab director in my region.”

She was repping a new antidepressant that was supposed to be a perfect fit for people just sobering up; it paired effortlessly with Anabuse and the other beta-blockers. I took the glossy pamphlets and business card she offered me and noticed how her perfectly manicured fingers lingered near mine on the desk. Pharma sales was borderline prostitution—the companies sent young, sexy girls around to take you to dinner while they repeated into your willing ears the benefits of the latest non-generic wonder drug, the pill that was going to change your entire practice. I was against it in principle, but who didn’t like pretty women? I was working eighty hours that week at the center and needed a break. So we had sushi. I sat next to her in the booth, pressed my thigh against hers. It didn’t have to go any further, and she seemed relieved when all I wanted to do after dinner was walk her to her car. After a couple of weeks, I gave her a call.

“I’m not interested in the drug,” I said.

“That’s a line,” she answered, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

“I just want you to know that, the next time we see each other, you won’t have to give me the corporate lap dance. I’m not interested in what you’re selling. In fact, I’d like to buy you dinner.”

“I bet you would,” she said. “You know? I don’t think I’ve ever been to a dive like O’Brien’s. A girl like me.”

“There’s only one girl like you,” I told her. “You’re unforgettable.”

“You’re really laying it on.”

“I’m not usually like this. Honestly.”

I didn’t mind it when she laughed at me. Back then, it meant that she thought I was funny.

◊

It’s not like I woke up the next morning with her hair in my mouth, the cells that would become Jim incubating inside her. No. We saw each other frequently, though, and I liked her. I told her all the the time that she was too young for me, and she responded with Freud jokes. She was the only person in my life who teased me—I liked it. It was a relief to have someone around who didn’t take me as seriously as I took myself. I loved who I was when I was with her, loosened up, never worried about the future. And, back then, I trusted her, though she never made a move to introduce me to her family or her friends.

Although there was the question of her pain.

◊

The pain was mysterious, a third party in our relationship. In the beginning, she gave the impression that it was intermittent. Sometimes it was there, and sometimes not. Once she moved in, I realized that the pain was chronic, ambient, and all-demanding, like a colicky child. She tried everything for it, every over the counter remedy, hot baths, red wine. Herbal supplements. Edibles. She started to go crazy, trying things that didn’t work. When I suggested that pain that wouldn’t submit to normal treatments might be psychosomatic, she accused me of being unsympathetic.

“You can’t tell me what I feel,” she said. She turned away from me in bed when the pain was strong. I had every reason to want to help her. “I should just go back to San Diego. I miss surfing. Being close to the water.”

But she was in pain, so she stayed.

◊

The morphine, I admit, was my idea. I brought her sheets of little white pills from the clinic, marked as “samples/training” in our inventory, in case of an audit. Boo responded to the morphine. In fact, it was the only thing that worked, so she took it all the time. When she ran low on her supply, I brought her more. Then, she was sweet and funny again and when I drove her around, she put her arm around my shoulders and played with my hair, stroking down over my nape and touching my collar. Life with Boo made my worries fade. One night, as she was falling asleep in my arms, her body going soft and malleable, I asked her to marry me. I am sure she told me yes.

If I had any idea that the drugs would be a problem; if I’d known what she was mixing the morphine with; if I had known about the stashes of empty bottles and bubble packs she kept around my house; if she had been less careful about cleaning up after herself, then perhaps our relationship wouldn’t have gone as far. Or maybe that’s a lie. The idea of life without Boo was too horrible to consider. I wanted more of her, always. Sometimes, holding her, I had the crazy urge to bite her face, or eat her, because she was so delicious and trusting and I wanted every part of her so close to me that we were one flesh. When I told her this, she laughed and let me gently sink my teeth into her cheek.

“You want me inside you?” she said. “That’s a reversal.”

◊

I didn’t realize the extent of her problem, until she got sloppy about covering her tracks. One day, I came home from work and found her in the tub, soaking. When I went in to kiss her, she lifted her chin obediently. I noticed that the water was cold.

“How long have you been in here?” I asked.

She smirked, shrugged. Her pupils were huge. I put my hand on her shoulder. Her skin was the chilled texture of a cadaver. I had the feeling that I could have sunk my fingers into her and torn out a handful and that she would simply have watched me do it, smiling her lovely half tilted, empty smile. And there was a suggestive trace of powder on the sink. And an empty champagne flute, submerged between her feet.

“Boo,” I said. “What else are you taking?”

“Go away,” she said, her voice lazy. “I’m not ready to talk to you.”

She only screamed once: when I lifted her out of the water, a high stabbing note. If I hadn’t seen the evidence, I might have believed I was hurting her. I laid her on the bed and wrapped her in a quilt. She started to shiver. She wouldn’t answer questions about substance, dose, intervals. She rolled over and tried to go to sleep.

“If you pass out, I can promise that you’ll wake up in the clinic,” I said.

“You’d like that, hmm?”

“I don’t want you to die, Boo. What did you take?”

“Mind your own business.”

“I could take you there now. Thirty day detox. Is that what you want?”

“I hate you,” she sighed, and closed her eyes.

“Boo, you’re my everything. You bitch.” I shook her by the shoulder. “You can’t do this to me.”

“I’m in pain. Leave me alone.”

I let her sleep while I went through her belongings. I searched the car I’d bought her. I went through her pockets and her purse. Everything I found was problematic. She was still taking the morphine I gave her. Mismatched baggies suggested that she was also scoring from at least two dealers, and her texts implied that she was fucking one or both of them. I also found slips for uncollected prescriptions for benzos and more painkillers, tucked into a book she always carried around. The pad of paper, with the doctor’s name at the top of each page and his signature pre-scribbled at the bottom, was in her lingerie drawer. Was I furious? I don’t remember. I collected all of it. This was the girl I loved. Sick.

“Why are you always at work? I get lonely when you’re gone,” she said when I woke her. She was drooling, tongue too big for her mouth. “Do you love me?”

“I’m trying to save your life,” I said.

“Why won’t you just let me be dead?”

◊

I took a week off from work and detoxed her at home; my first vacation since I started the center. My assistant director handled operations, I stayed on top of my email, and as far as I know, nobody asked any questions. I flushed the baggies and wiped surfaces clean of powders. I bagged her empty bottles and left them in the alley behind the drug store. I put her cell phone in the dishwasher and ran it, twice. I read her emails. She was in deeper than I expected. Plenty to work with. After the first three days—she’d gotten most of the vomiting and shaking over with—Boo sat up and asked for food. I made her a grilled cheese and we discussed her options.

“I don’t feel safe with you,” I said. “You’ve lied. You can’t do this again.”

“Or what?”

“You’ll die. Or you won’t, and I’ll find you and check you in.”

“My hero.” Her tone was dry as a new dollar bill.

“Please, Boo. Let me take care of you—keep you safe. Nobody will know about this except us.”

“You’re insane. I want to take a bath. I don’t want to eat this.”

I stared. She had vomited less than an hour before, but I wanted her. My first wife was in Africa now, sourcing coffee beans for her line of artisanal cold brews. Leni was my age, collecting sun damage and stories that made her interesting at cocktail parties. Boo, in comparison, was a child—complicated, but not yet complex. She was wild and whole and I desired her with a thirst that bewildered me.

“Here’s how it’s going to work. From now on, I’ll make the rules,” I told her. “You eat when I tell you to eat. You may have a bath when I say so. Is that clear?”

“I want to go home.”

“If you don’t want your family knowing about the two dealers you were fucking, or the dope you were trading your pussy for, you’ll stay where you are and do everything I tell you.”

“Who made you God?” But she couldn’t look me in the eye.

“Eat your sandwich. Today is the happiest day of your life, Boo.”

◊

She ate. And she said, every day, that today was the happiest day of her life. When she was folding my shirts, or doing yoga in the living room, or when she swam in the pool out back while I watched her from the upstairs window, or when she burned the lasagna and the fire department came, or when she was up all night with the baby—happy. We had no secrets, so how could this have been a lie? She was so grateful I’d saved her, she said. She could never repay me. She worked so hard at being my wife that she didn’t have time to miss her friends, her privacy, or her phone. She didn’t miss the drugs. She never went out, unless I was with her. She let me decide what was best.

For a while, it worked. Our home was beautiful with her in it, and she communicated joy to me. Her ring was massive, a solid band of heavy diamonds. I decorated her, rewarded her, protected her. I needed her to be happy and so she was. She did everything she was told to do, and because I told her to, she put a smile on her face while she did it. Neither of us will ever forget how completely I owned her, or how easily she adapted to it. She was at her best during those years. I know it: I made her that way.

◊

The ref’s whistle broke my concentration. They were going into the second half. Jim moved to the other side of the field and took a knee.

“How’s your new girl?” she asked. “Is she as good as I was? Enjoying her cage?”

“Jesus.”

“What’s her name again? Sloane? Logan?”

I reached for the jar; she slapped my hand away. In a professional setting, I would note her reaction as unearned. The potential for escalation hinted at a deeper instability. Really, I would have loved to choke her.

“Logan’s Run? I’m almost too old for that, they euthanize you at thirty-five.”

“You’re only thirty-two.”

“And you’re pushing fifty. Don’t sweat it, Hank: you’re only as old as your youngest wife.”

She said that when we were married, too.

“You’re not dying.”

“Suicide on the installment plan. That’s what I’ve got going on. I’ve been trying to kill myself since I met you.”

I blinked. That explained my nostalgia. She was in the same condition as when we met. I could feel that she needed me, and it pulled me in. No wonder we were getting along better.

“Our kid just face-planted in the goalie box,” I said.

Jim came up with a mouthful of turf. He immediately scanned the row of parents, pausing when he came to our blanket. I could tell that he was deciding whether or not to cry. Last year, it wouldn’t have been a choice. Now he was almost ten. He was hardening into the man he’d eventually be. His eyes went to Boo.

“My baby,” she muttered. “He doesn’t know I’m not sober, Hank, so give me a minute before you go sounding off any alarms.”

“You’re drinking enough that you need to quit?”

“One thing at a time.”

“How many things: other things?”

She turned to look at me. All I saw were her bare arms and long legs and the dots in her eyes, the dots of daisies that stuck to her like tears.

“Why, are you going to check me into Serenity Manor? Take a trip down memory lane?” Her tone was acid.

“If you’re going to drink, that’s your problem, but it means Jim can’t go home with you today. It isn’t safe. I can take him in my car.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Go home. Sleep it off.”

“You think you know everything.”

“I don’t, but at least I’m not wasted at a kid’s soccer game.”

“Which girlfriend are you on now?”

“Game’s over.” I got up, waiting for her to follow. After a minute, she did. Her body rose smoothly, legs unfolding like long hydraulic pistons. She was a surfer when I met her, more at home in the water. When we lived together, she’d swim laps until she was exhausted and come in with her hair smelling like chlorine. She missed the ocean, she told me. The pool wasn’t the same. I imagined her paddling out on her surfboard, her head as slick as a seal. Getting smaller, getting away from me.

“Go fuck yourself, Hank.” She said it casually, as though reminding me where I had left my keys.

“I’m not fighting about this. Jim can stay the night. You honestly shouldn’t be driving.”

“How about you suck my dick.”

“Deal with yourself, Boo,” I said. Her eyes met mine, hard and green and flint.

“You can’t take him.”

“We could all ride down to the police station so you can get breathalyzed? Would you like that? How long ago did you relapse?”

“You’re crazy,” she spat, and then Jim was coming towards us with the dirt smeared across his face and all smiles and a juice box in one hand.

“Bjorn’s dad brought grapes!” he said.

Boo took his hand. “That’s so great,” she said, voice suddenly warm for him. “I watched you play.”

“You can walk us to the car,” I told her. I folded the blanket and tucked it under my arm. I was ready to grab him, and getting them both out of sight would make it easier for me. We went down to the parking lot with Jim between us. The sun was higher now, and the trees and flowers were painfully bright. The next step would be to act quickly, before things really went sideways. Boo was walking loose and sassy. A string hung from the hem of her cut-offs and tickled against the back of her leg, making a shape like a black vein. Still sexy. Up to the last minute, she was a fox.

◊

In my defense, I didn’t know that this would be the last time I saw her. If I’d had any inkling, I might have done or said something different. If we’d stayed together, none of this would have happened—that’s what I tell Jim, who is pure-hearted and enough like his mother to believe me. I don’t know how much of that day he retains, or what he’ll recall later, when it’s his turn to sit on the therapist’s couch. Will he repeat the bitter words his parents exchanged, or tell how Boo’s hands were so unexpectedly strong when she refused to release him to me? No doubt, he remembers the horrible sensation of being pulled on in two different directions, his arms stretching, the sense that we might have torn him in half if we had been any angrier at each other.

Maybe he’ll tell his therapist about how suddenly our voices were cut off when I slammed his car door and sealed him into the backseat, where his mother couldn’t get him. He must remember how she pounded on the window, screaming his name, and then ran after us as I drove away, followed us all the way through the parking lot, losing her purse and dropping the jar, which shattered.

I felt a wave rising in me as Boo got smaller and smaller until she exactly fit in the silver rectangle of the rearview mirror. I could see all of her at once, every graceful, vindictive inch, as she ran and it was suddenly quiet in my head, the silence that comes after a reel of film runs to its last few frames, the sound of spring ending and taking all the sunshine with it. I tapped the brake and turned to look at my son, whose wide eyes recorded every minute, who looked so much like Boo that I knew I’d never, ever escape her.

“You’ll be safe now, sweetie,” I said, and pressed—quite hard—on the gas pedal.


Claire Rudy Foster sitting at a wooden tableClaire Rudy Foster’s short story collection, I’ve Never Done This Before, was published to warm acclaim in 2016. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Vestal Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She’s a Sterling Room Writer, and teaches writing workshops to people in recovery in Portland, Oregon. Claire is also a frequent contributor to Cleaver. Her stories, essays, and book reviews can be found on her contributor’s page.

 

 

 

You may also enjoy:

BEST READER, WORST ENEMY, a Craft Essay by Claire Rudy Foster

A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE RUDY FOSTER author of I’ve Never Done This Before

 

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Published on June 7, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 18. (Click for permalink.)

THE TOWNSPEOPLE by Emily Livingstone

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 7, 2017 by thwackApril 22, 2019

 

Illustration by Kate Greenaway, from The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1910)

THE TOWNSPEOPLE
by Emily Livingstone

It started gradually. First, little Michael was wrinkling his nose in a way he never had. Then four-year-old Jessamyn across the street sprouted whiskers from her cheeks that were long, fine, and nearly transparent. Elisa developed a light coating of tiny hairs that were thicker than body hairs ought to be and that turned gray within a few days. Paul was the first one to grow a tail. His tail was long, pink, and hairless, and at first he delighted in it, and used it to tap other boys on the shoulder when they weren’t looking. Then he realized it was not coming off, and he wailed in his mother’s arms. His mother, for her part, tried not to cringe as his tail wrapped around her leg.

Soon all the children had fur and tails. Their ears had grown bigger, rounder, and thinner. Their noses had lengthened. The adults tried their best to continue on. They kissed their children between their beady black eyes and helped them to put on their backpacks and board the bus for school. Many of the children began walking on all fours, which greatly disturbed the adults. It wasn’t all bad—the children were not nearly as picky about eating, and in fact, seemed to think nothing of nibbling out of the garbage or off of the sidewalk.

When the children began to shrink, it became difficult to tell them apart from, well, rats, and from each other. Parents took to calling for their children, looking vaguely forward, and hoping the bulky little forms that hurtled toward them were their own.

Finally, the adults held a meeting. They tucked their children into bed, or at least, they said goodnight and shut the bedroom doors, for most of the children were nocturnal now, and declined to stay in bed at night. Then they all met in the town hall.

Was it something in the water? Was it genetically-modified vegetables? A sickness? A curse?

They didn’t know. Their children could no longer speak. They didn’t play normally. They were not affectionate and sometimes bit the hands, arms, and legs of those who fed them.

A vote was taken, and the town decided to ask for help. They were just putting together a Craigslist ad when a man wearing a tattered cape and a cap with a feather in it came strolling up to the podium like he owned the place.

“My name is Peter,” he said earnestly, “and I’ve heard of problems like this. There are towns in Europe that have precisely the same epidemic.”

“What do we do?” Michael’s father wanted to know.

“Why haven’t we heard about this?” Jessamyn’s mother asked.

“Understandably, these towns have kept this quiet. They don’t want judgment, and what could people do? Who would believe them, and even if they were believed, what course of action could be taken?”

The crowd murmured in uneasy agreement.

“My friends,” Peter said, “I will solve this problem for you. When I play my pipes”—here he held up gleaming silver pipes—“the rats will follow me. I will take them far from here and you need never be troubled by them again.”

No one had ever used the “R” word to talk about the children up until this point. Many had thought it, but no one had actually said it. There was an uncomfortable silence before Peter resumed:

“You can start your lives over. Clean up the feces. Buy new carpets. Bear new children and buy them toys that have not been gnawed. These will be your true children, and all of this will be like a nightmare you barely remember.”

“Can’t you fix them—the—the rats?” Elisa’s grandmother asked.

“There’s nothing to fix,” Peter said. “They are just that: rats. They are perfectly fine rats, but they are rats.”

“Where will you take them?” Paul’s stepfather wanted to know.

“I’ll take them to Eden Farms,” Peter said. “There they will be housed with other rats from the towns I mentioned earlier, to live out their days comfortably, able to gnaw whatever they please and scuttle around wherever they like.”

Then Peter took a seat. There was some heated debate. Some stormed out of the meeting, went home, herded their rat-children into their cars, and drove out of town. The majority voted to take Peter up on his offer.

“Excellent,” Peter said. “There’s only the payment to be discussed.”

Peter took his money from the treasurer, and the townspeople followed him outside, where he put the silver pipes to his lips.

“Right now?” someone asked in horror.

He began to play. The melody started off happily with little runs up and down, but then it shifted into a steady, persistent rhythm with a repetitive phrase. Rats climbed out of windows and through cracks in the walls. They formed a teeming mass of gray-brown fur and twitching pink tails. They crowded round the piper, who began to skip and dance as he played, and he skipped and danced his way beyond the hills at the edge of town, with the rats following. The adults watched until the last rat was out of sight, then they shuffled back to their homes in a daze.

The next day, the town was silent. And the next. And the next. Then people began to do as the piper had suggested.  They fixed up their homes. They packed away all the pictures of the children they’d had, who now felt mostly like characters in storybooks they’d read long ago. They dared to bear new children.

Some townspeople refused to move on properly. There was a contingent who got together to find Eden Farms. There was no trace on the Internet. No one had been there. Nevertheless, they packed up their belongings, bought an RV, and went in search.

Then Debbie Johannsen came back to visit her mother. She’d been one of the ones who left with her rat-child, Dylan. Debbie came back, and in the backseat of the car was Dylan—furless, whiskerless, human.

People stared at Debbie and Dylan. She stopped the town dead in its tracks. It probably didn’t help that she looked a bit superior—that she stuck her nose in the air.

A crowd gathered outside Debbie’s mother’s house. Though this was not the age for them, the crowd had torches and pitchforks. They demanded that Debbie and Dylan come outside, then chased them out of town and over the hills, throwing rocks and shouting.

Afterward, people said that it hadn’t really been Debbie and Dylan. People said that it was a similar child, that there was a striking resemblance, but that was all.

The townspeople checked their new children each morning for fur, elongated teeth, and tails.

Winston Martin thought he could see the beginnings of whiskers on his infant daughter. Chantelle Martin said he was crazy, and clutched the baby protectively, but when she slept, Winston took the child out and laid her on the hill where they’d last seen the piper.

When the police found the cold, human body the next morning, they brought Winston to the station but were unsure how to proceed.

“She had whiskers,” Winston insisted.

Julie Nguyen trapped two rats down by the docks and brought them to her house. She trained them to sit in a purse and carried them everywhere around town.

“They’re my children,” she said. “It’s my Tori and Freddy. They came right to me, back from Eden Farms.”

Eventually, many of the parents trapped rats down by the docks and brought them back home. They fed them good food, trained them to do tricks, and called them by almost-forgotten names, but the rats never became children.

As the years passed, the pain became too large, and it took up more and more space in the town, so people started to move away.

Now there is no town in that spot. There are boarded-up shops and businesses, and the highway passes close by. There is a gas station right off the exit, and sometimes travelers filling up catch a glimpse of falling-down houses.  More than likely, if they’re looking long enough, they also see the rapid progress of a gray furry form across the road.


Headshot of Emily LivingstoneEmily Livingstone is a high school English teacher and writer living in New England with her husband, daughter, and German Shepherd. Her work has been published in The Molotov Cocktail, Chiron Review, Gravel, and others. She also writes at emilylivingstone.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

Image credit: Illustration by Kate Greenaway, from The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1910). Source: Wikipedia

 

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Published on June 7, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 18. (Click for permalink.)

IKEA MAN by R.M. Fradkin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 7, 2017 by thwackJune 24, 2020

Wood mannequins with title "Ikea Man"

IKEA MAN
by R.M. Fradkin

It started out as a joke in the warehouse. You could buy and build anything you needed for your home at IKEA, at least that was the corporate strategy behind all the useless knick-knacks that made it hard to pack the boxes. It was only a matter of time before they started doing people, they said. What good was your dream kitchen without a dream family to sit around on the INGOLF chairs you’d built yourself and praise your cooking? Surely IKEA could produce a model that was more durable, less flammable than your ordinary family, less likely to be annoyed when you let the jam spill over the side of the jar and then stuck it back in the fridge so that globs of fruit smeared all over the shelf.

It wasn’t long after the higher-ups recalled the LATTJO bat cape. Annika, Gudmund, and Martin had finished their meatball lunch in the warehouse, and they were bored. They were tired of the meatballs, too, but that was what was provided by the company, and none of them ever remembered to bring sandwiches from their home kitchens, furnished at IKEA.

None of the usual amusements seemed like any fun. Going through the boxes and pulling out one screw from every shipment or scratching the fronts of wardrobes or shuffling some of the small items between boxes—all of these normally delightful activities seemed dull today. There were only a few orders to pack up, but if they did that, then people would start to expect their furniture to arrive quickly, and all would be lost.

“Let’s make the IKEA man,” Annika said, wiping cream sauce from the corner of her mouth with the hard edge of one of the cardboard boxes. “The one we always talk about.”

They rifled through the shipments, taking a piece of medium-density fiberboard here, a nail there, until they thought they’d ruined enough orders to get started on their man. If he was to be a true IKEA man, he had to be easily assemblable. “No complicated joints,” said Martin. “Just the obvious parts to make it clear he’s a human.”

This began a complicated philosophical argument about what it meant to be a man, but when the dust had cleared, they had a round piece of fiberboard for a face, a tapered pine body to which they could attach all the other pieces, and a few ambivalent limbs of acacia and beech. They routed down the parts of him that had to meet the other parts of him, added pilot holes, and assembled the screws. He was perfect. They felt like God himself.

Gudmund said, “Let’s send him to the person who got the most boring order.”

“I have a MALM bedframe here,” Annika shouted.

“This one’s a BILLY bookcase and a NYFORS floor lamp,” Martin said, clawing at one of the boxes.

“Good God!” said Gudmund. “That’s the winner. Replace the NYFORS with our man.”

And once they’d packed off their man to his new home, they went back to work, singing and banging things off the pallet jacks happily.

It wasn’t easy to tell what the thing in the box was, but it didn’t take a genius to distinguish it from a floor lamp. Rasmus startled himself by continuing to build what was so clearly not his NYFORS lamp, but after the first moment of cardboard scraping away from cardboard when his stomach curled in on itself in anger (having already waited for his shipment two weeks longer than he’d been promised), he became very curious about this unusual assemblage that had contaminated his order.

When the IKEA man was whole, Rasmus stepped back and stared at him for longer than it’d taken to build. It was so clearly a man, even though Rasmus wasn’t sure if he’d made the legs the arms and the arms the legs. Or one and one. And he hadn’t had a man in his apartment in a long time. A few women, certainly, in and out after he cooked a breakfast of rye toast and boiled eggs, which he sliced in his bright yellow SLÄT egg slicer, or even sometimes women who came and went for months at a time, forcing him to add more variety to his breakfast menu, but men never made their way up the spiral metal staircase.

He worked from home, and he’d never been so good at male friendship. And that was all right. The women provided companionship without invasion, and his mother was always up for a visit when he wanted to get out of the city. He refused to believe that there was anything pitiable about a man without any real friends when he had permanent love in Fjällbacka and temporary love here when he wanted it, too.

But the IKEA man invaded before Rasmus could guard against it. He sat across from Rasmus at breakfast, and he sat by the gas fire at night, while Rasmus read on the ÅDUM rug. Rasmus set up the man with his legs outstretched, working his pine bottom into the macaroni tufts of the high, off-white pile. When the IKEA man lost his butt-hold on the carpet and his fiberboard head tilted into Rasmus’s lap, Rasmus felt a swift, sick swoop through his guts and put his arm around him. Rasmus didn’t consciously carry him from the LANDSKRONA armchair in the bedroom—where he’d set him up with a book of Bo Carpelan poetry the evening before—to the bathroom—where he let him examine himself in the GODMORGON mirror while Rasmus shaved. It just happened. Rasmus even forgot to buy a new NYFORS lamp or to get a refund.

Annika, Gudmund, and Martin spread the word that they had taken the work of God into their and IKEA’s hands. They couldn’t tell their supervisors, so it wasn’t something you could order officially, but people came round the back of the warehouse, shuffling their feet, looking embarrassed, and finally asking for the IKEA man.

Annika, Gudmund, and Martin refined their model. They added hands and feet and even a spiky fringe of medium-density fiberboard for hair. Then on the next one, they made more complicated joints, so the wooden limbs could bend at the knee and the elbow. Soon there was a sizable population of IKEA men across town, and it was common to hear phrases like, “Hold your fork properly, the way the IKEA man is doing,” or “I swear, one more night like that and I’m throwing that boy out and buying a second IKEA man.”

They had five models now, and Rasmus ordered all of them, but none were any match for his first. He disassembled the new ones quickly, but didn’t return them. His IKEA man might want company at some point when he, Rasmus, left the city. Except Rasmus never left the city anymore. His mother kept calling to invite him to Fjällbacka for Easter, and he knew he should go, but somehow he didn’t want to this spring.

“You can move Hjalmar,” Rasmus told a woman, who was looking like she wanted the IKEA man’s JOKKMOKK chair at the JOKKMOKK breakfast table, and he realized that he had named the IKEA man a long time ago, although he’d never given it breath. He congratulated himself on what a perfect name Hjalmar was.

He never saw that woman again. In fact, he became unsatisfied with female companionship altogether. He started sleeping with men, but again, it wasn’t what he wanted. And in the end, Rasmus decided that he was a truly lucky creature, because he wanted just exactly what he had: an IKEA man.


R.M. Fradkin author photoR.M. Fradkin studied fiction writing with Bret Johnston and Amy Hempel and has previously been published by Cherry Tree, Theaker’s Quarterly, and Bradburyesque Quarterly. Recently, she had residencies at Art Farm in Nebraska, Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Washington, and the International Writers and Translators’ Center of Rhodes, and was Writer-in-Residence at the Anchorage Museum, where she finished her first novel. She is also currently affiliate editor at Alaska Quarterly Review.

Image credit: Garry Knight on Flickr

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Published on June 7, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 18. (Click for permalink.)

FOR THE LIFE OF YOU by Brandon Timm

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackMay 2, 2019

Brown dog walking on a snowy bridge

FOR THE LIFE OF YOU
by Brandon Timm

For Pops, who’s always there.

The high-pitched animal cries of your boy come hurtling to you drunk at the breakfast table from the backyard, and until you finally hear “Dad! Dad! Dad!” it’s only by that terminal “Dad!” when anything registers—those cries and yelps and weight of the sliding glass door as you wrench it open into the sharp February bluster that spreads against your arms and face, snow falling in the crushed heels of the shoes slid on like slippers before crossing your uneven deck. There he is, your boy, standing on a cheap, green, plastic, piece-of-shit chair holding his puppy’s leash untethered in a red glove. Profiled against the warped wooden fence that spreads like bad teeth at places along its base, he is small, and he’s half-leaning into the neighbor’s yard over the top, his jeans dark from playing in the yard. On toe-point, he’s reaching over, looking at a situation you only later—by how cold the world feels on your knees, how it falls out beneath you—will begin to figure; he’s pointing into that other yard, his arms marshmallow thick in his blue winter coat saying again without looking back, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” because he knows you are there, trusts for some reason that you will always be, and you make an effort to talk except what comes out isn’t helpful or coherent because, face it, you’re ripped and don’t know what to say anyway, but you know what to do, goddamnit, which is scale that six-foot wooden fence now, Dad, right now.

The deep snow pushes up the bottom of your grey sweatpants on the other side of the fence and you’re focused on its cold grip around your ankles—not a single thought flying to those shadows on the x-ray your doctor handed you or the dot dot dots of the Sign Here’s on the papers your almost-ex brought with her last night. No, you’re thinking: the neighbor’s yard is just as sad as mine. Ditto his two-bedroom apartment. Then you see the blood in the snow. Lord, there’s plenty. But, for a moment, you allow yourself some hope. All this couldn’t be from your boy’s dog. Because it was so small. And barely old enough to be spayed let alone grown enough to have so much to lose. It was like the night before, when your wife dropped your boy off with his sleeping bag, when she was surprised to see a puppy, how she hurled arm-crossed accusations like, That’s a sad bid for affection, and, Shouldn’t he be bigger by now? like it’s your damn fault your boy’s nine and hasn’t sprouted into an awkward birthright of long limbs and voice shifts. Like it has nothing to do with the woman he’ll end up living twelve out of every fourteen calendar days with until he’s eighteen, or you’re dead.

“There,” your boy calls, “the bush!” which you should’ve figured, because of the blood, and because your neighbor’s fifty-pound fawn-colored mutt’s barking at the large, ugly-brown bush beside a warped deck just as shitty as yours, the dog’s entire backside wagging, and, between deep woofs, puppy-high wines; those cries that threaten to swing the world beneath you open, whoosh, like a trapdoor. An old dog, you’ve seen the neighbor kids, six and seven years old, hold onto its leash when a squirrel cuts across the yard, that dog lunging, rearing up on its legs against its collar. It looks back at you, making that happy dog face, almost smiling, jowls smeared lipstick red, and it paws at the cherry-dark snow.

“Dad!” you hear as if from on high, as if to warn you, but you never listen, do you? Until it’s too late not to. So you start talking low and calm with your hands out in front, moving toward the dog. Then you’re cursing, a growl and an uncommon anger rising into your throat. And you’re pointing. At your chest. Then grabbing the dog’s collar in a fist. And kicking wildly again and again and it’s pulling and twisting and yelping and you’re holding it off the ground by the collar and it’s making this crushed-throat hoarse-noised gasp and you hear:

DaddyDaddyDaddy!

But that isn’t your boy calling, no. It’s those neighbor kids on their deck yelling back into their house through the open dog-nose-smeared sliding glass door, a door you might have had. And you let go. Exhale. Feel a little bad, but also alive, even when you hard-cough in the cold air and spit what comes up.

Their dog hurries, with a limp, toward the kids, tail tucked, favoring one leg, choking, wheezing. When your tall, rail-thin neighbor finally comes out he says, What’s all this? as if he means anything by that in his Old Navy sweater, his flannel pajama pants and fur-lined Crocs, and his two kids are trying to explain. One’s trying to talk but out of breath while the other one cries; heart-wrenching stuff, should be, but their dog’s fine—he’ll live—and your neighbor says, Just what the hell is going on?

Grow up, you want to say when you kick the red snow. You wave open-palmed at all of it like the last act in a magic show before the curtain drops. Ta-da, you gesture, get fucked. You pound on that shadow in your lung and you kick the snow again. This time, your crushed-heeled shoe goes reeling onto the deck, and he cocks his blonde blockhead at it.

“Dad,” your boy says, and you ignore the sounds from the deck, and you ignore your bare foot in the snow to get down on your knees by that bush to find what you came for, saying stuff you never even said to your boy—not when he fell off his bike and skinned his arm up to the elbow, when she said right in front of him, Full custody if I can—those It’s okay’s and It’ll be fine’s. You get ahold of the puppy’s collar and, slowly, try to rescue it, to do the thing right. But, as you pull, it leaves a pink paintbrush-streak in the snow. There are flecks of mulch and dirt stuck to the red, slick parts that steam in the cold. You can see tiny bones and, for some reason, for a million reasons, you look over your shoulder and—whoosh—there he is, your boy, gape-mouthed, watching.

Last night, before he got into his sleeping bag because you only have the one small bed now, he watched the puppy sleeping, watched it kick and twitch and breathe, and he asked if dogs dream which you didn’t know how to answer. You wanted to say Yes and wanted it to be true.

Down in the bloody snow you pull off your shirt, a shiver riding your ribs, and scoop up your boy’s puppy and wrap him inside.

From his deck, your neighbor says something about the police and you’re saying a choice thing or two about him and his mutt even though you get it—what he must say and do, as Dad. But, no, you won’t shut up and you won’t hold on just a minute, and already you’re at the fence handing the swaddled pup to your boy. You climb the fence, which seems taller this time, the dry wood scraping like teeth across your chest and gut.

Inside, he asks, holding that small dog in his arms, “Is everything going to be okay, Dad?” and, for the life of you, you don’t know what the hell to say because you know how this ends. Choking from the cold, sobering air, you lead him by the scruff of the neck through the apartment with a limp from your one numb foot to grab your keys, and the coat with the cigarettes, and you are all three in the car going ten over the speed limit, fifteen. And your boy, he’s older, getting older by the mile, and before long he’s too old to hug and tall enough for his mother and his voice is breaking while you—you’re a shadow sliding down a road snaked with snow still trying to say It’ll be okay like you mean it.


Headshot of Brandon TimmBrandon Timm is a recent fiction graduate of Southern Illinois University’s MFA program. He currently resides in his home state of Ohio, where he holds a position at a logistics company. His work has been published in ZONE 3  and online at The Carolina Quarterly. He owes much to those family members, friends, and teachers who have supported him, and this is a small, printed thank you to all those who have rooted for him.

Image credit: Andrew Branch on Unsplash

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

WITH “Y” AS AN ABSENCE OF PAIN by Sarah Sarai

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackMay 2, 2019

Bare feet on a conrete floor

WITH “Y” AS AN ABSENCE OF PAIN
by Sarah Sarai

Cici squints at Agatha’s toes, bunched together like an Indy 500 pile-up of smashed, shiny speed-racers. “And that’s why you wear socks in bed,” she says, leaning against the short kitchen counter as she points a slice of toast dripping with butter and honey at her wife’s feet. “It’s good you’re getting them looked at.”

Being urged to take care of herself is one of the benefits of marriage, Agatha reflects. She likes someone watching out for her, though she wishes that someone would use a plate when eating toast, but that’s also a benefit of marriage, the gift of being challenged by petty habits. “I’m glad we’re legal.” She dives in for a buttery smooch.

Both women bear the names of Christian martyrs, although, in fact, Agatha was named after her grandmother’s best friend, who stayed in Sweden when her grandmother moved to New York, while Cecilia’s is a family name going back to some long-ago relatives, “cotton pickers on Satan’s plantations.” Both women are feminists. “Ya think?” is what Cici would say should anyone inquire.

So today is podiatrist day. Agatha leaves work early and happily, work being a pharmaceutical ad agency where she edits and fact-checks. She is not the medical profession’s greatest booster, but she knows podiatrists are mild-mannered specialists and not Guantanamo interrogators the CIA disavows. But she’s jittery. Her feet have been aching for months, the very feet she walks upon. That’s the thing—what if she’s grounded or benched?

Dr. Logan agrees that something’s amiss. Ag strains to hear what she doesn’t want to hear as he offers prognosis and options, the first option being to return every few weeks for the rest of her life so he can hygienically razor skin from her toes. This is not such a great choice, considering the longevity that is part of her family legacy. Does she want to be in the proximity of a razor-wielding podiatrist every few weeks for the next half of her presumed eighty years of life?

His second and recommended option is “the procedure,” in which he’ll carefully break a few of her bones and set them in a sort of cast so the bones reassert their natural shape. It’s just a toe or two, Ag argues with herself, noting how untroubled the doctor is by his suggestions. So what if it’s broken and she has to recuperate for weeks? Weeks! In bed and on the couch!

Leaving the office with a slick brochure in-hand and a few sympathetic words from the receptionist, Ag is soon on Bleecker in the Village, leaning against a large restaurant window and wiggling a pebble from her shoe.

“Lady!” A goon of a chef flaps his mildly white apron at her. “You wanna wash our windows?”

There is a third option. There’s always another option, she reckons as she hobbles on, not quite alert to direction. This third option involves calling Cici and crying. It is a good option, which she realizes into being as she limps west, away from the heavier foot traffic of Seventh Avenue toward Hudson Street. It may be January, but the day is sunny, and that church, Saint Someone’s, has a little garden in which she can sit. Saint who? She can’t recall the saint’s name.

Cici Ebenezer answers on the first ring. Ebenezer means “stone of truth,” as she has boasted more than once with a pride Ag finds reassuring. Her wife is solid and truthful. Sometimes her honesty is a byproduct of stubbornness, and she refuses to tell the graceful lie, but among your friends, not to mention wife (they’re coming on their five-year anniversary), honesty is much-desired. Ag sees herself as more of a wimp. She’s not wrong.

No sooner does Cici say, “Hello, honey,” then Ag breaks down, sobbing not how but that her life is over.

“No, it’s not, baby, it’s not over.”

“What about Mrs. Heimlich?” Who lives on the first floor of their building. “She’s never been the same!”

“She was run over a cab.”

“Her foot was!”

“It was a maneuver, ta dah dah.” Heimlich maneuver jokes never get old.

Five teenagers cross Hudson Street, the lowering sun outlining them. They are Black, though none as Black as Cici. Their loss. “Ma’am.”

Agatha nods.  They walk on, joking with each other. “You got too many left feet,” one of the kids goads the other. Everywhere, feet.

Something nags at Ag. “What’s a chiropodist?”

“Say what?”  Cici’s closed her office door.  Agatha hears a keyboard click and knows Google is being Googled.  Google-izing-in-action. The Google-ization of the globe. “Aha.” She imagines Cici’s triumphant expression when she scores big in Scrabble. “A chiropodist is the same as a podiatrist, only British.”

“So Ebenezer Scrooge would have seen a chiropodist?”

“If he’d been willing to cough up the co-pay.”

The kindly receptionist slipped Ag two Advil, which, on top of the two she found in her purse have finally kicked in. Still on the phone, she decides not to go to the church garden—it’s Saint Luke, she forgot about Luke, a fairly prominent participant in the religion’s beginnings, and heads south a few more blocks to Leroy Street, where she turns right, with the subway entrance at Houston and Seventh in mind. It’s a happy block with tall trees and a branch library next to a playground. Here and there tree roots have busted through the sidewalk.

“I’m on Leroy,” Ag says. A gull heading back to the river, or the High Line, or New Jersey—what does she know of gulls’ travel itineraries?—calls loudly. Keow, keow.

“You’re on Leroy? Hope you’re wearing protection.”

“Ha ha ha.” Ag removes her knitted cap for a good scratch. Her hair springs free like children when the school bell rings.

“Ag, your feet ache, yeah, but you’re not getting them bound. Kathy Bates isn’t about to hobble you.”

“Yeah, but…”

“The doc is trying to find a fix for you. You’ve been hurting.”

Agatha wants to whine but checks herself. Settles on the middle concrete step leading to a red brick apartment house. Her butt feels the cold. Her appointment had been scheduled for 2:30 p.m., and the doctor, the chiropodist diluted to an American podiatrist, was running late, so she didn’t see him until closer to 3:30 p.m. Now it’s nearing 5 p.m. and distinctly chilly—the nip of winter air is insufficiently warmed by the exploding climate. And she’s hungry.

“We’ll stay home. I’m up for take-out.” Ag is envisioning Cici envisioning the feel of Ag’s soft round body and Cici’s lean frame against each other, in motion, both knowable and mysterious in bed, with a mostly eaten carton of rice next to a pillow. “And getting cozy.” She is not one for sweet talk on the phone, but Ag surmises her meaning. “Thai food sound good? Spring rolls, those curry puffs, maybe duck. Hey, that how-to I told you about is finally out of my hands. Celebration time is here.”

They met at the School of Visual Arts, where Cici teaches one class a year. She designs book covers for one of the big publishing companies and has won a few industry awards. Agatha was looking at a friend’s daughter’s show in the gallery.

It is dusk. As Ag winds her scarf around her neck, she notices, sauntering along Seventh to Hudson, the same group of high school kids she saw on Bleecker. She observes the teens’ various stances and general air. They are having a good time in the slightly loud way dumbass teenagers have a good time. She remembers giggling through Southern California malls with other girls when she was in junior high. They would dab perfume on each other until the sales lady hinted they could leave, then race up the down escalator. One time she stumbled in her rubber zories and was administered first aid by a guard. Her feet have always been out for her.

As the kids pass by, the shortest trips on a tree root, which had powered through the sidewalk years back. “Fuck that shit.”

He is laughed at by his friends, one of whom is considerably taller than he is. The two of them are directly in front of Ag. “Apologize to the lady.” The taller teenager nods to her.

The kid who tripped glares, then shrugs. “Sorry.” He struggles against his sweet smile.

She waves her hand, no problem.

“My brother is learning manners.” The oldest kid is being an oldest. Maybe a little too much so, Ag thinks. She is a veteran of older siblings, the having of.

But whatever. “Continuing education, I’m a believer.”

Another of the kids invites her to join them.  “We could party.”

“Yeah, right.” She is secretly pleased.

They walk on, and she’s back on the sidewalk, slowly squeezing her toes into her splendidly pointy shoes and rubbing her cold butt. Hot soup would be good. She texts Cici to add Thai coconut soup to the order.

Noises from down the street reach her. A bar fight? she wonders, not convinced. Henrietta Hudson, the dyke bar nearby, is pretty easygoing and certainly so in the afternoon. She hears a specific sound like a large snap. The cloud of gentle neurosis that’s shrouded her is replaced by straight-out fear. Suddenly there are sirens. She hurries the best she can back down Leroy to Hudson. In the streetlights on the corner, she sees a body, inert on the sidewalk.

The oldest of the teenagers, the tall one, is shouting, “Why’d you do that?” Cops are milling and showing their muscle. Some women from Henrietta Hudson are standing as close as they are allowed and have apparently caught whatever happened on their cell phones.

“What’s all this about?” Ag doesn’t need an answer.

It is the shortest teenager, the one who apologized to her, who is down.

He’s dead on arrival, the kid, Victor Soto. Ag and Cici learn this when they watch the reports of the shooting on the news. The phone videos taken by the dykes from Henrietta’s have been leaked. There is nothing new to this particular story. A white policeman; a rookie; a quote/unquote misunderstanding; a split-second decision—well, not really a decision, because a decision requires consideration. More a nasty-as-hell impulse on the cop’s part. And that’s that for the teenager, the goofy kid.

“The Daily News website says Bratton is backing the cop, the lying fuckhead.” They ate all the dishes they ordered, but without their usual gusto. Cici phones her brother. Then her cousin. After each call, she reports their reactions to Ag. Each one asks what Agatha saw and if she will be a witness, and Cici tells them that a beat cop wrote down Ag’s story and her details. “Ag got their details, too. The beat cop’s badge number.”

It’s been a few hours since Agatha abandoned the high heels, and her feet have stopped throbbing. Her feet—not throbbing. Just like that, a + b – c = y, with y as absence of pain. The equation says, “Here I am, lady. You can just stop wearing those pointy shoes.” That’s it, and of course the podiatrist didn’t mention that possibility—no money in it for him. If she doesn’t wear pointy shoes, her toes won’t look like they are wishing for good luck like fingers crossing. Her two feet and ten toes will be out of harm’s trap. Open-toed shoes and square-toed boots are her salvation. Her aha moment. Like supper, there’s no gusto.

The next night she and Cici join a rally against police malfeasance, also known as bullshit, also known as murder, at Union Square. A week later, she testifies to the teenagers’ politeness immediately prior to the shooting. “And sweetness,” she tells the grand jury. “He was sweet.” Sweet Victor Soto.

A few weekends later, she carts all her pointy shoes to the Goodwill and follows through on her plan by buying sensible footwear. Her toes untangle. Dr. Logan fades into old memory. Victor Soto does not return to life. The body sometimes heals, but once it’s gone, it’s gone. None of the murdered ever return to life, including the martyrs, like Saint Victor, who kept on being who he was, in his case a believer, a silly believer. Emperor Maximian had him killed.


Headshot of Sarah SaraiSarah Sarai’s short stories have been published in Gravel, Connotations, Fairy Tale Review, South Dakota Review, New Madrid, The Antigonish Review, Wilderness House, Devil’s Lake, Tampa Review and many other journals. Her MFA in fiction is from Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a poet, with many poems out and about. She was born in New York State, grew up in California, and now lives in New York City.

Image credit: rselph on Flickr

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

LITHUANIAN SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS by Louis Wenzlow

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackMay 2, 2019

Girl with the colors of the Lithuanian flag painted across her face

LITHUANIAN SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
by Louis Wenzlow

“The destruction of the very young starts in grade school…”
―Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“The destruction of the very young starts in Lithuanian school…”
―Liudutis Venclovas, Untitled Poem

There was something about my smile the other kids didn’t like. Maybe it was the fear in it, the false bravado. Who knows what sets the wolf pack off?

These days, I sit in my castle without really caring what anyone else thinks. I drink lattes in the morning, expensive scotches late into the evening. Sometimes there’s a needle to thread. I have a family and friends who like to drink with me.

Almost anything is preferable to those Saturdays in the seventies at the Lithuanian Youth Center in Marquette Park, Chicago. Waking to the smell of Cream of Wheat, already knowing it’s the worst day of my life, just like last Saturday and all the future Saturdays to come: the dreary hour-long car ride past the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; the ridicule of second-wave pedagogues fiercely determined to preserve our identity through the Soviet occupation; the prayers, the petitions, those letters to congressmen exploiting the self-immolation of Romas Kalanta; the so-called friends who hang you upside down from the third story stairwell until you shit your pants if you smile the wrong way.

They say things get better when you’re older, but that’s only until something worse happens. This is the lesson I would teach the next generation of Lithuanian children if the administrators ever made the mistake of inviting me to perform the sixth grade commencement address.

I would stand at the lectern in my Burberry trench coat and, gazing down from the stage of the gothic assembly hall, I would offer the graduates and their doting parents the unvarnished truth. For those of you who are happy now, I’d tell them, you will always be happy. But for those who are unhappy, for those who were bullied and mocked and domineered, for those who are depressed, you will always be depressed. And all of your future accomplishments, the occasional victories, landing the first job, spouse, child, etcetera, the joys of drugs and alcohol, will be nothing compared to the disappointments, the rejections, the forever truth of the forever worst Saturday forever.

And then when the first families start getting up and streaming out, when they finally realize how crazy this speaker is—the so-called great Lithuanian poet, this Liudutis Venclovas—I would step from the lectern and open my trench coat, so they could see all of me, all of the sagging skin, the moles, the rash that just won’t go away, the object itself, not merely its ugly projection, the entire truth of the great Lithuanian poet, the entire unvarnished and depressing truth. And I would smile broadly as I watched them, frenzied now, both running away from me and toward me, the big Lithuanian men rushing toward me to close me down, to knock me off my imaginary tightrope, to hang me one last time from the third story stairwell.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’d do, I say to myself, from the safety of my brown leather club chair, which I purchased at Anthropologie for over $8,000. It’s a beautiful chair—made from the finest Italian leather—and it’s facing what one of my friends has called the Taj Mahal of whisky collections, a bar that even the Ayatollah would bow to, this friend has said, as he’s guzzled down my fifteen-, twenty-, and even twenty-five-plus-year-old single malts.

My favorites are the old Auchentochans and Highland Parks, but I also particularly like the Yamazaki 18, which I consider to be a testament to the Japanese capability to assimilate and transcend. What the Japanese did for the auto industry, they also did for single malt whisky. The Nikka Yoichi 25 is another very good one. Those Japanese are amazing! They take what is already good and make it even better, unlike the Lithuanians, who drink beer and Russian vodka.

As for me, I refuse (refuse!) to have a single bottle of vodka in my Taj Mahal of bars. There are many whiskies, a few gins and rums, several cognacs and armagnacs and calvados, and even a superb aged tequila, but not a drop of vodka. Go elsewhere for vodka, I say to the plebeians who ask for it. Go to Russia. Go to Poland. Fly to Lithuania for the vodka.

When someone comes to one of our parties with a bottle of vodka, I make a big show of opening it and then pouring it down the drain. Forgive me, I say. We must not pollute the Taj Mahal of bars with what is essentially boiled potatoes.

Vodka killed the so-called spirit of Lithuania. Lithuania gained its independence in 1990 but then lost its spirit by drinking Russian vodka. That’s why I drink only very old whiskies, like this Auchentochan 31, this amber ambrosia, the “water of life,” one of only ten whiskies in the world that exhibits the quality generally reserved for ancient cognacs—rancio, the pleasure for which I paid several thousand dollars.

One thing I’ll say about having the finer things in life, you pay for it, and not just with dollars and cents. You pay for it and keep paying for it. What little pleasure there is gets further diminished with every new luxury experience, with every new sip, even of the Auchentochan 31, which used to taste quite special, I imagine, but that now tastes like turpentine. Yes, with every new sip, the Auchentochan 31 tastes more and more like turpentine. There remains a hint of the old rancio, but the rest is very expensive turpentine.

That’s what Romas Kalanta would have learned had he, in 1972, on the square off of Freedom Alley in Kaunas Lithuania, reconsidered pouring gas over his head and setting himself on fire for the sake of Lithuanian independence. Lithuania may or may not be independent now, without the spark of Romas Kalanta—what the teachers called the spark of independence that was the great Romas Kalanta—but Romas Kalanta would probably be alive, rather than a spark, and then a fire, and then a symbol: alive to learn about this principle of diminishing returns, the spiral of worst Saturdays, expense after increasing expense, luxury after luxury, until everything is turpentine. No more rancio for you, alternate universe Romas Kalanta.

But instead he poured the gas, lit the match, and became the bonfire of independence, the perfect Lithuanian youth, performed what our teachers, and quite possibly even our parents, then secretly wanted from each one of us—the children at the Lithuanian Youth Center in Marquette Park, Chicago—to eschew the temptations of American materialism and devote ourselves fully and completely to the cause of our Tėvynė, which means fatherland. Not simply to write those letters to our congressmen, but to actually set ourselves on fire for the sake of the Lithuanian Identity. Deep down, I’m convinced it’s what they wanted, what they were guiding us toward: a flaming pyramid, a fierce pyre of sixth graders.

And I cannot deny that I considered it, considered following in his footsteps, especially on those Saturdays when the Lithuanian School bullies attacked me, hung me upside down from that pathetic third story stairwell. After cleaning myself up and wiping the tears away, I would look in the bathroom mirror and imagine the flames, the glory of those flames. For Romas Kalanta was my hero. The other kids worshiped OJ Simpson and Mick Jagger, but I—in step with the teachers and my parents—found American culture to be immoral and depressing. I worshiped the great Romas Kalanta.

I remember one time in particular. After returning home from Saturday school, I grabbed some poster board and scrawled on it the single word LAISVĖ, which means freedom. Then I walked into the kitchen and took the Diamond matches we used to light the defective left front burner of our stove. I rushed out the kitchen door into the attached garage and found the gas can we used for the lawnmower. I walked past our Chevy Impala station wagon through the open garage door to the center of our driveway, placed my poster on the cement ground, and then doused myself with gasoline.

I’m not sure what I was thinking or feeling. I somehow knew it was important not to think or feel much of anything in order to accomplish something like this, in order to follow my hero into his flaming glory. But when I opened the matchbook, removed a match, and tried to strike it, nothing happened. The wet of the gasoline prevented the initial spark. Had the match ignited, I wouldn’t be here to consider these issues, to relay these important thoughts to the next generation’s sixth graders, but it didn’t. There wasn’t even a faint sizzle or a tiny whiff of sulfur. Nothing (nothing!) happened.

And then I started thinking and feeling again. In particular I started thinking about the pain I would feel, the pain that Romas Kalanta must have felt, and I wondered if it was really worth it, whether this gesture would really make any difference, in the grand scheme of things, whether it would really contribute to the onset of a great new age of Lithuanian independence, which suddenly seemed quite unlikely, and just like that, my motivation was lost. I threw the matches on the ground, grabbed the poster board, and rushed back toward the garage.

To this day, I keep wondering if it would have made any difference, whether anything makes any difference. In the grand scheme of things, how much did it matter that even Romas Kalanta gave up his life to showcase the plight of occupied Lithuania? What impact did it really have on the eventual liberation—nearly eighteen years later—of the Lithuanian people, on those big Lithuanian men, drinking their beer and their Russian vodka, a nation of big Lithuanian men forever chasing me to wipe that silly smirk off my mug, with or without Romas Kalanta, with or without the spark of independence that was the great Romas Kalanta?

“Here’s to you!” I say, lifting my precious Auchentochan 31 high above my head in the general direction of Marquette Park, Chicago. “Here’s to all you sixth graders.”

The wife is asleep. The estranged kids have long since moved away, scattered about the country to their own lives of loud or quiet desperation. I am of course not a great Lithuanian poet. I am just a small, pathetic clown, sitting naked late at night in front of his fortune of fancy booze, my rash reflected in the backdrop mirror, the terminal rash, the inoperable forever truth of that forever worst Saturday terminal rash…

…that Saturday, after I failed to light myself on fire, as I rushed back toward the garage, I thought I noticed a flutter at the kitchen window, as if the drapes had moved. Yes, I’m sure there was a flutter. Someone had been watching me, my mother or father perhaps, watching their only son very nearly follow in the footsteps of his hero. How proud they must have been, until the match failed to ignite and I lost my resolve.

They are both long dead now, but they lived for more than forty years after that, with me wondering but never asking. All that time I’ve been wondering, was it my mother or was it my father, or was it perhaps both of them, who stood watching me through the window, their only son, so proud at first for his great sacrifice, his almost great sacrifice, and then so disappointed, so very ashamed, as he abandoned his Lithuanian Identity, abandoned the cause of Lithuanian independence, and instead implicitly (at first implicitly and then quite consciously) selected the dedicated pursuit of materialism: the right schools, the best firms, the trophy wife, the spoiled kids, expense after increasing expense, luxury after meaningless luxury, extreme after ignoble American extreme, rather than setting himself on fire, rather than firmly and boldly striking the Diamond match head and displaying the great poetry and courage of self-immolation.

This is what my parents were thinking, I am convinced, either one or perhaps both of them, yes, very likely both of them, as they stood watching me through the kitchen window, and then for the rest of my life, even as they continued to go through the so-called motions, to pack my lunches, attend my basketball games, to scrape and claw to pay for my college education, to dote on their grandchildren, etcetera, etcetera, until they passed away and were buried in Saint Casimir Lithuanian Cemetery on 111th Street on the south side of Chicago, where I still go to visit their graves at least once every year, and where—according to my doctors—I will be joining them sometime between six and eighteen months from now.

But that Saturday, when I walked back in the house, clutching my poster board and stinking to high heaven of petroleum, when I walked through the kitchen and into the living room, they were nowhere to be seen, until I looked out the living room window and saw my father pulling weeds in the backyard, and then heard the bang of the washing machine door, indicating that my mother was in the basement. How quickly they had run out of the kitchen in order to pretend they hadn’t seen me! As soon as I had dropped the matches and turned back toward the house, they must have glanced at each other, conspired on a plan, and then sprinted away to their respective hiding places, the backyard and the basement, running off to do their chores, starting the pretense that would last for over forty years. At least one but very likely both of them, almost surely both of them, as will be proved definitively (definitively!) between six and eighteen months from now, after my commencement, after my ashes are buried in the family plot, when I finally stand naked (not just physically but fully and completely, spiritually) in front of my creator, with my father on his right side and my mother on his left, and perhaps even my childhood hero, Romas Kalanta, slightly behind them and off to the side, when everything will be revealed, all of our sins and blemishes will be fully and completely revealed, the entire truth will be revealed. I can’t wait to see the look on their faces. What will they say when I ask them? Was it just one or was it both of you, surely it was both of you, standing there, watching me, that Saturday afternoon, behind those imaginary drapes?


Headshot of Louis WenzlowLouis Wenzlow’s short canards and poetry have appeared in Cease Cows, Eclectica, The Forge Literary Magazine, International Poetry Review, The Molotov Cocktail, and other places. He is a Lithuanian American who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and now lives with his wife and daughter in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME by J.T. Townley

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackMay 2, 2019

Worn baseball

A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME
by J.T. Townley

—Time to step up to the plate, Jimbo.

—What’s for supper?

—You’re on deck, right? We all are. We each have to take our turn at bat.

—Them things carry rabies.

—Take our hacks and swing for the fences. Knock the cover off the ball.  Go yard.

—I gotta tell you, Dwight, I ain’t entirely sure I—

—America, Jimbo.

—Greatest country on earth.

—That’s why we gotta take a good cut.

—What’s that got to do—

—Rip it or smoke it, lace it or rope it.

—Well, what can I say, Dwight? I’ll give it my best shot.

—Hit it on the screws.

—That old college try.

—At least put the ball in play, Jimbo.

—That can-do attitude goes a long way.

—Filet shot or Texas Leaguer, blooper or tapper or dying quail.

—Quail season ain’t till November, Dwight.

—Get you a single, a two-bagger, a three-bagger.

—Take me out to the ballgame.

—Start the merry-go-round running.

—Take me out to the crowd.

—Knock one out the park, Jimbo.

—I don’t care if I never get back.

—Sumbitches is throwing groove heaters.

—Hold up a sec, Dwight. You mean like grenades or sumpin?

—Right in your wheelhouse, too.

—Attacking hearth and home. No respect for private property nor women and children neither.

—Bases are juiced, Jimbo.  Get you a grand tamale.

—Well, why in hell not? The whole enchilada, too. Plus, my piece of the Frito pie.

—But we gotta keep on the ball.

—As in crystal ball? As in Magic 8-Ball?

—They’ll throw us a curve. It’ll be hit or miss. We don’t want to whiff.

—Would they do that?  Could they?

—They’re already doing it.

—Don’t seem right.

—We’re in the Big Leagues, Jimbo. Sumbitches play hardball. Gotta bring your A game.

—Only one I got, Dwight. Now how ’bout another beer?

—This ain’t no time for concessions.

—They got cotton candy, right? If we’re talking ’bout what I think. Peanuts and popcorn and Crackerjacks.

—I done already told you, concessions is out.

—Hot dogs, Dwight, grilled up just the way you like and drowning in mustard.

—You gonna drop the ball, Jimbo?

—Not me.

—You gonna foul out?

—Nosiree, Bob! Not if I have my druthers, anyway.

—Cuz this ain’t no game.

—Why, of course it is, Dwight!

—Do you see a smile on my face?

—Well, now that you mention it.

—Am I giggling and laughing and carrying on like some little ole schoolgirl with her dollies?

—Come to think of it, no. Why is that?

—Listen up and listen good, Jimbo. Them sumbitches got live arms.

—You ain’t serious?

—Electric stuff.

—No shit?

—They’re gonna throw gas and pound the zone.

—That don’t sound good.

—They want us to roll over, Jimbo.

—Like hell.

—They want to ring us up.

—We didn’t even buy nothing!

—But they ain’t gonna come right down Main Street to do it.

—Sumbitches ain’t welcome in the first place. We’ll be waiting outside Andy’s Gun & Ammo, armed to the teeth, trigger fingers itchy, Tim McGraw blaring in the background.

—They’ll paint the corner, come in high and tight, then pull the string and watch us swing out of our shoes. Next comes all that nasty backdoor stuff.

—Goddamn perverts!

—That’s why we gotta cover our bases.

—Best idea I heard all day.

—We want to be world champions, don’t we?

—I don’t see why not, Dwight. Kinda our birthright, when you look at it. It’s just that, the thing is, ain’t but Americans playing the game in the first place.

—That’s a filthy lie.

—Alright, they got a team up in Canada, but I ain’t sure there’s any actual Eskimos on it.

—What about them Japanese, Jimbo?

—That’s a whole other story. Got their own league and everything. We want any of their boys, we gotta recruit them special, go through all kinda fancy rigmarole and pay through the nose.

—What about them Dominicans and Mexicans and Venezuelans? Hell, there’s even a bunch of goddamn Cubans, and they live under a repressive commie regime. Remember that botched Bay of Pigs invasion?  Remember that missile crisis?  We’re talking international stage here, Jimbo.

—I hate to say it, Dwight, but you know well as I do that ain’t nothing but honest-to-goodness global capitalist exploitation.

—Hell you say?

—Them backwaters ain’t nothing but a source of cheap labor.

—Talk about outta left field.

—Ain’t nothing new.

—You done lost it, Jimbo.

—Same ole, same ole.

—Trash you’re talking’s off-base and a hundred percent un-American.

—And the rockets’ red glare.

—Now that’s more like it.

—Buncha bombs in the air.

—Hallelujah, amen! It’s good to be alive.

—Last I checked, Dwight, the future ain’t what she used to be.

—You said it, Jimbo. That’s why I gotta know sumpin right off the bat.

—Them things carry rabies.

—I’ll go to bat for you.

—Do what?

—Will you go to bat for me?

—Rules of the game ain’t exactly no breeze, but I’m pretty sure—

—Quit your hemming and hawing, Jimbo, and give it to me straight. Will you take one for the team?

—I’ll play ball, if that’s what you’re asking.

—Or maybe you’re out of your league?

—A swing and a miss!

—I’m just saying, Jimbo. We all gotta be able to execute the sacrifice.

—I got that can-do attitude.

—Cuz they’re stealing bases left and right.

—Dirty crooks!

—Second and third and home. First, even.

—You can’t steal first, Dwight.

—Tell that to the other side.

—Thieving bastards!

—They’re even stealing signs, Jimbo.

—Now that ain’t right. Gonna lead to all kinda mayhem on the highways and byways of this great nation.

—Not street signs, you dumb—

—And I, for one, can’t even tolerate a door-ding on my ole F-150, much less a bent bumper or crumpled fender.  Somebody’s gonna pay, and it ain’t gonna be me.

—Signals, Jimbo. Signs. Our private, confidential communiqués about what’s happening when, where, and how.

—Funny thing is, last I heard, we’re stealing our own signs.

—That’s misinformation.

—We broke our own codes, Dwight.

—Disinformation.

—Lip-reading and eavesdropping.

—Propaganda.

—Spying on our own self, Dwight.

—Don’t believe everything you read, buddy boy. It’s bush league psyche-out stuff. They’re trying to get into our heads and hearts and turn us against friends and neighbors and family. We look in the mirror, nobody there but some goddamn traitor giving us the evil eye.

—Stink eye.

—Crook eye.

—Whole thing’s like déjà vu all over again.

—But don’t be fooled, Jimbo. We’re the heavy hitters ’round these here parts.

—Murderer’s Row.

—We ain’t gonna get caught looking.

—Not on your life!

—We got ducks on the pond.

—Like shooting fish in a barrel.

—We’ll punch one right up the gut, Jimbo.

—An at ’em ball.

—A diamond cutter.

—Or blast one to right-center, Dwight.

—A gap-shot.

—A long shot.

—A bomb.

—And the rockets’ red glare.

—Amen!

—Buncha bombs in the air.

—Hallelujah!

—That’s why you should always root for the home team, Dwight.

—If we don’t win, it’s a shame.

—A goddamn sham, is what it is.

—What we’re talking bout, Jimbo, ain’t nothing short of the flaming future of the entire free world.

—It’s America’s pastime.

—And I’ll tell you sumpin else.

—You ain’t got to, Dwight, cuz I already know.

—It ain’t over till it’s over.


Headshot of J. T. TownleyJ. T. Townley has published in Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other magazines and journals.  His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award.  He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University, and he teaches at the University of Virginia.  To learn more, visit jttownley.com. 

Image credit: Kai Oberhäuser on Unsplash

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

HOUSEKEEPING IN SEVEN CIGARETTES by Rachel Oestreich

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackMay 2, 2019

Lit cigarrete

HOUSEKEEPING IN SEVEN CIGARETTES
by Rachel Oestreich

[SEVEN]

Margo is eight years old, and she doesn’t care about the New Mexican heat, or the drought, or that it is dry and her lips are cracked and her skin is slick with sweat. Her hair sticks to her forehead and neck in thick, twine-like clumps. Her father smells like he always does: motor oil and cigarettes.

Her mother brings home a dog when she’s supposed to bring home milk. The black fluff-ball almost looks like a porcupine; it runs around the living room and chases shards of gravel her father tosses, the ones gathered from the driveway. He sits on the couch. Margo sits next to him, silently wishing her father will let them keep the dog, certain he was too obstinate to let it be so.

Above them, the ceiling fan whirs and kicks up the dust mites, then scatters them in the same place.

Margo’s father says, “I told you we weren’t getting a dog.”

Her mother replies, “His name’s Gerald.”

“Stupid name,” her father says. He’s smiling, though, eyes crinkling along the lines of his wrinkles. And Margo has hope.

Margo takes a pebble from her father’s hand and throws it near the kitchen. Her father throws a bigger one toward the door. The dog chases Margo’s, nails clicking and scrabbling on the tile.

Her father chuckles; Margo likes that sound. She likes when her mother comes around the back of the couch and puts her arms around him, likes that they look like a family. “You can take him back to old Bax up the road if you want,” her mother says.

Her father pauses for a good long minute, rolls the gravel around his palm, makes the pieces clink together. Gerald wanders back to them with a rock in his mouth. Drops it at her father’s feet.

Her father grunts, his version of a chuckle, and pulls a cigarette from the box he keeps in his pocket—Margo’s never seen him without it. His lighter click, click, clicks and finally sparks. “We still need milk,” he says. He holds the flame to the end of his cigarette. “Get something cheap for the mutt, too.”

 

[SIX]

By the time she’s ten, her father is a pack-a-day kind of man, and Margo’s old enough to hate that habit. Sunlight cuts through streaked windows, highlights the color of the walls: an ugly shade of yellow stained an uglier shade of mustard.

She sits at the dining table, taps the black stump of her eraser against the wood surface, stares at the fractions she’s supposed to subtract. “Mom,” she says. “I need help.”

Her mother stands from her end of the table, book in her hand, thumb between the pages. She pulls her chair to Margo’s side, takes a pencil of her own—eraser pink and whole because she isn’t the kind who needs to erase things—and presses lead to page. “Like this, baby girl.”

Then: “Patricia.”

Margo’s mother drops the pencil, pulls her thumb from her book and lets it close. “Yes, Vince?”

Margo’s father shuffles down the hallway, eyes bloodshot. Worked all night at the auto shop again. Not like they need the money, that’s what Margo’s mother always says; he just likes the work, and when his bosses ask him to stay he doesn’t say no, not because he’s spineless, Margo’s mother says, but because he likes the work, likes accomplishing something. A day-old beard shadows his leathery face. He holds up his cigarette box. “I’m out, Patty. Mind?”

Margo wants her mother to say yes, that she does mind. But her mother doesn’t; she’s not like that. She stands, dress swishing, searching for her black sandals. “You and those damn cigarettes, Vince,” she says. Laughing, amused. Like they’re endearing, those cigarettes.

Gerald lumbers around the kitchen, finally stops next to Margo and ignores her father when he calls his name. Margo considers it a small victory; Gerald always sits by her.

Twenty minutes later, Margo’s mother returns from the gas station, the stench of diesel clinging to her skin, still a better scent than her expired perfume. She kisses Margo’s father on his forehead. Hands over a crinkling, plastic-wrapped carton of Camels.

“Still need help with those fractions, baby girl?”

Margo erases her most recent answer; she’s about to tear through the paper, she’s erased so often. “No, Mom,” she lies. “I figured it out.”

Gerald settles his head on his paws. His tail thumps against hardwood floor, throws up the dust mites. No matter how many times Margo and her mother sweep, they can’t get rid of them.

 

[FIVE]

When Margo is twelve years old, she doesn’t understand why her mother wants to put up a birdhouse. They don’t get any of the jays or swallows that she keeps talking about, just the carrion that go after the rabbit carcasses the coyotes leave behind.

Margo sits in the rocking chair on the porch. Her father’s leveling the birdhouse against the porch support, extra nails between his lips, a hammer in his hand. Behind him, her mother stands a few feet back in the driveway and tells him the house is crooked.

Margo rocks back. Gerald sits next to her. Ninety-eight degrees, no clouds. Margo squints at the glare of the sun and straightens the chair.

Her mother claps. “Right there, Vince.” Wide smile on peach lips; oblivious to sunburn, to the dust stains on her dress.

One whack with the hammer. Another.

Her mother coughs a few times, but the birdhouse is up. Painted an ugly shade of yellow that matches the inside of the house, because it’s the only color of paint they had in the garage.

“What d’you think, Margo?” her mother asks.

A mile out, something big circles over the road. Crow or raven, maybe a vulture. On the ground, Margo’s father lights a cigarette. Her mother coughs again as the wind tosses grit into all their eyes and makes them sting and water.

Smoke curls from her father’s lips.

Margo says, “I think nothing’s going to come live here.”

She doesn’t say: not if they could live somewhere else.

 

[FOUR]

She’s only thirteen years old, and the house feels heavy, like the broken promise of a monsoon rain. Middle of October, still hot. The ceiling fan wheezes on its tiny motor, an ancient contraption ready to die any day now.

Margo’s mother was young, but she’d wheezed. Again and again. “Can’t breathe,” she’d said, or tried to say. Undiagnosed asthma. She suffocated right there on the living room floor at the beginning of September.

Margo hopes her father blames himself.

Desert dust creeps into the crevices of the house, molds into the cracks in the grout between the tile. Won’t leave, or can’t. Blows in when Margo opens a window. Hugs the curtains.

Two packs of cigarettes a day now. All her father ever does anymore is go to work and smoke, and nearly burns the house down when he falls asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette between his fingers.

Margo sits at the dining table, her mother’s sandals on her feet. She runs a knife through a peach and twists the fruit’s flesh around the pit. Even the juice that dribbles onto her plate is murky, like mud.

She stands and opens a window, tries to wave in some fresh air. Gerald follows her into the kitchen and sits at her side; she kicks a stray clump of gravel that’d made it through the back door. The dog trots after it and returns the rocks at her feet. Cheaper than tennis balls.

A whistle from the couch. Gerald’s ears prick up, acknowledging the sound, but he doesn’t move.

“Gerald,” her father calls.

The dog looks his way. Doesn’t move.

The form on the couch rolls over. “Goddamn mutt.”

Margo smiles and scratches Gerald’s ears. “Good boy.”

 

[THREE]

Margo’s fifteen, and her father steps out for some sharp winter air, but when he steps back in he’s pulling another cigarette from his pocket. Finds his lighter between the couch cushions.

“What’re you working on, Margo?” His voice scratches at her ears, a stray cat eager to be welcomed from the cold.

She stares at her pre-calculus textbook. Refuses to look up. He’s ruined, since her mother died. He blames himself and Margo knows it, and she’s glad until she meets his eyes and sees their nothingness. He’d tried pulling himself together, but now he’s dried up like an ear of corn, a husk shriveled under the sun and all the kernels gone because the damn birds pecked them all out. Nothing left.

Margo doesn’t look him in the eyes, not if she can help it. All she ever sees in them is her mother.

He sits down with her at the table sometimes, tries to help her with homework he doesn’t know how to do, gives up and just sits there. The silence makes them both uncomfortable. He’ll feed Gerald dinner scraps; a bribe to pretend he’s got someone.

Margo still hasn’t answered him; she’s forgotten the question already and she wants him to go away.

“I’m on my last box,” her father says. “I’m going to the station for more.”

There’s a question. A would you go, instead? Or maybe a would you come with me? He’s lonely, but so is she. The answer is no. She erases a few numbers and rewrites them. Peels from her eraser fall to the floor. “I’m busy, Daddy,” she says. “Drive safe.”

After the front door closes, she stands from the table and locks it.

 

[TWO]

She’s just turned sixteen, and Margo’s really good at convincing herself that she still blames her father. That she hates him.

But her mother was the one who bought more cigarettes.

The birdhouse on the porch decays. Her father won’t let her pull it down.

She sweeps the house three times a day and dusts twice. Keeps the dirt on the outside where it belongs. Locks the front door whenever her father leaves, but then he starts taking his house key with him and what’s the point after that? Gets in either way.

 

[ONE]

Margo is eighteen years old, and she’s been waiting because last week her father went out for a new carton of cigarettes, and he hasn’t been back since. She’s pretty sure he won’t come back. Maybe he’s dead. Or just gone. To spite him, she cleans out his bedroom and finds one box of cigarettes left, seven still inside.

One at a time, she tosses them over the railing; the aged glow of the porch light barely illuminates them. The empty birdhouse hangs at an angle; it’s always been empty. Margo’s rocking chair groans, a tired sound; it wobbles on the deck, unsteady. When she inhales, she just barely smells the sweetness of pine: the porch and chair are both rotten and peeling and falling apart. The arm of her chair scrapes against the railing like they’re old friends, and it shaves a few splinters from both with a snap.

The last cigarette is in her hand. She puts it in her mouth, paper gritty against her tongue. She wonders what it’s like, smoking, suffocating. Tempting. Just light one.

What she should do is throw it away and rid herself of it for good.

At her feet, Gerald sighs.

Her father wouldn’t miss it. He’s not coming back, probably.

A mile away, the laughter of a pack of coyotes.

The lighter click, click, clicks impatiently when her finger slips trying to spark a flame. Before she even lights it, it leaves a bad taste in the space between her teeth.

Margo holds the cigarette to her lips and fills her mouth with the acrid smoke she’s always hated. She swallows it.

Chokes.

And puts the cigarette to her lips again.


Headshot of Rachel OestreichRachel Oestreich is a Fiction M.F.A. candidate at New Mexico State University, where she received her B.A. in English in 2015. She reads for The Indianola Review, works with the literary magazine Puerto del Sol, and teaches as an Instructor of Record at NMSU.

Image credit: Sonia Belviso on Flickr

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

A DIFFICULT WOMAN by Taylor Kobran

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackJune 29, 2020

 

Black and white photo of elderly woman with glasses

A DIFFICULT WOMAN
by Taylor Kobran

Well, it should come as no shock to you, I’m sure, that on more than one occasion I have been told I am a difficult woman.

If you’d been around longer, you would have found pretty quick that that’d be the truth, honey. You would have been embarrassed of me, like your little brothers, but maybe a little proud too, because us girls have to stick together.

But, just so you believe me, let me give you an example:

After I was told that my second husband, Peter, had died, I slapped the nurse who offered to call in a goddamn grief counselor. My heart could have burst wide open with rage. As I walked out of the hospital, real quick before security could reach me, my hand was all raw and stinging with something a bit like triumph.

It was only later that the shame caught up, which is the way it usually goes with me.

◊

Look how I lie here, my lips cracked and thin, my face worn like paper. See how they’ve taken from my goddamn body until there was nothing left. I always knew it would have been different with you, honey. Daughters are different than sons, they don’t require the same vengeance. They are just a piece of a mother’s soul, alive and in the flesh and wandering out in the world.

When he was twenty-three and just graduated from college, your one brother Jeremy sent me an envelope from the other side of the country addressed to: Ms. Francine (Franny) Krause Waley née Roth. Inside was a detailed listing of his therapy bills.

What I really found funny was what he had written, in big block letters, just under the seal: Charges for damages within. Pound of flesh will do.

Let’s speak of happier things.

But.

Your littlest brother Derick has become a priest, and it is one of my gravest disappointments. Oy vey iz mir, my poor mother should be rolling over in her grave.

He was only nineteen when he joined the seminary. I cried out, “But you’re not even Catholic! You had a bris, for Chrissakes. Don’t you remember?”

He did not, in fact, remember. He was only eight days old at the time, but that, I told him, wasn’t the point.

They don’t know about you, not even Jeremy. You both share the same father, but there is only Jeremy in those photographs with Krause, back when we lived in Philadelphia, his chubby cheeks and that serious look always on his face. There are no pictures of you. I don’t think I could have endured it if there were.

Sometimes I want to tell your brothers, “But wait! It’s true! In fact, I did have a daughter. Ha ha, your old Ma has one more surprise left for you nudniks!”

But I will not tell them. I cannot.

And here is this goddamned crocheted blanket the nurse put over me that is so itchy against my skin I could scream.

You were there and then you were gone just as suddenly, not even a day old, and that was the beginning of the end between me and your father. Don’t blame yourself. Things happen.

And it’s true, we had enough left in the old tank to make Jeremy just a year and a half after you left us.

I met your father when I was eighteen, waitressing at a diner in Newark, just after high school. Krause was the boyfriend of another waitress, Charlene, who I used to goof around with on slow shifts, blowing spit balls with straws and sticking wads of chewing gum underneath the counters, all things we’d have to clean up ourselves sooner or later. We were silly girls, but Charlene always grabbed money out of the tip jar when she thought no one was looking, so I didn’t feel too guilty about stealing your father away from her.

Everyone called your father by his last name, pronounced like “Cross.” He was raised pretty strict, Shabbos every week and kept kosher, so I’m sure he didn’t appreciate that reference.

He didn’t appreciate a lot about me.

It’s too warm in here, don’t you think they could open a goddamn window every once in a while?

I’m thirsty, but the nurse in this godforsaken facility has only left me some lukewarm water, and I can see little tiny particles floating around in it like the glass was not fully cleaned, and so I would rather wither and dry up than drink that.

I dreamed of Paris, a place all white and fresh, sunlight streaming in through the walls, a little balcony, the whole town smelling like fresh bread.

Your father never took me there. To be fair, I had never told him I wanted to go, but.

I am a bitter old woman. Shouldn’t I be sorry, at this point? You’d think.

Still.

When he would come home, I’d be so angry, holding a crying baby Jeremy, his diaper wet and his face so very pink, and I would say, “You don’t appreciate me.”

Honey, I can’t lie that your father had many faults. I once listed them all on a scrap of paper.

Let me rummage around here in my bedside table, I’m sure I still have it.

No matter. I remember them all. They include:

His drinking,

His temper,

His ignorance,

His late-night returns where he came to our bedroom with his eyes shifting anywhere but toward my face,

His continued refusal to put down the toilet seat after he was finished, as if he were raised in a barn,

His skill at making the tears burn as they spilled from my eyes,

His tendency to look around at me and at his son as if we were people he did not quite recognize,

His snoring,

His habit of chewing with his goddamned mouth open so that a person could feel absolutely nauseated just from the sound alone.

 

But, sure, I loved him, the kind of fierce love you only have for the first person to kiss your kneecaps or to tuck you into bed after a long bout with the flu.

We never got the chance with you. That first birth, I left the maternity ward with my arms empty except for the white blanket I had planned on wrapping you in, but when Jeremy first came home from the hospital after he was born, your father and I used to sneak into his bedroom together just to make sure his tiny chest was still rising and falling, to hear his breath mix out in the air with the breath coming from both our own mouths, creating such a song of our little family.

I slapped Krause once, but he didn’t even move. I remember feeling my own anger running through my body like snake venom, and I wished I could slice open my veins and infect him with it, but I doubted he would look at me even then.

He didn’t even protest when I told him I was taking Jeremy and moving to Hoboken.

The bastard.

This room is too goddamned white, hasn’t anybody around here ever heard of a color, for Chrissakes?

Jeremy never asked me about his father. You would have been different. I knew from the instant I looked into your dark, curious eyes.

I think you would have liked your little brother Derick. When he was eight, he asked me once why his brother had a different last name. I feel bad now, but my in-laws were coming to town for Thanksgiving, and I’d been busy figuring out how to stuff a turkey for the first time. So goddamned slimy.

Anyway, I told him that it was because Jeremy had been dropped off at our doorstep by another family when he was a baby. “There was a note that said they’d be coming along in a few years to take him back,” I told him. “He’s what, thirteen, it’ll probably be any day now. So get your goodbyes in, buddy boy.”

I’m terrible.

But listen to me, even now, all these years later, cackling away.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who finds me funny. When I met Peter, after he accidentally crashed his shopping cart into mine at the grocery store, he apologized so profusely that I was absolutely forced to reach down into my cart, grab the nearest roast chicken I had picked up for dinner, and say, “No harm, no fowl, sir.”

When he smiled, I knew it wasn’t because he found me funny.

The light is falling in through the window blinds real bright. Burns my eyes ’till they’re all wet and runny.

I would have loved to have heard you laugh.

Peter told me he loved me every morning and then got mortally offended if I was too groggy to say it back. I loved him, but every once in a while, I just wanted my goddamn sleep.

Peter was a little older than me, but he was kind to both boys, had clean fingernails. He bought me velvet dresses just because.

I never told him about Paris. Only you.

Peter’s parents had a cabin in the Poconos, and we used to visit it every summer. Once, while Peter and the boys were out on the lake, I took the car and drove to the Five and Dime and bought some bright yellow sandals with pink buckles and hair dye, platinum blonde.

I so dreamed of driving until I slipped off the edge of every goddamn thing.

Instead, I wrapped the box of hair dye in a plastic bag and slipped it under the driver’s seat, and drove back to the cabin. And when I got back, those little assholes made fun of me for wearing those ugly sandals. I got so mad I refused to cook them dinner.

Look at me, still seething, grinding my teeth until my jaw aches.

I was thirty-three when Peter died. Heart attack. Thirty-three and all alone with two little boys.

Things have not turned out like I expected when I was a child.

I wonder sometimes what you would have thought of my mother. It was like she had been tamed for her whole life. I was determined not to be tamed.

Once, when I was a girl, I cut my own hair with my mother’s sewing scissors because I had seen a pretty woman with a bob in a magazine. It didn’t turn out very well at all, and I tried to hide the evidence, but my father found all the bits of hair I’d stuffed between the couch cushions. After he whipped me, he wouldn’t let my mother fix my hair, instead made me live out my days with a lopsided cut until my hair grew long enough to pull up.

You know what Derick says? Forgiveness is bliss. “It makes you feel free, Mommy,” he says. He calls this place every night. Sometimes I think he calls just to make sure I’m still alive.

Just like his father with that mishegas. I can’t tell you how irritating it is.

He says to me, “Forgiveness is a gift that holds more than you could ever imagine.”

Doesn’t he sound like a goddamn fortune cookie?

You know, Derick paid for this place, but I don’t like my nurse, she smells like smoke, and I once bit her on the arm when she tried to give me a bath, then pretended like I was having an episode so she wouldn’t sue.

Once, Jeremy wrote and asked why I never hugged him when he cried as a child. I wrote back, joked that it was because he was always so slobbery and I didn’t want to get my blouses wet.

He didn’t respond.

I think of you, how you left this world just hours after you left my body. Shouldn’t I have kept you inside, where you were safe and kicking against me like the beating of a heart? I was so young. I only held your little body for a moment before they took you away. You felt so warm.

But what, I should tell your brother the truth? The truth that I had been afraid? Afraid to hug him, to hold him close to my heart, to feel him too firmly? No, I could never tell him any of this, not a single word. Wouldn’t I rather die first.

I am still considering putting it in my will that the next correspondence my first son will receive from my estate will be my obituary, but I don’t want to be dramatic.

And I can remember Jeremy coming home crying because the kids in junior high made fun of his crooked teeth since he needed braces so badly but there was no money for it, and so I wrote to Krause, mailed the letter to that little goddamn row house in Philadelphia we used to share, but it was eventually returned to sender, addressee unknown, and when little Jeremy bugged me about braces again, I finally told him to just deal with it because his weird teeth gave him character.

I’m not a terrible mother.

I taught Derick how to drive a car, even though my own license was suspended for too many parking tickets. And the only thing I said to Jeremy the time I picked him up from the police station after he got caught shoplifting was, “Next time pick me up a new tube of lipstick, will ya?”

You never got to resent me, got to blame me, like your brothers. You forever know me as your mother, your home. To you, I am only a nice, safe, warm thing.

I could have been someone important, right, honey? Even now, don’t I sound like I’m smart? I read a lot. I should have gone to college, should have done more than just take care of other people.

Two husbands was plenty.

I was at the emergency room reception desk for a time and saw all sorts of horrible stuff. I’d tell the boys over dinner about the man with his left eyeball hanging loose, the woman with the bone sticking straight from her arm, the little girl with the burns on the side of her face.

And wouldn’t Jeremy just eat up my stories, the only time he didn’t seem to absolutely hate me, and we would both just laugh at Derick, who would cover his ears with his chubby hands.

And then I got moved to the geriatric ward, which I found even more horrible than the ER. All those old people, moldy in their own skin, wasting away to nothing but beige slippers and wiry white hair.

Pot, meet kettle, etc.

When the time came, I wanted to throw myself off the bow of a ship, hang myself from a sycamore tree, wander into the highway during rush hour. My end had to be different than all those others, mine had to mean something more.

But.

Here I am, honey, lying on this bed, and the air has grown cold. It stings that my end is going to be like all the others.

Honey, I would have told you the story my mother used to whisper in my ear before I went to sleep as a child. She used to tell me about a little girl who loved a little boy who was a prince. Since she was poor, this prince never gave her the time of day. It was only until she intercepted a poisoned cherry meant for him that he noticed her at all, and by then, she was dead. The prince cried and threw a parade in the girl’s honor and then vowed never to marry.

Honey, I would have told you this story, but I would have let the goddamn prince swallow that cherry, every last deadly gulp, and I would have told you about the girl watching as his face turned blue and still, and I would have told you about the grim satisfaction she felt in that moment when she realized that she needed to let love go in order to live.

You never got to know what it was like to grow gray, to grow bent and crinkly. You never got to be anything. I would have taught you how to be a woman, honey, how to suck in your gut and paint on a happy face, how to hold life in your very cells, how to gnaw at the bone of your pain until you could swallow it in pieces, until it became something you could endure. I would have taught you how to be a better woman than me. No one would have ever called you difficult or even thought the goddamn word with you around.

Gotenu, but I made sure there was no shiva for you. I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting on the floor, tearing up cloth until my fingers bled, receiving all those visitors who would look at me with such goddamn pity in their eyes. Later, your father gave you a name so that we could find you in the world to come, but I didn’t want to know it, I told him I would kill him in his sleep if he told me what it was, and I meant it, and to this day, I still do.

There you are. I can feel your small weight next to me on the bed, and it’s like we haven’t spent a moment apart. Your eyes are so dark and beautiful. It’s a wonder that I even created you.

And goddamn it all, my life was more than that! More than just my sons, my husbands, more than being a mother and a wife! I had dreams, hopes, pictures in my mind that no one could imagine. Why this, even now at the end, why all these men who had made up my life? Sure, I had loved them all, but honey, does that have to consume everything I ever was, my whole entire being? Shouldn’t I have been more than just who I was to them?

But.

Who turned off the light? Stop that now. I’m wide awake.


Taylor Kobran author photoTaylor Kobran holds an MFA from Hollins University. Her work has been published in the Nottingham Review, Lunch Ticket, Emerge Literary Journal, the City Quill, and the Ilanot Review. She enjoys spending time with her dog and alphabetizing her overflowing bookcase. She lives in New Jersey.

Image credit: Alex Harvey on Unsplash

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

FUCK DONALD TRUMP by Kyle Kouri

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackJune 29, 2020

Donald Trump and Mike Pence with wives

FUCK DONALD TRUMP
by Kyle Kouri

And then he won and we kept drinking about it, what else to do but keep drinking about it, and no one knew whether to stay or not, it was worse too because the alcohol wasn’t doing anything, and all I wanted was to be with Jean, but she was somewhere else, with someone else, so I had to go home alone, but first I bought groceries at the place that stays open all night, discount tuna salad, spelt bagels, cream cheese, and then walked south, not quite trusting the reality, a nameless void ahead of me, and my apartment was dead, it was dead quiet, and I hadn’t done dishes earlier, which is the most depressing thing, and I unpacked my groceries, and put a bagel in the toaster, and then had to clean a knife to smear on the cream cheese, and sponge a plate for the bagel to sit on, and after preparing my meal I lay in bed with it, and watched his acceptance speech, at which point Nick texted me, saying “Oh my god,” and I responded, “Oh my god,” and Donald said, “Sorry to keep ya waiting folks,” but his coolness inspired—I hate to say it—the most awful reverence in me, and I could not take my eyes away from the screen, wearing my t-shirt Jean used to wear to sleep, our Howl tattoos underneath, and I felt the most unbearable loneliness, thinking that I’d have to get used to this, thinking that Donald’s son was Damien, the demon child, although it’s possible that he’s a very nice boy who happens to be wrapped up in this, like we’re all wrapped up in this, bagels with cream cheese will never be the same for me, I slept, obviously, terribly, and when I woke up there was no light outside, and I didn’t know what to do, so I packed my whiskey in a bag (note to self: take seriously your drinking problem), and walked south toward Time Square, wearing my Beats headphones, pop music, Spotify, dancing in forward motion like I do sometimes, and when I got to Time Square there was a man wearing Donald Trump’s face, and Donald Trump’s suit, and this man boogied with an old white lady, I hated her, and wondered what his motives were, but felt awe-inspired, and was compelled to start filming them, and it was a perfect video, starting with Donald and the old white lady, and there was an old black man there, whacking bucket drums, I shot him too, I circled slowly around the entire scene, and I captured the perfect moment, Donald throwing up two peace signs while behind him was the “Forever” part of the Forever 21 store, and to the left of that was a huge, sparkling Disney sign, and below on the street a hole billowed wraiths of smoke, and it was all literally a metaphor, and I twirled around capturing the tourists who were Instagramming our president, then whirled back around, and zoomed in as he posed with a smug brat who yelled, “Make America great again!” and I’m venting now, something horrible happened: the video collapsed, my phone had no space, what I captured was gone, and I thought for a second what if I just lost the most iconic Day After Footage, but quickly realized I had not, I had done nothing meaningful, and as I walked away I saw what you imagine every carnie ever looks like pull off Donald’s face, and he smoked a cigarette—show’s over, folks—I walked south, it was about time to crack open the whiskey (noon), and my lips kissed glass beneath a brown paper bag and I felt, for seconds, wonderful, but my mood turned, I was so sad, I kept walking against the bile, the black sun, Beats back on, and in the 30s everything seemed typical, a normal day in my city, but at Union Square it got bleak again, the protesters had their signs, I observed them, then picked up a sign, then flip-flopped my thoughts, deciding it was time to go home, which I did, and kept drinking there, in my book-littered echo room, and ate discount tuna salad, then showered, but the stream was either too hot or too cold, the head made shifts all on its own, plus the pressure sucked, so I got out, called my friends, none picked up, very frustrating, I kept drinking whiskey, and had a few beers, opened Facebook, and clicked on a link to Twitter’s Day One of Trump feed, where I saw heartbreaking things, and almost cried, but I didn’t cry, it was something like the week my father died, who had Donald’s body type, and Donald’s fat hands, but wasn’t all that bad, and I knew, just fucking knew I would not sleep that night, but I did sleep for a couple hours before shooting straight up in bed, during the Hour of the Wolf, my body shaking, aching, grieving Jean, but she was somewhere else, in someone else’s bed, outside a car drove by, shadows danced, a ripple on the sheets, her long slender legs, and there were sirens too, but they sounded different now, ominous, portentous, and then morning came, it was such a sunny day, a beautiful day, but it was not healing time, there was mourning to be done, and I walked to Columbia, because I’m a student there, and saw one Red Hat bobbing, she had a triumphant look, as she posed in a selfie on the steps, behind her were well-meaning protestors, and I thought of They Live and whispered, “They’re among us,” which was silly and made me laugh, but my laughter had a blunt edge, it didn’t sit well, and as I walked deeper into campus I saw a black man wearing a cardboard sign that said, “This is Amerikkka,” and yes, it was, I wanted to embrace him, but I was wearing a Slipknot t-shirt, and have lots of tattoos, so when he saw me staring, with what I thought were empathetic eyes, I think he got the wrong idea, and more sadness hit me, how deep are these divides, but the feeling subsided, because he pulled out a cigarette and said, “Got a light?” and I lit the Spirit before going inside, where I had class with Tin House Rob, and we all sat down, and there was a Trump Supporter in the room, jacket on, a few people tried to glare, but weariness took hold, like what’s even the point, and Tin House Rob asked, “Why do we write?” and you won’t believe it, but the Trump Supporter said, “What do you mean we?” and it was a shocking moment, it said everything, but then Tin House Rob said, “Um, I mean the people in this room right now,” and that was the perfect response, I told the class I write to learn about things, to understand, and I think that went over well, in any case I needed a drink, and after class I wandered south, incapable of reading words, ended up at a bar, where I drank all night, with Shathan and Bill, and I hate to say it but we were three white men, belligerent, bouncing around, in what may have seemed like celebration, we may have looked like the enemy, I felt trapped in my skin, I felt shame and hopelessness, but then my mood took a one-eighty turn, I wanted to be radical, I was ready to fight and die, for my country—for my black, Muslim, Mexican, gay, lesbian, and transgender brothers and sisters—who I love so much, whose lives are more meaningful than mine, I would die, the night became a cave, my vision strangled, darkness on all sides, until I passed out and slept like I was dead, and had the most amazing dreams, I’ll spare the details though, and in the morning I was refreshed, yet slightly concerned, where had my hangovers gone? must be a sign, I decided to write and wrote a spiteful piece, full of anger and hate, that sneered and spit, it was, in some ways, the literary self-death of me, and I smoked seven cigarettes, one after the other, on the stoop, and drank a huge glass of whiskey to sober up, and then Jean showed up, unexpectedly, inevitably, my dark-haired Jean, we looked into each other’s eyes, saw everything, and my apartment was full of life, I kissed her mouth hard, but softly kissed her neck, we lay entwined, one perfect being, and made love, for a long time, I’m home in her, I pulled Jean’s hair and smacked her ass, she scratched my back and begged me to take the condom off, “I want you to come inside me, take the fucking condom off,” in this time of death, we wanted to make life, I took the condom off, we made life, then lay in bed, laughing about something, I don’t remember what, but it was a perfect moment, I felt whole again, happy, alive, and didn’t even notice that I did it but I was already drinking another huge glass of whiskey and Jean didn’t judge me—or did she?—at least she never says anything, the sun had set, night again, and Jean left, back to him, my apartment was dead, darkness, no dark hair, and I had to get used to the silence, the cold too, it was cold like a tomb, or like my apartment’s always cold, and I just sat there for a while, heart racing, palpitating, becoming unhinged, and I worried for myself, but distantly, because I didn’t care, there were so many bigger things, that’s what I told myself, but I could not sit still, so I stood, paced, reread my spiteful piece, it was full of hate and made me high, I called my friends, they were down to drink, we went to the bar, it was a scene, and though the music was low, I still danced, like I was insane, and shouted, “Why isn’t anybody else dancing? Huh?” and Nina said, “Maybe that’s a sign,” and I laughed so hard, what a great dig, but I didn’t stop, never do when I’m on a roll, and I talked to friends, we all laughed, needed too, and I kept drinking, just didn’t stop, and then there was daylight, another beautiful day, but actually only from inside, it was secretly cold and that chill got into hands and the November wind whipped like ugh, but I kept walking south until I was downtown, where I met a friend and drank, even though I wanted to read, but there was no turning back, so we went bar bopping and ended up at The Library, on Houston and A, where I know the bartenders but they never give me free drinks, but it was two-for-one until eight o’clock, drink up, we did, then Jamie the Anarchist arrived, and he was charged, he told me about the protests, and I was feeling risqué so said the protests looked weak, and he said they weren’t weak, he said we needed to start now, we needed the country to know and I said okay, that’s true, I never know about these things, but I ventured that what I wanted to protest were the hate crimes, and he said that was good, we went to another bar, Sluski joined—an old friend, the only person I’ve ever punched in the face—and he would not say who he voted for, which meant he was a Trump Supporter, and things got a little sticky later, when he showed us a meme that featured a black man’s penis, which was the butt of some joke, and immediately Jamie the Anarchist and I went off on Sleuce, screaming, literally screaming on the sidewalk, “That man’s penis is not funny! You cannot make a joke about that man’s penis! You making a joke about his penis is racist, it’s not harmless, it’s violent, lives are literally at stake,” and Sloozer said something so stupid, he said, “You guys, I don’t see race, that’s on you, I just see a big ol”—we stopped him there, because I didn’t want to lose a friend, and we changed the subject, marched south, together, in the full moonshine, and went into another bar, where we bought many beers, and cheered to many things—everlasting friendship, fighting for something right, the death of postmodernism and rise of meaningful life—then Sleazy said, “To beating the pussy up!” and nobody cheered, but he was willing to listen, and changed his cheers, “To really good sex!” and okay, we all cheered, he was still our friend, we hit the streets, walked further south, headed to one last bar, the bar was a scene, there were so many people dancing there, I dove in, it was depraved, it was a bacchanal, I don’t know if it was good, I was under a disco ball, chugging Lone Stars, and it feels weird that I picked that beer, but I drank up and danced, froth clogging my nostrils, alcohol spilling all over my mouth, neck, and chest, and that’s when the song came on, it didn’t seem real, it was a hip-hop song, mostly bass and drums, the chorus was “Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!” we all sang along, wearing stank faces while screaming along, middle fingers in the air, we danced, against all that had happened and all that would come, we danced, together, American, a single organism, nowhere, everywhere, between venting and nihilism, joy and despair, bizarre and obvious, “Fuck Donald Trump!” we sang, “Fuck Donald Trump!” underneath the shimmering disco ball, which was a world on fire, that stole our image, fucked it, flung it back at us, and it was one of the most upsetting and gratifying moments of my life,


Kyle Kouri author photoKyle Kouri is an MFA candidate in fiction at Columbia University. He also makes visual art. His most recent exhibition, “Long After You’re Gone,” opened at 7 Dunham Gallery in April 2015. His fiction has appeared on horrorsleazetrash.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @kylekouri. He writes in the Chocolate Lab at Columbia with Nathan Fetherolf.

Original illustration by @bleedingpiss on Instagram

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

THE FIRST COMMUNION by Emanuel Melo

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2017 by thwackJune 29, 2020

Girl in communion dress in front of ivy-covered bricks

THE FIRST COMMUNION
by Emanuel Melo

The taxi had finally arrived. The driver watched Eulália Dias as she descended from her front porch one heavy step at a time. He got out of the cab to open the back door for her, smiled an apology for being late, and asked where she was headed.

“I go to St. Helen’s Church on Dundas, you know where it is? But I need to sit in the front seat because of my legs. Please, you have to hurry. I’m going to be late for my granddaughter’s First Communion.”

“What time you need to be there?”

“11 o’clock.”

“No problem. We have time to get there. From Euclid and Queen to Dundas and Lansdowne is not too far.”

Once the driver saw that Eulália had finally managed to latch her seat belt, he was off.

“You Catholic?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. All my life, before I come to Canada.”

“In my country, India, we have many Catholics.”

“You Catholic, too?”

“No, my family is Hindu. We come to Canada ten years ago. I have three sons and one daughter. They all go to university. I have degree in accounting from my country but can’t get a job in my field, so I drive taxi, two shifts a day. You have to work hard in Canada.”

“Oh, sure. I work hard when I come to Canada, too. I worked in a factory, you know? I get up five o’clock in the morning. Now I miss it so much.”

“Where are you from?”

“Azores. You know Azores? Very beautiful. They say my island, São Miguel, is a green island, but Canada is green, too. When I first come to Toronto, I am young, I can walk everywhere, but now I can’t walk very much.”

“How many children do you have?”

“I have three daughters and two sons. Eight grandchildren. All beautiful, healthy.”

“Why do you have to take taxi to your granddaughter’s First Communion? One of your children should have picked you up. It’s a special day.”

“They all live too far away. Ana, in Oakville. Lita in Mississauga, and the youngest one, Fátima, in Woodbridge. Matthew lives in Montreal. He works at McGill University. John lives on Dufferin Street, close to the church. He’s the father of my granddaughter making her First Communion. Meghan, she so nice and beautiful, tall and skinny. I don’t think she eats enough. But they all too busy to come and get me.”

“Children today can be so ungrateful.”

“Oh, yes, but I am used to it. Thanks be to God that I can stay in my house after my husband died. Three years now and, believe me, I still don’t get used to him gone. He was my life. After he die, my children all so nice to me, they all say, Mom, we come get you on the weekends. But then I see that they don’t mean it. Maybe once, maybe two times, somebody come to get me, but now only Christmas and Easter.”

“That’s terrible. In my culture we expect our children to be respectful and obedient, and to take care of their parents when we are old. Maybe in your culture is different?”

“No, no, when I was young, everybody respected their elders. Now, all my friends tell me the same thing about their own children. It’s the busy life and nobody has time for the old people.”

Eulália looked at her watch in a panic.

“Is already getting late. Oh, paciência, I am going to miss the First Communion.”

“We’re now at Sheridan. Just a few more blocks. There it is, see? I told you I would get you there on time. You must not cry now, be happy. You will be with your family for the celebration and then you have lots to eat back at the house.”

The driver held Eulália Dias by the arm and walked her to the front door of the church.

“Thank you so much, and God bless you.”

“You’re welcome, Mama. You enjoy yourself.”

Eulália pushed the heavy doors open. Organ music spilled outside, as did the chatter of the congregation. She walked up the aisle trying to find a seat.

Ai, meu Deus. She would never see her granddaughter in her First Communion dress. She had to find her family, but all the benches were so full of people. A kind soul made room for her to sit down. And just in time. She didn’t think she could walk any more. It was a big church, beautiful, but not as nice as her St. Mary’s.

Ah, all the little girls going up for their First Communion. She wondered which one was Meghan. They were wearing such plain dresses and no veils. When Eulália made her own First Communion, she’d worn a beautiful long white dress, and on her head a silk tiara with little pearls sewn around it. Queridos tempos, those were happy days.

Such a long line up to get to the altar. Eulália hoped she’d see her granddaughter on her way back from her own Communion. And there she was. Eulália waved at her but Meghan didn’t see her. Why was she talking to that little girl beside her? In Eulália’s day, they would be sitting still and praying. Oh, and there was Ana, and Lita, and their kids.

“Ana, give me a kiss. Kevin, Michael, come give avó a beijinho, just one little kiss.”

“We didn’t see you, Mom. Where are you sitting?”

“I come a few minutes late but I had to sit in the back. Now I can stay here with you. Can’t you make room for me to sit down? No? Then I’ll go sit behind you with Lita and the girls. I’m not making a fuss. I just want to sit with my granddaughters. Melinda, Jessica, come give grandmother a kiss.”

Mass was coming to the end. Eulália thanked God for it. She wondered where John and his wife were. Then she spotted them, way up by the altar, always talking to strangers.

“Lita, who are they talking to over there?”

“I don’t know, Mom, maybe some friends of theirs. I’m sorry that we could not drive you. Maybe Ana can drive you back. They have plenty of space in their big car.”

“I come by taxi. Otherwise I would miss the First Communion. Meghan looks so nice, I hope she comes over to see me.”

“The children are taking a group photograph. She’ll be along soon.”

“John, parabéns, congratulations, on Meghan’s First Communion. Bend over and give your mother a kiss. I have a special present to give Meghan but I want to give it to her alone. See? It’s my gold chain that I’ve had since I was a little girl.”

“Thanks, Mãe, she’ll love it.”

“I want to have my picture taken with her, too.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take one outside before we head out to the restaurant. Who is going to drive you there? You could come with us. We have room in our car.”

“That’s OK, I’m going with Ana. Where’s your brother, Matthew?”

“His plane got delayed so he will meet us at the restaurant.”

“Oh, que pena, how sad that he missed his niece’s First Communion.”

“Ok, Mãe, I gotta go. Sandra is calling me. I’ll see you outside.”

Eulália waved to Sandra. As Eulália’s daughter-in-law, Sandra’s duty was to come over and greet Eulália, but she was too busy talking to her friends.

Eulália looked around and hoped there was a washroom in this church.

“Fátima, I almost didn’t see you. Where are the kids?”

“Hi, Mom, we arrived late. Trevor took the kids outside. They weren’t behaving themselves. How did you get here today, taxi? Who’s driving you back to the restaurant? Oh, Ana, that’s good. You need the washroom? Yes, there’s one at the front of the church.”

“People are already leaving the church. I better hurry up.”

“Don’t worry, take your time. I’m sure Ana will wait for you.”

Eulália walked alone to the bathroom near the vestibule, and held on to the benches for support.

Her children were always nas pressas, always hurrying, with no time for anything.

Eulália found the bathroom too small to move around in. It had a very low toilet. Eulália was grateful for her tall toilet at home, with a handrail for support.

Suddenly it became very quiet, and Eulália tried to hurry up. If only there had been a handle to help her get up from the seat. Meu Deus, my God, she could not get up. Those legs of hers were good for nothing. LITA, ANA, FÁTIMA! Not even one of her daughters was close enough to hear her.

Oh, if only God could help her get up. She finally managed to stand up and felt relieved.

Hello? hello? She sensed that everyone had already left.

Why was the church so dark? She heard voices outside. What were they all laughing about while she was stuck inside alone? Oh, if only she could walk faster. She tried a heavy door and found it locked! She saw the Blessed Sacrament altar by the side door and felt for certain that this must be the way out. Please, dear God, she prayed, help me get out of this church. She sent up a prayer of thanks when the door opened. She had panicked when she had thought that she would never get out. But where did everyone go? Parece impossível! She could not believe they had all left her behind. They would be sorry when they didn’t see her at the restaurant.

Eulália was relieved to see a bench nearby and a little garden shrine with a statue of Our Lady of Fátima.

Ai, Querida Mãe. Even she, the Heavenly Mother, had been abandoned by her Son on the Cross. Eulália sat down to pray the Rosary until someone would come back to get her. She could not wait to see Meghan’s face when she gave her the gold chain.


Emanuel Melo author photoEmanuel Melo was born in the Azores and immigrated to Canada at the age of nine. He lives in Toronto. His short stories have been included in Cleaver, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada: An Anthology, MEMÓRIA: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers. His articles have appeared in Mundo Açoriano, (TWAS) Toronto World Arts Scene, and on the website of the Canadian Centre for Azorean Research and Studies. His short story “Avó Lives Alone,” was a finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada’s 20th Annual Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers in 2013. Website: www.thetorzorean.com

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Published on March 22, 2017 in Fiction, Issue 17. (Click for permalink.)

NO REPEAT CUSTOMERS by Josh Wagner

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 28, 2016 by thwackMay 3, 2019

"Home Seekers" by Maja Ruznic (painting)

NO REPEAT CUSTOMERS
by Josh Wagner

Early one Sunday morning Dean and I stumble past the First Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, the only church in town old enough to have God’s own handprint cemented in the walkway. We’ve been up a while, still not quite ready to pass out. It’s the corkscrew tail end of hour six or seven where synchronous waves start desynchronizing. The afterglow before the crash. Our general consensus is what the hell, so we sway on over through the courtyard where crocus buds pepper juniper hedges and murky stained glass islands float on seas of dried blood brick. A sign says welcome. The door creaks as it swings.

The last thing I see before going inside, carved into the arch in vaguely medieval script, are these words: A riddle: How are we desperate and empty half of the day, but content and satisfied the other half?

We stand in the warm, orange entryway, facing a cherry wood box on a pedestal where a laminated index card suggests we please insert our tithes and offerings through the tiny slit. I see no lids or doors. How do they get the money out? Once upon a time gift-giving was a ritual of reciprocity. A way to spice up commerce with warm, fuzzy feelings. Giving a gift was investing in favors. Maybe this is why the church hordes wealth, as a kindness, to prevent burdening poor souls with the weight of obligation.

We pay our dollar and sit in the back. I should mention we’re the only customers. The room is empty other than the priest. A church without a congregation.

“It’s a ghost town,” Dean whispers.

He’s a little on the young side, the priest. He’s buried his face in liturgy. He expounds his message in mutters, monotone, and monotempo. Reads his minutes like the chairman of a board meeting. It isn’t exactly a sermon—at least not any kind of sermon I’ve heard before.

Not that my past experiences were exactly fire and brimstone—I mean, that at least would’ve been something. The congregation where I grew up tore each other down with a battery of teeth, grinding knives in backs, eye-plucking beaks, and first stones cast. Insinuated gossip and passive aggressive witch hunts. Like the entire social scene was a sort of passion play to demonstrate how bad hell could get if they ever brought in some real talent.

It’s the same in all religions, I guess. Except for Buddhism. Buddhism’s just a conspiracy to keep us all breathing.

The priest drones on for twenty more minutes about some mysterious council. Finally closes his ledger and asks us to open our hymnals to some page.

I flip through: God is Pretty Okay I Guess, All You Christians Make Some Sounds, How Much Does the Lord Weigh (In Ounces), Boilerplate of Grace. I raise my hand. I’m ignored. The priest begins to sing, barely above a whisper. I get up and walk to the back of the church and browse the pamphlets and bulletin boards. Events scheduled for every day, with plenty of volunteer signatures to go around. Maybe that’s where everyone is. As if life doesn’t have enough mysteries. Where do all the socks go? Will I die inhaling or exhaling?

I sit back down next to Dean and the priest decides to step off stage and come say hi. He doesn’t stop singing until he’s inside pantsing distance. We get a sampler plate from the catalog of looks priests are required to master before graduating from priest school.

“I don’t know the songs,” I say.

“You can still sing.”

He tells us God delights in spontaneous bursts of creation, while to understand a thing is to be one step removed—a vessel for knowledge rather than an outpouring of the creative multiplicity of all which needs not be known.

“Tell us something we want to hear,” Dean says.

“Dogs will lick up the blood of tyrants, the wicked, and those who abuse the poor.”

“Did you just make that up?” I ask.

“I’m paraphrasing.”

“What else?”

“It is wise to build a wall, but foolish to repair one,” the priest says.

Then he asks us why we’ve come.

“We just walked in,” Dean says. “We paid our dollar.”

“Ours is a cosmos of fluctuating currency,” the priest says, smiling. “The best way to love God is to love people, not by subscribing to any of the big box brand soul scrubbers.”

“Is that why no one’s here?” I say.

“You’re here,” he says.

Have you ever been so high you feel sober?

“Everyone who walks through these doors shall be raptured by sermon’s end,” the priest says.

“No repeat customers?”

“We know we’re doing our job right when we put ourselves out of business.”

Now open the gates and enter heaven. In with joy, out with obligation.

“But first,” he says. “Did you solve the riddle?”

I look over my shoulder. The words on the arch. How are we desperate and empty half of the day, but content and satisfied the other half? I feel the walls jiggle and hum until they melt away.

I want to tell you the answer, but first I have to take a deep breath and hold it for as long as I possibly can.


Headshot of Josh WagnerJosh Wagner is currently on the move, trying to live in a different country every three months. He’s written four novels (including Shapes the Sunlight Takes, Smashing Laptops, and Deadwind Sea), the collaborative novella Mystery Mark, three graphic novels (notably the award-winning Fiction Clemens), a collection of plays titled Bleached Bones, and a book of shorts called Nothing in Mind. His work has been published by Cafe Irreal, Not One of Us, Medulla Review, Lovecraft eZine, Asymmetrical Press, and Image Comics. More at www.joshwagner.org

Image credits: Painting: “Home Seekers” by Maja Ruznic. Headshot photo by Rocío Briceño.

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Published on December 28, 2016 in Fiction, Issue 16. (Click for permalink.)

THE MAESTRO by Amin Matalqa

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 28, 2016 by thwackMay 3, 2019

Sketch of giant cockroach speaking at a podium in front of other cockroaches

THE MAESTRO
by Amin Matalqa
illustrated by Orlando Saverino-Loeb and Meredith Leich

William, who was a cockroach, had a deep love for the music of Beethoven. Born and raised behind the walls of the Cincinnati Concert Hall, he grew up nurturing a passion for the romantics, much like his forefathers, with an affinity for the operas of Wagner and Puccini. To say that music ran in his blood, while biologically inaccurate, would be an understatement. It traced back to his great grandfather Wilhelm the first, who was an immigrant from Germany famous for boasting to the uncultured Cincinnati roaches about life behind the walls of the Berlin Opera House (legend had it that he once sat on Herbert Von Karajan’s shoe while the maestro conducted Brahms’ Requiem), and to his grandfather, who was taking a stroll to contemplate the thematic development of his first symphony when he was stepped on by none other than Leonard Bernstein. When he was still alive, William’s father longed for the day the family would return to the motherland and hear the acoustics of the famous venues there, but he died while scouting the route to the airport (he was captured and swallowed by a drunk man over a $20 bet).

William’s realization that he was destined to become a great maestro dawned upon him when he first heard the 1957 recording of Arturo Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s Eroica, the magnificent 3rd Symphony. He could feel the divine power of music under the baton of the Italian maestro and from that moment on, he knew he had what it takes. He owed the world proof that under his guidance the Cincinnati Symphony could become as great as Berlin, Vienna or the New York Philharmonic. All he had to do was inject a fraction of Toscanini’s passion to inspire them. He had to think of a way to take over as conductor, because though the local musicians were promising, their leader, in William’s humble but impassioned opinion, was an aloof hack who waved his baton with the stiffness of a rusty Soviet metronome and kept the cold expressionless face of an English countryside butler. He knew nothing of the spiritual suffering necessary to convey true musical euphoria. William, on the other hand, had torment burning in his neopterin DNA.

His mother always reminded him that he could be special if he committed his life to nurturing his gift. His antennae were unusually long for a roach his size, and his natural ability to conduct precise rhythm with the right antenna and emotional dynamics with the left was a skill that brought attention (sometimes too much of it) from the ladies. However, let there be no question, his motivation was always driven by his sheer love of music and loyalty to Cincinnati.

When William divulged his mission to his pregnant sister, Ursulla (whom he also mated with), she had to sit down and take a deep breath through the spiracles in her sides (because cockroaches don’t have lungs). William was about to embark on a quest that would forever define him either as a courageous hero or a suicidal fool. No cockroach had ever conducted an orchestra of humans and survived. Ursulla waved her antennae hysterically screaming, “Are you out of your mind?” She begged and pleaded, trying to stop him, but William refused to listen. He was willing to die for his dream.

His mission was simple: first, lock the conductor in his back room while the orchestra awaits his arrival; second, rush down to the stage and take his place at the podium before the musicians get impatient or suspicious of a mutiny; and third, tap his antenna loud enough to demand everyone’s attention, then give the downbeat with undeniable authority, leaving the orchestra with no choice but to begin playing under his direction. If he could get these three steps out of the way, then he could focus on leading them to play from their hearts instead of their intellect.

They were to perform Mahler’s 9th that night, and he had spent countless hours studying the score, memorizing it, note for note, measure by measure, while listening to the defender of mediocrity butcher it in the rehearsals. William would get frustrated by the lethargic interpretation diffusing any build up of tension or angst from the strings. He would stand at the side of the stage calling out, “Faster, faster!” or “Schnell,” in case anyone spoke German, but his attempts were futile from that far away. Ursulla would walk up and find him screaming and banging his head against the walls. She would beg him to calm down, to which he would reply that if he didn’t care so much he wouldn’t be so upset, and what’s the point of life if a roach didn’t care about something with all his heart?

William was musically prepared to take over, but he was aware that if his coup were to succeed, he would face one major challenge: an orchestra of middle-aged humans didn’t have strong enough vision to spot a little cockroach his size. He wasn’t so worried about the strings in the front, but the horns in the back, they could pose a big problem. How terrible would Mahler’s 9th be with improper dynamics from the horns? William felt a shortness of breath as his anxiety returned.

One of the fundamental lessons his mother had instilled in him when he was little (before she was poisoned by a lethal combo of Cypermethrin and Acephate) was to conquer his fear by turning it into fire to fuel him. “Roaches,” she said, “have the tendency to become brooding creatures who submit to their fears. Always running away from this and that, they spend most of their lives so afraid that they get nothing done.” William promised he would never live that way, so on that fateful day, he took a deep breath, munched down on some cardboard, and set forth on his quest as Ursulla bade him farewell with proud tears filling her compound eyes.

◊

The clock indicated quarter till eight and the crowds were taking their seats around the concert hall as William snuck through pipes and under doors, finding his way to the green room where the conductor was sitting facing the mirror. His body was still, almost lifeless, and his eyes were closed. He was meditating. William scoffed at the crooked posture in the man’s back when he felt his curiosity, like a gravitational force, pull him closer towards the conductor. He climbed the dresser and crawled halfway up the mirror, feeling the brightness of light bulbs engulf him with warmth. He was up to the man’s eye line, so close he could smell his pungent body odor, which made him tingle with pleasure. All his hatred, jealousy and resentment evaporated in the magnitude of this moment. In their place, admiration was born. Here he was, a simple cockroach, standing on the reflection of the maestro’s face, leader of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

The conductor opened his eyes and William froze, fighting every instinct begging him to run for his life. He held his stance, naked and exposed, yet without fear. The maestro then did the unexpected: he slowly leaned forward and looked at William. Was he admiring our hero? Did he recognize the uniqueness of his antennae? Perhaps it was the roach’s courage that demanded respect. Could this be the moment? Had William finally taken that small step towards a life-long friendship, that giant leap on behalf of his entire species, a species that had been cruelly misunderstood by the human race for thousands of years? William then waved his right antenna, as if to say, “Well hello, human,” making the maestro smile. Oh, if only Ursulla were there to witness this moment of first contact between these two unlikely beings.

But the moment was all too brief. Whap! The conductor slammed his shoe onto the mirror, barely missing William by a hair. The betrayal! The mirror shattered and William fell onto the ground. Whap! Another attempt. The conductor was trying to murder him. But why? The fool! They were this close to striking a friendship and changing the interspecies dynamic for their respective peoples. William zipped his way across the floor, zigzagging to survive two more violent swats, until he found refuge under a door. He rested in a safe dark corner for a moment, made a quick prayer, then bolted out into the hallway where members of the orchestra were rushing to get on stage.

His mission had failed, but cockroaches never had a reputation for good planning. He had to come up with something new, a plan B, and he had to do it quickly.

◊

By the time the orchestra was settled on stage and the instruments were getting tuned, the hideous conductor stepped out of the room.  William hid in a corner and waited for him to pass, at which point he marched close behind where he could stay out of sight. He followed him all the way to the stage where he could hear the chatter in the crowds die down like rain after a storm. The lights had dimmed down and the concert was about to commence.

The orchestra waited in silence and William felt a sudden need to pee, which he did. The maestro then took to the stage and William followed him as the crowds burst into roaring applause. The heat of the spotlight washed over our heroic roach. It was a moment of glory. They were applauding as if they knew what he had gone through to get here. As if they understood how he had risked his life and challenged his own instincts to overcome his inherent fear. This was a reward for his courage, but he knew not to let it get to his head. It was a distraction and he couldn’t allow vanity to cloud his vision again. He had one objective in mind and nothing less. He was here to conduct and infuse his passion into the Cincinnati Symphony. He had to convey the beauty of Mahler’s 9th, a symphony portraying the inevitability of death.

He let the applause die down before walking onto the podium, then took a little bow and turned to face the orchestra. Unlike the human hack at the helm, William didn’t need to read the score because he had the entire 9th memorized. He stood behind the lazy stiff and tapped his antennae to the ground, calling for the orchestra’s attention. He could feel their eyes collectively stare at him, perhaps with bewilderment, but there was no time for vanity. The symphony was awaiting its birth under his baton. He raised his antennae and gave the downbeat.

A cockroach maestro directing music next to a music stand

 

Magic happened. The harp, the horns, the strings, like waves of a morning’s calm ocean, carried each note into the air, and William closed his eyes to feel the sensations growing inside him. The strings swirled around the escalating horns, then forces brewed with tension in a series of crescendos building towards a collision course. Wave after wave hit him like sonic flashes transcending time and space. It was as if Mahler’s ghost was standing before him, perhaps even taking possession of his body. Oh, if only his forefathers could see him in the glory of this moment as he simmered in the bliss of music. Suddenly, while continuing to conduct, never missing a beat, his wings triggered and spread open for the first time in his life. On their own, they started flapping rapidly, lifting him up into the air. William took flight and hovered up to the maestro’s head. The view from above was majestic. He no longer had to stare at the orchestra’s shoes anymore. The music had completely taken over him while his antennae conducted with the spiritual force of Toscanini, Bernstein, and Karajan combined.

He could feel their eyes staring at him. The playing continued. The timpani declared his arrival.

When the trumpets made their announcement, he looked to the side of the stage and found Ursulla staring at him in disbelief. She was proud and in tears. William smiled to her as his antennae waved up and down in perfect meter, feeding the orchestra’s swelling dynamics. That was also when he flew into the maestro’s face and accidentally got sucked into the vortex of his mouth. The music paused as William struggled to run across the surface of the man’s flapping tongue. He was drenched in saliva when the conductor spit him out and struck him with one swift blow. William crashed onto the ground and barely blinked when a massive shoe descended and crushed him.

The music returned. The French horns mourned as our hero accepted his demise. But there was one last breath left in him. Ursulla was crying as she ran to the love of her life and held his broken legs and torso. William could hear the solo violin play its gentle melody when he gave Ursulla his last dying words: “Tell the others, show them, find the videotape.” And he died as the end of the first movement came to a close.

Video cameras had recorded the concert, and the next day, upon the broadcast of the incident on the news, the entire population of Cincinnati Concert Hall roaches gathered to watch William heroically conduct Mahler’s 9th from the air then sacrifice his life for the one thing he loved. They collectively agreed, though William was gone, his interpretation of the 9th was the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s finest performance to date.

William became a legend to all roaches. A symbol of seeking one’s bliss and living without fear. And cockroaches flew in from all around the state to pay their respects.

The next week, the management of the Cincinnati Concert Hall spent $1,376.32 (after the $100 coupon) of their annual budget to have the entire building fumigated.


Headshot of Amin MatalqaBorn in Jordan, raised in Ohio, Amin Matalqa is a writer/director whose feature films include the Sundance-winning Jordanian Oscar entry, Captain Abu Raed; Walt Disney Studios’ soccer drama, The United; the romantic comedy, Strangely In Love based on Dostoevsky’s White Nights; and the upcoming adventure, The Rendezvous, starring Stana Katic (Castle) and Raza Jaffrey (Code Black) which premiers in the fall.  Amin lives in Los Angeles and has an MFA in Film Directing from the American Film Institute.  Next up: his debut book of short stories: Heroes & Idiots: Vol 1.


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Headshot of Orlando Saverino-LoebOrlando Saverino-Loeb is a Philadelphia-born artist. He graduates with a fine arts degree in painting and drawing and a minor in Italian from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in December 2016. He specializes in painting, using acrylic paint with an assortment of other mediums. His thesis exhibition at the Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery was entitled Individualized Pareidolia. He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Italy and has lived there for two summers studying art and Italian. He began his college career at the University of Cincinnati to study industrial design for one year before transferring to Tyler. He has shown his work at Infusion lounge in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Art Collective. You can follow his work on Instagram @orlandosaverinoart. Orlando is a Cleaver Emerging Artist.
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Headshot of Meredith LeichMeredith Leich is a videomaker, painter, drawer, and writer, who works with video installation, 3D animation, watercolor, music, and text. Born and raised in Boston, she has made her home in Berlin, Brooklyn, Jaffa, San Francisco, and now Chicago, making and teaching art. You can see her work at meredithleich.com and vimeo.com/outmoded.

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Published on December 28, 2016 in Fiction, Issue 16. (Click for permalink.)

JINJU IN THE DUST by Robert Hinderliter

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 28, 2016 by thwackDecember 17, 2016

jinju-in-the-dust

JINJU IN THE DUST
by Robert Hinderliter

This morning, out my window, a strange amber film over the sky. The usually crowded streets now mostly empty, only a few people hurrying down the sidewalk, heads bent in medical masks. In the distance, the temple on the hill just a faint shimmer.

Something on the wind.

Nuclear fallout? Had North Korea finally dropped the bomb? I check my phone. Like always, no messages. I look out the window again. Clay-tiled rooftops, a cat slinking under a parked car, a row of cherry blossom trees, the petals scattered along the sidewalk—everything in sepia, like a photograph from a hundred years ago.

And then I remember: Asian Dust. My boss at the English academy warned me about it, told me to stay inside when it blew through. It comes from the deserts of China and Mongolia, he said. Every spring it swirls east over the continent, turning the skies yellow and causing a respiratory nuisance. Koreans have written about it for thousands of years. Hwangsa, they call it: “yellow dust.”

It’s not like I had any exciting Sunday plans anyway. I close the blinds and make my way back to bed, kicking over a few empty bottles from the night before. I’d been up late reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and drinking soju—cheap Korean liquor. As I crawl back under the covers, I check the clock: already past eleven. Might as well sleep a few more hours. Let the dust bury the city.

But before I can fall asleep again, my downstairs neighbor starts sobbing. This has become a regular event over the past few weeks. Long, choking sobs—the sounds of true anguish. I’ve never seen her or even heard her speak, but from her crying I would guess she was middle-aged. I know nothing else about her. This building is new but hastily and cheaply built, and the walls and floors are thin. I hear every toilet flush, argument, and intimate moment of the young couple living next to me, but from the floor below, only sobbing.

It is a strange thing, in Korea, for a woman to live alone. The Korean women teaching at my academy are in their late twenties or early thirties, and those who are unmarried still live with their parents. They told me that especially in Jinju, a conservative city on the southern tip of the peninsula, a woman living alone would be eyed with suspicion or scorn. Has she abandoned her family? Why hasn’t she found a husband? What failure or shortcoming has led to this?

I only wonder why she has to cry so loudly. How can someone muster such emotion before noon? I lie there, head throbbing from the soju, and jam a pillow over each ear. But I can’t fall asleep. I pick up my book, read a few paragraphs, and set it back down. I can’t concentrate. Usually I would crank up some music or put on my headphones and play a computer game, but today with this headache I don’t need any loud sounds or eyestrain. I need some peace.

I get up and wander around my apartment. It’s a small studio, so I don’t have far to wander. I think about making breakfast, but I’m not hungry. Instead I sit at my computer and click around online for a few minutes. The whole world at my fingertips and nothing interesting. Eventually I go to the window again, open the blinds, and stare out at the empty streets, nothing moving, the city frozen in amber. My neighbor still weeping.

I realize, suddenly, that if I stay in my room and listen to this crying woman, the whole arc of my life will be decided. I’ll live out my years in one studio apartment after another, always sleeping on a single bed, always drinking cheap liquor, never with any new messages on my phone, never finding anything interesting online, and always, always listening to a neighbor sobbing through the walls.

I’ll go for a walk, I decide. It’s just a little dust. I put on a pair of jeans, grab a hat, and climb down the four flights of stairs in my apartment building.

The dust isn’t so bad. I like the empty streets, the feeling of modest adventure. It reminds me of my dusty prairie hometown, where I roamed the dirt roads swinging a stick like a sword and dug up my backyard looking for arrowheads. Even then I knew I would someday travel to strange and beautiful places, see things no one else in my town would ever see. And now here I am on the other side of the planet, in Jinju, South Korea, thinking of my childhood, hung-over and walking alone in a cloud of sand.

But unlike a sandstorm, yellow dust doesn’t swirl in your face, catch in your hair, crunch between your teeth. You experience hwangsa as a hazy sky, itching eyes, a scratch in your throat. You don’t see the dust until it’s built up along the edges of walls, or thinly coating a windshield. So I make my way without too much discomfort through the narrow, winding streets to Jinju’s river, the Namgang.

The Namgang, dark with silt, flowing haphazardly northeast to join with the Nakdong, and then south again to the sea. I stand on a bridge and look out across it. On the north bank stands Jinju Castle, a 900-year-old fortress where thousands of men have fought and died. Built from mud, destroyed by sea marauders, rebuilt from stone, destroyed by the Japanese, and now built again with a museum and 3-D theater. On the south bank of the river lies a bamboo forest. I’m standing there on the bridge, trying to decide which way to go, when I meet Na Na-Ra.

I don’t recognize her at first—just a wave of black hair above a white medical mask coming toward me on the bridge. But her eyes grow big when she sees me, and she rushes over.

“Michael Teacher!” she says. She lowers her mask and I recognize her then, her sleepy eyes and thick eyebrows, her small chubby nose.

“Na Na-Ra!” I say.

Na Na-Ra used to be a teacher at my English academy. We worked together for a month after I came to Korea, before she was fired for coming to work late every day. She used an English name—Tanya—for the students, but I preferred to use her full Korean name, family name first.

“Where are you going?” she says. “It’s yellow dust today.” She gestures with two hands at the sky.

“I’m just walking. Where are you going?”

“Over there,” she says, motioning vaguely to the south. “Where’s your mask?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You should take care. The yellow dust will kill you.” This is not true.

“You should give me your mask,” I joke, reaching out for it.

“No!” She slaps my hand away and cinches the mask tightly over her mouth and nose. “Walk with me, Michael Teacher. Just over there.”

We walk together down the bridge. When a car rolls past us, she presses her shoulder against me to move out of its way, and I’m filled with a sudden desire and loneliness. It’s been a long time since a girl has pressed her body against mine.

“Are you still at Avalon?” she says, referring to my English academy.

“Yeah. Everyone misses you.” This is also not true. Na Na-Ra was a less than diligent worker, and often the tasks she neglected would fall to the other teachers. Despite having only known her a month, I probably missed her the most. She never seemed to take the job too seriously, and her laziness amused me.

“Ha! What a shit place.” Na Na-Ra spent most of her time in the office watching pirated American movies on her computer, and she’d picked up some colorful language.

“It’s not so bad. I don’t know why you could never come to work on time.”

“I like to stay up late.”

“Classes start at 2 PM.”

“My house is far away. I have to take the bus. Have you eaten?”

“No. You?”

“Of course! You should eat more. You look very terrible. So skinny.” Na Na-Ra is much skinnier than I am, but a certain heft is expected of Americans here.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Anyway, what are you doing these days? Did you find a new job?”

“I’m tutoring two middle school girls. They’re so dumb. Mostly I’m watching TV and sleeping.”

We leave the bridge and start walking through a riverside park. Usually it would be bustling with children and couples, but today it’s quiet. We pass a collection of outdoor exercise equipment where in better weather older Korean men and women, ahjussis and ajummas, engage in public fitness routines. The path leads east into the bamboo forest.

Na Na-Ra looks at me and smiles—her eyes scrunch above her mask.

“Michael Teacher, do you really like Korea?”

I start to answer with a quick affirmative, but something stops me. Maybe it’s my loneliness, or the strange feeling of closeness two people develop when walking together in inclement weather, but I suddenly feel the urge to open myself up to this young woman, this person I know so little about, with whom I’ve only exchanged a few office pleasantries almost a year ago.

“It’s the same as anywhere, I guess. You know, this is the fifth country I’ve lived in. Did I tell you that?”

She shakes her head.

“I was born in America, of course, went to school there. I studied abroad in Germany for a year during college, and then after I graduated I taught English in Taiwan for a year, then the same thing in Malaysia, and now here I am in Korea.”

“Wow, you’ve seen so much of the world.”

“That’s just where I’ve lived. I’ve also traveled to a dozen other countries. And everywhere I’ve been it’s the same thing. Just trade a cathedral for a temple for a mosque, eat some meat and vegetables here, some rice and noodles there. Hey, here’s a very important old building. And there’s another one over there and another one and another one until they’ve lost all meaning. The only thing that changes is me, and not in a good way.”

We’re approaching the edge of the bamboo forest now. It’s hard to read Na Na-Ra’s expression behind her mask. “What do you mean?” she says.

“It’s hard to explain. But it feels like each place I go takes something from me. Like I’ve left the best parts of myself in all these different countries. I feel like I’ve become fractured somehow.”

The bamboo forest is about a hundred yards long, twenty yards wide. We walk through it on a path made from wooden planks. In a few places, the path breaks off to areas with benches overlooking the river. Tied near the tops of some of the trees, small speakers play artificial bird sounds. The forest is empty except for the two of us.

“For example,” I continue, “in the past, people told me I was funny. I’m not funny anymore. I don’t make people laugh. I lost that somewhere. And I used to be into philosophy and poetry. It was so important to me. Now it all just seems ridiculous.”

I begin coughing. Dust in my throat. Na Na-Ra grabs my arm. “Are you okay?” she says. “Here, let’s take a rest.” She pulls me over to one of the benches. We sit down next to each other. On the other side of the river, Jinju Castle sits in the haze.

“And the worst thing,” I say, “is that I can’t make deep connections with the people I meet because of the language barrier. So I meet new people all the time but I’m always lonely. I’d have to study for twenty years to have this conversation with you in Korean. Your English is good, but even if you understand the words, I don’t think you can really understand what I’m feeling. Our worldview is tied to our native language.”

“I almost understand,” she says. “My English is shit, I know. Good enough to teach kids, but my vocab is small. But I understand you.”

I look over at her on the bench. Dark eyes, smooth black hair, a few bumps on her forehead underneath her makeup. Her leg, so thin in a tight pair of jeans, is almost touching mine. I want to put my arm around her. But I don’t. It would feel, somehow, like a betrayal of trust. So I just sit beside her and look out at the river.

After a while, she says, “So you don’t like to travel. Why not stay in America?”

“I guess I’m looking for a spark of some kind,” I say. “I always wanted to have a great adventure. But now I’m not sure if great adventures really exist.”

“So what’s your dream?” she asks.

“My dream?” I laugh. “I guess my dream is to live a life that has some sort of greater meaning, that leaves an impression on the world. But I don’t think it’s possible. There was this English poet, John Keats. He was pretty famous. When he died, on his tombstone he left the words: ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’ Do you know what that means?”

“Written water? He loved nature, maybe?”

“Think about it this way: if you took your finger and wrote your name in the Namgang, what would happen to it?”

“A fish would eat your finger.”

“Maybe. And your name would disappear. That’s what’s happening to me. I feel like I’m going through my life just writing my name in water.”

Na Na-Ra shifts on the seat beside me. She seems agitated.

“Michael Teacher,” she says, “you lived in five countries. You saw so many places. I lived with my parents in Jinju all my life. I wanted to go to Canada to study English, but my father didn’t want it. So what can I do? I have to stay in Jinju. There’s no good job for me, but my family is here. Soon my father will introduce me to a man and I’ll marry. You’re sad about your life, but I envy you. Really I envy you.”

She stands up and walks over to the rail separating the forest walkway from the river far below. For a minute we’re both quiet. We listen to the sound of the river and the bird songs from the speakers.

Finally, she says, “Michael Teacher, come here.”

I join her at the rail. It’s thick, made of wood, and Na Na-Ra runs a finger along it and holds it up for me to see.

“Yellow dust. Hwangsa.”

I nod. “Hwangsa.”

“Michael Teacher, let’s write our names in the dust.”

“Why?”

“It’s better than water.”

“I guess it is.” I reach down, but she grabs my hand.

“Wait! You have to write it in Korean.”

“Why? I’m not Korean.”

“But you live in Korea. Just write it!”

“Okay. But I forget how. I’ve never really learned the letters.”

“Here,” she says, guiding my finger. “I’ll show you.”

We write our names in the dust. Hers looks like this: 나나라. And mine looks like this: 마이클.

After we’re finished she lets go of my hand and we stand there, side by side, and look out across the Namgang. Then we walk back to the path and make our way to the end of the bamboo forest.

Out on the sidewalk, Na Na-Ra says, “I have to take a bus. Wait with me.”

I stand next to her at the bus stop. We’re the only ones waiting. A bus goes by, but it’s not hers. All the seats are empty. After it’s gone, Na Na-Ra looks up at me and narrows her eyes, like she’s studying my face intently.

“What is it?” I say.

She makes a noncommittal sound, then laughs, shakes her head, and looks away.

A few minutes pass. I want to say something meaningful but can’t think of what it might be. Later, I know, I’ll run this moment through my mind a thousand times, thinking of all the perfect words, but for now I just stand beside Na Na-Ra and wait for the bus.

It pulls up a few minutes later, brakes hissing.

“I’ll go on this one,” Na Na-Ra says through her mask.

“Okay.”

“Try to eat more.”

“I will.”

“Try to learn Korean.”

“I will.”

“Goodbye, Michael Teacher.” She waves at me, even though I’m standing right in front of her, so I wave back.

“Goodbye, Na Na-Ra.”

And then she climbs on the bus and it takes her away.

I walk back through the bamboo forest and the riverside park, cross the bridge, make my way through the narrow, winding streets, and start up the stairs to my apartment.

But I stop in the hallway. I head back outside and into the convenience store across the street. Nothing in any aisle looks appealing, but I grab a box of green tea and a bag of shrimp chips.

Back in my apartment building, I stop outside my downstairs neighbor’s door.

I can’t hear anything from inside. She’s either stopped sobbing, or she’s gone out, like I did, into the dust.

I knock.

What’s my plan? She’s never met me before and will have no idea who I am. I don’t know the word for “neighbor.” I stand there holding the tea and the chips, a little sweaty, eyes watery from the dust. Will I just thrust the food at her and run away?

I knock again. Was that a shuffling sound? I can’t be sure. In any case, she doesn’t answer. I knock one last time and then set the snacks at the foot of the door.

Up in my room, I start coughing again, harder now. I pour a glass of water and stand by the window drinking it and listening downstairs for the sound of the door. Outside: empty streets, clay-tiled rooftops, a hazy yellow sky.


robert-hinderliterRobert Hinderliter’s fiction has appeared in Fourteen Hills, SmokeLong Quarterly, Night Train, decomP, and other places. He grew up in Kansas and is now an Assistant Professor in the English Literature Department of Chosun University in Gwangju, South Korea. He lived in Jinju for a year.

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Published on December 28, 2016 in Fiction, Issue 16. (Click for permalink.)

PHASE THREE OF BAZ LUHRMANN’S RED CURTAIN TRILOGY by Kelly R. Samuels

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 28, 2016 by thwackJuly 1, 2020

Pale arms around red curtain

PHASE THREE OF BAZ LUHRMANN’S RED CURTAIN TRILOGY
by Kelly R. Samuels

We may have found ourselves situated in Phase Three of Baz Luhrmann’s Red Curtain
Trilogy—that kind of progression. From happy ending to two lovers dying for love to one woman dying, coughing up what appears to be blood but is actually a mix of red food coloring, corn syrup and water. It doesn’t make us happy, this.