Category Archives: Fiction

THE WEEKLY VISIT by Emanuel Melo

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Weekly Visit. jpt

THE WEEKLY VISIT
by Emanuel Melo

Every week for the past five years, Jake has approached the front door after a slow walk from the bus stop. He gets off several stops away purposefully. The long walk to her house gives him time to decompress after a long day at work and ward off the resentment of duty that brings him here to her front door in the first place. The weekly visit, after his father died, to his aged and disabled mother, has begun to wear him down and now he shows up at her door as if in front of a trap he consciously, and dutifully steps into. He stays overnight, too, only to spare himself the exhaustion of a late night trip on the bus and then the subway and then another bus home.

Standing at the door, his eyes move to the green recycling bin and the blue garbage bin both placed directly in front of the driveway’s locked iron gate. The bins were left there by the next door neighbour, who out of kindness takes them to the curb every week and then leaves them by the gate for Jake to put them away. He rings the doorbell and while he waits for her to open the door, he peaks inside the black metal mail box and finds it empty. The door opens to reveal his mother: short and overweight from too many sweets and cakes, she is dressed in black from head to toe as she will always be dressed until the day she dies, a symbol of mourning for her dead husband. Her hair has grown too long below the shoulder, the curl from the last perm of eight months ago in need of the hairdresser’s touch. She looks haggard, worn out, and old as she gazes at her son. She saves her smile until she can figure out if he’s come in a good mood or a bad one.

As chaves! are the first words of greeting that come out of him, the keys! He waits outside the door until she turns around and gets the keys and brings them to him. He opens the locked gate and moves the bins to the inside part of the driveway and locks the gate again. Only then does he go inside the house. Before he even takes off his coat, he pours all his energy into doing any remaining chores, mumbling to himself when she hands him a dead pot of poinsettias, left over from Christmas. She lets out a small cry as he walks out to the back of the garden where he throws the old pot to decompose after the frozen winter months turn to spring. Back inside the house, he locks the screen door then locks the three locks on the inside door. He doesn’t understand why she needs to have so many locks on the doors; what if one day there’s an emergency and someone needs to break into the house to save her—if she’s fallen down and can’t get up again.

With the house locked up for the night, she sets the house alarm and he is her prisoner until she disarms it in the morning. He’s been there for a good ten minutes already and the visit hasn’t gone well. He knows this as he closes the door to the bedroom where he stays overnight.

He changes from his work clothes and puts on the pair of pants and shirt that is always there for him, along with the clean underwear for the next day. When he reappears in the corridor it’s only to see his mother waiting for him, still standing there and, as he walks close to her, she throws her arms around him, releases her pitiful cries and tears of complaint.

“What have I done,” she says, “You’ve changed, you don’t like me anymore. You don’t even greet me with a smile. All you give me now is desprezo, neglect.” She says it all in Portuguese and her son hates to have to defend himself in Portuguese. He doesn’t relate to the language of his childhood. It makes it more difficult to argue with her or to explain what he’s all about. The language stifles his ability to express himself to her. He hasn’t told her yet that he plans to stop the weekly visits. She won’t understand why he is no longer able to devote so much time to her—the shopping and the errands and the cleaning and the banking and the doctors’ appointments, all the things that his father would have done for her. But he is not his father nor does he want to be his father’s substitute.

And there she is, standing in her dark corridor, clinging to her son who doesn’t want to be
there anymore. She holds on to him, afraid of him slipping away from her. “I’ll leave right
now,” he warns her. “So, go!” she yells back but doesn’t really mean it nor does she expect him
to be good to his threat. He disentangles himself from her desperate embrace, feeling no softness or warmth toward the woman who is his mother. His heart is rigidly cold against her and he himself does not really understand how it got to be this way. He did love her before and maybe he still does but he’s so tired that he no longer feels it.

She moves into the living room where she spends all her days and evenings. The room feels like some old fashioned funeral parlor with heavy furniture where frames of photographs of his father are placed on top of every available surface. An array of santinhos has fallen out of her prayer book, fanned out on the floor in front of the sofa where she sits all day. Jake bends over to pick up the holy cards but she tells him to stop.

“You don’t know the order they’re supposed to be in. I was in such a rush to get to the door that I let them drop when I got up from the sofa. I never know if you are going to be in a good or bad mood. Eu não tenho sorte.” She says her favorite expression regarding everything that happens to her. I have no luck, is what she means. It’s a mantra that covers all the unhappiness and disappointments of her life. He ignores her command and takes his time picking up the holy cards, slow and deliberate, trying to re-establish some order out of the emotional chaos he has felt since his arrival.

She has spent the entire day cooking his meal. Lately, this has become hard for her. She can’t stand for very long and her legs are in constant discomfort and pain. But she has been doing this weekly ritual for five years now; he has been coming to see her every Tuesday night. The weekly visit has become a regular part of her routine and for him to get out of coming on any given Tuesday requires much explanation and a weighing of the validity for missing it.

She always makes elaborate home cooked meals for him: Portuguese recipes for soups like caldo verde and vegetable soups with feijão and repolho; codfish dishes like bacalhau à Gomes de Sá and galinha com arroz. She has a very sweet tooth and each meal must include a chocolate pudding or a crème caramel.

Tonight, he’s not in a hurry to eat; he’s lost his appetite. So they both sit on the sofa by the dim lamp light waiting for him to want his dinner. She’s still upset about how he neglected to greet her with a smile or a hug. “I don’t know how I can take so much desprezo,” she complains. Jake panics. No matter how much he does for her, she still feels neglected. “I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve all this desprezo.” She doesn’t let it go. Jake sits at the other end of the sofa and with every word she utters he wishes that he could find the courage to get up and leave and go home. He can’t hear the same complaints over and over again. I live alone, nobody wants me, the least they can do is call; this has become her recent mantra.

It’s the end of January and the Presépio still needs to be put away. He goes down to the basement and retrieves the box for the crèche figurines. The nativity set was bought decades ago at Simpsons, the price tag of $29.99 still stuck to the bottom of the box. She takes each statue, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the Three Kings of the Orient, the Shepherds and their little sheep, each figure returned to its individual bubble wrap container. Jake takes each statue from her withered thin hand and sorts them into place inside the protective box. They don’t say much while they put the statues away and the lack of words allows for a breathing space between them. Her face starts to look calm. He feels sorry for her just then and he wishes that he had been kind to her when he arrived.

Jake gives in to his hunger. At the kitchen table, she places the plate of chicken with rice in front of him and watches him eat. She never eats with him. Her dinner is always around three o’clock, without exception. He eats quietly while she tells him about who phoned during the day and which doctor’s appointment is coming up, especially the one to determine when she can have her knee replacement surgery. After dinner he gets up to wash the dishes. Normally, she doesn’t let him wash the dishes but tonight she is tired, and so lets him do it. She dries the plates and cutlery sitting down.

Once everything is put away, they move back into the living room and she turns the TV on to her Portuguese shows. He doesn’t mind watching the Brazilian soap operas and the news from Portugal with her. Jake, Joaquim, was nine when the family moved to Canada but he has always remained curious about the culture and the language they left behind, so listening to the anchorman speak the language he cannot speak fluently pleases him.

After a couple of hours of watching TV he gets up from the sofa. “This is it. My brain is closed for the night, boa noite.” He bends down to give her a kiss on the cheek and a hug that she expects from him but which he gives dutifully and not with a joyful heart. He doesn’t understand why he’s changed toward her. It saddens him to feel the way he does but he can’t help it. She pulls him toward her body with a smile and a reconciled heart. “Eu gosto tanto de ti,” she whispers into his ear but hearing her say that she loves him so much only makes him feel guilty and ashamed of his behaviour.

The next morning, he sits for a few minutes in the quiet dark kitchen, the only light coming from above the stove, and has an instant Sanka and toast, which his mother prepared while he showered and shaved. “You have changed,” she says sitting across from him at the small kitchen table. “You are so distant, you don’t like me anymore.” She is brave enough to say it head on. He sips his coffee slowly, not daring to answer her. He chews the dry toast to give him time to get out of answering it. Instead, he just makes up excuses of how busy he is at work, so overworked that he won’t be able to come back next week. He tells her this, anticipating a bad reaction. She looks at him with disappointment all over her face. But she says, “Well, if you can’t, you can’t. I can get used to anything. It’s just another desprezo.” There, she has said it again, another example of abandonment. And he puts the coffee cup down on the table with a bang, pretending afterwards that it slipped from his fingers, so that she doesn’t see his anger. It’s like this with everything. She can manipulate any statement he says, she can twist anything he says so that she comes out being right. If he says that he’s tired, well, she never gets tired and even now at her age. And all the years that she took care of her own bedridden mother without anyone’s help, who will do that for her now? She has no sorte. Her luck ran out when her husband died, leaving her to fend for herself alone in the world with a son who, frankly, is starting to be a disappointment. “Pensa bem no que fazes.” Think carefully about what you are doing, she warns him. “Not to take care of one’s parent is a sin against God.”

It’s only 7:15 am and he’s already exhausted. His ability to shrug off her words is gone and he can’t wait to leave. She hands him a plastic bag full of lunch. He has been telling her to cut down on how much she puts inside the bag but she dismisses his plea. “Nonsense, you need all of this. What you can’t eat today, save for tomorrow.” Realizing that there’s no point in arguing, he takes the bag but it feels like a heavy weight that wears him down.

It’s a dark morning and a snow storm is starting. He gives her a stiff hug goodbye so as not to feel her touch. She always stays by the window to watch him walk down to the bus stop. Normally, he looks back and once the bus arrives, he throws her a kiss or a wave before getting on the bus. But today, the snow is falling fast and by the time he gets to the bus stop visibility is none. Her house up the road is shrouded in clouds of twirling flurries and the window he knows she’s standing behind is nothing but a dark shadow. He doesn’t see her at the window but he knows that she’s there as he mechanically raises his arm to gesture a dutiful goodbye before entering the refuge of the bus that takes him back to his life.

Emanuel-Melo-June-2,-2014Emanuel Melo was born on the island of São Miguel in the Azores and immigrated to Canada at the age of nine. He lives in Toronto. His articles have appeared in Toronto World Arts Scene, on the Canadian Centre for Azorean Research and Studies website, and in Mundo Açoriano.  His story “Avó Lives Alone” was a finalist in the Writers Union of Canada 20th Annual Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers in 2013 and was also published in Memória: An Anthology of Portuguese Canadian Writers in 2013. He is currently working on his first short story collection.

Image Credit: Leo Elroy on Flickr

THE CONVERSATION by Robert Pulwer

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The Conversation

THE CONVERSATION
by Robert Pulwer 

“Are you an anti-Semite?”

I looked up from my mother’s crumbling copy of Journey to the End of the Night, which I had pilfered during my last visit home. I was so shocked to hear that someone actually recognized what I was reading that I stammered at first, unhinged my jaw as if to say something, anything, in response to his question, thought, pulled my head back, and finally furrowed my brow and said “no.”

“Yes you are. You’re reading Celine. That man—that guy, he was the most…anti-Semitic of them all. All the French people at that time. The non-Jews, they were against us, and he was the worst”—woist—“of all. The worst! How could you read him, and in public, too?”

We were on the D train between Grand Street and Broadway-Lafayette. After we had both gotten on the train at Atlantic, he through the second door and I through the front, I resumed reading and had re-entangled myself in this most intensely difficult novel. After the usual scrum at Grand Street I saw the curl flop from off the top left corner of the page.

I hadn’t been prepared for this. Who knew who Celine was anyway, except for Francophiles and the French people they wished they were? Wasn’t he a footnote of the French catastrophe of those years? And I’m Jewish—real Jewish, on my mom’s side. Who the fuck asks me—and I know I look Jewish, too—who the fuck asks me if I’m Jewish? It’s obvious.

“I, well, it’s great literature. Scholars of…”

“Great literature! Great lit…” His head darted to the other end of the car, then back to me, then back again, then back to me. His mouth was agape, and he was panting with disbelief. “Great what? The man hated the Jews! There’s no great literature in that. There’s no art in anti-Semitism. You…” He huffed a few more times, and the women around us had taken notice. Even the Chinese ladies who had gotten on at Grand Street seemed to recognize the word “anti-Semite,” or maybe they figured that anti-Semitism was the only plausible explanation behind a Hasidic man’s outburst on a subway train.

He had now squared his body toward me, though he was still holding on to the bar above his head. He traced my vertical measurements with his head, stared a moment, then turned around and bellowed “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Attention! This man”—pointing at me—“hates the Jews! He is an anti-Semite!” He put a long pause between the two parts of that last word.

“I’m not,” I managed. “I’m, my mother, we’re Jewish. I am Jewish, I don’t hate the Jews.” I realized that sentence didn’t come out correctly.

Everyone on the train was watching. An older black man wearing a pork-pie hat, a trio of Japanese tourists, a suit, a short Central American with a ponytail: everyone was watching this play out.

“This man”—again motioning to me—“this man reads literature by an anti-Semite! This man reads French literature from the time of Vichy, from the country who, that sold out their Jews, and he’s—”

I tried to interject, but he continued.

“—reading the worst of them. On the train”—sweeping motions toward me—“in public, to make everyone see that he’s an anti-Semite. No! A self-loathing Jew. The worst kind!”

By now he was pointing madly at me and his eyeballs were as revealed as those of a patient who is about to have his pupils dilated.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the worst Jew in the world! The worst! You’re a bad Jew to be reading that anti-Semite. What’s he saying? Huh? He talking about killing us yet? Huh? You thinking about killing us yet? Yeah?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone, man!” I had now raised my voice to match the intensity of his, and my increase in decibel level was met by an increase in his eye size. He looked like a madman, and I opened my mouth to let him know as much, but nothing escaped.

I fought back more words for a few seconds. Now he looked almost defeated, as though he had reached the peak of his intensity and had no choice but to descend the summit. His stare grew less menacing, his mien now less of a bomb and more of a disappointed father. Shaking his head with tightly pursed lips, the man swiveled toward the door and waited for the 47th-50th street stop. Aided by the blackness of the tunnel, I could see him mumbling words to himself, and I wondered at the scale of his derision.

Did he really think that I hated him, hated myself, hated Jews in general, because I was reading a novel?

I couldn’t resist watching him bumble into the crowd at his stop. The train had emptied out. I could now continue my journey in quiet, in the company of at least one ardent anti-Semite, constrained to paper perhaps, but whose life still haunts some of those whom he hated.

Robert PulwarRobert Pulwer is an education professional who lives in New York City. A graduate of Tulane University, he is a former NYC Teaching Fellow and a 2012 Fulbright ETA to South Africa. When he has time, he likes to tap the rubber practice pads in his room and wish they were a real drumset.

Image credit: My Name’s Axel on Flickr

METEMPSYCHOSIS by Caleb Murray

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metempsychosis

METEMPSYCHOSIS
by Caleb Murray

John Henry made circles with his bare feet on the carpet. The overhead light was on a fader, which was set low and gave the room an almost hazy affect. Against one wall was a purple couch, its frayed and shredded fabric covered with overlapping blankets and old bedsheets. Against the opposite wall was the television, which was off. The classical music station was playing some minor baroque drivel; it was set on this station because the jazz station, with its squeaks and honks, bothered John Henry’s cat, Felix, who was currently transfixed by the concentric undulations of John Henry’s taunting foot and the disembodied violins. His eyes were like black saucers, with only a faint hint of silver, a mere suggestion of an iris. “Have you eaten all my drugs again?” John Henry said in the high-pitched, playful voice he used for Felix when his girlfriend was not visiting; no other cats had heard this particular voice, though they had each received their own unique inflection. “Are you tripping balls, murder pants? Are you tripping balls?”

The cat, crouched behind the legs of a dining-room chair, eyed him, then returned his face to John Henry’s feet.

You’d better put on a pair of socks.

“What?” John Henry blurted, and, setting his foot flat on the carpet, removed his eyes from Felix. He was alone in his apartment.

I don’t need to put on a pair of socks—you need to put on a pair of socks. Asshole.

John Henry wiggled his toes. Felix wiggled his butt, probably without intention, but rather as a by-product of the transubstantiation of the toes into prey—such is the capacity for metaphor in the animal kingdom—although who knows what a cat thinks. Or whether thought is an accurate word for their mental processes. John Henry imagined that if he were to inhabit Felix’s consciousness—that was the word he chose, for the sake of convenience—he would go insane in less than a minute. The sudden and inexplicable animation of a cotton mite into a moth, the swell of hot air out of the guttural underbelly of the firmament, and the feeling of being followed, constantly, by some furry double, like a shadow materialized, would be enough to lose higher consciousness in a twitch. He could not explain it, but Felix experienced metempsychosis. A ray of sunlight, a ball of cotton, a wiggling neutered claw all happened upon their true reality—that of flies, moths, and mice. And liquid’s yielding texture as crumbling earth, as melting sands. There was no filter between one and the other. “Reality” is only a word that is put in quotes, as should be “soul” and “god,” because it is experienced by higher consciousness as detached from itself, like a live video playback. Cats probably don’t use quotation marks, but, again, who knows. Thought may not be an accurate word, but if it isn’t for them then it likely isn’t for us, and John Henry wouldn’t presume to know the reality of his own consciousness any more than Felix’s.

A phalanx of metallic tubes, several centimeters wide, through which circulated enough wind to durate pitch; followed by an infantry of vibrations muffled by hair, like screaming bits of smoke uncoiled from cords of firewood; then hammers, whittled, shaped, fur-wrapped, beat on sheets of metal and wrappings of dry skin; in between each outburst an equal, opposite, awful restraint, like a surly and self-righteous vowel in the consonant midst of the alphabet. John Henry only listened to the classical music station when his girlfriend was visiting, except now, when the music, like her, was enough to lure Felix out from the back room for long enough to register a purr and to animate a burlap-wrapped ball of cotton. Her handmade mice were exquisite—hand-cut strips of burlap wrapped around cotton balls, strapped with button eyes, pipe-cleaner tails, laundry lint noses, and seam mouths. As no mice were visible, however, Felix remained for John Henry’s elliptical feet, and for the music.

You are the protector of souls, John Henry, and I am the eater of souls; do you dare defy me, you mongrel cretin bastard?

John Henry tucked his bare feet beneath his legs Buddha-style, and held his gut with his palms, as if to keep his organs from spilling onto the floor. Strings, brass, woodwinds, and drums crawled through the speakers like spiders in the room’s dark corners. A lamp on the couch’s end table burned a 40-watt bulb, though it was designed for 60. Bouncing off the wall was a face, the residue of a 40-watt shadow, that might have grown, doubled, tripled in size, a piece of angry machinery, a broken spoke, a lonely troll in the spirit kingdom, that might have eaten his own shadow into a physical impossibility, had Felix not jumped into his lap at just the moment he was to unfurl his legs and relax. His heels on the coffee table, cranium in his palms…

“Felix, what is it? I’ll give you anything you want, just tell me.” Felix podged John Henry’s lap, one paw then the other, for so long he forgot he had even spoken. When he finally lay down he moved his leg so his head would fit in the nook of his knee. A choir of shaking bones, a chord of ribs, a chorus of white keys blaring through his crotch into the couch. He tried to speak but not through language because he did not have language, so he vibrated through the bones of the sofa, like the departed across the river Styx, in order to ask for one of the mice from the stocking. John Henry’s socks were by the dining room chair, he had checked them already. Strings, tails, whatever, gathered near their entrances. It was possible that John Henry had given him his gift already, and he’d just forgotten. But was it really his responsibility? Felix was in his lap, looking up at him like a child whose mother had relinquished him to the saints, clearly—anxious for something, but—what responsibility did he have toward the creature? Especially if he did not believe in his omnipotence? Did he even believe in omnipotence? The concept of omnipotence could not be beyond cats, who clearly recognized agency behind scurries, thrusts, and the glares of other predators. “I don’t know what you think, or if you can even think at all,” John Henry said, as if Felix hadn’t been present for the last five minutes. “You haven’t been present when I’ve needed you the most. Indeed, you haven’t been present at all.” Felix looked at the wall because it had turned into a spider web. “I can’t help you anymore, Felix. Not with where you’re going. Not with where you’ve been, or are now, and neither with the questions you had before nor the answers you need notarized now and will need stamped forever. Felix, I can’t help you,” he said, and he realized he was crying only because of the salty slug trails he felt crawling down his nose. “I can’t help you anymore, and I’m sorry.”

Your cat has no idea what you’re saying.

The tables were turned. Felix looked up at him, something on his mind, or whatever you call it, but John Henry had no idea what it was. In that moment, their look contained within a tenth of a second, John Henry thought he was Santa Claus, and that his brother Joshua was still alive, and was asking to not have to go to hell when he died. Then it clipped off, like cotton mites, dandelion skeletons, off in the wind. Felix bit his toe, his head crouched and ears flat, and jumped down from the couch before John Henry had a chance to react. A slight residual yowl left the room bereft; a thrift-store painting of a vase John Henry’s girlfriend had bought, “for decoration,” sloughed up on the opposite wall; the beaded gray fuzz of carpet underneath his punctured toenail; the tremulous murmurings of an Austrian, an uncharacteristically equivocating breath between tirades, newly holding forth on the radio, were all the sensations the room allowed in his absence. John Henry wiped his cheeks dry with the back of his hand, for he wanted to forget that they’d been wet altogether, when he’d already forgotten why he had cried and what he’d said. “Felix!” he called, high-pitched, all throat, nearly militaristic. He wiped blood off his big toe with his thumb and wiped it on the couch. Blood blended well with the purple couch in the low light. John Henry looked up and winced. The lights were on faders and needed to be turned even lower.

Caleb MurrayCaleb Murray is from Montana and currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a kitchen manager. He is a graduate of Linfield College. He is at work on his first novel, Cup of Oblivion.

RAVEN IN THE GRASS by Kelly Ann Jacobson

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Raven in the Grass

RAVEN IN THE GRASS
by Kelly Ann Jacobson

A single blade of grass. Long and thin, streaked like the drag of paint left behind by a brush. A singular shade of green, like the color of nothing except itself. Among others it is just a pinpoint in a larger plane, which we see the way a child draws grass, scribbled shape colored in with the nub of a crayon. But up close. Up close, near the nose so that your eyes draw inward and cross, that blade is one entity. Albeit picked and soon to be sun-withered, it is whole.

Marilyn lies beneath her husband’s green army blanket. Her arms hug her sides so that her body, beneath the wool, looks straight and stalky. Her feet are small, two doll feet barely rising from the flatness of her chest and legs, and the blanket covers them and hangs off of the cot like pie crust not yet crimped. The chest rises and falls with effort, almost mechanical in its singular purpose, emitting only the whisper of stale air through her partially parted lips.

The room is covered in light blue paint, so that when Marilyn wakes, she thinks for a moment that she floats through the cloudless beyond of the sky. She has already died, and risen above the city. The window is not a window to the real night sky but the other way around, the early polka dot moon peering in the glass panes to glimpse the expanse of Marilyn’s walls.

The clatter of pans brings her back to herself, and the pressure of her weight and the bones of her shoulders digging into the hospital cot ground her. They bought it for her, she remembers, and when she returned from the hospital there it was, in place of the four poster. They placed her in the open mouth of the sheets and left her there, alone, with only the problem of gravity to solve. That and the mystery of her missing bedside table, the set of drawers where she kept her nighties and silk stockings, the mirror above the dresser. Do they fear this will draw her to suicide, the simple slice of a sliver of glass right to the vein? Or that she will stumble, clutching at air, until she falls onto whatever sharp corner has been left in her path?

How could the decorations be dangerous when she lies pinned down to this cot, unable to change for dinner or do her hair the way she likes it, in the loose bun pinned at the nape of her neck? She is subjected to the torture of her children’s clumsy fingers rambling through her scalp and pulling the hair too tightly into the braids of a little girl, one on either side of her face. The little ones are better at braiding, but pull at the hair afterward like a cat’s tail.

Occasionally, one of the children brings her something to eat and feeds it to her like a bird. Something warm, like pudding, that slides down her throat in a wash of cocoa powder and milk, or cold, like pieces of frozen fruit. She is their doll, as lifeless and false skinned.

The seasons do not move here in this sky room, except for the changing of hot and cold. Of sweet mango or warm apple pie.

 

Penelope lies splayed out on the grass, her backpack on one side and her book, A Wrinkle in Time, split open on the other. She does not read; she waits. Spring tickles her eyelids and the skin on her exposed forearms, the little bouts of warm breezes and seed pods carried on their waves. She rolls her jeans up and removes her shoes, the socks with white polka dots too, so that her toes can massage the moist earth beneath the grass. Soon she has weeded herself into the dirt; when the boy finally comes, she is surprised to find herself still able to detach.

Bobby pleads with her to reconsider their breakup. Penelope has already forgotten the many nights in the back seat of Bobby’s Toyota—the pressure of the car door on her back, the steamy air, the unbearable heat that, even with her hair pinned back, sent beads of sweat into the crevices of her back. The tears, when she told him she did not want a boyfriend anymore. This summer she will spend a week at camp, and does not want to be tied down.

Now he seems so far away from her, as though he floats over her like a balloon, or maybe it is Penelope that floats.

She imagines returning to her book. Penelope likes the character of Meg, who, unlike Penelope, manages to be wearisome yet wise. Penelope is never wearisome; she is the perfect student, ballerina, and daughter, three unrelated and yet similar things. All three require great discipline, and quiet submission. On the inside, however, Penelope yearns to fold into the fabric of time like butter into batter, to go back or forward or anywhere but outside her school, where Bobby grasps at her arm.

After shaking him off, Penelope returns her socks and shoes to her feet. Then she stands and moves toward the parking lot, where her mother waits, reading a magazine about home décor or perhaps filling in a crossword puzzle.

If she had not turned to take one last look at Bobby, she would not have seen the bird behind him. But she does turn, and there it is, dead and rotted and covered in flies. The bones like teeth in a black mouth. Suddenly she knows she must not let him see the bird, that one look at the bird would be too much for poor Bobby to handle. He is fragile, easily consumed. And there is something about this raven, this large-beaked bearer of death, which sends a chill up the girl’s spine.

“Come,” she tells him. He wipes his snot on his bare arm and follows her to her car.

 

Richard cannot bear the scent of newly cut grass, the chocking grip of allergenic pollen. As he passes Bobby, the boy from down the street who cares for Richard’s yard, he brings his shirt up to cover his face, creating a polyester screen. Is the boy purposely whacking away at his petunias? Richard wants to call out, but ends up clutching at his throat and running for the door. Damn his asthmatic lungs, the constriction of his chest and the accompanying wheeze. The feeling of drowning, again and again, in air. If he could, he would cleanse the air like a pool hand with his skimmer net, until the whole world was a sterile, scentless known.

He arrives home early, before Molly, and relishes the quiet calmness of the house. Richard takes time removing his tie; he kicks off his loafers at the stairs and pads through the living room to the kitchen. At the sight of the red voicemail light he remembers that Molly will be at her brother’s tonight, tending to her mother while the older sibling and his even older wife take a night off, which in turn gives Richard a night off—no arguments, no waving of thermometers and plastic sample containers.

Still in his work trousers, Richard treks to the gas station across the street. At the refrigerated beverages he pauses and considers; he likes to feel spontaneous, though he always picks Pennsylvania’s pride. A worn ten dollar bill slides one way across the counter, and the six-pack, now bagged, slides the other way. Richard walks back down Main Street carrying the beer like a child, balanced on one hip.

By the time that Molly gets home, six empty beer bottles lie at the bottom of the recycling can Richard carts out to the curb every Tuesday. On her walk to the door she finds a bouquet of beheaded petunias piled on the step, and pauses to gather them in her arms. Only the hanging planters remain unscathed, their pink and purple faces turned away now that the sun has disappeared. Inside, Molly divides the petunias into three vases: one in the dining room, one in the kitchen, and one in the bedroom where she leads her inebriated husband by his belt loops. On the way, Richard steadies her when she trips on a careless pair of leather loafers.

 

Penelope should be sleeping, but after her parents’ bedroom light goes off, she creeps down the hallway to her grandmother’s bedroom. Though the Marilyn lying in the hospital cot looks nothing like the Marilyn who used to feed freshly bakes cookies off the pan to her only grandchild, Penelope still feels connected to her, like she might just bolt up in bed and ask when the next episode of Jeopardy starts.

The girl brings her book. Sometimes she reads to Marilyn, if her grandmother’s green eyes wander along the surfaces of the walls; other times Penelope reads silently while Marilyn sleeps. Tonight Marilyn dozes with her eyes closed and her mouth open, propped up against the pillows like a queen. Occasionally she calls for her husband, or for her daughter, Molly, though only Penelope is there to place her palm in the wandering hand.

Penelope has grown accustomed to Marilyn’s strange breathing, the raspy struggle to inhale and exhale. The girl imagines the cancer like a stain on her clothes, embedded in the very threads in her grandmother’s own faded fabric.

Only when the breath stops does Penelope glance up from the page, so quickly that the words seem to superimpose themselves on the walls. Then she closes her book and tucks it under the hand that has taken on weight like a sponge its water, a book that for Penelope has come to an early end.

 

Through squinted eyes, things that once had distinct shape blur until they are only splotches of color. Spills of green and blue. In one room, Marilyn closes her eyes; in another, her daughter opens them, sensing the change. From this distance, despite the folding in of one stalk and the start of another, the shade of the grass still looks the same.

Kelly-Ann-JacobsonKelly Ann Jacobson is a fiction writer and poet who lives in Falls Church, Virginia. Kelly is the author of the literary fiction novel Cairo in White and the young adult trilogy The Zaniyah Trilogy, as well as the editor of the book of essays Answers I’ll Accept. Her work, including her published poems, fiction, and nonfiction, can be found at www.kellyannjacobson.com.

Image credit: Sylvia McFadden on Flickr

 

THE INGREDIENTS OF DOG FOOD by Kevin Tosca

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

The Ingredients of Dog Food

THE INGREDIENTS OF DOG FOOD
by Kevin Tosca

Each night my father dipped two fingers into meat and sauce and then passed that wet present down to Django’s drooling mouth. It was no secret. I saw. My mother saw. My father wasn’t trying to hide anything.

And this didn’t just happen at dinner, it happened whenever my father ate or snacked. If three slices of cheese were to go on a sandwich, one more went to Django. If my father grabbed a handful of peanuts, Django got his share. If there were an orange to eat, Django got a segment. If there were ice cream at the end of the day, Django licked the bowl. The only food my father didn’t give Django was salad, but that’s not because my father hadn’t tried. Django just didn’t like it, which became Django lore, the one thing Django wouldn’t deign to touch: lettuce.

All this food was given to Django in addition to his two regular meals, one in the morning, fed to him by my mother, and one at night, fed to Django by my father. My father wouldn’t miss this six o’clock ritual. He loved the frenzy the sound of the dry food sprinkling into Django’s dish caused, how the buzz of the mechanical can opener spiked the fever. My father prolonged the moment, spooning half the contents of the Alpo can out slower than it needed to be spooned, giving the mix a few extra turns though every morsel had been moistened, waiting before picking the dish off the counter, using his strength to box Django away when he bent down. “It’s his pleasure,” my father liked to say.

I didn’t feed Django, not, that is, like my father fed him. When asked, or when my parents were away, I would give him his regular meals and make sure he had enough water to drink. That was it, and my not feeding Django, my not giving him scraps from my plate or from the table or ever sharing anything I ate or snacked on with him, became lore too—“He ain’t gonna give you nuttin’,” my father would amusedly inform his dog who never gave up hope, who would, in-between deposits from my father, accost me and stare at me with those big, pleading eyes—though I had no doubt that Django loved me, and that I loved him.

Django had been living on the outskirts of one of the construction sites my father supervised. He was a mutt—part beagle, part pit bull, the vet later said (more lore fuel)—and he was friendly and handsome: white (though gray from dirt and outdoor living at the time) with a black patch over one eye. The men cut out the straps from an old hardhat and gave him water. Some, irregularly, tossed him food. Was Django underweight in that vagabond period? His ribs were showing and the number of days and nights he went hungry were incalculable, so yes, he no doubt was, but over the next few years he graduated from his thirties to his forties to his fifties and on into his sixties. By the end of things, he tempted seventy pounds.

At that stage, he could still chase a tennis ball, but only a couple of times: all gratuitous running was over. He could still be considered strong, but not wiry. When his energy came, it came in bursts. He napped and slept a lot. But his food pleasure never waned.

I don’t know who else brought up the weight issue. I know the vet (a man—I’m not making this up—named Dr. Katz) did. He would mildly admonish my mother (my father never went) and talk about diets and weight loss and the complications associated with obesity, not so different than with humans, things like ambulatory trouble and joint trouble and heart trouble and cancers.

But nothing changed. Home and happy, Django would be lovingly scolded: “Dr. Katz says you’re too fat!” and then be patted on the head and fed in the same manner by both my parents, my mother having picked up the habit from my father. “He’s living the good life now,” my father liked to say.

Django died the summer after I graduated from high school. Or: My parents gave Dr. Katz permission to give Django a lethal injection the summer after I graduated from high school. At the end, Django’s breathing was awful to hear. At the very end, he could barely wag his tail when he heard the sounds of the dry food and the can opener, and it was when my father saw food being left in his dog’s bowl and Django not making it to the dinner table that he accepted the inevitable.

The five of us—me, my mother and father, Django and Dr. Katz—were in that small white room together. My mother cried, and then, so did my father. It was the first and only time I ever saw tears come out of my father’s eyes.

Django had lived with us for eight full years, and he had lived at least a couple before that. Many dog lives are much shorter, and harder, and this one’s brought us all a lot of joy and comfort and memories, but I couldn’t help but think that that life could have gone on longer, that there were more memories to make, that this death was preventable, that Django had been murdered.

That is not something you accuse your parents of doing, not when the feeding was, for them, a form of love, so I got myself ready: I was going north to college, leaving home for the first time.

One day, just before I left, my mother and father visited a shelter and chose a new member of the family, another mutt named Sandro. Sandro had been shot multiple times by pellet guns; he had been deliberately burned. He was big, a natural sixty-pounder with an enormous head, one black-patched eye, and black spots dotting his otherwise white-haired body.

My father was proud. My mother seemed hesitantly happy, making it no secret she would have liked a smaller, more manageable—perhaps less masculine—dog. I was simply surprised. There hadn’t been any talk of getting another dog, not with me at least, and I guess I hadn’t given it much thought, but I wouldn’t have bet they’d replace Django so quickly, not that replacement is the best word for what went on, though it does do necessary work.

On those last few days and nights in my parents’ home, that brief time before I left for college and the start of my so-called real education, I watched how my father and my mother fed Sandro. Nothing had changed. Nothing had been learned. And why would it? Nothing, from my parents’ perspective, was wrong.

What could ever, I hear them saying, be wrong with pleasure and the good life? What can possibly be wrong with love?

Kevin ToscaKevin Tosca’s stories have been published in Spork, Full of Crow, Bartleby Snopes, Vine Leaves Literary Journal and elsewhere. A frequent contributor to Cleaver, his short-short story “Romeo and Juliet” appeared in Issue 4 and his flash pieces “The 104”, “Tibet” and “Like That” appeared in Issue 1. He lives in Paris. He and his work can be found at www.kevintosca.com and on Facebook. Like him. He’d like that.

EMILY by Jan-Erik Asplund

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Emily
EMILY
by Jan-Erik Asplund

Desire not the night, for that is when people will be destroyed. Or perhaps: to drag people away from their homes. Or maybe: when people vanish in their place.

(Job 36:20), variations

The speed was a natural solution to Professor Flowers’s death. The only thing left to do after we had laid it out on the table and crushed it up and all was talk—and it turned out we could do that for hours. It was a beautifully orchestrated display, a symphony of run-on conversation and exuberant denial. We talked shit about the neighborhood, and what it was like to extort your parents for thousands upon thousands of dollars a year in the guise of receiving an education. We wondered if we were doing the right thing. We understood each other even when we didn’t.

“It’s so messy in here,” she said.

“I don’t really like cleaning,” I said.

“I didn’t say that because I disliked it.”

More long, thin, white streaks appeared on the table. Insufflatio in the Latin, she told me. Up and away.

“Your eyes are so big right now,” I said.

“Really? Yours are too.”

“Well, it’s bright in here.”

“Do something about it. That lamp is just—violent.”

I had gone to the wall and turned the light off. A thought had occurred to me in the darkness. I turned the light back on, grabbed the orange shawl she had hung on my chair and laid it on the sconce. The transformation was instant. A warm, red glow covered the entire room. We were silent. It could only have been a moment, but it seemed to be hours, like in a dream. I sat still and watched her.

She leaned back, completely at peace, as if she had come to an irreversible understanding. Then a muscle jerked somewhere near her mouth and she was back.

Her neat little finger reached to pick up what was left of the speed and then disappeared into her mouth. Her eyes lit up. Then she brought her hand down to her chest, and with that same finger extended, as if by reflex, made the sign of the cross.

“You’re so pious,” I laughed.

She pointed at me and intoned. “And are you among the believers?”

I crossed myself. “Lapsed,” I said.

“All the better,” she said, “so was He.”

“Explain.”

She pointed out that God and Christ were the same; any forsaking of his son was a forsaking of Him. We did some more of the stuff. The taste of it dripped into my throat and I gulped to clear it. She kneaded the side of her nose with her finger.

“So God was a suicide,” I said. “Why?”

“So we’d be free,” she said, “and I think St. Paul said it best—sapientiam sapientum perdam—to ‘destroy the wisdom of the wise.’”

“Destroy the wisdom of the wise,” I intoned.

“Sound good?”

“Yes,” I said, kissing her.

In the red light, we are all beautiful. Blemishes, stains, pockmarks, bruises, sickness, death, all fade away under its soft glow. It must have been visible from the road, because not long after that, some people showed up at the apartment. A blond man uncorked a bottle of wine and everyone cheered. Drinks were poured, cigarettes were lit, and everyone had a lovely time, drinking and carousing in its amiable light. Given the right ambience, even strangers can be friends. And I didn’t spare a single second to think about the old man.

Sometimes I close my eyes and try to remember the way she appeared the night she first showed me her hair loosed from that messy blonde bun. If I could just recall exactly how she lay down, how she reached back and let her hair fall, and how exactly it splayed over my pillows, maybe I could open my eyes and find every little thing restored to how it was. We all think like this from time to time.

One day she came in and told me that she had been lying in bed in the dark when she noticed something strange in her vision, something the Professor had once told her about. It had something to do with prolonged exposure to darkness. Astronauts, prisoners, truck drivers, devout practitioners of meditative techniques: all types of people had reported seeing these spontaneous shows of varicolored lights, often without discernible form but occasionally resolving into human forms. Apparently, it’s caused by sensory deprivation coinciding with the arbitrary misfiring of neurons in the retina.

Anyway, stare into the sun on a cloudless day, squint tight, and the play of the light through your eyelashes can do something pretty similar. That night, with her by my side, I squinted into the red light until my eyes ached from the strain and begged for closure. Then I saw it.

I was walking through a hallway in a large hotel, carefully checking the number on each door. I found the one I was looking for and a soft nudge got it open. There was a woman lying naked in my bed. Around her was a crowd of observers, each one angling around the others to try and get a better view. The woman was very beautiful, but there was a look of sadness on her face, and she ignored them.

I came into the room, hung my coat and kicked off my shoes. What is going on in here? I asked. The crowd ignored me. I looked to her but she ignored me too. I wanted to scream. But under the red light, I always find it difficult to assess blame. There was a burst of white light. “No flash photography,” I think I said, but the damage was done. She was putting her clothes back on. The crowd was muttering something under its collective breath. She walked toward the door but turned to me as she passed and whispered into my ear. “We tell lies at night,” she said, “because that way, they vanish.” The people started putting on their coats. When they were gone I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head.

I woke up next to her and thought I was safe. She was still asleep. I glued my eyes to the high lumen fluorescent overhead and lay perfectly still so as not to wake her. After staring for a few minutes, I noticed a single fly stuck dead inside the dome of the fixture.

She woke up anyway, yawned, and asked if I could grab her something to eat while she went back to sleep for a while. Since I’m already “up.” It took me a few moments to respond because I was busy with the fantasy of being there, in bed, with her. She groaned when she realized I was not going anywhere, and we started to talk. Lying there together under the red light, I had no trouble mishearing when she said things like:

“Just to be clear. This all doesn’t mean we can keep doing this.”

Not like this, I agreed.

“Right. Not like this.”

But maybe some other way?

She closed her eyes and I followed her into sleep.

When I awoke she was already out of bed, sitting at my desk and checking her e-mail. Our times were always out of joint. She turned around as I climbed out of the covers and looked at me in a state of nervous agitation. Father sent me an e-mail, she said. Father does not like the things I am doing with my life, she said. Father thinks I am sick. Father thinks I have spent my life following in the footsteps of the lost. There are verses that support this: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit?” I got out of bed and read it out loud off the computer, looking up at her and laughing into the hard-boiled light of day at what I thought were the funny parts. She does not find it funny when I offered to help her draft a reply.

“You shouldn’t take stuff like this so seriously,” I said.

“How can I not take this seriously?”

“It’s just scripture.”

“And?”

“Well, that stuff about St. Paul. Destroying the wisdom of the wise.”

“What about it?”

“I guess we must interpret that differently.”

“How do you?”

“As an attack on little-minded people who claim to be wise.”

She didn’t say anything right away and I knew I had hit the wrong note.

“Are you saying my father is little-minded?”

“No, no,” I said, “I’m just trying to say that, well, we need to do what’s right rather than let others tell us what is right.”

“And how exactly,” she said, “are we supposed to always know just what’s right?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I guess you just do.”

She moved across the room, toward the door.

“You just do?”

“I just mean, I don’t see any theologians around here.”

“Well you,” she said, “know nothing of the Torah.”

I followed her and put my hand on hers, tried to kiss her.

“Fuck off,” she said, and opened the door.

“Emily. Please.”

“I feel miserable. I need to go see the doctor.”

I reached for her again but she had already slammed the door closed behind her. After she left, I got back into bed and stared at the ceiling again. A chill ran through me as I realized that I had missed something. There wasn’t just one dead fly: there were dozens, maybe hundreds. They had a proper cemetery up there, all to their own. It still eludes me how exactly it is that flies make their way into those domes which look so airtight.

She came by the next afternoon and told me that she had been to the doctor. I just wondered which one. She said she was sick. I put my hand on her shoulder and told her nothing was wrong, that it was all going to be okay. Sometimes—rarely—you tell a lie so blatant you can’t even believe it yourself.

“But the doctor told me I was sick.”

“So?”

“You’re not a doctor.”

I know that, I say, and squeeze her shoulder a little tighter.

“Why are you touching me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away.

“You always put your hands on me to say that everything’s going to be fine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But it doesn’t matter whether or not you touch me.”

“I know.”

“Because the truth is that we’re both sick and you’re just denying it.”

“I thought things were going really well,” I said.

“Well, frankly, I do not know how you got that impression.”

A few days later, the crowds came back for more. Emily was nowhere to be seen. A man wearing his black sunglasses inside pulled a dartboard out of his duffel bag and a game began. The darts, as if defective, flew wobbly and uncertain: my plaster walls sprouted deep track marks from drunken blunders. Someone, in a bout of curiosity, pulled the orange shawl from the sconce and threw it across their shoulders. The crowd erupted in a disdainful shout and the shawl was replaced.

A few more days went by. Emily was still avoiding me. I didn’t know how to convince her I was right—and her doctor and father were wrong—so I decided to stop trying. I went to the mailroom to invite her out on a little adventure and she was already standing there by her box, as if she had been waiting for me.

“I’m going to leave,” she said. “I’m just picking up what’s left.”

“Why.”

“Because I’m sick.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am.”

“I’ll help.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then how is it?”

“I can’t be here.”

“What does that mean? Here with me.”

“That’s not what I mean. I just can’t be here.”

“We’re the only ones here though, so you wanting to leave here basically really just means that you want to leave me.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever understand.”

“Try me.”

“It’s not you. It’s who you are sometimes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She touched my face.

“You looked so beautiful under that red light.”

“So did you,” I said.

She smiled, weakly. She had expected this. There was a resoluteness to that gesture, an ultimatum embedded inside it, but at the same time I could see that she had given up on something: maybe she just didn’t see the purpose in fighting anymore.

“Will you come with me somewhere?” I asked. “One last time?”

“Okay.”

We reached the car as dusk fell and drove until the road became dirt and the truck began to jostle. She groaned loudly, and I just hoped that we were going the right way. Then it came up on the left: a clearing in the woods that Flowers had told me about. He said that at night people saw things here, that they had visions. That kids liked to come out here at night and scare each other silly. I was about to stop when I noticed another car already parked on the side of the road.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Park,” she said.

I turned the car around and parked on the opposite side of the street. She said we were going to get out and cross the street but that we had to do it as quietly as possible. She led me through the woods, treading lightly through the underbrush, until we reached the edge of the clearing. Once there, she took a deep breath, let it out, and screamed. She turned around.

“If I don’t put the fear of God in them, who will?” she said.

I thought one way to clear up the ruins of our language would be to simply fall silent, the way we had done together under the red light, the way we did after she screamed into that clearing. But somehow even in silence there seems to be a speaker and a listener, one who imposes the silence and one who merely obeys or observes. So the possibility is still open for storytelling. One just has to squint one’s ears, so to speak, and allow the story to be pulled out of the silence. Then, like a slide, one can follow it down.

Anyway, the last party. I struck up a conversation with this tall, dark-haired girl. She looked out of place and I guess that’s the kind of thing I sympathize with. It turned out she didn’t go to our school and had just come to visit a hometown boy she had been dating for a few months. When she arrived at his room, she found it was locked. She knocked for a few minutes until he came to the door, disheveled and confused. Not about to calmly accept what was going on, she pushed in past him. Then she saw that the window by his bed was wide open, the curtains softly swaying in the breeze. And the air was thick with it.

“I love the red light,” she said breathlessly, leaning over the coffee table.

“Me too,” I said, leaning over after her. We were a real community of believers.

Emily was with someone else that night. I knew this because someone had gone to her window, noticed a crack in the blinds and looked through it.

I jolted myself out of bed and ran down the stairs to her room. I pulled at the doorknob—locked—and banged on the door until my fists started to scream. It was futile. Someone noticed what I was doing and wanted to know what was wrong, why I had made my fingers bleed. It was the new girl. After I explained, I asked if she wanted to come back to my room and talk. She asked, dazed, if mine was the room with the red light. I said yes, it was, and we went up the stairs.

After we had sex I asked her if she knew the story of Job. She didn’t. Job had lost everything that he held dear in life, I told her. Job’s friends came over, saw him despondent, and tried to justify his misfortune for him. They tried to tell him that his suffering must have been some kind of punishment for his sins, that he should repent and pray for mercy. Job argues with his friends, says he is a righteous man, and cannot believe God would be so cruel to such a righteous man. “Whence, then, cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding?” Someone named Elihu chimes in. “If you do sin,” he asks, “how does that affect Him? Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself, your righteousness only other people.” That’s when God appears. He tells Job he’s right, and that everything his friends said was wrong. That there is no meaning in catastrophe.

“You knew Arthur Flowers, didn’t you?” the dark-haired girl asked.

Desire not the night, when people vanish in their place.

I woke up with a headache in the middle of the night. I left the new girl in my bed and went downstairs to try and explain, apologize, make things right. I told myself to tell her that I understood that she didn’t feel well. I did not. But that was what I should have said to her long ago: “I understand everything, that is what makes us special. We understand each other. These trials are nothing.”

The door to her room was ajar. I nudged it open slowly. There were no posters, no clothes, no sheets on the bed, just one thing. It was an old, thin hardcover from which the jacket had been long ago removed. The initials A. F. carved into the front. The title page reading The Red Light. The inscription reading For E. No sign of her at all.

The room was terribly cold. Someone had left the window open.

Jan-Erik Asplund

Jan-Erik Asplund lives in Brooklyn. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Potomac, The Bad Version and The Silo.

Image credit: Shavar Ross on Flickr

CUTMAN by Marc Labriola

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CutmanCUTMAN
by Marc Labriola

If the needle swung from side to side, it would be a girl. If the needle swung in circles, a boy. Lailah’s three sisters lay her laughing in Ben’s arms as her mother dangled the needle above her belly. Each woman willing the azimuth of the needle like an ancient geographic divination.

No one agreed on the gender of the needle and thread. Lailah’s mother saw a boy. The youngest sister swore it barely moved. The sister who had sworn off men blamed Lailah for the cryptic emanations of her body. Her mother, laughing her head off, mapped out Lailah’s body as the tree of life—naming ten parts of her body from head to toe which formed the ten Sephirot where God was broken into male and female. Lailah and Ben were silent in their pose. They had both distinctly traced the needle as it swung to the left, then swung to the right.

The women passed around the black and white sonogram of the baby. Seven more days until the eleventh week, and Lailah and Ben Amora would know if the baby would be male or female. The women warned Ben from the doorway. Whatever Lailah doesn’t eat will be missing in her child. Everything edible that she sees she has to bite, sip, lick. If she gets ugly, she’s having a girl.

Looming in front of the washroom mirror, Ben faced his own broken face. His features would be ugly in a girl. He was afraid to inflict a daughter with his hooded boxer’s eyes. Working as a cutman now at the ring, he thought of how many times he’d seen faces opened up, re-arranged, lopsided. One eye swollen shut with blood. Top lip opened wide. One cheek bigger than the other. The very idea of human features themselves, engorged or stretched by the spasms of happiness or misery, seemed grotesque. The clumsy orbit of shamefaced eyes. The stupidity of a lonely man’s nose. The little arch in the center of the top lip—the Cupid’s bow—the instrument of the god of sexual love. The two philtral columns between the nostrils and the upper lip, where Ben wore a small stitched scar after failing the ten count, was sunken, according to legends told to mystic children, by the finger of an angel of conception to make babies forget the miracle of birth. The features of man and woman are purely vestigial, he thought. Remnants of a divine history—part god and part baboon.

Dead drunk by ten, he succumbed to an exaggeration of his fusiform visual sense—deciphering faces where there were none. Baby girls’ faces in nighttime foetal clouds with their sonogram silhouettes seen from his third floor apartment balcony. Faces in the memory of a pattern on a woman’s dress who was sent to him after he lost the fight. Faces in the entoptic phenomena of the eye—seeing two blue girl’s eyes when he closed his own eyes, face down on the kitchen table.

Waking up as the husband of a pregnant wife, still seeing double from the dregs of the hours before, he picked up the needle and red thread which had been left untouched on the table. All domestic objects were really veiled ciphers for the most mortal of life’s happenings. To Ben, the bottle of bourbon, the pack of smokes, a needle and thread, petroleum jelly, cotton swabs, retained all of their original magical savagery.

Ben looked over to see his naked pregnant wife asleep in the bed of their one room apartment. He thought of Lailah’s body as the perfect cipher. For ten weeks her body had not moved involuntarily. The gesticulations of her body—her heartbeat, the blinking of her eyelids, were all tiny revelatory acts of the baby inside his wife. Careful not to wake her, he took hold of her palm. He was a man who knew about hands. Ben took her pulse. He bent over her to count her heartbeats per minute. Lailah’s sisters had instructed him that evening that even one beat over one hundred forty heartbeats was a girl. He tried to sleep off the booze.

Lying there with his hands on his wife’s torso as if scrying her bare belly, now iridescent from the light of the street, there opened a lesion of jealousy between Ben and Lailah. He remembered times he had come home too late in the night to be a man. He knew she felt he was losing his handsome boxer’s face. That he began to fear other men. That he had lied to her when he said he was not bothered that she was older than him, at the five years it took to conceive—each one secretly blaming the other.

Ben knew that Lailah began to see him as the bearer of weaknesses. His bad shoulder. His fear of water. His scarred lip that burned in the cold. She saw him as Ben “Animal” Amora, the man that had lost his job two times in as many years after giving up fighting following that knockout in the tenth, who had to take the job as a cutman at the ring where he was once an animal god. Fixing busted up eyes and flattened noses and smashed mouths of men transformed into wounded beasts. She had left behind a wealthy home to come live in this apartment, in this cold, shitty place. Ben was terrified that she would begin to revile him, as his blood unfurled in her unborn baby, for the possibility that his faults were being repeated unstoppably in the child. That even his cicatrix lip was a feature that could be passed on to the baby. Every scar that the cutman had collected was as much a part of him as his grandmother’s hairline, his dead mother’s eyes.

Waking up now, she climbed on top of him the way she had done since her belly started to swell, and undid his buckle. Ben became attentive to his feminine nails holding her thighs. He felt the usual blush of his cheeks. Lailah, too, was also suddenly aware of what she saw as her failures as a woman—the growth of hair on her legs, her small breasts moving up and down. Ben couldn’t help thinking up names of fruit for cock and birds for cunt.

During the last two burdensome years seeing him weak, she became more attracted to him for what she saw as a rise in her own beauty through the elaboration of femininity she showed in the face of his lack of masculinity. But secretly, she half-knew that he too was attracted to her because of her boyish looks, her smoker’s voice, her square shoulders. In seven days, the revelation of the baby’s gender would be, in fact, a testament to their own identity, their success or failure as a man or a woman. Both of them, separately, were measuring their own divinity in the creation of the child and their own desire to pull apart the spherical androgynous creature that they had become in Lailah’s belly. To unveil it, undisputedly, as male or female.

Afterwards, Lailah pretended to scoop out his eye, placing it in her belly. I want the baby to have your eyes. She mimicked pulling off his eyebrows and putting them in her belly. I want the baby to have your eyebrows. Lailah removed his ears, his forehead, his hair. Leaving his lips. Moving behind him she draped her long black hair to curtain his face. You look like a girl. They didn’t look so different, Ben thought. Years of contorting their faces alongside each other as they made love or as Lailah watched Ben get hit in the kidneys, in the gut, in the face. Their mimicked convulsions were what reshaped them. They lay down back to back as they had begun to do after making love.

Less than seven days before learning if his own child would be a boy or a girl, Ben dreamed that he was not a man. In the ring he let another man explode his nose, dislocate his jaw, close up his right eye, scar his lip. No one but Ben knew why he kept dropping his hands. But tonight, Ben “Animal” Amora rose after the ten count and fixed himself up with his cutman’s tools—his enswell, his cotton balls, his petroleum jelly. With his implements, he added two new blue feminine eyes, a new jaw, perfect lips. The cutman made himself into two. Into some ancient spherical person with back to back bodies of a woman and man, whose androgynous strength could challenge any man who tried to pull them apart.

Examining the scar on his dreaming face, where ten stitches had once closed up his lip, Lailah put a finger to his Cupid’s bow and imagined for a guilty instant, the way all lovers secretly imagine at the moment of their greatest love, what it would be like if Ben died.

Marc LabriolaMarc Labriola writes stories and poems and is involved with the world of theatre. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto. He has taught literature in Canada and in Italy and has taught English as a second language to students the world over. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Image credit: Cia de foto on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY IN VENICE by Julie Kearney

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Sunday in Venice

SUNDAY IN VENICE
by Julie Kearney

The alleyway was paved with humped dark stones like so many dead or hibernating turtles. On either side of these stones, walls leprous with peeling plaster inclined inwards towards a sliver of grey sky. The man walked ahead trundling his suitcase, the woman followed dragging a matching one. Their wheels made a thunderous noise on the stones.

‘Wait for me,’ the woman called. Her face was red.

The man kept walking.

‘Will you stop?’ she called more loudly. ‘Are you deaf or what?’

The man stopped but didn’t turn round.

‘That’s it!’ she said when she came up to him. ‘I’m not going another step!’ She wiped her sweating face with the back of her hand and said without looking at him, ‘I hate you. Why don’t you ever listen to me? If you’d listened to me we would have got off the vaporetto at the right stop.’

He turned round to face her. ‘We did get off at the right stop,’ he said. ‘According to the map it’s only a couple of laneways from here.’

‘No, it’s not! I saw the map. You’re not the only one who can read maps you know.’

The woman perched her anorak-covered behind on the black suitcase, which teetered on its metal wheels. ‘My feet hurt,’ she said. She sounded as if she was about to cry.

‘It’s not that far,’ the man said. He pulled a map from his pocket and unfolded it. ‘See. We’re about…um…about here.’ He stabbed his finger at the middle of the sheet.

She looked away and stared at the peeling walls.

They were alone in the alleyway. Where it joined up with the next one another wall rose up, fitted like a jigsaw piece under a flat section of grey sky.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, still staring at the crumbling plaster. ‘And I don’t care what you say, I’m not going another step.’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay here.’ He was having difficulty refolding the map. When he couldn’t get it to go into the right creases, he swore at it and shoved it in his pocket.

‘I told you, my feet hurt,’ the woman said. ‘Much you care about that.’

When he said nothing she tightened her lips. ‘Where are we anyway?’ she demanded, casting glances up and down the alleyway. ‘There’s no street name that I can see so how come you know where we are, Mister Smartypants?’

‘Let’s go,’ he said and began walking again. The rattle of his suitcase on the cobblestones echoed against the walls.

She watched him go. When he didn’t look back she got up from the suitcase, pulled up the handle and followed him. The man turned the corner, his bag bumping on the dark stones. The woman reached the corner and saw that the new alleyway was no different from the last one. She stopped walking, but when the man was about to turn the next corner she followed him with dragging steps.

The man and woman continued in this way for five more alleyways until they came to a large open square surrounded by grey stone buildings. The man kept walking but the woman pulled her suitcase upright and looked around. She seemed surprised. She looked at the expanse of cloud-covered sky, then at the stones under her feet. They were not so dark as the ones in the alleyway but a lighter grey, much the same color as the sky. People were walking in twos and threes over the stones and children in their Sunday best of frilled dresses or miniature suits trotted beside them. A small boy dribbled a black and white soccer ball beside an obelisk-shaped stone fountain in the center of the square. A tall thin priest in an ankle-length black gown walked arm in arm with an old woman who also wore long black skirts.

The woman caught up with the man who had stopped and was waiting for her.

‘At least I can sit down now,’ she flung at him from the side of her mouth, not slowing her stride as she rattled her case past him. She trundled it across the square to a café on the other side. When the man arrived she was sitting at a grey metal table, frowning at the fountain. The other tables around her were unoccupied.

‘I want a coffee,’ she said.

The man pushed in the handle of his suitcase and sat down opposite her on one of the grey metal chairs.

‘Are you going to get it?’ she asked.

‘What do you want, flat white?’ he said, taking out the map again.

‘Oh, leave that thing alone. Cappuccino please. And a packet of cigarettes while you’re at it. See if they have Winfield or something similar.’

He frowned at her. ‘Don’t be stupid. You’ve given up.’

‘Too bad. I’m taking it up again.’ She shifted her gaze from the fountain to the square. The boy with the soccer ball was playing with another boy now, taking it in turns to drop-kick the ball across the cobblestones.

‘Why don’t you calm down?’ the man said. ‘I’ll get you a coffee but I’m not buying any cigarettes.’ He started to get out of his seat but she was up before him.

She stood over him. ‘Just give me the money then. I’ll get them myself if you won’t.’

The man took out his wallet and passed her some notes and she went over to the café. He sat in the metal chair, watching the people in the square as they strolled about or stopped to greet one another. The boys with the soccer ball weren’t playing anymore. They had joined two couples who stood chatting in a circle near the fountain. One of the men waved his arms about as he spoke and the other three laughed.

The woman came back, pulling open the cigarette packet as she walked. She sat down and fumbled with the lighter, then touched the flame to the cylinder in her mouth. She inhaled deeply, forcing out a long stream of smoke, and inhaled again. The man watched. Her hand trembled as she took a third drag.

‘This is all your fault,’ she said, narrowing her eyes to look at him for the first time. ‘Why can’t you be civil? Why can’t you talk to me properly? Why can’t you listen when I try to tell you I’ve found a shorter way to the hotel?’ Ash fell on the stones beside her feet as she spoke. ‘You think I’m stupid, that’s why! You think you’re so smart but you’re not.’ Her eyes glittered with unshed tears.

‘I’ll get the coffee,’ the man said. He stood up and walked over to the café. When he came back he said, ‘I know what this is about. It’s because you gave up smoking. I told you it was a bad idea to give up at the start of our trip.’ He put the cups on the table and sat down. ‘You’ve been hanging out for a smoke for weeks. That’s why you’re carrying on like this.’

The woman pulled a second cigarette from the packet. It was a Winfield packet with Italian words on it. She frowned at it and pushed it aside. ‘Is that what you think?’ she said. She lit up and began puffing again. ‘How very convenient. Nothing to do with you of course. Nothing to do with your behavior.’ She waved her free hand in the air. ‘Nothing to do with ignoring me when I try to tell you something useful that would’ve spared my feet six alleyways at least.’

She drew on the cigarette in quick sharp puffs. The man picked up his coffee and sipped. The woman reached forward and stubbed out her half-finished cigarette, grinding it into the ashtray. When her hand came away the butt was torn and tobacco fibers were mixed into the surrounding ash.

The woman bent down so that only her shoulders were showing above the table and began jerking at the laces of her shoes. When she had the shoes off she sat up and looked at her feet. The man looked too and saw they were red and swollen. He looked away.

‘You shouldn’t have bought those cigarettes,’ he told her. ‘Now you’re back to square one.’

‘Make up your mind.’ She was smiling now. ‘You just said I shouldn’t have given up, now you’re telling me I should have.’

The man picked up his cup and took another sip. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped when you did, but since you did you should have stuck to it.’

‘I see.’ She stopped smiling. ‘Whatever I do will always be wrong. Whereas you, of course, will always be right.’ She rapped the cigarette packet on the metal surface of the table. ‘In that case, conversation over.’

The man opened the map and began studying it. She watched him, her head tilted back so she was looking down her nose at him, then shifted her gaze to the square. The boys with the soccer ball were gone. Three jeans-clad young women with shoulder-length black hair were walking across the cobblestones, bending their heads together as they talked. On the far side of the square a young man came with loping strides, his arm around another girl who also had black hair and was wearing jeans. In the middle of the square, next to the fountain, he stopped and turned the girl towards him. She put up her face and he kissed her, his arms wrapped tightly around her. A little girl ran past them in a frilly pink dress, carrying two ice-creams.

The woman watched the kissing couple for some time, then closed her eyes. Her face was less red than before. She wriggled her toes and sighed.

‘I feel a bit better now,’ she said.

The man looked at her over the top of his map. ‘I think I know where we are,’ he said. ‘The hotel is only two blocks away. Want to have a look?’

She shook her head. ‘If you know where we are then let’s go.’ She bent down and began to put on her shoes.

The man folded the map, which took him a long time. She stood waiting for him, one hand gripping the handle of her suitcase. When the man finished his folding he got up from the metal chair and put his arm round the woman’s shoulders. He massaged her neck and she sighed, relaxing her grip on the handle.

‘It might not rain after all,’ she said, looking up at the sky. ‘I think it’s clearing up.’

‘You’re wrong there,’ he said. ‘It’ll pour cats and dogs.’

She turned her head to look at him.

‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘you could be right.’

They walked away, trundling their noisy bags.

Julie KearneyJulie Kearney is an award-winning artist and writer who lives in Brisbane, Australia. She has written a fictional autobiography of her great-grandmother titled True History of Annie Callaghan, and is published in national and international anthologies. Her stories have appeared in Griffith Review, Hecate and Idiom. Currently she is working on the second of a trilogy of historical novellas with an Indigenous theme, inspired by The Tempest, Shakespeare’s iconic depiction of the colonised and the coloniser. You can find her on www.juliekearney.com.au.

Image credit: Tim Sackton on Flickr

MAGDALENE’S DREAM by João Cerqueira

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Raffaello_Sanzio_-_Christ_Blessing_(Pax_Vobiscum)\

MAGDALENE’S DREAM
by João Cerqueira

That night Magdalene dreamt about Jesus.

She was wearing a green overall and gloves, her hair was protected by a plastic cap, and a mask covered her mouth. She was in a large laboratory, looking through the lens of a microscope. All around her there were similarly dressed people—some sitting, others standing, each engaged in a different task. All of them were concentrating intently, and no one spoke.

She worked for Monsanto. The evil gene-manipulating, pesticide-and-defoliant-inventing multinational. But, weirdly enough, Magdalene was happy. Absorbed in her work, as if nothing else existed other than that experiment in genetic alchemy. Like a goddess about to create a new species, more perfect than all the others she had engineered, Magdalene the scientist took delight in her experiments. However, as is always the case in lucid dreams, the awareness of this pleasure disturbed her.

There was a project: to create a new kind of fast-growing corn that would be immune to all known diseases and would let off an odor that would repel predatory insects. This extraordinary plant would do away with the use of toxic herbicides and nitrogen fertilisers, chemicals that pollute groundwater, raise CO2 emissions, and require great amounts of watering. Such a grain would represent a miracle far greater than nature’s abilities—showing how nature represents a past of deprivation, while genetic engineering heralds a future of abundance; it would be a super-food designed to deal with population growth and put an end to famine. And only the biotechnology of Monsanto could produce this future. The Brave New Agricultural World, with only Alpha corn.

Expectations from the scientific community and from consumers were high. Newspapers speculated that this was one of the greatest discoveries of mankind; the radio said the same. On the news Cristiano Ronaldo was shown with two Swedish girls—“they like me because I’m rich and handsome,” he said. This and other information were part of the dream, like the text shown in some film scenes to set the time and place.

Other companies were trying the same feat, but it was Magdalene and her colleagues who had lifted the veil on the secrets of the genes, mapping them, decoding them, manipulating them—and coming closest to the finish line. Within Monsanto itself, Magdalene was heading the research, with the other scientists forming a team that followed her lead. They were just spare parts in a whole she controlled. As such, she closely watched the results of the latest tests, feeling that the chimera was edging closer and closer.

In truth, Magdalene, when awake, knew almost nothing about genetics and less still about the technological processes behind their manipulation. She had read stuff in the papers, browsed websites, watched documentaries, listened to layman conversations, and these scraps of information had provided the tattered rags with which she had sewn together her short, patchwork blanket of scientific knowledge. Put another way, she knew diddly-squat about the matter. But that didn’t stop her from dreaming that she was the greatest geneticist, about to invent a plant resistant to everything—pests, mice or environmentalists—and saving mankind from famine.

Even if we lose our identity, dreams enable us to reach for the stars, to walk in the clouds, to play with a magic wand that transforms frogs into genetically perfect princes. And so, radiant dreamer Magdalene was testing the magical powers of her wand; and her corn prince was almost ready.

Suddenly, the dream changed.

Proceeded by the crash of the door as they broke it down, Judas and his green militia stormed into the laboratory, shattering test tubes, pipettes, beakers, funnels, flasks, stirrers, centrifuges, microscopes, tables, chairs and computers. Everything went flying. The muscles of a choleric triumph twitched on his face and a rage yet to be quenched roared in his eyes. Eager to raze Monsanto to the ground, Judas even managed to hit his comrades with the equipment he was tossing against the wall, and to cut his hands on the glass he broke. It was in this blood-soaked form, like a beast that corners its prey after the chase, that he made his way towards Magdalene, the traitor. Holding a chair above his head, Judas was going to crush her as he would a GM crop. In Magdalene’s wide eyes, the color of terror was blue.

It was then that a door opened and Jesus appeared, stopping Judas in his tracks. He was wearing a white tunic and his hair and beard were longer than before. The serene physiognomy Magdalene knew had gained an expression of authority. He seemed taller and endowed with superhuman strength; omnipotent and omniscient. Nothing could oppose him. If she hadn’t have been terrified of Judas, she would have been intimidated by Jesus. Just as the others were.

The cold light of the laboratory had disappeared before the glow coming from Jesus’s body, forcing both intruders and scientists to cover their eyes with their hands. Only Magdalene kept her eyes open, immune to his radiance. Very slowly, everyone began to recover from the impact of the light and headed towards Jesus, with no difference between assailant and victim. Defenders of nature and its researchers walked side by side, as if they had discovered that they were heading towards the same destination.

Only Judas stood still, but he lowered his chair.

Magdalene had finally shed her fear and freed herself from anxiety. There was now an agreement between the feelings of the woman who was sleeping and the woman in the dream. Genetics and nature had become reconciled. Jesus had not only protected her from Judas’ blow, but had also freed her from the guilt of being a gene manipulator—far from being a miracle, this was no small thing.

However, when everyone was gathered around Jesus and waiting for him to offer words of wisdom, to give good advice, to explain what he was doing there, the saviour pulled up one of the few intact chairs remaining and sat down. He then crossed his legs, took out a cigarette, tapped it a couple of times against the back of his hand and began to smoke, peacefully—a behavior that irritated the scientists as it violated safety rules and disturbed the environmentalists, who suspected that it contained GM tobacco.

One puff, another puff, and nothing. Not a word. Just grey smoke, very unhealthy.

Even Magdalene started to become intrigued. A saviour appears for gene manipulators attacked by gene defenders, avoids a blood bath and astronomical damage, puts everyone in a daze, and then sits down for a smoke? It didn’t seem right. A few words were required, an explanation, a telling-off.

But Jesus rarely did what was expected of him.

He observed the bewildered men and women in front of him, waiting for the right moment to start his peacemaking speech. He was enjoying the cigarette, so he would finish smoking it. And what a shame one of those little machines couldn’t make coffee; or that there was no cognac or port wine in those test tubes. The bad thing about scientists is that they don’t know how to appreciate the good things in life. In the meantime, researchers and intruders were becoming desperate. But Jesus was now entertaining himself blowing smoke rings. It was a small punishment for those who wanted to play at gods, just as it was for those who wanted to destroy temples.

Finally he put out the butt in an intact flask, shifted his gaze from face to face, lingering on Magdalene’s, and then spoke, with Judas in his sights.

“Judge not, that ye be judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measure to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

 

João Cerqueira João Cerqueira has a PhD in History of Art from the University of Oporto. He is the author of seven books: Blame it on too Much Freedom, The Tragedy of Fidel Castro, Devil’s Observations, Maria Pia: Queen and Woman, José de Guimarães (published in China by the Today Art Museum), and José de Guimarães: Public Art. His works are published in Toad Suck Review, Hypertext Magazine, Danse Macabre, The Liberator Magazine, All Right Magazine, Sundayat6mag, and Literary Lunes. His website is www.joaocerqueira.com.

Image credit: Raffaello Sanzio, Christ Blessing (Pax Vobiscum), 1505-06 

LE PAIN D’AFFLICTION by Steven Anthony George

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LE-PAIN-D'AFFLICTIONLE PAIN D’AFFLICTION
by Steven Anthony George

The piercing, relentless buzz rises and falls in pitch. It starts and stops for only a moment, before resuming again near the upper corner. I have been cared for in this same room for nineteen years now, I think. It is difficult to say for certain. Most days are like any other, except for the weather, which changes almost daily here in the spring. Raindrops tap gently on the unbearably narrow window. On days such as this, I am not permitted to go into the courtyard. I try, through the aggravating buzz, to focus my eyes on the stark, white ceiling in order to again project mental images of my memory of Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc: the questions of the tonsured judges, Joan’s responses, the exact words of a simple county girl, not in armor on a field of battle, but in the simple garb of the lunatic, filmed as if lifted directly from the intricate script of medieval France.

I swear here to tell the truth as I remember it, ignoring those pictures that rely upon speculation or solely upon imagination. I first must assert that I do not believe the others in this place know or they do not care to know of the Fifteenth Century world to which I have returned so long ago. Medications, observational notes, and sleep and wake times, are all they seem to care about. In my solitude, I can feel the soft brush of the floral tapestries with scenes of the hunt of fox or boar, the arming of knights by young ladies with slender and awkwardly leaning bodies. I lie on the bed, observing the rainclouds, contemplating my clothes. I wonder that I must dress as neither a man nor a woman, often only the robe an angel would wear, I suppose. I imagine Michael descending to Earth enrobed and I doubt whether I would dress any other way if it were left to me.

I return my attention to the movie screen I have created above my head, where I notice the first fly land briefly on Mlle. Falconetti’s face, as Joan was questioned about her need for the Church. Should one who has gained her salvation by doing God’s work require the instruction of man? Once the Lord in his glory has promised to keep my soul, there is no longer reason for prayer, the mass, or confession. I hope personally for my redemption, but I know neither the day nor the hour, nor if I may already have it. It must be assumed that the fly of La passion fell rigid to the floor within days after the scene had been played if it were fortunate enough to evade the judgmental swatting of the director’s assistants; it led a life preserved by Dreyer, but the actress dismissively brushed it away, and neither could control it.

Did that second fly that landed briefly on Falconetti’s face as she lay on the cinematic bed return off-camera to drink momentarily of each theatrical tear, to nourish generations to follow as she knelt painfully on the stone floor? Perhaps maggots of the flies that visited Saint Joan, feeding on the bodies of those slain in the siege of Orleans, gave birth to flies who, tens of thousands of generations later, begat maggots feeding on the discarded scraps of Dreyer’s film crew and they, in turn, gave birth to flies who, thousands of generations later, perhaps carried on a merchant ship from France, resulted in this fly that speeds past my eyes, though those monitoring me keep the building secured so tightly that I cannot imagine how a fly would enter or where a maggot would feed.

That fly that flew both left and right before Falconetti’s face as the smoke rose before her was, perhaps, overcome and killed in the same manner as Joan, choked by smoke and singed by the rising flames, its body becoming an ember, floating through the boiling air, but I can only speculate, because the fate of flies is never certain. C’est la façon de mouches. We find them desiccated on the windowsill and wonder at their possible attempted escape, though the truth is that they have been given no more than a month to live, and I believe that they are aware of how soon they will perish. If that should be true, then to such similar loathsome creatures they are martyrs—messengers that hear the words of God and send them to our ears. 

Steven-Anthony-GeorgeSteven Anthony George is a poet and short story writer who resides in Fairmont, West Virginia. He finds inspiration largely in historical events, visual art, and film. His work has appeared in several online and print journals and is also forthcoming in the anthology Diner Stories, to be released in late 2014. He is active in the autism community and often speaks on the topic of self-advocacy. Visit his website at www.stevenanthonygeorge.com.

Image credit: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)—Carl Theodor Dreyer, film still courtesy of AWorldofFilm.com  

HOW A GHOST IS MADE by Sean Jackson

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How a Ghost is Made

HOW A GHOST IS MADE
by Sean Jackson

This is the part that gets to Shelly every time: running past the Horner’s fence with a big, bright smile on her face. It can’t be the sour pucker that she wants to display. It has to be a buoyant expression, otherwise Mingyu will talk about it in the clubhouse.

So she sprints along the freshly painted pickets (Mingyu Horner isn’t one to forgo spring improvements) and bares her teeth, chin high, shoulders back, and a proper curl to her lips. The Shih Tzu scrambles through the flowers behind the fence and leaps at the wheeling legs, yapping and clawing at the wood.

“Fuck off, Roxy,” Shelly says through her teeth. The sprinklers click on and the Belknap’s maid appears down the sidewalk, searching for the morning paper. Shelly flies past her, doesn’t even nod hello, her mind locked in on the fact that Dave’s car will be rolling by soon. She can practically hear the thump of his music, that awful heavy metal he still listens to, and the whine of the rear brakes he won’t take in to get looked at.

She leans into the next turn, bursting up Spindale Street like they taught her at Oberlin: run till you can’t think straight, then back off one gear. But only one. Too much and the pace erodes so that you won’t find it again. She imagines she is sprinting to Mingyu’s murder scene—cops and medics and white chalk outline, the whole bit. Dave will be there, peering out of the perfectly tinted Audi windows, his face wracked with grief and shame.

“Hey!”

Shelly stumbles at the Brier Lake intersection as a dude on a bike hops the curb and blows past her the other way, a shitty look on his face as he yells something rude about her having an alleged cocaine habit, being a whore, and needing to look where the fuck she is going. This is the Walser kid, back from prep school (booted for partying) and on a rampage through the neighborhood. Mingyu got him barred from the clubhouse and the pool after catching him rifling through lockers. Nancy what’s-her-name got him blacklisted from the tennis courts because he (allegedly) stuffed a dead cat inside the Lobster practice machine.

Dave plays tennis with James Horner, who said it wasn’t a big thing and we all make mistakes and maybe we should try to be more lenient with the Walser kid when it comes to banning him from proactive activities like tennis, swimming and working out.

Shelly digs into the rise up Bowman Hill and, though her head is lowered, she can feel the old Claremont Castle staring down at her. All thirty rooms of it. Granite and iron, the high gaping windows (“arched maws,” per Dave), and the woeful willows bent around the center statue of Garland Claremont atop a muscled steed. Shelly’s face warps into a wry smile as she pumps her way around the estate. Claremont sits in federal prison due to years of tax fraud. Millions of it. His wife “entertains” a host of “tennis pros” who come and go like pigeons on the turrets—there one minute, gone the next.

The whole neighborhood is on an Old Testament whoring binge: omnisinfidelitas.

Shelly reaches the greenway trail head, which is a fence-covered foot bridge over the Durham Freeway. She pauses, counts along with her stopwatch, till she sees Dave ease into a relaxed line of RTP-bound nerds and immoralists. Then she pops in her earbuds and descends along the bridge into a canopy-covered swath of nature so green it makes her sick.

◊

Radisson v. Marklitz, et al. is what they’ve given her at work, a six-figure payday for the firm and likely an eight-figure payout for the hotel which claims the City of Raleigh cockblocked its efforts to build a luxury high-rise near the train depot. Marklitz is the city planner who led the cockblocking. He’s also a manic depressive who Shelly knows will lose his job, kill himself, then become a martyr along the lines of John the Baptist or…who was that guy from Joy Division?

She’s trying to remember Ian Curtis just as Sambo goes by her door. He leans back, hand on the jamb, and grins in that manner he does which stops all negative thoughts. He is maybe fifty, with a mane of silver and immaculate pompadour hair, and is two uncles removed from the governor’s mansion. There’s already a fellowship at Wake Forest University Law School named after him: the Samuel J.K. Lammartine II Fellow of English Literature & Shakespearean Studies. Or, as he calls it, “the Sam-Lam sub chair.”

“How goes Radisson?” he says, smiling as his eyes dart around her walls. Every time it’s like he’s never seen her degrees and certifications. He always seems to be in awe.

“No chance we lose,” she tells him. (Ian Curtis! Love, love will tear us apart again.) “Not a question of win or lose. The question is: How much do we win?”

Sam’s eyes roll around and he laughs. He actually claps. Then he points at her:

“I knew you were my guy! First time I saw your CV, I told Kane—or maybe it was Julius—that you would kick ass here. Just totally kick ass.”

Shelly nods.

“There’s no ass too big or small to get kicked all down the courthouse hall. Isn’t that from a play or something?”

Sam makes a comic face.

“No it isn’t,” he says. “I think you made it up.”

Then he grins some more.

“No such thing as too much,” he adds. “Make sure you touch base with me the first time you hear anybody even think the word settle. Okay?”

She gives him the thumb, sideways, then jerked straight up. It’s like a ball team around here sometimes. Victory is joyous and defeat is fucking wretched. But they win way more than they lose.

“Oh, what’s the sitch with Dave?” he says, back at the doorway again. “You guys, you know…is he, you know, still…?”

She gives him the other thumb, sideways, then jerked down. She makes the YOU LOSE! videogame sound effect.

After a couple hours drafting emails for the hoped-for Radisson victory party (the invite list includes the widow Claremont), she plops into her car for the post-rush hour drive home. Twilight is in full bloom, a misty purple and gold that obscures the horror show of wires and billboards flanking the route she takes home. She listens to the radio and daydreams, those visions of Mingyu on a capsized boat or at the bottom of a well.

At home, Dave sits out back, surrounded by Tiki torches, whispering into his phone and watching her through the sliding-glass doors. He gives a tepid two-finger wave and looks away, probably telling Mingyu to steer clear of sailfish boats and open wells. She has stopped checking his outgoing calls. He claims he gets James and Mingyu’s numbers mixed up. But he never has an answer for why he’ll talk to the wife for an hour when he meant to ring the hubbie.

“Did I get any mail?” she calls through the glass. He points to the basket on the coffee table (god she loves Ikea). He has that irritated furrow, a fold in his face she never saw till he met Mingyu at the clubhouse bar (Love Forty) and came back saying there was this Chinese girl (even though she was at least thirty) who reminded him of somebody from an old Ang Lee film. Shelly didn’t quiz him, didn’t really even listen as he went on and on about this stunning, graceful Asian girl (married, a daughter, early thirties) who’d played on the women’s pro tour when she was just sixteen.

Shelly stops when the powder-blue envelope appears. Her fingers tremble as she tears the gold seal on the back and removes the registration card. She’s been accepted to the Montana Blue Sky Writer’s Retreat. In fact, her application was the best in years, the Texan, Bobby Short, tells her in the space at the bottom of her acceptance card. Just fill out the registration (a formality) and get it back to the Blue Sky Ranch within two weeks. She looks out at Dave, who cradles his phone between his cheek and shoulder so he can dig at something on the bottom of his foot. Finish off Radisson, have the victory bash, tell Sam she needs a break, drop poison tablets in Mingyu’s water bottle (haha!), and then head for Blue Sky. Easy peasy.

Lemon squeezy. It’s racist, but there’s a name for Mingyu. She wants to offer it to Dave, tell him it’s okay to fuck James Horner’s wife, so long as James never finds out. Horner is a big guy, a software programmer, but he works out and played lacrosse in college. Or maybe he rowed. Either way, the guy is huge compared to Dave.

“Something’s wrong with my foot,” he says as she comes out to check her tea roses. It cost a hundred bucks to get a guy to come spray them with organic something or other. The guy guaranteed it would keep the mites away, or else her money back. Sure.

“You should soak it in salt or whatnot,” she says, seeing that the bushes are strong, enjoying the humid summer.

“I don’t know,” he says, frowning. That furrow. Like a disappointed father. “I hear Mingyu does a homeopathic thing for feet, for athlete’s foot or whatever this is. Some kind of tennis secret, you know?”

Shelly stands behind him as he digs at the flaky soles of his feet.

“Lemon squeezy,” she says.

“What?”

“Get her to squeeze lemons on your feet.”

What an idiot. She lies in bed (her side, nearest the master bath), has some wine, and uses her laptop to research Blue Sky and Bobby Short, et al. She’s written a memoir that traces her mother’s rise and fall in the literary world—a 1960s confessional poet with pieces in The New Yorker, followed by accusations of plagiarism, a descent into alcoholism, the divorce, four years institutionalized (the entire Carter Administration), and finally the breast cancer that ate her away till she was nothing but a cobweb in a Fripp Island bedroom.

Shelly writes angrily about ugly truths and feels she has to get this me-and-mother memoir into print because a scathing account of adultery in a miserable and childless marriage is forthcoming. And also she has a lazy, clichéd notion that maybe, just maybe, she’ll come across some cowboy poet at the dude ranch (is that just a TV term?) and, you know, things will happen.

There’s got to be somebody somewhere who will be her lemon squeezy.

◊

Dave wowed her because he fucked her with arrogance—not with hostility or aggression nor a lusty bravura, just a confidence in his abilities. And he was so calm in the face of adversity, a stoic captain in the Ahab sense. When her mother died and the funeral home in Savannah tried to say the burial insurance was lapsed, Dave swooped in and smacked them across the face with the policy, saying honor it or face the wrath of the federal government. Some kind of Medicare issue, but he was a goddamned genius and the funeral went on, though Shelly was wrecked and the family turnout sparse. He was all that she needed: stability, confidence, and a fair share of good looks.

He still works in insurance, but he no longer fights for the little guys. He’s what Sam calls a douche. Along the lines of, “That douchebag at First Rock National Coverage is going to make us file a tort.” Or even specifically: “Dave is a fucking douche, Shelly.”

It’s something she’s watched before, when her father crept away over the course of a year.

There were times when Shelly thought she could actually hear her mother’s heart breaking. Like a creaky wall in an antebellum house that yawns during storms. Only worse. It was like watching a ghost being made. Piece by dreadful piece. Having seen this, Shelly doesn’t fear divorce or estrangement or loneliness or any of that shit that brought her poet-mom down. She’s put up walls, kinda like an old fucking castle on a hill that uses ramparts and hedges and murder stories to keep trespassers away.

All the fucking immoralists. Shelly hates them all. Soup to nuts, stem to stern—a gigantic waste of her time. A bag of dicks and all that shit.

She realizes she’s had one glass of wine too many about the time Dave pops his head in the room and asks her who is she talking to? Is she Skyping?

Pfft!

She goes back to her screens and reads about the workshops at Blue Sky. Daylong musings over core characters’ motives (why did she kill that little whore bitch?) and possibly delving into magical realism during the evening sessions with some Guillermo dude. There’s a reading by an Oglala Lakota poet who lost a hand at Wounded Knee. (Give him your card, no statute of limitations on malicious wounding.)

Nightly jam sessions are scheduled and everybody is encouraged to bring an instrument of his or her choice. Shelly goes to Amazon to look at acoustic guitars. She played one years ago. Was in some indie band while at Oberlin who did forty minutes of R.E.M. covers. “Swan Swan H,” remember that? Nobody ever figured out what that song was about. She fucked a stranger one night after a shitty gig at a frat party and thinks his name was Johnny Reb. Some guy with a dick shaped like a sweet potato.

She checks a box to attend a midweek gala on Tumble Mountain, a couple hours’ drive in a well-worn Jeep, or an all-day journey atop horses with “the wolfpack,” Bobby Short’s own group of cow punchers (ex-rodeo friends and Bighorn poets) and roughnecks (rumor is that these are a retired prizefighter, maybe that guy from Bon Jovi who nobody remembers, and Matt fucking Damon). It costs $500.

Then she gets an instant message via the site, a short bio and a headshot of her bunkmate. It’s a California woman, with dyed blonde hair, about sixty, who goes by “Carol of Palo Alto.” Carol has crow’s feet, a gold charm necklace (seagulls and starfish), and large, luminous eyes that radiate a forced happiness. That’s the face Shelly sees in the mirror, only younger. The strain of a complicated relationship with a lover is written everywhere. Like a man (or maybe it’s a woman?) has wiped his crappy boots all over it, from hairline to chin, ear to ear, on his way in and out of lies about whether he still loves Carol. Poor Carol. There’ll be two of them at Blue Sky. At least two. Who knows? They could all be jilted hearts turning over stones to find that page that will cry out to a publisher.

Shelly replies through the moderator: “Love Carol! Future BFFs for sure! ♥♥”

Then one last page to RSVP to. The BRING SOMEONE ELSE’S WRITING page. Has to be the unpublished writing of somebody you’ve known personally who means something to you. DON’T JUST BRING US YOUR HUSBAND’S/WIFE’S LOVE LETTERS TO YOU! MAKE IT COUNT.

Ha! If only. Dave’s not the type. He can write a grocery list and a sorry-excuse-for-why-he’s-not-home on a Post-it, but romantic stuff? You may as well ask him to stop fucking Mingyu.

Shelly knows what she’ll bring. There’s a notebook in her closet, in a box with things from high school and corresponding summers, a journal, a nice Moleskine that her mother got in Italy during her only trip abroad. There are four or five rhyming poems in there, a couple of never-ending sonnets, and a little travel piece she wrote for her sister. It tells all about Milan and Rome and the young man (her fiancé George) who was whirling her from destination to destination, an absolute love affair with life, sex, art, and experience.

It’s the only thing her mother ever wrote that uses the word “justification” in relation to her own life. It was the happiest she ever was. Shelly will bring that. That and, sure, one of the notes Dave dropped in her nightstand dish. About a year ago. A curlicue-laden piece about his having to meet a client’s lawyer at a golf course in Raleigh, how sorry he was that this came up last minute. Happy birthday. Save some cake for me.

Sean JacksonSean Jackson’s latest stories have been published in Main Street Rag, The Potomac Review, Niche, Sliver of Stone, and Conte Online, among other literary magazines. He was a 2011 Million Writers Award nominee. He wrote for more than a decade for newspapers across eastern North Carolina. Jackson lives in Cary, North Carolina.

IS THIS IT by Sidney Thompson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

baking pie

IS THIS IT
by Sidney Thompson

Jewell

Jewell Young didn’t know what made her son happy anymore. There was a time she did, and for most of his life she did. It was why she was making this pecan pie for him, because such a simple thing had once made him happy, joyously happy, and maybe, just maybe, she hoped, she could come as close to that as she could, the way a happy memory sometimes will. Even when it was a bought thing that Cooper had desired, something she couldn’t make, a bag of army men or a baseball glove or a Swamp Thing comic book, she knew she could find it and make the finding of it her own, likely at a garage sale, last resort a dime store, and for practically nothing. Now, the venture of trying to make her son happy was an impossible trap of high stakes. At some point, it seemed, he’d decided that if Leah was happy, then he was happy, but who in the world knew what could make her happy? A house? What thing could do that? But if somebody was smart enough to figure out what that thing could be, who in the world could afford it? When Jewell lay in bed late at night, feeling alone, with her ear plugs in, Henry already snoring but hardly audible, she sometimes prayed herself to tears.

She crimped the edge of the pie crust with the tips of her fingers. This was what made Jewell happy—sunlight slanting over the windowsill, Henry’s lawn mower humming in place of his Fox News, and dough, plenty of dough. She was actually making two pies, though one she wouldn’t take with her to Alabama. That one she’d freeze for the future, because no one could ever predict when the church might call for a fund-raiser or when you might need to pitch in a pick-me-up at a funeral potluck. Her mother had always kept something on hand in the freezer, and Jewell preferred to be prepared, too. It made her happy to be prepared. She just wished she could think of something that could possibly make Leah close to happy, too.

The problem was that she didn’t know Leah very well outside the horrible facts of her father’s suicide too few years ago, and that Leah’s mother sent envelopes of Ambien in the mail so Leah could sleep. Cooper had only brought her by to meet her and Henry a couple of times before marrying her, and they hadn’t seen much of her since. She was an attractive girl with a very cute body, so Jewell guessed Leah made her son happy in bed before she went out like a log. Jewell hoped so. She hoped her son had plenty of semen, that everything worked every time, and that someday soon, before she got much older, she’d have a grandchild. It was the one thing left in life that she wanted and couldn’t make or find herself, and she was growing tired of waiting.

In a motion that mimicked the pecking of a bird, she collected the strips and pinches of left-over pie-crust dough off the wax paper, then proceeded un-birdlike to roll them together between her hands into a ball and then to place the ball in the oven on the baking sheet next to the pies. She smiled, remembering her mother, who’d taught her this trick. A cookie to go with her afternoon coffee.

 

Henry

Leaving your home vacant, even for a couple of days, required more preparation than what Henry Young preferred to consider. Asking their neighbor to collect their mail and newspapers. Tracking down the timers for the lamps. Of course, mowing the grass, and this was the worst part of it, going around and around the crepe myrtles, all five, six, seven of them.

Twice over the years they’d been burglarized, and whenever he thought of the second of those two times, he always winced from the vividness of his memory. While waiting for the police to arrive, while Jewell waited safely outside in the car, he made the mistake of investigating the house, not expecting that it would be what was left behind and not learning what was stolen that would startle him with disgust—in the master bathroom commode, his commode, lay the foulest of insults one human could possibly deposit for another, and of gargantuan proportions.

That was it. After that, he and Jewell finally anted up and invested in security doors and lamp timers. That was thirteen years ago, not long after Cooper had received his PhD from the University of Memphis, first in the family to be a doctor, and had moved out of the house for what everyone believed then to be for good, the last time, in order to marry his first wife and begin an illustrious career, trying to out-do his old man, as a university professor.

He and Jewell both believed rather blindly, and unfortunately passed that blindness to Cooper, that it was only a matter of time, no more than a semester or two, before their son, their only child, forever a straight-A student, would prove his worth and be promoted from part-time to full-time and be making more money than they ever did after thirty years—Henry as a high-school history teacher and Jewell a middle-school home-economics teacher. Even when it became painfully evident that Cooper would never be hired at any university without a doctorate from a more prestigious university or without prominent publications, that the world of academia was changing, with qualifications increasing, and that he should go back to school to get certified to teach in secondary ed., do what it took, become street smart, he remained stubborn in his self-worth, believing with a religious fervor that eventually others would accept him for who he was.

Struggling with the lawn mower underneath the unkempt branches of the crepe myrtles had left popcorn-shaped blooms clinging to his shirt, but what he was thinking about now was his father’s face, the last time Henry had seen it and could ever remember holding it in his hands.

Henry had arrived at the nursing home cradling a watermelon. His father had had a stroke six months earlier and remained paralyzed down the length of his entire left side, his shrunken left limbs propped on pillows. Though he couldn’t watch television anymore without crying, because it reminded him too intensely that he wasn’t at home watching television, with his dachshund asleep in his lap, he still loved the taste of food, even if most of his food had to be pureed, and he hadn’t had a watermelon once yet that summer. It was that day, after eating watermelon, when his father asked Henry to please shave him.

Henry had never shaved his father before, holding his pallid face and wiry gray stubble, while bringing the razor slowly through.

It saddened him that Cooper had settled down on the coast, so far away. And was a car salesman, not a professor. Was so far away.

 

Cooper

In the amber light flickering through the leaves of the banana trees that ceaselessly and silently undulated at their bedroom window, he could see Leah’s blonde hair fanned across her pillow. He thought of waking her up, but waking her up had never led to sex before.

He eased himself out of bed, and his knees buckled from the hardness of the glazed terra-cotta floor, which by the day was feeling harder and harder to his feet and ankles and hips, as if he’d brought the pavement of the car lot home with him. He moved toward the bathroom with the speed and tentativeness of a senior citizen, and once he’d reached the bathroom and touched the door to the frame, he decided, like a senior and a woman both, to draw his underwear all the way down and sit.

There was great relief in sitting. He sat for a long while, then stood finally to his feet, and this time there was a little more strength in his legs, a little less ache.

He knew what Jimmy Bertella would tell him. That was his sales manager in training, his shadow.  Let’s be proactive, Coop! By God, take control. Don’t let her dictate the goddamned outcome. Whatever she says, ignore it and redirect and you keep going, keep redirecting, until you have to acknowledge whatever objection there is, but after you acknowledge it and show a little empathy, keep going. Objections don’t mean shit. They’re signs of fear about doing what she wants to do, or why else would she be here? Nobody dragged her at gun point to your bed. But if you have confidence, you have control, and she will follow you with the same level of confidence that you’ve got. It’s a habit for people to follow. It’s polite to follow. Do you want to be an order-taker for the rest of your life, or do you want to be a fucking salesman? Cooper, you pussy, make her follow!

He hiked his boxers and gently, very slowly, swept the door open. He was about to start his day the way he wanted to start it and hoped that was what she was up for because that was what was about to happen.

He even absorbed the shock of the floor with a pinch more youth, then two steps into the room, a blow—the bed was void of any wife, docile or not. Then in the kitchen he heard the unmistakable sucking sound of a refrigerator closing.

As he approached the kitchen through bars of sun filtering in through the living room blinds that she opened every morning before doing anything else, he heard, amid various knocks and clatters, one of his favorite sounds, quite possibly his favorite—that rare, happy sound of Leah humming.

He watched her at the cutting board for a moment in her camisole and striped pajama bottoms, buoyant on her tiptoes, before she realized he was at the doorway and stopped humming.

“Hey,” she said, carving the air with a steak knife, “I thought I’d make us an omelette.”

He smiled, and she said, “I don’t know why, I woke up just craving one. And then after we eat,” she said, setting the knife on the cutting board between mounds of sliced onion and cubed cheddar, “I thought, you know, we could go look at that house in Point Clear Stables I was telling you about.”

He hesitated. He didn’t mean to. It was his day off. It was like his day. But he quickly thought better of such logic and nodded with enthusiasm. “Sure,” he said.

“It’ll be fun,” she said.

“It’ll be fun,” he agreed. He met her at the stove and kissed her. She even resumed her humming in his presence.

He understood that her happiness wasn’t definitive. What made her truly happy, feel complete, serene yet ecstatic, like sex with her was for him, was beauty, wow beauty, rare beauty, genius beauty—watching Savion Glover tap dance or Mavis Staples sing or Liev Schreiber act, or standing so close to a Jackson Pollock that you could pick out the nails or buttons buried in the oils, or comfortably at home reading a Cheever or Carver short story, Susan Minot’s Evening, Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, or as on their honeymoon in Venice, walking along the canals and alleyways in awe. He understood that she was in that difficult transitional period of redefining happiness.

Even for him, sex gradually receded into the décor of the dining room. The omelette was in its place, then buttered wheat toast sprinkled, her way, which was becoming his way, too, with black pepper. Then there was the mutual excitement of a bluebird lighting on the balcony railing. And when she turned up Is This It by the Strokes to get ready to their constant up-tempo beat, he appreciated her choice.

Sidney ThompsonSidney Thompson is the author of the short story collection Sideshow. His fiction, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared or is forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review, Atticus Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Clapboard House, Danse Macabre, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, NANO Fiction, Ostrich Review, Prick of the Spindle, Ragazine.CC, The Southern Review, storySouth, TINGE Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Denton, Texas, where he teaches creative writing at Texas Woman’s University and is the Assistant Fiction Editor for the American Literary Review.

Image credit: Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr

 

BALLAD by Patrick Dacey

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Ballad

BALLAD
by Patrick Dacey

OK she’s gone let’s get setup amp cord guitar now this is romantic this is a gift D C G yep way out of tune needs a good tuning can’t remember how to tune just listen listen it all makes sense if you just listen that’s what Miles Davis once said I think maybe it was Mingus turn the keys thumb the E and A and OK we’re in tune music first then lyrics a mix of dark and light of high and low nothing too dark nothing too light it’s her birthday she doesn’t want a slit-your-wrists song and she doesn’t want some loopy gumball sing-along a ballad of course ballad in D too light, ballad in E minor too dark ballad in C C to F to D C to F to G something’s missing C to F to A minor to G that’s it that makes sense there’s a balance there OK C to F to A minor to G for a while and shit the kid’s squawking squawking and hiccupping and that cute-as-hell laugh can’t miss him laugh got to see that maybe take a picture if I time it right though he never seems to do it when I got the phone pointed at him guitar rest camera phone on hiccup and he stops altogether when I get to the doorway looks at me like I’m some creature from Mars wide-eyed scared shitless considering the size of his world for the past ten minutes little stuffed monkeys and parrots and lizards and then this giant indigenous freak from across the river comes stomping through the bush into his perfectly unreal world wanting to strip it bare take him away turn it into a resort which think about it little buddy think about living your first couple years in a beautiful resort no bugs or scary animals just people like your mother all there to serve you while you relax under an umbrella with the sun on your little toes doesn’t that sound nice sound like something you could appreciate later on in life if say you were to make a bunch of money and then lose a bunch of money at the point your future wife is five months pregnant surprise and already has you in a convertible crib on credit without considering the possibility of and we moved all the studio equipment into the garage where mommy says it should be anyway considering I haven’t recorded a thing since 1992 and what was that just a little number called I Do and I Don’t just a song that put her in the cream colored Mercedez she rides into Boston to have lunch with Karen and Odessa and Hilary like they’re the goddamn New England version of Sex and the City like they’re impressed by my twenty-year-old Benz she says I have to take the train in from Haverhill for christ’s sake well at least you have a car and you’re not some poor Mexican walking to work along Route 1 OK OK no sad time Daddy talk I get it come here spit up on my shoulder get rid of those hiccups OK I didn’t mean to bring you down let’s go out to the living room and you can help with mommy’s birthday present there you go buckle you into your little rocking chair and here’s your giraffe Sophie and your winkle and let’s clean the drool off your lip OK ready no don’t squeeze Sophie Sophie doesn’t have the right voice for this kind of song she’s more a Mezzo Soprano not what we’re looking for here OK squeeze Sophie we’ll work around her not like I haven’t had to deal with my share of aggressive background vocalists maybe I can cut her out of the master tape and that cough and that sneeze and don’t cry pal nothing to cry about I’m sure Sophie’s a good vocalist or maybe you’re just not interested in writing a song but if I could afford a present for mommy I’d get one though it wouldn’t even be a present more like a debt and she’d see it in the checking account probably return it claim it’s too extravagant just some earrings or a bracelet I don’t know something to make her feel pretty but what’s more important she’d say me looking pretty or some diapers for the boy yeah no brainer diapers but every once in a while something nice maybe and for the life of me I can’t imagine what we’d do if I didn’t lift your vitamins and formula and those stupid plastic toys well not lift as much as use the sweet Korean girl who runs the self-check line at Stop and Shop claim confusion with the machine tell her I like her green eyes and her hemp necklace but forty bucks for formula organic formula ‘cause it has to be organic or else what you might end up like OK let’s sort of cradle you take off the guitar strap OK get this underneath your butt and put your arms up here on the side and rest your chin there in the curve how’s that better feel better feel sleepy all right sleepy is good this is going to be sort of a sleepy song anyway now what was that chord progression G to no C to F to A minor right then G OK C C C C C fucking A buddy you almost fell out of the strap don’t make that face I know that face all right OK look at me look at daddy it’s smiley-time right isn’t it smiley-time do you even know what the hell smiley-time means it doesn’t mean anything that’s right that’s right keep smiling for smiley-time because smiley-time is a world that only exists in my mind and you won’t ever remember that you used to love smiley-time until you have a baby and then you’ll probably call it something different some inane phrase that gets stuck in your head and you’re walking around thinking about a world where people have smiley-time at some point during the day standing still wherever we are smiling at each other and not with some condescending coffee house how-you-doing smile but a real genuine smile that can crush your heart the way it does when you see true happiness on a person’s face like when they’re on a rollercoaster or sledding down a hill whatever it is that makes them forget about themselves for a few minutes maybe not a good idea to have you resting your head on the wood so back in the rocker OK now let’s get to work take mommy into the past ‘cause that’s what a good song does takes you back in time sets you down next to old friends and lovers well hopefully not her old lovers especially not that Australian dude the two of them out in the wild looking at kangaroos taking peyote can hear that stupid accent in my head picture Greg Norman with mommy’s face in his lap while he keeps saying ‘oy ‘oy ‘oy but what’re you going to do that’s the risk you take with a good song a good song brings you back in time a great song brings you to a place you’ve never been and you feel good being there you Jesus you little bugger you were so relaxed there during smiley-time you went ahead and dropped a load right as I was about to reach the nexus of this song for your mother how it has something to do with our past and present and future and how they can all work so perfectly together if you never think about time at all if you erase the concept of time from your being and just be OK that’s ripe here we go put the guitar down gently diaper wipes a bunch of wipes and all right it’s up your back Jesus how long has it been since you took a dump your mother never keeps me in the loop on your dump cycle we need a dump calendar or an eraser board guess we’ll have to get you in the tub the tub is a good thinking place I’ve gotten a lot of thinking done in the tub over the years of course a lot of that thinking got lost once I got out of the tub because I never remembered to bring a pen and pad into the bathroom with me so let’s clean you up and get a pen and pad and run the water and start thinking of lyrics for mommy’s song all right listen to the sound of the water listen to everything around you that’s music everything’s music have to make sure it’s not too hot too hot and you’ll get that pumpkin head screaming like a cat caught on fire all right me first got you up Jesus I hate the tub I look like a washed-up seal what a body no wonder mommy turns off the lights and my nuts cauterized forty-seven years old don’t want to risk another well not a mistake no you’re not a mistake but well we weren’t planning on doesn’t matter you’re here you’re beautiful you ready for the tub ready for the water OK here we go legs first yeah feels good doesn’t it now your back and your arms don’t worry I got your head I won’t let you go under we’ll just float you around OK it’s warm isn’t it you’re gonna love the ocean maybe you’ll be a surfer or maybe you’ll build sailboats or maybe you’ll be one of those guys who fishes in the summer and smokes dope in the winter and never really minds what happens around him because he’s generally satisfied with his life and doesn’t expect too much and never gets his hopes up and hasn’t a clue why everyone’s always arguing about what’s fair and what isn’t come on pal not in the tub well at least it’s clear means you’re healthy and you’re smiling because you think you got away with something well OK we should get out of the tub not much thinking done after all but it’ll come to us I mean you can’t stop yourself from thinking it’s impossible even wrapping you up in the towel and the tag says MADE IN CHINA and where in China it’s so damn big though you have to think some factory where they’re pumping out towel after towel all day it’s towels or it’s clocks or it’s Elvis Presley key chains whole factories producing Elvis crap and not one of those Chinese kids probably knows who Elvis is or was or how if he didn’t stop in at that little recording studio in Memphis or if he didn’t shake his hips on the Ed Sullivan show or die on the toilet or have this myth about him still being alive and all these whackos visiting Graceland like it’s some kind of church then none of the Chinese kids would even be working the Elvis factory and it might be the only factory in their town so without Elvis they might’ve lived a happier life working a farm or fishing doing something outdoors where the air is clean and no one’s breathing down your neck about printing a thousand of those Jailhouse Rock T-shirts by noon your skin’s soft too soft maybe hasn’t had to take a blow yet except that time you tumbled out of your little rocker but you knew to keep rolling and finally pressed up against the TV stand what’s this spot on your belly spider bite do we have spiders fuck I hope not it hurts when I press no good that’s good probably bitten a few days ago spiders crawling all over the house can’t see ‘em maybe they hide until night come out in packs crawl into our bed down our throats that’s why mommy’s coughing at night coughing on spider legs and what if they’re pregnant what if they’re delivering baby spiders inside us oh god OK let’s zap those spiders out of our minds OK zap no more spiders get the diaper on your onesy your little sweats and how about one of these sweatshirts a little chilly in here right can’t turn the heat up past 64 heat’s expensive if we hugged each other all day wouldn’t need heat at all zip you up looks like you’re ready to get back to work are you ready to get back to work good little smile stick your tongue out make that fart sound all right buddy ballad in C for your mother haven’t written a song a real song since I don’t know when tried to get the band back together but Dan’s a financial consultant and Randy works a farm in Montana and Caesar’s been cleaning toilets at Logan guessing drugs brought him there or maybe he’s off the drugs and that’s why he’s cleaning toilets maybe he’ll be ready to join up again in a year you only really need two founding members who am I kidding you won’t ever know your father the rock star you’ll probably see me as some old know-nothing like I saw my father until I got older and got interested in what his life was like before he started wheezing and coughing all the time and we needed to hook him up to an oxygen tank ‘cause all I knew of him was that he was a finish carpenter he’d talk about staircases and mantles and window trim whatever but later he told me how he dropped out of high school and flew to Madrid and from there trekked through western and eastern Europe and to Egypt and down to South Africa and over to Chile up through Southern America Panama Guatemala Mexico basically travelled the world except Asia said he wished he could get to Asia and I asked him why there were no photographs from his travels and he said because it’s all in my mind it’s for me not for anyone else and I came to respect my father more than I ever had before and then well he died died before he got a chance to see you or even known you were coming said how he wished he had a grandchild all the men in our family, since the dawn of time failing like it’s a birthright to dream big and touch greatness and then crash hard I’m not sure your grandfather ever even went to the places he claimed to visit maybe he was dreaming up a more adventurous past for himself maybe I should too who am I who was I who should I have been for you going to that dark place again try to stay away from the dark if we can so what was the point of right well you’ll see videos of me when I had long hair and purple suits and you’ll think where’s that guy he was famous he was weird he was cool but things change buddy people change and you’re my world now and maybe I dream of getting the band back dream of me and Caesar at the Paradise but I know that’s not going to happen too many mistakes band’s got a bad name I got a bad name put down the booze and coke put up all that dough in a vegetarian restaurant called ROOTS which your mother said was a terrible name and I went with it despite her thinking if it stuck with me then it’d stick with others but it wasn’t the name no one was willing to pay fourteen ninety five for a plate of raw vegetables and even after selling the house and most of my old guitars and pumping the rest of our savings into a self-published memoir printing off fifty-thousand copies and only selling about twenty mostly to your mother’s family with her thinking I didn’t know and a few to collectors of one hit wonders and becoming sort of a laughing stock on the local news during a where are they now segment claiming to have a connection with the spiritual world which I don’t but I thought it might drum up some interest in my music again and maybe kids’ll look up your last name find out who your father was make fun of how I used to look the music I played but you take out the synthesizers and you have some pretty lovely anyway it won’t matter shouldn’t matter ‘cause unlike their fathers and very much like my own father I went for it and I did it and no one can take that away from me just like they can’t take it away from you and I know sometimes I talk down about your mother but she’s been with me through it all rich and poor and she deserves some slack deserves a break and she’s a good mother to you and good woman and she’s still the only girl I know knows how to give a decent foot massage and maybe that sounds like it’s not a lot but trust me it’s hard to meet a woman you can love all your life and when you arrived it seemed to make us love each other even more and I guess that’s the point why it’s so hard to write a song I don’t have any songs left maybe you were my last song and maybe all your mother wants is a deep kiss and a warm bath and to be here with us a family our own little world just beginning.

Patrick-DaceyPatrick Dacey’s stories have appeared in Bomb Magazine, The Greensboro Review, Guernica, Salt Hill, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among other publications. He has recently completed his first collection of short fiction.

Image credit: Liz Davenport on Flickr

 

THE ELEPHANT by Erika Price

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Pink Elephant

THE ELEPHANT
by Erika Price

He got the news in the usual way: via Twitter. At 5:00 am when he’d already given up the prospect of sleeping (the thrum of his across-the-hall neighbor’s Skrillex ebbing into the rattle of the broken refrigerator), his phone silently lit up, providing an oasis of attention.

@scoliosis: Sounds like @brafshu is at Middleheartst in a coma #sad

He sat up, pulled the iPad out from under the spare pillow, and cast its light on his face. He pulled up Facebook. The first post, at 4:26 am from a former high-school peer, Misty Siler.

Soooo sad to hear about @BraffleyShumaker. Our prayers are in your heart!

At first he pulled the iPad away and stared into the kitchen. He remembered the tin of white chocolate cocoa his mother had mailed in a recent care package. He asked himself, just how could a prayer be in a heart? Is that what Misty really meant? Of course, grief could rot a person’s brain. Misty was second in the class, GPA-wise.

He tilted the screen back at his eyes and kicked the covers so one foot was bare. Perfect. He brought his forefinger of his right hand to Braffley’s highlighted name.

The page was awash in recent, well-meaning, and frustratingly vague posts, all prayers and wishes and memories for Braffley. The man asked himself, is Braffley dead or what? Then he found a post from Braffley’s cousin, Veronica.

Hey ya’ll Braffs folks have been too swamped to respond. He is in a stable condition and we are all with him, he’s been moved to the coma ward on the east side please park accordingly.

But still that wasn’t enough information. The man scrolled on, past old teeball playmates and ex-girlfriends and pastors, old neighbors and labmates and fraternity brothers and mystified, concerned internship partners. None of these dipshits know what happened to Braff, the man thought to himself. They weren’t there for what happened. They’re just hangers-on!

It was after five minutes had passed and a sparrow landed on the man’s windowsill that he finally scrolled past all the well-wishers’ non-updates to an old post by the now-unconscious Braffley himself. It was a sepia-filtered, low resolution image of the young man in a bright Hawaiian shirt, holding the camera aloft and at a cockeyed angle with one hand, a row of thick teeth glinting. In the other hand was a perfectly globular drink container, overflowing with a substance both frothy and green. There was a caption.

Ninety days sober! Here’s to big mojito mocktales and never missing a party just cuz there’s booze around! 😉 ~

The man held the back of the iPad with both hands and gently stroked the cool aluminum. This man, this overgrown boy whom he hadn’t seen since sixth grade, he had over ten thousand likes on the most insipid of feel-goodery posts. Were his eyes always blue, or was there something coming off the tiki torches that looked funny in the filter?

The man placed his tablet on the dresser and pulled his watch from the bottom of the key bowl. There was gum sticking to the face; he hadn’t worn the thing in weeks. Keeping time, wearing time had become useless since he’d taken the plunge, thrown out his desk and shelving units and rolled his Pilates ball out of the office and into the spare bedroom of his home.

For the past month, the days had been marked and kept by belly rumbles, faintly muted Skrillex beat drops, and the honking of the Thai delivery guy’s moped horn. No more. The man rolled until his bare, cool feet brushed the ground. He felt the crumbs dig into the webbing of his toes and regarded the burnt-orange sky and the clank of the dumpster in the alley. He went and brewed water for coffee, not cocoa, and thought of the steel-slicing jaw of Braffley.

He pulled into the hospital parking lot at 4:37 pm, swearing at himself and clicking Phil Collins off the local radio station. The man stuffed a few Verde Green Fritos into his mouth, opened the door, crunched his left boot on the snow, paused, reached back into the car to retrieve a mint from the cup holder, and flung himself out.

It was dark. It seemed impossibly late. The man hadn’t planned for early-afternoon commuter traffic, not in this disintegrating burb. He approached the old cement building, which was smeared on its sides with black and grey sooty filthiness of unknown origins. It was too late in the day for visitors. He was sure it was too late.

The man walked past the Emergency Room, through a wide set of doors. A woman screamed at him and gave chase. She approached, in toothpaste-colored scrubs, with a face both stern and impassive. This is the emergency room, she said.

I know, said the man. There was a beat. He said, I am looking for the coma ward.

The woman rapped on her chin with a pen, one of those five-color dealies with the multiple clickers. Okay, she said. You’re going the long way, though.

The man didn’t want to seem like he was uncertain, so he went along. It was important, he was pretty sure, to ape belongingness since he was about to maybe-probably violate the law. He reached the end of the hall and found a small sign made of dark plastic with a fake wood grain.

Rehab ^ (pointing nowhere)
Geriatric <
Burn Ward <
Pediatric <
Morgue >
Coma >
Yoga >

He took a right and found himself in a narrow passage smelling like a biology lab. Remembering the sign, he took a deep breath and held it low in his chest. Then the man was working his way slowly around a dance (or yoga) studio with open windows. He had to take an almost perfect u-turn around the room, full of old women in terrycloth workout outfits, to reach the hall leading to Coma.

As he walked, the man opened his phone. Still no substantive updates on Braffley. A girl the man remembered from Orchestra had posted on Braffley’s wall and tweeted at him. Amanda Sugar.

I remember camping with you and all the other tadpoles on Lake Wannempokka. You were so scared to be away from your mom and dad, you nearly cried. But when the fireworks came up over the cabins and showered you with stars, you stood up and started to cheer. I hope you are okay little tadpole!

The man clicked on Amanda. A poetry teacher now, with a degree from Swarthmore. Seemed legit.

The man reached the ward and found a small gaggle of blonde people gathered around the receptionist’s desk. He waited for them to clear.

I’m looking for—uh. Braffley Shumaker? He stammered.

She didn’t look up from her crossword puzzle for a long time. The man straightened himself, patted his tie. He thought, shit, I should have gotten some flowers from downstairs. That would look much better.

Braffley? The receptionist asked, too loudly. She ran a purple fingernail along a sheet of paper.

I, yes. The man stepped closer and tried to push her into whispering by doing so himself. He’s an old camp mate of mine. Just got in a horrible accident.

What kind of a name is Braffley? She asked. Is that Irish? Is it fake?

She looked up at him. Her glasses were thick; the rims were covered with a bright fish pattern that reminded the man of a children’s book.

I guess it is kind of silly, he allowed.

Five oh-nine C, the woman said. She pointed with a casual flip of her arm, then eased back into her chair. Just over there.

Oh? The man said. He took a step and looked at her desperately. Oh?

Just over there. Five oh-nine C.

The man began to stride. He pushed his posture up, once again. He struggled to remember which position Braffley played on the high school football team. Or was it soccer?

Hey, the woman called, and the man was sure the jig was up.

Yeah?

There’s a guy with emphysema in there, same room, she said. I hope you’re not wearing any strong cologne or anything like that.

Oh I’m not. And I won’t smoke either, ha, ha! The man realized this was the wrong thing to say.

Room 509-C was in a small archipelago of doors, some of which had to lead to closets or circuit boards, otherwise they made no architectural sense. The door was cracked and the man couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving around, so after a good forty-second pause, he let himself in. The window was drawn but facing a cement wall, belonging to another of the hospital’s many disorganized wards.

The old guy with emphysema was on the first bed, but that didn’t prevent the man from joltingly mistaking him for a hyper-aged and very world-weary Braffley Shumaker. His chest rose and fell like a little bird’s. He had many cards, including some hand drawn ones, but no balloons.

On the other end of the room, behind a half-pulled curtain, was, presumably Braffley. The sleeping man looked very little like his beaming, newly-sober Facebook self. His face was flat. Its flesh almost slipped into the fabric.

A monitor and a bag of clear fluid was attached to the left side of his body; where, exactly was unclear, as he was mostly covered with papery hospital bedding. On the table beside his perfectly square head there were many pots of flowers and cacti, plus big cards made of shiny stock, plus stuffed animals and balloons.

The man fingered the ear of a stuffed elephant. It was oddly squishy, like it was filled with microbeads, and, unfunnily enough, pink. It didn’t seem right, giving a recovered and almost-dead drunk a pink elephant doll with a squished-in head.

Uh hi Braffley, he said. I mean . . .

He looked behind himself, at the door.

They always say you’re supposed to talk to coma patients, don’t they? There’s no such thing as bad stimulation, is there? Even if it’s a big ‘what the fuck is this guy talking about’ kind of stimulation? I mean . . . I just mean mental stimulation.

Braffley had tubes in his nose. His hair was matted and looked darker than the man remembered. No one stays blonde forever, except Nordic men and women with extensive stylist budgets. Every other towheaded child or teen fades into a dingy, dishwatery adult. The man had orange hair.

So I’m surprised no one’s here, he said. All these people are writing to you on Facebook. I thought I was gonna get busted for sure.

The old man wheezed, moved a bit, and settled. His machine beeped, but it didn’t appear to be an alarming beep, just a regulatory one.

Security in here isn’t so good. Are they treating you okay? Are you getting enough sponge baths or whatever? I hope . . . do they have a spotter, or is it just one person that gives them?

The man leaned in. Despite the condition of his hair, Braffley smelled pretty good, and not at all like hospital.

The man stood, hovering over the comatose former classmate’s body, for quite a long time. The lights in the hallway dimmed, which signaled the evening shift and the end of visitation hours. If the man tilted his head just so, he could hear a booger whooshing in Braffley’s nose.

When a nurse came in, she let out a sing-song giggle and said, okay! Visiting hours are over! You come on back tomorrow bright and early if you like!

And she threw back the curtain. She was petite with big lips. The man had grabbed the stuffed elephant and was holding it a few inches from his body.

Can I leave this here? He asked.

Of course! The nurse walked behind him and straightened Braffley’s sheets, which were already immaculate. This created a nice barrier between the man and the patient. She took the elephant and plopped it back into its original place. Smiling, she moved forward with tiny squeaks of her Crocs and effortlessly edged the man out.

On the way out of the coma ward, the man made eye contact with a stricken-faced middle-old woman with frosted blonde hair and an ungodly perfect, square jaw. Her eyes were ruddy and streaked from crying, but they were undeniably blue. The man considered going up to her and telling the tadpole story, but decided against it.

Three weeks and four days later, the man was typing up a report while chewing watermelon gum and listening to golf on the television when his phone bleeped several times in quick succession. He flipped his phone over and found that seventeen different people had just retweeted the same message, which had originated from @brafshu.

Hey guys! Offficially released today. Thanks to every1 who visited prayed sent cards and etc. So blessed. The long road begins here.

Then another message popped up.

Special thanks to Misty for those scrumptious butterscotch blast cookies. Reading all your posts now . . . my heart! #happytobealive.

The man checked the replies and retweets but still couldn’t figure out what had happened.

Maybe I’ll never know, he said to his beta fish. Maybe that’s just it. I sure wish he’d post something, though.

He set his phone down and turned the television off. He switched Pandora to a jaunty little Django Rhinehardt station and put the water on for cocoa, a wide smile on his face. Then he returned to work.

Erika-PriceErika Price is a writer and social psychologist in Chicago. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has been featured in The-Toast, Liar’s League NYC, Full of Crow, and others. She writes regularly at erikadprice.tumblr.com

THE THING ABOUT A BOAT-IN-A-BOTTLE IS NOBODY STEERS by Erin Peraza

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Ship-In-A-Bottle

THE THING ABOUT A BOAT-IN-A-BOTTLE IS NOBODY STEERS
by Erin Peraza

Two figures sit on the bamboo gangplank jutting off a model pirate ship.

A man and a woman. They aren’t quite to-scale, and slightly over-sized as they are, they can’t explore the cabin space below or stand lookout in the crow’s nest. So they dangle their legs over blue-green silicone that feigns at ocean waves beneath them. Their relationship is more fragile now, contained in glass, than it’s ever been before. She’s a wide-eyed citizen of the world—packs a light suitcase, counts passport stamps—and he’s just grateful to have found a way to get out of town without ever having to leave it.

Time feels different inside a bottle, on a ship, at sea. There’s no telling how long they’ve been inside.

“Balmy,” Faye had said when she first arrived. She emerged through the bottleneck, jumping with two feet onto the hardened-putty ocean. Lance sealed the entrance quickly behind her—he’d grown accustomed to the quiet—gripping the cork like the wheel of a car as he guided it back into place.

He walked Faye across the sea to his pride and joy, his masts and sails.

“It’s modeled after a real English flagship called The Love Nest,” he’d said, trying not to smile.

Faye had held back and appraised the taut green sails, the cannon mouths, the sterile, artificial little barnacles affixed to the hull, before squatting down and propping her forearms on her thighs. A thinking pose, first, and then, a decision. “I think I like ‘em better sunk,” she said.

Lance shook his head. “You archaeologists. You like a ruin more than anything.”

Faye stood up again and played like a tightrope walker on the solid sea, her arms cast out from her shoulders. “Has all this walking on water given you a Christ complex?” she teased.

“I grew up ice fishing,” Lance reminded her. “Walking on water’s nothing new to me.”

When they reached the ship, Lance tossed Faye a rope ladder and said, “But you know, a bottled ship is more or less a sunken one.”

Faye put a foot on the lowest rung. “Because neither one’s going anywhere.”

Lance nodded and they clambered up onto deck.

There’s a certain puppetry in the assembly of these models. Sometimes they call them impossible ships. You slide the pieces in, tissue sails, thread, whittled wood, and you tug them into place from the outside using little tweezers, hooks, needles, and string. You pry and prod until it’s something you’re proud of, and then the cork goes into place.

“It’s sturdier than you’d think,” Lance had assured Faye as he patted a mast. She’d responded too readily, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” And for a while they pretended not to hear each other.

They fashioned hammocks from fishing nets. They stole scraps from the sails, folded them into paper cranes, and arranged a flightless flock along the rails of the ship. They cut string on their teeth and made the kinds of bracelets that kids make at camp. They scaled the masts, danced from bow to stern, and sprawled on the hard water beneath the bowsprit. There, they bathed in sunlight that passed through windowpane first, and then bottle glass, before it reached their skin.

They’re telling stories to each other. They’re laughing.

Then Lance asks Faye if she’s still seeing Mark. Faye asks Lance in return if he’s decided to go back and finish school.

No room for secrets within glass.

Up on deck, Lance is compelled to confess to more. He isn’t leaving the boat-in-a-bottle he says. Not now. Not ever.

“Of course you’re going to leave,” Faye says, dragging her thumb across the lacquered gangplank.

Lance crosses the ship and leans against the starboard rails. He examines the glass perimeter, cleans his fingernails, crosses one foot over the other. Then he turns to find Faye at the captain’s wheel.

“We could try long distance if you wanted,” he says.

Faye grabs the wheel spokes. She likes having something to do with her hands, to ground her thoughts.

“…but I think it’s really for the best that we don’t. ”

“What is this, Lance? Why’d you invite me here?”

“I’m ready to settle down, Faye, whether you are or not.”

“But here?” Faye asks. She glances past the glass enclosure at the looming office bookshelf outside it. Then she gives the wheel in her hands a spin. She wishes that the wood were splintered, dusty.

“You could stay here with me,” Lance adds, uncertainly.

Faye’s hair is braided, like the ship’s figurehead’s, and in her anger she feels as stiff as that mermaid with her carved chest strained toward the sea.

Faye marches across the deck and says, “I know a thing or two about escape, and you’re doing it wrong, Lance.”

Then she’s down the rope ladder and across the sea, one foot after the other, one last time.

Her shoulders are already starting to feel too large for the bottleneck as Faye passes through it. With her feet back on hardwood, she drives the cork into the bottle with the heel of her hand, and she lifts the bottle to her face.

Lance is lounging on the gangplank with a fishing pole.

Faye avoids his eyes, and lets her own rove the ship deck. “Eleven sails to take you nowhere.” She can’t hear what he’s saying, and she doesn’t care anymore, not really, but on the other side of the glass, Lance replies, “Eleven sails isn’t anything more or less than I want.”

He likes how still the sails are, how they don’t need the wind to get anywhere because they’re already exactly where they ought to be.

Faye’s at a dig, in a valley that used to be a sea long ago, but maybe not as long ago as you’d think.

She’s crouching with her forearms on her thighs when she dredges an old copper coin from the earth. It’s a nice find. Good condition. Whole.

But it’s facedown in the dirt, and Faye has to remove it with her brush and her pick. She blows air out her cheeks to clear the dust, and she pries the piece free, wipes it clean against her chest. It’s late, neither day nor night, so she holds the coin out of the shade and into what soft sunlight is left in the valley. That’s the light she first sees the coin’s kingly profile in. His face is so clearly hewn in the metal, like new.

Faye’s still holding the coin when she takes her seat on the bus at the end of the day, bound for the hotel.

She rests her ponytail against the window and sets her boots on the seat across the aisle, one heel balancing on the other’s toe, and the artifact is on her stomach. She studies it. It’s been still for so long now, for centuries, and it’s moving now. Down the dusty road and up the mountain, but it’ll be in a museum exhibit with others like it soon enough.

It’s funny, but lots of things just end up behind glass, and that’s how we learn from them.

Erin-PerazaErin Peraza is a Philadelphia-based writer of short fiction and screenplays. She has had an artist/writer collaboration published in Symbiosis Magazine, and her story “On a Whale Watch, Sober” won second place in the 2014 Phi Kappa Sigma Prize. She was also featured in the Emerging Philadelphia Writers program of LIVE at the Writers House. Erin is currently working on her fiction portfolio, while she works and eats at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.

IT’S THE NOISE YOU MISS MOST IN THIS GIANT NEW WORLD by Henry Margenau

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

It's-the-Noise-You-Miss-Most

IT’S THE NOISE YOU MISS MOST IN THIS GIANT NEW WORLD
by Henry Margenau

As soon as Ray’s wife had walked out, all the appliances stopped working, like she took all the electricity along with her. The refrigerator stopped humming and a few light bulbs blew out. The television wouldn’t turn on because the batteries in the remote had died. The angry voices were silent. Everything stopped but the heartbeat of the mantle clock, which ticked away sheepishly as if not to disturb the quiet.

It had been a long while since Ray was alone. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He made a turkey sandwich without the crust and ate it and then decided to go out. He put his hat, coat, and gloves on and called up the stairs, “I’m going,” before he realized what he was doing. When he left, he still closed the door behind him softly.

That was days ago. Since then, he spent most of the time walking. Walking in the park. Walking around town. Walking along the train tracks that hadn’t seen commuter transit in decades and whose ties were half hidden in the embrace of overgrown ryegrass. He passed evenings at the Rail House, drinking and reading, and slept in a rented room across the street.

“Lookie here now,” the man at the end of the bar said.

The paper was spread out in front of him on the bar. The edges had started to curl and there was a wet ring on the right page from his glass.

“The planets are moving away from the sun and each other at an alarming speed. The entire galaxy is spiraling forward and away.”

“Where’d you get that?” Ray said.

“The paper,” the man said.

“I don’t feel any different. Should I feel different? Shouldn’t I feel the speed like on a roller coaster or something?”

The man looked from Ray to the bartender who only responded with a shrug.

“And besides,” Ray said, “the paper’s not the gospel truth.”

“This is not just some scandal sheet. This is the New York Times.”

“My point,” Ray said.

“What the hell do you know about it?” the man said.

The man went back to his drink and Ray went back to his. It really didn’t seem so implausible when you thought about it. He felt it now in his own house, in his own life. Everything seemed like it was getting bigger and farther away. The negative space repelled him so powerfully that it drove him right out the front door.

When his wife left, Ray tried staying home in all that quiet, but now even the thought of it was unbearable. Everything in the house was made for two. Two chairs at the kitchen table, two sides of the bed. Now, the furniture seemed an odd fit for each room. Everything was too spread out. Ray felt too small for the house, or perhaps the house felt too big for him. The house was not just big but vacant, empty. He would have to replace the furniture, no doubt. Get rid of the loveseat and replace it with a few odd chairs here or there.

He knew when she was there, washing dishes and whistling under her breath, doing crosswords in the blue armchair with that constant papery scratch of her mechanical pencil (she was never bold enough to work in pen). He knew it even if he didn’t advertise it. The small sounds you barely hear until they stop making waves, he thought. Now he could feel the difference.

“You want another?” the bartender asked.

Ray looked at his empty glass. Then he looked at his surroundings. The loudmouth at the end of the bar was smoking the stub of a little cigarillo and sipping bourbon in between puffs and staring into space. There were usually a lot of sad characters at the Rail House, down and out middle-aged men, like the loudmouth, who should be home with their families if they had families, older women who sat in twos and threes, cackling and knocking over glasses, and people like Ray somewhere in between. Out the window it had begun to snow and Ray could see his little motel through the gray flakes.

“Not for me, thanks,” Ray said. “I should be getting home.”

He paid his tab and left a few singles for the bartender. It was colder than he thought outside so he wrapped his scarf over his mouth and pulled his wool hat down over his eyes. The thick veil of snow masked most of the foot traffic on the sidewalk. It made the air quiet the way snow usually does and Ray wondered if perhaps he was the only one out walking.  He had just finished that thought when he bumped into someone right in front of him.

“Keep your distance, fella,” the voice said.

“Sorry,” Ray said.

He continued on and, after walking for what seemed like a few blocks, Ray realized that he hadn’t seen a traffic light or an intersection. He looked back but, even squinting, could just barely see the lights of the Rail House sign, a few hundred yards back. That’s strange, he thought, and looked at his watch. I’ve been walking for half an hour. He continued up the street for another ten minutes or so until he came to a light. There was a group of people waiting to cross. Ray tapped the guy in front of him on the shoulder.

“What block is this?” Ray said.

“Clarkson,” the man said.

“Clarkson?”

“Yeah, Clarkson. The sign’s right there,” the man said and pointed.

“That’s the first light after the Crown Motel,” Ray said.

“Yeah.”

“The first light?” Ray said.

“Yeah, the first light. Are you lost?”

Ray thought for a minute. Am I? No. Drunk, maybe. That was it. Drunk as a skunk.

“No, I’m ok. Thanks,” Ray said.

When the light turned green, Ray went to step off the curb and was stopped short by the man who pulled him back by the arm.

“Hey, what are you doing?” the man said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Huh?” Ray said.

The man let Ray go, then sat down on the curb and lowered himself backwards off the edge.

“Take it easy,” the man said right before his head disappeared beneath the curb.

Ray looked to his right and saw other people headed down the curb. Some made their way down on their bellies like the man he spoke to and others went forward, reaching their hands down to be helped by someone at the bottom. Ray walked to the curb and looked down. The street was a good five feet down from the sidewalk.

He sat reluctantly on the curb, with his feet dangling over the side. Far on the opposite side of the street he saw people climbing up the curb to the next block, some making it on their own, finding little footholds from the cracks in the pavement, and others being hoisted up on the hands of strangers. Suddenly he felt a foot nudge his back.

“Come on, buddy. Today,” a voice said.

With that, Ray slid forward and pushed himself off the curb. He stood up to dust off his coat and was startled by the sight before him. It was the main drag that he had been down hundreds of times before only on a much larger scale. There were cars and buses as usual, but the street was as wide as a tarmac. People scampered up and down the five-foot curbs on each side, trying to make it up to the sidewalk before the light turned green. Rather than scale the curb again, he walked on the shoulder of the road. The streetlights projected onto the street the tall shadows of the people walking above. A cab pulled over alongside him.

“Need a ride?” the driver said. “You should probably let those socks dry off.”

Ray looked down and saw that he was ankle deep in slush.

“I’m alright,” Ray said.

“Ok, then,” said the driver.

The cab pulled away and merged back into the four or five lanes of traffic. Ray kept walking until he could no longer ignore the people honking their horns and yelling at him to get out of the road. He found an unoccupied piece of curb and made his way up the concrete wall to the sidewalk.

He sat down on a bench next to a forty-foot tall streetlight and let the snow land gently on him. The main street looked the same as it did that afternoon, same newsstands, same bars, but the buildings looked as if their proprietors had added an extra story or two to the top of each. They were set far back from the street as well. The walkway from the sidewalk to the entrance of the post office, for instance, was at least twice as long as when Ray mailed a letter the other day. It was a little after rush hour and people went about their business, helping each other up and down the enormous wall of a curb, walking the hundred feet or so to the front door of a restaurant, like nothing had changed.

Maybe nothing had changed. Maybe it was just that he was only now feeling it, the space he put between himself and everybody else. If he felt it earlier or just more deeply, the distance, maybe she would have delayed her exit, Ray thought. He didn’t know why his life had always carried on so inwardly but, watching the snowflakes and the little life going on around him in every direction, he regretted that it had.

Across the street, directly facing his bench, was the Abstand Building, the tallest building in town even amidst the towering masses in this strange new world. It rose away from everything else around it, alone up there, profiled by the bright lights below, no one to talk to at that height. Ray stared up into the Abstand until the wind became too much and he lost feeling in his brow. The people on the street went about their business, which was something unmistakably separate from his. There was a couple coming down the street, arm in arm, looking for a place to take in the sights, looking much a part of the expanding world around them, and so Ray gave up his seat.

 

Eventually, the center of town began to fade behind him as he walked on. It didn’t seem to matter which way. The night air was so unforgiving that he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes, like parts of his own body were separating off and floating away in contradictory directions.

It was a poignant exit; he had to give that to her. One final clash of voices, hers more than his, and then the purest silence. It was the same silence that Ray had kept until she was gone. It wasn’t malicious. He simply failed to realize that other people aren’t as content in the company of their own thoughts, that other people depend on conversation to reaffirm their own sense of being.

At some point, what felt like hours later, Ray found himself in his neighborhood. Though it was still early enough, the neighborhood was nearly pitch dark except for the streetlights. The houses on the block were set too far into the blackness to be seen from the street and so Ray was alone between the giant furry skeletons of sycamore trees that leaned tiredly in his direction. It was so quiet, he felt like he was the last man on earth. How strange, he thought, that the drink had still not worn off.

When he got to his street there were more ghostly sycamores and as he walked along the block, the streetlights burned out one by one. He could see his house in the distance. Really, it was too dark to see the actual house but he recognized the mailbox and the way the curb broke there.

The driveway had to be at least a mile long now. If it weren’t for the moonlight, the house would have been impossible to see in the distance. As it was, the only thing discernable within the jagged silhouette was the porch light, nearing extinction now, glowing a downcast honey orange. Ray must have left it on when he went out. He couldn’t help but feel like the house was trying to keep him at arm’s length.

Ray surveyed the landscape. On all sides was darkness and, sitting on his porch swing, he felt like he was on an island or his own planet. He stopped the bench to see if it was the swinging he felt or the planet hurtling away through space. Entranced with the night sky, Ray was surprised to hear a barely audible voice in the distance.

“Hi, Ray!”

“Is that you, Wilt?” Ray said.

Wilt’s house was so far away that Ray couldn’t really see it, but if he squinted he could just make out a few small lights dotting the dark horizon like the last embers of a firecracker that had wept back to earth. It wasn’t until he was alone in the midst of the blackness that he realized how sensitive he was to the sound of other people. There was only Ray now, his house, and the moon, bright and big as a serving plate, painting the landscape with porcelain light.

“The universe is expanding!” Wilt shouted.

“What?”

“The universe is expanding!”

“So I’ve been told,” Ray said.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Henry-MargenauHenry Margenau is a writer from Montclair, New Jersey.  His work has previously appeared in Prick of the Spindle and The Normal Review. He has an MFA in fiction from The New School and currently teaches writing at Montclair State University, Drew University, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.  This is his first headshot.

 

 

Image credit: NASA on Flickr

BIRDS / NERVES by Max Bartlett

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Bird/ Nerves

BIRDS / NERVES
by Max Bartlett

There’s this bird.  It’s nighttime, and there’s this bird.  And he’s flying, and who knows how long he’s been flying, because that’s not what’s important.  The thing is there’s this house.  Everything outside the house is dark, and the house is warm and bright.  And there’s a window openSo he flies in.  You would too, don’t pretend you wouldn’t.  But he can’t stop, he has to keep on flying.  Across the room there’s another window open, and it’s dark outside.  That’s it.  Dark before, dark after.  A few seconds of light and sound and heat and after that it’s back to nothing.

He keeps flying.  No choice.  He passes through the other window.

           

29.       She’s in a downtown café with her mother.  Not that you can tell, from the outside.  She looks like the older woman.  Back hunched with scoliosis, left leg folded up on the chair, the useless one hanging limp.  Birthmark on her face, café-au-lait, a burned-on map of nerve endings. They pass a notepad to each other across the table.  Her mother never figured out sign language.

So that’s it? she asks.  He just flies off into the darkness?

Because he doesn’t know, her mother says.  Maybe there will be another house, he doesn’t know.

She stirs her coffee, a half-finished plate of eggs in front of her.  Religion always makes her lose her appetite.  As if they haven’t had this conversation a thousand times.  Her mother toys with the cross around her neck, a nervous habit, displacement activity.

And I’m the bird? she asks.  You think I’ve stopped flying?

 I just wish you had something to believe in.  You should come with me on Sunday.

Worried about my soul again?  Telling yourself I’ll shed my ever-flawed mortal form?

 Don’t be a martyr. 

 

34.       Body.  She knows about body.  Here she is, in the mirror, watching it.  It curves wrong, the spine bent where it shouldn’t.  Her left leg is smaller than her right, atrophied from disuse.  Here’s the scar at the base of her spine, when they removed the tumor from her sciatic nerve.  Here’s the scar on her right knee, her left foot, just under her right breast, just over her left shoulder.  That one stands out, cutting across one of the milky brown spots spread across her body.

Here are her ears, useless, deaf from age thirteen.  Here are her eyes, filmed over with cataracts.  But not blind, not quite yet.

Here are her hands.  They’re fine.  They catch her on the counter and she hits the floor gently as the world spins, a black tunnel closing in.

 

5.         She can already spell better than any other kid in the class, and she knows the biggest word: neurofibromatosis.

 

14.       There is a dead bird lying in the snow.  It is a dark-eyed junco, migrated south to Idaho for the winter.  It is about six inches long but looks smaller, eyes closed, wings and legs folded into its body.  Black head, brown body, white breast, dark and vivid against the snow.  There is less blood than she would have expected.  Thousands of miles of flight, ended by a closed window.

Her mother has told her not to touch it.  She kneels in the snow with a pencil and a pad of paper, carefully sketching it.  She traces the curve of its head, the short delicate tail.  When she believes her mother isn’t looking, she spreads its wings for a better sense of anatomy.  She traces the right wing, counting each delicate feather.  Over the course of her life, she will draw thousands of wings.  The secret she never tells anyone: they are all this wing.

On the ground, the junco looks like it is flying.  When she wraps it in paper and lifts it away, it leaves a silhouette of wings in the snow.

 

34.       She is lying in a magnetic resonance imaging machine.  It is a smooth white tube, turning and shifting above her, taking stock of every inch of her body.  She cannot hear it anyway, but she can only imagine that this machine moves without sound.  This is the twenty-fourth MRI she has received in her life, the sixth since the fainting began.

The machine knows every inch of her, every nerve, every part of her brain.  It is the gentlest lover she has ever had, and she wonders if she can keep any secrets from it.

 

11.       Nerves bring two things: feeling and death.  There are 214 named nerves in the human body.  Neurofibromatosis type II causes tumors, properly called neurofibromas, to grow along the nerves, particularly where they meet bones.  They are especially common in the ears, eyes, spine, and brain.

She has had this explained to her so many times.  As long as she can remember, she has known that, one day, her own body will kill her.

On this day, for the first time, she believes she understands what her body is for.

There are 1,300 nerve endings per square inch in the human hand.  There are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris.

Her mother’s church, her church, has taught her for years that touch is sinful.  She believed it, because until this moment her body had only ever caused her pain, and so she has known the body must be evil.  Now she understands that every word of it was a lie.

 

26.       When she draws herself, she always has wings.  Oh, the women in the drawings have better bodies than her.  Straighter spines, better skin, amazing hair.  But that’s just vanity.  They’re all her.  And they all have wings.  Feathered, yes, but not angels’ wings.  In her comics they call them superheroes, but in her mind she thinks of them as goddesses.  Egyptian.  She likes the Egyptians, who worshipped birds and understood, as she does, that there is no difference between body and soul.  That is why they preserved themselves for the afterlife.  And armed themselves, too, because they believed that yes, you can take it with you.

In her will, she has asked to be buried with a gun.  She tells herself she doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but she also thinks she’s owed some answers.

 

25.       She is in love.  Not for the first time, but this is the one that will last the longest.  He is a naturalist, a veterinarian who works in bird conservation.  He would like children one day.  She doesn’t want to talk about it.

Neurofibromatosis is genetic.  She said she doesn’t want to talk about it.

 

29.       Whose house is it?

What?

The house the bird flies through.  Whose house is it?

I don’t know.  Does it matter?

Yes.  What do they think about the bird?

I don’t know.  I guess they’re surprised.  You would be too, a bird flying through your living room.

Do they care?

What?

 About the bird.  Do they care?

 Of course they care.  It could hurt itself, and it’s beautiful, and they’ve never seen anything like it.

 So they care.  And they’ll remember, after.

 Then it’s not God’s house.

 

0.         Something is already wrong, but she doesn’t know it.  Her new consciousness is still unformed, and she is nothing but nerves and body, each sensation lighting up her mind like a power grid overloading.

The doctors say she is probably going to die.  Very few infants born with neurofibromas have ever survived.  Fewer than five.  She was born with two neurofibromas.  One is in her leg, the other in her upper back.  They can operate, but it’s risky.  She’s lucky, though.  One of the surgeons here is an expert, he’s seen this before.  He holds her, shows her parents the places they’ll cut into her.

He is explaining the procedure, carefully, step by step.

 

34.       Getting an MRI means she can’t move for two hours and thirty-five minutes.  Not a muscle.  She can blink, that’s all.  There is nothing to look at or feel.  It is a smooth white tunnel, and she can’t hear a sound.  Just white, and cold metal.  She is a bird lying in the snow.  She is in limbo, devoid of feeling or motion as she awaits judgment.

When the machine is finished, it will tell her whether she will live or die.  In her mind, it is a pair of scales.  Were she Egyptian, Osiris, the heron, god of the dead, would weigh her heart against a feather.  She wonders how a tumor would compare.

 

34.       The body feels pain through nociceptors, specialized nerve endings that detect heat, pressure, and chemical changes.  There are none in the brain.  So she doesn’t feel the tumor growing where the vestibulocochlear nerve meets the temporal lobe, until it begins to cause vertigo, her sense of space distorted.  She falls to the ground and continues to feel like she’s falling.  She crawls across Escher architecture, trying to reach the phone with the TTY hookup for the deaf.  The message from the other end prints off on ticker tape.

What is your name?

 

28.       Name?  She, her, that girl, the poor thing.  She lives in a world of pronouns.  She lives in other worlds too.  Here are the women she has been, in her short but storied career: Canary Woman (artist, 8 issues), Dark-Eyed Junco (writer and artist, 15 issues), Peregrine (writer and artist, 36 issues), The Silver Falcon (artist, 4 issues), Songbird (writer, 6 issues) Eagle Eye (writer and artist, 10 issues), Redwing (artist, 18 issues), Red-Tail (writer and artist, 4 issues), Starling (artist, 13 issues), and Canada Goose (a short-lived Alpha Flight spinoff, artist, 2 issues).

They all have secret identities.  That’s important.  Like her, all her heroes are someone else.  And that begs the question: which one is the real one?  The hero or the alter-ego?  Batman or Bruce Wayne?  Superman or Clark Kent?

Her success comes from an understanding: there is no such thing as a real name.

 

16.       She is looking at a picture of her spine in grayscale, a cutaway showing bone and flesh and nerves.  It is pinned to the wall of the radiologist’s office, and it is the fourth magnetic resonance image she has seen of her own body.  The technician is showing her the neurofibromas growing on her S1 nerve, which passes through her sacrum, at the base of her spine.  It is growing around the nerve, and the pressure is narrowing it and blocking the chemical signals.  This is why her left foot is numb, and it is the cause of her sciatica, the shooting pain through her upper thigh and lower back.

It has grown larger since they last examined it.  It will continue to grow.  If she does not have it removed, she may lose the use of her leg.

So remove it.

If they remove it, they may damage the nerve.  She may lose the use of her leg.

 

 

29.       When she draws herself, she has wings.  When she draws herself, she is a hero.  She has developed a detailed world of these winged women, Valkyries and superheroes and bird-headed goddesses.  They fight crime, and threats from outer space, and fate, and death.

But there are enemies, and they also have wings.  They are messengers.  They bring bad news, births, deaths, disease, pain, and tumors.  They live in the clouds and come to Earth in lightning storms and power lines.  They love magnets.  They seek out neurons and hide inside the electricity of synapses.

She doesn’t talk about whose messengers they are.  There are enough galactic threats for one superwoman to face.

 

34.       She is looking at a picture of her brain in grayscale, a cutaway showing bone and mind and no pain, because the brain is the only place without pain.  It is the thirty-seventh such image she has seen of herself.  For decades now she has navigated her own body by electromagnet.

When birds migrate, they find their way by the Earth’s magnetic field, in much the same way that humans navigate by orienting themselves to the north pole.  They know exactly where they are, where they have been, and where they will be through this magnetic map.  She does the same thing.

The image shows the tumor growing in her brain.  The radiologist is not sure if it is operable.

Pigeons and doves, which are closely related despite their opposing reputations, also navigate by magnetic field.  It is how homing pigeons find their way.

Here is a story from her childhood: When God flooded the Earth, Noah took two of every animal onto his ark and sailed the endless oceans.  But the birds, who were smarter, took to the skies and skipped the ark entirely.  So it was a dove flying by that showed Noah the way to land.

She always liked that story, because it was God who tried to destroy man, and a bird that saved them.

 

27.       There is so much history in her body.  She is an amalgam of every woman before her: her mother’s eyes, her grandmother’s blood, her great-grandmother’s hands.  But she is a flaw, a dead end, a failure of history.  A mutation in the neurofibromin 2 gene, or “merlin” gene, and that is it for the family line.  A merlin, of course, is a kind of small hawk.  She can’t help but feel betrayed by one of her own.

 

19.       She likes comics, because they let her control time.  She traces panels with pencil and ruler, each line another point in history.  She is so many other women, and they are timeless, and they all have wings.  When she is reborn, she says, she will have wings.

 

27.       No children, she says.  Not can’t, won’t.

So he leaves, and it ends there.

 

34.       The doctor sits on a stool in front of her, takes her hand, looks her in the eye.  As the tumor grows, it’s going to start putting pressure on other parts of your brain.  You may experience some other symptoms.  Sleeplessness, confusion.  Your perception of time may change.  It may affect your memory.

She laughs.  It reminds her of another story from her youth.

 

There’s this bird.  He’s flying through this house, and it’s nighttime outside.  It’s so cold out there, and so warm in here.  But he doesn’t stop.  He keeps flying toward the other open window.

 He has to keep going, because he’s following the magnetic field.  That’s how they navigate, you know. They follow the magnetic field, just like it’s a map.  It’s all drawn out.  They can fly for a long time until they reach their destination. 

Birds turn, they circle, they find new paths.  There are other houses.  That’s the secret.  There’s always another chance.

And when he passes through your house, you remember him.  This brief flash of wing and speed as it flies through for only a moment.  The bird is not forgotten.

Max-BartlettMax Bartlett is a journalist, part-time writer, and public radio producer. He has a degree in Journalism from the University of Idaho, and enjoys books about robot wizards fighting space dragons. His literary inspirations include Margaret Atwood, Anthony Doerr, and Daniel Orozco. When he is not creating classic works of art that will probably be taught in schools in fifty years, he lives indoors and mostly sleeps.

Image credit: angela ☾.on Flickr

FLYING by Grace Connolly

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Flying

FLYING
by Grace Connolly

I was wearing my turquoise suede moccasins. I was afraid they would get wet because I knew it would start raining at any given moment. There was an ominous raincloud making its way down the block.

I decided I needed to leave the city. I packed a small valise with silk scarves and kid gloves and a completely impractical lace shift that I figured could double up as a cocktail dress in case the need should arise for it because after all, you never know.

I carried my red umbrella with the pink beaked duck handle over my head willing it not to break or blow away. It didn’t. Thank you Lands’ End.

I reached the train station and bought a ticket for the New Haven line without a destination in mind. The train left the station as the sky turned a pitch black and we chugged slowly up the Hudson. Expect delays if the tracks are flooded. I prayed to God we’d beat this one way or the other and wished the Hudson Line had rooms with beds like an overnight train. I walked in between cars and my hair clung to my head wet, all in order to see if there was a seat alone. There wasn’t. I sat next to a woman who was highly engrossed in a book about business tax. She didn’t seem too thrilled about having to have a seatmate either as her body language pointed out: shifting all the way to the right nearly smashed up against the glass.

I decided that I’d take the train and stay overnight maybe in Cold Springs on the Hudson. I could weather out the storm there, maybe at a bed and breakfast. I decided it would be fun if the Hudson was a large lazy river so that in the summer time you could float on rafts and the current would take you down past New York City. Country to city and then out, out way out in the ocean floating in the salty sweet. I decided a rainstorm might not be the best time to try out this idea but before I knew it I was in Cold Springs, getting soaked on my walk to the bed and breakfast because I was too cheap to take a taxi—even in a rain storm. Luckily they had one room left.

Before I had reason to question rhyme I put the lace slip on and went into the dining room for a drink. A Dark and Stormy, I requested. The gentlemen all raised their eyebrows and the suburban housewife looked intrigued as she downed what I am sure was her third glass of red wine. I lifted my glass, Bon Voyage, I toasted myself realizing as I glanced down that the slip as a cocktail dress was a magnificent idea. The blue really glistened. The perfect attire for a trip out to sea.

I walked down to the muddy bank in my bare feet and threw the glass behind me in complete abandon. I’d never been one for diving in and so I didn’t. I gently dipped one toe and the current grabbed my ankle sucking me under. A branch, a branch, find a branch, something to float on which was anyway part of the original plan that sounded way more romantic in my mind. I surfaced. I’m not dead popped into my head and then I saw it, the branch that would be my lifeline. I felt my stomach scraped by excess offshoots as I struggled to balance myself around it. I looked to the left and the lights of Cold Springs were missing. It was in pitch black that I was carried down the river, shooting left and right somersaulting around the branch.

This happened for a very long time. I can’t tell you how long because all I know is it was dark and rainy and I was fighting for dear life to hold onto that branch and to breathe and not swallow too much water. Later things calmed down and I realized they would probably stay that way. My eyes swollen with sea water I decided I’d keep floating. Now it would be better. I’d float way out to that salty sea and I’d finally get some rest. I don’t mean that I wanted to die, it really is just that this all came from wanting to relax after such thrill seeking on what turns out was the farthest thing from a lazy river you can imagine. But I found out the hard way which is what most people do anyway and I lived so I figured, chapter 2. I decided I didn’t want to live on land anymore. So I stayed floating on that salty sea for a pretty long time. Unfortunately sometimes the body really does win out over mind. There was this major issue of dehydration. The marvelous fantasy of sustaining on sea life and brine had fallen through and there was no way I was turning into a mermaid. I mused that they were probably rooting for me to die so I could be the delicacy of the week in that mermaid stew we all hear about. I hated to admit defeat and so I just altered my plan. I considered that maybe Mermaids were a myth.

I decided to start flying. Way up and out of the salty sea back to the land where I had come from.

But the wings that grew had different ideas. They decided to fly up and up into the atmosphere where the raindrops glazed my lips clicking my brain on. Why go home? I reasoned. I’d fly. I’d fly to Paris and Venice, Rome, Madrid, Cairo. I’d see the tangled rainforest of South America and the icy terrain of Antarctica. I’d see everything in the world I’d ever wanted to see. So after the bumpy start I really took off, flying as it turns out was the life for me and my body made modifications.

The more I flew the more I really began to resemble something that belonged in the sky. Whereas the sea had rejected me the atmosphere gripped me up, blew wind down my throat and insisted I stay a while. My skin out of necessity acquired a layer of thin down-like feathers. My depth perception really improved. I found that what I once thought necessary to sustain myself was rather frivolous and so I feasted on whatever was available. Even sometimes, garbage. One man’s waste I joked to myself, every time that happened (which sometimes was pretty often). I flew so far and for so long that it became difficult for me to remember what my life was even like before, when I was only a woman down on land.

Time passed. After a while, I began to grow bored as the exotic nature of my travels suddenly became a routine bird exercise. Here in the summer, here in the winter. Flight patterns and such.

I decided I’d stop flying. Start remembering what real life was like again. See what I’d been missing.

When I got back to the city I had a hard time finding a place to stay. It had been ten years. Time flies when you fly (literally), and my friends were hard to find. My apartment building was gone replaced by a new multimillion dollar condominium. I stayed in a shelter the first several nights surrounded by people who spoke a language I realized I now barely understood. I learned it was better to shut up than to share my story. Where are you from? People kept asking.

I found my family. They insisted on doctors. So many doctors, all kinds with probes and lights. They chalked the down up to a hormonal imbalance. They too really didn’t want to hear about where I’d been. They gave me medicine to make me forget. I was lectured—did I know the trouble I’d caused? You eat like a bird now, my mother accused me. They told me I needed to get my act together, I heard them mumbling about me using phrases like ‘bad choices,’ ‘free spirit,’ and even ‘schizophrenic.’ My dad chalked it all up to art college. That was the mistake he kept repeating, that was the mistake.

I dug out the old diploma and got a job as a secretary. I eventually found an apartment. A place with 3 other roommates. My legs became stronger. My stomach readjusted. I whistled and then I stopped when I realized whistling is not a normal thing to do constantly. All of this took so long and felt so arduous that I’d wonder to myself how it had all come down to this.

Slowly and surely the various aspects of my life improved. Within a year I made new friends, I joined a gym, I found a Chinese place I really liked right in my neighborhood. When it rained, I went inside and prayed to God the power would stay on. Sometimes I remembered about the flying and felt a sort of yearning inside. I repeated a mantra. I told myself that that period of my life was, well, a little nuts. Better to forget, not to live in the past. After all, I’d come so far to get back to where I started that by the time I finally arrived, everything had changed.

Grace-Connolly

Grace Connolly is currently based in Harlem, NY. Her poem “The Fool” will be published in an upcoming issue of Black Heart Magazine. Previous publications include pieces in Blazevox, The Commonline Journal, and CC&D. She enjoys traveling and playing ball with her Patterdale Terrier, Spanky. She currently studies through the UCLA Writers Extension and is working on her first screenplay.

 

 

Image credit: Toni Frissell, 1947, on Wikipedia

HUNGER by Amy Burns

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

hungryHUNGER
by Amy Burns 

I was sitting at my friend Bebe’s kitchen table. She was standing at the counter using a black and yellow handled screwdriver as an ice pick. I was telling her about it while she chopped.

You should have seen her, Bebe. Not a hair out of place. Perfect. I stood by the salad station and watched her until Louis told me that I was down at table three. I mean, I knew I was down at table three. I was staring at table three.

When I tell you that she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, you best believe me. She sat like a picture; real still, you know, with her middle swayed, shoulders back.

Louis shouted at me from the counter. If you don’t pick up three, I’ll give it to Gwen.

I’m going. I’m going, I said.

Give it to Gwen. Like Gwen needed another table. She’d already cycled through her station twice. But me? Oh no, not me. I was stuck with a foursome at table one that had been there since my shift started and a couple at table two making a night out of dessert and coffee.

Anyway, I poured a glass of water, added a lemon wedge and walked to table three.

Hello. Is this your first visit to Brownwood’s?

Yes, she said.

Her skin was perfect. She looked airbrushed.

In that case, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you about our specials and answer any questions you might have about the menu.

By all means. And then she smiled.

Bebe, when she smiled I could hardly remember my own name let alone the specials. Her teeth were perfect. I don’t even think they were capped. I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. She had this extra little pucker around the cupid’s bow and her lips were glossed in a very tasteful nude-colour.

The specials tonight are grilled mahi mahi with a ginger glaze, côte de boeuf served with steamed summer vegetables, lime chicken on a bed of mashed potatoes and butterflied tiger prawns in garlic butter.

That sounds delicious, she said.

Shall I give you a minute to decide?

No. I’m ready.

What can I get for you?

I’ll have the specials.

No problem. Which would you like?

All of them, she said. And I’d like a house salad with extra bleu cheese dressing. And do you have spinach of any kind?

I pointed out the spinach queso starter and the creamed spinach side.

Excellent, she said. I’ll have both.

I didn’t know what to say. I mean, she had me fixed with this expectant stare, not really daring me to question her order, but . . . I don’t know, more like silently asking me not to question her order.

Will that be all?

Yes, thank you.

Would you like to start with the spinach queso?

I’d like it all at the same time, she said.

No problem.

So I took the menu from her and went over to the posi-touch and started tapping in the order. It took me a long time because I had to over-ride the system so that everything would go at once. If you placed an order for say a starter, a salad, a main and a dessert, it’ll automatically put a few minutes delay on each course. Stagger them, you know.

I walked the long way around so that I could check on my other tables, still gabbing, all of them.

Refusing to make eye contact with me, refusing to be rushed. I mean, seriously, Bebe . . . how do they think I’m going to make a living?

When I came through the alley Louis pulled me to the side.

What the hell is this?

Send it all at once, I said.

He took two steps back so that he could see.

Where’s the rest of her party?

I think it’s just her.

Louis shouted to the kitchen.

Hold table three.

He started to walk over.

Well, I mean, I don’t know how to explain it but I felt this strong urge to protect her.

No, I said. Leave her alone.

Nobody comes in by themselves and orders food for four or five people. What’s her deal?

I shrugged my shoulders.

Fine. You’ll be paying if she skips.

She won’t skip.

Fire it up for table three, he shouted to the kitchen.

The house salad with extra bleu cheese dressing was already sitting in the window, so was the spinach queso. Gwen ran the salad before I could tell her to wait and so I decided to take the spinach queso too.

She smiled at me again when I brought the food.

I’m sorry, I said. The timing’s a bit off. I didn’t want it to get cold.

Don’t worry about it, she said.

I went back to the salad station so that I could watch her without being too obvious. She pushed the plate with the house salad to the far right of the table and she put the bowl of spinach queso at twelve o’clock. I folded napkins while the rest of her order cooked.

She sat there with a devastatingly placid look on her face. She looked around the restaurant and admired the paintings, watched the other customers. She seemed genuinely interested in what was going on around her. She looked comfortable, not at all conspicuous. She sipped her water but she didn’t touch the salad or the queso.

When Louis sent the mains the table was crowded, barely room.

I gave her a few minutes and then I went to make sure everything was OK.

Can I get you anything else?

Not right now, she said.

The foursome at table one had left without bothering to ask for the tab. They left two twenties and a ten which covered it, barely. I cleared the table and told the hostess that I was ready to be seated again.

It’s a slow night, she said. You’ve already been cut.

I was feeling pissy at that point, Bebe. It’s a really pissy feeling when you go to work and don’t even make enough to dry clean your uniform, you know?

As I walked back to the kitchen the woman got my attention and gave me the bring-me-the-bill, air signature. I thought, fuck it. But I smiled and got her the tab.

Can I get you a to-go box?

No thanks, she said.

Everything was exactly as it had been placed. She hadn’t taken a single, solitary bite out of anything. I was in a mood by then, a real mood, and I don’t know why but I just stood there. I stood there and stared at that big table of untouched food.

Was everything ok?

Oh, I’m sure it’s all delicious.

She leaned over to me and, I swear I just couldn’t help myself, I leaned over to her. Real close.

There was a time when I would have eaten every single bit of this, she whispered.

Everybody deserves a treat now and again. I whispered too.

It wasn’t just now and again for me, she said. I was fat.

I don’t believe it. You’re gorgeous.

I was morbidly obese.

Well, I said, you can’t tell it. You can’t tell that you were ever fat.

Look closer, she said.

Bebe, I did. I did look closer. I looked into her big green eyes and, I swear, what I saw there liked to broke my heart. All I could think to say was, would you like to see the dessert menu?

She laughed. I was never a sweets girl, she said.

Then she paid and I cleared the table.

 

Bebe was filling a graduated blender with ice, midori, whisky sour mix and Sprite. When she realized that I had stopped talking she looked at me.

Then what, Bebe asked.

Then nothing, I said. She left.

And?

And what?

Did she stiff you?

No.

Oh. And she didn’t eat any of the food?

Not a bite.

And, what? So she used to be fat?

I felt my bad mood coming back. Bebe didn’t get it. I didn’t want to explain.

Yeah, I said. Fat.

People are strange, she said.

Bebe turned on the blender and the noise of the blender made my teeth hurt. She bent close to the blender and watched the green liquid spin. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a different life, a different place. I thought, somewhere in the world there is a place with black-sand beaches and old, grey-boarded fishing boats anchored just beyond the break, sorting the daily catch; rejoicing.

Amy-BurnsAmy Burns holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Glasgow. She currently serves as the Managing Editor for Mulberry Fork Review. She is nearing completion of her second novel and is represented by Lucy Luck Associates. For more about Amy please visit: http://amyelizabethburns.com/

COUCH by Jenny Wales Steele

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Jester Hat

COUCH
by Jenny Wales Steele

[?]

It was an okay day. I don’t understand zoos, the appeal. The kids thrill to it, sure, but kids are dumb. My nephew flounced around, did his giddy slash sissy thing. He was wearing his jester’s hat, this idiotic hat with floppy, pointy, velvet prongs, jingle bells on the ends. And his nose was all snotty. I’ve told Clay to put the kid on meds, to put an end to the wacky antics, to dam up the endless flow, flood of snot. But no. He never listens to me. He says, ‘Val, please, please.’ Anyway, the zoo. Polar bears, elephants, funny monkeys. The reek of piss and dung. And the kids saying, ‘Look, that aardvark or panther or llama is going to the bathroom.’ They’re obsessed, scatologically speaking. And don’t even bother telling them that animals don’t have bathrooms. It’s maddening. But we were trying so hard, the adults. Such anguish trying, trying to create happy childhood memories so when they’re old, they’ll have some dumb story to bore the hell out of someone with. So, we were trying hard. That included me. Good Aunt Valerie. As if I’m only that. There’s another self. Selves. Not shallow. Not a cipher.

[?]

No. Don’t switch on that lamp. The dim is soothing.

[.]

So, the zoo. You know how the enclosures always have a door in the back? The door the zookeepers use? It’s always painted to blend in with the phony habitat, a trompe-l’oeil kind of thing. Jungle fauna, a sand dune. Meant to fool, meant to trick. Ocean and wharf for the seal habitat. We watched the seals in their cement moat. Frisky and playful they were. But I was looking for the door. The hinges, the outline. I found it and then, bang!, out came a zookeeper in yellow rubber boots and with a pail of dead fish. That has always, seriously, bothered me. Even as a little girl, on a school field trip, as the other kids hollered and squealed, I looked for that door, and if a zookeeper came through it, I would get this knotty clench in my stomach.

[.]

Anyway, it was an okay day. We picnicked too, in this filthy pavilion. Candy wrappers, smudges of gum. A band aid, yuck. We had baloney sandwiches, but they had gotten all hot on the bus. I worried about that. I worried if potentially toxic bacteria would somehow activate if the mayonnaise was heated to a certain degree. But none of the kids seemed queasy afterward, so I stopped worrying. I was never a worrywart until I became Good Aunt Valerie, until I became this chaperone slash buddy. Since Lily died. Since Clay became a heap of useless.

[.]

True, that is unkind. But what a sloth he is. The kid is too, except when he’s suddenly a crazy maniac. And then in an instant he’s sweet again, a sweetly damaged boy. Girls will love this. He’ll get all the girls, what with his tragic childhood, his mother dead when he was only eleven, uterine cancer, and add that to his looks, he has Clay’s looks, and blam!, girls will swarm him.

[?]

Tea? Herbal as usual.

[.]

Thank you.

[.]

Of course they grieve too. I’m not insensitive to that. But Clay has this kid to raise and he’s got to pull it together. He can’t expect me to schlep to his house day after day to make sure his kid is washed and fed. I let myself in, all cheery and bright, ‘hello, boys,’ and there they are, slovenly louts slumped in these rotten bean bags that Clay bought at a flea market. Gross. And the TV is on, as always. A baseball game. A soap opera with foxy bodies between the sheets, grind and moan, and then a commercial for toothpaste, and Clay and my nephew are totally blank, a bowl of burnt popcorn between them. And soda cans, beer cans. So I have to step in. I say to Clay, ‘Here there are dirty dishes. Do the dishes. Here is soap and here’s a sponge.’ And his kid? A blob on his bean bag and then he’s wild, a banshee smashing things against the walls. That crystal swan my mother gave to Lily for her tenth birthday? Smash! Shattered into a million pieces. I was so sad as I vacuumed it up, as I listened to a million tiny slivers, clickety click click. I was mad too. Mad and sad simultaneously. It should be one word. Madsad. You could add that to your fancy schmancy lexicon.

[.]

Yes, okay, I use sarcasm to shield my bruised soul.

[.]

Thank you. Madsad. It’s funny, and I don’t mean funny ha ha, I mean funny weird, that I was totally aware of being madsad as I poked and yanked the vacuum, as I monitored Clay attempting to make pancakes. Madsad is my coping mechanism. The words coping mechanism are in my brain, written in fancy calligraphy across my gray matter. But what is its meaning? Then I think, how can I wonder about the meaning of coping mechanism while in the midst of coping? You understand the conundrum.

[.]

And then, get this, this is ripe, Clay accuses me of being or of wanting to be pseudo dash wife and pseudo dash mother. The nerve! I’m fond of him and his kid, but only slightly. Clay is, frankly, a bit of a dunce. He’s smart and all, a hot shot architect, but he’s also this dunce. He doesn’t know anything about me. Zip. Zilch. He doesn’t know about STEVE. Capitalized, italicized. That. That situation.

[?]

Of course. The, quote, status, unquote, of our, quote, relationship, unquote. How his mother and slash or his step dash father and slash or his first girlfriend said and slash or did this brazenly hurtful thing to him and that explains why a, his peculiar quirks, plus b, my emotional issues, i.e. my inability to consider the word love, equals c, our current dilemma.

[.]

Hilarious.

[.]

Of course he and I discuss it, but first we have to rattle around with small talk, irrelevant bullshit, miles to the gallon, highway, city, to get to where we meet, the place half way between here and Phoenix, a hundred miles?, petty nonsense until one of us finds a slot in the blah blah blah to insert a cruel or smarmy or cryptic comment, a slot, a gap, to inject poison into. We circle around. That’s how Steve puts it. ‘We circle around.’

[?]

Yes, we’ve analyzed our options. Ad nauseum. Option a: continue our afternoon trysts in cheap motels, cash only if you please so his dippy wife won’t find out, or option b: not continue at all, in other words, we’re kaput. But option b seems ridiculous because yesterday was an option a kind of day, so why have an option b? And then there’s option c: not go kaput and sayonara, but figure out what Steve and I have. I mean, circumscribe it in transparent terms, and also to what to do about the wife.

[.]

I’ve met her. She’s no prize, believe me.

[?]

Anyway, I tell Steve that we’re not getting any younger, we’re not the proverbial spring chickens, as the saying goes, though I’ve never understood what the hell are spring chickens, or why they’re proverbial, and what’s proverbial anyway?

[?]

The point is this: we’re at this crucial juncture, or is it junction?, well, crossroads, in what is or maybe isn’t a genuine romance. Seriously. With Steve, it has been, no, sorry, it is, present tense, a kick, our naughty tumbles, a true blast. And guess what? We went out in public together. We wanted to find out how it would feel to have people looking at us. So we went to a carnival. He convinced me, in his seductive slash goofy way, to go on this utterly scary whirligig that flung us around at a crazy angle high above the ground. How we survived is a mystery. I swear the bolts were loose. Rusty too. But I made no mention of it even though I had extreme concern about our safety, and, get this, I modified the pitch of my scream so it was a joyous scream instead of a scream of absolute terror. This, to me, proves that I am FUN!, capital F, capital U, capital N, exclamation point, and also that I am not unwilling to take a risk, even if said risk is a threat to my life and slash or quality of life. Think about it. We could have been thrown out of that rickety, clatter hyphen clank whirligig, snapped our necks on the pavement, and become instant cripples. The bolts were loose. It was hazardous.

[?]

The tones you use! In shrink school, did you take Tones One dash Oh dash One? This wry tone, with a little edge to it: use with severe words or with mockery. Or use a sappy tone if the words are heartfelt. Ha! Now I’m analyzing you! I’ll send you a bill. Anyway, what you were saying, maybe becoming a carnival ride safety inspector would be an interesting career move. Interesting, but not practical. Not smart either. I mean, where I am now and then jump to that? I’m on the middle rung of the company ladder. The slippery rung of middle management. I’m half sycophant, half authority. I fawn and kowtow to some pouty child executive on the top floor and within an hour I have to admonish some trembling underling because he or she has blundered with the numbers of some piddling account.

[?]

[.]

So, me and Steve. If I’m totally candid about it, one of my main peeves is how obstinate he is. Are he and I only he and I, completely separate individuals, vaguely acquainted, who rendezvous, n’est-ce pas?, sometimes regularly, sometimes irregularly, in a squalid motel? That’s the crux, isn’t it?

[.]

I’ve already told you, she’s no prize.

[.]

Of course I have plenty of flaws. I’m aware of that. I admit, yes, that I have, quote, neuroses, unquote. Isn’t that why I’m here? On this couch? This couch, I’ll add, that needs better upholstery, a nice damask, dark blue.

[.]

Is it? Is our hour almost up? Crap. I have to rush across town to Clay’s house, to make sure he and his kid haven’t breathed their last due to malnutrition, that they haven’t completely melted into those stinking bean bags. Pseudo slash who I am slash not that good aunt slash this self who would rather be sprawled elsewhere anonymous and horny.

[?]

Summary and final think. I’m looking at the door of this room. I’m thinking of the door of Clay’s den. I’m thinking of the door of a motel room. Outline and hinges. And any minute now, any minute, a zookeeper will come through the door with a pail of dead fish, a bowl of meat. We’re all animals, aren’t we? We are. Only animals. Animals who talk and talk and talk and tell fibs.

Jenny Wales Steele

Jenny Wales Steele’s fiction has been published in The Ampersand Review, juked.com, Quay, The First Line, bluelakereview.com, among several others, and she’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. A native Arizonan, she lives in Tucson. Visit her website at www.jennywalessteele.weebly.com.

 

 

 

Image credit: Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr 

TOUGH by Geoff Peck

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Tough

TOUGH
by Geoff Peck 

You picture it: fourteenth floor of Walker dormitory. A former wrestler dangles from a window. The one they call Bisonhead has him by one ankle and another ex-teammate, a freshman, by the other. It’s late April in Oklahoma, athletic tape scaling his shins to combat the humidity, but it’s only so long before he’ll start to slip through sweaty palms. He’s the only one crazy enough to try this and that means something. Pride is all that’s left.

This is your father.

He lost his scholarship this term. In two more weeks he’ll lose his dorm and crawl back to Sand Springs to work in the box factory, scars on his palms from fresh cardboard for the rest of his life. He hasn’t been home since high school. The state champion. One hundred fifty-five pounds.

A week after he bends Tulsa Webster’s Randy Sutcliffe into origami for the title he comes home to Mom nagging over the trash he forgot to curb before school. He says sorry sarcastically as he knows how and your grandmother slaps him, hard.

He doesn’t move. Swears he doesn’t even flinch. Can’t let her see. This does not hurt you, he tells himself. This does not hurt you.

Tears gather in your grandmother’s eyes. Her jaw tightens. She does it again.

Bisonhead notes the slippage but your father won’t respond. He enjoys the aerial view: the blackjack oaks, the coeds distant and removed, unaware. He considers velocity.

This is the University of Oklahoma, where the nickname for the football coach is literally The King. The football players get the cocaine and cars, the hundred-dollar-handshakes, but they don’t know the first thing about tough. Your father likes their egos because they look at him, one-five-five, and mouth off at parties—the arrogance of royalty—and it always ends badly for them. Until the night when he and Bisonhead put two in the infirmary, including an All-American linebacker. The King is displeased.

It costs his scholarship. Bisonhead gets stadium stairs.

Bisonhead gets stadium stairs because he’s never lost a match. Because the Olympic team has wet dreams about sending him to Seoul. This has been your father’s plan, too. Until the match he becomes expendable when his kneecap pops off the tendon and bone like a champagne cork and leaves him on the mat reaching for the leg suddenly rendered Dada, a visual so wholly dislocating he submerges into aphorisms: this does not hurt you, this-does-not-hurt-you.

He feels the actual slip, Bisonhead’s palm nearing his heel, and Bisonhead says it’s time. Your father goes limp, lifeless, a boot reeled out of pondwater. He imagines falling, unaware of the daughter he’ll conceive. The little thing he’ll never be quite certain of so he’ll call you buddy, and in a fit of anger at thirteen you accuse him of wishing you were a boy. You see tears gather in his eyes.

He imagined falling. Something he never tells you until you’re home from college for the first time, a fall semester in Fayetteville so frantic you just couldn’t find the time until Christmas. In your absence, you feel his aging, know he’s reckoning with his own mortality, and it makes you consider your own for the first time. Falling. Consumed by opportunities lost. You carry these stories with you, recall them at odd times. A fourth date with a Walton-money Sig Ep who you sense being less than transparent so you step forward, direct a finger between his eyes. “You will treat me right,” you tell him. He doesn’t call again and this makes you proud, the toughness. You imagine this was what the loss of your father’s scholarship had been about—a young woman and an appropriating football player.

And again, after graduation, when you’ve been working for the Department of Child Services in Tulsa and a sorority sister takes a job in Manhattan and invites you to her apartment on the Upper East Side. You’ve never been east of the Mississippi and the city roars through every bit of you, telling you there’s more more more. But that first night she invites over her New York friends, transients like herself, for an aperitif only to snicker at the Okie drawl you’ve never been aware of until then. Blood rushes to your face and you deprecate a laugh, suddenly aware of their handbags and shoes, the Prada and Louboutin that accompany their news-anchor drone, their practiced way of being from nowhere.

During a second drink where the conversation piques and allows you to disappear you find yourself crawling out to the fire escape and listening to the city below, tormented by your inability to suppress these emotions that seem so trivial by comparison—not just the challenge to your conception of self but your daily dose of the real at DCS: the current case of a newborn thrown or dropped or what? from a moving car on Peoria as it passed the Coney-I-Lander.

The fire escape groans and you think of your father, imagine the maze of iron giving way, collapsing beneath your weight and then you’re freefalling into the rush of headlights on eighty-third and first, through Midtown and SoHo and the sweep of the plains to Steinbeck’s red and gray country and an a-frame in Sand Springs where the sweat and grease from your father’s work clothes would permeate the kitchen and mask the smell of his evening coffee. You crawl under the kitchen table and he becomes all boots and denim, his stilted stance favoring the leg with the scar. Soon he’ll move to the garage for his second shift but first he calls out to you, pitching his voice towards your room. Buddy? he calls again, less certain, and his boots turn as the porcelain mug sounds against the countertop. You keep quiet, waiting for him to shuffle across the linoleum, squat low, and draw back the tablecloth.

Geoff-PeckGeoff Peck received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of North Dakota, where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Floodwall Magazine. His fiction and poetry have appeared in over a dozen journals, and in 2013 he was nominated for Best New American Poets. While not on campus at UND, he lives in New York with his wife Meredith.

 

 

Image credit: Scott Swigart on Flickr

HUNGRY by Rachel Estrada Ryan

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Hungry

HUNGRY
by Rachel Estrada Ryan

It has been seven days since we’ve run out of meat and vegetables in the freezer and most of the cans and boxes and jars in the pantry. My husband reminds me that we have not run out of money. He says this as he leans against our stainless steel refrigerator that matches the stainless steel stove and the stainless steel dishwasher and the stainless steel built-in microwave. Of course I know he’s right; I also know we probably never will. No, we will always have too much, and the people on the charity websites will never have enough, and frankly if I have to spend another afternoon hauling reluctant children and unforgiving paper-or-plastic bags I might just lose it once and for all. I’m not sure I can ever go to the supermarket again.

Instead I do my food shopping through the aisles of my crowded brain. I push the cart with the wobbling front wheel, and the metallic saliva glaze of its handle coats my palms. The refrigerated stink of raw fish hangs overhead. I push down the plastic child seat even when my daughter isn’t with me, so that a jar of tomato sauce sails through a leg hole and splatters at my feet.

Those shoes still smell like last week’s spaghetti night; I know I should just throw them out already. Which sucks, because I really liked those shoes.

◊

The smallest one doesn’t talk much. She grunts and pulls her knees up under the tray of her highchair and scowls at her brothers. Her small feet are plump and dimpled, so how hungry can she be. Compared to those poor children in Myanmar, or Sierra Leone, I mean really. Some of them never even develop the strength to walk.

She begins to whine.

“Talk,” I say. “Use words.” She is two and she has to learn. Last month, her pediatrician raised her eyebrows and wrote down the name of a speech therapist.

“Hung-ee,” she says.

“Hungry,” I correct. I unstick the half-chewed piece of wheat bread from her tray. The crust has started to go stale, but the center is soft. “Bread. Eat.”

“No,” she says. She is shaking her head and her black curls bounce. She points to the kitchen stove. “Hung-ee.”

The boys, all three, kick their feet underneath the table and smile and eat. They know how to make the best of things. The middle one leans over to kiss my hand and transfers a small arc of crumbs.

“I don’t know what you want,” I say to my daughter, who has begun smacking her palms flat-clap-loud against her tray. I look at my husband. He is twisting the metal tie of the bread bag around his pinkie, forming a perfect spiral, half a strand of DNA. “Tell Daddy what you want. Go on.”

“Hung-ee.”

He doesn’t look up. “I think she wishes she had something else to eat, Leah.”

“I’ll go to the supermarket tomorrow,” I say. “I promise.”

We chew in silence for a little while longer and then the oldest one says, “But you always say that.”

I have noticed that my children say always quite a lot. I mean, consider their exaggeration. Perhaps one’s perspective is distorted to scale. This would certainly explain how my husband keeps so calm. He is six foot four and three hundred pounds, give or take. The man is downright unflappable.

◊

Day twelve. The refrigerator is almost empty now, except for his beer. There’s only our Brita pitcher, a quart of milk, lemon juice, an abandoned pork chop, ricotta with blue-green spots, the remaining unsalted butter from the peach pie I baked over the summer. I don’t think I have replaced the box of baking soda since we moved in here. The refrigerator always smells the same.

I look at the clock. He’s going to be home any minute. I should run to the corner store to pick up a few cups of ramen at least. But the smallest is still in a T-shirt and diaper. Her hair is a mess. My hair is a mess. I am wearing a stained bathrobe that was new and perfect last Christmas and I have no idea where this day went.

When we spoke on the phone earlier today, he was almost angry. “Just pick up a few things,” he said. “Not a whole big trip. Just a few things. We need to eat a real meal tonight, Leah.”

I considered it and cried.

He softened and shushed me and cooed from his cubicle. “Just a few things. Chicken, maybe. Some broccoli.”

I suggested that he go instead.

He hung up, but not before he cursed quietly, then apologized, then said, “Honestly, I don’t have time for this. I love you. Goodbye.”

When he gets home, dinner is still not dinner—but oddly nobody, not even him, not even the smallest, complains this time. My husband is all white shirt and loosened tie and weary forehead. My big boys smell like playground sweat. I want to gather them all into my arms. I want to copy and paste this day into tomorrow. Even the sound of them chewing, usually so abrasive, is bearable tonight.

“Mommy,” the smallest one chirps, holding up her toast, the unsalted butter dripping down her wrist. “Ook. Eat.”

She is getting so much better at talking.

My husband says, “I see you vacuumed,” his eyes scanning the portion of the floor that is still crumbless. He smiles, and I do too. “Thank you for doing that.”

We finish our meal in silence. I lay down on the couch and rest my eyes while my husband puts the children to bed, and when he comes downstairs we finish the beer together and make love on that same crumbless part of the floor.

◊ 

Day twenty. I promised.

After the older two left for school, I awoke to the smell of urine. The smaller two both wet their beds. There were great, seeping stains on their sheets, and I found them each resting in their own waste, wriggling, whining, their cheeks chapped and wet with it. I stripped their bodies and their beds and herded them naked into the bathroom. How they thrashed and soaked the floor today, rendered the bathmat dripping, a stray magazine warped. The smallest one still won’t let me rinse her hair without an angry, drowning protest. She jumps to her feet and gasps for air and rubs the soap into her eyes as if this does not happen almost every day, as if her hair has not been washed and rinsed almost seven hundred times and counting.

Every time, I tell her, “Put your head back and close your eyes.” The boy complies and I point to him and say, “See? What a big boy your brother is. Aren’t you a big girl?” She just stares up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

Today, I wrapped her in her old pink hooded towel and hugged her baby soap body to my chest. The boy stayed behind and splashed as I dressed her. He drained the tub to a mere puddle and laid flat on his back so that the water was just over his ears, and he shouted out over and again, unaware of how loud his voice carried above his personal sea. “Look at me, Mommy. I’m swimming!”

When he quieted I felt relief before anything else. I listened for the next splash to signal he was still among the living. I just needed five more minutes to do the smallest’s hair. She reached up to take the comb from my hand, and I wrestled it away and rapped her head with it. I worked the comb through the wet tangles that remained, doing my best to grab the hair at the root to avoid pulling against her scalp. She whimpered. I shushed.

“Oh stop,” I said. “I’m not hurting you. I’m almost done.”

Almost was not soon enough. The boy decided to get out of the tub on his own, and in so doing managed to sidestep the bathmat. There was the terrible thud of bone against ceramic, and then the pause, and then the wail.

I am still holding him on my lap now, nearly six hours later. He would not leave my embrace all day. His bottom lip is half bitten through, and as he dozes through his naptime hours I apply the bag of ice in careful intervals. The smallest one has refused to sleep at all. In her mad unreason she is impatient with the television, with her bowl of ancient cheese crackers, with her toys. Her dolls are all undressed, their skirts and barrettes and panties scattered across the living room floor, their hair mashed with yellow crumbs and drool.

I think I might have really gone today.

 ◊

 “Man cannot live on bread alone,” my oldest says on the first day of the second month. He is standing beside me in the kitchen, smiling and absently pinching the fat that hugs my hips just above the waistline of my jeans. He must have overheard this from my husband’s joking a few days earlier, and though I want to laugh I am overpowered by a tic of superiority.

“That doesn’t mean we need peanut butter and jelly on it, and then we’ll be fine,” I retort. “That’s from the Bible. You shouldn’t joke about the Bible.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he says. His smile disappears and he looks down at his socks, inside of which he is rubbing his big and second toes together. I want to hug him, but my arms won’t move.

“Man cannot live on bread alone,” I say, “but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

He nods his head, then stills. He asks, “Is the Lord saying anything now?”

◊

There is a gaunt young woman from Haiti on the Internet. She is a girl, really, and there are all sorts of pictures of her and of the other people from her village. One is of her crying amidst a huddle of women and the story reads that her ten-month-old son is dead. He was the width of a small branch, and he withered away. In a full-length portrait, I see that she has twin newborns tied to her midsection with a large swath of fabric. Her four-year-old son is the size of my smallest, half of what he should be.

The white people from the charity are bringing metal bowls of water and mixing grains with it, and a group of mothers spoon indistinct mush into the children’s mouths. One of the bowls of water is tipped to the children’s lips. As they drink some of the water escapes and runs down their faces, making streams in their desert cheeks. In another picture the girl has knelt beside her four-year-old and the two stare into the camera. Neither of them smile, but the mother’s eyes are speaking. They are writing books that nobody will read.

I fold my laptop closed.

◊

The corner store has a small shelf of groceries. Very few items among them are perishable. Nothing is ever on sale, but it is only one block from our house and it is small and warm and everything I want to buy I can carry with my hands. The children cannot get lost; I don’t even have to watch them. They walk to the newsstand and turn the pages of the magazines and Mr. Raj doesn’t mind at all. He gives them pretzel rods from a jar he keeps on the counter. I don’t know if he sells the pretzel rods or eats them or what and frankly I don’t care. They like Mr. Raj and they keep quiet, savoring the salt crystals and catching up on news about Kim Kardashian while I buy my expensive bread.

The girl from Haiti is with me. I don’t think anyone else sees her, but she is standing right beside me. She is nursing one of her twins inside the wrap and watching as I pick over the varieties. Potato. Wheat. Wonder. I look over at the suckling baby and I remember when it was so easy to feed my children, and for a moment I am jealous. When my oldest was just a baby, I could sit in peace and be drained and filled all at once. Everything was simpler then; so much more time and energy. The baby could poop through three layers of clothing and onto his car seat in the middle of church, and we’d laugh about it for days. If we ate toast for dinner, it was silly and romantic. We shopped for our food with baskets, not monstrous metal carts. The baby drank from me and grew fatter every day. Hunger never crossed our minds.

The girl from Haiti interrupts my reverie and places a loaf of bread in my hands. I tuck it underneath my arm and we approach the children at the newsstand. The smallest one has fished out a women’s magazine and is holding it up for me; on the cover is a chocolate cake, frosted and garnished with berries, surrounded by Christmas ornaments and glitter. The large print reads, “Eat, Drink, and Be Skinny.”

“Hung-ee,” she says. I can see that she has licked the cover, and she screams when I take the magazine from her. The boy chimes in and their voices swirl around a single carrying note. I do not have the patience for this today. I give Mr. Raj the money for the bread and the milk and the magazine. The girl from Haiti smiles and shakes her head at my wailing children. I am too embarrassed to respond. She begins to walk home with us, but when she stops to burp one of the fussing twins we leave her lagging behind.

◊

I reason with myself: if she will come with me, I’ll go. She is here now, nursing the twins on the couch, and I sit in the recliner. Her four-year-old plays the quiet game better than any of my children ever have. I don’t want to tell her this, but in my dream last night her baby visited me, not one of the twins but the twig baby, the dead baby. But he is not a twig anymore. This is the part I almost say out loud: that he is fat and happy with all the other babies in heaven. He is not hungry anymore, nor is he alone. There are so very many of them.

My husband calls and asks what I am doing and I tell him, “nothing,” because really what can I say. He sighs and murmurs and hangs up the phone. He has stopped asking the other question. He eats like a king at work, imports the remnants in greasy brown bags for the children, and maybe he thinks I don’t know this. I can smell his lunchtime haunts in his hair at night.

The girl from Haiti has turned the twins onto their stomachs, one atop each of her thighs. She is patting their backs and singing to them in Creole. The four-year-old sits beside her. They look up when my smallest comes toddling into the room, carrying pages from her magazine. She has taken to sleeping with them. She places a crumpled, glossy rendition of a roasted turkey on the couch beside our visitors. I think she sees the four-year-old, too, because she smiles at him and points to the magazine meal and says, “Eat.” He looks at the turkey and then up at his mother.

“Okay, I’ll go,” I blurt out. “I promise I’ll go, but only if you come with us.” Before she can answer, I jump up from the recliner. I take the stairs two at a time. I can’t look at her face; I call out over my shoulder instead. “I just have to go wake the boy from his nap first. I’ll be right back.”

◊

I snap down the cart’s plastic child seat and ease the smallest into it. The girl from Haiti walks beside us, her boy and mine in between. The children are quiet as we browse. In the produce aisle I hand them each an apple; I know we shouldn’t, but we let them eat. They mash the crisp, white flesh into their mouths. My daughter holds hers out to me.

“Apple,” she says, I think, or maybe she said, “Happy.” She is holding out the fruit and waiting.

I lean forward to take a bite. The taste is a jolt, a brilliant red-green tang. I steal a second, and a third, and then she pulls the apple away.

As the children’s teeth approach the cores, I reach into my bag for a baby wipe to clean their hands and faces. I notice that someone has uncrumpled the pages from the magazine and tucked them into a zippered pocket. Turkey and stuffing, candied yams and green bean casserole. Even the chocolate cake from the cover.

I look at the girl from Haiti. She nods.

Our pace quickens. Up and down each aisle, it quickens. She walks with her arms open wide. I push the cart.

Together we buy all of it, every single ingredient from every single recipe. We toss the bags and jars and packages against the clanging metal, and the children clap and squeal. We cannot stop when we have enough for dinner. We work frantically, until we have emptied every shelf and every freezer and every bin. The girl from Haiti finally smiles, and I smile too. We look around at our handiwork, at the empty store, at the brilliant shining nothing. The abundance that surrounds us has found its way out. We have done our jobs and set it free. Not even the cart can contain us.

 

Rachel-Estrada-RyanRachel Estrada Ryan is a writer and graphic designer. Her freelance consulting firm, Both is Better LLC (www.bothisbetter.com), serves authors, nonprofits, the health care sector, and businesses large and small. Over the past decade, she’s written more than forty essays and articles for local, corporate, and national newsstand publications. This is her first published piece of fiction. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in New York with her husband and three children (and one more on the way).

Image credit: Cia de Foto on Flickr

THE GREAT WAVE CARRIES YOU FORWARD by Nick Kolakowski

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa

THE GREAT WAVE CARRIES YOU FORWARD
by Nick Kolakowski

Marie’s husband Zachary passed away in early March, followed two weeks later by the dog. Marie would never confess this to anyone, but she missed the dog a little more than Zack. At least the mutt could stick to one bed.

Marie would never confess this, either, but a deserted house can be pretty enjoyable. She took down Zack’s framed Bullitt poster from its prime spot in the living room and, with the help of an online art class, painted a giant wave crashing onto a skiff of Japanese fishermen. None of her friends knew it was a copy of “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” the famous Hokusai woodcut from the Edo era—they just assumed the pummeling whitewater was a metaphor for depression, a cry for help, and reacted accordingly. Her life filled with dinner parties; bone-crushing hugs arrived at random and often startling moments; her phone blinked and hummed with text messages of love and cheery quotes from dead philosophers.

Marie had only wanted a little more color in that part of the house, but she accepted the attention with slightly befuddled grace.

As summer draped its moist blanket over the city, her friends finally downshifted to a more normal gear: phone calls once a week, movie nights twice a month. The house was quiet once more, and she spent her evenings reading books that had sat dusty and unopened on her shelves since college: underlined and dog-eared texts about samurai and geishas, the Floating World and red battlefields. She had never seen Japan, despite majoring in its art. There were so many things she hadn’t experienced, come to think of it: deserts and Great Plains and the cities heavy atop them, the cold Pacific pummeling the California coast.

One night Zack appeared in her dreams, in the lacquered red armor of the shōgun, to apologize for his petty life. Before it was all over, he said, I never realized the small things don’t matter. Don’t make that same mistake. And by the way, what you did to my poster was sacrilege.

That was Zack, always needing the last word. The next morning Marie had the car nearly packed with luggage when her friend Joan pulled into the driveway. Joan made the expected sounds of surprise and concern as she circled the overstuffed sedan: “Where are you going?”

“West,” Marie said, tossing a backpack full of snacks onto the passenger seat.

“Okay, but where west?”

“California, maybe sell the car there, fly to Tokyo,” she said, casual as announcing she was headed to the corner store for some milk. “Beyond that, not the faintest clue.”

Joan was theatrically aghast. “But why, Marie?”

“Because why not.” An empty life is a canvas for starting again, Marie thought. It’s a melancholy gift you’ve given me, Zack, but I’ll take it.

Nick Kolakowski

Nick Kolakowski’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Evergreen Review, Satellite Magazine, Carrier Pigeon, and Shotgun Honey, among other publications. He’s also the author of How to Become an Intellectual, a book of comedic nonfiction that covers (and sometimes, lovingly skewers) everything from ancient Greek tragedies to Albert Einstein. He lives and writes in New York City.

Image: The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, c. 1829-32

AN EVEN, PERFECT BURN by Royee Zvi Atadgy

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciadefoto/6944663286/sizes/l/

AN EVEN, PERFECT BURN
by Royee Zvi Atadgy

Come here, he said.

No, you can just watch me and then afterwards we’ll go to sleep and that’ll be the end of it, she said.

You mean that we’ll go to sleep like it never happened.

It never did, she said.

In the glow of the single desklamp, yellow glow, onionskin, he watched her shed her black cardigan like a snake in the darkness, revealing first the shadowy bones of her shoulder blades—very thin and on the verge of falling out of her back like two ice shelves. Then it was the middle of the back, almost all spine and the shadows played on her disks as if they were small mountain ridges in a diorama. There were two moles he had never seen before and a scar, pink-shaded, about three inches long that lay diagonally across the bottom of her left blade. He had waited forever for this. Well, not entirely forever, he thought, because by forever something else would have occupied his mind. As she revealed her arms to him, he saw where the elbows attached the two pieces of each of her arms and, as bad as it was to imagine, he couldn’t dissociate the way they looked from the bones of the cheap and thin raw chicken wings he marinated at the restaurant on Wednesday nights. He felt bad for thinking this and then replaced this feeling for the proud and stupid other one about how she was the most beautiful girl he or any of his friends had ever seen and even just watching her undress was like a second sort of sex to him. Now, she finished peeling off the cardigan and when she breathed, it appeared as if she had inhaled a demon that moved around in her, and exhaling, she gave it back to the universe and, inhaling, she had it again. To him, she seemed to have so much power that she was able to do this easily, willfully, many times.

The pipes rattled in the walls as she turned to look at him, her tanned breasts sighing in the shadows and her flat, almost muscular stomach revealed another unknown dark mole.

She lived at the edge of the woods in a small Pennsylvania town so that even with the windows open there was no human noise and you could see the stars behind her dark figure, resting on the wooden balcony in silence.

Well? she said, standing naked now, half in shadow, half in the yellow light and completely out of his mind like she never had been before.

He wanted to say the thing about how it was enough for him to watch her, like a second sort of sex. He also wanted to say that he had waited forever to see her like this, that she was the most beautiful girl he or any of his friends had ever seen, but nothing came out of his mouth and he wasn’t thankful either because he knew she was sick and he had recently gotten into the habit of only wanting things he could fix—like her bad relationship with a Greek boy who hit her, and her terrible upbringing in New Jersey. But now that she faced him, he could just barely see the demon moving in and out of her eyes—burning and burning like the reflection of those stars on the plants hanging off her balcony and he knew that this was the end of it, that it never happened, that it never did and he smiled secretly to himself but she caught it and moved toward him thinking he was inviting her to bed with it.

He lay up against the pillow and felt her blonde hair hang across his chest as she placed her head on his stomach.  He didn’t know what else to do except to stroke her hair and hope she went to sleep as fast as possible and that she wouldn’t try anything. Holding her, he felt as if he were holding a string of pipes, breathing and sighing beneath him. He stared at his feet and her feet and at the perfect pattern on the sheets, the perfect veins of the plants, the equal, even, perfect burn of the stars and thought that maybe it was about time he stopped using that word.

Royee Zvi AtadgyRoyee Zvi Atadgy currently resides in Philadelphia after returning from a three-month stint as a farmer in Israel. He works as a part-time oyster shucker and lives with his cat Bubbles in the Northern Liberties section. In his spare time, he walks around the city aimlessly looking at the architecture. Previous publications include short stories in The Brasilia Review, Hemingway’s Playpen, Nib Magazine, and Daedalus Literary Magazine.

Image credit: ciadefoto on Flickr

BUNGALESE CONSTRICTOR by Jason Kapcala

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Bungalese-ConstrictorBUNGALESE CONSTRICTOR
by Jason Kapcala

No one told me that Carlos’s gallery exhibition was that night until after I’d wrangled the Burmese python from under the porch and I was drenched through with rain and covered with dead leaves and muck. Storm clouds hung low in the sky as I slammed shut the sliding door on the back of my truck and nodded to the woman on the porch. Her husband had been the proud owner of the exotic snake and a ten-month-old Pit Bull; now he was just the proud owner of an exotic snake. Former owner, at least. The snake was tan with brown hexagons—its body thick like one long muscle, the head a small diamond with tiny black eyes. It had taken me forty-five minutes to drag and tug and wrestle it from the hole in the latticework where it had crawled with a full belly to hide, and it had sapped me of all my energy. Before climbing into the cab, I double-checked the back door to make sure that it wouldn’t fly open and dump the two-hundred pound reptile somewhere on Old Route 209 as I drove toward the Snake Farm, a small reptile zoo on the outskirts of Lakeville. I could feel the cold rain blowing sheets through my wet shirt as my cell phone rang in my pocket.

“Are you on your way home?” my wife, Rhoda, asked.

“Just about,” I said. “You won’t believe what I pulled out from under this lady’s porch.”

“Great. Don’t forget we have Carlos’s exhibit in a couple hours,” she said. “And for God’s sake, let’s try not to be the last couple through the door.”

I arched my back, felt something pop. My feet were muddy from slogging around half-bent beneath the porch for nearly an hour. I wanted to channel my inner Ralph Kramden, hit Rhoda with my best shot, something witty and mean, something about her aging like her mother, but I couldn’t think of anything clever.

“I’ve got to make a trip to the Farm,” I said.

“Now?”

“Rhoda,” I said, leaning against the side of the truck cab. “I just crammed a ten-foot snake into the back of my truck. What would you have me do? Leave it there overnight?”

“Allen, you know I hate unhappy surprises,” Rhoda said.

“How’s this for an unhappy surprise: would you want to start your morning off tomorrow yanking on the business end of an angry constrictor? It won’t take me long.”

“Your clothes are laid out on the bed,” she said, and she must have clicked shut her cell phone before I finished because the dial done cut me off.

“Yes, mother,” I said, scraping my boots against the running boards and climbing into the cab.

I muscled the big white truck around in the driveway and wheeled out onto Spruce Street. I could feel the weight in back, and as I pulled up to a stoplight, I heard something slide across the floor. It was a soft brushing noise, like sandpaper, and I imagined the python back there, curled up, skimming up to the cab and then back toward the rear door every time I accelerated. The truck was old and the alignment was perpetually off, but now with a full load the steering was so heavy and awkward that my forearms were beginning to burn as I snaked down Ninth Street and accelerated toward the exit ramp like a freight train. I blew through two intersections and felt the springs dip. I could feel the mud seeping down into my work boots. But I didn’t stop. I had less than an hour to get to the Farm, get the snake unloaded, and get home to change.

Every November, The Lakeville Mountain Gallery Exhibition was held in the ballroom of the Best Western downtown. It was a black tie event, invitation only—the kind of soiree that invariably made me look and feel like a jackass—but we went anyway. Rhoda had a permanent spot on the guest list, and she was kind enough to make me her plus-one. The event itself was usually a bore, lots of asymmetrical faces and bleeding clocks, but the wine was half decent. Carlos always stood on the opposite side of Rhoda. He’d whisper in her ear all night long, and sometimes they kicked off their shoes and danced slow and tipsy to the Muzak. During those impromptu foxtrots and mambos, I’d customarily stand with the rest of the onlookers and introduce myself as Rhoda’s first husband, but no one ever laughed. Not even when I explained that Rhoda’s never been married before. Usually people shook their heads, or else looked the other way as Carlos dipped Rhoda and spun her vigorously around the room. In moments like those, it must be painfully clear that I am the best she can do.

When the light changed, I hung a sharp right onto the highway, tires licking the pavement. There was a dull thump, and I heard the snake smack the metal wall of the truck. The old truck shimmied like a rollercoaster car, and I sawed the wheel, leaning forward and practically willing her up to speed, until I heard the pop and felt the tire go. I cursed under my breath, checked my rearview mirror, and flipped on the flashers. I could probably make it to the next exit. It was getting dark.

I let the truck coast down the exit ramp toward downtown and through the intersection at the bottom of Main. I brought it to rest at the first gravel lot I could find. The low stucco building was inconspicuous; a red neon sign proclaimed “BAR.” Across the street, catty-corner from the lot, I could see the fancy hotel where, in a little under an hour, my wife and her friends would drink expensive hooch and peruse even pricier art. I pulled my collar high and stepped out into the wet air and surveyed the damage. The rim was pretty bent up, and I imagined a slow leak, unnoticed, had drained the tire of most of its air before the blowout. I had a full-sized spare and a jack, but I caught myself halfway to the door. There was no way I was going to wrestle a thirty-pound tire out of the back with that snake in there. I could see the headlines in The Morning Record: Animal Control Officer Killed By Burmese Python; Snake Wrangler Strangled In His Own Truck.

I knew had to call Rhoda.

The bar was warm and dry. It smelled like old cigarettes and stale beer. The jukebox was cranking out that Harry Chapin song about bananas. The secretary at the Snake Farm had gone home for the night, so I called the emergency beeper number not knowing how long it would take to get a response. As I leaned against the doorway with my hand cupped to my ear, I tried to figure out how to explain this mess to my wife. I felt lucky when her voicemail picked up.

“Listen, babe,” I said. “Ran into some car trouble. I’m right across the street from the exhibition, but I still have the snake in the back. I’ll be over as soon as I can get things squared away. Be good.” Then I sat down at the empty bar to wait. The warm wooden interior glowed softly in the light from hanging lanterns, and I sat alone at the end of the bar, stinking like a wet mutt, surveying the dozen or so beers on tap. My back hurt. My socks squished in my boots.

“What can I get you?” the bartender called, glancing away from the election coverage playing on the corner television. He was lean and pale, his head shaved to the scalp.

“Just water,” I said, and then when he narrowed his eyes at me, “Okay, a whisky sour then.”

The bartender left his post under the television and snatched a bottle of Jack Daniels from the shelf as he walked toward me. The drink was tart and cool. It stung the inside of my mouth a little, but I was tired and it tasted fine.

Before long I was knocking those puppies down like Prohibition was making a comeback. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and it didn’t take much to get me space brained. Midway through my third whisky, I could feel the barstool starting to float.

“Pal, you’ve been here less than an hour,” the bartender said when I motioned him over for another. At some point, he’d introduced himself as Donnie. “Maybe you’d like to actually taste what you’re drinking?”

“Maybe you’d like to taste what I’m drinking,” I said, cocking my head.

“Good one,” Donnie said, glancing back at the television.

I ran my finger around the top of my glass, trying to make it sing. “I think my life is cheating on me,” I said. “My wife, I meant. Both really. She’s the life of my love.”

Donnie sighed and leaned down on the bar. “Wow,” he said. “Wife and life. That’s some bad luck.”

“Women try their luck; men risk theirs,” I said. “When a woman marries again it’s because she detested her first husband. Oscar Wilde said that.” It had been my dad’s favorite quote, one he recited often.

“Oscar Wilde? I think I saw him in concert once,” Donnie said, wiping out the inside of a glass. “Big O and the Wildemen—that was back before his solo career.”

“Right,” I said, nodding and taking another gulp. Then, for lack of anything profound to say, I added, “Women—they’re from a whole different planet. Or something.”

“That’s deep,” Donnie said. “I haven’t heard anyone say that in almost twenty minutes.”

I belched and glanced down at my wavering reflection in the yellow liquid. “I can almost see the bottom,” I said, swirling the ice around in my glass. “It makes me dejectable.”

“Listen, pal,” Donnie replied. “I’m not one of those I’ll-dispense-some-prophetic-bullshit-wisdom-if-you-get-drunk-enough bartenders, okay?”

I let my chin fall, and I shook my head. I felt like a petulant child. “I’m supposed to meet my wife at an art exhibit,” I said, and I could feel my chin beginning to vibrate above my collar. “If I’m not careful, they’ll start calling me her first husband.”

Donnie blinked a couple times. “That’s some motto for a happy marriage,” he said.

 ◊

Outside, the rain had stopped, and I could see dozens of Yuengling caps glittering in the gravel. The branches of the huge oak trees behind the bar were silver in the evening sky. By now Rhoda would be leaning in against Carlos’s side, staring at something that looked like a squashed bug, saying something like, “Clearly, What’s-His-Name has gotten himself perished. No doubt eaten by a serpent. Let us toast his memory with our heartiest wine and then pasodoble the night away.”

I waited for traffic to slow. Then I crossed the street.

The hotel lobby was warm and bright, and I managed to stagger back to the ballroom without any of the staff hassling me. From the doorway, the room seemed to tilt a little. I could see all of the display easels set up, the waiters in their maroon monkey suits whisking trays of cheese and champagne around the room. Carlos was the center of attention. He wore all black, and he kept petting his goatee as though he were afraid it might get pissed and run off. A small crowd had gathered, and he gestured emphatically at a few of the paintings on display behind him. I saw one of Rhoda’s artist friends, Tess, nodding pensively while he spoke. And, of course, I saw my wife. She stood by his side in a plunging black gown that stretched almost to the floor. She lightly brushed his arm, and every so often she would throw her head back and laugh at something he said. When her eyes settled on me in the doorway, a look of abject horror spread across her face. Even from across the room, I could see her redden. I looked down at my splotched pants legs, my muddy boots. I’d left a dark wet stain on the burgundy carpet.

“What are you trying to do to me, Allen?” Rhoda said, clacking briskly across the room and grabbing me by the arm. “First, you’re late, and then you show up looking like . . . this?”

“Surprise,” I said, swaying a little, remembering then just how much she hated unhappy surprises. “Didn’t you get my message?”

“Have you been drinking?” she said, sniffing me. “No, I don’t even want to know. Just get out of here before anyone recognizes you.” She pushed me back out of the doorway, but Carlos had all ready come over, and he was now standing behind her.

“Good to see you, Allen,” he said, holding his hand out. I could tell he didn’t mean it, and when I didn’t shake his hand, he stroked his chin hair some more and glanced back into the ballroom. “Listen, friend, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said. “I mean, until you get changed around, of course.”

Rhoda stiffened, and her jaw muscles fluttered. “You’re so stupid,” she hissed, punching me in the chest. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

The room was hot, and I felt like I might yack any second. I’d known this wasn’t a good idea even before I left the bar, but now it was really starting to sink in: I had screwed up. Big time. And yet, I didn’t feel bad about it. Carlos was a fraud. A fraud that spent far too much time touching my wife. And Rhoda—why, at that point, I couldn’t have told you why we’d even married in the first place.

“I’ll go home,” I said, finally, crossing my arms over my chest. “If you help me put the spare on my truck.”

“I’ll find someone to help you,” Carlos said.

“No,” I said, leaning in close. “I want you to help me.”

Carlos looked down at Rhoda, and then back at me. “Fine,” he said, turning to grab his coat. “If that’s what it’ll take.”

 ◊

The temperature had dropped a little, and the cold air felt good on my face as we trekked across the street to where my truck sat, still parked in the bar parking lot.

“A classy place to break down,” Carlos said, wiping his rimless glasses with a handkerchief. I knew what he thought of me.

I stopped and pressed my hand hard against the side of the truck, letting my forehead rest against the cool sheet metal. I heard something move inside. My brain was starting to clear up. Tonight, it was going to be ugly when Rhoda got home.

I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket, and when I looked down, I saw it was one of the other Animal Control experts from the Snake Farm answering my page. I didn’t want to pick up. The thought of returning to that glorified petting zoo with its filthy displays and lethargic animals nauseated me. I didn’t want to go back to work, I didn’t want to go back home, and I definitely didn’t want to climb into the back of the truck with that snake.

“Are you going to vomit?” Carlos asked.

I shook my head. “I was just thinking about Rhoda,” I stammered.

Carlos cleared his throat and put his hands on his hips. “Well, certainly she’s not happy,” he said. “It’s pretty bad when you are too drunk to change your own tire.”

“You try changing a tire with a Bungalese Constrictor in the back,” I said, pointing at him and nodding as though I were a man who had it all figured out. “You’re in for an unhappy surprise.”

Carlos paused for a second and squinted at me. “What in hell are you talking about?” he said. He walked around to the rear of the truck. “Let’s get this over with so I can get back to my patrons.” He grabbed the door latch and nodded. He smiled politely. “Someday,” he said. “I may even look back at this and laugh.”

“Me too,” I said, waiting for him to make the next move.

Behind us, I could hear the deep bass of some live band playing inside the bar, and across the way, I could see the bright Best Western canopy and a single woman with the bottom of her dress bunched up in her hand, half running and half tottering through the wet Main Street intersection in high heels. I knew it was Rhoda; she’d finally checked her voicemail and heard my message about the flat tire and the man-eating snake. And though I had no way of knowing if she was running for me or for Carlos, I had to admit she looked beautiful that way, urgent and frightened and just a little messy.

 

Jason-KapcalaJason Kapcala lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he runs a series of community writing workshops for adult students. His writing has been published in Blueline, Santa Clara Review, The Summerset Review, and The Good Men Project Magazine. He is currently shopping a novel and working on his next book about a small-time rock band from a ghost town in central Pennsylvania. His website is www.jasonkapcala.weebly.com.

Image credit:  Arno Meintjes Wildlife on Flickr

BLACK RAINCOAT, BLUE STOCKINGS by Anthony Wallace

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BLACK RAINCOAT, BLUE STOCKINGS
by Anthony Wallace 

Nobody took Rhiannon there, and nobody took her home. She managed the whole thing by herself. When she woke up, it was dark outside. A light was on in the living room, and she could see it through the open doorway. She lay in bed with her eyes closed, trying to decide if it had really happened or if she had dreamed some version of it and it hadn’t happened yet. She hoped it had happened and that it was finally over, and at the same time she hoped it hadn’t yet happened, something that was still out there, a possibility among other possibilities. She lay quietly in the place between happening and not happening, between what had been and what might yet be.

In the doctor’s office she’d waited longer than she’d expected to. She read a couple of magazine articles. One piece was about ants finding their way home. If the ant’s legs were extended, the ant would go past its home: the ant would walk farther than it needed to. If the ant’s legs were shortened, it would stop before it reached its home. She couldn’t remember how they lengthened or shortened the ants’ legs in the experiments. To lengthen them they could attach tiny stilts, perhaps, but to shorten them—

Then there was another article about Portuguese men-o-war. They were a type of jellyfish. She remembered laughing at the idea that the plural of man-o-war is men-o-war. It seemed ridiculous to her, but she couldn’t figure out why. She pictured the school of jellyfish like a gang of men rocking back and forth even as they marched forward with cudgels in their hands. She laughed now, still with her eyes shut, thinking of it.

In a while she got out of bed and walked toward the living room. She was unsteady on her feet, but she was thirsty. She went from the living room to the kitchen and drank water out of the plastic gallon jug in the refrigerator. Only then did she realize she was still wearing her raincoat. She unbuttoned it. Underneath the raincoat she was wearing a long white t-shirt and below that a pair of striped blue stockings.

She shrugged the raincoat off at the shoulders and let it drop to the floor. On the counter was a canvas supermarket tote that contained a large bottle of Orangina, a bag of Ranch-flavored Doritos, and a fresh copy of People magazine. She took the things out of the tote and lined them up on the countertop. In the sink was a dish partially covered in water, and on top of the dish an empty drinking glass. A long strand of blond hair lay across the wet plate. She dumped some of the Doritos into a terra cotta salad bowl her mother had given her, poured warm Orangina into the glass that had been in the sink, and placed the bowl and the glass along with the magazine on a wooden bed tray. She took the tray back into the bedroom where she lay quietly, enjoying the snack and watching the six o’clock news with the sound turned off.

She still didn’t know if it had happened or if it was still in the future, something that was going to happen but which hadn’t happened yet. She might have been in the doctor’s office just to schedule the appointment and have a preliminary checkup. She might have a card in the pocket of her raincoat or in her wallet that gave the date and time of the procedure. It might still be out there, a possibility among others.

She changed the channel and another program silently appeared. The show in progress, she found out by scrolling the remote to the viewer’s guide, was a documentary called “The Witch of Hunan.” It was on the History Channel. But the program seemed to be almost over and she couldn’t figure out what it was about. The viewer’s guide had given the title but no description. On the screen was a small brown mummy, or what looked like a mummy, ceremoniously arranged in an open pit. Then there was some footage of a woman in an elaborate costume, a pointy black hat with arcane symbols on it, loose clothing that billowed up and undulated as the woman twirled round and round a roaring bonfire, a stick in her hand that looked like a magic wand. She recited something Rhiannon couldn’t hear and the people huddled by the fire sat listening, mesmerized. The woman in the pointy hat must be the Witch of Hunan.

Rhiannon took the remote from the night table and turned up the sound, a row of green dots moving across the bottom of the TV screen, but it was too late to hear what the witch had to say. The witch started screaming and waving her magic wand, the History Channel blared some fake-sounding Chinese music, and all the people fled as the bonfire seemed to engulf the screen. The credits began to roll over a final shot of the mummy in her burial pit: gourd-like shoes curled up at the toes; brown, leathery face pulled tight beneath the pointy black hat; swaddled in the witch’s loose-fitting robe a mummy so small it might have been a cat, a tiny blue cap on its head, a tiny blue stone over each tiny eye.

Anthony Wallace

Anthony Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in the Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he is also Co-director of “Arts Now,” a curriculum-based initiative to support the arts at BU. Tony has published poetry and fiction in literary journals including CutBank, Another Chicago Magazine, the Atlanta Review, River Styx, Sou’wester, 5-Trope, the Republic of Letters, and Florida Review. His short story “The Old Priest” won a Pushcart Prize and was published last fall in Pushcart 2013. His short story collection The Old Priest is the winner of the 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published in September by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Image credit: Wikipedia

PLACES TO WALK OUT TO by Gabriel Ojeda Sague

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Places to Walk Out To by byronv2 on Flickr

PLACES TO WALK OUT TO
by Gabriel Ojeda Sague

I read the note scribbled wildly on torn paper:

“Language is not the signifier nor the signified. It is the significance.”

The only constant is the height of buildings. I hate the way you find things like that and I’ve just now realized it’s the smoke that’s making that taste of oranges in my mouth.

A yellow cat bolts through a black street. I am drunk and swinging through concrete paths, my legs twisting and stumbling, pivoting and sliding.

Billboards sneak into my field of vision.

“For tough cleaning, toughen up with Husky brand paper towels.”
“No more pests with Nomopest bug spray.”
“Feel the fragrance. Be the woman. Rise. Rise, by Vaudlin.”

The night is long and I hate the names of streets.

“Washington St. Mulligan St. Perricone St. Franklin St. Jefferson St. East St. Hawke St. Levi St. 15019 Levi St. 15021 Levi St. 15023 Levi St. 15025 Levi St.”

My house is simple, affordable, and gray. I remember to smell the coriander that I’m growing on my porch. My welcome mat is damp and tattered.

“Robertson Home”

Two weeks before he left, he wrote a poem about my breasts. What a piece of shit. Tits don’t go in books and that bastard will never be published anyway. I sit on the couch avoiding the hole in the fabric where soft cotton or whatever that white stuff is pours out. I pick up the book on the table next to me, one of the books he was reading, titled “Woman” and obviously you can already tell it’s written by a man who is just gonna blab about women who have hurt him even though he loved them so much. It’s the kinda shit John loved to read. I open to a random page:

“The woman is lost,
anger passed down for generations
through brown hair.

She bends like clay
to his touch.”

Of course, well of course she bends like clay and yeah of course the women in her family fuck her up and make her lost and angry, well of course, cause that’s what men write. Men writers. Fuck the crowd of ‘em. I’m too drunk to read anyways, so I slip into my room and without changing fall onto my bed.

◊

Oh god, I should never have gone to Jeremy’s place last night. I was such a mess, saying things I never would say or never should say. I just remember stumbling and I really couldn’t tell you where. My head was in such bad places last night and now just hurts.

The only dishes that are clean are the fine china so I fix myself toast and jam on a ring of swirling blue and I slowly eat. I pick up a book next to me and read from it as brown crumbs slip through my lips.

“Stories erupt. Stories burp. Sentences drip from the ceiling and coat the floor in mixed letters and phrases. A kiln will bend glass. Dear Roma, nobody’s books will give you the day and the water doesn’t move so near you now. You should have them climb out of sewers instead of being pulled from pages. The spine is bending in a kiln. Dissolve that mess of anecdotes you graze off the page, like a cow in a field of grass, and find it again in the air.”

I’ve always thought those books were a way of putting too much pink in the eye, but I’ve been reading this one for a few weeks now. Sunlight hits the window wrong. John left me because he did not have a single clue what he was doing. John left because he doesn’t want to understand the way he is. Or am I just losing myself here?

I see the book he left on the table by the couch. “Woman.” What a title for one of John’s books, that’s the kind of stuff he loves. If it talked about me in there he would close it quick and abandon it. On finishing eating, I place the plate in the sink over a stack of many others covered in dried food. I couldn’t tell you what I was eating four days ago; now it’s just brown chunks. Think, Marianne: what did you eat that could have become brown chunks? Chicken Kiev was Tuesday. Lasagna was Wednesday. John left Thursday. Yeah, it must have been lasagna.

I pick up “Woman” and read from a random page. A prose poem: it’s always hard to find those and really pay attention. And when you do, you inevitably have the question in your mind “well, there weren’t any line breaks or anything, so what’s actually making it poetry?” and god if I could tell you. I’ve never had a knack for classifications.

“She doesn’t remember the way we were in the garden. She doesn’t remember the way I kissed her golden hair and the way the sunligh—”

Jesus, this is awful. Never talk about the sunlight and gold; never. Maybe a different page. There’s got to be a reason he reads this. Another prose poem:

“Devilish walks nowhere and again no-one. I don’t have time for the slip of the thumb or the nailhead. You hit the nail right on the. She doesn’t take a dip of day or slip into old patterns. My lover is really there, but hardly happening.”

I gave the thing too many chances. What trash. Masculinist romanticism. I’ll take it to the church tomorrow for donation.

On Saturdays, I usually take time to go to the gym and go to a museum or something after. I’m getting tired of art, though. Every time I go, I walk so fast through the rooms only reading names of artists and so all the paintings blur together.

“Paul Gauguin. Edgar Degas. Paul Cézanne. Claude Monet.”

So, instead, I decide to just start walking. I get far, even past Jeremy’s house. John always hated the way Jeremy put his laces into his shoes instead of tying them. John and I would probably be arguing now about whose friend Jeremy was first, each giving the other the blame. John left me because he had someone else. John left me because he thought I was too much. John left me because he hated himself. John wouldn’t care if the dishes piled out the windows. If I have a purpose here, it is one of opening.

I am no more today than I was yesterday, but that’s all really getting muddled. He never moved while he was in the house. His friends always commented that he was the quietest sleeper.

Walking farther, I find a crumpled paper on the sidewalk and it reminds me of the note I saw last night. Language is a signified or something? Give it a day and it will come back to me. I pick up the small ball of crushed paper and open it slowly. Frantic scribbles, again. People don’t have time anymore, or at least that’s what everyone keeps saying.

“Dear Darian,

You forgot to pick up the kids again from school. I feel like I’ve said that a thousand times. They waited two hours for you. Do you know what it felt like to get home after work and not find them there? Not find you there? Realizing you had gone again to do the stupid shit you do. They were crying when I picked them up. You can’t explain how a father goes wrong to six year olds. I can’t give you any more chances.

-Molly”

I wonder how the vowels do that. I wonder why the consonants do that to them. “Sentences drip” was it? God, no one has got a clue why I’m walking around this way. If someone could define the word “there” and I mean really tell me what that means and how you can describe “there” I’d be more grateful than I’ve ever been. See that? “not find them there? Not find you there?” If we were translating into, hell, I don’t know, Chinese, that “there” probably couldn’t fit. Allí, là. John hated the way the stairs creaked in e’s and a’s when he walked to get water late at night.

We used to walk down old streets by the river and moss would rub against my heels. I would listen to him spout old nonsense for hours. John left me because he ran out of things to say.

I eventually make my way back home and pick up the first book I see on my shelves, “The Occurrences of Jacques Ponteau.” It’s a book I read at some point in my childhood, one of those adventure books kids read, and I haven’t looked at it in years.

“What was obscure in Jacques eyes was not how he felt about Marie, but what he was going to do next. She stared at him not with fear, but anticipation. Swiftly, he pulls out his blade and places it against her throat. “But Jacques, why?” His only answer is the forgetfulness in his face.”

I pick out another, “The Sewer,”

“When I was just 5 years old, my brother fell into an open manhole. It went so deep it was black inside. My family, so large in number, was relieved by the loss. When I was twenty, I passed by that sewer again and, out of cruel chance, it was open. I peered inside and found a note in a bottle with my name on it. ‘Brother, I am in a world like no other’ it said.”

It’s all places to walk out to. John left a black tie on the chair. He could have at least cleaned up after himself. Even the note he left was messy, everything messy, that’s how he always was and I could never tell you different. When we fought, he said things he didn’t believe and I can’t decide if that was because he went wild with anger or because he believed nothing.

“Your Wickedness”

That’s what is painted on the side of the church; I remember that. I stare at that engraving every Sunday. I remember that. I leave my house again, without a place to go.

“Levi St. Hawke St. East St. Jefferson St. Franklin St. Perricone St. Mulligan St. Washington St. Carrion St. Standing St. 15th St. 14th St. 13th St. 12th St. 11th St. 10th”

What feels like miles and probably is. If I have an agenda, it is one of searching. John is filled with selfishness. Fuck men writers, fuck the lot of ‘em. He wrote a poem about my breasts. Fuck the lot of ‘em.

I walk along the old street by the river the way we used to do. A plane writes along the sky.

“952-555-6809 A NIGHT OF FREE DRINKS AND DANCING. $12 AT THE DOOR”

A poster beside me reads,

“Want to learn a new language? ¿Quiere usted aprender español? Your wait is over! Spanish lessons $20 an hour, twice weekly.”

A red dog sleeps by the water. It’s become night faster than I could have noticed. Woolf said something about wires and electrics, so did Kesey. This is a wired city. Or, to be more specific, the body is stuffed with words and without legs. We put stories on walls and paper to keep them in one place. It is all places to walk out to. Alone, and feeling filled with copper. The brick wall says,

“This will not be televised”

in bending, sprayed letters. John wanted to get in contact with things I have no place in. John left because a red dog sleeps by the water.

I walk further along the river and reach an empty park. Someone has left a small brown book on a bench, ants crawling on the ridges of its pages. I sit and open the book. The words inside are handwritten and it seems like a diary.

“‘Afterwards, showers.’ There you’ve got the same sounds inside of each one and I didn’t make that, Grenier did. What it does to hear that sound again and, to be more specific, to ponder moving sound in such a way. I didn’t want to tell you of the way those sounds come out at us, but nobody was there to tell me otherwise. It’s not that I’m obsessed or crazy, I only think those stories have control of us.

I couldn’t believe how he was then and how he treated me. He couldn’t have loved me a day of his life and so I’ve set myself to writing it instead. If he wouldn’t make a minute for the curve of my hips, then look at the way the letters move.”

Setting the book down again, I look out onto the water. With the way the air sits, I can hear my fingers moving.

 

Gabriel Ojeda-SagueGabriel Ojeda-Sague is a fiction and poetry writer currently residing in Philadelphia where he studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been published in Apiary and the Daily Pennsylvanian, and in his collection JOGS, a poetic rewriting of the 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex.

Image credit: byronv2 on Flickr

HOW TO MASTER SOCIAL MEDIA by Brennan Cusack

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How to Master Social Media

HOW TO MASTER SOCIAL MEDIA
by Brennan Cusack

Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror because it’s got a frame like a photograph and you need the practice. Move around and play with angles until you find the most flattering position. Now practice snapping into picture position. Repeat until it’s automatic. Practice makes perfect. Smile perfectly.

The next day you sign up for a photo class with Abby. Pick up your rented cameras and practice your photo smile as Abby points the lens towards you. Click. You look pretty, she says.

Make it your profile picture. You’re on the right track.

As the professor drones on about camera settings, begin laying groundwork for network popularity by scrolling through your newsfeed and liking pictures and statuses accordingly. Watch as your name appears across the newsfeed as you click, think of footsteps in the sand, think of I came, I saw, I liked, think of a like for a like. Someone has liked your comments. It’s Tara, a girl from your IR recitation last semester. You click her name and scroll through her recent pictures. She looks fun outside of class. You’ve almost made it through a year of photos when Abby says it’s time to go.

Over the next couple of days be sure to sign up for Instagram. Abby will complain about spending all her money as you drag her from trendy cafés to dimly lit sushi bars searching for the best food and drink to picture and post. Order eel for the shock value. Take a picture and filter. Ask Abby about a caption. Try not to seem disappointed when she says she doesn’t care and asks if you’ve heard anything she’s been saying. The eel tastes salty and slippery going down your throat. Offer some to Abby. Post the picture and share it with Facebook.

Act surprised when Tara comments that you’re at her favorite restaurant even though you knew that. You had found the place from one of her Instagram hashtags.

One day, while walking to Photo class you see Tara. She tells you about a party tonight and says she’ll invite you.

Receive Facebook invite and click attending.

Use the money you’ve been saving for a perfect new outfit. Go to party in perfect outfit and take pictures with Tara and friends. Learn to strike picture your pose as soon as you see a flash going off. The picture of you and Tara gets a lot of likes.

You begin to go to more and more parties with Tara. Start bringing your camera from photo class and watch as new friends fling themselves in front of you smiling waiting for the flash. Upload the albums on Facebook with clever titles and tag all the people you recognize.

Abby invites you to movies but realize that those kind of nights out are not really popular to document on social media so instead invite her out to get eel again. Be understanding when she says she still doesn’t like eel that she’ll just see you in photo class.

One morning, you wake yourself up snapping into your best picture pose as the first flash on sunlight cuts through your shades. Blame it on a stress-induced dream. You forgot to do your photo project on ‘Change’ so you turn in some pictures of your new friends posing at a party. Call it ‘Day to Night.’ Decide to call your Facebook album the same thing.

Abby says she never sees you anymore. Try not to act confused as you remind her about the personal snap chat you sent that morning.

Ask your mom for more money because living in a city is expensive. She gives you more because she’s never lived in a city and you spend half of it on concert tickets. The other half you use to buy more makeup because your eyes look tired all the time now. Notice your hair is no longer shiny. Switch shampoos.

Go to concert and spend the entire time on elevated surfaces or on the shoulders of your new guy friends so you are more visible to the cameras around you. Spend the next week checking Facebook waiting for the photos to go up.

See Abby on the way to the library. You haven’t seen her for two weeks because you were so tired from the concert you skipped photo. She says it looks like you had a really fun weekend. Say you did but you have to run because you have so much work to do.

Study in the library. Feel overwhelmed by all the work you have to do and feel down because you asked your mom to go to Thailand to ride elephants for winter break and she asked if you were crazy. Decide to start a twitter so you can tweet about all the Netflix you’ll be watching confined to your home. Put your books down and start a twitter. Start following people.

Your photography teacher says your black and white shots from the concert don’t capture depth. Tell him you’re better with color. He sighs and says you’ll do poorly in the class if your final project isn’t better.

For your final project decide to do a self-portrait. You need a new profile picture, anyways.

Call Tara and friends to come help with your project. They ask if you’re taking pictures of them. You say no. They say they’re busy.

Text Abby about it. She doesn’t respond. She’s never been good with phones.

You decide to create the most popular profile picture of all time. Camera in hand, borrow the neighbor’s puppy. Get in a bathing suit. Go out to the snowy graveyard. Set up your tripod and cue the timer

Run through snow barefoot towing the puppy on a leash. Throw rose petals in the air at sunset.

In the photo lab, reduce the redness of mild frostbite—thin your thighs and fluff the puppy. Saturate the colors to make the petals look more exotic. Clarify the inscriptions on the tombs and erase your footsteps. Send it to your teacher in an email with the subject, Final.

Wait for when Facebook has the most traffic to post your profile picture.

Your teacher will give you a C in the class. He says the picture has no expression. Asks why you erased the shadows and why you are in a bathing suit and if your feet were cold in the snow. He’ll also ask for his camera back.

As you wait to post your new profile picture, Abby comes up on your newsfeed. It’s a picture of her head bent down her hair covering her face above a coffee mug. You can’t see if she’s smiling but you think she is. You think about calling her but don’t really know what to say. So you just like the picture.

It’s time. Post it.

Now wait. Wait. Refresh.

Brennan-CusackBrennan Cusack grew up in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Cate School in 2011 and is currently a junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She recently arrived back from a semester abroad in Turkey.

Image credit: LearningLark on Flickr

ALL GOOD THINGS by B.A. Varghese

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

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ALL GOOD THINGS
by B.A. Varghese

The milk was white and it squirted out from under his hands. He pulled and pulled the cow’s udders one at a time to a rhythmic beat and I watched it fall down in spurts after each pull. I didn’t know that. I just didn’t know that. I was mesmerized by Appachan’s hands as he pulled and pulled and out it dropped and when it hit it made a metallic clink until the bottom started filling then it sounded like liquid hitting liquid.

I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to leave home without my father. I told him I didn’t want to go but he told me I had to. He told me we didn’t have family here and that we had no one to help my mother once the baby came so we had to go. He told me I’d get to see all of Kerala and I’d get to see my grandparents and their farm. I told him I didn’t want to go but he gave me a look like I had no choice and that he wasn’t going to be happy if I didn’t go. I asked why he couldn’t come and he told me he had work and that he would come later, after the baby was born, and then he would bring us all back to the States. I told him I still didn’t want to go to India.

It took a long time to get here. I was on a plane, and then a car, and then a bus that said Pathanamthitta in faded black letters with a bunch of other letters I didn’t understand. Now, I was here watching Appachan as he sat crouched down on a stool, pulling and pulling. I wanted my mother but they kept me away from her and warned me that she needed her rest. At nights, I would sleep in the same room but on a separate bed. It was the only time besides meals that I got to see her. Most nights, I could hear her tossing and turning on the old flat mattress and I knew she wasn’t comfortable. I just couldn’t sleep with all the rustling she made. We were lucky to have a room with a ceiling fan, but it rotated so slowly that all it did was move around the thick humid air hanging in the room. I remembered one night I saw small beads of moonlit sweat flow down from my mother’s face and pool around her eyes before falling and disappearing into the pillow. I missed her and I wanted to touch her but I was afraid. I didn’t understand why this needed to happen. Doesn’t she have me?

During the day, Appachan would keep me busy with his daily chores around the farm. His house sat near the middle of a large sloped hill about a mile from the main road. At the bottom of the hill was a long river where I saw people fishing. The smell of wet smoke mixed with jasmine floated in the air and the sound of sharp chirps leapt from the trees. All along the round hill was a bulging thicket of assorted greenery so much that I could barely see the neighboring houses. But there was something beyond what I could see, beyond what was visible.

“Bobby!” shouted Appachan. “What are you doing? Pay attention.”

His voice knocked me and I focused back on his hands pulling. He scolded the cow when it moved.

“Look, this is where milk comes from,” he said. He pulled and it came out in a spurt and fell into a metal pail.

I smiled and nodded. He pulled and pulled, working his hands under the cow.

“Are you ready to be a big brother?” he said.

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“You have to help take care of baby. You’re a big boy. Very important to help your mummy.” The cow flinched and he moved his hands over her side to calm her down. He continued to pull.

“Good,” he said. “Our family grows. God’s blessing on us.”

I nodded. The milk rose halfway in the pail.

My appachan began to tell me how a cow gives milk. He explained that after a mother cow gives birth, the calf is allowed to spend a week with the mother so it can feed and grow. After a good week, the calf is separated and given different food. This allowed him the chance to milk the mother cow so the family could use the milk.

“That’s enough. Let’s take this inside.”

I walked behind him and watched the pail of milk sway back and forth in his hand. Does the calf ever get to rejoin his mother again?

 ◊

After a few days, my mother went to the hospital in Kollam. It was a women’s hospital and men were not allowed to go there unless you were a doctor. I was too scared to stay with my grandparents without her so I was allowed to sleep overnight with her in the hospital. Stephen Uncle was also allowed to stay overnight, but only to watch over me. The nurses took every opportunity to remind us of our wrong and their grace.

“This is a women’s hospital. You are not allowed here.”

At night, I slept with my uncle on a floor mat near my mother’s bed. His arm around me felt warm, but I wished for my mother’s instead. She slept only a few feet away, but I knew she loved me.

During the day, Stephen Uncle took me to the local markets and we stopped in a tea shop. I walked in and the aroma lifted me off the ground. I smelled a patch of sweet milk boiling with tea and then some baked coconut treats. I floated to the table and Stephen Uncle ordered two deep fried plantains.

“You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll really like them. They have the best.”

A man walked by with a plate of what smelled like buttery soft flatbread with spicy chicken curry.

“How come food back home doesn’t taste as good? As good as here?”

“I thought yours was better until your daddy told me. He said the food here is fresher. In America, food sits in a store for a very long time. Ah, here it is.”

The hot fried plantains arrived as if by magic in front of me. The outer batter was deep fried to a golden brown with crispier edges of dark brown where the sugar burned. I peeled some off, exposing steam and sweet soft plantain inside. I blew on it and took a bite. I let it sit in my mouth and I swirled it around with my tongue.

“You like it? Yes.”

I smiled and chewed.

“Can I take one banana tree back home? My mummy can make this for me.”

“No. Not possible. Too cold where you live to grow banana tree. And, once it bears bananas, you need to cut it down.”

“What? I don’t want to cut it down. I want to grow it for more bananas.”

“Banana tree bears fruit once, then dies. New ones grow from the ground. The old one must be cut down so the new ones have rich soil. Otherwise, the old tree uses soil as it dies. Old life must stop so that new life can begin.”

“Why?”

“It is the nature of things.”

◊

We returned to the hospital and there was a crowd of nurses in my mother’s room. My ammachi saw me and motioned for me to come toward her. I entered the room and looked at my mother who was sleeping on a bed in the corner. Ammachi leaned forward and held her hand gently against my back.

“Do you want to see her? You are big brother now.”

I inched toward the nurses and one by one they moved away. Then I saw her. She was the smallest person I had ever seen.

“She’s going to eat all your food and grow bigger than you,” Ammachi teased.

Her tiny chest moved up and down with every tiny breath she took. In all her newness, my old world was cut from me, never to be returned to again. My sister was the rift that pushed our family apart and then the force that pulled it back together anew. The end of something good and the beginning of another. The nature of things.

 

B.A. Varghese

B. A. Varghese graduated from Polytechnic University in New York in 1993 and has been working in the Information Technology field ever since. Inspired to explore his artistic side, he is currently working toward a degree in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. His works have appeared in Apalachee Review, Rose Red Review, The Camel Saloon, Foliate Oak, and other literary journals. More at www.bavarghese.com.

Image credit: Ilri on Flickr

A SAD, LOGICAL CAPITULATION by Justin Nicholes

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GROUP OF SOLDIERS

A SAD, LOGICAL CAPITULATION
(after D. H. Lawrence)
by Justin Nicholes

The day a welding rod shimmied down Zou’s collar and combusted his shirt into singed tendrils, the same day my stomach caught traction in the scoop of his lower back and I knew I was in love, also the same day the building gave way, all of us died.

It’s how these things happen, I guess. During our lives our bodies ricochet along until all we stumble into, all that’s rolled our ways, amasses into these blurred mirrors (I’m getting at corporeality here; I’m getting at ghosts). The building’s integrity flagged, and we all lurched ground-ward in common cataclysm.

It sure did surprise us. I mean, we built this place. Just that morning we’d been gawking at Zou’s computer at an image he’d found. It was what the building would finally look like. Twilight purpled on the Dell’s loose-hinged screen. The sky smoked with purple-bellied clouds in the Dream-Weaver image. Living space in the building would sell for eighty-eight thousand Chinese yuan per square meter. Zou turned, his face cracked in tragic reflection (the last cast of beauty he’d manage). If we, workers from unit 414, stopped eating, in ten years each of us could afford closet space.

Provided we were alive, I said, and ventured a hand to Zou’s hip.

We’re not alive, though. Now we drift through beams. Our handprints beat into climaxing clarity then fade. We have bodies that seem whole, but that are invisible. This is no metaphor.

 ◊

Those of us who are dead worked long enough to raise the thirtieth floor. Beams glitter, almost blinding in the sun. A river runs beyond that. I could shoot my arms out, open them in front of me like an imitation of God, pierce through air and form a kind of slide-beam, an escalator angling from this skeleton. Down below, white hats surround the spot where we landed. They are looking up but cannot locate me. I’ve taken my white hat off. It’s rough around the rim. The smell of tar should be stinging my nose. We slathered it over joints for water resistance. We knew it would rust over time.

We once smoked Hongmei cigarettes. Smoking’s something off limits when dead. Eating steaming spicy soup, then smoking these cigs, would singe your lungs like inhaling chili peppers. The Hongmeis went for five yuan from street vendors. A red rose with a couple leaves and a thorny stem arced on the cover (a more affordable dream than luxury condos). I offered Zou one that morning. When he refused, I knew he’d really quit. I never smoked myself. Just kept that pack for him. He might’ve noticed that I traced the peck of his fingers that smooshed the filter in no casual, coworker way. He bit the tips. You always knew which butts were Zou’s by the four little incisor indentations, two on top, two on the bottom. I had a half pack at the time of the structural break.

My hand is trembling now. From this height, the wind roars.

The wide-hipped girl who operates the elevator—she’s the one to blame here.

She reads romance novels, almost all day. They’re printed on cheap paper and strung together with thread. The books are pirated, and we couldn’t stop thinking about her being interested in sex. She’s young, sure, and her face is smooth and bronze. Her hair is always in a ponytail.

Her name is Meimei, and she made it hard for Zou to sleep. After a day on the upper levels, after being lowered from the cocoon of bamboo scaffolding and debris-catching netting, I could smell her when she opened the elevator doors—all shampoo and laundry-detergent clean. When she looked up at us from the ground, we must’ve seemed like insects at work inside some bandage. Last night Zou left the encampment. His cot lay empty. I watched and watched but he never came back. I thought he’d left, escaped back to family and (God help him) work that pays.

Below me now, on the ground, the concrete workers mix. No point stopping over a few dead men. Yellow hats have arrived. They have probably parked their BMWs a block down and walked, which is why it’s taken so long. Last year, when the Production Office stalled on paychecks, we squatted around one manager’s car. Yellow hats point with hoarse, smokers’ voices. They’ll want to know why work paused. We’re dead, someone should say.

The intercom crackles beside me. “Hello? Hello?” They ask who is up here though they damn well know.

Meimei must be one hundred and fifty pounds. Plump arms make her hands seem delicate. I studied those hands. What was I missing? I watched and wondered why the answer wouldn’t come to me. Such a simple image had to be hiding intent.

Just minutes before the starting whistle, Zou showed up. Zou and Meimei didn’t look at each other.

He had his gloves in his hands, though, both of them, and slapped them on her hip. A small amount of dust exploded and Meimei’s face flushed. When the elevator gate closed, her eyes trailed him until beams broke her line of sight. The elevator’s pulley engine geysered steam and hissed. Zou stared off over the city, gazing through smog toward the last traces of blurred stars.

“What’d you do that for?” I finally asked.

The elevator gate screeched opened. One gate gave way to the crisscrossing of beams we’d welded, the other to the cityscape. His arms pin-wheeling, I didn’t have time to say I was sorry.

“Zhang?”

The voice through the intercom is a woman’s now.

“Zhang?”

It doesn’t matter. We’re dead down there. We fell, and there’s nothing Production or Meimei or Zou’s parents can say to bring that back.

Justin NicholesJustin Nicholes received an MFA from Wichita State and is the author of the novels River Dragon Sky (2012) and Ash Dogs (2008). His stories have appeared in The Saint Ann’s Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Summerset Review, Stickman Review, Sassafras, Outside In, The Medulla Review, and elsewhere. He’s the chief editor of The Pavilion and teaches English composition in China.

Image credit: Wikipedia

DEGENERATIVE DISEASES OF THE BRAIN by Juniper Green

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

degenerative-diseases-of-the-brain

DEGENERATIVE DISEASES OF THE BRAIN
by Juniper Green

When I walk into her room Mrs. Goldberg does not recognize me. Every morning I help her out of bed, clean her up, and dress her. Every morning we meet for the first time. Some days she is thankful for my help. She calls me love, sweetheart, darling. Some days she curses me under her breath, scratches my arm when I try to steady her and cries out for a husband long deceased to come and chase the stranger out of their house.

“Did she give you any grief today,” Sam says as we meet by the bin in the hall.

“Nope,” I throw away a dirty nappy. “Sweet as a kitten.”

“That kitten has claws,” he lifts his forearm.

Three thin scars protrude from the skin. They’re smooth and translucent, catching the light as Sam flexes his arm. I want to reach out and touch them but Sam moves his arm away as he stuffs dirty sheets into the hamper next to the bin.

“Are you almost done with her?” he says.

“Almost, I’ve just got to get her down to breakfast.”

“Just put her on the settee,” Sam points to a worn sofa by the elevator. “I’ll get Suneeta to take her downstairs.”

“Thanks,” I smile a weak smile.

Looking forward to an extended coffee break, my shoulders straighten a little.

“You can help me on the two,” Sam says as he goes back into the room he’s been cleaning.

Of course, I think, and my shoulders slump back down.

After I have placed Mrs. Goldberg on the sofa where she will wait for Suneeta, however long it takes, I head over to the part of the house where Sam is helping the residents out of bed, waiting for me to come and join him.

“Sam?” I call through the corridor.

I cringe at the echo of my own voice. Most of the residents are still asleep and in room B12 Mr. Hauser is dying.

“In here.”

“In where?”

I take a step.

“Warmer.”

I don’t believe this. I shake my head but can’t fight the smile spreading on my lips.

“Sam?”

I take another step, eavesdropping on doors that harbor snoring residents.

“Getting warmer.”

“Sam?”

Another step, I push my ear up against a likely door. I snicker, I bet he’s in there.

“Hot now.”

I grin and rip open the door to room A17.

“Gotcha.”

“Got whom?” says Mr. Powell, the resident of A17.

He is standing in the open door to the bathroom with Sam behind him washing a bedsore on his buttock. Before Mr. Powell can fetch his glasses I shut the door. My cheeks are burning, Sam again.

“Since you’re taking care of Mr. Powell, I’m going to get started on Mrs. Wolff across the hall.”

“Sure.”

I walk off to B14, and this time I knock before I enter.

When I get down to the breakfast room with Mrs. Callander on my arm, most residents are seated. The more agile ones move around the room, making small talk about sleeping patterns and the current night nurse, giving shoulders a rub here and there. As I sit Mrs. Callander down I spot Sam at the far end of the room. I try to put my annoyance at him disappearing with Mr. Powell and leaving me on my own to get the rest of the residents ready into a single gesture. He smiles at me like a cheeky schoolboy and walks over. I have a feeling once he’s standing in front of me I won’t get a word out.

“Good morning Mrs. Callander,” Sam bends down to peer into her eyes.

Mrs. Callander smiles and blushes a little.

“Well, good morning to you, too.”

“Did you get another visit from your Johnny last night?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Callander chuckles. “He came through the window. We talked all night.”

I have to bite back a grin.

“I’m sure it was a lovely night,” Sam says.

“Oh, it was. Whenever my Johnny comes to visit it is very lovely.”

As I walk over to the kitchen counter to fetch Mrs. Callander’s breakfast, my stomach aches with the effort to hold back a laugh. I let out a choked thanks as I take the breakfast tray from the kitchen aid.

“Sam flirting with the old ladies again?” the aid says.

“They’re talking about her Johnny.”

“Hell, you make it to eighty and the president comes for a visit,” the aid mumbles and goes back into the kitchen.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When I walk back to the table, the bubbles in my throat have settled.

“Here you go, Mrs. Callander,” I put down her tray. “Enjoy your meal.”

“Thank you dear.”

Sam winks at her before he follows me through the room.

“Cigarette break?”

He wiggles his eyebrows.

“Is Jenny here yet?”

“Dunno. Why don’t we get Suneeta to watch ’em?”

“Suneeta is not your personal slave, you know.”

“She’s not? I thought that’s why they sent those candy stripers in the first place.”

I bite my tongue before I say the things I can’t take back. He shrugs and grins but then he turns away. I look at my feet.

“There’s Jenny,” Sam says.

I look around the room but all I can see are residents chewing on stages of mushed breakfast.

“Where?”

“Over there,” Sam points across the room. “Hey Jenny.”

And then I see her too, straightening Mrs. Cowan’s wig, waving a distracted hand at Sam.

“Let’s get out of here before she comes over to talk to us.”

Sam grabs me by the elbow. As he drags me from the room, I spot Mr. Coleman, who is feeding his wife a slice of honey-buttered toast, and I think, Sam’s right, I need a break.

Outside I am rubbing at the goose bumps on my arms while Sam lights our cigarettes. The morning sun just isn’t enough when I’m standing here in a T-shirt.

“Here you go,” Sam hands me one of the cigarettes.

The filter is soggy with his spit but I don’t say anything.

“Such a nice morning,” Sam says. “They should build a conservatory, so the residents can eat outside.”

I look at Sam and raise an eyebrow.

“The board might take you up on that if you pitch it right.”

“You think so?”

“Sure,” I laugh. “If you build it yourself that is.”

Sam snorts and takes a drag from his cigarette.

“I could.”

“You’re a DIY-man?”

“No, but I’m a builder,” and that surprises me.

We stand there for a moment without saying anything until I can’t hold it in anymore.

“You are a builder? I thought you were a nurse.”

“Both,” he looks at me as if he can’t believe that I can’t believe that. “I used to lay brick.”

“Huh,” I exhale, the smoke stings my eyes. “Who would have thought?”

And as I look across the half-empty parking lot I can’t help but imagine Sam’s lean frame in a hard-hat, sweating the working man’s sweat, and when he touches my arm, I jump.

“Relax,” he says. “Where did you just go?”

“Just thinking about what to put in my notes after the shift,” I stare at his yellow fingers on my skin.

“Long time until then,” he sighs.

“Look there’s Mr. Coleman,” I hope Sam is distracted enough to move his hand away. “Good morning, Mr. Coleman.”

Mr. Coleman lifts a hand from the handles of his wife’s wheelchair and waves.

“I hope he’s put sunscreen on her,” Sam says and waves, and I hope that too.

I watch them as he wheels her off into the garden.

“So you fancy a lift after work?” Sam says, and I wish he hadn’t.

Mr. Coleman is gone and there is nothing to distract him with. I nod and when he smiles and leans in, his chest brushing my shoulder, I regret that I did. The heat radiating off him makes me go back to daydreaming about hard-hats and bricks and all these things I don’t know about him.

Since Jenny is in a mood, I am feeding Mrs. Coleman at lunch. Sam is on bathroom-duty. Mr. Coleman has gone home for the day, I wonder if she knows. I crush the potatoes and vegetables before I navigate the mush into Mrs. Coleman’s toothless mouth, gaping at me like a wet, pink cave.

“You know you don’t have to do that,” Sam nods to the mush on the plate, as he returns Mrs. Callander to her seat. “She’s never had dentures.”

“So?” I try not to look at him.

Jenny is watching us from the door.

“Here it comes, Mrs. Coleman,” I smile at her. “Open up wide.”

“Her gums are so callous. She could chew steak.”

I doubt that but I don’t argue. Mrs. Coleman chews and smiles, humming like a small, wrinkled refrigerator.

“Someone likes her meals,” Sam says in that exaggerated voice he uses with the residents.

Mrs. Coleman doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t look at me either. She looks at the spoon before it goes into her mouth.

“If only you were that content,” I say.

“Maybe when I’m old and have no more teeth,” Sam grins. “For now I’ll have to settle on being young and restless.”

I shake my head and concentrate on shoveling more lunch goo into Mrs. Coleman’s gaping mouth. Sam watches me, until Mrs. Callander starts tugging at his sleeve.

“Excuse me young man. But would you mind fetching the nurse?”

“Mrs. Callander. I am the nurse.”

“Oh, well then would you mind accompanying me to the bathroom.”

Sam bends down and puts an arm on her sleeve.

“Mrs. Callander, we just went. Five minutes ago.”

Mrs. Callander studies Sam’s face, pursing her lips but he just smiles at her.

“Did we? Well then I guess it can wait a while.”

I am mesmerized by Sam’s patience, which he appears to have reserved for the residents only. As he strokes Mrs. Callander’s arm, smiling at her, I feel acid bubbling up my throat. I can’t wait for my shift to end and for Sam to quit his job and return to working in construction and then I wave Suneeta over before I end up smothering Mrs. Coleman in her mashed potatoes.

After lunch I scribble down some notes for the late shift, an eye on the door of the break room. Sam is still helping residents go to the bathroom, since Mrs. Callander ended up soiling herself.

I can see him entering the break room as I round the corner, heading for the exit. I should change before I leave but that would take another ten minutes. Time I don’t have if I want to catch the bus and I want to catch the bus because if I don’t I’ll end up catching a ride with Sam and as much as I want to, I have a feeling I shouldn’t. So I run across the street where the bus is approaching my stop and as I get on I see Sam exit the building. he’s looking around, looking at me, turning a gesture into a question. And I want to turn back, get off the bus, walk over but there’s a line behind me pushing me forward, so I just shrug at him, pay my fare, and find a seat.

 

Juniper-GreenJuniper Green is a writer at the very beginning of her career. After long periods of aimless wandering she has settled in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is working on her portfolio as well as editing her first novel. Previously her work has appeared online in Foliate Oak and The Dying Goose.

Image credit: Ulrich Joho on Flickr

DAFFODILS by Daniel W. Thompson

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DAFFODILS
by Daniel W. Thompson

The main reason I drove four hours to be here was to sign a document giving me access to mom and dad’s security deposit box. Mom called it personal housekeeping. She said, you never know, Miles. What if something happens to your father and me? Somebody’s got to care for our affairs, and we all know your sister—. Well, you know what I’m saying, she said.

When we got to the bank, they couldn’t find the form we needed. The person who prepared it was on her way, but it would be thirty minutes. Mom suggested we go pick daffodils behind the old elementary school while we waited. I said we should forget the bank and flowers and go home and eat lunch. I told her I wanted to get an early start back to Richmond. But Mom said it was too important I sign the form. The school was right up the street and wouldn’t take long. Then she started in on how tall these daffodils were. They come right up to your knees, she said. Best daffodils in town and only a short walk away. Fine, I said. Let’s pick daffodils.

The sun warmed our backs as we walked through town, and Mom started telling me about Melanie’s latest mess. Her ex-girlfriend was pissed off because she stopped paying rent on the apartment they shared in D.C. Mom said the ex had called the house four times asking for the money, and that Melanie was hiding with another ex somewhere in Baltimore. Your sister sometimes, mom said. I just don’t know what we’re going to—. Well, you know what I’m saying, she said. It was her favorite way to end a Melanie story.

I hadn’t thought about Halifax Elementary since mom retired three years ago. For thirty years, she taught second grade at Halifax, and it was where I spent kindergarten through third grade. It was a grand old school. Three stories tall, with round, white columns across the front, and the whole building was dressed in dark, red brick. Mom’s last year teaching was the last year Halifax was used for a school. She said they couldn’t have kids going to schools with stairs in them anymore. They built a new, flat one across town, and Mom packed thirty years of teaching up in big brown boxes. They tried using it for administrative offices, but it didn’t take. Mom said it’s been empty for two years now.

Standing in front of the school I saw the toll the vacancy had taken. Dirty, white streaks ran down the brick façade, and the paint was peeling off the columns. The large boxwoods that framed the sidewalks were so tall they’d need a bucket truck to prune them back. They looked more like trees than shrubs. The place was just a mess. An absolute mess. But when I looked at mom, I saw something different. Expecting to see sadness or anger, she was smiling. It was like she was looking at something totally different. She still saw dozens of smiling, chirping little kids walking in straight lines with their backpacks and lunch boxes. She saw teachers huddled by the door, smiling and waving at the arriving children, telling stories about what this kid did or that kid said. She was unfazed by what the school had become.

There was one particular spot behind the school where the best of the best grew, Mom said. If we were lucky, they’d still be there, but we weren’t the only people in town that knew of them. We walked around the side of the school, avoiding the tall weeds growing up through the sidewalk and stepping over old twigs and limbs that had blown down from recent storms. It was funny. Somewhere between the bank and the school I got excited for the daffodils. I don’t know if it was all the decay and debris or something else, but I wanted to find these flowers. I wanted to find one thing that was still beautiful.

What we found was a long thick patch of green leaves and short, cut stalks. A couple daffodils were wilted and fallen over, casualties of the mass picking. There wasn’t one pickable flower. Not one. I was certain this would upset mom but again, she only smiled. And I knew that smile. It was the same one she had when she was teaching, the way she’d look at her students when they gave her a hug or said hello. Well, they sure got some beautiful flowers, she said. Looking at the size of these stalks and leaves, she said they were probably the tallest and fullest ones yet. I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. The school was a wreck, mom’s cherished flowers were robbed, and we were waiting on a form that gave me access to my parents’ personal items in the event they died. Mom looked up at her old school, then turned and looked at me and smiled again. She asked if I had my phone on me. Why, I asked. She picked up one of the wilted daffodils, fluffed its yellow petals, and straightened its stalk. Then she walked over to the school’s brick wall and asked me take a picture of her holding the flower.

 

Daniel-ThompsonDaniel W. Thompson is an urban planner living in Richmond, VA, with his wife and daughter. His recent stories have appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Literary Orphans, and Jersey Devil Press.

Image credit: russelljsmith on Flickr

FLESH AND BLOOD by Jamie Lin

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Flesh and BloodFLESH AND BLOOD
by Jamie Lin 

He’d done it again. Little puddles of sticky green glop all over the floor, specked with shards from the small glass bottle that’d held the apple purée. His fist clutched the plastic spoon as more pale green glop dribbled off his chin and onto the high chair.

Ying had left him for less than a minute to attend to her dinner, which had been threatening to boil over onto the stove. When the bottle shattered on the tiled floor she moved quickly, striding across the small expanse from kitchenette to living room and lifting him clean off the chair and into his cradle, away from the glass. Her movements were smooth, instinctive. He gurgled, his expression untroubled, and using the spoon as a catapult he feebly flicked more purée onto the floor.

As she looked over the mess a familiar warmth began to collect in her insides, wisps of something that was not yet—this was the second time this week she had forgotten to sleeve the bottle and both times he had knocked it off the table. She picked her way carefully back to the kitchenette where the pot still rattled on the stove, the water hissing on the flame. This time she managed to get the clattering to ease before a new sound broke in the close air of the flat: a shrill wail, a sure sign that he was hungry again. At mealtimes she would struggle to feed him while he pushed food out of his mouth with his tongue or smeared it on his chair, and only as she was close to giving up would he grow hungry and shriek his insistence on being fed. She removed a fresh portion of purée from the fridge, placed it in a bottle and warmed that in a container of hot water. It was easier to prepare his meals in batches, steaming the fruit and vegetables—or boiling when she didn’t have time—and then puréeing by hand, storing the food in the freezer where it would be good for a couple of days.

The crying continued as she crossed to the living room and tried to right the mess with paper towels and a wet dishcloth. The impact of the bottle on the floor had flung bits of glass under the furniture and it would take too long to gather the pieces together; they would have to wait until after he was fed. He was rigid in his cradle where she had left him, barely a year old and bawling like only an infant could, the shrill sound seemingly one with rather than coming from him, shining into the hollows between her ears and the crevices of the small flat. Ying felt her teeth slowly go on edge.

When the last of the purée was off the floor she returned to the kitchenette. The broth simmered quietly, tendrils of steam uncoiling lazily upwards in the enclosed, stagnant air. A pigeon sat on the ledge just beyond the closed windows, its head cocked at an angle, by all appearances a permanent feature of the windowscape. As Ying dabbed some of the fresh purée on her tongue to see if it was ready, she heard the spoon clatter onto the floor and his wailing double in volume. There was something strange about the way he was howling: it was different, urgent somehow. Quickly she swirled the contents of the bottle to even the mixture out, and in four strides she was by his side. Bits of glass lay strewn around the high chair; his cradle would have to do. His face was pale from all the crying and his fists motioned uselessly in the air. She shushed him loudly, spooned some purée from the bottle and pushed it into his mouth. His lips hung open, non-complying, and the purée trickled out onto his chin. The cries continued. Ying clicked her tongue, the warmth in her insides close to blooming. He had to be hungry by now. She swirled the contents of the bottle again and took another taste before offering him a second spoonful. His eyes squeezed shut and he continued to wail. This time the purée dribbled onto the cradle bedding.

As if from a distance, Ying watched one hand pass the spoon to the other and arc cleanly back across his cheek in a fluid motion, connecting with a tight thwack. Her insides were alive and the expression felt uncommonly good. In response his cries crescendoed, his skin flowering a multi-petalled crimson where the back of her hand had landed. She tried again with another spoonful of purée, but this time his head jerked away so that she couldn’t even get it in his mouth. His vacant gaze was fixed intently on the windowsill upon which the pigeon still perched, patient. Buoyed by another surge of emotion, her hands left the bottle and the spoon and fell roughly about his shoulders, shaking him fiercely, her voice jagged in a half-scream, desperate for the wailing to stop.

His tiny weight shifted under her strength and out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a squirming yellow-and-black spot on the beige of the bedding—a small wasp had been caught under his thigh and was just wriggling free. With the blood rushing to her head she lifted his leg a little and saw with a shock that the back of his thigh was puffy and discoloured. He was whimpering quietly now, and when he lifted his eyes to hers again, she saw a look on his face that had the quality of a realisation, as if her actions in those moments had upset something precious, something deeply personal that had barely begun to take shape. And while that was the last time he would taste her wrath as he shed his youth over slow decades, emerging a man no different from others in appearance—able-bodied, good-natured, kind, yet something seemed to have been taken from him that day that he was not to find again, some capacity to give all of himself over to another, a quality of abandon that made him seem more than, or perhaps not quite, flesh and blood. Decades later in the long afternoons she would spend awaiting his return from work, their roles by then wholly reversed, her mind would often return to the events of that day, her thoughts circling the past like a songbird over its cage, already but not yet free.

 

Jamie LinBy grace alone, Jamie Lin lives, teaches, reads and writes in Singapore. His work can be found both in print and online in Flash Magazine (UK), Relief, and QLRS. A chapter in a nonfiction anthology Altogether Elsewhere is forthcoming from Math Paper Press in 2014.

Image credit:  Cia de Foto on Flickr

MIRABEL RIVER GIRL, CHAMPION SPELLER by Shannon Sweetnam

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MIRABEL RIVER GIRL, CHAMPION SPELLER
by Shannon Sweetnam

I was twelve when my Daddy got a long iridescent motorcycle, his first to my unemphatic, unpathwayed, what-I-recall. I wandered the shop façade near the cow-bell laden door, while he strode around back to cast a final gaze at his newly purchased ride. I perused the store in white leather sandals, ambulating back and forth among the sharp smells of steel and sawdust, amongst the stink of after-shave, rubber, and gasoline, under the reverberation of bleak fluorescent lights. I yearned for something to read. When Daddy returned, I laid hands upon his new manual and parked myself outside Jim’s Hardware atop a cooler, foraging for spelling bee clinchers: crankshaft, flywheel, cam chain, hydraulic steering damper. I was to be a world champion speller; I was to win the national spelling bee in the great capital of our country that very spring. Daddy predicted it and I prayed upon it. I would soon be a part of the history of this great nation. The cow-bell clanked obstreperously (the world with which I won the regional bee) and Daddy descended upon me and set me behind him on his new hog. We were homeward bound.

When not shuffling through the delicate pages of the American Heritage Dictionary, I rode with Daddy on his new bike, the child in a swarming sway of age, leading his posse deep into the country along Dog River, under the bright Alabama sky. I’d sneak stones in my pocket, paw them up from underneath the porch and aim them for the river as we sped beside its churning tawny waters.

I was twelve that spring Daddy bought his new motorcycle, the same age and season in which he would be struck by lightning, besieged through the phone line with such pernicious force that he suffered cardio-pulmonary injuries and electrocardiographic alterations. After this, his mind embarked. Daddy stowed the milk in the cupboard after dribbling it over the cat food he mistook for cereal. He attempted phone calls with the TV remote. We scrambled to rise early and feed ourselves. Mama hid the keys to all forms of transportation in the neighbor’s garage while Daddy spent time recovering on the front porch, poring over the dictionary in order to grill me for the bee that, despite his trauma, we remained destined to win.

We had built our house atop the shallow, brackish Dog River, which snaked its way through our front yard on its way to its tidal estuary near Hollinger’s Island, which connects the estuary to the northern reaches of the Gulf of Mexico: the grand Riviere Du Chien, which Daddy had not once had the fortitude to enter. Though I am aqueous, I am not aquatic, he announced, making me spell both. It’s the aqueous part that acts as a conductor of electricity, he explained. Electricity needs a conduit. (Pause for the spelling of conduit.) A conduit is something that transfers electricity. I do not swim. I do not tube. I do not float. I do not engage in landless activities.

Daddy being hit by lightening changed everything, the event preceded by ominous signs. The morning woke with swollen gray pupils. My ruckled senses unfolded. My sister Misty and I regarded each other, sensing the stillness preceding a great storm. Everything was stopped, looming, hindered, except the small stream of blood that poured from between my legs and bled into the cotton sheets.

No one’d warned me about menstruation. It was a word we hadn’t practiced. I didn’t know the blood would be so . . . effusive! Daddy threw me a rag towel to sit on and presented me a new set of words to memorize. Then he scrambled to hunt for the remote to call the drug store for a delivery of tampons.

Mama was a traveling saleslady. It wasn’t her fault she was perpetually absent. Nobody else I knew had a mama like that. Other kids’ mamas stayed home. Daddy took the milk out of the pantry and set it on the table for me and Misty, along with a box of cat food and some plastic forks. Meanwhile, I stuffed my underwear with toilet paper, put on an old short set, and headed outside with a tube of Neosporin to clean the wound on Less Yellow, my nebulous, wandersome feline! Each night, while Misty and I lay together in syrupy-headed slumber, his muffled muroooowls swung through the wind—awoo—caught on the end of the bullfrog’s watery croaks, which together initiated dreams of the church choir’s accordion solos reverberating through the wooden floors and up through our leather dress shoes and our lace-trimmed Sunday socks.

The storming had started in earnest the night before Daddy was hit. The eve of the precedent was mad, and the sordid air hung about in spastic fits. Misty and I were deep in our bed. Daddy was deep in his bed. Mama was tucked into her bed in a Holiday Inn somewhere in Mississippi. The windows were secured against the boreal winds, but the air slammed and jammed to the fremitus of the clicking, kissing, static in the fat-mooned eve. And I knew something was coming, something big and as far away as God Himself.

By mid-afternoon, the stillness was ending and all the things in the universe tingled up. Less Yellow returned from his wanderings, fluffed his tail and shed like a dried up Christmas tree beside me on the porch where I sat looking at the river and watching the road beyond, waiting for Misty’s yellow bus to come galloping to a halt. Together we sat on the porch steps, throwing rocks hard across the lawn so they’d reach the river.

◊ 

It wasn’t long before the thunder and long corvine screams embroidered the sky and frightened all the infants in the universe. Misty and I sat together on the porch, crowded in concentration and fear while heavy dark colors fell from the viscid sky.

I could feel it coming. Misty could feel it coming. Our cat-yawn companion clawing up the screen door could feel it coming. I could feel the whole world of my space feel it coming. And Daddy was set for the stage, pencil-fisted on his orange work phone. Oh odious, spastic sky! It was late in the afternoon and I could feel it coming . . .

Inside, hooked to the screen, Less Yellow peeled back his ears and opened his green eyes wide toward the heavens. He sensed the danger the way only felines can. That was when the zipper finally pulled, the engine cranked, the serpent roared, and the lightening raced down upon us.

It was the END. We all knew it was. Less Yellow shivered like a baby chickadee and Misty turned violet and limp in my arms, forgetting to aspire. I did not know what to do, so shocked and confused I was from the copious air. My red hair tangled itself like snakes around my head and the river itself seemed to beckon us in as the water spit an angry mist into the trees. I spelled words from my Greek roots list: euphemism, euthanasia, paradigm, hyperbole, and told myself not to go in. I thought of the upcoming state bee, and the national, which had been timed to allow us all a glance at the cherry trees blooming in their long rows on Washington’s indelible and wondrous Mall. I would stand beneath the canopy of the most resplendent tree in my polished white sandals, facing the Lincoln Memorial. The blossoms would sway upon their branches and Misty would elevate my trophy toward the kingdom come, shouting exuberantly: Mirabel, Mirabel, Mirabel, river girl, champion speller!

 

Shannon SweetnamShannon Sweetnam is a Chicago-based fiction writer whose work has appeared most recently in terrain.org, Crab Orchard Review, and Georgetown Review. She was a finalist for both the 2012 and 2013 SLS Summer Literary Seminars, finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Orlando Prize for Short Fiction, finalist for the 2013 David Nathan Meyerson Fiction Prize, semi-finalist for the 2012 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, winner of the 2010 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize, and recipient of an Illinois Arts Council grant. She currently works as a writer at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines.

Image credit: Cia de Foto on Flickr

PIGEON by Thomas Mayes

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Pigeon

PIGEON
by Thompson Mayes

He was hot, too hot, walking on the sunny side of the hard stone streets through tourist stickiness of dripped gelato. He felt as wilted as the reddish-pink blooms that drooped out of the doorway, and he could smell the roach poison they must use here, wafting up from small dark gaps at the base of the buildings. He avoided the pigeons, suspected they were diseased, though he could hear their burbling as they waddled on the dirty streets.

It had been churches today, and each of the dim, frescoed interiors had been a calm relief from the crowds and the heat. But the religious art had oppressed him. In the last church he had stared at an awkward painting of Mary Magdalene, blonde hair covering her entire body, ending with sharp points like the tongues of flame. And there had been another Crucifixion, the blood dripping down the underside of Christ’s arm in attenuated strings of red and piling up like viscous thread at the stones of his feet.

He began now to cross the street in the hot sunlight, hoping the shaded side would be cooler. He heard a Vespa behind him, and turned to see if he needed to hurry across to the narrow sidewalk and huddle against the stone wall. But the Vespa, and its helmeted rider, turned into a small side street.

When he turned again to look up the street, his eyes caught the blinding sunlight, and in the moment it took for his sight to readjust, he saw something coming at him in the blue wedge of sky visible above the street. It was a pigeon, flying down toward him from the rooftops above, its beak a clear centered point, its wings outstretched so they appeared to meet the buildings on both sides. It’s that image, he thought, the image of the Holy Spirit that I had thought so artificial. He continued to look, unblinking in the middle of the street, as the bird kept coming at him in a swift glide, until the bird turned to the side to land on the blackened stone of the street. It had been a hot dog bun it was after, he saw now, as the pigeon began to peck at the gritty bun.

In the cool of the shadow now, he continued his walk up the street. The image had been in a painting of the Pentecost, the apostles below with red tongues of flame on their heads. The dove had been above, in a circle of incised gold. It was the same straight-on image, the centered beak, the wings outspread. In the church, he had thought, who has ever seen a pigeon like that? But now he knew they had taken it from life. Five hundred years ago, walking the stone streets of Florence, they must have seen it too, coming right at them, something they could paint as the Holy Spirit, in the form of an everyday sight, a hungry pigeon flying from the cool air of the rooftops for a piece of broken bread.

 

Thompson MayesThompson Mayes is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Masters program in writing and wrote “Pigeon” while studying in Florence, Italy.  Currently living in Rome, Tom is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation from the American Academy in Rome, where he is writing about why old places matter.

Image credit: Chris Beach on Flickr
Author’s photo by Catie Newell.

SCORCHER by Alina Grabowski

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Scorcher

SCORCHER
by Alina Grabowski

June had been eating a creamsicle on the front porch when she saw them. It was the third week of July and the entire house was sweating, drops of condensation sliding down bookshelves and chair legs. Her father was having his annual boys’ weekend with some college buddies, and her mother was at an artist’s retreat in Vermont, working on her new series of collages. June was left to babysit Lily, whose tyrannical seven-year old behavior she’d only expected the heat to magnify. Instead she had become drowsily acquiescent, content to sit in the shade of the porch as long as she had a constant supply of chocolate milk and coloring books.

June laid on her belly on the shadowed porch, coloring mermaids and dripping creamsicle syrup onto the page. “No mermaid has brown hair,” Lily said, leaning over with turquoise stub in hand. “It has to be realistic.”

If Lily hadn’t intervened she probably wouldn’t have seen anything. She wouldn’t have looked up from Coral Casey and her sea critter pals. She wouldn’t have glanced at the maroon Lawson Shrub Service truck speeding down the road. She wouldn’t have bit her lip at the sight of Tim Lawson in the front, his arm wrapped around a woman in the passenger seat. She wouldn’t have glimpsed the unmistakable head of her mother, hair too long for a woman her age and streaked with the fuchsia hue favored by teenage experimenters.

“Lily, time to go inside.”

Lily didn’t look up from her coloring book. “No way, too hot in there.”

“I’m not asking you,” June said, trying out an authority she didn’t feel she had. “I’m telling you.”

Lily kept coloring and June knocked the crayon out of her hand. The instant she did, she regretted it—Lily’s bean-bag size fist opened in shock and trembled. Lily swept the crayons into their box and closed her coloring book. “You don’t have to act like Dad,” she said.

  ◊

Lucy was reaching up to open the sunroof when she saw them.  Side by side on the porch, postures mirroring each other—lying on the deck with chests lifted, bare feet pointed skyward. “We shouldn’t have come this way,” she said, shaking off Tim’s sweaty arm.

“You still paranoid about the girls? No one’s going to be outside in this heat, Luce.” He patted her on the back, looped his arm around her shoulder again. She rolled her shoulder backwards but he just gripped it tighter.

“We’re fucked. I just saw them. June saw us. From the porch.”

“Jesus, they want heatstroke?” Tim rolled his window down further, stuck his left hand out and wiggled it in the humid wind.

“We don’t have AC. It broke a week ago and Mike keeps saying he’s going to fix it, of course he doesn’t, God forbid he makes any sort of contribution to the family.” Lucy ran a hand through her hair—her fingers came out netted with blonde and pink strands. She pulled them off and tossed them out the window.

Tim flicked his aviators up onto his head and turned to Lucy, his eyes locking with hers. “Lucy baby, what’s that rule we made? No family talk, especially no Mike talk, remember?” He stared at her until she nodded. “Good. And June couldn’t have seen us, I flew past your house—nothing like 50 in a 20 zone!” He pulled into his driveway and stamped the brakes, tires squealing like a dog with a crushed paw. “And no AC! Man, you’re a sadistic one, leaving those girls alone in hell heat.”

He grinned at her and she had to bite her lip to keep from spitting on him. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she said, trying to remember how to defend herself. “I am not.” She could hear the uncertainty in her own voice.

He kicked open his door and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead before leaping onto the driveway. “Don’t worry, babe. That’s why I love you.”

 ◊

June ran the Jacuzzi in her parents’ bathroom with cold water. Lily sat on the tile in her pony print bathing suit, swimming two mermaid Barbies through the air.

“Isn’t this better than coloring mermaids? Now you can be a real mermaid!” June said, squeezing a fish-shaped container of bubble bath that her mom used to use for her tubs. Lily didn’t respond—she’d been alternating between the silent treatment and screeched demands since they’d gone inside.

The Jacuzzi began to froth with bubbles and June turned off the stream of water, then knelt beside her sister. “You want to get in, Lil?”

Lily shook her head and dive-bombed one of the Barbies towards the seashell shaped bath mat. June could feel a tear of sweat drip from the corner of her forehead and dipped a hand into the cold water. “C’mon Lil, you’ll feel better if you’re in the tub.”

Lily clicked the heads of her Barbies together. “No.”

June gripped the side of the tub, her knuckles turning the same white as the tile. “You’re the one who wanted to play Mermaids, Lily.” She slapped the foamy skin of the water. “It’ll be refreshing.”

Lily shrugged, one of the frilly straps of her suit slumping towards her elbow. “Why don’t you go in?”

June rolled her eyes but swished her hand through the cool bathwater. “If I go in will you go in?”

Lily turned her back and slapped the plastic bodies of the two Barbies against each other. “Maybe.”

June stood up and dipped one foot into the bubbles. “I’m going in, Lily.” Lily ignored her. June didn’t bother taking off her clothes but slid into the tub with her tank top and shorts on, the wet denim clinging to her skin like strands of hair during a rainstorm. She rested her arms on the sides of the tub and blew a cluster of foam away from her face. “It’s so nice, Lil, come join me!” She patted the bubbles and shook fistfuls towards Lily. “You want to play?”

Lily pretended not to hear her and slammed her Barbies into the ground, grinding their faces into the grout between the tiles.

“Lily,” June said, trying to sound like their mother. “Lily.”

Lily started humming to herself and swinging the dolls by their tiny arched feet.

“Goddamn, Lily, listen!” June snatched the Barbies from Lily’s hands and thrust them beneath the cap of coconut-scented bubbles. Lily jumped up in surprise, lurching for her dolls, and June noticed that her face was a splotchy pink, her breath sputtering out in fast, unfinished bursts. Just as her hand was about to reach into the tub Lily’s legs folded beneath her, body spreading onto the bath mat and hair wrapping around her eyes and forehead.

June sprang out of the tub, water falling from her like a storm shower, a sudsy stream pouring over the bathroom as she lifted Lily from the floor and ran to the bedroom. The bathwater weighting her clothes was tugging the material towards the floor, fat drops splashing onto the carpet and Lily’s still body. She placed Lily on the bed as gently as she could in her panic and picked up the phone, dialing 911 while she clawed at the buttons of her shorts. The waistband was heavy and choking against the rapid rise and fall of her stomach, and the denim finally dropped to the ground in a soggy pile. She peeled off the sticky tank top with one arm as the phone rang, then threw the thin shirt against the wall, where it slowly slid to the ground, a streak of water trailing it like the residue of a snail’s path.

“My sister—“ she panted, not crying only because she couldn’t remember how. “Help—I don’t know what to do.”

 ◊

“Why don’t we take a shower?” Tim asked, grasping Lucy’s wrist and leading her upstairs. She hated climbing the carpeted steps with bare feet, dodging the stiff, yellowed socks and multicolored stains.

His bedroom was the same as always: shades drawn, bed pretending to be made with the comforter smoothed over wrinkled sheets.  There was the same laundry basket of unfolded clothes that had been there last week. She dropped her purse on the bed and turned the dial up on the AC unit jammed into the window, which coughed in response.

Tim stood in the doorway, watching her. “Shower’s that-a-way,” he said, hooking a thumb down the hall.

Lucy sat down on top of the bed and undid her sandals. “I know. Can we just lie down for a bit? This heat is getting to me.”

He sucked in his breath and gave a little whistle. “Lucy, are you here to fuck me or not? The whole point is that I’m not your husband.” He turned and kicked the doorframe. “I’ll be in the bathroom if you care to join me.”

Lucy took deep breaths to avoid getting emotional. You deserve this, she told herself, You wanted this.

She remembered the first time she’d caught Tim looking at her, when she was planting tulips and he was mowing their lawn. She’d invited him in for a glass of lemonade and he’d told her she had pretty red hair. That was it. And it was enough. That weekend Mike had said he was on a golfing trip, which meant that he was with Jessica, a junior executive at his firm. She’d liked Jessica when she’d met her at the company Christmas party last year. She had excellent taste in shoes.

She remembered the first time she’d caught Mike looking at her, too. At the studio in college, where he was working on a sketch for the Intro to Drawing class he was taking to fulfill a requirement. She was finishing a self-portrait she’d been painting and could see him glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. As she was about to leave he came up to her: Sucks that you won’t be able to get an A for that piece, he’d said. Why? He shrugged. There’s no way you can do justice on canvas to your beauty. Later he’d tell her it had taken him two hours of watching her paint to come up with that.

“Luce, you coming?” came the voice from the hallway.

She closed her eyes and pulled her shirt off over her head, lobbing it at the wall. “Coming.”

 ◊

Lily wasn’t sweating. She was dry, too dry, like the scorched leaves of the aloe plant in their kitchen. June stood over her in her damp bra and underwear, the wet ends of her hair sending droplets rolling down her chest and ribcage. She pressed one moist hand to Lily’s chest and used the other to hold her tiny beanbag-size hand, stroking it like she’d seen her mother do on the night Lucy had appendicitis.

Her mother. She picked up the phone and dialed her mother’s number, but it went to voicemail. She called it again, her sweaty fingers slipping on the keypad, the buzzing dull in her ears.

She dropped the phone to the ground and returned her hand to Lucy’s chest. She counted the rise and fall of her chest: updownupdown.

 ◊

Lucy stepped into the bathroom as she heard her phone ringing. Tim had his hand under the spray of the shower, testing the temperature. “Finally.” He grabbed her and pulled her to him.

“Hold on, my phone.” She twisted away from him.

“Just ignore it, Jesus.” She paused in the doorframe. “It’s nothing,” he said. “You’re in Vermont creating or whatever, remember? Who would be calling you?”

She looked down at her bare feet. “What if it’s the girls?”

He stepped towards her and tipped her chin up to his. “All the more reason not to pick up.”

She could feel a bead of sweat racing down her shoulder blade. It reminded her of the day of her mother’s funeral, when it was so hot two of her aunts had fainted and she had sweated through her black shift so badly that she’d had to throw it away afterwards. June had been three at the time, and watched the speeches, the sobbing, and the handholding with a solemnity Lucy hadn’t expected. Back at the house afterwards, left-over finger sandwiches wrapped in the fridge and an open bottle of wine on the table, June had climbed onto Lucy’s lap. She wrapped her little legs around Lucy’s waist and placed her chubby fingers on Lucy’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Mommy,” she said, eyes wide and unblinking. “I’ll never leave you.” It was the first time Lucy had cried all day. She was usually pretty good at keeping it together.

“So?” Tim drummed his fingers against the glass door of the shower.

“You’re right,” Lucy said, pressing her fingers to her temples and closing her eyes. “It’s nothing.”

 

 

Alina GrabowskiAlina Grabowski is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying English and creative writing. Her writing has been recognized by the YoungArts Foundation and the Scholastic Writing Awards, and she was a Presidential Scholar in the Arts semifinalist in 2012. She recently participated in ICA Philadelphia’s 7 Writers program celebrating the museum’s 50th anniversary.

Image credit: cia de foto on Flickr

BETTER by Molly McGinnis

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Better

BETTER
by  Molly McGinnis

I am salt and champagne. Salt and dirt and stars. Two-sided story, double-edged knife. Dinosaur bones and tambourines.

I have walked into town by myself at dawn and seen my face reflected in the windows. I have danced down the aisles of the grocery store and blown kisses to the pharmacist with the one blue eye. I used to count tiles from the produce section to the checkout line, because I thought that if I didn’t, my sister would die. In school, I learn this is some kind of misfiring, and am warned that it could come back any minute, but for now I breathe carefully and wash the idea down the bathroom sink. I am on the brink of a brilliant war. Each morning, I move in spheres. I contain mirror neurons and sunshine. Porch lights and beer cans. July.

Miss Irene lives next door with her ghosts. She reads Time and The Harvard Review and washes her car on the lawn. I know a boy named Max who moved here from Louisiana last December. He has fiddler crabs tattooed on his left arm, and rough breath that makes me suspect he speaks harshly. One day he says Miss Irene has a mind like the light in his garage. It burns so bright some days that it shivers, then drops into darkness for weeks. I loved Max so much when he said this. I told him. He might have kissed me then, but I am defiant and cruel, and I stared straight ahead. Her house is painted white on one side, blue on the other.

But I am not as foolish as I once was. I will not try to save you because I am not salvageable either. The only things I will take with me from childhood are pink lemonade, laughter, and dogs at night. Nothing else. Not the man in the pawn shop with hungry eyes. Not the test with the 33%, a number that looked like clipped wings. I am lightweight.

In eighth grade, I have a friend named Kate. We sit on the curb after school with mayflies in our hair and sweat in the back of our knees, and talk about Tyler and Peter and Kevin, who can’t move the right way. His arms are twisted sideways, and he is in pain when he walks. Sometimes, Kate gets so quiet I forget she is beside me. One of the boys she loves has a telescope that he lets us try on his rooftop in November and there. No. To the left. There! I see Saturn suspended, a yellow jawbreaker with dust haloes. The idea of it hums in me, even when I realize that Kate has gone downstairs, with this boy she is so sure she loves, and I am alone again, spinning in moons and stars.

But I have to remember that the world is irrational. Full of jazz clubs and drugstores and forgiveness. 3 A.M.s and airports and reunions, so who am I to worry about whether or not it laughs at my restlessness, or decide if it desperately needs me?

Max moves when he is twenty-four. He goes back to Louisiana for no good reason. There is no U-haul or pickup with a mattress in the back, just a taxi in his driveway at 4 A.M. and a bedroll by the mailbox.

Will I be brave when I am older? Will I become a woman who can lay down all her secrets before 8 A.M., and decades before the world is ready to receive them? Will I ever know what to say? In my wrists, there will be moth’s wings. In my mouth, a darkness I will pull out like a tablecloth, and from my throat, silver doves instead of this silence.

And I will not be sorry. I will not swim in the shadow of my tallest mistakes. I will collect mysteries and begin counting the steps to my house in senseless self defense before I am reminded that this is only mechanics. Dear simple thing. Dear strange impulse. A striped cat on the balcony should be proof of safety. A man jogging under the dogwood trees might wink as he passes your car. I want this world unburied. I am right now on the brink of a brilliant war.

And did you know that even in this body you have learned to hate, you contain a vicious kindness? You can see it there, suspended, by the tiny bones in your ear. A yellow planet.

And any day now, I will move to a city that smells like jasmine and exhaust. At night, it is a constellation, and stretches into images of hunters and dancing girls. But it won’t tell me which one I am.

And in the evening, I will stand very still by the window. I, too, am full of hidden staircases that other people built. Who will I tell this to? Which friends do I still need to meet? In this air, a nightingale sings. In this room, the walls breathe. This house is orange on one side, and burning on the other. A boy I knew named Max was orange to the bone. I like thinking that the person I was when I knew him lives on inside him, somewhere, every time he sees a girl dance through a grocery store. Maybe, by now, his own daughter. His wife? Miss Irene is reading Time on her lawn.

And I am still salt and cement. Salt and dirt and morning glories. Semi-automatic, I have become suspicious. Most of the facts I have learned are incomplete. I am full of facts like these. Five percent water, ninety five percent gentle lies. I will leave none of them behind, but long after I have left this apartment, rumors of disasters and small discoveries will stay hitched to the cobwebs by the TV cabinet.

In truth, I have been so lonely. I have lost so much time to untamed thinking. But look at this satellite skimming the trees. This lightning bug in the bushes. I am better. I am undone. I am caught in the middle of a brilliant war. The sky outside this conversation. Clouds lipsticked gold like the ceilings of Italian cathedrals. A plane sweeping up and over the field, the window, the roof, the radio in the kitchen, the glasses clinking. I am here, for now, and in the lifting shadow, the rush of sudden light, the small room expands like a lung.

 

Molly McGinnis

Molly McGinnis is a freshman at American University in Washington, D.C. She is the recipient of two national American Voices Medals through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and has been published in The Sierra Nevada Review, The Adroit Journal, and American Literary Magazine. In her next life, she would like to be Aubrey Plaza or Hillary Clinton, even though that’s a little unrealistic.

Image credit: Cayusa on Flickr

ASSEMBLING AN ANATOMICAL LIFE by Laurie Blauner

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionsbyvicky/5432960856/sizes/l/ASSEMBLING AN ANATOMICAL LIFE
by Laurie Blauner

To Annie

I labeled all the dancers’ body parts and told them how to use them.  I prepared resonant music, a prescription for feet that kaleidoscoped from room to room.  I described what I wanted, a mouth yanked upward, ankles and hands telling a phantom story, heads grouped into archipelagoes.  I was the one going nowhere.  I theorized, discussed, directed their bodies, which leaned against one another’s shoulders.

“Arm?” one asked.

“If you want one.”

There was a movement of undressing and tiptoeing toward the unlocked door.

They floated and spun, lifting themselves.  The floor parked itself beneath them.  Air congealed, then became inflamed by their motions.  They rightfully absconded with my best advice.

I helped strangers, reassembling them.  At night boxes sheltered the dancers’ animal parts.  Morning light combed their human hair.  I knew what to hold and what to let go, correcting their articulated shadows.  I positioned and positioned.  The dancers borrowed pieces of my body, fingers flaring, toes waving goodbye without restraint.  Their faces reflected nothing.

“A leg isn’t just a leg.”

I pointed to another, pouring past me as though she had survived something she had already forgotten.  They understood suffering.

 

Laurie BlaunerLaurie Blauner is the author of six books of poetry, a novella, and three novels, most recently The Bohemians from Black Heron Press.  She has received several grants and awards, including an NEA and 4culture.  Her work has appeared in The Mississippi Review, New World Writing, Your Impossible Voice, The Nation, The New Republic, Superstition Review, and many other magazines.

Image credit: Visions By Vicky on Flickr

ICELANDIC KISSES by Shane Joaquin Jimenez

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Icelandic Kisses
ICELANDIC KISSES
by Shane Joaquin Jimenez 

The man in the fur coat paused in the electric blue of the porch light.

He sniffed the air, as if trying to read some presence in the atmosphere and the ice particles. A blinding wind came shrieking from the city, flaring his coat behind him. The fringe brushed against the two trashcans, skittering the nearest lid into the snow. The man in the fur coat cursed and hunkered down to pick up the lid. But when he had righted himself and the wind had died, he stood very still and looked across the dark yard, to where I stood in my solus rex in the shadows of his greenhouse.

The man very carefully set the trash bag in the snow. Then he very slowly chose a large rock from the ground. He walked along the perimeter of his backyard with very exaggerated steps, laying heel down before crunching toes into the garden snow. The night oxygen converted into poisonous, clear nitrogen in my lungs. I picked up a rock, too.

The man flashed a flashlight on me.

“Mi elkore pardonpetas!” he shouted, dropping his rock into the snow.  When I didn’t say anything, he pointed a finger at me.

“Mi pensis vin estis ŝtelisto kato,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t understand you.”

The man cocked his head at me, the ears of his fur trapper’s hat flopping stupidly. In the uneasy light, I could see the thick salt-and-pepper beard covering his face, his large brown eyes, and nothing else. I hid the rock hand behind my back.

“I can speak English,” he said. “I said that I am afraid I startled you.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “I guess we’re both guilty.”

“But I did not mean to scare you. I thought you were a… vervloekt… how do you say. A thief cat. A raccoon.”

The damn wind came again, inflating the man’s coat. He only wore sweatpants and an old thermal shirt under it.

“This fucking wind,” he said, hugging the folds of his coat around him. I wanted to do the same with my threadbare peacoat, but couldn’t because of the rock in my hand.

“He has been eating my wife’s vegetables,” the man said after awhile. “The raccoon. He has been breaking into the greenhouse and eating all of her vegetables. I promised to murder the beast.”

“I am not a raccoon,” I said.

“You are not the raccoon,” he verified.

The man wedged his hands into his coat and under his armpits and looked off past the line of his wooden fence.

“You are not the raccoon,” he decided, looking back on me, “but the question remains: who are you?”

I looked away, as the man had before, gazing past the fence to the lights of the city burning on the horizon and promising warmth and love and a million plaintive regrets.

“I’m just a guy in your yard,” I eventually said. “But I wasn’t stealing your vegetables.”

“It is very cold out. You should come inside and share a glass of brandy with me. My wife cannot drink anymore, you see, and there is nothing sadder than drinking alone.”

I looked down at the duct-taped ruins of my shoes, wiggling my toes inside them. They had lost all feeling.

“Sure,” I said.

I followed him to the house. Halfway across the yard, he turned around and held out his hand, saying, “Where have my manners gone? My name is Leopold.”

I looked at his hand for a few moments, then finally took it.

“Finn,” I said.

He turned his back to me and I dropped the rock in the snow.

Inside the dark kitchen we kicked off our boots. The house was bathwater warm and I was glad to be inside it. The ceiling belled over us, close to our heads, oak-beamed like the inner chamber of a pirate ship. Leopold motioned for me to follow him down an unlit hall, then down a honeycomb of further hallways, until we eventually came to a sort of study, lit very dimly by a fireplace in one far corner.

“Please,” Leopold said. “Sit.”

He motioned to two leather chairs in the center of the room. I chose the closest one and sank into it like it was quicksand. Leopold added a quantity of wood to the fire, stoking the flames with a mottled poker. The room smelled like Christmas Eve. As the flames bloomed and illuminated the room, I looked about the space. Mahogany bookcases spanned the walls, filled with dark leatherbound books. Framed black-and-white portraits filled the walls above the bookcases. Nothing looked younger than a hundred years old.

Leopold took off his trapper’s hat and rubbed the gray stubble on his head.

“There,” he said. “That’s better.”

He shuffled over to a glass-case cabinet and retrieved a honey-colored bottle. He chose two tumblers and filled them nearly to the brim. He stoppered the bottle, handed me a drink, and sat down.

“I like your house,” I said.

“Thank you, Finn. The credit, I’m afraid, is all due to my wife. She has put a lot of work into this home.” He winked. “This room though, is all mine.”

I thought that was an incredibly sad sentiment, but only asked, “Where is your wife?”

“She is sleeping, although she very well may join us later. In these final days of her pregnancy, her sleep is fitful just.”

“I don’t know what I would do if I was going to be a father,” I said into my glass. Then looked up and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“No need to apologize. Of course I’ve had the same thoughts. Worse even. I suppose every man, when confronted with paternal obligations, is plagued with these thoughts. It must be our nature. However, I must admit that it all seems so much worse now, somehow heightened, considering the current state of the world.”

“If I had any sense, I’d go south,” I said. “Maybe even head west, back across the ocean.”

“And what would you do there?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why would you go there?”

“Because it’s elsewhere.”

“Once,” he said, “I ran away from my life, towards something I thought I wanted.

But when I had that I ran too. The only thing I learned was to stop running.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”

“I am curious though. If salvation is to be found in some terra nova, someplace out there way past the horizon…why are you still here?”

“Because I can’t stop the expansion of the universe,” I said.

“You speak in riddles,” Leopold said distastefully. He held his glass up to the firelight and thought for a while. “I myself wandered the continent once, back when I was young. It was a difficult time for me. I was unbelievably penniless. I thought that the love I had to give was not worth the money it was printed on. It was comforting to wander, to be out of place, isolated, not able to understand anything that was said or asked of me. Yet now…”

“You seem like you are doing well for yourself.”

“It’s strange how one’s life plays out. Once I was alone. Miserable. Now I have a family. A home. I think of the young man I once was and I feel incredible sympathy and fondness for that man, but I can no longer see his face. Where his face should be there is only a shadow, a certain dimness. He is a ghost to me.”

“How do you stop that?” I asked. “How do you not become a ghost to yourself?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Every moment is a decision. And those decisions are doorways within a labyrinth. Each door leads one deeper and deeper into what becomes, eventually, a life.”

“So life is disappearing?”

Leopold chuckled. “We all disappear eventually.”

“Lathe biosas.”

“What is that?”

“Latin.”

“But what does it mean?”

I drank half of my drink in one swallow and looked off at Leopold’s books, suddenly feeling very sad.

“Live unknown,” I translated.

“Live unknown,” he repeated to himself. “When I was your age, I would have thought that a very ugly sentiment. The youth movements of my day had tremendous battles, philosophical street riots. We were overcome with dreams. We thought there would be a new day, a new world for young men such as yourself. If I had heard you say live unknown then, I would have called you a nihilist to your face. Now…”

“A man can change nothing in this world,” I said. “So what’s the point in intending to transform anything? I don’t trust movements. The only freedom to be had is at the margins, where you have to carve it out with your fingernails.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Don’t you miss anything at all?”

I watched the firelight flicker across the surface of my drink like wild horses driving into the Aegean, and I said to him, “I don’t miss anything.”

“That’s a very American answer.”

“What do you know about America?”

“I took a steamer ship to New York City once,” he said. “I saw the statue in the harbor, the sword she held above her head.”

“I don’t miss that place,” I said.

“Then let me ask you again. What do you miss?”

“Miss is the wrong word.”

“Tell me the correct one.”

“Desiderium,” I said. “It means a yearning, specifically for a thing one once had but has no longer.”

“And what do you no longer have?”

“A girl.”

“So it’s a girl. Who was she?”

I looked off into a corner of the room and suddenly felt like laughing, but didn’t because I feared how it would come out.

“She was a different person depending on the time of day,” I eventually said.

“They are that way,” he said, raising his glass. “To girls.”

“To girls,” I said, clinking drinks with him.

After we drank, he looked into his glass and said, “Desideridum. To yearn for something one no longer has. Like whiskey.”

“Like youth.”

He studied me, then set his empty glass on the floor.

“You set a boy on a path,” he said. “And the boy thinks the path is the world. But his path is not the only path. There are many paths to be walked, so many paths that they spiral out like the branches of a tree, that they overlay one another like parallel universes. This is not the only world. There are worlds of only pain. Or cruelty. Regret. Friendship. Love. It is, my friend, only a matter of perspective.”

“Death is not perspective,” I repeated.

“What is it then?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out,” I said. “When I was a boy, my father took me to the funeral of some distant uncle in New Orleans. My father had a falling out with this uncle many years before I was born, due to some obscure thing neither could admit was trivial. But my father still felt some kind of filial duty to attend the man’s burial. Have you ever seen a funeral in New Orleans?”

“Do they not just bury the dead?”

I took a final sip of whiskey, the ice kissing my lips.

“No, they don’t,” I said. “This dead man, my dead uncle, was a jazz trumpeter and they held a parade for him from the funeral home. We were followed by a big brass band, trumpets and trombones and saxophones and drums. All the musicians were dressed like train conductors in old time photos, with those hats and white gloves. They started off playing some spiritual tune, but the more we walked the faster and more upbeat it all got. Every time I looked back, they got crazier and crazier, jumping around, dancing, throwing parasols around, all playing to their own inner tune, but tied together somehow. That night I had a dream that I had died and a New Orleans funeral was being held for me. Yet, somehow, I was in the band too, playing a little toy ukulele. It was spring and there was wisteria in the air. A man in a tuxedo and tophat followed behind me on a black carriage drawn by a white horse. And when I looked back at him, he held out a dark red flower to me, and I knew that flower was death. But I also knew that it would not matter if I touched the flower, because I was already dead and I would not die any more, I was already in a world determined by funerals.”

The logs crackled in the fireplace. We looked down at our socks.

Creaking sounds came from right outside the doorway, from stairs that I had not previously noticed. A very beautiful, very pregnant girl entered the room in a white nightgown, her long blonde tied in a French braid down her back.

Both Leopold and I stood up.

“Sweetheart,” Leopold said.

“I thought I heard you speaking with someone,” she said. “I wanted to say hello.”

Leopold turned to me.

“Finn, this is my wife, Esmeralda.” He winked at me and said, “She is from Iceland.”

“I knew a woman from Iceland once,” I said.

“I hope you treated her nice,” she said.

“I tried to, Esmeralda. But in the end, I don’t think I treated her very nice at all.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Finn.”

Esmeralda’s nightgown ballooned out at the stomach and covered her feet so that as she moved about the room it appeared that she was floating above the ground.

“Why don’t you sit down,” she said to me. She turned to Leopold and said, “You too.”

We did as we were told.

“I was just having this dream,” she said. “Only, it was more like a dream inside of a dream.”

She smiled to herself.

“There was this little boy,” she explained. “A very strange little boy. The two of us were sitting under a tree having a conversation, or at least trying to because the little boy kept hiccupping and interrupting me. He was very excited because he only had three dreams left.”

“What does that mean?” Leopold asked.

“I didn’t know what he meant either. When I asked, the boy sighed, like it was all so obvious. He explained it like this: at the end of every dream the dreamer visits the dream castle in their mind. There, they put their dream into its own unique drawer, where it stays forever. But the castle is not an infinite castle. Within the dream castle, there are only a certain amount of drawers. And, the boy proudly said, he had dreamed so many dreams that in his dream castle there were only three empty dream drawers left, and once the boy filled them the castle would be complete, and he would then dream day and night, night and day, forever and ever.”

Esmeralda was near Leopold by now. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek and then the lips.

“I really just wanted to say hello,” she said. “I should go back to sleep now.”

She glided across the carpet to where I was sunk into my chair.

“Icelandic kisses,” she whispered in my ear, then kissed me lightly on the cheek.

The kiss traveled along the free nerve endings of my cheek, waking up a diamond-shaped diameter of thermoreceptors. Then the kiss traveled through my muscle tissue into my spine, up into my pariental lobe, then all-overish down my body.

Then she was gone.

Leopold and I were left with our silence and the dying fireplace.

“I should be off to bed myself,” he said.

“I’ll be going,” I said.

“Don’t be absurd.”

Before I could object, he had found a pillow and an armload of blankets, arranging them for me on the floor. I tried declining his offer, but he wouldn’t hear anything of it. However, after I laid down under the blankets, Leopold stopped at the lightswitch, looked at me very curiously, and asked, “What were you doing in my garden?”

“Stealing your vegetables, of course.”

He smiled. Just a little one. Then he turned off the lights.

I laid in the darkness and watched the snowfall slowly shadow itself on the ceiling. Above my head was the portrait of a man who was the spitting image of Leopold, although younger than Leopold, and dead in his frame for at least a hundred years. I waited an hour before I refolded the blankets, stacking them neatly in one corner of the room. In the morning, Leopold would wake up and find them there. Perhaps he would wonder about me. Not for an incredible amount of time, but perhaps just for a little while, wondering why I had left, where I had gone.

Perhaps he would think of me the same way I thought about Emma. How, from time to time, I would imagine her lying about on certain Sunday mornings, somewhere, eating chocolates and madeleines, listening to analogue tape reels, letting something strange and weird stir to life inside her heart.

Before I left, I went to Leopold’s bookcase and pulled a book at random off the shelf. It was an antiquated pocket dictionary. I opened it at random and found a word.

Solivagant.

Noun.

A person who wanders alone.
Image credit: Alexandra Brovco on Flickr

Shane-Joaquin-JimenezShane Joaquin Jimenez lives and teaches in Portland, OR. He holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University. He is the author of Rue the Day and It Can Be That Way Still. His writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, Rain Taxi, and elsewhere.

THE FERRY by Emma Greenberg

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

Ferry-emma-greenbergTHE FERRY 
by Emma Greenberg

“So your mom told you about the new houses?”

“Yup.” I lunged too aggressively for the volume control and my seatbelt tensed and slapped me back into my seat. The second verse of “Livin’ On A Prayer” blasted from the speakers.

He reached for the dial and turned it down slowly, eyes still on the road.

“What did she tell you?”

I shrugged and clenched my teeth. “Not much.”

“They’re only a few minutes away from each other, we’ll all be close by.”

“Cool.”

I had been playing 80s music in the car since I got to boarding school the year before—before that, actually, after I had visited for a night in ninth grade and all of the girls on Hall II played it from their laptops as they got dressed for a dance or geared up for a field hockey game. By now I knew all the lyrics too, but Bon Jovi’s hopeful words and electronic guitar solos suddenly sounded idealistic and whiny. It made me angry. I skipped to the next song, the next, the next—they were all annoying. I switched to the radio.

“I think you’ll like the new house. You’ll have to share a room with Molly, at least for now, but you can pick out your new wallpaper and everything.” I felt him glancing at me, but I kept my eyes on the dashboard, focused on finding a station. “I know you were sick of that floral one your mom picked out when you were eight.”

“I like that wallpaper.” I found a station playing some angry girl song—Pink or Gwen Stefani or something. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was angsty.

“I think you will have your own at your mom’s though.”

I hated how he had started saying “your mom.” He had always referred to her as “Mommy” when he was talking to my siblings or me, then “Mom” as we got older. But over the past two years he had started saying “your mom,” the way any stranger might refer to her. My mother still referred to him as “Daddy.”

“So we haven’t figured out the exact schedule yet, but Molly and Jack will go back and forth between the houses every few days—your mom and I will split the week. But it will be flexible, of course, whatever works for you guys. When do you come home next?”

“Sometime,” I said through my teeth. But I meant never. Now that they were selling the beach house too, the one thing left from before they separated, there was no home to return to whatsoever.

“It won’t be that different from the way it is now, Sea. It’s just finally… official.”

The car slowed as we pulled into the line for the ferry. My father lowered his window to hand a ticket to the attendant. Icy air poured into the car.

“It’s gonna be a rough one,” said the bearded man. He rubbed two dirty ski gloves together after punching a hole in the ticket. “I suggest you stay in the car tonight. The wind might blow that one overboard.” He nodded towards me.

“It will be an adventure,” my father replied, looking over at me. “We’ll be okay, she’s a brave one.”

I reached into a bag at my feet and pulled out my aviators, even though the sky was gray and on the verge of dusk. It would be dark by the time the ferry arrived in New London an hour and a half later. I put the sunglasses on deliberately as the car inched towards the ferry.

“Looks like it finally might snow,” my father offered. His hands held the steering wheel casually. They looked pale and in need of hand cream. “Although you’ve had snow at school for months, haven’t you. Maybe we’ll just have to come visit you to go sledding! I’m sure Molly and Jack would love that.”

I stared straight ahead through the streaked windshield at a black Volvo station wagon in line ahead of us. Stickers on the window boasted PROUD YALE MOM and ANDOVER FOOTBALL. I squinted, trying to figure out if I knew the shaggy-haired boy in the car. I hoped I didn’t.

“You excited to get back to school? I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks.” My father’s voice was annoyingly bright.

“Has it only been two weeks,” I said into my scarf. The bearded, gloved man beckoned us towards him and my father eased the car onto the boat. We moved forward towards the Volvo until one of the gloves gave a thumbs up. My father put the car in park. One of the gloves knocked on my window and I pushed the button to roll it down. I shrunk towards the center console as the biting air again cut through my fleece.

“You folks can keep the car on ‘til we get moving, but then you’ll have to shut it off. I know it’s cold.” His lips disappeared between his rusty mustache and beard as he pressed them together tightly. He shrugged. “Policy.”

“Got it, thanks,” my father said loudly. The weathered face disappeared as I rolled up the window.

“We might have a blanket in the back,” my father said, opening his door carefully so as not to scrape the car next to him. He returned from the trunk with a few sandy towels.

“No blanket but these might help a bit,” he said, handing me a faded red and white striped towel.

“Thanks,” I said, shoving the towel by my feet next to the bag. He tossed the others into the back seat. Some leftover grains of sand hit the leather with a hiss. An old Sugar Ray song came on.

“Remember this song?” my father asked, turning up the volume. I noticed I had started singing quietly, out of habit. I stopped.

“Yup.”

“Who sings this again?”

“Sugar Ray.”

“What ever happened to that guy?”

“Don’t know.” I tried to shrug, and noticed my shoulders were already tensed towards my ears. I lowered them.

A foghorn let out a low, loud bellow and the boat began to move slowly. The bearded man walked up and down the aisles, miming an exaggerated key turn as he peeked into each car. My father nodded and mouthed “Okay,” and cut off Sugar Ray mid-verse. The car grew cold almost immediately.

“Want to go upstairs before it gets too choppy? It might be warmer up there.”

“No.”

“Maybe they have hot chocolate. Want me to go see?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

I looked away as he got out of the car. My window was just inches from the car next to me. A dark haired man sat in the driver’s seat. He was turned around towards the backseat. I could only see the back of his head, but I assumed he was making funny faces based on the giggles coming from two little girls strapped into car seats behind him. I leaned forward so I could see around the father. A woman in a puffy black coat typed furiously on a Blackberry. Her blonde hair hung loose by her face, hiding what I pictured were furrowed eyebrows and piercing eyes. But when she lifted her head, I was surprised by how relaxed her freckled face looked. She turned towards her husband, and her eyes landed on me. I sat back quickly but she gave me a brief smile before turning towards her laughing girls in the back. She reached back and gave one a tickle. Her husband pulled her head towards him and gave her a kiss on the side of her forehead. The action was so seamless, even though they were twisted around in their seats: he must have done that all the time.

“Success!” I reared around as my father slid into his seat, balancing two hot chocolates against his chest with one hand.

“Thanks,” I said, reaching for one of the paper cups. I held the cup between my hands before opening it, thankful for the warmth.

“No marshmallows, but at least it’s something,” my dad said, peeling open a section of plastic lid and blowing into the cup. “Careful, it’s hot!”

We sat in silence for a few minutes as we drank our hot chocolates. I turned towards my window again, but I could no longer see into the other cars—it had gotten dark.

“It’s starting to get a little rocky,” said my father as a few drops of hot chocolate escaped from the opening in the lid and onto his scarf. He brushed them off with a frown. I could feel the duffle bags shifting in the trunk as the boat moved over some waves.

“You don’t say,” I said, surprising even myself with my caustic tone. Silence hung thick in the dark car.

“We’re all going to be okay, you know.” My father turned towards me, but I kept my eyes facing forward. It was now completely dark, but my sunglasses were still on.

“I’m fine.” This time, my voice sounded so bitter it scared me.

“It’s better for all of us, for all of you. It doesn’t mean we don’t love each other—your mom and me, I mean. And we both love you and Molly and Jack so much. It’s just been a tough period, and your mom and I—”

I had already slammed the door and was walking stiffly between the cars, then jogging, then running. I heard another door slam, assumed it was my father. Icy, salt air whipped strands of hair across my face. I brushed past the bearded man and heard him call “Where you goin’?” from behind me. I lunged up the steel stairs two at a time, until my boot slipped and I came to a halt as my chin hit the cold metal. I reached for the banister to pull myself up, but my body felt overwhelmingly heavy. I let myself collapse against the hard stairs. I lifted my face a few inches off the stair, touched the bottom of my chin. Sea spray and tears soaked my cheeks. I buried my face in my arms on the stair.

“Are you okay?” My father’s voice pierced through the loud wind as he bolted up the stairs.

“No, I’m not okay,” I said into my arms. “Leave me alone, I want to be alone.”

But I let him help me to my feet and down the stairs. We moved slowly back towards the car, and I fell heavily into my seat. My father wrapped a towel around me. He walked around the car and got back into his seat.

“We’re all going to be okay,” he said, starting the car.

The foghorn sounded.
Image credit:Emma Greenberg

Emma-Greenberg

Emma Greenberg grew up in New York City and the East End of Long Island. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 with a degree in English and a concentration in Creative Writing. She is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, The Last Magazine, and Policy Mic. “The Ferry” is an excerpt from her upcoming novel about a teenage girl at a New England boarding school. She currently lives between Philadelphia and New York.

YOU ARE BUT A PILGRIM VENTURING TO A STRANGE AND HONEST LAND by Jared Yates Sexton

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

You are but a pilgrim

YOU ARE BUT A PILGRIM VENTURING TO A STRANGE AND HONEST LAND
by Jared Yates Sexton

On the cab ride in the driver turned and said, Did you know Hope and Despair are sister and brother and you their distant cousin? We were driving over a bridge. The snow was falling and people were trudging down the walk holding newspapers over their heads.

I’m sorry, I said. I had been watching the people. What did you say?

I said, he said, that Hope and Despair are sister and brother and you their distant cousin.

For some reason I thought over my family tree to see if there was any truth. I was an only child though, the offspring of two miserably matched people who would’ve still hated one another had they been alive. The only glimpse of hope in my whole lineage was a cousin who had scored well on his Naval test and was chained to the belly of a submarine in the Pacific.

I’m not sure I understand, I said.

It’s an easy mistake, the driver said. He was still turned around, his head framed by the glass separating us, his hands busy with the wheel. Most think they’re abstract concepts. States of mind. Tricks of brain chemistry. But I’m here to tell you, he said, that they are very real and they are very concerned with you.

From his glove box he pulled a laminated flyer no bigger than a bookmark. I took it with hesitation and studied the print. The first sentence said DID YOU KNOW HOPE AND DESPAIR ARE SISTER AND BROTHER AND YOU THEIR DISTANT COUSIN? There was a picture at the top of two people tugging a rope. There was a woman and a man and they looked like hieroglyphic people who had been locked in eternal struggle.

Those are your cousins, the driver said. The pretty one is Hope. The ugly one Despair.

I looked at hope and her snake-like locks of dark hair. Despair had a nest of scars racing down his sharp-angled cheek.

What you didn’t know, the driver said, still paying no attention to the road or the crowd of cars he was weaving through, was that you had been locked in a constant family feud. Fought over by a universe as petty and emotional as yourself.

On the back of the laminated flyer was a phone number. Below that a question – WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN THE FAMILY?

What’s The Family? I said.

The Family, the driver said, is our humble attempt to understand the greater struggle. To find our kin. To commiserate among the likeminded and the frightened.

We were at the airport. The cab had parked itself at the curb leading into the main terminal. The driver was still there with his head poking through the divider. He was smiling, but not. He was grimacing, but not. I said, I don’t have any money.

That’s fine, he said.

I said, It’s a very strange time in my life.

That’s fine, he said.

I said, I’m sorry, but I have a plane to catch.

Catch your plane, he said.

After scrabbling out of the cab I collected my own bag from the trunk and carried it into the terminal. It was midday and throngs of people choked the space. Everywhere there was someone. They were pushing past one another, holding each other close, screaming into their phones, buying flowers by the ticket stand. I found myself at the counter. I slammed my information on the desk and demanded my boarding pass.

I’m in a hurry, I said.

That’s fine, the ticket officer said. She had straight black hair and a crooked tooth in front.

It’s a very strange time in my life, I said.

Isn’t it for everyone? she said and typed at her keys.

I have to get back to my wife, I said.

She had called the night before from Atlanta and said that the city had begun vibrating. She said she opened up the window to our loft and leaned out and listened. She said it sounded to her like all of the city, all of the towering buildings and beeping cars and hustling people and clanging restaurants, had whispered to her to jump, to fly out of the window and onto the pavement below. But I didn’t tell the ticket officer that.

You’re in seat 24F, the ticket officer said and handed me my pass.

Wonderful, I said. Thank you, I said.

Listen, she said. Did you know Hope and Despair are sister and brother and you their distant cousin?

What? I said.

Listen, she said and started again.

I have to go, I said.

Security next and I begged my way to the front. Some of the people in line were happy to let me through and others grumbled and yelled and spat. I shoved my shoes and belt and bag through the x-ray machine and walked through the gate. The alarm went off though and a man with security pulled me and my goods to the side.

We need to check you further, he said.

I’m running late for my flight, I said.

That’s fine, he said. This will only take a moment.

He waved a wand over my chest and arms and down the back of my legs and then the front. Sir, he said, do you have any metal implants?

Implants? I said.

Pins, he said. Needles. Artificial joints or valves?

No, I said. Nothing of the like.

Good, he said. He touched a button on the wand. You know, he said, the struggle continues whether you are aware of it or not.

The struggle? I said.

Hope is the oldest sibling, he said. She was born in a meadow on a sunlit day. Her mother and father stroked her hair while she cooed and squirmed. Despair came a month later in the midst of a flood that destroyed an entire civilization. The mother was aloft on a makeshift raft and pushed him into the world as all of the bloated animals and peoples bobbed by. She died as he breathed his first breath.

I looked at the man from security.

Why are you telling me this? I asked him.

Because, he said, it’s nearly time.

I left my shoes and belt and bag and ran barefooted across the floor and to my gate. All around me I could hear people talking to each other and into their machines. Their conversations were vastly different, their tones changing and growing as they continued. I reached my gate and found a phone near the boarding area. I dialed the numbers to my home and my darling wife answered.

It’s getting worse, she said as she picked up the phone.

What is? I said. What’s getting worse?

The sound, she said. Outside. You should hear it.

I don’t want to hear it, I said. I’m already hearing enough. Honey, I said. Are you all right? It’s been a strange day.

I’m fine, she said. I’m better than I’ve ever been. You should hear it though, you really should.

No, I said. Honey, something’s happening.

I have to go, she said. I want to listen some more. I’m going to the window.

Don’t, I said. Stay away from the window. I’m boarding the plane. Now. I’ll be home before you know it. Don’t go to the window, I said, but she was gone.

The flight boarded. I waited my turn in line and settled into seat 24F. I felt that I had broken into a sweat and soaked through my shirt and pants. My breath, which had been ragged since the incident in the cab, slowed and returned to normal. I closed my eyes and envisioned my wife, my beautiful wife, as she had been before I’d left Atlanta. She’d laid next to me. I’d looked at her and she at me.

We are so lucky, I had said.

We are, she said. The luckiest.

None luckier, I said.

But then, as I was remembering, the memory changed and my darling wife raised herself from the bed and walked to the window opposite us. She opened it and pointed to something out in the distance. She turned to me, in the memory, and said, You need to listen.

The plane lifted into the air. No one spoke. The captain never came over the address system. There was silence except for the hiss of air through the vents. Things moved faster. It felt as if we were flying at speeds unimaginable. I turned to the person next to me, the person in 24E, an old woman wearing a sweater with a squirrel on the front. I said, Is something wrong?

Of course something’s wrong, she said. There’s always something wrong.

The plane’s trajectory increased until we were nearly end over end. No one stirred except for me. No one moved except for me. I looked out the window and saw the ground growing farther and farther away and the pressure in my ears built until I thought the drums might burst. My god, I screamed, my god enough.

As if on cue the plane slowly leveled out and we were parallel to the ground again. The other passengers turned in their seats and looked at me. I expected them to be angry but they seemed serene in a way I’d never seen before. Then, in unison, they unbuckled their seatbelts and stood hunched over by their seats. The flight attendants joined them and crowded the aisles. Behind them, the pilot and first officer. All of their faces were different but somehow the same. And then, in a moment, a subtle ripple ran across them as if across the surface of a pond.

Did you know, they said together in perfect coordination, that Hope and Despair are sister and brother and you their distant cousin?

Their stare was so intense I had to look away. Out the window I could see that the landscape was changing somehow. It was warping. Transforming.

What you have seen for so long, they said, is a distraction. Life hidden by a powerless daydream.

I watched a cornfield below rise like a wave and then flatten out like the last breath of a tide. I turned back to the other passengers and realized I was surrounded.

It’s time to wake up, they said, their voices still in lockstep, their eyes unblinking. It’s time to see the true nature of reality.

The level of the plane changed again and I could feel the force of descent. The pilots were still standing there, their hands lifeless at their sides. I felt the shape of something in my pocket and I found the laminated flyer the driver had given me in the cab. My eyes were drawn to a line at the bottom – YOU ARE BUT A PILGRIM VENTURING TO A STRANGE AND HONEST LAND.

I looked outside. The world glowed now with the tint of a mad and dying sun. Where there had once been Atlanta, with its skyscrapers shouldering up from the concrete, was now a city with glorious temples and glass spires surrounding a smoking cavity of a pit full of rotting and decaying flesh. There were people dancing and making love in the streets and there were people flaying one another.

Welcome home, they said in one voice. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Image credit: blu-news.org on Flickr

Jared-Yates-SextonJared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University and currently serves as Managing Editor of the literary magazine BULL. His work has appeared in publications around the world and has been nominated for a pair of Pushcarts and The Million Writer’s Award. He was also a finalist for The New American Fiction Prize. His first book, An End To All Things, is available from Atticus Books.

A HUNGER ARTIST by Henry Marchand

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human-earA HUNGER ARTIST
by Henry Marchand 

The medium is biological, human cells crafted in a sterile environment to simulate body parts: an ear, a finger, a foot. Clyde Averill has become renowned for his work, the first bio-artist to achieve such astonishing, lifelike effects. After exhibitions in Italy, France, and China, in the Ukraine, in Moscow, he has come to Los Angeles and from here will go to San Francisco, Denver, and finally New York. In each city, in each gallery, he exhibits different works, and at the end of each showing he unseals the glass in which the apparent body parts are displayed and allows attendees to touch them; the shock of it always sends a murmur through the crowd, the tactile sensation indistinguishable from touching a fingertip to the lobe of a lover’s ear, a beloved child’s flesh. The finale never alters; cells not previously exposed to bacteria are ravaged by microscopic hordes that rush upon them from the intruding hands, and the ears, fingers, feet decompose and crumble before astonished eyes, eaten alive.

Even those who’ve read about the spectacle, or who have seen it before in another gallery, are appalled and fascinated. So it will be tonight when the thirty invitees to Averill’s showing at the Lovington Gallery on 4th and Flower are treated to the artist’s disturbing final flourish. I have no doubt of this; I have seen it many times myself and am never less than repulsed. Yet the horror of it is also somehow exciting at, perhaps—if you will allow me this—the cellular level. Something resonates, primally, in one’s own tissues as these tissues made by man decay and die.

Yes. They die. And yes, they live. I am sure of this. Averill himself convinced me; the logic of it is inescapable. The cells he uses are living cells; they bond and respond to his direction, as cells respond to the prodding of scientists in labs. He is not their creator, no more than a technician who inserts sperm into an egg creates either sperm or egg, but he is the maker of their destinies, the shaper of what it is they will become. As perhaps, that technician shapes the child that may be born of the reproductive combination he has facilitated; but Averill’s control is more complete. He himself carves the contours of the ear, etches the whorls and spirals of the finger’s tip, determines if the foot will have the expected number of toes, and how long or short each toe will be. Some Averill feet have been lovely forms, softly contoured and smooth-skinned, each of their five toes “a song of delight made flesh,” as one appreciation in the art press opined. Others, crafted for divergent effect, had eight or ten or—the maximum so far—even twelve gnarled and nail-less toes bunched together at their extremity, conjuring unexpectedly our species’ origins in the sea, the crowd of digits like barnacles or small pale crabs that have affixed themselves permanently, parasitically, to an unconsulted host. At times an exhibit consisted exclusively of such ugliness, or its opposite. Just as often, the artist offered an approximate balance of the two.

There would be no announcement of an exhibition’s content before it opened. Averill’s audience was kept always in a state of uncertainty, the precise nature of what they would see/are seeing/have seen never a settled question. Yes, I have been convinced that his sculptures are alive and, because he shapes them from human cells, human; but this being so, is their inevitable destruction a moral crime or simple biological process? Are the people who touch Averill’s creations in the wrong—perhaps sinning—if they know beforehand what their touch will do?

Reviewers pondered these questions, and more. Having known Averill and his art longer than they, having been invited to touch and witness the decay of a living sculpture two years before the first public showing, I asked these questions first. And when I asked them of Averill himself in his studio one day, after we’d returned from the first exhibition, he stared at me with his laughing blue eyes and said it wasn’t his job to answer questions. I nodded and said, I see. It’s your job to raise them, then. And he said, No. I make art, and it may be that art raises questions.

I looked into the glass cylinder on the pedestal before me, at the warmly pink, perfectly formed ear that would become colorless sludge in less than a minute if I were to touch it and said, I don’t know where the limits are. Averill responded with a smile, You’re phrasing a question as a statement.

I raised my hand to touch the glass, leaned in closer to the ear inside and whispered. Perhaps one day Averill will create a mouth and I will have an answer.

 

Henry-MarchandHenry Marchand’s fiction has appeared in The King’s English, Paradigm, The Seattle Review, Rosebud, The Laurel Review, Penduline Press, and elsewhere. He has published essays and commentary in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Common Dreams News Center, and The International Herald-Tribune. A New Jersey native and longtime resident of northeast Ohio, he now lives with his wife Lisa on the Central Coast of California, where he teaches creative writing at Monterey Peninsula College.

THIS TOWN IS YOUR TOWN TOO by Anne Dyer Stuart

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This-Town Photo copyright Karen RileTHIS TOWN IS YOUR TOWN TOO
by Anne Dyer Stuart  

The next morning at Paige’s, too many mamas were there. I didn’t know why they’d stayed. It made me feel like Mama was anti-social, which she was. But more than that, it made me feel—even though I’d lived in Greenville all my life—like I still didn’t know the rules.

“What are we going to do with you?” Mrs. Grovenor was picking up a side of my hair and letting it fall. “What about layers? Those are the same shirts you’ve worn all summer, darling. Has your body changed? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I started packing it to my hips when I was sixteen—overnight. Just, boom. I swear, the next morning nothing fit. I mean, nothing. Have you asked your mama to take you to Jackson?”

Jackson? For a second I thought she was talking about Dr. Dana, my secret. Of course, it wasn’t a secret. Secrets around here were things that everybody knew, only they didn’t talk about in front of your face. Mrs. Grovenor meant the mall.

“I took Missy to Ridgeway last weekend, girl, they have some fun things. Ann Taylor Loft is much younger than Ann Taylor.” Mrs. Grovenor’s eyes were pools of blue and they blinked constantly. Now she was talking directly over my head to somebody else’s mama. That was how short I was. I couldn’t keep the mamas straight. This summer they had the same blunt haircuts.

There were no boundaries in this world. People could talk about your body in public then move onto something else.

 ◊

Jade had a black eye. I didn’t notice it until I’d followed her into the kitchen. She hovered over the donuts just to smell them, and when she turned around the hair draped over her eye came off. “Oh my God!” I screamed in Paige’s mama’s stainless steel kitchen. It was purple and pink and puffy and black all at once.

“Shut up, Rebecca.” Jade’s voice was low and angry but secretly pleased. “That girl last night? The one with the hair?” Her hands fluttered above her shoulders. “Let’s say I met her boyfriend and didn’t know he was taken.”

“How far was it took?” I asked her.

She wrinkled her brow. “Anyway, she has an arm. I’ve never been in a fight in my life. Seriously. When the lights came on he wasn’t even cute.” She flipped her bangs back, then remembered and arranged them over her eye. “What’d you do? Hear from the cousins?”

What did I do? I got dropped off like a third grader. I hated myself because I could not hate her more. “Beauty rest,” I said, then snorted.

“Rebecca ARNOLD,” a grownup voice said behind me. “I have a solution for you.” Mrs. McJunkin laid her hand on my shoulder. “Shondra put on some weight this summer and we got a book that has helped her. Is your mama here? I am so sorry about your grandmamma, sweetie, all of us are just bereft.”

Jade had walked off and Mrs. McJunkin and I stood in front of the kitchen table full of donuts that nobody was eating. One of her earrings swung back and forth like a wrecking ball. She waited for me to say something, but she had thrown so many topics at me I didn’t know where to start. “Thank you. What’s the book called?”

“WHERE’S OUR GIRL?” Another mama came into the kitchen. All mamas shouted things when they walked in rooms. I didn’t know whose mama this one was. She was dressed entirely in white with a thin red patent leather belt synching her itty bitty waist.

“She is resting,” Mrs. McJunkin said. Her smile was full of meaning.

“How are they?” the mama asked.

“Perfect,” Mrs. McJunkin said. “I may need to let out her top. I’m just going to guess today.”

From the living room Paige’s mama clapped her hands for our attention, measuring tape draped over one arm.

 ◊

“How was it?” Mama asked when she picked me up. She hadn’t come in. She’d pulled up in front of the house and waited. I’d watched her watch the mamas make their way across the lawn, their manicured hands on their daughters’ backs.

“Apparently Amber Lynn got implants.”

“Breast implants?” Mama turned to me in anger, like it’d been my idea.

“No, calf implants. Yes. Boobs. Ginormous boobs. Boobs that set the world on fire.”

We were driving through the neighborhood, not turning where we usually would. Trees passed us on both sides. This was a pretty street. Somebody’d rolled somebody’s front yard. Toilet paper streamed from the trees then clumped in the grass, moist from that morning’s dew. School hadn’t even started and there were already pranks. “I think her mama has them too. Mrs. McJunkin? Have you noticed hers?” I turned to Mama and she was staring straight ahead. “What’s wrong?”

“I cannot believe this town,” she said. “I cannot believe it.”

“This town? You are from this town. What’s so hard to believe?”

“That a mother would take her sixteen-year-old daughter to get elective surgery. Sexualized elective surgery. Tell me, Rebecca, who are breast implants for?”

“She’s seventeen, I think. A senior. What do you mean who are they for? The people who get them.”

“Girls get them, but they’re for boys,” Mama said. “Do you see the problem with that?”

This always happened. When I agreed with Mama, I still wanted to give the impression that I didn’t. “Are you saying you disapprove of Mrs. McJunkin’s parental practices? Don’t you think we have a right to modify our bodies? Maybe it’s only a taboo here.” I was trying to remember Jade’s argument. I did not have my own ideas. I did a bad job of copying other people’s.

“I’m taking you to Mama’s. You haven’t seen your grandmother in weeks.”

◊ 

When we pulled in front of my grandmother’s apartment, her front door opened and my aunt Alma walked out in cutoffs with legs like a man. She was what I was afraid I looked like. Her black hair hung in pink rollers. She had a cardboard box under one arm and leaned to the side with it, walking to her truck. I got out of the car and she gave my shoulder a squeeze with her free hand. “We the same size,” she told me in her thick deep smoker’s voice. “We gotta stick together.” Her eyebrows were penciled on right above the bones, thin brown shiny lines you could rub off with your finger. She went around to the flatbed and hefted the box over the side.

Mama’s door slammed. “Hello Alma,” she said.

Alma nodded. “She getting worse.”

“I just saw her. She looked great,” Mama said. She walked to the front door then turned around. “You leaving?”

“Gotta go,” Alma said. “See you, Rebecca.” She hoisted herself into her truck and it cranked loud as a Harley. We watched her back out and turn the corner. I followed Mama to the door. It was locked and she was knocking.

“Did you see what she had in that box?” Mama asked me. I hadn’t. She knocked again.

“Maybe she’s not here,” I said. “Her car’s not. She’s not here. How come Alma has a key and you don’t?” She kept knocking and shaking the doorknob. “Mama, she’s not here,” I said again. “Stop.”

She backed away and the screen door slammed shut. There was sweat above her upper lip. She took off her burgundy sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. I stared at her and waited until she said something.

“See that man?” She pointed to the apartment next door. “See? He’s in the window staring at us. Does it every time. Wave to him. Go on, wave.”

For a minute I thought he was masturbating. He stood in front of the sheer liner, then whipped the curtain in front of himself. Mama stood there staring with her hands on her hips. “This town,” she said, then walked to her car.
Image credit: Karen Rile

Anne-Dyer-StuartAnne Dyer Stuart won New South journal’s 2012 prose prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction Southeast, Pembroke Magazine, Poet Lore, The Louisville Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Sakura Review, Midway Journal, r.kv.r.y., Third Coast, Best of the Web, storySouth, and elsewhere. She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL by Anthony Wallace

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Christmas Angel

THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
by Anthony Wallace

He sets up the Christmas tree in the family room, untangles the lights and strings them around the tree in lazy loops from top to bottom, drapes a few strands of tinsel at the ends of prominent branches. He gets a good hot fire going in the fireplace. Later his wife will come home from work and they’ll have dinner and then put the star on top of the tree. The star is not really a star but an angel from his wife’s childhood. It’s large, about ten inches high, with sheer wings like an insect’s wings and overlarge blue eyes that the man considers overly sentimental. Perhaps it’s not an angel at all but a fairy, like Tinkerbell. Whatever it is, there is something annoyingly Disneyesque about it.  

He opens the slider and goes out to see how the tree would look to someone passing by; he closes the slider behind him so as not to let the heat escape. It occurs to him that he is more interested in how someone passing by might see the tree than with how he himself sees the tree. He has no interest in any of this, if he is honest with himself, but he does it for his wife. He doesn’t really like the angel, but that of course is part of it: it’s for his wife anyway, what does he care what they put on top of the tree since on his own he’d never put up a Christmas tree to begin with. They’re dirty, they’re a fire hazard, and one year the house became infested with fleas that could only have been carried in on the Christmas tree.

While he stands looking into his own house as if he is someone passing by, he thinks about the possibility of being locked out. He would have to stand here in his sweater until his wife gets home, within the hour, or he’d have to go and bother one of the neighbors, none of whom he is particularly crazy about. He likes the way the lighted tree looks through the slider, how the partially frozen glass diffuses the colored lights, how the slider frames the tree as if it is a scene in a Christmas card, how inviting his glass of scotch looks on the side table next to his reading chair. Someone passing by would undoubtedly think of this tableau as picturesque, might stop briefly to look into the family room of another family, the cozily arranged furniture, the Christmas tree, the cat which is just now coming closer to inspect the tree and to bat amiably at a low-hanging strand of tinsel.

They would not be able to see the angel from the wife’s childhood, the doe eyes and the stalky eyelashes, the gossamer wings that have grown slack over time, and soiled (there is something vaguely louche about them), the paint blistered on one cheekbone, the silky crevice within the body of the ornament where the angel is fitted to the top of the tree a nest for mice, for black beetles, for other things.

 ◊

The end of the story is that the man really has locked himself out, that he really does have to wait without a coat for his wife, or go to the neighbors, that this predicament really does heighten, for a short while, the sensation of looking into his own home as if into somebody else’s life, that it is a pleasant sensation, that he does not go to the neighbors, that the wife arrives all too soon with the customary Christmas Eve Chinese take-out, that during dinner they get into another one of their low-grade arguments, that the angel from the wife’s childhood remains in the cardboard box, swaddled in excelsior among the other ornaments, that as he continues to drink and the argument escalates it gets tossed along with the other ornaments into the fire, that the man will regret this action above all others for years to come, that he will tell this story at meetings with the inevitable refrain that he wants his life back more than anything in this world. He always knows he is crossing the line into sentimentality when he observes that the Christmas angel has performed a paradoxically graceful function, that it has risen victoriously from the ashes, or permitted him such a resurrection.

He does not believe that but would like to, which is why he must tell the story, year in, year out, over and over again.

 

Image credit: Gwenael Piaser on Flickr

Anthony Wallace

Anthony Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in the Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he is also Co-director of “Arts Now,” a curriculum-based initiative to support the arts at BU. Tony has published poetry and fiction in literary journals including CutBank, Another Chicago Magazine, the Atlanta Review, River Styx, Sou’wester, 5-Trope, the Republic of Letters, and Florida Review. His short story “The Old Priest” won a Pushcart Prize and was published last fall in Pushcart 2013. His short story collection The Old Priest is the winner of the 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published in September by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

LEMON TUESDAY by Jo Beckett-King

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lemons

LEMON TUESDAY
by Jo Beckett-King

It was Lemon Tuesday and so far it had not lived up to expectations. His gran had made pancakes, smaller and fatter than any his mum ever made, and while he was eating, his mum had come home and talked quietly on her mobile in the hall, before coming into the kitchen and speaking to his gran using words he didn’t understand. He fiddled with the metal ball chain around his neck and felt the four corners of the cross with the tips of his fingers, before thumbing the raised ridge of Christ’s body. He knew that if he asked what they were talking about she would say in her most serious tone that it was an adult conversation, so he continued to cut perfect isosceles triangles out of his pancakes and decided that when he was a grown-up he would remember what it was like to be a child.

It was Lemon Tuesday because he had a plastic lemon in the fridge, which he squeezed on the pancakes his mum always made. He had called it that since he was little, and when he started school, the other days of the week began to take on different colours:

Monday = dark blue.
Wednesday = tangerine.
Thursday = turquoise.
Friday = bright red.

The boy finished his last triangle and tried to listen in on their conversation. He knew that his grandad was ill because he had stopped smoking and they had been to see him in hospital every other evening for the past three weeks, even though he was usually asleep when they got there. The lights were too bright in the ward and the grey-green plastic furniture made the boy feel unwell, but he usually didn’t say anything and would just hold his hands behind his back and look at the swirls in the tiled floor.

That evening he didn’t have to go to the hospital because he was going to Steven’s house. He knew that his mum didn’t like Steven’s mum because she always wore bright lipstick, but he liked going round there because he could play on the Nintendo Wii. His mum said that he could go, as soon as he had washed up and said goodbye to Gran.

At the sink he noticed his shoelaces were undone. The boy was one of the last in his class to learn how to tie his laces. He hated wearing velcro shoes because they made him feel like a little kid and his feet were too narrow so he could never get them tight enough. He bent down to tie his laces and remembered what his grandad had told him, talking himself through it as he went: left over right, tuck, pull, back together, loop right, left over, tuck, loop left, tuck and pull tight. He remembered his grandad’s hard, wrinkled skin and the way his hands had magically looped the first time he had shown him. His grandad had told him that he couldn’t tie his own laces until he was nine and had said: “Everyone in their own time”. He went to say goodbye to Gran and she finished off his laces for him. She gave him a little smile and he couldn’t tell if she was about to cry or not because her eyes often looked as if they had too much liquid in them.

He left the house, got on his BMX, and turned out of the estate, past the sharp bend in the road, which led across a bridge and up the hill. He tried to think of nothing but he kept seeing the words his mum had said. They were all black and in capital letters:

TUMER
LIMPH
CARSERNOMER

They hung over him as he pedalled up the hill. At night-time, the area beyond the bridge was flat blackness, but in the daytime there were fields, electricity pylons and a farm with chickens in the yard. He wasn’t allowed on the roads yet so he joined the footpath which ran through some fields, alongside the busy road. There were some bike tracks in the mud already so he didn’t feel too guilty about cycling on the farmer’s land. It began to rain and soon it was so heavy it was as though his glasses had grey filters in them.

The ground was uneven but it seemed to level out as the hollows filled up with rain. His anorak was wet to his skin like a shower curtain clinging to his arm, which was one of his most hated feelings. He was cycling up the hill against the wind when he spotted the strange bundle on the road—a blurred grey blob 200 meters ahead. It started to become clearer as he pedalled on and he thought it could have been a rat, or a big furry slipper. The rain pelted down on his face and he kept pedalling until he got to the fence. He jumped off his bike and was about to lift it over the stile when he saw through the fence that the lump of grey fur was a squirrel. He climbed onto the bottom rung and peered over. Although the squirrel was mostly grey, its coat had specks of auburn that perfectly matched his own hair and its dull black eyes looked like they should have been intense.

He knew the squirrel was injured but he couldn’t see any blood. He dropped his bike and hopped over the fence. He looked down at the creature and the damp soil soaked into the boy’s trousers as the rain got heavier; the huge raindrops felt like coins hitting the back of his head. He looked both ways and couldn’t see any traffic in either direction. The boy hadn’t seen any cars since he’d left the house but he knew one would probably come past soon. He stamped his foot right next to its head and shouted:

“Get off the road!”

Nothing. He had read that you could tell from an animal’s eyes when it was in pain and he could see now that it was true. He thought that its leg could have been broken. Then he remembered the silver cross. He pulled the chain over his head and started dangling it over the squirrel’s body, backwards and forwards, then side to side, back and forth, back and forth. He hoped to will it into movement, and thought that the hypnotic swing would stir something inside the creature. He locked the creature’s eye and he continued swinging back and forth, back and forth, and side to side. The squirrel blinked a few times then its lid closed.

◊

Just over nine miles away, the man’s arm came down to rest. The cannula around his head had irritated his skin for hours and he had been trying to make himself comfortable by readjusting it, moving his pillows and then altering the angle of his bed. Still not comfortable, at least he could now see the TV without straining his neck. The humourless TV presenter was introducing a piece on obese pets and was stroking a particularly mournful Basset Hound that weighed six-and-a-half stones. The man would have gladly watched the programme for the rest of the evening if he didn’t have to be seen by them all later, if he didn’t have to repeat the doctor’s words for the third or fourth time, if he didn’t have to listen to their endless interpretations and look at their poor, loving eyes. If he didn’t have to look at that boy.

◊

With the cross now in his fist, the boy jumped and landed with both feet this time, shouting over and over again. As he screamed and thudded he thought of what his mum would have seen if she had stood watching from afar: a funny little boy shouting and screaming over nothing. Staring at the squirrel’s dull eye, he screamed and shouted and thudded and clapped his hands to scare it off the road. It gave the faintest twitch then remained completely still. He thought about picking it up but he knew that you weren’t supposed to move people if they had been in accidents because it could hurt them even more and decided it must be the same for animals. He also thought there could be insects in its hair that would bite his skin. He was ashamed of that thought and decided that it would be best not to touch the squirrel because it would hurt it to move it. There in the rain he stood staring, shouting at the ground and to the sky until his clothes were soaked through. The squirrel did not move, did not blink. He lay the cross down in the mud next to the creature’s head.

When the boy had shouted out everything he had, he whispered “I’m sorry,” grabbed his bike from over the fence and pedalled hard and angrily away, filled with rage for God’s forgotten few.
Image credit: Troy Tolley on Flickr

Jo Beckett KingJo Beckett-King edits Oblong, a flash fiction zine based in London. She works as a French translator and is currently enjoying an extended trip to the US. Her fiction has appeared in The Metric, 4’33” Magazine, Scissors and Spackle, and elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

FRANCESCA by Mohammadreza Mirzaei

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Mohammadreza-Mirzaei,-untitled,-Tehran,-2013-

FRANCESCA
by Mohammadreza Mirzaei

I was exhausted. It was an hour since we parked the car down the mountain and came up the slope. I had spent all my life in Tehran, but I had never been in Tochal, which was one of the city’s tourist attractions. And interestingly, this time, I was there with someone who was from elsewhere in the world. Her name was Francesca. She was an Italian girl, from somewhere near Naples, a student of Eastern studies in Naples. She had been to Iran several times, once as a tourist, and again as an intern at the Italian embassy. She was here now to take a course at the Dehkhoda institute to improve her Persian. Maybe it’s not right to say, “to improve”. She could say “hello” and “goodbye” in Persian and she might be able to learn “How are you?” and “Fine, thanks” this time. She had been in Tehran for a few days when she called me, and said: can we go to: “Tochal?” And I answered: “Tochal?”

A few days after that conversation, we were in Tochal, on the side of a mountain. We went and sat at an outdoor cafe. The waiter brought a tray of tea to our table. He said while smiling: “You are very welcome! Your lady is a foreigner, right?”

He had seen us speaking Italian. I pulled on my tea: “Thanks, yes, but she is not my lady.”

He said: “Oh where is she from?”

I said: “Italy.”

He said: “You did the best man. The best women in the world are Italian.” He laughed. “Like Anna Maria Rosa in the Rescue Group TV series.”

I had no clue if this TV series really existed, or if he made it up in a second. When he left, Francesca asked me: “What did he say? Tell me. What did he say?”

I said: “Nothing, just a welcome and then he asked where you were from.”

She said: “And he knew an Italian girl too?”

I laughed: “No, three Italian girls, Anna, Maria and Rosa.”

◊

Francesca took a sugar cube and submerged it in her tea. She then put the sugar in her mouth and drank. She was holding the cube in the corner of her mouth, exactly in the style of downtown dudes.

We had Tehran in front of us, Tehran in smog with tall towers, different buildings. It seemed kind of desirable from afar. I was looking at apartments and thinking of my landlord who had increased the rent. We had to move. Perhaps in the middle of all this smog, our next home was not visible from this spot on the mountain.

Francesca said: “I love Tehran! It’s the most beautiful city of the world.”

I said: “Where in Tehran is beautiful?”

She said: “It’s so beautiful. The smell of smog makes me drunk and boys taunt me on the street. Every time I leave, I soon miss it.”

In the cafe, the radio was on, and somebody was talking about the value of proprieties in Manhattan.

I said: “But I prefer New York.”

She said: “New York City? Have you ever been?”

I shook my head, to say no.

She said: “Tehran and New York are different, just like the earth and moon are different.”

I said: “Have you ever been there?”

She said: “No. But I can imagine. When I was a child, we once went to California. I mean my family and me. There was nothing there. Nothing. It was like another planet. The people were drinking Coca Cola even at breakfast. Do you believe me?”

◊

We had finished our tea and I gestured to the waiter that we wanted another. I was exhausted, and didn’t want to start climbing this soon.

Francesca said: “But you should come here more often. Your belly is getting bigger and bigger!”

I said: “I’m in a relationship now. I don’t need to be fancy anymore. You should care about yourself, as you are already looking like a housewife.”

Francesca hit my hand. We laughed.

Then she said: “Can I say something to you?”

I nodded, to say sure.

She said: “Last time that I came to Iran, I had a relationship with someone.”

I said: “It’s good! Who is this boy?”

She said: “He is not actually a boy. He is forty­-five.”

I said: “For real?”

She said: “He works at the embassy.”

I said: “Is he Italian?”

She said: “Yea, he doesn’t live here. He is back in Italy for a commission. But he’ll be back next week.”

I tried to show myself interested and I said: “Listen, if he is a good guy, age doesn’t matter. I’m done, but if I could date now, I’d try an older one… Only if she was rich.”

She laughed as the waiter served us fresh tea. I noticed him peeking at Francesca.

She continued: “When you are somewhere like Tehran, you need support. You need someone who supports you or you will be so alone.”

I said: “I was saying that New York is much better. Or Tokyo, I made a mistake by studying Italian.”

She said: “What are you saying?”

She hit my hand harder.

As we finished our tea, I motioned to the waiter to bring our bill and he replied with an understanding nod. The cafe was getting crowded and he was busy with a group of girls and boys who were ordering.

I looked at the top of the mountain. I said: “Drop it! I’m too tired to climb.”

She said: “Should I call him?”

I said: “Ah sure. Why not?”

She said: “There is a problem. He is married. His daughter will be attending Sapienza. She might be the classmate of your cousin, Babak.”

I smiled. The waiter came, put the bill on the table, and he said while looking me: “Good for you! Get one in the sack for me too.”
Image credit: Mohammadreza Mirzaei, Untitled, Tehran, 2013

mohammadreza-mirzaei-portraitMohammadreza Mirzaei is an Iranian photographer, writer, and translator based in Philadelphia. His recent book What I don’t have is published in Italy by Edizioni del bradipo. He is the translator of “La Grammatica di Dio”; short stories by Stefano Benni from the Italian to the Persian. (Herfeh-Honarmand Publications, 2012, Tehran) As a photographer, Mirzaei has participated in numerous solo and group exhibition around the world including The 16th Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography and the Fotográfica Bogotá 2011. Mohammadreza Mirzaei has a BA in Italian Literature from Azad University of Tehran and is an MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

BLUE SANTA by R. Daniel Evans

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

blue-santa

BLUE SANTA
by R. Daniel Evans

All the votive candles stood arranged in a circle before Blue Santa. First, Mirta lit the four red and four blue ones. Her favorite candle holders were made from yellow glass colored dark as old cheese. She placed two in front of the dolls with the sap-green insect heads, and two in front of the wooden Santa that she had painted blue the day after the collapse of the Towers.

Mama came into the dimly lit room, luckily not noticing the mess of books and clothes on the floor. If only she would notice the dolls and say how pretty they were.

“Mirta! What are you doing? Just like it’s a statue of the Blessed Virgin, you’re lighting candles in front of that Santa. I don’t know why you painted it that nasty blue—”

Best not to talk about Blue Santa, which Mama had never liked, even when she bought him in that town in Mexico. “Elena, what lovely stockings you’re wearing today. What color are they?” Mama liked to be called by her first name.

Mama smiled and looked down at her legs. “I think the woman in the store called them lilac.”

Mirta pushed strands of her brown hair away from her cheeks, thinking of her mouse Toastie’s whiskers.

Mama said, “Papa and I have a special Christmas gift for you.”

Mirta tried to hide the anticipation in her voice. “You do?”

“We have tickets for The Nutcracker. Isn’t that wonderful?”

What a strange time for Mama to be happy. A frown soured Mirta’s face. “I’ve seen it so many times.”

“Honey, I thought the Nutcracker was your favorite ballet. I would have loved it if I could have seen it when I was ten.”

Mama probably wanted to add, ‘You’re spoiled,’ Mirta thought.

“I do like it,” Mirta answered, the truth lowering her voice with embarrassment. “It’s just the story’s always the same.”

Musical visions of the Sugar Plum Fairy floated in the air, courtesy of the CD player in the living-dining room. “Listen to that,” Mama said, “Papa just turned on the stereo system. Isn’t it beautiful? What are your favorite parts?”

Mama always wanted to share her happiness. What a strange time to be happy, after all the terrible things that happened in the city this year. But Mirta played along and said, “Well, I love the growing Christmas tree, how it gets bigger and bigger…”

“Yes, isn’t it something? It still thrills me. What else do you like?”

“The dance of all those snow flakes in the forest of the Christmas trees. The lights are almost as blue as my Santa.” Though not as sad, Mirta thought, glancing over at the wooden figure, her treasure from Mexico, which she had painted two shades of blue: the face and hands a pastel, and the rest of him a darker, blueberry blue.

Mama said nothing, ignored the mention of the blue Santa. They hadn’t argued about him since last week, when Mama wouldn’t let Mirta place Blue Santa under the Christmas tree. Mirta had felt angry, and that’s when she started plans for the altar of votive lights.

“But my favorite part of all,” Mirta continued, “is when the mice battle the toy soldiers. The music is so swirly there. Only…well, the mice never win.” She pictured the Mouse King, stiff as a fallen log, carried out by the defeated mice after his death.

“Why would you want the mice to win?” Mama asked. “They’re the bad ones, trying to take over little Clara’s room, her house, everything.”

“I don’t care. It’s unfair they always lose.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“If she just had a cat like Rongo that would solve the problem, right Mama?”

“What a thought.” But Mama couldn’t conceal the smile gleaming in her large dark eyes. “Anyway, we’ll eat lunch early Wednesday, so we can be at the theater early.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going out to make drinks for Papa. Do you want to join us? I’ll ask Nanny to make your favorite punch.”

“Thanks Mama, but I’ll just finish up in here first. Call me when dinner’s ready, ok?”

“All right.” Mama started to stride away, her satin blouse trailing perfume, her head held high as usual.

“Oh, and Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Can I bring Blue Santa to the ballet with me? Please, pretty please?”

“Mirta! Why would you want to bring that…thing? He’s too big for your little red bag.”

“He can fit into the pocket of my coat. Maybe he’ll make something different happen. That’s why I’m lighting candles to him. Don’t forget, Santa’s as powerful as Saddam Hussein.”

“Saddam Hussein! Where did you hear about him?”

“Beth mentioned him. Her teacher talked about Saddam in class.”

“I don’t know what they’re teaching you in school anymore.”

“It’s all right. I like my teachers. They’re good.”

Mama walked away, her heels clattering on the wood floor. “I hope so,” she said softly.

Mirta arranged all the lit candles on the shelf to form a semi-circle in front of the Santa before she said her evening prayer. She felt so sad, and remembered painting Santa blue the day after the Towers fell down. “Make something special happen at the ballet. Something different…pretty please? If you do, I’ll buy you your own chocolate bar. In fact, we can share it…” Did the Blue Santa nod? Mirta hoped so. “See, Toastie,” she said to the mouse sleeping in his cage in the corner. “Blue Santa will come through again.” Unlike most mice, Toastie wasn’t nice to look at, for he had red face patches, raw from nervous clawing. The vet couldn’t help, and now even Papa called Toastie “Scarface.” How horrible. Mirta would never bring Toastie into class again, no matter what. All the kids made fun of him.

 ◊

The day of the matinee was only a few days before Christmas. The streets, full of rain and fog, felt clammy. Papa would say the bad weather had been caused by global warming. Blue Santa weighed down her pocket, and reminded Mirta of his power. He’d performed miracles before, such as the time Toastie the mouse left his cage and ran across Rongo’s front paws without being eaten. That day Blue Santa had cast some sort of spell on Rongo, so he wouldn’t notice Toastie. At the time Mama said Rongo was too old a cat to pounce on Toastie. But no wonder: Mama didn’t believe much in such things.

Inside the theater, in her seat, the chatter of the screeching violins led Mirta away from thinking about Blue Santa. She would never confess it to Mama, but being at Lincoln Center and seeing the ballet was exciting.

Mama took her hand. Poor Mama. She would be content with the usual story. But tonight it would change, because Mirta rubbed Blue Santa’s head.

Mirta looked around the auditorium for her friend Beth, though she didn’t see her. Beth had sent an e-mail saying she’d be at the same performance.

The curtains, already opened, revealed the cozy parlor. Why didn’t everyone call their living room a “parlor”? Parlor sounded much nicer than “living room.”

Despite not wanting to, leaning against Mama’s shoulder, Mirta became sleepy. But after the first gun shot in the battle of the mice and the toy soldiers Mirta was jolted awake. The gun shot reminded her of those terrible things she’d seen three months earlier on TV about the Twin Towers. How horrible guns were. Just like terrorists, they killed people.

In the ballet, she watched the same old story. The Nutcracker, gnarled and short as any dwarf, though he wore a scarlet jacket with brass buttons bigger than thimbles, would soon defeat the Mouse King. Then he’d turn into a boy-prince and lead Clara to the waltzing Snowflakes in the Enchanted Forest. If only the mice could somehow win and stay alive, the way Toastie had when he ran across the cat’s paws.

The battle proceeded with some losses for the toy soldiers and some rodent deaths, when all at once the tide turned. The mice were cleaning up, mopping the floor with the expiring toy soldiers, who they pulled offstage by their long locks of hair, probably wet from stage sweat. After all, the toy soldiers were played by girls; lucky Beth had been one last year.

Nudging Mama’s elbow Mirta whispered, “Look! The mice are winning.”

At first Mama didn’t seem to notice the difference. “Calm down. It’s only a fairy tale.” This was the most incredible moment ever, and Mama didn’t get it.

But throughout the theater dozens of other kids understood. Squeals of fear burst out all over, above the silky-smooth violin melodies. Mirta sat on the edge of her seat, her knees twitching. Thankfully, she’d visited the Ladies’ room before the ballet started. She took Blue Santa out of her pocket. To think his power had really worked. Just like Papa said, no one would have an ordinary Christmas this year.

The seven-headed mouse king seemed bigger, almost like the Christmas tree had grown earlier in the scene to throbbing strings and low brass braying in the orchestra pit. The rumbling noises sounded unruly, as menacing as the reptile cage at the Central Park Zoo. Next the other mice, the lieutenants and foot soldiers, marched forward. Their fat padded stomachs contracted and they stood taller. The rodents, with teeth pointy as dentist’s drills and yellowed as tea stains, picked up the remaining toy soldiers. Some wounded soldiers limped off stage, dropping their silver stage swords, crying and clearly defeated. But others, not so lucky, were already grasped by the rodent paws. Mirta thought the new version of the ballet was even more frightening than Jurassic Park. The mice warriors twirled their small victims around their heads, holding the children by the feet. The mice wouldn’t throw the limp kids out into the orchestra, would they? Suddenly things looked bad on stage, too horrible to watch. Silently, Mirta prayed to Blue Santa to stop the mice.

Mirta wondered if the police would come, or if most police still worked down at Ground Zero. She’d seen them day after day on TV. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to show up. The orchestra played on raggedly. The deeper instruments, the trombones and horns, blared on, if partly drowned out by people talking in the audience.

Mirta saw that the woman conductor seemed to have a long, twitching snout, rather than a nose. A bunch of prickly, toothpick whiskers sprouted from her upper lip. She glared right and left at the chatty audience members, and she loudly urged on the frenzied orchestra.

Mama leaned over, a frown on her face. “We should leave,” she said. “You look upset.”

“Oh no,” Mirta said, her chin firm. “I don’t want to leave. Not now. The ballet is good today, Mama.” Blue Santa’s magic would work. Mirta’s praying to him would stop the battle.

On stage the fight continued, the mice now piling up the toy soldier bodies stage center, right before the gigantic Christmas tree. The plot had definitely changed from the original one everyone knew. The victorious mice dragged large gold cages from underneath the boughs of the tree. A sweaty fear scented the air as the mice pushed the children, clearly no longer pretending to be toy soldiers, into tall cages.

“Blue Santa,” Mirta urgently whispered. “You have to stop this.”

The Nutcracker-Prince, his contorted mask askew, lay wounded on the stage. Things looked disastrous, and it hadn’t been wise to wish for the mice to take over.

Suddenly the tide turned and the mice were pushed back. The wounded soldiers rose and more of the toy soldiers rushed in from the wings, while kids cheered in the audience. They regrouped as the Nutcracker Prince stood up, a circle of stars lighting his forehead. Blue Santa saved him, Mirta thought. This time the bad ones wouldn’t win.

Mirta blinked, and the scene changed to the huge forest of Christmas trees. The snowflake ballerinas danced on their toes as the air in the theater, showering cold all over. In her head, Mirta saw again the fierce Mouse King, mean as Rongo, advancing on the Prince, and all the candles blazing on the stage from the first scene to the last, each one magical.

Then the curtain came down and the music stopped.

“Mama,” Mirta said, pulling on a sleeve.

“Yes, darling?”

“I liked the ballet today. It seemed so different. Thank you for taking me.”

Mama smiled, as they stood, to walk up the aisle.

 

Dan-Evans

R. Daniel Evans was a founding co-editor in 1976, along with Louise Simons, of Philadelphia’s long-running literary magazine, The Painted Bride Quarterly. During the seven years that they edited the magazine, they published stories, poetry and essays on music, by many authors including Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Gregory Corso, Lynn Lonnider, and Meredith Monk. During that period Dan published poems in many magazines and anthologies, including Hanging Loose, Hellcoal Annual, America, Gay Sunshine, and over 40 others. Dan’s stories have appeared  in magazines such as Peregine, Art Mag, Of Leather and Lace, and Pangolin Papers, which nominated one of his stories for a Pushcart Prize.

THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT by Lynn Levin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

 

Dirty Mar

THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
by Lynn Levin 

The day of his wife’s forty-fifth birthday party, Norbie Bernbaum let Jerry Rosen talk him into an afternoon at the Dirty Martini, a strip club on the edge of downtown where Hot Pantz, Double Dee, and The Bride seduced the clientele to one degree or another. Rosen had been there a couple of times, mostly during weekdays, and he made the place sound so irresistible—the women were just like showgirls—that Norbie was panting to go.

“But what about Donna’s party?” Norbie groaned as Schpilkes, the family dog, came by and leaned against him.

“Just tell her you’re going out to buy her a gift,” advised Rosen. “You’ll be back in time for brisket with the in-laws. I promise.”

Norbie hadn’t bought Donna a birthday present, so this sounded like a plan.  He hurriedly splashed on a bit of cologne, brushed his teeth, and scooped his keys off the top of the bureau, which was slightly dusty and decked with family photos. He nearly tripped on a toy police car that his son, Eddie, had left in the upstairs hall. Latin rap pulsed from his teenage daughter Annette’s room. Through the slightly open door, Norbie saw her working her hips to some kind of chipotle-flavored belly dance and cringed. He had to pick up Rosen in twenty minutes.

An accountant in a medium-sized firm, Norbie was in good health and not bad looking: he had a full head of onyx hair and a slight cleft in his chin that could look playful and charming when he was feeling merry. But he had not felt merry in some time. Instead, a blue mold of boredom and resentment had crept over him. He began to wonder what accountancy meant in the big picture and what the big picture was anyway. The idea that he was squandering a third of his life on other people’s numbers poked at him like a constant elbow. As for his marriage, he was bored and resentful of it too. The easy passion he and Donna once felt for each other had subsided with the years and petty disgruntlements of matrimony. Norbie sometimes wondered if this was a normal part of the passage or if he and Donna were just stringing each other along. The problem was that nothing much could gain traction in his soul. He felt like a man dangling and reaching out for something, but he didn’t know what.

As Norbie sought relief from his funk, ideas of purpose would stir in his mind. He should coach Eddie’s Little League team, learn Spanish, take up guitar, engage in a wild affair, maybe even try harder to appreciate what he had. But he only dreamed of these things. He didn’t act on them – neither the good things nor the bad ones. The idea of the affair he dismissed as too real, too intense, too risky. Sooner or later, each notion dissolved like the morning fog, and hard daylight only made him see the big boulder of his life more clearly.

Eventually, he figured that he should simply try to have more fun. And convinced that his opportunities for fun were speeding away from him like a Porsche down the highway, Norbie jumped whenever Jerry Rosen called with a new adventure. So grateful was Norbie for these invitations that he tried not to mind that Rosen was always a few dollars short for beer or greens fees, that he usually had Norbie chauffeur, or that Rosen kept him waiting as he finished his shower, went through his mail, or yakked on the phone with his girlfriends, some of whom were married. Compared to Norbie’s life, Rosen’s life seemed so various and full.

Donna Bernbaum, Norbie’s wife of sixteen years, worked as a part-time paralegal in a small suburban law practice. A devoted mother and a loyal spouse, Donna also cultured her hurts like pearls, and Norbie’s small abuses—no-showing for dinner without bothering to call, playfully putting her down in front of the neighbors, opting for outings with Rosen over dates with her—supplied the grit that started the pearls. Now on her birthday, Norbie avoided eye contact with Donna as he strode toward his red Toyota Camry. He aimed his electronic key at the car like a ray gun.

It was a fruitful May, the air heavily peppered with pollen, and Donna had a bad case of hay fever. Before she could utter a word, a sneeze tornadoed through her body. Recovering, she arraigned her husband, “You’re off with that Rosen, Norbie. I know it.” She fixed him with a narrow look. Behind her sharpness, Norbie sensed the fluttering flags of insecurity and fear.

Ever since Rosen had entered their lives, Donna had felt herself weirdly in competition with him for Norbie’s love and attention. This Saturday, his flight on her birthday made her feel even more sidelined and insulted. Not that a man wasn’t entitled to his free time. And her birthday party was hours away. When, however, her tormented nostrils caught the scent of cologne, a new anxiety pricked her. She hadn’t known Norbie to cheat, but under Rosen’s tutelage anything was possible.

“And what’s that smell? Where are you going on a Saturday afternoon that you have to wear cologne?”

Schpilkes trotted up to Norbie for good sniff. The dog’s tail accelerated to a quick tick-tock. He looked expectantly at his master.

Norbie made no reply, but lobbed a you-must-be-paranoid look at Donna and made the loco sign so she could see it. He knew that being a little mean would make Donna shut up. He slid into his car and started the engine. Today, it was easier for him not to feel so annoyed or judged by her. After all, he would soon be in the bosom of topless dancers.

“We have to be at my sister’s by six. It is my birthday,” she said, fighting suspicion and another oncoming sneeze.

“Terrific. Thanks for the reminder,” snapped Norbie. “If I have to spend time with your family, the least you can do is let me have a little fun first.”

A wounded expression whitewashed Donna’s face. A pearl began to form over the sting of Norbie’s remark.

“Maybe I’m just going out to get you a present. Unless you rather I didn’t,” he said glancing at his watch. What would Rosen think if he had to call and cancel just because he caved to his wife’s nagging?

“You play in the dirt, you get dirty,” warned Donna in just the sort of schoolmarmish tone that made Norbie jump into the fraternal arms of Rosen. As he backed down the driveway, he saw her brandishing a Kleenex. He definitely did not like the way she said “dirty.” It was as if she knew where he was headed.

The thought of Donna’s birthday party circled him like a turkey vulture. He could barely tolerate Donna’s family, a bunch of self-righteous socialists always hammering away with their politics and justice causes. If it wasn’t the whales, it was the handicapped or the undocumented immigrants or people with AIDS. He needed an antidote to all that suffocating goodness, and he was now more glad than ever that Rosen had talked him into a visit to the strip joint.

Donna ducked into the house and told the kids she was off to the health club for a quick lift. For the last several months, whenever she felt Norbie was saying no to her and yes to Rosen, she went to the health club to weight train. She could now curl fifteen-pound dumbbells and bench press forty pounds, yet she lacked the power to cut Norbie’s ties to Rosen. The fellows’ friendship burgeoned. Almost every day begat another pearl.

It would be a busy Saturday. After the gym, she had to run Annette to dance class and Eddie to his ball game. And there was Norbie out and about who-knows-where, no help at all with errands—and on her birthday no less. Of course he was going with that Rosen. It was scrawled all over his face like a signature on a bad check.

Donna Bernbaum detested Jerry Rosen. He was a know-it-all, a schnorrer, and he dripped enticements into Norbie’s brain the way a bad factory leaked dioxin into a stream. A half-hearted salesman of uncertain skill, Rosen had, at various times, peddled ad space in magazines, vacation time shares, radon detection systems, and mortgages. Now he was selling hot tubs. He mostly lived off his wives when he had them and his girlfriends when he was single. Donna couldn’t stand the way Rosen used women and the way he collected male followers like Norbie, guys who mistook the cheesy glow of Rosen’s sporting company for a kind of glamour. She hated Rosen’s stupid satanic-looking Vandyke. She hated the way his cigars stunk up their good car, his cocky self-confidence, and, if she had only known him better, she surely would have hated him more. Just hearing Norbie on the cell with that Rosen made her skin crawl like a roach in a diner. What skeeved her especially was that peculiarly light and eager tone her husband used only with Rosen. It was a voice he never used with her.

While Donna militantly believed in protest, she worried that today she had antagonized Norbie too much. It was something about the sight of him backing down the driveway and speeding off down the street. She stood for a moment in front of their house as she watched Norbie disappear. A pang of anxiety went through her. She polished her newest pearl.

 ◊

Jerry Rosen kept Norbie Bernbaum waiting as he finished watching a golf tournament on TV. Norbie understood that Rosen was a tacky playboy, and he therefore secretly considered himself morally superior to his friend. Rosen, for his part, liked Norbie well enough, but saw him as a watch to unwind, a pal to fill his loneliness, and, should he sell him a hot tub, a customer from whom he could profit.

Rosen seemed to be endowed with great bravado and self-esteem, yet inwardly he was not a happy man. On some level he knew he was self-centered, of little help to those around him, and below par on the job. He sought to blot out this sense of lack with pleasures and entertainments—women, golf, cards, dining out, shopping, movie going—and endless hours of chitchat: gossip, trivia, and advice he foisted on his listeners. Yet after all of this, there was still the lack.

The golf match crept by slowly, and Norbie grew increasingly antsy. It was already after two in the afternoon. He instinctively felt a little bad at having treated Donna poorly, but he tried to delete those feelings. Then there was the matter of the birthday present. Norbie usually just bought Donna a card and maybe flowers, but now he was committed to buying her an actual gift. But what? A nightgown? A handbag? He hadn’t a clue what she’d like.

“Hold your horses, bubbeleh,” Rosen soothed as he pared his fingernails. “Those gorgeous gals aren’t going anywhere.”

The Dirty Martini was a low, flat building that might have once been a factory or a grocery store. An easel-style marquee in front said, “Philadelphia’s Bachelor Party Headquarters. Congratulations, Brad.” Another sign in the parking lot said “Police and Dirty Martini Parking.” Although it was early afternoon, all the parking spaces were filled. Cops or no cops, it was a dodgy neighborhood, so Norbie didn’t want to park the red Camry on the street.

“Here’s a space,” said Rosen pointing to a spot designated for disabled parking.

“Are you crazy?” replied Norbie. “It says a minimum fifty dollar fine, plus towing at the owner’s expense.”

Rosen minced his lips and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Listen, do you really think some gimp in a van is coming to the Dirty Martini? They have to put a handicapped space there. It’s a federal law or something. Just park for crying out loud. You don’t have all day.”  Then he looked at Norbie meaningfully and added, “Well, if it will make you feel better, limp in and if anyone asks say you twisted your ankle.”

So Norbie did as Rosen instructed, parked in the handicapped space, and made his way into the club half jumping, half limping. Like Hopalong Cassidy on his way to the bordello. He felt very foolish.

Two plaster statues of female nudes pillared the entrance to the club. In the parking lot, a number of men lingered talking on their cell phones. Inside, a huge bouncer, who looked like a body builder, had Norbie and Rosen pass through a metal detector. Rosen sauntered through. Norbie kept up his limping act. By the metal detector were signs that warned against cameras and touching the girls. Norbie was surprised at all the security. It made him kind of nervous. He heard raucous laughter coming from a curtained-off room. Peeking in, he saw several girls in fishnets and black leather bustiers wheeling in a big box that was iced like a cake. He felt sure that a girl would pop out of that cake.

“Craaazy, craaazy,” yearned a female voice over the sound system in the cavernous main room, which smelled faintly of a moist mustiness. One wall of the club was mirrored. The other was hung with a number of flat-screen TVs tuned, audio off, to a baseball game. The patrons were mostly middle-aged white men. Some were seated on shell-shaped cushioned chairs; others perched on barstools along the polished runway, a black stretch bordered in red lights that rolled out through the center of the room like a long tongue. There was a brass pole in the middle of the walk. Overhead pulsing spotlights splashed the strippers in red, green, blue, and yellow.

The Dirty Martini was like something Norbie had seen in a movie or a TV show, only it was better and real. The door to a deeper, darker, nastier side of sex opened to him, and he felt big, elevated, male. There to be served by juicy little teases who sometimes acted submissive and sometimes acted like they were begging for it.

The two friends settled into bar stools along the catwalk and ordered beers. The DJ played mostly sultry R&B and announced girl after girl. There seemed to be an endless stream of dancers of all races, skin tones, breast sizes, and hair colors. Each came in with her gauzy wrap and five-inch Lucite heels. The Lucite high heels were definitely a very big item. Then inch by inch, each girl unpeeled her wrap until she wore nothing but a thong or a G-string, see-through pasties, and those skyscraper Lucite heels. Then the slow grind. And the embrace of the pole.

Hot Pantz, a very fit black girl in a leopard thong, thrust herself up against the brass pole. Norbie wished he were that pole. Then Hot Pantz climbed the pole and suspended herself upside down. Her legs were like boa constrictors. She had amazing abs. She did all sorts of acrobatic moves. Just like Cirque du Soleil, mused Norbie. Then she slid down the pole and began to stalk catlike on all fours. One man put a bill in her thong. She purred like Eartha Kitt.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a patron leave the club with one of the girls.

A tall blonde with huge breasts came on and slowly gyrated to “Nasty Girl.”  “That’s Double Dee,” Rosen whispered. Double Dee did a backbend, lowered herself to the catwalk floor, then knees bent she pumped her beautiful and shapely legs open and closed like a giant butterfly. Shaved, fit, and incredibly tight was all Norbie could think. The kind of girl you can’t get at home. His heart was pounding, and a big erection took root in his pants. He watched as she went down on all fours and crawled up to a patron who lovingly tucked bills in her little pink thong. She smiled at Norbie. He wanted to be a bill in her thong. He took a dollar from his wallet, and she held her side string open for him. His fingers grazed her hip, which was warm and round and smooth.  He was mesmerized, lost in a hormonal haze.

“Hey, give me a bill,” Rosen broke in, rubbing his fingers together. Norbie hesitated but, reluctant to seem a poor sport, he handed Rosen a single. “Gimme a five, at least. They like bigger bills,” wheedled Rosen who proceeded to insert Norbie’s five-spot into Double Dee’s thong. Double Dee swung her silky golden tresses and worked the two cupcakes of her ass.

“And now, gentlemen,” announced the velvety voiced DJ as organ tones of the “Wedding March” began, “Here comes the Bride.”

The Bride, petite and virginal, began to step demurely down the runway. She wore a white G-string, a white garter, and a snowy shawl over her small breasts. Dangling from her arm was a white beaded drawstring pouch, the kind brides carry to collect wedding checks. A hush drifted over the crowd, but this was soon disturbed by some rustling at the back of the room.

A grizzled male voice ripped through the sultry atmosphere. “Lawbreaking prick!” The man’s tone spiraled louder with mounting indignation. “Lawbreaking prick!”

The “Wedding March” kept playing, but the DJ fell silent and The Bride froze. The yelling was coming from a guy in a wheelchair. “Whose red Camry is that?” he raged. “You’re in a disabled zone. You’re gonna pay for this, asshole! Management, too.”

Working the hand controls on his wheelchair, the disabled man, a guy in his mid thirties with stringy hair, motored deeper into the club. Fear dug its red polished nails into Norbie’s chest. The huge bouncer lumbered into the room.

A contingent of strippers, now in halter tops and miniskirts (how plain they seemed off the stage!), filtered through the crowd to comfort the disabled guy. Their kindness caused him to lose his tough edge. His voice began to break. “I just wanted to see you girls dance. And some bastard with a working prick…”

Two cops came up to the man in the wheelchair. One took out a notepad and began to take a report.

“Bubbeleh, looks like you’re up shit’s creek,” said Rosen as he took a pull at his beer.

“You’re the one who told me park there,” retorted Norbie lamely.

Having run a license plate check, one cop began to bellow, “Norbert Bernbaum! Is there a Norbert Bernbaum here! Red Toyota Camry!” Norbie was frantic with shame; fine beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He hopelessly prayed for deliverance. Trembling, he looked at his watch. It was after five o’clock. The party. The present. And he was about to get a citation in a strip club.

The limping excuse did not work with the cops. Then the strippers gathered around Norbie and started to yell at him. “Don’t you have any respect for those less fortunate than yourself?” scolded Hot Pantz. “Shame on you.”

“And I thought you were a nice guy!” hissed Double Dee curling her collagen-plumped lips.

The Bride glared at him and smacked him with her white drawstring purse. “Go back to your wife, you dick!” she shrieked.

The cops assessed him a seventy-five dollar fine, twenty-five more than the minimum. When the bouncer escorted Norbie and Rosen to the door, Norbie saw that his red Camry was being hauled away on a tow truck. It would cost a hundred and fifty dollars to get it out of impoundment, and he’d have to pay for a taxi to the lot, too.  He fumbled with his cell phone and was finally able to call a cab. There were six missed calls from Donna and one bitter voice message. “If you don’t think enough of me to get home in time for my birthday party, then I think that is pretty disgusting. But I understand your priorities. And don’t bother coming to my sister’s.”

The ride to the impoundment lot was a long tour of the city’s rundown riverfront streets. The lot, no surprise, was attended by some unsavory types and a couple of pit bulls. Nothing like the sweet-tempered Schpilkes. Forced to pay with his credit card, Norbie knew he’d need to intercept the statement before Donna could see it and interrogate him. Not that he’d have to account to her. She wasn’t his mother. And if Donna did see the statement with the impoundment charge, he prayed she would not use her paralegal skills to get to the root of the story. The parking fine, he’d pay with cash.

The drive back to Rosen’s place was bleak. Norbie imagined Donna’s family at dinner, drinking wine, talking politics, talking about him. “Shit happens,” offered Rosen seeking to break the silence and minimize the situation. “All you wanted to do was be happy and have a little fun. Is that such a crime? You’ll buy the wife a nice gift, that’s all. And you’ll say you screwed up. You’ll say you went to a sports bar and lost track of the time.”

Norbie made no reply. Shame was on him like a red rash, and a sick stomach ache churned in his gut. Over and over he saw those censorious whores and the paraplegic man with stringy hair and a life that was so much harder than everyone else’s. If only he had refused Rosen’s idea and looked harder for a parking spot. That fucking Rosen! And fuck me, fumed Norbie. Fuck me!

“I really think you should help me out with the cost of the fine and the towing,” Norbie said to Rosen.

“I don’t make bank like you, my friend. From each according to his ability, you know what they say,” declared Rosen. He blew a smoke ring with his cigar, a big fat zero in the air. “But I’ll see what I can do. Here,” he said and handed Norbie a ten dollar bill. Minus the five bucks for the thong money, Norbie calculated that his companion had really chipped in a measly five.

 ◊

Down and depressed, partly angry, partly worried, feeling not at all like a birthday girl, Donna fed Schpilkes his dinner and drove with Eddie and Annette to her sister’s. In the car, the children were very quiet.

When they arrived at her sister’s house, Donna preemptively announced that Norbie would not be coming, and after that no one said a word about his absence. At least being with her side of the family was a comfort. Over eggplant salad, they talked about movies, and as dinner progressed they moved on to Iraq and Afghanistan and the miracles orthopedists were working on injured soldiers. As her mom and dad and her sister sang “Happy Birthday,” Donna felt weirdly girlish and unmarried. When she blew out the candles on the pink and white cake, she could barely muster her traditional wish: that lightning would strike Jerry Rosen. The pearls of her hurt hung heavily around her neck.

No longer in a hurry to get home, Norbie drove to a McDonald’s and ordered a vanilla milkshake hoping it would settle his stomach. Amidst the loud primary colors of the McDonald’s, he imagined being yelled at by Donna. He drove to a Walgreens and browsed through the gift items—big candles, jars of potpourri, Whitman’s Samplers—and ended up buying a bubble bath and dusting powder set, a humorous birthday card, and a festive gift bag for the presentation. He planned on using that excuse about the sports bar.

Schpilkes wagged his tail energetically when Norbie came home and nosed his master’s pant legs, curious about the unfamiliar odors. When the family arrived home, Eddie bounded up to his dad, hugged him, and asked him where he’d been. Annette was sullen. Donna, her face drawn and colorless, barely looked at her husband.

“Happy birthday,” Norbie said, attempting cheer, and tried to kiss Donna, who backed away from him. He apologized, offered the sports bar alibi, then handed her the gift bag. He half expected her to clobber him with it à la The Bride, but she merely mumbled thanks and placed the gift bag on the dining room table without peeking inside. There was no yelling. Donna’s eerie politeness troubled Norbie’s waters; a rant or at least a quick curse would have helped him justify his escapade.

“It must have been a very exciting game,” said Donna dryly. She wondered how much of Norbie’s story she should believe. She had always seen sharply through falseness and remarked on it quickly, but now that falseness seemed so close upon her she found herself looking for ways to justify Norbie’s version of events.

That night, they slept restlessly in their double bed, a shadowy wall between them. Some day this turned out to be, thought Donna, inhaling the new atmosphere of mistrust. Yet angry as she was with Norbie, she was glad that he had returned, comforted that he had not abandoned her, relieved that he had not been in a car accident. Then she detected the fading whisper of Norbie’s cologne. She opened her eyes in the darkness. Cologne? A sports bar? She twitched her nose for the scent of another woman. Finding none, she drifted for a while on a current of bitter thoughts, then fell asleep.

On his side of the bed, Norbie tossed and turned. What is wrong with me, he thought, that I cannot be happy with what I have? Why do I want more? And what do I want more of? Visions of Hot Pantz, Double Dee, and The Bride swam up to him like evil spirits. What a dumb shit he’d been. What rotten luck to be caught by the disabled guy, a man frozen from the waist down, who nevertheless had the power to cause him such anguish.

Norbie reached out to Donna’s slumbering form, hoping that she would not wake and shake him off. She was warm, and she was there, and do