Jeff Friedman: FOUR MICROS • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Jeff Friedman
FOUR MICROS

All My Fathers

One father worked in a deli for many years. He could slice the lox so thin you could see through its beautiful orange. He would flick my ears with his index finger because he said they stuck out too far and slap me on the back hard as if trying to get me to spit out something lodged in my throat. My second father sold gems in a jewelry store. He could spot a fake stone in a second, and he knew just what necklaces, earrings and bracelets the customers would buy. This father tried to teach me about the properties of the different stones. He would hold them up to the light for me to see. But after weeks of training, I could identify a diamond but didn’t know a moonstone from an emerald or a sapphire from a ruby. “You’re hopeless,” he would say, gripping my forearm with such force I cried out and sank to my knees. Another father worked as a cook at the diner. He flipped omelets on the griddle and crisped the home fries in lard. He also made perfectly browned, thick pancakes always the same size. He would tell me to throw a punch at him and then grab me under the shoulder and lever me into an armlock that would send me to the floor. I would shout in pain, “I give! I give!” He’d laugh as he let me go. “You have to be ready if you want to defend yourself.” And my fourth father was a salesman who sold women’s clothing that had become hopelessly out of date. He would lock me in the closet so he could practice his sales pitch privately. But I could hear his voice rise and fall as he would pitch each item. “Harry, your ladies are gonna love these cream-colored blouses…Audrey Hepburn pedal pushers—snazzy, huh?” I lay back against the closet wall, sitting on his wingtips, feeling the soft cashmere of the overcoats against my cheeks. When he finished practicing, he would slam open the door and wrench me from the closet. Then he would give me a dime. “Buy yourself a Nestle’s.” I told my mother that I didn’t like any of my fathers. She lifted my chin. “You’ve only got one father,” she said, “and you’ve never met him.”

Woman with Two Heads

At the party, I met a woman with two heads. “Great party costume,” I said, even though it wasn’t a costume party. She shook her heads. “This is not a costume or disguise; it’s me.” She held a glass of punch in her hands and fed it to both of her mouths, her lips very red. She had two identical pretty faces, except one of her faces had fleshy, chapped lips and the other had thin moist lips. Both faces had a crazy bright blue eye and a steady brown eye. I preferred to focus on the brown eye, though I couldn’t shut out the wild looks the crazy blue one was giving me. “Does having two heads bother your boyfriends or dates?” I asked. “No complaints so far,” she answered. “We’re twice the fun and great kissers.” Only one of the heads did the talking while the other kept winking. She leaned in close as she said this breathily as if she were about to kiss me with one of her heads. The song “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” came on, and I asked her to dance. We held each other tightly and swayed to the music, and as the song played, one of her heads lay on my right shoulder and one on my left. I could feel her lips touching both sides of my neck and thought my song will be titled, “Put Your Heads on My Shoulders.” When I went in to kiss her, my eyes closed, our faces collided. With her two heads, she began to laugh and laugh, while I tilted my head back and held my nose, blood dripping through my fingers.

Lying Green

When he lied to her, his face turned green, and he would have a bellyache for hours. His partner would tell him to sit down and would bring him a glass of water. “Drink this,” she would say and stare into his face. The water didn’t make him feel better, but he drank it anyway. She would check his face every fifteen or twenty minutes and feel his forehead for fever. The green would fade over several hours along with his bellyache.

They had been living together for only six months, and he had lied to her to keep her from finding out about his lovers, lied about who he had talked to, why he had been out of touch for hours—his cellphone turned off—and where he had been, lied about why he forgot to buy her lemons or her special tea that, when brewed, smelled a little like skunk.

But one spring afternoon, the green didn’t fade. He lay in bed in a dark room. Had he told her too many lies now for his face to recover? In the kitchen she brewed her awful tea and let it steep and then brought a cup of it into their bedroom. “I can’t drink that stuff,” he said. She laughed at him. “Not for drinking,” she said and dipped a paper towel in the tea, began scrubbing his face. After she blotted his face dry, she turned on a lamp and held up a hand mirror. Then she said, “Who have you been seeing?”

The Mime Breaks Up with Me

The mime folded her hands into a prayer and then unclasped them as if they had blown apart. She narrowed her face into a cruel frown. “Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?” I asked. She pretended to laugh, pointing at me and nodding. Not a trace of sadness or compassion. I moved toward her, but she backed away, taking a step for every step I took, imitating my motions in reverse. “What did I do so wrong?” I said. She spread her arms wide as if attempting to wrap them around a whole world. “What does that mean? I did everything in the world wrong? Or I did a world of wrong things or too much to name?” She nodded vigorously with every question, seemingly pleased with herself. I remember how she used to sing to me silently and act out the song, and I would guess what song it was. I never guessed right.

JEFF FRIEDMAN’s eleventh book, Broken Signals, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in 2024. Friedman’s poems and microfictions have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Fiction International, Poetry International, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Wigleaf, 100-word Story, Plume, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, New England Review, Hotel Amerika, Rattle, Antioch Review, Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards.