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writdisord

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The Writing Disorder is a quarterly literary journal. We publish exceptional new works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art. We also feature interviews with writers and artists, as well as reviews.

The Devil Walked Here
Work in Progress
Power Prayer
Last One to Leave the Party
Seen
The Rapture
You Get to Make the Choice
Lucky Day
The Garden of Eden is Hot
I will Put You in a Box So You’ll Never Grow Up

Jaina Cipriano

Jaina Cipriano is an experiential designer, filmmaker and photographer exploring the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment. Her worlds communicate with our neglected inner child and are informed by explosive colors, elevated play and the existence of light in the dark.

Jaina writes and directs award winning short films that wrestle with the complicated path of healing. Her second short, ‘Trauma Bond’ is a dreamy, coming of age thriller that explores what happens when we attempt to heal deep wounds with quick fixes. In 2023 Trauma Bond took home the grand prize at the Lonely Seal International Film Festival.

Jaina’s photographic works are fabricated by hand in her Lowell studio. Working with Jaina is often described as cathartic and playful. Her photographic work has been shown at Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Resource Center/Boston, PhotoPlace Gallery VT, Medium San Diego among others.

She is the founder of Finding Bright Studios, a design company specializing in set design for music videos, immersive spaces and public art. Jaina is the owner and executive director of the longstanding Arlington International Film Festival. She has collaborated with GRRL HAUS, Boston Art Review, and was a Boston Fellow for the Mass Art Creative Business Incubator, a finalist in EforAll Merrimack Valley and was a participant in the city of Boston’s Un-monument augmented reality workshop.

jainaphoto.com

Photo by Henry Marte

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Laconia Gallery, The Empty Mirror, Boston, MA, 2023.

Boston University 808 Gallery, Dreamscapes: Finding the Light Through Immersive Design, Boston, MA, 2022 Beacon Street Gallery, The Infinite Mirage of Rapture, Brookline, MA, 2022.

Griffin Museum of Photography WinCam Gallery, The Infinite Mirage of Rapture, Winchester, MA, 2021.

Shelter in Place Gallery, Empty Spaces,

Boston, MA, 2020.

Gallery Seven, Directed Imagination, Maynard MA. Curated by Kelli Costa and Nick Johnson, 2019.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Kingston Gallery, TOO HOT!, Boston, MA. Juried by Jessica Roscio, 2024.

Cambridge Art Association, Blue 2023, Cambridge, MA. Curated by Abigail Ogilvy, 2023.

Rivalry Projects, collective selection / selective collection, Buffalo, NY. Curated by Camilø Álvårez, 2023.

Medium Photo, Size Matters, San Diego, CA. Curated by C. Meier, 2023 Photographic Resource Center, Night of Film, Cambridge, MA, 2023.

NE Sculpture, Artifactuality, Minneapolis, MN. Curated by Allison Baker and Jannell Hammer.

The Curated Fridge, Winter 2023, Somerville, MA. Curated by Brian Piper. Leica Gallery, Inward Outward, Boston, MA. Curated by OJ Slaughter, 2022.

Panopticon Gallery, First Look 2022,

Online, 2022.

The British Journal of Photography,

Edition 365, 2021.

Rhode Island Center for Photographic Art, Behind the Lens Plus 2021: Women in Photography, RI, 2021.

Emerson Contemporary Gallery, Digital Dreams, Boston, MA, 2020.

PhotoPlace Gallery, Altered Realities, Online Gallery. Middlebury, VT. Curated by Brooke Shaden, 2019.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gampat, Chris. “5 Women Photographers You Should Teach Your Kids About.” The Phoblographer, 16 Feb. 2024, www.thephoblographer.com

Photographie, L’Œil de la. “Jaina Cipriano.” The Eye of Photography Magazine, 16 Dec. 2023, loeildelaphotographie.com

Gampat, Chris. “The 12 Most Inspirational Photographers of 2023: A List of the Best.” The Phoblographer, 9 Dec. 2023, www.thephoblographer.com

Gampat, Chris. “Jaina Cipriano Is the Best Thing since Gregory Crewdson.” The Phoblographer, 3 Dec. 2023, www.thephoblographer.com

“As Luck Would Have It Artist Feature – Jaina Cipriano.” 13FOREST Gallery, 19 July 2023, 13forest.com

Sleboda, Kathleen. “Newly Remodeled 808 Gallery Opens with Immersive Show Exploring Fantastical Worlds.” Boston University, 23 Sept. 2022, www.bu.edu

COMMISSIONS

Who Invited Them?, 2024, Providence, RI, Level 99.

Cartoon Fire Pits, 2023, Boston, MA, BRM Production Management and Massport.

Butter Bench, 2023, Boston, MA, Johnny Cupcakes.

PUBLIC ART

NERVOUS SYSTEM, 2023, Boston, MA,

Isenberg Projects, Boston Art Review and The Fenway.

Tiny Memphis Room, 2023, Boston, MA, Boston Art Review.

Park Shitty

by Melissa Or


I never knew CD’s real name. I just knew that’s what they called him because his eyes flattened into thin CD-like slits when he was stoned. Perhaps if I were in the same grade as those guys, I would have heard teachers call CD by his legal name, but I was five years younger than they were. Thinking back now, I was much too young to be hanging around high school seniors. Especially those seniors.

It might sound strange that they tolerated a dorky middle schooler tagging along, but even guys like that, especially guys like that, needed something to believe in. You’re gonna be the one who gets out, they’d tell me again and again, as if repeating it would eventually will it into fruition. I think they needed to hear it more than I did. Especially CD. He was my older sister’s boyfriend, which is how I got to know those guys in the first place. He didn’t seem to give a shit about my sister, but he was invested in making sure that I did something with my life. It didn’t really matter what that something was, but everyone seemed to think it required getting out of Park City. Which was fine by me.

The thing with Park City was that if you happened to spot it on a map and see it nestled all cozy between the Great South Bay on Long Island’s southern shoreline and the swank star-studded Hamptons to the east, you’d surely mistake it for one of the island’s many quaint beach villages. You’d imagine this perfect little town where yuppies draped sweaters over their shoulders as they walked in and out of small expensive shops that all looked the same; and not only would you picture sidewalks, but you’d also line them with flowers and street lamps; and your mind would probably also build a charming brick schoolhouse with a flag that had never been defaced and a roof that had never leaked. But for some reason Park City, even the name of the town itself, never lived up to its potential. It had been established by an obscure signer of the Declaration of Independence who happened to settle there in 1770 with ambitions of creating an international port and commercial center. Sadly, the town never grew up to become the “city” its founder had envisioned. Nor did it ever contain an actual “park” unless you counted the area beside the landfill that had been fenced off to protect migrating birds who stopped in for quickies on their way to South America. We called that overgrown strip of land the Bird Brothel, and it sort of functioned more or less like a park because it was where a lot of kids went to try drugs or sex for the first time.

Later on, when I did get out, and I would tell people that I was from Long Island, I saw how their eyes would adorn with visions of Gatsby’s gilded Eggs, and although I knew I was misleading them, I didn’t want to explain that I had grown up in the only south shore town that never became a summer tourist destination for celebrity Manhattanites. Instead of multi-million dollar beach estates enclosed by behemoth hedges and electric fences, my home town was known for its abundance of Section Eight housing. Before I met him, CD spray-painted over Park City’s welcome sign in order to announce to anyone who exited the main road for a pit stop on their way to the Hamptons, that they were “Now Entering Park City Shitty.” The sign was replaced about a year later, but the name stuck. That’s the thing with identities, they just get lodged in people’s heads, and after a while there’s no way to extract them.

CD looked out for me in the only way he knew how, by creating an ever-expanding list of drugs that I was never, under any circumstance whatsoever, to even pretend to try. He wrote his list on one of those long shopping pads that had a refrigerator magnet on the back. He said these were drugs that could fuck a person up so badly that I had to swear on my grandmother’s grave to abstain from trying, no matter how tempted I might be. (You’d think since he was dating my sister, he would have known that all of my grandparents were still alive.) There were so many drugs on his list, and he seemed to add to it every time I came over, that I was sure some must have been repeated or made up. It was three pages deep and included a lot of substances that I had never heard of, and some that I had heard of but never thought of as intoxicants. I remember wondering what it was about those particular drugs that made them worse than others. After all, I had grown up in the Nancy Reagan era, when we were told that all illicit drugs were created with equal capacity to scramble a kid’s brain up like the egg in the commercial that aired during After School Specials.

CD used to hang out with these two other guys, Rod and Hoff. Rod was the first emancipated minor I ever knew. His father got so fucked up one night that he beat the shit out of Rod while he was sound asleep in his bed, so Rod got a lawyer to help him file for emancipation. This was the first time I heard the word “emancipation” used in a way that was not associated with slavery. It was also the first time I heard of anyone going to court to gain a right instead of having one taken away. A judge granted Rod’s request, and the government let him live in one of the subsidized apartments off the highway. He got a small studio above the Roy Rogers, which was convenient when we got the munchies. You see, CD said, lawyers make so much money that they can do cases like Rod’s for free. That’s what I’m talking about. What are you talking about, Rod asked? No one ever knows what he’s talking about, Hoff said. For the Nerd, CD said, referring to me. That’s what I’m talking about for the Nerd. For when she grows up and gets the fuck out of here. Attorney General Nerd or some shit like that. I looked up at the mention of my nickname, but my fingers were deep in Rod’s ashtray, fishing for roaches to take home with me, and Rod said, Yeah, that’s real lawyer material right there, and we all laughed.

Although Rod was a dealer, Hoff was the real thing. Pretty much everything about Hoff was next-level. He was particularly compulsive about things that really mattered to him, which meant that he had a ripped body, an impeccable car, and an endless series of tanned, toned girlfriends he met at the gym. Not to mention his lucrative drug business. He actually used to grow his own weed on the side of Sunrise Highway, up in the woods where no one would go except maybe for some animals. We used to joke about all the deer that must have been inadvertently getting high back there. Hoff really had it going on back then. At some point, his harvest was so plentiful that he had to hire a couple of those guys who stood on the side of the road by the exit ramps holding “Will Work for Food” signs. They were good workers, Hoff said, even if they couldn’t speak much English. He paid them in actual money and weed instead of just food, and he said they were priceless because they were too afraid of getting deported to report him. Hoff also dealt a lot of the drugs that were on CD’s no-no list. The list was for me, not for the guys.

Like Rod, Hoff had his own apartment, but not because he was emancipated. Because he was earning a ton of money and his parents didn’t seem to notice or care that he moved out. But there was no way Hoff would let us over to his place because he was a real clean freak. Everyone knew that he vacuumed his apartment every day just before he left, and that he was so obsessive-compulsive about the whole thing that the vacuum tracks had to be perfectly straight and parallel with the wall, and if they weren’t, he’d start over again. He was so nuts about those lines on his carpet that he would vacuum backwards, all the while edging towards the front door, where he would eventually leave the vacuum in order to avoid defiling the perfectly straight carpet lines. That’s why Hoff was late all the time, and everyone would poke fun at him for it, saying he was late because he was doing lines.

The last time I saw Hoff must have been about eight years ago in what used to be the Roy Rogers below Rod’s old apartment. At that time, it was a 7-11, and I was in a hurry to grab a coffee before catching the train back to Manhattan after visiting my folks. I brushed right past him without realizing who he was.

Jessica’s Sister, he said. Hey, Nerd! How are you?

I recognized his voice, but when I turned to face him, he looked nothing like the Hoff I knew from the old days, even though it had only been a few years since I had graduated from high school. Instead of the well-toned and manicured guy I used to know, the one whose artificial tan had accentuated a beaming white toothy smile, Hoff now appeared before me as an old, almost grotesque, stranger. Even his posture was different. He used to have the starchy upright stance of a weightlifter, but now he was sort of hunched and weathered, like a tarped Weber grill in winter. Several of his teeth had rotted out, and his T-shirt looked like it had been plucked from one of those Goodwill bins outside the Stop & Shop.

How’s your sister? How’s your family? How’s…He threw questions at me frenetically, but he was sweet and genuine, happy to see me. How’s the big city life treating you, he asked and then laughed for no reason, which made me self-conscious. I felt dozens of judgmental eyes peer straight through soda displays and Slurpee signs, and hone in on me as if to ask what a young woman dressed like President Clinton’s wife was doing chatting with a homeless meth head. Not that he was homeless. At least I don’t think he was. But those eyes went right through my pants suit, and I swear they saw me for who I really was.

Later, when I told my sister about running into Hoff, she said, And this used to be the guy who was so OCD that he vacuumed himself out of his house. Used to be— as though he was not the same guy. You know, she said, Hoff should have died a long time ago. And angry as that made me, I imagined this very scenario: Hoff disappearing in his prime, when he was still smiling like Knight Rider or oiling his abs like the guy in Baywatch, before our shitty little town dug its shitty little meth-rot teeth into him. Not to sound callous though, because dying too early, no matter how honorable the death, is no prize either, and I know this because that’s exactly what happened to CD’s little brother, Bruce.

Bruce was the same age as I was, but I never saw him at school because he was in special classes. Sometimes he would hang around with CD, but the guys never called him anything but his real name, even though he was an easy target for a nickname due to his cognitive impairment. CD wouldn’t tolerate so much as a joke made at Bruce’s expense. Their whole family was protective of him, actually. Their dad coached Bruce’s baseball team for the sole purpose of making sure that the other players wouldn’t make fun of him. CD told me that if I played on the team, his dad would look out for me too. You got brains, but you need a scholarship if you’re gonna actually go to college and be a lady lawyer, and there’s really no money in softball, CD said. I figured he was right, and I joined the team.

CD’s dad did look after me as best he could, but since I was the only girl in the league, I had to endure a surprising amount of shit-talking from the opposing players. The parents were the worst though. They’d actually yell things at me like, Girls can’t hit, you cunt! And, Put the bat down and pick up a spatula. A fucking spatula? That’s what they came up with to insult me? Grown adults telling a kid she was a cunt in need of a spatula? Even then, I knew I shouldn’t let that nonsense get in the way of my performance. After all, I was a better player than most of the guys in the league, and I was sure that only a few of them would have made the girls’ varsity softball team at school. Not that they would have wanted to try. It’s just that even though they weren’t much competition for me, it was their attitude about who I should be that posed the real challenge.

Admittedly, the harassment got to me more often than it should have. I didn’t have terribly high self-esteem to begin with. During one at-bat early in the season, a mom yelled, Join the God-damned Girl Scouts!, just as I swung and missed on a third strike. Everyone laughed, even my own teammates. The catcher chuckled and sorta snorted behind his mask, then he dropped the ball, so I booked it to first base. Apparently, I was the only nerd on the field who knew the rules. The other team’s coach screamed for the catcher to throw the ball. Throw it! Throw it, he shouted, it’s a freakin’ dropped-third-strike!

When I think about it now, I imagine the catcher must have been confused, but I don’t know for sure because I didn’t look back. I just ran down the line with all the rage of a girl who needed to prove her worth. The first baseman was standing right on the bag with his arm stretched stupidly over the baseline. His glove was wide open, and I could see his eyes as they followed the ball over my head toward his mitt. What an idiot, I thought as I ran through him. My body met his just as the ball reached his glove, and I stepped on the bag as he fell to the ground and the ball trickled toward the foul line. The umpire stretched his arms and yelled, Safe!, and my whole team cheered as though we won a championship game or something. Then two parents came out to walk the first baseman off the field. He was sniffling, trying not to cry. I stayed on the base like I owned it. I wanted to run to second because no one had actually called a time out and the ball was technically still in play, but I refrained.

I sort of knew that kid who played first. His name was Neil, and he was in my photography class. He didn’t have friends in the class because he constantly walked into the dark room when other people were in the middle of developing their film, and it would just fuck up everyone’s photos. He was that kind of kid, and I suspected he was told a hundred times not to stand on the baseline just as Mr. Fox, our art teacher, told him not to go in the darkroom when the red light was on. I felt bad that I knocked him down, but that was the rule– if a fielder is in the baseline, the runner still has the right of way. Yet, I felt sorry for Neil because a girl had taken him out, which was just about the most humiliating thing a girl could do to a guy, aside from laughing at his prick. But I didn’t feel too bad because the incident made my teammates actually like me. Even later in the season, they would still take turns imitating how I threw up my elbow just before ramming into Neil. That pussy deserved to get plowed by The Girl, they would say. They called me, The Girl. I liked that name better than Jessica’s Sister or Nerd.

One day I got to practice early, and only the Tommys were there. As I leaned my bike against the fence, I saw Tall Tommy shoving his fingers under Ugly Tommy’s nose, and Ugly Tommy said, Damn, that pussy smells sweet– I wouldn’t ever wash my hands if I was you. They didn’t stop talking about Jenna Passanti’s sweet smell on Tall Tommy’s fingers, even when they turned to see that it was The Girl who was walking toward them. I just sat on the bench and didn’t say anything. Tall Tommy passed me the joint they had been sharing, and I took a long hit, even though I was afraid I might catch an STD, being that it was only one degree removed from Jenna Passanti’s crotch.

About a month later, on the first day of tenth grade, Jenna Passanti was found in the woods just inside the Bird Brothel. She was partially naked and all beat up by her boyfriend, Pete Mason. Pete was one of those kids who wore Polo shirts and had a nice smile and who said all the right things, but who was really a fucking douchebag, my sister said. She said this before Pete beat up Jenna, so I guess it was sorta well-known that he was no good. Jenna was in my grade though, so she probably didn’t know that the older kids thought Pete was an asshole.

Channel 12 News, the Long Island TV station, was obsessed with the whole thing. It reported that Jenna had made fun of the way Pete performed sexually, and that was why Pete beat the living shit out of her and then sexually assaulted her. So then Mr. Pearl, the Health teacher, made us watch every video he could find on date rape. This was in addition to the usual scare-tactic videos he used to show us, including the documentary that featured real-life addicts shooting heroin into their eyeballs because there were no other viable places left on their bodies to inject needles. It was depressing. We all swore we’d never do heroin or let a guy beat us up, but we also knew that the odds were that some of us would. I hated high school, even though I got good grades, and I just wanted to cut and hang out with CD and Rod and Hoff, who had already graduated, but those guys wouldn’t tolerate me missing school. Eventually, we all just went our separate ways.

A year after I graduated from high school, and a few years before I ran into Hoff at the 7-11, CD’s brother, Bruce, got shit-faced at Mr. Lucky’s Pub. He decided to do the prudent thing and walk home, leaving his old Skylark on the graveled pathway behind the bar that served as Mr. Lucky’s parking lot. About half-way home, Bruce was struck by a drunk driver and killed instantly. He was left on the side of Sunrise Highway until the early morning when a cop happened to slow down to watch some deer grazing nearby and then noticed Bruce face-down in the grass.

I was so far removed from that whole scene by then that I probably wouldn’t have known about Bruce dying if I didn’t happen to be in Park City at the time on a break from college. I went to the wake. All the boys were there. CD, of course, and Rod and Hoff. The Tommys were also there, as were most of the other players from our team. The funeral home was packed, so most of us had to hang outside, which was fine with me because I did not want to see Bruce lying dead in a coffin at nineteen years old.

After the wake, a bunch of us went to the diner, and we sat at one of those round booths in the corner where they put large groups. CD shared a story about this one time when he went to the diner with Bruce and Hoff. Bruce had wanted to order one of the cakes in the display case. Not just a slice of it, but the whole cake for the three of them to share. This was after Bruce had gotten a job at the hardware store due to some government program that compensated local businesses for hiring people with disabilities. Bruce was so proud to get the job that he wanted to treat his older brother and his friend, and ordering a whole cake seemed like the best kind of celebration that a guy like Bruce could conjure up in his generous, childish head. CD said no, that they would have come across as being really high had they eaten the whole cake. But we are high, Bruce apparently pleaded. We all laughed because it was funny as hell, and it really captured Bruce’s personality. He would say shit like that all the time, and it would have us laughing really hard, even though Bruce wasn’t trying to be funny. The beautiful thing about Bruce was that he saw everything as it really was, and there really was nothing even a tiny bit funny about the way things actually happened to be.

The waitress came over to take our order, and CD said, We’ll take a whole cake from the display case. Without even looking up at us, the waitress said, The only cake that’s still whole is carrot. So then give us the whole fucking carrot cake, CD said, and she wrote it down on her pad as if it were something she could potentially forget. She walked away, and Tall Tommy said, I wonder if she wrote “whole carrot cake” or “the whole fucking carrot cake.” Then we all went outside into the back of Tall Tommy’s van to take bong hits.

Isn’t this the bong that your mom took, Rod asked, and Tall Tommy said that his mom actually didn’t confiscate his bong, that he must have just lost it because it recently resurfaced. How the fuck do you lose a bong, Ugly Tommy asked. And how the fuck does it just resurface, Rod added. Maybe your mom borrowed it, I said, and the guys all laughed pretty hard. Don’t hog it, CD said, pass it to the Nerd. Are you allowed to smoke weed at Columbia, Tall Tommy asked. Ugly Tommy said, It’s the biggest drug country in the world, of course she can smoke there. She’s at Columbia University, not Colombia the country, you dumbass, CD said, and we all laughed and Ugly Tommy had a huge coughing fit, which made us laugh even more.

We must have reeked when we went back inside the diner. The carrot cake was on the table already sliced and waiting for us along with a stack of plates and napkins. Oh, this is gonna be the best cake ever, Hoff said, and then he added, here’s to Bruce! To Bruce, we all said and for a moment we all felt sober, thinking of poor Bruce doing the right thing and walking home from Mr. Lucky’s. Then Hoff continued, you see where being responsible gets you– gets you dead, that’s where.

We recalled Hoff saying that a couple of years later when we went to the diner after his wake. Being irresponsible gets you dead too, CD said, and we all toasted to Hoff. Then Rod talked about the days when Hoff used to vacuum himself out of his apartment and we all fell silent as we scraped cake crumbs from our plates. What are you doing here, CD said, I thought you got out? You say that like Park City is a prison, I said. It is, they all said in unison. Hey, what are you studying anyway? Shouldn’t you be done with college already? I’m in law school now, I said. Jeez, Nerd!, they all said in unison. Are you going to be a prosecutor, Tall Tommy asked. No, I said, I don’t know, I mean I don’t really like law school. Then the Tommys got up and reenacted the time when I knocked Neil down at first base, and everyone hooted and hollered, and some gray-haired couple turned toward us, rolling their tired eyes passive-aggressively at our brief joyous moment. Seriously, Nerd, what the fuck are you doing here with us, CD pressed. I don’t know, I said. I’m just home on break and then Hoff died and now I’m here fucking around with you guys. How’s your sister, CD asked? She’s alright. She’s engaged to Phil. I always liked your sister, CD said. No you didn’t, I said, You thought she was pretty, maybe, but you didn’t like her. Yeah, she was hot, CD said, and then added, but soon she’s gonna be fat and pregnant with a bunch of little Phils. And they all laughed pretty hard. Really, you need to stop hanging out with us, CD said. Yeah, one day you might prosecute us, Rod said. And no one laughed even a little.

The next time I went back to Park City was for Jessica and Phil’s wedding. None of the guys were invited. My sister wasn’t friends with them anymore. But after the wedding, I met some of them at the diner. I’m not sure why. I was drunk from the wedding and over my head with stress from studying for the Bar Exam, and I didn’t have any other friends in the area. That’s like the hardest test on earth, Ugly Tommy said. She’ll pass, CD said. Then to me, he said, You gotta stop hanging out with us. Then the two of us went outside to where the cigarette machines used to be and did a few bumps of coke off our knuckles. You gotta promise me you’ll get the fuck out of here, he said. Park Shitty’s not that shitty, I said. He smiled and said, then why does it feel so shitty? He had this boyish smile, but this time when he laughed, I could tell his teeth were getting that meth-head rot, and it was sad but also not sad. It’s as though I saw him the way that his little brother Bruce would have seen him: just as he was. No more, no less.

CD suddenly stopped smiling and he looked straight at me and said, You gotta promise me you’ll get the fuck out, you have to make the promise. You always say that, but I already am out, I said. No, you still have a foot here in this shitty town. We left the diner without saying goodbye to the others, and we tip-toed into my parents’ house, into my childhood room, into my bed. We did a few lines of coke off of my Con Law textbook, which CD thought was hilarious. Come on, quote the Constitution he said, and then he deepened his voice and declared, Four score and seven years–

That’s not the fucking Constitution, I said. You must think I’m an idiot, he said and tossed the textbook from my lap, and then he got annoyed at how much coke was wasted on the floor. Don’t be an asshole, I said. He turned to me and pinned me down by my wrists. I told you to get the fuck out of here, he said. His eyes were like two huge holes. There was no emotion to them, but his voice was angry and jittery from the coke. Come on, tough girl, you’re supposed to be a badass. He pushed down hard on my wrists, and I said nothing, just stared at him, feeling his weight press me deeper into the bed, and I wanted to stay there pinned by my desires and my past for perpetuity.

He suddenly let go of my wrists and unzipped my jeans. He looked at me as if to ask if I was sure I wanted to keep going, but I just stared at him. He was not a good fuck, and I wasn’t either. Afterwards, we lay vacuously next to each other, and he said, your tits are hotter than your sister’s. That’s kinda gross to think about, I said. But it felt good to hear. He kissed my forehead with a tenderness that felt like a pat on the head and then he did two lines off my stomach. That was fucking awesome, he said, lifting his head from my belly and rubbing his nose with his fist, and I got the feeling that he was mimicking something he had seen in a movie. Wasn’t that fucking awesome, he said. What, I wanted to ask, but instead I said, The Constitution, Article I, Section 1: All legislative powers shall be granted to a Congress. It wasn’t an exact quote by any means, but it didn’t matter.

You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me, Nerd, he said with that decaying boyish smile, then he dipped down to lick some stray coke off my belly. I liked the way his tongue was warm and adoring, as though it felt lucky to be able to taste my skin. I can’t believe you exist and you chose to fuck me, he whispered, I mean, why the fuck did you fuck me? You know where I’m gonna end up, don’t you? Where, I asked? He just shook his head.

The next morning, my dad banged on my door and yelled at me to get up before my pancakes got cold. CD must have snuck out at some point after I fell asleep. He would have gotten a kick out of the way my dad folded the pancakes into mini chocolate-chip tacos.

The last I heard, when CD’s mom went to visit him in the hospital, she was taken aback by his painted fingernails. She saw the polished nails first, then the restraints which tightly bound his wrists to the bed rails, then the bruises on his eyes and chin. The innkeeper–or whatever you call him–found CD earlier that morning in a ground-floor room of the Park City Motel, dressed in drag, lying in his own piss and blood. Can you believe I dated that guy, my sister said. He’s such a loser, prostituting himself out for meth or God knows what.

It was Black Friday, and we were in my parents’ kitchen. Jessica was taking out the Thanksgiving leftovers to make sandwiches. She had separated from Phil, and she and her two girls had been staying with my parents for almost a year already. She knew where everything was kept, the bread, the mayonnaise, the cutting boards. I paced around the kitchen, thinking of the soft, deliberate, even delicate motion of CD’s tongue on my skin. Then I suddenly wondered what color his nails had been painted and whether he had painted them himself. CD was once the kind of person who would have laughed at a man who polished his nails and pimped himself out for drugs.

Oh my God, what a loser, Jessica kept saying, what a fucking loser. OK, damn it, I yelled. Jess, we get the picture. He’s a fucking loser. We got it loud and clear. A. God. Damned. Fucking. Loser. My sister’s youngest daughter was about three at the time, and she kind of looked like I did at her age, with two curly pig-tails on either side of her chubby face. She was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with some Tupperware, staring up at me with her mouth open, and when I looked down at her, she began to cry in that slow way that starts with a confused look, a quivering lip, then finally tears. Oh great, thanks a lot sis, Jessica said.

I took Jessica’s minivan and drove to the diner, but by then the diner had gone out of business and a Family Dollar had sprouted up in its place. When did that happen, I wondered. I smoked up in the parking lot and thought about the organizations that I could create to help people get back on their feet before they end up like CD. But I knew I wouldn’t actually do any such thing. I had already put in my dues at the firm and would be named partner by the end of the year if I continued to play my cards right, so there was no time for charitable work. Then suddenly I was startled by the rapping of knuckles on the passenger-side window.

I turned toward the noise, and a large, pale police officer peered at me through the condensation on the window pane. He made a circular motion with his fist, signaling for me to roll down the window. I did, and he asked, What are you doing? That’s when I realized the joint was still in my mouth, and I thought to myself, this is it, this is the end of everything. Forget partner, you’re fucked.

Dom Harris, one of the firm’s managing partners, told us associates that if we ever got into trouble, we shouldn’t lie. It’s the lie that gets you disbarred, not the indiscretion, he said. Then he added, but at home, to your spouse, you lie like a God-damned rug because the truth gets you fucked in the ass when it comes time for the divorce. However, this wasn’t a curbside blow job or whatever it was that Dom was into. This was weed, and although it’s not a big deal now, it certainly was then. And, I hate to say it, but I also happened to have some other drugs in my purse that would have made CD’s no-no list had he kept it up to date. I had to use every ounce of self-control I had left in my body to avoid glancing at the purse, which was right there on the passenger seat. If I allowed just one flutter of an eyelash to tilt over in its direction, I would have been doomed. Such a look would have been the sort of self-sabotaging giveaway that separates the successful people from the losers of the world. Instead, I concentrated on holding the cop’s gaze and trying not to shift my eyes in any direction whatsoever.

He shined his flashlight through the open window, ignoring the purse and focusing instead on me. I felt exposed for the phony I was. He stared at me long and hard, and he seemed to be thinking or recalling something from his past. Did he know me? He looked a little like everyone I had grown up with but no one person in particular.

What do you think you’re looking at, I wanted to say, but I knew what he was seeing. In the halo of his Maglite sat a displaced woman in designer business-casual clothing who happened to have a joint dangling from her lips. Wearing that sort of Saks get-up in Park City always made me feel like I was playing dress up, as if I were an imposter who would at any moment be discovered for the loser she always was. Finally, the moment was here, the gig was about to be up, and it felt, oddly enough, liberating. Free from having to be the Girl or the Nerd or the Lawyer, or Jessica’s Sister or the One Who Would Make it Out (Who Did Make it Out), I could just be another shitty loser in this shitty town. It felt like failure, and it was fucking invigorating.

I tilted my head back, inhaled as deeply as I could, and through a blissful swirl of exhaling smoke, I whispered so softly that the officer had to lean his head into the car and over my pill-packed purse to hear: Don’t you know, I said, I’m an undercover prosecutor.

He smiled, shaking his head at my calm audacity. Then he laughed out loud in a boyish way that reminded me of CD in the old days, before his teeth started to go bad. Get rid of the drugs, he said.

I opened the driver’s side window and dropped what was left of the joint into the parking lot. He laughed again, Undercover prosecutor, he said under his breath, that’s a good one. To him, the truth was funny. He didn’t see things the way they really were, not the way CD’s dead brother used to, not the way I was starting to.

Now get the hell out of here, he said.

I’m trying. I’m fucking trying.



BIO

Melissa Or crafts fiction that gives voice to the small, unspoken stories that exist beneath life’s many silences. Her characters both belong and do not belong. They are outsiders, whether in their own countries, their own families, or their own minds. She is writing a novel and a collection of short stories. 

Artwork: Image by McZ







ALBA

by Robert Hill Long



Begin with a woman in her doorway—
nightgown and loose robe, the spill
of light from her living room. It’s still less day
than night. Fog scrims the hills,

muffles the black surf below. She looks west.
Wherever she touches a hand
to her body—forehead, cheek, breast—
is a wing applied to a wound.

In the doorway’s dim parenthesis
she lets out ghosts, to burn off
like the fog. There’s no kiss
better than the sun’s; it will come soon enough.

And you, why are you watching her? The woman
facing you is a door. Wake up. Go in.



HANA COAST


In rain, the doves don’t call. Let
the Pacific resume its master narrative—
they blink away the details. Around each eye

a lapis ring chains sky
to sea. They utter a rivulet
of distances, yet live

at your feet. After the flood they flew
here because better than
any surviving thing they heard converging

waves of blue upon black upon blue,
moon upon sun upon moon.
They are the perfecting

of that echo. Their wings in the grass
that buoys your feet are rainclouds. Let them pass.



COMPLICITY


Trailing coastal rubbernecks, she descended
into a cave vibrant with the roar
of breakers and sea lions. Her eyes
stung with salt wrack, bodies black

as torpedoes made of fishmeal and bilge-water.
Once it was a sanctuary; marketing sleaze
made it a zoo. The adults avoided eye contact;
pups stared, refugees behind wire. She ended

her part by turning away. But she
had paid her fraction for the upkeep of this
franchise crowded as the bowels of a slave ship
turned amusement ride. She came up to the clean kiss

of sky, stepped into the road and was nearly hit
by a truck hauling the trunk of a redwood tree.



IMPLORE


Kill me in the water or kill me on the sand.
Kill me among the spruces on the cliff.
She was praying in a church without roof
or walls, crying hard. She could not stand.

In the zigzag of dead things at tideline
she sank. Kill me with sky black with rain
or cold blue going black and empty.
But she did not push her way into the sea.

Hard, hard to pierce the perpetual
noise at the edge of the world. The cold ache
in her knees was telling her to break,
break. No, she was not whole or well

but her fingers held one another, aware
that she was asking to live forever.



BIO



Robert Hill Long has published 6 books and won numerous awards, prizes and fellowships—including 2 from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Raised in North Carolina, he was founding director of the NC Writers Network, and afterward taught in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.

He lives with his wife Linn Van Meter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.







BOOK REVIEW

Bright-Eyed by Sarah Sarai


Review by Ed Go


The title of the first poem in Sarah Sarai’s new collection Bright-Eyed is a complete sentence and a bold statement: “Things always work out.” It is an assurance and a promise reinforced toward the end of the poem when the speaker assures the reader that “With the East now behind you, / the lush of you spreads” and promises that you, your “lush,” will flip “the pages of religion” and thumb “through in search of / a promised earthly garden / of ethereal delight.” The speaker is offering comfort here, while the poet takes you on this journey in space (toward the West—“the East now behind you”) and time, as the poems in the following pages unfold revealing growth through adolescence to adulthood.

From “a girl, twelve and studying / the ambient inhalation of family” in “Souls in the Penalty of Flesh” to “This thirteen-year-old / Balancing on crabgrass” in “Two-Story Bldg, on Vernon,” the poems in the first half of Bright-Eyed give us insight into the child the speaker once was: “She is young: a fact which proves nothing” she tells us in “The Crooked Road Without Improvement,” before instructing us:

            To offset appetites for urban nostalgia,

            think: rats: scurrying: ivy’s sprinklered

            banks before the house, before as in:

            I trembled before the hanging judge, so

            trembled ivy before the squatting house.

The poet does not want to indulge in nostalgia, nor does her speaker seek such a simplistic ploy at empathy. The flow of the verses here is from not simply how lines break from phrase to phrase; it flows from colon to colon, reinforced by the repetition of “before”—a word steeped in nostalgia but, as a preposition, functions as a means of positioning the reader, situating them in the present only to view the past. The rapid fire use of colons supports this position: a colon is used to introduce a list or expand on an idea, or both: “think: rats: scurrying: ivy’s sprinklered”—expand your nostalgic thoughts to include rats, and expand that to include scurrying, and then to the sprinklered ivy enjambed onto everything that came before. No, this isn’t mere nostalgia—it’s the establishment of how a life is lived.

Sarai’s command and control of the line is what gives these poems their flourish. Both in her use of enjambment, such as “a girl, twelve and studying / the ambient inhalation of family” and in powerful end-stopped lines, exemplified in “Not Me, It Cries”:

            My past doesn’t haunt me.

            I haunt my past.

            In the middle of the night, it jerks ‘wake:

            “Shit. Now what are you gonna blame me for?”

Unlike enjambed verses, the end-stopped line is a matter of fact statement: “My past doesn’t haunt me” has more power as a statement than the image of the girl studying because we don’t know what she’s studying until the next line when we learn she’s not studying at all; she’s lost in a contemplation of family. The speaker now haunts her past, she tells us in another end-stopped line, and she’s not going to be blamed now. She is no longer the girl, she is the woman who, in the second half of the book, looks back at all the girls now grown: “weirdo girl, prom girl, high-IQ girl, / neutral girl” as well as “nerdy girl, abused girl / abused girl, abused girl, pot-dealing / girl, acid-dropping girl” in “No One’s in High School These Days”—girls “who in / seventy years will be not-so-bitter / girl.” Nostalgia is for the weak, the poet reminds us; the “immovable past girl” is the “future girl”—she has come full circle, come into her own self, alluding back to rats and ivy in “Some Mysteries of Youth Unsolved (Where I lived When I was 13)”:

            rats lay low in ivy,

            a wet bank of it,

            the leveling up of a slope

            straining for your house

            wrapped in scrim.

The girl is a woman now looking back, not nostalgically but understanding poetic “reenactment being / a distortion, a cry, and /even now, a question.”

Sarai’s control of poetic structures is not only demonstrated in enjambed and end-stops verses; it is present in the collection’s prose pieces as well. Prose poems remove the necessary distraction of verse’s line breaks and focuses readers on imagery and ideas. Sarai’s prose runs counter to the rhythms of her verse by creating a more flowing cascade of imagery, as exemplified in the title poem which begins with the reminder “The past is over” before immersing us in the images of the past: “The pain center was a tumor crazy for your right ovary”; “It’s malleable, not like ducklings, more like wet clay shivering in anticipation of thumbs”; “Zero in on the bright-eyed and hopping with more.” Each of these images is connected by ideas: “Memory is unreliable”; “Look to your future”; “Unreliable memory is understudy for sublimity.” All of this grounds the reader in a certain stability that is required when reenacting the past in poetry, and it takes a true practitioner of the art and master of the craft to pull together a collection this vibrant and stunning.

Moving without being sentimental, structured while feeling organic, Sarah Sarai’s Bright-Eyed skillfully displays her command of language to focus the experience of the past into a foundation for the present in order to connect the personal to the universal.



BIO



Ed Go is a Chinese-Filipino-Portuguese-English-Scottish-Irish American writer raised in Massachusetts, Virginia, Alaska, Hawaii and Connecticut. His writings have been published in various online and print journals and anthologies, and his chapbook Deleted Scenes from the Autobiography of Ed Go as told by Napoleon Id was published in 2014 by Other Rooms Press, and “new machines,” a sequence of twenty-one prose poems in the anthology Urgent Bards in 2016 by Urbantgarde Press.







No Toe in the Water

by Patricia Ann Bowen



Mom, my sister Rachel, and I boarded the Zurich Flughafen train to Forch in northern Switzerland, accompanying our mother to end her own life by her own hand in her own pragmatic way. Here we were, on foreign land, on a mission to an even more foreign one, minus our brother who “couldn’t get away” from his law firm, much as we’d all expected, as he’d never had a good relationship with our headstrong mother, even as a likewise headstrong child.

Though nearly ninety, our mother wasn’t as frail as people decades younger, and she’d remained more frugal than most. Raised in New England by German immigrant parents, she told us our family members had certain values stamped on their birth certificates, and low-cost public transportation fit right in with those sensibilities. Besides, she loved trains. We all did. She used to take us as children on Amtrak from Boston to Montreal where we toured the zoo and the flower shows, and on the way she’d have us follow along on an unwieldy paper map spread across the table between our bench seats, pointing out each town and site of interest.

The economical train ride we were on now was the last leg of her last trip.

We helped her manage the short walk from the train station to the three-room apartment arranged by Dignified Dying, the association that assisted folks like us with all the details for such procedures. We gained access to the accommodation with a door code, programmed to the year Mom was born, 1936, so we wouldn’t forget it. The place was one cut above spartan, at least by American standards, but comfortable. A small open living room/kitchenette combination, a guest room with twin beds, and a room where my mother would self-administer her cocktail of lethal drugs. Hers held a queen bed covered with overstuffed down pillows and an equally overstuffed off-white duvet surrounded by four high-backed wooden chairs with green seat cushions. A sideboard held candles, drinking glasses, notepads, and pens.

A medical assistant came by minutes after we arrived, along with a volunteer who turned out to be a student working toward her degree in Social Psychology. They were pleasant and patient as they helped us unpack and settle in while we endured a final round of verbal legalisms and paperwork. In their presence, we met on Zoom with the prescribing physician, one of the same ones Mom had Zoomed with from her home back in the States. It was late morning by the time our guardians left, and we had forty-four more hours to spend with our mother because she had forty-four more hours remaining in her life.

–  –  –

Mom had invited Rachel and me to her home for brunch on a fragrant early spring morning six months ago. After the hazelnut coffee, avocado toast, and carrot muffins were consumed, but for one more cup of coffee out on the deck of her condo, while robins and wrens conversed in the nearby trees, she asked us to help her die with dignity. She said each year her world was getting smaller, she’d outlived all of her siblings and cousins… everyone who’d known her “when”, each year her body allowed her less and less choice of what she was able to do, and every year she added at least one new medical specialist to the roster of physicians approved by her insurance provider.

“This year’s is a neurologist,” she said, “and her diagnostic gift for me is Parkinson’s. So I want to put a stop to this, get it over with. You both know I’m not like those dainty ninnies who step into the swimming pool one toe at a time, making their whole body tremble again and again with each caress of deeper water. I’d rather jump in all at once, immerse myself in the reality. I prefer to ‘just do it.’”

Mom told us she’d been researching assisted dying for the past few years. We knew that her dearest friend, Sydelle, had wanted that way out and enlisted a nurse friend to help her when the time came. When it did come, the nurse friend reneged, and Sydelle sunk into sadness, sedentariness, and senility, claiming to all who would hear her that she was just waiting… waiting to die. “That won’t be me,” Mom said. “I won’t let it. I want to go to Switzerland, be one of those suicide tourists, and I want the two of you to help me.”

“That isn’t funny,” I said. “How can you joke about dying?”

“She’s not joking, Rose,” Rachel said. “She’s being Mom. I can’t say that I agree with what she’s asking us to do. I have to think it through. But I don’t want to see the dark future she’s projecting for herself any more than she does.”

“No, it’s too much to ask, Mom. I can’t help you kill yourself.” Tears were flooding my eyes.

“But you can watch me go further downhill every time you see me?” She locked her hands onto the arms of her chair, leaned forward, glared at me, and raised her voice like she was talking to a recalcitrant child. “Is that about you or about me? Do I have to live a life of increasing misery because you want me to?” She wagged a finger at me and laughed. “Bad girl.”

“You know she’s right,” Rachel said. “If you won’t help her, I will. But I think you should. And Robert, too. This is more than Mom’s issue; we should all own it.”

“That’s sweet of you, dear. I knew if anyone would see things my way it would be you.”

Oh, her little digs. I loved my mother dearly, but she had a way of trashing my feelings with her offhand remarks. My sister played her much better than I did, maybe because she had a few more years’ experience as her daughter.

“I mean it, Mom,” Rachel said. “I’ll help. I’ll track down Geraldine Frisch. You remember her, my old marketing professor at AU in Geneva. We’ve stayed in touch off and on over the years and I know she helped her sister, who had ALS, process the Swiss legal and medical approvals.”

“Thank you. I’d like that. And speaking of Robert, I invited him here, but I’m glad he couldn’t make it,” Mom said. “He’d start talking like a lawyer, trying to convince me, in his own so eloquent way, that the doctors in this great state in this great country know better than I about my inalienable human rights.”

I laughed through my tears, despite the grim topic. I couldn’t help it. She’d imitated her son’s voice and gestures to a T. She knew him so well. How sad for her, for all of us, that they weren’t closer, weren’t there for each other. I’d have to call him. It was only fair that he knew what our mother’s plan was. Despite her disdain for his logic, I felt he could help me come to terms with her decision … or not.

–  –  –

It was 7:05 am. Time.

Rachel and I lay on either side of our mother, she under the duvet and we on top.

Two staff members from Dignified Dying were present to witness Mom’s death. They set up a long thin metal tripod with a digital recorder to document the procedure for legal liabilities.

I asked Mom, “Is it okay if I get under the covers with you? I want to feel the warmth of your body, end to end, one last time.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied, with an ear-to-ear smile that crinkled her eyes.

“Me, too,” Rachel said, and we both removed our shoes, stood up, lifted our side of the comforter, and slid underneath. I mused for a moment then got up, took off every stitch of my clothes, and repositioned myself underneath the covers again, under Mom’s left arm, my tummy to her left side, leg to leg. I didn’t care if the camera was rolling. I wanted to be as close to my mother as I could be. I wasn’t surprised when Rachel followed my lead on the other side.

I cried.  I perspired. I wanted to stop the clock. I wanted this not to be happening. I wanted my mother to change her mind.

One of the assistants handed Mom a liquid emetic to drink so she wouldn’t barf the final drug. While it took effect, Rachel, Mom, and I spent the next thirty minutes whispering about our newest family members, her first great-grandchildren, and about the world she hoped they’d grow up in. I’d thought about recording her final words on my phone, but we all decided to eschew technology at that moment. There was enough of it in the room already.

Then the other assistant had a second glass in hand with 15 grams of powdered pentobarbital dissolved in water. “Would you like a straw, Emily?” she asked in a warm German-accented voice.

“No, thank you.”

“Are you ready?” the assistant asked.

Mom kissed Rachel on the cheek and said, “I love you”, and then me. “And be sure to give Robert my note,” she added. Finally, she looked up and told the woman, “I am now.”

“Will you drink this voluntarily?”

“I will.”

“Here you are, then.”

She drank it all. Took our hands and squeezed them. In a minute her eyes fluttered. In ten more it was over, the camera dismantled. In fifteen more my sister and I left our mother’s side, dressed, and sat with her until her body was taken away.

–  –  –

Rachel and I closed up the apartment and erased the door code per the instructions in the Dignified Dying Guidelines for Family and Friends. We were allowed to stay there a few more days, but the place was like an emotional morgue. We moved to the Hotel Alexander Zurich to await the final package of paperwork along with Mom’s cremains. After we settled in, Rachel called our brother, waking him on purpose at some ungodly hour, and told him it was over. He informed her he’d spoken with Mom before she left for the airport, but we didn’t know whether to believe him or not. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything.

The Alexander is in Old Town Zurich, in the German-speaking section of Switzerland, on the banks of the Limmat River, and a five-minute walk from the train station that would take us back to the airport. Our mother wanted her ashes scattered to the winds so, as she put it, “what’s left of me will find many new homes in the universe.” The broad Limmat was perfect for such a mission, so after a late dinner on our final night in the city, Rachel and I packed ourselves a thermos of strong Cabernet and strolled the bridge across from our hotel. Every few steps we’d pause, sip, and discreetly pour a small cup of Mom’s ashes into the rushing water while reciting a memory of her.

“She went out the way she wanted. No fuss. No frills.” I said, poured a cupful of Mom into the river, and sipped.

“She and Dad had such high hopes for Robert, and he fulfilled every one of them. Too bad it didn’t bring lasting happiness for any of them.” Rachel poured a cup.

“She was a better dancer than all of us combined, including Robert. I loved watching her and Dad on the dance floor at our weddings. Their moves. The looks in their eyes. I still miss him. And now I’m missing both of them.” I poured a cup.

“She was the best cook. Potato pancakes. Carrot cake. Lamb couscous.” Rachel poured a cup.

… and so on and so on.

We ran out of ashes before we ran out of memories. But we had one more thing to do while we drank the dregs of our thermos. We sat down on a bench at the end of the bridge and took out a slip of vellum from the unsealed envelope with “ROBERT” printed on its front. She’d left a message for each of us, unsealed, I guess so we could read all the others, so we had. His read:

My dear, dear son,

You will find the things I want you to know, if you care to know them, in the journals I’ve kept off and on for the past sixty years. They are on a shelf under my desk. You can’t miss them.

I have always loved you in my own way, and I know you loved me in yours.

Mother

Back at the hotel, we got a special delivery envelope from the concierge, put the now-sealed vellum inside it, and addressed it to our brother.



BIO

Patricia Ann Bowen is the author of a medical time travel trilogy, a short story collection about people in challenging circumstances, and a serialized beach read. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and most recently in Mystery Tribune, Chamber Magazine, Idle Ink, Unlikely Stories, and Commuterlit.com.

She’s taught short story writing, and she leads a critique group of short story writers for the Atlanta Writer’s Club. She divides her time between the burbs in Georgia and at the beach in South Carolina, has four sons, grandkids all over the world, and two cats in the yard. You can connect with her at www.patriciabowen.com







Summer Evening Music

by Daye Phillippo



A breeze sifts the feathery locust leaves
   the way the mind sifts memory, tenderly.

The sun, that old dog, takes its time settling
   behind the train station. On the front steps

the Lafayette Citizens Band is tuning up. Noah
   our sixteen-year-old, will tonight belt out

jazz and Sousa and Mozart, same saxophone
   my father played, same band when I was young.

Lamppost globes wash the evening watercolor.
   Even the train seems to pass, whispering.

Summer evening music as the moon rises
   and children chase, barefoot in grass beneath trees.

Beside me, my pregnant daughter, her unborn son,
   turning in his amniotic sea, must hear

the music, too, watery soundings like whalesong.



Evensong

            to GMH


I saw no kingfisher or “roundy well,”
evening, late summer prayer walk
around the hayfield behind the church,
but heard a killdeer shrill as it swooped
and dove by three crosses on the hill,
white undersides of its wings, and I
saw among the swarming gnats, bright
with setting-sun light, a dragonfly
“catch flame,” and felt the communion
of a like mind, walking with me there.
All over the field, awns of grass flamed,
table of earth, candles lit for evensong.



What Falls Into It


Each morning after dressing,
I lie back on the bed
to put in the eyedrops
the doctor told me to apply
if I hope to keep seeing,
and I watch
as the clear drop
falls from the tiny bottle
into my eye
and think what a vulnerable
thing this is,
to be lying here, eye open
waiting to receive
what falls into it.
They say the fastest speed
a falling raindrop
can hit you
is 18 mph.
Yet what about
all those people in countries
where missiles and debris
and terror
are falling into their eyes
each morning?
How fast do those fall?
Yet here I am, other side
of the same globe,
going about my day—
dressing, dripping in eyedrops,
walking out into the aroma
of damp autumn leaves,
the only sounds falling
into me from the distance,
cattle bawling for breakfast
and from the tangled woods,
the tiny chirps of a wren.



BIO

Daye Phillippo has lived her life backwards, first raising a large family and later earning degrees in creative writing from Purdue University and Warren Wilson MFA for Writers. She taught English at Purdue and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Presence, The Midwest Quarterly, Cider Press Review, One Art, Shenandoah, The Windhover, and many others. She lives and writes in rural Indiana where she hosts Poetry Hour at her local library. Thunderhead (Slant, 2020) was her debut full-length collection. You may find more of her work on her website: www.dayephillippo.com







Grandma Ward

by Jon Woolley



     One evening, after a dinner of whatever fast food chain was offering two sandwiches for three dollars, I retreated to my jail cell sized room for a time of forced self-reflection. I opened my Bible to the book of James, and read a verse that said religion is visiting orphans or widows. I didn’t know any widows. There was a dearth of orphans since the inventions of vaccines and organized agriculture. Seems if you give little kids shots and food, they tend to stay alive.

     The next day my roommate said he was going to visit Grandma Ward.

     “I didn’t know you had a grandma nearby?”

      “Oh, everyone calls her that. She is an old widow I visit.”

      Prayers answered. Time for some real religion. I shall minister to a widow.

      We drove to where our town was called “old” and was once a separate village before being swallowed up by suburban sprawl. We pulled into the driveway of a ranch house with a huge picture window. It was across the from the library and a strip mall. The house predated all of them, as did its owner.

      As we advanced up the walk, I could hear panting like a marathon runner nearing the end of the race, or his life. My roommate opened the front door to reveal an obese yellow lab. It was as though Winnie the Pooh were a dog.

      We stepped into a living room with wall to wall faded light blue carpet. The fat yellow lab was trying to jump up on me, but unable to get her front paws more than an inch off the floor.

      “Oh, am I happy to see you,” said an old woman sitting on a dark blue sofa. Lot of blue. Her hair was black and perfectly permed. She was wearing a dark brown skirt and a turquoise blouse. A sitting garage sale. At what point do people decide they are done updating their wardrobe? For my parents, it was forty-six. Hers was also forty-six. 1946.

      “This is Jon,” Dan yelled, “He’s a teacher.”

      Grandma Ward had perfect hearing. Much like a two-year-old being told to go to bed, if she didn’t like what you said, she just pretended not to hear it. This caused pretty much everyone to raise their voice around her. Like one does with a little kid.

      Grandma Ward threw her head back and laughed. The exact laugh I had been missing in my life.

      “I was a teacher for thirty years! You know, I had a fella that was sweet on me, back a hundred years ago. He asked me to marry him, but I knew he’d never let me teach, so I had to let him go.”

     She patted the sofa next to her. And I went over and sat down on a blue sofa with a sheen of yellow lab hair.  She leaned forward.

     “Now, what grade do you teach?”

     “Seventh.”

      One eyebrow raised. There was a spark in her eyes. She reached to the coffee table to her left to snatch a glass bowl.

      “You need a piece of chocolate,” she whispered.

      And she was right, I did need a piece of chocolate.

      She proceeded to ask me all about my job and boring life, hanging on every word.

      A few days later, I was back at the corner of Main Street and Water Street, at the ranch of dark brown brick with the picture window. I grabbed her mail protruding out of the black metal box next to the door. It was addressed to Aida Ward. I didn’t need to knock, the dog having a seizure gave my presence away.

      “Hello Mrs. Aida Ward,” I said while reading the name on her the mail.

      “Oh, Aida is my given name, but I’ve always gone by Vareena.”

      “You traded one civil war widow name for another?”

      She laughed long and hard while extending her candy bowl toward me.

     “So, Jon, are you sweet on some young lady?” she asked while I sat down next to her.

     “I’m sweet on a lot of young ladies.”

      She started laughing so hard she almost tumbled off the sofa. Her dog, Honey, got all excited and started panting, sending golden hair into the sunlight pouring through the picture window. I saw a leash hanging by the door.

     “How about I take this dog for a walk?”

     Grandma Ward clapped at the idea and Honey nearly went into an asthmatic fit with excitement while I grabbed the leash and clipped it to her collar. I stepped into her Brady Bunch kitchen. I pulled open drawers until I found a plastic bag to stuff into my back pocket. Honey and I took off down the sidewalk. Well, I took off. Honey waddled after me.

     The neighborhood consisted of tiny ranch houses built on a cement block with single car garages. They were built in a totally different era. Just like grandma Ward. I knew this type of neighborhood. I grew up in one. In the 50’s and 60’s, these houses were the dream. Now they were homes for the permanently poor. Everyone owned three vehicles, two in the drive and one on the street, with the goal of keeping two cars running. People stood between houses and smoked. Everything had changed in this neighborhood. Everything but Grandma Ward.

     Two blocks away, Honey drags me into a perfectly manicured yard. Her girth equal to that of a compact car. No sniffing around or pacing. She lets lose a steamy turd. I want to turn away, but I can’t. This must be what it’s like when a sumo wrestler drops a constitutional. I wrap the plastic bag around my hand, hoping against hope that this thin piece of plastic holds as I pick up a turd the size of adjoined softballs.

     We walk a block back towards the house. The bag of steaming dog poop keeping time, swinging like a pendulum in my right hand. Honey lurches toward another yard.

     “No! No! I don’t have another bag!” I yell as an epic tug of war begins.  Honey strains forward like a plow horse. I dig in my heels, to no avail.

     Honey arches her back and plops out another. Bigger than the first. She turns to me and smiles.

     I look down at her business, glance right and left, not a soul in sight. I decide to use up any spiritual goodwill gained from walking Grandma Ward’s dog.

     “We gotta run.”

     Occasionally, in professional football, an overweight defensive lineman, a player who in the course of a season should never touch the football, ends up with the ball and has an opportunity to progress the ball with other large people chasing him. He will huff and puff and flail about in a comical manner. This player will finally collapse after running about ten yards and strain to stand again. This is Honey running back to Grandma Ward’s house.

     Her exuberance over her once in a lifetime exertion extinguished, she lay in the center of the sidewalk half a block from home.

     “Come on!” I chant while pulling. She responds with a raised eyebrow that says “Just choke me out with the leash.”

     I drag the cement bag back home. As soon as I pull her over the threshold, she jumps up and starts panting all over the place. Grandma Ward gets up and disappears into her Brady Bunch kitchen.  She emerges with a 1970 orange Tupperware full of leftover pot roast. She dumps it in the dog bowl and Honey goes to town like Winnie to Pooh on the honey pot. Then Honey pauses, lifts her head, looks at me, and winks.

     “She worked up an appetite,” says Grandma Ward, not realizing I’m the work horse.

     We both turn toward the picture window as a late model Honda Accord pulls up. A couple I have seen at church comes walking up the driveway. I hug Grandma Ward and prepare to excuse myself.

     “Dale and Charlotte are taking me out to dinner. And you are coming,” she states, as though choosing dinner over the first drive though I see is a tough choice. Honey looks at me and smiles.

     “We’re nothing alike,” I whisper to Honey.

     Soon I am sitting at a local restaurant. Grandma Ward chooses where she eats based on the special for that day of the week. Tonight’s choice was based on potato soup. Grandma Ward made me sit close to her so she could whisper to me and wink. Charlotte was quite a bit older than Dale, which caused quite a stir in the church circles when they married. Charlotte was pretty, college educated, and smart, and I’m sure she had plenty of suiters in her day, but had turned them all away. Now she was forced to double back and scoop up Dale, a day laborer with square hands and an “aw shucks” grin.

     Grandma Ward pats me on the back as I order saying I worked up quite an appetite walking Honey.

     “I’ll have the pot roast,” I say to the waitress.

     “Why don’t you have any kids yet?” asks Grandma Ward while staring at Charlotte, who is near forty, and near the end of fertility, “Something wrong with your pipes?”

     Awkward silence. Grandma Ward turns toward me and whispers in an unusually loud voice that conceals nothing.

     “Must be her pipes. My pipes are so old, I’m not even sure I could get a man interested in these pipes anymore.”

     I sit perfectly still. Mortified. Charlotte giggles a little. Dale chuckles and soon everyone is laughing as Grandma Ward smiles, like a two-year-old who has a hang nail on her middle finger and goes around flicking everyone off, old ladies get to say whatever they want. I love Grandma Ward.

     When the bill comes, Grandma Ward hoists a black leather purse that could easily encapsulate a bowling ball, up on the table. She pulls out a wad of cash that could choke a mule.

     She walks out gripping my arm and I gently lower her into the backseat, hop around the car and sit in the backseat next to her. She winks at me and leans forward.

     “Dale, I sure could use some ice cream.”

     Dale and Charlotte turned to see the eyes of a little girl asking her daddy for a frozen treat. They’d have better luck kicking a kitten. Grandma Ward turned to me and smiled, her eyes sparkling. And I loved her even more.

     The ice cream place was the type of establishment open only for the summer. A shack with a sliding window and four teenage girls in matching T-shirts, all sprinting around for minimum wage. I try to decide which of the 50 flavors to choose for my single scoop sugar cone. I order blackberry chip and step aside. Grandma Ward, black purse swinging, dressed like she just stepped out of a USO dance, fog of rose perfume, saunters up to the window.

     At the bottom of the sign listing all the flavors, is the Atomic Bomb. A fifteen-dollar concoction of the ten most popular flavors, dumped into a waffle cone the size of a mixing bowl. Like the $100 bottle of wine at a pizza place, no one orders this.

     “I’ll have that A-bomb,” states Grandma Ward.

     The shocked teeny bopper starts stretching out the ligaments in her forearm. Grandma Ward pulls on my arm so I am forced to lean down to hear her whisper.

     “Life is short. Always get the big cone.”

     When the A-Bomb comes out, they have to turn it sideways to get it out of the window. Grandma Ward takes it with a grin. I grab a handful of napkins and she takes my arm as we walk to the car. She’s getting ice cream on everything. A glob lands in her hair, dribbles down her USO dress and onto my arm. She’s oblivious. She smiles and takes a big lick.

     Back home, I help her into the house. She’s eaten a tenth of this monstrosity. She walks into her Brady Bunch kitchen, stands over Honey’s dog bowl, and drops it in.

      “Done,” she deadpans.

      Honey trots past me. Smiling. I have a feeling this is not the first Atomic Bomb for Honey.

      It was getting late. I hug Grandma Ward, breathing in the rose perfume that has become comforting. It’s been a month since I’ve hugged anyone.

     I’m back in the driveway. I can see Grandma Ward’s excitement through the picture window, I can almost hear Honey wheezing, and have rose perfume assault my nostrils. She is wearing a navy-blue pleated skirt with a matching top.

      We decide, or rather she decides, to head to an Amish restaurant famous for fried chicken and peanut butter pie. She digs her keys out of the black leather purse that could easily fit a bowling ball, pinching the ignition key between her thumb and pointer finger.

     “We’re taking my car,” she says.

     “Fine, but I’m driving,” I answer.

     “Don’t try to run away with me,” she says, teasing.

     “With what? A 1989 Chrysler with eight hundred miles on it, and an untold fortune in your giant purse?”

     “You’re lucky I’m not sixty years younger, or you’d think about it,” she answers, with one raised eyebrow.

     At the restaurant, she struggles to get out of the car. I lift her and get her steady between the open door and frame of the car. Grandma Ward is slightly plump but weighs almost nothing. Whenever I help her up, she always takes that as an opportunity to hug me or give my arms a little squeeze. I turn and lean in to the car to get her purse.

     It is autumn and the maple trees are a beautiful shade of orange. The seeds are aptly nicknamed helicopters.  I turn around with her Brinks truck of a purse and she has a handful of helicopter seeds. The Cadillac next to us left their driver’s side window down a bit. She is dropping them in like letters in a mail slot.

     “What are you doing? Where did you even get those?”

      “This man will be glad in fifty years when he has a maple tree in his yard. He’ll thank me. You need to plant more seeds,” she says with a slight indignant tone.

     “I’m sure he will thank you on your 130th birthday. Bring you firewood or something.”

     She uncurls her fingers like a kid who has been caught with a hand in the cookie jar. She has two left. I glance around.

     “Put ‘em in,” I sigh.

      “You’re going to be a good dad one day,” she whispers as we walk across the restaurant parking lot.

      The lobby is a sea of people. I have to breast stroke to get to the seating station. A taller Danny DeVito with a Secret Service earpiece is barking orders at a pair of teenage girls. He glances up at me.

      “Wait is going to be over an hour,” he snaps.

      Grandma Ward peeks around my arm.

     “Tommy?”

      He grins and barks “Table four” at one of the girls. She leads us to a circular table set for six people. Six people who are not us.

     “You going to get married? Have some fun? Have some kids?” she asks without looking up from the menu, knowing we were both getting fried chicken and peanut butter pie.

     “I’m already having fun,”

     But I wasn’t. I was all alone in life. And so was she.

     After dinner, we drive back to the ranch on the corner of Water and Main with the blue carpet, massive red brick fireplace, and fat yellow lab. We chat, count cars out the picture window, and eat all the chocolate out her crystal candy bowl.

     “We’re a good team,” she says as I stand to leave.

     “You get one of those handicapped parking passes and we’ll be unstoppable.”

     “It was in the glove compartment.”

     “You’re lucky you’re not sixty years younger.”

     I drove home thinking about old Vereena, who goes by Aida, and why I liked being with her so much.  Overpowering rose perfume?  June Cleaver fashion sense?  The fact that she probably slept in a formal dress? The ability to get a seat in a crowded restaurant? The ability to say whatever she wanted? Definite selling points.

     I had mostly avoided the elderly. My own grandparents lived far away and I never saw them much. One grandma was cranky, the other was a hoarder. I didn’t think I was missing much on the old lady front. Mostly old people scared me. I was scared that I would end up just like them. Unable to stand without pulling a table over. Smelly. Wearing sweatpants and white New Balance shoes. I shuddered at the thought.

     Grandma Ward was mostly the opposite of these things. She was witty, dressed nice, and literally smelled like roses. But that wasn’t why I loved her.

     A few months later, I brought my new girlfriend, Julie, to the corner of Water and Main. I’m not sure if our relationship would have continued had Grandma Ward not extended her candy dish with her left hand and glanced at me and winked.

     Soon we visited and Julie extended her left hand to Grandma Ward, palm down. We were engaged. Grandma Ward was so happy for me.

     Julie had a wedding shower at the house we bought together. Neither of us lived in the house yet. We were going to do things “old fashioned” like Grandma Ward would want. I entered the living room with steel folding chairs and Julie’s college friends and ladies from church were sitting in a circle. Julie was wearing a black cocktail dress and she looked really beautiful. Grandma Ward gave me the most evil grin, like a four-year-old just waiting for dad to figure out she ate all the cake. My future wife pulls me out to the kitchen and cups her hand to tell me a secret. I lean down, looking at Grandma Ward.

     “Everything was good. Everyone got me really nice gifts. But one person got me the skimpiest lingerie. It’s barely there.”

     Grandma Ward just smiles and nods.

     At our wedding, Julie had her grandma on her side, and I had Grandma Ward on mine. We got her this big flower to wear. We hugged on the way out of the church and some more at the reception. She was so happy for me.

     Turns out, when you marry a corporate lawyer, they are responsible for this thing called “billable hours”. I’m still not sure what it is, but it meant I rarely saw the new wife. March came and I was staring down a wife working sixty hours and my own teacher spring break. Back to sad and lonely. That Sunday, at church, another old lady asked me if I knew that Grandma Ward had fallen at her home and was in a nearby nursing home. I did not know. And now I knew what I was going to do with my spring break.

     I park in the side lot of Arlington Court Nursing and Rehabilitation Center next to the only other car. I haven’t seen her in six months. I walk into a lobby of overstuffed couches, brass lamps, and coffee tables. It looks like an abandoned furniture store.

     There is an old lady staring out at the courtyard. She has perfectly permed hair, a green dress, and I can smell the rose perfume. I sneak up behind her and perch next to her on the couch. It takes a second, but she recognizes me. I get the biggest smile.

     “I am so happy to see you! I was hoping you would come. But I would understand if you didn’t. You’re married now,” she says.

      “Yeah, to a lawyer. it means I see her about as much as I see you. I am off all week. She is not,”

     “What are you going to do with yourself?”

     “Hang out with you. We make a good team. I like this place. I think I’ll move her too.”

     “You can have my spot.”

     We both laugh and then sit quiet for a good long while. I have missed her. Missed her a great deal.

     “Did you drive here?” she asks as though I walked, “Sneak me out. Take me back home.  They make me wake up too early. I miss my house. I miss Honey.

     We talked for a long time. Neither of us had anywhere else to be. We both had empty houses waiting for us somewhere else. Mostly, she made sly innuendos about sex and me being newly married. She always threw in a smirk and a wink. I laughed until my side hurt.

     It was nearing lunch time. I stood and helped her stand. I walked her back to her room, which was no easy process. I walked backwards with my arms extended. She had hold of my hands and I was talking her through every step of the way.

     “Five more steps.  You got this,” I said as she ambled down the hallway, “Don’t run home on us tonight, Mrs. Jackrabbit.”

     “When does that wife of your get home? So you can have some fun,” she fired back.

     “With your bridal shower gift?”

     I have more faults than can be listed. One of my biggest is that generally don’t like other people. There’s seven billion people on the planet and if I met them all, I would like seven of them. This wears on a person.

     On the couch, sneaking up beside her, Grandma Ward’s eyes focused and her smile was magical. She had recognized me as her person. She was my type. I thought I’d never see a smile as pure as that again in my life. Never.

     “Do you think you could come back tomorrow?” she asked as I walked toward the door of her nursing home room.

     “Let me check my calendar,” I said pretending to flip an invisible day planner. She thought this uproariously funny.

     I went to that nursing home every day that week. When you find someone who really sees you, who smiles from deep in their soul at you, you return. Best spring break I ever had.

     Soon enough, Grandma Ward’s shower gift returned dividends. Julie was pregnant with a little girl. I was excited. Nervous. All the feelings at once. Grandma Ward was thrilled for me.

     “You will be the best daddy ever,” she would say. When I would ask her how she knew she would smile at me. As though it were one of our shared jokes.

     Twenty weeks into the pregnancy, we starting having problems. They were serious enough that Julie had to go on bedrest at home, and then in the hospital. We had to have a baby shower in the hospital, and Grandma Ward came, despite her distaste for hospitals. Another sentiment we shared.

     Weeks inched by. Then a month. Tough time. I went to work, and then straight to the hospital, every single day. It was depressing. One day, my wife was entertaining one of her many visitors while I sulked in the corner. I overheard them say “Grandma Ward fainted at home.  She’s here now too.”

     I walked out. Took the elevator to the welcome desk in the lobby. Some sixteen-year-old candy striper boy was manning the desk. He smiled at me with this “I’m going to be an Eagle scout someday” grin.

     “I need to see Grandma Ward.”

     Blank stare.

     “Aida Ward.”

     He pecks the name into his keyboard while I spell it. Blank stare again. Dang civil war widow names mixing me all up.

     “Vareena Ward,” I say like we are trying to guess an email password.

     “Bingo. Room 512,” he says while taking out an over photocopied hospital map and a highlighter.

     Old Vareena would listen to him patiently. Smile at him and wink at me. Maybe in another fifty years I’ll be as saintly as her.

     “I don’t need a map. I live here,” I snapped.

     The hospital had two gleaming towers. My wife was in one, trying to keep a life from entering this world.  Grandma Ward was in the other one, maybe leaving this world. I took the elevator to the fifth floor. The door to her room was ajar, and I could hear her and her daughter talking. I lightly rapped, slowly pushed the door open, and had to hold back tears.

     Her hair was permed on one side, but mashed down on the other. No make-up. No rose perfume. Just the disgusting hospital disinfectant that permeated my life. This was the first time I had ever seen her not wearing a dress. They stuffed her in one of those white off green hospital gowns. It had blue polka dots, like the designer was thinking, “what this needs is some dots, that way when you’re dying with your naked rear end falling out, you’ll have that fashion going for you”.

     She turned and her eyes focused. Her whole face brightened and she got a big smile.

     “My boy! My boy is here!”

     I saw the same smile as I did on the couch at the nursing home, as every time she saw me walking up the sidewalk through her big picture widow, and as she handed me a chocolate out of the glass candy dish while asking all about my hopeless life.

     Her daughter graciously stood so I could have a seat next to her. She reached over to take my hand and the inside of her arm was all purple and green.

     “What happened?”

     “Young girl was trying to draw my blood. She was trying hard,” she said with a wink. I knew exactly what she meant. Learn on someone else.

     “Your wife still here?”

     “Yeah, I don’t think they’ll let us go home,” I said.

     “I don’t think they’ll let me go home either.”

     We talked. Laughed. Smiled. She reminded me of what a great dad I would be. I missed being with someone who really got me. One of my people.

      Time flew. Unlike when I was in the other tower. One tower to bring you in this world and one tower to take you out. A life lived between the two. I heard two nurses whispering in the hallway. I knew they wanted in. I knew this hospital. Time for vitals.  Then some water and ice chips. Lights out, until a midnight blood draw, or the janitorial staff strolls in to empty the trash at two in the morning. Time for me to get out or be chased out.

     I stood and hugged Grandma Ward. Walked toward the door, but paused.

     “Come see me again, come see me.”

     “I will,” I promised.

     But I didn’t. I never saw Grandma Ward alive again.

     Because I was a self-centered jerk. Who learned nothing from her while she was alive.

      I returned to my wife, thirty weeks pregnant. I was staring down ten more weeks of going to work all day, spending my evenings sitting in a 1979 pleather recliner in her room, and my nights in a big empty house. But that didn’t happen. We had a premature baby. Well, she had her. I just mostly stood around and freaked out at the whole process. Two and half months early. Due date was April Fools and we had her on MLK Day. Welcome to your tower, baby Hannah. Live a good life before you get to other gleaming glass monstrosity.

     I went on paternity leave for six weeks. Which is exactly how long Hannah spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU. Her mother and I were there every day. This was largely because of her mother. Hannah wasn’t really my person. She was just a strange little creature who lived in a plastic aquarium. Then a plastic bin. Then my bed.

    I was at church, when some unknown soul came and expressed regret to me that Grandma Ward had just passed. I felt nothing. “Well, can’t live forever.  I hope to live as long.” I tried to put it out of my mind.

     Julie made me go to the viewing. Funerals are out of the question. No one has to go to my funeral. I won’t be offended. They have no choice but to be a morbid affair. I expect the same gracious offer in return. There she was, laid out in a casket. She looked like a makeup covered mannequin. I leaned over the coffin and squeezed her hand. It was like a piece of wax. At least they doused her with rose perfume.

     “Just so you know, I’d have put you in pants,” I whispered, half expecting her to open her eyes, smile, and wink at me.

      I fell into a deep sadness. I did not want to be a dad. I was failing at the one thing Grandma Ward was sure I’d be good at. I didn’t care about baby Hannah. I cared about me. I wasn’t sleeping. I was having nightmares about rolling over on Hannah at night. Finally, my wife had mercy on me and took the little hand grenade to the guest bedroom.

      I woke up, alone, at six in the morning. Drunk on depression. I wandered in to the guest bedroom to say good bye. Julie rolled over and baby Hannah, who formerly had the facial expressions of a Barbie doll, popped her head up. Then it happened. The thing that changed my life.

     Hannah looked at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes registered me as her dad. She got the biggest smile on her face. It was exactly the smile that Grandma Ward made when she would see me through the picture window. The smile Grandma Ward had when I snuck up beside her at the nursing home. The smile I got in her hospital room when I saw her for the last time. My daughter was one of my people.

     Everything changed. I would help her walk, encouraging every step. Go get too big ice cream cones. She’d go to school, and I would promise to be there when she was done. A promise I kept. I bought a glass candy dish. Because sometimes you just need a piece of chocolate. We’d feed the dog all kinds of people food. Hannah loved her dog. Mostly we just held hands and talked. Because in a world of seven billion people. I probably like seven. Grandma Ward was one. My daughter was another.

     Sometimes I still think about that verse in the book of James. It said religion was simple. Find a widow. It was simple, just not in the way I thought. By keeping company with Grandma Ward, I didn’t help her.

     She saved me.



BIO

Jon Woolley has been published in the literary journal Come on Georgia, and his humorous essay “Record Low” was published in The Columbus Dispatch. Jon is a public school teacher. He thought he knew all about children. Then he had two of his own. Jon Woolley lives in Dublin, Ohio with his lawyer wife. He is often the primary caregiver for his two daughters and they are the reason he writes. They are also why he has gotten into collecting bourbon. Jon is a former Division 1 basketball player. Now he is exactly 80 inches tall for no good reason.

Website: jonwoolleyauthor.com

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Podcast: Writing in Progress







If They Can’t See the Light, Make Them Feel the Heat

by L. L. Babb

 

           John Taylor spent the first hours of Saturday morning the same way he spent every Saturday when it wasn’t raining. At eight he mowed and edged his perfect square of lawn. Between 8:30 and 9 he hunted for signs of the oxalis that threatened a shady corner of the yard. After eradicating any sign of weeds, he decapitated the marigolds in the pots on the porch. Finally, he swept the walkways and stepped back to admire his work. Taylor always liked the way the lawn appeared to have just received a basic training haircut, each blade of grass chewed and standing at attention. He imagined the ravaged marigolds thanking him for his tough love.

            Now he heard the interior of the house begging for its weekly beating—the carpets, the toilets, the sheets and towels—all in a chorus. He would get to them in due time.

            He went inside, sat down on the couch, tipped his head back on the cushions, and closed his eyes. To be clear, this was not a nap. John Taylor did not take naps. Naps were for children or the elderly and though nearly sixty, Taylor did not consider himself either. He was simply going to sit for one moment before he continued his chores. A breeze puffed through the living room window blowing in curtains as sheer as tissue paper. The next-door neighbor was trimming his hedge with electric clippers. Taylor listened to the sound of the metal teeth gnawing through the branches, the drone rising and falling.

            He dreamed he was on his favorite forklift lifting an oddly shaped box and fitting it like a puzzle piece into an oddly shaped slot on a shelf high above his head. At the edge of his vision, he saw his ex-wife flitting down the warehouse aisle towards him. She was barefoot and bare-legged, the puddling white skin of her midsection draped in gauzy, multi-colored scarves. Taylor shut off his forklift. He felt a familiar bubble of exasperation rise in his throat. What did she think she was doing coming to his place of business dressed like this? He instinctively realized that this nonsense–her dancing and twirling, this loopy exhibitionism–was the result of their divorce. Without his steadying influence, she’d gone off the deep end as he always feared she would. He reached out to grab her arm but she skipped away from him, brushing his face with the trailing scarves, a filmy gauntlet thrown down, then she disappeared around the end of the aisle towards the shipping/receiving dock. Taylor sighed and trudged after her. He considered calling her name but he barely dared acknowledge that he knew her. At the same time, he felt a profound ache behind his sternum, an unwelcome joy at the sight of her.

            The doorbell rang. Taylor fought off the curtains blowing in over his face and struggled awake. He had a fleeting thought as the dream dissolved around him that it might be Emily at the door. He massaged his chest for a second as if trying to manipulate his heart.

            The doorbell sounded again. “Just a minute, just a minute,” Taylor said.

            A young man stood on the front step. At first Taylor thought it might be one of those school kids selling overpriced candy but noticed that this guy had a serious five o’clock shadow. Taylor couldn’t tell the difference between teenagers and adults anymore. Heck, sometimes couldn’t tell the difference between men and women. This fellow wore baggy shorts and a tee shirt proclaiming “ORGASM DONOR.” His baseball cap was on backwards but Taylor could see the shaved head underneath. Taylor disapproved of shaved heads on young men.

            “Hi,” the young man said. “I’m your neighbor in the house behind you.” He nodded his head, took a step back, and said, “Lance.”

            “Taylor,” he said. He didn’t offer his hand to the guy. What kind of person wore a shirt like that in front of a stranger? In front of anyone?

            “My wife and I bought the place a couple of months ago.” Lance shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You know that storm that knocked out the electricity for a couple of days? That’s the weekend we moved in. Lousy timing but it wasn’t like we had any choice. I mean, when you give your notice at one place and escrow closes on the other, you gotta go when you gotta go. You know what I mean?”

            “No,” Taylor said, bristling at the phrase “you gotta.” The divorce lawyer Taylor had hired and who had threatened to pull representation (and keep the hefty retainer) each time Taylor refused to relinquish one more thing to his wife, said “you gotta” a lot.

            “Okay,” the young man said. “Well, the back fence between our yards is falling down.”

            Taylor hesitated. He hadn’t been in his backyard in over a year. It had been Emily’s special place the way the garage was his. She had loved gardening. She crammed in wrought iron benches, a birdbath, hummingbird feeders, gates and gnomes and trellised arches. She had one bed of flowers planted exclusively to attract butterflies, another for cut flowers. Center stage in the middle of all this chaos was four topiary bushes Emily had been training to look like a family of giant, knee-high squirrels. She wasted a lot of time with those squirrels, clipping them, talking to them like they were her children. Perhaps they were, in a way. Taylor and Emily had met and married in their mid-forties, too late to start a family. Which was fine with Taylor. He didn’t really care for kids. They were disruptive and destructive.

            He hated the fussy, high-maintenance plants that Emily had chosen for her garden. It was just like her to find the messiest trees and flowers. Camellias fell off the bush and covered the ground like a bunch of soggy debutants the morning after a ball. A droopy Japanese tree dropped millions of curled, green leaves the size of fingernail clippings. The topiary squirrels grew together into a conspiratorial huddle that Taylor felt uncomfortable turning his back on.

            When the divorce was final, after he had to give Emily money for half of his own house, Taylor rented a tractor. He tore everything out of the backyard, smoothed down the dirt, and filled the yard from fence line to fence line with concrete. While he was doing it—hacking down the delicate Japanese maple, tipping over the birdbath, attacking those damn squirrels with a chainsaw—he felt a surge of righteous vengeance. But shortly after the concrete had set, all the anger just rushed out of him. He was overcome with a combination of shame and fear, as if something deep inside of him had been yanked out and exposed, unfurling and flapping like a banner that proclaimed his true, small self.

            Now as Taylor led the neighbor down the front steps and along the narrow side yard, it was as if a strong current was pushing him from behind. He felt his face getting hot. There was nothing to be ashamed of, he told himself. He could do whatever he wanted with his damn yard. He didn’t need to justify anything to anyone.  

            Lance didn’t appear to notice the flat grey moonscape. The fence was indeed falling down. Two eight-foot sections leaned over into Taylor’s yard, the dog-eared planks gaping. Taylor reached down and grabbed the top of the fence and tried to push it back upright, as if the problem were merely a matter of balance. The top of the board broke off in a splintery chunk in Taylor’s hand.

            Lance let out a low whistle of astonishment. “Man, that fence is toast.”

            “Now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Taylor said, annoyed. He had lived with this fence for twenty years. What right did this guy have to judge? Taylor could see over the leaning fence into Lance’s yard. There was a new deck, a table with chairs and an umbrella, and a complicated-looking stainless-steel barbeque. Terra cotta pots overflowing with impatiens were arranged across the yard in orchestrated casualness. He turned to look at his own yard. His house rose like a stucco battleship looming over a sea of concrete.

            “I called a guy I know.” Lance pulled a folded slip of paper from his shorts pocket. “New redwood planks, posts, labor, everything comes to $2,500.00. That’s $1,250.00 apiece.”

            Taylor studied the fence, hackles rising. It wasn’t the money that bothered him so much as the principle. Emily used to ambush him like this when she wanted something. She’d start out sweet, let’s just have a look-see, merely window shopping, not really in the market today and then the next thing he knew she’d be raising her voice, waving Consumer Reports, enlisting some slime-ball salesman to bolster her case. “What principle?” Emily would say. “What possible principle could you hold relating to—” and here Taylor could fill in the blank. A better dishwasher. A set of dinner dishes that matched. Refinishing the hardwood floors.

            The sliding glass door to Lance’s house slid open and an attractive woman picked her way along the new deck and across a zig-zagging line of stepping stones. A pink sweater hung from her shoulders, the sleeves tied around her neck. When she got to the fence, she smiled at Taylor. “Hi,” she said, with a quick wave of her hand. “I’m Avril,” a name that Taylor judged as simultaneously odd yet familiar, like the kind of name they gave to new cars.

            “John Taylor,” Taylor said, nodding his head.

            “How’s it going out here?” she asked. “Have we got everything all worked out? Honey, did you show him your research? The estimate we received? If you write out a check today, Lance can call someone this afternoon. I really need to have this fence repaired by next weekend.”

            Apparently, Taylor had been dealing with a subordinate. Now that his wife was there, Lance stared at his feet. Lance was obviously the kind of guy who had to be prodded into doing the simplest of tasks. It was sad what young women were settling for these days. Taylor had been a great husband. He always took care of the important issues—Emily hadn’t had to worry about a thing. Taylor imagined she was kicking herself for divorcing him. She had squandered him away like an unearned inheritance.

            Taylor watched the wife’s eyes flicker over his own bare yard. He wanted to tell her that he was better than his backyard, she should come around to the front porch, have a glass of ice tea. Instead, he heard himself say, “Actually, I think I’ve got everything we need to…fix the… ” He lost the will to continue halfway through then forced himself to push forward, “…the fence…in my garage.” What Taylor had in his garage was a pegboard of gleaming power tools that he didn’t like to get dirty, each one outlined with a black sharpie so that Taylor could tell at a glance if something was missing, a half bag of quick setting cement, and a jar of recycled nails that he had pulled from some old pallets he was going to use for firewood.

            “Really?” the wife said. “Why, that would be fantastic, wouldn’t it, Lance?” She gazed at Taylor with such grateful admiration that he was afraid he might blush.

            “Well, sure,” Taylor said. What was he doing? It was as if he had been bewitched by this woman whose name he had already forgotten. Sally? Abby? Aspirin? Aspirin couldn’t be right. He ho-hoed, continuing helplessly. “With Lance’s assistance, we can bang this out tomorrow.”

            “What? I was going to watch football,” Lance whined. “I’m not good at this stuff. We need to hire someone.”

            “You’re not good at it because you never try,” Mrs. Lance said. “I think this is just wonderful. I’m always in favor of saving money.” She turned towards Taylor and cocked her head conspiratorially. “Lance might learn a few things.”

            Taylor felt buoyant with benevolence. He had once felt this way with his ex-wife. How Emily had looked up to him when they first started dating! Emily had been, in Taylor’s opinion, a mess—expired tags on her car, no health insurance, a lukewarm credit score. She took his coat the first time she invited him over to her apartment and threw it over a pyramid of clothes on the living room couch. Plastic garbage bags full of recycling leaned three-deep against the cabinet doors in the kitchen. She was 46 and had a brand-new tattoo of Marvin the Martin peeking over the top of her tank top, right over her left breast. She wasn’t his type at all but after that night in her apartment, when Taylor offered to take the black bags of cans and bottles to the recycling center downtown, Emily had gazed at him with such gratitude it made his heart full. He had believed he could make her happy with so little effort. Looking back, he thought he must have lost his mind.

            Sunday morning, Taylor filled a wheelbarrow—two hammers, a trowel, a saw, the bag of cement, and a plastic bucket to mix the cement in. He had slipped off to the hardware store when it opened at seven and bought two lengths of pressure treated wood. The neighbors didn’t need to know that he did not, in fact, have everything in his garage to fix the fence. He tucked the receipt in his shirt pocket.

            He was pulling nails and taking down the old planks when Lance showed up on his side of the fence at 10 am. “What’s the plan, man?” Lance asked. He held a paper cup from one of the new coffee shops on the main street of town, the one jam-packed with people gazing at their cell phones. He probably had paid more than $5.00 for a cup of coffee. Taylor wondered if Lance’s wife approved of that kind of nonsense.

            “Most of the boards are fine.” Earlier, Taylor had determined that the rot was confined primarily to the edges of each board. The centers were good, solid redwood. A little green in places, a bit unsightly, but still strong. “We’ll trim the rotten parts and reuse these.”

            Lance looked at him with the blank face of a straight man waiting for the punch line. He took a sip of his coffee. “Then the fence would only be about four feet high. We will see right over the top of it.”

            “Well, I wasn’t finished,” Taylor said. “We’re going to nail these two-by-twelves along the bottom and use the existing boards for the top. Not a problem.”

            “I dunno, that sounds kind of janky to me,” Lance said. “Half of the fence will be horizontal and the rest of the planks vertical? Dude, I can’t even picture what you are talking about.” He pursed his lips and sucked at the lid of his coffee. Taylor wanted to smack him.

            “You got a better idea?”

            “Oh, I had a much better idea but you shot it down yesterday.”

            “Right,” Taylor said. He grabbed the bucket and the bag of cement. “When you’re done moaning, you can pull off the rest of the boards.”

            The job took all day. The quick setting cement was not as quick as Taylor remembered and the salvaged boards were more damaged than he first thought. By the end of the afternoon, when Taylor stepped back to judge the finished project, the result looked more like someone’s patchwork quilt hanging on a clothesline than it did a fence. Boards went horizontally and vertically, and up towards the top corners, there were spots where Taylor had hammered on small pieces of wood that overlapped crazily like some kind of collage.

            “Hoo boy,” Lance called over from his yard. “This is some piece of shit.” Mid-afternoon, Lance had switched from coffee to beer. When Taylor peered over the top of the fence, Lance waggled a can at him. “I don’t want to be around when Avril gets home and gets a load of this.”

            Taylor hefted his hammer in his hand, trying to store AVRIL in a readily accessible corner of his brain. She appeared to be the kind of person who appreciated frugality and functionality. So what if it wasn’t a work of art? It was a fence. She would be pleased with the work and the money saved. She could plant a tree or a bush in front of the parts she didn’t like.

            “I’ll drop a note by with your share of the expenses,” Taylor said, filling his wheelbarrow with his tools.

            The following evening after work, Taylor sat down at the kitchen table and itemized the cost of the repairs. He wrote down the amount he had paid for the wood then estimated the cost of the cement and the nails in his jelly jar. Bent or not, they had used every last one of them and they would need to be replaced. He adjusted the half bag of cement for inflation since it was several years old and the price had surely increased since he bought it. He estimated the hours he’d spent pulling and straightening the used nails from the old pallet plus the time he had actually spent repairing the fence, and multiplied that by his hourly rate at work. He thought about adding a rental fee for the wheelbarrow and the bucket but dismissed that idea.

            He got up and filled a glass of water from the tap. Should he really charge for pulling the nails? He would have done that whether the fence needed fixing or not. He sat back down and crossed it off the list. He thought about …Advil…looking at the list. He took out the inflation for the bag of cement. It still looked so petty, $12 for this, $48 for that. He removed his hourly pay. He crumpled up the paper and wrote down a flat amount. Then he halved it. Advil would shake her head in wonder. She would be amazed that someone could do such a fine job for such a small amount of money. She was the kind of neighbor he thought he might be friends with. He might even get used to Lance. Teach him stuff. He halved the number once more. $17.50. It was a ridiculously low figure and Taylor was tempted to adjust it up a little, just to make it more believable, then stopped himself. Advil would understand that this was a gift.

            And honestly, he didn’t want anything but her appreciation. And the $17.50.

            Taylor wrote the amount on a new piece of paper with “Fence Repair” and a smiley face next to it. He had never used a smiley face before but he felt this was a situation that warranted it. They were neighbors. Friendly. Taylor put the paper in an envelope and took a stroll around the block to leave the note in the Lance’s mailbox.

            He half expected the money to be in his own mailbox when he got home on Tuesday evening but it wasn’t. What had he been thinking? They couldn’t very well leave cash in his mailbox. Perhaps they planned to walk over later. He watched television that night well past his regular bedtime, leaving the porchlight on so they could see he was awake and available.

            Wednesday night, Taylor wrote the figure on another piece of paper, minus the smiley face, and signed his name at the bottom. “Your neighbor, John Taylor.” Now they had a choice of dropping by the cash or a check. This time he took the note to the front door in case it had gotten lost in the mailbox the first time. He thought he could hear voices when he knocked but no one answered. He slipped the note under the door.

            By Friday evening, he still hadn’t heard from the Lances. Taylor went out into the backyard to check on the fence. Perhaps it had fallen down again. Maybe something else was wrong. Maybe one of them had gotten sick or been in a car accident. In the grey light of the moon the fence looked as formidable as the face of a cliff, complete with outcroppings and toe holds.

             Taylor heard the back door to the Lance’s house slide open with a groan. Now he could hear people in their yard, voices and laughter and something else, ice rattling inside a plastic cooler. A champagne cork, a pop, more laughter. He reached up and grabbed the top of the fence to peek over. It felt sturdy, thicker than he remembered. Was there something propped up against it on their side? He couldn’t tell in the dark. He went back and got his stepladder from the garage, unfolded it against the fence, and stood on the first rung. Yes, there was something there, a solid piece of redwood against the fence that he had built. He climbed the second rung and peered down. Another piece of wood next to that—a whole row of dog-eared planks, screwed in and freshly stained, supported by the fence he had sweated over and paid for.

            It took Taylor’s breath away. The disrespect. The audacity of it.

            There was Lance holding court at his sissy barbeque, swinging a beer in the air, flanked by a couple of guys just like him. A trio of t-shirt wearing, baseball-hatted imbeciles. There were strands of white Christmas lights hung from the house, crisscrossing back and forth over the deck. Lance waggled his spatula in the air—king of his backyard. That little shit. Advil floated out of the house as if on wings, carrying a plate in one hand, shoulder high, stopping by one seated woman, dipping her head to listen, to nod, laugh.

            Taylor ducked down, crouching on the step ladder. They were having a party! They had used his fence to make a better fence and now they were having a party. They owed him money and instead of paying him for his time and his materials and his knowledge and the use of his tools, they had given money to someone else to make his fence look better and they were having a party that he had not been invited to. Did they think he wouldn’t notice? Were they deliberately having a party to mock him? A man laughed and Lance tittered and Taylor knew that Lance was probably telling everyone about the fence and the money and how they had used him, taken him for a fool. Because he was a fool. An old fool.

            Wasn’t this always what happened when you tried to help someone? Wasn’t this the story of his life? What did Emily do as soon as Taylor had gotten her affairs all straightened out? After he’d given her his good name, shared his outstanding credit score, put her on his car insurance with his good driving discount, rendered unto her his knowledge and expertise and guidance? She’d left him, of course, left him flat. And what had he gotten out of that marriage? Nothing. No, hell, less than nothing. He’d lost money, lost time, almost lost his home.

            Taylor folded up his stepping stool and brought it back to the garage, placing it carefully in its usual spot. Later, he would acknowledge, if only to himself, that this was the moment when the trajectory of the evening might have gone a different way. It was hard to see those particular moments when standing in the middle of a lifetime. The thought of being able to forget it, to just let it go, nudged at a corner of his mind, but quickly disappeared. He reached for the six neatly bundled stacks of newspapers sitting on the recycle bin. He loaded the newspapers into the wheelbarrow and added the pieces of broken-down pallets he had carefully pulled the nails from. As he propped the pallet pieces on top of the newspapers to make teepees against the fence, he heard the party pitching up. Lance was singing.

            This was his fence. He could do anything he wanted with his own fence. They hadn’t paid one dime for it.

            He went into the kitchen, retrieved a pack of matches from the junk drawer, and grabbed the full gas can as he passed through the garage again. He doused the newspapers with the gasoline, emptying the can. He lit a match, and touched the flame to the paper. It caught then fizzled and Taylor was in the process of striking another match when there was a whoosh that pulled the air out of his lungs. The newspapers, drenched with gasoline, the rotten wood, and the stain-soaked redwood planks, ignited into a wall of orange and blue flames ten feet high. A woman screamed. Someone shouted. Taylor was driven back to the wall of his house.

            Taylor could only cower and shield his eyes from the bright light. The singeing heat, the acrid smell of chemicals, and a deafening roar consumed the night sky. Shadows danced over the concrete making Taylor’s backyard look alive. In the spot where the Japanese maple had been, a tiny eddy of black smoke rose up and reached wispy tendrils towards him like a ghost beckoning. He remembered planting that tree, its new branches and leaves wrapped in a burlap turban, Emily watching as he dug the hole. That had been a fine day in early spring. Emily feared that the sun might burn the new growth so Taylor brought out a beach umbrella to protect the tree after it was in the ground. He and Emily gazed down at the pathetic thing, its thin trunk quivering. Without him, the tree would have died that first year. Now it was gone forever. Wasn’t that the way of everything you cared about?

            It was raining. Or no, someone on the other side of the fence was spraying water. Lance must be using the garden hose. It would never occur to Lance that the fresh redwood stain on their side of the fence was oil based. “You’re making it worse, you idiot,” Taylor called. In the distance, he could hear sirens and he thought he might go back inside and let someone else take over. Why did he always have to be the one to fix everything?

            He felt a massive weight pressing down on him, so heavy and unrelenting that it was hard to get to his feet. This was his burden—all this great knowledge, his common sense, the resolve to do things the right way versus the wrong way, his sense of duty. Wearily, he headed back to the garage to get the fire extinguisher from its place on the pegboard. He didn’t want to use it. He’d have to pay to replace it once it was activated. He was always the one to pay, he thought. Always.



BIO



L. L. Babb has been a teacher for the Writers Studio San Francisco and on-line since 2008. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming at the Peatsmoke Journal, Cleaver, the San Francisco Chronicle, the MacGuffin, Good Life Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart anthology for her short story, “Where Have You Been All Your Life.” Lorraine lives deep among the trees of Forestville, CA, with her husband Cornbaby Johnson, dog Smudge, and cat Cosmo.







Free Termite Inspections

by Hillary Tiefer



            During the time when the landline telephone was a powerful money-making tool, I took a job working at Burbank Pest & Termite Control as a telemarketer. I must’ve frowned after the woman at the temp agency defined my duties because she pointed out that my lack of secretarial skills made me qualified for little else. I needed the money and assured myself this job was only for the summer. In the fall I’d be starting a Master’s program in English at UCLA.

            On the Monday morning after Independence Day, I parked my Chevy Impala a block away from the office on Burbank Boulevard. It was in a squat brick building with a dirty and empty display window. My mother had told me it used to be a dress shop.

            When I opened the door and entered, a man in his thirties greeted me, offering his hand for me to shake. “Hi, I’m Gary,” he said. He wore a well-ironed button-down shirt tucked into slacks—the type of clothes my father used to wear to work as an accountant.

            “I’m Ellen,” I said, keeping it on a first name basis.

            He pointed to his partners sitting behind desks, both also looking to be in their thirties. They were more casually dressed in t-shirts and jeans. Gary introduced me first to Hank, who was heavyset and had an Elvis Presley’s hairstyle, with brown sideburns that swooped toward his chin. He gave me a nod. The other he introduced as Roger, who was roughly handsome with stubble on his cheeks and a rusty tan. He smiled at me and said, “Nice to know you, Ellen.”

            Soon a girl arrived who announced she was ready to make calls. She had stringy blond hair and wore a tie-dyed t-shirt over bell bottom jeans. I, on the other hand, wore my most conservative clothes: a pink jersey top over white linen pants, not quite so flared on the bottom. White probably wasn’t a wise choice for this place.

            “Let me introduce you both,” Gary said, “You’re on the same team.” He pointed at each of us and said, “Ellen, Sally.”

            The girl grinned at me. I noted that she was about my age, in her twenties. I assumed she, like me, was only here for the summer and in the fall would pursue a more promising profession.

            “I want you both to know your job is a vital one and we’re depending on you,” Gary said as if he were the coach of a football team—we were teammates, after all. “As telemarketers,you girls are going to contribute to making this firm a success. In other words, me and my partners expect you both to make us rich. There are plenty of termites in San Fernando Valley and we aim to destroy all of them. We are very excited about our summer campaign. We expect you to put out a big effort.”

            Gary brought us to a small, dusty back room, which probably had been the storage room for the dress shop. On each end of a long table, which occupied most of the space, were a phone, thick phonebook, pad of paper, and pile of Bic pens. In a corner of the room was a tall pedestal fan, which he turned on.

            “Have a seat, girls,” he said. “Sally, you’re responsible for last names A to M and, Ellen, N to Z. Just call homes, no apartments or businesses. When they answer you tell them you’re with Burbank Pest & Termite Control and you’re offering a free termite inspection. Spice it up, of course. Remind them how important this is and what a great deal we’re offering—inspections are costly. If they agree, write down their name and number and tell them a man will call them soon with details. It’s simple as pie. Best of luck—we’re counting on you two.”

            He was about to leave but then stopped and said, “Unfortunately the plumbing isn’t working in the office bathroom. But all you have to do is go out the back door and enter Hank and Margie’s trailer. It’s okay to use theirs.”

            “I’ll show Ellen,” Sally said, obviously familiar with the place.

            He gave her a nod and left.

            “I can’t just barge into their house to use their bathroom,” I said.

            Sally let out a giggle. “They don’t care. I’m best buddies with Margie and I know she’s very laid back. Anyway, she’s gone a lot and so is her kid, Billy.”

            “You know everyone who works here?”

            “Mostly. Margie went to school with my sister, Carol. They used to hang out with each other all the time before Margie got pregnant and married Hank. They introduced me to Gary and his wife, Claire. I was so excited when this job opened up.” Then she grinned and her small hazel eyes sparkled. “I plan on getting friendly with Roger. He’s some hunk. He makes my heart go all crazy with flutters. Margie told me he’s available—he recently got divorced.”

            “Isn’t he too old for you?” I dared ask.

            “Not at all. I like older guys. In my opinion they’re sexier than younger guys.”

            I looked down to the closed telephone book and knew I had to open it. “It’s been nice talking to you but I guess we should get started.”

            She grinned. “I’m going to snag plenty of A’s today.”

            That word snag made me wince but I wished I had at least half of her enthusiasm for this job.

            I opened the phonebook to the beginning of the N’s and saw the last name Nader. As I began dialing, I viewed this person as more like a victim than a potential customer. I was relieved when no one answered. But the next one did, a woman who sounded out of breath. I began my short pitch about the free termite inspection.

            “Termite inspection! Is that the reason I ran out of the shower, soaking wet with only a towel around me? Damn you!” Then click.

            I looked toward Sally. She was happily writing on her pad.

            I had a few more calls, some angry, some polite but no one interested in a termite inspection.

            The time arrived for me to have to use the bathroom. I waited for Sally to finish her call then I followed her to the back door. She opened it and pointed to a trailer about ten feet away. I thanked her and crossed a path of crabgrass to the trailer.

            The main door was open—someone was home. I tapped on the screen door. A woman soon arrived and opened it for me. “Come on in,” she said. “I’m Margie.” She had platinum hair teased into a slope and wore thick black eye makeup, fake eyelashes, and glossy pink lipstick. She was plump but apparently had no qualms about revealing her arms in a sleeveless blouse and her legs in a denim miniskirt.

            “Hi, I’m Ellen. I’m the new telemarketer. I’m sorry to have to use your bathroom.”

            “Hey, no problem at all. Excuse the mess. I haven’t had time to clean up.” She pointed to a door in a hallway. “That’s the bathroom.” She placed a strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “I gotta run.” The screen door snapped shut behind her.

            The small living room and adjoining kitchen were appallingly messy. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink. Crushed beer and soda cans lay sideways on a coffee table and a glass ashtray was piled high with cigarette butts. The room stank of cigarettes and rotting food, no doubt from the trash bag sitting on the kitchen counter. A man’s t-shirt was crumpled on an upholstered armchair near a television on a metal stand and by the chair was a pair of woman’s flipflops.

            I never let the apartment I shared with my boyfriend, Adam, get like this. Adam wasn’t as concerned about neatness as I was but he washed his dishes and tossed his laundry in a hamper. I wished he did more of his share of vacuuming and dusting but between his work at Bank of America and his rigorous studying of the law I couldn’t expect him to do much. This domestic job was mostly mine. It was the one trait my mother instilled in me. She was obsessive about cleanliness. Every time I visited her the house smelled of ammonia cleanser and every surface of furniture had a polished glean. Yet it seemed more like a set than a home since my father died, my brother, Jerry, moved to Illinois with his wife, and I left to join Adam in his apartment.

            No one ever bothered to clean this trailer. I had to brace myself for the bathroom.

            I entered and told myself to get my necessary function over with quickly. While I sat on the commode I faced a small table with a pile of Playboy magazines. The one on top was open to the centerfold. A nude blond-haired “bunny” lay sprawling before me. She had huge boobs—way bigger than mine. Thoughts about why it was so strategically placed there troubled me. I wanted to close the magazine but dared not touch it. I looked away, down to the grimy linoleum floor.

            At our noon lunch break, I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drank my Tab sitting by a round metal table shaded by a limp oak. It was across from the trailer and near a barbecue grill. After I finished eating, I removed my paperback copy of King Lear from my satchel. I was captivated by Shakespeare and probably would have pursued scholarship about the famous author had not so many others did so already. I opened to the page where I had placed a bookmark and read King Lear rant in the storm, “Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal….” I stopped when I noticed Sally strutting toward me. She was sipping from a can of Coors.

            “Here you are,” she said. “I was looking for you.” She sat on a metal lawn chair next to mine. “What are you reading?”

            “King Lear. It’s very tragic but I’m loving it.”

            “I’m not into reading,” she said and sipped her beer. “I want to live my life and not spend my time reading about somebody else’s. So tell me about yourself, Ellen. You got a boyfriend?”

            “Yes, I do.”

            “Is it serious?”

            “Yes, we live together and when the time is right we’ll get engaged.”

            “That’s cool. I wish I had a boyfriend I could live with instead of with my mom and my stepdad who’s drunk most of the time. I dream of moving in with Roger. Of course we have to go on a date first. What do you both do for fun besides the obvious?”

            “Not much this summer. Adam is busy as a courier for Bank of America and also preparing for law school in the fall.”

            “Gee, that’s too bad. Everyone needs fun. You can always leave him home and join me and my friends on a Friday night. We hang out at Joey’s Saloon, about a mile up the boulevard. Sometimes guys pick us up. But you can stick around the bar if you’re so faithful to your boyfriend.”

            “Thanks for offering, but I’m also busy preparing for school. I’ll be in a Master’s program in English in the fall. It’ll be challenging.”

            She slowly shook her head. “I hated English. But I like sales. And I’m good at it.” She clapped her hands to applaud herself. “I grabbed two customers this morning. That’s darn good for making cold calls—from what I’ve been told. Of course, I heard my share of cussing—worse than what my stepdad says.” She sipped her beer.

            “I did too and I didn’t get anyone interested yet. Gary won’t like that.”

            She popped up. “Well, come on, girl. You’ve got to be pushier. Don’t take no for an answer.”

            After my first two phone calls with typically enraged people cursing at me and slamming down the phone, I heard a sweet but shaky voice answer, “Hello.” It was a woman who sounded like my grandmother, which meant she was probably in her eighties.

            I proceeded to recite my lines about a free termite inspection.

            “It’s so nice of you to call,” the woman said. “My name is Peggy. What’s yours, dear?”

            “Ellen.” I wanted to tell this sweet grandmotherly type she probably didn’t need the termite inspection and say good-by but the zealous worker, Sally, could overhear me and get me fired. I forced myself to say, “So, are you interested in the inspection?”

            “I suppose that’s a good idea. My husband, Bert, used to take care of the bugs but he passed away—it’s been three years now. I miss Bert. You would like him if you knew him. Everyone liked him.”

            “Yes, I’m sure I would.” I lowered my voice and said, “So maybe you don’t need a —-.”

            “You say the inspection is free?”

            “Yes, but —-.”

            “You sound like my granddaughter, Jennifer. I don’t see her much. She and my son and daughter-in-law live in Tustin. They don’t visit too often. Seems the traffic is getting so bad it’s tough for them to make the trip. It was back in February when I saw them last. Jennifer is a pretty girl and her brother, Brian, is a real cute boy. He loves to do all kinds of leaps on his skateboard. I’m afraid one of these days he’ll injure himself.”

            I was listening to her while my mind drifted away from the purpose of my call. Finally, it dawned on me to say, “I don’t suppose you want a —-.”

            “Oh, yes. It would be lovely to have that inspection. When will you come?”

            I asked for her full name and phone number and told her a man would return her call.

            “That’s wonderful,” she said. “I look forward to it.”

            I looked down at her name that I had scribbled on my pad. Peggy Nelson would be happy to get a phone call—any phone call and a visit from anyone. I felt no triumph.

***

            At five p.m. I left feeling weary from my work. I had had success twice on this day. Besides Peggy, a woman had said she was planning to sell her house in the near future so it was best to get the “termite issue over with”—as she had put it. Sally was grinning ear to ear as she followed me out the front door. She boasted having four “bites” that day.

            I decided to visit my mother before heading to our apartment in Van Nuys. Peggy triggered guilt in me. My mother often invited Adam and me to visit or for me to meet her for lunch or coffee and I usually came up with an excuse not to accept. The truth was I didn’t enjoy my mother’s company. I headed for North Hollywood, where she lived.

            I drove on a street I knew well, of modest houses with neatly mowed lawns, agapanthus shrubs, and skinny palm trees. I turned my Impala into the driveway of a beige stucco house with a red tile roof—what had been my home for years. I had grown up on this street. All of the neighborhood kids I knew had dispersed. Even Bobby, the boy who mowed our lawn for years, was gone, a soldier fighting in Vietnam. But most of their parents remained together living here and enjoying retirement. My father died in his early sixties of a stroke and now my mother lived alone in our house and depended on his life insurance.

            I opened the front door and shouted, “Mom, it’s me, Ellen.”

            She rushed in from the kitchen. She had put on weight since I had seen her last—just a few weeks earlier. I was afraid she spent most of her day cooking and eating. Her hair was different: from a wedge cut, dyed brown, to a tight perm and brassy orange. She saw me staring at her hair and slipped her fingers through the curls. “I know it’s different,” she said. “I felt I needed a change. Anyway, my beautician told me dark hair doesn’t look good on a woman when she gets older. It drains out the complexion. Besides, I decided if you can have lovely red hair so can I.” She cocked her head at me. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have made brisket—your favorite.”

            “I can’t stay for dinner. I thought I’d just drop by after work to say a quick hello.”

            “It’s been a while. Can you stay long enough for a cup of coffee? I made a bundt cake that’s delicious.”

            I wanted to tell her that she was baking too many cakes but restrained myself. Instead, I said, “Okay, sure.” I followed her into the kitchen. I sat on one of the four vinyl chairs with a green leaf pattern by the table with a faux marble top, where I had sat for years. I got a whiff of garlic and sauce bubbling from a pot on the stove.

            “I was in the mood for spaghetti and meatballs tonight,” my mother said. “Too bad you can’t stay.”

            I feared she ate too much spaghetti but I again restrained myself from saying that. “Thanks, but we have plenty of leftovers from the dinner I made last night. We don’t want them to go to waste.” That was a lie: like most evenings Adam and I made our separate dinners, with no leftovers, but we at least tried to eat together.

            “How’s your new job?” she asked while scooping coffee into the metal percolator basket.

            “Awful,” I said and brought a forkful of her bundt cake to my mouth. It was delicious and I was hungry.

            “You told me it has something to do with termite inspections. I can’t see you going to houses spraying poison.”

            I shook my head emphatically. “That’s not my job. I sit in an office and call people from a phonebook. I ask them if they want a free termite inspection.”

            “Calling people on a phone—I don’t like that at all,” she said. “I hang up on those people immediately. I resent them making me come to the phone and then trying to sell me something.”

            I thought about all the profanity hurled at me during the day and some were imaginative. “Yes, many hang up—and worse.”

            “Why do it then? It can’t bring in many sales.”

            “Actually, it does. And just one fumigation of a large house can cost a thousand dollars. Today a woman agreed to an inspection because she’s selling her house and another woman also wanted it.” I’d not say that this woman had wanted to hear a voice, wanted to see a face, wanted some company in her life. This could also be my mother. “Mom, don’t you think this house is too big to live in all alone? You should consider selling it. You’d probably like an apartment that has a swimming pool, where you can make friends.”

            She pouted. “I don’t want to give up this house, where we lived for so many years. Besides, the mortgage is paid off. And I do have friends—my mah jongg friends and my friends from Temple Adat Ari El. I recently joined the sisterhood, and we’ll be getting together soon to discuss a project for next Rosh Hashanah.”

            “I’m glad to hear it.”

            “It’s you I worry about,” she said as she poured coffee into a cup. She handed me the cup and a pint-sized container of half and half. “I hate to think of you doing a job like that.”

            “I tell myself it’s temporary,” I said and sipped the coffee. I relished it and hoped it would perk me up.

            She sat across from me and stared at me while frowning. She made no effort to lift her cup to drink. “I don’t like to butt in, sweetheart, but I think you should quit and get a better job, one you really like and, well, maybe want to keep for a while.”

            I forced myself to place my cup down gently. I knew what she meant and was furious. “I intend to go to grad school in the fall.”

            She grimaced. “That’ll be quite an expense. I wish I could help to pay for the tuition but being a widow without an income isn’t easy.”

            “I told you I have loans and I’m in a work-study program.”

            “Yes, but it will be so hard for you and Adam. If you got a decent job—after all you already have a college degree—you could marry earlier and in time Adam will finish law school. You’ll both be on Easy Street and you might even decide to start a family.”

            I shot up. “I intend to teach college English and that means I go to grad school!”

            She shrugged. “If that’s what you want. I hope you manage it.”

            I lifted my satchel. “I’m leaving.”

            As I bounded toward my car, I decided I’d not visit my mother again for a long time, maybe even months.

            When I entered our apartment, Adam was in the kitchen area next to the living room, opening a cardboard pizza box. He looked up at me. He was handsome with coffee brown hair and turquoise-blue eyes but now his upper lip curved into a snarl, making him look less appealing. “I had a shitty day so I decided to treat us to a pizza for dinner,” he said.

            “Great idea,” I said and dropped my satchel on the living room carpet and went to the refrigerator to retrieve sodas for the two of us. “Mine wasn’t so great either. I hated having to make calls to —-.”

            “I still can’t believe what happened,” he said, while lifting a piece of pizza dripping with cheese. “When I opened the van door a bag stuffed with peoples’ checks fell out and straight into the sewer. There was no way I could get the bag out of there so I had to report it to Pete. Some sewer guys had to go out there and get it. Pete was pissed.”

            “That’s awful,” I said realizing his day was worse than mine. “Let’s go sit at the table.”

            “Yeah, and tonight I’ve got to hit the books.” He slumped into a wobbly oak chair. “I hope I can stay focused.”

            “We need a break,” I said. Sally’s words came to mind. “On Saturday we should head out to Zuma Beach. It’s been a long time since we’ve gone to the beach—or anywhere for that matter.”

            “When do we really have time for a break, Ellen?” He bit into his pizza and while still chewing, he added, “Tort law is hell. I don’t know how I’ll remember any of it. I’ll be booted out the first year if I don’t get a handle on it.”

            This was Adam’s great fear. He had told me many times about the attrition rate for first year law students.

            One slice of the pizza was enough for me. I lifted my plate and headed to the sink. I was rinsing it when I felt nibble-like kisses on the back of my neck. Then Adam’s arms wrapped around my waist. “We manage to have fun right here in the apartment, don’t we?” he said by my ear.

            “Yes, we do,” I said softly.

***

            The following Friday, around four thirty Gary came into our back room and said, “Finish your last calls, girls, and come into the front office.”

            I had just finished a call with an irate woman who had said “there’s a place in hell for you,” then had slammed down the phone. Sally was done too and we left together. Hank and Roger, both sunburned, were sitting by their desks. They were sweaty and Hank’s wet t-shirt clung to his stomach like cellophane. They had apparently just returned from doing a tent fumigation for termites.

            Gary pointed to Sally and me. “We have these girls to thank for making us money.”

            The men grinned at us and clapped.

            Although I managed to get them some customers Sally brought in the most. Occasionally I had listened to her sales pitch: “Termites right now could be eating away at your wood floors, the wood frames holding your house together, and even your wood furniture. You don’t always see them. That’s why you need a termite inspection and right now you’re in luck—the inspection is free, an offer that won’t last long and let me tell you inspections can be pricey.” I should’ve copied her embellished approach but just couldn’t muster it.            

             “We are raking in the dough,” Gary said, beaming. “We got ourselves a real Jewish shop!” This was said with a fake Yiddish accent that made me sick. “We’re not Jews but we’re getting as rich as Jews!”

            Everyone laughed except me. I wanted to storm out, not tolerate this bigotry. But I remained stoically staring at him. I needed this job only a few more weeks until I began classes and a job on campus.

            “Let’s call it a day and head over to Joey’s Saloon to celebrate,” he said. “Burbank Pest Control will take the tab. And we should carpool there.”

            Sally was beaming and said, “Sure, I’m in.”

            Roger slipped off his desk and approached me. “Come with me, Ellen,” he said, smiling at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “I’ll drive us. I’d like your company.”

            I turned to red-faced Sally, who was narrowing her eyes at me. I turned back to him. “Thanks, but I have to go home. But I’m sure Sally would like a ride.”

            He came closer and his calloused hand took mine. He said softly by my ear, “I only want to be with you.”

            “I’m sorry, Roger, but I have a boyfriend.”

            “Sure you do.” His lips sagged into a frown. Then he turned away and walked out the door.

            Hank rushed over to me, his nostrils flaring. “Roger has been suffering something awful since his wife left him,” he said. “You should run out there and be with him. He needs female company right now.”

            I took a step away from this man who smelled briny from sweat. He also scared me. “I’m sorry but I’m about to get engaged to my boyfriend.” I hoped that explanation would satisfy him.

            His blue eyes glared at me. “I bet you have no such commitment. I know your type. You think because you’re a nice-looking chick you can turn a guy down whenever you choose!”

            Sally took his arm and they left together in a huff. Both looked upon me as the enemy.

***

            On Monday morning Sally glowered at me as soon as she sat across from me at the long table. “I make most of the sales but you took just as much credit,” she said sharply.         “You said nothing while everyone was applauding the both of us.”

            I knew she meant one person in particular—Roger.

            I agreed she should take credit for this “real Jewish shop” and said, “I’ll make an announcement right now that the success is mostly yours.”

            I was about to stand and leave for the front office when she said, “Don’t bother. Hank and Roger aren’t even here. They already left for an inspection.” She flipped open her phonebook. “Thanks to me!”

            I opened my phonebook to the page of P’s and was about to dial the number of Martin Paterson when she said, “Margie told me Roger has a thing for redheads. You should’ve gone with him. No offense, but that boyfriend of yours cares more about his dumb law books than he does about you. I bet he just wants you around to, well, take care of his urges.”

            She obviously meant to be offensive and avoided me at lunch, where I sat as usual by the outside table. I removed my book and opened to the scene of the poor blinded Earl of Gloucester lamenting, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;/They kill us for their sport.”  

            I shut the book and closed my eyes. I imagined I was at Zuma Beach, my bare feet enjoying the warmth of the sand. I walked into the foam of a breaking wave and enjoyed the cool water swirling around my ankles.

***

            I dutifully continued in my job, making calls, and occasionally providing Gary with a name of a potential customer. More often than not a termite fumigation followed. I couldn’t help but wonder if so many of those customers actually had a termite problem. If they didn’t, I was complicit in an unethical practice. Yet I did my best to discourage those I considered vulnerable. These chatty people let me know they lived alone.

            “Lester was the one to take care of bug problems,” said one woman. “But he’s left me for his receptionist. They were going to motels for three years while he told me he had to work late. I was stupid enough to believe him and felt bad he had to work such long hours. Meanwhile I enjoyed playing bridge and going shopping. I even felt guilty about it. But then one night when he came home around ten he said, ‘Gloria, I’ve been with another woman and it’s time for us to call it quits. I’m in love with Norma now.’” She sobbed into the phone. “Just like that he told me he wanted to end our marriage of twenty-two years and marry that whore who works in his office. She’s half his age.”

            “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You should consider dating.”

            “I feel too much of wreck right now to get myself out there again. It’s been so long since I dated last.” I heard her blow her nose. “So now tell me more about this bug inspection.”

            I lowered my voice and said, “I think you can wait on it.”

            “Sure, hon, thanks so much for listening.”

            There were more widows and divorcees who considered me a sympathetic ear—but not all of them. One savvy widow said to me, “Listen here, young lady, just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I don’t need no damn termite inspection.” The phone slammed shut.

            But then there was a man who said, “I suppose I should consider the inspection because ever since Barbara died and the kids moved out this house seems too big for me. My son told me I should sell it and move into an apartment for seniors. But Barbara loved this place and I still see her here—her spirit I mean. I just don’t know if I’m ready. What do you think?”

            I sighed deeply then said, “How about we call you in a few months. You might know better by then.”

            “Yes, why don’t you do that—I’ll look forward to your call.”

            I made a note for Sally. She’d be here in a few months. She didn’t speak to me much since Roger had shown a preference for me—as if that was my fault—but she had informed me that the company hired her permanently. I had congratulated her.

             I managed to survive working at Burbank Pest & Termite Control until the last week of August, when I had already informed Gary I’d have to leave and prepare for grad school.

            There was no farewell party for me on my last day. At five I merely closed my phonebook, waved good-by to Sally who was still on the phone with a customer, lifted my pad with two new potential customers, and my satchel. The three men sat behind their desks. Hank and Roger were sweaty as usual after returning from a fumigating job while Gary, their business manager, wore his usual neat button-down shirt tucked into slacks.

            I handed Gary my pad. “Here’s the last of it,” I said to him.

            He glanced at it and said, “You were the model employee—never came in late or missed a day. We appreciate that.”

            I noticed he mentioned nothing about my ability to acquire customers, which didn’t surprise me. I said a quick good-by to him and the other two men. I was about to walk out the door but stopped and turned back to Gary. “Oh, and by the way, I’m Jewish. And … and your Yiddish accent sucked.”

            I didn’t stay to see his reaction but rushed out the door. I walked briskly on Burbank Boulevard even though the day was brutally hot and felt the joy of liberation.

            When I entered my car, I decided I’d celebrate. I retrieved a map from my glove compartment. Then I turned on the engine and began my journey to Malibu. I’d be there in time to watch the sunset on Zuma Beach.



BIO

Hillary Tiefer has a PhD in English and has taught at Southern Oregon University and other colleges in the Pacific Northwest. Her short stories have been published in Descant, Red Rock Review, Mission at Tenth, Blue Moon Literary Review, Gray Sparrow Journal, Poetica Magazine, Poydras Review, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, JuxtaProse, The Literary Nest, Smoky Blue Literature and Art Magazine, Five on the Fifth, The Opiate, The Manifest-Station, Pennsylvania Literary Journal and Minerva Rising Press’s The Keeping Room. Her novel The Secret Ranch is forthcoming the summer of 2025, published by Histria Books.









Belonging

by Ariel Fábrega


Although we haven’t met,
I dream of the day my heart’s
tired coastline finds your name
washed on the shore
in the foam around scattered shells,

and I will follow the guiding tide
to the great sand dune that
rests between cragged cliffs
I’ve tried to summit on so many
merciless treks.

As salt wind kisses my nose and
my eyelids blink orange in the bright,
I will run into the pillow of sand
to climb my dune,
as open and free as ever I’ve been,

because at long last, I will see you
waiting for me at the top,
shining as sure and sweet
as the sunset over
the western horizon.



For She Who Could Not Speak Enough


I.
For she who was my ancestor,
my great-grandmother’s grandmother,
or her mother before her,
or the daughters who followed –

she who took the plight of men,
to harvest, carry, and accept without a word.

II.
In my wrist’s bouquet of veins,
my blood swells like the rivers she wades to fetch his water.

In the wrinkles of my palms,
is a field where she wields a blade, and sugarcane leaves glisten with beads of sweat raining from her trembling lips.

In the marrow of my elbow bone,
throb vestiges of bruises from when he wrenched
her scorched body to her clean swept floor.

In the lines around my eyes,
she cradles a baby daughter,
their bodies merging like their fate, as one crouched in their tawny shelter.

Rage must have struck her then,
and taut as the pause between lightning and thunder,
my ancestor gasped its echo and shook to withhold it.

Yet she imprinted on her daughter the flash and weight
of unspoken words as bitter bridles of womanhood.

III.
Now when men claim the right to my existence,
I promise to be the last bound daughter and
to raise my voice over their whole world.

A flash of gold flickers in my brown iris.
In me, deeper than the wildest crevasse in the earth’s most hidden valley,
I feel a rumble.

So I cut the bindings of a hundred ancestors
and my lungs fill with their pressure
when I say:
“Enough.”



Unwelcome Miner

I didn’t know my heart locked joy in a stone cavern
until grief spalled it with an iron pickaxe,

and the metallic tapping was so sharp
it throbbed in the nerves beneath my teeth
and caused my spine to buckle.

I wish I’d been a little softer,
open to absorbing memories of my lost one
through my skin until they circulated in my blood,
becoming part of me.

Instead, I hoarded exalted moments
in my heart’s dark cave
as protected crystals,
never to touch or visit.

Then grief came to mine
by tapping,
tapping with the iron blade until my stone cracked into an avalanche,
exposing my treasure for excavation.

The crashing stone keeps ringing in my ears,
I’m still wheezing from the dust.

I’ve crumbled,
yes,
yet also
softened.



Midnight Homage to Wallace Stevens’s Blackbird

I.
Sometimes, I slide into my insulated boots,
and when desert rain mists on my cheeks,
I dream of the Arctic tundra.
There where the sun shines at midnight,
dwell those who know true cold.

II.
I remember
when he said he’d find me
after the bar,
so I’d watch the clock.
If his beer-soaked knocks pounded
too far into the wrong side of midnight,
no one could save my soul
from his splinters.

III.
A hare hops through a street lamp’s ambit,
unaware of coyotes slinking
in the midnight shadows.


IV.
My bloodshot eyes widen.
What have I forgotten?
At midnight,
drops of water from a leaking faucet
flood my ear drums,
and I toss to staunch the din.

V.
Dimes in a wishing fountain
become an unfulfilled galaxy
when the midnight
moon gleams.



BIO



Ariel Fábrega is a writer, poet, and painter based in Arizona. After academic pursuits in medicine, psychology, and finance, she connected to her creative ambition to write poetry and fiction. She is currently working on her debut novel.







Going Places

by Bart Edelman



I thought I was going places;
Then the hammer came down—
Crushing, to say the least.
Oh, I was ready for failure—
Taught it from an early age—
But not, at all, like this.
What’s a body to do, though?
Hurl itself off a bridge?
That’s not my style, I’m afraid.
Far more impact than I need.
Where’s hope in her disguise?
A modicum of positive thought,
If nothing else survives.
Yes, I guess I’m fortunate,
Able to find adequate shelter,
Until a destination is available—
Whether I reach it or not.
Just point me in any direction;
Let the wind spin me around.



BIO

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.







Sam

by Rachel Moncada



My son would have turned 12 this month. The only evidence of his existence are a birth certificate and a death certificate with the same date on them. I remember I was alone. For hours I tried to get his father on the phone. I sent emails, I sent texts. There are just far too many ways for people to ignore us nowadays. Eventually I had to give up because I had to push.

Sam was born April 4th at exactly two minutes after two in the afternoon. The sun was bright outside, so he got to feel the warmth from the window for a few moments in his short life. Exactly 11 minutes later he was gone. 

His heart was too weak. I’d known he would have trouble from previous appointments, but there was always a chance he might make it. I did everything I was told, from bed rest to eating disgusting food and vitamins. He was desperately wanted. I’d had three miscarriages before with the most recent only getting as far along as six months. But now, with Sam, I held out and even prayed sometimes despite my disdain for the practice. Watching his last cry sucked all the air out of my lungs.  I’m pretty sure my blood stopped moving through my body at that moment, and I just froze, watching him, waiting for any movement or sound. I didn’t want to miss it.

There was nothing to miss. He was tiny and limp, still covered in afterbirth and attached to me through his umbilical cord. I couldn’t talk and I don’t think I uttered another word for the rest of the day. Still alone with the nurses and my dead son, they asked me if I wanted to hold him. I did. Then they asked if I wanted a picture of us. I couldn’t. I felt very defensive of his little body at this point, and the idea made me ill. Selfishly I also wanted to be one of only a few who got to see him. No one else deserved him. A line from a poem pushed into my mind, and all I could think of was the future we’d never have.

I could feel pity staring at me from every direction. Nurses had taken off their masks and were looking at me, their faces twisted in pain. My doctor just kept saying he was sorry. He asked if I wanted to be alone for a minute because they would have to take Sam away. My eyes burned, my jaw ached, and oddly nothing below my waist felt anything. I hadn’t even had an epidural. I was just in as much pain as I was numb. I asked if he would stay with me for a few minutes. He pulled up a chair.

The nurses walked out looking back at me or at Sam, I couldn’t really tell which as they disappeared behind the door. Then there was silence.

Suddenly, my doctor grabbed my hand and began his own venting session. He knew how hard I had worked and what I’d sacrificed to have Sam to try to give him a chance. He’d been in constant communication with my oncologist since the first day I came to him. Everyone did everything they could, and no one was to blame.

He was a specialist in an already specialized field. My oncologist referred me to him as soon as I found out I was pregnant. At the time, I was on chemotherapy and radiation for leukemia. Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, to be more exact. By the time I had an inkling I was pregnant, I was already three months along and had been putting poison and radiation into my body the entire time. My oncologist recommended I terminate the pregnancy not only because I’d been on chemo to that point, but I couldn’t continue if I held on to the pregnancy. I would have to stop immediately to give the baby any chance. But that would hurt me. I needed my treatment, as I’d fallen out of remission months earlier like a brick from a building top. From stage 0 to stage 4 in only a couple of months. I barely had to think about it: I wanted my child. Treatment stopped and I went to the OBGYN he recommended who has seen many women with cancer through their pregnancies.

It wasn’t going to be pretty, he said. The treatment had already wracked the baby’s body, which was undersized and not developing properly. I would have to make a lot of changes and assess the risks. Again, another man asking if I wanted to terminate. I realized they were looking out for me. But it left a bitter iron flavor in my mouth every time I’d tell another medical professional I wasn’t getting an abortion. Not because I didn’t “believe” in them, but I didn’t want one. Hence, choice. I made mine. And now I was living with it.

After sitting silently while my OB rattled on, I’m sure as a means of comfort, a nurse came in the room to take Sam. I let her. But I didn’t offer him up. She had to dig into my arms to take him, but I admired her gentle touch. She had even gotten a different, softer blanket than those blue and white stiff towel blankets every hospital has for babies. He was safe with her.

I asked the doctor if Sam had suffered at all. Was there pain? Fear? Panic?

He said he doubted all those things very much. But he said Sam would have felt my touch. Which makes me dubious about his previous response. If he felt my touch, he had to feel other stuff.

Everything went very fast after that moment. Once Sam was out of the room, nurses and administrators and other people who I have no idea what they did were bustling in and out. Nurses tended to my body while administrators asked me what his name would be on the birth certificate. They asked me to verify my information. Then they asked if I was putting dad on the form. I don’t think he knows to this day that I left him off Sam’s birth certificate. Sam was mine.

I was in a wheelchair before I knew it. I hadn’t suffered much physically from the birth, so I was safe to leave that same day. They asked if I had someone coming to pick me up, and I lied. As soon as they left me alone, I abandoned the wheelchair and walked to my car. When I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat, I got this feeling of déjà vu. It was in reverse, though. Just hours before I’d been in that seat, driving myself to the hospital after my water broke. I had messaged him the second my water broke and kept trying to call Sam’s dad on the way there. Even now I don’t know where he was or what he was doing in all that time.

I drove home with no memory of doing it. I must have because I ended up at home on my couch staring at my ceiling. At this point I’d given up on getting a call back.

Sleep took me. I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t get a choice. It was after nine that night before I woke to a touch on my arm. It was him. I was too sad to be angry.

The next day came too fast. Sam’s dad was behind me, playing big spoon like he had a hundred times before. Occasionally, I would be big spoon. I’d struggle to put my arm over his wide shoulders, so instead I’d have to loop my arm between his chest and his arm as best I could. I welcomed his touch and was reviled by it all at once. My indecision left me frozen, staring at the wall, wondering if the events of the last 24 hours had actually transpired or been a cruel nightmare. Pain in my stomach and loins shot me out of the bed towards the bathroom, and the spots of blood and pain in my crotch brought me back to reality.

I stumbled back to the room after cleaning myself. My legs were weak and shaking, and I kept grabbing surfaces to steady myself until I reached the edge of my bed. He appeared in the doorway with a look of concern, asking if I needed something to eat. I didn’t answer: I just stared at him, holding his gaze as I fell towards my pillow and curled into a fetal position. My expression must have been grim. He retreated towards the kitchen, and I heard the fridge doors open and shut and the slight click of my stove turning on.

He was making fried eggs and rice. I knew somehow. It was my comfort meal even before my pregnancy. A couple over easy eggs, fried with avocado oil, put over a bowl of rice and sliced. The yolk would turn the rice a slight yellow. Imagining the color right then made my stomach turn.

I scootched up a bit towards my headboard so I could watch him. He always moved fluidly, quietly, as if he knew my kitchen better than his own. Which was likely true since he spent more time with me than at home. That thought sparked anger in me. He was usually with me, usually at my home. Where the hell was he when I needed him the most? I squirmed in my bed, trying to relax, as the sudden flare of fury brought about a boiling hot pain in my groin. I wasn’t allowed to be mad; I wasn’t allowed to be sad. I was trapped.

He finished in the kitchen, turned quickly, and walked towards me with a steaming bowl in his hand. I inspected him. I wondered if Sam would have looked like him or like me. Maybe he would have looked like one of his grandfathers or uncles. Would he have had that winning smile like his dad’s that engaged me the first time I met him? Who would he have been?

I named him Sam for many reasons. The least important being it was a name his dad and I could settle on. The most important being how many wonderful Sam’s there are. When I was filling out his birth certificate, it was difficult for me to write Samuel instead of Samwise. It’s not as if his dad was there to stop me. I could have done it. Samwise Gamgee was one of my favorite literary characters. He still is. There was no one braver, more loyal, or more self-sacrificing. Would my son have been like that? Could he have lived up to his name?

He never got the chance and I will never know. I do dream on occasion of a boy. Brown hair, deep brown eyes, quick witted with a devilish grin. But also kind. So kind and good. No matter what happens in those dreams, as soon as Sam arrives, it’s never a nightmare.

The steaming bowl of rice and eggs was placed gently on the side table in front of me. The clank drove me out of my thoughts and back to where I was. Where I didn’t want to be.

Don’t ask me now what I was thinking. I have no idea, I only have regret. Despite my condition and knowing how bad it was, we made love just then. It hurt worse than when I lost my virginity. But I needed the connection. I was falling apart. Part of me tries to blame him for that moment, wondering why he would care more about sex than how delicate I was. Stupid as it was, it was my decision. Afterwards we laid there, and I’m reasonably sure he was talking to me.  I wasn’t listening to him. I didn’t care what he had to say. I wanted to keep thinking about Sam.

I fell in and out of love in a 24-hour period. I’d never look at Sam’s dad the same, and I loved someone who I would never see again more than I could express. I was as full as I was empty. I barely spoke a word to his dad the entire time he was with me. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask where he’d been while I gave birth and watched our child die alone. Part of me didn’t want to know the answer. He was a love I always knew would go wrong one day. I hadn’t realized how horribly wrong.

It’s been 12 years, and I still dream of Sam. I like to fantasize about how wonderful and smart he would be, how adorable. Even how at 12, he would likely be giving me a hard time like any tween. Sam and I were robbed. I keep him to myself, rarely telling anyone about my ordeal. I can’t stand looks like the one the nurses in the hospital gave me. I didn’t want to give birth alone. I didn’t want to leave his dad. I don’t want pity. I just want my son. I have his ashes in a tiny ceramic urn, blue, with his name written in gold. Two small praying bears sit around him at all times. Fuzzy sentinels.

I’m not typically triggered by events. I can see a movie that discusses child loss without automatically equating it to my experience. For some reason, though, a poem makes me think of Sam. It’s titled, “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me”. Fortunately for me, this isn’t a particularly well known or repeated piece of poetry, so I can go months or years without the words making me fail. I feel like a failure still, like I should have and could have done more to save him. When I researched what more I could have done I found nothing, but I did find research that states he might have saved me. According to research I stumbled upon, the stem cells creating him might have healed my damaged organs and stopped the cancer from killing me. My baby, my love, likely saved my life even when I couldn’t save his.



BIO

Rachel Moncada was born in Portland, OR, and currently lives in Vancouver, WA. After 18 years working in the medical field, she is now a student at Washington State University pursuing a BA in English and Communications. She hopes to write grants for non-profit organizations along with her own personal work. Her writing is predominantly non-fiction pieces about her life and those around her. “Sam” is her first published work. 







Don’t Call the Sea ‘Cerulean’

by Megan Howell



“Or azure, or ultramarine,” Mr. Hewitt adds. He cracks a wry smile. “Or periwinkle, or atrovirens, or paisley. It’s fine to call the ocean ‘blue.’”

No one laughs. Mara-Leigh, my best friend in English 206H, doodles in her planner, face blank as she makes little hearts with detailed, hairy, little nips on their rounded ends.

I raise my hand. “What’s atrovirens?”

“It’s a color,” Mr. Hewitt says.

“Yeah, but which one?”

“A shade of green.”

“Can’t oceans be green, though?”

Mr. Hewitt looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time, though for the past ten or so minutes, he’s been picking apart the poem I wrote about Eternity Beach. The title is “Ode to Eternity.” I struggled coming up with each stanza because I could only think for so long before my worries—Mom, school—consumed me. My hope was that the same pain that held me back would filter through the words I picked out of a rhyming dictionary and transform into something beautiful.

“Of course, water can be green,” Mr. Hewitt says. “But what I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to give it an impressive-sounding name. Just write what you know.”

I nod my head. What I really want to do is cry. I’m angry at my teacher, but at the same time, part of me knows that my poem is overwrought.  

Mr. Hewitt pats me so lightly on the shoulder that I can only feel air—I think the school must have some policy against any physical contact. The feeling, or lack thereof, is a million times worse than the idea of him outright calling me a failure. I wonder if he prefers Mara-Leigh over me because of her looks, which he called Rockwellian during the unit on Norman Mailer’s American Dream.

“You’ll improve down the line,” he says.

I roll my eyes to stave off tears. I just want the class to move on, but he keeps going on and on about the ocean.

“I used to surf,” he says. He flashes a hang-ten sign. “Hard to believe, I know, but once upon a time in the 90s I was young and stupid. I drained my bank account to go to this beach in Portugal that has the highest waves in the world. Luckily, it rained my whole trip, so I didn’t get the chance to drown. I did eat a ton of arroz de pato, though.”

Silence. There’re still a few minutes left of class time. He won’t dismiss us early because he never does, not even when there was a fire drill. Instead, he goes on and on about the ocean and his three-year-old’s obsession with Finding Nemo.

“Asher’s at that age where he’s trying to understand the world,” he says. “My wife and I caught him filling up all our mixing bowls with water. She asks him what he’s up to, and he gives her this super serious look and goes, ‘I’m growing the fishes.’ He thought they’d just spawn out of thin air—or thin water, I guess.”

I purse my lips, waiting for the silence to return to crush his obnoxiously high spirits. Instead, kids giggle. Even Mara-Leigh smiles. Taciturn Mara-Leigh who only speaks when called on, and only in sparse, stripped-down sentences that mimic her prose poem about a shut-in. Of all my school friends, her and Marlowe and Kei are the most reserved.

I cry. I can’t help it. Mr. Hewitt’s schmaltziness stings. I prefer the judicial harshness of my old, sophomore year English teacher Ms. Antonucci. When she told me that my analysis of Helen Burns’s death in Jane Eyre impeccable, I believed her as much as I did when she said that my other, earlier work needed improvement. She didn’t give out consolations. Mr. Hewitt, however, writes them over all my papers, but no matter what I do he keeps giving me Bs and Cs.

Mara-Leigh sees me, sees my tears. What happened? she mouths. She whips her head around, searching for ghosts that only I can see.

I shrug, sniffling. Other kids are staring. I suddenly hate everyone and everything. And I absolutely despise the new boy who critiqued my poem the most during the writing workshop. He called my language “clunky.” When he speaks up, bringing up his great-grandmother’s life as a pearl diver in rural Japan, I glare at him. He stops midsentence, cocking his head at me so that I feel like I have no choice but to say something.

“I don’t get why everyone’s being so fucking mean for,” I say in between sobs.

Mara-Leigh won’t look at me anymore. She shields her blue—not azure, nor ultramarine, cerulean, etc.—eyes with her hands. I know I’m humiliating myself. The problem is that my self-awareness only pushes me to act even worse because I know there’s no going back. The whole grade will know about this moment before dismissal.

“My mom’s dying!” I yell.

No one speaks. I can hear this one girl, super annoying, typing on her laptop that she’s allowed to use in class for vague health reasons. I look at her and just know she’s talking about me in a huge group chat. One time, I heard her complaining to a bunch of senior girls’ about her friend’s eating disorder. The names that I want to call her make my mouth bitter, but I’m not quite daring enough to spit them out.  

I look up at the clock on the wall. Only ten minutes left of class. I stand up, grab my bag, and walk towards the door. I don’t ask to be excused. There’s no point. I just go.

“Well,” quips the boy with the pearl-diving family, “that was awkward.”

I let the door close on its own. Door opens, door closes—there’s a metaphor somewhere in all of this, I tell myself, something so powerful that it will surely make me the most authentic writer in the class. I start walking, but I don’t know where I’m going, only that I can’t stand being anywhere that I’ve ever been.

My mom really is dying. I just hadn’t told anyone at school before. I didn’t see the point in people knowing. I viewed my life as a seesaw, school on one side, home on the other—connected but distinct. Student and daughter, the two roles that I could play but never at the same time. If one was doing well, the other had to be plummeting to the earth. Freshman year: no friends, mediocre grades but also my Mom’s attention, which was so generous and overbearing—constant girls’ trips to national parks, restaurants, shopping malls, overpriced hotel tearooms—that I wondered if I’d always be that girl who had only her mother for company. Sophomore year: new friends, good grades but Mom’s cancer. Now, just one month into my junior year, the seesaw is broken. It’s bent at the middle, an upside-down u, a frowny face with two negative ends.

I just want my life’s destruction to be entirely my dad’s fault. He’s the one who called up the apartment last month to say I should plan on moving in with him and his new wife in Mississippi. Of course, I hung up. I couldn’t find the words, could barely speak to Mom when she asked if anyone had called. Writing became impossible after that.

I go into the bathroom and turn on the sink only to turn it back off again. Maybe I’m finally free, I think as I stare into my reflection and wait to feel something. My hair’s a mess, but at least I don’t have to be anything for anyone anymore, neither friend nor daughter, not even a promising student. I wonder who I am when I’m alone like this. Myself? Or nothing at all?

I hear someone come in. A new wave of shame rushes over me, making me hot again.

Agnes Rivera is looking at me weirdly. I say hi under my breath. She says nothing back, just steps around me and goes to apply mascara two sinks down from mine.  

I think she’s this way with me because people are always mixing us up all the time even though I’m Black and she’s supposedly not, her dad from somewhere in Peru where the people happen to have tightly coiled hair and full lips. Being near me makes her half-Danish side seem less exotic, I guess, but maybe I’m just being bitter. Maybe she doesn’t yet know that I lost my mind today.

“Agnes,” I say.

She looks up.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” I go on, “but it’s flattering whenever someone mistakes me for you. You’re super gorgeous.”

“Oh,” she says. “Thanks.”

“D’you think we look similar? Be honest.”

“Honestly?” She looks me up and down. “I think you dress kinda badly.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. You dress like someone who pretends not to care what people think while actually caring a lot. The pants you have on plus that sweater make you look like you write essays on, like, why it’s sexist to separate women’s clothing from the men’s.”

I laugh. The performance that I’ve been putting on for so long is over and I can poke fun at it like a retired actor reflecting on their worst movie. I thought that I was meant to be a quirky intellectual because the world let me be—it was one of the personas I could choose from, either that or loner; I never thought that I could be anything more here.

“Sorry,” I say, “it’s just that, before I came here, I’d always dressed super feminine because that’s all my mom bought me: froufrou dresses and stuff—lots of Lily Pulitzer. I became known for being like that for a while. Feminine, always in pigtails. I wore what I was given.”

“What’s your preferred style?”

“No clue.”

“Do you have a favorite color palette? A favorite color?”

“A period ago, I would’ve said cerulean.”

I expect her not to know what that is, but she nods and says, “That’s a pretty color. It reminds me of the Cycladic Islands.”

I nod along, but in truth, I don’t know what cerulean really is, only that it’s a shade of blue—light or dark, I have no clue. I wonder if Agnes can sense my ignorance. She takes out her phone and pulls up a picture of white stucco houses in Greece, pointing at their blue roofs, which blend in with the bright blue sky. They’re beautiful in a way that makes me sad because my mom’s in a coma and can’t travel anymore.

 “I have to go,” I say.

 “Well,” Agnes says, looking me up and down with a concerned look, “I guess I’ll see you.”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

“Are you moving?”

A large group of girls streams into the restroom. The bell rings as one of Agnes’s friends runs up and hugs her like they haven’t seen each other in decades. “Aggie!” she squeals. “You’ll never guess what happened.” She turns, sees me, and clasps her mouth over her hands as I fast-walk out into the hallway.

#

Mom’s asleep, not dead, her chest rising and falling as one of the palliative care nurses writes something on the little white board below the TV. I comb her long hair with my fingers. The machines keeping her alive chug along indifferently.

“Mom,” I say. “It’s me. Leelee.”

Nothing I say feels true anymore. No one calls me Leelee but her, and she hasn’t been conscious for a while now. To everyone including my dad and all four of my older sisters, I’m just Leanne. Constance, my oldest sister, the one who’s staying with me—“watching over me,” she says as if I’m still five—won’t stop texting me. My phone keeps buzzing. I can hear her yells already. Leanne, Leanne! Your school said you skipped. What the hell, Leanne?

I wonder if Mom’s favorite color is pink or if she only starting saying that when she had daughters. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I know less and less about her. My memories of her feel as sparse as the obituary she wrote for herself. Danielle Hastings, PhD. Mother, sister, wife, scientist. I wanted to hate the description, but couldn’t think of much to add that didn’t fall under those few categories. I know that she was the last of four siblings, most of whom have already passed; that she grew up in south Texas, moved to Hawaii for college, and stayed here in Honolulu for work; that part of her still loves my dad even though he cheated when she was still pregnant with me. If she lived forever, I’d still never learn what she was like when she was alone. I couldn’t just listen in to her private thoughts that used to make her smile while she did the dishes and laundry.  

My mind won’t focus on Mom. She’s too much, I can’t take her or her pain anymore and almost wished she’d been abusive so that I could be unfeeling in the face of her suffering. I think about the picture Agnes showed me of those pretty, blue-domed houses that overlooked the sea.

I want to go to the beach. I don’t want to just play in the sand, though. What I crave is the ocean. I need to dive into it, let the waves wash over me. Mom never learned to swim. She was terrified of the ocean. I wasn’t allowed to go near it when I was with her, not even after I’d started taking swim classes at the Y. I think what I really want is to be truly alone.  

“I’m going to go in the ocean,” I whisper in Mom’s ear, half-hoping she’ll wake up and say absolutely not. She doesn’t wake up, though. But the ghost of her concern for me still holds me back.

It’s literally right there, a thin cerulean strip between hills and sky. It’s a completely separate world that goes miles deep and sprawls outward for what feels like forever. I can smell the seawater, which the hospice’s brochure advertises as medicinal as if the residents aren’t going to die anyways.  

#

Walking to the beach takes much longer than I thought. When I finally get there, it’s late and I’m already exhausted. The setting sun is a punctured egg yolk bleeding shades of orange and red onto the sky. Everyone’s gone except for a homeless man chain-smoking under a makeshift lean-to.

I undress. The air is cold. The water is much colder. Every inch of my skin screams out as I frog-kick in just yellow undies towards what feels like the end of the world. This, I decide, is the ocean’s true form. Not cerulean but inky black and very lonely. I go out so far that my arms start to ache.

I’m not trying to kill myself. I just happen to be thinking about death when the rip tide grabs me and drags me far away. I don’t panic. I know there’s no point in screaming because there’s no one around but me and a million little sea creatures who don’t care about me. I’m not thinking about the ocean safety lessons from elementary school, my mind too worn down to remember that strong currents drown those who attempt to fight them.

In this moment, I’m just curious. I want to know where the world will take me to when there’s no one else around. I close my eyes and let go. Then I’m underwater. I imagine that my obituary would be just like Mom’s minus the wife and scientist parts. Maybe someone would call me a promising or even skilled writer. But no one would know that my favorite color is now red-sky-at-morning or that I really want to go to Greece. These private pieces of me would die with my body if I don’t make it to shore. I’d never get to share them.

By the time the fear starts tingling in my brain, the current has already dissipated. It screams out as I struggle swimming back to where I came. I’m not particularly strong, I just really want to feel loved. I want to make more friends, maybe get married someday. I want to say goodbye to Mara-Leigh and fuck her older brother who flirted with me at her pool party last summer. Tomorrow, I’ll guilt my other sister Gianna into buying me the strappy type of sundresses I’ve been seeing a lot of in magazines. Then I’ll ask all my friends from class and soccer and marching band if they want to meet up, then we can go swimming, then out to eat, and then, and then, and then—on and on, desire after desire until I really die.

I crawl out of the water, coughing, sniffling, wondering why I’m still alive and if that reason is who I really am.  



BIO

Megan Howell is a DC-based writer. She earned her MFA in Fiction from the University of Maryland in College Park, winning both the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’sThe Nashville Review and The Establishment among other publications. Her debut short story collection Softie is forthcoming with West Virginia University Press in November 2024.









Curfew

by Geoff White

            -for Tim, Ryan, Garrett, and Joe



Why do we keep looking at the door
like they’ll come home the next minute, late


by a few months? When did we stop?
There was more than one accident, even in this


small town. The one-man tailgate,
the T-bone, the beloved car, curfew breaking


under the weight of what rolled over them.
I’m getting them confused. Did any


transplant their lives, laying on silver tables,
the riches within given away? When did their sister’s


smile come back from twisting into a
howl of unanswered questions? When did


God make himself God and say I could be up
all night but wouldn’t let them


stay out one minute past?



BIO

Geoff White is a husband, father, poet, and dog owner from Lexington, KY. His poetry is an exercise in his sanity. He is introverted, so it is hard for him to reach out and interact with the poetry community as a whole. The words have nowhere else to go but on the page. He has been published by Recently Eclipsed, A Long Story Short, and the Atlantic Pacific Press.







The Everlasting Hour

by Chris Jalufka


Murmurs of the threat had spread quickly, and a final confirmation was released: yes, a meteor strike was imminent. There was a date. In approximately two years, the rock would burn through the Earth’s atmosphere and dissolve into the size of a suburban tract home. “This is not a global extinction–level event, far from it,” they said, “but the states of California and Nevada will be evacuated to ensure a mortality rate of zero.” Businesses took aid from the government to relocate, and their staff followed. Most fled to the broad plains of the Midwest and the humid pockets of the Southern states.

One year in and the pace of the evacuation had found its rhythm. The impending strike had become just another event on the calendar, and six months to impact, the final push of the evacuation found the military combing the area, removing the stubborn and those in need of assistance. Still, two remained. Starlet had made up her mind. She would not leave San Francisco. She would become invisible. Present for the big show. Robert expressed the commonsense perspective of the situation to her. The meteor will strike and destroy the area. It wasn’t overly complicated. Animals disperse at the first sign of danger, yet Starlet had made the decision to deny all instincts—not to mention Robert’s appeals—to flee. He, too, did not want to leave San Francisco. He did not want anything to change, but their home was to be destroyed by cosmic design, and they could either be upset or accept this chance to completely refresh their lives.

“You’ll burn alive as soon as that thing is a mile through the atmosphere,” Robert remarked.

“Only one way to be sure of that,” Starlet reminded him.

“Do you understand that if you stay, you will die? And you want me to do the same? And for nothing. Because you wanted to see what would happen when you stood your ground against a meteor.”

“I know, I get it. Just imagine this—we’re sitting there on the beach and a speck appears in the sky. Ten seconds later, all life is erased. But, in those ten seconds we will be inside a unique moment in the timeline of this planet. A rock from outer space is coming at us, Robert. Think of that. We’ll experience the same fate as the dinosaurs. Just you and me. This has never happened in any human lifetime.”

“Pompeii,” he said. “We know how that went.”

“That was a volcano,” Starlet said.

“We can go anywhere in the world right now and you want to stay here? There is no need to stay. If you want to know what’s going to happen here, just watch television. Read the book. Watch the documentary. I don’t understand why this is worth dying over.”

“I don’t care about dying. That’s going to happen no matter what we do, eventually. I’m staying because there is nothing for me in this world that even compares to the chance at witnessing something truly monumental. I don’t want to watch the movie or read the book. I want to live it. We will be the main characters in our own lives, Robert.”

The strike area had been successfully evacuated and the couple walked the empty streets of their neighborhood. Free of the buses, cars, and other forms of human transportation, now each street was dusted with a fine layer of sand that blew in from the beach. They walked the Great Highway, an almost four mile stretch of road that followed the curve of the coastline and ran the length of the western-most edge of the city. The Great Highway was the final street before you crossed over to the dry shrub, sand dunes, and damp shore of Ocean Beach.

Starlet led Robert to a home that sat next to the final bus stop before you hit the water. The home’s orange coat of paint was peeling, torn apart from the constant abrasive assault of beach weather. The gate was open and the courtyard overgrown with ice plant and Seacliff buckwheat. Sand filled the corners of the doorway and the entrance was unlocked. She knew the home and had dreamt, at one time, of being invited in by the family of surfers who lived there.

“Huh, not what I expected,” Starlet said.

The home was empty. The occupants had packed up well. Starlet hadn’t considered what she might find inside, but she was still surprised to find that nothing was left behind. On summer mornings, Robert had walked with her down to the beach to sit on the dunes and watch the surfers. If they got there early enough, when they passed that house the garage door would be open. Starlet counted a dozen or so surfboards strapped to the walls and a few bicycles hung from the rafters. On some mornings, Starlet might find a young surfer pulling on a wet suit, and she’d give him a polite nod. She hadn’t figured out how many people lived there, but over time she could link three men to the house. One of them looked as old as her grandfather, and she assumed the other two were his grandsons. She would hear them in the garage mumbling about which board to take out and the conditions of the ocean. Two decades of dance had formed her inner clock, and she was proud of her ability to wake early and be ready for the day, but then she saw these surfers who woke up earlier and chose the frigid ocean as their morning prayer.

In the prolonged stress of the oncoming meteor Starlet kept an easy calm, something Robert was unable to achieve. He was missing whatever she had, that secret element that erased all fear. He was with her, that is all he knew and that is all he cared about. Robert looked to Starlet to balance what was happening in his mind. Instinct and commonsense. The urge to run, anywhere. End up as a dentist in Nebraska. Another house with a large television and a calendar of deadlines, due dates, and empty commitments. He imagined telling tell this story, too, of how he almost stayed behind with his girlfriend. “Remember when that meteor struck the West Coast?” he would say. “I was there. I almost died.”

The day had come, and they sat among the sea thrift and gum plants of the low dunes. There was a sense of loss marked by the muted city behind them, the streets empty of cars and human chatter, the distant call of the neighborhood cats and dogs silenced. The fog had scared off the local animals as well and gone was the missing squawk of gulls and threat of rats. Perhaps even the sharks that swam offshore, threatening those that entered the water, had moved on. In a city without people and animals the sand took over. The elements—wind, water, daylight—roared across San Francisco without resistance.

“We should set up a camera. Have the video sent immediately to the cloud,” Robert said.

“Don’t do that. Don’t spoil this,” Starlet said.

“I don’t understand giving up our lives for this experience and not even sharing a record of it. History will never know we were even here.”

“This is what freedom is­—existing outside of modern society. Embracing the cosmos. We’re free, Robert.”

Freedom was not on Robert’s mind, just the anticipation of the meteor. Would he die from a sense of burning? Will the waves of the Pacific Ocean pummel him through the decimated streets? Will the meteor itself eat up all the oxygen, suffocating them before the debris can crush their bodies? He had questions, but these were not what he wanted to share with Starlet. He wanted to live inside of her excitement. Starlet wanted to see it all happen, and not on a television screen or beneath the bright glass of a cellphone, but really see it with her own eyes, in real time.

Robert had taken steps in preparation for this moment. He felt it proper to settle his bills and business. Do the work to save those he would leave behind these menial tasks. He had messaged his mother about his whereabouts and hoped she would understand. She accused his love of Starlet of merely being an obsession with a beautiful woman. He rarely left the city, for his own mother or for anyone. Now he was going to get himself killed because of that woman. Yes, Robert’s love was an obsession, or his obsession with her had grown into love—either way, he was not going to leave her. Starlet was an attraction he couldn’t break. He clasped her hands in his and watched a smile fold out across her face. When he imagined how much he loved her, he saw this smile. The plump of her upper lip had a tiny divot at its center, and when her lips met, that divot created a miniature cave at the center of her joyous, silly mouth.

The meteor breached the atmosphere, they could see it high above the clouds. It appeared like the moon in broad daylight. It was gaining toward them, growing larger in the sky. Robert had assumed they would hold each other at this moment. Their heads tucked together like resting cranes, a single body. Now in it, Starlet was right. He wanted to see it all play out with his own two eyes.

A warm breeze shook the calm of the Pacific. The dried tines of the coastal buckwheat bent over Starlet’s bare feet. There was nothing to hear—no roar of blazing rock as the meteor broke the atmosphere, no final cries into cloudless sky. They watched the streak of the meteor cut through the blue above. They looked down and saw the shadow of rock cascading over the earth, dimming the orange of the Golden Gate Bridge, the deep green of the bay, and everything in its path. The ocean sunk down under the force of it. The Earth convulsed. The sky shook with an atmospheric deluge of energy. A colossal break in all things that make up the living world.

The meteor had made contact far off in the desert of Nevada.

Somehow they were still alive.

The city was overtaken by a great fog that streamed over the land and lifted up to the sky, an unending curtain of gray. They walked back to Robert’s apartment in silence. The building still stood, and only a few new cracks were added to the walls first erected in 1909, two years after San Francisco’s last great disaster.

“Holy shit,” she uttered.

Robert could only expel a slow moan. A child’s moan. The meteor had shaken the framed art from the walls and collapsed the bookshelves of photographs and a career’s worth of plaques, gifts, and trinkets. Starlet checked on the home’s vitals. Everything worked: the lights, the running water, even the television. The world had learned about what they had just experienced. On impact the meteor caused nothing more than a mid-tier fear-inducing earthquake. The contained apocalypse that was promised did not happen, but the sudden, dense fog that followed was unexpected.

Robert acted quickly in cleaning up. He moved in panic. In stunted movements, unclear of what, exactly, he should be doing. There were those broken things like vases and ceramic figurines, and there were those unbreakable things like books and photographs.

“There’s too much here. I knew it. I’ve always known it, I suppose. Look, I can reach down and here it is—a program from the 2002 San Francisco Opera production of Turandot.”

“Is that something you need?” Starlet asked.

“No. That’s the point I am attempting to reach if I can stay in this thought long enough. Do I need this opera program? No. Need. Imperative. I can’t say. It was the first opera I attended when I moved to the city. The sets were designed by David Hockney, which you should know. I think you should know.”

“Is it worth anything?” she asked.

“Nostalgia has its value. But this performance of this opera at this particular point in time has already been recorded into history. This physical reminder is redundant. It’s not that I don’t need it, it’s that it doesn’t need me. It will be remembered forever, even if I forget,” he explained.

“Throw it away.”

“Absolutely,” he said and paused. “Is the floor still shaking?”

“No. We’re motionless.”

“To be safe I won’t put anything high up on the shelves. No. Change that.”

Robert grabbed a few slats from the shelving and tossed them out of the window. The crash of dry oak and loose hardware echoed through the neighborhood, the frequency of splintered wood filled the night sky. Then Robert wrapped his arms around the bulk of the bookcase, heaving it out the window and onto the street below. He wanted the house to look as it never had before. Bare walls. Sofa, chairs, and bed. Simple living. He polished the hardwood floors and Starlet watched television.

Weeks had passed by and the sky held onto the muted steel of dusk light. There were claims that the sunlight would return once the chemical haze dispersed over the ocean, but the meteor continued to fume, and weeks after impact the haze remained. Robert sat in the chair and stared out of the window and into the everlasting hour, the media-designated moniker given to the steady blank gray fog that fell over the non-day. The city was lost to the movement of time: the cycle of the moon, the rise of the sun, the glow of the stars. They saw none of it. Only fog. Nothing to regulate the waking from the sleeping hours. From one day to the next. They lived in the constant colorless drone of a polluted slate cloud.

“Quite beautiful, isn’t it?” Starlet lounged on the sofa, content to simply stare outside. Robert drained the last of his drink and poured himself another from the bottle at his feet.

“I can’t tell if time has stopped.”

“Nope. Still going.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked.

“News. Television. I’m connected.”

“Feels like we’re trapped in time. Trapped in something.”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to understand my future.” 

“This is the future. We’re experiencing it, more than anyone else anywhere in the world,” Starlet said.

“There’s nothing here.”

“Everything is here. You and me. Isn’t that all that matters?”

Starlet lifted her legs and Robert joined her on the sofa. She laid her legs over his lap and he fiddled with the loose skin of her kneecap.

Above the kitchen table where they ate hung an aged photograph suspended between two sheets of glass. This was the only non-essential Robert had allowed himself to keep. In the photograph: a figure, a dancer poised, toes outward. She is phantom-white against the dappled blackness of the theatre curtains behind her. Anna Pavlova in the title role of Giselle, two men at her feet. Giselle, a figure killed by heartbreak and deception. Robert was a patron of the arts and this print, dated 1931, was a gift from the Los Angeles Ballet as a thank for his support in their inaugural season. The gallery lights suspended above the piece confirmed its provenance. Starlet knew this photograph—a copy of course—from her childhood. Two weeks after her twelfth birthday, her parents had packed up Starlet’s bedroom in their suburban home and drove her to a ballet academy in Chicago where she was introduced to the physical nature not just of dance, but of its history as well. The career of dancer Anna Pavlova was held up as one to aspire to.

Her first visit to Robert’s house was after the closing performance of a new modern work. The choreographer had created the piece with Starlet in mind, and in certain circles, it was quite the event. Robert was a major sponsor and hosted a post-performance reception. She had missed the photograph when she first walked through Robert’s house, but later that night on a trip to the kitchen for another glass of wine she saw Anna again.

As a dancer Starlet had spent the bulk of her life in study. Her free time used up attending events: fundraising dinners, annual galas, benefit luncheons, and the occasional appearance at backstage tours of the ballet house. Her dalliances were either with other dancers or people she met at these work events, and it was Robert’s donation to the ballet company that facilitated his attendance at each of her rehearsals for Massenet’s Manon. Eventually, he went from being just another guest to being the only one she wanted to see. Robert was a force of calm—it followed him wherever he went. Starlet could walk hand in hand with Robert at those career-making events and not get frustrated with the idiocy she saw in the business of the arts. She just wanted to dance, but she also had to compete with and outperform her peers. She was a small woman and had been a smaller girl. There was a constant eye kept on her weight and body form. Enough muscle to do the movements, but not so much that the bulge of muscle broke the line of her body. She made herself perfect. Her fellow dancers seethed at each of her successes. Starlet internalized their jealousy and became stronger. She made herself beyond perfect. Starlet, the rare dancer that was just as brilliant at thirty-nine as she was at eighteen, was at peace with her isolation.

She thought of her relationships before the meteor and how they were all grounded in her beauty. It was the sexual attraction that kept her busy. She could be as occupied with men as she liked but she could not turn it off. Men would complement her beauty. Men would follow and linger, timid and afraid in her presence. She had her pick of them. Robert had begun in that pool, but for him, for him only, their relationship had developed to something beyond what she had previously allowed.

As tests were still being done remotely to determine exactly what the fog was and why the downed meteor continued to spew the vapor from deep within its crater, the impact area remained empty. The world watched as the fog engulfed the entirety of California, deep into Nevada and southern regions of Oregon. Robert thought of the fog, he thought of its chemical make-up, the long-lasting medical conditions brewing in his respiratory system. He had begun to ache for his old life. Without a job he had no purpose, and without the constant pestering of his mother he felt no urgency to do better. He could feel the fog fold around him, in his hands and face. He imaged the fog taking him around the neck and easing down his shirt collar and covering him like a spider’s web.

Starlet opened a can of spinach and a tin of sardines afloat in tomato broth and poured both into a small steaming pot. No living food had survived the fog. The farmlands roiled into gaseous swamplands; the livestock, left behind, scattered across the coast for their own private deaths. Processed foods became vital for survival, and after months of trial and error Starlet had mastered her own personal combination of iron-rich foods. They drank the powdered milk and fortified vitamin mixes they’d taken from the corner shops, and she had never felt so healthy since early in her dance career.

“We can drive out of this fog and go wherever we want to. Drive to Santa Fe and grab a flight to anywhere. The rest of the world is out there, waiting,” Robert offered.

“The world is here too,” Starlet told him.

“Is it? Because I don’t feel like anything is here. Not me. Not you. Nothing.”

“There is no one else in the world right now experiencing this. Just us. You and me.”

“I know. I get it. We’re doing it, but can we be done with it? You won. Let’s celebrate to the future,” Robert said.

“Just wait, the future will come.” Starlet divided the pot of steamed spinach and sardines between them, took a packet of crackers from the cabinet, spread the algae-like mixture over the salted wheat.  

Remote rovers entered the desert from a makeshift camp set up by a collection of global scientists. Cameras fixed on each, the rovers surrounded the rim of the crater and fed the world a non-stop stream of video. This stream was broadcast as Camera One. Robert had hoped that someone out there was in the midst of preparing for the reoccupation, yet there had been no outside contact with the impacted area. A fear of contamination, of upsetting the isolated bubble of the fog, kept a rush of scientists at bay until more was known. Starlet kept her television on Camera One. From the pit a steady flow of basalt particles winnowed into the air. The meteor was barely visible behind its spew of fog.

“I’d like to see it. In person,” she said.

“What?”

“The meteor. Visit the crater. See this for myself.”

 “And then what?”

“Then I would know what’s kept me here. What’s kept us alive.”

“Really? You want to go?” Robert perked up at Starlet’s first sign of movement.

“Yes. It’s time.”

 Robert loaded an abandoned car with gas, water, and enough food for a day or two, and they drove in silence through the dense ash of the empty coast and across the dead expanse of California. Signs for abandoned gas stations and hotels, truck stops and weigh stations, speed limits that held no purpose. The fog thickened and misted against the window glass. The asphalt of the highway broke and they drove on the pure ionized soil of the new barren Earth.

“Do you think it’s safe, getting this close?” he asked.

“About as safe as staying home for a meteor strike.”

He nodded, wondering why he even asked. Safety had become a foreign concept.  

“Drop me off wherever. If you’re afraid, I can go alone.” she said. “I’ll walk from here.”

“Fine. This is not something I need to see.”

Robert stopped the car and watched as Starlet headed toward the crater’s edge, deep into the fog. He had yet to see the crater himself. He had let his fear get the best of him. Starlet would watch Camera One and he would leave the room. Unwilling to see his situation from an outsider’s perspective. He had feared knowing the truth. The world was still there, same as it ever was. Their isolation was unnecessary. He sat in the car and realized he hadn’t bothered to buckle his seatbelt. It was odd, but he found himself surprised by this.

He finally got the nerve to switch on the radio and soon he heard a voice describe the weather in Boise. Another spoke of stocks and the economy. Growth in the marketplace. The statistics of modern sports flowed between two voices, arguing over the virtues of unknown athletes.

Hours passed. No sign of Starlet. He thought of the time when all of this would be over, and life would be normal again. He saw a backyard with a grill and a swimming pool with a painted blue bottom. Another office: this time he would work somewhere that gave him as much free time as he wanted. He could see himself playing tennis and learning piano. In his mind, he saw Starlet.

Robert stepped out into the drizzle of ash and shouted her name into the fog. His voice rang out across the empty horizon. He missed her and could not believe he let her walk off alone. He wasn’t thinking. He hadn’t thought straight since first meeting Starlet. His love. The woman who turned all beauty around her invisible. On stage with the members of the corps de ballet, and Starlet was all he saw. His stomach ached. Nerves and panic. They had driven halfway through the fog. Once she had seen the meteor for herself, they could keep driving east. Give up whatever it was they were living and return to the world. He just needed for it to make sense to her. He needed her to be done. To return from her pilgrimage and get back in the damn car.

Robert drove through the fog, honking the horn and flashing the headlights. Starlet was out there, and he would find her. The fog thickened. He was close to the crater. It was a strange feeling, the fog at each window, nothing to give away which way he was heading. The sand swarmed around the car, clinking against the glass. He pounded on the horn in rhythmic spurts, a propulsive noise to puncture the din of sand on glass. The car slid and it reminded him of driving in the city during a heavy rain. Except he could see in the rain. He was driving blind. He knew if he drove too close the car could fall into the crater, or maybe crush one of the cameras. Maybe someone would see him on television, a sign of life, and come to their rescue.

Robert couldn’t risk hitting Starlet. He stepped out of car and began to shout. It didn’t help to search the area because there was nothing to see. He needed to reach a city. Any city. In a city he could find the police. He would tell them it was safe and the fog was no threat. In a city there would be an authority who could locate Starlet in the desert. He returned to the car and drove toward the Utah border out of the thick fog and into the sunlight. Another surprise. His hands where bone white on the wheel. The fog had bleached all color from his body and clothes. The fog grew thin and there were colors he didn’t remember. The desert was an iridescent gold. Within that gold were deep greens and blues. Shades of coral and the insides of seashells. The world was new to him again.

He felt light. Weightless.

The loose sand turned to road and at the first exit he found a diner. Robert checked himself in the dashboard mirror and saw his ashen face. Colorless, a strange ghost. He took a seat at the counter like they do in movies. The waitress asked if he needed an ambulance, but no, just a glass of water. His white fist around the glass made the water appear like the purest of blue. The waitress returned with a menu and Robert nodded to the television mounted above the window into the kitchen.

“Does that work?” he asked.

“Yeah. You sure about that ambulance though?”

“I need the cops. Call the cops, okay?”

The waitress placed a dish with a packet of crackers in front of him and refilled his water glass. She grabbed the remote and turned on the television and tossed him the remote.

“Stay here, all right? I’ll get the cops on the phone.”

Robert took the remote and found Camera One. The fog had no specific shape. It was an endless cloud. He wondered if the police would arrest him or if they would even believe him. Is there anything to explain? They stayed home when everyone else left. It was simple and he couldn’t see anything they had done wrong. They couldn’t be arrested, of course not. He was feeling better and finished off the packet of crackers. He devoted his attention to Camera One.

With a squint he made out the dull outline of the meteor in the gray haze. There was a shadow cast from within the fog. Petite. An upright skeleton. It was Starlet.

The waitress refilled his water glass, “Cops are on the way. Can you hang tight?” 

“For sure. I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

His hand around the glass, missing. From the wrist on, his fingers gone. Wet ash against the glass, a pile of white dust on the countertop.

“I told the cops you’d need a doctor too.”

Robert watched behind her, on the screen, Starlet stood in front of the meteor as an apparition. He stood up, shouting at the screen, “That’s her. Are the cops here yet?”

“Not yet.”

Another customer came in. With them came the dull wail of a siren. The waitress moved her hand to Robert’s shoulder but was too afraid to touch him. It didn’t matter. He saw Starlet and she was alive and that was all the comfort he needed. Now that he saw her, he knew he could find her. He just needed to try harder.

“I have to go, okay? Tell the cops I had to go.”

“They’re going to be here any minute. You can hear the sirens.”

Robert rushed for the door. He ran to the car and pictured an afternoon spent lying about in bed, of twisted sheets, and most of all he thought of Starlet’s smile, and by the time he reached the car there was nothing left of him beyond a brief huff of smoke, lost to the desert sky.



BIO



Chris Jalufka writes fiction and non-fiction, focusing on the arts. His work has been published in Print Magazine, HOW Magazine, Content Magazine, Juxtapoz, Nerdlocker, and Evil Tender. Most recently he has written the forward for Object Compendium, a collection of works by the Swiss artist Kilian Eng, published by Floating World Comics. 







D-Day at Eighty

by Nadine Revheim



            My dad, Frank Revheim, landed on Normandy Beach on the second day. I guess that is why he survived. I always wondered if his job was to pick up the bodies left behind from that first day of carnage. Or perhaps he hauled supplies to replenish those depleted by the survivors who scaled the cliffs.

            I wonder how the troops were divided. Who was selected for the first day? The young? The unmarried? And who were the remaining souls that were thought to be worth saving for the long fight ahead?

            I always pondered.

            But I never asked.

            Not even after we went to see the movie The Longest Day with his friend from work, who asked him at the end of the movie, “Was it really like that, Frank?”

            “Yes,” Dad replied.

            I guess his response was enough for me. Maybe I really didn’t want to know anything more than that.

            But if he were alive today, watching the memorial services for the 80th anniversary of the epic battle that would liberate France, then Europe, I’d ask many questions so that he’d share some of his memories. The memories of his pounding heart as he raced forward over the beach and towards the escarpment with his equipment and weapons weighing him down. The sense of dread as he saw the fallen and wondered if he might be next. The reflection on meeting his brother Reidar in England. Reidar, who was serving in the Norwegian Navy, sought him out because he heard the 99th Battalion of Norwegian-Americans serving in the US Army were on the base awaiting orders. I imagine he would remember the hope he had in his heart because they went to a photographer’s studio to take a photo together. They marked the occasion they saw each other after 11 years apart; my dad left for America at 19 years old and his brother was only 10. I wondered if he remembered the song and lyrics to the Vera Lynn classic, “We’ll Meet Again”, not knowing where or when, but repeating those words over and over like a mantra to bolster his courage. I wonder if he thought about whether he’d see his 30th birthday in October 1944. Or whether he’d see his wife, Jenny, again in Brooklyn, his new home so far away from Haugesund, Norway. And I would ask how he prayed, not if he prayed. I would ask if he cried as he remembered what he saw in Normandy.

            My father cried. I saw him cry when he listened to music. When he left for work because he’d be away for two weeks. When he wrote a letter to his family in Norway. When we sang along with Mitch Miller. When he played the accordion. Or the organ. He cried when the doctors told him he needed brain surgery. When the biopsy showed it was mesothelioma. When I told him it metastasized from the lungs. He cried when the ambulance got him home because he knew I had saved him from dying in the hospital.

            “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” he said, as I pulled the nasal-gastric tube from his nose. The hospital hadn’t removed it even though they knew he was entering home hospice.

            He said it was okay when I got angry that he didn’t eat. When I had to remove thick mucus from his larynx because he was too weak to cough it out, I swiped and wiped in the back of his throat with a sponge on a stick.

         “I’m glad you taught me how to fish in the fjords of Norway,” I said, remembering how we reeled in the red cod we caught. He laughed.

            I remember how special it was to have my father home for the week he was off from working on the tugboat. I remember how he vacuumed and dusted to help my working mom. How he cooked his specialty, fried mackerel, first dredging it in flour tossed with salt and pepper, then placing it carefully into the melted butter until crisp.

            I remember chopping down trees in the woods on the property in Pennsylvania before the country house was built and asking him if he was trying to turn me into the son he never had. The son that was stillborn six years before I was born. I remember how he told me he sang You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” to me. I remember the pink and floral alarm clock he gave me that played Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

            I remember his smile. How he always broke into a dance when he was feeling happy. Or sad. How we did the two-step and the polka. How he waltzed with me standing on top of his feet.           

            I will never forget his feet. His tender and soft soles that carried him through seventy-six years of life. Over the beach at Normandy and through western Europe. I remember the feet that he said hurt from time to time and that when they ached, everything else ached too.

            “Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you,” he said to me, many times.

            My dad did not get to see the 50th anniversary reunion of veterans returning to Normandy in 1994. I watched the TV broadcast alone and cried as I thought about missing him since his death in 1991. I didn’t know that my Uncle Reidar was there with the other Norwegian sailors who survived the battle and were honored by the Norwegian government. I would like to imagine that they would have been together, once again, to take another photo to celebrate the lives they returned to after the war. They would tell their favorite story of how Reidar knocked on the door where my dad’s troops were located, and how he almost walked away after my father kept saying it couldn’t be his brother who was just a little boy. But they were both men facing the biggest challenge in their lives, two men who recognized the grace they had to survive.

            Those feelings are present now and are even stronger since the American veterans present at the ceremony on June 6th, 2024 are in their late 90s and even 100s. My dad wouldn’t be there; he would have been 113 years old. But hopefully I will get to Normandy someday to visit the memorial that pays tribute to all who crossed the beach and have crossed to the other side. For my dad, and for the brave, with prayers and hope that our world will always remember the ‘war to end all wars’ so that tyranny will not have the final word, once again.

ACTIVITY DURING WWII

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS. SERVED OCTOBER 30, 1942 TO DECEMBER 21, 1945. ENTERED SERVICE WITH THE 99TH BATTALION, A SPECIAL UNIT OF NORWEGIAN NATIONALS AND TRAINED AT CAMP RIPLEY, MINNESOTA AND CAMP HALE IN COLORADO. SERVED IN CENTRAL EUROPE, NORTHERN FRANCE ON D-DAY PLUS 2, IN THE NORMANDY INVASION AND RHINELAND. PERFORMED VARIOUS DUTIES IN CONNECTION WITH THE STORAGE AND HANDLING OF ALL TYPES OF AMMUNITION FOR THE 95TH BOMB SQUAD, ARMY AIR FORCE. SAW ACTIVE DUTY AS A RIFLEMAN WITH THE 99TH INFANTRY BATTALION. AWARDED DISTINGUISHED UNIT BADGE, EUROPEAN-AMERICAN-MIDDLE EASTERN SERVICE MEDAL, GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL AND THE WWII VICTORY MEDAL.



BIO

Nadine Revheim, PhD, a licensed psychologist, occupational therapist, and author. Her forty-year career in mental health was primarily focused on research and clinical programs for individuals with schizophrenia with various professional publications. She is currently self-employed as a private practitioner in behavioral health for individuals and couples. Her memoir, Woven Together: Finding Me in Memories of You, is in press with Cape House Books. She has written an ad hoc blog, “Beacon Bits” – A Bite of the Hudson River Valley (beaconnybits.blogspot.com) for over ten years. Other recent published works have appeared in The Highlands Current and The Keepthings.







10/1/1978

by Timothy Robbins



I don’t recall when I learned my
man’s DOB, but I am certain it was
the day October became solid.
The first Spanish ships in this
hemisphere are as little on my dry
mind as they are on the soaked
minds of most Americans, the
bank holiday and the impact of
that ancient and controversial find
notwithstanding. My High Holy
Days and my Low Selfish Days

are not partial to the tenth or any
other month. They come and go
as freely as groupies backstage
or up and down hotel halls.
Halloween has never been for me
the proof it is for some gay
boys and girls. The parade is a lump
that crawls, not a baton the Trans
drum majorette hurls at clouds.
Still, I have sliced a mean rug
to the cool Lou Reed hit, staring

at the black-capped biker on the
back of Transformer, at the swipe
of fine raw tan over rough trade
jeans. I saw that the month-long mel-
ancholy was over-welcome to the
melancholy-deficient. Still, for me
it formed a surplus. All the rented
hurt colors reminded me of my high
school living room and the orange
sectional every soul but my young
shade made out on; thin paneling,

light pretending hard to be fire in
a thin plastic hearth. Having arrived
on its first day, you are the month’s
crown prince. Sharing your sight,
I see your loyal subjects, see their
vampire-shaped birthmark; mark
how they soar like witches in a V.
Mowing the stars and trimming my
hedge, they trace our line, our limit,
the link, the brink, the dizzy ledge,
the inseam of a long denim pledge.



Portrait


“Come in drag,” he said.
So I came as Frankenstein.

I know what it’s like to
fight inaccuracies

that lead to new meanings.
I also know what it’s like

to stop fighting. He insists
he was designed like the

glass floor or rather floors
of the Sears or rather

Willis skywalk. He jokes,
“I do my best thinking

(and forgetting) on the john,
my best sleeping, on the

floor.” As a child he was an
expert at losing himself in

placemat mazes waitresses
slipped between the table

and his downturned face
while his dad complained.

His feelings were wobbly
when, twenty years later, his

own son entered the maze
and never came out.



5 Cup Rice Cooker/Warmer


This is our second Tiger JNP.
(The first rests in honor with
its small pink ordinary whites.)
A modest territory around the
cooker’s steam vent gets
polluted with flakes like rice
paper or an aged librarian’s —
a retired mandarin’s skin
skillfully torn from the hand
that commands, barely, the
date stamp and ink brush. Once
a month I apply a warm, damp
cloth to this area, as though
the appliance had my headache
or your tender shoulder.



Extinguished


There was always that one window across
the blacktop, beyond the de facto dog park,

past the lark-less, spark-less crow-streaked
trees; as cavalier about its WE electric bill

as these United States; as loyal to its light
and lies as our two religions combined.

While other parties, crude or refined, petered out,
it partied on. Now it too has gone, not shut but

cut off by the utility company. At last we
are alone. At last even you must admit we

are unseen. A bark-less walk awaits.



BIO

Timothy Robbins is from Indiana. He has a B.A. in French, an M.A. in applied linguistics from Indiana University and has been teaching English as a second language since 1991. He has been publishing poetry since 1980 and has six collections of poetry to his name, the most recent being Florida and Other Waters. He and his husband have been together since 1998. They live in Wisconsin.







One of the Guys

by Renee S. Jolivette


Red taillights glowed through the windshield, guiding my path. They turned right towards Chico State. I continued straight, forced now to stretch my head and shoulders out the driver’s side window. Icy rain pelted my face. It vanquished my hangover but drenched my wool suit, making me smell like a wet dog.

I cursed the jackwad who stole my wiper arm.

The west side of our grey cinderblock office was saturated. The storm was tapering off. Another would follow in the coming days. Typical weather pattern for the northern Sacramento Valley. Once the rainy season started a person could mold while waiting for spring. I hated the rain just like I hated this town.

I got my engineering degree from the University of Arizona in 1979. A recession was creeping across the country back then. It hadn’t reached California yet and I’d been lucky to find an entry-level position here. The companies who were still hiring were anxious to add women to their professional rank and file. My employer’s recruiter said there would be plenty of opportunities for advancement and relocation. Hoping for an upgrade to their San Francisco office, I moved from Tucson to Chico sight unseen. That was five years ago. Five years of working my butt off in the same construction management job, no promotion in the offing.

The recruiter said Chico was God’s country. Also a lie. God’s country would have a better shopping mall.

I tucked my purse into my gender-neutral briefcase and hurried inside.

#

“Got time for a cup?” Mickey stood at my desk in his dress shirt and jeans. It was ten a.m.

“No,” I said. “But I could use one after last night.”

He flashed that grin of his. I checked my conscience. I was fine. I pushed a stack of paperwork aside and followed him out the back door.

 “Let’s take your truck,” I said. “My wipers are out of commission.”

Mickey winced when he saw the Mustang. The jagged aluminum remnants of the driver’s side wiper arm pointed skyward.

“I couldn’t see shit comin’ in this morning,” I said. “I swear the guy who broke it was trying to kill me.”

Mickey placed his palm on the small of my back, steered me towards his orange F-150 and pulled a mangled windshield wiper from the bed.

“What the…?” I backed away.

“I didn’t do it, darlin’.” He unlocked the passenger side door. Knew better than to open it for me.

Inside the cab, he handed me the broken wiper arm. “Stacey tried to beat the crap out of me with that last night. I was wondering where it came from.”

 “Oh my god. What did she say?”

“She wasn’t in the mood to talk.”

“I’m sorry.” My skin prickled, my neck burned. My conscience not so fine now.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he said.

“I thought she and her friends were going dancing.”

 “They decided not to drive in the storm.”

“Probably a good call.”

“They got into our stash of coke instead. That stuff always makes Stace’ a little crazy.” His upper lip twitched as he talked. Like he couldn’t decide whether or not to smile. It was one of my favorite things about him. When the grin finally bloomed, it lit up his round face and formed small lines at the corners of his denim-blue eyes.

#

I slipped into my side of our usual booth at Perko’s, tugging at my skirt to protect my nylons from the cracked vinyl seat. “You don’t think Stacey saw us?” My hands shook as I reached for my mug.

“She saw my truck at your place.”

“She knows we go drinking together.”

“Doesn’t mean she likes it.” He poured cream and way too much sugar into his coffee. “You heard from Dale?”

“No.” I crossed my arms to stave off an internal chill. “I’m a little worried. The storm hit the Delta pretty hard. I called the paper and left a message. The receptionist said he wasn’t available. Guess he’s on deadline.”

“He still living on your boat?” Mickey asked.

I nodded. “Must’ve been a wild ride last night.”

Dale ran the Isleton Gazette—a weekly newspaper—for an absentee publisher. The job didn’t pay much. He was living out of his truck when I met him. I let him stay on my 26-foot cuddy—an older Sea Ray that I’d bought on the cheap at a government auction. It was docked at a marina on the Mokelumne River, two hours south of Chico. The arrangement worked out well. I got down there about once a month to go fishing.

“Poor guy,” Mickey said. “When are you going to make an honest man out of him?”

“We like things the way they are. We have fun when we see each other but we can still live our own lives.”

“Those long-distance deals never seem to work out.”

 “Like I’m going to take relationship advice from you.” I flicked a wadded napkin at him. He chuckled and batted it away.

 Back in his truck, I plucked a cassette from the dash. Pancho and Lefty. The album had come out the previous year.

“You remember singing along with that last night?” Mickey said.

“Vaguely. I believe you were doing most of the singing.”

“It’s a talent.” A smile lurked beneath his deadpan expression. “But you insisted on listening to the radio. Don’t ya like Willie and Merle?”

“You kept playing the same two songs.”

 “You tried to throw the tape out the window.”

I didn’t remember that. I did recall hitting the preset button for Chico’s country and western station.

 “So I had an early meeting this morning,” he said. “When I start up the truck, the Farm and Ranch Report almost blasts me out of the cab. Some guy shouting about rice futures.”

“Drunk volume.” I had to laugh.

Mickey’s life was an anthology of barroom tales, most based on his own foibles. I achieved a degree of immortality each time I featured in one of his stories. And his joking always dispelled the stale-whiskey fog of self-loathing that would envelope me the morning after a bender.

Back in the office parking lot, he pointed to my car. “I can help you fix that. Maybe Sunday?”

“I’ll be in Isleton this weekend. But thanks. Anyway, you should probably stay close to home for a while.”

“Stacey went to the City to visit her sister.”

 I bit my lower lip and studied Mickey’s face. The impish grin was gone but his gaze was level, his brow smooth. I couldn’t tell if he was serene or resigned.

“We’re okay,” he said. “She’s pissed right now and needs a break from my sorry ass. She’ll take it out on our charge cards and everything will be back to normal when she gets home.”

I phoned Dale again that afternoon. The receptionist said he was busy.

“Could you tell him that Reggie Andersen called?”

“He has your message from this morning. I’m sure he’ll get back to you when he can.”

“Okay, thank—” I heard the dial tone— “you.”

Bitch.

There were no other gals in my office, save for the boss’s secretary. I liked it that way. Women scared me. Having a conversation with one was like playing three-dimensional chess—things happening on several levels. Guys were more straightforward. They said what they meant. And I could usually tell what they were thinking. I preferred to be one of the guys.

#

Friday. Quitting time. A pack of us walked down the hall to the back door. Half of the people I worked with were engineers. The rest were in the trades. Most were at least eight years older than me.

Mickey was talking about the 49ers’ performance in the playoffs and their prospects for the 1984 season. The guys crowded around him. Everyone wanted to be his friend. His confidant. It felt good to be part of his inner circle.

“You headed to the Delta tonight?” Mickey asked me. A couple of the men moved closer to hear my answer.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “It’s supposed to rain tonight and the wiper arm is back-ordered at the dealership.”

“You want to go to the Towne Lounge with us?” Arnie was a right-of-way acquisition agent. Slim, soft-spoken, thirtyish. Divorced, with male pattern baldness. “You can ride with me.” He looked at Mickey as if for permission.

“I’m going to sit this one out, fellas.” I’d had enough excitement for one week.

#

The Isleton paper was in my mailbox that night. Articles and photos by Dale Bixby. The pictures were startling. Untethered boats drifting in the current. A broken dock lodged against a bridge abutment. Three RV parks were flooded, their full-time residents displaced. One photo showed people packed inside the western-themed dining room of the Rio Bar and Grill—an impromptu shelter. The cover story asked readers to bring donations of food and clothing. I always stopped at the grocery store on my way to the boat to keep the cuddy’s fridge stocked with food and Dale’s favorite beer. I could pick up some additional canned items before I went to the marina.

The marina.

I called the harbormaster’s after-hours number. No answer. Nothing I could do until morning. I burrowed under the covers, hugging my pillow while sheets of rain slapped at the windows.

#

Early the next day, I threw my duffle and fishing gear into the car and headed south on State Route 99. The sun broke through a low layer of clouds, forming tule fog in the pastures. A red-tailed hawk surveyed the dormant surroundings from its perch on a split rail fence post. A winter groundskeeper ready to remove any bit of life that dared disturb the season’s desolate landscape. I missed Arizona. Wished, not for the first time, that I’d gotten a job there.

I turned onto Highway 160 and followed the Sacramento River downstream. The shot rock lining the channel was barely visible above the water line. Huge snags floated in the mud-brown torrent. An orphaned red and white ice chest bobbed in the mix.

The counterweights were down on the Isleton drawbridge, allowing a sheriff’s vessel to pass. Usually a boat that size could clear the underside of the bridge. Today the water was too high.

 I drove down off the levee road and onto Main Street, past the Tong building. Built in the 1920’s, the abandoned, corrugated metal structure was once a meeting place for the area’s Chinese immigrants. A green sign marked Isleton’s city limits: Pop. 900. Elev. 10.

#

Jack’s Country Market in Isleton was smaller than the IGA store in nearby Rio Vista but more convenient. Its warm air carried the aromas of freshly ground beef and Pine Sol. I strolled the narrow aisles amidst the humming of refrigerated cases and fluorescent light fixtures.

There was one checkstand open. The cashier was a plump girl, maybe twenty-three years old. A few years younger than me. She was helping the only other customer.

“Can you believe all the damage?” The customer spoke with a slight drawl. She wore a hot pink warm-up suit, the jacket unzipped to reveal a tight white tank top and a gold filigree necklace. Her porcelain hands sported manicured nails, polished to match her outfit. Her big hair was meticulously feathered, curled and highlighted.

She glanced at me as if trying to discern whether I was impatient. Either I didn’t look it or she didn’t care. The cashier smiled at me. She and her friend continued their conversation.

“I’ve been helping out at the shelter,” the pink gal said. “Doing some of the ladies’ hair. That kind of thing can be so important at a time like this.” She looked at me for affirmation. Her eyes turned to my wispy blond coif which was stringy from the damp air.

She pouted.

“Is you-know-who working there too?” the cashier asked.

“He is. He’s been making meals for the evacuees. He’s such a good cook.”

“Dipsy, you are one lucky girl.”

“Don’t I know it. Of course, there are certain formalities.”

“He’s still with that other woman?” the cashier said.

“He’s too nice to break up with her on the phone. Not that she doesn’t deserve it.” Dipsy began bagging her own groceries.

 “You gotta tell me when you two go public.”

“Gonna be soon, I hope. I think he sees her this weekend.”

“Her loss.”

“It is. But you know, I wonder if she’ll even care. He says ‘she has scar tissue instead of a heart.’ He’s just so poetic.” Dipsy’s voice rose to a squeal. She scrunched her shoulders and gave me a winsome smile—an apparent apology for her exuberance. She hugged the cashier. “Bye, y’all,” she said to me, waggling her pink fingernails.

“Where’s she from?” I asked the cashier.

“From around here. Same as me.”

“But that accent…”

“She got it from watching Mama’s Family.”

“On purpose?”

The cashier laughed. “Daisy’s a self-made woman. She’s smart. And determined. She decided in high school that guys don’t like brainy girls so she dumbed it down. All us gals teased her. I even gave her that nickname.”

“Dipsy.”

“She loved it. It fit her… persona? Is that the right word? All I know is that she had a date every Friday night. I was so jealous. But you can’t hate her. She’s a just such a sweetheart.”

The cashier rang up my last item, a cold twelve-pack of Coors. “Looks like you’ve got plans for the weekend,” she said, hoisting the beer into my shopping cart.

“I need to check on my boat. And my boyfriend.”

“In that order,” the cashier said with a laugh.

I laughed also, trying to be polite. “But first I’ve got to take some of this food to the Rio.”

“Bless your heart. I know they’ll appreciate that.”

I’d bought steaks for Dale and me. For dinner. I put them in my ice chest along with the beer and parked my car in front of the restaurant-turned-shelter.

The Rio’s wagon wheel chandeliers provided only the dimmest of lighting. Nice ambiance for dining. Depressing if you’re forced to spend your days here waiting for the flood waters to recede. All the tables were occupied. People played cards, or cribbage. Some tried to read. Volunteers in matching blue sweatshirts buzzed around the perimeter.

A grey-haired woman intercepted me. “You can put those here.” She pointed to a six-foot long folding table with ISLETON ELEMENTARY stenciled on it. I added two cases of beans and franks to the haphazard stack of donated items.

The room smelled of body odor. I was anxious to leave when I heard Dale’s voice. “Reggie, over here.” I turned. And stared.

“What’d you do to your hair?” I said.

Dale had an enviable, thick brown mane. It used to fall loosely around his shoulders, framing his square jaw.

“You like it?”

 “You got a perm.” I’d never had a perm. I hugged him and sneaked a hand through the artificial curls. It was possible to hate Dipsy.

 “I’m starved,” I said. “Let’s get some lunch.”

“It’ll have to be Chinese. No one else is open.”

I looped my arm through his and we walked out into the chilly morning.

“What happened to your car?” he asked.

“It was vandalized. Tuesday night.”

“Jeezus. Who would do something like that?”

“I have some ideas. Mickey offered to fix it but I’m going to take it to the dealer.”

Dale unhooked his arm from mine and took a few quick steps towards the restaurant. He walked inside. I caught the door before it swung closed behind him.

 “Sit here, okay?” The host pointed to a table overlooking the street.

“How about back there?” Dale motioned towards a horseshoe-shaped booth.

 “Romantic.” I smiled at Dale.

He took a seat on the left side of the table. I scooched around the center of the booth and leaned into him. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried when you didn’t return my calls.”

 “I didn’t know you called.”

“I swear that woman hates me.”

“Who?”

“Your receptionist? The one who didn’t give you my messages?”

“I’m sure she just forgot. Work’s been crazy. We actually got some real news in this town.” He patted my shoulder, nudging me upright. “I could use some elbow room,” he said.

I slid back over the red Naugahyde until I was facing him. My stomach growled at the smell of stir-fried garlic. We placed our order and sipped weak tea from small, handle-less cups.

“Have you been to the marina?” he asked.

“Not yet. Is it bad?”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone? What about the boat?”

“I was able to get it out. It’s on a trailer, behind the newspaper building.”

 “Thank you.” I reached across the table and squeezed his hands. “So where are you staying?”

 “At the shelter. With half the people in town.”

Our food arrived. I took the rough wooden chopsticks from their paper pouch. Broke them apart and picked up a steaming morsel of chicken drenched in garlicky oyster sauce.

“Why don’t you stay with me? At least until I can find another slip.”

“I thought of that.” Dale chased a slice of black pepper beef around his plate. His uncalloused hands were large and uncoordinated. He abandoned the chopsticks for a fork. “I called you Tuesday night. I guess you weren’t home.”

“I was in Redding for a workshop. Got in kinda late.”

“Bixby! What the hell is this?” Vernon Banks sauntered up to our table and cuffed Dale lightly on the head. The resilient curls sprang back into place.

Most people wouldn’t have spotted Dale and me in that booth. But Vern had cop eyes. “Looks like a big brown sheep crawled on your head and died,” he said. He turned to me. “You like this look?”

 “Of course. It’s au currant.”

“Maybe I should get mine done like that.” Vern took off his police cap and rubbed his thin grey crew cut. “S’pose they’d give me a discount?”

A little bit of Vern went a long way, but I liked that he was almost always laughing. Dale wouldn’t make eye contact with him. I beamed at the genial officer, trying to compensate.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, missy,” Vern said.

“I’ve been really busy.”

“Your boy here’s been busy too.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Aw, let’s see that pretty smile again… There ya go.” He rapped his knuckles on the table under Dale’s nose. “This one’s a keeper, son.”

“Your order’s ready, Chief,” the host said.

“I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

“He’s funny,” I said after Vern ambled away.

“Most clowns are.” Dale sneered. “Just look at him.”

Vern shadowboxed with a paper lantern that hung above the cash register. The host handed him a white plastic bag with red Chinese characters that I assumed said “Thank you for your business.” But it could have said anything. None of the restaurant’s patrons would know the difference.

#

The waiter brought our check on a small black tray. “You coming to the parade next weekend?” he asked.

“Lunar New Year,” I said. “I almost forgot.”

“I have to cover it for the paper, but I wasn’t planning to stay long,” Dale said.

“I’d like to go.”

“It’s supposed to rain.”

“We can sit in Sullivan’s and watch it from the bar.” The Irish pub was one of our favorite haunts—the place where we first met.

“The parade only has five entries. They’ll just march up and down Main Street a half dozen times to make it seem like a bigger deal.”

“So it’s provincial. C’mon. You have to make your own fun in a small town.”

“I guess you’d know all about that.”

I squinted at him. “After living in Chico, yeah.”

He exhaled heavily through pursed lips. His gaze, at first plaintive, turned fierce. “I drove up there Tuesday night. I was wet and cold and tired and I needed a place to stay. I went to your apartment but you had company.”

 “Just Mickey.”

“I thought you were done with him.”

“I was. I am. What happened last fall was a mistake. I told you that.”

“But you’re still seeing him.”

“I’m not seeing him,” I said. “He’s my best friend—”

Dale placed his forefinger on the center of his chest, his mouth agape.

“At work,” I said. “We hit the bars on our way home from Redding. I invited him for dinner because we needed to eat.”

 “I saw you with him. On your balcony.”

“Grilling burgers.”

 “Don’t bullshit me. I thought I’d need a garden hose to separate you.”

I laughed. Dale didn’t.

“It was harmless,” I said.

“I don’t believe you. Not about Mickey. Not about anything. Hell, for all I know, you’re still screwing half the guys in your office.”

I shrugged. “We never said we’d be exclusive.” My voice seemed small.

He slumped back, arms crossed. Silent. The sound of someone trying to control his temper. I missed the Seventies, when no one expected monogamy.

“It hurt to see you with him,” he finally said.

“Guys don’t hurt.”

“The world according to Reggie.”

 “It’s true. And besides, feeling hurt is a choice. People only hurt you if you let them. I figured that out in the tenth grade.”

“When your boyfriend raped you.”

“You’re over-simplifying. We were just fooling around and things went too—”

“You told me he forced himself on you.”

“Only that first time.”

Dale ground the heel of his palm into his forehead. “And that guy in college? Idiot?”

“Eliot.”

“Whatever. He just kept you around to impress his fraternity buddies. Until he could finish med school and marry a nice Jewish girl.”

 “She is nice.” I poured some tea and gathered my thoughts. “All I’m saying is once I learned men only want one thing I never had to feel hurt about it again.”

“Do you know how insulting that is?”

“Not you. You’re different. You’re more in touch with your feminine side.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You used to think it was.” I tinkered with my chopsticks, trying to balance them on the edge of my plate. “Most men only want sex,” I said. “I have strong empirical evidence.”

Dale smiled and shook his head. “When we got together I thought, what’s this beautiful woman doing with me? You fed me, gave me a place to stay, put gas in my truck.” His voice cracked. “You took care of me like no one ever had.”

“Because I love you.”

“I don’t think so, Reggie. And that’s the one thing I really needed from you. I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re capable of love.”

A lump formed in the back of my throat. I extinguished it with tepid tea and contemplated the dragon painting on the wall—its red and yellow body coiled and contorted. Its fiery tongue aimed at Dale’s head.

“Guess I’ve got scar tissue instead of a heart.”

He shifted in his seat. It was satisfying to watch.

I reached for the check but he slapped his hand on it. The black plastic tray rattled and flipped upward, sending the fortune cookies to the floor.

“I got this,” he said.

#

I challenged the 55-mph speed limit on the way home. Dark clouds rolled in from the west, like the inverted surface of a roiling ocean. I felt a combination of relief and sadness.

The office Christmas party was coming up. The organizers, tired of trying to get everyone together during the holidays, had moved the event to late February. They’d decorate a tinder-dry tree. My boss would dress as Santa. We’d exchange gag gifts. After dinner, there’d be a DJ and dancing. I’d been looking forward to having a date this year. Without Dale, I’d have to find some guy on the fringes of the gathering. Chat him up, take him home. The only way to keep from feeling alone in a crowd.

My face felt heavy. Inside my hollow chest a teenaged girl sobbed, her tiny shoulders convulsing. I gripped the wheel, taking deep measured breaths. Trying to replace the air that she was sucking out of my lungs.

BIO

Renee S. Jolivette is a retired engineer with a fiction writing certificate from the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Her work has appeared in The Union, Current, Cruisin’ News, Microfiction Monday, Bronco Driver and Portage Magazine. She lives in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills with her husband and their small but authoritative dog, Rascal.










The Seagull’s 460th Seguidilla

by Jake Sheff


The sun’s stunt double was hired
For her beautiful
Handwriting. This morning’s drawn
In the Bauhaus style.
Its little staircase
Beckons me. Time has gone a
Little stir-crazy.



The Seagull’s 415th Seguidilla


Drink, my darling, drink again;
A pint of interest
With a hint of bliss-berries.
Oh child, oh doom-kissed
Child; it soothes my brain
To fill what follows death, and
It will soothe your pain.



BIO


Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and a crazy bulldog. Poems and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. A full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe,” is available from White Violet Press. He also has three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).







My Speedo

by T. B. Meek



         The text came in at 12:22 in the morning. “I have ur cat. The $$ is now $200.”

         Miriam had been unable to sleep that evening, it had been three days since Speedo scampered out the door of their third-floor walk-up and hadn’t returned. It wasn’t the first time the black cat with a white blaze across its face and one white paw went on a “walkabout” as Miriam and Charles affectionately called it. The first time he disappeared Miriam was riddled with angst and emailed the neighborhood listserv at 4:30 in the morning, “Our cat Speedo has gone missing. Have you seen him? We are worried sick. If you see him, please call.” She included her cellphone number and attached her favorite picture of the pet, which was the embodiment of kitty cuteness, though the creature’s piercing green eyes probed the viewer as if the cat knew the beholder’s deepest, darkest secret. Later that day, the McFadden’s son, home from college on a laundry run, found Speedo batting around a balled-up paper bag in the basement. To thank the boy, Miriam and Charles invited the young McFadden up for a brunch of vegetarian black bean chili crowned with poached eggs and hollandaise along with Miriam’s personal pride, home cured lox on bagel crisps with whipped cream cheese and chive. As Miriam arduously whisked the thick yellow sauce, the scene of Charles assembling a bagel as he listened to the boy talk excitedly about his future plans—something outdoors, urban planning, land conservation or maybe renewables—tweaked memories of the weekends that Leah would come home from veterinary school for comfort food and quiet. She laughed inwardly for a second because Charles always overloaded his bagel with a triple spread and a double heaping of onions with capers rolling off a teetering crown of sprouts, and then there was the two layers of her meaty, thick lox, and as usual, a good portion of it ended up in his bushy beard. She was about to do a subtle chin point behind the boy’s back but paused in mid motion as a hot tear welled up and made its way down her cheek and into the hollandaise.

         More overnight “Where’s Speedo?” disappearances happened, but the cat always returned the next day for his mid-morning feeding, and seemed to be eerily cognizant that Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, were sardine days as he’d always be there waiting in the kitchen for Miriam, excitedly purring and crashing into her legs, nearly tripping her as she tried to fork a pungent headless filet into the cat’s bowl. As Speedo escape days became more and more, the mode of which, the stealthily trailing of a pant leg of an unwary resident, delivery person or anyone else operating the heavy wooden door that closed with creaking, achey slowness, Miriam and Charles began to fret less, often sharing a glass of crisp kosher white wine and laughing about, “Speedo being Speedo.” “He’s out saving the world,” Charles said one night as he sipped wine and noshed on crackers crowned with a diced mixture of Miriam’s lox, capers and pickles. To Miriam’s non-reaction he reiterated, “I’m serious, I think he morphs into a giant crime-fighting kitty.”

         Miriam took a long sip of wine, savored the buttery oak sweetness for a contemplative beat, and then nodded in reluctant agreement.

         “See?” Charles said, perching forward in his chair, “I’m telling you, it’s a thing. What do you think his superpower is?”

         Again, Miriam regarded the question with pause and said, “Laser beam eyes and saber claws, or maybe, he can command other cats as allies like the rat girl in ‘The Suicide Squad’?”

         “A giant starfish and Jim Ignatowski with Christmas tree lights popping out of his head? That movie was utter poop!” Charles bellowed. “Superhero films are ruining cinema.”

         “So says the grown-up man who collects kewpie dolls.”

         “They are trolls! Trolls are not ruining film!”

         ***

         Normally Miriam slept with her iPhone in sleep mode but that night she left it on in the hope that the ding of an incoming email from the listserv would bear good news. When the text came in, Miriam immediately poked Charles in the back and turned on the light.    

         Charles ripped off his eyeshades, put on his glasses and sat up, “What’s going on?”b

         “It’s about Speedo,” she said holding the phone up to his face.

         “Did you post your number on the flyer?”

         “And the listserv and Nextdoor. Call them.”

         “Now? It’s 12:30 in the morning.”

         “They just texted, call them,” she implored and dropped the phone on her husband’s chest.

         “Alright,” he sighed wearily and dialed the number.

         After three rings the phone picked up. “Hello, hello, hello,” a thick Eastern Bloc accent said with a flourish of maniacal merriment.

         “Do you have our cat?” Charles asked flatly.

         “But of course. I give tomorrow. You send two hundred now and then I text you where to meet.”

         “How do we know you have our cat? How did you get this number?”

         “My friend, I show you, you don’t worry.”

         “The reward posted is one hundred dollars.”

         “I show, you send two hundred, I tell you where, you send two hundred more, then you get your ket.”

         “But that’s four hundred dollars!”

         “That is the deal. You take, you leave. Up to you,” and with that, the phone clicked off.

         “Probably a scam,” Charles said tossing the phone into the puffy in between of the white duvet.

         “How do you know?” Miriam protested.

         “I mean c’mon, that accent, the way he says ‘ket,’ he might not even be in the country.”

         Miriam started to open her mouth when the phone vibrated and emitted a muffled hum. On the screen, underneath a grainy picture of a black cat, taken top down from the backside, was a single word, “Proof!”

         “Do you think that’s him?” Miriam asked as Charles enlarged the picture and rotated the phone.

         “Hard to tell, could be any black ‘ket,’or some rando picture off the internet. I don’t see his white paw, but I’m not sure that I don’t either.”

         “Let’s just pay him.”

         “And we’ll be out two hundred dollars?”

         “It’s Speedo,” Miriam said, and then more softly, “and Leah.”

         Charles sighed. It was a bitter cold day in February when the call came in. Miriam heard Charles’s phone ring in the other room as she carefully extracted the potato kugel from the oven amid the moist wafting juices of roasting chicken on the rack below. It was Leah’s favorite meal. As she pulled the foil snugly across the Pyrex pan, she tried to pull the words from Charles’s soft murmurs, but to no avail, so she quieted herself. In the still of the kitchen there were nothing but the soft whine of the oven fan and the drip of the faucet she had asked Charles to fix numerous times. Then, from the other room there was a sudden, muffled pop and the sound of glass skittering across the floor. Miriam stiffened. Heavy, lumbering footfalls made their way across the apartment. In the doorway, Charles, a portrait of clash in his his flannel robe, baggy sweatpants and plaid button down, appeared looking drunk, unsteady and holding onto the door jamb in an effort to remain upright.

         “What?” Miriam asked as she registered the tight, tremulous contortion on his face.

         Six months after the accident, Miriam became insistent that they get a pet. “We’ve already created a sizable adoption fund in her name,” Charles said. “We’ve never been pet people, that was Leah.”

         “But I want to do something, something I can put my hands on, something I can feel everyday.”

         “You could volunteer at the shelter.”  

         Miriam shot him a sideways glance. “I could, but that’s not what I am talking about, and you know it.”

         “Well, our options are limited in that the condo docs restrict dogs, birds, reptiles and other animals deemed ‘exotic,’ which oddly includes Guinea pigs and other rodents.”

         “But Leah had Charlie and Mickey and then that cute albino rat that I was dead set against.”

         “Fergie. I knew back then, but some rules are meant to be bent, plus when Leah kept asking for a dog, I spoke to Burt about it. He said he and Rach would be cool with it, but before we moved in, Jimmy Mac had wanted a puppy, and Rosemary was a hard no.”

         “Well she’s gone,” Miriam said of the former first-floor resident who Burt often described as, “NIMBY entitlement gone off the rails.”

         “All I’m saying is we should think about the time commitment and care requirements. As you recall, those piggies were a real chore to clean.” His wife seemed not to hear him. “What I am trying to say,” he said in a louder tone, “is that we should work within some boundaries if this is something you really want to do.”

         At the MSPCA-Angell Center, the Levys were warmly welcomed by a wiry blonde-haired woman who introduced herself as “Shel,” and again as “just Shel,” when Charles asked what it was short for. “Your funding has allowed us to expand our food, and spay and neuter assistance programs,” she said as she led them to a sterile conference room with a coffee urn and a stack of sugar-coated crullers at the center of the table. “Last week we were able to supply a farmer out in Fitchburg with hay and grain relief for his starving livestock.”

         “Doesn’t the farm sustain itself?”

          “In theory, yes, but this is a sad situation, tainted runoff from a development killed the grass, there’s back taxes and no new generation to pass the farm onto. The animals will likely need to be moved, though we remain somewhat hopeful as the GoFundMe campaign we launched has money trickling in and our social media team is cranking up the dial.” She clicked the top of her pen and placed a clipboard on the table. “As I understand it, you’re interested in adopting an indoor pet, is that correct?”

         “Yes,” Miriam said extricating a cruller from the Jenga heap.

         Shel sat patiently and took notes as Miriam expressed her desire to not have anything that could get out of a cage and disappear into the walls. Low-maintenance and self-sufficiency were essential. “Sounds like a rabbit or a cat,” Shel said double checking the clipboard. 

         “But a rabbit just sits in a cage, right?” Charles asked.

         “No, they can come out and hop around your living room or sit in your lap as you watch TV or read, but you have to rabbit-proof the room.”

         “Rabbit-proof?”

         “Make sure they can’t get to electrical wires—we don’t want an electrified bunny—and if you have a thick ply rug, they may gnaw on it thinking it’s grass or hay. Let’s take a walk, sometimes you see an animal and it sees you, and you just know.”

         Charles shrugged, “Sure.”

         In the rabbit room, Miriam peered through the thin metal bars of a cage. There appeared to be nothing inside, so she leaned in. Something stirred amid a large mound of hay. Ears shot up. It was a large grey buck that looked at Miriam with modicum of curiosity before thunder-hopping across the hay-lined floor and crashing into the bars. Mouth agape, Miriam let out a short, inarticulate yelp and staggered backwards, one hand instinctively pressing against her clavicle.

         “That’s Mr. Peanut,” Shel said.

         “Salted or unsalted?” Charles asked adding a sheepish laugh.

         “You don’t feed rabbits peanuts,” Shel said matter of factly, “just greens and veggies.”

         Once the color returned to her face, Miriam peered into a few more cages. There were plenty of brown and white rabbits, and some near albino, with pronounced pink ears and noses. Despite their varying colors, all the rabbits shared the same big, black, soulless eyes, which unsettled Miriam. One plump, fluffy rabbit lounged at the front of its cage, its soft fur tempting her to imagine running her hand through it as it sat calmly in her lap. But overall, they all seemed to share the same inert, aloof demeanor. The ones lingering at the back of their cages appeared to be in a state of perpetual fear, their midsections pulsing rapidly as their tiny hearts raced.     

         “They certainly poop a lot,” Charles observed.

         “It’s not so bad, it’s mostly green matter, and they can become quite tidy, choosing one corner of the cage to use as a loo once acclimated and settled in. Would you like to hold one?” Shel said gesturing Miriam toward a cage.

         “Oh,” Miriam said, “I don’t know, perhaps on the way back?”

         As they left the rabbit room, a black cat shot past them in the hallway with a young, boyish woman in blue MSPCA scrubs chasing after it. The cat raced down the hallway and into the main reception area with the woman’s sneakers making squishy squeaking noises as they ran after the animal that seemed to intentionally taunt its pursuer, pausing, allowing them to close the distance and then suddenly darting off again.

         “All part of the care giving process,” Shel commented nonplussed with an outstretched arm.

         Shortly thereafter, as they continued down the endless hall, Miriam heard the faint squishy squeak of those sneakers and then felt something suddenly brush between her legs.  She froze. What ever it was, brushed her leg again. Glancing down, the wayward cat was doing figure eights around her calves.

         The young woman’s athletic shoes made a high-pitched screech as they skidded to a sudden halt. “There you are Joe,” they said as they reached for the cat which scooted to the back side of Miriam’s legs to avoid capture.

         “It’s Ok Alex,” Shel said, “I’ll get him.”

         “He’s got a will of his own,” the younger woman said handing Shel an open tin of cat food and a spoon with an oily brown lump on it.

         When the younger woman left, the cat relaxed and rested its haunches on Miriam’s well-worn flats. She looked at Shel and shrugged.

         “He seems to like you,” Shel said handing Miriam the spoon, handle first.

         “Pheromones?” Charles asked.

         “Who knows,” Shel said, “Cats are very emotionally intelligent animals.”

         The cat sat there expectantly like a curbside passenger looking for their late arriving Uber. Miriam gingerly presented the spoon to the cat, who regarded it cautiously at first, sniffing it and then taking a tentative lick the before taking a sizable bite of the brown mushy lump. When the last greasy smear from the spoon was licked clean, the cat affectionately crashed into Miriam’s leg and began to purr audibly.

         “What’s its name?” Charles asked.

         “We’ve been calling him, ‘I Dunno, Joe,’ because that’s what the intake person called him when asked his name by a fellow staffer filling out the paperwork.”

         Charles arched his eyes and held out his hands.

         “He was found in the back seat of a cab,” She continued. “The cabbie had no idea how it got there and said he didn’t recall anyone getting in with an animal, so the thought is that when someone got out, the cat snuck in. The point is, he doesn’t have a name he responds to so you could call him anything you want.”

         Back home, Miriam scrolled through her iPad looking at digitized pictures of the family in happier times. “I want to name him something that reminds me of Leah,” she said when Charles suggested they simply call him Joe.  Miriam sniffled and daubed at the corner of her eye as she swiped and poked. “Oh,” she said tilting the iPad towards Charles, “remember our summer getaways at Sunapee?” Filling the entirety of the eleven-inch screen was a picture of the three of them in a canoe with Miriam awkwardly perched in the middle. She swiped again and the three were on a dinner cruise, and then atop a rock outcropping of one of New Hampshire’s Presidential Mountains with a vast green forest in the background. She slid again and they were lounging and reading in the living room of a rustic cabin dominated by a stone masoned fireplace framed by a roughly hewn wooden mantle, and then sunset dinning on the back deck. Then there were the shots of Charles and Leah making goofy faces as they jumped off the dock and into the lake’s dark waters. Miriam laughed uncontrollably at the next picture of Charles on the dock in a red Speedo, hips thrust towards the camera, expressive hands by his sides showcasing the tight garment, his slightly furry belly hanging over the waistband with an own-it, “Boo-yah!” expression on his face.

         “My Speedo was a great and glorious annual tradition,” Charles said of the infamous swimming garment he had initially purchased with serious intent.

         “You wanted to be like Mulder,” Miriam smirked making reference to the paranormal FBI investigator on the sci-if series they religiously watched together on Sunday nights while slurping Miriam’s beloved matzo ball soup, “but you looked more like a young, cutely chubby Seth Rogan, though I did love your appropriation of that poem.”      

         “An appropriation of an appropriation,” Charles clarified, “Duchovny ripped off William Carlos Williams’s ‘My Red Wheelbarrow’ which was both funny and shameless at the same time.” He paused and then launched in,

                  “My Speedo

                  So much depends upon a red Speedo

                  Covered with rain…

He paused again. “Now I can’t remember if there was more or not, I’d have to ask Lord Google.”

         “But you added something about vanity and Duchovny‘s sex addiction claim.”

         “Right, a goof of a silly spoof,” Charles cleared his throat,

                  “My Speedo

                  Look at me so pretty in my red Speedo

                  So much depends upon me and my flaming libido

                  Washed in rain, don’t call me vain

                  That’s just your hating ego.”

         In the wee hours of the morning Charles performed a reverse Google search on the image of the cat with Miriam hovering anxiously nearby. “Im not sending the money if this is some stock image from the internet or Granny Nana’s cat Paws from Ames, Iowa,” he said.

          When no real hits came back, he said, “Ok, let’s do it. We’ll give it a shot. It’s a fool’s errand but…”

         Charles texted the number asking where and how to send the money, and where and when they would get Speedo.

         “8AM tomorrow. Send the 1st 200 apple pay to this number, then I tell where.”

         Charles hesitated but did as requested. The next three minutes felt like an eternity as Charles and Miriam stared at the phone trying to will a response. Finally, text capsule popped up with the numbers “42.3539, 71.1373–go here.”      

         “What’s that?” Miriam asked.

         “I think they’re geolocation coordinates.”

         “What?”

         “It’s like a street address.” Charles pounded away on his laptop. “Looks like it’s a shopping mall over on Everett Street in Allston.” He showed Miriam the map. “We’ve driven by it a bunch of times, it’s a rundown stretch of urban wasteland waiting to be paved over and built up.”

         “So, we go to a shopping mall and…?”

         “Hope.”

         “I don’t think I can sleep.”

         “Me either, this all feels so invasive, like you know you’re being taken advantage of and you’re just letting it happen.”

         Miriam did eventually find sleep with the aide of a Xanax. Charles meanwhile stayed up and posted to Facebook the “The Ballad of Speedo,” which was a witty bit of acerbic humor that outlined the whole ordeal and concluded with, “If you don’t see a post here from us by 10AM, call John Wick.” He included the picture of Speedo with his probing eyes as well as the grainy image of the cat sent by their tauntingly aloof texter.

         Charles brewed a pot of coffee as the sun came up. Miriam entered the kitchen bleary-eyed, glasses askew and her thick curly hair kinked and frizzy. “Anything new?”

         Charles handed her a mug of coffee with Papa Smurf on it. “Nope.”

          “Let’s get there early just to be safe.”

         “Right. I think I’ll mount Leah’s old GoPro on the dashboard and let’s have our phones on record.”

         “Aye, aye captain,” Miriam said and issued a sleepy salute. “Phasers set to stun.”

         Checking his laptop, Charles noticed he had three Facebook notifications. One was from a former publishing colleague who triumphantly claimed they had just completed the first draft of their memoir about living in a West Bank settlement. The other two were responses to “The Ballad of Speedo.” The first from Frank Kashner, Charles’s foodie friend who was forever searching for the best fried chicken and St. Louis ribs in town, and always overjoyed to discover new joints serving such desired victuals. “Don’t do it,” Frank wrote, “call the cops.” The other was from Liz Rush, a college friend of Miriam’s who lived in Columbus, Ohio and was one of Miriam’s bridesmaids. “This is just terrible, hopefully all is well for Speedo and you two.”

         Liz had also texted Miriam, “You guys, Ok? Anything I can do?” Miriam didn’t know how to respond so she didn’t.  

         With weary trepidation Charles and Miriam loaded into the aging metallic silver Honda CRV pockmarked with bumper rubs from aggressive drivers trying to cram into too small parking spaces on their narrow, cluttered street. Charles used a suction cup apparatus to mount the GoPro between two of the many mounted kewpie doll trolls that adorned the dashboard of the car they affectionately referred to as “Old Betsy” and punched the coordinates into his iPhone. “Head south on Vassal Park Lane for 200 yards and then turn right onto Wright Street,” the cheerful GPS AI voice chirped. The AI sent them down Mass Ave and through Harvard Square, which normally it would avoid, but It was early enough on a Sunday morning that the somnambulant throng of coeds that would soon bring all moving traffic to a grinding halt as they foraged for bagels and eggy hangover relief, were still in bed sleeping off their weekend revelry.  They turned onto JFK Street and then began the slow rise over the Anderson Memorial Bridge, a point in many a journey that Charles usually pointed out that the bridge connecting Cambridge to Boston was the point of no return for Quentin Compson III in William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury,” a fact, he claimed few knew, even if they had been forced to read the shape shifting southern gothic as part of their educational evolution. “People don’t care or are just too lazy make the connection. I bet half the people who see the plaque think it’s real,” he said of the gravestone like epitaph affixed to the bridge memorializing the fictional Compson III (1891-1910). The ringtone of Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom” came from Charles’s phone as the countenance of Frank Kashner, reddish, greying beard and piercing turquoise eyes, flashed on screen. Charles put the phone on speaker. “Frank, what’s the good word?”

         “Good word, are you crazy?”

         “Probably.”

         “Are you in your car going to meet this creep?”

         “That’s the plan.”

         “Stop and call the police now.”

         “Nah, we go, we hope.”

         “You think that’s wise? Where you heading? I’ll meet you there.”

         “You don’t have to, this’ll be over in 30 minutes or less.”

         “Will it? You don’t know who this guy is or what he wants. I’m getting in my car now. What’s the address?”

         “Allston, the shopping mall on Everett Street.”

         Charles heard a car door slam and an engine turn over.

         “Ok, I’ve got you on speaker and am going to stay on with you, just in case.”

         “Thanks,” Charles said as he reached over and squeezed Miriam’s leg gently.

         “That area’s a real shit hole.”

         The Honda jerked and bucked as it hit a pothole. “Yup, the old New York Bus Stop Diner is all fenced off and looks ready for razing. The whole place is pothole minefield, and it doesn’t help that old Betsy has shit for suspension.”

         “Your destination is 1,000 yards ahead on the left,” the GPS ‘bot announced.

         “Looks like we’re here,” Charles said as they pulled into a litter-strewn parking lot surrounded by construction fencing cordoning off adjacent properties in various stages of razing.

         “I’ll be there in 10.”

         “You have arrived at your destination,” the GPS ‘bot added as Charles paused the car in the middle of the mostly vacant parking lot. At the far end loomed a Star Market grocery store. To their left was a drive thru McDonald’s and a boarded-up Mr. Sushi restaurant that stood alone from the rest of the connected mall front like two shipping containers randomly dropped in a vast sea of tar and concrete.

         “I’m thinking over there,” Charles said pointing to the derelict sushi bar.

         “Ok,” Miriam said hesitantly, “what are we looking for?”

         “That’s a good question.”

         Nestled aside the eatery adorned with a lime green seaweed motif and boarded up windows, Miriam and Charles sat in silence scanning the parking lot for any sign of movement. Besides some distant activity in front of the supermarket or the occasional squeaky rattle of cart wheels as an employee tracked down an abandoned shopping conveyance, all was quiet.

         “Just about there,” Frank said from the phone now wedged between Charles’s thighs.

         “We should do something,” Miriam said.

         “Right,” Charles said as he extracted the phone and texted their tormentor, “We are here.”

         It took a few minutes that felt like hours, but finally a reply came, “Send other 200.”

         Charles looked at the phone, mouth agape with incredulousness. “That’s not the deal,” he wrote, “Give us the cat and I’ll send the $$.”

         “What’s he saying?” Miriam asked.

         “Wants the money first,” he said and tossed the phone onto the dashboard, the iDevice lodging between the legs of a pink and a blue haired kewpie.  “Total BS.”

         “What just happened?” Frank asked over the speaker.

         Charles quickly retrieved the phone, “Sorry. Frank, I’m going to put you on hold.”

         “Ok, be there in two.”

         Charles dialed the number and waited for what seemed too long of a period of time.  There was no ring, just dead digital silence and then, as Charles had feared, came the aurally chaotic crescendo of a disconnected tone.  He sighed and collapsed back into his seat. “Totally played.”

         “Here’s Frank,” Miriam said sitting up and pointing at the approaching gold Acura coupe dipping and bouncing across the uneven tarmac, the kewpie troll Charles had given him visible in glints as it dangled and bobbed from the rearview mirror. 

         Standing in the crisp cold between the two vehicles, Charles shrugged sheepishly. Frank closed the distance between the two and gave his friend a firm, one-armed, lean-in hug. “Zip?”

         “Total scam.”

         “Probably doesn’t have the cat. You put up fliers, posts?”

         “Around the neighborhood, on the local listserv and Nextdoor,” Miriam said as she zipped up her jacket and joined the two thick bearded men.

         Frank gave Miriam a hug, “Sorry this isn’t under better circumstances.”

         Through the billowy windbreaker Miriam could fee lean ribs and a musculature she was not formerly aware of. “You’re quite the fit one these days,” she said as they released.

         “Training for the Pan Mass challenge. It’s amazing how much weight falls away when you ride over 150 miles a week. But hey, that’s the life of a bored, retired bachelor with nothing else to do. Definitely not for the faint of heart.”

         The three shared a laugh.

         “Zaftig’s?” Charles asked.

         “Let’s.”

         At the popular Coolidge Corner deli dour in decor and adorned with what Miriam always described as tchotchke art, the three sat in a cramped booth, Miriam and Charles arm to arm on one side with Frank looking relatively adrift in his own sea of green pleather across the way. Wafts of onions and griddle grease commingled with the pervasive scent of dark roasted coffee as busy servers flew in and out of the kitchen. Before them lay a spread of knishes, potato pancakes, berry drizzled blintzes, toasted bagel halves, a plate of lox, onions, and capers and a mound of chopped, pickled whitefish at the center of it all with Mise cups nestled in between, brimming with various whipped schemers.

         “You really should consider calling the cops,” Frank said.

         “It’s just two hundred bucks, besides what would they do? Give us lip service about priorities and manpower? Speedo’s prolly still out on one of his famous walkabouts and will come home to us when he’s damn ready. That cat has always had a mind of his own and we bend to it.”

         “Charles,” Miriam said pointing to her chin.

         Charles dabbed a napkin to his beard and examined the result. “Didn’t you know, I was saving that berry sauce for dessert tonight?”

         Taking note, Frank executed a similar precautionary wipe. “It’s amazing what you sometimes find nested in there.”

         “The brotherhood of the beard, a true labor of love,” Miriam said raising her mimosa glass. Charles hoisted his splatter-stained mug of coffee and Frank followed with a garishly gigantic Bloody Mary made even more ridiculous by the towering pompadour of celery. As the drinking vessels converged the soft clink of their brief consummation was barely audible above the cacophonous din of garbled voices, clanking silverware and the continuous thwapping of the heavy kitchen door.

         “To Speedo and a safe return,” Frank said.   

         They all clinked again.

         “I know we joke,” Miriam said, “but I still have that nervous feeling.”

         “Same,” Charles said and gave his wife a soft kiss on her brow, his beard leaving her glasses askew in the aftermath.

         “That thing,” she said with a half tremulous laugh as she straightened her opticals.

         A faint mellifluous ding rolled up from under the table. Charles straightened up and extracted the cellphone from his pocket.

         “Is it him?” Frank asked.

         “Yeah, now wants three hundred. Says, ‘Your lack trust now cost more. Send and I tell.’”

         “Well, there you have it. Stop dicking around and call the cops.”

         “Funny thing is the text identifies the sender as Gracie Alves.”

         “Yeah, and?”

         “She,” Miriam interjected, “was a former house cleaner of ours.”

         “Maybe she’s in on the scam?”

         “I don’t think so, she moved back to Brazil before the pandemic. Had sick parents, though she did turn her business over to one of her workers, but we don’t use them anymore.”

         “Give the number a call,” Frank said holding his hands palm up by his shoulders. “I mean, why not?”

         Charles tapped the phone, listened for a while and then put it on speaker for the others to hear the acrimonious disconnected tone.

         “Likely masking,” Frank said. “Wonder if they hacked you or someone else. In these dark days of dirty laundry and personal information strewn all over the internet, it’s like Pac-Man chomping out there.”

***

         As Charles and Miriam were about to turn onto Vassal Park Lane, an oncoming cab made a curt, preemptive left.   

         Charles tapped the horn. “And no signal either! Don’t people signal anymore?”

         Miriam looked at her husband with a steely eye. “Just let it go.”

         But he didn’t. His agitation mounted as they rolled down the narrow side street, the cab slowing and braking every ten yards as the driver’s head craned right before moving on. “And the guy doesn’t even know where he’s going.” Charles said as threw his hands up. “Ask Siri! She knows!”

         Due to its tight narrowness, two cars could not pass each other on Vassal Park Lane. If two cars met in the middle, one would have to pull into an empty parking space or one of the few driveways to let an oncoming traveler pass, and if no option was available, one would have to back up, which often led to honking and shouting, especially when other cars added to the impasse.  Often Miriam and Charles would peer out their window with knowing bemusement, but when these uncivil moments played out in the middle of the night, they put in earplugs and grumbled about a letter to the city requesting that their cozy side street be turned into a one-way.

         In the moment however, a one-way passage would not abate Charle’s impatience as the procession jerkily made its way past the smattering of stately Victorians, the tight row of brownstones and small sitting park formerly named after a colonialist who made his vast fortune off the backs of slaves. It was now called Mind’s Eye Park, the name suggested by the biotech entrepreneur who, when he and his family moved into one of those grand Victorians, paid for the Stonehenge-like art and rustic benches hewn from tree stumps. The street name however, long a topic of city council debate as part of the ongoing mandate to remove the names of those who perpetuated slavery from city landmarks and commemorate those who were subjugated and endured, retained the name Vassal, not because it commemorated John Vassal, but because, as one council member articulated, “it elevated the inspirational spirit and persevering will of Darby Vassal,” one of John Vassal’s slaves who became a freeman, activist and religious leader. “Had they called it Darby Lane or Darby Vassal Lane, that would have made sense,” Charles had said at the time taking exception to Jeet Shiva’s preemptive, money-pushed agenda that shut others out. “He’s a godsend for the neighborhood,” a neighbor had posted on the listserv when he had his gardener install planters full of picturesque flora around the neighborhood, but that communal affection ebbed after the park’s controversial renaming. When the city had first announced the rebranding and long overdue renovation, Charles had wanted to make a little fairy and troll house out of the old tree trunk that had remained a ghostly spectacle decades after a lightening strike robbed it of its carbon cleansing ability. “Children can come and play and have a sense of wonderment,” Charles beamed at the prospect when budgets, artists and designers were being discussed by the council, but then Jeet stepped in and opened his checkbook.

         The park faded from view as they drove into the neighborhood of triple-deckers where the Levys lived. This part of Vassal Park Lane, in particular, faced significant parking challenges due to its proximity to Massachusetts Avenue. That stretch was home to two contentious marijuana shops and a hub of eclectic eateries attracting visitors from the suburbs. People flocked to Jin’s Fine Asian for its house-made soup dumplings and La Mediterranean for its green crab-infused seafood dishes. The main attraction, however, was Giuseppe’s Table, a Michelin-rated restaurant where the line for haute nouvelle Italian cuisine formed around the block an hour before opening. Another notable spot was Big Paul’s Southern, known for its gas station cuisine, which gained popularity after Paul’s two-episode stint on “Top Chef.”

         The strip also boasted essential Indian cuisine, two homemade ice cream shops, and a vegan café that had become a mecca for yoga enthusiasts seeking healthy meals after their sessions. A recent addition to the area was a pricey, “proudly woman-owned” wine bar and art gallery serving tinned fish and imported French cheese. As always, Paddy’s remained a classic college hangout and sports bar, also hosting live music and poetry slams. It had been a fixture on the strip long before the subway line extended to the area and had weathered the rising real estate prices brought by gentrification.

         Parking became even more complicated on Sundays, when the city allowed all spaces on Vassal Park Lane—normally reserved for permit holders—to be open to anyone. This policy meant that Charles and Miriam had to carefully secure a parking spot for Betsy on Saturday before sundown, leaving her parked there until Monday morning.

         To Miriam’s eye, the shadowy passenger in the backseat seemed to be a woman by the updo hairstyle adorned with hat had to be chopsticks or pencils sticking out. “Oh here,” she said pointing to her right.

         “Nah, I see a better one right up in front. Now if this guy would just get along.”

         But he didn’t, the flashers came on and the cab stopped adjacent to the empty parking space.

         “Great,” Charles said, and palm smacked the steering wheel.

         “Just back up and get the one back there.”

         Charles put Betsy in reverse and began rolling backwards until a loud honk brought him to a stop. His foot hard on the brake, a large black SUV loomed in the rearview.  They were boxed in. “Nothing but those knishes is going to go right today,” Charles muttered to himself and gave a little double tap on Betsy’s horn. 

         “It’ll be just a minute, let’s just let it be,” Miriam offered sympathetically.

         “I’ll see your two-hundred and raise you fifty.”

         “What?”

         “Never mind.”

         There was movement in the back seat of the cab as the passenger began to duck and bob. The rear trunk popped, and the large SUV gave another long leaning horn blast.

         Charles threw his hands in the air. “Wonderful, just forking wonderful!”

         The rear passenger door flew open and out stepped a tall dark-haired woman in a long flowing floral dress and sporty, waist-cropped black leather jacket. To Miriam, she looked like a model, angular, aloof, and instantly captivating. With quick efficiency the woman adjusted dark sunglasses that framed her porcelain face, swung a large black purse over her shoulder and then rounded the back of the cab, but before she got there, the driver, a short bearded man, head wrapped in a turban, shot out of the driver’s side and was there before her, digging down into the cab’s abyss and extracted a sleek silver toned piece of luggage. The horn from the SUV blared again.

         “Bloody hell,” Charles said, “I’ve got half a mind to…”

         The cabbie turned toward the SUV and made a slow, exaggerated hand wave. Then, with the calm precision of a BBC broadcaster, he said, “My friend, it is only time. Time we can share. Time you can afford. Be kind to all and kindness will come to you.”

         The SUV, its windshield as dark as its paint job, revved and lurched and then flew up Vassal Park Lane in reverse. Charles watched with daunted amazement at the driver’s seamless skill but then his appreciation turned to horror as the SUV didn’t even pause when it dumped out onto Oxford Street, cutting off another car. More horns sounded, engines growled, and then there was silence.

         Trying to find calm and refocus, Charles noticed the woman was nowhere to be seen and the cab was now at the end of Vassal Park Lane where it made a languorous left and disappeared.

         “So much drama,” Miriam mused. “Who do you think she was? I’ve never seen her before.”

         “Who knows. Maybe a visiting professor? People come, people go.” Charles put his index finger in the corner his mouth and flicked it out, making a loud pop. “Ok,” he said, “Back to our regularly scheduled program,” and with that, he slowly but adroitly pulled Betsy tight to the curb, her bumper just inches the McFadden’s prized Tesla.

         As Charles joined Miriam on the sidewalk, he noticed his wife was frozen, staring down between the navy-blue Tesla and a city worn Toyota Corolla with a tattered “Co-Exist” sticker on its rear bumper. Her finger was pointing, and her lips quivered, but no words came out. Charles followed the path of her finger and there, emerging from the front of the Tesla and onto the sidewalk was Speedo. Neither of them moved as the cat nonchalantly sauntered between them and up the stairs of their building.

         “Well, well, well,” Charles said with a soft chuckle that made his belly jiggle. “All’s well that ends well.”

         Slowly, Miriam followed after the animal, her eyes burning and heavy and moist, her gait unsteady.

Taking stock of Miriam’s state, Charles hurried after her. Halfway up the stairs a foot missed a riser, and she stumbled backwards. A hand shot out for the railing but missed, and she began to fall until firm arms secured her around her waited and righted her. They stood awkwardly on the stairs facing each other, each with a foot on a higher and lower riser.  She looked at her husband long but said nothing as the tears continued to well. When she became overwhelmed she crashed her face into his soft chest, as he gently put his arms around her, his beard enmeshing with her frizzy free ringlets.

         “Where have you been boy?” Charles whispered aside to the cat who sat nonplussed by the door licking the one white paw. Convulsing waves of grief poured into him in rhythmic intervals.

         Finally, Miriam pulled back, eyes red. She placed a soft hand on his cheek and then with one arm firmly around her, they slowly ascended.

         “Were you out saving the world with your laser beam eyes?” Charles asked the feline who regarded him indifferently, its piercing eyes shooting right through him. “You had mama and me so worried.”

         “It’s like he doesn’t even know us,” Charles said softly into his wife’s ear.

         “But he’s back,” she said blankly.  

         Charles opened the door and held it ajar. “Nothing sardines won’t change.” The invitation did not move the cat, its eyes were now fixed on Miriam.

         “Shall we all go in?” Charles said with an arm wave gesture of and usher.

         The cat gazed over its shoulder at the man for a brief second and then suddenly lurched forward and into Miriam’s legs rubbing against her and purring like the way he did when their souls first fused.



BIO

Tom Meek is a writer living in Cambridge. His reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, Cambridge Day, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.







KILL RATIO

by Patrick Theron Erickson



A certain kind of horse
is home to a livery stable

when a livery stable
without a horse
is no home at all

A livery stable
that is no home
to a horse

is yet a haven
for rodents

And the woodland owl
knows this

and waits

And we conclude
The owl is wise

because he doesn’t jump the gun
moving in for the kill

whittling away
the rat snake’s rations

raising the kill ratio
by one

one and done.



VACANCY


With inborn dexterity

he came to occupy
and then embody

the disparity between
humble beginnings
and lifetime achievement

without recourse
to a lifetime achievement award
and without rancor

And he never waffled

For the life of me
I cannot say
I do not wish him well
and Godspeed

and fain
would I not
gladly
share his lot

or at least
trade occupations
and inhabit new occupancies.



SLEAZY


A kiss

unless it leads
to a strip search
or a kiss off

is nothing
to write home about

except that you do

and your Facebook friends
misconstrue the kiss
for a kiss off

and the strip search
for a striptease

your home
away from home

So home
is no longer
where the heart is

no, not even
on your homepage.



BIO

Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. Besides a chapbook, Better Late Than Never (The Orchard Street Press, 2022), his work has appeared in the anthology, SHARING THIS DELICATE BREAD: Selections from Sheila-Na-Gig online 2016-2021, in Grey Sparrow Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Sheila-Na-Gig online, among other publications.







The Writing Disorder Interview

Deborah Holt Larkin



Deborah Holt Larkin grew up in the small coastal town of Ventura, CA. In the 1950s, her father, Bob Holt, was a newspaper journalist and columnist for the Ventura County Star-Free Press. Beginning in 1958, her father covered one of the most famous criminal cases in Ventura County history. When Deborah was only a child, her father attended the trial on a daily basis, following it through from opening statements to the verdict and punishment phases. As her father came home at night, Deborah would ask him for details about the case and the courtroom proceedings. Deborah recently wrote an exceptional and detailed account of the famous case of Elizabeth Duncan (A Lovely Girl, 2022), the woman who was convicted of murdering the pregnant wife of her son, Frank Duncan. Elizabeth Duncan was the last woman put to death by the state of California. Like the case itself, the memories of this period in her young, impressionable life haunted Deborah throughout her life—until it finally came out in book form.

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I met Deborah recently at a local book festival in Carpinteria, just north of Ventura. As we sat down to talk, a train, the Surfliner, was passing by.

The Writing Disorder: Have you been to Carpinteria lately?

Deborah Holt Larkin: I haven’t been here since I was a little girl. A friend’s grandmother used to live here. We’d come up here and stay with her family. We would sometimes camp out in her backyard, and we would hear the trains pass by at night. My family lived on Alameda Avenue in Montalvo, and our house was right near the railroad tracks. So, we heard the trains going by all the time.

TWD: What about Ventura?

DHL: A local historian, Glenda Jackson, used to give tours of the Ventura courthouse (built in 1926). She would take groups up to the old court room and tell them all about the infamous trial of Elizabeth Duncan. It’s a beautiful old building. I actually spoke there last year about my book. My sister still lives in Ventura — in the same house where we grew up.

TWD: My friend, Susan, who grew up in Ventura and worked at the courthouse, said they used to display a large photo of Elizabeth (aka Ma) Duncan up in the window upstairs. So, when you looked up from the street below you would see her face in the window.

DHL: When I was in college, I got a summer job as a student intern at Camarillo State Hospital. I got it through my mother who worked there as a psychiatric social worker. I was an intern in the school there and I remember that they seemed to treat children with mental illness as if it were some kind of parenting error. And I remember sitting out front on the lawn and watching the parents who would come visit. It wasn’t because of bad parenting. My mother was a big influence on me too, as far as some of her experiences working there at the hospital. I put this in the book, and I remember my mother saying, “I just hope I live long enough for there to be a cure for mental illness.”

TWD: The things your parents exposed you to as a child were quite provocative.

DHL: It was a different family. It was very unusual at the time for my mother to be working. She was the only married mom I knew who held a job. For the most part, women didn’t work when they were married.

TWD: And there weren’t a lot of divorced parents back then either.

DHL: No. There were some that had lost their husbands during the war.

TWD: How did the book come about? Was it through your writing class?

DHL: First of all, the story of the trial shadowed me my whole life. And I wanted to be a writer. It was something I always had a dream of becoming. When I first went away to college, I didn’t have the confidence. Even though my teachers always commented on how good my writing was. I would get comments on my papers like, very well written. So, I went into education. When I graduated from college in the 1970s, a lot of women were going into education. That was something we all did. And then thirty years later I started taking writing classes at UC San Diego, because I wanted to be able to do it right. I wanted to write a fictionalized account of the Duncan case. That was my goal. I was going to write a novel and fictionalize the story.

TWD: You know your book feels like fiction. It reads like a story.

DHL: I’ll tell you a little more about that. But I started to fictionalize the story. But the more chapters I wrote—I would just end up tearing them up, because the case is stranger than fiction. It doesn’t sound believable. And for fiction, it does need to have a certain quality. Even if it really happened, it might be hard to believe as fiction. And people in my writing class used to say that, that it wasn’t believable. Even after I started writing the book as nonfiction, people would still say it to me that it was unbelievable. And I would say, I’m sorry, but that’s what actually happened. It’s actually right there in the trial transcripts.

So as soon as my youngest son went off to college, I started taking writing classes. That’s when I first had the idea to write it as a novel. And then I got into a writer’s group, with reading critiques. It was at that point that I realized fictionalizing the case wasn’t going to work. So, I would bring in ten pages every week to the group and the other writers in the group would comment and critique my pages. I didn’t actually have a book I was working on at the time. Sometimes I would bring in personal essays, and it would be about my family and about my dad. And other times I would bring in something that was more like a police procedural, writing about this true murder case. One night I brought in something about my dad and the murder, and his reporting about the trial. Mark, the teacher/leader of the group, said, you know, Deborah, I think you have a book here. He suggested I write both my memoir about my dad and family, and about investigation and trial, and also some of the actual court proceedings, and weave it all together as one book. I thought about it, and I decided that it was a really great idea. So that was Mark’s idea. I gave him credit at the end of the book.

TWD: The structure works really well. You get really involved with the case, but you also welcome the relief with your own personal story about family and life growing up.

DHL: And then a very fortunate thing happened. After I had written most of the book, I had met with an agent who was interested in it. I sent her the whole manuscript, and when she finally got back to me, she said she really loved it, but she thought there was a problem with the pace of the book. She thought the family chapters were slowing down the pace. She wanted me to work on it and then she would take another look. So, I did. And I realized that as the trial approaches, there needed to be more true crime chapters and less personal chapters about my family to rev up the tension of the crime story.

I wrote it as literary nonfiction. And in literary nonfiction, all the facts are true, but you can write scenes where they’re drinking a cup of coffee, or you can describe the weather, or how someone might sit or walk down the street. I actually looked up the weather at the time. But there are little details like brushing your hand through your hair or sitting in a chair. So, all that is part of literary nonfiction.And I wanted to write it like I was telling a story.

When I started the book, I got 5,000 pages of the trial transcripts from the courts. When I was reading that, it felt like I was there in the courtroom. When the people testified, they were very candid. And they tell what they did. And the fact that the two men had already confessed to the crime. I had Newspaper articles from four newspapers, my father’s files and all that testimony. I had the grand jury testimony of all the witnesses. I just couldn’t put all that in the book. So, what I did was to create scenes. When you’re reading the interview of the landlady by the detective, those words are exactly said told the grand jury. When I read those transcripts, I felt like I was really there. It all turned black and white in my mind. I felt that I was there in that public gallery when everyone was gasping at the outrageous testimony of the killers. So, I wanted readers to be able to experience it that way. There’s much more of an intimacy when you’re writing in the literary nonfiction style than a journalistic style. So that’s how I wrote it.

There aren’t any things about the case in the book that aren’t true. I can tell you where every fact came from, either the trial transcripts, or multiple newspapers interviews  or my father’s files. I also was able to read the unpublished memoir of the DA who prosecuted the case. I got a lot of insight into his thinking and could be in his head in the court scenes.

TWD: Tell me more about that.

I was staying with this couple in Ojai, and she was getting married about halfway through writing the book. And she said one of her high school friends, Bob, was coming to the wedding and he had a lot of information about the Duncan case. He’s the one that found the transcripts that were said to be lost. That story is in the back of the book. So, when I met him, we talked about the case. I told him about my book. And he said he would send me the trial transcripts. I was missing of the original transcript, like Frank Duncan’s testimony, which was pretty important. And he said he had something else I might be interested in. He said, “I have Roy Gustafson’s (the prosecutor in the case) unpublished memoir.” Bob had worked in the same law firm that Roy worked in after he left the District Attorney’s office. Roy had already passed away when Bob started working there. So, in the early 2000s, the law firm was going out of business, and Bob was in the law library cleaning it out and up on the top shelf he discovered the lost transcripts of the Duncan case, and this unpublished memoir. The D.A.’s office wouldn’t have even had the transcripts at the time I came looking for them. So, Bob gave the transcripts back to the city, but he held onto to the memoir. And Roy didn’t have any children. So, he just left it there in the law firm.

I got the story from one of the lawyers that was still there at the time, and he said that Roy brought the transcripts over to the law office because he wanted to write the memoir. After he wrote it, he contacted one publisher and the publisher said no. It wasn’t written very well; it was more of a matter-of-fact style. But what I did get out of it when I read it were his thoughts on the proceedings, when he was prosecuting the case. His worries and concerns. So, when he thinks he’s ruined his own case, and what happened in that little room — I read all that in his memoir. So, I had all that information.

Elizabeth Duncan and her son, Frank

TWD: Everything just fell into place for you.

DHL: Yes, it did. And there were other things he wrote in his memoir. He gave his opinion on some of the witnesses, and their backgrounds. There were a couple of witnesses who were very credible. And those were his opinions. So, I got opinions of good and bad witnesses and why.

TWD: How did you get your book published?

DHL: While I was writing the book, I was hearing that publishers didn’t like books with mixed genres, and this was a dual genre book of memoir and true crime. And that publishers don’t necessarily like older authors. They like authors that write multiple books or series because the audience grows. And I had no platform, especially for a memoir. But I thought that this was what I wanted to write and I just kept writing and did the best I could. And in the end, it didn’t really matter. They say if you write a good enough book, none of the other stuff will matter. That’s what I was hoping for.

I had been working on it for nine years. And my youngest son said, mom you’re going to have to stop writing this. And I think I had eleven or twelve drafts. I. wanted to get it right. And I thought I could tell a good book; I read and write so much. I read true crime and everything else. So, I thought I could do this, since I read those kinds of book and I would know when it was right.

My son told me about the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. This was in 2019. He suggested I take it up there, since it was a Santa Barbara and Ventura County case. At this conference they have something called Advanced Readings. For an extra $50, you can pay to have an agent there read ten pages of your book. And they’ll come back to you with some feedback. I signed up for three agents. And I had done this before the book was even ready to be published, just to get some feedback. You can do it with editors or agents. So, I did that. And all I was expecting was to get a little more direction. And the agent I met with, we sat down and chatted. And she said she wanted to read the whole manuscript, that she loved it. And she’s only seen ten pages. She was the first agent I pitched. And she’s the one who suggested that I work on and improve the pace of the book. So, after that, it still took a while. We needed to make a book proposal. And she started pitching it to publishers. And she is a good agent. I looked her up and she has represented a lot of great books. She even represented one that was nominated for the National Book Award a few years ago. I could tell she would always send me the email that the editors would send her. And she knew these people personally. The first couple of rejections said that they didn’t know how to market the book. It’s true crime and it’s memoir. We don’t know how to market that type of book. So, we just kept going. It took about eight months. And towards the end — she was pitching this to good traditional publishers that I recognized — I told her to perhaps go with a lesser-known publisher. I don’t need a big advance and she said, oh no, you’re going to get an advance. We’re almost there. And sure enough, Pegasus Books offered me a contract a few weeks after we had that discussion. It didn’t take that long once I signed the publishing agreement. It only took about a year for the book to come out. It had already been well edited. They didn’t ask me to change hardly anything. The title, they chose that. My title was The Remarkable Duncan Case. That’s what my dad used to call it. That was my working title. I did have A Lovely Girl as one of my choices. But they added the subtitle. Everything went smoothly after that. The other thing that my agent said, is that publishers expect their authors to publicize the book. And they did have a publicist that they assigned me. But they still wanted me to do a lot of things to help promote the book. So my agent told them that I was a very experienced public speaker. And I thought, well, sure, at my school where I taught, and did training for teachers. I had been a school principal for a while. And then the book came out. And Pegasus Books was great. They set up a lot of speaking events for me at the beginning.

I’m going to be on a panel at the San Diego Book Festival. And I’ve done other book festivals in California.

TWD: Has there been any talk of turning this book into a movie or series?

DHL: I’ve already sold an option. My agent sold an option just before the Writers’ strike happened. And it’s a good company. They have a developmental production company. So, they want to develop it as a limited series on a streaming platform. They have something they did for Netflix. I’ve been told there are a lot of film options for authors and their books out there, but very few of them make it into production.

TWD: There are writers who make a living optioning the film rights to their books but are never made into anything.

DHL: It’s a two-year option. So, we’ll see what happens.

TWD: What are you working on now?

DHL: Not too much. I get overwhelmed by all the things that have happened since the book came out. It’s a lot of work. I would like to write some short stories. And I would also like to write a book for a younger audience, a mystery of some kind. I have a lot of experience with children, being a teacher. I have a good ear for children’s voices. So, I would like to write a young adult mystery of some kind. Based on my experiences as a child, children are interested in those kinds of things. Not necessarily the graphic, gruesome details, but they’re interested in learning about a lot of things. I’m not sure if they involve murder though. Maybe they have to be rescued.

TWD: You could be a character as a child. You can’t really go into the minds of your two main characters, the mother and son, but how do you read them. What is your take on their lives?

DHL: I tried to read them from their testimony. I think Elizabeth Duncan was probably what they call a malignant narcissist. One thing that I didn’t get into the book was when she plotted a jail escape, when she was in the county jail. It was so preposterous. I don’t think the woman ever thought one step ahead. She was in the moment, and she came up with all these plots, told lies, and moved on. I’m not even sure she even thought about what would happen to Olga, Frank’s wife. She just wanted to get rid of her, and she hired those guys to do it. I don’t think she ever thought it through. I think Frank Duncan was just trying to save his mother from the gas chamber. I think he knew, at some point, that she was guilty. A lot of people thought that he was in on the plot. But I don’t believe that was the case at all. It would have never been solved if he hadn’t dragged his mother down to the Santa Barbara Police Station to report this phony extortion case she’d made up to cover-up why she needed money to pay off the killers. Frank said something at the end, when he was testifying during the penalty phase of the trial. He said, when asked about his mother and about marrying all these different men, he said, “You know some people like to think about or dwell on their problems, but that’s not me.” He just didn’t want to think about it. What’s in the past is in the past.

The D.A., Roy Gustafson, talks about Frank Duncan in his memoir. He hated Frank Duncan. He despised him.

I remember I tried to get in touch with her son, Frank Duncan, and he hung up on me. He still had a law office in Los Angeles. He answered the phone. As soon as I started talking, he hung up. Bob, the man who found the trial transcripts, said he had seen Frank Duncan appear in his court room. He was representing an old client and was still practicing law. He said he was very cordial and polite, almost like a southern gentleman. He was in 80s at the time and seemed very sharp and knew the law. He was still practicing well into his 80s. His wife had passed away. I believe later that he lived in an assisted living facility. He had one child, a daughter. I think she still lives in Ventura County. But I decided not to contact her. I didn’t think it would be reliable information.

TWD: I found some old newspaper articles where they printed large sections of the transcripts from the trial right on the front page.

DHL: It was unusual that they would print the grand jury transcripts in the newspaper. Mrs. Duncan’s attorney complained about that. It was some like series from a true crime mystery. He felt it would poison the jury pool because everyone had read that.

There was a Lifetime movie made about the case several years ago. But they changed everyone’s name so they wouldn’t get sued by Frank Duncan.

You know how in the book I describe what everyone was wearing. I didn’t make that up. There was a Los Angeles newspaper, The Herald Examiner, they described everything about the witnesses—their clothes, their movements, and their emotions. It was all in the newspaper reports. They even covered—there was a lot of drama going on during the recesses at the court, and before the trial started. Mrs. Duncan would call people names during the recesses. It was all in the newspaper.

TWD: Some of the buildings—the school and churches—you visited as a child are still there in Ventura.

DHL: Yes, the elementary school I went to is still there, and some of the churches I went to with my friends. Judy and I liked to go to the vacation Bible schools.

TWD: Ventura has the oldest pier in the state of California, built in 1872. It’s being repaired now from recent storm damage. But it’s supposed to reopen this summer.

DHL: My parents have a bench on the pier. It’s just before the gates. So, whenever I go to Ventura, I like to sit on their bench. They liked to walk on the beach there. The newspaper offices where my dad worked are gone now. It must’ve been nice to work downtown. Ventura was such a small area at the time. Everything was walkable from his office. It was just a little town by the ocean.

TWD: Your dad was quite a character. He expressed himself freely.

DHL: Yes, he was very original. I don’t know where all that came from.

TWD: How did you end up in San Diego?

DHL: I went to graduate school there. That’s how I ended up living down there now.

TWD: From one beach community to another. I love all the history you put into the book about the city of Ventura.

DHL: I’ve been told that my book is a true crime book for readers who don’t usually read true crime books.

TWD: That’s true, because I usually don’t. Does anyone call you Deborah?

DHL: No, everyone calls me Debby. I just hope I live long enough to see the book made into a series. I get to be a Consultant Producer. Since this book is about me and my family, I was worried about how we would be portrayed. So, I told the producers that I would like to know their thoughts about my family. My agent thought Annette Bening would be good as Elizabeth Duncan. But we’ll see. No one ever wrote a definitive book about this notorious crime, until I wrote mine.

TWD: Thank you very much. It was great to meet you and talk about your amazing book.

DHL: Thank you.



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