. - Spalding University

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REMEMBER LOVE
DALY WALKER
JODY LISBERGER
MIREL’S DAUGHTER
CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE
KAY GILL
NED BACHUS
FLEUR-DE-LIS PRESS OF SPALDING UNIVERSITY
[email protected] | WWW.LOUISVILLEREVIEW.ORG
tlr74cover2.indd 1
74 – FALL 2013
NO. 74 FALL 2013
SURGEON STORIES
THE LOUISVILLE REVIEW
FLEUR-DE-LIS PRESS C
C
The
Th
LOUISVILLE REVIEW
9/17/2013 9:13:29 AM
The
Louisville
Review
Volume 74
Fall 2013
THE LOUISVILLE REVIEW
Editor
Guest Faculty Editors
Guest Editors
Managing Editor
Associate Editor
Assistant Managing Editor
Student Assistant Editors
Sena Jeter Naslund
David-Matthew Barnes, Pete Duval,
Roy Hoffman
Lisa Williams, Betsy Woods
Karen J. Mann
Kathleen Driskell
Ellyn Lichvar
Farah Bagharib-Kaltz, David
Domine, Shawna Downes, Peter Field,
Julia Forman, Anna Haynes, Jennie
Kiffmeyer, Kelly Morris, Katie
Mullins, Cynthia Rand, Catherine Randall
TLR publishes two volumes each year: spring and fall. Submissions of previously
unpublished manuscripts are invited. Please submit online through our submissions
manager: www.louisvillereview.org/submissions. Prose submissions should be
double-spaced and page numbered. Poetry (up to 5 poems) need not be doublespaced; multiple poems should be submitted in one document. Drama should appear
in standard format. Please include your name on every page. If you are submitting
in more than one genre, please submit documents separately. We encourage you
to include a cover letter in the comments section. Our editorial staff reads year
around. Simultaneous submissions accepted. Payment is in copies. Email address:
[email protected]. Children/teen (K-12) poetry and fiction must be
accompanied by parental permission to publish if accepted. Reply time is up to 6
months.
This issue: $8 ppd
Sample copy: $5 ppd
Subscriptions: One year, $14; two years, $27; three years, $40
Student subscription: One year, $12; two years, $20
Foreign subscribers, please add $4/year for shipping.
The text and the cover printed by Thomson Shore of Dexter, Michigan. The cover
design is by Jonathan Weinert. The cover photo, “Venus Rising from the Sea,” is by
David Stewart.
TLR gratefully acknowledges the support of the brief-residency Master of Fine Arts
in Writing Program, Spalding University, 851 S. Fourth St., Louisville, KY 40203.
Email [email protected] for information about the MFA in Writing Program.
© 2013 by The Louisville Review Corporation. All rights revert to authors.
Editor’s Note
The Spalding University MFA in Writing Fall 2013 residency features creative nonfiction, with guests Molly Peacock and Frye Gaillard. Both are much published, prize-winning writers, but students
and faculty are focusing on two of their most recent books, Peacock’s
The Paper Garden and Gaillard’s The Books That Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir, which we also recommend to readers of The Louisville
Review.
Other Spalding news includes the completion of a delightful MFA
residency in Ireland and our plans for summer 2014 to conduct the
summer residency in Prague and Berlin.
On a personal note, I’ve just finished touring from Washington
D.C. to Los Angeles with my ninth book, a new novel-within-a-novel
titled The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as
an Old Woman. Because I’ve long found the beauty of this particular
Louisville fountain to be an inspiration for my own writing (I live
nearby), I thought I’d share its image with you, on the cover of this
issue of TLR.
My thanks to the guest editors for their work on this issue:
DAVID-MATTHEW BARNES is the writer and director of the films
Frozen Stars, Made From Scratch, and Threnody. He is the author
of more than forty stage plays that have been performed in three languages in eight countries. Barnes is a member of the Dramatists Guild
of America. His literary work has appeared in more than one hundred
publications, including The Best Stage Scenes, The Best Men’s Stage
Monologues, The Best Women’s Stage Monologues, The Comstock
Review, Review Americana, and The Southeast Review. Barnes lives
in Denver where he serves as the CEO of Fairground CineFilms and
as the Artistic Director of the Dorothy Nickle Performing Arts Company.
PETE DUVAL is the author of Rear View: Stories. He teaches in
Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing program and
lives in Philadelphia.
ROY HOFFMAN teaches creative nonfiction and fiction in Spalding
University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing program. A novelist and
journalist, he is the author of five books, including Alabama After-
noons, an essay collection, and the novels Chicken Dreaming Corn
and Come Landfall. A frequent contributor to The New York Times
whose work has also appeared in Fortune and Esquire, he is the recipient of the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction from the University
of Alabama as well as the Lillian Smith Award and Alabama Library
Association Award in fiction.
LISA WILLIAMS is the author of Woman Reading to the Sea (2008)
and The Hammered Dulcimer (1998). Her third book of poems, Gazelle in the House, is forthcoming from New Issues Press in 2014. She
teaches and directs Creative Writing at Centre College.
BETSY WOODS is a weekly columnist and feature writer with The
Times Picayune and teaches writing in New Orleans schools. She is a
proud member of onepotatoten.blogspot.com, a collective of ten children’s writers and illustrators. Her work has appeared in The Louisville Review, The New Orleans Review, Sophisticated Woman magazine, Alive Now, The Literary Trunk, and Citizens Together magazine.
—Sena Jeter Naslund, Editor
TABLE OF CONTENTS
POETRY
Crescent Moon 9
Storm 10
Solstice 11
Saskia Hamilton Leave 12
Compass 13
Roger Reeves At Hospice (Alexandria, VA 2011) 14
Notes Toward a Manifesto of the New Negro
Escapist Social and Athletic Club 15
Julia Johnson River Diversion 16
Semiperfect Number 17
Anne Dyer Stuart [summer snuck into fall again] 18
Tiny 19
Changming Yuan Skyline 20
Y, Y 21
Kathleen Caplis Migration 22
Beams Off Gilmer Road 23
Brittany Lee Cheak Fabergé 24
Maurice Manning Feather Pillow 25
Don Bogen Soft Song 26
Kristie Kachler sing a happy citizen 27
Nausheen Eusuf Ce qu’il y a 28
Angie Macri Leaves have no reason to remember 29
Madeleine Wattenberg Australia’s Convicts in
Beginning Syllables 30
Sarah Arvio Care 31
Museum 32
Outtakes from night thoughts . . . 34
Alex Greenberg Tame 36
Haesong Kwon Hong Sangsoo 37
Kristin Brace Empty Boats 38
Zachary Lundgren The Fields Chase You
When No One Else Will 39
Alice Catherine Jennings Letter from Ecuador 40
Joan Seliger Sidney First MS Attack 41
Robert Collins A Young Catholic’s Guide to Sex 42
Jeff Worley The Witching Hour 43
Sara Grossman
Jonathan Weinert
A Clear Bell Rang, 44
Engine Trouble 46
Joe Survant Coal: A History 47
Jane Gentry Night Beasts in the Backyard 50
Janice Moore Fuller Ars Exactica 52
Gravity 53
FICTION
Rick DeMarinis Uncle Gamiel 54
Mark Powell The Acreage 63
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Dianne Aprile The Water-Bearer 82
Erin Flanagan The Theory of the Second Best 89
Susan Chiavelli (Gravity, No Engines) 92
Gary Fincke The Onset 96
Janice Wilson Stridick Notes of an Unfinished Daughter
DRAMA
Toni M. Wiley Nails by Auntie Em 112
Mallorie Halsall Love, Differently 119
F. J. Hartland
Mothers and Other Strangers
Barbara Lhota Lost 143
Notes on Contributors
138
148
THE CHILDREN’S CORNER
Isabella Frohlich Hellos and Goodbyes 157
Peter LaBerge Gestation 158
Shashank Nag Environment 159
Peter LaBerge Mango 160
Victoria 162
Lessons in Winter 163
Notes on Contributors to The Children’s Corner
165
106
Sara Grossman
CRESCENT MOON
To find the sky a thousand pieces:
matter teetering
to absence, but where
was the storm, the wind
of this wreck?
I trace pronouns like sand-drifts, mouth
to the moon i’ll never
forget . . .
but how to tell the world
without telling, that I want
more than medicating pronouns,
to know myself
without deflection,
without I, you.
Not for the moon
but for my own vital strangeness,
do I lie awake,
desperate before an undone sky,
glinting with openness––
a revolution of empty.
The Louisville Review
9
Sara Grossman
STORM
Sky of iron
unwilled to let this longing break,
you rust the field
wanton, mark maple
leaves to vapor,
purse durum to rippled glass.
But see the field’s edge––
dregs of land, woodland
and whorl.
See this field as knowing
the memory of rain,
umbered and raw.
Make me
slow as a whiteout, lingered
in density, so that my body
rings with the actual,
moves without shame.
10
Sara Grossman
SOLSTICE
Dead doe in the highway’s grease,
cut into noon’s light, and lit so the narrow
neck of her turns to a sea of eastern crows
(bills full of belly fat, heart meat). They peck her cheek
then move to the eyes. Three weeks
this body smeared in axle grease, delo grease, tallow
rendered from the sun. Three weeks and no
she can’t run back, forward (hips misplaced, deseamed
by talon and tongue). Think of this body full
as a metaphor, but what to call her in the ditch,
in the blue-grease stream, other than what she is:
Kingdom of Granite, Colony of Myrtle.
The summer sky cracks a loose stitch
and to it, this body we give––
11
Saskia Hamilton
LEAVE
The children who dug a hole in the garden
of the house rarely visited uncovered
the limb bones, and I, lately arrived,
spoke to the parents before I called the police.
Let them play here later, I’d said.
I put the phone down. The grass
grew in blotches on the ground, the oaks
rose at the edge of the property as if newly
taking possession of a lease long since expired.
12
Saskia Hamilton
COMPASS
Occluded, the hours with you,
as we wait for the arrival of an answer
that is too big to voice. Should your desk
face the wall or the window? Does the mind
go there when you’re not there, when you’re
not working at all but travelling again,
on the ferry, on the train, in the motor
driving up to the other house.
13
Roger Reeves
AT HOSPICE (ALEXANDRIA, VA 2011)
Who is clear and who is Claire? The rooster moon
Tilting in its underwear of cloud and broken blouse,
The titmouse, pewit and now the grouse groom
Nothing but a tuft of hair beneath a battered wing.
Time had become similar to the broken chair, June’s
Jaundiced rain watering its wicker back into a slack
Caul and stair no one cares to climb or keep. Soon
Anything and anywhere was torn and hare
Trapped and tacked to the back fence bleeding—the spoon
Had an unnatural affair with the nose, the rose
Bush with the kettle and then the overcoat. Noon
Came without its flute or loop de loops of spun-sugar,
And then, the woman hemorrhaged in the hallway
Of her mind. Yes, the mind is an awful place. Go there quickly.
14
Roger Reeves
NOTES TOWARD A MANIFESTO OF THE NEW NEGRO
ESCAPIST SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC CLUB
What is without an exit? Dear Committee
Of Contemporary Mechanics, the soliloquy of pines
Rusting in the red-meadow-light of morning
Refuses to make any more statements about war.
They will speak only as pines privileged
To take vespers in the shadow of a man taking tea.
The beaver beneath the thatched muck
Of sticks and mud refuses to embrace the contested
Meanings of the shrike imitating the meadow
Lark of morning. There’s a ladder that leads to nowhere
And above that nowhere the kin condemned
To wander the gates of the great city wearing nothing
But clouds and roses over their eyes. Who else
Refuses to bear the mark of words? Show me,
And I’ll show you a falcon gnawing off his master’s hand.
15
Julia Johnson
RIVER DIVERSION
We live on the plain.
On the plain we have been
Hydrologically isolated from the river.
From the river, by containment,
Levees for nearly a century.
For nearly a century, ensuing lack
Of fluvial sediment inputs.
Sediment inputs, natural submergence,
Process high coastal land,
Loss rates, land loss.
Rates controlled river diversions.
River diversions have since been constructed
to reconnect the marshes of the deltaic.
The marshes of the deltaic, plain with the river, the river pulsed,
Diversion sediment delivery, sea-level rise.
16
Juila Johnson
SEMIPERFECT NUMBER
We won’t concern ourselves with number theory today,
every practical number that is not a power of two.
We won’t worry about the ante meridiem and post meridiem,
the twelve hour clock developed over time.
If only we had not done away with the analog dial, modeling
the apparent motion of the Sun.
We shouldn’t think of the complete revolution,
the shadow of the sun tracing a path that repeats approximately once
per day.
We won’t keep track of our sidereal day, the regularity
of the Earth’s rotation.
We won’t worry that, at midnight tonight, our sidereal time
will be four minutes later than last.
17
Anne Dyer Stuart
[SUMMER SNUCK INTO FALL AGAIN]
summer snuck into fall again
spat its humid lust
gave the fields brown rain
I am trying to be a different girl
I need the silence here
how it wraps around white stars
builds into the sky a hollow cone
the night has lost its voice
and cannot answer
18
Anne Dyer Stuart
TINY
the subject of this poem is tiny: high
school and all its horrors
spied with tiny eyes outside a tiny mind
down the hall of the macabre
enter and shrink
like a worm in sun
leather finger on the lawn
pawned by a bird and its dead
black eyes
dull feathers full of mites
watch it fly back
to the poplar and its silver leaves
to its nest too thin for the wind
19
Changming Yuan
SKYLINE
Golden teeth glistening
In the mouth of the city
Silver clouds colliding
At the tongue tip of the day
Bite off all the darkness
They whispered;
And chew the light well.
20
Changming Yuan
Y, Y
yes, yes, with your
yellowish skin, you enjoy
meditating within the shape of
a wishbone, inside the broken wing
of an oriental bird strayed, or
in a larger sense, you look like
the surfacing tail of a pacific whale
who yells low, but whose voice reaches afar
far beyond a whole continent, to a remote village
near the yellow river, where you used to sunbathe
rice stems, reed leaves, cotton skeletons
with a fork made of a single horn-shaped twig
when you were a barefooted country boy
on the other side of this new world
21
Kathleen Caplis
MIGRATION
But the flash always
distorts what’s closest
to the lens, leaving everything else
in relative darkness. I watch
these birds tangle the world
like vines and you
must see the way they challenged
the telephone lines; making a folly of
the horizon. For you, I’ll take
a picture and hope it turns
out because like a magnet,
they draw to the stem, and the maps
under your passenger seat may seem
obsolete. But you like to look through
them to grip their remains.
I’ll let this picture go
untaken because these birds can’t sit
still; you remain in ink
if you follow these lines downstream,
due south, a habit you call home.
22
Kathleen Caplis
BEAMS OFF GILMER ROAD
The bend in your arm takes me
to the bend in the road; the blind
turn to pass the saturated
barn swallowed by an overcast
and reaching hands. Splinters
come to mind though I’ve never
ventured in, through crows come
like gravel and scatter silence
across these plains, rolling
through for home, going wherever
headlights may reach.
23
Brittany Lee Cheak
FABERGÉ
Pretty peacock sitting in the glass,
feathers folded, trailing like
a wedding train in blue
and green, with sapphire eyes.
I am the painted peacock tapping
at the glass, frozen in my wedding march,
feathers folded, head turned up;
I am watching the glass.
Pretty peacock I am waiting in the glass:
my crystal cage. Golden cherry blossoms
blossom at my breast and I am
waiting for the glass to open.
Me, a painted peacock.
Pretty peacock. I will dance for you.
Pretty peacock. I will march for you, just let me.
Lift me from my nest
and I will spring up and strut.
Folded feathers fly out. I am
designed to be a pretty painted peacock
sitting in the glass. Designed to be
a pretty peacock
walking down the aisle.
Designed to be a pretty peacock
with feathers folded for you.
24
Maurice Manning
FEATHER PILLOW
for Alan Shapiro
My great-grandmother long ago
made from chicken feathers pillows—
at least the one I have in blue
and gray ticking—on the farm,
the homeplace we call it, near
the mingled farms and the country store
composing a village called Plato. She
was poor, but I recall, steady,
more faithful than she was religious.
When locust leaves flutter down
in September I think they look like feathers.
Her name was Maranda. All of this—
I call it slow knowledge; there
I lay, sometimes unsettled, my head.
25
Don Bogen
SOFT SONG
Look at the soft rain
sifting straight down,
soaking the moss
on the top of the wall.
Look at the stained bricks
taking it in,
the chips, cracks, and flaws
all darkening.
Damp mortar is crumbling
in grains fine as silt
so slowly no one
can follow it.
Above, on new branches
water beads build
to fall like berries
full of wet light.
Such cycles, such gleaming
and gradual loss—
I’ve studied for hours
behind smudged glass.
The quick whisperings
too faint now to hear—
what did they tell me,
all those years?
26
Kristie Kachler
SING A HAPPY CITIZEN
i’ve learned to arrange a day—
one a sonata one a symphony
contents don’t matter
whatever i do i do it dotingly
i sit and love to sit
i walk and love to walk
this joy so trained it’s effortless
a kindly doctor—brisk, efficient—
now and then i call it up
it comes forthwith, reminding me
that what i want i’ve got, already:
you’ve secured the mushed peas, it says, eat them!
what i don’t get is pain,
so when it’s time to fall
or lose or grieve i go ahead:
a vacation in hell, bedtime at ten
27
Nausheen Eusuf
CE QU’IL Y A
Il n’y a pas de hors-texte.
–Derrida
There is no outside-text.
There is nothing outside
the text. There is no outside
to the text, of the text.
Outside there is nothing.
Nothing is outside.
This weaving, this cleaving,
was fate, the fates weaving,
this woven, cloven world.
It was fated, this surfeit of words,
this forfeit of world. It was a feat
to be fêted. And so it was fraught,
this woven yarn, this brazen world,
this brazen yarn, this cloven world,
this weaving, cleaving, unraveling.
28
Angie Macri
LEAVES HAVE NO REASON TO REMEMBER
a tree,
or the tree the leaves. One becomes the other
through the soil, a sentence (the verb
of rain,
the noun of fall, vice versa then). We are
like birds,
working through, returning each spring in vague memory
of a home in a space not too hot or cold, our face first
high in father’s
arms, then safe in mother’s
roots, and back again.
There was nothing that we couldn’t do.
29
Madeleine Wattenberg
AUSTRALIA’S CONVICTS IN BEGINNING SYLLABLES
December passes in the oils
of eucalyptus. The land fills
from the ships docking on heated shores,
still watched by the barbed Banksia blossom
and the speared creator of islands.
We learned to sleep through early
trains, and their cargo too. Without bedframes we slept, on mattresses, curtainless; here, scorpions gather outback
dry. It’s hard to say if we worked hard,
or if we were always kept asleep,
with sweat gone like silence into air.
Red-crested cockatoos swarmed the dusk,
and I couldn’t help but see one phase:
a silent glide into the moon-depth
that travels everywhere we go, here
following more closely. Still, red smears
against black wings, and a pungent smell
of Adelaide oil clings to quick rains.
30
Sarah Arvio
CARE
2003
I never wanted to feel care again
and care never wanted to know my name,
all of carnations and calla lilies,
and then one might ask, how well did I care
or would I have cared if I could have cared.
Oh enslaved in a soul seraglio,
turning in a Saharan scirocco,
so sultry and also so exultant
and as slippery as Indian silk.
And was I sorry to have been myself,
and was I sorrier not to have been you—
and all the serendipity of self.
Were you with me or without me, were they
with me or without me, and above all
was I with me or without myself. Oh
couldn’t we like Etruscans love our lives.
Cara cara will you come to me now,
in a cerebellum, Sarah bella,
with all the tonic of seratonin
a cameo of came I to my life,
a serenity of che sarà, sarà,
weaving a sarabande of my own soul,
never a threnody of nobody,
crying for a care, caring for a cry,
caring at the sound or sense of a cry.
31
Sarah Arvio
MUSEUM
2003
And now, in another mood: amazement
means awe in the maze of the heart. Then this:
amusement is a visit by the muse,
a mood or a wind, a motion, a man.
Oh yes, a muse may also be a man.
Love is awe, one said. No, love is awful.
Did I know this in the mind or the heart?
Oh, some thought memory was in the mind.
Memory was life mirrored in the mind.
Others thought memory hewed to the heart.
Even something simple was so ornate:
sunset spreading on the sheen of the lake,
a pastel night with a whisper of wind.
As the dusk descended, the mirror rose,
matching and marrying the sea and sky.
Myriad elements made up the act.
An intimate moment was intricate.
Was that the mirror I had met him in?
Mirror a moment in a word, a wish
in an eye; match an emotion; mimic
a motion; meander in ravishment.
So what’s a museum, I wryly said.
Oh, the collected visits of the muse.
Oh, the maze of a recollected life.
32
All the missed trysts and angry reunions,
the maze of lies, the amazing passion,
all the moments and the months spent musing.
33
Sarah Arvio
Outtakes from NIGHT THOUGHTS: 70 DREAM POEMS &
NOTES FROM AN ANALYSIS
(2013)
queen
and yet I was the queen of belonging
I only belonged until I didn’t
and then I had being and longing
but no crown for what I longed to be
but couldn’t become oh come come my love
I whispered crooning to myself as if
I were someone else here speaking who could
make me belong by his longing for me
by the longing that would never end
at long last in the act of our coming
as though be were the be of belong
elbow in the crook of an elbow
below in the sex above in the heart
it won’t be long now no it won’t be long
lipstick
night of my laureate the ladies’ room
to put on some lipstick I lay on a smear
old ladies like in an old chic hotel
I see it’s scumbled to my eyes and ears
deep red lipstick smeared all over my cheeks
red as a lip as a mouth my whole face
the moments are passing it won’t smudge off
not with tissues or with cotton and cream
I’m smearing with my fingers rouging them
now I’m stumbling down the hall and down
the other hall to the mouth of the stage
all the chairs tumbled the listeners gone
who would wait for a girl whose name is smeared
who waits for a chick for a lipstick chick
34
wound
a man in a sunshiny parking lot
wears a brightwhite shirt with a brightred wound
on his belly bloodbelly it is round
red in a big circle red on the white
bleached ironed shirt he is not bent over
but he will be soon when he bends he falls
turning sideways in the parking lot
and landing in the shadow of a car
he’s a man like a lot of other men
cleanshaven with a round martini face
and short hair a lot like a lot of men
we knew when I was young but they were not
bleeding from the belly or falling over
into the shadow of a parking lot
35
Alex Greenberg
TAME
. . . for us, the earth is flat,
and if we venture out, we
will fall off the edge
–Andrea Dworkin
I imagine the song starting with my mother.
Tucked under the sun like a pocket square,
nursing over the firm breast in my father’s suit.
Her hands shackled in hot cooking oil, the dark
steam rising from it like space. Her fingers
counting time by the pop and scatter of rain.
She feeds life to be sucked dry. Like a lemon
smiling where the child’s front teeth once were
or a river, delivering through the books and
books of oppressive sand. The shadow which bleeds
out of her each night is unmistakable. Waiting in
the classroom, hand raised like Moses, when the
teachers and students have long since been home,
tumbling into their crowded rooms, candles burbling
out, the night forever trailing, like tape on the heel
of a shoe, its blanket of nebulous sex.
36
Haesong Kwon
HONG SANGSOO
A bit of Aki and Woody and Rohmer.
In birch leaves
I can sense art’s heart swell.
In nerves of ocean waves.
Starfish and sea monkey. Side by side.
I should have never left. So the teacher comes to my village.
Comes to the village with all his learning.
The bumpkinest they’d seen the kids wail on him.
How dare you educate us. Their manners were hammers.
Aroma. Tears of a crown.
37
Kristin Brace
EMPTY BOATS
Make you think at first: catastrophe—
(the body’s inner lunge)
the way the water is so still, as if someone
stopped splashing hours before. The way
the sun is brightness and nothing more,
the slick red leather of one seat giving
the light a grinning afterthought
of itself. The other boat abandoned further out,
the motor stilled. Somewhere—sigh—
men clamming. I was surprised
the first time I saw it, a man in no-color
waders, his shirt a brilliant flash of white
like a seagull swooping close to the surface.
Different cut up shapes of him
through the bushes beyond the live oak.
I finally learned the name of that tree, a month
before we move away. The wind
has conversations with it regularly
and won’t miss us when we leave. Once
we saw our landlady moving
through the back yard’s afternoon light
as in a dream. She wasn’t wearing her wig
and her hair was sparse, wispy gray that barely
covered her head. She seemed lost
inside herself. The wind
urges the water into sideways-turning fingers,
hands submerged, each curl clear when you see it
up close, but from here, only texture in the water.
38
Zachary Lundgren
THE FIELDS CHASE YOU WHEN NO ONE ELSE WILL
January
After a dance I drove her home and it wasn’t much
of a mattress that pin oak
but into the ground and then it was over I kissed her hair.
February
This air numbs the fingertips of trees.
Grass favors its roots, crowning brown
then yellow, then tired.
But these sleeping fields are not asleep
they often sing
early in the morning before the deer.
I heard this once but not her voice
and still left fallow.
March
There are seeds in the wind I turn and
in my mouth.
I haven’t seen her in months but the fields
have and this might be why
out of the ground the heart, its homecoming
raw and emerald, always chasing
always about to catch
39
Alice Catherine Jennings
LETTER FROM ECUADOR
After “Letter from the Summer House” by Oksana Zabuzhko, as
translated by Douglas Smith
Dear ______,
This corner is busy again. Gringolandia: cafés
with neon-colored chairs jut out from the stonepaved streets. I’m not sure I can return there tonight.
This area’s had a good cleaning up but I’m scared
of those streets. When I walk down them, I worry.
Last week, a young boy sprayed Carol
with mustard. He grabbed her bag, just like that
while she was distracted. Someone touches my arm,
someone smiles sickly in the warm sun
and I get nervous. The day before yesterday at the markets
amid the monotonous a sus ordenes, the vendors
all strained for the same dollar. Do you remember
Cuenca, the old town where the store owners
scrub the outside walls of their tiendas? Sometimes,
I think they like to pour the water out of their buckets
just when the gringos pass by. How would you act?
The jubilados live in their high rises, they keep a guard
at the main door, just in case. At least, the dogs are mating.
The gringos will have more strays to adopt. Oh yes, my
Spanish teacher can only eat meat twice a week since
Correa’s been in power. If only, she could slip away to the playa,
to Canoa for a rest, a vacation. Yesterday, I was cleansed
by a curandera. She brushed my face and arms with a bundle
of herbs, flowers. She stretched small strands of my hair
and rubbed my body with an uncooked egg. She cracked
that same egg in a glass of water. I have a mild case of mal ojo,
she said. My body is sick with anger. But you know that
already. So there it is. If you can get down here for the week,
bring me something to love. The stray dogs I call mine are dying.
Love,
40
Joan Seliger Sidney
FIRST MS ATTACK
i was entering my twenty-fourth year
when a bolt of lightning
struck my knee & sparks flew toe to thigh
six weeks married
i had no time
for anything but sex & teaching
still
fears sneaked in
through the door that didn’t shut
till I gave myself to doctors
believing they knew
everything
or with a snap of fingers
their genie
would figure it out
did you & your husband fight
asked the hospital physician
this
could be newly-married hysteria
(Freud twisting weeping women’s
minds around icy bodies) no
i said from my bed i watched
leaves on the maple tree outside
shrivel & flee across the street
in between
as perfect patient i
was passed from machine to machine
41
Robert Collins
A YOUNG CATHOLIC’S GUIDE TO SEX
–to MDH
Though it had both the Nihil Obstat
and Imprimatur printed on its title page,
official stamp of the Vatican’s assurance
no phrase remotely harmful to the soul
lurked between its covers and claimed
if people hoped to remain good Catholics,
they really shouldn’t enjoy it, especially
not females, I skipped to the good parts—
chapters where terms formerly taboo
were listed in italics—ovary, scrotum,
vulva, vagina, semen, labia, masturbation.
Coupled with the sexy scenes I conjured,
I found words were even more perverse
than the glossy smut on sale downtown.
Then I read how any rhythmic movement
might excite—marching in parades,
running after fire trucks, reciting poems
or singing in a glee club, especially
“The Star-Spangled Banner.” Whether
I grew up to be a patriot or poet, I felt
destined to dwell in sin and burn forever.
Other than a sketch of female genitalia,
which resembled the fossilized insects,
mandibles intact, we had just dissected
in science, the manual barely mentioned
girlfriends or the mysterious role they play
in procreation or what to do if I found one,
when it was bodily contact I craved until
I ached, the words I’d read made flesh.
42
Jeff Worley
THE WITCHING HOUR
3 a.m. Sleep refuses to be seduced.
Instead, old wrongs and failings,
real and imagined, drift in like gray snow—
a woman I shredded with a few sharp words,
the motorist and her child I didn’t stop
to help as ice locked up the highway,
my mother begging me to please please stop
doing that. These phantoms parade in;
there’s no refusing them. Then I think
I hear a door creak open, imagine myself
sliding furtively toward the knife block
in the kitchen. The burglar and I tussle.
A semiautomatic sprouts from his hand,
flash-lights the room, and turns me into
a tombstone of front-page news:
Local Poet Killed by Intruder. Then
I’m the centerpiece in a large, velvet-draped room—
let’s see who’s come for a final goodbye.
I never knew I had so many friends!
But then someone punches my face—hard.
It’s Jimmy Chester on the playground,
every friend I had moving away from me
like a riptide. Which is when my wife,
lying next to me, says Why don’t you free associate
at least one of those blankets back over this way,
Thrasher Boy? Groggy but awake, I say
Well, OK, but then maybe you’d care to tell me
why you were nowhere to be seen at my
visitation. How do you explain that?
43
Jonathan Weinert
A CLEAR BELL RANG,
so I opened the door. No one I could see was there.
I saw the empty yard, the deathstill oaks,
the skylid closed and painted blue.
I saw the blackened road, the curbweeds waving,
road dust blown as from an opened mouth.
O beautiful inhuman world, you stood there lonely in your broken
boots.
You maundered to yourself
below the restless gossip of the cars.
I took your hand and walked with you a little way
along a high embankment.
Hanks of darkness stood ahead.
Below, the river, folding on itself,
carried leaves and treefalls down.
You stumbled, frail and almost blind, across a root.
I almost carried you.
At length we lay down in a clearing by some mossy stones.
There was nothing I could do.
We breathed together while the cities burned.
Hot wind fumbled in the canopy as
the remnant sparrows rose as on a tide
44
and the songs of gunfire died in the throats of the rifles.
Night fell finally while we lay there looking
through a darkness living eyes
were never meant to see, the absence
at the end of love, that disappearing thing.
45
Jonathan Weinert
ENGINE TROUBLE
He sent the figs, but kept the ripe cherries,
even though cherries were her favorite. Because
they were her favorite, even though he loved her,
in his way, because the thing that loved in him
stuttered like a balky car. What is the thing
that loves in us, he thought, and thought perhaps
the engine of his troubles was this very thought,
as though the distance from himself that let him
think it disengaged some crucial gear which turned,
when everything was working right, below
the level of awareness, generating
unreflecting love and other pure emotions
of the tuned machine. Or on the other hand,
he thought, perhaps the self-alienation
that enables reflection constitutes the precondition
for the only kind of love deserving of the name
—and here he found himself in danger of intruding
on the neighborhood of absolute paradox
and necessary exile, and pulled a u-ey.
No wonder his engine stuttered, having to haul
such a freight of deliberations always behind himself.
Does one choose to love, or does one just love,
and why didn’t he know the answer? In any case,
he chose to withhold the cherries, because when
did she ever offer to help him with his burdens,
and he ran a little cold in consideration of her
indifference or obliviousness, if that’s what it was,
because how could he give himself to someone
who caused him pain, or who would do nothing
to alleviate it? Still, he figured he must love her,
somewhere to the right and a little behind
his preoccupations, so he sent her the figs.
He ate the cherries, which he never really liked,
in one sitting, with satisfaction but with no enjoyment,
the whole ripe pound of them, and mounded the pits.
46
Joe Survant
COAL: A HISTORY
My Lord, He said unto me,
Do you like my garden so fair?
You may live in this garden if you keep the grasses green
And I’ll return in the cool of the day.
–“Now is the Cool of the Day” by Jean Ritchie
The shallow seas
rose and fell quietly.
Great swamps lived and
died along their rims.
There were no seasons.
There was no end to
the warm wet weather.
Life had no limits
in oxygen-rich air.
Plants exceeded
the imagination.
Mosses grew
to 40 feet.
Ferns and horse-tails
to 60. Slender
climbing plants with
whorls of leaves
threatened to overrun them all.
The seas shimmered
with small animals
devoured by five-armed
hunters and snake-like
worms. Giant mollusks
with toothed hinges
were disembodied mouths.
Great sponges and
tree-sized corals
47
filled up the floor.
Armored fish with
the jaws of snapping
turtles ambushed tiny
plant-eating sharks.
Lungfish and 50 inch sea
scorpions invaded the land.
Dragonflies with 30 inch
wings filled the air.
Giant spiders and
oversized ticks
roamed the forests
flashing like exotic
jewelry. Here,
diamond encrusted
gold brooches
stalked the undergrowth
for anything smaller
than themselves,
there, emerald and
ruby earrings clung
patiently to drooping
fronds, waiting
for a meal.
Twenty foot lizards
with scales like
plates hurried by,
quicker than dinosaurs.
Seven foot millipedes
were voracious.
The swamps and seas
came and went.
The vociferous struggle
of all the ravenous
creatures, the intricate
motives of the great
plants were forgotten
under the unbearable
48
weight of 300
million years.
Reduced to their
lowest selves, they
became buried seams
of voiceless coal.
They waited in
smothered darkness
for coughing diesels
to move the earth,
releasing once more
their urgent hungers,
the burden of their
needy appetites
into the hills
where waw-bigon-ag, wild
flowers Shawnee
girls once loved
to wear would
wither and die,
where lilies would
no longer chase
the dripline of
retreating snows,
old ones falling
as new ones rose.
49
Jane Gentry
NIGHT BEASTS IN THE BACKYARD
Often as I fall asleep an owl mutters
in the yellowwood. As daydreams fade,
the owl stays, a horned blank
against a starless sky, riding on the wind
that zithers through the pines. Sunk
into himself, all head and gut, his eyes
searchlight across the paths of mice he’s come
to murder. His cries muddle with the wind from
northern places, and lull me back to nothing,
my old home.
Last night in my driveway, I caught
in my high beam a coon, adopted daughter
of the town, plump as the fatted calf
on neighbors’ garbage, her back arched high
as a cat’s. She stared a slattern stare
from behind her bandit’s mask, her bony
digits fingering the gravel. Then she loped
away, veering sideways, daring me
to outrage at her trespass
and her pillage.
One night last week, a possum scuttled
through the porch light. His feet moved him
but not the parts of his scrounging, slapdash,
patchwork self: head of sloth, hair of hog,
eyes unblinking as a snake’s, his tail
pink as a tongue of cunning muscle—
he came here from beyond the pyramids,
descends from dinosaurs, from the dark
50
behind my yellow windows, brittle, clear
against the night.
All we beasts, familiar to each other as bodies
of our own, as plain as being; and strange
as if from outer planets of the dimmest galaxies,
cosmic, ancient, aboriginal as debris from broken
stars: all of us, what we were, what we are.
51
Janice Moore Fuller
ARS EXACTICA
for Cash Bundren
I won’t be burned to ashes that flutter
and settle in whatever basin appears.
I want to fit like a puzzle piece
snapped into place, the jig saw’s
curves and lurches so perfect
nothing else will go there.
Let the shovel be as clean as the saw.
Let it follow the dotted lines the puzzlemaker drew. Not God. Just the guy
who buys his tools at Lowes
and smiles when his bevel is sharp.
That maker. The artisan who says,
“Here. And here” and turns away
from the lathe, ready for another job.
52
Janice Moore Fuller
GRAVITY
The Fun Encyclopedia has exhausted itself
on the floor, all the brain teasers
eased apart or lost.
My cousin sleeps beside me in bed.
The keyhole is an eye
to the light in the hall.
Heat melts into the box springs.
Something’s creeping up the stairs—
one step, pause, two.
Each vertebra waits.
At last, the breeze from the train track
puffs the curtains into a lady’s dress,
a tent drawing me out and in,
spirits slipping through
the screen with the wind.
Angels hover with silver tendrils
so fine nothing can keep them away.
They will shudder their wings,
comb my hair, braid themselves
into my dreams until everything
is ether, ether, counting back—
my pillow as weightless as God.
53
Rick DeMarinis
UNCLE GAMIEL
Nikki was the athlete in the family. She had natural strength and
quickness. She was stronger and more aggressive than any of us boys.
More aggressive even than Todd who joined the Marines when he
was seventeen. Shy Lyle, the family bookworm, was no match for
her. Nikki also had a quick temper. Get a rise out of her and you’d
better watch out. So what had Uncle Gamiel been thinking that day?
He dove repeatedly between her legs in the backyard pool. Nikki
hated him doing that. Antics like that made her furious. Sometimes
he’d come up under her and she’d wind up straddling his hairy back
muttering dark curses.
When Uncle Gamiel surfaced behind her after swimming through
her legs she said, You better not do that again. I mean it, Uncle Gamiel.
He said, Don’t be so prissy, Miss Nikki, and started singing “Yellow
Submarine.” Nikki was the “baby” in our family. The youngest and in
many ways the most promising. Lyle, a college freshman, saw trouble
coming (a talent of his) and retired to his room.
Uncle Gamiel winked and smiled in a way we’d always hated.
He held the tip of his tongue between his front teeth when he smiled.
You’ve seen a certain kind of man do that. They believe they are
devilishly charming. Nikki hated it. It gave her the creeps. She was
practically a baby when he first put his hands on her supposedly in
fun. Nikki knew even then that he didn’t mean it in fun. Pinches and
squeezes and roughhouse embraces. He’d toss her on the bed and pull
her off by her legs then hold her upside down by her ankles. Fun? It
was never fun.
Uncle Gamiel’s lips were pale blue. Was there something wrong
with his heart? Oxygen shortage? He once was a heavy smoker. Had
two packs a day over thirty years compromised the health of his lungs?
Was their capacity to carry oxygen to the blood limited by the tar that
blocked his pulmonary circulation? No one knew for sure and now
we’ll never know, short of an autopsy. Uncle Gamiel didn’t confide in
any of us. He was secretive. Sometimes we called him James Bond.
He’d often wink and press a finger to his lips as if to suggest he knew
things no one else could possibly know. Things that delighted him.
54
Things that would shock others.
His teeth were artificially white. His dentist had bleached them
with chemical whitener. He had just turned fifty and was proud of his
teeth. It was as if white teeth set in healthy gums implied a positive
outlook on life. It meant something close to the opposite to some of
us. We were not blinded by his blinding smile. Some of us doubted its
sincerity. And yet a terrific smile tends to make people put aside their
doubts. Some were later chagrined for doubting his intentions. They’d
say, Good old Uncle Gamiel! What a charmer!
He swam under water toward Nikki again. You could see his thin
white legs propel him. He reminded Nikki of an eel. Pale and slippery.
Jointless. Gamiel the eel. She felt his smooth bald head nudge her
belly. She felt it slide down to her pubic ridge. His fingers pushed her
legs apart as if they were doors.
She had very strong thighs but now she let him have his way. She
let him think he could force a path between her legs and then swim
through them and pop up behind her singing “Yellow Submarine”
as if it was all in fun. He claimed it was a game. Come on, come on,
Nikki urged. Do it again. Let’s play it your way, Uncle Gamiel.
His head was caught in her thighs like a nut in a vise. She brought
all her strength to bear. She locked her ankles for leverage. One ankle
over the other. The power of weight-trained youth is formidable. He
could not move his head in or out. Not forward, not back. She said, Is
this what you’re looking for Uncle Gamiel? Are we having fun now?
He was stunned by the un-girlish strength of her thighs. How could he
not be? He tried to pull away. He failed. Tried to push her off. Failed.
This thrilled him in a way he did not anticipate. You win, Nikki! He
tapped his fingers against her knees. My mistake, Nikki. You can let
up now, Nikki.
She played water polo and soccer for the high school teams. In
the weight room she squatted with 300 pounds. She could bench 170
twenty times. 210 once and without strain. She felt his panic rise as he
fought to escape. She knew he would not be able to. His underwater
fists had small impact. She felt his pleading fingers dig in. He plucked
at her swimsuit. He pinched her. He tried to bite. She had power in
reserve and now she used it.
She heard his underwater voice. A high desperate hum. She saw
bubbles rise. His pleas were locked in those bubbles. He realized he
was in deep trouble. He understood now what she was capable of.
55
Earlier he’d said, May I join you in the pool, my love? He assumed
an English accent. Under her breath she said, I’m not your goddamn
love. She tightened the trap he found himself in. His knees scraped
bottom. He regretted his behavior but it was too late. She lost her
balance momentarily when he planted his feet and pushed upward
looking for air but he never found the surface. She held him fast.
They drifted away toward the deep end. His head remained unmoving
in her unforgiving thighs. She swam with arms only, dragging Uncle
Gamiel behind her, his knees scraping bottom.
She could kick a soccer ball seventy yards with velocity. She
threw the javelin and the eight-pound shot for high school records.
She ran the hundred meter dash in eleven-six. Coach Jim Blanco said,
She’s swifter than my best halfback. She can fly.
She said, So, is this the game you wanted to play, Uncle Gamiel?
Are we having fun now, Uncle Gamiel? After another minute the
bubbles that held his underwater voice stopped rising. She rolled
over, applying massive rotational torque to his thin neck. He rolled
over with her. He was helpless to do otherwise. She rolled over again
and again, taking him with her each time. It was an oddly fascinating
aquatic duet. Each time she rolled she turned his head on the stem of
his neck like a watch spring in need of winding. Uncle Gamiel had no
strength in reserve now, or need of it. For Uncle Gamiel the struggle
was over.
Nikki put her foot on his shoulder and shoved him away. He
drifted for a few seconds, then sank. She climbed out of the pool.
The power in her body was visible. It was visible in the expanse of
her shoulders and the bulge of her thighs as she climbed out of the
water. She gleamed with beads of liquid light as she emerged from the
pool. She twisted water out of her hair as if nothing of consequence
had happened. Her narrow hips and flat belly made some think she
would never have children of her own, nor want to. She was beyond
ordinary. She looked like a water goddess visiting the upper world.
Mother came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish towel,
Lyle the book worm lagging two steps behind her. Mother said, So
where is your goofy uncle? She used benign words like goofball, birdbrain, and knuckle-head to describe Uncle Gamiel to others. Mother
believed her brother Gamiel was a harmless eccentric, an odd duck
with a good heart once you got to know him. If she had suspicions
she’d dismiss them with a shrug and a sigh.
56
She said, with some alarm, Where is Uncle Gamiel? Nikki said,
He’s in the pool. Mother shaded her eyes against the surface glare.
She said, But I don’t see him. Honey, I don’t see him. Lyle returned to
the security of his room and the book he’d been reading, The Origins
of Drama. I’m not getting into this, he said.
Nikki had just turned fifteen. The party had taken place two hours
earlier. Uncle Gamiel led us in song. Nikki, twisting water out of her
hair, said, Is there any cake left, Mom? The party was over but here
she was, hungry again. She wanted another wedge of chocolate cake.
Nikki assembled a story. She said Uncle Gamiel dove in off the
high board. His entry angle was all wrong when he smacked the water
hard. He tried to do a twist and summersault from the ten-foot board
but he hit the water at an awkward angle. Kind of sideways, arms and
legs windmilling. His neck looked funny.
Everyone knew Uncle Gamiel could be a show-off. He sang
the birthday song too loudly and with show-off vibrato. He thought
he was talented. I could have been an architect, he once said. Or a
painter. Maybe a famous writer. Nikki said, I think he might have hit
his head on something. Maybe the edge of the pool? Or the bottom of
the pool? Maybe the board? His neck looked funny. He didn’t come
up.
Nikki was a high school sophomore. She wrote stories in
tenth grade English with titles such as Our House in Flames. The
Amputated Hand. Who’s Sorry Now. Coach Jim Blanco said, She’s
stronger than my best fullback. If the district allowed it, I’d have her
in my backfield. I’m not kidding about that. She’d pancake our first
string linebacker.
Mother said, But Uncle Gamiel doesn’t dive, honey. He’s afraid
of heights. He goes into the water one careful foot at a time. Nikki sat
down at the patio table. She said, Mother could I have a glass of milk
with my cake? Nikki liked to wash down her cake with cold milk.
She was also very thirsty from swimming laps with Uncle Gamiel in
tow. Next year she’d try to make the varsity swim team. She thought,
I could letter in three sports.
It was called an accidental drowning. Odd how it happened, but odd
things sometimes do. There are things that can’t be fully accounted
for. The medical examiner had seen far worse. He said, Yet and still
it’s very odd. He shook his head as if bewildered. He was an elderly
57
man with a kind and gentle manner. He touched the pale body of
Uncle Gamiel as if it could still feel terror and pain.
He looked up from his work and rested his eyes on the tall
eucalyptus grove behind the house. The trees were occupied by a
flock of doves. The medical examiner was a devoted bird-watcher
and in spite of his painstaking examination of Uncle Gamiel, he was
thrilled by the bird-heavy trees. My God how beautiful! How they
endure!
Eyes on the flock of bickering doves, he said: I can account for
the broken neck but not the unhinged mandible. The fractured cervical
vertebrae are no surprise to me, but the damage to the jaw seems . . .
spurious. Very odd indeed.
Most people don’t realize water doesn’t compress. Unless he has
correct form the diver will hit a surface as unforgiving as concrete.
When they go off the Golden Gate they do not drown. They die on
impact. Organs in fact explode. But the mandible? The neck yes, but
the mandible? Plus the appearance of trauma to the zygomatic arch?
It was not what one would expect from a diving mishap. I would
say a considerable force of undetermined nature aggravated the lower
boney structure of this man’s skull, if someone thinks to ask. Not
that it explains anything. The tongue was swallowed but it was also
lacerated by the teeth. Bit, as if forced to bite. Then swallowed, as the
victim aspirated blood and water. Not an easy death in my opinion.
The medical examiner said: Look up there, in those trees. I’ve never
seen so many Spotted Doves at one time! There must be hundreds of
them! We looked at the trees and then at him as if he had lost his mind.
Officer Peterson responded to the 911 call. He wore the skeptical
non-committal expression many police officers affect. Officer
Peterson noticed finger bruises on the girl’s thighs. He saw the red
scratches. But then you have to ask yourself, How can a fifteen-yearold girl hold a grown man under until he drowned? And if she had she
probably had good reason. The bastard no doubt deserved it. Uncles.
Fathers. Even grandfathers. Almost always a family deal. You see it
all the time.
Officer Peterson shrugged. He looked skeptical but that was
his everyday on-the-job expression. Over the years it had become
fixed. His face could express nothing but skepticism. If he laughed
it was a skeptical laugh. If he grieved for a fallen fellow officer he
was skeptical of his grief. All emotion was held suspect until proven
58
genuine. Sometimes this took days, even weeks. Sometimes it was too
late. Better to err on the side of correctness. When his dour expression
was called to his attention by his wife, he said, It’s the downside of
police work, dear. But his wife’s observation irritated him. I am not
Ronald McDonald, he snapped.
He was not uncomfortable with his work or how his features had
adjusted to it over the years. After all, he wasn’t selling used cars. He
wasn’t a Wal-Mart Greeter. He had no illusions. He’d seen too much
in ten years on the job to harbor illusions. For fun, his wife took his
picture with her cell phone while he was dozing in his overstuffed
armchair. He wore the same expression even while unconscious. As
if even his dreams inspired skepticism. His face could not relax. The
muscles remained fixed with doubt. His wife thought it was funny.
Your forehead is still knitted! She laughed merrily. Hysterically?
Perhaps. Officer Peterson did not see the humor. He said, What
the bejesus are you laughing about, LeeAnn? What’s so goddamn
hilarious?
He brought his skepticism to the family dinner table. What’s in
this soup—kale? Jeez, LeeAnn, you know I hate kale. Is this turkey
meatloaf? Canned gravy? Ersatz bean curd? Tell me these things are
not tofu scallops. If it’s not a fish then don’t call it a gosh darn fish.
(He tried to avoid bad language at the dinner table. The kids, after all,
were still impressionable.)
He watched TV cop shows skeptically. He’d say to his family,
No cop would speak that frankly to a civilian. Not where he could be
heard by other cops. He told his kids, Don’t you ever think what you
see on TV is real. It isn’t. Not even the news. Those so-called reality
shows? All of them are phony set-ups. Officer Peterson had long ago
decided that very little was not phony, on TV or off.
What his wife and children reported to him of their everyday
activities he took with a grain of salt. Are you sure it was a python
the girl brought to class in her violin case? It was more likely a king
snake or an overgrown garter. And where was the violin? The socalled python was in the violin case but there was no violin. The story
doesn’t hold up, son. And so on. He had come to believe that nothing
is as it appears. Not ever. That was his motto. I’m not a cynic, he said.
Maybe by the time I retire I will be. But not yet. There’s still hope.
Officer Peterson had no desire to initiate an investigation. A fool’s
errand in this case. A waste of department resources. In his report he
59
called the incident a swimming pool accident. Happens often enough
in our fair city. People are reckless. You think you know how to dive
but you don’t. Have a few drinks and you think you can do a halfgainer with a twist and a somersault but you’re kidding yourself.
You’ve seen those tricky dives on TV so many times they almost look
easy. You think you can do anything with little or no practice.
You think you can fool around with your fifteen-year-old niece
year after year. You begin to think it’s your right. You tell her, You will
always be my little princess, Nikki, as she squirms in your arms. But
the princess eventually becomes a woman. Sometimes a woman with
attitude.
Weren’t you paying attention, Uncle Gamiel? No, you weren’t.
You think all things in the flux of time remain in the same relationship
to each other? Is that what you think? What an unfortunate wrongheaded philosophy. Nothing remains the same. There is no constancy.
All relationships loosen. New definitions are needed. New rules of
behavior.
Uncle Gamiel did not grasp this. Officer Peterson could see scorn
for the dead uncle in the girl’s defiant stance. Plenty of attitude there.
And look, she’s built like a brick privy. No jury would put the girl
away. Count on it. Case dismissed. Of course there would be no case
to dismiss.
Officer Peterson said, I’m sorry for your loss. He was speaking
to Mother but his eyes were on Nikki. I’m not going to make trouble
for these law-abiding tax-paying people. Horsing around in the pool
and things got a bit athletic. So what? The girl looks strong as a young
bull. The pencil-neck degenerate uncle misjudged her. No doubt he
was the family embarrassment. Good the SOB’s gone. Amen.
The girl looked away. To herself she said, It’s not my loss. Uncle
Gamiel was a sack of shit. Turning to the girl, Officer Peterson said,
You going to be okay? He thought he detected a tremble. Her eyes
met his. Her sky-blue Nordic eyes admitted nothing and admitted
everything. They were fearless untroubled guilt-free eyes. Boo hoo,
she said, staring straight into the policeman’s skepticism. Officer
Peterson took a backward step. A smile of appreciation strained
against the fixed muscles of his face. It made his face hurt. He was
wrong about the tremble. A cool breeze had raised chill-bumps on her
arms, that’s all. Shit oh dear, he thought. We got us a real cutie here.
No one brought charges. No one would. Uncle Gamiel had no
60
family other than his sister, niece, Lyle the bookworm, yours truly,
and Todd the marine who was ten-thousand miles away in Kabul.
Uncle Gamiel worked at the Overland bus depot peeling tickets apart,
giving the carbon to the travelers. He always wore a suit to work. Hart
Schaffner and Marx: pin stripes, sharkskin, blue serge. Or, for casual
wear, Harris tweeds hand-woven in the Outer Hebrides. Seersucker
on a hot day. And a tie. Always a tie, no excuses. (A collar without a
tie is like a wingtip without laces, he said on many occasions.)
Have a pleasant journey, he would say in his fake English accent.
Travelers became self-conscious of their mumbling regional drawls
before this well-spoken English gentleman who peeled their tickets
apart. His long pale fingers, manicured nails, with amethyst pinky
ring, handled the split tickets with precision and style. Done properly,
it elevated the traveler’s sense of importance.
His co-workers didn’t like him. They weren’t influenced by his
charm. Just the opposite. He was a phony through and through. He
also had a loud and offensive mouth. His co-workers thought his racial
jokes were not only not funny but also, in this day and age, passé.
If he says Rastus one more time I’m going to smack him, someone
vowed. Indeed, his sense of humor crossed the line. Certain heavily
biased words should not be spoken in public. Probably not in private
either.
No one would miss Uncle Gamiel. He was more than expendable
as far as his co-workers were concerned. Good riddance, they said.
Amen to that, brother. A superstitious baggage handler said, We
oughtn’t to speak unkindly of the dead. The man he spoke to said,
I see no reason not to. I am not a hypocrite. A janitor within earshot
said, Everybody a hypocrite, man.
And so the conversation about Uncle Gamiel went. It was rumored
that he once had a wife and child. Both killed in a rollover out on U.S.
99. People found it hard to believe. It must have been a fabrication
spun by Uncle Gamiel himself. What kind of woman would submit to
a man like that? Maybe one who would get drunk and steer her car off
the road, the child tossed clear of the wreck but dead-on-arrival just
the same.
After a while people stopped talking about him. He faded from
memory. He joined the legion of the dead-and-forgotten. A planet
full of the forgotten lay under the sod. One more or less makes no
difference. Some had been charming, some not. Some had unpleasant
61
habits. Some comported themselves beautifully. Others were stupid
and foul-mouthed, yet many were blessed with intelligence and
decency. Uncle Gamiel and the mythical woman who married him
belonged to some similar but as yet unnamable category. Though
he lacked the qualities most admire, Uncle Gamiel was cut from the
same cloth we all are. Patterns in the weave account for the variations.
Most of us hold the belief that genetics dictate who we are and
what we do. If that’s true, then we’re all off the hook. We can’t help
what we do. Your life has been written for you. Winner or loser, you
meet your fate on the path you chose to avoid it. So says Lyle the
bookworm quoting his favorite author, Sophocles. But that’s way too
easy, don’t you think? We see things through a distorting lens but that
is the single and only undeniable constant in this conversation.
Lyle the bookworm hid in his room while the medical examiner
studied the dead body of Uncle Gamiel. Lyle’s books and his own
imagination terrified him. He would be terrified all his life until a
heart attack mercifully took him away at the age of forty. Life itself
had scared him to death.
He wrote in his diary: We belong to a vanishing collective. We
vanish and re-appear in unremembered cycles. We’ll meet again, God
help us, warts and all.
62
Mark Powell
THE ACREAGE
They told Deakin he’d gotten the job because he was local, but he
knew it was because he had once killed a man and they figured that
if it came down to it, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill another. Which
was maybe just another way of saying he was disposable. As for
the present, as for the shit with the locals, the ragged protests and
screaming soccer moms dragged from Volusia County growth-board
meetings, Deakin had carried a bad reputation home from Vegas, and
someone in corporate must have thought that might help. So he spent
three weeks at a strip mall outside Chicago shivering in a thin Carharrt
jacket while being trained to do things like remove a bald eagle’s nest
or handle the blood-borne pathogens of some trespassing eco-terrorist
he might have happened to, however accidentally, shot. When he
thought about it later—after the child had disappeared, after his child
had disappeared, after everything had disappeared—he figured most
of it was illegal, but fuck it. You don’t stack illegal against the sorrows
of this life.
Since the housing market collapsed he’d worked construction
until the work all but disappeared. It was always catch-as-catch-can
but things worsened dramatically, bad enough to remind him of his
days as a fighter—the feast-or-famine part—but he was too old to
be reminded of his days as a fighter. The economy tanked around the
time his marriage began to founder and if Kendra wasn’t on him the
mashed face staring back from the mirror was.
Arrogance—that was his wife’s diagnosis. You got arrogant and
you started grabbing. Which was true. Deakin and his old friend Avi
had grabbed everything in sight, first a series of condos on Cinnamon
Beach, then a few strip malls around Daytona, and, finally, a thirtyacre housing development just as everything evaporated, first the
economy and then his marriage.
As to his current situation, she was resigned to it. She spoke of
reaching a certain point where it wasn’t so much about your ability to
go forward as your inability to go back. She thought of taking their
son Sam and staying with her mother but hadn’t, at least not yet. He
had other oars in the water—the exact words he used: oars in the
63
water—even if they weren’t exactly aboveboard. When he said it she
didn’t laugh so much as roll over. “Fate,” she told him one night in
bed just before he took the job at the Acreage, “is the only bastard that
owns me.”
So he became part game warden, part forest ranger, and for it got
a pickup and a decent paycheck, a new .357 with a box of Jacketed
Hollow Points, and out in the center of the tract’s 39,000 acres, an
aluminum shed with a two-way CB and an army surplus cot on the
floor. But what he really got was access. That was what his work was
about.
It wasn’t hard work, either, and when things like murder—he
imagined no other word for it—got to him he would walk into the
yard and fire rounds into the giant stump of an old kapok tree. In a few
years the land would be plowed and tamed, the palm and scrub pine
displaced by twenty thousand stucco homes with manicured lawns
and cheerful yard ornaments. There would be elementary schools
and office parks—at least that had been the plan before the bottom
fell out. But for now he was three miles down a dirt road and God
only knew how far from the nearest person. It should have made him
reckless but instead had the opposite effect: he became keenly aware
of his movements, tended to little things like keeping his socks dry
or changing the timing belt in the pickup, but ignored big things,
avoided the fencelines, stayed out of the mangrove swamps and
stands of cypress. Didn’t call his wife. Forgot he had a son. He had a
book on big-game hunting and would sometimes find himself reading
the same page over and over again, listening as the crop dusters came
low over the treetops, the occasional truck that ground up the road.
Days he caught himself shadow boxing he was embarrassed and then
furious, and then, one morning in early May, soaked in his own tears.
It wasn’t too long after that the child disappeared.
A week prior he had driven into town just for the spectacle of it all,
cruised down Woodland Avenue and found he couldn’t make the left
onto Indiana for the blue sawhorses set up outside the courthouse.
This was the last night of public debate on whether or not to allow
commercial development on the Acreage but everyone knew it was a
foregone conclusion. Even the folks with air horns and poster board,
he thought. The Acreage had set empty for ninety years but all of a
sudden there was a plan to develop the land. Housing couldn’t go
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any lower and was bound to rebound by the time the sewers were
dug. Labor was abundant. Materials were cheap. The very crash that
had, just a few years prior, made the land seem protected indefinitely
had now conspired to open it in a few years’ time. And they all knew
it—he accelerated past the throngs and made a left onto Highway
44—everyone just loved a circus.
The housing development appeared as if made from the air which
in the end, he supposed, it was. A ghost development: an asphalt lane
winding through a few stunted trees and on to little circular blobs
meant to be cul-de-sacs but holding nothing more than lot numbers
and markers for septic lines. Survey flags and a brackish retaining
pond swaddled in Tyvek wrap. The faded hieroglyphs of orange
spray paint. Wire grass everywhere. Occasionally you would see the
cinder foundation for a two-story faux Mediterranean arrested and
abandoned, but even those were disappearing beneath the scrub.
This was the housing development that was to be their retirement,
their cash cow, money turned, as he liked to tell Kendra, hand over
fist. There were lots for forty-five houses but there were only three
complete; only one was occupied.
He parked out front and found his wife in the kitchen drinking
raw milk and reading Entertainment Weekly. Sam was already down
for the night.
“This early?”
“He didn’t get his nap.” She sat sideways in a white ladder-back
chair, barefoot with her legs in running tights and crossed at the thighs.
A little silver ring around her pinkie toe. “Besides, it’s not that early.”
“I’m just going to peek in on him.”
“Don’t wake him. He had a hard time going down.”
He took a sip of her milk. “I’ll just peek.”
“Don’t you dare wake him.”
His boy was indeed asleep, his five-year-old head sweating,
blonde hair matted and swirled. Deakin flipped the wall switch and
looked at the fan. Nothing happened.
Kendra was still at the table.
“The fan’s not working,” he said.
“Nothing’s working. The power’s off.”
“Why’s the power off?”
“Why’s the power off?” She finally looked up at him. “Jesus,
Deakin. You are really something else.”
65
He opened the refrigerator door on cool darkness.
“Shut that,” she said. “You’ll let out the cold.”
“There was another big protest downtown.”
“Pick what you want and shut it.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t want a thing.” He took another drink
of her milk, started opening and shutting cabinets. “Is there anything
to eat?”
She closed her magazine and leaned back. “Did you get paid?”
“I’m gonna stay tonight.” He was into cans now, Campbell’s
Sirloin Burger, Van’s Baked Beans. “I should drive back, I know, but
I can’t bear the thought.”
“Deakin, did you get paid or not?”
“I did.” He took a bank envelope from his pocket and handed it to
her. “I did indeed.”
She licked the tip of one finger and counted the money, slid three
twenties back across the table to him. Ultimately, it was about making
compromises. He had a job to do and he did it. Even if the past had
come to seem as amorphous as the present.
The bedroom was no cooler for its darkness and they lay atop the
tangle of sheets, sweaty and panting and staring up at the motionless
ceiling fan. That had become the thing about only being home one
night a week: the sex. Coming home now was a little like it had been
back in Vegas: the tenderness just another drug. They had always
been the real thing. That’s what they told each other, all the other
couples hooking up and breaking up only to hook up again. Not us,
baby. We’re the real thing. Boxing was supposed to have been their
salvation. It hadn’t worked out, of course, just as, on some level, he’d
known all along it wouldn’t.
Deakin was a patient and skilled practitioner, but that didn’t mean
he could fight. Growing up, he had boxed his way through Golden
Gloves mostly on guts and technique, slipping through the lower
rounds only to lose some bloody decision at some obscure regional
championship in Jacksonville or Tallahassee. But he had never quit,
and by his early twenties he was living in the Palm in Vegas and
fighting Saturday night undercards for five large. He sent money
home to Kendra, home to his parents, home to Avi to invest—did that
mean he knew even then it couldn’t last?
Probably. He was lean and small-fisted but he was also a gym-rat,
66
gorging on eighteen-mile runs and three-hour weightlifting sessions.
Manny Almodovar trained him before Manny’s Parkinson’s got too
bad and Manny had a conditioning circuit he ran his boys through
called ‘The Gauntlet.’ Most fighters made it through two, maybe
three times if they were particularly badass. Deakin ran The Gauntlet
eight times and was on his way to number nine when his body simply
keeled over. “I swear to God,” Manny said years later, “it was like
watching a horse die.”
But intangibles can only float a fighter for so long and eventually
it turned. By twenty-four he was getting routinely knocked out. By
twenty-five he was on his way out of the game all together. The fight
against the Puerto Rican was meant as something of a rear-guard
action, a last payday before he took his substantial nest egg home
to Florida. But the Puerto Rican wasn’t supposed to be seventeen,
and he wasn’t supposed to be as narrow as a fawn. And Deakin most
definitely wasn’t supposed to kill him. But it happened because, as
Manny told him, that kind of bad energy is always everywhere around
us. Deakin, he said, had just been unlucky. He didn’t mention the kid.
And then everybody went home to try and pretend like nothing had
happened.
Kendra got her real estate license and Deakin followed her to
her office where they began to divine what undervalued properties
might appreciate violently in the coming months. Homes, lots, office
buildings. They cleared thirty-two thousand on a house in Kissimmee
after only seven months. Then a villa near Rollins College: fortyone grand in a little over five months. The trades came with more
rapidity, selling after a week, a day. Kendra became fierce, a knight
errant seeking bungalows around Thornton Lake, or pre-fabs in
stucco ghettos hugging the Beachline Expressway, Deakin her squire,
hunched at her shoulder while she scrolled through MLS listings.
It wasn’t so much profit margin as forgiveness: so long as
Deakin was rich no one seemed to hold his past against him. He was
just another good old boy. But it wasn’t enough, and the housing
development was his idea, his answer. They had to get serious. They
had to buy in to be real players.
They drove over to watch the ground-breaking—a Cat D6 tearing
through palm fronds and tangled vegetation—drove back periodically
to watch the home-sites cleared and excavated. When buyers failed
to materialize it seemed more a puzzle for their amusement than a
67
concern. When the investment consortium filed for Chapter Eleven
life seemed to spark with chance. Deakin and Avi bought out their
partners without consulting Kendra. It seemed the kind of move that
defined a man, made a man. When he told her she cut her hair to
the length of her thumbnail. It seemed possible to self-destruct in a
matter of hours. But what did it matter, really? The flame-out would
be spectacular.
But then it wasn’t spectacular.
“Not with a bang,” Deakin grew fond of quoting. This was the
summer he perfected that sad shake of his head. “Not with a bang, but
a whimper.”
He got involved with Avi’s side project, but after months of makework the job on the Acreage was an answered prayer. Except he no
longer prayed, hadn’t prayed, in fact, since the Puerto Rican took the
ten-count. Now he was losing his own boy, not to a cerebral edema
but to indifference, his own goddamn lassitude. His wife too, because
try as he might, besides sex, he couldn’t think of a single moment he
and Kendra had spent together in the last six months.
“I’m sorry about the power,” he said. “You should have said
something.”
“It’s all right. It was only today. This afternoon really.”
They lay quietly before he spoke again.
“I could always call Avi. He said anytime. He said he’d always
have a place for me.”
He could feel her shake her head.
“He has people,” Deakin said.
“Please.”
“He knows people.”
“If you were going to call Avi,” she said, “you would’ve called
Avi.”
He showered with a flashlight and came out to find her sitting in
floor in the lotus position, eyes shut, hands cradled, sweating again
before he could get a pair of clean boxers on.
“I forgot to say,” she said from whatever place she now occupied,
“those kids are back. The ones throwing dairy products.”
“Shit, Kendra.”
“I saw them earlier when I was walking with Sam. They had
all this rotten milk. I completely meant to say that the moment you
walked in.”
He took the flashlight, dressed and walked barefoot into the still
68
yard. Tree frogs and the hum of far away traffic. All along the lane the
street lamps were on, washes of umbrella light illuminating patches of
nothing, and he couldn’t figure that for a minute. Who was paying for
it? The bank, he supposed. Some asshole in a Tampa high-rise. Cigars
and a bi-weekly massage. Then he realized he was projecting. Me.
The asshole in a Vegas high-rise. The artist formerly known as—. He
stepped on a prickly pear and jerked back. Instant karma. Story of his
life.
A moment later he caught the first egg. It came in at shoulderheight, grazed his arm and burst against the vinyl of the garage. Three
kids on bikes. Maybe a fourth somewhere in the shadows. The fucking
vandals. Spray-painting giant penises and something Deakin thought
was meant to be a three-eyed robot. Twice they’d terrorized his son.
He slung a rock but they were already gone, hitting the safety of the
highway, laughing all the way home.
He hosed the siding and walked back inside to find Kendra asleep.
There was sticky yolk down his arm, warm as blood, but that was all
right. He walked to the bathroom but didn’t immediately wash it off,
just stood there and felt it dry, hardening, thickening. He let it sit for a
good minute before he turned on the faucet.
The truth was, he’d gotten off easy.
He was sitting on his cot when his boss drove up. There’d been little
to do and Deakin had spent the day taking the six-wheeled Kawasaki
Mule down a series of rutted paths. Deer sign. Rattlesnakes and
migrating Arctic tern. He rode back to this shed and cranked the
window unit. Took off his shirt and spread it over his eyes. The air
conditioner whispered like a river and he thought of all those nights
tied up below Quarter Mile Bridge, the power plant flashing above,
below the river black velvet and fat with channel cats, whiskered and
sinuous and sliding through the dark water.
He was mentally preparing to flop onto his stomach when he heard
the truck pull in. The bossman. Johnson he was called. A slumping
bear, apologetic and clumsy in his Member’s Only jacket, the elbows
glossed. Dickies uniform pants. OSHA-approved work boots. Deakin
didn’t know if it was his first name or his last.
“It sounds like it’s all settled,” he told Deakin.
“With the county?”
“They had em another to-do last night.”
69
“I heard something about that.”
He had a mutt of some sort in the back of his truck, burly head
slung through the slide window. “Said they hammered it out with the
attorney. Got a whole list of dos and don’ts.”
“They gonna develop it?”
“Hell, yes, they gonna develop it. All but the eastern mangroves.
The mangroves stay.”
“You ain’t out here to tell me I’m out of a job are you?”
Johnson waved him off. “Shit, son. It’ll take years. Your boy
might be riding that Mule before they get the footings dug. I’m here
to tell you to cut a trail from here down to that dry area near the
mangroves. Right down to where it’s elevated.”
“Like a logging road?”
“Like a natural trail. We got campers coming. It’s part of the deal
with the county.”
The campers turned out to be Boy Scouts. The trail turned out to be
a boar path Deakin flattened with the Mule. It took about an hour.
Hacking back the palmetto and scrub pine took the better part of a
week. But by the end of it a half-mile trail ran from the shed and its
graveled drive down to a gentle rise on the edge of the mangroves,
a clearing maybe thirty meters wide. He dug a fire pit and lay in a
brazier. Dragged fallen palms trunks over for seat. When he’d chopped
enough firewood to last a Montana winter he called the bossman and
the next day Johnson huffed his way down the trail and approved
it all. Except the goddamn mosquitoes. We’ll have to spray for the
mosquitoes.
“It’s too late in the year to be camping.”
Johnson waved away a circling clot.
“This ain’t my decision. This is a decision made up in Chicago,
you understand? Chicago makes the calls. But I tell you this: I got
authority enough to gas these bastards.”
Two days after that a crop duster flew over the swamp, an amber
cloud opening behind it, a spreading mist of oranges and yellows
that seemed to hang forever, as if too fine to fall. Until it finally did.
Deakin watched it from his shed.
The next day the Boy Scouts arrived. That was when it started, he
told himself later. Except it wasn’t. It had started long before that.
70
They came on a converted school bus, blue, with troop and tribe
scrolled down the side. The flinty profile of Osceola. Thirty-two fifthgraders and four fathers in neckerchiefs and khaki shorts.
“I take it we’ll need bug spray,” one asked.
“More like a bee keeper’s suit,” another said.
They were already slapping at their bare legs.
“I got some stuff in the shed,” Deakin said.
“Organic?” asked a man in an expensive Orvis fly-fishing vest.
“It’s pure Deet,” he told them. “It’ll wreck your mind. But you’ll
thank me.”
He could see the glow of the campfires from his shed. Or thought he
could. A lid of heat sealing the treetops. The sun went down and the
bull frogs started up, croaking out of the loam. Far-away voices. Was
he hearing them? He couldn’t be certain. But what was the difference,
in the end? Hearing them. Imagining them. He fell asleep and woke
a little after eleven. Back stiff. Hands clamped with the first feints of
arthritis. Walked inside and fixed a thermos of hot chocolate, grabbed
his sleeping bag and a ground tarp, got his keys and wallet. When he
cranked the truck the gas light came on. He’d never make it. But to
hell with it, he went anyway.
A light was on in the downstairs bedroom but he knew it was
late enough that his son would be asleep upstairs. The last thing he
wanted to do was wake Kendra and get into a thing. He parked along
the highway and got out, careful to stay along the far side of the road
as he looped the house. More graffiti had gone up since his last visit.
A broken window in one of the facing unfinished villas. A peculiar
silence in the rustle of ornamental trees.
He waited until the bedroom light went out and the house settled,
silent as prayer. He knew he should leave, just get in his truck and
drive away, but to hell with it: he missed his boy. He collected several
wood chips from the flower bed and lobbed them toward Sam’s
screen. After the third strike he saw the sash go up and a small head
appear.
“Dad?”
“Hey, son. Whisper for me, all right?”
“Does Mom know you’re here?”
“No,” Deakin said, “but it’s okay. Think you could get out without
waking her?”
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“Is it okay?”
“It’s fine. Maybe just put your shoes on.”
He met his son behind the house, his boy in dinosaur pajamas and
Dingo cowboy boots. Hair matted and eyes puffy with sleep. Deakin
hugged his slim frame, his body warm and tiny, all shoulder blade and
rib.
“I thought we might want to camp out like we used to,” Deakin
whispered. “Maybe just down near the pond.”
“Is this okay with Mom?”
“It’s fine.” Deakin pulled him close again. “You’re a good boy
for worrying about your mama, but I promise you it’s fine. Let’s walk
down to the pond.”
Deakin spread the ground sheet on the grassy slope that broke
toward the water, unrolled the sleeping bag and gave Sam the thermos
of hot chocolate. The stars were out. The sky clear and banded. A
waning moon three days past full, and there, beneath, the cold glow of
planets. They lay on their backs, Deakin’s right arm beneath his son’s
head, the warm thermos between them and the air alive with night
smells: the honeysuckle that grew along the bank, raw lumber.
“This is really nice, Dad. I wish Mom was with us.”
“Me too, son.”
“I’d like for her to maybe just be beside us. We wouldn’t even
have to say anything. Look at the moon, Dad.”
The moon was waxing, growing radially, he thought, something
he had first witnessed out in the desert, before that last fight with the
Puerto Rican kid, before that last fight with Kendra.
“It’s the same moon,” he told his son, “but the way you see it, the
light, the angle, however much pollution is in the sky. It changes. An
astronomer told me this once. It won’t ever be that way again.”
“That’s kind of sad, Dad.”
“Yes.” He touched his son’s hair. “It is. But it’s also sort of what
makes it beautiful, that nothing ever stays. That nothing will ever be
the same again.”
They slept then, and sometime just before dawn Deakin woke,
his son curled into Deakin’s chest, the vinyl bag moist with dew and
tight across his back. He sat up and gently pulled his son’s head into
his lap. The nape of the neck. The perfect funnel of ear. His son was
beautiful. As fragile as the light just beginning to filter through the
trees. Clean light. Washed in pine. He’d wished away so many days.
72
Oh God. Rainy afternoons with Sam constipated and defiant, nights
his boy couldn’t sleep. He wanted forgiveness for that, more so than
for all the rest—the ceaseless violence, the pointless destruction—he
wanted forgiveness for his irreverence, his failure to hold fast. He
pulled his son onto his shoulder, rested one hand on his hair. Mercury
and Venus were bright, and he was overcome with the need to see it
once more, to share it. Look up at the moon, son, look up, it won’t be
like this again in our lives. It won’t be like this ever again. He stroked
his boy’s hair but couldn’t bring himself to wake him.
A while later they walked back through the grass and empty
streets to the house. Slashes of dew across the leather cowboy boots.
Birdsong. When they topped the hill Deakin saw Kendra on the front
porch with her arms crossed. Pink housecoat and old tennis shoes, her
mouth pulled into a straight line. They approached silently and she
hugged Sam and told him to go inside. Deakin turned for his car.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
He nodded and walked on. A few minutes later she came out and
sat in the passenger seat, handed him a cup of coffee and hugged her
chest.
“You scared the shit out of me, Deakin.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You do anything like that again I’ll get you locked up.”
He looked out through the beaded glass. “He’s my boy. I needed
to see him.”
He watched the leaves tremble, their undersides translucent and
veined. One floated free to drift down, swirling for a moment before
coming to rest in the mud, a quiet rustle he imagined but could not
hear. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
“I know you didn’t. It’s just.” She stopped. Out in the yard the
dead straw ticked with a ghost of breeze. “I thought for a minute you
might have taken him and just ran.”
“I’m sorry about that. I thought you’d see the car.”
“I did see it.” She waved away the concern. “It still scared me
though. I think sometimes I could just see Sam disappearing, like
maybe you’d bury him at the bottom of that pond where I’d never
find him. Then you’d say you did it cause you loved him too much.”
“Jesus, Kendra.”
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand to her face. “I don’t mean to say
that, I’m just scared. People keep calling, driving by. That asshole
73
Johnson.”
He touched her shoulder.
“Don’t.” She pulled away from his hand and bit her lip.
“What’s happening, Kendra? I mean look at us. Look at you.” He
touched the terry cloth of the robe. “You never dressed like this.”
“You just never noticed.”
“You’re giving up.”
She forced a laugh. “You have to make a deliberate effort to stay
alive, Deakin.”
“I understand. I’m just saying—”
“It’s an everyday effort and even then you have to keep settling
for less and less. I don’t know what you might call it.” She looked
at him and back out at the street. “The law of diminishing returns. I
never expect much anymore,” she said. “You taught me that.”
“I’m sorry then.”
“I’m not complaining. I’m just stating a fact.”
Light came through the dewed glass, a rain-blown prism of
sunrise breaking above the trees so that it seemed less a windshield
than a panel of stained glass.
“I still love you, Deakin,” she said finally. “But I have to think
about more than just me. These people that keep calling for you.
Eventually one of them is going to knock.”
The wind gusted and a shudder of leaves showered across the
dead grass, caught against the gutter and sailed free to cyclone into
the street.
“Yard looks like shit,” he said.
“I need to tell you something.”
“I’ll sow some fescue next time I’m over.” He turned the key
forward in the ignition. “I should get back.”
“My mamma called again,” she said. “I think we’re going to go
up there for a while.”
“Kendra.”
“I think we’re going up there to stay.”
He made it back to the shed just ahead of the Boy Scouts who came
tromping up the trail wearing backpacks and carrying unrolled
sleeping bags, legs bitten and eyes bleary with sleep. They piled their
gear and counted off. Thirty-one of thirty-two.
“God Almighty,” said the man in the Orvis get-up. “Somebody
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walk back down and find Teddy. Peter will you walk back down and
find Teddy please?”
Peter came back a half hour later, shaking his head.
“God Almighty,” Orvis said and trudged back down the trail.
He came back an hour later, face flushed, arms and legs briarscratched.
“I think we might have a problem,” he said.
That was around ten in the morning. By noon the Sheriff was there
and by late afternoon volunteers were beginning to assemble. Deakin
shuttled the Sheriff up and down the trail and out into the further
reaches of the Acreage. Johnson was in the shed, talking on his cell to
corporate in Chicago. He came out and spat sunflower seeds, wiped
his mouth on the back of his hand.
“You see ’em?” he asked.
“Who’s that?”
“Them. All of ’em.” Flashlight beams were visible out in the
scrub, less now than there had been a half hour ago. “All kitted out
from whatever catalog they shop. Wouldn’t know their ass from an
aphid.”
“What did corporate say?”
Deakin could see his mouth work its way around a sunflower hull.
“What you think they say? They said find that boy.”
Except nobody could.
Early on the second day a team of blood hounds arrived. Later
in the day the Sheriff’s Department got their helicopter in the air.
There were TV trucks by that point, a team from the Florida Bureau
of Investigation that asked Deakin to have a seat in the back of their
van, they wanted to have a little talk. They knew about the kid,
Vegas, seemed to know about everything. He answered honestly.
They wanted to know how to get in touch Kendra. He had her cell,
no address. They asked him to take a piss test, which made no sense,
but he took it anyway. They seemed satisfied but asked him not to go
anywhere.
“Where the hell would I go?” he wanted to know.
Back into the mangroves it turned out. On the third day they were in
canoes and sea kayaks, an armada of the well-intentioned trapped in
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the reeds and the vine-tangles. This went on for two more days: the
walking, the paddling, the low thump of the helicopter. Every time
Deakin turned about someone with a badge seemed to be eyeing him.
“Do they actually think I’m involved in this?” he asked Johnson.
“Come out here a minute, son.”
He followed Johnson out to the edge of the treeline, the old
Kapoks, the scattered and discarded equipment. A trashcan had spilled
and empty water bottles and Power Bar wrappers lay scattered by the
breeze. Johnson walked out of the reach of the safety light and lit a
cigarette.
“They called up looking for your wife.”
“Who did?”
“The bureau folks.” He took a drag. “She ain’t in Atlanta, Deakin.
Her mamma ain’t in Atlanta either. Tell me you don’t know this? Tell
me you just somehow forgot and you aren’t trying to fuck us over.”
“Forgot what?”
“That her mamma’s been dead for better than two years.”
“My God,” he said, because perhaps he did remember that.
It was like that, the haze of memory, the rustle of weeks. The operation
turned from rescue to recovery. There was nothing after recovery. A
once-used fire ring, a makeshift memorial like you see on the highway,
photographs peeling off the limp posterboard. He called Kendra’s cell
to find it disconnected, no voice mail, no forwarding number. The
Florida Bureau hung around, the last to leave, but eventually leave
they did. One day at the public library Deakin searched “phases of
the moon.” He was curious about what he’d told his son because it
occurred to him he had never met an astronomer, let alone spoken to
one. Another day he drove out to the housing development. He still
had a key and he thought Kendra might have left something behind,
but he was shocked to find the house occupied—all the houses, in fact,
were occupied. Where were the vandals with their bikes and threeeyed robots? Where was the plastic wall around the retaining pond?
He tried to count back the weeks. It had been what? Five, maybe six
at most. It was impossible. But of course standing there he had to
concede that it wasn’t. Everything had changed. Except the truck was
still out of gas. He realized he’d never refilled the truck.
A few days later the tracker arrived. A squat Hispanic man in knee
boots and coveralls. He said he was here to find the boy’s remains,
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there was a reward. Deakin didn’t know anything about that. “No,
no,” said the man. “I talk to your boss. I am tracker. I track rhino in
Colombia. You remember Escobar?”
“What?”
“Rhino. They escape from Escobar’s compound and I track them.
I track everything.”
“I got to call this in,” he said, and went inside and got Johnson on
the two-way.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Johnson wanted to know.
“This guy. He’s a tracker or something. He tracked rhinos. He
said he talked to you.”
“Are you stoned, son?”
“He said he talked to you. Little guy. Mexican or something.”
“If there’s some Mexican there you tell him to get the fuck off the
property,” he said. “And you take it easy, Deakin, all right? Don’t you
sit out there and smoke up all our shit.”
“Yes?” the man said when Deakin came out.
He was prepared to make him leave but instead just waved him
into the woods, watched him disappear right down the old boar trail.
The next day Johnson drove out and asked how things were.
“Fine, I guess,” Deakin said. “Except that tracker never came
back.”
“What tracker?”
“The rhino guy. Pablo Escobar.”
Johnson stared at him for a moment and then drove away. The
next day another crop duster bent low over the pines and let loose
a cloud of insecticide except this time the wind shifted and it blew
back onto Deakin, yellow around the hairs of his arms. It tasted like
almonds, a little bitter, chalky when he licked it. He sat in his camp
and shivered. The next day he drove back to Kendra’s but got turned
around because exactly where he thought the development should
be there was nothing, just acres of scrub. These goddamn tangly
unmarked back roads, he thought. But he also wondered what the hell
was wrong with him.
The day after that he found a neckerchief wadded in the spout of a gas
can. Light blue with a gold crest of some sort. He burned it in the trash
barrel before he could really be certain.
77
The next time he went to drive to town, he couldn’t seem to get off the
property. He’d always thought the dirt road more or less straight but
it turned out it kept doubling back on itself. Time and again he would
think he was near the highway only to find himself pulling up at the
shed. Finally, he gave up, and was glad he had because that night his
son called on the two-way.
“Which one was it, Dad?” his son wanted to know.
“Which one what?”
“The boy,” Deakin thought he said, but the connection was bad
and he couldn’t be certain. “I miss you, Dad.” That much he could
make out. “I miss you so much.”
The crop duster returned the next day and instead of sitting still for it
he left. Packed his messenger bag. Took Highway 40 and turned onto
International Speedway Boulevard and in fifteen minutes passed the
lurking hulk of Daytona Speedway. Avi’s gym was on Beach Street,
two blocks from the ocean. Deakin parked by a surf shop and walked
down. The building was windowless, constructed from once-white
cinder blocks, the silhouette of a boxer beside cursive script that read
Olunsky’s Boxing and Fitness Emporium. Avi had owned the place
for almost five years—because that’s how the money comes out clean,
Deak—but had never bothered to change the name. The street had
devolved into wino seediness, most of the stores shuttered, but it was
still the best fight gym on the Atlantic coast.
Avi jumped up from behind the counter when Deakin came in—
Jesus Christ, you’re late—led him by the arm past the free weights on
toward his office. He shut the door and took the bag from Deakin’s.
“This is two pounds,” he said. “Jesus, Deak, you can’t expect me
to just go around not knowing. Why didn’t Johnson carry this?”
“I got tied up with things. I got confused—my son.”
“Fuck you.” He was smiling now.
“My boy called,” Deakin said, “Kendra—”
“Oh, fuck you, man. You better not sit out there smoking this shit
up too. Little aluminum shed acting like you Pablo Escobar. You’re
just running seesh, Deak. Not taming rhinos.”
But had he said that last thing about the rhinos, about Escobar?
Had Deakin mentioned it at some point? Strange, he thought. But the
stranger thing was, when he got back it wasn’t just the mosquitoes that
were dead, though they lay thick with the crickets all over the ground.
78
It was everything—everything was dying, the palms and staggerbush
and the trumpet vine—all brown and wilting. He knew then that the
boy was behind it. Deakin would have to find him himself. He’d have
to get up and move. Yet he didn’t.
Two days later Johnson showed up.
“You look sick,” he told Deakin. “Malarial, actually.”
“It’s all this insecticide they keep spraying.”
“Who keeps spraying?”
“The crop dusters,” Deakin said, though in truth they were no
longer spraying, just buzzing back and forth over the trees. “This stuff
is toxic,” he said. “You can taste it. The water in the pond’ll drown
you. I wouldn’t have my boy out here for all the world.”
Johnson was turning to go but now he stopped.
“Your boy?” he said. “Just what is your boy’s name, Deakin?”
“His name?” He said it not because he hadn’t heard Johnson but
because suddenly he couldn’t remember it. “His name,” he said again.
“The Boy Scout,” Johnson said, “little missing Puerto Rican kid.
You look fucked up to me and I’m betting you can’t even remember
his name.”
Johnson stood in the door of the shed and slapped his hand once
against the siding. “Sam,” he said. “Goddamn. His name is Sam.”
Johnson waited a moment, shook his head before he looked at Deakin.
“You know I’m not sure I need you out here anymore, Deakin. I’m
sorry to have to say it, but you got no more knack for this than you and
Avi did buying land.”
Deakin just nodded, unsurprised. What he had learned when the
development collapsed was how truly unrequired he was, the fabulous
extent to which the world did not need him. He was a blip, a notion
going and then gone. He wasn’t even sure his wife needed him. He
wasn’t even sure he had a wife.
“Pack up tonight,” Johnson said. “I’ll come out and get you in the
morning. I’ll let Avi know too. At this point, I suspect we got the feds
watching.”
But Deakin wasn’t listening. Behind him he could hear the twoway crackling with his son’s voice, calling him out.
He left an hour before dusk, the sun netted in the trees, regretful,
contemplative, and was a half mile down the access road, deep in a
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seemingly endless forest, when the man stepped from behind the roots
of a kapok, a pit bull at his heels and a rifle balanced in his hands.
“Stop right there,” the man said, though Deakin had not moved
since the first stir of the undergrowth. He put his hands out, let them
fall, started to look back but caught himself. The man stepped through
a bed of glossy ferns to stand on the graveled shoulder, buried in deep
shadow though close enough for Deakin to see he was a Hispanic
man, shirtless, with wires of gray hair curled on his chest. A cigar
hung from his mouth though a cloud of insects still haloed his bare
head. The dog was a pitbull. The rifle a big elephant gun.
“We were looking for you hours ago,” the man said.
“No rhinos?”
“Not tonight,” the man said. He appeared taller and thinner than
the day he had driven up to the shed, but Deakin suspected the bush
might do that to you, stretch, skim.
“You got it with you?” the tracker asked.
The messenger bag. He did. Hadn’t even realized he was carrying
it. Deakin slipped it from his shoulder and handed it to the man who
slung it across his back.
“You ain’t supposed to be touching the shit,” the man said. “You
a minder. You meant to sit still. Second fucking time this happened,
Deak.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t be out and about. Johnson looking for you.”
“I’m headed to see my son,” Deakin said.
The tracker cupped one gnarled ear. “Say that again?”
“I said I have an appointment to see my son.”
The tracker stepped forward, paused to smash a mosquito on his
chest, drew his hand back to reveal a shimmer of dark blood, a single
translucent wing that veered from the wreckage.
“Come on then,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
The heat was intense, languid and wet. Deakin hadn’t felt it earlier
but he felt it now, the way it sat on the face like oil. The land here was
tabletop flat, the road a perfect plumbline cut through a few dying
persimmon and black gum trees scattered among the wilting palm and
scrub pine. The understory was no longer thick with staggerbush and
scarlet sumac; everywhere dead fronds dried in the heat.
Eventually they walked into a clearing. The little crop duster sat
on the far end. The tracker stopped, gently removed the two bricks of
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seesh, and then dumped the rest of the bag. A pistol fell out, wrapped
in the neckerchief Deakin thought he had burned. The tracker gathered
the contents in his arms, looked toward the plane and then back at
Deakin.
“Sentimental?” he asked, holding the neckerchief.
“It was my boy’s.”
“Shit,” he said. “Wait right here.” And in that moment he looked
just like Manny, Manny counseling patience, Manny pushing him
through another round of sparring. “Wait,” he said again.
And Deakin did just that, straining to see the figures down around
the plane but never moving from his spot. It was his son down there,
it was Johnson, it might have been Avi talking to Kendra, but it was
hard to say. He kept trying to see but couldn’t. Darkness was coming
on and just as the light failed the plane lifted off. The moon rose. The
trees died. Still he didn’t move. He stayed put that night and every
other night, his skin yellowing, his eyes aching with the absence of
light. He thought the crop duster might return but gradually understood
they were gone, all of them, though by the end he couldn’t be certain
who it was he was missing—the Boy Scout, the boy in Vegas, his own
son? All of them? None of them? And what was the difference? He
moved into the treeline, and sitting out among the mangroves, those
last mangroves, it was impossible not to wonder at it all, the sheer
absence, the sheer negation. A world where not even the mosquitoes
remained. And none of it was coming back. None of it would ever
come back.
81
Dianne Aprile
THE WATER-BEARER
What they told me about her
She’s afraid of germs. She’s silly. She washes her hands till they bleed.
She sees things. She thinks something’s there when it’s not. She’s a
hothouse flower. She was over-protected. She needs to be taken care
of. She’s scrupulous. She worries. She believes everything’s a sin. She
thinks too much. She’s afraid of her thoughts. She’s afraid of storms.
She’s afraid of dogs. She’s afraid of strangers. Afraid of sin. Afraid of
germs. Of dying. Of death. She’s afraid. Afraid. Afraid. Afraid.
What I notice about her
She’s fun. Not like my mother’s other sisters, both married with their
own daughters to pamper. She takes me with her to the beauty shop on
Saturdays where the stink of permanent solution comes to smell like
perfume to me, in my memories, then and now, and the steady drone
of bulky over-head hair dryers reminds me of engines revving in
driveways on winter mornings up and down my suburban street. The
beauty shop is actually a beauty school in a concrete block building,
six steps up from Bardstown Road, a busy city street. It’s a short walk
from the house where she lives with her unmarried brother, Red, and
their mother, and we make it even shorter by going out the back door,
crossing the brick-paved alley and cutting through the driveway of
the Cherokee Inn. (We hurry past the inn, the two of us trying to make
ourselves small, knowing we are trespassers, defying the no-cutthrough order, hoping we can dodge the grumpy lady who runs the
place.) At the beauty school, I sit for hours, my legs dangling from a
cushioned chair, listening and watching.
She is happy here. She’s laughing. She’s telling a joke. She shakes
her head the same way, at the same tempo, as the other women. She
looks in the mirror held to the back of her head, checks out the curls,
the color, the length. She says, I love it. She says, I didn’t know I
was so good lookin’. I’ll get me a fella tonight. She laughs at herself,
knowing there will be no fellas, then gets out her wallet, removes some
bills, pays the women who have washed and permed and combed and
fluffed and sprayed her hair. They laugh, too. You be good with that
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fella tonight, Aileen, they call out as we leave through the door with
the old wavy glass in the top. Next thing you know, we’ll be getting you
ready for your weddin’. She wags her head at them (it’ll be a cold day
in hell, she thinks to herself, chuckling) and points to me. This one’ll
be getting’ married before I do! I cringe at the attention, suddenly, for
the first time all day, focused on me. I frown. But everyone laughs. It’s
all a joke.
Going down the steps, trying to push her wallet back into her
purse, she drops a ten dollar bill. It floats to the sidewalk, lands lightly
on a crack. Break your mother’s back. When I stoop to pick it up, she
whispers, No! No! Leave it there!
It’s dirty, she says. It’s got germs on it. I think she’s joking again,
until I see the panic in her eyes. O.K., I won’t touch it, I say, and we
ignore the dirty, germ-laden, filthy piece of paper, act as if it isn’t
there, walk right past it. When we get to the corner, she looks up,
over the top of the bank building across the street, and I look up, too,
to see what she’s seeing. No clouds, blue sky. Not a storm in sight.
She lowers her eyes to meet mine. You want a sundae? How about a
butterscotch at Walgreen’s? I’ve been waiting for this invitation.
We punch the button mounted on the telephone poll, eager for the
light to change, to cross the street, to find our way to the back corner
of Walgreen’s, to the red vinyl booths, to the seats by the windows,
where we can have our sundaes and watch people go about their
business, cashing checks, buying stamps, picking up dry cleaning.
From our favorite booth in the back of Walgreen’s, we can also watch
the sky. Just in case.
What I heard happened
How did I hear it? Through the furnace vents? The voices of my
mother and father talking about the operation, disembodied details
filtering upstairs to my bedroom? Or did I overhear my grandmother’s
side of a telephone conversation with one of her sons? Did my older
brother clue me in? Was it something the family talked about in front
of me that I knew they thought I didn’t hear, wasn’t supposed to know,
couldn’t possibly understand?
She never got over it. And it wasn’t anything. Not really. She
made a big deal out of it. It scared her. She was a hothouse flower.
He didn’t do anything. He didn’t touch her. But she was afraid. It
made her feel dirty. Her hands. Filthy. She washed them. Scrubbed
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them. She could go through ten towels in a day. Her married sister,
Laura, noticed first. By then, the washing had been going on for two
years but nobody knew. She didn’t tell. Laura noticed the wet towels,
thrown in the closet, heaped up, whenever Eenie visited. All that
washing. He didn’t do anything to her. Only took her for a ride. It was
a rainy day. Stormy. She didn’t want to go. She had a dress to return
to Selman’s. She was counting votes at the Armory, a temporary job,
something to do. Her friend said, Why don’t you go with him? He’s
a nice fella. My daughter dates him. He had a car. The lightning and
thunder had let up, but it was raining cats and dogs. She had plans to
go to Middletown, to Laura’s, with Red and my grandmother. Her
friend said, Aw, you can take that dress back another day, can’t you?
She got in the car, hugging the dress close to her body, keeping it
dry, protecting it from the rain. He said, Would you like to ride out
somewhere? I have to do something. She said, Oh, I can’t.
But she did. Nothing happened. Not really. He drove past Waverly
Hills, out Dixie Highway, past any place she had ever been. He parked
in front of a house where a man was picking chickens. A woman
answered the door. Come in! she said. Where’s Joan today? It was
raining. Through a doorway, she saw a room with a jukebox, a shiny
dance floor, tables and chairs. What’ll you have? She didn’t know
how to order drinks. She said, Just a Coke highball. She wondered
if they were waiting for her back home, Mama and Red, impatient,
wanting to leave for Laura’s. She was afraid they were angry, worried,
afraid.
It was her brother Sam who said she was a hothouse flower. My
mother was the one who told me she was silly. Skip said it was just
something she couldn’t get out of her mind. I heard my grandmother
say it was her nerves that were shot. That’s why she wouldn’t pick
up a ten dollar bill that fell from her wallet to a sidewalk. That’s why
she used her elbows, not her hands, to push open doors. That’s why
they gave her the shock treatments and kept her for long stays in the
hospital. And that’s why she spent so much time in the bathroom with
the water running, even though her hands weren’t dirty, were in fact
just washed a few minutes earlier.
She herself told me, much later, more than a half-century after the
day in the rain, that it was not something that happened that set her
mind crazy but something the woman said. The woman who let them
into the house. She said, there’s no room downstairs, but there’s plenty
84
of beds upstairs.
That was the beginning of everything, she told me. I said, Get me
out of here! Get me out of here! On the way home, in the rain, the man
kept saying, I didn’t hurt you. I don’t know why you’re so excited. And
she kept repeating: Get me home. I got to get home.
That’s when all of it started. The fear. The dirty hands. The filthy
world closing in on her. The urge to wash, to scrub, to cleanse, to
erase. The heaps of wet towels. A secret for two years. Too fearful to
tell anyone what she was doing, or why. Not even a priest. Laura was
the first to notice. I’ll tell Mama if you don’t. So they told her together.
Mama cried. Why didn’t you tell us? They found her a doctor. They
gave her shock treatments. They put her in hospitals. They prayed for
her and listened to her and tried to talk sense to her. And finally they
signed her up for an operation.
I can’t remember when or how I heard about it. The word seems
always to have been in my vocabulary. Long before the story of the
ride in the rain, I knew how to say it, spell it, define it. Four syllables,
unaccented. Like a Japanese word: no emphasis, just sounds strung
together, like a line of chant, a prayer, a mantra. Lobotomy.
What I learned later
When she was 10, she was struck by a car on Barret Avenue. She
was with her cousin Ginny, walking home from a movie. I remember
we bought candy when we came out of the show. She walked east on
Broadway from the movie house, stopping to take a look at Beargrass
Creek as it ran beside the street. What happened after that, she
doesn’t remember. The driver of the car, the owner of Michael’s Shoe
Company, stopped after he struck her, and she heard, later, that his
girlfriend, a member of the family that owned the swanky Seelbach
Hotel, got out of the car, took a glimpse at Eenie lying unconscious
and fell to her knees to pray the rosary.
At the hospital, her skull fractured, she fell into a coma and lay
unconscious overnight. They anointed me for death. She awoke to see
a priest sitting by a radiator, reading prayers from a book and, standing
next to him, her uncle by marriage, Charlie Leibson, a lawyer. She
never remembered much else about her hospital stay, other than it
lasted three weeks. She was laid up at home for so long she had to
take summer courses to make up the days she missed.
When she was 13, a freshman at Atherton High School, she came
85
down with diphtheria. She was on her way home from her uncle’s
house where she had rehearsed a school play with friends when she
suddenly thought, I’m sick. When her father felt her fiery forehead in
the middle of the night, he called a doctor who didn’t arrive until the
next morning. The entire household, a dozen persons strong at the
time, was placed in quarantine. A sign on the door warned visitors
away from the house. Mama had to put out a pail for the milkman.
Her sisters and brothers, including my mother, could not attend
classes until the start of the next term. I carried the germ till March.
She herself missed nearly the entire year of school.
When she was 21, her father died. Tony Bauman’s Ice & Coal,
the business he ran with the help of his sons and an employee or two.
He died at 56. His heart gave out. He worked too hard. He started
his business with a quarter. He had a horse and cart, then trucks. The
boys helped. Ice hooks slung over shoulders. Delivering the big bulky
blocks up flights of stairs. Loading of coal into chutes of cellars.
Collecting payments. Or not. Dime, and didn’t pay! They all feared
his temper. He was kind but moody. He made candy at Christmas. For
family and friends and customers. The long hallway at home, lined
with tables, delicately roped spun-sugar candy baskets setting up on
wax paper, chocolates cooling. He was a perfectionist. He worked too
hard. He owned a saloon, The Buckeye Tavern. In the only photograph
of him that survived his death, he’s standing behind the bar: small,
dark, balding. Brooding. Eventually he turned over the saloon to the
boys. Red worked there for a time. Sam, too. Buck, as well. They all
liked to drink. Some, too much. There is a division within the family
as to whether Tony was one of the latter. But regarding some things
about Tony, everyone agrees. For two years before he died, he lived in
an oxygen tent. He couldn’t breathe on his own. His lungs collapsed.
His heart gave out. He died too soon.
The day the man drove her to the house with the juke box and
beds, he asked her at some point about her father. She remembers
this clearly. He’s dead one month, she told him. It was a rainy day in
September, 1936, four months before the Great Ohio River Flood, the
January deluge that sent icy waters roaring across Louisville’s streets
into its houses, overtaking entire neighborhoods, including the one
called Butchertown, home to the Buckeye Tavern and the three-story
brick on the north side of Franklin Street where the Bauman family
lived.
86
What someone said about her story
The mid-1970s. A corner of a newsroom. The fourth floor of The
Courier-Journal & Louisville Times building, 525 West Broadway.
A break between deadlines. Reporters, leaning against desks, talking
about their families. I mention my aunt, Eenie, who washes her hands.
Reporters, being reporters, ask lots of questions. I find myself thinking
about her story in a way I have never done before. The conversation
lasts until an editor’s bark sends us back, abruptly, to our individual
typewriters. All but one of us. This one sidles up to me, whispers in
my ear: If you don’t write about her, I will.
Coincidentally, The Courier-Journal building was built in the
1950s by Struck Construction Co., the firm that employed Eenie
for 37 years, until her retirement. Coincidental, as well, is the last
name of the man who picked her up outside the Armory on that rainy
September day: Hand. In fact, this is why I have not tried, as so many
have urged me, to render her story in fiction. Too many coincidences.
Too rich. Too complex. Too full of grace and amazement to pass for
truth in fiction.
Think of it. A moody, temperamental father whose job is
delivering the essentials of life—ice and coal. Too pat for a character
in a novel. Or this: the way water runs—well, like a river—through
the story of her life. Rain, creeks, faucets, floods, Holy Water. When
I was growing up, my uncle Red, her brother who was less than two
years older than she and with whom she lived from birth to his death,
habitually crooned the line of an old cowboy song, a hit in the late
’40s by the Sons of the Pioneers. I can hear his exaggerated baritone,
rising up from his basement workroom or drifting from the backyard
shed: The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water,
Cool water. And way up there He’ll hear our prayer and show us
where there’s water, cool water.
As a family, they lived a few blocks from the banks of the Ohio,
on a flood plain, where they took for granted the elaborate geography
and complex economy of that great river—didn’t think much about
it until the winter of 1937, when the river overshot its banks and sent
its freezing waters up the stairway of the brick house, past its wide
landing, halfway to the second floor. The women escaped. The men
stayed until they had to be rescued by Red Cross boats.
Water, mesmerizing and dangerous, resurfacing at the scene of
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every crime. Water flowing through memories, blurring the lines of
recollection and truth.
We stopped and looked in the creek, and I don’t remember another
thing.
The lightning and thunder had let up, but it was raining cats and
dogs….
She said, Aw, you can take that dress back another day, can’t you?
He’ll hear our prayer and show us where there’s water, cool water.
88
Erin Flanagan
THE THEORY OF THE SECOND BEST
In June 2005, from a televised courtroom in Kansas, the BTK Killer
confessed to ten murders, the families of his victims lining the room.
Dennis Rader was your average Midwestern-looking man—bad
glasses, boring suit, bald—and he told about his atrocities in startling,
monotonous detail, as if he were recounting the intricacies of changing
his oil. I don’t remember his arrest, although I’m sure it was all over
the news, but I watched hours of his testimony on my honeymoon from
a hotel in San Francisco, waiting for my new husband to get ready for
the day. The hotel room was small but expensive, located downtown
with a view of office buildings across the street. I’d expected a luxury
suite for what we were paying—a room at the Holiday Inn Express
was considered high living for us—so I was surprised to walk in the
first night and see a polyester sheen on the floral bedspread, to realize
I could touch at least two pieces of furniture at all times, my elbows
still at my sides.
This was only the second overnight trip Mike and I had taken
together. The first was to western Nebraska to drop off our friend
Daryl at the beginning of a bike trip. We spent that night in Alliance
after visiting Carhenge at dusk, the shadowy representations of
Stonehenge crafted out of American cars. The concession stand
was closed, and we couldn’t find any literature on the tourist spot,
but rumor had it the artist originally started planting foreign cars in
the ground, decided against it, and switched to Chevys and Fords.
That hotel—the cheapest in town and closest to the interstate—was
so revolting we kept our socks on rather than walk barefoot across
the carpet; the free breakfast was a plastic dispenser of three generic
cereals we ate that night as a snack, stale.
In San Francisco, Mike and I were still adjusting to our differing
travel rhythms; I wanted to be out of the hotel by eight a.m., while
Mike preferred to sleep in and get a leisurely start. In the evening,
we’d raid the mini bar—neither one of us had stayed at a hotel with
one before—figuring out after the first night we could replace the two
dollar Snickers or seven dollar IPA from a still over-priced bodega
around the corner. We thought this was funny; we thought we were
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the first people to have ever thought of such a scam, and were proud
of this harmless deviance. I watched TV in the mornings, enthralled
that Rader, a seemingly good person, was capable of such brutalities.
Listening to the baritone coughs of Mike in the shower, I sat on that
polyester bedspread with an eye toward the bathroom, wondering if I
could ever really know him. Rader was married for thirty-four years
to a woman who didn’t have a clue what was going on, accompanying
him to church every Sunday where she sang in the choir. She wasn’t
at the trial but I imagined her as his perfect match—another pair of
bad glasses, a frumpy outfit on a frumpy frame—something Mike
and I had heard more than once about the two of us. Mike and I came
home from the honeymoon with the usual stories and anecdotes—
the good-enough natured squabble about riding rented bikes over the
Golden Gate Bridge, the funny guy with the big nose selling roses in
the afternoon, dinner at a steakhouse courtesy of his Uncle Charlie
and the hundred dollar bill he slipped in Mike’s suit pocket at the
wedding. There was one dark argument after drinking too much at
happy hour one evening, but the details had escaped us and all was
forgiven by morning.
I followed Rader through the court system—the emergency
divorce granted his wife, his sentencing in August that year—and
read one book about his murder spree that tried to make sense of what
had happened. The author Roy Wenzl wrote, “The most disturbing
thing childhood friends told The Eagle about Rader as a boy was that
he had no sense of humor.” Reading that sentence, even in the context
of the book, I still didn’t know how to take it. Did those childhood
friends mean that was the worst they could say, that it is ridiculous to
think you should expect others to see the signs, or were they serious,
that there are few things more dangerous than a person who doesn’t
get the joke? Mike and I, for all the problems down the road, got
the joke. I think of us flat-footing it to the bodega every day with
a list in our hands: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a Bud Light, a bag
of roasted almonds. Of us laughing at the ridiculousness of burying
those American cars in the ground, yet recognizing the work it must
have taken. We’re divorced now and I’ve re-remembered a lot of that
honeymoon trip to see glimmers of what was to come: the argument
over the bikes; too much drinking. There’s a theory in welfare
economics called the theory of the second best, challenging the belief
that if you fix one problem you’re going to fix another, when in fact
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you may just make things worse. Make more money and everyone will
be happier; stay in a nicer hotel and you’ll have a better trip; the more
you really know someone, the more you will love them. I remember
sitting on that crappy hotel bedspread watching TV, thinking about
Paula Rader. What a fool she must have been, I thought at the time, to
not be able to see what was in front of her. I was pretty confident Mike
wasn’t a serial killer—as a boy he cried the time he accidentally killed
a fish—but were there other secrets I didn’t know? (The answer, of
course, was yes, and I had a few of my own.) I thought what mattered
then was that you know a person fully, but now I can see what matters
is that you love them enough to see them in a particular light, that you
love them enough to see only what you can handle seeing.
I imagine Paula Rader at her kitchen window washing the
breakfast dishes, months or years before the shit hit the fan. Many
interviewed said Dennis Rader was an iron-fisted man, while others
said the women at church used to cluck their jealousy at Paula with
a husband who helped her, each week, into her coat. I imagine her
hands submerged in the now cooling water, her husband at work, the
kids at school. It’s spring, a new beginning, and she’s got the windows
open, the scent of cut grass in the air. I wonder how hard she has to
work to imagine her husband’s just gone to work, another day-to-day
at the Compliance Department at Park City. She’s always liked a man
in uniform, and in her mind, Dennis is a handsome one, the beginning
of a gut just coming over his belt line, a compliment to her good
cooking.
Paula hears a noise in the yard—a quick, trill note—and her
heart measures an extra beat. This happens often—her staring into
space, empty-headed, and the quick coming back as her pulse starts
up. Dennis teases her sometimes for her startle response, says she’s
easily frightened, a typical woman. She shakes her head at the
silliness—scared by a little, old bird—and leans forward, her hands
now wrinkling from the water as she strains to hear the bird outside
sing.
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Susan Chiavelli
(GRAVITY, NO ENGINES)
1962
What I remember most was the silence. How the plane swooped out
of the West like a great mythical bird. How at first it seemed like
something wonderful sent to break up the boredom of an Indian
summer day.
I’m standing at the top of the cul-de-sac in our new neighborhood,
thinking about boys at my new junior high school—the ones I like,
the ones I don’t. This neighborhood was nothing but woods when we
lived here two years ago. Everything’s the same, but different. Those
years after we moved away feel like odd-shaped puzzle pieces now.
I wore the wrong clothes on the first day back at school here, a circle
skirt from Denver. No one wanted to sit next to me on the bus—no
one could, the skirt took up so much room. But once I caught on to
Seattle fashions, some of the girls I knew when I was in grade school
suddenly remembered me.
When you’re in the seventh grade you worry a lot, and today I’m
worried about my first kiss, something that hasn’t happened yet. The
idea of kissing a boy is terrifying. I’m kicking a foursquare ball to the
little Jenson girls I sometimes baby-sit. Kicking a ball is something I
know how to do; kissing a boy is not.
According to my girlfriends, Danny Deagan’s going to ask me to
the dance—my first dance. Just my luck. He looks like Howdy Doody.
His lips are too red for a boy, the same color as this rubber ball. I kick
it hard and watch it rise in the September air where it shrinks to a red
dot—puckered lips blotted on blue sky.
I remember how everyone stopped in the middle of what they
were doing to watch the plane when it first appeared on the horizon—
so low, so wrong. How time became elastic and stretched. How the
stories told later became layered in my memory, so that now I can see
each person at that precise moment.
My mother pauses to look up from her ironing in the bedroom.
She notices the curtains fluttering in an unexpected breeze. Later
she’ll say she heard a swooshing sound, but I remember only silence.
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My father sits on the neighbor’s deck across the street, drinking a
beer with Kent, and watching the air show over Lake Washington on
TV. At first, their eyes dart back and forth from the television screen
to the sky, unsure which one to watch. But when the plane banks and
slices toward our neighborhood, just a few miles from the lake, they
jump up and run into the street.
I turn, leave the red ball hanging in midair, a period at the end of
something yet to come. The plane looms over us and the ball thuds
softly to earth behind me. Other neighbors are on their porches now,
hands raised to shield their eyes. Our silent faces are tilted to the
sky like flowers following the sun. The plane is so low we can see
it clearly. It’s a fighter jet. The sun glints off its silver wings. I hold
my breath. I think I see the pilot’s face. He’s looking right at me. He
wants to tell me something. The plane’s shiny belly passes overhead,
and it’s so close I think I can reach up and touch it. A shadow skims
low, blocking the sun. My hair blows across my face, the last summer
flowers sway backward, and the curtains of every open window on
our street flutter in the wind. The plane sails on, dragging its shadow
like a great net, lower and lower over our rooftops, over my mother’s
ironing board where she whistles her wordless love songs, over the
tipped-over beer bottles on the neighbor’s deck. The excited voice of
the TV commentator cries, Oh, my God. Oh, God!
Now the plane is headed for my school, just two miles away. It sinks
closer and closer to the treetops, a thing of terrible beauty aiming for
the newly decorated gym. Then it disappears, swallowed by stillness.
I imagine the broken plane sticking out of our gymnasium, its wings
covered with tangles of smoldering green and gold crepe paper. I feel
an odd sense of relief that I won’t have to go to the dance. But it’s lost
in a flash of orange and I suck in a deep breath. The Jenson girls begin
to cry and run for home. Black smoke rises from the site and now I’m
running, cutting across the lawn and taking the front steps two at time.
We’re running to our mothers.
We’re running to our fathers.
My heart is everywhere as I burst through the front door yelling
out the news. Mom leaves her ironing, and looks out the window at
the neighbors pointing to the sky.
Dad’s with us now, his face determined, but he doesn’t look at
me. He grabs the car keys and he takes Mom, leaving me behind.
I follow, but he won’t let me go no matter how I beg. Mom says I
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have to stay home with my sisters and keep an eye on things. Daisy’s
playing with a friend in the backyard, but it’s not like she needs two
babysitters. Rose joins me on the front porch. She missed the whole
thing, upstairs reading her Mad Magazine. We could walk over there.
We could. We talk about it, but we don’t. We watch a finger of black
smoke point at the empty sky.
After a few minutes, urgent sirens slice the air. I squeeze my eyes
shut and try to remember the pilot’s face. It’s a distant memory, an
evaporated dream. The red ball’s still sitting where it landed in the
Jenson’s flowerbed. Just a soft rubber ball, but it managed to crush
the delicate stems. Broken daisies lie on their sides; soft pink petals
scattered in the dirt, like babies’ fingers.
Later Mom and Dad return, but they don’t have much news. The
police have the area blocked off. The only thing they know is the
plane crashed into a house two blocks from our school: that yellow
house kitty-corner from the church, the one with too many flower
beds and hanging pots. Boy, were we ever lucky, they say. Wouldn’t it
be terrible if the school had been destroyed?
That evening we watch the news and learn that the older couple
who lived in the flower house was killed. I remember that man always
watering, as if the hose was a permanent extension of himself. His
silver-haired wife sometimes smiled from the kitchen window behind
hanging fuchsias and hummingbird feeders. The newscaster says the
pilot ejected safely over Lake Washington, which means the plane
had to be empty when it flew over us. But I know what I saw. I saw the
pilot’s face looking right at me. If it wasn’t him, then it had to be his
spirit, his sheer will clinging to that plane and trying to land it safely.
He was probably aiming for our school’s empty football field. I don’t
know how I know these things. But I do. Grandma June says there
are different ways of seeing in the world, and we all live in different
versions of it. She calls it looking through the veil.
The next day Rose brings home a piece of the plane and stashes
it in her closet. Stashing junk is a habit of hers—once she put a dead
fish in there. It’s just a little chunk of metal the size of my hand. I
touch it, run my fingers over it. I don’t know what I expect, but it’s
disappointing, just ordinary metal like something from our toaster.
She doesn’t get to keep it, though. The authorities demand any found
wreckage be turned in, no matter how small. They want to try to put
the plane back together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Good luck.
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At school there are rumors about body parts. Someone whispers
that Danny Deagan found a severed finger near the crash site. I think
about the man in the yellow house, the green garden hose always in
his hand, the perpetual watering. I remember glimpsing a rainbow
spraying from that hand once—a veil of water so fine that it revealed
all the hidden colors inside.
Someone says Danny has the finger in his locker, wrapped in wax
paper, like a bologna sandwich. For a dollar, he’ll show it to anyone
who wants to see it. At lunch he offers to show me for free. His rubber
mouth stretches open in a grin. I look away and say, “Thanks, but no
thanks.” One thing’s certain. I’ll never kiss Danny Deagan.
He laughs and calls me chicken. To shut him up I tell him that I saw
the plane crash with my own eyes. He and his friends stare at me.
They want to know what it was like.
(Gravity, no engines.) I wish I’d said that, but all I said was, “It
went right over my head. Yours, too. You just didn’t know it.”
It was all I could manage at the time. I couldn’t find the words
to describe what really happened—how the silver plane looked like
a mythical bird, how it crashed into our childhood and left behind
the heartbreaking crush of broken flower stems. Kids in junior high
don’t talk like that. I couldn’t tell a boy who thinks it’s cool to keep
someone’s finger that I saw the pilot’s spirit trying to land that plane
safely. A severed finger is nothing compared to that.
95
Gary Fincke
THE ONSET
1
I have spent a February evening with ten thousand fist-pumping fans
at the Bryce Jordan Center in State College watching my son play
guitar in a rock band. The show is full of light and fire and smoke and
enormous videos synchronized with the band’s songs. My wife and I
have VIP passes, and we opt to watch from near the stage in a ropedoff area. The surface we stand on is hard, and I feel the familiar ache
in my legs that comes from when I suffer through more than forty-five
minutes of walking in a mall.
Three hours after the show ends, an hour after falling asleep, I’m
driven awake by the sensation of both legs simultaneously cramping.
Automatically, I bend my ankles back and tell myself to relax. After a
few minutes, the sensation dissipates.
In the morning, after I’m on my feet for less than two minutes, the
backs of both legs suddenly burst into flame punctuated by electric
shocks. I brace myself against the bathroom wall, but there’s no
convincing myself to relax until I bend over at the waist and the pain
slips into a steady discomfort that feels like relief. I know at once that
these aren’t ordinary leg cramps. I limp to the kitchen table and tell
my wife I have “issues” with my legs.
“You fell on the ice last week,” she says. “Maybe you hurt
something besides your head.”
I’d slammed the back of my head against the icy street when
my feet had gone out from under me. For the rest of that day I’d
considered going to the doctor because I thought it was likely I had
a concussion, or, in my imagination, potential bleeding in my brain.
A week later, my headaches have been gone for three days, but now
this new pain has either been brought on by the fall or its timing is a
sinister coincidence.
Cautiously, I drag myself to two classes that meet in a building
close to my office, but when I leave campus to walk to my car, the
pain in my calves is so intense I have to hold on to the school’s
new wrought iron fence as if it were a cane, leaning on the railing,
measuring the distance of one hundred yards as if I have the stride of
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an insect.
My doctor, when I call the following morning, is on vacation,
but I sound so anxious her receptionist makes me an appointment
with another physician for the next day. That doctor, echoing my wife,
believes I’ve injured my spine, but she doesn’t know just how. She
writes me a prescription for a muscle relaxer and sends me for an
X-ray.
I tell myself I am needlessly worrying, that the pills I’ve just
begun swallowing will soon make the pain a memory. Then I do some
online research about what might cause my pain besides trauma. The
alternatives are nearly uniformly appalling.
Nerve Damage
One kind of damage can generate an array of symptoms—sensitivity,
pain, tingling, burning, numbness. Another kind produces weakness,
muscle atrophy, twitching, paralysis. There are causes from probable
to unlikely: trauma, compression, poor nutrition, lupus, MS, diabetes,
cancer, ALS, Guillane-Barre Syndrome. Treatments vary. So do
results. There is the chance of spontaneous recovery. In one of three
cases, the cause of nerve damage will remain unknown.
2
I pass the X-ray test, but on muscle relaxers, my IQ seems to plummet.
The associative thinking I rely on in my workshop classes is slowed
so much or stopped altogether that I explain what I am taking and
settle for hours of unremarkable discussions. A few days into taking
the muscle relaxers I roll over in bed and feel what I believe to be
my entire network of nerves light up from head to toe, becoming one
of those “system” transparencies of the body in an anatomy book. It
takes me an hour of concentration to convince myself I’m not dying.
In the morning, calmer, I make an appointment with an orthopedic
specialist.
Twenty-five years ago, shortly after I began teaching at the
university where I work, a colleague confided to me at a party, “Since
you’re as much of a hypochondriac as I am, here’s a story you’ll
enjoy.”
I thought he’d mistaken me for someone else. Sure, I’d told
him I had asthma sufficient to force me to a few emergency rooms,
dozens of allergies, and a chronic, worsening problem with my knee,
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but he plunged right in. “Proust had asthma,” he began, and I knew
where I’d made my mistake. Now he was elaborating, explaining how
Proust had his bedroom lined with cork, that he kept the drapes drawn
and burned “medicinal powder” to create a fog of relief. “He spent
practically all of his time in there,” my colleague said. “You’d have
loved this guy.”
“Maybe so,” I said, but I didn’t admit I’d never read Proust. All
I needed was for that colleague to add me to some list he’d made of
badly read aspiring writers.
“You know,” he finally said, “I’m forty-seven years old. I’m
getting up there,” and I tried to hide my astonishment that he wasn’t
fifty-seven or even older. That colleague was only nine years older
than I was, but he carried himself like my father, stooped, watching
his feet as if every surface was covered with a scattering of marbles.
It explained, I thought, how much he enjoyed any sign of my
weaknesses.
3
Five years later, when my daughter was in high school, the biology
teacher who served as the cross-country coach shot and killed himself
after being arrested for having sex with dozens of his students while
they were enrolled. Among the letters to the editor published in the
local newspaper in the aftermath of the arrest and suicide was one
written by the daughter of my Proust-story colleague.
The teacher, she wrote, had comforted her in his car after she was
upset about her performance in a cross-country race. “It was more
than my running,” she wrote. “I was sixteen. I was miserable about
a hundred things, and when he hugged me I felt happy. And then he
kissed me and said ‘doesn’t that feel nice,’ and it did, in a way, and
then he opened my blouse and told me how beautiful I was, that I
should be happy to have such wonderful breasts, that they were a gift,
and then he raped me.”
The teacher, she went on, had been raping students for several
years. “I knew,” she wrote. “Everybody knew.” Which was what my
daughter, nine years younger than my colleague’s daughter, echoed
when the news broke: “Dad, trust me. Everybody knew.”
4
In the waiting room of the orthopedic center I count three sets of
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crutches, two wheelchairs, and one awful wheelbarrow that holds a
man with no legs who uses a language exclusively of vowels that he
bellows to tropical fish that swim in a corner tank. For five minutes,
while no one is called, he shouts at the fish. Everyone in the room
listens, their magazines limp in their hands.
When I stand, unaided, after my name is announced, I feel as if I
am envied. When I take tentative, but steady steps, jealousy wheezes
behind me. I walk through a door before I stoop and gasp, the woman
who called me already out of sight around a corner. I press both hands
against the wall until the steady deep ache of discomfort replaces the
electricity of pain. In this small privacy, it is my story again, the one
with a suppressed whimper. Through that wall my fingers can almost
hear a flood of those brain-damaged vowels, ones that remind me of
that victim’s posture of permanent deletion. I restart my fiery legs.
I’ve barely begun my description of pain when the physician’s
assistant who greets me smiles and says, “It sounds as if the dogs are
barking.”
I dislike him immediately. I try to tell him every symptom in detail,
but before I finish, he begins a cursory test of muscle strength and
flexibility. Less than ten minutes after I’ve entered the examination
room, he writes me a prescription. “This should do the trick until the
inflammation recedes.”
By now I hate him. If there’s a “real doctor” working at the
orthopedic center, I don’t spend a moment with him.
While waiting in line to co-pay and make a future appointment,
my legs hurt so intensely that I drag a chair from the waiting room to
where the receptionist is dealing with patients who are leaving. “Are
you in discomfort?” she says.
“More like agony,” I say, and I lean forward in that chair, staring
at the carpet as if I’m inspecting it for an infestation of tiny insects.
Vicodin
Vicodin may be habit-forming. It may tempt others, so keep it secure.
Tell your doctor if you drink more than three alcoholic beverages
per day. Vicodin may impair your thinking and reactions. Side
effects are fainting, confusion, fear, seizures, unusual thoughts. An
overdose will harm your liver. The first signs of overdose are nausea,
sweating, confusion, weakness. Later there is stomach pain, dark
urine, yellowing of the skin. Take Vicodin exactly as prescribed. An
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overdose can be fatal.
5
Eight years after the suicide of the high school student seducer, my
colleague invites me to his sixtieth birthday party. As he greets me,
he says, “We’re glad she’s here. She’s had some problems.” As if he
expects me to intuit everything, he uses only the pronoun and the
generic noun. What I do know is that his daughter is married now,
but her husband isn’t there. She seems to be on some sort of moodleveler, greeting everyone while seated on a chair as if she’s in a
receiving line at a funeral. Her younger sister acts as the emcee when
the time comes, telling stories, asking her parents to speak, working
the crowd for sentiment. Her older sister, who for a year babysat my
three children when they were four-to-ten years old, never rises from
her chair and never speaks.
6
I exhaust my prescription of Vicodin and a few vials of antiinflammatories. I see another doctor who adds spinal stenosis to the
diagnosis and arranges for physical therapy. I ride elevators instead
of walking up and down one flight of steps. I park in the handicapped
zone. I lean on anything solid, and my wife stops telling me to sit up
straight at the dinner table. March withers until its shadow goes out.
One night I dream my mother, dead at my age, unclasping her
beaded purse as if entering my house requires a ticket. For twenty-three
years, she says, she’s carried the proper ID for pain, waiting to hand it
over. She’s dreamed my body crippled in yesterday’s underwear, my
breath caught in phlegm’s thick web. In a doubled brown paper sack,
she’s brought twelve pounds of pennies gathered from sidewalks and
carpets. She asks me to arrange them in rolls for the teller she knows
by name, the woman who lost her husband at Normandy. She shakes
my clipped hair and nails from her purse, spelling my name with her
finger in the thick dust of me. Only after she knows the exact sum of
her savings does she allow me to moan my symptoms. Lie down, she
says, so I can love you. In two places, she ties her green gown behind
me. There, she says, now finish undressing. And yes, she examines
me, saying, “Relax now, close your eyes. This is where the past ends.”
When I wake and try to walk, there are knots in both calves, as if
I’d just risen after cramping. I try to walk off the pain in the dark, and
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the near future looms like one of those Dickens spirits. Tomorrow, he
says. Imagine. The following day, much worse. The clot of the next
hour forms in the deep veins of my leg. Caution blinks on like a timed
night-light.
In the living room of unable-to-sleep, the near future stands so
close he can overhear my breath as I move to the window where
the drapes leave a space for an eye. He adores my softened chest
of interrupted fitness-room exercise, the flaccid muscles nudging the
small, unsteady steps. He loves the stooped beauty of decline as I limp
from one night light to the next.
Therapy
Every movement is a child’s, knees near the chest, six variations of
stretching to the therapist’s jazz of optimism, each of his riffs so simple
it terrifies. In the next room, a woman moans while waiting. Weeks
from now paces by the display of canes. Months from now sleeps
sitting in a chair. Years from now, in stays and corset, swoons into
the spine. When the legs flutter like insect wings, the room thrums.
Distance is inches. Self-pity’s caught breath nearly shrieks.
7
A few years after my colleague’s birthday party, his daughter is dead,
a suicide. My wife and I sit through a memorial service in his church,
one full of the pomp of medieval ceremony, an hour of ritual and
incense and the intermittent ringing of bells. A minister wearing an
ornate robe who holds a gold-edged Bible over his head as he moves
from place to place on the chancel. Who kisses it before he opens it
to read.
Afterwards, in the church’s community room, there is a covereddish meal served by volunteers from the congregation. I have a
noticeable limp from recent knee surgery, but my colleague says
nothing about it when he sits beside my wife and me and offers that
his daughter had been struggling for years. Before he leaves the table,
he tells us how much his daughter enjoyed babysitting our children.
There’s no mention of her high school rape, which must have happened
during her one-year tenure of taking care of our three children.
Looking back, he says, “I never imagined.”
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8
I begin to listen to the tingling in my fingers when I slouch even a few
degrees. I evaluate whether it is fatigue or muscle weakness I sense
in my legs.
You’re the wrong sex and age for that, my doctor says, when
I suggest MS after she asks what I worry my symptoms might
mean. When I mention Lou Gehrig’s disease, she shakes her head,
embarrassed, I think, even to provide answers to what she considers
to be self-pitying fantasies.
As the weather warms, I play golf with a swing so limited
someone watching from a distance would think I was playing on a par
three course. I gain accuracy, but the idea of playing from the senior
tees is one I can barely suppress mentioning aloud. Riding, however,
is such a necessity that I put aside my contempt for golf carts and rent
one without hesitation.
The lawn that surrounds my house, ordinarily about a fifty-minute
chore, is now a job that requires three days of twenty-minute shifts. I
discover that the garbage can has wheels and roll it to the curb like a
child. I carry grocery bags one at a time, always in the stooped posture
of a comic-book crone.
One night what wakens me is a dream of dust bursting from my
back like the manifestation of an incubus. I am afraid to reach behind
me. The darkness is a clock.
My mother, for once, is not walking off her pain, an etching in the
guest room. Outside, at three-forty-two, one house is bright so early it
must be lit by carelessness. The phone displays a predator’s heartless
eye.
Lying on my side, both legs curled up into the position of least
discomfort, I remember how my father suggested, when I faced knee
surgery, to crawl backwards down the stairs, that living alone like he
did meant there were no witnesses to his body’s decline. His knees
whisper until he smothers them with his hands. He collapses to a
gurney.
I haven’t tumbled down the stairs, not yet. I’ve been so careful
with descent that I can repeat one set of pains for weeks before
something worse replaces it. I shuffle, hands outstretched like the
dizzy. Now I am the neighbor watched from windows, the name for
whom I’ve become chosen from the list of uncomfortable words. In
the stooped world each thing has a shadow.
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The Pain Scale
From zero to seven, the imaginable ones:
No pain. Very mild. Discomforting. Tolerable. Distressing. Very
distressing. Intense. Very Intense.
From eight to ten:
Utterly horrible. Excruciating/Unbearable. Unimaginable/
Unspeakable. .
From examination to examination, counting down from very
intense to distressing, the body adjusting from the open mouth of
agony to the grimace of resignation.
9
By the end of April standing builds pain behind the eyes sufficient to
gobble memory. My prescriptions are recycled like bottles and cans.
A chorus of “As Needed” is sung in harmony by vials. The house
expands. It holds the unanswered riddles of heavy rubbish untended.
The yard’s roots seem to be aroused by neglect. Supported by a
cartel of weeds, disintegration postures like a dictator. At its top, the
weeping birch dies off into a wispy promise. I imagine that strangers,
driving past, ask each other, “Who lives here?”
One answer: If a man fears walking, he hears fumbling at his
locked door. If he leans heavily on the kitchen counter, he sees the
prowler near the garage. If he pours water into a glass, watching over
the lip as he swallows, he knows the stranger is deciding how much he
is worth.
I remember how my mother, unaided, walked to her bed where,
an hour later, she died. I remember how, behind his locked door,
my father fell from his wheelchair, choosing privacy over rescue. I
make an appointment with a pain management clinic. They promise a
strong likelihood of relief if I’m injected with steroids at the base of
my spine.
I shuffle to the elevator that rises to where syringes grow like the
green onions my father salted like hard-boiled eggs. When the man
who prepares me for the epidural I’ve agreed to try discovers I am a
writer, he tells me he’s written a book, too. His is about his service in
Vietnam. There’s a copy propped up on his desk. “It prepares you for
this sort of thing,” he says, and I don’t encourage him to elaborate.
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Epidural
An iodine wash. A bee sting. Some pressure followed by a wash of
warmth through the legs receding into relief, it’s hoped. Side effects?
Not many and so remote. The worst headache of your life, not life
threatening. Sudden dizziness and weakness, a worse alarm. A
number to call for further instructions. Now it’s twenty-four to fortyeight hours, on average. Up to a week for some. If you are unchanged,
there’s surgery, the last resort of the knife.
10
After two shots spaced six weeks apart, I have “noticeable
improvement,” but despite that generalization, I don’t have a moment
without discomfort. There are strange mornings when my bare feet,
numb through sole and heel, can’t remember the small wounds of the
wooden floor. But now, as if declaring myself cured, I mow my lawn
shirtless in one continuous fifty-minute sweep. For that work, and for
every other exertion, I spend twenty minutes with ice applied to my
lower back.
My wife invites my colleague, now retired, to my surprise birthday
party. I haven’t seen him for six months, but now, when he enters the
restaurant, he uses a cane, his face gray, his body shrunk, even his
voice gone to near whisper. It’s nearly impossible, at the crowded
table, to hear anything he says, but I listen hard, saying nothing about
my persistent back pain. When he is the first to leave, his wife helps
him stand, and he leans on her and his cane. I can’t take my eyes off
the stop and start of his shuffling.
Afterwards, when I examine my face, I look so much the same I
am ashamed of my anxiety, but it doesn’t keep me from going online
to do more research, this time for a definitive attempt at becoming
pain free.
Surgery
The back muscles, because they run vertically at the incision, can be
moved instead of cut. After access is gained, the nerve root is gently
moved, disc material removed. Though the success rate is more than
ninety-percent, some patients have a recurrence of pain. As for any
surgery, there are risks and complications: a dural tear, bleeding,
infection, incontinence, nerve root damage. The last two are quite
serious, but they remain rare.
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11
I ask one doctor about the risk scale for surgery, whether there is
a poster with numbers and corresponding expressions of happiness
and despair. For success, I say. For all the way to the number-ten of
paralysis.
“That’s your imagination run wild,” he says, and we move on to
routine discussion of progress versus setback.
12
Two months after my birthday party, I attend my colleague’s memorial
service. Once again, a minister kisses the oversized ornate Bible and
carries it face-high. This time a second minister brandishes a glittering
cross.
Leaning on the pew in front of me, I manage to stand with the
congregation through a lengthy series of readings and prayers. The
minister reveals that my colleague wanted nothing said about his life
during the service.
Now it is an ordinary church service, and when the congregation
kneels on command, I sit and search for one more person like myself,
finding the woman who had entered earlier by using a walker.
Eventually, nearly everyone rises, row by row, to take communion
accompanied by serious sprays of incense.
After the service, when I embrace my colleague’s widow, she is
so thin in my arms there is horror in her weightlessness.
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Janice Wilson Stridick
NOTES OF AN UNFINISHED DAUGHTER
My mother was a painter. She died. Nothing too unusual about either
of these statements. I can’t let go of her memory or stop questioning
the objects she left behind. That, too, lacks originality. So, what to do
with all these images, questions, unexpressed needs? If you’re me,
you just make a project out of it all—a big project, an unfinishable
one. And then you go to work and, of course, complain. So that’s what
I’ve done since my mother died.
My first gripe is about all the portraits I sat for. I hated sitting for my
portrait. I still hate sitting for haircuts or for driving long distances,
not because I don’t want to go places, I just want to arrive without the
captive sitting. I’m a writer. When I sit, I want to be productive. This
is me, and as I passed my sixtieth birthday, I embraced my crankiness
and foisted it on the rest of the world.
I struggle to make sense of the many unsigned portraits of myself
that I discovered in my mother’s studio. She never deemed them
done, unlike the paintings of my siblings. It’s as if a part of me is
memorialized in every one, and her reticence to sign meant she wasn’t
satisfied; she had greater plans or, possibly, regrets. This line of
questioning was not supposed to be my current project, as I had vowed
to catalog her body of artwork for a retrospective and book after her
death. I imagined the job would require a few months. Wrong. An art
historian told me that scholars devote entire careers to cataloging the
work of a single artist.
But she was my mother, and I said I’d do it, and I was hooked.
These questions began as notes to myself, morphed into failed
fictions, have been published as journal excerpts and mauled by
countless rewrites into lifeless manuscripts. Readers often ask, “Is it
the mother’s story or the daughter’s story?” Or, they vote: I want more
of the mother. No, no. Let’s hear what the daughter has to say. It’s as
if I perpetuate old arguments through my writing in concert with her
brush.
When I view my image painted by her hand, I see pleasing
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likenesses, works that most would consider worthy of a frame and a
nail. But I see them as coded messages. And now my poems talk back
to her paint. Here’s what I wrote to three of the dozen survivors:
I. Newlywed at Nineteen, 1971, smudged charcoal on newsprint
The eyes are uneven, mist-filled, my nostrils like perfect peas,
and my mouth is impossibly kissable: a ripe plum. On this
page, my face is heart-shaped, hair upswept, ready to work.
The ironed white collar stands as if starched; I practically
leap to serve.
II. Divorced at Twenty-Three, 1974, watercolor on rag paper
Maelstrom of color and shape: red floor, tilting lampshade,
hint of Swedish ivy. The window’s firm lintels give me away
in a one-room stone cabin on a ranch in Arizona. I sit in
lotus, my legs open, relaxed. Golden hair cascades over my
shoulders. I have no face.
III. Graduate Student at Thirty-Two, 1983, graphite on paper
Pencil-sharp intention squints my eyes:
this collar circles me, leash-like, yoke-like;
my nostrils droop, chiaroscuro mutes
my future.
Okay. It’s complicated. Did we love each other? Yes. Did we fight? Of
course. Do I honor her as an artist? I hope so. Did she honor me as an
artist? She tried, but she bore the mantle of motherhood. Having never
borne that mantle, I am free of the conflation of offspring and creative
output that divided us. I was not satisfied to be her canvas, and our
standoffs sprang from my revisions to her view of me. I was not an
easy child. She was not an easy mother. But our process continues as
I view, review, write to and about her paintings, revisiting stories in
memory and pigment, goaded by her message on a painting.
In late summer 1974, I left a failed marriage to live alone in the
mountains and rewrite my future. I welcomed solitude, took back my
given name, and declined when my mother urged me to move home.
Nobody in our family history had ever divorced. I can’t say whether
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she was frightened or exhilarated by my boldness, but that September
she scrawled her artist’s manifesto on the back of a sparkling
watercolor.
Twenty-seven years later, in late summer 2001, she died from
breast cancer. Since 1990, we had lived one block apart, and for the
last five years, I served as her caregiver and partner in art. She rallied
after the first round of chemo and painted with fervor, but the disease
returned in the summer of 1999. She fought it. We laughed, prayed,
gathered with friends and family, and made art. I wrote. She painted.
And then she died.
When the skies silenced after the events of 9/11, I felt a muted
recognition, as if the rest of the world had joined my grief. One
evening, as I prepared dinner, the phone rang. A stranger who had
inherited some of my mother’s paintings said he had discovered a
handwritten message on the back of an early watercolor. I abandoned
the sliced mushrooms and ran to tell my husband. We skipped dinner
and drove to the man’s house, where we read a long-hidden message.
In case my paintings are
ever “discovered” after I’m
dead, this is my statement
of what I was trying to do.
I loved the appearance of
things, light particularly, and
I tried to copy it as accurately
as I could, leaving out what
was boring and exaggerating
what I liked. Why I loved
certain sights better than others
I never understood, and
neither do the people who are
explaining it to you now.
Alice S. Wilson
(written September, 1974; found September, 2001)
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My mother left shelves of journals, paintings, lists, and plans, but she
had tucked this statement behind a light-filled sketch of a wooden
porch. Built in 1879, the Windsor Hotel perched by the sea in a spot
that caught sunrise and sunset. She loved the neglected building like
a family member and painted it often until arson took it in 1980.
Five years earlier, she had sold the sketch, titled “The Windsor in
September,” for a modest price to a Philadelphia doctor.
One of the journals catalogs her first years of motherhood. She
wrote down meals, measurements, bowel movements, doctor’s
appointments, books she planned to read, even arguments with friends
and my father. All quickly resolved in a line or two written in pencil
on a four-by-six-inch page. Near the back of the journal she reserved
a couple of pages for “Sayings” of the four of us toddlers. Although
family lore was full of these bursts of candor and insight, I cringed
when I found this advice I had offered at the age of four:
“Mama, when we go to college, you’ll have time to work on your
pictures.”
Fortunately, she didn’t listen. She painted portraits and commissions.
She won awards. As soon as we were occupied with school and
extracurricular activities, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts. It was 1966. Abstract expressionism was in vogue at
the time, but she was a traditional painter. Students slightly older than
her children were the stars. At her memorial thirty-five years later, one
told me that she had asked him: “How do you see such colors?”
As her first child and frequent collaborator, she left the job of
curating her artist’s legacy to me. I had begun recording the hundreds
of paintings owned by collectors, but in her studio I discovered dozens
of unfinished oils and watercolors as well as scores of works she had
signed and boxed. Many had been finished and displayed, then removed
to make way for new work. Portfolios of paintings from travels rested
under those from workshops. Others brimmed with family portraits,
student portraits, and landscapes—many signed, others unfinished,
interrupted or deferred. Her handwritten record books, a stack of
simple composition notebooks, tallied every early sale, expense, and
most of the many commissions. Up until shortly before she died at the
age of seventy-four, she was still painting. Remarkably, she painted a
life-sized oil portrait of me that hangs in my dining room. She was at
the peak of her painterly powers. She joked that cancer had given her
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three previously unattainable gifts: she was thin, she had my father’s
undivided attention, and her paintings were selling like hotcakes.
I marvel at her resolve to create art through years of childrearing,
rejection, and aesthetic trends counter to her impulse. After she died, a
magazine writer quoted my father as saying that painting had been my
mother’s hobby when we were young. I had told the writer otherwise,
but there were his words, in print: “strictly a hobby.”
In the 1950s I witnessed her raise us, keep house, and paint oil
portraits as she bolstered her energy with the popular helpers of the
time. She gulped ten cups of instant coffee a day, smoked unfiltered
Pall Mall cigarettes by the pack, and cracked peppermint Chiclets in
between. When my father got home from work, there were cocktails.
Considering the breath-toll of coffee and cigarettes, the peppermint
was essential. Her artist’s reward for all this domestic productivity
was deferred until we reached school age. She fashioned her first
studio out of a dark, damp second-floor porch, close to our voices.
She kept on painting. She lined that studio with unfinished canvases.
Years ago, I dreamed that my writing studio had sprung a hole in the
roof, a large rectangle where the vaulted sheetrock opened to trees
and rain, a skylight without glass. Fresh air, sunlight, and rain flooded
in. I felt exhilarated, as if I could fly in place or rise above the trees.
The dream inspired a poem that included the line “broken windows
admit the sky.” A fellow poet, a generous woman, suggested I use it
as the title of my manuscript.
My manuscript? I had never seen my reams of unfinished drafts as
a potential manuscript—until then. Those poems and journal entries
were sustenance. But, like the unfinished oil paintings that once lined
my mother’s studio, I can now leave them behind or bring them out to
finish and release.
Until the end, my mother resisted completing a transaction with
me. She held back from signing that last portrait—the one she had
suggested doing, and I had willingly sat for, as her body gave out.
First she said she had fifteen fixes to do in order to finish. Then, once
she had done them, she didn’t sign it until I insisted. At last, she
painted her initials in the lower left corner of the canvas.
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Elegy
for Alice Steer Wilson, 1926–2001
Dripping vermilion, you are the Chinese sable brush
the smell of turpentine, and the rub of a cast-off gym sock soaking
up spills.
You are the crack of peppermint Chiclets making their pay
you are the twine on the brown paper package on the porch
you are the surprise inside.
You are the tingle on my scalp as I brush my hair each morning
and the rubber band tangled in my braids
you are the steam on steel-cut oatmeal
the dance in the third glass of wine
you are last call.
You are the sharpened pencil, the Staedtler Mars eraser, and
the dental floss.
You are the Mexican turquoise ring dangling yes—no—maybe
the fuchsia dawn
the imprint of a dove’s wing on thermopane
You are the imperceptible grain~
the growth
the pearl or the pea or the malignancy;
you are the itch.
111
Toni M. Wiley
NAILS BY AUNTIE EM
CHARACTERS:
EMILY: Manicure shop owner
SUSETTE: Customer
SETTING: Aunt Em’s Manicure Shoppe located in Kentucky. In the
shop, there are miscellaneous items for sale, a box full of coats
with a sign that reads: Coat A Kid, a manicure table and chairs,
a coffee/tea table, and pictures of Emily’s first nephew. Behind
the table are four different phones with unique rings to them. A
multiple line phone and headset, or various cell phones may be
used. A big sign on the door reads: OPEN Walk Ins Welcome.
(The play opens with EMILY on the phone. SUSETTE is standing
nearby with her purse over her shoulder, looking at the pictures
of Emily’s nephew while fixing a cup of tea.)
EMILY: OK, 2:30 on Thursday . . . Uh huh, yeah, sounds good. So
I’ll see you Thursday . . . OK then . . . OK . . . right . . . Thursday,
see you then . . . Uh huh . . . OH! Listen, Susette’s knocking on
the door for her 3:00, and she looks like she’s in a hurry. All right,
good-bye.
SUSETTE: Mrs. Flock?
EMILY: How did you ever guess? Good night!
SUSETTE: (referring to a baby picture) So how’s the big guy?
EMILY: He’s positively a monster. (Beaming with pride) He learned
how to climb out of the play pen this week.
SUSETTE: And nobody’s spoiling him.
EMILY: Wouldn’t dream of it! So, what’s it going to be this time?
(SUSETTE sets her purse over the chair and starts looking through
the nail colors.)
SUSETTE: I think . . . I don’t know, what do you think? Fuchsia
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Fever or Salmon Silk?
EMILY: Last week was Radiant Roses, so I’d go with Salmon Silk.
SUSETTE: Ok.
Phone 2 rings.
(SUSETTE sits. EMILY removes SUSETTE’s old nail polish during
the call.)
EMILY: Vitameatavegamin . . . . Yes ma’am, about two years now. I
love it . . . . Well, you know Joe Johnson down at the First Baptist
Church? Well anyway, I swear he walks two inches taller these
days and rarely has any more trouble with his arthritis. Yeah,
and maybe you know Ginger Swaney? No? Well she was all set
up with her doctor for surgery on that carpel tunnel syndrome,
started taking this for about six weeks, cancelled her surgery and
now she’s workin’ just like a machine . . . Ours has sixty minerals
and thirteen vitamins . . . . This product retails for $29.99. Yes,
but now listen. If you sign up as a member, you know like in those
warehouse stores? Right. It’s only $5.95 for a lifetime and then
this quart size jar is only $18.95. That’s a savings of $11 a month.
Not bad. Yes, I’ve had some of those other liquid minerals. Puke
a dog, they will. But this tastes just like apple juice . . . wonderful.
Let me get your full name . . . Gladys Wilson. And your address?
. . . 1549, 15 89 Mott’s Ln., and the zip? . . . OK, now I just need
those magic numbers . . . Visa . . . ok . . . uh huh . . . ok and the
expiration? Fantastic, you’ll be getting your shipment in about
three weeks.
SUSETTE: Vitameatavegamin?
BOTH: I Love Lucy!
EMILY: I just loved that episode. Now ours doesn’t quite have the
same spirits in it, but I just love saying “Vitameatavegamin,
Vitameatavegamin.” You should try, it you’ll like it.
SUSETTE: Walter Henderson tried it and he thought he was gonna
die. You can keep your witch’s brew.
EMILY: That was angina and has nothing to do with my liquid
minerals. Twenty years from now when I am drop dead gorgeous
and healthy and you’re just plain about to drop dead, you’re
gonna be begging me for this stuff. Only then you’ll have to drink
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a quart a day just to catch up.
Phone 1 rings.
EMILY: Aunt Em’s. Well, howdy, Maybelline . . . . We sure are, till
the fifteenth. Anytime, that’ll be fine. Friday at eleven a.m. See
ya then.
(EMILY scribbles an appointment in her book, and then continues
with filing and painting Susette’s nails.)
SUSETTE: Is Maybelline bringing in her grandkids’ old coats?
EMILY: Yeah, it’s a great program; the Rotary Club collecting all
those coats to give to needy children.
SUSETTE: You’re a paradox, Emily; doing charity work. I never
know what to expect when I come here.
EMILY: Ain’t it the truth. So what’s going on in your neck of the
woods?
SUSETTE: Nothin’ in mine, but I have got to tell you about Linda’s
latest escapade in the Bahamas.
EMILY: Your sister?
Phone 3 rings.
EMILY: (With a Jamaican accent, she answers the phone) Psychic
Hotline . . . . Well you do sound a little down hon’. I sense you’re
feeling a loss . . . not like someone has left you but like a loss of
not having . . . uh huh . . . could it be you’re wanting a baby?
SUSETTE: (Whispers) What in the hell?
EMILY: Well now, I want you to just listen to me. Have you got a
paper and pen. my dear? OK, I’ll wait . . . .
SUSETTE: Now you’re psychic and Jamaican?
EMILY: Shhh! . . . Fine. Now I am going to pass on to you a very
special recipe given to me by my great grandmother who was part
Cherokee Indian . . . on a Bible . . .
SUSETTE: And Cherokee?! You are so going to get caught one of
these days.
EMILY: (She silently hushes her and continues) Now you get one
of those ovulation predictor kits . . . about $14 to $25 at your
114
drugstore, once you figure out your cycle then about two days
before it’s time to ovulate you just cut that rooster off!
SUSETTE: What? (Loud whisper.) Just give it here.
(SUSETTE begins to paint her own nails.)
EMILY: That’s right, but only for two days. Now, are you writing this
down? About twenty minutes before the deed, he is to drink an
old fashioned malt . . . Yes, it’s like a shake but the fast food kind
won’t do the trick. Yes, like at a drugstore. OK, now the way it
goes is: if you want a boy drink chocolate, and if you want a girl
drink strawberry.
SUSETTE: Oh my gosh.
EMILY: Wait twenty minutes, go for the gusto, and then you
should immediately put your legs in the air and do the bicycle.
(Pronounced bi-cycle.)
SUSETTE: (She says it the same way, but it makes her laugh.) Bicycle?!
EMILY: You know, shoulders on the bed, lift your butt up with your
arms bracing you, legs straight up and pedal. Honey, I got a strong
feeling you may get a lot more than you bargain for . . . you want
five? Well get that malt, and get to it. You, too. Good luck, and
call me in a few months and maybe I can tell you what you’re
going to have. Good-bye.
SUSETTE: You swore on a Bible, Emily!
EMILY: My great grandmother was part Cherokee, I’ll have you
know.
SUSETTE: And the recipe? Did they even have malts back then?
EMILY: I don’t know. I heard that one on Oprah! Here, give me the
polish. OK, so what has that crazy sister of yours done now?
(EMILY goes back to painting SUSETTE’s nails.)
SUSETTE: Oh yeah, right. She took this quick little trip to the
Bahamas; you know, one of those charter flights from Cincinnati,
the kind where everybody on the plane is going to the same hotel?
EMILY: Yeah, my brother and sister-in-law went there last year and
that’s why I have a nephew this year.
SUSETTE: Well, they have this fantastic hot tub.
115
EMILY: This is sounding good.
SUSETTE: It’s made like a natural cove with little waterfalls of hot
steamy water coming down your neck and back, seats about eight.
Anyway, you know Linda is no model; she’s just your average
pleasant looking mother type.
EMILY: Right.
SUSETTE: Well, she’s already in the tub with two little kids and
another couple. Suddenly, here comes Mr. Hunka Hunka Burnin’
Love into the tub.
EMILY: Yeah?
SUSETTE: Everybody’s being chatty, and Linda is just minding her
own business. The kids get out, and then the couple leaves so it’s
just the two of them. Well, you know how they’ve got those hot
water jets you can press your back up to?
EMILY: Yeah?
SUSETTE: She was on one of those when her feet hit this man’s.
Phone 4 rings.
(EMILY grins, passes the polish back to SUSETTE. She takes a big
breath and speaks in a low sultry Southern voice.)
EMILY: Hello? . . . Hi John, I was hoping you would call.
(SUSETTE gets up fixes another cup of tea. She remains standing to
get a look at “the show.”)
SUSETTE: I swear; coming here is better than watching TV.
EMILY: I’m just sitting here eating some ripe red strawberries dipped
in whipped cream . . . . I like to be decadent . . . . The softest silk
red robe you ever laid your hands on . . . . Under that? A barely
there red teddy . . . . I bet you are a big ol’ Teddy Bear just waiting
to be squeezed . . . .
(EMILY and SUSETTE look at each other and simultaneously do a
silent finger-in-the-mouth gag.)
EMILY: Under that? Why nothing but a dab of sweet smelling perfume
here . . . and there . . . . What? Oh sure, anytime. (Hurried) Good-
116
bye.
SUSETTE: What happened?
EMILY: I think his boss came in! Ok, so back to this feet-in-the-hottub business.
(SUSETTE sits back down.)
SUSETTE: All right, Linda thinks she accidentally invaded this guy’s
space and apologizes but then it happens again only this time he
totally wraps his feet around hers, takes hold of her arm, pulls her
in one swift motion to his side and plants the biggest Clark Gable
kiss on her lips!
EMILY: You are kidding!
SUSETTE: No! And when the moment ends, they slowly pull apart
and gaze in each other’s eyes, and in the same instant Linda says
“Now that we are so personal, what’s your name?” He says (in an
exaggerated English accent:) “Ron.”
EMILY: (in the same accent:) Ron!
SUSETTE: Yes, Ron from jolly old England!
Phone 2 rings.
EMILY: Dang! Vitameatavegamin . . . I’m sorry I’m all out of
stock. Could I call you tomorrow? . . . I’d love to give you some
information, but actually my computer is down. (There is no
computer.) How about I call you tomorrow? OK (starts to hang
up and then, with a sheepish grin:) Right, you are Mike Kaiser,
8659. Got it, I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks. (She hangs up; to
SUSETTE:) Go on . . . .
SUSETTE: Apparently Ron had come down three weeks earlier and
was supposed to stay for just three days. However, he loved the
Bahamas so much he was staying a month. Now, Linda is trying
to explain where Kentucky is, the horses, fried chicken and such
when they get into another lip-lock.
EMILY: I never have excitement like that in my life!
SUSETTE: Yeah, well, leave it to Linda. They get about as hot and
heavy as you can in public . . . and then some. This poor guy
probably never counted on having someone so . . . agreeable.
EMILY: Are they going to write or is she going (in an English accent:)
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“over to the mother land?”
SUSETTE: Next day when Linda is leaving the hotel and getting in
line for the bus to the airport so she can take that charter flight
with everyone on it coming back to Cincinnati, guess who she
sees in line in front of her?
EMILY: You’re kidding! Ron?
SUSETTE: Oh yes, coming back to jolly ol’ Ken-tuck-ee.
EMILY: He was a fake!?
(EMILY stands and starts preparing to close the shop for the day.)
SUSETTE: Completely, he came over on the same flight. Here, reach
into the side pocket.
(SUSETTE stands. EMILY reaches into SUSETTE’s purse and pulls
out money.)
EMILY: So what did she do?
SUSETTE: She sat there with a ten mile wide smirk on her face, and
he never even looked her in the eye!
EMILY: What a riot! Just goes to show, you can’t trust some people!
SUSETTE: Ha! You would know. See you tomorrow for Bunco at
Wilma’s?
EMILY: 7:00 o’clock right?
Phone 1 starts ringing.
SUSETTE: Right, see ya.
EMILY: Aunt Em’s . . . . Hi, Jackie. Well, I’d love to. Put him on the
phone . . . Auntie Em just loves her sweetie pie. (She makes big
gushy kisses and baby sounds.) Are you talking to your Auntie? I
love you. (More baby sounds). Ok, let me talk to Daddy. Let me
talk to Daddy. Give the phone to Da—Hi, yeah, I’m getting ready
to leave now . . . diapers, milk, and ice cream; will do. See you in
about twenty minutes. Bye-bye.
(EMILY hangs up, switches off the lights, flips the Welcome sign
and exits. The opposite side of the sign reads: GET NAILED AT
AUNTIE EM’S.)
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Mallorie Halsall
LOVE, DIFFERENTLY
CHARACTERS:
DENISE: 23 years old; college student; dating Walter, is meeting his
family for the first time
WALTER: 25 years old; graduate student; is very family oriented
SHARON: 40 to 50 years old; a trust fund child grown up and married
to a commodities broker; Walter’s mother
PIERCE: 20-22 years old; college student; the black sheep of the
family; Walter’s younger brother
NANCY: 25 years old; mentally handicapped and physically disabled;
Walter’s twin sister
YVONNE: 35 years old; the maid
BARISTA: 19-21 years old; female college student; works at the cafe.
SETTING:
Scene One: Present day; small town coffee shop.
Scene Two: Present day; Walter’s house.
SCENE ONE
(LIGHTS UP on a cafe. PIERCE sits stage left reading a newspaper
with a cup of coffee in front of him. WALTER and DENISE sit
together at a table downstage center, obviously on a date. Pierce
glances at them out of the corner of his eye and takes a long drink
of his coffee.)
DENISE: Really? I thought you were an only child!
WALTER: What made you think that?
DENISE: I don’t know. You never really talk about your family, so
I just assumed you had a terrible childhood and grew up awfully
alone while hating your parents, just like anyone else.
WALTER: Oh, you misunderstand. I don’t talk about my family
that much because when I do, I find I miss them so. Sentimental,
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right? I know. I’m too much even for myself sometimes.
DENISE: There’s nothing wrong with loving your family, Walter.
WALTER: I know, but don’t say that too loud. I don’t want it to ruin
my tough guy exterior.
(WALTER flexes his muscles comically as DENISE laughs.)
DENISE: So, how old is your sister?
WALTER: Twenty-five. She’s my twin.
DENISE: Twin? I bet you two would be interesting to watch together.
She’s probably the coolest person in the world to you.
WALTER: Nancy is pretty cool, I suppose. I’m not sure what you
would find so interesting about the two of us though. We act like
regular siblings.
DENISE: Well, what kind of stuff do you do together?
WALTER: I don’t know. What kind of stuff do you do with your
brothers and sisters?
DENISE: I’m an only child. Remember?
WALTER: Right. Well, I read to her a lot. She’s always really
interested in the things I learn at school. It helps me, too, hearing
it aloud. We go on walks sometimes. I’ll talk to her about the stuff
that’s going on with my life and she listens. Just the look on her
face shows me how much she understands, you know?
DENISE: That is really interesting!
WALTER: What makes you think that?
DENISE: Well, there’s this big psychological mystery about twins.
We just learned about it in my lecture class with Dr. Thatcher. He
believes that twins can talk to each other through their eyes and
that if the twins are separated, they can sense when the other is in
trouble or something. There was even this case where these twin
brothers died on the same night from a fatal wound in the same
area on their bodies, but they were miles away from each other
and the cause of the wounds were completely different, but still—
WALTER: Isn’t that interesting? Tell you what, when you come
to meet my family next weekend, I’ll let you have a chance to
observe.
(PIERCE’s head shoots up from behind the newspaper. He seems
irritated.)
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DENISE: (excitedly) Oh, really? You want me to meet your folks?
Does this mean, you know, you believe that there is a future
between us?
WALTER: It means that I love you, Denise. It’s time you met my
family.
DENISE: Oh, goodness! What should I wear? Should we bring
anything? Tell me more about your sister. I must know everything
before I meet her!
WALTER: (chuckling) Nancy is a beautiful soul, has a kind heart,
and I love her dearly. And that’s all you really need to know.
DENISE: Do you think she’ll like me?
WALTER: Absolutely. I can’t really think of a reason the two of you
wouldn’t get along. I can’t think of a reason you wouldn’t get
along with anyone. (Pauses, finishes up his coffee.) You look
nervous.
DENISE: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m just excited.
WALTER: Would a back rub make you feel better? Or maybe a
different type of rub? (He moves closer to her and nestles his head
into her shoulder. She laughs aloud and smacks his shoulder.)
Let’s go back to the apartment, what do you say?
DENISE: I say yes. (She gets up from her chair as WALTER holds her
jacket open for her; she puts it on.) Did you say you had another
sibling?
WALTER: Oh yes. Pierce. My younger brother. He’s not around very
much. Ever since high school he’s been somewhat of a social
butterfly or, rather, menace.
DENISE: Why do you say that?
WALTER: He’s caused a lot of problems in his life, but it’s nothing
that would get him thrown in jail or anything. I guess he just
wants attention.
DENISE: There are two sides to every person. I bet he’s a great guy
underneath his bad boy exterior. (She gropes WALTER lovingly.)
I’m sure he’s just jealous of his gorgeous, well-mannered, and
sophisticated older brother.
WALTER: How insightful, Miss Denise. If we can get back to the
apartment fast enough, I hope you will allow me to introduce you
to my other side.
DENISE: And what side might that be, Mr. Walter?
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(WALTER whispers into DENISE’s ear followed by uproarious
laughter as they exit. Pierce sets his newspaper down on the
table, finishes his coffee and looks at the cup. He pauses for a
moment before throwing the cup on the ground, shattering it. The
BARISTA comes over with a broom and dustpan.)
PIERCE: A menace? What a piece of shit.
BARISTA: Whoops! I’ll get that all cleaned up for you. (She bends
over to sweep up the mess; PIERCE stares at her behind.)
PIERCE: You know, I’m a very rich man.
BARISTA: Congratulations! Are you going to give me a tip for
cleaning up after you?
PIERCE: Sure, I can give you a tip. When do you get off?
BARISTA: In an hour or so.
PIERCE: That’s a shame.
BARISTA: (playful) Why is that? Will your . . . tip . . . have diminished?
PIERCE: I’d have fucked someone else by then. (He reaches into his
pocket and drops a few bills at her feet.) Enjoy working for the
rest of your life. (He exits as the BARISTA starts to cry. Blackout.)
SCENE TWO
(LIGHTS UP on a dining room, extravagantly decorated. DENISE
and WALTER are standing, holding hands, while she admires the
beautiful artwork adorning the walls. YVONNE enters.)
YVONNE: I’ll let your parents know that you’re here. Dinner will be
ready shortly.
WALTER: Thank you, Yvonne. (She exits.) I treat the help humanely.
Isn’t that nice of me?
DENISE: (She slaps his chest at his joke.) Walter, you told me your
parents were well off, but I wasn’t expecting this! I’m starting to
wonder what I’m up against.
WALTER: Oh hush, darling. You’re not up against anything. And we
aren’t rich, we just make sure our budget can handle my mother’s
exquisite taste. (He chuckles.) You aren’t nervous, are you? It’d
be silly to be nervous. What’s there to be worried about? Oh,
there’s a stain on your shirt. Is that coffee? We didn’t have any
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coffee today.
DENISE: (while examining her shirt for the stain) A little, truthfully.
What if they don’t like me?
WALTER: Nonsense! I’m in love with you, aren’t I? You make me
happy, don’t you? They’re going to love you. I’m a little nervous
myself, to be honest.
DENISE: What have you got to be nervous about? Is it what your
parents will think of me?
WALTER: Of course not! I just fear my family may not be as
interesting as you hope they will be.
DENISE: Now that’s nonsense! Since the day I met you, you’ve
done nothing but talk about how wildly interesting your family
is, especially over soft shell crab and a fine bottle of white wine!
Right? White wine goes with seafood and chicken. Red goes with
meat. Is that right?
WALTER: Oh dear, the wine! I’ve gone and left it in the Jag. I’ll be
gone only for a moment, Sweet Heart. Well, maybe longer. Your
insecurity is making me feel manly, if you know what I mean.
DENISE: Walter! (She slaps him again, playfully.) You’re going to
leave me here all by myself?
WALTER: Of course not! I’m leaving you with Van Gogh, Dali,
and Warhol. (He motions towards obscure paintings hung on the
wall.) Yvonne will be in and out I’m sure. Pierce is around here
somewhere. You’ll be just fine. (DENISE grimaces as WALTER
exits; blowing her kisses; a few moments of silence pass before
PIERCE enters)
PIERCE: Don’t tell me you actually buy in to all of his crap.
DENISE: (startled) Oh! I’m not sure what you mean. I’m Denise,
Walter’s—
PIERCE: —girlfriend. I know. This house has been all astir with the
thoughts of Walter’s common harlot coming for a visit. You look
quite stunning tonight, might I say. Is that a coffee stain?
DENISE: (offended; wiping at her shirt again) I beg your pardon?
Harlot? That means prostitute, right?
PIERCE: Oh, don’t beg. My heart’s as cold as stone. (She doesn’t
know how to take this.) Feel free to take pity on me. See me as
someone you can save and make yourself believe that it’s love.
Most everyone does.
DENISE: You look familiar. Where I’ve seen you before? And don’t
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say in my dreams. That, I fear, may be too tacky even for you.
PIERCE: I do, do I? Hmm, do you frequent the Golden Greens
Country Club? Or perhaps we’ve seen each other from across the
room at one of the senator’s gatherings.
DENISE: Am I supposed to be impressed at your wide array of upper
class social gatherings?
PIERCE: Are you?
DENISE: You do look familiar, though. I’m sure you get that all the
time, what with your brother being the amazing person he is.
PIERCE: Touché. Do you want a drink? (He walks over to the drink
carriage and pours himself a glass of scotch, no ice.)
DENISE: No, thank you. Walter’s just run out to the car for the wine.
PIERCE: I do hope it’s not in a box. The last girl he brought home
actually thought it would be a fine idea to teach my mother how
to drink from the little, plastic spout. It was torture trying to keep
a straight face. Then again, Walter’s been with some pretty . . .
interesting girls. The wine box disaster wasn’t the worst of train
wrecks this family has been subjected to. The fourth girl, I believe
her name was Suzette, wore these hideous fishnet thigh highs
that kept slipping down through appetizers. Made her look like
a common street walker. (DENISE goes back to looking around
the room.) I apologize. The reason you know my face so well is
because I took a class with you a few years ago. Introduction to
Psychology.
DENISE: Oh yes. You were the guy who never showed up to class
and brown-nosed his way into an A.
PIERCE: Do I detect a hint of jealousy?
DENISE: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I did just fine in
that class.
PIERCE: I’m honored that you remember me.
DENISE: Well, you should be more modest. I don’t look back on you
fondly.
PIERCE: That’s a shame. I most definitely look back on you fondly
and I plan to continue looking back on you fondly. (DENISE
stares at him quizzically. WALTER enters with the bottle of wine.)
WALTER: Brother! (He approaches PIERCE with open arms;
PIERCE shies away slightly, but gives in.) How have you been?
It’s been ages since we’ve last spoken. I trust you’re being
respectful towards my guest?
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PIERCE: Life is good, Walter. Denise and I were just catching up.
Seems my eyes have focused on this radiant beauty long before
yours. Isn’t that right, Denise? (DENISE perks up and looks to
WALTER.)
DENISE: We had a class together a few semesters ago.
WALTER: Is that so?
PIERCE: Yes. You’re lucky I was in love with Professor Sanders
that semester, otherwise tonight it may have been my honor to
introduce Miss Denise to the family.
WALTER: (playful, yet skeptical) Pierce, are you hitting on my
girlfriend?
PIERCE: I would never think of it. You have one hell of a woman on
your hands.
WALTER: I certainly do, and I am all the luckier for it.
DENISE: (embarrassed) Walter!
WALTER: What? Is it such a crime to be so unbelievably and
blissfully happy with a gorgeous, smart, and talented woman?
PIERCE: Not if she has a trust fund. (He gulps down his drink.)
WALTER: Oh, don’t listen to Pierce, Denise. He’s only teasing.
That’s how you know he likes you.
DENISE: Oh? I’d have expected him to lay on his back and let me
scratch his belly. (WALTER laughs obnoxiously.)
WALTER: You’re so adolescently witty. (DENISE seems confused.)
Pierce, how is Professor Sanders these days?
PIERCE: Married with two children. She seems to have recovered
from the shock of childbirth though. (He stares at DENISE.) Her
figure is as classic as it was three years ago.
WALTER: I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve rekindled the flame you
had for her.
PIERCE: Of course not! I’ve set my sights on higher things.
WALTER: Anyone I know?
PIERCE: Only slightly. My conquest still relies heavily on the fact
that most happy couples don’t stay happy for long.
WALTER: So hope, really.
PIERCE: Yes, I guess hope would be the more effeminate word.
DENISE: Hope is a waste of time and energy. (Both boys look at
her, almost stunned.) Like anxiety! While you were gone, Walter,
I stopped hoping that your parents would like me and started
believing they would.
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WALTER: That’s great, Denise! I believe you’ll like my parents just
as much. (They embrace.)
PIERCE: Cute.
(SHARON enters, wearing a beautiful evening gown, complete with
elbow-length white satin gloves. Denise sees her and becomes
very self-conscious about her attire; Walter, however, finds
nothing alarming and opens his arms to her.)
WALTER: Mother! You’re looking dashing tonight!
SHARON: Oh, Walter. You always knew how to make a terrible dress
sound delightful! (The two remain in their embrace just moments
after an awkward silence settles in. They break once WALTER
remembers DENISE’s presence.) Now, where did I put my drink?
Oh never mind. Pierce, will you pour me another one? (PIERCE
moves to the drink cart and pours a drink.)
WALTER: Mother, I’d like you to meet the woman of my dreams.
Denise, come here and meet the woman who gave me life!
(DENISE wanders over to SHARON, whose arms are stretched
out towards her. She meekly accepts the embrace and ends it
quickly, side-stepping to WALTER.) Two of the most important
women in my life meeting for the first time! What a rush!
SHARON: Denise! It’s so lovely to finally meet you. Will someone
please get me a drink?
(PIERCE downs the drink and starts to pour another.)
DENISE: You too, Mrs.—
SHARON: Call me Sharon, please! The whole Mrs. thing makes me
seem old. I’m not really as old as everyone thinks I am. I think
the wrinkles come from the scotch and the liver spots are simply
signs that my organs are ready to check into the Betty Ford Clinic.
DENISE: Oh. It’s great to meet you too, Sharon. Woo! I feel like such
an adult now!
SHARON: Hmm?
DENISE: Calling you by your first name. It makes me feel very
mature. I’m used to calling all of the adults in my life by their
last names.
SHARON: Uh-huh. Do excuse Arnold, Denise. He’s in his office.
Very important business. Very hush-hush. I’m sure it’s the sort
of stuff that the women were kept in the kitchen playing bridge
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for while the men smoked their cigars and drank their brandy.
Brandy. I think I fancy myself a glass of brandy and milk on the
rocks. That’s a hint, Pierce! (PIERCE sets the drink in his hand
down on the table and starts to fix a different drink.)
DENISE: Walter’s father?
WALTER: (to DENISE) One of the most intelligent and thoughtprovoking men you’ll even meet.
WALTER and PIERCE: Almost as much as I am! (There is an
awkward pause.)
SHARON: Yes, it would be nice to meet him if you ever get the
chance. I’m not entirely sure where he is, to be honest. He’s either
in his office, his study, the library, or he could very well be on
the toilet. I don’t like to badger him. He’s incredibly too high
strung for me. I give him his space. Yvonne? Yvonne! (YVONNE
enters.)
YVONNE: Yes, Miss Sharon?
SHARON: Where’s Arnold? Do you know?
YVONNE: I believe he is swimming laps in the pool. Would you like
me to fetch him for you?
SHARON: Oh, no, that won’t be necessary, Yvonne. Please, let us
know when dinner will be ready.
WALTER: Where, dare I ask, is Nancy? I’ve been simply aching to
see her.
YVONNE: She’s in her bedroom getting ready for supper. I was on
my way up to help her just as you called for me.
DENISE: Oh, excellent! Walter does nothing but talk about his
beautiful, talented, gifted twin sister. (PIERCE chokes out a
cough, but no one pays attention to him.) Maybe I’m a little too
excited about meeting her. Does that seem silly?
(SHARON and WALTER let out a long, loud laugh.)
WALTER: Denise, you are too wonderful.
SHARON: You’ll meet our little Nancy soon enough. Why don’t we
sit down and enjoy our appetizers while Arnold and Nancy are
predisposed? (The couple nod in agreement and sit. Both heads
of the table are empty.) So, Denise, tell us a little about yourself.
DENISE: Okay, well, I’m a fourth year psychology major and—
SHARON: Yvonne, the appetizers, please. Denise, I must tell you I
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just love having my palms read! Don’t you, Walter? That must be
so interesting to learn. Tell us more, please. Pierce, you can hear
Denise from the drink cart, can’t you? Feel free to join us at the
table with my drink if you can’t.
DENISE: Oh. Well, actually, I don’t read palms too much. I work
more with people’s thoughts and dreams and . . . things like that.
I’m sorry, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Psychology is
a science. It’s not a parlor trick.
WALTER: Denise, I’m sure my mother wasn’t trying to undermine
the importance of psychology.
SHARON: So, you’re a mind reader? I simply love mind readers.
My mother was a mind reader. No wait, (pauses and speaks to
herself) Sharon, I am not a mind reader. (To the table) No, she
wasn’t a mind reader. That’s right.
DENISE: Not exactly a mind reader. I’m more of an interpreter.
SHARON: Do you use tarot cards? That’s what they’re called, right?
Or tea leaves? I’ve heard of people looking at egg yolks and
interpreting them. Or throwing cooked spaghetti against a wall to
see the shapes the noodles make.
PIERCE: I actually think that’s to see if the spaghetti is cooked
enough.
SHARON: Oh. Well, do you use tea yolk cards?
DENISE: No, not really. I—
PIERCE: She’s a glorified fortune teller, Mother. (DENISE looks to
WALTER, who is anxiously checking his watch.)
SHARON: Well, isn’t that lovely? Good heavens, Walter! Why on
Earth are you staring so intently at your watch? Oh! Is that the
watch your father gave you for your first passing grade on an oral
presentation last year? It looks magnificent. Am I going to have
to fix myself a drink?
WALTER: I’m sorry. Do excuse my rudeness. I’m just very impatient
tonight.
SHARON: Well, how about you go on upstairs and see what’s keeping
Nancy? Make sure you help her down the stairs. You always were
the good little helper, Walter.
WALTER: Surely! Be back in a moment!
(WALTER leaps out of his chair and exits. The remaining three sit
quietly before PIERCE gets up to pour his mother a glass of white
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wine; he returns to his seat and clears his throat; Sharon gulps
it down)
DENISE: You have a lovely house, Mrs.—Sharon.
SHARON: Oh, thank you, darling. (Another moment of silence.) Was
that water or wine? I could barely taste it. Maybe it’s gone bad.
DENISE: The artwork is simply magnificent.
SHARON: Oh, thank you, darling. (Another moment of silence.) Oh,
thank you, darling.
DENISE: I’m sorry? What?
SHARON: For what? Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be sorry
about. It’s only a little red wine. It’ll come right out of the
900 thread count, crushed white silk table cloth imported from
Indonesia. Will you excuse me for a moment? I need a stronger
drink. (SHARON rushes out of the room; DENISE is confused as
PIERCE begins to chuckle.)
DENISE: We’re not even drinking red wine!
PIERCE: Don’t worry. She’s a little off. I’m surprised Walter
didn’t tell you about her many neuroses, what with you being a
psychologist and all. You can agree with me.
DENISE: I’m beginning to think he’s left a lot of details out.
PIERCE: Why is that?
DENISE: He described you as a good-natured, strong willed, driven
individual.
PIERCE: And? I’m an egotistical monster asshole. I get it.
DENISE: (to herself) Oh, why bother? It’s not like anything I say can
have any effect on you.
PIERCE: Humor me here, Denise. What did my brother tell you about
Nancy? Why not ask me what Nancy is like?
DENISE: Why should I? You’ll just try to tear her down a peg or two
in my mind in an attempt to raise yourself up in the ranks. Are you
jealous of her, too?
PIERCE: Of course I am! I wish I could sit on my ass all day and have
hundreds of people doting on me, getting me everything that I
could ever need, could ever want.
DENISE: What a shock.
PIERCE: Truly. Still, what makes you think I want you to look highly
upon me?
DENISE: You want everyone you meet to look highly upon you as
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long as it requires minimal effort on your part.
PIERCE: And yet finding your approval proves both tiring and
strenuous.
DENISE: Right.
PIERCE: So, it seems your theory has disproved itself. Are you sure
psychology is the right path for you?
DENISE: Oh, stop. You’re just defensive because I didn’t fall at your
feet the moment you entered the room. I can see right through
you. (PIERCE laughs heartily.) So, what, is Nancy some kind of
beauty pageant queen? Or a Future Business Leaders of America
alumni?
PIERCE: Why should I tell you? So you can prepare yourself for
the unnecessary and juvenile battle you’ll start between her and
yourself the second you see the smile she brings to Walter’s face?
So you can dig back into your mind and start embellishing some
experience about saving a rabbit that got caught in your family’s
dryer output?
DENISE: Reverse psychology. Nice weapon if used against someone
who can’t turn it back around. We’re talking about you here, not
me.
PIERCE: Funny, I thought we were talking about Nancy.
DENISE: We were. Well, we are. Now.
PIERCE: Aww, you’re frustrated. How precious.
DENISE: Do you think this is cute? This little act you’ve got going
on here? I’m not stupid, you know. Why are you even here in the
first place? Aren’t the James Dean wanna-be screw-ups usually
off painting the town stupid when their families have organized
dinner get-togethers?
PIERCE: Why, do you think it’s cute? (He laughs.) I’m not implying
that you are stupid. Ignorant, yes, but not stupid. I’m offering you
the opportunity to figure out Walter’s riddle on your own.
DENISE: What riddle?
(WALTER and SHARON enter.)
PIERCE: And it appears you are too late.
DENISE: (almost crazed) Where’s Nancy?
WALTER: (looking off stage) Nancy! Stop dawdling and come meet
Denise! (He crosses to DENISE.) The love of my life. (DENISE
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smiles. They embrace as NANCY enters, SHARON pushing her
wheelchair and bumping into different objects on stage. The
noise causes DENISE to look up from WALTER’s shoulder; she
freezes.) Here, Mom, let me help you.
SHARON: Denise, can you move that chair so there’s room for
Nancy at the table? I’d do it myself, but, you know, shaky hands.
Thyroid condition.
DENISE: Uh . . . yeah. I—uh, yes.
(DENISE moves awkwardly and grabs a chair from behind the table.
WALTER rolls NANCY over and sets her up at the table. Everyone
is silent and resumes their positions around the dinner table from
earlier; DENISE is now seated across from NANCY.)
SHARON: So, Denise, what do you think of our little Nancy?
DENISE: Oh. Well, I didn’t expect her to be so—beautiful!
SHARON: Aww, that was nice of Walter to prepare you.
WALTER: Oh, Denise! You’re so wonderfully kind-hearted. I knew
you wouldn’t have a problem with this. Forgive me for not telling
you, please. I would have, but I was afraid you wouldn’t want to
come to dinner because you’d need more time to think about how
to approach the situation. I’m relieved. Really.
DENISE: Walter, can I talk to you for a minute, alone? Now.
PIERCE: Actually, Walter, can’t you check on the dinner? I’m sure
you are all as famished as I am.
WALTER: Oh brother, you never could satisfy your appetites. Denise,
darling, can you hold on to that thought for one sweet moment?
(WALTER exits. DENISE glares at PIERCE, then stares at her plate.)
WALTER (off-stage): Oh, Mother? Could you come in here please?
It appears the cook has taken a leave of absence and we’ve got a
situation in here.
SHARON: Oh, thank you, darling. (She takes a drink.) What? Damnit,
Yvonne!
(Yvonne enters.)
YVONNE: Yes, Miss Sharon?
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SHARON: Yvonne, I think there might be something troubling Walter
in the kitchen. Do you know anything about this?
YVONNE: (She looks at PIERCE, then at DENISE, then back to
SHARON.) No, Miss Sharon. Why don’t we go take a look-see?
SHARON: I suppose so. Oh, Denise, darling, please.
DENISE: Yes?
SHARON: Please. Don’t.
DENISE: Don’t what?
SHARON: Think anything of that stain on your shirt. You look just
lovely. Come on, Yvonne! Off we go into the kitchen!
YVONNE: Yes, Miss Sharon.
(There is an awkward silence as they exit. DENISE frantically pulls
at her sweater, folding it over, etc. in an attempt to hide the stain.)
PIERCE: Look at us, alone again.
DENISE: Yes, it’s almost as if you had planned it. Are you pleased
with yourself? Don’t think you’ve got this all figured out because
you don’t! I’m fine with this. Truly.
PIERCE: You seem fine with this! You’re taking it much better than
I thought you would.
DENISE: You’re disgusting.
PIERCE: Why, because I coerced you into spending an evening with
my family while leaving out the fact that my sister is retarded?
Oh, wait—that was my brother! Walter! Your boyfriend! The
love of your life! Remember?
DENISE: That’s so rude! And if I call you disgusting, then I won’t
think I’m disgusting anymore. So, you’re disgusting.
PIERCE: You’re not disgusting, Denise.
DENISE: I know.
PIERCE: Of course you do. (Pause.) It’s okay to be nervous. Everyone
else is. People get so nervous that they start to mutter, stare, all
sorts of things. All because she’s retarded.
DENISE: Would you stop calling her that?
PIERCE: What? She can’t hear me! She can’t hear anything! She
can’t say anything! If she could, she would have told me to fuck
off a long time ago.
DENISE: How could you ever know that?
PIERCE: Because I’ve tried. We’ve all tried. A fucking masked
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bandit could swing in here on a rope vine and steal the clothes off
her body while no one was watching and we’d never know what
happened. (Pauses; moves closer to DENISE.) We could touch.
I could hold your hand, you could kiss me. We could fuck right
here on this table and no one would ever know! Nancy wouldn’t
tell anyone!
DENISE: God, would you knock it off?
PIERCE: What I don’t know is why you’re still disgusted with me
when Walter was the one who brought you here completely
unprepared! And what’s worse, he led you to believe that she was
normal! God! Hate Walter! Hate him! I do! It’s easy!
DENISE: She is normal!
PIERCE: Jesus, you sound like my parents. They only think that
because they don’t spend more than five minutes around her a
day. They hate her! You know that, don’t you? They think that
she’s bad for their image. They don’t want to be the pity couple.
They want to take pity on others, rub others’ noses in their fortune
and lap up the envy that spills out of their mouths! You can’t very
well do that when the future breeder is mentally incapacitated and
physically repulsive!
DENISE: No. That’s how you see her, Pierce, but you do want people to
pity you. You don’t want pity because of your sister’s misfortune,
though. You want pity because of your own misfortune. The only
problem is that you don’t have any misfortune! The only part
about you that’s misfortunate is the fact that you can’t appreciate
one thing your family has done for you, including Nancy!
PIERCE: You don’t know what you’re talking about! (Long pause.)
I’m the only person in this family that loves her for who she is.
DENISE: Well, what happened to her? Was she born this way?
PIERCE: What way? You mean, normal?
DENISE: Yes.
PIERCE: No. It was an accident. Makes it easier to accept, doesn’t it?
(DENISE shrugs and looks away.) She was twelve and decided
she wanted to be a horseback riding champion.
DENISE: Oh, God. Was she trampled?
PIERCE: Car accident. On the way to the ranch for training. Arnold
was driving. Hasn’t been able to look at her since.
DENISE: Why not?
PIERCE: Grief. Denial. Jesus knows I wouldn’t be able to get through
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that. You think he’s busy doing work, but really he’s waiting out
the Nancy storm. I assure you he will be down at 9:00 on the dot.
That’s when Nancy goes to her room for the night.
DENISE: Wow.
PIERCE: My father is ashamed of her. Ashamed of what he’s done to
her. He can’t live with himself.
DENISE: That’s terrible. I feel so—
PIERCE: Awkward?
DENISE: Terrible.
PIERCE: Wow. Extensive vocabulary you’ve got there.
DENISE: You are—
PIERCE: Terrible?
DENISE: Yes.
PIERCE: What’s terrible is how the accident affected Walter. I’m
counting on the fact that he hasn’t talked to you about this.
(DENISE doesn’t respond.) He and Nancy were very close as
children.
DENISE: Because they were twins. Twins are closer than any pairing
in the modern world. It’s a fact.
PIERCE: He watched over her like a hawk protects its nest. When the
accident happened, he couldn’t live with himself either.
DENISE: It wasn’t his fault, though.
PIERCE: Yes, but he was supposed to be in the car as well. He had
promised Nancy he would watch her run the course with Crash,
her pure-bred Arabian. The name is a coincidence, I assure you.
DENISE: Oh, really? It’s not some nickname you branded it with
after you decided that what happened was funny?
PIERCE: Did it just get a little cooler in here?
DENISE: Continue with your story, please.
PIERCE: When Nancy returned from the hospital, Walter never left
her side. He was even more possessive over her than before. It
turned into a real psychological disorder. He would feed her,
move her around, bathe her, clothe her. He would take her to the
bathroom. He would shower with her in the room, to make sure
that if she needed anything, he was ready. He even insisted they
share a bedroom.
DENISE: Stop. You’re lying.
PIERCE: One night, when they were sixteen, I watched him touch her
while she slept.
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DENISE: Stop it, please. You’re lying!
PIERCE: The noises she made once she understood what was
happening, which was about thirty seconds before he was done
with her—
DENISE: Liar!
PIERCE: You know what Nancy really needs?
DENISE: A younger brother who isn’t a complete asshole?
PIERCE: What she needs is someone who accepts her, doesn’t treat
her differently because she’s different. She needs a beautiful
person to love her and, and tell her that everything is going to be
okay because every day is a constant struggle for her to get by.
A kind face to wake up to is enough for her to open her eyes and
keep living. Imagine for a moment that your family has disowned
you. You are the laughing stock of the bloodline, and there’s
nothing you can do to stop the woeful looks and blistering heat in
your ears as you listen to people whispering. Words like “failure”
and “waste” have been uttered under the breaths of every person
you’ve encountered to the point where they might as well be
calling your name. It stings as you rip the Band-Aid of misfortune
off, but you’ll get over it. The pain will numb itself and you’ll
become a calloused soul searching for someone who will tell you
that it was all worth it in the end, just to be in that moment with
them because they need and want you just as much as you need
and want them. (He reaches for her hand.) I need someone like
you.
DENISE: What?
PIERCE: I’ve been through a lot in my life. I really have. I know that’s
what every poor little rich kid says, but you’ve got to stop pining
over the mature hunk and go after his dipshit, bad boy, brother.
You don’t look like the kind of girl who’s been through her fair
share of punks and dirt bags. You need to take a chance with them
once in a while. You don’t meet the guy of your dreams right off
the bat! If you did, do you think divorce rates would be as high
as they are now? Just give it shot! Please. I care more about you
than anyone else I’ve ever known. (He pauses.) Denise. Look.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
SHARON: (off-stage) Pierce! Could you help us a moment?
PIERCE: Denise. Would you look at me? (Denise doesn’t move.) I
didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to say it like that.
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SHARON: (off-stage) Pierce! I know you can hear me!
PIERCE: I’m not a liar. Walter. Walter is. A liar. He’ll tell you anything
to get you in bed with him. He’s always been like that. (Pause.)
I want you to know that I think you’re beautiful. I counted the
freckles on the back of your neck every time I sat behind you in
that damn class. Twenty-seven. Did you know that?
DENISE: Your mother is calling you.
PIERCE: I’m talking. To you. I’m being honest!
DENISE: No, you’re not. You’re being ridiculous.
PIERCE: Why? Because you want to believe me? You want to, but
you know it’s wrong, right? You want to accept the truth, but you
can’t because you’ve been conditioned not to!
DENISE: What are you talking about?
PIERCE: We need to get away. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go for
coffee.
DENISE: No.
PIERCE: Let’s go for a drive. Clear our heads.
DENISE: Pierce.
PIERCE: You don’t love him, Denise. You think you do, but you
don’t.
WALTER: (off-stage) Pierce, what the hell is going on in there?
PIERCE: Come on, Denise. What’s it gonna be?
WALTER: (off-stage) Do I have to come in there and get you?
(DENISE gets up from the table. PIERCE holds out his hand. She
takes it, forcefully, and their hands knock a glass over, breaking it.
They pause for a moment and stare at the shattered glass, then at
NANCY. The two exit. WALTER and SHARON enter with crackers
a few moments later.)
WALTER: Denise? Denise? Nancy, where’s Denise?
SHARON: Well, isn’t that just wonderful? Another wine glass,
broken! Honestly, wine glasses must be made of glass with the
way they always break.
WALTER: She must have forgotten something in the car. Where’s
Pierce?
SHARON: Who ever knows?
WALTER: No. He will not do this again. No. Denise! Denise!
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(WALTER runs off-stage, screaming for DENISE. Sharon walks over
to NANCY.)
SHARON: Sometimes I think it’s better you were born this way. You
never have to deal with the lies people tell. Lies like “I love you”
and “I think you’re beautiful.” You never have to understand the
things people think of you.
(SHARON walks over to the drink cart and pours herself a drink. She
takes a sip. She downs the drink. Bottle in hand, she walks back
towards NANCY. She kisses her forehead.)
SHARON: I love you, Nancy. I think you’re beautiful.
(SHARON exits, gulping the bottle.)
END OF PLAY
137
F. J. Hartland
MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS
CHARACTERS:
(in order of appearance)
GRACE, the mom, 60s or older
ETHAN, the son, 30s
MOIRA, GRACE’s best friend, 60s or older
SETTING
The front room of Grace’s apartment. The present. Early afternoon.
(At rise: A knocking at the door. Enter GRACE. She is wearing a big
bathrobe. She makes her way to the front door, passing an empty
wheelchair along the way. She opens the door. It is ETHAN.
He is carrying a few bags and is agitated. He speaks loudly to
GRACE, to compensate for her hearing loss. He has the tone and
the demeanor of a caregiver who is running out of patience—
sometimes pleasant, sometimes annoyed.)
ETHAN: Mother, how many times have I told you never to open the
door without asking who it is?
GRACE: I’m sorry. I forgot.
ETHAN: What if I had been a burglar . . . or a rapist? And what are
you doing out of your wheelchair?
GRACE: But—
ETHAN: I don’t want any excuses. Get in this chair. (He grumbles as
he wheels the chair to her and seats her in it.) That’s all we need.
A broken hip. What would we do then? (ETHAN tucks a blanket
around her lap and lower legs.)
GRACE: I don’t need a blanket.
ETHAN: Don’t argue with me, Mother. There’s a draft in here and we
don’t want you getting a chill. (He’s done.) There. Now I brought
you some soup for later. I’m going to put it in the refrigerator.
138
(ETHAN exits to the kitchen with one of the bags. GRACE pulls the
blanket off of her. ETHAN re-enters carrying an old container of
soup.)
ETHAN: Mother, why haven’t you eaten the split pea soup I made for
you last week?
GRACE: I hate split-pea soup!
ETHAN: I made this from scratch—from your recipe. You made this
all the time when I was growing up.
GRACE: I don’t remember that.
ETHAN: Fine. No more split-pea soup.
GRACE: Good. I hate it.
ETHAN: I’m not going to argue with you. Now what have you done
with your blanket.
GRACE: It’s too hot.
ETHAN: You’ll be the one with the pneumonia then—not me . . .
(ETHAN exits to the kitchen. GRACE gets out of her wheelchair.)
ETHAN: (Offstage) Mother, are you in your chair?
GRACE: (Lying) Yes, dear.
(ETHAN returns with a feather duster or maybe a small watering can
to water plants—some housekeeping duty.)
ETHAN: I knew it . . . I just knew it. Mother, what are you doing out
of your chair?
GRACE: I wanted a magazine.
ETHAN: Get back in the chair. I will get you the magazine.
(They both do so.)
ETHAN: I don’t know why you are so stubborn about using the
wheelchair.
GRACE: I want a scooter . . . like I see on TV . . . and go to the Grand
Canyon.
ETHAN: I am looking into a scooter, Mother. (ETHAN opens one
of the bags.) Now, look here. I brought some old pictures. The
doctor says that looking at these may help your memory. See this
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one. (He shows her an old photo.) Do you know where this was
taken?
(GRACE looks at the photo and thinks.)
GRACE: The beach?
ETHAN: That’s right. Very good. The beach. Now, do you know
where the beach is?
GRACE: (A guess) Florida?
ETHAN: No, Mother, not Florida. You’ve never been to Florida
in your whole life. It’s New Jersey. Remember all the summer
vacations to the Jersey shore?
GRACE: No.
ETHAN: Okay. Then look at this pretty lady here. Who do you think
that pretty lady is?
GRACE: (Another guess) Me?
ETHAN: That’s right. It’s you. Look at all those children.
GRACE: So many.
ETHAN: And which one is me? Which one was your little boy Ethan?
GRACE: (Pointing and guessing) Ah . . . this one?
ETHAN: No. That’s stupid cousin Skippy. This one is me.
GRACE: I’m sorry . . .
ETHAN: It’s me, Mother. Your son Ethan. When I was a little boy.
(He holds up another photograph.) Here we are the morning I left
for the state high school debate championships. Do you remember
what you did that morning?
GRACE: Hugged and kissed you?
ETHAN: Yes. And . . .
GRACE: Wished you good luck?
ETHAN: Yes. And . . .
GRACE: And . . . I don’t remember.
ETHAN: You took off your wedding ring and slipped it on my little
finger and said, “Here. Now a piece of me will be with you.”
GRACE: And you won the championship!
ETHAN: No, Mother, I lost. (Looks at her hand.) Mother, where is
your wedding band? Did you lose it?
GRACE: I don’t know.
ETHAN: Well, you’d better look around here and find it! (Looks at
his watch.) I have to get back to work. (He kisses her.) I love you.
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GRACE: Yes.
ETHAN: Keep looking at these photographs to jog your memory.
GRACE: I will.
ETHAN: And look for your wedding band.
GRACE: I promise.
ETHAN: And remember—ask who it is before you open the door!
See you tomorrow at noon—sharp!
(ETHAN exits. GRACE looks at the pictures. A knock. GRACE stands
to open the door—then remembers . . . )
GRACE: Ethan, is that you?
MOIRA: (Offstage) It’s Moira.
GRACE: C’mon in, Moira.
(Enter MOIRA. She is GRACE’s age—and is dressed for a bowling
tournament.)
MOIRA: Grace, don’t tell me you let that crazy man in here again.
GRACE: Ethan is harmless.
MOIRA: Ethan is crazy. The man thinks you’re his deaf, demented,
dead—and did I mention “dead”— mother.
(GRACE removes her bathrobe to reveal that she too is dressed for
bowling.)
GRACE: Douglas and I were never blessed with children.
MOIRA: I had seven kids . . . I wouldn’t use the word blessed.
GRACE: Ethan’s like the child I never had. It’s sweet.
MOIRA: It’s twisted.
GRACE: He must miss his mother very much.
MOIRA: If you ask me, this child is guilty about something.
GRACE: Either way, I’m helping another human being. I think he’s
lonely. Besides, it’s a great deal. Do you know what it would cost
me to have someone come in here and do all my housework for
me? Then there’s the soup—don’t forget the soup. I get a lot of
free soup. That’s some split pea. Take it if you want it.
MOIRA: With my colon problems? If I ate that, you, me—or both of
us—would live to regret it. (Seeing the photographs.) What are
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these?
GRACE: Family photos that Ethan brought.
MOIRA: (Looking at one of the pictures.) You think this is her? The
dead mother?
GRACE: I think so.
MOIRA: Pretty lady. (A beat.) He probably killed her.
GRACE: Moira!
MOIRA: You could be next. Mark my words.
GRACE: Stop being such a gloomy Gus.
MOIRA: C’mon or we’ll be late. I can’t wait to mop up the lanes with
those uppity women from Saint Cecelia’s Altar Guild.
(GRACE picks up her bowling ball bag.)
GRACE: I’m right behind you.
(The women exit.)
CURTAIN.
142
Barbara Lhota
LOST
CAST OF CHARACTERS
MEG, 30s, Mark’s wife
MARK, 30s, Meg’s husband
GPS, various, an actress on a voice-enhanced microphone
SETTING: Interior of a Honda.
TIME: February night. Present.
(Sound of a car engine sputtering to a start. MARK and MEG middiscussion in their well-worn Honda. Both wear puffy winter
coats.)
MARK: (Patting the dashboard.) You can do it, Ralph. Did you tell
them we wanted that?
MEG (Overlapping. Swishing her butt against her seat, messing with
the car’s heater—turning it back and forth.) It’s cold, it’s cold.
Jesus fucking Christ on a hockey puck it’s cold!
MARK: You don’t think your parents can hear you out there?
MEG: Well, they wanted God in my life.
MARK: Did you tell your Dad I needed a GPS or something?
MEG: No, of course not. I told Mom. She buys the crap.
MARK: I knew it.
MEG: Speaking of…
(MEG dives into the gift bag she’s holding.)
MARK: (Looking out the window.) Geez, they’re still—
MEG/MARK: (Simultaneously, waving) Hey! Thank you!
(MEG holds up the GPS gift.)
MARK: Aren’t they freezing out there?
143
MEG: Tss. They enjoy suffering. My Mom wants to see us use it.
She’s. . .
MARK: Sweet.
(Sticks the suction cup of the GPS hard against the dashboard.)
MEG: Weird is what I was going to say.
MARK: It’s not like I don’t have GPS on my phone.
MEG: But you said that thing about it causing whatchama-hinky.
(MEG turns on the GPS and starts to program it.)
MARK: What?
MEG: You know.
MARK: Terrifyingly, I do.
MEG: (Referring to GPS:) Do you want our voice to be Gerald?
MARK: I don’t need a GPS, Meg.
MEG: Gerald it is.
MARK: I’m good with directions.
MEG: Honey, on the way here you misplaced Milwaukee.
MARK: Well, you were talking about interesting stuff. You talked
me past it.
MEG: So it’s my fault?
MARK: Yes.
MEG: Fine. I’m sorry for being so fascinating. Are we going now or
are you trying to kill my parents?
MARK: Oh. Shit. Sorry. So how does it know—
(MARK starts to drive. GPS lights up.)
GPS: (GERALD, English Accent. Overlapping, very demanding)
What is your destination?
MARK: Pushy little bugger. Let’s try Val instead.
(MARK hits a button on the GPS.)
GPS: (VAL—Deep sexy English-accent female) What is your
destination?
MARK: That’s good.
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MEG: She said the same thing.
MARK: (Calls out.) 1534 North Winchester, Chicago, Illinois.
GPS: (Deep sexy English-accent female) Calculating route for your
destination.
MARK: # 3 North
MEG: She doesn’t need our apartment number.
GPS: (Deep sexy English-accent female) Keep right toward your
destination.
MEG: I don’t like her. She’s too flirty. Let’s try Martha.
(MEG hits the button on the GPS.)
GPS: (MARTHA—Older woman’s voice.) Take a right in 900 yards
toward Country Road South.
MARK: Aunt Bette. Jesus, that’s just weird.
MEG: I don’t think that’s right directionally either. Maybe Martha’s
senile.
MARK: This is going well.
MEG: Just keep going straight here to the freeway.
GPS: (MARTHA—Older woman’s voice; growing frustrated.) Take a
right in 300 yards toward County Road South or else.
MEG: What the . . . ?
GPS: (MARTHA—Older woman’s voice.) Recalculating route.
MARK: (Overlapping) Did you hear—
MEG: (Overlapping) Yes! Fucking weird shit! (Hits the GPS button.)
Let’s do Matt. Matt’s safe. Matt’s Midwest. Matt’s a guy who’d
let you borrow his toothbrush in a pinch.
GPS: (MATT’s voice is deep-slow and slightly stilted.) Take the next
legal U-turn . . . orrrrrrrrrrr
(MEG goes for the radio.)
MARK: Whaaat?! And where is this taking us? What are you doing?
(Searching for a radio station.)
MEG: Radio. I’m totally creeped!
MARK: So should I listen to him?
MEG: I don’t know. I guess.
145
(The theme song for TWIN PEAKS plays)
MEG: Fuck no.
(She turns the radio off suddenly.)
GPS: (MARTHA returns, sounding pissed) Take the next legal
U-turn! Now!
MARK Jesus! Okay, I’m doin’ it!
(MARK turns and the car screeches a little.)
GPS: (MARTHA returns, sounding pissed) Legal, legal!
MARK: Maybe it’s a joke GPS? Would Mom and Dad be jokey?
(MEG looks at him.)
MARK: So why are we following it?
MEG: I don’t know. It sounds unhappy.
MARK: This road is so dark. Did you notice that before?
MEG: No. But that’s how roads are out here some times. Right?
MARK: We could turn it off.
MEG: It’ll work. These things tend to work.
GPS: (MARTHA firmly.) Take a right on Country Road South.
MARK: (Turns on the blinker) Love to. Like that idea.
GPS: (VAL—deep sexy English-accent) Your destination is on the
right.
MEG: (Overlapping) How did she happen again?
MARK: Oh my God, Meg, look!
(A strange sound vibrates.)
MEG: Falling stars . . . Wow! They’re so gorgeous!
MARK: Do you recognize where we are?
MEG: (Looks out the window. Pause) Wait. Come on. Is that the Lake
where we first—
MARK: Yep.
MEG: Jesus. In that old Ford. How did we end up here? We put in our
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Chicago address.
MARK. I know. Look at the light from the stars on the lake.
MEG: (Watching.) That’s incredible. The snow is . . . So how did we . . .
MARK: I don’t know. End up here?
MEG: Maybe the GPS is broken or . . . ?
MARK: (He turns to her.) Or . . .
GPS: (VAL—deep sexy English-accent) Your destination is straight
ahead.
MARK: (Looking at her.) That’s true. So I don’t suppose . . . Would
you want to . . . ?
MEG: What? You mean . . . park? That is totally—
MARK: Yeah, incredibly stupid. It’s way too cold.
MEG: (Referring to the back seat) But we got that down blanket back
there.
MARK: Seriously? (Grabs it and puts it over them.)
MEG: This is so odd. I feel nervous like when . . . Anyway. It’s
so quiet here. Isn’t it? Like that very same night. Turn on your
brights.
(He does. They listen. He watches her for a moment as she watches out
the window. Then takes her face and kisses her passionately. She
pulls the blanket over them entirely. Suddenly the radio plays.)
MARK: Hon, I thought you turned off the radio?
MEG: I did.
(Passionate movement under the blanket.)
GPS: (Sighs gently)
(Lights fade to black.)
147
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
DIANNE APRILE writes essays and books, including The Eye is Not Enough:
On Seeing and Remembering, a collaboration with visual artist Mary Lou
Hess. She is also editor of several volumes, including The Book, an anthology
of photographs, poetry and prose, forthcoming in 2014. A recipient of
Kentucky and Washington state artists’ fellowships and a former journalist
and jazz-club owner, she teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University’s
brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.
SARAH ARVIO’s night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis
(Knopf 2013) is a book of poetry, a memoir, and an essay. Her earlier books
are Visits from the Seventh and Sono: cantos (Knopf 2002 and 2006). She has
been awarded the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Letters,
and Guggenheim and Bogliasco Fellowships, among other honors. For two
decades a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland,
she has also taught poetry at Princeton. A lifelong New Yorker, she now lives
in Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay.
DON BOGEN is the author of four books of poetry, most recently An
Algebra (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He teaches at the University
of Cincinnati, where he is Nathaniel Ropes Professor of English and
Comparative Literature. His website is donbogen.com.
KRISTIN BRACE is a writer, artist, educator, and literacy advocate. She
received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and a BA in Creative
Writing from Hope College. She lives in Michigan with her husband.
KATHLEEN CAPLIS is a writer from Chicago, Illinois. She is currently a
student at the University of Missouri where she received first and second
place for the 2011 Francis W. Kerr Writing Prize.
BRITTANY LEE CHEAK is a recent graduate from Western Kentucky
University. She has worked as a reader for Steel Toe Books and as an editor
for Zephyrus. She has been published in Still and IthacaLit, and was also an
honorable mention for the 2012 Sarabande Flo Gault Student Poetry Prize.
She writes poems with the hope that they make readers feel uncomfortable,
like they’ve discovered a delicious secret.
SUSAN CHIAVELLI’s award winning stories, essays, and poetry have appeared
in Chattahoochee Review, New Millennium Writings, Minnetonka Review,
580 Split, Other Voices, Rattle, The TallGrass Writers Guild Anthology,
148
Music in the Air, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Lamar York Prize
for Nonfiction, the John E. Profant Foundation for the Arts literature award,
and a Wildling Art Museum Poetry Prize.
ROBERT COLLINS’ latest book of poems is Naming the Dead (Future Cycle
Press, 2012). His work has appeared once previously in The Louisville
Review. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
RICK DEMARINIS has published nine novels, six story collections, and a book
on the art and craft of the short story. Magazine publications include The
Atlantic Monthly, The Antioch Review, Esquire, GQ, Harper’s, Grand Street,
Paris Review, Iowa Review, Tin House, Epoch, and others. He taught fiction
writing at several universities, including San Diego State, Arizona State, the
University of Montana, and the University of Texas at El Paso. He received
two NEA fellowships, a literature award from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, and won the Drue Heinz Prize in 1986 for his collection
Under the Wheat.
NAUSHEEN EUSUF is a doctoral student in English at Boston University. She
holds an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and her poems
have appeared in Agenda, Acumen, Spillway, Poetry Salzburg Review, and
other journals. Her chapbook What Remains was published by Longleaf
Press at Methodist University.
GARY FINCKE’s latest book is a short story collection, The Proper Words
for Sin, published earlier this year by West Virginia University. An earlier
collection, Sorry I Worried You, won the Flannery O’Connor Prize. His
memoir, The Canals of Mars, was published by Michigan State in 2010.
He is the Charles Degenstein Professor of Creative Writing at Susquehanna
University.
ERIN FLANAGAN is the author of two short story collections—The Usual
Mistakes and It’s Not Going to Kill You, and Other Stories—both published
as part of the Flyover Fiction Series by the University of Nebraska Press.
Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri
Review, Crazyhorse, the Best New American Voices anthology series, and
elsewhere. She is an associate professor at Wright State University in
Dayton, Ohio.
JANICE MOORE FULLER has published three poetry collections, including
Séance from Iris Press, winner of the Oscar Arnold Young Award (North
Carolina poetry book of the year). Her fourth poetry book, On the Bevel,
149
will be published in 2014 by Cinnamon Press in north Wales. Her plays and
libretti, including a stage adaptation of Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying, have
been produced at numerous US theatres and at Estonia’s Polli Talu Centre
and France’s Rendez-Vous Musique Nouvelle. She is writer-in-residence and
professor of English at Catawba College in North Carolina.
JANE GENTRY, Kentucky Poet Laureate from 2007-2009, grew up on a farm
at Athens in Fayette County and now lives in Versailles. Her two full-length
collections of poems, A Garden in Kentucky and Portrait of the Artist as a
White Pig, were both published by LSU Press, in 1995 and 2006 respectively.
Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies and literary journals. She
teaches in the Honors Program and is an English professor at the University
of Kentucky, where she has won the Great Teacher Award.
ALEX GREENBERG’s work can be found in issue 17 of The Literary Bohemian,
in issue 7 of Cuckoo Quarterly, in issue 13 of Spinning Jenny, and as runnersup in challenges 1 and 2 of the Cape Farewell Poetry Competition. He has
won a gold key in the Scholastic Arts and Writings Awards and was named a
Foyle Young Poet of 2012.
SARA J. GROSSMAN is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, a Hedgebrook
Residency, and fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and
the West Chester Poetry Center. Her poems have been published in The
Cincinnati Review and Memorious and she is currently a doctoral candidate
in American Studies at Rutgers-Newark.
MALLORIE HALSALL is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University with
a BA in English and a BA in Integrative Arts. Love, Differently was one
of five original one-act plays written by Halsall selected to be performed
at the campus. She is currently working on her budding acting career in
independent films as well as a production of her first original screenplay,
though writing has always been and will always be her first and foremost
priority.
SASKIA HAMILTON is the author of As for Dream (2001) and Divide These
(2005). She is also the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005) and the
co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth
Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008). A new collection of poems, Corridor, is
forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2014.
In 2012 Writers News Weekly named F. J. HARTLAND one of the top
playwrights in Pittsburgh. This fall he will make a record-setting thirteenth
150
appearance in the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. In New York City his plays
have been performed at Emerging Artists Theatre and GayFest NYC. F. J.
was the recipient of a 2008 playwriting fellowship from the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts. His plays have been published by Samuel French, United
Stages and Original Works. He resides in the South Hills of Pittsburgh with
his feisty Eskimo spitz Snowflake.
ALICE CATHERINE JENNINGS is a student in the MFA Program in Writing at
Spalding University. Her poetry has appeared in In Other Words: Mérida,
The Fertile Source, Penumbra and is forthcoming in the Hawai’i Review.
She is the recipient of the U.S. Poets in México 2013 MFA Candidate Award.
Jennings is currently living and working in Medellín, Columbia and Austin,
Texas.
JULIA JOHNSON’s second book of poems, The Falling Horse, was published
by Factory Hollow Press in 2012. She teaches at the University of Kentucky
and lives in Lexington.
KRISTIE KACHLER received an MFA from the University of Michigan and is
a blogger for the Michigan Quarterly Review. Her poems can be found in the
New Delta Review and Sentence. She is a freelance writer and editor living
in Cork City, Ireland.
HAESONG KWON lives and works in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His poems are
forthcoming in Eleven Eleven and Ghost Proposal.
BARBARA LHOTA’s plays have been produced in Boston, Chicago, and New
York as well as throughout the country. Her new full-length, Warped, will
be produced September 2013 by Stage Left Theatre. Publishing credits
include: Strangers and Romance in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of
2001; co-authored 4-volumes series, The Forensics Duo Plays (Smith and
Kraus Publishing); Young Women’s Monologues from Contemporary Plays
(Meriwether Publishing). Awards include: Harold and Mimi Steinberg,
Hanging by a Thread; Margaret Martin, The Vanished; Diverse Voices,
That’s All Folks; 2011 Semi-Finalist, Pride Films and Plays for The Double;
2013 Semi-Finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference,
Athena Project and Circle Theatre New Plays Festival for Echo, Love Creek
Theater’s Samuel French finalist for The Beekeeper and His Daughter.
ZACHARY LUNDGREN received his MFA in poetry from the University of
South Florida and his BA in English from the University of Colorado at
Boulder and grew up in northern Virginia. He has had poetry published
151
in several literary journals and magazines including The Portland Review,
Barnstorm Journal, The Adirondack Review, the University of Colorado
Honors Journal, was nominated for the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award,
and was awarded the Estelle J. Zbar Poetry Prize in 2012. He is also a poetry
editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection and a founding editor of Blacktop
Passages.
ANGIE MACRI’s recent work appears in Sou’wester and The Southern Review,
among other journals. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she teaches in Little
Rock.
MAURICE MANNING’s latest book of poetry is The Gone and the Going Away.
He teaches at Transylvania University.
MARK POWELL is the author of three novels—Prodigals, Blood Kin, and The
Dark Corner—and has received fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Stetson
University in DeLand, Florida.
ROGER REEVES’s poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry,
Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House,
among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the
Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship,
Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf
Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine
Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. Recently, he earned
his Ph.D. at the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor
of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His first book, King Me, is
forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in October 2013.
JOAN SELIGER SIDNEY’s Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir
was published by CavanKerry Press. Her poems have appeared in The
Louisville Review, The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review,
Jewish Currents, Caduceus, Theodate, and elsewhere. Joan has received
individual artist’s poetry fellowships from Connecticut Commission on the
Arts, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Craig H. Neilsen
Foundation, Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, Vermont Studio
Center, also a Visiting Faculty Fellowship from Yale. She’s writer-inresidence at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Judaic Studies and
Contemporary Jewish Life. In addition, she facilitates “Writing for Your
Life,” an adult workshop.
152
JANICE WILSON STRIDICK’s work has been published or is forthcoming in
Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Coachella Review,
Dos Passos Review, Matter Press, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Studio One,
and many more. Her book and art reviews have appeared in publications
including NY Arts Magazine and Cape May Star And Wave. Her writing has
been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poem “Homecoming” won
the 2012 Lois Cranston Prize from CALYX Press. In November 2013, her
book, Alice Steer Wilson: Light, Particularly, will be released nationally by
Southbound Press. Her blog can be found at janicewilsonstridick.com.
ANNE DYER STUART holds an MFA in from Columbia University and a PhD
from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her
lyric nonfiction won New South’s 2012 prose prize, and her fiction received
the Henfield/Transatlantic Prize from the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction Southeast, Pembroke
Magazine, Poet Lore, The Midwest Quarterly, Sakura Review, Midway
Journal, r.kv.r.y., Third Coast, Best of the Web, storySouth and elsewhere.
She teaches at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.
JOE SURVANT has published four collections of poems, most recently,
Rafting Rise. from the University Press of Florida. A fifth book, The Land
We Dreamed: Poems, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky
in the spring of 2014. It is the final book of his Kentucky trilogy. ”Coal: A
History” is the closing poem in that collection. He is a Professor Emeritus at
Western Kentucky University and served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate 20022004.
MADELEINE WATTENBERG is earning her MA in English Literature with a
concentration in Poetry at University of Cincinnati. She is drawn to the study
of philosophy and literature through her poetic endeavors. Although she now
identifies Louisville, Kentucky as home, she has also resided in Michigan
and South Australia; consequently, her writing often also centers on one’s
connection to place and its relation to identity.
JONATHAN WEINERT is the author of In the Mode of Disappearance (Nightboat,
2008), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Norma
Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Thirteen
Small Apostrophes (Back Pages, 2013), a chapbook. He is co-editor, with
Kevin Prufer, of Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on
the Recent Work of W.S. Merwin (WordFarm, 2012). Jonathan is the recipient
of a 2012 artist fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
153
TONI M. WILEY’s range of writing includes a children’s musical participation
play, romantic and historical comedies, plus historical dramas. Her play
Aunt Em’s was included in the Samuel French OOB Festival of Short Plays.
Crossing the Line and Two Sides of the Coin with Jesse James the American
Outlaw were finalist and semifinalist in the Kentucky Theatre’s Roots of
the Blue Grass New Playwriting Contest. Toni has also written and hosted
a radio show called “Travel with Toni” for thirteen years. She has an MFA
in Writing from Spalding University and lives with her husband and son in
Bardstown, Kentucky.
JEFF WORLEY has two new books of poetry available: Driving Late to the
Party: The Kansas Poems (Woodley Press) and A Little Luck, which won the
2012 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize at Texas Review Press. New poems can be
found in Boulevard, Tampa Review, River Styx, and elsewhere. (Go to jeffworley.com for too much information.)
CHANGMING YUAN, five-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a
Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China, holds a
PhD in Engish, and currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry
Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan (Poetry subs welcome at editors.pp@gmail.
com). Recently interviewed by PANK, Yuan has poetry appear in Barrow
Street, Best Canadian Poetry (2009, 2012), BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite
Corpse, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and more than 700 others
across 27 countries.
154
The
Children’s
Corner
Isabella Frohlich
HELLOS AND GOODBYES
At age ten,
We moved two houses down the street.
We said goodbye to out small yellow house
With the broken lamppost and the black bench
By the front door.
We said goodbye
To the brick chimney
And I said goodbye to the small window
With the white curtains that I could peer out of when I was sitting in
my room.
We said goodbye to the creaky swing set in the back,
By the tree that used to drop acorns every summer.
But as we carry some of our luggage down the street,
We say hello to the big house with the windows
That reflect the glimmering sunlight
On the crisp autumn day.
We say hello to the red rope swing
Swaying softly in the backyard,
Pushed by the same soft wind brushing my cheeks.
We say hello to the open rooms,
Bare and empty,
Smelling like fresh paint.
Seemingly waiting . . .
For us
157
Peter LaBerge
GESTATION
When I had no roof, I made a roof
out of skin, taped it to mine: empty
skins sewn together at knuckle-point.
That summer, my body broke
the rules of summer, caught
snowflakes in kitchen vases,
left the milk out to spoil.
I always left the wrong things
exposed. I could’ve listed until
the first snowfall all the names
I had given myself, but instead
I holed them up and named them
secret. Up and up, I could not find
grass above the topsoil of my body.
Upon surfacing, I would locate
an eagle, and name it mother.
158
Shashank Nag
ENVIRONMENT
You are so beautiful, you are lush green,
You are the one who help us to live.
O Mother Environment! We thank for all you gave us.
The cool breeze and the pleasant heat,
The beautiful flowers and the beautiful bees.
Sparrows and Pigeons and Crows and Nightingales
Tulips and Orchids and Roses which charm us.
Rain and storm and snow and hail,
With rivers and lakes floating all the way
You are giving us whatever we want,
Then I can’t understand why we are destroying you.
O Mother Environment! I can’t understand why we are
destroying you.
159
Peter LaBerge
MANGO
We fool our hunger with our forced happiness and our
corroded smiles,
bits of mango snuck under our tongues a little less than frequently.
Our yawning eyelids flutter when the mangos hit the knotty
oak table.
A dozen, freely revolving like planets in our Nigerian solar system.
Stomach groan and cry and rumble but, of course, we are only
allowed to peer at them like hungry wildebeests.
Sun-bleached fabrics billow around hands that clash like cutlery
constructed from the darkened copper that matches our skin.
Saliva plucks my blistered, sundried lips like rain against
harp strings.
My tongue ushers it back into my mouth and down my parched
throat.
The mangos tremble, casting us anxious looks with seedy eyes.
Girls flock towards my edge of the table, where the mangos are
collecting.
I remain perched, holding myself back. You cannot eat these.
I remember the first day on this land, the overseer’s voice clear.
Black calloused hands reaching for the fruit are smacked with rods.
It’s not right to reach for food here—not in Nigeria.
“No.” The overseer swindles the mango—mine in four seconds as it
approaches warmth spilling from the cracks across my own palms.
Then the scent of corpses raps around the waxy mango pits.
We revolt. I am told to grab mangos and run away form this place.
160
I tremble now—clutching mangos streaked with sweat and crimson
blood.
The chants of sisters tearing through the plains like nails on blistered
skin.
Perhaps the mangos remained too long held in our desperate palms,
pieces of mango rind under my fingernails and melting through
my skin.
The sweet juice pumps through my bloodstream.
My blistered feet knock against moonlit earth.
161
Peter LaBerge
VICTORIA
That was the summer you silenced
because you knew you were misplaced
here, destined for the swift pear orchard
underbelly of Hamilton upstate. You told me
you left your laugh in the forward humming
of Amtrak cars, felt certain they would
always gulp effortless miles of track.
We sat on the porch next to your suitcase
in August when the sky was a cracked
windshield. There was only room for surfaces
of fact: temperatures and maps and return dates.
We were slowly awakening to some things:
how, in two weeks, your room would be a cocoon
for purposeless furniture and bored bed sheets,
how your walls would be painted and repainted.
You left a trail around the faithful house, name
sung through the soap dishes, fingerprints whispering
down the banisters, arriving somewhere. Your spoon
indents still in the Ben & Jerry’s. This poem has been writing
itself for a while now, while I’ve been out of breath, stalled
like a Ranchero in the rain. When I open fortune cookies,
they say people revolve like newspaper subscriptions or holidays.
I have more faith in weather patterns, and always will.
162
Peter LaBerge
LESSONS IN WINTER
I.
When we were young children, we loved it when the snow came on
our doorsteps early and ghosted the surface of the pond. It wasn’t the
freezing that we loved, but rather the relative warmth that became of
it. The extra cranks of the rasping radiator in your Nana’s den, and
the tree line outside the frosted windows just learning how to cope.
We found warmth in the least likely of places: the prick of the
needlepoint rug, and the lazy ripple from the candle with the
resurrected Lord printed on the front. I asked if you believed, and
you said yes, but in reality your faith was stored in things such as
sandboxes and scissors, in the weather, and in risks. You thought that
if you jumped, you wouldn’t fall.
II.
And when you kissed me on the lips, it was just that. Like white
doves, my hands flew up, astonishing themselves. You pulled me
close, pausing to glance at the stump of my nose, my empty velvet
mouth. Your fingers climbed the rungs of my ribs. My fingers
reciprocated.
There was nothing as right as making a lover with a rib. You
reasoned me outdated, but I told you that’s what we were taught.
I couldn’t explain the attraction that drove our widening hips into
each others like rail tracks. When you said you couldn’t either, your
mother came flooding like the riverbank. With the winter tree line
outside, everything went still.
III.
Like a windmill, she swung you from my arc. Her words meant
little, but the sound was sufficient. The riverbank outside silted, and
our bodies liquefied, and for a second we thought this was a sweatnightmare. We squinted our eyes, wishing ourselves silhouettes or
dust particles. Your mother’s eyes spilled warmth like the radiator.
163
None of us could remit the past.
IV.
We often asked too much of the world, and of ourselves, thinking
time fell like snow ghosting the surface of the pond, on our
doorsteps early. The past went gone melting.
But to your mother, we still speak in rivulets and warmth. We
are the frosted breath against the windowpanes: misremembered,
misunderstood.
V.
Like guillotines, childhood lessons taught me about clarity and
punishment. What you spoke, you spoke truthfully. You said the
winter severed the warmth. A clean break that we could piece
together, with each throaty rasp from your Nana’s radiator. We
resurrected it. We taught it how to glide on the ghosted surface of the
pond—until it fell, until it fell.
164
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS TO THE CHILDREN’S CORNER
ISABELLA FROHLICH is a ninth grader at Seattle Girls’ School. She enjoys
reading, writing, listening to music, and spending time with friends.
PETER LABERGE is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania studying,
among other things, creative writing. His recent work has appeared in The
Newport Review, DIAGRAM, Euphony, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle, and
elsewhere. He is a 2013 Presidential Scholar in the Arts semifinalist, a blog
editor for the National YoungArts Foundation, and the founder & editor-inchief of The Adroit Journal. [peterlaberge.co.nr]
SHASHANK NAG is a middle school Junior at Central Academy and is eleven
years old. Incidentally, this is his first poetry written very recently. He is
a keen observer and grasps things quite fast. He loves nature and enjoys
travelling to tourist destination with his kith and kin.
165
brief-residency
Master of Fine Arts in Writing
Where Every Individual
Talent Is Nurtured
Ideally suited to the wriƟng life
• study with a great community of writers
• write in your own home
oﬀering fic on, poetry, playwri ng,
screenwri ng, crea ve nonfic on,
wri ng for children & young adults
Flexible Scheduling
Our four-semester, brief-residency MFA combines superb
instruc on with unparalleled flexibility.
• 10-day residencies in spring and fall in Louisville
followed by a 6-month semester of independent study
with a faculty mentor, or
• 10-day residency abroad in summer followed by a
9-month semester of independent study
with a faculty mentor,
• Students may customize the loca on, season, and pace
of their studies. The same amount of wri ng is required
in each op on.
For complete informa on
[email protected]
spalding.edu/mfa

. - Spalding University

Transcription

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