Bird's World, Franklin Park Zoo, Boston, MATuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
And the Same is True of All of Us
As I drove back to work from a lunch hour that involved me not so much eating as watching my dog relieve herself, I put on my sunglasses for the first time on this lush and grey Thursday, the Sun finally coming out just in time to set. Just like every other trip in my car for the last two weeks, I was listening to Juno’s “This is the Way it Goes and Goes and Goes”. I started to sing along with his low, soft scream, and I thought of you. I don’t remember if it was something funny you said, or your laughter, or the shape of your face, but I thought of you, and that memory made me happy, and I wanted you to know that.
No.
You.
I’m talking about you.
You may or may not dance at nighttime through the dreams of others like smoke or candy or a great and monstrous train, but I can guarantee that during every moment of every waking daytime somewhere someone is thinking of you. Maybe it’s your mother or your boss, or maybe it’s the last heart you broke or that quiet special someone who can’t ever seem to get you off their mind, or maybe it’s your third grade teacher or some guy at American Express carefully monitoring your credit card expenditures, or maybe it’s me, but somewhere someone is thinking of you.
Don’t look so surprised. Have you seen you? Go ahead. Look in the mirror, close your eyes, and take a good, hard look at you.
You.
You are beautiful.
You are talented.
You are kind.
You are you and you are loved.
You.
You feel that?
You’re smiling.
Because you know I’m right.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
skull
A still-hardening skull crashes into a crib of gravel. It’s like a spool letting loose, the clattering of tension, a rolling that lasts from here to the hospital bed. That man, the one of whom you’re a parcel—an unanticipated exclamation launched through hollows—folds you over his shoulder. You’re six plus feet up, ears ringing like the testing of a tornado siren, and he’s murmuring to you, just barely, over the idling autos, pushing along his bike and yours.
The vacation has been called off. You’d been presuming sprung pup tents, the cool moisture beading over you—a storm, maybe, smothering the fire and relegating everyone to the lighting of flashes.
Where you are is named for saints. There’s no record of how you made it here, but this is where you’ve come to be entangled. You’ve sprouted tentacles. Their guts are as empty as your own, but they manage somehow to lend you cloying moisture at specified intervals.
He had a story that he always told on camping trips about a one-eyed banshee named Cy who’d taken an axe to the breadth of his family tree. Transient, wayward, county-hopping, Cy was always at the heels of your hiking boots. In the same way dreams inspire treacherous rebirth in supplicated combatants, dusk awakened the fury of termination in Cy. There were rumors that he’d licked the blood from his axe, so to say he had a taste for it was not just figurative.
Early summer, the smells and sun melting over everything. There is no way to retract the windows—the coverings are pulled tight most of the day. You have the vague feeling of nothing really being wrong with you, that all of this is just something into which you’ve been wrongly placed. They feed you into machines that swallow you whole. Blood is drawn; cards pile up, flimsy toys bought in the lobby below. There are other visitors, but what you’re aware of most is how he keeps watch over you, pacing back, sitting down, occupying himself by stroking your brow.
It’s all a rehearsal for the way that days can wind down. Statistics bob over you, incomprehensible charts. You’re just beginning to understand the significance of numbers. Percentages lilt. The doctor, who is covered with a field of exploded follicles that pause only at his eyelids, pays intermittent visits. He speaks a language that translates to silence—eventually he palms your crown.
As you’re putting your shoes on for the first time in a week, they come across with a menu. You’re horribly tired of frozen grapes. But you’re rushed out with nothing.
At home, still disappointed that the fennel-laced accouterments could not be yours, you take the glossy sides of Mylar balloons to the uncombed mess of your chlorine-wrecked hair. They cling to the wall and stay there until they pale.
The vacation has been called off. You’d been presuming sprung pup tents, the cool moisture beading over you—a storm, maybe, smothering the fire and relegating everyone to the lighting of flashes.
Where you are is named for saints. There’s no record of how you made it here, but this is where you’ve come to be entangled. You’ve sprouted tentacles. Their guts are as empty as your own, but they manage somehow to lend you cloying moisture at specified intervals.
He had a story that he always told on camping trips about a one-eyed banshee named Cy who’d taken an axe to the breadth of his family tree. Transient, wayward, county-hopping, Cy was always at the heels of your hiking boots. In the same way dreams inspire treacherous rebirth in supplicated combatants, dusk awakened the fury of termination in Cy. There were rumors that he’d licked the blood from his axe, so to say he had a taste for it was not just figurative.
Early summer, the smells and sun melting over everything. There is no way to retract the windows—the coverings are pulled tight most of the day. You have the vague feeling of nothing really being wrong with you, that all of this is just something into which you’ve been wrongly placed. They feed you into machines that swallow you whole. Blood is drawn; cards pile up, flimsy toys bought in the lobby below. There are other visitors, but what you’re aware of most is how he keeps watch over you, pacing back, sitting down, occupying himself by stroking your brow.
It’s all a rehearsal for the way that days can wind down. Statistics bob over you, incomprehensible charts. You’re just beginning to understand the significance of numbers. Percentages lilt. The doctor, who is covered with a field of exploded follicles that pause only at his eyelids, pays intermittent visits. He speaks a language that translates to silence—eventually he palms your crown.
As you’re putting your shoes on for the first time in a week, they come across with a menu. You’re horribly tired of frozen grapes. But you’re rushed out with nothing.
At home, still disappointed that the fennel-laced accouterments could not be yours, you take the glossy sides of Mylar balloons to the uncombed mess of your chlorine-wrecked hair. They cling to the wall and stay there until they pale.
***
It’s well known that lights kept on in skyscrapers prompts the collision of birds in the night. There is that sound, that smack, late, against the taut slant of the tent wall. The tapping of an axe. You crouch deeper into your pumpkin-colored sleeping bag and flex your leg out to make sure that he is still there, keeping watch, lungs expanding.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
marilyn (feather ceiling)
Marilyn's face would have kids lassoing around her, wide loops of wide and not so wide kids, the fat or bones dancing on their bodies as they whooped up and down, taunting Marilyn with weird constructions. "Helium buttons, balloon skin!" "Frosty the Snow Bitch!" "Baby woman, go home on the range!" "Knotty tree cranium, sick, sick!" "Scareilyn bear face!"Marilyn opted out of caring. "It's a coping mechanism," the doctors (specialists, all) would tell her father, who loved her very much, and her mother, who buried her shame in thick, boastful gradients of pride. It wasn't that at all, the reason Marilyn more or less sealed her lips shut for anything other than to eat and drink the things she liked.
She'd kick down the country roads that lead like a cross from her house. She'd walk until long after her knees were sore and her shoes started to slope from outward pronation.
As she walked those roads, she'd listen to the wind scrape the leaves on the trees and the nearly blond wild grass until it all rattled, and tried to align cadences with the shuttering cicadas.
She'd take it all in. She'd gulp it down like it was lemonade. Predators swooping out of the sky to swiftly murder prey, the patter of chipmunks on mud, a branch smacking down, roaring. She'd reach up to her horrific face (they said that and she agreed so it must be fact) while continuing to walk and wipe away bits of sweat that the humidity of late August pulled from her.
The reason she blocked it out, all the theories and taunts, was this. This was all that really mattered, she knew, was all that was real. And the falseness of the rest of it terrified her.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
free time
Beyond the security entrance, Dan swaggered, wearing his tough-as-balls attitude, squaring his shoulders, clenching his jaw. In the sterile hallway, tiled in standard-issue mint green, he felt true to the bumper sticker on his car: unfuckwithable. His busted lip added depth, his brand-new Nike Shox conferred style. He was for real. The guard kept ahead a good five paces.
On the outside, things were different; he was different. He was a sanitation worker, hauling away everyone’s unwanteds, keeping people clean and safe. Most people did not realize what filthy animals they really were. The guys in here, though, were a different breed, and even if they weren’t animals, especially if they weren’t animals, they still felt like animals.
Kevin was not an animal. Though back when Dan was ten and Kevin only six, Dan slipped the dog’s collar round his neck and chained him up in the backyard till he cried. But that was just kids’ stuff. Sixteen years later, Kevin was chained up again. He’d been shackled and led out, he sat when and where he was told, behind a shield of inch-thick glass; he was not an animal, but he obeyed. He was already seated and waiting when Dan entered the room.
A big dopey smile hollowed out the bottom half of Kevin’s face, and round wide eyes ate up the top half, like some baby seal on The Simpsons: impossibly cute. Those innocent eyes had helped him get away with it for so long, but when Dan tried to see past their shine, all he found was a bottomless black hole. He was no angel himself, but his brother was hard-core under his fuzzy exterior.
Dan plunked down into the folding chair and lifted the black telephone, the only connection to his kid brother. “Yo,” he said.
“Hey,” he replied.
The seasons had changed, and changed again, since Dan last saw his brother’s face. When Kevin was first locked up, Dan promised he’d come every week, which dwindled into every month, then whenever he could. Time could wear out even the sincerest promise.
“Pop been by lately?” He already knew the answer. He lived with the man and worked with the man—if Pop had gone to see Kevin he would’ve heard all about it. But small talk was small talk.
“Two, three months ago? I forget.” Kevin’s smile faded. “Time in here, you know… It’s hard to recollect.”
“I’m working the truck with him,” Dan said. “It’s hell on my hands, but the paycheck is nice.” His mantra. The thickest work gloves he could find couldn’t protect him from the skin-tearing, bone-crunching work of lifting heavy trashcans all day. Pop laughed at him. With time the skin would thicken up, he said. One day his hands would be tough and meaty. Like Pop’s.
Kevin drummed his thin, bony fingers on the counter. “Well, Pop always said do what you love.”
“Shitty advice, huh?” Dan started out doing what he loved—drinking—and worked for years as a bartender till the bar went up in flames and Pop got him on the trash truck. Kevin went after his love, too—cars—learning how to fix them up, and how to take them apart. Wasn’t long before he was stealing cars, selling off the parts. It was a good gig till he got caught.
“So, where’s Sandy?” Kevin asked suddenly, looking around the half-full room as though she’d gone to someone else’s window.
“Fuck her, man,” Dan replied, pointing at his busted lip, still swollen.
“I wish!” Kevin threw his head back with a throaty laugh. “But I forgot about what always comes with it.” He twirled his finger by his ear in the “loco” sign. He’d had some crazy girlfriends, one who’d even had his baby, but he was, as Pop always said, the agitator. Trouble found him when he wasn’t finding it.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “You’re not missin’ anything.” His neck was stiff; last night’s fight hurt more today.
Kevin sighed, leaning back onto two metal chair legs. “I always liked Sandy.”
“Eh.” Dan shrugged. “If I let that bitch dictate what I can and can’t do in my free time, then I might as well be in here with you.”
Kevin, his nose and cheeks a motley muddle of freckles, resumed his finger drumbeat on the counter. When he spoke, the hole where his right-side incisor ought to have been whistled slightly, the unfortunate result of a particularly rough high school fight, not long before he dropped out and left home. “Least you get to take a dump in private,” he said. He snuck a glance at the clock on the wall behind him, above the guards’ heads.
Pop said being inside would force Kevin to grow up, but with fifteen months under his belt, he was still the same, baby-faced and petulant. With another forty-five months to go, Dan had to hope Pop would turn out right. Eventually.
Dan rubbed the bruise on his cheek, holding back a wince. She’d called four times, no message. By now she’d be at the diner, too busy to call again. His anger was raw, his self threatened, he couldn’t deal with her shit today.
“God, Sandy has a nice rack, don’t she?” Kevin blurted, rocking manically in his chair. “Last time you were here, man, I just couldn’t stop thinking about her tits.”
“Bet you say the same thing after Mom leaves,” Dan said, something in the pit of his stomach igniting.
“For fucking real,” he replied. “Tits are hard to come by in this place.” He blinked his fat bulging eyes. “Hey, tell Sandy to come by and see me.”
“Dude.” Dan couldn’t single out any one thought, so many were zipping around his head at once. “Dude!”
“I didn’t know she was aggro, too.” He looked almost like he could pop off out of his chair, like it was all he could do to contain his energy, rocking and drumming.
“Aggro?” Dan was confused. His brother had had some crazy girlfriends, and he thrived on provocation. “Dude, we had a fight and she threw the remote at me. I ducked it, but kind of lost my balance and fell.” It was stupid, embarrassing even, but hardly aggro. “I biffed the TV and busted my lip.”
“You biffed the TV?” He smirked, let the chair drop to all four of its feet.
“It looks worse than I do, believe me,” Dan said, far removed from his bumper sticker persona.
“Ah,” Kevin said again. “You guys are fucking boring. Made for each other.” The guard by the door called out that five minutes remained for the visitors. Kevin hopped up. “Bet you’re back together next time I see you.”
“Nah,” Dan said, coming to his feet. “She wants me to move in. She flips out every time I go to the titty bar…”
“Whatever,” he interrupted dismissively. “Give it a week, a month tops.”
“Well, I won’t be bringing her back here, if so.” Dan tried to smile but it hurt his lip.
Face-to-face, they almost looked like brothers, the resemblances were so slight. The glass, thicker than the years, kept them on opposing teams. Dan was about to hang up when Kevin leaned closer to the glass, as though to whisper in his ear. He breathed heavily into the phone. “Come back next week, Danny.”
A murky moment passed before Dan tilted his head. “Sure, Kev.”
“Please...” He hung up, severing the connection. In the past, Kevin would wait there till Dan was gone, but now he nodded to the guard, who approached him speedily.
Dan watched, the receiver dangling limply in his hand, as the guard adeptly cuffed and fettered Kevin, escorting him through the sturdy double doors, which slammed shut behind them with a slap. Other people in the visitors’ room were crying, pressing their palms up to the glass. So close. He sank the phone into its cradle.
In the hallway, he took slow steps, unable to recapture his earlier swagger. He noticed now that the tiled walls were dingy, the overhead fluorescents ghastly. Slow steps. Outside the air was brisk but the sun was shining. He had nothing left to do that day, no plans, free time to spare. The drive home would kill an hour: wide open roads through rolling farmlands, big sky, loud music, and his foot on the gas. Maybe he’d swing by Frey’s for a quick nip. The state pen inside its razor wire cage loomed behind him, steely and sprawling, where it would be next week and the week after that, never moving, never changing, never free.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
aged and grown...so far
I sit with me and I wish for better company
The horizon line gets near--
but I can't see it anymore
All I can see is your face in front of mine
songs will fill tomorrow.
but I long for yesterday--
when those hours lasted for all those days
and through all those nights
and the stars. i can't count or touch the stars.
but I want to kiss your face--goodnight.
I can't reach that high above the earth
where you shine so brightly among those stars.
It's all sharply defined
referring to the equivalent of me.
Elation fades past days
Let's imitate the real thing and
exaggerate our courage.
Fake pleasure in the details.
Let's create an analogy
for the purpose of understanding
keeps on spelling out the obvious...
nothing has the same effect as you.
Cut holes so you can see through
my windows and my words.
You were the best looking one in the room tonight.
Losing light with desire--
the dawn is lying to me again--for so many years in a row.
I think that dream was you.
moving in me.
Curiosity is overwhelming me day by day.
but I won't be killed again...
that cat died nine times ago.
The horizon line gets near--
but I can't see it anymore
All I can see is your face in front of mine
songs will fill tomorrow.
but I long for yesterday--
when those hours lasted for all those days
and through all those nights
and the stars. i can't count or touch the stars.
but I want to kiss your face--goodnight.
I can't reach that high above the earth
where you shine so brightly among those stars.
It's all sharply defined
referring to the equivalent of me.
Elation fades past days
Let's imitate the real thing and
exaggerate our courage.
Fake pleasure in the details.
Let's create an analogy
for the purpose of understanding
keeps on spelling out the obvious...
nothing has the same effect as you.
Cut holes so you can see through
my windows and my words.
You were the best looking one in the room tonight.
Losing light with desire--
the dawn is lying to me again--for so many years in a row.
I think that dream was you.
moving in me.
Curiosity is overwhelming me day by day.
but I won't be killed again...
that cat died nine times ago.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Never Say You're Sorry for the Waste You’ve Lain, Because We’ve All Got Marks to Carve.
There are varicose sidewalks beneath my skin
to a city whose subways thunder disappointment
with the systolic rhythm of missed opportunity.
White blood cells disinterestedly wave away from the bleeding wreckage
beautiful tourists armed with spray paint and misplaced vendetta:
“Move along. There’s nothing to see here anymore.”
Workers fill abandoned atriums with cement.
I point left, tell them, “You missed a spot.”
The woman in the back listlessly sings “Is that all there is to a fire?”
She dresses in apologies, living her life with her suicide on pause.
She's earned the immune system of a trailer park, suffering disaster with duct tape and inertia, defying guilt, derision bouncing off her foam trucker hat, using self-acceptance like judo in a gunfight.
Call it obstinacy,
call it laziness
she’s not going on anywhere.
“This is what I am. And I can’t be ashamed of that anymore. The view of my shoes never changes and you deserve to look me in the eyes to see how your scorn is received.”
The future seeps through the vents and speaks like the backhand of God,
“There’s a horizon in this night, so squint harder, boy.”
leaving guiding trails in countertop dust of dead skin and the skeletal remains of hope long since calcified.
And I file down my scars,
because this nerve can never be raw enough
and,
Mom,
they tell me I clean up pretty well.
to a city whose subways thunder disappointment
with the systolic rhythm of missed opportunity.
White blood cells disinterestedly wave away from the bleeding wreckage
beautiful tourists armed with spray paint and misplaced vendetta:
“Move along. There’s nothing to see here anymore.”
Workers fill abandoned atriums with cement.
I point left, tell them, “You missed a spot.”
The woman in the back listlessly sings “Is that all there is to a fire?”
She dresses in apologies, living her life with her suicide on pause.
She's earned the immune system of a trailer park, suffering disaster with duct tape and inertia, defying guilt, derision bouncing off her foam trucker hat, using self-acceptance like judo in a gunfight.
Call it obstinacy,
call it laziness
she’s not going on anywhere.
“This is what I am. And I can’t be ashamed of that anymore. The view of my shoes never changes and you deserve to look me in the eyes to see how your scorn is received.”
The future seeps through the vents and speaks like the backhand of God,
“There’s a horizon in this night, so squint harder, boy.”
leaving guiding trails in countertop dust of dead skin and the skeletal remains of hope long since calcified.
And I file down my scars,
because this nerve can never be raw enough
and,
Mom,
they tell me I clean up pretty well.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Sex Ed
How was I supposed to know what it meant?
I mean there's blow jobs, hand jobs, tug jobs, strap-ons, hard-ons, money shots and 100 different things. Like I'm supposed to keep it all straight.
Everybody knows it was me too because Mike told Sarah. Mike knows because I asked him what it meant last week and he told me it was something you buy at a porno shop. Now Sarah told all her friends and the girls keep laughing at me in the hallway.
I hate Mr. Tunney too.
He just kept smiling and whispering to Miss Kemper, even after they'd gone on to the next question. Why do we even have to go to sex ed anyway, it's not like I'm going to need to know this stuff anytime soon. Especially now that everyone thinks I'm an idiot.
I've never even kissed a girl who wasn't my mom or my grandma, and it's not exactly like that's good practice for anything.
It was after they told us about wet dreams and showed us close ups of women with chlamydia. After the video of a baby coming out and the diagram of the penis. After they told us that condoms can break and lectured us about teen parenting.
It was after all of that when they passed out note cards and asked us to write any other questions we had and pass them to the front.
I almost didn't write anything, but they hadn't answered my question and I figured that nobody would know it was me anyway.
Miss Kemper collected all the cards and brought them to the front, and Mr. Tunney pulled out the first one and read the question.
"Can you get A.I.D.S from a toilet seat?"
"No," said Miss Kemper. "That's a common misconception, but it would be almost impossible to get A.I.D.S., or any other sexually transmitted disease for that matter, from a toilet seat."
"Alright gang, next question," Mr. Tunney said as he pulled the next card out of the basket.
"Is it true that if you masturbate you can go blind?" No. "When you're having sex can your penis break?" Yes. "Are fake boobs really filled with air?" No...and on and on until finally I saw Mr. Tunney pull out my folded note card.
He started laughing right away when he read it, and then he showed it to Miss Kemper. She started blushing and smiling, but was trying not to show it. I don't get what's so funny about it and I bet a lot of other kids didn't know what it meant either.
How am I supposed to know what Love Handles are, it sounds like it should be dirty.
I mean there's blow jobs, hand jobs, tug jobs, strap-ons, hard-ons, money shots and 100 different things. Like I'm supposed to keep it all straight.
Everybody knows it was me too because Mike told Sarah. Mike knows because I asked him what it meant last week and he told me it was something you buy at a porno shop. Now Sarah told all her friends and the girls keep laughing at me in the hallway.
I hate Mr. Tunney too.
He just kept smiling and whispering to Miss Kemper, even after they'd gone on to the next question. Why do we even have to go to sex ed anyway, it's not like I'm going to need to know this stuff anytime soon. Especially now that everyone thinks I'm an idiot.
I've never even kissed a girl who wasn't my mom or my grandma, and it's not exactly like that's good practice for anything.
It was after they told us about wet dreams and showed us close ups of women with chlamydia. After the video of a baby coming out and the diagram of the penis. After they told us that condoms can break and lectured us about teen parenting.
It was after all of that when they passed out note cards and asked us to write any other questions we had and pass them to the front.
I almost didn't write anything, but they hadn't answered my question and I figured that nobody would know it was me anyway.
Miss Kemper collected all the cards and brought them to the front, and Mr. Tunney pulled out the first one and read the question.
"Can you get A.I.D.S from a toilet seat?"
"No," said Miss Kemper. "That's a common misconception, but it would be almost impossible to get A.I.D.S., or any other sexually transmitted disease for that matter, from a toilet seat."
"Alright gang, next question," Mr. Tunney said as he pulled the next card out of the basket.
"Is it true that if you masturbate you can go blind?" No. "When you're having sex can your penis break?" Yes. "Are fake boobs really filled with air?" No...and on and on until finally I saw Mr. Tunney pull out my folded note card.
He started laughing right away when he read it, and then he showed it to Miss Kemper. She started blushing and smiling, but was trying not to show it. I don't get what's so funny about it and I bet a lot of other kids didn't know what it meant either.
How am I supposed to know what Love Handles are, it sounds like it should be dirty.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
every muscle sore
On the battlefield of words, all soldiers are asleep, having dreams like whispers about the way things might have been if they hadn't ended up as they have.It happens, just does. Night arches its back and they assail each other like a hailstorm. There's a wicked hardness to the pellet of each utterance. It's as difficult to stand as it is to stand up to.
So they sleep again tonight like men who have almost died.
Eventually they'll wake, their smallest muscles jousted through with soreness, coughing up fog. They'll agree and say for not the last time that this change, now that it has finally come, is more than good and that it will last nearly as long as forever.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
once bitten
thud.
Thud.
THUD!
Maggie sat in the chilly humidity of the basement, her fingers poised falteringly over the lower register of the ivory keys. The piano sounded as though it was underwater and she sighed heavily. Didn’t her mom know anything? Pianos shouldn’t be put in basements.
THUDDDDDDDD!!!!!!
Just for emphasis.
The cinderblock walls echoed the muddy notes. The piano was a total pile of garbage: The cat had used it for a scratching post for years and the kids had used it for an emotional punching bag. She unhooked her right foot from underneath her left knee where she’d curled it for warmth in the basement’s damp atmosphere, and shook it a little to loosen the pins; it felt as though someone were pouring cool, dry sand over her bare foot.
At the top of the stairs, a shaft of light jutted through the dim basement, lit with only one overhead bulb. A shadow appeared at the top of the stairs, then an ungraceful and angular figure swung down the stairs, three at a time, using the handrails like monkeybars. Laura.
“Hey,” Maggie said, turning her face back to the tops of the ivories, which gleamed in the double light. The tops were slightly scratched, giving them the appearance of the underside of a leaf.
“Hey,” a husky voice echoed, slightly out of breath. “Where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know. I thought she was upstairs?”
“Good. Can I borrow five?”
Maggie’s eyes shot back towards her older sister, standing outlined by the light of the open door. One hand was on her freshly shaved but still faintly blonde head.
“What did you do to your hair? You look like a total asshole.”
“I didn’t ask for an evaluation; I asked to borrow five bucks,” Laura annunciated, a tiny bit irked that she had pointed out the obvious. “And watch your mouth – you swear way too much for an eleven-year-old.”
“What do you need the five bucks for?” Maggie asked discriminatorily, reaching up to close the cover of the keyboard with a firm indication of what her answer should be.
“A pack. I’m out.”
“You’re gonna get cancer like Grandpa Mike and have to shove a piece of plastic up your nose just to breathe before you’re out of high school. You’re going to look stupid and die.”
“I’m prepared to deal with that.”
“Where’s Jerome?”
Jerome was their five-year-old brother.
“He’s in the bathroom, doing lord knows what.”
“What do you mean, ‘lord knows what’? Aren’t you supposed to watch him so he doesn’t fall in the toilet?”
“I have exceptional hearing.” Laura stuck out her hand covered with a black-inked homemade tattoo of an enormous open-mouthed skull. “I’ll hear the splash and come running,” she guaranteed. Impatiently, she said, “Listen, Maggie, you don’t need to buy anything and you get a killer allowance, so you’re the richest little kid in Detroit. What gives? I’ll pay you back.”
“I charge interest, remember?” Maggie gritted her teeth and pulled crumpled bills out of her back jeans pocket. She reached into the other pocket, and pulled out a small flip notebook. She dated a line, and wrote: FIVE BUCKS. She was into page thirty or so. The thirty pages spoke volumes of her innate idealism.
Laura sucked her breath in sharply, imagining that first, blessed hit of nicotine. Suddenly, she seemed to realize the embarrassing quality of the situation, begging a child five years her junior for money, and got flustered and anxious to keep the continuum of motion in play. “Alright. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? I’m just going to the corner.” She turned to go, her sneakers squeaking, but stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing a lime green thermal that emphasized her paleness and freckles. Her eyes, black in the dim light, lifted Maggie’s up to make sure she was listening, “Can you stay upstairs to make sure Jerome’s okay while I’m gone?”
Maggie dropped her eyes and mumbled, “Sure.” Her sister was always covering her ass for something she wasn’t doing, anyway. Always multitasking.
Maggie looked up. She was gone.
SLAM! The door shook the windows.
Maggie reached up to grab hold of the chain switch between her fingers. She pulled. The basement stairs lightened with each step, and she soon found herself in the bright, drenching sun of the living room: beige carpeting, white walls, mirrors, family photos. The air had gone from basement-damp to late-October--indoors, windows-shut dusty.
She heard the water in the upstairs bathroom running, a dull, inner-wall sound. What the hell could a five-year-old be doing in the bathroom with the water running?
Surprisingly, the door opened right up when she test-jiggled the handle. Jerome was standing in front of the mirror, his huge head of black waves sticking out to shield his face. His hand was in his mouth, wiggling something.
“Dude, you got a loose tooth?”
The wide-eyed expression that met Maggie’s eyes was one mixed with surprise and fear, as still-baby fingers tugged and shook cautiously at the rooted foundations of primary teeth.
“Yea –aeah,” Jerome gurgled, spit and blood making a tiny river down his chin. Obviously, brave curiosity was at play, and he wasn’t crying y-e-t…so.
“Well, you need anything? An ice cube? A hug? A knuckle-sandwich?”
She knew this would make him laugh. It worked.
Blood sprayed all over the bathroom mirror in gleeful, red droplets.
“Thtop it. I’m thrying to thoncenthrate.”
Maggie squinted both visibly and mentally as she evaluated the situation. Should she just let her little brother go to town on his tooth without ‘adult’ supervision, or should she do the whole coaching thing that’s expected in these childhood milestones? She recalled her loose teeth memories, and just wanting to be left alone. In fact, she might’ve swallowed half of her loose baby teeth in her sleep, by accident anyway.
“Want me to stick around to watch the fun, buddy?”
“Eh.” Jerome stated, closing his mouth and visibly wiggling the tooth with his tongue. He had a lumpy cheek. He turned his attention to the mirror, opening wide to reveal the multitudinous future of loose prospects. Maggie looked cockeyed at the red-spattered mirror and shrugged. What more could he do, anyway?
“Well, if you need some help, just let me know,” She looked him in the mirrored eyes – the hazels were more calm now. “I’ll be right…” she pointed outside the bathroom door, “out there.”
“Othay,” he agreed, his tongue wiggling away at the tooth, again.
Maggie closed the bathroom door, and went back into the dusty warmth of the living room. Outside, dry, blowing leaves were wreaking havoc on pretty much any plant life that was still in existence on the ground. She looked out the window, and down the sidewalk. The thin, defiant figure of her sister appeared, her very jeans even arguing her every step, their hugeness blowing in the wind; any other direction than her. Her hair just existed. No movement. The original shoulder-length pigtails were just phantom images now. She looked so goddamn ridiculous. Maggie rolled her eyes, but went into the kitchen, anyway, to be there when she came through the door.
“Lose something?” Maggie shot at her as soon as she appeared through the door.
“What?” Laura asked, looking down and around at her sneakers, baggy jeans, green thermal shirt. She felt her pockets. “What’d I lose?” Her eye looked even more green with that shirt. Confused.
“Your hair.” Maggie inquired, “Where’d it disappear to?”
“Eff you,” Laura slapped down a crinkly, plastic supermarket bag on the kitchen countertop as she bent down to unlace her black Adidas. Maggie saw more than one object in the bag.
“Jerome’s losing a tooth right now,” she announced, craning her neck to get a better view of the contents of the bag. Cigarettes and something else…
“Huh?”
“Yeah. He probably has it out by now.”
“Why aren’t you up there with him?”
“I was. He doesn’t need my help, I guess.”
Laura raised her eyebrows for a minute, then finished shaking off her sneakers. She strode past Maggie authoritatively with her bag and within seconds could be heard knocking on the bathroom door. She waited and toed the kitchen floor. “You forgot my change!” she yelled after a full minute. She looked up.
Laura stood in front of her. “Come with me for a sec.”
Down the stairs and into the basement; on went the lone lightbulb.
“Everything okay?”
Laura was at the piano, lifting the top and peering inside its depths where shiny tines lay like musical teeth. “Uhm-hmm,” she responded. “It’s out – the tooth.” A flash of white paper was handed off to Maggie before the update could register.
“What’s this?” Maggie held a slightly wrinkled and very lumpy envelope in her hand. Opening it, she found several singles, fives…a bunch of twenties. “What is this?” she repeated. “Why’s there money in the piano?”
“It’s yours,” Laura said.
Maggie blinked.
“It’s pretty much everything you’ve ever lent to me over the last few years. I knew you never expected me to pay you back, but I didn’t want to disappoint you by following through on that.” She eye-cornered Maggie with a glance and nervously laughed. “You expect nothing but the worst from me…you’ve got every reason: I’ve been a pretty crappy sibling, but I always wanted to pay you back no matter what, so I’ve made sure to put everything I borrowed into that envelope within a week of borrowing it from you…I just didn’t want you to know yet. I wanted to give it all back to you in a few years to put towards a car, but I think you’d probably rather have a new piano right now? Maybe one that can stay upstairs?”
Maggie looked at Laura, then at the dilapidated piano, then at the envelope full of tightly packed bills. “How many packs of cigarettes is this?” she asked as she gave her sister a hug. She didn’t want Laura to see that she was probably going to cry.
Upstairs, Jerome tucked his freshly yanked tooth underneath his pillow, and ran outside to play catch with his pal, Casper. Maggie went upstairs and looked at the baby tooth under the pillow covered with flying Supermans. It had traces of now-brown blood at the root and caught the glint of the late-afternoon October sun from the window. She cradled it for a few seconds before pulling a fiver from the bulging envelope from her back pocket. She soundlessly slid them together under the flying Supermans and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Thud.
THUD!
Maggie sat in the chilly humidity of the basement, her fingers poised falteringly over the lower register of the ivory keys. The piano sounded as though it was underwater and she sighed heavily. Didn’t her mom know anything? Pianos shouldn’t be put in basements.
THUDDDDDDDD!!!!!!
Just for emphasis.
The cinderblock walls echoed the muddy notes. The piano was a total pile of garbage: The cat had used it for a scratching post for years and the kids had used it for an emotional punching bag. She unhooked her right foot from underneath her left knee where she’d curled it for warmth in the basement’s damp atmosphere, and shook it a little to loosen the pins; it felt as though someone were pouring cool, dry sand over her bare foot.
At the top of the stairs, a shaft of light jutted through the dim basement, lit with only one overhead bulb. A shadow appeared at the top of the stairs, then an ungraceful and angular figure swung down the stairs, three at a time, using the handrails like monkeybars. Laura.
“Hey,” Maggie said, turning her face back to the tops of the ivories, which gleamed in the double light. The tops were slightly scratched, giving them the appearance of the underside of a leaf.
“Hey,” a husky voice echoed, slightly out of breath. “Where’s Mom?”
“I don’t know. I thought she was upstairs?”
“Good. Can I borrow five?”
Maggie’s eyes shot back towards her older sister, standing outlined by the light of the open door. One hand was on her freshly shaved but still faintly blonde head.
“What did you do to your hair? You look like a total asshole.”
“I didn’t ask for an evaluation; I asked to borrow five bucks,” Laura annunciated, a tiny bit irked that she had pointed out the obvious. “And watch your mouth – you swear way too much for an eleven-year-old.”
“What do you need the five bucks for?” Maggie asked discriminatorily, reaching up to close the cover of the keyboard with a firm indication of what her answer should be.
“A pack. I’m out.”
“You’re gonna get cancer like Grandpa Mike and have to shove a piece of plastic up your nose just to breathe before you’re out of high school. You’re going to look stupid and die.”
“I’m prepared to deal with that.”
“Where’s Jerome?”
Jerome was their five-year-old brother.
“He’s in the bathroom, doing lord knows what.”
“What do you mean, ‘lord knows what’? Aren’t you supposed to watch him so he doesn’t fall in the toilet?”
“I have exceptional hearing.” Laura stuck out her hand covered with a black-inked homemade tattoo of an enormous open-mouthed skull. “I’ll hear the splash and come running,” she guaranteed. Impatiently, she said, “Listen, Maggie, you don’t need to buy anything and you get a killer allowance, so you’re the richest little kid in Detroit. What gives? I’ll pay you back.”
“I charge interest, remember?” Maggie gritted her teeth and pulled crumpled bills out of her back jeans pocket. She reached into the other pocket, and pulled out a small flip notebook. She dated a line, and wrote: FIVE BUCKS. She was into page thirty or so. The thirty pages spoke volumes of her innate idealism.
Laura sucked her breath in sharply, imagining that first, blessed hit of nicotine. Suddenly, she seemed to realize the embarrassing quality of the situation, begging a child five years her junior for money, and got flustered and anxious to keep the continuum of motion in play. “Alright. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? I’m just going to the corner.” She turned to go, her sneakers squeaking, but stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing a lime green thermal that emphasized her paleness and freckles. Her eyes, black in the dim light, lifted Maggie’s up to make sure she was listening, “Can you stay upstairs to make sure Jerome’s okay while I’m gone?”
Maggie dropped her eyes and mumbled, “Sure.” Her sister was always covering her ass for something she wasn’t doing, anyway. Always multitasking.
Maggie looked up. She was gone.
SLAM! The door shook the windows.
Maggie reached up to grab hold of the chain switch between her fingers. She pulled. The basement stairs lightened with each step, and she soon found herself in the bright, drenching sun of the living room: beige carpeting, white walls, mirrors, family photos. The air had gone from basement-damp to late-October--indoors, windows-shut dusty.
She heard the water in the upstairs bathroom running, a dull, inner-wall sound. What the hell could a five-year-old be doing in the bathroom with the water running?
Surprisingly, the door opened right up when she test-jiggled the handle. Jerome was standing in front of the mirror, his huge head of black waves sticking out to shield his face. His hand was in his mouth, wiggling something.
“Dude, you got a loose tooth?”
The wide-eyed expression that met Maggie’s eyes was one mixed with surprise and fear, as still-baby fingers tugged and shook cautiously at the rooted foundations of primary teeth.
“Yea –aeah,” Jerome gurgled, spit and blood making a tiny river down his chin. Obviously, brave curiosity was at play, and he wasn’t crying y-e-t…so.
“Well, you need anything? An ice cube? A hug? A knuckle-sandwich?”
She knew this would make him laugh. It worked.
Blood sprayed all over the bathroom mirror in gleeful, red droplets.
“Thtop it. I’m thrying to thoncenthrate.”
Maggie squinted both visibly and mentally as she evaluated the situation. Should she just let her little brother go to town on his tooth without ‘adult’ supervision, or should she do the whole coaching thing that’s expected in these childhood milestones? She recalled her loose teeth memories, and just wanting to be left alone. In fact, she might’ve swallowed half of her loose baby teeth in her sleep, by accident anyway.
“Want me to stick around to watch the fun, buddy?”
“Eh.” Jerome stated, closing his mouth and visibly wiggling the tooth with his tongue. He had a lumpy cheek. He turned his attention to the mirror, opening wide to reveal the multitudinous future of loose prospects. Maggie looked cockeyed at the red-spattered mirror and shrugged. What more could he do, anyway?
“Well, if you need some help, just let me know,” She looked him in the mirrored eyes – the hazels were more calm now. “I’ll be right…” she pointed outside the bathroom door, “out there.”
“Othay,” he agreed, his tongue wiggling away at the tooth, again.
Maggie closed the bathroom door, and went back into the dusty warmth of the living room. Outside, dry, blowing leaves were wreaking havoc on pretty much any plant life that was still in existence on the ground. She looked out the window, and down the sidewalk. The thin, defiant figure of her sister appeared, her very jeans even arguing her every step, their hugeness blowing in the wind; any other direction than her. Her hair just existed. No movement. The original shoulder-length pigtails were just phantom images now. She looked so goddamn ridiculous. Maggie rolled her eyes, but went into the kitchen, anyway, to be there when she came through the door.
“Lose something?” Maggie shot at her as soon as she appeared through the door.
“What?” Laura asked, looking down and around at her sneakers, baggy jeans, green thermal shirt. She felt her pockets. “What’d I lose?” Her eye looked even more green with that shirt. Confused.
“Your hair.” Maggie inquired, “Where’d it disappear to?”
“Eff you,” Laura slapped down a crinkly, plastic supermarket bag on the kitchen countertop as she bent down to unlace her black Adidas. Maggie saw more than one object in the bag.
“Jerome’s losing a tooth right now,” she announced, craning her neck to get a better view of the contents of the bag. Cigarettes and something else…
“Huh?”
“Yeah. He probably has it out by now.”
“Why aren’t you up there with him?”
“I was. He doesn’t need my help, I guess.”
Laura raised her eyebrows for a minute, then finished shaking off her sneakers. She strode past Maggie authoritatively with her bag and within seconds could be heard knocking on the bathroom door. She waited and toed the kitchen floor. “You forgot my change!” she yelled after a full minute. She looked up.
Laura stood in front of her. “Come with me for a sec.”
Down the stairs and into the basement; on went the lone lightbulb.
“Everything okay?”
Laura was at the piano, lifting the top and peering inside its depths where shiny tines lay like musical teeth. “Uhm-hmm,” she responded. “It’s out – the tooth.” A flash of white paper was handed off to Maggie before the update could register.
“What’s this?” Maggie held a slightly wrinkled and very lumpy envelope in her hand. Opening it, she found several singles, fives…a bunch of twenties. “What is this?” she repeated. “Why’s there money in the piano?”
“It’s yours,” Laura said.
Maggie blinked.
“It’s pretty much everything you’ve ever lent to me over the last few years. I knew you never expected me to pay you back, but I didn’t want to disappoint you by following through on that.” She eye-cornered Maggie with a glance and nervously laughed. “You expect nothing but the worst from me…you’ve got every reason: I’ve been a pretty crappy sibling, but I always wanted to pay you back no matter what, so I’ve made sure to put everything I borrowed into that envelope within a week of borrowing it from you…I just didn’t want you to know yet. I wanted to give it all back to you in a few years to put towards a car, but I think you’d probably rather have a new piano right now? Maybe one that can stay upstairs?”
Maggie looked at Laura, then at the dilapidated piano, then at the envelope full of tightly packed bills. “How many packs of cigarettes is this?” she asked as she gave her sister a hug. She didn’t want Laura to see that she was probably going to cry.
Upstairs, Jerome tucked his freshly yanked tooth underneath his pillow, and ran outside to play catch with his pal, Casper. Maggie went upstairs and looked at the baby tooth under the pillow covered with flying Supermans. It had traces of now-brown blood at the root and caught the glint of the late-afternoon October sun from the window. She cradled it for a few seconds before pulling a fiver from the bulging envelope from her back pocket. She soundlessly slid them together under the flying Supermans and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
soft magics
There were kittens everywhere. Crawling over armchairs and scaling bookshelves and popping tiny kitten heads out from behind doors and under beds. Gray kittens and white kittens and orange kittens and black kittens. Patterned kittens, in tortoiseshell and patchwork and tiger stripe and paint splotch. Purebred kittens, with pedigrees and lineages, from the finest schools. Street kittens, with chips on their shoulders and no breeding, but hearts of scrappy gold. Tiny kittens and giant kittens. Skinny kittens and fat kittens. Kittens sleeping and running and pouncing and meowing and stalking and scratching and dancing and eating and planning and dreaming. Kittens everywhere.
Kacey was a dog person. She’d grown up with dogs, liked their loyalty, their playfulness, the way they looked at her with nothing but pure adoration in their eyes. She still had a photo album back at her house that was filled with snapshots of all her old dogs, from Goldie to Snappers to Goldie Jr. She’d pull it out on autumn days when she was feeling nostalgic and remember the good times she’d had with her pups. But she wasn’t at her house now; she was at her aunt Gretchen’s, and Gretchen was most definitely a cat person.
Kacey stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind her, nearly catching a tabby in the doorway. She brushed past the brocade couch and felt Siamese paws grab at her skirt. She gingerly stepped around the chipped wood coffee table where a giant Maine coon sprawled, halfway falling off. Two twin calicos watched her from the top of the china cabinet, their green eyes blinking in unison.
Aunt Gretchen was sitting in the kitchen, playing solitaire and drinking lemon tea that smelled like whiskey. A Russian Blue rubbed against her legs and purred as she flipped the ace of clubs over.
“Hey Auntie. How’s Tuesday treating you?” Kacey dropped her bag by the kitchen table. Three white strays immediately ran over to inspect it.
“Same as always, which is nothing to complain about. Pour yourself a drink, sweetie. I’m almost done here.” Aunt Gretchen didn’t look up as she gestured to the cabinet where she kept the tea bags and the liquor. Kacey grabbed a mug and a bag of English Breakfast. She left the whiskey where it was. A black and white tabby peeked through the half-finished bottle of Jack from the other side, the glass distorting its oversized head, making its already huge kitten eyes immense. Kacey closed the cabinet.
As Kacey put the water on to boil, Aunt Gretchen kept at her cards, alternately mumbling to herself and throwing out conversation to her niece.
“How’s your mum doing? Been to the doctor yet?”
“No. She’s okay. I told her what you said, but… She says she’s okay.”
Aunt Gretchen let out a sad sigh. The Persian on her lap also let out a sad sigh.
“That woman’s stubborn. You know it as well as I do. She won’t listen to anything but doctors and science, but still, you just have to keep hoping.”
“I’ll keep at her, Auntie. Don’t worry.” The teakettle sang out in a tone like a high purr. Kacey lifted it off the stove and poured her mug three-quarters full, leaving just enough room for an ice cube. A Himalayan and a hairless Sphynx sat curled around each other, on top of the refrigerator. When she walked over, the Himalyan was kind enough to open the freezer door for her with its paw.
“And your sister? How’s she?” Kacey shrugged, though her aunt didn’t see it. The Sphynx reached a six-fingered paw out and closed the freezer door.
“I haven’t heard from her in, ah, two months now, I guess.” Kacey pulled a chair out from the table, brushed off the jet-black kitten with the missing ear from the seat, and sat down. “We kind of got into it over the holidays.”
“I thought as much,” Gretchen said, turning over an ace of diamonds. “The cards never lie.”
Kacey sipped her tea and watched her aunt lay down the cards in neat rows. Ace of diamonds on ace of spades. Ten of clubs on six of hearts. Eleven of ill-conceived wishes on thirteen of kittens. Gretchen’s deck was new every time.
“What game are you playing this week?” Kacey asked as the Turkish Angora in the chair across the table mouthed her words back at her as she said them. Kacey thought how much she missed Goldie and Snappers and Goldie Jr. Her dogs would never have been so presumptuous, so rude.
“It’s a prayer for the future, dear. For your sister’s well being.” She flipped the top card over, to the two of hearts. “I think she’s coming home.”
“That would be nice, I guess,” Kacey said, taking another sip of her tea. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Abby coming home. She loved her sister, but she was so difficult, so much work… Kacey closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“Aunt Gretchen?” she asked, not opening her eyes. “Why kittens?”
Gretchen clucked her tongue at the question and Kacey could hear the deck being shuffled. She opened her eyes and watched a Korat stack the cards into a neat pile.
“You need something loyal and smart,” Gretchen answered, picking up the deck again. "Something full of energy but easily managed.” She placed the deck on the table and tapped it. “But really, I think I just like how fluffy they are.”
Kacey looked over to Gretchen, and her aunt looked back at her with bright green eyes. She pushed the cards toward Kacey and shrugged.
“You can pick whatever you like, when it comes down to it. When you’re done with your lessons, and ready to hang your shingle out. But I like kittens the best of all.”
Kacey picked up the deck and cut it three times. Aunt Gretchen began explaining the cards to her in low tones, the same lesson she’d heard before, which card meant good fortune, which card signaled trouble, how to read the face and position. Underneath the table kittens brushed against her ankles and purred under her chair and danced in a circle on their hind legs. Kacey began to deal, and thought about all the puppies she would have someday. Puppies everywhere. She placed the first card and dealt out her future.
Kacey was a dog person. She’d grown up with dogs, liked their loyalty, their playfulness, the way they looked at her with nothing but pure adoration in their eyes. She still had a photo album back at her house that was filled with snapshots of all her old dogs, from Goldie to Snappers to Goldie Jr. She’d pull it out on autumn days when she was feeling nostalgic and remember the good times she’d had with her pups. But she wasn’t at her house now; she was at her aunt Gretchen’s, and Gretchen was most definitely a cat person.
Kacey stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind her, nearly catching a tabby in the doorway. She brushed past the brocade couch and felt Siamese paws grab at her skirt. She gingerly stepped around the chipped wood coffee table where a giant Maine coon sprawled, halfway falling off. Two twin calicos watched her from the top of the china cabinet, their green eyes blinking in unison.
Aunt Gretchen was sitting in the kitchen, playing solitaire and drinking lemon tea that smelled like whiskey. A Russian Blue rubbed against her legs and purred as she flipped the ace of clubs over.
“Hey Auntie. How’s Tuesday treating you?” Kacey dropped her bag by the kitchen table. Three white strays immediately ran over to inspect it.
“Same as always, which is nothing to complain about. Pour yourself a drink, sweetie. I’m almost done here.” Aunt Gretchen didn’t look up as she gestured to the cabinet where she kept the tea bags and the liquor. Kacey grabbed a mug and a bag of English Breakfast. She left the whiskey where it was. A black and white tabby peeked through the half-finished bottle of Jack from the other side, the glass distorting its oversized head, making its already huge kitten eyes immense. Kacey closed the cabinet.
As Kacey put the water on to boil, Aunt Gretchen kept at her cards, alternately mumbling to herself and throwing out conversation to her niece.
“How’s your mum doing? Been to the doctor yet?”
“No. She’s okay. I told her what you said, but… She says she’s okay.”
Aunt Gretchen let out a sad sigh. The Persian on her lap also let out a sad sigh.
“That woman’s stubborn. You know it as well as I do. She won’t listen to anything but doctors and science, but still, you just have to keep hoping.”
“I’ll keep at her, Auntie. Don’t worry.” The teakettle sang out in a tone like a high purr. Kacey lifted it off the stove and poured her mug three-quarters full, leaving just enough room for an ice cube. A Himalayan and a hairless Sphynx sat curled around each other, on top of the refrigerator. When she walked over, the Himalyan was kind enough to open the freezer door for her with its paw.
“And your sister? How’s she?” Kacey shrugged, though her aunt didn’t see it. The Sphynx reached a six-fingered paw out and closed the freezer door.
“I haven’t heard from her in, ah, two months now, I guess.” Kacey pulled a chair out from the table, brushed off the jet-black kitten with the missing ear from the seat, and sat down. “We kind of got into it over the holidays.”
“I thought as much,” Gretchen said, turning over an ace of diamonds. “The cards never lie.”
Kacey sipped her tea and watched her aunt lay down the cards in neat rows. Ace of diamonds on ace of spades. Ten of clubs on six of hearts. Eleven of ill-conceived wishes on thirteen of kittens. Gretchen’s deck was new every time.
“What game are you playing this week?” Kacey asked as the Turkish Angora in the chair across the table mouthed her words back at her as she said them. Kacey thought how much she missed Goldie and Snappers and Goldie Jr. Her dogs would never have been so presumptuous, so rude.
“It’s a prayer for the future, dear. For your sister’s well being.” She flipped the top card over, to the two of hearts. “I think she’s coming home.”
“That would be nice, I guess,” Kacey said, taking another sip of her tea. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Abby coming home. She loved her sister, but she was so difficult, so much work… Kacey closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
“Aunt Gretchen?” she asked, not opening her eyes. “Why kittens?”
Gretchen clucked her tongue at the question and Kacey could hear the deck being shuffled. She opened her eyes and watched a Korat stack the cards into a neat pile.
“You need something loyal and smart,” Gretchen answered, picking up the deck again. "Something full of energy but easily managed.” She placed the deck on the table and tapped it. “But really, I think I just like how fluffy they are.”
Kacey looked over to Gretchen, and her aunt looked back at her with bright green eyes. She pushed the cards toward Kacey and shrugged.
“You can pick whatever you like, when it comes down to it. When you’re done with your lessons, and ready to hang your shingle out. But I like kittens the best of all.”
Kacey picked up the deck and cut it three times. Aunt Gretchen began explaining the cards to her in low tones, the same lesson she’d heard before, which card meant good fortune, which card signaled trouble, how to read the face and position. Underneath the table kittens brushed against her ankles and purred under her chair and danced in a circle on their hind legs. Kacey began to deal, and thought about all the puppies she would have someday. Puppies everywhere. She placed the first card and dealt out her future.
Monday, March 2, 2009
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