Our bungalow was actually two apartments, side by side, under one roof. The neighbor on the other side was a young, single woman. Our house was crammed in comparison, with a cat, and a kid, and a mother, and usually, a live-in-ish boyfriend. It seemed like all the live-in-ish boyfriends had one-syllable names. There were several repeats: “Tom” was probably the most popular. “Tom” always sounded like someone solid and level-headed. They were. But then there was something in my mother that dug out that solid foundation, and made “level-headed” seem like a bad word. And then that particular Tom would stop sleeping over for the whole night, then not showing up quite so much, and finally, whatever it was that made him a distinctive “Tom,” whether it was a Redskins baseball cap, or Marlboro cigarette butts in the flower pot in the tiny sliver of back yard, or a Bruins knit cap that landed on top of the refrigerator, or the pungent scent of Old Spice, would disappear from our lives. And my mother’s slight perfume would take over again, until the next Jim, or John, or Pete, or Bill would start the process all over again.
The “Tom” that I liked best won me over with a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream treat. He was a summer Tom. All of the summer boyfriends seemed to spend a lot more time with me, probably because the days were long and lazy, and sitting on a bungalow porch waiting for the ice cream truck seemed as good a place to be as any. This was the Tom that smoked Marlboros. My mother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house, so that was another rule to pull him outside. Mostly he wouldn’t say anything more to me than “hey there.” Depending on how hot it was, I would either be practicing cartwheels, or begging to water something with the hose, hoping to cool off my feet. Or, on really hot days, I would be content to just sit on the porch step, while Summer Tom sat and smoked.
I got an allowance that translated into fabulous bounty: one ice cream treat a week. The cash was doled out every Monday afternoon. It took a lot of willpower to get past the first rush of instant gratification, an impulse to use it up immediately as it passed from my mother’s hand to my own. Sometimes it went straight to the ice cream vendor, barely touching my fingers before the coins tumbled into his practiced hand. In those moments of weakness, the week stretched ahead, as bleak as a parched wasteland. So I learned to bring my cravings under control. Monday would pass, and Tuesday. Sometimes I got as far as Thursday, finally realizing that the thrill of expectation had a little frisage as much as the taste of real ice cream melting in my mouth. That was when I was being Grown Up Beyond My Years. In truth, an eight-year-old is chronologically challenged, and three days of watching the Sunshine truck approach up the street (such potential), then disappear, might as well have been a month. The very tune hung in the air, the notes almost palpable. Unlike a bakery, where as you walked past you could at least get a whiff of yeasty warmth, the truck left nothing behind. Other kids, luckier, richer than I, contemplated their choices, agonizing over the chocolate/non-chocolate choice, then fine-tuning the decision (Fudgsicle? Sundae cup?).
The day that Summer Tom won me over was hotter than usual for July. It was a Tuesday. That Monday had been one of those days where I recklessly surrendered to a craving for sweet creamy goodness, and now there was no hope in sight for days and days. There was lemon water in the refrigerator, but that wasn’t going to satisfy me. I was jonesing for ice cream, and nothing was to be done.
Soft sounds began -- the endless repetition of jingling bells in a half-recognized tune. I had been sitting on the top porch step, wreathed in Tom’s lazy smoke rings. By instinct, I sat up straight, gazing expectantly to my left. Oh, sweet torture. I imagined all the bright colors of the menu card, the colors saturated, each frozen treat prominently displayed, the text just an afterthought, probably added so that ignorant adults would know what to call things and would order the right thing for their child. (Hearts could be broken when the parent said “ x “ and got “y.”) I gave a heavy sigh. My shoulders slumped. Behind me, I heard the front legs of the chair hit the porch boards, and a sort of shuffling and jingling sound as Tom rearranged himself in the chair.
“Hot day today,” said Tom. “Why don’t you get yourself somethin’ cold.”
I turned around in disbelief. Tom leaned forward with a few coins.
“Go on,” he said, “that ice cream man doesn’t have time to wait for someone as slow as you.”
I grabbed the money with one hand, and with a voice that sounded something like “thanks,” sprinted to the curb. There was one other kid already at the side of the road. We exchanged grins, looking at the magical money in our hands, waiting for the moment of transformation when it turned from hot metal to cold treat. I knew what I wanted. On Monday, I had been all about a Creamsicle. It was probably the citrus tang I was craving, with just a soupcon of creaminess that signaled “treat” to me. But today, in a fog of bliss, I was all about the commitment of a Strawberry Shortcake. There was nothing like a Strawberry Shortcake bar. The color, an artificial, neon bright, surreal pink, with a crumbly coating. All of its fabricated, unreal goodness wrapped around a solid bar of vanilla ice cream. It was a toothsome challenge, but one that I was up for. After all, this was a miracle.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar.” “One Strawberry Shortcake bar. Please.” I had to remind myself about the “please” because I was so intent on getting those sweet syllables right, so he wouldn’t have to ask me a second time, or, even worse, give me the wrong thing.
“One Strawberry Shortcake bar, please” I said to Danny, the ice cream guy. I remembered to say “please” because this was a moment that was special. Before, I might have just thought “please,” and Danny, probably an ex-firefighter who took early retirement and settled on selling ice cream to do something else special in his life, would have seen that “please” in a little kid’s eyes and, not being one of those “teach you a lesson in politeness” grown-ups, pushed to hear the actual words.
Danny handed me the treasure. I took it with my left hand, and handed him the coins with my right. I felt like one of those old balance scales – one hand tipped one way with the weight of the ice cream, and then tipped to center itself when the weight of the coins fell out of my hand and into his.
I knew exactly what would be beneath that paper. But as I peeled it off, it was almost as though as I was doing this for the first time. Crumbs stuck to the wrapper, inviting a little lick. This was the tricky part. It was hot, and heat and ice cream were incompatible on several levels. Too slow, and you were licking a drippy mass of frozen cream. Who could enjoy that? Too fast, and you were crunching chunks of ice cream that could lead to the dreaded “ice cream headache.” Where was the joy in that? I started at the top, nibbling the thinnest peak of the treat. There’s nothing but pure sensation in that first bite. The ice crystals hit the tongue, melting so quickly that the creaminess flooded the mouth with vanilla and strawberry and dreams. The other kid! There was that other kid who was at the curb, waiting for the ice dream truck with me. Now that the first wild cravings had passed, I had a chance to look around and see how the world had changed since I took that first bite. Hmm. The sun still shone in the sky. There were a few fluffy clouds. The air had a certain special warmth that before had been just plain hot, but now was a delicious compliment to the ice cream.
The other kid was down to the stick in some places on his ice cream. He was a sprinter. Maybe he got three, maybe even four ice creams a week. He might have been in danger of becoming a glutton, or maybe had an undiscriminating palate. I would have to keep my eye on him. Or maybe he was just a little kid and would grow out of the gobbling phase. I had high hopes for him. But in the meantime, I had my own ice cream to concentrate on. And Tom! Oh! The founder of the feast, and I had forgotten him from the moment the quarters hit my hot hand.
I looked up. The sun was still high in the sky, but it was behind the bungalow roof. The rays cast themselves out from the side of the house. And there, on the front porch was Tom, sitting, tipped back on a wooden chair, squinting as his last inch of cigarette butt blew smoke into his eyes. He could have been Zeus on Mt. Olympus. He had given some mere mortal the gift of Fire, or Ice Cream. Or whatever. The mortal whose life he had touched was already building a marble altar to him. Tom didn’t show it, but I knew that he was tickled.
This was only one afternoon. This was the only time he ever put his hand into his pocket and pulled out some change and gave it to a little girl for ice cream. I loved him from that moment, and didn’t stop loving him, even though he was turning into a shadow three weeks later, and into a ghost six weeks after that. He represented a giving spirit, even when he wasn’t required to be giving. I asked my mother where he went.
“He had to go,” she said. And by the tone of her voice, I knew not to ask anything more than that. It was ok, though. It was like collecting a butterfly and then having it on display. You knew that one such butterfly existed, and you could imagine another one coming along. For now, eight year old that I was, I was ready to move on.
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
the slap of conclusion
When they finally released me, I left with a fear of women. A fear of what they can do and a stronger fear of what they can't.
How, where I was, I came to the conclusion I did is best left to the guesses of people who can more easily thrust themselves into thought than I can.
It's not that I didn't have time to think. I did. I had time; it ran off me. Then there was the rethinking. But there was such a small population of thoughts in me. The only ones I latched to were vile and absurd, rainwater beading on cracked walls in a building on the outskirts of a city at the pinpoint center of a country that's been left to crumple.
And women never took up residence anywhere, not once that whole time.
Life can spring out of unexpected places. Opportunistically in sidewalks, say. Or science scaring it out of a barren womb. Life can shrink and grow, expand and collapse. Disappear if it wants.
What I came to, the slap of conclusion, was between. Not swollen or skinny, here or away. Not even living or the opposite.
Between, somewhere between.
But real. This fear, my fear, is real as the history of your own life. Women. I hide my head from them. Not from shame, not out of reverence. Not because I'm any more like or unlike them than I've ever been. But because it's the only thing there is now.
How, where I was, I came to the conclusion I did is best left to the guesses of people who can more easily thrust themselves into thought than I can.
It's not that I didn't have time to think. I did. I had time; it ran off me. Then there was the rethinking. But there was such a small population of thoughts in me. The only ones I latched to were vile and absurd, rainwater beading on cracked walls in a building on the outskirts of a city at the pinpoint center of a country that's been left to crumple.
And women never took up residence anywhere, not once that whole time.
Life can spring out of unexpected places. Opportunistically in sidewalks, say. Or science scaring it out of a barren womb. Life can shrink and grow, expand and collapse. Disappear if it wants.
What I came to, the slap of conclusion, was between. Not swollen or skinny, here or away. Not even living or the opposite.
Between, somewhere between.
But real. This fear, my fear, is real as the history of your own life. Women. I hide my head from them. Not from shame, not out of reverence. Not because I'm any more like or unlike them than I've ever been. But because it's the only thing there is now.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
willful abandon
George sits across the restaurant table and talks about art films and important novelists and experimental jazz and Kayley thinks she might scream. Long and loud and deeply, with great feeling. With high passion. George is talking to Kayley about art and novels and music because, he’d told her, those were the things he was most passionate about. Kayley thought either they had different definitions of the word or, more likely, that George was lying through his teeth. He’d been talking for twenty minutes straight, a monologue interrupted only long enough for her to interject polite noises like “Really?” and “Hm,” and it just seemed like an attempt to look cool. Passion wasn’t coolness; it was dirty and messy and unselfconscious. It was the least cool thing of all, and Kayley wanted to scream with it.
“The thing about the Swedish postmodernists,” George says through a swig of merlot, with what he must have thought was a roguish lift of his eyebrow and a self-satisfied chuckle, “is that their Swedishness was completely at odds with their postmodernism—”
Kayley screams, long and loud and deep with passion.
It is their second date.
When you are young, everything is new and shiny, wrapped in possibility. The world is filled with so many stories, and you don’t know what your ending will be. Who knows what amazing career could come out of that new job! Who knows if your exotic and extroverted new roommate will be your new best friend! Who knows what will happen on your next date, how the evening will unfold, what you’ll do, what you’ll talk about, how far you’ll go!
Kayley isn’t young anymore, and she knows exactly how far she’ll go with a well-meaning and boringly handsome corporate artist who cannot stop trying to talk to her about soulless things. Kayley has seen the way things went in previous chapters, and there aren’t any surprises anymore.
George says good-bye at the subway entrance, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say good-bye at all. Kayley’s outburst at dinner hasn’t scared him off; on the contrary, it seems to have made him more interested. This is not a surprise either. George thinks it makes Kayley dangerous and crazy, a free spirit. He thinks it makes her someone uninhibited in bed. Kayley is completely over whatever George might think, and she shakes his hand and turns away when he leans in for a kiss. She rushes down the steps and through the long tunnel to the other end of the platform, and then takes a different set of steps back up again. She isn’t tired and doesn’t feel like going home yet, but that was none of George’s business, after all.
At a bar downtown Kayley sips her gin and tonic and watches the old bartender handle the regulars. She’s way overdressed for the dive bar, wearing a cocktail dress, carrying a purse, her hair pulled up and back. Still, no one pays her any attention. She used to live in the area, and this bar was her favorite. The old pub next door has been turned into a hipster lounge, trafficking in fake grime, contrived decadence. The bar she’s in now though, that’s the real thing. The alcoholics here are passionate about their addiction, and that’s something she can respect.
Kayley needs for something to happen. The itch in her chest that had started in the restaurant with George seemed to grow with each block she walked down, and when she got to this street and the two bars, side by side, she couldn’t decide for a minute. She stood on the sidewalk exactly in between them and considered. She needed excitement, an uproar, a feeling of life. On her right, in the lounge, music pulsed out from the seams of the door and took over the street. Sweet young things went in and came out, laughing and stumbling and making out by the side door and the aluminum trash barrels. Kayley needs for something to happen.
But she also needs something real, and so she walked to her left and stepped into the quiet dive bar, waving hello to the ancient bartender as he mixed her gin and tonic.
“Young people, you don’t know what you have. We didn’t know then, and now you don’t know.”
Kayley has made friends with one of the regulars, an old alcoholic named Jim. She let him bum three cigarettes and then just handed him the pack. In exchange, she asked him for his stories, and he happily began telling them. Like George, Jim speaks in monologue, a steady stream of unbroken narrative. Unlike George, Jim is funny and heartbreaking and unfettered and passionate.
Right now, his passion is about his lost youth, and Kayley’s comparative youngness.
“The fire comes so easy when you’re young, and you think you’ll have it forever, that it’s part of your gut and soul. And then life takes over and you get caught up in it all, all the little battles, and then you wake up one day and poof!" Jim throws his hands into the air so enthusiastically that he tips back a little too far, and Kayley moves her hand out as though to catch him. Jim scowls at the gesture, and throws his hands up again, more emphatically this time, to prove her wrong.
“Poof!” he says, remaining standing. “The fire’s gone. Even the embers, gone out with the wind.”
“What fire are you talking about?” Kayley asks. “Like, activism or building something or—”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever you want. All of ‘em. They all go. Fire to build with and fire to burn it all to the ground.” Jim sighs and sits back on the bar stool and takes the new drink that Kayley’s ordered for him. “Even the fire to burn it all down disappears with age. Without that, how can you start anything new?”
The itch in Kayley’s chest gets stronger, beats a staccato rhythm. She has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss Jim, not sexually, but passionately. But Jim is focused on his gin and lost in thought for whatever used to light his fire and so instead Kayley raises her glass and taps it against the edge of Jim’s and says
“Cheers.”
Fire trucks pass Kayley on her walk home from the subway, their lights blazing, but when she gets to her block her apartment building is still standing. Real life isn’t as poetic as all that. She opens her cell phone on her walk and checks her messages. One is from George, and she deletes it without listening. One's from her sister, and she shuts the phone for the time being.
It’s almost four in the morning but no one’s around outside her building; either the party kids haven’t gotten home yet or they decided to sit out a night for a change. Kayley unlocks her building’s door and walks up three flights of stairs and unlocks her deadbolt and then locks it behind her again. Nothing happened on her way home; the night was without incident, good or bad. How can a person be expected to live without incident? Kayley wonders. Without burning things down or starting things new.
Kayley’s exhausted, and she kicks off her shoes and opens her window and climbs up her fire escape to her roof. She isn’t supposed to be up there, but she’s tired and the view is beautiful and the sun will be coming up soon and the itch in her chest is beating a drumbeat she can’t find the rhythm to. She lies down on the black tar and wiggles into the hard surface, wishing she’d brought a pillow. There’s a rose color at the edge of the horizon, she can see it just past the skyscrapers and the trees. She fights to keep her eyes open as the rose turns to red and orange and gold, to stay awake long enough to see the sky turn to fire in front of her eyes.
“Poof,” Kayley says, and smiles.
“The thing about the Swedish postmodernists,” George says through a swig of merlot, with what he must have thought was a roguish lift of his eyebrow and a self-satisfied chuckle, “is that their Swedishness was completely at odds with their postmodernism—”
Kayley screams, long and loud and deep with passion.
It is their second date.
+++
When you are young, everything is new and shiny, wrapped in possibility. The world is filled with so many stories, and you don’t know what your ending will be. Who knows what amazing career could come out of that new job! Who knows if your exotic and extroverted new roommate will be your new best friend! Who knows what will happen on your next date, how the evening will unfold, what you’ll do, what you’ll talk about, how far you’ll go!
Kayley isn’t young anymore, and she knows exactly how far she’ll go with a well-meaning and boringly handsome corporate artist who cannot stop trying to talk to her about soulless things. Kayley has seen the way things went in previous chapters, and there aren’t any surprises anymore.
+++
George says good-bye at the subway entrance, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say good-bye at all. Kayley’s outburst at dinner hasn’t scared him off; on the contrary, it seems to have made him more interested. This is not a surprise either. George thinks it makes Kayley dangerous and crazy, a free spirit. He thinks it makes her someone uninhibited in bed. Kayley is completely over whatever George might think, and she shakes his hand and turns away when he leans in for a kiss. She rushes down the steps and through the long tunnel to the other end of the platform, and then takes a different set of steps back up again. She isn’t tired and doesn’t feel like going home yet, but that was none of George’s business, after all.
+++
At a bar downtown Kayley sips her gin and tonic and watches the old bartender handle the regulars. She’s way overdressed for the dive bar, wearing a cocktail dress, carrying a purse, her hair pulled up and back. Still, no one pays her any attention. She used to live in the area, and this bar was her favorite. The old pub next door has been turned into a hipster lounge, trafficking in fake grime, contrived decadence. The bar she’s in now though, that’s the real thing. The alcoholics here are passionate about their addiction, and that’s something she can respect.
Kayley needs for something to happen. The itch in her chest that had started in the restaurant with George seemed to grow with each block she walked down, and when she got to this street and the two bars, side by side, she couldn’t decide for a minute. She stood on the sidewalk exactly in between them and considered. She needed excitement, an uproar, a feeling of life. On her right, in the lounge, music pulsed out from the seams of the door and took over the street. Sweet young things went in and came out, laughing and stumbling and making out by the side door and the aluminum trash barrels. Kayley needs for something to happen.
But she also needs something real, and so she walked to her left and stepped into the quiet dive bar, waving hello to the ancient bartender as he mixed her gin and tonic.
+++
“Young people, you don’t know what you have. We didn’t know then, and now you don’t know.”
Kayley has made friends with one of the regulars, an old alcoholic named Jim. She let him bum three cigarettes and then just handed him the pack. In exchange, she asked him for his stories, and he happily began telling them. Like George, Jim speaks in monologue, a steady stream of unbroken narrative. Unlike George, Jim is funny and heartbreaking and unfettered and passionate.
Right now, his passion is about his lost youth, and Kayley’s comparative youngness.
“The fire comes so easy when you’re young, and you think you’ll have it forever, that it’s part of your gut and soul. And then life takes over and you get caught up in it all, all the little battles, and then you wake up one day and poof!" Jim throws his hands into the air so enthusiastically that he tips back a little too far, and Kayley moves her hand out as though to catch him. Jim scowls at the gesture, and throws his hands up again, more emphatically this time, to prove her wrong.
“Poof!” he says, remaining standing. “The fire’s gone. Even the embers, gone out with the wind.”
“What fire are you talking about?” Kayley asks. “Like, activism or building something or—”
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever you want. All of ‘em. They all go. Fire to build with and fire to burn it all to the ground.” Jim sighs and sits back on the bar stool and takes the new drink that Kayley’s ordered for him. “Even the fire to burn it all down disappears with age. Without that, how can you start anything new?”
The itch in Kayley’s chest gets stronger, beats a staccato rhythm. She has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss Jim, not sexually, but passionately. But Jim is focused on his gin and lost in thought for whatever used to light his fire and so instead Kayley raises her glass and taps it against the edge of Jim’s and says
“Cheers.”
+++
Fire trucks pass Kayley on her walk home from the subway, their lights blazing, but when she gets to her block her apartment building is still standing. Real life isn’t as poetic as all that. She opens her cell phone on her walk and checks her messages. One is from George, and she deletes it without listening. One's from her sister, and she shuts the phone for the time being.
It’s almost four in the morning but no one’s around outside her building; either the party kids haven’t gotten home yet or they decided to sit out a night for a change. Kayley unlocks her building’s door and walks up three flights of stairs and unlocks her deadbolt and then locks it behind her again. Nothing happened on her way home; the night was without incident, good or bad. How can a person be expected to live without incident? Kayley wonders. Without burning things down or starting things new.
Kayley’s exhausted, and she kicks off her shoes and opens her window and climbs up her fire escape to her roof. She isn’t supposed to be up there, but she’s tired and the view is beautiful and the sun will be coming up soon and the itch in her chest is beating a drumbeat she can’t find the rhythm to. She lies down on the black tar and wiggles into the hard surface, wishing she’d brought a pillow. There’s a rose color at the edge of the horizon, she can see it just past the skyscrapers and the trees. She fights to keep her eyes open as the rose turns to red and orange and gold, to stay awake long enough to see the sky turn to fire in front of her eyes.
“Poof,” Kayley says, and smiles.
Friday, April 10, 2009
sirens
The sirens went off every Saturday at noon. The boy was always surprised, but then remembered that it was only a test. No tornadoes were coming.
What would happen if a tornado came at noon on a Saturday, would everyone just continue pushing their carts down the produce aisle and making sandwiches and folding the laundry? Would they hear the noise before it was too late and run to the far corners of their basements. Would they have time to save the dog?
Why hadn't any adults thought of this problem? They were supposed to be in charge.
This is what he was thinking when his Grandpa came into the room.
The boy's Grandpa was a kind old man, soft around the middle, with deep creases in his face. He'd raised the boy since his son dropped the boy off for the weekend and never came back. It didn't effect the boy much, he was so young, but to his Grandpa it meant a lot. He knew he had to be better than a father, better than a mother, better than a family.
And he was better. He raised the boy with more attention and love than his son ever could have.
The old man was sick though, but they still went about their daily routines, the boy’s Grandpa pretending he wasn't getting weaker and the boy pretending that he didn't notice.
The boy took on many of the tasks the old man couldn't manage anymore. He cooked their meals and helped with the cleaning. He did a good job too. He had never gone to school because his grandfather didn't believe in it, but he had managed to learn enough along the way.
Now it was his grandfather who was startled by the sirens, and every Saturday the boy had to dry the old man's eyes and reassure him they were safe.
The only thing the old man had any energy for was destroying his belongings.
He'd push glasses off the table to watch them shatter. He’d tear houseplants out of their pots. The boy didn't mind because it was something he used to do when he was little. And because it made his Grandpa happy, the boy would sometimes help.
Their favorite thing to do was to tear the pages out of books. Sometimes they'd spend the whole afternoon shredding one text after another. Reader's Digest, War and Peace, The Joy of Cooking. Even the Bible. Their house looked as though a small tornado had made its way inside and devoured everything in sight, leaving only the walls and furniture intact.
When it was time for his Grandpa to die, the boy helped him into his best suit, now worn thin at the knees and elbows. The boy cooked and they talked and laughed all morning.
When they ran out of things to say, the boy led his Grandpa to his room and placed a pillow beneath his head. He crawled into bed next to the old man, and this time when the sirens went off, it was the boy who cried. When the sirens stopped, the boy wiped his eyes, kissed his Grandpa's cold cheek, and walked out the front door.
What would happen if a tornado came at noon on a Saturday, would everyone just continue pushing their carts down the produce aisle and making sandwiches and folding the laundry? Would they hear the noise before it was too late and run to the far corners of their basements. Would they have time to save the dog?
Why hadn't any adults thought of this problem? They were supposed to be in charge.
This is what he was thinking when his Grandpa came into the room.
The boy's Grandpa was a kind old man, soft around the middle, with deep creases in his face. He'd raised the boy since his son dropped the boy off for the weekend and never came back. It didn't effect the boy much, he was so young, but to his Grandpa it meant a lot. He knew he had to be better than a father, better than a mother, better than a family.
And he was better. He raised the boy with more attention and love than his son ever could have.
The old man was sick though, but they still went about their daily routines, the boy’s Grandpa pretending he wasn't getting weaker and the boy pretending that he didn't notice.
The boy took on many of the tasks the old man couldn't manage anymore. He cooked their meals and helped with the cleaning. He did a good job too. He had never gone to school because his grandfather didn't believe in it, but he had managed to learn enough along the way.
Now it was his grandfather who was startled by the sirens, and every Saturday the boy had to dry the old man's eyes and reassure him they were safe.
The only thing the old man had any energy for was destroying his belongings.
He'd push glasses off the table to watch them shatter. He’d tear houseplants out of their pots. The boy didn't mind because it was something he used to do when he was little. And because it made his Grandpa happy, the boy would sometimes help.
Their favorite thing to do was to tear the pages out of books. Sometimes they'd spend the whole afternoon shredding one text after another. Reader's Digest, War and Peace, The Joy of Cooking. Even the Bible. Their house looked as though a small tornado had made its way inside and devoured everything in sight, leaving only the walls and furniture intact.
When it was time for his Grandpa to die, the boy helped him into his best suit, now worn thin at the knees and elbows. The boy cooked and they talked and laughed all morning.
When they ran out of things to say, the boy led his Grandpa to his room and placed a pillow beneath his head. He crawled into bed next to the old man, and this time when the sirens went off, it was the boy who cried. When the sirens stopped, the boy wiped his eyes, kissed his Grandpa's cold cheek, and walked out the front door.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
the frown
Mama always said I came out with a frown on my face. I never cried, I just opened my eyes and frowned. She says it was the darndest thing. All my brothers and sisters cried.
Well, Russell cried after he fell to the floor. Doc couldn’t keep his hands on him. Slippery little bastard. That’s just what he is to this day. He’s always lying and thieving, and the law just can’t seem to keep their hands on him for very long.
We all called him Slick when we was growing up.
Me, I frowned. So I got called Sad Face. Matter of fact, three people to this very day call me Sad Face - Sissy, Slick and Bernard. I never much cared to be called Sad Face, but I have to admit they had a point. I can’t even smile. Not a proper upturned smile like Sissy could make.
I smile in my head, and what’s on my face is an upside down version. Looks pathetic. I’ve stopped even trying.
So either the name wore off on me, or maybe it was imprinted on me from the moment I came out of Mama. Maybe the frown sealed the deal.
Well, Russell cried after he fell to the floor. Doc couldn’t keep his hands on him. Slippery little bastard. That’s just what he is to this day. He’s always lying and thieving, and the law just can’t seem to keep their hands on him for very long.
We all called him Slick when we was growing up.
Me, I frowned. So I got called Sad Face. Matter of fact, three people to this very day call me Sad Face - Sissy, Slick and Bernard. I never much cared to be called Sad Face, but I have to admit they had a point. I can’t even smile. Not a proper upturned smile like Sissy could make.
I smile in my head, and what’s on my face is an upside down version. Looks pathetic. I’ve stopped even trying.
So either the name wore off on me, or maybe it was imprinted on me from the moment I came out of Mama. Maybe the frown sealed the deal.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
town of planks
Sunlight mounted the room as pyramids. The heat, and there was so much of it, coughed up a sleazy barroomish haze. I was choking on the humidity, but the windows had long since swollen stuck and I'd promised I'd wait there.
This was around the holiday, but after.
The town—three irregular peels of streets hemmed by shops filled with dunes of souvenirs—was in its midweek slump. It was like how it becomes when visitors leave after the on-season finally gasps to a close. Only then it’s stiller and we sleep easy.
I'd been a beast, something slovenly and low. So when she'd said, "Wait, I need this," with stabbed-through urgency, I realized this might be the chance I thought I'd never have to bounce back to being the way I'd always imagined I could.
She wasn't from here. She was another of those who filtered in and out during that brief stretch when the weather lets up and unfreezes the lakes. Her features were toneless; she didn't stay for long, but we kept in touch over a diminutive pile of years. I'd pay for tickets to visit her in the denser southern part of the state.
For the telling, she'd managed to tug extra life out of her time off, so I said I'd be here and I was, drained-feeling, asphyxiated and fluvial in the hot room.
Then the sun got lower and I finally heard the gravelly sound of her approach. Looking out, I saw her mouth hitched into something like a grin through the snare of her windshield. What she'd put to me, I knew then, would not be what I'd wanted.
This was around the holiday, but after.
The town—three irregular peels of streets hemmed by shops filled with dunes of souvenirs—was in its midweek slump. It was like how it becomes when visitors leave after the on-season finally gasps to a close. Only then it’s stiller and we sleep easy.
I'd been a beast, something slovenly and low. So when she'd said, "Wait, I need this," with stabbed-through urgency, I realized this might be the chance I thought I'd never have to bounce back to being the way I'd always imagined I could.
She wasn't from here. She was another of those who filtered in and out during that brief stretch when the weather lets up and unfreezes the lakes. Her features were toneless; she didn't stay for long, but we kept in touch over a diminutive pile of years. I'd pay for tickets to visit her in the denser southern part of the state.
For the telling, she'd managed to tug extra life out of her time off, so I said I'd be here and I was, drained-feeling, asphyxiated and fluvial in the hot room.
Then the sun got lower and I finally heard the gravelly sound of her approach. Looking out, I saw her mouth hitched into something like a grin through the snare of her windshield. What she'd put to me, I knew then, would not be what I'd wanted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society
Dear Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society Members,
Mr. Seymour Reid, former Director of the Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society, now Assistant Director of same said Society, is a man of operational salaciousness. That is to say that, since our incorporation, he made the workings of our Society look infinitely sexier than they actually were.
Turns out Seymour Reid is a rat. That is the reason that the Board of the Society has hacksawed a leg from the chair of his appointment.
And now that we've identified him as rat, let us tell you what type of rat he is: He is pack rat. Yes, that horrid sort of rat who scrounges life's flotsam and jetsam, like a greedy squirrel guzzling more than his fair share of acorns. Reid's apartment teemed with canister upon canister of original prints of one-off films, coiled copies of luminary cinematic cartographic works of all genres: Drama, comedy (black and romantic and slapstick), chick flick, foreign, pornographic, and horror.
The list goes on, but if you're not getting the gist, well frankly there's something wrong with you. Maybe you should consider our continuing education course SRCCS095: Cartographic Cinema Studies for Beginners, Returning Students, and Complete Dolts.
Next round of classes start in mid-June.
But back to thick of the plot: When the Society's "alleged" "remote" "film shed"—the one that "only he" had "keys" to or knew the "location" of but couldn't map from "memory"—"allegedly" "burned" "to the ground", we members of the Society all sobbed together over our collective misfortune.
The insurance money came through though, and we cooed at all the zeroes that trailed the 7. Remember how we cooed? Oh we cooed. But no amount of cooing could ever quell the tremendous sense of loss we felt. Am I right?
Remember how, in the Twinesdale Library's Community Room, we all talked for what felt like weeks about how it didn't matter that we didn't have a single masterpiece remaining to fill what would have been, without all the talking, an evening silence and charting of coordinates? We shared our feelings, became One, which is so much more than Many.
It felt romantic, didn't it, to be missing something loved by so few? It did.
But the shed? There were never any films stored there. That shed may as well have been a leprechaun crowned king of the Bermuda Triangle, because it never existed.
This pack rat, our rat, (now) Assistant Director Mr. Seymour Reid, was at home every night, hosting private showings from our archives for a party of one.
He used an antique film projector to disperse the images and dialogue that express who were are over his filthy, off-white living room wall. He'd constructed his furniture out of some of the canisters and used others as artistically painted wall-hangings, and still others he used to warm tortillas on his stove. He was, almost literally, completely surrounded by things that are and should have always been ours.
Well, we've reclaimed them! They are in their rightful hands once more. Our hands. The Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society's hands. Now please set down those towers of life-saving canisters and smack your hands together in a little clap.
Haha. I'm giddy, giggly! Can you tell? But in all seriousness...
The rumors will continue to grow, and the Society’s official position is: Let them.
Let them be like a desert overrun with Jumping Cholla Cactus. Let them be like Romanian infants gone stir crazy in their cribs, who gets more aloof and angry as their flesh and bones bellow toward adolescence. Let them be like a bathtub full of snakes in a place where mice don't exist, so the snakes feast on each other until the strongest becomes the sum of their total.
But please, be civil when you see Mr. Seymour Reid at our meetings. And please continue to make your membership dues payable to him. The Society is his namesake, after all.
Sincerely,
The Board
Seymour Reid Cartographic Cinema Society
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Good Boy
I'd heard him scuttling across the floor of my bedroom all that morning, his claws tapping on the hardwood each time he came over to check if I was awake. He wanted to go on a walk and I was, in his opinion, rested enough. As I slid my legs off the bed and pushed myself upright he became excited and started doing little figure 8's by the door. I pulled myself into my pants and shirt and we headed outside.
While we were walking I noticed his claws were still making the same clicking sound and I decided to cut his nails when we got
inside. We returned up the stairs and he looked at me expectantly, waiting for his treat. Normally I just drop it on the floor, but this time I made him come get it out of my hand so I could snatch his collar. He crouched and backed away, but I was too fast. I dragged him into the kitchen and got the clippers.
I'd just started on the third leg when it happened. I misjudged the length of the nail and he yelped and jerked his paw from my hand. As the thick red liquid started bubbling from the wound I flinched and reached for the dishtowel hanging on the oven door. The blood was spilling on his chest and I tried to apologize as I wiped it from his fur, but he just looked at me and began to shake. I wrapped the dishtowel over the wound, hastily finished the job and freed him from my embrace.
He stood on the foot well and didn't appear to be in pain, but something would have to be done to stop the bleeding. He sat down and started licking his foot and I got some gauze and tape, competing with his tongue as I secured the bandage. He followed me into the living room, seemingly ok with his new footwear, and plopped down on his blanket next to the couch.
Later that day he got up and started across the room. I looked up from my book and noticed that the bandage was now completely red, so I rose and followed the little trail of paw prints he left on the floor from his bed to his water dish. I watched as he casually lapped up the water, ignoring the growing pool of red liquid forming around his foot. I reached down to lift his leg and the soaked bandage came off easily in my hand. As I secured a new larger bandage around his paw he continued to drink, annoyed at my interference. I cleaned the prints off the floor and left the house for the afternoon.
When I returned later that evening, I again found the room covered in small red footprints. I followed them into the kitchen and then into the living room, where the footprints were concentrated around my dog, asleep on his blanket. I changed his bandage once more and cleaned the floors, but the bleeding continued throughout the night and by morning I was worried.
I phoned the veterinarian and she suggested we come in, so I loaded him in the car, the blood pooling around him on the seat. I apologized to the Vet for the mess we'd made in the waiting room, but she was kind and said not to worry, that sort of thing happened all the time. She cauterized the wound and sent us off, but by the time we got home it was bleeding again. I took him back that evening, but that time only an hour or two passed before it opened up again. We repeated this many times over the next few days, until I finally convinced her to teach me how to cauterize the wound at home. It seemed to work for a while, but after some time the effect of my repeated soldering dwindled to nothing.
As the weeks passed I became increasingly consumed with his care, but no matter what I tried his condition remained the same. I made him a series of washable bandages that I changed many times a day, but he still bled through them while I was at work or sleeping. I spent most of my free time cleaning up the marks and stains he'd leave in the apartment, eventually buying scraps from carpet stores to cover the areas with the heaviest traffic. At night he slept in the bathtub on a little pile of blankets, a small river of blood flowing steadily down the drain.
The first few months were hard, but I'm getting used to it now. When we walk around the neighborhood he leaves a trail of footprints that becomes almost a solid line if it doesn't rain for a while. Everyone knows about us, and most cross the street when they see us coming. It feels as though every surface in our apartment is saturated with his blood, but I no longer mind. I've stopped scrubbing the floors, I've stopped changing the carpet scraps, and I've stopped making him sleep in the tub. I let him sleep in the bed with me now.
While we were walking I noticed his claws were still making the same clicking sound and I decided to cut his nails when we got
inside. We returned up the stairs and he looked at me expectantly, waiting for his treat. Normally I just drop it on the floor, but this time I made him come get it out of my hand so I could snatch his collar. He crouched and backed away, but I was too fast. I dragged him into the kitchen and got the clippers.
I'd just started on the third leg when it happened. I misjudged the length of the nail and he yelped and jerked his paw from my hand. As the thick red liquid started bubbling from the wound I flinched and reached for the dishtowel hanging on the oven door. The blood was spilling on his chest and I tried to apologize as I wiped it from his fur, but he just looked at me and began to shake. I wrapped the dishtowel over the wound, hastily finished the job and freed him from my embrace.
He stood on the foot well and didn't appear to be in pain, but something would have to be done to stop the bleeding. He sat down and started licking his foot and I got some gauze and tape, competing with his tongue as I secured the bandage. He followed me into the living room, seemingly ok with his new footwear, and plopped down on his blanket next to the couch.
Later that day he got up and started across the room. I looked up from my book and noticed that the bandage was now completely red, so I rose and followed the little trail of paw prints he left on the floor from his bed to his water dish. I watched as he casually lapped up the water, ignoring the growing pool of red liquid forming around his foot. I reached down to lift his leg and the soaked bandage came off easily in my hand. As I secured a new larger bandage around his paw he continued to drink, annoyed at my interference. I cleaned the prints off the floor and left the house for the afternoon.
When I returned later that evening, I again found the room covered in small red footprints. I followed them into the kitchen and then into the living room, where the footprints were concentrated around my dog, asleep on his blanket. I changed his bandage once more and cleaned the floors, but the bleeding continued throughout the night and by morning I was worried.
I phoned the veterinarian and she suggested we come in, so I loaded him in the car, the blood pooling around him on the seat. I apologized to the Vet for the mess we'd made in the waiting room, but she was kind and said not to worry, that sort of thing happened all the time. She cauterized the wound and sent us off, but by the time we got home it was bleeding again. I took him back that evening, but that time only an hour or two passed before it opened up again. We repeated this many times over the next few days, until I finally convinced her to teach me how to cauterize the wound at home. It seemed to work for a while, but after some time the effect of my repeated soldering dwindled to nothing.
As the weeks passed I became increasingly consumed with his care, but no matter what I tried his condition remained the same. I made him a series of washable bandages that I changed many times a day, but he still bled through them while I was at work or sleeping. I spent most of my free time cleaning up the marks and stains he'd leave in the apartment, eventually buying scraps from carpet stores to cover the areas with the heaviest traffic. At night he slept in the bathtub on a little pile of blankets, a small river of blood flowing steadily down the drain.
The first few months were hard, but I'm getting used to it now. When we walk around the neighborhood he leaves a trail of footprints that becomes almost a solid line if it doesn't rain for a while. Everyone knows about us, and most cross the street when they see us coming. It feels as though every surface in our apartment is saturated with his blood, but I no longer mind. I've stopped scrubbing the floors, I've stopped changing the carpet scraps, and I've stopped making him sleep in the tub. I let him sleep in the bed with me now.
Friday, February 13, 2009
allesthesia
The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and runs an ivory comb through its long, ghostly hair. The comb, thinks Elizabeth, looks like the type that Victorian ladies used to use to pin their hair up, an ornately carved piece that fits perfectly in the hand, ivory from a real elephant or a real whale or a real something that used to be alive. Just the same as the ghost used to be.
The ghost is dead. Transparent. Overall deceased-looking. The comb is dead and solid and as real as any other object in Elizabeth’s room.
The ghost is wearing a dressing gown. The ghost is wearing a nightgown under a dressing gown. The ghost is humming softly to itself as it combs through the insubstantial wisps. The ghost raises its head and looks straight through Elizabeth, deep, gaping holes where its eyes should be, but aren’t.
Elizabeth thinks how strange the word “comb” is, how it’s one of those words that loses its meaning with repetition. It’s an odd word to spell out, too, with that strange combination of the M and the B. She would close her eyes to visualize the word spelled out, but unlike the ghost, she can’t see without eyes, and it’s important to her to be able to see right now. Now, with a ghost with no eyes at the end of her bed.
Sydney is down the hall, in the kitchen. She is probably making toasted peanut butter and jelly, her favorite before-bed snack. She is probably untying the twist-tie on the bread, pulling out two pieces from the middle of the loaf, putting them in the toaster. She is probably laying out the peanut butter, the jelly, the knife and plate. Sydney is doing all of this without any idea that at the same exact moment there is a dead woman in her bedroom, staring at and through Elizabeth. Sydney has always been Elizabeth’s greatest defender but this time Sydney isn’t there. She is in the kitchen and she is not thinking that Lizzie is maybe in trouble, maybe paralyzed with fear. She is probably thinking about how she hopes she doesn’t burn the toast.
(Another ghost lives in the space between their kitchen wall and the wall of the adjoining apartment. Every night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. it floats into their neighbor’s kitchen and begins to make a ghostly meal. It chops nonexistent vegetables, dices spectral meat, stirs unreal pots of stew that nevertheless come to a real boil. One night, months from now, Elizabeth and Sydney’s neighbor will wake from a strange dream about a woman he once loved, and he will stumble to the kitchen doorway. He will be searching, he thinks, for a glass of water, and he will see his ghost standing at the stove, stirring a stew that will never be real enough to eat. He will look at it, and he will whisper, “Elizabeth,” shocked and hopeful. Not Elizabeth his neighbor with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice, but Elizabeth, the woman he once loved.
His ghost has no eyes either, only those same dark, gaping holes, but it seems like something’s buried down there, if only he could stare deep enough.)
Up and down, up and down the comb goes through the ghost’s long hair. Over and over, mesmerizing.
The ghost is dead. Transparent. Overall deceased-looking. The comb is dead and solid and as real as any other object in Elizabeth’s room.
The ghost is wearing a dressing gown. The ghost is wearing a nightgown under a dressing gown. The ghost is humming softly to itself as it combs through the insubstantial wisps. The ghost raises its head and looks straight through Elizabeth, deep, gaping holes where its eyes should be, but aren’t.
Elizabeth thinks how strange the word “comb” is, how it’s one of those words that loses its meaning with repetition. It’s an odd word to spell out, too, with that strange combination of the M and the B. She would close her eyes to visualize the word spelled out, but unlike the ghost, she can’t see without eyes, and it’s important to her to be able to see right now. Now, with a ghost with no eyes at the end of her bed.
Sydney is down the hall, in the kitchen. She is probably making toasted peanut butter and jelly, her favorite before-bed snack. She is probably untying the twist-tie on the bread, pulling out two pieces from the middle of the loaf, putting them in the toaster. She is probably laying out the peanut butter, the jelly, the knife and plate. Sydney is doing all of this without any idea that at the same exact moment there is a dead woman in her bedroom, staring at and through Elizabeth. Sydney has always been Elizabeth’s greatest defender but this time Sydney isn’t there. She is in the kitchen and she is not thinking that Lizzie is maybe in trouble, maybe paralyzed with fear. She is probably thinking about how she hopes she doesn’t burn the toast.
+++
(Another ghost lives in the space between their kitchen wall and the wall of the adjoining apartment. Every night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. it floats into their neighbor’s kitchen and begins to make a ghostly meal. It chops nonexistent vegetables, dices spectral meat, stirs unreal pots of stew that nevertheless come to a real boil. One night, months from now, Elizabeth and Sydney’s neighbor will wake from a strange dream about a woman he once loved, and he will stumble to the kitchen doorway. He will be searching, he thinks, for a glass of water, and he will see his ghost standing at the stove, stirring a stew that will never be real enough to eat. He will look at it, and he will whisper, “Elizabeth,” shocked and hopeful. Not Elizabeth his neighbor with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice, but Elizabeth, the woman he once loved.
His ghost has no eyes either, only those same dark, gaping holes, but it seems like something’s buried down there, if only he could stare deep enough.)
+++
Neighbor-Elizabeth knows about portents and she knows that the eyeless ghost at the end of her bed is not a good one. Elizabeth’s mother was a gypsy, after all, and she instilled in her daughter the knowledge of how the world really works, along with a healthy dose of fear. Elizabeth knows what things to be afraid of, which signs are meant to reassure or give fair warning. She is not afraid of muggers, of flying, of getting hit by a car or caught in a fire. Her mother taught her that death comes in cleverer disguises.Up and down, up and down the comb goes through the ghost’s long hair. Over and over, mesmerizing.
+++
+++
(“A candle to burn to keep out the spirits,” her mother tells her, “and this charm to ward off the evil eye. This other one’s from your grandmother’s grandmother, for good fortune and safe travel, and… Are you even listening?” Elizabeth was, but not in the way her mother meant. “If you don’t take this seriously, who knows what will happen to you? The world is not a safe place, tehara. The world is not soft.” But Elizabeth is only fourteen and her idea of danger is still undeveloped. She nods and pretends to listen while she doodles hearts and arrows in her notebook, mixing her initials with various crushes, casting unwitting love spells of her own.)
+++
Elizabeth is sitting upright at the head of her bed, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. The ghost’s gaze hasn’t changed, but Elizabeth knows that now she is being looked at, not through. She can’t imagine this is a good change. From the kitchen she hears the toaster pop and a sharp intake of breath as Sydney touches the hot bread and quickly drops it on her plate. Elizabeth can hear all those little sounds; they are that close. She would just have to whisper, “Syd,” and Sydney would hear her, come down the hall, find out what was wrong, save her. But Elizabeth knows inevitabilities as well as she knows omens, and she is on a high-speed train hurtling toward a clearer and clearer fate, and no whisper or shout will derail it now. Why even try.
+++(When their neighbor addresses his ghost by his departed beloved’s name, nothing happens at all. The ghost keeps stirring, staring at him with no eyes, and the ghostly pot keeps boiling, and the seconds tick by. But that is not what he will see. He will imagine a spark of recognition. He will think he sees his own Elizabeth somewhere in the depths of those black spaces. He will feel the air around him change to spring, to be infused with love like he used to know it, making the world Technicolor again. He will shake his head and turn around, glass of water forgotten, and he will go back to bed, to sleep. He will think it was a dream. He will feel somehow reassured.)
+++ The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and stops combing its long, long hair. It stares at Elizabeth without eyes, and wisps of hair fly around its face, lifting and falling as though in a breeze. Elizabeth’s mother taught her about portents and warnings, safety and danger, and somewhere in the back of her mind are all those lessons still. Elizabeth lets go of her legs and comes to her knees, leans forward. The ghost holds out its ivory comb to her, a solid thing in its spectral hand. The details of the engraving are so delicate, so intricate, so amazing, and their swirls and symbols never seem to end. In the kitchen, Sydney has started humming, and Elizabeth wishes she could stop for a moment and kiss her. Instead, Elizabeth reaches out her hand.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Upon arriving early in the morning, I was paired with a very experienced hospice nurse. The first patient’s room we entered was occupied by a man in his 70’s and his wife, who was watching her husband die of metastatic lung cancer. He had been a client of the hospice unit for about two or three weeks and she hadn’t left his side. In his room was his bed draped lovingly with a handmade blanket, a collection of family photos, and his wife’s cot in the corner, impeccably dressed with sharp plaid sheets. Her suitcase was packed with care, neatly pushed under the cot. The nurse told me she had done this every morning, by 7 o’clock, since her husband’s admission. I remember thinking how strange packing that bag would have been. What type of clothes are appropriate for this setting and, worse, how many days worth should be brought?
The man in the bed had recently made a significant change in condition. Two days prior to my meeting him, this dying man had stopped speaking, stopped responding, and slowly slipped into what appeared to be unconsciousness. He was receiving ample pain medication as well as a medication to help keep his airway as clear as possible. This man with whom I never had the pleasure of speaking took slow, irregular breaths, often with many seconds between them. I noticed that his breaths produced a unique, calming rhythm as we all sat with him in near silence.
When we walked back into the corridor, the red-haired woman with the tightly packed suitcase ran to us with an unmistakable urgency. “I think something has happened” she whispered, “He hasn’t taken a breath in a long time.” The nurse and I hurried into the man’s room. Indeed, his slow, off-tempo respirations were eerily absent this time. He lay there, in his bed, without even his chest moving up and down. The three of us stood surrounding him, saying nothing, watching. Then after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the nurse went to the nurse’s station to retrieve a stethoscope. With it, she listened to the exited man’s silent chest, waiting in vain for any sound to be made. The nurse removed the stethoscope from her ears and took a step back.
“He’s gone” she stated. The man’s wife started to slowly shake and cry quietly. The nurse, who had developed a very special relationship with her, went to her to offer a very soft touch on the arm. Seemingly, with the sensation of this touch, the woman’s quiet tears became one long, loud wail, the sound nearly animalistic. She began to violently shudder, her shoulders wrapping in on her chest.
“Don’t go, Dad” she sobbed. “I won’t know what to do without you.”
I stood alone at the foot of the bed while the nurse and the newly widowed woman cried and touched the peaceful man. I attempted to hold in the tears which threatened to burn my cheeks, but listening to the woman’s guttural pleas to her dead husband forced them from my eyes. While I cried, I began to realize the overwhelming power of lifelong love and the devastation of losing it. I began to envision myself as an old woman, standing by the side of my future husband. I could see our life together, rolling up a screen like such slow film credits; a life of love, of struggle, of joy, gone in one moment. Now, this woman was left to continue a paired life alone. I began to wonder whether the life with this man was worth the devastation of losing him in the end. Would it be better to live and die alone than suffer the pain of such severe loss and longing? Amidst my naive mid-twenties thoughts came a pain in my chest--MY heartache I felt for the broken heart personified standing beside me. At that moment, I knew the depth with which I felt for this stranger’s lost love, all emotion is worth it in the end. However, the END was no longer the finale of some metaphor or extended romance novel. The end of this shared life stood before me in such explicit, blinding detail. Real heartbreak is something my 25 years had no way of preparing me for. So…I cried.
The man in the bed had recently made a significant change in condition. Two days prior to my meeting him, this dying man had stopped speaking, stopped responding, and slowly slipped into what appeared to be unconsciousness. He was receiving ample pain medication as well as a medication to help keep his airway as clear as possible. This man with whom I never had the pleasure of speaking took slow, irregular breaths, often with many seconds between them. I noticed that his breaths produced a unique, calming rhythm as we all sat with him in near silence.
When we walked back into the corridor, the red-haired woman with the tightly packed suitcase ran to us with an unmistakable urgency. “I think something has happened” she whispered, “He hasn’t taken a breath in a long time.” The nurse and I hurried into the man’s room. Indeed, his slow, off-tempo respirations were eerily absent this time. He lay there, in his bed, without even his chest moving up and down. The three of us stood surrounding him, saying nothing, watching. Then after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the nurse went to the nurse’s station to retrieve a stethoscope. With it, she listened to the exited man’s silent chest, waiting in vain for any sound to be made. The nurse removed the stethoscope from her ears and took a step back.
“He’s gone” she stated. The man’s wife started to slowly shake and cry quietly. The nurse, who had developed a very special relationship with her, went to her to offer a very soft touch on the arm. Seemingly, with the sensation of this touch, the woman’s quiet tears became one long, loud wail, the sound nearly animalistic. She began to violently shudder, her shoulders wrapping in on her chest.
“Don’t go, Dad” she sobbed. “I won’t know what to do without you.”
I stood alone at the foot of the bed while the nurse and the newly widowed woman cried and touched the peaceful man. I attempted to hold in the tears which threatened to burn my cheeks, but listening to the woman’s guttural pleas to her dead husband forced them from my eyes. While I cried, I began to realize the overwhelming power of lifelong love and the devastation of losing it. I began to envision myself as an old woman, standing by the side of my future husband. I could see our life together, rolling up a screen like such slow film credits; a life of love, of struggle, of joy, gone in one moment. Now, this woman was left to continue a paired life alone. I began to wonder whether the life with this man was worth the devastation of losing him in the end. Would it be better to live and die alone than suffer the pain of such severe loss and longing? Amidst my naive mid-twenties thoughts came a pain in my chest--MY heartache I felt for the broken heart personified standing beside me. At that moment, I knew the depth with which I felt for this stranger’s lost love, all emotion is worth it in the end. However, the END was no longer the finale of some metaphor or extended romance novel. The end of this shared life stood before me in such explicit, blinding detail. Real heartbreak is something my 25 years had no way of preparing me for. So…I cried.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
a particle through
I'm cutting the shapes of all my concerns into folded sheets of white paper of a standard dimension. I have dilations of apprehension and contractions of doubt, tonight. The moon is cutting through with a cocky grace you can't really be sure of.For now, the sun's absent from the scene, totally blotted by an opposing meridian.
Here's the crux of my problem: I'm terrified that the bulb up there has popped and is forever gone; that it won't ever buoy up again.
It's love, I guess. One that bubbles up your skin, makes you recoil from even gentle touch, and then makes it come off dead in layers. It's a love that impregnates itself in your pores, latches to your tissue and metastasizes.
It's something to love in beaches and parks, bringing stained glass to life, cleaving through dastardly gray clouds, breaking up the dull eave of woe that overhangs winter. It's something to pray for, or beg for if your prayers aren't answered quick enough.
I keep cutting and the scissors start to dull from my constant snips. The result of my work is piling up around me. I'm like the jut of a mountain whose foot has been erased.
Somehow, cutting helps balance the scales of my worry.
There's a pattern that's starting to emerge.
The house is waking up. Slippers scrape softly from all of the rooms and converge in the kitchen. There's drowsy, bad-breathed laughter and the acidic threat of caffeine. There's the dry tumbling sound cereal makes as it gets dumped into a ceramic bowl.
And footsteps once again. Predatory footsteps this time. Many feet gently swarm outside my door. A hand encroaches upon the long brass doorknob.
The door opens without any kind of plea.
Mom shakes me. Dad shakes me. Sister and brother shake me. They take what I've done in handfuls and let it fall over me, laughing.
And the edges of the windows warm with the first indication that there will be another day.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
the caretaker
The caretaker
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.
I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.
That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.
As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.
He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.
The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?
I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.
A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.
The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.
I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.
That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.
As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.
He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.
The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?
I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.
A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.
The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Growing Up
Dad pushed himself back from the table. Looking down at the space he had made between himself and the table he started to speak, but then stopped himself and sighed. He looked over the round kitchen table at my plate. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I just shrugged and pushed the noodles around with my fork. Dad got up heavily, took his dish and walked past me into the family room.
He paused in front of the enormous potted plant that now took up most of that drab little room. Looking up at the canopy it formed above his head, he reached into the branches and plucked a brown leaf in a quick motion. I saw the edges of his mouth turn up slightly. He let the leaf fall to our floor and continued into his room. I heard the TV turn on and looked back down at my plate. I slid forward in my chair and let my feet touch the ground. I collected my plate and put it in the sink, watching the noodles slide slowly into a little pile near the drain.
Dad came out of his room with his small hand shears and started pruning his plant. He took enormous care in this, looking for any errant growth or sign of fatigue. After 10 minutes or so he stuck his thick finger into the soil, took it out and moved it under his nose. He inhaled deeply and went back into his room, returning with a small watering can. He walked past me in the kitchen and filled the can in the sink. Returning to the plant, he poured the water around its base in practiced motions, careful to let each dose absorb before administering the next. When he was done he looked up again into the plant's branches, glanced at me, said goodnight and went to bed.
Every night went like this, I'd come home from school, let myself in and wait for Dad to return from his job. He'd get home, ask me how school was and start dinner. We'd eat in near silence, then he'd watch TV or take care of the plant. When Mom left the plant had been small enough to fit in the corner behind his chair, but in the weeks and months that followed I watched it grow at an alarming rate. Dad was constantly fertilizing, pruning and repotting the plant, and his work paid off.
The plant soon became too large to keep behind the chair and was moved to the main part of the room. A few months later it became so large it blocked the television, so Dad moved the TV into his room. That was ok, I didn't like watching TV with him anyway. He always laughed in places that weren't funny and sighed anytime someone said something he didn't like. I preferred to stay in my room and look at magazines.
One night I awoke to go to the bathroom, which was directly off of the kitchen, and stopped in front of the plant. It was a nice plant really, tall and proud, its branches healthy and heavy. I could still hear the TV coming from Dad's room, but I could also hear him faintly snoring through the door. I looked at the plant again and undid the snap on the front of my pajamas. With my eyes still trained on Dad's door, I took out my penis and peed a little bit into the pot...not a lot, just a little. I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and finished peeing.
Every night for the next few weeks I repeated this act, growing bolder as the weeks went on and my sabotage went undetected. Dad was starting to notice changes in the plant however and his concern with the plant's health increased. The once luminous leaves had started to brown around the edges, slightly at first, but now it was noticeable.
Dad checked out several books from the library to try to diagnose the problem and started brewing up remedies in the kitchen. Fish parts mixed with vinegar, diluted bleach solutions to spray on the leaves, ground mint on the soil to deter pests...but none of his cures had any effect. He became increasingly desperate until one morning he emerged from his room to find 5 or 6 leaves on the floor around the pot where the plant resided. He reached up quickly to touch the plant, horrified when another leaf fell to join its siblings. Still every night I repeated my ritual and every morning he awoke despondent.
He stopped going to work, calling in sick with imagined symptoms that seemed to mirror those of the plant. Weak limbs, no appetite, hair loss-his boss said it sounded serious and agreed to give him a few days to recover. None of this deterred me though, and the plant’s condition continued to worsen. Now whole branches were dying and breaking off and it looked like the plant's days were numbered. I returned home a week later and found Dad sitting on the floor, his shoulders shaking. He was surrounded by the fallen leaves and branches of his plant and I felt the corners of my mouth begin to turn up slightly.
Monday, January 19, 2009
is the heat even on?
1.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.
I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.
I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.
2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.
But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.
Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.
3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.
She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.
Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.
Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.
One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.
My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.
We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.
4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.
Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.
It just happened. It always seems to happen.
She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.
Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.
I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.
5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?
By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.
Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.
6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.
We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.
The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.
Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.
Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.
With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.
Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.
They followed, throttles pulled.
Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.
The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.
7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.
I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.
They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.
The runoff stained the snow bright red.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.
I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.
I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.
2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.
But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.
Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.
3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.
She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.
Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.
Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.
One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.
My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.
We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.
4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.
Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.
It just happened. It always seems to happen.
She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.
Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.
I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.
5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?
By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.
Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.
6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.
We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.
The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.
Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.
Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.
With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.
Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.
They followed, throttles pulled.
Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.
The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.
7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.
I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.
They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.
The runoff stained the snow bright red.
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