The Rising
Poor Ezra’s Almanac/Volume 2/November 2023
Karma Comes Before/Issue 3/March 2024
She has left for the school where she works, so I turn to face her side of the bed. The pillow is shadowed, a circle of peach makeup. She doesn’t wash before sleep. I rise, remove the case to toss in the basket. Later, I will apply a special mixture learned long ago: vinegar, baking soda, lemon. I straighten the bedroom, lining up her tiny shoes, dead mice, returning her cast off clothes to boney hangers. (She is a snake, constantly shedding.) I avoid my own spare closet, the black chalice box-a gift from my dead parents-tucked high on a shelf.
A moment of peace. I kneel down beside the bed to pray.
The baby’s room is another planet, an alternate atmosphere. I am weightless here. I float. Here, I can breathe, enjoy the scents of Vaseline and powder. The light is a pink haze, puffy stars dangle overhead. The baby is beautiful, curled brown hair at her temples, pursed rosebud lips. Her body rises and falls in sleep. Behold! My daughter. My. Daughter. I rest a hand on her back to feel warmth, life, joy.
***
By 10 AM the house is sufficiently neat. The baby plays on the floor with her blocks and books while yeast proofs in a bowl of warm water. At noon, the dough rises in the oven. We eat lunch together at the kitchen table. With a steady hand I spoon pureed vegetable soup into her o-shaped mouth. Later, we stroll in the spring air. Cracked sidewalks lead to more cracked sidewalks, a palm outstretched, lines revealing mistakes, broken promises. Still, we amble under budding trees, pass small sad houses similar to ours. A stray dog follows, sniffing our trail. I resist annoyance, hold out a hand for a sniff. At the deserted playground, we glide on a rusty swing, scuff marks on sand.
On the way back, it sneaks in, a burglar through a back window: the dread of late afternoon. I attempt to untangle, smooth the jumble of dark thoughts emerging. Hail Mary, full of grace. I can’t sustain the prayer. I repeat different, well known words: Seconds lead to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, months to…
The baby naps. I sit hunched at the screen, bathed in computer glow. I examine a nearly empty inbox, my failed search for employment. Not so long ago I led a large parish, fielded untold questions and needs. I spent my days stretched thin between the living and the dying, an adept trapeze artist, balancing, flying, falling.
***
She arrives home at 3:30 PM, begins unravelling the peace I built throughout the day. The boy, eyes covered in bangs, follows close at her heals. He doesn’t greet me, darts to his room, a chipmunk running under a bush. I will not make him a snack, help him with homework. His mother will feed him. His father will collect him for baseball practice. The boy will leave and return in silence, never once meeting my eyes.
She stands at the counter, a dividing line between us. She boils water, crackles open a package of ramen, empties it into a pot. She holds a bowl from beneath, her tongue contorting to catch noodles in her open mouth. At the table I feed little bits of bread to our daughter.
On the counter, her phone repeatedly lights. Some unknown person insists on her attention.
“Must be nice,” she snipes without prompting, “to stay home.”
“You know I’m looking,” I say.
“Look harder,” she says, mouth full.
The thought comes without any warning, becomes words. I turn away from my daughter and say them carefully, as though practiced.
“What if I take her, just go?” I prepare for the roof to crack, collapse, plaster raining down, to shield the baby with my body.
She pauses, says, “When?”
She continues to slurp strands of noodles into her mouth, worms disappearing into an unknowable tunnel. The fork seems bigger than her hand. She is a tiny, bird like person. No, she is a giant who stomps on villages, shattering everything to tiny bits. She is a storm, a hurricane. Or am I these things?
“As soon as possible?”
“Fine. Perfect.”
She finishes, abandons the bowl in a clean sink.
***
Even this last night, we share a bed. Our backs face each other, untouching. She snores. I lay awake in the darkness, my mind flashing, memory’s lightning strike, my failures shocking in the flare, diminishing into waning thunder rumbles. My daughter sleeps in the next room, the calm after the storm, an expected surprise. I watch the window for the slightest glimpse of light. Its gentle fingers reach through the blinds, striping the bed. I whisper words to myself, a mantra, a prayer: I am a father still, her father. I will always be her father.
The House on Crook Road
Trembling with Fear/Horror Tree/Halloween Special, 2023
If he was honest, he’d have said he felt her presence on that first day. The house was cold, as it had always been during his childhood, and the grey November day made it seem more so. The emotions-joy and freedom-felt at the closing were replaced by a nagging uneasiness, like a thin scratchy sweater he couldn’t shed. He hoped his daughter would call. He willed his phone to light, a small-screen firework exploding in his palm. Hey, Dad, she might say, hope everything went well. Can’t wait to see the place. No such luck. The house creaked and groaned with all its familiar sounds. Clark slapped a peanut butter sandwich together. Chewing slowly, he stood at the window over the sink. A reflection, a shape of a person, a woman, formed and then disintegrated in the glass. He held the half-chewed food in his mouth, a dense cud. Outside, the trees distracted, wrestled with the wind, branches scraping along the sides of the sagging house.
***
Morning light stretched across the kitchen, revealing stained linoleum floors, pealing wallpaper. Repeating his last evening’s pose, he sipped coffee, examining the backyard out the window. The barn challenged like a sunburned child, red and pealing, hands on its hips, as if to say, Get on with it, Clark. Fix this place. Get to work. His father famously painted that entire barn with a six-inch brush in one month. Clark mowed the lawns. His mother and his sister Vera weeded the flower beds. They were all long gone now, dying one by one for different reasons, no rhyme or reason to it, everyone but him. Settled at the table he scribbled lists and sketched punctilious plans on a legal pad. He was handy, more than capable of rehabilitating the house. Showering, he imagined pounding feet up stairs. He shut off the water, stood naked and wet in the slow drip silence, listening. He would begin his work outside.
***
He started in the barn, chock full of rusted gardening tools, bicycles, lawn mowers, pieces of wood. Dragged into the light of the yard, the discarded stuff sat awkwardly, reminding him of old people in a nursing home, faded, hunched, lost. He fantasized about turning the place into an Airbnb. I could convert this barn to bedrooms. People might like it here. Energized by inspiration, he continued, resisting a familiar intruding voice, telling him to quit. Always the romantic! it scoffed. He thought of his ex’s negativity. Nothing he did was ever right, ever good enough. Everything he attempted was somehow foolish. He pushed her out of his head, cleaned all morning, stopping only for a second cup of coffee and sandwich.
In the lean-to behind the barn his father once kept a John Deer tractor. Clark stood tentatively for a moment at the doorway of the empty space. The dim light cascaded in slight slivers from the windows. A human form fell across the space before him. He turned in fear. A tiny figure loomed from a corner. Clark approached slowly, stooped to pick up the ragged bunny with a plastic face. Vera’s Baby Bunny. He remembered teasing her about the doll, hiding it. She cried for weeks.
You’re a dirty fighter, Clark, his ex had said, You’re a child. A stupid, dirty fighter.
He threw the doll on the heap for the junk collectors.
***
He managed to work out a daily schedule of breakfast, house work, lunch, nap, reading, a long walk, dinner, bed. He tossed up the noises and images emerging from the corners and crevices of the old house to the effects of change. So much had changed. Moving back here was meant to steady the ship, fix what was broken, heal. God, grant me the courage to change the things I can…
Christmas came. Clark put the tree up in its old place in the living room near the fire. The family Mitch Miller record turned, churning out the favorite tunes. His parents’ wedding photo, with his mother’s red nails contrasting with white lace and his father’s set jaw, asserted itself from the bookshelf. He wondered if he should keep it there, keep it at all. Too many mixed feelings.
How he missed his daughter, Abby! She’d chosen to spend the holiday with her mother.
“I need time, Dad,” she’d said.
He yearned for a drink, called his sponsor, nibbling at a cuticle as he spoke into the phone.
“The holidays are tough. You want to meet somewhere?” his sponsor said.
“No, no. I don’t want to bother you. I got this.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Clark ended the call, unplugged the tree, snapped on the television.
***
Well into spring Clark cleaned, cleared, hauled, stripped, painted, papered, polished, yet the house insisted on its original haggard expression. Fresh paint bubbled, new wallpaper lifted from the wall. In frustration he abandoned his many projects, stalked the ubiquitous antique stores and estate sales in town, searching for fresh furniture to fill the emptied house. Just the right things, that’s what the place needs, he assured himself. He walked along the road, picking up garbage tossed from cars, something he didn’t remember from before. Back in the day, this road was pristine.
He passed a threadbare, grey-faced woman sitting in a shadow. It was almost like she was the shadow, like a charcoal rubbing. He imagined himself blowing his breath toward her, her body breaking up, scattering into the wind.
“You move in down the road?” she said.
“I grew up here,” Clark said, smiling, faking vitality, enthusiasm.
“Nothing can be done there, no sirree. You’d better head back! Head back, that’s right!”
“Take care!” he dismissed, carrying on his false brightness, making his way to the graveyard where his entire family lay buried. The stern Methodist church sat beside it, new (at least to Clark) graffiti scribbled across its side.
***
At night, no matter the season, the wind kicked up and the trees banged into the windows. When it was particularly bad, he’d rise to study the backyard. The trees’ long dark fingers reached up and out like a woman’s graceful but strong hands. Vera playing the piano. He marveled at the trees’ strength and perseverance, hoped they were protecting him, feared they might reach out, suffocate him in their clutches. Sometimes he silently wished they would crash through, remove him, save him.
***
His father’s vegetable garden remained on the east side of the house, needing to be reframed and retilled and replanted. His mother, overburdened by its proliferation of squash, tomatoes, everything, hated the garden. Always the naysayer. Clark remembered believing in his father’s agricultural aspirations, helping plant, water, harvest. He loved picking and eating the sweet strawberries in June.
Exuberant in the early morning sun, he dug and planted and patted. He especially anticipated the pumpkins. He remembered the gourds of his childhood, the pale orange spheres nestled in giant green leaves. I’ll even have a vegetable stand, he speculated, picturing himself sitting on the back step husking armloads of corn.
Finally, Abby will come for a meal.
Summer passed. Each seed, plant, even the weeds, produced only withering, death.
Hands in pockets, he paced between the lines of plants, head drooping. Something shiny caught his eye. He squatted and pulled on the glittering speck, extending to reveal a gold necklace. Something long repressed emerged in his mind, his father snapping the same necklace from his mother’s neck. Clark knelt in the dirt. Rain fell. The dirt turned to mud. He sank further still.
***
At Halloween Clark bought three pumpkins and a packet of cigarettes at the grocery store in town. Settled on the porch, he carved, newspapers spread out beneath him, cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He stabbed out chunks of triangular eyes and toothy grins, gathered and trashed the soggy newspaper, set battery operated tea lights in each stringy hollow. He arranged his feet on the porch railing - the same way his father propped his legs after a long day - draining a cigarette of nicotine.
His mother’s antique clock ticked and tocked while he hunched over a bowl of tomato soup at the kitchen table. A slight smell of her Estee Lauder Cinnabon perfume tugged on his nostrils, made him slightly queasy. The doorbell stayed ominously silent. A stillness replaced the expected footsteps and voices gathering on the front step. The candy bowl on the side server remained full. The pumpkins’ frozen grins blazed into the night. The wind was kicking up. Clark decided to go out.
At Foxies, the bartender wore hilariously terrifying vampire teeth and a powdered white face. Clark blocked him out to focus on the thirty-something woman sitting at a corner table. Abby? He almost shouted his daughter’s name with joy. The woman’s foreign profile shifted into view.
“Lager,” Clark said, snapping back to reality, telling himself a lite beer would be fine. He really needed this. Just this once.
He sat on a barstool, glanced up at a blaring television.
A warmth came across him. He turned. A woman in dark clothes, wearing a cape, sipped a margarita by his side.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Clark replied, taking in her round, ageless face. She had the hooked nose of his mother, the china white skin of his ex, the strong brows of his sister, and Abby’s tiny spray of freckles across her cheeks.
“Aren’t you the guy who bought the house he grew up in?” she said.
“It’s not working out. I can’t fix anything,” he confessed.
She stared at him for what felt like a long time, forever actually. Her eyes were unique-green, bottomless ponds.
“Trust me, you can’t fix it. What’s done is done,” she said.
The bartender set the beer on the bar.
A tear escaped, rolling down Clark’s cheek. He resisted the urge to fall into the woman’s shoulder, collapse into her body, like a tree chopped through its trunk.
“You’re not the worst thing you’ve ever done. You’re not,” she said.
Clark followed her flowing cape out the door.
They drove through town, crossing the railroad tracks, headlights shining into the night. Clark’s cigarette’s tip burned red, tilted slightly out the window. He leaned his head back and dozed, enjoying the pleasing movement of the car, the woman’s scent, her confident control, the steady silence. They continued on this way, leaving the past, he hoped, behind, following the well-worn road into a fortress of trees.
In Which My Own Costumes Betray Me
Cream Scene Carnival, October 2023
I dropped the candy sack by the door. The makeup itched my skin. I stumbled into the darkened kitchen, grabbed a towel, wetted it, wiped off some of the fake blood. I didn’t want to look in the mirror.
Why’s that?
Embarrassed. Parker and Nora and everyone else went to Matt’s. I insisted on trick-or-treating. We used to have such a ball. I love-loved Halloween. Everything about it. The candy corn and the decorations. The- everything.
Keep going.
All the kids were in for the night. I should have headed over to Matt’s, or texted someone. The house was so dark. There was just that light over the stove. I couldn’t remember where Mom went- no note on the counter or anything. I felt very, very-
It’s okay to cry.
I know that.
Veneration
Literaria Magazine/October 2023
Miranda thought her robed and hooded classmates lumbered like eggplants, hauling themselves in purple robes around the cloisters, carefully protecting flimsy candlelight. A few freshwomen wept, rain streaked window faces. She remembered the giddy fear of her first time, not knowing what would come next. Katelyn’s delicately clumsy hands shook for days afterwards.
The bell tower tolled and the procession stopped.
President Flowers entered, identified by her long strides.
“Let there be light in darkness!” she exclaimed. A plaintive soprano soared from the crowd, singing the College anthem.
Miranda’s feet throbbed, rammed into those damned thrift store black loafers, but the togetherness of this final Candle Night teased normally blocked emotions. Where would she be next year? Med school? Research? God forbid she ended up back in Pittshead working at Good Prices. She wished she could stay right here, held within Sandstone College’s dank stone walls. When the songs ended, President Flowers praised the students.
“Well done, scholars! Now, as is tradition, I ask our newest faculty member, Splendid Marchmant, Chemistry, to lead you in the recitation of our college poem, “Out of Darkened Cloisters Come.”
The crowd hushed. Miranda focused her busy mind, searching in the darkness for the figure of
Splendid Marchmant. Bingo! Miranda fell into instant fascination with the pale owlish face,
trembling voice, the golden dog laying at the professor’s feet.
A roar of shouts and hoots followed the reading.
“Thank you, Dr. Marchmant,” President Flowers said, “That concludes our opening Rite.
Remember to conduct your own Rites with the grace and dignity of our institution. Good
night, my shining stars.”
“Good night!” the students shouted joyfully, thundering out of the cloisters, like a pack
of dopey elephants, Miranda thought.
***
Splendid had a rough Monday morning with Stanley padding a crime scene of mud across the kitchen floor. She wasn’t a tidy person, but couldn’t leave that mess all day. She entered the science building late, harried and breathless, tugged forward by Stanly nosing his way inside. She almost missed her office door, unrecognizable from an over-abundance of adorning paper flowers. A slender note dangled from the knob.
36
An Ode to Splendid
You came from the north to grace us with charm
Your intelligence beams from your fingertips, powerful light
Your soft smile and voice
An echo we long for in a silent cave
We adore you from afar
Rites Week. She pulled the note from the knob, tucked it away, leaving the decorations. She glanced up and down the hall before heading to her lab, her happy place. Today, infrared spectroscopy.
***
The very next morning, Miranda and Katelyn were delighted by Dr. Splendid’s acceptance of their invitation to lunch at the Carlton Dining Center. They found a table in the back, covered it with a cloth borrowed from dining services, adding napkins, silverware, and a little vase of supermarket daisies.
“Can I pour you some tea, Dr. Splendid?” Katelyn asked, hovering.
“Yes, please. Boy, you two really went all out! And you’re both so busy! Miranda, you said
you’re an RA, and Katelyn on the equestrian team!” she said.
Miranda’s face heated in embarrassment, enjoying the weight of her loaded dorm key ring in her pocket.
“We have a wonderful vegetarian meal planned for you, Dr. Splendid” she said.
“Please, call me Dr. Marchmant.”
Miranda noted the teacher’s drifting eyes, vacant expression.
“How’d you get your first name?” Katelyn blurted while Miranda placed bowls of soup from a tray.
“It was my grandmother’s,” she said, providing no other details, no inspiring story.
The three buttered their rolls.
“Why the dog?” Miranda asked. She’d thought of this question in the middle of the night, jotting it down in a journal.
“Stanley’s a service dog,” she said, again not very illuminating.
When she wasn’t eating, Dr. Splendid’s mouth clamped shut in a tight line.
“We’d love to come to your house for dinner!” Katelyn practically shouted above the cafeteria din.
They had not discussed this earlier.
“Oh no. My place is a mess. No visitors!”
Miranda eyed Dr. Splendid, watching her gulp the tea, noting she barely touched the chocolate cake bought especially for here at the expensive bakery in town.
***
The unwarranted attention imposed by Miranda and Katelyn felt confusing, dangerous. Splendid wished the so-called Veneration Rite would end.
On the third day of Rites Week, the girls were waiting at her office, like the Queen’s guards.
The decorations sagged, drooped, some had detached and lay stepped-on in the hallway. The girls wanted to take Splendid on a nature walk through the Pierce Gardens.
“Have you been there yet? They’re lovely!” the scarier one, Miranda, said.
Splendid noted the vine tattoo creeping from Miranda’s sleeve.
“I have seen it. I run there. Look, ladies, I need to catch up today.” She twisted Stanly’s leash. The dog stood alert, panting at her side.
“How do you know we’re ladies?” Miranda smirked. “We’re women, but we might not be ladies.” Katelyn reached out a hand to pet Stanly. Splendid reflexively jerked the leash.
“My apologies. As I said, I’ve got-” A familiar tidal wave of panic rose in her chest to her throat. These are the kind of conversations she needed to avoid, she told herself. She had to be careful, very careful.
“The cohorts and their hosts must participate in all Rites Week activities. Willingly. It’s a rule,” Miranda said, Katelyn bobble-heading behind her.
Splendid peered into her office, longing to enter, her bag full of paperwork dug into her shoulder. She had an appointment with her new therapist later. She breathed in deeply, tamping down the growing fire of fear and rage.
“Of course, if you’re too busy. Of course we’ll leave you be,” Miranda said.
“Thanks. Yes. I think I’d like to take a break today.” Dampness grew under Splendid’s arms. “We understand,” Miranda said.
***
That night, they donned their Candle Night capes and met at the cloisters. Miranda unfolded a paper slipped from her pocket- a Prayer for Those Who Resist.
Oh Holy Athena, come to our aid!
Open closed minds and hearts
They lit their candles, cold breath visible between bent, hooded heads. They sang the college song:
Sandstone, Sandstone
Our hearts rise up to
Sandstone!
Katelyn wept at the end, her big body shaking.
“She. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It,” she choked, “The honor of our Veneration!”
Miranda chewed on a ragged cuticle. As much as she pitied Katelyn, her tears brought a rip of anger. Who did this Dr. Splendid this she was?
“No, she doesn’t get it,” Miranda said.
***
“No signs of forced entry. Wouldn’t your dog have heard them?” the sharp-nosed police woman said, glancing at Stanley asleep on the floor.
“My dog! I think they drugged him. He’s been sleeping for hours. And my dirty dishes I’d left are washed, stacked in a different place-over here! My shoes-look!-all lined up in that weird
way. Everything is neat. My sock drawer. My desk. I’m not neat.” “Maybe you cleaned while sleep walking?”
Splendid stood there silent, blinking. This did not compute. “You really think it’s these two students of yours?”
“They’re not my students but they’re Sandstone students. They’re venerating me for Rites Week.”
“So you want me to go wake these kids up on a Saturday morning. You want to get the college administration involved? The parents?”
Splendid closed her eyes, tried to breathe.
“No, no, I don’t want that. Forget it,” she said.
“That’s a good choice, mam,” the officer said, “Let me know if I can be of any more help. I hope your dog wakes up.”
***
The last day, Saturday, they left Dr. Splendid alone. Miranda told Katelyn to stay in her room.
“Do a workout or something,” she said, drumming her fingers on her desk. Every piece of laundry was folded, her bedspread as tight as a drum. She didn’t know what to do with herself other than stew. She could put the finishing touches on Katelyn’s philosophy paper, but lacked
the inspiration.
If everything had gone correctly, Dr. Splendid would be seated here, in the middle of Miranda’s restrained, orderly room, eating a hot Indian take out. Afterwards, they planned to take her up to
the roof to stargaze. It was supposed to be a perfect clear night, too. Such a pity to waste it.
Katelyn’s Grandma Edith’s china remained inside Miranda’s closet, wrapped in plastic,
breakable as bird bones. Beside it sat the bottle of fancy champagne Katelyn snuck from her
father’s wine cellar over Christmas break, just for Veneration. Now, everything was cancelled
because Dr. Splendid, Dr. Marchmant, ruined it.
***
Splendid found the silence of that Saturday unsettling. The house constricted, like tight clothes
after a big meal. She paced around the first floor, plopped down in her office chair where she dashed off an early morning email, trying to make amends with the girls. After that she tried to work, grading and planning the week’s labs, distracted by the constant urge to check for a reply in her in box. She called Charity, considered sharing her woes, but found only voicemail. Splendid imagined her sister’s voice. “Remember how lucky you were last time? Those - what did they call them?- Microaggressions? Your Chair was very generous giving you the reference for Sandstone. And with your history, your diagnosis, you do not want to lose this job, right?” “But I thought I was being supportive! It was just an emoji!” Splendid imagined her defense. She had no appetite. Her hands shook as she held a glass of water to her lips. Running in the Pierce Gardens she half expected one or both of the girls to pop out, trip her.
Perhaps if she told them she had autism, maybe they’d forgive her? Before bed, she
began another message, clicking away on her keyboard, but she pressed the delete button, gobbling up the stream of words. Too desperate. She couldn’t hand over all her power, all the strength she’d worked so hard to build. Instead, in another message, she took on a new, robotic tone, adopting Miranda’s formal speech.
I regret not accompanying you on our walk. I have prepared for the final night of your
Veneration. I am so grateful for your attention. You have made my first year at Sandstone so, so
special.
Tossing and turning, clutching her sheets, fearing every shadow, every house settling sound, Splendid held onto Stanley, sinking her face into his fur. “Things will be better in the morning,” she whispered, all night long.
***
That same night, Miranda posted on Instagram a different email from Dr. Splendid, one in which
she called the girls parasites, stalkers, pathetic children.
“How can I politely say this?” the email read, “Fuck off.”
“That should do the trick,” Miranda said, whispering to herself as she made final evening rounds
of her dorm’s floor.
Everyone keeps secrets at Sandstone. Katelyn keeps my secret that I’m poor and smart and that I
went to a Christian school. I keep Katelyn’s secret that she’s filthy rich, but very stupid.
Together we will keep the secret that we know how and why Dr. Splendid will lose her job at
Sandstone. That we caused it. And Dr. Splendid will keep our secret that she knows what we did.
These are the rules to be followed.
She chanted this like a prayer, walking in quick steps back to her own room.
The next grey morning they headed to Marsh farm, the final stop in Dr. Splendid’s Veneration
Week, and where Katelyn boarded her horse Sprinkles. They planned to crown Dr. Splendid and have her ride around the barnyard, cape flowing, regal, a queen. Instead, Miranda
and Katelyn sat shivering at an old wooden picnic table eating peanut butter sandwiches. They
took turns wearing the royal wardrobe. Katelyn, crown askew atop her curly head, rode
Sprinkles in circles like an overgrown child. Miranda, not-into-animals, did not. Then they
drank the champagne in plastic flutes and drunkenly threw the roses they’d bought for Dr.
Splendid at each other. One of the thorns scratched Katelyn’s face, a red tear of blood trickled
down her cheek. Miranda laughed, but Katelyn didn’t seem to mind.
***
Splendid finished her probation and sensitivity training by May and followed her chair’s instructions to attend graduation. As she processed with faculty through campus to the outdoor stage, she banished the worry of Miranda and Katelyn’s trailing eyes. She stood straight, gripped Stanly’s leash, forced a proud smile on her lips, happy to disappear into a sea of regalia. When each of the girls crossed the stage to receive their diplomas, she straightened her shoulders and clapped enthusiastically, just in case someone was watching.
Afterwards, she leaned into a pillow of relief. Now, she could begin yet again, start fresh. She and Stanly ambled along the shaded path under the century old oaks, his leash slack, loose in her hand. They exited campus, reveling in dappled light.
At the college’s main gate, they saw her, Miranda. A low growl formed in Stanly’s throat. Splendid stopped, locking breath in her chest. Miranda appeared like a bent branch, small
beside the imposing stone arches, a few boxes and suitcases at her feet. A puttering sedan approached. Miranda loaded her things in its trunk, opened the passenger door, got in. The engine gunned and peeled away. Splendid watched Miranda and the car disappear in a cloud of rumbling exhaust, a bad witch melting, soon forgotten, soon replaced.
Bruce Tuesdays
Muleskinner Journal/Fall 2023
She watched the line stretch down the block from the front windows. Cars passed in a stream, unrelenting. Business people, regular people, those who did not need a free meal, crossed the street to avoid the crowd. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d seen them, the poor, the hungry. On a trip into the city with her grandmother for the Christmas show all she remembered afterwards was the homeless man shivering on a steaming grate, the elderly woman with smeared lipstick poking through the garbage, a dirty sleeping bag unrolled under a tree in the park. Before sleep each night, those images lingered. She worried and wondered about them all. She dreamed about the poor.
“C’mon in, everybody!” She propped open the front door and waved, welcoming the line. “Starting to rain. Dinner’s almost ready! Get a cup of joe and a seat!”
“Hey, Bethie, how’re ya?” John took her hand.
“I’m good, very good, glad to see you!”
She glanced once more out the door before closing it. Horns honked, someone gave someone else the finger. Life continued in the outside world of oblivion. Inside, she enjoyed a better view: her team of volunteers preparing a meal for the poor, all for free.
This was Beth’s dream come true, her nonprofit soup kitchen, “The Table.” The dream that mystified and disappointed her parents, repulsed her older sister, and destroyed her social and sex lives. How many people are living their dream? she often asked herself. Not many, she answered, not many at all.
Just Another Good Samaritan
Heimat Review/Issue 5/October 15, 2023
All the lawns on Mentone Avenue are mowed on Wednesdays. Not this Wednesday, though, Andrew thought. Not today. Andrew observed the week’s worth of summer growth from his window. Where’ s Dwight? Andrew moved away from the window to the kitchen. He dialed the faded numbers scrawled on the scrap of paper. Andrew stared into the spare room while Dwight’s phone rang without answer. A tightening gripped his chest.
Not the Time or the Place
The Bad Day Book/October 2023
Witcraft/February 2024
I drew the short straw and ended up leaning on the encyclopedia case in the reference section collecting raffle tickets, right outside the glass doors of the rare book room where the annual Holiday Gathering was coalescing. As each of the mostly elderly Friends of the Library entered, I handed them a small slip of paper and pencil, repeating directions: “You have to write your name. On the slip of paper. The slip of paper. Yes, that’s right.”
Shifting from foot to foot, staring into space, a bad idea crept into my consciousness. Perhaps writing some fun words on the raffle tickets would relieve my intense boredom?
In prior years, there was just one raffle winner, so what were the chances of my fake names getting called? Zero. Zilch. Hohoho, I scribbled, smiling, feeling brave. Falalalalala I wrote next, those first silly words loosening something tight inside me. Recklessly, a little hysterically, I started a series of names: Mike Rowave. Mag Azine. Jim Nasium. I allowed a small, insane giggle to escape my lips. I added another hohoho just to seal the deal.
Any good reference librarian would have asked the pertinent questions. What are you hoping to achieve by this? Is this actually funny? Is this respectful to the Friends of the Library? What will you do if one of your fake names gets called? How do you know for sure there is only one prize? Oh, that last question was one I should have pondered. But that end of the workday malaise, the presence of the very old, the ticking grandfather clock peering over my shoulder, the musty smell of books taunted, Write another phony name, who cares?
As it turned out, there were five prizes that year. When I approached my colleague, the tech guru who was in charge, to rescind my erroneous entries, her expression contorted. Her hold on the ticket bowl stiffened. We began this back-and-forth thing that went on a touch too long.
“What is your problem?” she asked, yanking one last time.
I let go, realizing I needed to stand back and watch how this thing was going to play out. Sweating slightly, I gnawed on a piece of candied grapefruit peel, bitter stuff we made fun of every year. I took my penance orally and leaned against the back display case, the one holding part of the Dead Sea Scrolls or something.
It was the old art librarian, wearing a mid-length black dress and pearls, an alumna and thirty plus year employee, who threw her hand in the bowl to pick the first name. I held my breath as she swished around. I repeated a newly formed mantra: There is no way. No way. There is no. Way. The intrusive grandfather clock ticked off the seconds. I sipped my punch, the sweet ginger-ale taste lingering in the back of my mouth. When her face screwed up in annoyance, I knew. I knew. She looked at the tech lady and said bitterly, “Someone. Is. Trying. To. Be. Smart.” Her hand crumpled the raffle ticket in, if not anger, deep annoyance. I looked around. The Friends of the Library shrugged, looking around themselves. Some didn’t hear. One man, head back, snored in deep snooze.
Then, my extremely elegant boss, the head of public services, took over, sliding her well-manicured hand into the bowl. Would she sit me down and lecture me after this? I deserved it, for sure. She landed on a ticket, removed, unfolded it. She then said, with her best annunciation, Mike Ro-Wahv, fancily pronouncing my joke name. No one flinched. She called it again. I shrunk, realizing how I should have told someone, just to have an ally, but it was too late, impossible. It was that day I learned that having a joke by yourself isn’t fun, not at all. The pain continued, like plantar fasciitis or a throbbing sciatic nerve. . She shook her head and reached in again. “Jim Nahsium?” calling the over- pronounced version of the name. She called out several times, looking for this Jim Nahsium fellow in the crowd. How could Mike and Jim not be here after entering the raffle? No one caught on. Nonplussed, she laughed slightly and returned her hand to the bowl for another name. Finally I shot forward, unable to withstand anymore.
“Those. Those were joke names. I put them in! Mike Rowave. Get it? Microwave. And Jim Nasium, like gymnasium?”
It all sounded so stupid, so infantile. One lady’s mouth dropped in horror. Others laughed uncomfortably. My face heated, beaded in sweat. The sweets I’d imbibed earlier curdled in my tightening throat.
“Well,” the tech lady said, “You will NOT receive your pack of greeting cards!”
My punishment, more embarrassing, more ridiculous than the crime.
Loss, Love
Pile Press, October 2023
This is a story about a friendship that flourished during a difficult season of life. This is a story about a connection formed long ago that still thrives, still sustains, thirty years later. This is a story about a time when I first learned that life’s darkness is inevitable, but that love stubbornly asserts itself, poking through in little slivers of light.
The summer of 1989 I was 19, living the dream working as a chamber maid at the Jersey shore. Every day, the maids gathered in an uncleaned room for lunch. One day, three young women from Scotland were introduced as new co-workers. Two had brown hair and one red. We immediately fell in together, discussing whether or not the RC brand of the cola I sipped stood for Roman Catholic. I knew nothing of Scotland or its people and lacked the Internet to expedite my knowledge base. I soon learned my new friends were friendly, fun, and hardworking. They hand washed their clothes and hung them on a line outside their boarding house to dry. They went to church every Sunday and drank copious cups of tea, even on the hottest summer days.
Out of the three Scottish girls, I formed the deepest connection with bright -blue- eyed Jen. We were both third year college students with summer birthdays. Stretching sheets across wide mattresses, we told each other about family, friends, our lives back home. We turned on the telly while we dusted nightstands, dancing around the room to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
There was a fateful quality to my connection with Jen. The previous December, my father came to Manhattan College to take me home to Syracuse, NY for Christmas break. On the way we heard that a plane exploded over Great Britain with a number of Syracuse University students on board, dropping from the sky over a place called Lockerbie, Scotland. We struggled to process the concept that young people, as young as me, could be snatched from their family, friends, their futures, in one instant. Jen’s hometown, Dumfries, was adjacent to Lockerbie. Her policeman father helped clean up the disaster. He returned home each night from the site, silent, traumatized. The cleanup went on half a year. A few months later, the spring before meeting Jen, my brother was diagnosed with a kind of cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When I travelled to the Jersey shore to work that summer, I carried my first load of major pain and grief, weighted by the fear of life’s fragility and unpredictability that has stalked me my entire life.
Coincidentally, Jen shared the uncanny information that her boyfriend Jim’s brother had also recently been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Just a few months before, I didn’t know any young person who had cancer, now I knew two.
So, the following January I went off to Scotland to study abroad. In Glasgow, I skipped all of my classes, haunted the bars, crushed on a nerdy guy at a bookstore, ate buttered toast every day and not one fruit or vegetable, served Guinness to old people at a bridge club, and bought pounds of clothes at the many charity shops. Conversely, my brother was at the University of Nebraska receiving a bone marrow transplant. Most mornings I stood at the mail table in the hall of my student house skimming my parents’ and siblings’ letters, trying to speed through them, skipping the bad parts. I wanted to block out the image of my brother’s young ravaged body, stripped of bone marrow, beaten with extreme chemotherapy, then radiation. I wanted to forget, so I headed out to Byers Road, where the charity clothing, chip shops, and flowing beer awaited.
Every week or so I’d show up at Jen’s flat despairing. She knew how to cook-something I didn’t do yet - offered me creamy mushroom soup, a hot slice of lasagna. I’d sleep beside her overnight, gathering strength before returning to my own wild existence across town.
Like a bad penny, I just kept coming back. Her three flat mates never seemed to mind my spontaneous arrivals at their front door or the fifth person queuing for the shower in the morning. Jen, Jim, and I often went out for nights at the student union, partying until wee hours under a sparkling disco ball to the beats of Depeche Mode and Erasure.
During spring break, I went home with Jen to Dumfries where I finally met her parents, sisters, dog, and pretty much every other relative in town. At the time I wore socks as gloves, a fashion choice that intrigued and amused my hosts. We went for walks in the forest, shopped in the town center, ordered Indian takeaway, and visited a pub frequented by Scotland’s poet, Robbie Burns. This was the first of a lifetime of visits to this place, this family.
At the end of the semester, the night before my departure for home, Jen, Jim, and I drank a lot, stayed up very late. The alarm clock shocked us awake and we staggered out of bed to gather ourselves and my luggage into Jim’s car. The photo of the three of us standing at the airport’s check-in still peeks from under the crinkly cellophane of my photo album. I stand between my friends, holding the plane ticket like a prize. We smile through exhausted young faces. Eventually, I pulled myself from Jen’s unyielding hug, walked to the gate without her. I cried the whole way back to New York. It felt like an ending, but it was really just the start. Jen has been with me through every loss and joy of my life. I don’t like saying things are meant to be, but that year I met Jen my universe shifted. Bad things happened too, but somehow she fell into my world and brightened and lightened my load. Was it magic or fate? I don’t know. Anyway, It’s much more than coincidence. It’s a lifelong friendship. It’s love.
First
Flash Fiction Magazine/September 2023
I am the second Mrs. Roberts.
I don’t ever, ever want to meet the first Mrs. Roberts. The first Mrs. Roberts put a glass on the mantel in our living room thirty years ago and left a persistent ring. The first Mrs. Roberts colors her hair a fake imitation of the deep red she supposedly had twenty years ago. The first Mrs. Roberts gets boob jobs and Botox between her eyes. The first Mrs. Roberts looks down at me—a younger, natural beauty with sandy hair and dark brown eyes.
Free Write
Longlist, Funny Pearls Short Story Competition, 2021
Little Old Lady Comedy/June 2023
Confetti Magazine, October 2023
The regular ladies attending Nora’s writing workshop immediately suspected no-good from Sandy McCaffery. Mid-fifties, she wore a bright pink Mexican style top with jeans and clogs and a deep red lipstick. Her grey/blonde hair hung in a braid down her back. Nora thought she looked quite cool, comfortable in her own skin.
“Where’d you get that top?” said Rosalind, eyeing her closely.
“I just picked it up somewhere-a thrift store,” responded Sandy.
“Aren’t you worried about bugs?”
“Bugs?”
“Bed bugs. In the thrift clothes?”
Nora jumped in. “Tonight let’s just do a completely free write. No prompts, just write whatever you want.”
Sandy straightened up in her chair and poised a pen above her notebook.
“Sandy needs a debrief on my Civil War saga,” Cheryl added.
Nora set the timer, smoothed her skirt under her notebook, took a breath.
More to the Story
Birdy/September 2023
He'd never seen it, but Ken Colby heard about the house his entire life. In the early 1920s, his grandparents, Patrick and Lucy Colby, traveled upstate to create a summer home for their soon-to-be family. Patrick was tall, strong, a successful banker, a self-made man with an eye for architecture. Lucy was known for her calm demeanor, charitable works, and green thumb. Their turreted, gabled house, surrounded by Lucy’s vegetable and flower gardens, boasted a wide porch overlooking Loon Lake. They had two babies and hired a maid/nanny, and a caretaker. The place seethed with bourgeoning life.
The year Ken’s father was born, the sister drowned and the Colbys closed up the house, sold the property, never returned.
More Than This
Shift/August 2023
His mother did not approve of peeing near the house, so he made sure to do it with the dilapidated structure out of sight. Flashes of the night before poked into his thoughts as he relaxed into the steady stream of piss. Finished, he approached the shack, startled and saddened by its smokeless chimney. In the yard, the wood pile, the picnic table, the sittin’ chairs as his mother called them, all appeared as they had always been. Their clothes hung on the line, flapped in the breeze like pinned birds desperate to break free.
He held his back tight against the wall outside her first floor bedroom. He inhaled to gather the necessary courage, turned to peer inside. There she was - as he had left her - on her side, mouth and eyes half open. Dead.
“George, start the fire. George sweep the floors. George, get the water.” Her voice, always commanding him, telling him what was next. “The cold is setting in, we must stock up,” she’d say. “The harvest time is here, we must pick everything!” Dutifully, unrelentingly, he did as her voice instructed.
Inside, he froze at her work table. His soft weeping eclipsed by torrents of tears, great gulps and sobs. His shoulders caved, his arms locked, crossed before his stomach as he bent, wailed into the silence of the house.
Finally, he approached the settled body, snipped a lock of grey hair, slipped it in his pocket. He closed his eyes, placed both hands on the corpse, pushed it onto a blanket spread on the floor. He dragged the body out, rolled it into a hole dug by the water pump. Shovel by shovel, he covered the body, his mother. He knew no prayers, so he said none.
***
The schedule. He must get back on it.
Midday. His mother would be disgusted by his laziness. He must make lunch. He hadn’t had much besides berries and water for days. A powerful hunger churned in his gut.
There was still enough meat from the smoke house, still the tea mixtures they made from their own herbs. He checked the half-full sugar jar, the bread box with its two stale loaves. He still had some of the bread his mother baked, now rock hard, but edible. He’d have to look for her recipes. He’d seen her make bread, but wasn’t sure how she made sugar. Had she told him it had something to do with sand? She’d spun it out of sand? She added honey to sand? He’d read books about the sea with sand beaches. There was no ocean here, no sand. Is sand edible? The memories and questions blurred in his dull mind. If his mother were alive she’d explain it, like she had before, and it would make sense. He was certain of this. He believed she was some kind of witch, a powerful sorceress, like Merlin in the King Arthur stories.
He boiled water on the fire, made his tea. He set the table, resisted the habit of setting her place.
“These things matter, they do. Civilized living.”
It occurred to him that his mother spoke to him almost entirely in adages, words of advice, words to live by. Although, she’d forgotten something important, maybe the most important thing: how he’d live alone, without her. He pushed back the onslaught of tears. He sat down, stared at the utensil poised above the sugar bowl. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the window, shimmered on the silver spoon. One of his many chores was to polish the silver. The thought broke through, a log busting through a dam. Once the hole was opened, he tried in vain to push the question back, but it flooded his mind, overtook: Where’d we get this spoon?
***
By the end of summer, he grew tired of the schedule, of everything. He missed his mother. The loneliness ached relentlessly, starting at his feet and rising to his head.
“I’m all you need!”
“Well, I ain’t got you, Ma!” he shouted, throwing a glass canning jar against the wall.
“Wasteful!”
Self-consciously, he tried speaking to the squirrels, but it felt wrong befriending creatures he killed and ate. He began seeing shadows lurking behind the trees, inside the barn, even in his bedroom at night. First, he burned extra candles to keep his room lit, then he decided to sleep beside the front door sitting up, holding his knife. He revisited a long dead question: Where did he come from? Where did his mother come from? Did they have any other family? He read and reread Robinson Crusoe-his mother’s favorite book. He longed to see a footprint in the dirt of the yard, dreamed of a Friday coming to save him. No such luck. He held a jagged piece of glass in a shaking hand to his neck. He begged his mother’s spirit to give him the courage to dig into his flesh, allow his troubled insides to pour out on the kitchen floor, but she did not comply. He heard only silence, and the steady thump of her beliefs playing in his head.
“Who’s going to clean up the mess, George, when you’ve gone and killed yourself?”
What if she wasn’t really dead? he thought. He went to the spot marked by the round stone he’d placed. He pushed it away and dug with urgency. The weather grew colder and colder. He needed to find her before the ground hardened. He dug, sweat seeping through his shirt. Finally her rotting corpse appeared in front of him. Joy and relief bubbled up from his core. He jumped into the hole and picked her up. She broke into pieces in his arms, dissolved back into the dirt. He swept the specks of her off his neck, his chest. The anger he’d been holding in for months came out in shouting. He retched beside the open hole. He thought of all the questions that had come to the surface of his mind, all the questions with no answers.
“You. Are. Nothin’. But. A. Liar,” he said. He threw the compost heap on top of the body-moldy onion skins and apple cores. He tossed the stone marker in the hole too, smashing his mother’s skull.
***
The next day, he rose up out of bed, ignored his breakfast, left the house an untidy mess, and walked with purpose to the edge of the Okay Places and passed deliberately into the Off Limits. He brought only his knife and some smoked meat, stuffed in the pocket of his winter coat. He marched forward across the frosty leaves and made his way deep into the forest. He followed the stream, walking for what seemed like hours. He grew tired and cold and hungry. He stopped to piss and take a drink of icy water, gnaw on some of the meat. He continued with only the slightest regret for embarking on such a pointless journey. Part of him hoped it’d quench his desire for death. He half expected to collapse onto the cold ground, fall asleep, freeze to death, melt into the dirt. So far, he saw nothing out of the ordinary in the Off Limits, the same squirrels and chipmunks and trees and leaves that inhabited the Okay Places.
Summoning his last bits of energy, he stalked the edges of a house, noting a wide dirt path leading up to one side. Pushing the door open without effort, he stepped inside the shadowy space. Crate-filled shelves surrounded him. He climbed a ladder and began prying them open, finding supplies of every kind - sugar and flour and clothing and even the little lemon birthday candies his mother gifted him each year. He couldn’t open his eyes wide enough to absorb it all. He turned around in wonder. Reaching for a lantern on the shelf he jostled a protruding side lever. He gasped as it flickered and lit, without a flame. George stood in the brightened room, gaping.
***
For years afterward, George spoke of a sister he never met. He told strangers encountered on the streets or the camp where he lived, “I’ve got a sister. I’ve got a likeness of her on paper. She’ll be here soon,” his voice echoing in the darkness, the smell of dead fish rising up from littered water. He searched in the river’s current for a glimpse of her brown curls, welcoming eyes. Most of the time, he only caught reflections of his own rippling beard and long tendrils of hair. On bad days, his mother’s stern expression emerged, her watery mouth moving, forming orders, rules he could no longer hear. Again and again, George turned away from the river that led to the woods of his first home, the one he had with his mother. Again and again, George walked up the bank to the safety of the home he found later, the tent under the bridge.
Transients
Heavy Feather Review/August 17. 2023
I tossed garbage bags full of last items into my Honda. Wire hangers, rolls of wrapping paper, a comforter. The orange tabby cat appeared, jumped into the back.
“Damn you!” I shouted. The cat arched and skittered to the ground, running behind the (no longer) rented bungalow. I expedited to the driver’s seat, my foot hovering above the gas pedal. The cat’s green-eyed stare taunted. She stood stock still awaiting my next move. I gripped the steering wheel as the car revved and exited the driveway. From the rearview mirror I saw the cat holding its stance, then shooting into the shrubs. I turned out of my former street with a racing heart.
I regretted not killing the cat, then regretted feeling that way. Typical.
Locally Famous
Atlantic Northeast/Summer 2023
Dedicated to my late great parents,
Lorraine and Warren Nerz,
and to all our happy times together.
We open the Guller’s door, allowing a gush of icy air that surely freezes every other diner. The restaurant is dark with a blur of yellow-y lights, full of mostly older looking cold people. The bar is built entirely of dark wood and cloudy with cigarette smoke. We do not smoke though. My mother still breaks up straws and rips up napkins. She says she still doesn't know what to do with her hands since she quit smoking thirty years ago.
"Gloria!" my father yells, as though he has not seen Gloria Guller, the adult daughter of the bar's owner, in twenty years. My father is an impossible, predictable flirt. Although he is a perfectly loyal and loving husband, he has a particular obsession with bartenders, waitresses, and women in shiny clothing.
"He's like a crow," my mother says.
There are only two barstools open and my father gestures to my mother and I to move into them. We do. He orders himself and my mother a Canadian Club on the rocks, me a glass of the house merlot.
"Now that's a Guller's drink," he remarks as he surveys his and my mother's glasses. They like them nice and big.
"Harry put our name on the list," my mother demands, and he goes.
I watch as he talks to Linda, the hostess. I can see her laughing, her straight, white teeth showing through the crowd. I know exactly what he’s saying to her. He’s telling her he wants a hot turkey sandwich to go. He's been telling her this almost my entire life, way before Linda started hostessing, when she was just a waitress. My mother and I stop watching him and turn back toward the bar, knowing that after he talks to Linda, he'll work the room, looking for people we know.
That's fine because my mother and I like to talk to each other. We always talk about books, my job, the neighborhood, and my mentally ill Aunt Deebie, usually in that order.
She asks me about Daniel, the interlibrary loan librarian at the library where I work. She wants to hear about all the other characters there, too. I launch into my usual string of stories.
My father comes over and dumps the dregs of his drink and all its ice into my mother's half empty glass and orders himself another. My parents have an elaborate and mysterious drink ritual that I have never understood.
"You OK, Red?" he asks me.
"Yup. Thanks. So who'd you see, Dad?"
"Mostly Ralph Dohn. He's still shook up."
"Oh," my mother looks concerned, "Myrt said he's still not himself." We are talking about our neighbor right across the street, whose twin brother died of a heart attack last summer.
I sit up on my stool and crane my neck around my father's body in an attempt to see Ralph.
"How long a wait?" my mother asks.
My father doesn’t answer, says instead, "Monsignor Colvson is here. What's he eating?"
"Looked like the fried haddock sandwich," I report.
We are all three great observers of details like what people are eating and what they are buying at the supermarket. My father keeps a steady mental record of what he calls "soundbites," little representative comments he hears on his rounds at the mall or the post office, or here, Guller’s. It's like we are taking an informal poll that has no purpose and no end.
"Good choice," my mother affirms in regards to Monsignor's dinner, while I nod and take a sip of wine.
"Indeed," my father says, eyeing a young couple at the end of the bar. I reach into the popcorn bowl and watch my father spring into action.
I know he identified the young couple as out-of-towners or just- moved-iners. He’s going to get them to talk about Herman's, the grocery store, one of our favorite topics. I watch him as he picks up his drink and moves closer to the young couple. They look extra cold and way too young-younger than me-to be at Guller's. These two can't be from around here. My mother and I go back to talking neighborhood gossip, pleased that Dad found someone to talk to about Herman's. I can’t hear him, but I know he is saying things like, Produce like nothing you've ever seen! and The service is out of this world! and, the big finale, The bakery has an oven built in France shipped all the way here to our Herman's! I take another glance at the couple laughing, enjoying my father's enthusiasm. It’s hard not to.
Soon, I can actually hear my father's voice above the crowd,
A half hour later, the couple exits in a burst of freezing air. My father gives us the goods:
"She’s a teacher-kindergarten."
"That's sweet," my mother yawns.
"Yeah, he's a lawyer-"
"Who with?" my mother instantly interrupts. She's a pro.
"Some firm in Syracuse. Melbourne, somebody, and somebody."
"Where from?" I ask.
"Philadelphia-met at Penn."
"Did you tell them about Papa?"
My grandfather grew up in Philadelphia. The son of a wheelwright.
"Oh yes," my father says, "I got it all in," he winks at me.
My mother sips her drink, "Well I hope they know about the white-outs, commuting into Syracuse like that."
"Ma! How could someone not know about the white-outs? That's what we're famous for!"
"No-well-we're famous for Herman's!" she offers proudly in defense.
"No. No, Nora-that's locally famous. The white-outs are famous-famous. World famous," my father says, he looks at his watch, "It's nine o'clock!"
"So late. What happened to Linda?" My mother is a little tipsy, her face is as rosy as mine feels.
Unselfconsciously, my father calls out, "Linda! Our table?"
"Hot Turkey!?" she screams back, "I called you already! Where were you?"
"We were right-uh-here," my father is laughing at the end of his sentence.
“I’m all full," says Linda, "You want to eat at the bar?" She looks at my mother, instinctively knowing it’s her decision.
I survey the packed restaurant. I am not the least bit hungry anymore.
"Ok," my mother announces, "let's roll down the hill, Harry. Em, we'll have grilled cheese at home." She stands to confirm her statement.
My father gets our coats and holds them crookedly at our backs while my mother and I push searching arms down sleeves. We say our goodbyes and venture into the dark night, snow crunching beneath our feet as we march single file down the sidewalk lining the road that winds through our town. The air instantly sharpens our dulled senses. Removed from the festive lights and noise of the bar, we’ve entered a seemingly foreign world of silence. We push our hands deep inside our coat pockets. My father's long scarf swings, hanging down his back as he leads our little parade.
"Let's go see who's where," he suggests. We agree by following him past our house into the circle of houses beyond, responding as he calls out each neighbor's name.
"Redbo's?" he asks.
"Club," we say, continuing to move along briskly.
"Brown's?"
"Florida," my mother says.
"Dohn's?"
"Guller's!" my mother and I shout in fake exasperation.
We enter our driveway. I see my car, already covered in a thick frost.
"Em, you gotta sleep over! It's too cold and dark to go home to your apartment!" my mother begs.
An image of my apartment without me flashes through my mind. The refrigerator hums, the clock ticks, the bed is made, the unpaid bills sit on the desk. The objects don’t miss me or need me for completion. In another flash I envision my room here at my parents’ house, with all my dolls and Norton Anthologies lining the shelves. My ceramic bank that looks like a cat asleep atop a ball of string sits quietly on my dresser. Do these miss me when I am gone? I am not sure either place needs me the way I want it to. My room at my parents' with its flannel sheets, the mismatched sounds of my mother's antique clock collection pulls me in every time.
"Oh yeah, I'm staying, Ma," I say.
"Good, put on Glenn Miller, won't you Harry?"
"Sure, sure," he says, throwing his keys into a large bowl in the hall as he makes his way to the kitchen. He sort of limps in his older age, but it is a quick, agile limp, a little dance step. I am busy kicking off my boots off as I listen for the sounds of him filling the kettle and the tick tick tick before the gas pilot light bursts forth from the burner.
"Supposed to snow tonight. A big one," he calls out to no one in particular. My mother answers him from some deeper recess of our house, an indecipherable remark.
Later, in bed, I am comforted and relaxed by the hot water heater’s creaks and groans, spreading warmth through the pipes, radiating through the house. Despite the potentially harmful number of blankets covering me, for now I am the perfect temperature. I turn in bed on my side to face the window, watching the snow fall softly, steadily, as my father said it would.
The Surprise
Westwind Journal of the Arts/Spring 2023
Rebecca had not thought of surprises when she packed her bag. Her splayed-open suitcase lay hungry on the bed, accepting her most comfortable clothes: brown leather sandals, tee shirts, flowy floral skirts. She envisioned vacation Rebecca to be opposite of Pennsylvania Rebecca. Vacation Rebecca would be relaxed, unworried.
At work, she daydreamed of Will’s hand on her waist or at the back of her slightly sweaty neck. She pictured him tugging off her clothes, carrying her naked to bed. She would often lose her place while reading at story hour, stare at bookshelves instead of searching for the specific title she needed, and frequently retreat to the bathroom to splash cold water on her flushed face.
This was Will’s idea, a trip to celebrate their one year dating anniversary. Rebecca had never been anywhere, besides Philadelphia, the Jersey shore. Her parents withheld, she knew, their resistance. She’d only told them the bad things about Will, none of the good things. It was her fault that her parents did not like Will.
“It’s okay if he’s cheap, but not mean cheap,” her mother said after Rebecca shared a slight concern about Will’s stinginess.
“No, he’s never mean,” Rebecca lied.
***
Once at the airport, on the plane, in the taxi, things were not as smooth as Rebecca fantasized. Will had a migraine, a problem which could cause any number of altercations. He snapped at the luggage carousel, angry that Rebecca had missed his bag. He criticized her for over-tipping the bellhop at the hotel.
“I was a waitress once,” Rebecca said.
“That’s irrelevant,” he countered.
While Will slept off his headache, Rebecca went to the bar, scribbled a pro and con list on a napkin. She padded the pros with small things he did in the beginning, like when he spontaneously bought a bouquet of carnations at the supermarket when they stopped in for a six pack. That gesture withered at the other memories, like when he refused to pay for dinner, knowing she’d forgotten her wallet. Or when he left her in the train station alone at midnight. What about the time he asked her if she was embarrassed by her morning bed head? But each time he would apologize, tell her how much he loved her, beg her to forgive him, and each time she would acquiesce. Rebecca put down her pen, covering her eyes with both hands.
“Becca?” Will appeared beside her, stunning in a suit and tie. “Why are you crying?”
“I-I-I’m just so happy to be here,” she said.
“Good, because I’m about to make you happier,” he said, kneeling down on one knee. The other customers in the bar immediately shifted, creating a space around the couple. Rebecca, perched on her barstool, her heart pounding in her chest, beheld Will, whose upturned face shone in the manufactured light.
***
Rebecca rose from bed, this time leaving Will sleeping off his hangover. She thought of calling her parents to tell them their news, but decided later would be better, maybe at dinner, after a few drinks. She approached the closet, unenthusiastically surveyed the skirts lined up on the rack.
The ring Will gave her the night before sat unwieldy, out of proportion on her slender finger. The band constricted, grasped. She attempted to twist it off, but it refused her tugs and pulls.
Half-dressed, Rebecca sat on the bed. She told herself how beautiful, how special it was for Will to propose in this way, without giving the slightest hint, a total surprise. She imagined the story she would repeat to all her friends, coworkers, her parents. The band was too tight, but she knew it could easily be fixed, and nothing was ever perfect, anyway. She closed the door gently, leaving Will asleep.
The elevator descended to the breakfast bar. Rebecca leaned into the wall, closed her eyes, imagined Will waking, missing, searching, finding her. His smiling face would emerge from all the plain, boring ones. He’d approach her transformed, a shining presence, her life partner, her fiance.
Return to Mills Island
Birdy Magazine/July 2023
Our island, Mills Island, sits in a spot where currents collide, ships crash and sink.
We’re surrounded by old bones, death. We’re used to it. We remember our grandfather, the lighthouse keeper, telling us stories of bodies washing up on the beach in multitudes, victims of shipwreck. The storms have only worsened over time, we’ve seen to that. With a gathering of eyebrows, the clenching of fists, and the whispering of words collected in our book, we keep people away from here, away from our boy…
Beatrice Bakes, in 13-Not-So-Easy-Steps
Corvus Review/Spring/Summer 2023
1. Beatrice joins a gym.
Beatrice can’t remember when she first stopped wanting to get up in the morning, when every day felt slow moving and pointless, when the sun started hurting her eyes. The therapist says Beatrice needs endorphins, STAT.
2. Beatrice notes hypocrisy.
The gym juice bar sells nuts, dried fruit, and smoothies but also full-fat double chocolate muffins. Beatrice googles lite muffin recipes, stops at the grocery store on the way home, begins testing. She works all night, whisks egg whites with apple sauce into foamy lather. She brings the best batch to the gym. They’re a hit.
3. Beatrice sells.
Beatrice completes her day job quickly. Her muffins crest, crisp at their edges. She loads her car with boxes, delivers to gyms and cafes before dawn. She smiles more, her steps quicken. She relishes the orange sky at sunrise.
4. Beatrice quits things.
Both her boyfriend (Doug) and Beatrice’s engineering job loom, cast shadows, threaten her bourgeoning light.
5. Beatrice meets Larry, a café customer, on one of her deliveries. “Wow, you’re something else,” he says.
He’s bald, rotund, a freelance computer programmer.
“I work when I want, charge by the hour, then I can travel, take breaks whenever,” he says. “You’re smart not to let yourself get tied down. I just got out of that.”
“We’ll make a good team,” he says, winking.
Beatrice floats from the café feeling strong, graceful, beautiful.
6. Beatrice locks it down.
The day Beatrice buys the bakery space, Larry proposes on a hot air balloon over a wide Pennsylvania field. The ring is from a gumball machine. She laughs and kisses him. Larry does not believe in material things. Larry believes in experiences.
Beatrice calls her parents in Vermont.
“We haven’t met him,” says Dad.
“It seems like a lot of change,” says Mom.
“Trust me. I’m over the moon,” Beatrice tells them.
7. Beatrice returns to Earth.
Larry yells at their neighbors. Larry disappears for the entire night. Larry adopts an Irish wolf hound and insists it must stay in the bakery, for protection. Larry installs cameras inside the bakery, even though only he and Beatrice work there. Larry tells Beatrice’s parents not to call.
8. Beatrice works double time.
Beatrice pulls her back muscle while dragging a bag of flour up the basement stairs in the bakery while Larry sits playing computer games. Beatrice finds it hard to breathe, leaves for home early, does not fill her orders that day, or the next.
9. Beatrice needs help.
Beatrice does not tell Larry about the ad she places in the local newspaper. A young woman named Selma calls, says she has no experience baking, but is writing a novel about a bakery. Beatrice hires her sight unseen.
Selma’s clear face and quick smile brighten the dingy space.
Larry says, “Who the hell is this?”
Larry informs Selma she is under surveillance; all the cameras are watching. He storms out, jumps on his bike. (Larry has a head injury and cannot drive.) The dog growls from its crate.
10. Beatrice breaks.
Beatrice cries while she measures, when she pours, when she whisks and mixes, when she spoons batter into the tins. She cries at the beginning of the day and at the end. She cries as she drives home and to deliveries. She longs to cry to her parents, her mother, but she cannot. She is stuck again.
11. Beatrice achieves clarity.
One day, when Selma is washing out the batter buckets, she suddenly asks Beatrice if Larry is helping or hindering. Beatrice knows there is only one answer, just one word, that second word, the latter one: hindering.
12. Beatrice burns.
Beatrice receives a call from the police. She stumbles through the mess of Larry’s thrift store finds still cluttering her space, out of her apartment. She stands before the bakery. Smoke occludes, flames leap. Beatrice glows in fearful fascination. A fireman yells at her, “Step away. This isn’t safe.”
13. Beatrice bakes.
The fire out, Beatrice returns home, assembles a fresh batch of lighter-than-lite muffins. She piles Larry’s stuff on the sidewalk, ambles to the gym. Afterwards, she calls her parents, tells them about the flames, the ash. She sits for a time in silence, enjoys the sun streaming across the scratched floor. A strong breeze blows through the windows. It rustles the curtains, shifts papers on the desk, lifts Beatrice’s hair from her face.
Byrne 1982
Overtly Lit/June 2023
The Blessed Mother statue in front of our school received a blow when I was in seventh grade. Her head, knocked to the ground, was left sitting in a puddle of rubble. Principal Parisi sent a letter home, decrying the horror of the act and the broken-hearted feelings of the old priests at the rectory, but no one did anything. Every day, I observed from my classroom window Mary’s chipped head abandoned on the ground, her eyes staring off into the garden.
***
Our math teacher, Miss Byrne (we reduced her name to just Byrne) was awful, or so we thought. I once heard Mr. Cope, the religion teacher, saying as much to another teacher on the playground. He said, “Theresa is awful.” Mr. Cope, a layman, not a priest, led the folk group with his guitar and taught us fun songs - The Lord said to Noah, we’re gonna build an arky arky…- and about the birds and the bees. Mr. Cope, a gentle soul, a free spirit, was not awful. His opinion seemed valid.
Why was Byrne so awful? Something just seemed missing -half there- with her. Even when she forced herself to be nice, we kind of got the feeling that she wished she were somewhere else. She inhaled deeply when we didn’t understand something. She slammed the text book with her hand right before forcing a fake sweet voice through clenched teeth, “OK, let’s do some quiet desk work.” On top of all of that, her explosive anger over miniscule occurrences was legendary. If we, say, didn’t return her scissors, her tiny coral-colored lipsticked mouth, the mouth with the wrinkles all around the outside like Gran’s, would expand in epic proportions and she’d just let it rip. Byrne could blow up into a terrifying teacher blob monster very quickly.
***
I already mentioned the Mary statue, the one that got vandalized. Before that, she was so beautiful, her white head crowned with stars, her dainty feet stamping out a snake. The whole school used to gather around her for the May crowning, a common event at Catholic schools and churches, where a junior May Queen places a floral wreath on the head of a Mary statue. I loved those years when we stood and sang out in the sunlight commemorating spring and the Blessed Mother. Mr. Cope strummed his guitar as we shouted out the lyrics to Immaculate Mary and Hail Holy Queen.
By the time I got to seventh grade, the school’s neighborhood - the place my father grew up - had deteriorated. Industry had been replaced by drugs and poverty. Lewd drawings and swear words sprayed on the side of our building caused us to poke each other in the side, smile and look down, perhaps giggle a little in embarrassment.
***
One day, I stood on the playground waiting for my bus when I saw Byrne walking to her car. A light rain sprinkled down. A plastic hat covered her greying hair and her khaki raincoat hung wrinkled and limp on her boney frame. She held her leather briefcase in one hand as she limped and slouched through the parking lot. I watched as she fumbled with her keys and opened the door of a dented Chevrolet Caprice Classic, surprising myself with a slap of pity. Where did Byrne live? I never thought of the details of her life before.
From that point, I began to look for Byrne at the end of each day as she slumped out to her car. Eventually, I caught her back walking in a different direction, carrying stuff. I kept my distance, following her slow tracks as she made the way around the school to the front garden.
I hid behind a brick protrusion, watching her put down her things and place her hands on her hips. She stared at the broken Mary statue, contemplating it, her eyes squinting up. She crouched and pulled weeds, moving on her hands and knees right and left, her head low and focused on her work. She swept up some of the crumbly stones around the statue, struggled to lift Mary’s head, moving it to a place behind the statue, hiding it from view.
She continued working, removing her rumply jacket, her knees stained with dirt. I noticed she shed her sensible, low-heeled pumps and wore a pair of discolored Keds. When she glanced up again at the statue, I thought I saw something different on her face, not quite a smile, something else. I never saw Byrne look happy before. I smiled, too.
“Ms. Patton’s List of (More) Appropriate Words
Peripheral (adj., relating to or situated on the edge, the periphery of something)
In just one year I went from the center of my family to the edges. The other mother was put in charge of the food and gifts. The sister took the coats. The cousin fetched drinks. There I sat, small and hunched, perched on an ottoman, an ordinary guest expected to sip lemonade and nibble sandwiches and chat pleasantly with random, vaguely familiar people.
“Elinor, your hair is so short!”
“Elinor, this is just what you need!”
The first comment came from an old aunt of my daughter-in-law. The last from a younger aunt, referencing my recent divorce from the new baby’s grandfather.
I didn’t want to be peripheral. I wanted to be integral. I wanted to stand at the front of the room and say, “No, no, my barely out of college son impregnating someone and getting married soon after is not what I need!”
What I needed was for my husband to not have said, “I feel you lack imagination.”
What I needed was for my husband to not have chosen his (apparently very imaginative) trainer, Lucy, over me.
I needed to go home, even though my home would soon no longer be mine. The closing was that Wednesday and all of my pretty things were already packed up, given away or in storage.
What I needed was to leave this shower. Right. Now.
“You’re leaving before the gender reveal cake?” some woman with a wide split between her teeth practically screamed at me.
“Yes, I am,” I said. And then I did.