Doing Without
Tiny Moments, Volume IV, Summer 2024
While prepping the dough, Gran asked me about school and friends, snuck in a question about Mom. I kept a tight lip.
Dad, Gran’s son, snored on the living room couch, sleeping off the excess of the night before.
Gran still blamed Mom for everything even though she should have known better than anyone how it was, living with a drinker.
I was dying for a cup of coffee, but Gran thought young people should drink milk in the morning, so I poured a glass of juice.
She sent me for the raisins.
I pulled the pantry’s light string but the bulb had blown out.
“Is it round or square?” I called out.
“Tall and round!”
She shouted above an endless Johnny Mathis sing-along.
I touched the edges of canisters and tubs and sticky bottles, dreading a mouse’s wet nose sniffing my hand.
Finally, the container Gran described.
I lifted it, felt something heavy shifting from side to side.
“C’mon, Lolly,” Gran said. Lollygagger, slowpoke.
I set the container on a nearby laundry machine, lifted the lid.
There were no raisins in there.
I looked at the thing in my trembling hands.
I’d touched a gun before. It was the surprise of it that shook me.
I returned the container to its place.
“No raisins, Gran, “ I said.
“Have to do without,” she said, touching my cheek before returning her large capable hands to working the dough.
At Last, You’ve Come
The asylum at Christmas amuses with its small attempts at revelry. The sagging pine, misplaced, like me, out of its element, covered in paper ornaments crafted by lunatic hands, lightless in the corner. The screams instead of carols.
I see you’re wet from the snow, Mother. How it falls! How it slants, whitening the streets, coating the horses’ manes.
Sit, mother, sit.
The stench of you, dead all these years.
You see, my senses are still quite acute.
I must open the windows, allow the cold air to refresh us both.
Oh but the evil one, Nurse Bell, will alarm like a ghost, close it.
I will endure your odor, Mother, just to be near you.
Ah, your hand, so small, so cold, fits just right in mine.
Your plaintive face is like looking into a mirror. I have always seen myself in you.
I would get out of the bed to study you more closely but my legs seem to shake.
I see the rope’s red stain still bruising your neck.
May I touch it?
Sit here, Mother, stay, I will tell you how I ended up here, locked up for good, and on Christmas no less. Are you like Dickens’ ghosts, all three in one?
I will pull the curtain snug. Spies are everywhere, you see.
My extreme sensitivity, my patience, are exhibited even here. I’m the most careful mouse. I’ve earned their trust, my discharge from isolation.
Oh, they recognize my wit, my sincerity.
They now allow me to move about.
I can talk to you, Mother, touch you!
Please, come, lay down with me as I have always imagined.
***
After your death, Father hired a Mrs. Hooper to cook and clean and assume childcare duties. He was never home, spending much of his time out, presumably at meetings with other doctors, discussing big ideas, restraints and ice baths and electric shock and cutting out wedges of brain like the Christmas goose. (Thankfully, perhaps because of my relation to the late great man, they’ve not done that to me. Yet.) Usually, his presence in the house was known by the sight of his hat and coat in the hall. Sometimes I put my face in his clothes to get a whiff of him. Oh, I was so lonely, Mother.
He kept the house a frightful cold, for health I was told. Even in summer, my breath hung before me at the breakfast table. Most of the rooms were closed off, their furnishings covered in white sheets. So, I spent my hours in a dreary so-called nursery, the kitchen, and outside on the grounds of the house.
Consumption was rife, the dreaded blood coming up into the cloth signaling the fate of the afflicted. That’s what Mrs. Hooper said happened to you, Mother.
I imagined your hack drifting from shadowed closed off corridors. I never knew your voice, so I invented a coughing, dying mother. I prayed the cough of the consumptive no longer ailed you. Alas, I pictured a bloodstain on your sleeve or on your lace-lined pillow.
I sometimes envied you, being dead. You could come and go from this sad, cold house.
How beautiful you are now, Mother, as beautiful as I dreamt. Your chest is still. Your brown eyes, so deep, so much like mine, such a comfort here.
Let’s not talk about eyes though, that will come later.
***
Of course I loved him, as you did once. What son does not at least try to love his father? When I was seven, enduring a rare meal together, I asked him to tell me about you, Mother. He put his soup spoon down, cleared his throat and then said, quite unforgettably, that my birth caused your weakness and subsequent death and I should never speak your name.
Lenore. Lenore. Lenore. Lenore.
Let me say it and say it, now that you’re here, now that I can.
My twelfth year, a banging on the door disturbed the house’s usual forlorn silence. Two brutish men lugged Father on a stretcher, deposited him in his room like a bag of stones. He’d apparently been found in the street, despondent. Mrs. Hooper wanted nothing to do with illness, so I, a veritable child, was tasked with the burden of care. I barely knew the man before but now emptied his bed pan, blotted sweat from his greasy brow. He too coughed up blood. Day after day I spooned mush into his hanging mouth. He lived in a state of delirium, babbling nonsensical words or sunk in a coma of sleep. Mrs. Hooper made the meals, tidied the kitchen and fled each day.
Meanwhile, I lurked from silent room to silent room. The clocks, long unwound, stared with unquestioning faces. Their pendulums, stilled tongues, hung motionless. They did not accuse, did not torment. With each step I grew more powerful. My house, I said softly, practicing the phrase, my voice growing stronger with each utterance. My house.
I built fires in the once-locked rooms, raced the hallways. My frequent bursts of laughter giggled away from me, echoing down the corridors. I coerced a stray black alley cat inside, offering milk, allowed it to stay. Soon the house was filled with multitudes of dark, skulking felines. Bowls of milk sat in every corner, upon every surface. The cats weren’t always tidy, so soon Mrs. Hooper quit in disgust. I celebrated her departure. With access to Father’s accounts, I was more than able to pay the grocery bill and cook a roast. The Lord of the Manor, at last.
One day, I found the key to Father’s study in his dresser, dashed off immediately to unlock the room. I was thrilled to find the tremendous number of books lining the walls of sturdy shelves. There, my self-education began! I studied his medical and anatomy books, marveling at the human form, all its sinewy connections, its cartilage and bone, and of course its blood. I felt my own blood more keenly, began to respect it. Before, as I said, it was only a dreaded product of illness, decrepitude, encroaching death. Now it was the beautiful, holy stuff of life. I promised myself I would master its form and function.
I fell into a routine of caring for Father, reading in the study, and working various chores in and outside the house. I brought his meals, sat beside the bed turning the pages of all the books I’d wanted to read with him as a child. Stevenson’s Treasure Island had just come out and Father and I enjoyed it very much indeed. Eventually, he told me how much he’d always loved me, how difficult it was for him to express his feelings, especially after you died, how well I looked, for I did look well. He smiled and reached out his shaking pale hand from the bed, and I held it, Mother, I did. He thanked me for my care.
I grew a robust garden in the back. I purchased chickens, rabbits, a pig. I taught myself how to kill them-the chickens with a snip of the neck, the rabbits with my foot to the rake and the rake to their necks, the pig with a knife through the heart. Every now and then a neighbor would complain about the smells and sounds of livestock, but I’d hand them a big basket of vegetables and they’d scurry off.
I drained the animals of their blood, skinned and prepared them for eating.
I was entirely self-sufficient. Father was completely reliant on my care. I had created a better life for myself, a life of control.
***
For weeks I continued reading in Father’s study, ignoring the solid desk sitting squarely in the middle of the room. I assumed the drawers were locked and since I possessed no key I paid it no mind. One day I decided to approach, surprised by the easy shift of every drawer. Inside lay multitudes of papers, boring medical case studies, deeds and contracts of business. Perhaps because no one was there to stop me, I studied every word carefully, so carefully. You see Mother, my life was a bottomless pit, a seething, swelling question mark. I knew, the way children always know, that there was some truth from which I had been excluded.
Then, I found it. Your letter. In its sweet, tiny, wavering cursive, ink blotting the page, you described your own bottomless pit of darkness. You told him of your loneliness, your despair. You said you had asked untold times for his love, his companionship, but he did not respond to your pleas. You told him you saw no way out, no way besides death. My hands shook absorbing your final words.
It was after reading this, learning the truth of your death, that I no longer saw him as my father, but a pathetic, needy old man.
I no longer read to him, kept our time together short. I assured his colleagues who sometimes appeared on the stoop that he was doing much better. And he was. I permitted him just enough food, water, and sunlight to keep death’s door shut, but I would never allow him the strength to leave his bed, that room.
***
I’ve told everyone, absolutely everyone, it was the eye, that pale blue filmy right eye, watery, always looking at me. The vulture eye. Perhaps it was infected, I knew not. I did not think the old man wished me ill, but the eye became like a relentless tapping on the window, reminding me of the old man’s failings, toward me, toward you.
It was so clever, ironic, how I used all the knowledge the old man’s library gave me to sustain myself and our home, and then that knowledge taught me how to kill him, to sever him into little bits.
Oh, Mother, I believed you’d be there in the end, but you did not come, and I felt so weak without you. So weak that when the police came my courage bled from me like the pig I hung from the oak tree last fall.
Now it’s Christmas one year hence. You’ve come too late.
What is that you say, Mother? Speak up!
Coward? Lunatic? Murderer? How can you call me these things, when you, you…
No, no, no, no.
Watch me, Mother! I will pull the curtain, open the shutter, throw open the window, release you out into the cold, dark night.
Nurse Bell be damned!
Fly. Mother! Fly! I have no need of you now. Out into the swirling snow you go, join the church bells, they’re ringing now, clanging, insisting, accusing, replacing, at last, the old man’s lingering heartbeat. I am poised, alert as ever! My blood courses in my veins. The bells, the relentless ringing bells, sustain my eternal wakefulness.
Jennifer Prochna: A Magical Life
Syracuse Woman Magazine/Cover Story/July 2024
A Magical Life
by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
“It’s magic.”
This is how stylist Jen Prochna describes the palpable energy at a cabi fashion party where the room is full of women trying on clothes, talking, and laughing.
Magic is, according to the dictionary, an extraordinary power or influence, something that seems to cast a spell, an enchantment.
Jen Prochna is a wife, mother, friend, registered nurse, and fashion stylist whose magical life shimmers with passion, purpose, and gratitude.
Looking back, Jen’s career in fashion seems fated. Between her undergraduate degree in psychology and earning an MBA at Syracuse University, she worked as a freelance model (something she continues to do to this day), doing advertisements, voice-overs, commercials, and fashion shows. With her graduate degree in hand, she was set to start work at an insurance company when the sudden death of her father-in-law thrust her unexpectedly into the jewelry business. Prochna Jewelers in Armory Square became a successful fifteen year venture with her husband, Gary. Jen jumped right in, quickly learning the market and customer base. Over the years she and Gary ran both the jewelry store and another family business, Dependable Paving Company, from one office. Their three children, Sierra (now 32), Ryan (now 30), and Ava (now 25) grew up observing their busy parents first from office playpens and later as helpers themselves. When an incredulous five-year-old Ryan asked his mother why work stopped her from attending his Christmas play, Jen’s exit strategy from the jewelry business was born, conveniently opening a door to fashion styling.
Three years later, in 2004, Jen found herself charmed after attending something called a cabi party at a friend’s home in Camillus. This company presents and styles their high quality, fashionable (investment fashion, i.e., not cheap) clothing to small groups of friends in private homes. Soon after, Jen began hostessing her own parties and then applied to become a stylist herself.
Each of the two cabi seasons begins with a fashion week in a different city where stylists convene to meet and study the latest line. Afterwards, boxes of clothes arrive at each stylist’s home, where they work producing outfit combinations and accessories for different tastes and body types, preparing for the imminent styling/sales parties. Jen styles at about 15-20 parties each season, with from 5-30 people at each event. Women find out about the parties by word of mouth, one friend invites another and so on. Hostesses provide the wine and cheese and the space for the racks and in return receive half priced clothing and “cabi cash” to inspire further shopping.
Jen says, “I present the current collection and we sip a little wine…then the action starts! We try on clothes. I assist with sizing and pairings…most of my clients I know so well that I have recommendations before we even begin. I’ve been doing this for 19 years…this fall is my 39th season!”
Surprisingly, Jen does not like to shop. Before becoming a stylist, she’d go to the mall and buy multiple single pieces and then have to go back to find more clothes to match. Manycommiserate with this experience of having many articles of clothing yet nothing to wear.
Jen says, “They have items, not OUTFITS!”
And styling is about the outfits. Jen’s long experience gives her the, perhaps magical, ability to help women of every age, shape, and size find the right clothing combinations to look their best.
Looking good is nice, but the friendships and connections forged and nurtured through these gatherings cast the most important spell.
“I have had thousands of clients whose lives I've touched and I am so proud of that…My two best friends are my assistants, my attorney and eye doctor are my hostesses, my hair stylist is a client! Many appointments extend very long because we take time to catch up, hash out the world’s problems, exchange stories of husbands and kids! I have days, just like everyone, where I am not wanting to go to work…tired, weather, whatever the reason. But unbelievably, every time I come home energized and smiling,” Jen says.
Long-time client Karen McGinn, says of her friend,
“Her style advice is dead on and many of us in Onondaga County dress a whole lot better after Jen has come into our lives!”
Judy Bragg, a self-professed “die-hard cabi fan,” cites Jen’s incredible talent for everything from upbeat presentations to fashion knowledge to honest advice to customer care to business acumen among her many strengths.
Jen believes in fashion’s power to transform.
“When I am dressing a client and she looks in the mirror and I see the sparkle come back in her eye and she stands a little taller with new confidence, then I know I have been successful in my mission. Every woman needs and deserves to feel beautiful and special when she sets that foot outside the door,” she says.
However, fashion styling is not the only magical occupation in Jen’s life.
“My 50th birthday gift to myself was to become an RN…I had always loved medicine and I should have gone in that direction right out of high school, but what does a 17 year old know? So I asked my husband if he would mind if I went back to school for my RN. Understand, we already had two [children] in college and one in middle school, so it was hard.”
She attended Onondaga Community College for prerequisites and Crouse Hospital to complete her training before accepting a job in Crouse’s maternity center, where she’s worked the last ten years.
“We take care of moms and newborns after birth (post-partum and post-surgical) and women who are with us antepartum (before birth) if they need extra care before delivery due to illness or a complicated pregnancy. I assess moms [and] babies…offer education in breastfeeding and newborn care. I do my very best to get my families out the door with good information, confidence, and advice. I strive to give them the best possible start as a new family.”
Indeed, becoming a mother, a parent, is a magical moment, a metamorphosis. Jen participates in that magic by advocating for her patients, giving back what she received.
“I always remember this is their [her patients’] moment. I remember everything that happened to me and the people who were kind to me. I do for these new moms what was done for me.”
Jen believes she has the best two jobs in the world. Although motherhood has been the most defining role of her life, she finds both styling and nursing equally fulfilling.
So, what’s next for this magical woman of reinvention?
“It’s nice to know when you’re happy. I’m right where I want to be,” she says, “I am profoundly blessed. Serving women is my passion!”
Inset:
Jen’s Top Five Fashion Tips: (66 words)
1. You don’t have to follow every trend, you are uniquely you.
2. Confidence, and a smile, are the best accessories.
3. Yes, you can wear yellow.
4. Buy a perfect bra, the one you have probably doesn’t fit right.
5. Kick your wardrobe up just a notch. It’s OK to be one of the best dressed people in the room!
The Secret Stones of the Vatican Observatory
Sophon Lit/Aurora/June 2024
I’d pictured myself surrounded by the best telescopes in the world, stargazing for the rest of my days.
Instead, I looked down at a floored box of rocks.
“This is the largest collection of lunar meteorites known to man,” Fr. Phelps told me. “No one has ever studied them, no one until you.”
Lexi Spadaro: Mrs. New York International is the Queen of her Castle
Syracuse Woman Magazine Cover Story/June 2023
The alarm goes off at 6:15 Monday morning. Lexi and Cody Spadaro begin their usual well-orchestrated preparation. While Lexi dresses, Cody makes lunches and breakfasts and feeds and walks their dog. Their three and one year old sons, Easton and Axel, giggle and wriggle as Lexi dresses them and they make their way to the kitchen. After Cody leaves for his carpenter job at 7:15, Lexi feeds the cat and bunnies and prepares her own lunch before finally pouring herself a cup of coffee. By eight the boys are off to the babysitters and at nine Lexi is ready to welcome her second graders at Hastings-Mallory Elementary School in Central Square. All of this seems like a lot, but Lexi Spadaro is not just a wife, mother, and teacher, she is also the reigning 2024 Mrs. New York International.
Born in 1992 in the Fairmount section of Syracuse, Lexi Kerr grew up attending West Genesee schools. With her younger brother, Joshua, and their parents, Michelle and Charles, they formed a close-knit group that still enjoys vacations to Disney World, cruises, and camping trips with extended family.
“My parents always told me to chase my dreams and do what made me happy. They gave me the opportunity to competitively figure skate for about 20 years, participate in competitive cheerleading, model, dance, participate in gymnastics, and sing! They always did whatever they could to allow me to experience anything I wanted,” she says.
Chasing those dreams proved fruitful in other arenas. At age 15, Lexi met her future husband, the friendly and funny Cody Spadaro, at the Camillus ice skating rink where he played hockey and she skated. After high school, Lexi went on to study education at SUNY Cortland (graduating in 2014) and then pursue a Masters in Early Literacy from Southern New Hampshire University. Her mother’s hairdressing career motivated Lexi to add a cosmetology license to her resume, working in that field for a number of years (She still does wedding hair and makeup on weekends). Ultimately, she felt something was missing and reconnected with her vocation teaching elementary school.
“The relationship I have with all of my students makes me smile and I know I’ve made a positive impact on their lives because I still have students coming to visit me years later. That alone speaks volumes!” Lexi says.
Another key moment in her formative years was the realization of her father’s growing disability related to his childhood diagnosis of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, a genetic muscle disorder affecting the face, shoulder blades, upper arms, and other muscles. For many years the disease did not affect him very much, but over time it slowly progressed.
“At first, he was embarrassed and didn’t want others to know... But he slowly began to accept his condition and learn how to live life in a new way. He got a wheelchair scooter, ankle braces, and soon a chairlift. If we’re out to dinner and they fill his water cup too much, I take some sips to make it lighter for him. I hold his arm as he goes up and downstairs. I get his dinners ready when I’m with him, and so much more. The biggest challenge was when we were in public and people made fun of the way he walked. I’m now not afraid to say something and stand up for my dad…Seeing what he goes through, and also knowing the financial burden it puts on families to get the medical technologies and assistance needed…pushes me to advocate for others and make a difference within the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) community,” she says.
Lexi’s passions fused when she became involved with pageantry, specifically the International Pageants Organization. Interested in pageantry from an early age and buoyed by a friend’s involvement, she competed in smaller events, winning state, national, and international competitions. In 2017 she planned on doing the makeup for the Miss New York International Pageant and was so taken by the organization’s uniquely high standards and commitment to their contestants’ families and platforms she decided to enter the pageant herself, winning that competition and placing in the top ten of the Nationals.
“I didn’t know that I could incorporate my passion for giving back to the MDA community and educating others [about] muscular dystrophy. That discovery was the answer to my question of if I should compete,” Lexi says.
Through this first experience with the International Pageants Organization, she realized that pageants give their participants a way to amplify their fundraising goals and efforts they would not have otherwise.
“My pageant platform, Muscle Warriors, is dedicated to fundraising and education for muscular dystrophy. I’m a certified national volunteer for the organization and before the pandemic I participated in many local events for the MDA such as the Muscle Walk, Christmas Celebration, and Fill the Boot. Since COVID shut down local offices there’s now just one national office that puts together different events, campaigns, and fundraisers. Thankfully, I’m still able to volunteer virtually for the organization and even reach out across the country!” she says.
After her 2017 Miss New York International victory, Lexi promised herself she’d be back to compete in and hopefully win the Mrs. New York competition, and in 2024, after getting married and having her sons, that dream came true. Lexi is currently working hard to represent New York at the 2024 Mrs. International competition this summer in Nashville. Of course, it will be a family affair as Cody and the boys will come along. The crowning event happens to fall on July 27th, Lexi and Cody’s fifth anniversary, a good luck sign for sure.
“If I were to win the title of Mrs. International I would have achieved my ultimate dream. I’ll continue to work on my platform, but bring it…to new heights and reach hundreds, if not thousands of more people in hopes to continually make a difference,” Lexi says.
After her long workday, Lexi treasures sacred time with her husband and children playing, eating dinner (Lexi admits she is not a very good cook. Cody takes the reins in this department.), doing tubby time, and reading before a 7 PM bed time. She hits the gym three nights a week only after her boys are asleep.
Not too long ago she found her son Easton standing on her crown box, his weight causing it to bend a little out of shape, a good metaphor for what it’s like to be Mrs. New York. In Lexi’s house there are two closets full of gowns and a box holding a crown, but there are also Legos and clothes scattered here and there, children and animals to be fed, lesson plans to write.
“The crown and the sash are beautiful things, but I want people to see who I am inside,” she says.
Lexi hopes to boost others by her life and work. She wishes for all women to have the confidence to celebrate their inner and outer beauty and pursue their dreams. She knows that if she can impact others, then anyone who’s willing to dedicate their time, passion, and hard work can do the same.
A Process
Stone’s Throw/June 2024
On her way through the familiar lobby, Margaret passed Superintendent Kevin, or K-man, as Phil used to call him. He twisted in his swivel chair, his legs spread, knees loose, flowing with the rolling movement. He looked her right in the eye, said, Good morning, but did not produce her name. She forced one confident glance before moving with purpose to the stairwell. No worries about K-man, she thought. K-man didn’t remember or notice anything special about her. K-man hadn’t moved from his perch in all the twenty years she’d lived in the building, except to plod across the lobby to shovel doughnut holes down his throat at the occasional coffee social.
Seeing Him Through
Tales from the Moonlit Path/Demented Mothers’ Day issue/May 2024
Where is Herman? Where is Herman?
Herman is not in his room, on his hospital bed, underneath his patchwork quilt. Herman is not in the bathroom, sitting on the commode. Oh, where is Herman?
“Herman! Herman?”
Has he forgotten his name? Perhaps I might as well be saying, “Sermon! Sermon?”
Of course, Herman could be dead somewhere. That’s a strong possibility. Since I’m quite a bit younger than my husband, ten years to be exact, I’ve expected (hoped for) him to be dead for some time.
Ah! There’s Herman, outside, on the other side of the window of all places, bathed in light, tilting a bit, like a ruin, standing beside my rose bush, ironically beside the oak tree under whose canopy of branches I harvest my mushrooms.
“Oh, Herman,” I scold. He is not supposed to get out of bed by himself, let alone leave the house. He knows better, or he knew better, until today.
My hand covers his, our wedding bands touching. He pulls away. Oh, Herman.
“It’s too early to be out. You’re half naked. You haven’t had your breakfast.” My slippers are soaking in the morning dew. What a nuisance!
Herman begins to cry. A light rain sprinkles.
“And you haven’t got your teeth! That won’t do.”
Herman cries harder, gums showing.
Inheritance
Wyld Craft/Issue 2/Spring Summer 2024
Inheritance
Dedicated to my late brother, Donny, who loved to ride his bike.
June noticed Mr. Morton’s feet first. His brown loafers came apart at the seams. His khakis weren’t much better, hanging from his painfully thin frame. She hadn’t seen him in months, felt the need to contain her shock, swallow it, a big pill rammed down her throat.
“Hello! Glad you came! Canape?” he said, holding out a silver tray with little crackers blobbed with something white.
June’s discomfort grew. She did not want a canape.
“Thank you, Alan,” her mother said, giving June the be polite and take one nudge.
June complied, standing like a statue, cocktail napkin displayed on an upright palm.
The house had a lemony just-cleaned smell. Afternoon light streamed into the living room through the front window.
June remained frozen next to her mother, hyper-aware of the alien Mr. Morton greeting others, offering his gross little snacks.
Her mother’s smiling face glimmered above straight posture, a pressed flowered dress and sandals. Her hair was perfectly smoothed back in a neat ponytail.
June slouched in self-consciousness. She’d won the earlier party attire argument, but somehow her tee shirt, cut-offs, dirty Keds, and messy bun didn’t scream victory.
They hadn’t planned to stay long. June was relieved to see her mother raise her time to go eyebrows, went to find someplace to throw out the untouched canape. She entered the kitchen, finding a mess of cream cheese and crackers hanging out of open sleeves, a dirty butter knife exposed on the counter. She pictured Mr. Morton in his old shoes and baggy khakis spreading cream cheese. She pushed back the memory of him out front in his cycling clothes, returned from his Saturday ride, gulping from his tilted water bottle.
“Thanks so much for having us,” Mom said. She shook Mr. Morton’s hand stiffly, as though he was a stranger, June thought.
June copied her mother’s gesture, avoided Mr. Morton’s eyes. It would be easier if he was a stranger. She followed her mother out the door and down the walk to the street.
Her mother glanced back at Mr. Morton’s house.
“Terrible,” she said.
Mr. Morton was dying of cancer.
Last Words
Flora Fiction/Volume 5/May 2024
Last Words
by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
The room was completely still, oblivious to my demise. The fire waned, flickering in the grate. The wind howled on the moor, challenged the sides of the house, the window panes. Judith, also unaware of my passing, slept on the divan. I whispered her last words spoken to me, “Sister, we are running out of time!” She’d studied me with dry, serious eyes. Her hand held the pen above the page, pushing me to finish the book.
I didn’t expect to linger, to have this sense of the room, all the spaces in the house. I could hear the maid Betsy’s soft snores from her cold little bed upstairs. I regretted never giving her an extra shawl. I could feel the emptiness in Father and Bertram’s rooms, the tightly made beds untouched for many years now. My senses exited the house, swept the moors. The purple heather, its insistent ubiquity, its persistent beauty, despite, in spite of recurring storms.
Ah! The expectant, waiting church bells, the hidden stars and sun and moon. Yes, things were much bigger than I imagined, but much smaller too. The rat scurried behind the kitchen cupboard, the broody chicken sat on her egg, the worker bees buzzed, warming their queen.
I approached my sister’s sleeping form. How beautiful and kind she was! The love I felt overwhelmed but did not sadden. I shifted my glance to examine my own body laid out stiff, lifeless on the opposing couch. I marveled at all that wasted time fussing, of smoothing my hair and pinching color into my cheeks, worrying about my scars, my plainness.
I examined the book’s unfinished pages. The story lived on in my presence, my consciousness. I moved the pen, the words colluding, extending and twirling, spinning and swirling. The ending came, brighter than Judith and I imagined! I released our heroine, allowed her joy, new life. She would not be swallowed by grief and heartbreak. She would not wander the moors alone. I couldn’t help myself! I laughed, a deep sound I didn’t recognize as my own. It echoed within my own ears, reverberating down the halls of the house, out of doors.
“Tricia? Tricia!” Judith stirred, rose, crossing the planks to find my corpse. She fell across my chest and sobbed. She was the last of us left and I pitied her.
“Why do we attempt these long stories,” she once asked me, “when we so often take ill, die so young, so quickly?”
“What else are we to do with the tales bobbing in our heads?” I replied, knowing it was not much of an answer. Judith, Bertram, and I spent our childhoods holding one another captive, spinning stories of dark woods and generous lords and mysterious ladies, spending wondrous, magical hours doing so. Without our mother, ours was a sad life. Our imaginations provided some escape.
Judith did not notice the finished book. Well before its discovery, she ran for the maid, Betsy, she waked and buried my body, she noticed the signs of her own consumption. When she finally found the unmoved book upon the desk, she read with amazement, assuming those last lines were her own forgotten inspiration. Pleased, she wrapped the pages and sent them to the publisher.
Soon, she passed too, cold in her own bed. With nothing left, the windows blew in, the papers scattered, the walls collapsed. Released from our stories, we flew from the page, the demands of story. Reunited, we whipped in the wind, loose, frenzied, free. In life, we believed composition our greatest joy. Now we knew something else.
Slim Differences
Muleskinner Journal/April 2024
I noted the decrepit state of Mr. Talbot’s shoes before stepping over his legs, a motion I’d performed for over a year. He slept in my shop’s doorway, as he did every night, mostly because I no longer tried to stop him.
“Mr. Talbot,” I said, always very respectful, “It’s time to get up.” I tugged at his arm.
It’s not like I was afraid to touch a homeless man. I made a point of it.
Not very long ago, after engaging him in several conversations, I learned that Mr. Talbot and I were not very different. We were only two years apart in age, divorced, college graduates. We’d both lived in Newburgh our entire lives. Talbot said his mother bought their entire family shoes at Fogarty’s. She knew my father. And we were both recovered addicts, although different addictions, and he was not totally recovered, like me.
No, we were not as different as I originally hoped.
Going South
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 2024
They planned on driving north, all the way to Long Island. They’d stay overnight, attend Theresa’s father’s funeral the following day. Todd drove, his right hand pressing on Patti’s thigh.
“Almost to Maryland,” he said.
She watched miles of trees swoosh past, dreading the decreasing November temperatures that awaited them.
“Theresa hated country music,” he said, new information delivered as he changed the radio station.
The Meltdown
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 2024
At 4 AM, just as the grandfather clock chimed in the hall, Mrs. Starch shrieked from her room. “No! No! Noooooooo!”
One of her nightmares.
Mr. Starch’s painted eyes followed me, his stern brow and navy suit imposing as I stood listening and watching at the door.
Mrs. Starch’s little white head poked from the covers. She thrashed in the shadowed bed, screaming, yelling.
I honestly felt sorry for her, but I would not enter.
Rule #1 at Mrs. Starch’s house: never ever go into her room at night.
Papa Hemingway, Help Me
Open: Journal of Arts and Letters/April 6, 2024
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
I arrived early because I didn’t want to see anyone, even old Phil, the janitor. The hall stretched, long and daunting, the walls surveyed me with hundreds of eyes. Bad knees creaking, I pressed on, struggled to find my own classroom door, almost unrecognizable, decorated with Shakespearean insults: How now, you gleeking, flapmouthed, footlicker.
Alphabetic Disorder
E is for Elizabeth, me, dark eyes matching curly hair contrasting with white white skin, lover of coloring books, tin doll houses, solitaire.
M is for Mom and Dad, whose love was at best like an umbrella, at worst, a harness.
H is for home, both safe and stifling.
Three Holiday Horrors
Litmora Literary Magazine/January 2024
Tradition
We arrived by carriage late afternoon Christmas Eve. I followed Beatrice to the living room where her parents and younger sister sat before the fire.
“Hughe!” They all stood at once, bestowing a torrent of warm greetings, pats on the back, and offers of food and drink.
That night, Bea and her father sang in duet, “Good King Wenceslas,” their voices smooth and delicious, like the toffee candies her mother had made.
“Next year you can sing my part!” Bea’s father winked.
Christmas day passed dreamily, as I sipped on the many drinks they offered, and I fell in and out of sleep while enjoying the scent and presence of the woman I loved.
Late in the day, Bea’s father pulled me aside and said, “It’s time for men’s work.”
I obediently followed him out the back door where he pointed to a horse-drawn sleigh. He cracked a whip and we glided through the snowy acres of their farm to a clearing in the woods.
“Now you’ll slaughter the pig.”
A pig meandered into view, nosing along the pristine patch of snow.
I started to run but he grabbed me from the back, put the knife in my hands.
“You will do this now. You must.”
I returned to the house covered in pig’s blood, disoriented and crying.
The women encircled me, held me.
“You’ve slayed the pig! You’ve slayed the pig!” they sang softly.
Bea led me upstairs, undressed and bathed me, caressing my shuddering body.
She performed this impropriety without flinching.
“I want to go home,” I said wearily.
“You are home,” she said, drying my tears. “You’re part of this now, forever.”
She held my wet head to her bosom and did not let go.
There’s Really No Need
Crayon Magazine/December 2023
Illustrated Worlds Magazine/December 2024
There’s this feeling like we’re leaving Earth for a place far away, and literature feels like looking back through the window of the spaceship, waving goodbye.(Elle Magazine)
I stumbled onto the street and there she was, darkened but decipherable through my UV400s : a bun-headed woman wearing some super weird clothes standing on the sidewalk. The violent sun, white and hot streaking from the east, pressed its nasty fingers into my leathery skin. The street was, as usual, empty. I’d gotten used to that, but this anachronism lady brought out the loneliness of it all. That day it was me and her, but it was usually just me. A while back, I found I could walk out here before anyone checked their cameras. People like me were supposed to stay in their place, but I found my morning walks to be worth the risk. I needed to shake myself out, sort of like pacing. There was so much time in those aimless days.
The woman’s jacket had like fifty buttons, a railroad track trailing up to her throat. I mean, she was wearing decent, like full leather shoes on top of pantyhose. I haven’t seen pantyhose since the early 1960s. My granny wore panty hose.
Her presence heightened my disheveled look and not-so-fresh fragrance. Without one whiff I knew she smelled of old scents, soap or moth balls or both. So, I smoothed back my hair and hiked my shorts from their usual half-ass state.
The shock of seeing an old lady with a buttoned coat, bunned hair, skirt (I forgot to mention that), panty hose, and shined leather shoes diminished compared to the shock of her voice, directed at me.
“Young man,” she said, “Can you help me hail a cab?”
“A cab?”
“I have a reading to attend at the public library at 1 PM sharp and I need a cab. I’d like to arrive early.”
She spoke with – what would you call it – like every word was a little jewel rolling around in her mouth or something.
I hadn’t been spoken to by real live person in about six months, since my sister Ruby came looking for me, found me, and then promptly returned to her cool tower.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alive. I couldn’t find your phone anymore.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
I gave up the whole phone (the irony of that old fashioned name for those things!) some time ago, mostly because I couldn’t afford one but also because I didn’t give two craps anymore. They used to call it off the grid. That’s me, off the grid.
“You don’t do anything anyone else does,” Ruby said, right before rushing off.
She didn’t invite me to come with her. And I would have in a heartbeat.
Anyhow. Digression.
I still couldn’t get over the amount of clothing the bun lady wore. I mean this was like some broadloom woolen shit. This was not the high-functioning fabrics people, rich people, wore these days. I assumed she was rich. I wore old clothes, my father’s clothes, threadbare denim, cotton. I nervously ran my fingers through my lucky charms inside my jeans pocket, feeling for the smooth soothe of my guitar pic.
“I think I shall walk. Would you escort me, sir?” she said.
Escort? To a reading? What the hell did she mean by that? Why would she need to go somewhere to read? Who would she be reading to? Sir?
“I. I. Guess,” was all I could manage.
“Excellent. What a fine young man you are,” she said.
Fine young man. I looked at my filthy flip-flops, my horny toenails. I’d let my greying beard grow long, hiding the wrinkled remnants of my face. My mouth tasted foul. I was not a young man. I wasn’t even sure I was a man, a hu-man. I was some kind of messed up Rip Van Winkle, denied the privilege of a long, peaceful slumber.
Then, get this, she tucked her hand into my arm. She touched me. I nearly sunk to the concrete.
“It’s a good day to go to the library, nice and cool in there,” I said. The library was one of the few places people still went.
“Shall we?” she said.
“We shall.”
Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Mother with Dementia
Literally Stories/November 2023
“I’ve just told you that.”
When things became worse, I brought my mother to our abandoned-since-Dad-died beach house for the summer. A sabbatical and a newly west coasted daughter freed me to lug Mom like a bag of silent, bewildered groceries into the passenger’s seat of my car. We sped along the highway from the city to the coast, chasing the rickety car of Mom’s memory, lumbering just ahead. I savored the hopeful sensation of control and the encroaching smell of sulfury sea air.
The house, high on a hill overlooking the sea, was left to my father by my grandparents, and was really just a shack, by modern standards. Mcmansions threatened from all sides.
The first night I awoke to find my mother flying on the green sky lawn, face down, her nightgown hitched up the back.
I turned her mud-smeared body on its side, used both my hands to direct her gaze towards mine.
“Home?” she said.
“This is your home.”
“Home?”
“You always loved it here.”
“Home?”
“I’ve just told you,” I said, jaw clenched.