Diary of a Heretic

Grow Gigantic & Run

Coming home with a migraine, Sam saw Anna and his daughter Rosalyn through the kitchen window. They traded tastes off wooden spoons like sisters, although Anna was his age.

They would want to know how he was feeling, including nuances that were beyond him. Having made it inside the living room, he resolved to maintain reticence.

In one corner of the living room light from the street streamed in, illuminating a horse from an antique carousel. Sam had always assumed it was a gift from one of his wife’s lovers. Last New Year’s Eve, sixteen-year-old Rosalyn had plopped a blonde wig on its head. 

The kitchen lay past the horse through a swinging door. The sudden, sweet smell of brown rice almost brought him to his knees as he leaned against the door frame.

Through the hinges he saw Rosalyn holding a finger to her lips. Anna said, “I think it’s time, don’t you? Let’s ask today’s contestant to come on out and say hello. Sam Durkin, folks, a financial consultant from Westchester, New York. Sam?”

He had no choice. He was in pain but conscious.

“Let’s give him a hand,” Rosalyn said.

Seeing his face, Anna whispered. “Imitrex?”

He’d already taken two; he could take another after midnight. Anna turned off the lights and through the jig-sawing darkness, she gleamed. Through filters of pain, he kissed her goodnight, ecstatic as always at her touch. He found his daughter concerned in the background and kissed her goodnight, too.

Upstairs, he dreamed about being ten years old with Anna and watching a horse being born. They stood inside the hot, humid barn, charmed by a shaft of light turned substantial by motes of hay. Grandpa’s big, blonde horse, Lorna Doone, snorted and thrashed. They watched her belly shift backwards. She reared up and issued a noise like a scream. Their grandfather ran into the barn, into the stall, and held Lorna’s head down. More thrashing until he had to jump back from her bucking hindquarters. He stroked her side and the foal rippled through its mother’s body. Grandpa was pulling and yelling above the horse’s ferocious screams and kicks. So many legs working and then they heard a wet, wrenching sound.

The foal lay still inside a pillow of slime, which Grandpa ripped off. He cleaned the foal, a filly, rubbing it with hay. Lorne Doone had rolled onto her side.

The children, Sam and Anna, hugged each other as the newborn horse tried to stand—and did.

Shot through this half-conscious memory were haphazard sensations that harked back to Rosalyn’s birth. She had been bloody and squalling, not lifeless, not trapped in a thick sac of membrane.

But the recollections ran together: the violence of birth, the hugeness of a head, the spindliness of legs and how quickly we totter up, grow gigantic, and run.

(“Grow Gigantic & Run” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

His Other Wife

Alison didn’t remember most movies she and Sean watched, whether at the multiplex or on Netflix. Sean remembered the plot and music, all the taglines, who had starred, and who directed.

For special occasions, he treated Alison to fancy restaurants, but even when she apparently enjoyed the experience, she forgot it fast. Only if she had hated it, like the places that left them time to savor a few cocktails and appetizers, when she was wildly hungry, could she tell him the restaurant, for what occasion, and how much he had paid.

Alison remembered real life conversations. She remembered people’s names and faces after casual introductions on the street: friends of friends. She remembered not just women’s outfits, but men’s shirts, hair color and/or balding patterns. Smiles? She never forgot smiles, although she often judged them too quickly. Cold or warm, mean or kind, the result of too much dentistry or not enough. 

Sean disagreed that her memory carried any real significance. No one knew what she was talking about when she described meeting a someone wearing an ill-fitting dress; or a man in shiny loafers; a pretty girl with bleached bangs. But “The Matrix?” Sean mentioned it, had seen the trilogy, and people bonded. 

So for years when she couldn’t remember which actresses had starred and which were “supporting,” they would joke. “Guess you better ask your other wife.”

“Why don’t we have any bourbon?” Sean swore that hot toddies cured impending colds and flu.

“You took it over to your other wife’s place last weekend.”

Alison was always asking him how other kids he had, and how much money his other wife earned, because how was it possible that Sean and Alison never went anywhere or bought anything, but sank deeper into debt every month?

The first Wednesday night in January, however, Alison wasn’t asking Sean anything. Not why he needed to shower before coming to bed; not why for several weeks now he lavished her with sexual favors and attention as if desperate…to compensate for something.

While he toweled dry and rubbed expensive new creams into his face and hair, Alison wrapped herself naked inside the heavy top blanket. She wiggled to its edge, and keeping her hands flat by her hips, pinched the fabric. She wound the wool around herself, turning until the blanket, lay propped on her side of the bed, as tight and tapered at the ends as a home-rolled cigarette.

She breathed quietly, a body ready for disposal, though he might want some rope. 

“What’s this?” He tried to tug her loose but her fingers clung to the edge. “You’re making a statement?”

“Not until you do.” Alison’s voice sounded muffled to her.

“I have to go first?”

“Now, later, whenever you want.” Even through layers of blanket, her voice reached the balcony. “But yeah, Sean, you talk first.”

(“His Other Wife” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

It Should Be Easy

Pulling out of the driveway, Claudia’s car passes their car, waiting to pull in. Max is driving. Lacey’s auburn hair casts remarkable light. From behind the windshield, Claudia forces a smile. But she sees Lacey about to open her window—obviously to say hello. Claudia presses the gas pedal. They’ll get to that later.

She promised Lacey, no hiding. After all, in the spring Lacey will marry this man, making Claudia his mother-in-law. Arranging this visit, Lacey explained, “We’re eloping, Mom. Partly because of how you are and partly because Max’s family is the other extreme. Still, you must meet him, shake his hand and say hello.”

This isn’t the same as when she used to avoid Lacey’s high-school friends, letting the kids enjoy the house on their own.

How that annoyed Lacey, even after Claudia portrayed it as an example of trust. “Ha!” her daughter scoffed. “That’s your excuse.”

Possibly. Claudia feared embarrassing Lacey. The idea haunted her.

Her own mother, obnoxious from drinking, had embarrassed Claudia so much that she had done whatever possible to hide her. Lacey doesn’t know that.

Of course, by now Claudia and Lacey both recognize Claudia’s problem as plain fear. Until Lacey started high school, Claudia coped well enough. But once her daughter’s friends grew big, and circumstances shifted, rarely forcing Claudia to face other people, she withdrew.

When Lacey went to college and moved to the city, Claudia phoned and emailed regularly. But before long, even Lacey’s presence proved daunting.

Claudia’s overnight job requires processing catalogue orders over the phone, never in person. She shops at a 24-hour Piggly-Wiggly, after her shift, at five a.m.

At work, Claudia concentrates on her plan. No more nonsense. She vows all night to rise to the occasion.

Home at daybreak, she sets the table and makes coffee. They’re scuffling overhead. Lacey’s giggling. Claudia senses their young bodies stretching, their backs arching. She listens to water running, their voices sounding like chimes.

It should be so easy. She imagines calling out, “One egg or two, kids,” in her telephone voice. They’re coming downstairs. Lacey says, “Smells great, Mom.” But Claudia panics. She ducks into the front closet the moment their shadows appear.

Smothered between coats, Claudia strains to escape the trap she’s built for years. Why doesn’t it explode? It’s charged like that.

Lacey mock-screams in exasperation.

Max says, “When your mother feels right about it, she’ll appear.”

Yes, Claudia thinks. Max understands. I can appear when I’m ready.

Eyes squeezed shut, she rises, weightless a split-second. A sweet aroma, separate from the coffee, surrounds her face and moistens her cheeks. And then, not giving in, she darts out of the closet!

They watch her but don’t say anything. She blinks and her right hand swings stiffly up. “Hello.”

(“It Should Be Easy” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

Unguarded & Undiscovered

My mom’s waiting in the glass-walled library because I asked her here. But now I’m embarrassed, ready to run and hide.

My mom’s not embarrassing, not at all. It’s me. Half way through my first semester at college, I wake up screaming. Meanwhile, my roommate cries all the time. 

Last night I dreamed that surgery-gone-wrong had attached my organs outside my body. The lower intestine? Disgusting. I had to wind it up like a hose and duct tape it to my hip. I heard sniffling and scratching and woke up to find Monique crouched naked, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and gobbling up another Cadbury bar, cream oozing out.

Through the glass doors, I see my mom talking to Robert Peterson, who dresses like a banker. He also uses an unlit pipe for a prop. It’s impossible to fit in here. People prize their own superiority so much that the social atmosphere stinks of five thousand geniuses stacked on totem poles.

My mom has gotten Robert to laugh for real. I’ve only seen him fake-laugh. It’s getting dark and the rain hits in horizontal sheets. I better go in, before she makes Robert laugh again. She hurries over to hug me, not caring that my clothes are soaked.

Shit, did I really push my hand in her face? Like: “Halt!” She doesn’t care; she’s touching my shoulders and saying how much she loves me and I’m shrinking back, gritting my teeth. “Quit talking. People can hear.”

We stay at a “Bed and Breakfast,” meaning someone’s house, which creeps me out, but anything’s better than the dorm. Without my roommate weeping and eating, I sleep late. My mom’s already dressed and reading The New Yorker. 

“They left out muffins and coffee for you.”

“I’ll eat later. Whoa! It really felt good  to sleep.”

It’s stopped raining and the fog is chest high. I ask her if we can walk back. “Before I have to reconfigure myself into that capsule.”

She smiles her sympathetic smile. “That bad?”

It’s great to be outside. We trudge along hills swathed in fog—no distinct sun in the sky, just this thin, tight light. My mom says she’ll remember this, the trees dripping and sighing in the cold, fresh, highly condensed air.

“We could be walking back a hundred years,” she says, “or ahead.”

“We could end up anywhere.”

And then my mom says the perfect thing. She says, “What if we end up someplace we can only find in our minds? When we’re off guard.” 

Wouldn’t that be sweet? My mom and I wandering off somewhere unguarded, and until then, undiscovered.

(“Unguarded & Undiscovered” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

Too Much Fun

Jonathan’s wife, Lucy, who had died ten years ago, rarely let a month pass without haunting him. Occasionally, however, when he would really appreciate a word from her, she stayed away.

He prayed to her much the way he had when she was alive: silent pleas that she would love and understand him; that she wouldn’t desert him. Which, he believed, she had, driving her new Toyota over the Tappan Zee Bridge at four a.m.

In the last weeks of her life, she had played a Charles Mingus record almost nonstop. She would creep around their living room, swaying to the music playing at top volume.  So now, when he desperately wanted to hear her voice, he played the CD constantly, remembering how she’d hold her head askance.

Since her death, she had only visited him at night. Lucy stayed away if he was at work or chatting with the neighbors about hydrangeas.

Her presence in daylight would probably count as too much fun in public. Too much fun in public, Lucy would say, and a person risked all claim to honor, decency, even sanity. What was she doing in a world where if you enjoyed yourself at all noticeably, you were a pariah?

Why weren’t there soundproof kiosks where people could tremble and gasp as necessary? Leaning into whatever man she was confiding in, Lucy would say, “Either that or we should relax the code. Allow for random, ecstatic swoons.”

Then she’d arch her neck and drop her eyelids, signaling it was a joke, a burlesque. Except often with Jonathan (no one else; he was pretty sure) the game would flip into its antithesis.

Come on, now! Had he presumed she was referring to sex? Didn’t he realize Lucy was strenuously circumventing the way time and boredom, impatience and anxiety affected them?

Tell her the truth. How often did he cringe when dealing with people even on the “hi-how’s-it going” level?

During the past three months, Jonathan had slept little, playing the Mingus CD and praying till dawn. So when he hung up his suit jacket in his office and a silent stab of Lucy’s temperament had sent him swimming in a band of watery air, he almost lost his breath.

What was she doing visiting him at work?   

Lucy had never answered such dull questions while living, and certainly didn’t now.

Still, solely for her sake, Jonathan tried to behave normally, calling up the computer file of his latest report. “How to Modulate Routinization.”

“A little.” Lucy fluttered about his head. “Modulate in little bits.”

Rising from his chair and holding his neck, Jonathan prayed to her:  Please, Lucy. Talk to me.

(“Too Much Fun” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

The Lie

Jeanine and I work doing data entry. On Fridays, we cross the street and drink daiquiris before going home. We’d seen him around, straight black hair he tossed back, heavy eyelids covering the bluest eyes, and a weird, thick mustache. His smile was enormous and he floated over to our table with such practiced languor; he had to be kidding. Still, I ran off to fix my mouth: shell-pink pencil, matte lipstick, concealer and fixative. 

When I returned, he watched me even while telling Jeanine that people with fingertips like hers were clairvoyant.

Staring at me, he said, “Keith.” And ordered us fresh drinks. After a while, he whispered, “Come with me. I want to talk to you.”

I shook my head but Jeanine said, “Go on, Robyn.”

He wrapped an arm around me, issuing me outside. At seven it was still light and the stream of people flowed past in waves.

His finger under my chin, he said, “A beautiful affliction. Corrected and healed.” Keith traced my scar covered with concealer and I was too surprised to react. He fingered his mustache. “Mine’s a lot worse under here. But yours—I’ve always wanted to kiss a harelip fixed like yours.”

No one has ever said, “harelip” directly to me. The word’s offensive. My tiny scar’s noticeable only in bright light. So, I’ve no right to complain. 

His nose didn’t look flattened. And who knew, under that mustache? His smile really addled me. So I said, “Now’s your chance.”

“What?” Like he forgot. And then, “Oh yeah.” His arms circled my waist, tipping me backward for the kiss: people noticed.

Maybe because Keith said the truth—out loud—I took him to the apartment I share with my sister. Of course, I’ve heard “harelip” usually whispered, or shouted from far away, but my family protects me, as if it’s something shameful. So when he touched my mouth and said, “a beautiful affliction,” it sounded like the truest love.

In my room, I said, “I never do this,” which was true.

My sister knocked on my door, “Robyn? Do have company?”

“Yeah.”

We had our clothes off. Keith pressed into me and stopped, his eyes wide. “Am I the first?”

“No. I’m twenty-two.”

“Well, I’m twenty, but I can tell—I’m the first.”

We did it all night with intermittent rests. Keith was determined I “get off.” 

“If it’s happening, you’ll know.”

It happened and kept happening.

At dawn, he said, “I’m leaving, Robyn.”

Stretching my hand up, I brushed my fingers through his moustache, which suddenly looked sparse. “Do you really have a harelip?”

“Yeah.” Then: “No, I just said that. But don’t smear that gunk on your mouth. You’re way prettier without it.”

“You lied about that?”

He was dressed and opening the door. Like taking pity, then, he weaved back, his face above mine. “Yeah, but we had fun. Maybe I’ll call you.”

(“The Lie” originally appeared as “A Clever Lie” on The View from Here.)

Thresholds

Joyce Payson was saying good-bye to her daughter Emma for the second time since her daughter had gone to college. The first time Joyce visited, her existence as Emma’s mother, or something, had caused acute embarrassment.  This time, however, Emma introduced her mom to everyone in sight. Much as Joyce appreciated this, she was mostly relieved that her daughter had found a way down from such anxiety.

They were getting her overnight bag from Emma’s dorm room and were halfway down the steps, when two shouting boys carrying bicycles distracted Joyce. She heard them laughing and saw their thick calves coming and her foot landed wrong. It crashed through a mirage step and twisted on the real one. 

Fists clenched, she tried to fool Emma, insisting it was nothing. Meanwhile, her ankle radiated dull, sharp, and steady pain, three in one. Too bad: No way was she overstaying her welcome.

“It might be broken, Mom.”

But Joyce said, “Please, it’s fine.”

Ten minutes later, during which Joyce tried not to focus on Emma too much—no staring awestruck by her mouth and eyes—the taxi arrived. A middle-aged woman driver sucked on an antique pipe reeking of cherry tobacco.

Holding the stem in her teeth, the driver said, “Hurt your foot, didn’t you? The reason’s emotional, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Think carefully. And confront your feelings.” The driver watched Joyce in the rearview mirror.   

In too much pain to argue, Joyce agreed, and the driver continued. Studies, she said, had proven that even cancer stemmed from emotions. “People with cancer who aren’t depressed recover better than depressed people.”

“Are there people with cancer who are happy about it?”

“Not happy, probably. But not depressed.”

A block from the train station, Joyce said “Here’s fine,” and overtipped the driver, which meant she was angry. On the strength of that anger, she hobbled to the platform.

No one would convince Joyce that her mother, Emma’s namesake, had died from breast cancer twenty-six years ago because she was depressed. Her mother had vowed she wouldn’t die and leave Joyce to her grandparents. If she failed to keep that promise it was not due to bad attitude or weak will or wrong thinking.

No one knew why her mother had had to die while everyone else lived on. A random, fatal illness that could happen to anyone had stolen her mother.  Joyce, her mother, the doctors, and even God apparently, couldn’t stop it. As a girl, Joyce told herself over and over: it’s no one’s fault. No one’s.

So now? A twisted ankle? It was not even as significant as the mother-daughter bond that had initially left Emma so anxious. A bond that Joyce hoped one day when her daughter recognized it only in retrospect, she would accept as a gift.

The misstep that caused Joyce’s twisted ankle was nothing. Really. In fact, the growing physical pain was starting to recall her long-gone joy.

(“Thresholds” originally appeared on The View from Here.)

Amazing Grace

Once, after his dad slammed 10-year old Matt’s head against the door to teach him to close the refrigerator so it was sealed shut, his mother pulled him outside the cabin. She draped an arm around him, leading him to the pier and saying how much his dad loved him. When Matt asked why, his mom said, “Sometimes the more you love someone the more you demand from him. Like God—the people He loves best, He makes suffer the most.”

When Matt’s dad wasn’t hitting him, he sometimes held Matt’s shoulders and whispered, “You’re way too good to be my kid. You must be someone else’s.”

That made no sense.

His parents’ friends visited: Jack and Sarah, with Alice, who was Matt’s age. The fathers took the kids fishing. In the middle of the lake, Matt’s dad cut the motor and baited their fishing rods with worms. Glare bounced off the water. For a second, things were still. Then trickles of sweat smelling like raw alcohol formed on Matt’s father. Matt noticed but no one said anything.

When Alice’s pole bowed in half, she shrieked. “Oh my God!” She had never caught a fish and threw the rod in the lake. Matt’s father reached for it but missed.

“Go get it.” His father ordered him out of the boat.

“No, Dad.”

His father told him again and Matt said, “You do it.”

Alice giggled. His father took a hook, grabbed Matt’s palm, and jammed the prong through the flesh below Matt’s thumb.

Alice screamed. Matt closed his eyes but everything kept spinning.

Jack said, “It was a total accident.”

“You’ll be okay in a minute.” His father’s voice sounded high and false.

Matt’s father told Alice to sing. “Amazing Grace.” She had never heard it but Jack told her to repeat after him, while Matt’s father snipped the hook with wire cutters and worked the stem up and out.

Onshore, while the mothers dressed the wound, Matt’s father kept saying it was his fault. He was usually careful; it just happened. Matt went to his room.

Soon his parents were calling him. The friends were leaving. Before they got in their car, Sarah told Matt’s mother, “We’ll help you. You and Matt can stay with us.”

If Matt’s father heard this, he pretended otherwise. Later he knocked on Matt’s door and sat on his bed. Matt kept his hand hidden.

“Drink some of this,” his father said. “Time honored remedy.” Matt sipped the bourbon. “More.”

He couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Before dawn, he sneaked into the woods and spun until he towered among the pines. The trees swayed not with remorse but with glee. Matt had power over his father now. No need to use it right away though, since more was coming.

(“Amazing Grace” originally appeared on The View from Here.)