Diary of a Heretic

The Waterbaby

[I found this in a lost file that turned up after some repairs. To my surprise, I still like it: only 450 words.]

Vacationing in Bermuda, ten-year-old Vivi snorkeled with Liz, her much older sister. Vivi had seen stingrays and parrotfish at the aquarium, a sad place suddenly.

In sunlit water, she intruded upon bright patterned schools, the fleeting pop-eyed and no-eyed angels and clowns, the damsel-, butterfly-, and triggerfish, the tiny neons and snaky mudfish. Certainly these creatures communicated. Their language simply eluded her.

And the corals! Either rock or plants but also animals. Forests shifted. Porous stone walls reached for drifting morsels. Flowers waved their fingers. Great caves beckoned her.

Liz tugged Vivi’s UV protective shirt: time to quit.

Above water, Vivi begged, “Just until the sun fades.”

“I’m tired.”

“Please! I’ll do your fingernails.”

Liz relented and Vivi dove into the shifting tide. She swam in circles unable to find the coral. And few fish. The sun shot a shaft of white light into the ocean. Vivi swam toward that and everything changed.

The water was impossibly clear. Voices gurgled underwater. She comprehended a suggestion to remove her mask. Transparent but distinct shapes formed. An almost invisible man nodded to her.

“Breathe deep and don’t be frightened.” His name was Zee.

A girl named Merra said, “Vivi, I knew you’d come.”

A woman, Ondine, stroked her hair. Vivi had slipped into a bubble that existed independent from time or space.

“Unlike you, we were never born.” A boy named Blue led her into a “chamber,” which was transparent yet somehow secluded. He spun her around until she imagined shedding her body. She became a whirlpool and then foam. Ripples lapped on the surface when she laughed. They invited her to join them forever.

“Before the sun rises tomorrow,” Zee said. “You won’t find us after daybreak.”

“Think about it overnight,” Ondine said.

As Bermuda resumed, Vivi saw that Liz was furious. “What happened to you? I was scared to death.”

Vivi told Liz that if she joined them, she could never return. She would exist longer than the ocean. She would be freer than was humanly possible. But she would belong to a separate realm with no bridge to the earth, air, or even, ordinarily, the sea.

Liz scoffed, but then grew hysterical. “Do not go swimming tomorrow. Promise me.”

“So you believe it’s real?”

“No. You’re insane.”

She told her parents, who wondered why she still liked fairy tales.

Before dawn, Vivi ran to the beach. She stripped, anchoring her bathing suit with rubber sandals. She left a note between them, telling her family: Don’t be sad.

Underwater, she blinked in terror and almost choked. Then Zee pulled her inside—where Vivi and the rest rejoiced.

Peter's Secret Place

[This isn't anyone's favorite as far as I know. It's up there among my own favorites, but that's because in our small apartment when I say something to Manny (usually while facing the computer that faces out the window) and he can't  or doesn't or pretends he doesn't hear me, I jump up, asking where he is. "Are you hiding in your secret place again?"]

I knew not to ask, “What’s that, Peter?” when he brought in the first wooden board. We weren’t that casual. Our conversations concerned the world and its needs, global hardship, destruction, and greed. And then, too, history and genius and fundamental, universal truth—nothing personal.

To an astonishing degree, Peter found navel-gazing repellent. “I, me, mine,” he said. “What’s wrong with people?”

When we met, I attempted to argue: People need to talk about their likes and dislikes; it’s how we relate.

But he said, no, it only leads people to demand that everyone believe what they believe. Well, all right; I went along. After all, Peter was the most intelligent, handsome man I’d ever met.

Averse to anyone worming around for validation, Peter naturally disliked revealing his inner life to me or anyone else. Initially, his secretive nature thrilled me—such depth and intrigue.

When we married, we made “non-intervention” our first vow. We would respect each other’s differences just as we respected other cultures’.

Our apartment has one bedroom, a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom but high ceilings and thick brick walls. Behind the bedroom is a long, narrow, high area, set up as a closet, one half his, one mine.

Once, when he scolded me for examining his toy soldier collection, I said, “No worries, darling, if you need to be furtive.”  It was, I thought, just another guy thing.

But he said, “I’m never furtive, Angela.”

Of course, Peter wasn’t really furtive but should he ever wish for a furtive moment, I understood. I understood, too, not to question his privacy.

The stockpile of wood and carpenter nails accruing in his closet’s shadows meant nothing. I imagined it was like a musty, secret shrine. Or something.

As his project developed, however, I worried. Turned out, it was a boy’s fort, secured to the closet ceiling. I surmised but never saw that he shimmied up a rope and pushed open the fort’s trap door.

Our confines were such that I registered without actually watching him horde bottled water, batteries, flares, flotation devices. He acquired a Boy Scout uniform and soon spent—it seemed—his life inside his fort. His troops traded intelligence in muffled voices.

And then, several times he refused to decamp for dinner. This battalion or that, I gathered, had been bombed to smithereens. Well, please. This isn’t how I’d envisioned married life.

Yet since I was married, I tried to remain loyal. 

Soon he wouldn’t come to bed due to military conflicts. He continued going to work, though. Until the holidays, when insurrections proliferated.

I’ve been staying at my brother’s and avoiding the landlord’s summons. I can’t run forever, obviously. My coworkers won’t cover for me another minute.

To be honest, I’m afraid here, ready with my door key, the hallway thick with silence and desolation.

Guaranteed Happiness

[Probably around December, 2008, Jan Geronimo of Writing to Exhale stumbled upon this flash fiction, which originally appeared in Mike French's The View from Here. He must have given it a great Stumble Upon review because for two years the hits often ran into the thousands. This year it's dipped into the low hundreds but everything else I've ever written only piques the interest of a handful. As long as you're here, consider joining my Google Friends Connect. Diary of a Heretic has been an active blog since 2007.]

My family called me, “Pris,” which I hated.

It bothered me until I was thirteen and Felicity sauntered into our humdrum classroom, after being expelled from some top echelon school. With several seats vacant, she collapsed into the one beside me, and blew a balloon of bubblegum that somehow didn’t stick to the gleaming swatch of dark hair covering half her face. Behind her books, she exaggerated our teacher’s lisp. “Such suffering succotash.”

I laughed and spent the afternoon in detention. Thereafter we were best friends. Felicity lived in a mansion overlooking Lake Michigan. Her parents traveled and her brother Barret attended boarding school. A housekeeper existed, but barely.

In class, Felicity showed me her body-piercings. When nobody else was looking, she flashed her navel and budding breasts. My parents didn’t miss me. They were happy I’d made such a rich friend.

 At Felicity’s, we watched movies, swam naked in the lake, and, fitting our barefoot soles together, pushed, testing our leg strength. That summer I kissed her in a webbed hammock, getting lost in her perfect, sweet face. Breathless, I asked, what next? Her quicksilver blue eyes darted around. “Lots,” she said, “but you’re not ready.”

Then I fell in love with the backs of her knees as we bicycled along less fancy streets, which nonetheless maintained summer’s endless leafy green canopy. Splotches of sunlight shimmered over the asphalt. Felicity’s instinct for houses where contented owners answered the doorbell rarely missed.

Her game required genteel manners and a waitress’s receipt book pad. If the homeowner would sign the receipt—no money, don’t worry—Felicity promised she would think of the person every day. She’d say their name out loud, guaranteeing their happiness. As witness, I tried unsuccessfully to act solemn.

After we collected signatures covering two booklets, though, the game bored her. Halfway through August, everything bored her. Suddenly, Felicity refused to leave her darkened bedroom—or even talk. I visited and she ignored me.

Except, just before leaving forever, she said, “If you ever think of me, Pris, say my name. And I’ll say yours.”

That was ten years ago. Last week her brother Barret, whom I had never met, found me in Manhattan. He’d pay for the plane ticket if I’d visit the hospital—the same one where John Hinckley is kept.

A nurse led me to an unrecognizable Felicity, huge and twitchy from drugs. Her lustrous hair was hacked into a bowl-shape, her quicksilver eyes blank, and her tantalizing face hung bloated and vacant.

Appalled, I finally took her swollen hand.

Her voice burped like gas from a forgotten cave. “I. Know. You.”

“And Felicity,” I choked, “I know you."

Her laugh was guttural. “I don’t know me. But you…”

“I say your name, Felicity, every day.”

When I returned, my husband teased me for lying to her. As if he could possibly understand. As if anyone could.

The Killer

Unless you’re born cute you will die before the year ends. I was never cute. Or perky, adorable, funny, cuddly, regal, or even enigmatic. No stars or stripes, no boots or diamonds, amusing ears, no fascinating markings…nothing cute. My eyes are not hypnotic or wise; they’re not blue, green, or gold. I’ve heard them described as “muddy.”

How I envy the lustrous all-blacks or fluffy whites, even the silken tans. Who abandons such beauty? Some hard-hearted beasts, because among us vulgus, you can always find absolutio perfectioque. (All cats like Latin.)

A fat, rapacious raccoon almost ate me alive but I was scooped up, taken to a clinic, inspected, and given shots. Orange, male, domestic was duly noted. Not-cute is probably not on their checklist. But there I was, a baby kitten at the rescue clinic, and nobody said, “Oh, how cute!”

Lynnette lives with twenty-five stray kittens. Each of us gets six months to hook a human. The agency runs an ad in the grocery’s coupon circular so people come looking. If you’re cute enough, a person takes you into their life. They care for you, and about you, till death do you part.

Otherwise, after six months, Lynnette apologizes and sheds a tear, but there’s a limit. The supply of stray kittens never ends. Dura lex sed lex. The big sleep.

So now I’m five months old and huge, obliterating any cuteness I did not possess when small. I can leap to the ceiling molding and hang there. But rather than impressing people, it disturbs them. If I rub against their leg, I annoy them. My mew sounds like whining and my purr grates. Nuzzling with another kitten, I seem aggressive, not playful. Sitting proud and still only emphasizes my lack of noble bearing.

But then, mirabile dictu, I am saved! A man comes to Lynette’s kitten coop with what could be a human version of me—except cute. The big, cute, blond child lunges for me: “This guy’s the one. Tom the Bomb.”

In the car, the boy talks to me. “You’re a killer, Tom. You’re gonna kill those mice like a bomb hit them.”

Their apartment is riddled with mice that sneak beneath the floor and behind the walls. Every day when the family leaves, I go on attack. Imagine how good it feels ripping those rodents apart. My God-given claws are Weapons of Mouse Destruction. Swipe, swipe, swipe: I pile the carcasses by the door so the family knows I’m doing my job. This morning I’m staking out a crack in the bathroom baseboard. My hunch says a nest of babies. Cave felem.

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 23 of magazine’s print version.)

No More Net

After my junior year at Chicago’s Burnham Day school, I moved out of my parents’ manor on Astor Place. My backpack accommodated my MacBook; a geode; chillum and dime bag; a change of clothes; and as counsel, “The I Ching,” with yarrow sticks (more accurate than coins, I had found.) That summer afternoon, I became a man. Better yet, I became my own man.

Before I hit the sidewalk, my father, who had promoted the plan, called my name, “Kent!”

“Dad” was an old-money entrepreneur and patent lawyer who rarely spoke to me, my distracted mother, or it seemed anyone else. As a free man, I deliberated before turning around in case he wished to end our sorry relationship with what he deemed “civility.” It clawed my heart to submit, but since my manhood had already become official, I chose to bow. A wanderer on the threshold, I magnanimously offered him this gesture of gratitude.

“Kent!” He was carrying a big brown paper bag. “Take this and good luck.” Breathing heavily, he thrust the bag at me and left, I hoped, forever.

Around the corner, I peeked inside. I was sixteen years old and worked at Pizza Hut. My friend Gus, an older, former school-mate, had found us a squat above a restaurant. And what had my angry, perpetually absent progenitor bequeathed me? A six-pack of Heinkens.

My man Gus, whose parents made mine seem like coddlers, had dropped out of school and worked in a warehouse. He sold recreational drugs as a sideline. That night we hung with his associates, all in their twenties and glad, when asked, to acknowledge my adulthood. The next morning I woke alone on the vacant floor, wadded clothing under my head. The stand-alone sink didn’t work so I’d wash later.

I had a girlfriend, Ashley, whose parents tolerated me spending a very occasional night as long as we were unobtrusive. Her reaction insulted me. “Your own man, Kent? How stupid can you get?”

Within days, we were through.

Gus branched out into cocaine. His new dealer friends brandished weaponry. Uneasy, I cast the yarrow sticks. My Fêng hexagram promised abundance: “Be like the sun at midday.” So I relaxed. Ten weeks of summer can stretch out like ten carefree years when you’re sixteen.

Come Labor Day, however, a new Pizza Hut manager fired me. “The I Ching” addressed this via the “Holding Together” hexagram. Its Judgment advised me to consult the oracle again but declared “no blame.”

In September I didn’t anticipate how snow blowing through the empty windows would derange me far beyond mere discomfort. Or how frozen pipes, hunger, and drop-by strangers that long, sub-zero winter would induce constant panic.

And yet, even that first afternoon, back from Ashley’s I had climbed onto the roof’s edge and experienced a realization requiring no oracular confirmation. Being my own man essentially meant: from here on out—no more net.

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 21 of magazine’s print version.)

Hotel Aloha

After graduation in May, 2008, Daisy and I started at Salinger Brothers. The economy had flat-lined; layoffs deluged every bank. But Daisy’s Uncle Bernie was vice-chairman. Typically an analyst’s first year is volunteered slavery: running spreadsheets nonstop for eighteen hours. Thanks to the collapse, however, Daisy and I ran spreadsheets lackadaisically and still pretended to act busy. We left at six o’clock, seven tops.

Our goal was to rise at a fabled financial institution and to stand out as stellar beauties on the late-night glamour scene. So even though we made decent enough money, the social aspect required Armani, Dior…Louboutin heels and artistico hairstyles and maquillage. Knock-offs fooled nobody.

To compensate, we rented one-sixth of a studio apartment and ignored our hulking coevals. Sometimes we sneaked into Versailles (Uncle Bernie’s membership helped) for body work and basic grooming. We enticed still-rich fellows to buy us drinks and dinner. Skimping on breakfast and lunch kept us willowy.

We honestly relished working in the historic Salinger tower. And at penthouse parties we feigned insouciance while secretly basking in the city’s incandescence. By the winter holidays our social whirl sped so quickly as to make us dizzy.

But in January, a massive pall took hold. The exquisite dinners dropped off; the glitter faded; and our roommates, now unemployed, stunk up the studio with take-out food, poor hygiene, and sloth.

Bad before, but now double-digit layoffs swept through Salinger’s every echelon, every week. Daisy phoned her mother who was not reassuring. “Do not bother your poor Uncle Bernie,” she said.

So we held tight, made no mistakes ever and affected brisk, inconspicuous attitudes.

In May, Daisy and I and two hundred other survivors convened for “Continuity Management.” Or, how to keep Salinger afloat, come some global catastrophe.

During a restroom break, Daisy and I discovered the “Aloha Suite,” a floor of offices reserved for fired chieftains. Unlike those escorted out by security guards, the top dogs retired here until they had their prospects and portfolios in order.

We ditched the seminar to explore the higher floors. And guess what? No people. And yet: electricity, water, functioning computers, lounges, and mini-kitchens.

That night we invited Nico, a club kid who specialized in popping locks, and moved in. (Oh yeah, closets galore!) Nico opened the media room and the gym. And on the top floor, we found the catering room from back in the executive dining room days—with industrial washer and drier.

Daisy and I still worked and still partied, but lived in luxury. Last night we traipsed home around midnight. At the forty-ninth floor the elevator door opened and an old man shuffled by in robe and slippers.

“Hey Uncle Bernie,” Daisy called. He dashed out of sight, dropping a toothbrush. Apparently, unlike us, he doesn’t love the new Hotel Aloha, the quintessence of Wall Street.

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 18 of magazine’s print version.)

Sabrina Who Always Believed

The ever-changing light, time, and temperature enthralled Sabrina. She marveled at the vibrancy of everything alive, and wondered at the imperceptible emanations of everything inert. The way things occurred constantly delighted her; she tried not to miss how the atmosphere was layered with sights and sounds. The interplay astonished her.

Sometimes, just as the world’s magnificence overwhelmed her, its rampant pain and deprivation sickened her. But she was profoundly resilient and her intrinsic joy and gratitude returned soon enough.

Was she ambitious? Not so much. She packaged cleaning products gracefully, operated the cash register correctly, and bestowed customers with a bedazzled smile.

When she fell in love with Jon, she sent announcements to friends and family. For six weeks she held her camera at arm’s length taking photos of their two faces smooshed together in front of the Chinese restaurant, inside the movieplex, or even boarding public transportation. At home she pasted the pictures of her and Jon kissing into heart-shaped cutouts, and emailed romantic updates to all her contacts.

Jon made her happy for six months until he said he couldn’t do it anymore. He wasn’t the man Sabrina thought he was.

She didn’t understand.

“Sabrina, it’s simple.”

Jon was hooked on pornography and off-track betting. He disliked pets and stole tips from unguarded tables.

When he left, Sabrina’s resiliency lay dormant. She wept until finally her mother slapped her. “Get on with it, Sabrina.”

Yes, she must. Losing faith was wrong. Within a year, Sam beckoned. She enjoyed him even more than Jon but this time kept quieter. Finally, Sam said her ebulliency wore him out.

Same story six times over.

But with Jason, Sabrina hid her intensity to the utmost—which left her floating between heaven and earth. He boosted his mood with drugs so that it seemed they existed or drifted inside the  stratosphere. They lived ecstatic together until the drugs grew unreliable or Jason’s chemistry changed or both. On Sabrina’s thirtieth birthday Jason said he was bored.

Again she lay stricken. Watched TV and stayed indoors. This time her mother wasn’t in striking distance but said on the phone, “Wise up, Sabrina, or you’ll lose your mind.”

That jarred her awake. Sabrina had always feared for her sanity. Enough so that she immediately tidied up, turned off her electronics, and found a job assisting corporate retreats.

She scheduled events at grand hotels and stood behind a field of name tags. “Please wear them; don’t take them off,” she said, smiling like a child who has tasted ice cream for the first time.

After day-long exercises in trust, a CEO invited Sabrina to dinner. During which she expressed awe at his kindness. The light, the colors, the clever salads, the encrusted entrée—Sabrina was enraptured. She hung on his every word. Later they danced on the roof and played hide-and-seek in his suite. Come Sunday evening, the CEO promised to call her.

Sabrina believed him.

 

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. “You know your father loves you. He loves you more than anything.”

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. And 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.

Her father, 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, Alice’s mother 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.

Hotel Aloha

After graduation in May, 2008, Daisy and I started at Salinger Brothers. The economy had flat-lined; layoffs deluged every bank. But Daisy’s Uncle Bernie was vice-chairman. Typically an analyst’s first year is volunteered slavery: running spreadsheets nonstop for eighteen hours. Thanks to the collapse, however, Daisy and I ran spreadsheets lackadaisically and still pretended to act busy. We left at six o’clock, seven tops.

Our goal was to rise at a fabled financial institution and to stand out as stellar beauties on the late-night glamour scene. So even though we made decent enough money, the social aspect required Armani, Dior…Louboutin heels and artistico hairstyles and maquillage. Knock-offs fooled nobody. To compensate, we rented one-sixth of a studio apartment and ignored our hulking coevals. Sometimes we sneaked into Versailles (Uncle Bernie’s membership helped) for body work and basic grooming.

We enticed still-rich fellows to buy us drinks and dinner. Skimping on breakfast and lunch kept us willowy. We honestly relished working in the historic Salinger tower. And at penthouse parties we feigned insouciance while secretly basking in the city’s incandescence.

By the winter holidays our social whirl sped so quickly as to make us dizzy. But in January, a massive pall took hold. The exquisite dinners dropped off; the glitter faded; and our roommates, now unemployed, stunk up the studio with take-out food, poor hygiene, and sloth.

Bad before, but now double-digit layoffs swept through Salinger’s every echelon, every week. Daisy phoned her mother who was not reassuring. “Do not bother your poor Uncle Bernie,” she said.

So we held tight, made no mistakes ever and affected brisk, inconspicuous attitudes. In May, Daisy and I and two hundred other survivors convened for “Continuity Management.” Or, how to keep Salinger afloat come some global catastrophe. During a restroom break, Daisy and I discovered the “Aloha Suite,” a floor of offices reserved for fired chieftains. Unlike those escorted out by security guards, the top dogs retired here until they had their prospects and portfolios in order.

We ditched the seminar to explore the higher floors. And guess what? No people. And yet: electricity, water, functioning computers, lounges, and mini-kitchens. That night we invited Nico, a club kid who specialized in popping locks, and moved in. (Oh yeah, closets galore!) Nico opened the media room and the gym. And on the top floor, we found the catering room from back in the executive dining room days—with industrial washer and drier.

Daisy and I still worked and still partied, but lived in luxury. Last night we traipsed home around midnight. At the forty-ninth floor the elevator door opened and an old man shuffled by in robe and slippers. “Hey Uncle Bernie,” Daisy called. He dashed out of sight, dropping a toothbrush. Apparently, unlike us, he doesn’t love the new Hotel Aloha, the quintessence of Wall Street.

All in Love Is Fair

Markham’s Pub is perfect for this neighborhood. Since I’m the bartender, I know the regulars. Roger and Jackson arrive after work without fail, and again after dinner. Friends since grade school, they’re grateful to still have jobs.

Their girlfriends are nursing students. Zoë and Vanessa don’t come in when Roger and Jackson are here. They arrive earlier, drink wine near a window, and hold hands.

Today after an hour of giggling and entwining pretty ankles under the table, the girls approach the bar, having agreed I should know what’s happening tonight. Ordinarily, I turn my back when people offer details. But Zoë and Vanessa are so damn cute that I’m happy to listen.

“The only reason Roger and Jackson don’t already know,” Vanessa says, “is because they’re oblivious. On purpose.”

“It’s not like we haven’t given them fair warning,” Zoë says. “I mean, how explicit do we have to be? We’ve said we’re serious. We’ve even acted serious.”

Later, when Roger and Jackson arrive after work, I’m less thrilled by the situation, which, thank God, is not after all any of my business.

For weeks now Roger and Jackson have asked me about women alone, women in pairs, and women in groups. Is Sapphic love springing up everywhere this year, or is it just them?

Roger is watching a pair of dark beauties lost in conversation and asks, “In your educated opinion, Joe, are they lesbians?”

“The Brianti sisters? Shy but straight.”

Later that evening neither shows. Not up after dinner, anyway. Instead they stagger in, well after my shift when I’m savoring my taste of Armagnac and choosing the night’s final playlist.

“We don’t need to tell you what happened.” Jackson rocks back and forth.

“You know, I wouldn’t really have known…till now. Can I buy you guys a drink?”

Of course, I can. And since I’ve always liked them, I listen to their side—seems only fair. Zoë’s moving in with Vanessa; Jackson’s stuff was piled in the hallway. Roy can’t make the rent alone but—no way they can live together.

“Sorry.” I salute when their drinks arrive. “To better days.”

“We’re okay, Joe. I’m better already.”

Maybe so, but I hear them out until almost four in the morning. Jackson worries he failed to encourage Zoë’s feminine side. And Roger admits to hanging out with the guys too much, no girls allowed.

“Don’t blame yourselves. Maybe they’re made for each other.”

“If so, they lied to us. Told us we were their best lovers ever. They both said that.”

“And until lately, you probably were.”

Roger turns away, “You really think that?”

“I think what I always think: All in Love is Fair—Stevie Wonder. ’Cuse me a sec.”

I stand up. “Last call!”

Mean as You Are

Monday and Tuesday nights Rufus and I play two sets at Isabel’s Pub. Days, I work for Spokane’s city council.

It’s not Madison Square Garden where The Opposites performed. And Rufus isn’t Hank, who could wrap his rhythms around my voice. But the beats Rufus puts together add brightness and hold space for my arpeggios.

All my songs revolve around old-fashioned women’s blues. “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” “You Lost the Best Thing.” “Mean as You Are.” But that was always my style. Not necessarily my life. So if anyone asks about The Opposites, I say, “Better this way.” Or: “Do I seem bitter?”

True, the group still wins Grammies but not off Nadia’s whiny voice. She was never a singer. Hank sings now and they sweeten Nadia’s stingy response with William’s mandolin.

It rarely comes up anymore. But The Opposites first hit? I sang upfront. I wore the strapless dress. Nadia played the marimbas in black sackcloth. We were on MTV Unplugged when people tuned in for that. Before the second CD, Hank made a play for me and I said, “Sorry.” Hours later Nadia delivered the news: They didn’t need me. So I moved on.

Tonight I’m singing, “”He Said, She Said” to maybe thirty people. Rufus contributes a new orbit. A man wearing a bandanna claps and hoots, dancing like he wants the stage. Even with the lights blinding me, I know I should know him. Somebody from somewhere.

“Thank you, everyone.” I unplug my guitar and—it’s Hank. I knew that; just hard to accept.

“Summer, what are you doing in this place? God, you sound great. Look great, too. Why are you here?”

Hank’s holding my wrist and I shrug. “What brings you here?”

Sister’s wedding. He’s by himself. But—well—why did I disappear like that? What happened?

“Nadia said you and William voted me out.”

“What the—?” Hank stumbles. The bandanna falls off and he leaves it there. “Let’s sit down. Honest to God, that never happened, Summer.”

Rufus asks if Hank is bothering me. “No, love. An old friend.”

I could use a drink. Hanks says, “Wait there.”

Rufus sits down. “Want me nearby?”

The Opposites mean nothing to him. He isn’t a fan. But if I’m happy, he’ll see me tomorrow. I’m happy.

Hank’s carrying beer bottles in one hand and balancing shots on a tray. “Tequila.” We swallow it. And sip Heineken, still his favorite.

He curses. “Nadia! Piece-o-work! She told us the pace was killing you. And, don’t call you; you’ll call us. She actually said that.”

“Stupid me. Not to check. Just trust Nadia.” Hank says, “So…Come back. We’re doing the Redwood Fest next month. We’ll take it from there.”

We exchange numbers. He’ll call.

And I wonder. “Nadia stays…”

Hank grimaces. “At this point, she’s our rock star.”

Right. At this point, maybe don’t call.

The Embezzlers' Club

John was a cash-only antique dealer in Chicago. Everything he sold had once belonged to the grand old rich, famous, and scandalous. His side business salvaged architectural remnants and sold them to contractors. Another all-cash scam. John’s crews stole stained glass windows and glazed tiles off buildings and unloaded them before daybreak.

In a bar tricked up like a church, I convinced him I was better than his current bookkeeper. “Look,” I said when he was blind drunk. “Look at my face. Trustworthy as faces get.”

My timing must have been right. In three years I skimmed three million. With John’s drinking problem, I might have grabbed six, but greediness killed the cat.

Then I drove cross-country and bought an old mansion in Yonkers.

Months later and I’m still sniffing around for an occupation. Three mil don’t last forever. But everybody’s already set. They don’t need to talk. And my trustworthy looks? Not even women respond.

So I found a girl “Susie” on the internet, and left a fat envelope on the armoire. Same girl every time, so by now I don’t mind asking her, “What gives?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why am I paying for it and why can’t I find a nice situation?”

“Guess the market for embezzlers just dried up,” Susie says. 

“Look here, Sherlock, who says I’m an embezzler?”

“Who says I’m a whore?”

“Very funny.” Before I get angry, she says there’s a party down the street.

“Your kind of party.” She tells me to wear jeans and a good shirt if I have one.

Meanwhile, she washes her face, ties her hair back, and pulls flat shoes from her purse. Her skirt’s three inches longer than usual and she buttons a little checked jacket.

The party’s two blocks over, where I’ve heard the guy living there gives piano lessons. A little girl opens the door. “Hi Susie.” My whore teaches the girl ballet. The piano teacher deals drugs. Susie introduces me to building contractors, speculators, car dealers, condo supervisors, consultants galore, lawyers, and therapists.

After we shake hands and move on, she tells me how they really make a living, what their con is.

A man wearing a tuxedo extends a platter of stuffed mushrooms and hands us little green napkins. Susie eats three mushrooms. I’m not hungry. She gets whiskey from the bartender.

“What’ll you have?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Loosen up,” Susie says. “The Embezzlers’ Club is outside, on the deck.”

“Do you think I believe this? It’s not even funny.”

“Oh, they don’t call it ‘The Embezzlers' Club’ but everybody knows. Do you want to land a ‘nice situation’ or not?”

“You’re kidding. I go outside, meet some people, and I get some sweet deal? And never get caught.”

“Probably not for a  long time. But someday you will. Right? We all will, soon or later.”

Boys To Men

From age seven until seventeen, I was responsible for my brother Ryland and his friend Rico. Being three years older seemed plenty at the time: girls are more mature than boys.

Our mother traveled in sales. Dad came and went—mostly went until he was totally gone.

If people asked about Rico’s family, he said, “Nada.” Not that he knew Spanish. His real name was Richard. “Call me that and I’ll bust your lip.” He was five.

Rico wasn’t always around; it just felt like it. He probably spent holidays away. But I remember taking care of him if he had a fever. He slept in Ryland’s bunk-bed. If the fever continued, we took a bus to the doctor. I suppose my mother paid the bills. Never a problem buying food or medicine.

The older we grew, the more the boys made me laugh. Salt in the sugar bowl. A radio station called because they had picked my name for a contest. And if I answered three (trick) questions in three minutes, I won a bicycle.

Being an expert at Rico’s trick questions, I won hundreds of bicycles. When they didn’t materialize, Rico said, “Those bums,” and offered me a consolation kiss. He was ten.

When he was twelve, I caught him staring at my chest. “Love that green sweater on you, Casey. It matches your eyes.”

“Don’t try that line on a real girl, Rico. She’ll laugh in your face.”

Ryland swiped at him. “Stop sucking up to the babysitter.”

“No babies here, Ry. Unless it’s you. Casey likes me flirting with her.”

“Whatever, man. See you at the beach.”

Another year passed and they went to the beach to get high. “Wanna come, Casey? You like weed.”

Approximately then, my brother wanted to ditch Rico. Thought he’d outgrown him. “Don’t talk to me if you’re gonna drag her around,” he said.

No matter—I didn’t want people seeing me hanging out with them anyway.

Ryland and Rico were old enough to take care of themselves.

Eventually, I got a scholarship to Indiana and never looked back. I teach high-school biology in Bloomington. Five full years in June, so I’ve even got tenure.

Ryland moved to Colorado and worked at a resort long enough to become a skiing instructor. Off season, he’s a river rafting guide. Rico, too, I thought.

But last night Rico phoned from Illinois. He’s tried for years to find me but Ryland would steer him wrong. This time he conducted his own search.

He does construction work, every kind and everywhere. “So, Casey, can I see you? I’ll stay at a motel till we’re adjusted. You know, I’ve always loved you. Even as kids, it wasn’t like kids’ love. For me, it was always real.”

What do you say to that? Like I had a choice.

The Desert

 At eighteen I lived in New Mexico and waitressed at a creperie, although the menu included huevos rancheros and even bagels. I lived on tips, barely managing to pay my fourth of the rent.

Leroy, the cook, sometimes liked me and sometimes not. I needed him to like me. Because if he forgot my order or covered the crepes with thick, unheated cheese sauce, the customers blamed me.

My memory for who ordered what with which never faltered. In one hand I could balance eight beverages on a tray and in the other carry four full plates.

Leroy liked my “look at me” attitude. Customers admired my “hustle.”

When my tips ran scant, Leroy nudged the sombreroed owner, deconstructing pie-a-la-mode in the corner, to pay me the difference. The owner and Leroy shared a venture in auto parts. Leroy bragged about being a local racketeer.

“You mean raconteur?”

“So now you’re French, CeCe?”

“Raconteur is a storyteller. Racketeer is an extortionist.”

In hindsight, that’s probably when he didn’t like me: when I corrected his vocabulary.

“Forget storyteller,” he said. Leroy had stature--big man about town.

What he meant was that he and his buddies were rich builders, hot shots. Sometimes, when he liked me, he invited me to accompany him to their haciendas. Because, he said, they liked guys with pretty, young girlfriends.

At these places, several pretty girls always lolled around a swimming pool. Beautiful rooms, great music, usually a garden. If Leroy invited me, I accepted.

One hot afternoon he had business with Geoff. “Wanna come, CeCe? Has to be right after work.”

Ordinarily I stopped at home, changed into a sundress, and grabbed a bathing suit. That day Leroy didn’t have time to spare. So I hopped inside his four-wheel drive along with another “racketeer,” Chet.

Leroy drove really fast. Bald, fat Chet ranted so much his spit flew. Then he paused, sizing me up. “She ain’t a safe bet, Leroy. Geoff said just us--remember?”

Leroy glanced back at me, grimy from work and silly in the degrading prairie dress waitress’s uniform. “CeCe, we’re letting you out.”

He sped off the highway. The jeep bounced, flying across the desert. Grit in the air stung my skin. “Out?” I asked. “Out where?”

“Where you won’t get in trouble.” Leroy and Chet snickered. The jeep flew off road for half an hour, thereabouts. Then Leroy forced me out. I was too stunned to register them driving away.

Alone in the vast flatness like another planet, I didn’t dare panic. I didn’t dare anything. Red dirt surrounded me without interruption for as I far as I could see. No rocks or tumbleweed, no bleached wood or bones. Nothing but unchanging horizon, 360 degrees.

If I screamed, my voice would not register. If I moved, the air wouldn’t stir. I was lost in a void. Lost, I believed, forever.

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 15 to of the magazine's print version.)

Crazy Women

When Edward and his family finally arrived, the receptionist said Mrs. Nesbitt would receive them in an hour.

As always, the family waited at the McDonald’s across the highway.

The nursing staff refused to prepare residents before guests arrived, because getting the elderly patients cleaned up, dressed, coiffed, and settled involved strenuous maneuvering. And often the expected visitors failed to show up.

Inside the grimy franchise across the highway, Edward’s wife Amy conceded that McDonald’s coffee wasn’t bad.

Grant and Diana, who were approaching their teens, hooted. “Really, Mom? You think it’s safe to drink coffee here?”

She laughed. “I suppose I was prejudiced against it.”

Edward, however, imbibed nothing. He acted disinterested unless someone suggested his grandmother was slipping into dementia. Or if the thought occurred to him unbidden. “Grandma never misses a trick. Her mind is sharper than ever.”

Amy signaled her children—don’t contradict him or you’ll be sorry.

After phoning the facility and learning it was time, the family hurried through the living areas, averting their eyes from the communal rooms, where contorted bodies were strapped into padded furniture. Reaching Victoria’s dismal, sick-smelling room seemed like an oasis.

“So lovely to see you!” Amy kissed Victoria’s papery cheek and gestured that her children do likewise.

Despite trouble speaking or swallowing, Victoria wanted to give little Diana a bottle of vodka, hidden behind a curtain. “Open it now, honey, because somewhere it’s cocktail hour.”

“Yes, but not for nine more years,” Edward yelled into his grandmother’s ear.

Grant elbowed his sister and whispered. “Sharp as a tack.”

Before long, Amy half-carried, half-dragged Victoria to the minuscule bathroom. Victoria wasn’t heavy, just stiff as stone, crying and moaning whenever Amy moved her.
Adult diapers filled the bathroom shelves but Victoria insisted the nurses were joking.  Nonetheless she cringed with apologies as Amy cleaned her. “Hush, this is nothing,” Amy said, “compared to when the kids were babies.”

Mission half-accomplished, Amy heaved Victoria, who moaned and groaned, into her recliner. Hands flailing, Victoria snatched at the tissue Amy offered and spit into it.

From next door a woman screamed, “Save me! Someone! Get me out of here!”

The nurse appeared. “Sorry about the crazy woman next door. Just don’t listen to her.”

“Save me!” the woman yelled. “Get me out of here!”

“Victoria,” Amy said, “this isn’t right. Please, come home with us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Victoria said. “You can’t mean it.”

“Amy, have you lost your mind?” Edward demanded. “Victoria needs expert care.”

The crazy woman continued screaming.

“I’m ready to save you, Victoria. The lady next door does not sound crazy to me. If I woke up her body? In her bed here? I’d scream, too.”

“That day will dawn,” Edward said.

And Victoria added: “He’s right, my dear. You’re next.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here  as flash fiction, and then in issue 12 of the magazine’s print version.)

Free Fall from 10,000 Ft.

The sporting goods store in Chicago fired Quinn after three months; not only was he uninterested in fishing and rock climbing but he hung around listening to his iPod and paid no attention to the customers.

Quinn’s best friend Winston had dropped out of college downstate to live in a trailer and work on an assembly line.

They hadn’t seen each other in months when Winston phoned. “I have two words for you, Quinn: sky diving.”

Having joined an aviation club, he whistled. “You gotta try it.”

“I do?”

“This rich guy Dowling will lend me his C-182 since I got my pilot’s license.”

Next Thursday, Winston called again. “All Dowling said was—don’t get caught. I bought him a beer and he handed me the Cessna’s keys. We’ll take it up Monday when the center’s closed.”

Quinn paused.

Winston said, “I’m telling you, Quinn, the rush is phenomenal.”

“All right.” Quinn had read in a sports magazine that sky diving was nowhere near as dangerous as people imagined.

He arrived at Winston’s Sunday afternoon.

“Turns out that because this is clandestine, you won’t have an automatic safety line, Quinn. But who forgets to pull the rip cord?”

Wearing Winston’s jump suit and helmet, Quinn practiced jumping from the trailer’s back door into bales of hay.

“Belly first, back arched,” Winston said. He would be both pilot and jump master. “The jump master’s essential,” Winston said. “He asks, ‘Are you ready to sky dive?’ and unless you say ‘yes!’ we fly home; no worries. Then I’ll ask again, “Quinn, are you ready to sky dive?” And if you don’t answer, ‘Yes!’ both times, it’s no go. 

“It’s easy,” Winston claimed as they drank beer and listed to the Foo Fighters. “Brace, reach, and release. Brace inside the plane’s open door; reach for the wing’s strut, and release. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Quinn continued leaping belly first into bales of hay.

“Pretend the hay is the atmosphere at 10,000 feet,” Winston said. “The silence is amazing. When your altimeter reads 3,000, pull the rip cord. Then steer by pulling the guide lines.”

“Last thing,” Winston said. “Packing the parachute is critical. Never trust another guy with it.” That said, Winston packed the parachute. He demonstrated every fold and Quinn did it exactly as shown. Except Winston redid it.

Overnight, Quinn wondered about trusting Winston with his life. Winston had slept with Quinn’s girlfriend once. Back in Little League, he yelled, “Out,” when Quinn was safe. He copied Quinn’s homework and stole his CDs.

Small stuff. Even the girlfriend, because they were drunk and Quinn was home with the flu.

Monday afternoon Winston yelled the jump master’s questions from the pilot’s seat. Quinn answered, “Yes!” twice. Then he braced in the door, reached for the wing’s strut and released.

(This originally appeared in The View from Here as flash fiction, and then in issue 10 of magazine’s print version.)

A Great Sale at Saks

Before going to college, Sophie suggested her parents take up jogging.  “Run outside together. Wearing bright outfits. Nobody will suspect money’s tight.”

But social tricks that worked in Oklahoma only intensified her loneliness in Chicago. The university was huge. Nobody talked to her. Sophie might be invisible.

A straight-A student on scholarship, she watched videos in lecture halls. Afterwards the teacher called for questions. Sophie always raised her hand, which went unnoticed.

Thank goodness, Sophie’s (paternal) grandmother invited her to dinner. Lucinda hadn’t seen Sophie since she was a baby. The restaurant was so fancy Sophie drew back a second. The man issuing them in knew Lucinda’s name.

“Striking resemblance,” he said, touching Sophie’s shoulder. “Like your grandmother, you’ll only grow more beautiful, not less.”

“Albert, please.” Lucinda told Sophie, “Never listen to flattery. Besides, I was never beautiful. Interesting, people said.”

Lucinda was so keen and glamorous; Sophie forgot her horrible homesickness. They discussed financial scandals and the Mid-East.

Every Sunday, Sophie ate dinner with Lucinda, usually in her apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. Monday through Saturday, though, Sophie’s loneliness grew worse. Students who sat beside her in class would stare into space rather than say hello.

On the phone, her parents seemed to have forgotten who Sophie was. They never said they missed her or recalled anything about her. They didn’t even ask about college except to wish they’d had her chance. Instead, the topic was television.

Lucinda served poached salmon and fresh peas. She had traveled the world as a museum curator. All the men she loved broke her heart in the end. And those that loved her developed tedious habits.

In November, Sophie arrived late but Lucinda didn’t answer when Charles the doorman rang her apartment. “Come back in ten minutes,” he said, “maybe she forgot.”

The wind off the lake pushed her backwards. Cars raced past but no other people occupied the sidewalks. What if Lucinda was dead? Sophie staggered around a corner. Stop being ridiculous! But fear surged through her bloodstream. She walked as far as the hospital. Lucinda might be in there—in intensive care. Heart attack or—Sophie couldn’t think what calamity might strike an old lady. A stroke!

She pretended not to panic. Approaching Lucinda’s building, Sophie held her breath. Inside, Charles rang the apartment. Still no answer though.

She tore away before he witnessed her weeping.  

She didn’t remember returning to school. Only worrying if she should call the police. She didn’t out of fear. Like if she called, it would be true. Her pillow muffling her sobs, she didn’t notice her phone ringing. But later she heard the voicemail.

“Sophie darling, sorry I missed you. This great sale at Saks delayed me. See you next week.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here as flash fiction, and then in issue 10 of magazine’s print version.)

Words Can Not Say

It makes no sense. I didn’t even say the worst part. But Larry read my mind.

He was carrying a deli platter for the office party and my mind flew smack into something so appalling I couldn’t squelch it in time. I saw Larry’s face above the deli platter and he saw my sick, unspoken thought. I gasped and Larry gasped. And then thank God, he laughed. We were both laughing hysterically—it was either laugh or cry.

We’ve worked together in accounting for ten years. Larry was always irritable, even overwrought, except when talking about his son. Joel was a brilliant boy who was too good to be true. Larry said so when Joel graduated first in his class from medical school. And he was saying it again after Joel died on New Year’s Day. A chief intern at City Hospital, engaged to marry his longtime sweetheart, Joel died suddenly, the first tragedy of the New Year.

No need to ask the details. We all have the same theory, but nobody will say it out loud. Instead, we say, “It makes no sense.”

No need to say what words can not say.  Everyone seems to understand that nobody can understand. 

Larry says that Joel would never say if something was wrong. Even as a little boy, he never complained. Even as a child, Joel worked like crazy and excelled like crazy and to throw it all away makes no sense.

Management told Larry to take all the time he needed. But Larry said time off wasn’t going to bring Joel back. So he and his wife sat Shivah for seven days, following Jewish tradition. We visited, sat with them, and said prayers—surrounded by deli platters. So many deli platters that people attempted feeble jokes about them. You know, the way people do.

Larry and I work at a bank and all through January and February, on Friday afternoons the company laid people off. Not me and not Larry, but hundreds of others.

Now in March the company has announced no more lay-offs. And this Friday afternoon it hosted a morale-boosting party with deli platters and soft drinks.

The baby kept me up all night. I’m still nursing him but that’s no excuse. I stepped out of my office. And Larry was coming straight at me with this huge deli platter.

“Don’t tell me that’s from—” I stopped there.

Larry and I gaped at each other. Until finally he laughed and I laughed, thank God.

Foregoing the party, though, I drew the blinds and lay my head on my desk.

Larry’s knocking on the doorframe. “Don’t worry about it, Joanna. It’s nothing.”

“I know.”

But suddenly I’m crying. 

“Give that little son of yours a kiss from me.” Larry’s crying, too. “Make sure he always knows how much you love him.”

Then Larry slaps my doorframe and walks away, choking back sobs.

Don't Bother Roger

Aunt Clara and Uncle Richard’s son Roger had lived at home like a saint for three months. In January, he could return to college, providing he agreed to daily counseling. Providing he never set foot in a fraternity, let alone a sorority. The entire college would know about Roger’s status and the need for extreme vigilance.

Roger had spent two years in a minimum-security facility. “Over and done,” Roger told his parents, his lawyer, and his ex-girlfriend’s lawyer. “Past tense.”

His mother agreed. Nobody should blame Roger anymore. So why not throw the annual summer party?

Her dearest sister Jane, however, invented countless excuses. Because, honestly, her daughters were only six- and four-years old.

“Nonsense,” Clara said. Best if the family not over-react.

“Just bring the girls.” Their own father said this, and he had never especially liked Jane’s extended family.

Whenever she remembered the party, Jane warned her girls, “Don’t bother Roger.” And, when the day came, she dressed them in fancy frocks with stiff satin sashes and hems to their ankles. During the car ride, she outright pleaded, “Don’t bother Roger.”

The backyard party was crowded but boring. While her parents drank martinis and her sister sat on her father’s lap, six-year old Sadie sneaked inside and upstairs. All the doors were closed except for the last one. Peering into the room farthest from the stairs, Sadie stared at a man lying down, his laptop open. 

“Are you Roger?”

“Yes I am.” Bright-eyed and smiling, he sat up, planting bare feet on the rug.

Sadie squirmed backwards, fooling with her dress’s tied sash. “Are you the same Roger my parents warned me against bothering?”

“Undoubtedly, yes. But you’re not bothering me. Come here and I’ll show you something.”

Sadie frowned but stepped inside.

“Come and sit down.” He patted the bed. “Come on.”

Sadie bounced on the bed, eyeing the laptop.

“It’s not there,” Roger said. “And it’s kinda scary.”

Sadie tapped her Sunday shoes.

Roger lifted the leg of his baggy jeans. “It’s an electronic anklet that sets off an alarm if I leave the house. Sometimes movie stars have to wear them. And, Martha Stewart had one, too, for insider trading.”

“Who’s Martha Stewart?”

“Someone rich and famous for decorating wreaths and flowers and stuff.”

“And the movie stars?”

“Not positive who. Paris Hilton, maybe? Lindsey Lohan—that type.”

Sadie hadn’t heard of them either. “Does it come off?”

“Not yet. But soon. I’ll be free.”

“That’s good, Roger. Uhm, good-bye.”

“Hey, wait. This might sound weird. But don’t tell anyone you saw me, okay?”

“I won’t. My mom would scream her head off.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 6 of magazine’s print version.)

   

Thirty Years Teaching

Gwen Willoughby had taught third grade in Port Townsend for thirty years. Long enough so that this year’s class included Gillian Hopkins’s daughter, Tessa. All fall Tessa stood out as a straight-A achiever. Nothing like her mischievous mother, who had been such a terror.

Yet twenty-four years ago, when Gillian was nine, the rules were stricter. Tessa said, “Momma’s thirty-one.”

Ms. Willoughby calculated fast. “That’s correct.”

Unlike disruptive Gillian, Tessa shared Ms. Willoughby’s love of numbers.  “They always make sense.”

“Without fail.” The teacher smiled at Gillian’s daughter. Her best students ended the year two years ahead in math.  

Once upon a time, Ms. Willoughby started the school day with a prayer. No more. Now they had an approved set of environmental rhymes. Fine. But 
Ms. Willoughby still read from “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” Who could forbid the up-in-a-swing poem?

Two weeks before Christmas vacation—now winter vacation—Ms. Willoughby used to hang in the middle window a crystal star her father had given her. Bigger than a fist, it cast rainbows throughout the afternoon.

Ms. Willoughby’s star was banished even before the daily prayer. For a while, she hung it from her kitchen window. These days, it lay in a box Ms. Willoughby never opened.

The last day before vacation, Ms. Willoughby heard Tessa, no, Gillian breaking something. Shattering it. Inside the classroom, Gillian and Phoebe were giggling. 

“Gillian,” she said. “You broke my star!”

“My name’s Tessa, Mrs. Willoughby. And nothing broke.”

“You shattered my Christmas star.”

“Gillian, bring your chair beside my desk and stay still. Class, if you notice her move, tell me. We’ll listen to music while you work in your workbooks.”

Phoebe said, “But Tessa didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Another word and you can sit here, too. Work in your exercise books.”

Mrs. Willoughby found the CD player and put on the “Nutcracker.” Volume loud.

Sitting still proved impossible, but nobody told Ms. Willoughby when Tessa folded her hands, then sat on them, swayed, and cried.

Ms. Willoughby closed her eyes, listening to Tchaikovsky. Tessa needed to pee. After an hour of crossing her legs and holding on, Tessa asked permission to use the lavatory. Half-asleep, Ms. Willoughby’s head flew forward. “Anyone who broke my star, Gillian, can just hold it in.”

Tessa’s tears turned to sobs, which Ms. Willoughby ignored. She wet a little. Again begged permission and was again denied. Finally, Tessa involuntarily peed a lot. It pooled in her socks and puddled on the floor.

Liam sang, “Tessa wet her pants.”

Ms. Willoughby woke from her daze. “First the star, Gillian, and now this. Stay in the chair.

Not until the real Gillian arrived to see what was keeping Tessa did Ms. Willoughby realize her mistake. Red with anger, the real Gillian said, “How dare you!”

Gillian Hopkins remained furious long after she took Tessa home.

Ms. Willoughby apologized. She couldn’t apologize enough. 

(This originally appeared as "Thirty Years" in The View from Here online, and then in issue 7 of magazine’s print version.)

Chaz

Arriving home after our neighbor’s play, “Buddha Revived,” we alert our sixteen-year old: “We’re home!” From the living room, Claire flicks on the lights. “Meet my boyfriend, Reed.”

Seeing him, I notice a person more seductive than credible: angelic, tousled hair, deep blue eyes. Claire’s first boyfriend is as beautiful as she is (and I’m an adoring father).

“Hello, Reed. I’m Chaz.”

Sylvia and Claire laugh in my face. “Chaz? That’s hilarious, Dad.”

“Call him Charlie,” Sylvia says. She punches my arm, still laughing (“Chaz!”).

“My mother Sylvia—Reed; Reed—Sylvia.” Claire’s first reaction still hovers above our heads. “Chaz. Jeez, Dad.”

“Good night, children,” Sylvia says. While she climbs the stairs, I fall into the armchair, and end up staring at Reed’s bare feet. Strong, graceful feet.

Claire, meanwhile, is staring at me. “Go upstairs, Dad. With Mom.”

“Have a drink with me first.”

Reed nods. “Mos def.”

“How ’bout martinis?”

“We’re underage,” Claire snaps.

“Live a little.”

“Martini, please, Charlie,” Reed says.

“Hendricks gin or Belvedere vodka?”

“Stirred or shaken?”  Reed grins straight at me.

“Real vermouth or pretend?”

“Pretend vermouth, real gin.”

Claire says, “Goodnight, you stupid fools.”

Reed leaps up, catching her wrist. “Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not.”

In the kitchen, I fix the drinks. Reed switches the music station. Claire appears, tugs my shoulder, and whispers, “Have you flipped, Dad? Are you drunk?”

“Now who’s hilarious? Stay with us. I’ll open a bottle of wine for you.”

“No thanks.” She kisses my cheek goodnight.

Reed and I drink martinis and talk Keynesian economics. The boy’s in high school but reads The Financial Times. Ella Fitzgerald is singing, “Anything Goes.”

After three martinis, Reed stretches out on the couch. His eyes roll up, finding mine. If his specific, unsettling affect on me is a variation on common fatherly distress—Claire’s first boyfriend—it’s one I haven’t heard before. Sitting still in the armchair, I’m past terrified. I’m jellified.

Reed comes over and crouches above my loafers. “Most people,” he says, his hands cupping my knees, “aren’t all one way or another.”

Smiling hard, I brush Reed’s palms off my kneecaps. “I’ve heard that.”

Queasy, I let my head drop back against the upholstery. If Claire continues going out with this boy, my troubles will grow worse. And worse.

“Excuse me, Reed.” I step outside the backdoor. Shiver in the cold. Until panic disperses. I sneak upstairs and join my wife in bed. In twenty years of marriage, I’ve never strayed. Not physically. So it occurs to me—straight, gay, who cares anymore?

“Kids today,” Sylvia seems to say.

After five minutes, I hear Reed and Claire talking in her bed, which is acoustically impossible and so must be my drunkenness:

“Was it fun?”

“Yeah,” Reed says. “Of course, next time it’ll be much more.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 7 of magazine’s print version.)

Many Are Called

During his career at AIG, Thomas had made and spent a fortune. Friar Felix acknowledged that some men didn’t recognize their calling right away. “That’s the Lord’s way. And you certainly seem ready.”

The subway ads were designed for men like Thomas. Do Something Meaningful was the headline. Make Your Life Your Career, the tagline, was sheathed in gold.

“No need for anxiety,” Felix said, preparing Thomas for the Provincial Minister’s inquiry. “Father Donald will decide if the Holy Spirit is present. For we can’t allow hard times to deceive us.”

Thomas, in a flimsy chair facing an imposing desk, sat long enough to ponder if the monks wore different sandals, winter and summer. From a side door, Father Donald entered, a pointed hood and cowl topping his brown robe.

“So, Thomas, what can you offer our brotherhood?”

“Love of God.”

“What of God’s love?” Father Donald’s face sank into his hood.

“God’s love? Not mine for Him?”

“As you wish.”

Thomas wished for water. Sometimes interviewers offered him a glass, but rarely. It occurred to him that the scriptures made much of thirst.

“God’s love,” Thomas said. “Well, God loves everyone.”

“You sound confused, young man, if I may call you young at—” Father Donald tapped the keyboard, “thirty-five.”

“God loves all his children, whom He created equal.”

“Not necessarily, Thomas. God loves those who believe in Him.”

“Doesn’t everyone want to believe?”

“Wanting to believe is one way of not believing.” Father Donald tightened his lips.

“I believe absolutely, Father, or I would not be here. But, if I may, what about the prodigal son?”

“What about it? You may understand the parable, but it’s irrelevant here. We who serve must believe like little children.”

Thomas agreed whole-heartedly. “We’re all children in God’s eyes. We believe in Him as children believe.”

Father Donald’s sandals scraped the floor and his hood tipped forward. “Yet, an innocent child might believe anything.”

“So we believe whatever the Lord asks. Like His sheep.”

“Sheep? Leaders can not be sheep, Thomas. We’re shepherds.”

Flailing now, his blood racing, Thomas raised his voice. “Just how obedient are sheep? With shepherds, dogs, barbed wire…”

“Thomas, you disappoint me.” Father Donald leaned back.

“I realize you mean just the good sheep. Those with herd mentality.”

“Herd mentality?” Father Donald sounded gleeful. “We don’t put it that way, Thomas. Have you fulfilled our study requirements?”

“Yes, Father,” Thomas answered. “Why else would I be going into this sheep thing?”

“The monastery requires vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Simple acts of will. Less advertised is our need for creativity.”

And here Thomas had worried about the chastity vow!

Father Donald rose and extended his hand. Thomas rose, too, and shook that hand. “You’re welcome at Mass anytime. And afterwards, feel free to sell the congregation life insurance. Nothing wrong with that.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 9 of magazine’s print version.)

My Ex-Ophthalmologist

My internist referred me to a new ophthalmologist, who noted my astigmatism, told me he’s married, and asked me out. “Nothing casual,” Julian said. “My intentions are venereal.”

“Venereal?”

“Desire, not disease.”

Julian took me to dinner at Orsay and Jean Georges. He’s married and has a daughter, but we got along so famously, they seemed far away.

We traded ironies and smirked at saying the obvious: “Really raining.” “Crowded elevator.” “She’s a bitch.”

After a month, we started staying at the Stanhope hotel, where the sexual force between Julian and me held the planets in orbit. All night.

Over the course of a year, everyone came to know us—Julian and me. This afternoon, Julian presented me with a surprise—our own corner three-bedroom at Fifteen Central Park West. Sixteenth floor. The park’s trees roll endlessly beneath every window. We move in three weeks; he’s leaving his wife and daughter.

I was too surprised to respond. Julian said, “For you. I’m leaving them for you.”

We walked to Jean Georges and he said, “You can’t say no. Think about us. Who has more fun?”

Julian ordered champagne. And then, a coincidence. Effusive Tom Scully, a divorce lawyer who went to Catholic school in Queens with me, looms over our table. How great to see me! How long has it been?

Not long. A cousin’s funeral, last year. Tom Scully’s handsome face turns red. He’s sorry to intrude. But he sees the guys from our class and they wonder about me.

I’ve heard this before from Tom.

 “Wait till I tell them you look the same.” His tall body sways and I excuse myself.

Possibly, Tom wants forgiveness, which after twenty years, I’ll give him. But I can’t hand it to him out of nowhere. He needs to say, “I apologize.” Or even, “We all do.”

At thirteen I looked like I do now. Same big breasts and long legs. Most eighth grade boys’ noses reached near my nipples. Back then, in eighth grade, Tom was the guy who handed me the note.  

You look like a frog,
Smell like a hog,
Poke out your eye
And see if you die.

Every eighth grade boy had signed it. When the girls heard about it, they laughed, and shunned me, too. Even Erin from next door. When someone threw a rock through my bedroom window, I stopped going to school. St. Agnes promoted me to high school despite my lack of attendance.

Thirteen was painful. Most injuries you can’t help. But playground cruelty? A selfish father going after extra play-dates? Julian and I had had fun—nothing serious; nothing real.

When I return and sit down, Tom Scully has left. Jean-George brings us minuscule omelets.

“Julian, how old is your daughter?”

“Penelope? She’s twelve.”

“So besides you, who’s a good ophthalmologist?”

(Originally titled, “Mean Boys,” this appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 7 of magazine’s print version.)

Don't Ask Why

April never considered telling her father no. Although she lived a mere train ride away, Anders hadn’t contacted her even when Max was born. But now that her son was six, he invited them kindly. No matter that in thirty-two years, he had only once taken April to lunch, when she was ten. That, and several random, pre-dawn phone calls; a few greeting cards.

On the train Max asked a stream of questions about the grandfather nobody ever mentioned. Why did Anders want to meet Max now? What was a recluse and why did April call him one?

“Don’t keep asking why, sweetheart. Sometimes you have to wait and see.”

But why hadn’t Max seen Insect Collector magazine if Anders owned it? Why did some people collect insects when most people hated them? Why did people have bug fairs? Why couldn’t Max go to one?

“Ask him to take you, honey.”

At Grand Central they took a taxi to West 21st Street. The sidewalks teemed with people; the narrow, towering buildings obliterated daylight.  

Anders’ building looked especially decrepit. They waited long minutes until he opened the door. “Well, well.” He shook Max’s hand and moved to kiss April, who recoiled involuntarily.

In the unkempt studio, April touched her son’s head and knew Max found the shrunken old man amazing. That Anders reeked of alcohol and loneliness didn’t penetrate the boy’s wonder. Whereas April imagined the cluttered space and soiled artifacts springing organically from her father’s leathery hands.

Beneath a gray window a primitive computer and printer sat on a linoleum-topped table. “A young man at Radio Shack provides me with parts.” Anders smiled, showing his grimy teeth.

“Come here, Max.” He steered the boy, waving to include April, toward two cabinets, where a fluorescent lamp brought a spurt of cleanliness into sharp relief.

He opened a thin cabinet drawer, which displayed huge, iridescent beetles.

Max said, “Yikes.”

Anders chuckled or more like croaked. “See these?” He opened the next cabinet with its array of butterflies.

“Wow!” Max’s eyes widened. He peered at the vivid gossamer wings swirling with red, orange, and blue. Patterns like eyes dotted a lot of them.

“Asterope sapphira.” Anders pointed to an especially gorgeous blue butterfly. “Originates in the Amazon.”

“Wow!”

Anders opened every drawer and talked about every specimen. Origins and traits.

Then April forgot herself. Almost unaware, she clenched her fists. “Why, Anders, why? Why now? I mean, why you? Why you jerk! Why oh why ever not?” 

Max was tugging her elbow. “Mommy. Don’t keep asking why. Sometimes you have to wait and see. Sometimes nobody knows.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 9 of magazine’s print version.)    

Precision Cut

I escort William to my station. 

“Make it look like two weeks ago, Nora.”

He’s my only regular client. If his former stylist hadn’t severed a fingertip, I’d be back in Chicago. Luckily, William prefers to look unchangeable. A hyper-regular—he’s in here every two weeks. 

“Thanks for squeezing in my wife. She rarely even touches her hair.”

I don’t tell him that although it’s Saturday, I have no other appointments. Instead, I say, “No worries, William. Anyone can find time when necessary.”

He likes that and sits taller. William wants to hear about me—rather than talk about himself. Or sit quietly. So I tell him about the bad-neighborhood art gallery, and my two paintings there. 

How, he wonders, did I come to subsidize my artwork with haircuts?

“Someone complimented my manual dexterity.” When I was waitressing. “And I applied to the Precision school.”

I don’t say that the Precision school sent me to France for “international” status. Or that I met my boyfriend Alan there, attending a sculpture festival. Since we moved to New York, I’ve paid the rent. For a while, it didn’t matter that Alan’s sculptures were too important for day jobs. He had me half-convinced, in love. But it matters now. Two people can’t live on one man’s haircuts.

“The Precision school. That’s why I chose you, Nora.”

“They say you can’t get certified until you can do it in your sleep.”

William laughs. “Sodium pentothal before final testing?”

“Bet they haven’t thought of that yet.” I hand him the mirror and turn the chair.

“Perfect,” he says, tipping me a huge amount and calling Pratibha. “Ready, sweetheart?”

 Three minutes later, drugs, narcolepsy—not even! Wormholes? Rabbit holes? Who knows? Apparently, I chopped off three lustrous lengths, on top and the sides. It happened so fast even Pratibha was lulled. Before shrieking, “What the hell?”

Recovering, I see this beautiful young woman, fingering bristly patches like wounds.

“Nobody will ever notice,” I try.

But the damage’s obvious. Pratibha has great hair. “Maybe twisted up my mistake won’t show.”

“My husband likes it down.”

What husband wouldn’t?

Half-measures would look awful, which she realizes. And seethes. “Do your damn Precision cut. We’ll hate it. But it will appear intentional. Ugly on purpose.”

The Precision cut looks spectacular on her. “It highlights your eyes. And neck.”

“Don’t make me laugh. William!”

He glances at her and his cold face bobs near mine. His hand swings up and I flinch. Cursing, he backs away. I return his tip and they race out. Becca in front is saying, “A problem?” while retrieving Pratibha’s apron. 

Three more minutes: sickening, prickling skin. In the restroom, I vomit, rinse my mouth, splash my face—my reflection wavering in the mirror.

Tonight, I’ll phone my parents for airfare. 

Coat zipped, I tell Becca, “I’m done. I’m gone.”

(This originally appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 8 of magazine’s print version.)    

Guaranteed Happiness

My family called me, “Pris,” which I hated.

It bothered me until I was thirteen and Felicity sauntered into our humdrum classroom, after being expelled from some top echelon school.

With several seats vacant, she collapsed into the one beside    me, and blew a balloon of bubblegum that somehow didn’t stick to the gleaming swatch of dark hair covering half her face.

Behind her books, she exaggerated our teacher’s lisp. “Such supercilious pusillanimity.”

I laughed and spent the afternoon in detention. Thereafter we were best friends. Felicity lived in a mansion overlooking Lake Michigan. Her parents traveled and her brother Barret attended boarding school. A housekeeper existed, but barely.

In class, Felicity showed me her body-piercings. When nobody else was looking, she flashed her navel and budding breasts.

My parents didn’t miss me. They were happy I’d made such a rich friend.  At Felicity’s, we watched movies, swam naked in the lake, and, fitting our barefoot soles together, pushed, testing our leg strength.

That summer I kissed her in a webbed hammock, getting lost in her perfect, sweet face. Breathless, I asked, what next?

Her quicksilver blue eyes darted around. “Lots,” she said, “but you’re not ready.”

Then I fell in love with the backs of her knees as we  bicycled along less fancy streets, which nonetheless maintained summer’s endless leafy green canopy. Splotches of sunlight shimmered over the asphalt.

Felicity’s instinct for houses where contented owners answered the doorbell rarely missed. Her game required genteel manners and a waitress’s receipt book pad. If the homeowner would sign the receipt—no money, don’t worry—Felicity promised she would think of the person every day. She’d say their name out loud, guaranteeing their happiness. As witness, I tried unsuccessfully to act solemn. After we collected signatures covering two booklets, though, the game bored her.

Halfway through August, everything bored her. Suddenly, Felicity refused to leave her darkened bedroom—or even talk. I visited and she ignored me.

Except, just before leaving forever, she said, “If you ever think of me, Pris, say my name. And I’ll say yours.”

That was ten years ago. Last week her brother Barret, whom I had never met, found me in Manhattan. He’d pay for the plane ticket if I’d visit the hospital—the same one where John Hinckley is kept.

A nurse led me to an unrecognizable Felicity, huge and twitchy from drugs. Her lustrous hair was hacked into a bowl-shape, her quicksilver eyes blank, and her tantalizing face hung bloated and vacant.

Appalled, I finally took her swollen hand. Her voice burped like gas from a forgotten cave. “I. Know. You.”

“And Felicity,” I choked, “I know you.

Her laugh was guttural. “I don’t know me. But you…”

“I say your name, Felicity, every day.”

When I returned, my husband teased me for lying to her.

As if he could possibly understand. As if anyone could.

*

Originally this appeared in The View from Here online, and then in issue 4 of magazine's print version.

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.)